Ayotzinapa & Famine

Featured Articles

The Ayotzinapa families, 10 years later

EL PAÍS English • 26 Sep 2024 • ~3300 words

Ten years have passed since the tragic events surrounding the disappearance of 43 students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers' College in Mexico, yet the families still seek the truth. This article shares the heart-wrenching stories of parents like Cristina and Don Berna, who continue their relentless search for answers amid a backdrop of official indifference and enduring pain.

Cristina doesn’t fully understand the legal terms that surround the case, nor has anyone sat down to explain them to her. Her mother tongue is Nahuatl, which is why she has a hard time reading all the Spanish-language information that’s published about the Ayotzinapa case. When asked what has worn her down the most in these 10 years, she answers without any hesitation: “Not being able to sleep. Because you come home tired from a meeting or a march, you go to bed to rest and think about your son… and then, it’s another sleepless night.”

Famine is ravaging Sudan, but the world can’t get food aid to millions of starving people

Reuters • 27 Sep 2024 • ~5100 words

In a harrowing look at Sudan's food crisis, this article discusses the severe famine ravaging the country, where millions of people are facing starvation due to the ongoing civil war and the inability of the United Nations and aid organizations to deliver food assistance to the affected areas. It explores the challenges faced by the UN and aid groups in accessing regions controlled by warring factions, as well as the role of the Sudanese government in restricting humanitarian access. The article also raises questions about the effectiveness of the global system for monitoring and responding to famine crises.

Sudan is a stark example of what happens when the final, critical stage in that intricate system – the delivery of food to the starving – breaks down. And it exposes a shaky premise on which the system rests: that governments in famine-stricken countries will welcome the help.

Recommended Articles

Why romanticising your own life is philosophically dubious, setting up toxic narratives and an inability to truly love

Aeon • 27 Sep 2024 • ~3750 words

Main character syndrome (MCS) is a tendency to view one's life as a story in which they are the central protagonist, while everyone else is a side character. This piece delves into this concept to examine how our obsession with self-centered narratives can distort our connections with others and ultimately lead to feelings of isolation.

But the main character narrative denies all these possibilities. It is destructive to views of human beings as fundamentally relational and interdependent, and poses a threat to two important experiences of being human: the first is connection to others; the second is love.

The satellite spectrum battle that could shape the new space economy

Financial Times • 27 Sep 2024 • ~2800 words • Archive Link

Elon Musk's SpaceX is stirring up a significant debate over the future of satellite communication by pushing to relax power limits on transmissions from low Earth orbit. This article explores the implications of this battle, revealing how what seems like a technical dispute is actually a clash over competition, national sovereignty, and the power dynamics in the emerging space economy.

What might seem at first like an arcane, technical dispute has become a proxy for a wider philosophical clash: about the power of US billionaires in a lightly regulated but strategic region of space; the implications for competition; for national sovereignty; and for equal access to the economic benefits that low Earth orbit offers.

The storm chasers trying to save the world from drought

The Economist • 27 Sep 2024 • ~4000 words • Archive Link

In the face of worsening droughts, cloud-seeding is drawing attention as a controversial solution to boost precipitation. This piece explores the balance of science and ethics as researchers grapple with the effectiveness of this technology, the potential for unintended consequences, and the broader implications for water supply management.

“Once I would have said, hell, you could probably take some moisture from the Mississippi river basin and no one would really care that much,” said Sorensen. “But then New Orleans ran into really serious problems [in 2023] because of drought and saline water pushed farther up into the river system.” There’s no evidence to suggest the drought was due to cloud-seeding, but Sorensen is worried we don’t yet know enough about its effects. “I’m just not sure where this mystical place is, where you can steal moisture from, and no one will care.”

Backlight : Technology Against Evil

The Montreal Review • 26 Sep 2024 • ~6350 words

This essay explores the concept of evil, arguing that evil is not inherent in nature but rather stems from the actions of conscious, rational beings. It explores ideas around the dehumanization of "evildoers" and the use of surveillance, discipline, and confinement as methods to deal with moral and social problems. It also raises questions about the role of religion, reason, and freedom in addressing the problem of evil.

Society, culture, state power discipline and create subjects and, at best, citizens. And Foucault notes that the aim of disciplinary power, that which is imposed purely from the outside on individuals and communities, has one goal: not to make a festival of diversity, a wedding-like celebration, but to penetrate with regulations into the smallest details of everyday life through the mediation of complete hierarchy.

The Future of Prisons?

The Marshall Project • 26 Sep 2024 • ~5600 words

The concept of prison reform takes center stage in this piece, through the lens of the "Restoring Promise" initiative in South Carolina. By offering a more humane environment and mentorship opportunities for young inmates, this program challenges traditional views on incarceration and aims to foster personal growth. The article explores the challenges and opportunities of implementing this model in the U.S. context, and questions whether such programs can truly transform the American criminal justice system.

Arnold Ventures also funded a report by a group of criminal justice scholars about why recidivism shouldn’t be the main marker of progress. Most measurements amount to a simple yes or no. Someone was rearrested, or they weren’t. They went back to prison, or they didn’t. But these numbers don’t reveal how a person stays out of prison. A woman might not return because she earned a law degree. Or she might have died from a drug overdose on the outside.

What Was Bidenomics?

Phenomenal World • 26 Sep 2024 • ~10350 words

What does "Bidenomics" really mean, and how does it differ from past economic approaches? This piece provides an in-depth analysis of the economic policies and political dynamics that shaped the Biden administration's economic agenda. It explores the tensions between the Democratic Party's progressive wing and the business community, the influence of national security concerns, and the resulting policy outcomes that emerged. The article also raises questions about whether Bidenomics has been able to meaningfully address growing inequality in the U.S. economy.

As a positive vision, the resulting program centers on developing green technological (and military) prowess, national-security hawkishness, and the priority of corporate profitability over social reform. By the summer of 2023, the administration had embraced a name for this vision: Bidenomics.

Seeking Stability

Phenomenal World • 26 Sep 2024 • ~3750 words

Central banking often feels like a never-ending quest for stability, but as this piece from Phenomenal World explores, new challenges are mounting. This piece examines the concept of "stability as stasis" versus "stability as resilience", and questions whether the central banks' focus on preserving the status quo may have unintended consequences. The article also explores the potential for a more democratic approach to central banking that embraces change through predictable political processes.

But this insistence on stasis is now producing volatility. There was the occupy wall street movement. There were protests at the European Central Bank. There was the Fed Up campaign. But these were small beans compared to what we are seeing now. There are now governments, left and right, across Europe, the U.S., and beyond that oppose the powers and structures of independent central banks in their entirety.

How To Fix DEI

persuasion.community • 26 Sep 2024 • ~4850 words

This piece discusses the challenges and limitations of current diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs in universities and workplaces. It examines the potential unintended consequences of these programs, triggering backlash and increasing polarization, and offers suggestions for how to redesign DEI initiatives to better achieve the goals of pluralism and inclusion.

To put it plainly: no large country has ever successfully transitioned to a majority minority demographic while maintaining a full democracy. Experience suggests that such a transition is much more likely to be blocked than to succeed. So those of us who want the country to move towards inclusion must be serious in considering how to get there. How can the United States shift from a dominant culture that is White, male, straight, and Christian to one that has no demographic assumptions at its center?

A Secret Diary of Mass Murder

The Atlantic • 26 Sep 2024 • ~3800 words • Archive Link

This piece introduces Kazimierz Sakowicz, a Polish journalist who witnessed and documented the mass killings of Jews by the Nazis at the Ponar forest near Vilnius, Lithuania during World War II. It also discusses another firsthand account of the events at Ponar by Polish writer Józef Mackiewicz, and explores the connections between the two witnesses, revealing the dual perspectives of these two observers of the Ponar atrocities.

Though he clearly did not endorse what was going on around him, he was often surprisingly restrained in expressing abhorrence. Mostly, he concentrated on empirical matters: what happened, how it happened, how many people it happened to, who did what, how they did what they did. This is the diary of a man who, when he awakes each morning, looks outside his house and, more often than not, observes to himself, They're killing again today.

Enforcers Move to Cut Visa's Private Sales Tax

BIG by Matt Stoller • 26 Sep 2024 • ~2800 words

Visa is facing serious scrutiny as the Antitrust Division pushes back against what they describe as a "private sales tax" imposed on merchants across the U.S. This article delves into the allegations that Visa leverages its dominance in the debit card market to stifle competition and manipulate fees, echoing themes from other high-profile antitrust cases. The article also explores the broader implications of the case for the payments industry and the role of antitrust enforcement in addressing monopolistic practices.

Visa, with a few exceptions, also admitted it didn’t do much innovation. And that’s worse than it sounds, because the U.S. payments infrastructure is the most corrupt and bloated in the world, with identity theft and fraud as a routine problem for both merchants and consumers. Moreover, Visa is a significant data broker, using its surveillance power to help advertisers and firms engage in pricing choices.

The Dark Shadow of the Chinese Dream

Los Angeles Review of Books • 26 Sep 2024 • ~4350 words

In this book review, Mingwei Song discusses the current state of Chinese science fiction, highlighting its rapid growth and global recognition. It examines the complex relationship between the genre and the Chinese state, exploring how certain authors and their works have been embraced or suppressed based on their political alignment. The article also delves into the contrasting visions of statecraft and social commentary presented in the works of prominent Chinese sci-fi writers like Liu Cixin and Han Song.

It is easy to see why, as Liu has been embraced by the regime, Han has often run afoul of the censors. His 2002 story “My Fatherland Does Not Dream” recasts China in the midst of its “economic miracle” as a nation of sleepwalkers controlled by microwave-emitting generators. These somnolent citizens produce, consume, and procreate blissfully unaware, while the Party elite, who supply the industrially produced stimulants everyone takes during the day, keeps watch.

National Sovereignty’s Foundational Violence

Public Books • 24 Sep 2024 • ~3250 words

In an examination of how borders, immigration regimes, and national citizenship are built on racist and violent foundations that emerged from European colonialism, this piece explores how these systems of exclusion and exploitation are challenged by movements proposing the abolition of borders and the free mobility of people.

. . . today’s smugglers often rely on infrastructures and routes developed long before national borders existed. Many activities now criminalized as “smuggling,” in other words, are nothing more than a continuation of similar activities—trade in goods, for instance—taking place in the same area since time immemorial. As Debdatta Chowdhury points out in chapter 7, practices criminalized as “smuggling” by nation-states reflect people’s adaptations to the imposition of national borders.

Are We Too Impatient to Be Intelligent?

Behavioral Scientist • 17 Sep 2024 • ~3500 words

In a world that constantly pushes us to hurry, our obsession with speed and efficiency may be undermining our ability to truly appreciate and benefit from certain experiences and decisions. It questions whether we have become too focused on optimizing time and productivity at the expense of acknowledging the value in slowness, ambiguity, and human preferences that don't always align with numerical models. The article also examines how technological advancements can sometimes transform optional conveniences into obligatory norms that end up diminishing our overall satisfaction.

So this is what’s happened to the world: optimization trumps human preference. The people who want to win the argument are effectively prepared to ignore human truths to preserve the integrity of the artificial model.

Confessions of a Former Carnivore

The New Republic • 15 Sep 2024 • ~6100 words

A former meat lover reflects on the complexities of transitioning to a vegan diet while grappling with society’s deep-rooted attachment to animal products. The author explores the ethical, environmental, and psychological factors at play, questioning why so many continue to consume meat despite the growing awareness of its implications. It's an insightful read that challenges us to rethink our food choices and their broader impacts. It’s also at times a difficult read if you are a meat eater.

Why, given the growing plethora of decent alternatives and the many reasons to forswear meat, dairy, and, yes, seafood—self-evidently good reasons, involving ethics, personal health, environmental devastation, and social justice—aren’t more of us doing it? Why are so many otherwise thoughtful, conscientious, and deeply caring individuals so willing to cause so much suffering for the most trifling and transient of gratifications? (View Highlight)****

The Tragic Toll of Climate Change on Children

Undark Magazine • 13 Sep 2024 • ~1400 words

This book review tries to shed light on the often-overlooked impact of climate change on children’s health. Through stories of young patients facing respiratory issues and emotional trauma from environmental disasters, it explores how children's physiological and neurological differences make them more vulnerable to the dangers posed by a warming planet, and calls for greater awareness and action to protect the youngest generation.

Anna and her peers were more vulnerable because, physiologically, children are quite different than adults. Babies only possess a fraction of the alveoli, or tiny air sacs in the lungs, that adults do. Childhood should be a time of rapid proliferation of alveoli — but smoke can stunt development, leading to small, stiff lungs and a lifetime of asthma, pneumonia, and other respiratory issues. Even more troubling, new studies have shown that inhaling pollution particles as a child can cause cognitive impairment.

Woman In the Woods

The Bitter Southerner • 8 Sep 2024 • ~3000 words

Holly Haworth reflects on the eerie intersection of nature and gendered violence after the murder of Laken Riley. As she walks through the woods—an area meant for solace—she grapples with the unsettling reality of women’s bodies found in such places, exploring how the forest can symbolize both life and death for women.

A woman found dead in the woods comes up so often in news stories that it begins to read like a literary trope. In our stories, then, a woman in the woods is usually not a woman alive.

The fatal flaw in the Border Patrol’s rescue program

High Country News • 1 Sep 2024 • ~5250 words

There is a complex relationship between the U.S. Border Patrol's law enforcement and humanitarian rescue operations along the U.S.-Mexico border. This piece examines how the agency's mandate to detain and deport migrants can conflict with its efforts to save lives. The stories and insights presented shed light on a complex system that often leaves vulnerable individuals in peril.

Many local officials and residents believe that the Border Patrol should bear primary responsibility for migrant rescues and recoveries. The agency is part of CBP, which is itself part of the Department of Homeland Security, and its resources dwarf those of local emergency teams and nonprofits. But some aid workers and border researchers see a conflict of interest between the agency’s primary mandate, which is to detain and deport migrants, and the humanitarian goal of saving lives. Both outside critics and Border Patrol agents acknowledge that the two goals are intertwined, but only the former see this as a problem.