Month: October 2016

Technology and Inequality

/ nancyjonathan / Leave a comment

serversNancy Lindisfarne writes – We live in a world mad drunk on technology and political stupidity. Bob Hughes’ new book, The Bleeding Edge: Why Technology turns Toxic in an Unequal World (Oxford: New Internationalist. 2016) says more about this poisonous combination – its causes, consequences, and possible cures – than anything I have previously read. This is an ambitious and important book. The questions Hughes addresses about the relation between equality and creativity – and the converse, why inequality is so stifling of innovation and so destructive of the environment– are extremely pressing.

And they are questions that haunt us. Thinking hard about technology is frightening. Our world is so full of things that most of us don’t understand, perhaps it is better not to look. Continue reading →

Don’t Bomb Mosul: The Reasons Why

/ jonathannancy / Leave a comment
american-bombers-ramadi-october-2015

American planes bombing Ramadi in October, 2015

Nancy Lindisfarne and Jonathan Neale

An assault on the Iraqi city of Mosul by the United States, Iran, the Iraqi government, Kurdish forces and Shiah militias looks imminent. We can expect massive bloodshed and the destruction of most of the city.

Mosul is now held by ISIS. Different estimates suggest that between 600,000 and 1,500,000 people are still in the city. In the last year Iraqi and Iranian forces backed by the US bombs have retaken the cities of Ramadi and Fallujah from ISIS. In both cases, the whole city was flattened by American bombs, and almost all the people became refugees. Those two cities remain destroyed, and almost empty.

Because ISIS holds Mosul, every reactionary power in the world will welcome the bombing. On present form, almost the whole of the European and North American left will do nothing to protest the bombing, and many leftists will support the assault.

The position of most of the left makes us sick at heart. Do Muslim deaths not matter? Continue reading →