Opinions

Today, Quito woke up as cold as usual, but that was not the first thing that Ecuadorians noticed when their alarms went off.  At 5 a.m., Ecuadorian time, President Lenín Moreno announced to everyone that the country was to stop…

By George Monbiot for The Guardian Creeping privatisation is rolling back the state to create a new, absolutist bureaucracy that destroys efficiency.  My life was saved last year by the Churchill Hospital in Oxford, through a skilful procedure to remove…

By Baher Kamal Paris, Milan, New York, Tokyo… These are just some of the world’s most prestigious fashion catwalks. There, and elsewhere, perfectly – and often unrealistically – silhouetted young women and men graciously parade to impress elite guests and…

The attempt by foreign powers to impose regime change in Venezuela has failed, ex-Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters has said, adding that final victory over the “evil empire” was on the horizon. In a short video posted to Twitter, the…

Garfield Benjamin, Solent University for The Conversation Gwyneth Paltrow – who has 5.3m Instagram followers – reportedly ran into a spot of trouble with her daughter, Apple Martin, recently when the 14-year-old called out her mother for posting a picture…

Apparently they are the worst enemies. They speak of one another in the most horrid and dehumanising epithets. But as it often happens, which was so well described by George Orwell, the enemy without is used to keep control of…

Tom Solomon, University of Liverpool for The Conversation Following a measles outbreak in Rockland County in New York State, authorities there have declared a state of emergency, with unvaccinated children barred from public spaces, raising important questions about the responsibilities…

Since the powerful march of hundreds of thousands of students in 1,000 towns against climate change, an unexpected campaign of delegitimation, ”demystification” and demonisation has started against Greta Thunberg, the Swedish teenager who started the movement. After searching the media, social…

Despite enormous ongoing effort over more than a thousand years, during and since the formation and shaping of the modern world, and as the number of issues being contested has steadily increased, activists of many types have made insufficient progress…

Michael Mikulewicz, Glasgow Caledonian University and Tahseen Jafry, Glasgow Caledonian University for The Conversation The tropical cyclone rampaging south-eastern Africa has been described as one of the worst disasters ever to strike the southern hemisphere, with up to 2.6m people…