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COP26 and the Fragility of Climate Knowledge

By Isobel Akerman (@isobelakerman) On Sunday 31st October 2021, the 197 signatories of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change will gather in Glasgow to discuss the biggest issues facing our planet.[1] The 26th Conference of the Parties [COP26] is a two-week conference, designed for nations to negotiate climate adaptation, mitigation, science, technology, finance,…
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Brexit, the Blob, and Global Britain

By Niles A. Webb Defending Tony Blair’s decision to invade Iraq, historian Andrew Roberts invoked the man who told Britain to fear Hitler but was scorned until events vindicated him. ‘For Churchill, this apotheosis came in 1940 [when Hitler invaded France]; for Tony Blair, it will come when … hundreds of weapons of mass destruction…
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“Help Me, Rhonda”: The Beach Boys and the Labouring of Popular Music

By Grant Wong (@wongpopscholar) The Beach Boys’ 1965 album Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!) looks and sounds like your typical early Beach Boys record. Its tracks, hits like “California Girls” and “Help Me Rhonda,” celebrate the simple joys of being a teenager in postwar America. Its album sleeve beams with summer fun, depicting the Beach…
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24. ‘Morality’ Broadcasts by a Dictator

By David Crowther Jose Efrain Ríos Montt (1926-2018) was a complicated figure, to say the least. President of Guatemala for a brief period in the 1980s, and an influential figure in Guatemalan politics thereafter, Ríos Montt was an uncompromising Protestant moralist in a country that increasingly followed his path of conversion. As leader of the…

