The ongoing floods in Pakistan could have been largely prevented, writes ABDUL RAHMAN
Latest editorial
Violent and harmful: legally tackling online pornography
Mountains of research show that hardcore material harms children, yet there are still no simple measures in place
PULLING NO PUNCHES: Activists from the feminist campaign group Not Buying It at the Liberal Democrat Conference in Brighton in 2018
By escalating deportations and cutting remittances, Trump threatens to destabilise Latin American economies and exacerbate humanitarian crises. Ironically, this might trigger a new wave of migration, write JOHN PERRY and ROGER HARRIS
With foreign media banned from Gaza, Palestinians themselves have reversed most of zionism’s century-long propaganda gains in just two years — this is why Israel has killed 270 journalists since October 2023, explains RAMZY BAROUD
On the release of her memoir that reveals everything except politics, Sturgeon’s endless media coverage has focused on her panic attacks, sexuality and personal tragedies while ignoring her government’s many failures, writes PAULINE BRYAN
At 80, Elizabeth Morley wished she could join Palestine Action’s ladder-climbing but found her perfect protest at Defend Our Juries, proving Britain’s elders won’t be silenced despite government crackdowns, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
AMNON BROWNFIELD STEIN reports on the Israeli national strike as thousands call for an end to the war
WHEN I was a teenager, the only generally available pornography or erotica was surreptitiously traded postcards of coyly posed, naked women or under-the-counter magazines with innocuous titles like Health and Beauty. Not exactly uplifting visual material, but hardly damaging.
Today, we are living in a world where access to extremist material of all kinds of sexual depravity is readily available on the internet. Pornography has taken on a new and frightening significance. It is also a perfect paradigm of capitalism in that it exploits the poorest and most vulnerable in our societies, engenders huge profits and cultivates urges and desires no-one knew they had.
As a recent article by Harriet Grant in the Guardian showed, many of the men convicted of online child abuse say that they began by logging on to one of the many “mainstream” porn sites, but were, over time, taken to increasingly more abhorrent material, involving violence and child abuse by the inbuilt algorithms and without their conscious desire for such material.
More from this author
JOHN GREEN recommends an Argentinian film classic on re-release - a deliciously cynical tale of swindling and double-cross
JOHN GREEN is fascinated by a very readable account of Britain’s involvement in South America
JOHN GREEN is stirred by an ambitious art project that explores solidarity and the shared memory of occupation
JOHN GREEN applauds an excellent and accessible demonstration that the capitalist economy is the biggest threat to our existence
