There have been penalties for those who looked the other way when Epstein was convicted of child sex offences and decided to maintain relationships with the financier — but not for the British ambassador to Washington, reveals SOLOMON HUGHES
Forensic Architecture: using 3D modelling for the people
A group constructing an accurate model of violent events using 3D imaging based on multiple kinds of input can help us discover the truth of situations the powerful want to keep hidden, write ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and JOEL HELLEWELL
Forensic Architecture has used its groundbreaking methods to map incidents ranging from illegal forest burning by palm oil conglomerate Korindo to the origin of the Beirut Port explosion.
Labour’s new Treasury unit will ‘challenge unnecessary regulation’ by forcing nominally independent bodies like Ofwat to bend to business demands — exactly what Iain Anderson’s corporate clients wanted, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
DR DYLAN MURPHY looks at a Big Brother Watch report which exposes the government as an enabler of DWP secret spying on benefit claimants
The EU faces a critical choice: will it remain in the shadow of an increasingly unreliable US ally, or will it forge its own path in a multilateral world where co-operation with China is essential, asks MARC VANDEPITTE as leaders meet for the EU-China Summit
A lot of discussion about how the left should currently organise – including debate on whether the Green Party is a useful vehicle for advance – runs the risk of refusing to engage with or learn from the reasons the left was defeated previously, argues KEVIN OVENDEN
For Egypt trade trumps the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians, but how long can the country’s ‘misleaders’ – and others in the region – continue their indifference against the popular will of their own people, asks ROGER McKENZIE
ALL models are wrong, but some are useful. This aphorism is generally attributed to a statistician in the 1970s, but its message is much older, and its truth is much more widely applicable than just to statistical models.
All representations of the world are “models,” that is, depictions of reality, or some aspect of it. They are “wrong” because they purposefully simplify reality — to make it comprehensible, or to extract a perspective through one particular lens.
When violence is inflicted on people by the powerful, they work very hard to control the story of what has happened. They offer an account of the world, a model, to describe what has happened on their terms.
More from this author
What’s behind the stubborn gender gap in Stem disciplines ask ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT in their column Science and Society
While politicians condemned fascist bombing of Spanish civilians in 1937, they ignored identical RAF tactics across the colonies. Today’s aerial warfare continues this pattern of applying different moral standards based on geography and race, write ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT
The distinction between domestic and military drones is more theoretical than practical, write ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT
Nature's self-reconstruction is both intriguing and beneficial and as such merits human protection, write ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT
