Every Monday on Global Comment, we share the slow, thoughtful, considerate words that our brains – and souls – need but that it’s easy to miss in our busy world. We distil the best of the web and recommend just three links every week that you absolutely must see.
No fluff, no fuss, just three exceptional reads.
Here are this week’s recommendations:
The Zone of Interest is about the danger of ignoring atrocities – including in Gaza (Naomi Klein / Guardian)
“Genocide becomes ambient to their lives”: that is how Glazer has described the atmosphere he attempted to capture in his film, in which his characters attend to their daily dramas – sleepless kids, a hard-to-please mother, casual infidelities – in the shadow of smokestacks belching out human remains. It’s not that these people don’t know that an industrial-scale killing machine whirs just beyond their garden wall. They have simply learned to lead contented lives with ambient genocide.
It is this that feels most contemporary, most of this terrible moment, about Glazer’s staggering film. More than five months into the daily slaughter in Gaza, and with Israel brazenly ignoring the orders of the international court of justice, and western governments gently scolding Israel while shipping it more arms, genocide is becoming ambient once more – at least for those of us fortunate enough to live on the safe sides of the many walls that carve up our world. We face the risk of it grinding on, becoming the soundtrack of modern life. Not even the main event.
The trendy second-hand clothing market is huge and still growing – yet nobody is turning a profit (Alden Wicker / BBC)
The problem is one of economics. With the rise of ultra-fast, ultra-cheap fashion brands, the volume of clothing produced and shipped globally continues to explode, and consumers are offloading more of it after just a few wears.
According to a 2023 study, one large Swedish charity has to pay to have 70% of donated clothing incinerated because it is too low quality to sell in-store or export. Of the clothing that is exported to Ghana, 40% of the average bale leaves the market as waste.
Boosting the representation of women on Wikipedia (Pod Save the UK)
@podsavetheuk A *very* happy International Women’s Day to Lucy Moore & her incredible project, boosting the representation of women on Wikipedia. From the new Pod Save the UK. Listen now, available wherever you get podcasts. #IWD #InternationalWomensDay ♬ original sound – Pod Save the UK
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Image: Jan van der Wolf