I don't want to get to 2050, when Elon Musk and his libertarian chums are eating dog food on Mars, and then for them to look back on Earth and see that we've lost fifty per cent of our life forms. There's a significant minority - or maybe a majority - of human beings who are biophiliac. They like livings things. - Jonathan Ledgard

It was only a matter of time. Graft, corruption, and negligence had left 2,750 tons of highly explosive ammonium nitrate lying unchecked for 6 years in a hangar at Beirut's crowded port. It was a disaster-in-waiting, a genuine time-bomb itching to ignite within lethal distance of both homes and harbour. Lebanese officials knew — from customs authorities to army commanders to the prime minister and the president — and did nothing. Then, one day early in August, the conditions were just right. A blast roughly one tenth as powerful as the atomic explosion in Hiroshima killed at least 190, leaving the country reeling amid the devastation. But even before the explosion, Lebanon was already erupting. Bribery and cronyism had enriched a complacent elite, while immiseration spread due to economic collapse. Resentment had spilled into the streets: widespread protests called for an overhaul of the political class. Judge Ghassan Oueidat, Lebanon's chief public prosecutor: "We failed at running a country." Amid the rubble, can a more just society be built? Or is Lebanon, raised on compromised foundations, doomed to founder? The answer must lie with the People. Otherwise, Lebanon will serve as a dire warning to failing states the world over. Which will be the next to fall?

Earlier this year, the FBI elevated a new threat to its list of top-level priorities, alongside ISIS: racist violence. Though the KKK, neo-Nazi gangs, and other hate-groups are mainstays of the American right's extremist fringe, a new affiliation — born online and steeped in meme culture — has come to light as anti-lockdown and racial-justice protests have faced right-wing backlash.

Decked out in military fatigues, tactical gear and — signally — Hawaiian shirts, gun-toting "boogaloo bois" have maintained a conspicuous presence at demonstrations this summer. (Kitschy Hawaiian patterns, as well as igloo motifs, symbolize "big luau" and "big igloo," corruptions of boogaloo coined to evade internet censors.) More an in-group revolving around memey signifiers than a movement, the boogaloo bois are a loose band of pro-gun, anti-government militants, largely mustering on Facebook and subsribing to various strains of far-right libertarianism.

They are united, however, by their aim to spark a government-dissolving revolutionary war known as the "boogaloo." (The word is borrowed from the 1984 breakdance-themed flop Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo, and is meant to evoke the notion of a "sequel" to the Civil War.) And though not all adherents embrace a racist ideology (some even expressing solidarity with black victims of "state" violence), to many the sought-after boogaloo is an all-out "accelerationist" race war. That idea has been appropriated by white supremacists and neo-Nazis. And as unrest erupted across the country in the wake of George Floyd's death, they saw an ideal opportunity to catalyze the boogaloo.

Online radicalization is no longer exclusive to ISIS. In the United States, homegrown memes now inspire an all-American brand of terrorism.

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Here's an excerpt from hate-mail we received on September 8th:

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You think everyone in America is afraid of you. Trust me before this bullshit you have started is finished you will be afraid of us. We will not be shooting teargas or rubber bullets at you. It will be for real bullets.
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That's only one of hundreds of similar messages which have made their way into our inbox since we began our campaign for the White House Siege. We've been asked to "go to another country." We've been informed that we'll be met by "armed militias." We've been told to "get ready for war." We've been threatened with being "taken away in body bags." We've been called disappointingly few variations on "commie" and "libtard." We've been bad-mouthed by "patriots" whose mastery of grammar would make George Washington wince. We've been called the N-word.
From the beginning, we've made it clear that we're calling for an explicitly peaceful demonstration. But that has been wholly lost on bloodthirsty, far-right keyboard-warriors. Honesty and truth are meaningless to them. They're spoiling for a fight.As a result, the hashtag #WhiteHouseSiege has been censored on Facebook and is not likely to survive for long on other social-media platforms. So, from now on, we will tag our WHS-related posts with the hashtag #ReOccupy.
Stay safe.

"Kill all you see, whether children or adults." That's what Myanmar's military allegedly commanded as it waged a coordinated campaign of ethnic violence against the Rohingya minority. At the Hague, two former soldiers confirmed what the military, known officially as the Tatmadaw, has long denied: that it perpetrated atrocities including mass rapes and massacres, decimating whole villages at once. Since 2017, the violence has driven some 700,000 Rohingya into neighbouring Bangladesh, where they languish as refugees. The International Court of Justice is investigating charges that the Tatmadaw committed genocide. In a divided age punctuated by crises, let this serve as a dire warning lest the world succumb to barbarity.