Nafeez Ahmed

Dr. Nafeez Ahmed is the founding editor of the 100% reader-funded investigative journalism project INSURGE intelligence. His latest book is Failing States, Collapsing Systems: BioPhysical Triggers of Political Violence (Springer, 2017). He is an 18-year investigative journalist, formerly of The Guardian where he reported on the geopolitics of social, economic and environmental crises. He now reports on ‘global system change’ for VICE’s Motherboard. He has bylines in The Times, Sunday Times, The Independent on Sunday, The Independent, The Scotsman, Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, Foreign Policy, The Atlantic, Quartz, New York Observer, The New Statesman, Prospect, Le Monde diplomatique, among other places. He has twice won the Project Censored Award for his investigative reporting; twice been featured in the Evening Standard’s top 1,000 list of most influential Londoners; and won the Naples Prize, Italy’s most prestigious literary award created by the President of the Republic. Nafeez is also a widely-published and cited interdisciplinary academic applying complex systems analysis to ecological and political violence. He is a Research Fellow at the Schumacher Institute.

Liberal Philanthropy is Dooming the Planet to Climate Disaster, Documents Reveal

We need a people’s movement to mobilise for ecological regeneration and systemic transformation.

Nafeez Ahmed
By Nafeez Ahmed
Climate Change

One of the world’s biggest philanthropic initiatives to address climate change is set-up to fail catastrophically, according to a strategy document setting out the initiative’s five-year plan. The strategy document, published by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation in January, represents the third renewal of the Climate Works initiative

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Collective Intelligence May Be Humanity’s Best Bet to Stave off an Uninhabitable Planet

Humanity needs new tools to overcome the global crisis of collective insanity

Nafeez Ahmed
By Nafeez Ahmed
A large flock of starlings fly illuminated by the setting sun near Bacau, north eastern Romania, Dec. 10, 2013. (AP/Vadim Ghirda)

The world faces an unprecedented convergence of crises. The ecological crisis, which points to a nearly uninhabitable planet by the end of the century if business-as-usual continues, is perhaps its most apocalyptic dimension. But the ecological crisis is intimately bound up with the business-as-usual political, economic, and cultural structures

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Former OPCW Official: No Conclusive Proof of Russian Complicity in Salisbury Attack

But Russia’s denial of past ‘Novichok’ programmes is misleading.

Nafeez Ahmed
By Nafeez Ahmed
Police officers guard a cordon around a police tent covering a supermarket car park pay machine near the spot where former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter were found critically ill following exposure to the Russian-developed nerve agent Novichok in Salisbury, England, Tuesday, March 13, 2018. The use of Russian-developed nerve agent Novichok to poison ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter makes it "highly likely" that Russia was involved, British Prime Minister Theresa May said Monday. Novichok refers to a class of nerve agents developed in the Soviet Union near the end of the Cold War. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham)

The US and its European allies have coordinated the largest collective expulsion of Russian diplomats in history. Russia has promised to retaliate in kind. Yet despite the sense of certainty around Russian culpability in the Salisbury incident, questions remain around the state of the available evidence. As contradictory narratives proliferate

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UK Sought Foreign Policy Advice From Cambridge Analytica Trump Team

SCL Elections briefed Foreign Office officials in 2017 on how use of data for US presidential elections could be applied for UK diplomatic and foreign policy interests.

Nafeez Ahmed
By Nafeez Ahmed
U.S. President Donald Trump, right, talks with British Prime Minister Theresa May in Taormina, Italy, May 26, 2017. (AP/Luca Bruno)

A whistleblower has thrown new light on how Cambridge Analytica, the notorious data analytics firm, breached Facebook rules to acquire private information on over 50 million people to target American voters. The revelations raise urgent questions about the use of psychological manipulation techniques on Facebook to influence voter choices, not

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Britain Is Manufacturing A Nerve Agent Case for ‘Action’ Against Russia

Britain has no real basis to presume Russia was behind the death of Sergey Skripal, but has already decided that it wants to manufacture a path to heightened hostilities with Russia, regardless of the evidence.

Nafeez Ahmed
By Nafeez Ahmed
Police officers wear protective suits inside the fence of "Ashley Wood Recovery", a vehicle recovery business in Salisbury, England, March 13, 2018. The use of Russian-developed nerve agent Novichok to poison ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter makes it "highly likely" that Russia was involved, British Prime Minister Theresa May claimed. Novichok refers to a class of nerve agents developed in the Soviet Union and possessed by multiple governments. (AP/Matt Dunham)

On Monday, Prime Minister Theresa May announced that former Russian spy, Sergey Skripal and his daughter Yulia, were poisoned with “a military-grade nerve agent of a type developed by Russia” known as ‘Novichok’. The chemical agent was identified by the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory at Porton Down. May referred to the British

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US Army Docs: Plan to ‘Dethrone’ Putin for Oil Pipelines May Provoke WW3

A US Army document concedes the real interests driving US military strategy toward Russia: dominating oil pipeline routes, accessing the vast natural resources of Central Asia, and enforcing the expansion of American capitalism worldwide.

Nafeez Ahmed
By Nafeez Ahmed
A Russian military combat vehicle, left, and tanks roll during a military exercise at a training ground at the Luzhsky Range, near St. Petersburg, Russia, Sept. 18, 2017. The Zapad (West) 2017 maneuvers have caused concern among some NATO members neighboring Russia, who have criticized a lack of transparency about the exercises and questioned Moscow's real intentions. (AP/Ivan Sekretarev)

The Russians are coming. They hacked our elections. They are lurking behind numerous alternative political movements and news outlets. Such is the overwhelming chorus from traditional reporting on Russia, which sees the United States as being under threat from fanatical Russian expansionism — expansionism which has gone so far as to interfere

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New Study by Ex-Chief of BP-Acquired Solar Giant Sees Renewable Energy Revolution on the Horizon

The dawn of the age of renewable energy could be even more complicated from a geopolitical perspective than the age of fossil fuels, shifting national and regional power to new players.

Nafeez Ahmed
By Nafeez Ahmed
fossil fuels

A new book put together by the former Chairman of Europe’s largest solar company, Lightsource - which merged with BP last year - throws light on how the world will be permanently transformed by an energy revolution in coming decades. The study’s key finding is that the widespread adoption of renewable energy technologies could usher in a new

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