Новости за 26.04.2024

No longer considered a public good where ideas and important social issues are nurtured, debated. and interrogated, institutions of higher education are being transformed into indoctrination centers where critical ideas and imagined futures are held in contempt, transformed into apparatuses of censorship and hopelessness. Derided as a haven for critically informed social criticism, the far-right wants to reduce teaching and learning to what might be called cloning pedagogies, designed to clone culture... Читать дальше...

In the state’s closing arguments jurors were treated to the spectacle of the prosecutor in Brenda’s case, Gayland Gieger, hauling a suitcase toward the jury box, from which he extracted a pair of her thong panties, which he waved in front of them, saying, to audible gasps in the courtroom: “This [dangling a pink thong] is what we found in [the suitcase]. It’s been introduced into evidence. The grieving widow packs this [brandishing a red thong] to run off with her boyfriend. The grieving widow... Читать дальше...

As an undergraduate at UC in the late 60s, I wondered why the name of one of the world’s greatest physicists who had worked there was absent, whereas that of his colleague, Ernest O. Lawrence, had been affixed to the sprawling Lawrence Radiation Laboratory and the Lawrence Hall of Science on the hill above campus as well as to the Lawrence National Laboratory in Livermore south of Berkeley.  A prestigious award and endowed lectureship also bore his name which features prominently in The Centennial... Читать дальше...

In striking at the Iranian consulate in Damascus on April 1 Bibi Netanyahu has made himself an April Fool. Israel has been bombing Syria for years with no provocation or retaliation by Syria. For years it has bombed its airports which disrupted humanitarian aid to Syria’s civilian population who were suffering in its long civil war. Iran responded to the Israeli strike on its Damascus consulate by asking its allies, the Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and Hamas in Gaza, to refrain from... Читать дальше...

It’s never been so bad. The Great Barrier Reef, which is one of nature’s most iconic mosaics of biodiversity, is on the ropes because of extreme global warming. Coral bleaching at the World Heritage-listed reef is “experiencing its worst mass bleaching event on record.” (Source: Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is ‘Transforming’ from Repeated Coral Bleaching, More

How will Biden conceal the inflation rampaging throughout his term? The latest scheme appears to be draining the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to the last drop. It’s already down to 17 percent, because Biden opened the spigot when his idiotic sanctions on Russian energy back in 2022 boosted prices at the pump into the stratosphere, always a terrifying development for homo politicus. Biden tamed gas prices by emptying most of the SPR. Now he may finish it off, because no, he can’t have gas prices rising before the election... Читать дальше...

No, Mr. Netanyahu. It is not antisemitic or pro-Hamas to point out that in a little over six months your extremist government has killed 34,000 Palestinians and wounded more than 77,000 people — seventy percent of whom are women and children. It is not antisemitic to point out that your bombing has completely destroyed more More

The recent presence of police on the campus of Columbia University to stop pro- Palestinian protesters is reminiscent of turbulence on the same campus in 1968. While the past and present issues of contestation at Columbia are different, the issues of free speech and student activism reflect an ongoing tension between students and universities in More

Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman wrote Manufacturing Consent in the late 1980s to describe the structural forces which cause an otherwise free media—one lacking government censorship, fear of prison for journalists (aside from those sharing designated government secrets), and staffed with people who genuinely see themselves as holding power accountable—can nonetheless produce systematic propaganda, with a highly More

“To this day I feel humiliation for what was done to me… The time I spent in Abu Ghraib — it ended my life. I’m only half a human now.” That’s what Abu Ghraib survivor Talib al-Majli had to say about the 16 months he spent at that notorious prison in Iraq after being captured and detained by More

In a global context where tropical rainforests play a critical role in biodiversity conservation and climate regulation, these ecosystems are severely threatened by expanding agribusiness and logging activities. This poses significant risks to the environment, wildlife, and communities dependent on rainforests. Against the backdrop of escalating climate change impacts, urgent action is needed to prevent the collapse More

On April 16, Australia’s eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, issued with authoritarian glee legal notices to X Corp and Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, to remove material within 24 hours depicting what her office declared to be “gratuitous or offensive violence with a high degree of impact and detail”.  The relevant material featured a livestreamed More

One of the greatest systemic failures in the U.S. is healthcare. Even after the 2010 passage of the Affordable Care Act: + 26 million Americans, or 7.9% of the population, still lack health insurance. + 51% of working age adults have difficulties affording health insurance. + 38% of working age adults delayed or skipped needed More

In the summer of 1983 Ted Kaczynski was feeling hemmed in even in remote Lincoln, Montana. “There were too many people around my cabin,” he later wrote, “So I decided I needed some peace.” In search of the solace that only nature could provide him, he hiked up to a favorite remote spot far from More

Haiti has descended into chaos. It’s had no president or parliament — and no elections either –for eight long years. Its unelected prime minister Ariel Henry resigned recently when gang violence at the airport in Port-au-Prince made it impossible for him to return to the country after a trip to Guyana. Haiti is the poorest More

What will it take to end the nuclear nightmare that has gripped the world since the atomic bombings of 1945? For a time, that nightmare seemed to have abated for, in response to massive popular resistance to the prospect of nuclear war, governments turned to signing nuclear arms control and disarmament agreements. Even previously hawkish More

As more campuses join the protests against Israel’s continuing engagement in war crimes in Gaza, one common thread runs through the student demands – divest from supplying the Netanyahu government and the IDF with weapons of mass destruction. What compels many of these youthful demonstrators to occupy the public spaces and offices of their universities More

Indoor air quality has emerged as a critical public health concern, gaining traction amidst growing recognition of its significance in spreading COVID-19 and many other diseases. Though progress has been slow, several recent developments suggest palpable momentum toward addressing indoor air quality. Late last month, Science published an article by over 40 experts extolling the More

A good memoir should be more than an autobiography and less than a confessional but contain elements of both. As a reader, I am less interested in being overwhelmed with family trauma and pathos except when it informs the greater tale being told. Quite often, it is the memoirs that feature an excess of pathos More

Growing up, I looked up to my father and aunt, who began restaurant industry careers after immigrating from Eritrea in the 1970s. When I started working, a restaurant job was a natural choice. While I took great pride in my work, I struggled with the conditions. I was often on my feet for 10-12 hour More

In cities and in rural areas, in red states and blue states, most residents want cleaner and more connected communities. Public transit — including trains, buses, and dial-a-ride services — and accessible walking and bike routes give us healthy, clean, and affordable ways for everyone to get where they need to go. But for too More

Truman Capote is dead: The Slow loris observer of New York in modern times. The magic is in what will be and certainly what was the night before: The moment begins with the arrival of the yellow taxi in the midst of a misty dawn; The hovering mist waited not in the chords of Moon River, More

Overflowing with national pride, the Greek media, seconded by the country’s grandiloquent authorities, don’t miss the opportunity to present this veritable re-enactment of a Nazi ceremony, namely the so-called “Olympic flame lighting ceremony” in Olympia… as proof of the greatness and historical continuity of the Greek nation. And with it, to present its accessories too, More