Not really that surprising, but still, yikes!
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Great news. Let's hope Obama goes wild with further pardons and commutations in the next few days!
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Fascinating history of the (extremely successful) British covert operation to get the US involved in WWII
"American communists, fascists and isolationists complained bitterly and loudly in 1940 and 1941 that Britain was secretly manipulating the U.S. media as part of a campaign to pull America into the war. These accusations, confidently dismissed by liberal politicians and newspapers as paranoid ravings, were inaccurate only in that they were understated. Even the most alarmist commentators and conspiracy-mongers underestimated the depth and effectiveness of British covert activity."
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UN officials stating unequivocally in the British Medical Journal that the War on Drugs has caused seriously human rights violations and must be rethought
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I apologise for the usual overblown way of reporting things which is typical of Cracked, but I genuinely had not known about Trump's connection to Prosperity Gospel organisations before this
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An argument that the recent rise of populist politics represents (in part) a rejection of the use of (certain kinds of) statistics. Interesting throughout
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Hmm, apparently the stripiness of zebras probably has very little to do with avoiding predators, and lots to do with deterring biting insects!
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"Roma are used by nation-builders to create ideas of solidarity and belonging for the majority at the expense of Roma themselves. They're constructed as a threat, a necessary aberration, supposedly undermining the values and principles the European nation holds so dear... In contemporary western Europe, it's generally Muslims. In eastern Europe it's Roma." Vice
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"Our approach to freedom need not be identical but it must be intersectional and inclusive. It must extend beyond ourselves. I know with surpassing certainty that my liberation is directly linked to the liberation of the undocumented trans Latina yearning for refuge. The disabled student seeking unequivocal access. The sex worker fighting to make her living safely." NY Mag
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And here is my political commentary for today... I think "Gangham Style" is my favourite, but post your own suggestions in the comments! :)
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Well, this is terrifying. Animation and audio manipulation technologies are now reaching the point where it's just about possible to generate a completely fake video clip of a real person saying things that they haven't actually said, but that would be indistinguishable from the real thing. Imagine the havoc created by a clip of Trump promising to drop the bomb on Beijing, distributed widely via Twitter.
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Great work, this crew <3 I'm noticing the cleverness of targeting a building that, although clearly a house, was previously the Spanish cultural centre- so was presumably zoned commercial rather than residential - thereby circumventing the recent law criminalising the squatting of residential properties. Also, the sheer political savvy and downright decency of housing rough sleepers. Solid work all round.
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Good piece on greenwashing and the construction of highly environmentally damaging "eco-estates" in Cape Town.
"The township of Masiphumelele, where metal shacks use what little space is available, is often described as encroaching on the wetland’s edge. In contrast, the Lake Michelle estate, which is completely built within the wetland and appropriating its heart, figures less in analysis of wetland problems."
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Interesting. Fundamental research on opioid receptors in the brain may pave the way for compounds that have the analgesic properties of morphine, but don't result in some of the harmful side-effects (tolerance, respiratory suppression, etc).
"the [mu-opioid] receptor is like a double garden gate that can open onto two pathways, the G-protein and beta-arrestin paths. Use morphine to unlock the gate, and it swings open as one unit onto both paths. Change the gate itself so the beta-arrestin side remained locked and you could open to just the G-protein path and reap the crucial benefits of morphine with fewer side effects."
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"Vaishnav’s main explanation for the continued electoral success of criminally tainted politicians [in India] is quite simple: They provide services the state does not... More so, these politicians use their criminality as a badge, as a way to signal their credibility to the voters. If anything, the more voters know about the criminality of a candidate, the better that candidate will do." FT
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A history of white supremacism in Australia. The bit about slavery and forced labour in the late 19th century is something I wasn't aware of
"The primary driver of slavery on the South Pacific Islands and in Australia from the 1860s onward was pretty straightforward. Britain wanted cheaper cotton. The world’s cotton market had been thrown into turmoil because it could no longer depend on the blood and sweat of free labor provided by the slaves of the American South. The British Empire’s textile industry was suffering, and even though the UK had abolished slavery in 1833, they were not above looking the other way when it came to getting cheaper cotton.
This explosion in cotton prices led entrepreneurial men of highly questionable ethics to go island hopping in the South Pacific. Starting in the 1860s, ships with names like the Marion Rennie, the Forest King, and the Krishna picked up native peoples by any means necessary and brought them to places like Fiji and Queensland, Australia to work on cotton and sugar plantations."
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The UK is hardly doing a great job of protecting immigrants' human rights... :/
"Department of Health figures show that the Home Office made 8,127 requests for patient details [from the NHS] in the first eleven months of 2016, which led to 5,854 people being traced by immigration enforcement."
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The abortion 'gag rule' is an utterly cynical piece of political posturing. By cutting funding to NGOs that supply contraception to people in developing countries, it actually systematically *increases* the overall number of abortions taking place (while no doubt making them less safe as well).
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