The U.S. can prosecute Russian leaders for war crimes

The U.S. can prosecute Russian leaders for war crimes

Tom Nachbar writes: Since April 4, when President Biden accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of being a war criminal, many commentators have focused on how Russian leaders might be subject to international war crimes trials. But there is another option that should be on the table: a U.S. prosecution. It is a remarkable thing for the president of the United States to personally accuse a foreign leader of being a war criminal. Such an allegation should not be made unless…

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Rep. Jamie Raskin on the climate crisis: ‘We’ve got to save democracy in order to save our species’

Rep. Jamie Raskin on the climate crisis: ‘We’ve got to save democracy in order to save our species’

The Guardian reports: When it comes to fighting for democracy and climate change – two of Jamie Raskin’s top priorities – the whole thing feels a bit like a game of chicken and egg to the Democratic congressman. On the one hand there is the planet, heating up quickly past the limit that is safe and necessary for human survival, while Congress stalls on a $555bn climate package. On the other, a pernicious movement, spurred by Donald Trump and other…

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Democratic state activists are working to decarbonize trillions. They don’t need Joe Manchin’s permission

Democratic state activists are working to decarbonize trillions. They don’t need Joe Manchin’s permission

The Nation reports: Republican state leaders are on the warpath against BlackRock, the largest financial asset manager in the nation. The company’s sin? Statements by BlackRock leadership that climate change is a long-term threat, and that the company will pursue investments that promote a reduction in emissions. In January, West Virginia declared that it was barring the company from managing its state pension funds. Texas passed legislation in February prohibiting any firm divesting from fossil fuels from managing state assets….

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Global data reveal half Covid survivors may still have symptoms four months after infection

Global data reveal half Covid survivors may still have symptoms four months after infection

Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy: Worldwide, 49% of COVID-19 survivors reported persistent symptoms 4 months after diagnosis, estimates a meta-analysis of 31 studies published late last week in The Journal of Infectious Diseases. University of Michigan researchers, who conducted a systematic review on Jul 5, 2021, also found the prevalence of long COVID at 1 month at 37%, while it was 25% at 2 months and 32% at 3 months. Fifty studies were identified in the review, and…

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Could gut microbes regulate appetite and body temperature?

Could gut microbes regulate appetite and body temperature?

Science reports: With more microbes than cells in our body, it’s not surprising that bacteria and other invisible “guests” influence our metabolism, immune system, and even our behavior. Now, researchers studying mice have worked out how bacteria in the mammalian gut can ping the brain to regulate an animal’s appetite and body temperature—and it involves the same molecular pathway the immune system uses to detect bacterial pathogens. “It’s quite an important finding,” says Antoine Adamantidis, a neuroscientist at the University…

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A universe without mathematics is beyond the scope of our imagination

A universe without mathematics is beyond the scope of our imagination

Mathematics is the language of the universe. (Shutterstock) By Peter Watson, Carleton University Almost 400 years ago, in The Assayer, Galileo wrote: “Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe … [But the book] is written in the language of mathematics.” He was much more than an astronomer, and this can almost be thought of as the first writing on the scientific method. We do not know who first started applying mathematics to scientific study, but it is plausible…

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The courage to speak the truth

The courage to speak the truth

Timothy Snyder writes: Once, after a debate in 2009 in Bratislava, I looked over at the notes that the Czech thinker (and by then former president) Václav Havel had been keeping for himself. He had written “love and truth” on a sheet of paper, and then doodled flowers around it. Havel was the author of a famous secular east European statement about risk in politics. He wrote “Power of the Powerless” in communist Czechoslovakia, three decades before that debate, under…

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Atrocities in Ukraine war have deep roots in Russian military

Atrocities in Ukraine war have deep roots in Russian military

The New York Times reports: In a photograph from the Kyiv suburb of Bucha, Ukraine, a woman stands in the yard of a house, her hand covering her mouth in horror, the bodies of three dead civilians scattered before her. When Aset Chad saw that picture, she started shaking and hurtled 22 years back in time. In February 2000, she walked into her neighbor’s yard in Chechnya and glimpsed the bodies of three men and a woman who had been…

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Here’s what the Facebook Papers say about Donald Trump, the 2020 Election, and January 6

Here’s what the Facebook Papers say about Donald Trump, the 2020 Election, and January 6

Gizmodo reports: In the hours following the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, employees at Facebook tasked with preventing “potential offline harm” found themselves under siege by a mob of a different sort. Reports of abusive content from users were flooding in. As one employee put it in an internal forum, many of the flagged posts “called for violence, suggested the overthrow of the government would be desirable, or otherwise voiced support for the protests.” The same day, Instagram employees…

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Elizabeth Warren: Democrats can still avoid disaster in November

Elizabeth Warren: Democrats can still avoid disaster in November

Elizabeth Warren writes: Democrats are the party of working people. Ahead of the 2020 election, we advanced ideas and plans that we believed would, in ways big and small, make our democracy and our economy work better for all Americans. Across this country, voters agreed with us — and gave us a majority in Washington so that we could deliver on those promises. Republican senators and broken institutions have blocked much of that promised progress. Now Republicans are betting that…

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How democracies spy on their own citizens

How democracies spy on their own citizens

Ronan Farrow writes: Commercial spyware has grown into an industry estimated to be worth twelve billion dollars. It is largely unregulated and increasingly controversial. In recent years, investigations by the Citizen Lab and Amnesty International have revealed the presence of Pegasus on the phones of politicians, activists, and dissidents under repressive regimes. An analysis by Forensic Architecture, a research group at the University of London, has linked Pegasus to three hundred acts of physical violence. It has been used to…

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Taking decolonisation beyond Eurocentrism

Taking decolonisation beyond Eurocentrism

Ingrid Harvold Kvangraven writes: With the publication of Orientalism in 1978, Edward Said would become one of the most influential scholars of our era. The book transformed the study of the history of the modern world, as it offered insights into how racist discourses created and maintained European empires. As much for his political activities, Said and his work attracted a number of Right-wing critics, most notably perhaps Bernard Lewis. Less well known in the West is Samir Amin, the…

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The beauty of life

The beauty of life

Joshua Hicks and Frank Martela write: When we think about lives filled with meaning, we often focus on people whose grand contributions benefited humanity. Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Nelson Mandela surely felt they had a worthwhile life. But how about us ordinary people, toiling away in a typical existence? Many scholars agree that a subjectively meaningful existence often boils down to three factors: the feeling that one’s life is coherent and “makes sense,” the possession of clear…

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The Wagner Group: Putin’s doppelgänger army

The Wagner Group: Putin’s doppelgänger army

Joana de Deus Pereira writes: The German word doppelgänger literally translates as ‘walking double’ and alludes to paranormal ‘duplicates’ that can manifest in many ways: you can see them in your peripheral vision, meet them somewhere on a lonely road, or see them while looking in the mirror – you see them, but they do not exist. This description very much applies to the Wagner Group, the largely invisible, officially non-existent, unregistered, mighty and resourceful private army with obscure ties…

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