Here are two short (ca. 7 minutes each) clips from Friday’s “Real Time” show with Bill Maher; watch ’em before they take them down. They’re both good–and larded with humor. The first is his opening monologue about the censorship and fear of American media. Maher points out that Jimmy Kimmel’s firing occurred exactly 24 years […]
This has some relevance to today’s wars. Families and friends who ended up on opposite sides in the U.S. Civil War (1861–1865) experienced some of the most painful consequences of the conflict. The war was not just between North and South—it cut across states, towns, and even households. Here’s what happened in different situations: Families […]
Just War Theory is a moral framework for evaluating the resort to war, conduct in war, and responsibilities after war. It seeks a middle path between pacifism (which rejects war) and realism (which treats war as beyond morality), arguing that war, though tragic, can sometimes be morally justified and must always be morally constrained. Classically […]
As we wrote in a post last week, a Guardian article by their Beirut correspondent William Christou (“US imposes sanctions on Palestinians for requesting war crimes inquiry“, 5 Sept) included the following erroneous claim: In an interim judgment in January 2024, the ICJ ruled that the claim of genocide was “plausible”… As we’ve noted in communications […]
The concept of proportionality – or as it is more often presented, ‘disproportionality’ – has long been a theme that is widely used in BBC reporting on armed conflicts involving Israel. However, contrary to the narrative frequently advanced by the BBC, that concept does not relate to the relative numbers of people killed on either […]
In August of 1833 the British passed legislation abolishing slavery within the British Empire and putting more than 800,000 enslaved Africans on the path to freedom. To make this possible, the British government paid a huge sum, £20 million or about 5% of GDP at the time, to compensate/bribe the slaveowners into accepting the deal. […]
What Happens When You Have an Unjust Law A Halfling writes – This article focusses on the way that terrorism legislation and the designation of entities as terrorist organisations can have a chilling effect upon other civil liberties. I should make it clear that because the article concentrates on the group Palestine Action does not […]
A report published on the BBC News website’s ‘England’ and ‘Bradford’ pages on September 6th purports to inform readers about a legal case. Titled “Pro-Palestine activists sentenced over protest”, that uncredited article tells BBC audiences that: [emphasis added] “A group of pro-Palestine activists who staged a seven-hour protest on the roof of an aerospace and […]
The ‘appeal to authority’ fallacy is committed when arguments are presented as true simply because an individual or group deemed to have authority supports it, rather than being backed by evidence or sound reasoning. This fallacy, our research over the years has demonstrated, is employed continually by British media outlets to defame Israel, saving their […]
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has claimed credit in defeating Japan during World War II. However, this claim is a subject of historical debate. Their contribution was significant but also very different in scale and character from that of the Nationalist government under Chiang Kai-shek. Here’s a breakdown: 1. Context: China’s Resistance Against Japan 2. United Front […]
Imagine the reaction if Western media outlets participated in a campaign for Hamas to release the hostages in Gaza, which included suggested talking points, that was launched and coordinated in part by a pro-Israeli organisation in the UK: Let’s call it CAMERA-UK. The outrage expressed in posts decrying the media’s subservience to the “pro-Israel lobby” […]
On September 2, 1945, representatives from the Japanese government and Allied forces assembled aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay to sign the Japanese Instrument of Surrender, which effectively ended World War II. The document was prepared by the U.S. War Department and approved by President Harry S. Truman. Eight short paragraphs formalized the “unconditional surrender to […]
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
In Hume’s spirit, I will attempt to serve as an ambassador from my world of economics, and help in “finding topics of conversation fit for the entertainment of rational creatures.”
“We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert”. - J Robert Oppenheimer.
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