This is a story about how the University of Chicago, famed as the #1 Free Speech School of America, is now allowing the suppression of speech, either not punishing those who engage in suppression or giving them ridiculously light punishments. The result is that there is no palpable deterrent to students who want to silence […]
I hope NZ doesn’t resume funding UNRWA. Here’s some numbers (from Israel but not rebutted) on them: We should fund other UN agencies like the World Food Programme and good NGOs providing relief. But it is clear that funding UNRWA is akin to indirectly funding Hamas.
There has been fairly predictable outrage this week at the revelation by Judith Collins, the minister in charge of the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) and Security Intelligence Service (SIS), that China spied on our Parliament in 2021. China has denied the accusation, but knowing Judith Collins as I do – and have done for…
Slate reports: Amid all the calls for an Israeli cease-fire in the war with Gaza, a few key facts are getting short shrift. Israel has put forth a cease-fire plan. It was negotiated along with U.S., Egyptian, Qatari, and Saudi diplomats. Its terms are quite favorable to Hamas. And Hamas is the party that’s rejecting […]
My Dad once told about how the famous British General Bernard Montgomery was asked after WWII whether he might like to go into politics and he declined, saying: War is a dirty business, but politics, by gum! I’ve never looked into the story to see if it’s apocryphal but given that politics appears at the […]
Dina Rubina is a prominent Russian Israeli Jew who writes in Russian. Wikipedia gives this precis: Rubina is one of the most prominent Russian-language Israeli writers. Her books have been translated into 30 languages. Her major themes are Jewish and Israeli history, migration, nomadism, neo-indigeneity, messianism, metaphysics, theatre, autobiography and the interplay between the Israeli and Russian […]
This article from Tablet describes “How the Gaza Ministry of Health Fakes Casualty Numbers“, and while I have a few quibbles with it (or rather, alternative but not-so-plausible interpretations), the author’s take seems pretty much on the mark. Abraham Wyner simply gives the daily and cumulative death-toll accounts of Palestinians taken from the Hamas-run Gazan […]
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.
“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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