Jehoshaphat went to war

Despite Moscow's attempts to stem any dissent against its invasion of Ukraine, some Russians are continuing to protest -- even if it means facing draconian punishment for the most benign acts of opposition. Some have paid a heavy price for their acts of protest. In the early days of the war in February, authorities moved quickly to quash demonstrations, arresting people who marched or even held blank signs, balloons in the colours of the Ukrainian flag, or other oblique references to the conflict. Critical media outlets were shut down as the government sought to control the narrative. Political opponents were singled out by President Vladimir Putin or commentators on state-run TV. Russia cracks down on independent media during Ukraine invasion Russia's brain drain: War with Ukraine prompts tens of thousands to flee abroad Lawmakers rubber-stamped measures that outlawed the spread of "false information" about what the Kremlin called a "special … [Read more...] about Russians defy crackdown to find small ways of protesting Ukraine war

H ere, lying in a stained carton, are notes on a refugee camp in Tanzania, where surviving Tutsis and their Hutu enemies lived side by side in blue tarp tents. It is 1994. The notes record that there are people everywhere, milling and moving in short parades on the main path in the camp, hastily constructed by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Women wear colorful cloths, khangas , and carry yellow plastic containers of water on their heads. Children and old men push up against one another, as if at a bargain sale. They hold portable radios to their ears. A man in a brown rain hat drags a reluctant goat by a rope. White smoke mixes with the smells of fresh earth and excrement. At an outdoor butcher shop, a cow’s bloodied horn lies beside the animal’s astonished head. I greet a group of young Hutus in French. “Did you participate in the killings?,” I ask. “We did nothing,” one says. “Did you see others do the killing?” He says, “We saw nothing.” I ask, “How many … [Read more...] about The World Is a Thriving Slaughterhouse

An elite sniper and former model has been killed in a Russian airstrike in Ukraine . Thalita do Valle, 39, died while fighting in the city of Kharkiv on June 30. She had joined the war effort alongside former Brazilian Army soldier Douglas Burigo. Douglas, 40, also died in last week’s airstrike, reportedly after he went into a bunker to try find Thalita. The pair had travelled from Brazil to support Ukrainian forces. Thalita had previous experience in warzones, and had fought against the Islamic State in Iraq. At this time, she received special sniper training as she trained alongside the Peshmergas, the armed military forces of the independent Kurdistan region of Iraq. She reportedly used these skills in Ukraine, where she was responsible for providing cover from advancing Russian froces. Thalita had documented some of her experiences on a YouTube channel and she had been working with a writer ahead of a potential book about her diverse life. She was also … [Read more...] about Model who joined Ukraine army as ‘elite sniper’ is killed in Russian air strike

Auberon Waugh's death at the age of 61 is more sad than surprising. His immediate heredity wasn't promising - his father died at 62, his mother at 57 - and he suffered from ill-health all his life, partly resulting from severe wounds sustained during National Service at the age of 18. That may, in part, have accounted for the acidic personality which made him the most verbally brutal journalist of his age. Everyone who met him remarked on the contrast between his ferocity in print and his personal geniality, but this was hard to explain to those who didn't know him, especially if they had been on the rough end of his pen. Apart from health, his background shaped his career in one other respect. He spent much of his life trying to escape from the shadow of his father, the greatest English novelist of his age. This provided an obvious weapon for Auberon's enemies. Philip Larkin joked about "my projected series, Talentless Sons of Famous Fathers - Waugh, Amis, Fuller...", and for … [Read more...] about Auberon Waugh

S ometime around 2010, about two-thirds of the way through his 13 years at the helm of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)—the world’s largest mental-health research institution—Tom Insel started speaking with unusual frankness about how both psychiatry and his own institute were failing to help the mentally ill. Insel, runner-trim, quietly alert, and constitutionally diplomatic, did not rant about this. It’s not in him. You won’t hear him trash-talk colleagues or critics. Listen to the audio version of this article: Feature stories, read aloud: download the Audm app for your iPhone. Yet within the bounds of his unbroken civility, Insel began voicing something between a regret and an indictment. In writings and public talks, he lamented the pharmaceutical industry’s failure to develop effective new drugs for depression, bipolar disorder, or schizophrenia; academic psychiatry’s overly cozy relationship with Big Pharma; and the paucity of treatments produced by the … [Read more...] about The Smartphone Psychiatrist

The most famous story about modern presidential campaigning now has a quaint old-world tone. It’s about the showdown between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy in the first debate of their 1960 campaign, which was also the very first nationally televised general-election debate in the United States. The story is that Kennedy looked great, which is true, and Nixon looked terrible, which is also true—and that this visual difference had an unexpected electoral effect. As Theodore H. White described it in his hugely influential book The Making of the President 1960 , which has set the model for campaign coverage ever since, “sample surveys” after the debate found that people who had only heard Kennedy and Nixon talking, over the radio, thought that the debate had been a tie. But those who saw the two men on television were much more likely to think that Kennedy—handsome, tanned, non-sweaty, poised—had won. Historians who have followed up on this story haven’t found data to back … [Read more...] about When Donald Meets Hillary: Who Will Win the Debates?

The energy crisis sparked by Vladimir Putin's war on Ukraine is having all kinds of consequences on the corporate sector. Germany's government looks set to bail out Uniper , one of the country's biggest power utilities, with a package of up to €9bn apparently being discussed. On Wednesday, the French government went one step further, announcing a full nationalisation of the energy giant EDF, the company that in Britain is the fourth largest household energy supplier and which is building Hinkley Point 'C', the UK's first new nuclear power station in a generation. Elisabeth Borne, the French PM, told parliament: "The climate emergency requires strong, radical decisions. We need to have full control of the production and our energy future. We must ensure our sovereignty faced with the consequences of the war and the colossal challenges ahead. "That is why I confirm today the intention of the state to hold 100% of the capital of EDF." Advertisement In truth, … [Read more...] about UK’s fourth-largest household energy supplier EDF nationalised by the French state

“D uck and cover!” a mechanized voice screamed. The ground shook and the window rattled. I rolled from my bed to the floor of my trailer and felt for the armor I’d forgotten in my office. I lay there and sweated and swore. The voice from the loudspeaker urged me to get away from the windows. I was inside a tin can. I crawled to the door. My hand was on the knob when I realized I was naked. The next impact knocked the air conditioner to the floor. I grabbed a light-blue cotton robe and bolted. To hear more feature stories, see our full list or get the Audm iPhone app. I raced along a row of sandbags, one hand holding the robe closed. The duck-and-cover bunkers were 100 feet away. Another series of explosions, and I hit the rocks. I was lying there, panting, when I saw a bright-yellow bunker tucked behind a row of sandbags and palm trees. I was up, running, full out. My robe fell open and flew out behind me. Another hit. I was 20 feet away. Ten. Five. I crashed into the … [Read more...] about What I Wish I’d Known About Sexual Assault in the Military

M y reaction to O. J. Simpson’s arrest for the murder of his ex-wife Nicole Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman was atypical. It was 1994 . I was a young black man attending a historically black university in the majority-black city of Washington, D.C., with zero sympathy for Simpson, zero understanding of the sympathy he elicited from my people, and zero appreciation for the defense team’s claim that Simpson had been targeted because he was black. O. J. Simpson wasn’t black. He came of age in the 1960s—the era of Muhammad Ali’s opposition to the Vietnam War and John Carlos and Tommie Smith’s black-power salute at the 1968 Olympics. But the O. J. Simpson I knew, and the one poignantly depicted this year in Ezra Edelman’s epic documentary, O.J.: Made in America , recognized only one struggle—the struggle to advance O. J. Simpson. When the activist Harry Edwards attempted to enlist Simpson in the Olympic boycott, Simpson rebuffed him and later claimed that organizers like … [Read more...] about What O. J. Simpson Means to Me

One day after Twitter deleted a “controversial tweet” made by the country’s president, Nigeria’s minister of information and culture announced that Twitter was being suspended “indefinitely” in the African nation. Twitter responded by describing the “#OpenInternet” as “an essential human right in society,” prompting accusations of hypocrisy from critics. “The Federal Government has suspended, indefinitely, the operations of the microblogging and social networking service, Twitter, in Nigeria,” read a statement, ironically posted on Twitter . “The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, announced the suspension in a statement issued in Abuja on Friday, citing the persistent use of the platform for activities that are capable of undermining Nigeria’s corporate existence.” “The Minister said the Federal Government has also directed the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) to immediately commence the process of licensing all OTT and social media operations in … [Read more...] about Twitter Reacts To Nigeria Ban, Mocked For Calling Open Internet ‘Essential Human Right’ After Censoring Trump | The Daily Wire