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Childish Fantasies: Age Verification for Social Media Down Under
The Australian government has been in a banning mood of late. In keeping with an old, puritanical tradition, the killjoys and wowsers have seized the reins of power and snorting a good deal while doing so. In important matters such as anti-corruption and environmental protection, the government of Anthony Albanese is showing fewer teeth and […]
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The Law of Force or the Force of Law
Are the nations of the world doomed to go on fighting the brutal, horrifying wars that have long characterized human history? We might well wonder about that as we watch, aghast, while Israeli armed forces slaughter thousands of Palestinian civilians, Russian military might relentlessly pounds Ukrainian towns and cities into rubble, and new, bloody wars […]
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Three New Kinds of Refugees in a World of Migrants
Rashid Diab (Sudan), Out of Focus, 2015. One summer evening, the unrelenting sun over Niger refused to dip below the horizon. I sought out some shade with three anxious men in Touba au paradis, a small quiet restaurant in Agadez. These three Nigerians had tried to make the crossing at Assamaka, to our north, into […]
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Overthrowing the Constitution: All Sides Are Waging War on Our Freedoms

It is both apt and ironic that the anniversary of 9/11, which paved the way for the government to overthrow the Constitution, occurs the week before the anniversary of the day the U.S. Constitution was adopted on September 17, 1787. All sides are still waging war on our constitutional freedoms, and “we the people” remain […]
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What It Means to Go Back-to-School in the American Police State

Every day in communities across the United States, children and adolescents spend the majority of their waking hours in schools that have increasingly come to resemble places of detention more than places of learning. —Investigative journalist Annette Fuentes It’s not easy being a child in the American police state. Danger lurks around every corner and […]
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“Intellectual Hick”: Sorting Out Our Complex Identities
I am from rural America, sort of. I’m an intellectual, sort of. I’m certainly on the political left, but some comrades believe I’m turned conservative. Like many people, I don’t fit easily into conventional labels used in today’s polarized political debates. To understand me—and anyone else—takes some sorting out. Here’s how I sort myself out. […]
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Beware the Derogators: The Geneva Conventions Turn 75
On August 12, 1949, the four Geneva Conventions were adopted, laying the basis of a normative standard in international humanitarian law. As Balthasar Staehelin, personal envoy of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) president to China, stated at an anniversary event at the Swiss Embassy in Beijing, “In the past 75 years, the […]
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Technofascism: The Government Pressured Tech Companies to Censor Users

Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, has finally admitted what we knew all along: Facebook conspired with the government to censor individuals expressing “disapproved” views about the COVID-19 pandemic. Zuckerberg’s confession comes in the wake of a series of court rulings that turn a blind eye to the government’s technofascism. In a 2-1 decision in Children’s […]
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The Political Matrix Sustains the Illusion of Freedom

What you smell is the stench of a dying republic. Our dying republic. We are trapped in a political matrix intended to sustain the illusion that we are citizens of a constitutional republic. In reality, we are caught somewhere between a kleptocracy (a government ruled by thieves) and a kakistocracy (a government run by unprincipled […]
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Starmer’s Fingerprints, Not Just the Tories’, are all over Britain’s Race Riots

Imagine this scene, if you can. For several days, violent mobs have massed in the centre of British cities and clashed with police in an attempt to reach synagogues to attack them. Draped in England flags and Union Jacks, and armed with cricket bats and metal rods, the trouble-makers have dismantled garden walls to throw […]