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Status of Palestine in 2015

Mazin Qumsiyeh Human Rights Newsletter
Academic and activist Mazin Qumsiyeh shares his insights on status of Palestine.

Okinawans Want Their Land Back. Is That So Hard to Understand?

Jon Letman Truthout
Living in the USA where people learn world geography through frequently fought overseas wars, Americans are accustomed to reading about places where we've fought wars - Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan. But one formerly war-ravaged part of the world most Americans don't think much about is Okinawa. What's it like to have 20 percent of your small, crowded island home occupied by more than 32 foreign military bases and some 50 restricted air and marine military training sites.

To Have and to Hold. Reproduction, Marriage, and the Constitution.

Jill Lepore The New Yorker
There is a lesson in the past fifty years of litigation. When the fight for equal rights for women narrowed to a fight for reproductive rights, defended on the ground of privacy, it weakened. But when the fight for gay rights became a fight for same-sex marriage, asserted on the ground of equality, it got stronger and stronger.

Ronnie Gilbert, Bold-Voiced Singer With the Weavers, Is Dead at 88

Bruce Weber New York Times
And she had a courageous voice: There was a tremendous sense of joy and energy and courage in her voice. She was able to be very gentle, too; she did wonderful ballads and lullabies and things; but there was that trumpet sound she had that I found very encouraging, because it said, oh, you too! You’re not a misfit, there’s somebody else out there with a big voice!

The Collective That Saved Jazz

Salim Muwakkil In These Times
The 1960s were a period of great ferment in many musical genres, but especially in jazz, where new and musically transgressive styles were combining with the political defiance that characterized the developing Black Power movement.

Artificial Intelligence For Biology?

Derek Lowe In the Pipeline
That's what computers are really good at, relentless grinding. I can't call it intelligence, and I can call it artificial intelligence only in the sense that an inflatable palm is an artificial tree. I realize that we do have to call it something, though, but the term "artificial intelligence" probably confuses more than it illuminates.

Does Anthropocene Science Blame All of Humanity For Environmental Crisis?

Ian Angus Climate and Capitalism
Ian Angus, editor of Climate and Capitalism, responds to critics of Anthropocene scholars who assert the Earth has entered a new geological epoch due to human activity. Angus argues the criticism that Earth System scientists in the forefront of the Anthropocene project blame all of humanity for the actions of a small minority simply doesn’t hold water. And he urges ecological Marxists to be positive contributors to the Anthropocene discussions.