FROM this week’s news ON: society generally, and broader issues [Note: Content Warning - may be links to distressing reports on this topic. Reader discretion is advised]

Note: CONTENT WARNING - some of this content is about upsetting, disturbing or triggering events & attitudes. Seek competent help - including professional - if you need it. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that linked articles may contains names and/or images of deceased people. READER CAUTION IS RECOMMENDED! For anyone distressed by anything in this post, or for any other reason considering seeking support, resources are available in Australia here, here, and here. In other nations, you will have to do an Internet search using terms such as “mental health support - <your nation>” (which, for instance, may lead to this, this, and this, in the USA, or this, this, and this, in France [biased towards English-language - my apologies]), or perhaps try https://www.befrienders.org/. 

Note: in my “from the news” posts, quotes are shown italicised and blue, my comments are in a different shade of blue, and “good” items are shown in green. I have loosely grouped the posts where such seemed reasonable, but that is subjective (i.e., my opinion - others are free to disagree), and challenging, as some posts belong in multiple “groups”.

Frrom this week’s news on society generally, and broader issues (note: I may continue to add links for a few days, possibly up to a week, after these are published):

• “For 30 years I saw my kidnapping as character-building – until I finally faced what happened to me”   https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/apr/10/for-30-years-i-saw-my-kidnapping-as-character-building-until-i-finally-faced-what-happened-to-me   “As a gen X feminist who survived and ignored a violent assault in the 80s, I didn’t identify as a victim – but #MeToo gave me a crucial new perspective”   

• “The Dutch are aiming to quarantine populism. Should the rest of the world follow suit?”   https://theconversation.com/the-dutch-are-aiming-to-quarantine-populism-should-the-rest-of-the-world-follow-suit-227432   “The legitimacy of liberalism hangs in the balance. Whether quarantining populism via coalitions formed by weakened parties will barricade the door against populists is an open question.   Many populists, after all, are highly organized, well-funded by the billionaire class and skilled at sowing disorder. It’s going to take much more than a legislative lock on the door to shore up our defences. But it’s incumbent upon the courageous Dutch and others to give it a shot.”   This warning has been made in a wide range of forums and formats: it seems someone is having a genuine go at dealing with the problem, although they may be underestimating it  
  

• “Massive investment and financial reform needed to rescue SDGs”   https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/04/1148411   

• “The French aristocrat who understood evolution 100 years before Darwin – and even worried about climate change”   https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/apr/07/the-french-aristocrat-who-understood-evolution-100-years-before-darwin-and-even-worried-about-climate-change   “Georges-Louis Leclerc proposed species change and extinction back in the 1740s, a new book reveals   ...   Buffon postulated that new species must have come into existence and changed over time, while some species must have gone extinct. “That was a very, very radical idea at the time, and Buffon was censured for it by the Sorbonne: he had to write a statement publicly renouncing everything he had written,” said Roberts. Buffon was later formally accused of heresy for implying that Earth was older than the biblical record.   ...   Since Buffon had to keep undermining his own observations, it was easy for Victorian naturalists to brush aside his contributions”  
  

My links for activism post may aid any activism you may decide to do on any/all of these. If you do, don’t get too fixated on specific instances of problems - important though they may well be: take a moment to also consider the broader issues these incidents and groups of incidents may suggest/reveal.

 

Assumptions / basis 

In writing this, I have assumed / started from the following: 

• this blog states quite clearly that it is about political and human rights matters, including lived experience of problems, and thus I will assume readers are reasonable people who have noted the content warning in the post header;

Possible flaws 

Where I can, I will try to highlight possible flaws / issues you should consider:

• there may be flawed logical arguments in the above: to find out more about such flaws and thinking generally, I recommend Brendan  Myers’ free online course “Clear and Present Thinking”; 
  
• I could be wrong - so keep your thinking caps on, and make up your own minds for yourself.
  

 

If they are of any use of interest, the activism information links from my former news posts are available in this post. 

 

If you appreciated this post, please consider promoting it - there are some links below.

Remember: we need to be more human being rather than human doing, and all misgendering is an act of active transphobia/transmisia that puts trans+ lives at risk & accept that all insistence on the use of “trans” as a descriptor comes with commensurate use of “cis” as a descriptor to prevent “othering”.

Copyright © Kayleen White 2016-2024     NO AI   I do not consent to any machine learning aka Artificial Intelligence (AI), generative AI, large language model, machine learning, chatbot, or other automated analysis, generative process, or replication program to reproduce, mimic, remix, summarise, or otherwise  replicate any part of this post or other posts on this blog via any means. Typo’s may be inserrted deliberately to demonstrate this is not an AI product.     Otherwise, fair and reasonable use is accepted under Creative Commons 4.0 on an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike basis   https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/