Miguel Afonso Caetano

EU ESTIVE LÁ!! // I WAS THERE!! #FourTet #TheLoop #Dekmantel #Dekmantel2025 #EDM

"Given the histories at play, some might argue that human rights and global health projects do not deserve rescue. If these frameworks have always served the interests of powerful states and individuals at the expense of those they have dispossessed and exploited, why defend them now? Why mourn their erosion at Harvard, of all places? Because even a compromised universalism provides a vocabulary for demanding equality that authoritarian politics cannot tolerate. Because institutions that acknowledge their failures can correct them, while institutions that deny their obligations altogether cannot. And because abandoning universalism under pressure from governments, donors and political actors would confirm the most cynical assessment of American power: that our ethical commitments from within US institutions can only ever extend as far as strategic alliances allow. Bassett’s removal demonstrates what happens when institutions choose short-term protection over intellectual and ethical integrity. But it also clarifies what remains worth fighting for. A public health field that cannot describe the destruction of Gaza’s health system forfeits its credibility on every other question of justice and claim to truth. A human rights discourse that excludes Palestinians cannot credibly defend anyone. And a university that punishes scholars for naming political violence does not merely betray its ideals; it becomes a malign force in the world it claims to seek to redeem and to carry forward into a better future."

the Guardian

A Harvard scholar’s ouster exposes a crisis of institutional integrity | Eric Reinhart

The dismissal of a a renowned health leader who refused to ignore Palestine highlights false claims of universality in human rights, global health ...

#USA #Trump #Harvard #AcademicFreedom #Palestine #Gaza #Genocide

"As an American reporter living in Beijing, I’ve watched both China and the rest of the world flirt with cutting-edge technologies involving robots, drones and self-driving vehicles. But China has now raced far beyond the flirtation stage. It’s rolling out fleets of autonomous delivery trucks, experimenting with flying cars and installing parking lot robots that can swap out your E.V.’s dying battery in just minutes. There are drones that deliver lunch by lowering it from the sky on a cable. If all that sounds futuristic and perhaps bizarre, it also shows China’s ambition to dominate clean energy technologies of all kinds, not just solar panels or battery-powered cars, then sell them to the rest of the world. China has incurred huge debts to put trillions of dollars into efforts like these, along with the full force of its state-planned economy. These ideas, while ambitious, don’t always work smoothly, as I learned after taking a bullet train to Hefei, a city the size of Chicago, to see what it’s like to live in this vision of tomorrow. Hefei is one of many cities where technologies like these are getting prototyped in real time. I checked them all out. The battery-swapping robots, the self-driving delivery trucks, the lunches from the sky. Starting with flying taxis, no pilot on board. Hefei is one of the first Chinese cities to issue permits for what are basically flying cars. So I booked a ride."

Flying Taxis? China Has Them. And Drone Lunch Deliveries, Too.

China’s experiments in clean energy can feel like living in the future. Even when things don’t quite work.

#China #CleanEnergy #Renewables #FlyingTaxis #BulletTrains #FoodDeliveryDrones