“A prominent opposition leader in Rwanda has been arrested on charges she assisted an alleged plot to incite public unrest. Victoire Ingabire was arrested on Thursday and is being detained in the Rwandan capital of Kigali. Her team of international lawyers in a statement called her arrest ‘baseless and politically motivated.’ The Rwanda Investigations Bureau links Ingabire to alleged subversion after her name was mentioned in an ongoing criminal case against nine people accused of plotting to overthrow the government of President Paul Kagame. … Ingabire spent 16 years in exile in the Netherlands and returned to Rwanda to launch an opposition political movement in 2010 but was imprisoned before she could contest the presidential election. … she was freed in 2018 after obtaining presidential pardon. But Kagame has since threatened Ingabire with a possible return to jail.” (06/20/25)
“Twenty years ago, the US warned prematurely of the ‘birth pangs’ of a new Middle East. Now they have arrived in full force – and they will not end in Iran.” (06/20/25)
“Twenty years after his death, what Hunter S. Thompson’s legacy — or lack of it — tells us about literature and manhood in our current moment.” (06/20/25)
“A San Diego nurse has filed a wrongful termination lawsuit against UnitedHealth Group, alleging that she was illegally fired from her job at the Outpatient Surgery Center of La Jolla for bringing water bottles to work that featured stickers supporting Palestinian freedom and denouncing Israel’s war in Gaza as a genocide. Lauren Gaw alleges that UnitedHealth Group, which owns the local surgery center through a series of subsidiaries, violated several California laws prohibiting employers from infringing on their employees’ political views and activities. The suit also alleges discrimination, harassment, retaliation and wrongful termination. … UnitedHealth Group, the lone named defendant, and its subsidiary Optum did not respond to requests for comment.” (06/20/25)
“In The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith used rules about writing as a metaphor for rules of conduct. He examines conduct by two different measures. In one measure, he considers what rules one would need to follow to, in my inelegant paraphrase, avoid being an actively scummy person. On the other hand, he also considers what rules of conduct one would need to observe to be a positively virtuous and praiseworthy person. … Orwell attempted to put out clear and straightforward rules for how to improve the quality of one’s writing. He lays out six rules. … Orwell, like Smith, expected people to be able to recognize what is good or bad writing (or virtuous behavior) independently of the rules.” (06/20/25)
“In Offended Freedom: The Rise of Libertarian Authoritarianism, two Swiss sociologists, Carolin Amlinger and Oliver Nachtwey, indulge in a common academic habit: blaming libertarians for an intellectual and social phenomena that they find alarming. Their bill of particulars fails to stick because of conceptual incoherence, mistaking radical opposition to any government policy — even one that allows more liberty than the disgruntled person wants — as ‘libertarian,’ and categorizing perfectly understandable anger at government overreach as inherently ‘authoritarian.’ The authoritarians the authors study — those angry at more open immigration — are not at all libertarian. The study’s libertarians — those who opposed COVID-19 restrictions — are antiauthoritarian.” (for publication 07/25)
“The British parliament has narrowly voted in favour of a bill to legalise assisted dying for terminally ill people, marking a landmark moment of social reform in the country’s history. The legislation passed by a vote of 314-291 in the House of Commons on Friday, clearing its biggest parliamentary hurdle, and will now undergo months of scrutiny in the House of Lords, Britain’s upper chamber. The process could result in further amendments when it goes to the Lords, but the upper house is usually reluctant to block legislation that has been passed by elected members of parliament in the Commons.” (06/21/25)
