McDonald’s US turnaround shifts to technology, speedier service – Reuters

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CHICAGO McDonald's Corp (MCD.N) on Wednesday announced a push to embrace apps aimed at speeding up service at drive-thrus, which account for about 70 percent of its U.S. business, as the fast-food chain looks to woo back diners.

The company's U.S. restaurants have suffered four straight years of traffic declines, resulting in 500 million lost transactions since 2012. As part of the push for greater convenience in the United States, which contributes more operating income than any other global market, McDonald's will also offer curbside pickup of orders to reduce wait time at drive-thrus.

McDonald's will start to roll out "mobile order and pay" in the fourth quarter and have it available at all of its roughly 14,000 U.S. restaurants by year-end, Chris Kempczinski, president of McDonald's USA, said at the company's investor meeting in Chicago on Wednesday.

Customers who use the app will have the option to pick up orders at drive-thru windows or in designated curbside delivery parking spots, where a restaurant worker will hand off orders. Customers could also choose to pick up orders at restaurant counters.

Service times at McDonald's have recently slowed, and the new initiatives are expected to cut wait times, shorten drive-thru lines and prevent customers from skipping visits due to long delays, said Jim Sappington, McDonald's executive vice president of operations, digital and technology.

McDonald's has lagged other fast-food restaurants such as Domino's Pizza Inc (DPZ.N), Panera Bread Co (PNRA.O) and Starbucks Corp (SBUX.O) in its use of digital technology.

The goal is "progress over perfection," said Sappington, who added that McDonald's will also debut "mobile order and pay" in about 6,000 international locations by year-end as it works to add a loyalty program and customization.

Mobile ordering should reduce errors and significantly cut the time it takes to handle large, complex orders. The new initiatives could shift some 20 percent of drive-thru orders to curbside delivery and another 20 percent to drive-thru pickup only, executives said.

"Decongesting" the drive-thru in such a way could result in 20 more cars per hour and incremental sales, said Chief Executive Steve Easterbrook. McDonald's also plans to expand delivery in the United States, which it is testing with UberEATS in Florida, and begin trying it in other countries.

McDonald's said it would use a part of the savings from refranchising restaurants outside the United States to get to 2,500 "Experience of the Future" restaurant revamps by the end of 2017. Those restaurants include self-service kiosks, table service and reconfigured kitchens designed to slash the distance a restaurant's workers walk on a given day by as much as seven miles.

Shares of McDonald's closed up 1.1 percent at $129.05 after hitting a nine-month high of $129.99.

(Reporting by Lisa Baertlein in Chicago; Additional reporting by Sruthi Ramakrishnan in Bengaluru; Editing by Leslie Adler and Jonathan Oatis)

WASHINGTON A coalition of 53 companies on Thursday backed transgender rights at the U.S. Supreme Court, signing on to a brief supporting a Virginia student who is fighting to use the school bathroom that corresponds with his gender identity.

RIYADH Drivers from ride-hailing services Uber and Careem are barred from picking up passengers from Saudi Arabia's airports, Al Madina newspaper reported, quoting a spokesman from the kingdom's General Directorate of Traffic.

Elon Musk, an active Twitter user, has been Tesla's mouthpiece to the public, informing them about the electric car maker's upcoming products and plans.

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McDonald's US turnaround shifts to technology, speedier service - Reuters

This Crazy New Technology Transforms Movies Into Video Games – Co.Design (blog)

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If youve played a recent Forza or Gran Turismo video game, you already know: These virtual cars are almost indistinguishable from their real life counterparts, with all the curves and light reflections that make them look like theyve driven straight out of a car commercial and into the game. But unlike films made by companies like Pixar, these game cars arent rendered over the course of months. They render 60 times every second.

Now Epic Gamesa company known for making the Unreal Engine which powers many big budget video game on the marketand VFX studio The Mill are showing just how far the realtime rendering of photorealistic graphics can go. In their new short called The Human Race, you can actually choose the car you want to star in a short Chevy commercial, then watch as it instantly appears within the video.

The end product is basically a choose-your-own-adventure The Fast & The Furious short. And technology like this is about to change the way movies, games, and everything in between are made forever.

"We created a virtual production toolkit to visualize what you see in the filma virtual car," says Boo Wong, global director of emerging technology at The Mill. "But that can be extended to any character, prop, etc. From a visual effects point of view, thats super exciting."

To film the demo, the Mill used a pseudo-car called the Blackbird. The Blackbird is basically a physical placeholder for a CGI car that will be added in post-production. (Thats right! Many cars you see in car commercials are fake!) This vehicle is like a dune buggy, fit with visually trackable markers and filled with 4K RED cameras that shoot outward. Usually, the Mill's team shoots a commercial with the Blackbird because they need to film the spot before a cars final design is readyor because the car is so secretive they dont want to publicize it. But the ensuing post-production, in which the CGI car is added to real footage, takes months. Single frames can take hours, even days, to render.

Enter Epic, on the software end. Its new technology is called Project Raven. An extension of its Unreal Engine 4 used in video games, Raven has been customized to support augmented reality applicationsin fact, the platform is built to support systems like Googles Project Tango.

With Project Raven connected to the Blackbird, visual insanity ensues. The Unreal Engine gets all this real-time information from the real environment simultaneously. Footage from those 4K cameras onboard the Blackbird is mapped onto the curves of the CGI car, rendering a super-realistic reflective shell on its surface. Software analyzes this footage, too, spots the sun, and infers where its position must be in the sky, creating a realistic lighting system.

On set, the director can look through a preview monitor to see the dune buggy prop car re-skinned in real time as the CGI car from any conceivable angle. Of course, preview systems like this exist in the special effects world already, but heres the twist: The director sees the final, photorealistic pixels that will be in the actual commercial, rendered at 24 frames per second. (Sure, thats a bit slower than a high-end video game, but it meets the traditional benchmark of Hollywood films just fine.)

So where does this technology go next? As weve pointed out here on Co.Design, the Unreal Engine is evolving, making its way into more mainstream entertainment. Nickelodeon shows now use Unreal to produce TV programming with a quicker turnaround. And the latest Star Wars movie, Rogue One, actually used the Unreal Engine to render some shots of the movie's K-2SO droid.

For agencies like the Mill, this technology means it can shoot something for a client once, but easily repurpose it for multiple platforms and campaigns. In a world in which any asset within a film can be swapped out, it adds the immediate capability of customization and interactivity. Unreal Engine has also pledged to support Pixars Universal Scene Descriptions, meaning its verging toward compatibility with the Hollywood 3D machine.

"Were a games company. What we see happening is the gamification of everything in our lives," says Kim Libreri, CTO at Epic Games. "If youre watching an animated TV show, why shouldn't you be able to change the costume on princess, or change the location, have a personalized experienceand share your version with friends?"

Or, as I like to imagine: One day soon, you'll pause the NBA game youre watching, reach for the Xbox controller, and take over where the real players left off.

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New solar roof technology from Panasonic could eventually end up in Tesla’s Model 3 – BGR

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This past November, Tesla CEO Elon Musk took to Twitter and floated the idea ofoffering a solar roof option for the Model 3. When asked outright if Tesla had plans to embed solar panels in the roof, Musk replied that they would probably offer that as an option.

Right off the bat, Musks tweet seemed overly optimistic, if not downright absurd.While a solar roof capable of harnessing the suns power and charging a car as it drives is certainly intriguing, such a design is far from practical given the current state of solar technology. At the core, the size of the Model 3s roof would only be big enough for a solar panel that would, at best, manage to tack on an extra mile or two of range per day. In effect, implementing a solar roof would be far more trouble than its worth.

Earlier this week, however, Panasonic unveiled a new a type of solar panel technology designed specifically for cars. Dubbed theHITPhotovoltaic Module for Automobile, the solar roof design is currently available for the Toyota Prius PHV exclusively, but that may change in the coming years.

What makes Panasonics work here so intriguing is that the design houses new technology which makes it possible to actually charge lithium-ion batteries, the very same which power Teslas fleet of vehicles.

Panasonics press release reads:

Panasonics solar cells have a unique structure that combines a crystalline silicon substrate and an amorphous silicon film, and feature high conversion efficiency and excellent temperature characteristics.

Conventional automotive solar cells can output up to several tens of watts and have been used only for the auxiliary charging of 12 V batteries and ventilation power sources for parked cars; however, the use of the features of Panasonics solar cells allow a high output (approx.180 W) in a limited area on a cars roof, enabling the charging of the drive lithium-ion batteries as well as 12 V batteries, resulting in a possible extension of an EVs travel distance and increased in fuel economy.

An added bonusis that Panasonics solar roof can be designed to match a cars existing design, thereby enabling an efficientinstallation process.

That said, a lot more work still needs to be done before solar roofs become an add-on worth paying for, or even considering. Even with Panasonics solar roof advancements, a parked car equipped with a solar roof panel might still only be able to eek out an additional 3-4 miles of range per day.While that could certainly add up over time, itshardly a game-changer. Additionally, consider this: the aforementioned Toyota Prius PHV would reportedly need about a full week to go from empty to full charge via a solar roof alone.

In the meantime, Tesla owners can look forward to next-gen Supercharger technology which Musk last year hinted would be a huge leap forward.

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Silicon Valley teacher: Don’t confuse educational technology that helps kids learn and doesn’t – Washington Post

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For years now school reformers have been touting the power of technology to transform education. Kids can learn better, faster and anywhere they want if only school districts would invest enough money in technology and allow teachers to learn how to integrate them into lessons.

But while educational technology has been extremely helpful for some populations of students, including some with disabilities, the overarching promise that enthusiasts predicted has not yet been borne out. There are a number of reasons for this, including poor training of teachers, poorly designed technology and technology that quickly becomes obsolete.

Here is a piece on this subject by Kathy Liu Sun, a former high school math teacher who is now an assistant professor of education at Santa Clara University in Silicon Valley, California.

[The new magical thinking about high-tech in schools and why its a problem]

By Kathy Liu Sun

I live and work in Silicon Valley, so its not surprising that technology has found its way into our math classrooms here. But is technology really supporting our students to learn? Just because something is labeled as technology doesnt mean it supports good learning.

In my recent work in local schools, I have observed that teachers are having their students work on computers for the entire math lesson. Proponents argue that computer-based lessons allow students to go at their own pace and expose students to content they might not otherwise have an opportunity to see. But these benefits come at a high cost.

One of the most pressing problems is the content and focus of these digital lessons, which are often simply digital replications of traditional lecture based math lessons. (You remember these: teacher at board showing you example after example, followed by practicing a similar problem with different numbers twenty times over.)

Whether delivered digitally or in person, this type of instruction sends the wrong message about mathematics. It teaches students that mathematics is about mastering a set of procedures, rather than viewing mathematics as a creative subject that is about problem-solving and sense-making.

Research has shown that such an emphasis on mathematical procedures is not supportive of student learning and fails to help students to draw connections between key mathematical ideas, think critically, and problem-solve. These skills are particularly important for 21st Century citizenry and long-term achievement outcomes.

While your seventh grader engaging in digital math lessons might be learning pre-calculus procedures, she may not have any understanding of the underlying concepts that will be critical for future success.

Instead, lets consider how technology might genuinely support mathematical sense-making and problem-solving. A recent study conducted at Stanford University found that students who played a game that focused on the relationship between numbers, rather than memorized math facts, led to better learning outcomes.

[The overselling of educational technology]

Good educational technology, implemented at the appropriate time, can enhance math learning. Here are a few things to look for when examining technology to support mathematics learning:

When the latest technology-based learning program rolls out at our local schools, lets be sure to critically examine the type of mathematics learning it supports.

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Silicon Valley teacher: Don't confuse educational technology that helps kids learn and doesn't - Washington Post

On Khalid’s ‘American Teen,’ Songs of Young Love and Technology – New York Times

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New York Times
On Khalid's 'American Teen,' Songs of Young Love and Technology
New York Times
This, like a few other songs here Khalid wrote almost all the lyrics on the album are worthy additions to the body of music about how technology and love overlap. Location is a prime example of that a song about begging for his lover to drop ...

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On Khalid's 'American Teen,' Songs of Young Love and Technology - New York Times

Azerbaijan: No Progress On Key Reforms | Human Rights Watch – Human Rights Watch

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(London) The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), a prominent international coalition, should suspend Azerbaijans membership for failing to carry out key reforms, a coalition of 21 groups including Human Rights Watch, ARTICLE 19, and International Media Support said today. The EITI, during its board meeting in Bogota, Colombia, on March 8 and 9, 2017, will review Azerbaijans efforts to ease its repression of civil society groups as the EITI had required.

The Azerbaijani government is snubbing the EITI by ignoring its requirements for reforms and by systematically dismantling the countrys independent civil society, said Giorgi Gogia, South Caucasus director at Human Rights Watch. Following numerous reviews and warnings, the EITI should suspend Azerbaijans further participation until the government makes serious, lasting changes to allow nongovernmental groups to operate freely in Azerbaijan.

The EITI brings together governments, companies, and nongovernmental groups to encourage better governance of resource-rich countries by fostering open public debate about the use of oil, gas, and mining revenues. The EITI requires member governments to foster an enabling environment for civil society and to refrain from actions which result in narrowing or restricting public debate in relation to implementation of the EITI.

An Azerbaijan state flag flutters in the wind on an oil platform in the Caspian Sea east of Baku, January 22, 2013.

2013 Reuters

At its most recent board meeting, in October 2016, the EITI gave Azerbaijan four months to eliminate legal and bureaucratic obstacles inhibiting civil society engagement in the initiative. It required Azerbaijan to simplify procedures for registration of nongovernmental organizations and for the receipt and registration of grants from foreign donors. The reforms would eliminate some mechanisms for the government to interfere with and stop the work of independent groups. The EITI had downgraded Azerbaijan from a full member to a candidate country in April 2015, due to the governments interference with independent civil society.

A joint letter signed by 22 human rights groups worldwide and sent to EITI board members on February 10, 2017 assessed the Azerbaijan governments lack of progress on the reforms identified by the EITI and called on the board to suspend Azerbaijan.

In January, Azerbaijans Cabinet of Ministers adopted two decisions changing regulations for donor organizations and grant registrations. While the new regulations simplify some procedures for grant registration and reduce the number of required documents, they do not repeal the restrictive laws and fail to meet the EITIs demands, the groups said.

Superficial regulatory changes dont address the fundamental issues that led to downgrading Azerbaijans status in the EITI, or the specific corrective actions set by the board, said Katie Morris, head of Europe and Central Asia for ARTICLE 19. The credibility of the EITI validation process requires the initiative to suspend Azerbaijan for its failure to comply with the initiatives commitment to civil society participation.

The Azerbaijani authorities repeatedly harass activists who advocate good governance and transparency, preventing civil society groups from participating in public debate and advocacy, including on extractive industries, the pillar of Azerbaijans economy. Two members of the local civil society coalition that participates in the EITI remain jailed on spurious charges, and several other members have been forced to flee the country, fearing politically motivated prosecutions.

Local groups in Azerbaijan are counting on the EITI to remain principled and stand up for them and their essential contributions to public accountability and transparency, said Gulnara Akhundova, head of global response at International Media Support. Azerbaijans embattled civil society deserves nothing less than clear and unbiased support from EITIs international board.

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Azerbaijan: No Progress On Key Reforms | Human Rights Watch - Human Rights Watch

Mosaic to share repair progress of Polk County sinkhole – ABC Action News

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Mulberry, Fla. - Mosaic will host an on-site review Thursday of the remediation process at a sinkhole at its New Wales facility.

The sinkhole, roughly 152 feet across at its widest point and 220 feet deep, is one of the largest in the state. It opened in late August and sent 215-million gallons of radioactive water into an underground aquifer.

On Thursday, the media will get the first up-close look at the sinkhole and the progress crews are making to fill it. The review, scheduled for 10 a.m., will involve a briefing on the progress of remediation activities and a tour of the site.

RELATED | Mosaic's toxic sinkhole now getting filled

Retired hydrologist claims Mosaic ignored signs

Earlier this month, workers started pumping a concrete-like mixture into the ground as part of the stabilizing phase. Crews will pump enough concrete to fill 7 Olympic-size swimming pools.

Mosaic hopes to have work complete by rainy season, which in Florida typically starts in May.

The sinkhole sounded alarms for people living in and around the area who were concerned contaminated water may have leaked into their well water systems. All testing done on the wells, however, has come back negative.

The state has ordered regular well testing through 2018.

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Mosaic to share repair progress of Polk County sinkhole - ABC Action News

An Oscars photographer’s pictures reveal a historic blunder in progress – Washington Post

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As the biggest fiasco in Oscars history unfolded, photographer Andrew H. Walker hoveredin the wings offstage, his camera trained on Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty as they prepared to announce the winner of cinemas grandest prize: the Academy Award for best picture.

Except, of course, that isnt preciselywhat happened. As the masses would learn later, Brian Cullinan, one of two PricewaterhouseCoopers accountants in charge of guarding and distributing the winners envelopes, had handed Beatty the wrong one containing a duplicate copy of the card awarding Emma Stone the best actress prize for her role in La La Land. And so, moments later, Dunaway mistakenly announced La La Land as the winner of cinemas top award, which rightfully belonged to Moonlight.

[After Oscars debacle, all eyes are on PricewaterhouseCoopers accountant Brian Cullinan]

Walker, a staff photographer for Shutterstock, watched the stunning drama unfold through his camera lens. Over hours spent shooting on the red carpet and backstage, Walker had taken more than 4,000 photos, he told The Washington Post.Buried among them were a couple of throwaway images that, his photo editor later realized, were rather important: They appeared to document the defining moments that led tothe unprecedented Oscars disaster.

In an unprecedented gaffe, "La La Land" was accidentally awarded the Oscar for best picture before producers realized the award actually belonged to "Moonlight." Here's how the moment played out, plus other highlights from the 2017 Academy Awards. (Nicki DeMarco/The Washington Post)

The photographs, published exclusively by Variety, reveal a striking sequence:

The first image, taken at 8:53 p.m.Pacific time, shows Warren Beatty embracing Casey Affleck, who had just won best actor.Cullinan stands behind the pair, apparently holding his cellphone andtwo red envelopes in his hand.

One of those envelopes would be handed to Beatty in the minutes that followed.Walker told The Washington Post that Beatty had the envelope in hand a few moments before he walked out on stage: I took a photo of Warren Beatty looking at the monitor, and a split second before I took that photo, he was standing there with [the envelope] in his mouth, because he was tucking his shirt in, Walker said. Im disappointed I didnt get that photo.

At 9:03 p.m., Beatty and Dunaway took the stage to present the best picture award. As they read their introductions, Emma Stone posed for photographers waitingbackstage and Cullinan snapped a pichimself. At 9:04 p.m., Walker photographed Cullinan looking at his phone, just one minute before Cullinan shared a photo of Emma Stone on Twitter. Three minutes after Cullinans tweet was posted, at 9:08 p.m., Dunaway mistakenly announced La La Land as best picture.

Walker saidhe was shooting with such speed and intensity that hetook no notice of Cullinan in the frame at the time.

It was definitely not a photo of [Cullinan] in particular. At the time I didnt even know he was on his phone Im just surveying the scene, Walker said of the 9:04 photo. I had been guided to also shoot the stage staff, the stage managers, as a courtesy.

As the cast of La La Land took the stage and began to deliver acceptance speeches, Walker became aware that something was wrong, he said.

There was this weird sort of uncomfortable pause, this tension. And there was a woman standing next to me who was wearing a headset, and I dont know who she was, but she started swearing to herself, but pretty vehemently.

As Walkers photographs circulated Wednesday, new questions arose: Why was Cullinan pictured holding two envelopes, when he should have been preparing to hand over only the best picture winner? Why hadnt the veteran accountant been focused on the task at hand as the single most important moment of the ceremony approached, as opposed to looking at his phone? And why hadnt the two accountants, both of whomare charged with memorizing every winner, acted immediately when they heard Dunaway announce the wrong film?

[Two people knew instantly that La La Land didnt win. Why did it take so long to announce?]

The worst-case scenario was oddly foreshadowed by Cullinan in an interview with the Huffington Post days before the show. Cullinan and his ballot co-leader, Martha Ruiz, were asked what would happen if the wrong winner were to be announced by mistake. The pair said they didnt know what the precise protocol would be, as such a calamity was entirely unprecedented.

We would make sure that the correct person was known very quickly, Cullinan said. Whether that entails stopping the show, us walking onstage, us signaling to the stage manager thats really a game-time decision, if something like that were to happen.

He added: Its so unlikely.

Despite the barrage of criticism, jokes and never tweet quips circulating about Cullinan, Walker saidthe accountantseemed like a polished professional.

The impression that I got about him and a couple of other people who were running the stage area there, my impression of them was just that they were very capable people, he said. I was flabbergasted at the amount of moving pieces that have to go into producing this show.

But, for Cullinan and Ruiz, it would be their final year as part of the process. On Wednesday, Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs told the Associated Press that the two accountants would not be invited back to the Oscars.

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LGBT equality a work in progress – Journal Advocate

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By Jeff Rice

Journal-Advocate staff writer

Progress has been made in the area of LGBT rights in Colorado, but that progress has to be preserved and built on.

That was the message Tuesday evening to a handful of local residents who attended a One Colorado briefing on the organization's work over the past six years. The Sterling briefing was part of a 10-stop statewide tour by One Colorado to update Coloradans on progress in gaining and retaining equal rights for LGBT citizens.

One Colorado was founded in 2010 and Executive Director Daniel Ramos told the group discrimination against the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual community has actually gotten worst over the past five years.

"We don't know whether that's because there are more (LGBT) people out or whether it's just a growing backlash," Ramos said, "but in almost every aspect of life, discrimination is getting worse."

But the good news, Ramos said, is that Colorado continues to be generally a safe place for LGBT people, and Coloradans generally favor "the protection of individual civil rights and personal safety."

Ramos said school districts are getting serious about training their staffs to combat bullying, with more than 9,000 people trained in the past five years. He also pointed to the adoption of HB-1254 in 2011, which created a fund and established criteria for anti-bullying training and enforcement in Colorado, primarily in the public schools. That was followed by Proposition BB in 2015 that allowed the state to keep $66 million in marijuana tax revenues and divert $2 million of that into the fund created for anti-bullying training.

Ramos said the Colorado Genral Assembly continues to knock down legislation aimed at diminishing the personal rights of LGBT citizens, particularly in the area of "conversion therapy" for children. There is a widely held myth that sexuality can be changed through therapy, but subjecting children to such practices is illegal in Colorado. Nonetheless, some Colorado legislators repeatedly introduce legislation to repeal that law, and Ramos said constant lobbying is needed to fight that.

"It has been proven again and again that this conversion therapy actually is harmful to children, but people continue to try to get it legalized," he said. "Fortunately, we have a (partisan) mix in the legislature that doesn't allow that, but it's a constant battle."

Ramos said the Affordable Care Act, and Colorado's decision to expand Medicaid to cover state residents, has helped LGBT people access health care that wasn't available to them before.

"A lot of people are reluctant to come out to their physicians, so ACA brings more doctors into the system, and that makes it easier for people to find a physician they feel comfortable with," he said. "That's important, especially in mental health, because we've found that medical people actually tend to over-report their acceptance of LGBT people. Over 85 percent of caregivers said they were comfortable working with LGBT patients, but the patients report a comfort level of about 60 percent."

Attempts to modify Colorado's birth certificate law need to continue, Ramos said, and members of the state legislature are slowly beginning to change their minds about it. A "modernization" act was introduced in 2015 that would have allowed a transgender person to have their birth certificate changed even without sexual reassignment surgery. A House committee defeated the measure.

Ramos also played a video made by Gov. John Hickenlooper voicing support for the transgender community.

"Hickenlooper is one of the few governors who will even say 'transgender,' let alone give support and recognition," he said. "We're going to lose him in two years, and we need to work on getting an LGBT-friendly majority in the legislature."

Jeff Rice: 970-526-9283, ricej@journal-advocate.com

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Commission reports on progress under the migration partnership framework and increased action along the Central … – ReliefWeb

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Brussels, 2 March 2017

Today, the Commission and the High Representative/ Vice-President presented the third Progress Report on the Partnership Framework with third countries under the European Agenda on Migration.

What has the College adopted today?

Today, the Commission and the High Representative/ Vice-President presented the third Progress Report on the Partnership Framework with third countries under the European Agenda on Migration, which also takes stock of progress achieved and sets out next steps in the EU's efforts to more effectively manage migration along the Central Mediterranean Route.

What is new?

Since the launch of the Partnership Framework in June 2016, a number of tangible results across the five sub-Saharan priority countries, Niger, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal and Ethiopia, have been achieved. Packages are better tailored to our partners, while more policies and tools are being harnessed. Also, the geographical scope has been broadened and the report also looks beyond the priority countries, in line with the discussions held at the December European Council. In particular, the current focus on the Central Mediterranean route is reflected and actions are outlined to respond to the continued high crossings on this route, as well as the still high number deaths in the Mediterranean. It sets out further actions to implement the Malta Declaration, adopted by EU Heads of State or Government on 3 February 2017, covering a wide range of measures to save lives, step up the fight against smugglers and traffickers, provide protection to migrants and improve border management.

What results have been achieved?

A detailed overview of results achieved since the last reporting period can be found in the report itself. However, some concrete results, both with the five priority countries can be highlighted:

Ethiopia will actively cooperate with the EU Trust Fund supported Regional Operational Centre to fight against trafficking and smuggling. It will also benefit from an additional Facility to support Sustainable and Dignified returns and reintegration and assist stranded migrants.

As regards Niger, after the visit of President Issoufou on 15 December 2016, progress has continued at good pace building on previous achievements. The EU has reinforced its presence with the deployment of a migration liaison officer and a Frontex liaison officer, as well as with the creation of a liaison office in Agadez. At the end of January 2017, three projects under the EU Trust Fund for Africa (EUTF) were launched in Agadez, targeting agriculture, vocational training and sustainable migration management. Two EU field missions took place in January to assess emerging alternative routes and to help identify rapid impact projects for creating economic alternatives in local communities reliant on income from smuggling.

Political dialogue with Nigeria continues with High Level visits and meetings. VP Ansip visited Abuja and Lagos on 2-3 February 2017. An interest for cooperation was expressed in the areas of cyber security and governance, with important by-effects on fighting corruption, promotion of trade and investment and migration management. Future cooperation on "Digital 4 Development" was equally explored.

Cooperation with Mali continues, in particular as Chair of the Rabat Process in the preparations of the Valletta Senior Officials Meeting in February 2017. During the Valletta meeting the HRVP and Minister Sylla agreed to focus next EU-Mali actions around the fight against migrant smuggling networks.

Four additional projects for Senegal have been adopted under the EU Trust Fund in December, addressing the root causes of migration, enhancing migration management, the integration of returning migrants and the involvement of the diaspora, and re-enforcing the civil registry.

What are the next steps under the Partnership Framework?

EU Institutions and Member States remain jointly committed to continue to translate the Partnership Framework into tangible results to the mutual benefit of the European Union and our partners. Thus, the substantial efforts already put into the Partnership Framework will be continued and will be enhanced. Concrete next steps foreseen include, but are not limited to, the following:

Ethiopia: Finalise actions on the pilot return cases (32) and use them as a blueprint for faster returns to be performed in the future, and continue to support Ethiopia as a country of origin, transit and destination of migrants and refugees. A Strategic Engagement sectoral dialogue on migration is targeted to launch in April 2017, while close dialogue will continue with Ethiopia, as Chair of the Khartoum process.

Niger: Intensified action is foreseen to support Niger to fight smuggling and trafficking, including support to a Joint Investigation team and full operationalisation of the EU antenna in Agadez, including for training[1]. Contracts on all actions agreed under the EU Trust Fund should be signed swiftly, to ensure concrete implementation and provide alternative income opportunities to substitute the smuggling economy. At the same time, intensified monitoring of possible alternative routes will be conducted in the Agadez region and a working arrangement between the European Border and Coast Guard Agency and Nigerien authorities will be put in place.

Nigeria: Finalise the Readmission Agreement by June 2017 and identify EU Trust Fund for Africa projects with a strong migration focus. Active cooperation on anti-smuggling and trafficking through the Africa-Frontex Intelligence Community and the recently launched Cooperation Platform on Migrant Smuggling will continue.

Mali: Step up work on the transit dimension, focussing on voluntary return of transiting migrants; ensure adoption of a National Border Strategy and explore options for cooperation and strengthening of capacities for border management and the fight against smuggling. Further cooperation on effective return of irregular migrants including of Malians attempting to cross the southern Libyan border irregularly should be strengthened, as well as close dialogue with Mali as Chair of the Rabat Process should be maintained.

Senegal: Improve day-to-day cooperation for both identification and issuance of travel documents; follow up missions were undertaken, to ensure the effective return of identified irregular migrants. Working arrangements between Senegal and the European Border and Coast Guard Agency should be finalised and on the basis of results achieved so far cooperation should be stepped up in other areas, including border management.

As regards policies and tools to be applied, a step-change is needed in the effectiveness of returns inside the EU and matched with the work with third country partners. In this regard, the report is closely linked to the renewed Action plan on return which proposes a number of concrete actions. Engaging with third countries through the Partnership Framework, using all the available policies and tools, will foster better cooperation with a view to identifying, re-documenting and readmitting their nationals.

In this context, the mobilisation of also other policy instruments will be considered, such as providing legal migration pathways, for example through Erasmus+, and other operational tools will be applied. This includes the increased use of EU agencies, like the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, European Migration Liaison Officers and financial instruments, in particular the EU Trust Fund for Africa.

For more information on the Commission's action to take this forward, please see here.

What will you do under the Central Mediterranean Route?

When it comes to Libya: Support is to be focussed on protection at disembarkation points, as well as on the humanitarian assistance to those migrants who are in reception/detention centres, while increasing the development of alternatives to detention. The contribution to socio-economic stabilisation in Libya will continue to be addressed, in particular through work at the municipality level.

Humanitarian repatriation and reintegration will be scaled up. The IOM has been contracted, as part of a project funded under the EU Trust Fund for Africa, to assist an initial target 5.000 migrant in Libya to return to their communities of origin. Reintegration will be provided to returnees across the whole of the area covered by the Trust Fund. The Commission and the IOM have signed a joint initiative in December 2016 for migrant protection and reintegration in Africa along the Central Mediterranean migration routes, worth 100 million.

Training of the Libyan coastguard and Navy: EUNAVFOR Med Operation Sophia and the Seahorse Mediterranean network have both already trained members of the Libyan Coast Guard. Operation Sophia has completed a first package of activities resulting in the training of 93 personnel. Operation Sophia has now started the training under the second package on Crete. The Libyan Coast Guard has expressed the ambition to further train 600 Coastguard personnel with a focus on generating 8 trained crews for the Libyan patrol vessels. Training should also align with the overall plans for the development of a Libyan a Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre and search and rescue area, which are foreseen to be completed in 2018.

Immediate action by the Commission includes the expansion of the Seahorse training of the Libyan Coast Guard, with 15 new training courses being planned for the period February-July 2017. This is also complemented by support to migration management under the Regional Development and Protection Programme.

Increased cooperation with the neighbouring countries

Increased cooperation with Egypt, Tunisia and Algeria, including through regional initiatives like the Seahorse Mediterranean network are key.

Egypt: The EU now has an agreement to launch a formal EU-Egypt dialogue on migration, fully embedding migration on our overall relations and existing frameworks such as ENP, Khartoum and Valletta.

Tunisia: The EU remains committed to continue addressing the root causes of migration, and to reinforce governance in the field of migration. Furthermore, the EU intends to reinforce cooperation on irregular migration, concluding a Readmission Agreement in parallel with Visa Facilitation Agreement; In addition, focus will be on reintegration of returnees, promotion of legal migration and cooperation on border management.

Algeria: Cooperation with Algeria remains important to combat irregular migration to Europe. At political and technical level, discussions have been taking place since September 2015. Dialogue will continue to follow up on issues such as trafficking, preventing and combatting counterfeiting of travel documents, as well as visa liberalisation and cooperation on readmission.

What about the funding?

Partnership Framework

The EU is using a range of financial instruments to support the implementation of the Partnership Framework, most prominently the EU Trust Fund for Africa (EUTF). The EUTF operates in a total of 26 countries, with resources allocated amounting to more than 2.5 billion, including 2.5 billion from the European Development Fund and several EU budget financing instruments, and 152 million pledged so far by EU Member States and other donors (Switzerland and Norway).

Most recently, a total of 42 new programmes worth 587 million were agreed in December 2016. These include 28 new programmes under the Sahel/ Lake Chad window worth a total of 381 million; 11 additional programmes under the Horn of Africa window, worth 169.5 million and 3 new programmes under the North Africa window, for a total of 37 million.

This brought the total number to 106 adopted projects worth over 1.5 billion. Programmes contracted so far amount to 627 million.

Central Mediterranean Route

200 million have been pledged by the EU for migration-related projects in Libya and North Africa through the EU Trust Fund. This comes on top of other projects launched in 2016, focussing on providing protection to most vulnerable migrants and creating socio-economic opportunities at local level.

Discussions are under way to focus support on protection at disembarkation points and in detention centres, as well as support for alternatives to detention. The contribution to socio-economic stabilisation in Libya will also be addressed through work at the municipality level. This will add to the work to enhance rescue at sea, including by the training of the Libyan Coast Guard. Strong coordination on the ground will also be sought with Member States.

For more information

Factsheets for progress made with: Ethiopia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria and Senegal

Factsheet: Migration Partnership Framework

Factsheet: EU Trust Fund for Africa

See the Q&A on the Communication on the Central Mediterranean route here. Factsheet: EU relations with Libya

[1] Training is done by EUCAP Sahel Niger, in support of the Nigerien security force (Police Nationale, Gendarmarie Nationale and Garde Nationale) to reinforce the rule of law and Nigerien capacities to fight terrorism and organised crime, in line with the EU Strategy for Security and Development, as well as irregular migration.

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Commission reports on progress under the migration partnership framework and increased action along the Central ... - ReliefWeb

Adrian Peterson’s interest in Raiders a sign of their progress – The Mercury News

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To hear that Adrian Peterson, the future Hall of Fame running back, has the Raiders among the teams hes interesting in joining is proof positive to coach Jack Del Rio just how far the franchise has come in his two seasons in charge.

I think its great that were on the list of guys that are premier guys, Del Rio said Thursday from the NFL scouting combine in Indianapolis. He declined to comment specifically about Peterson because hes still technically under contract with the Minnesota Vikings.

The message I get is that players and coaches and people recognize this is a good place to be, Del Rio said. We have turned this thing around. And when I first arrived three years ago, the thought was, Nobody wants to come here. We battled through that and became a place where people wanted to come. Over the past two years, weve been able to attract some nice free agents. Of course, paying them is part of it. But its become a destination where people recognize we do have a good young nucleus and a quarterback and some pieces in place to have a good run, and they want to be a part of it.

Staff writer Cam Inman contributed to this report.

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Adrian Peterson's interest in Raiders a sign of their progress - The Mercury News

Touring transhumanism ‘To Be a Machine’ – Maine Edge

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Book explores the tech subculture waging war on death

In a world where the growth of technology is exponential, the span of time between science fiction and science fact becomes increasingly shorter. Things that seem like the height of speculative fantasy become commonplace in just a generation or two.

That rapid expansion of scientific capability has led to the development of a subculture devoted to accelerating human evolution and ultimately conquering death itself - through technological means. These people, with varied ideas and attitudes regarding what that acceleration means, are loosely grouped under the umbrella term transhumanism.

Journalist Mark OConnell spent some time with assorted members of this movement; the result is his new book To Be a Machine: Adventures Among Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers, and the Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death (Doubleday, $26.95). Through encounters with people that run the gamut from Silicon Valley billionaires to basement-dwelling hackers OConnell discovers the wide array of motivations that drive this unique (and often strange) group.

Much of the book revolves around the notion of the Singularity. The term - coined by mathematician and physicist John von Neumann in the 1950s and popularized in recent years by the futurist Ray Kurzweil represents the hypothesis that the development of artificial intelligence springing from scientific acceleration will trigger a technological explosion far beyond anything that we can currently comprehend.

Those who believe in the inevitability of the Singularity can go to drastic (and drastically different) lengths to prepare for it. But all share some variation on a particular belief that the human body is a machine, one which technology will someday allow us to move beyond. And almost all of them truly believe that their path can lead them in escaping death itself.

Theres the Alcor cryonics facility in Arizona, for instance. Alcor perhaps best known as the final resting place of baseball legend Ted Williams believes that they are capable of freezing a person in a state between life and death, preserving them until such time as science has determined a way to bring them back. OConnell also speaks to people who have devoted their lifes work to the notion of mapping the human brain to such a detailed extent as to be able to digitally replicate a persons consciousness.

OConnell meets with people devoted to preparing for the worst-case-scenario of artificial intelligence, believing AI to be a potentially existential threat to humanity, and young self-styled biohackers whose rough-and-ready work is based around turning themselves into literal cyborgs.

To each of these encounters, OConnell brings a keen and empathetic journalistic eye that conflicts nicely with his personal distaste for the concepts being presented. Thats not to say that hes judging these people. Hes not. Quite the opposite his interest, engagement and even admiration for their passion comes through.

Essentially, he allows his own feelings about what it means to be human to help balance the singular zeal presented by the people he dubs (not without affection) Singularitarians. That balance turns something that could have been fairly dry into a compelling narrative, one populated with outsized characters who are brilliant, eccentric or most often both.

To Be a Machine is flat-out fascinating. OConnells journey is a laymans adventure through the technological looking glass, an opportunity to meet with a subculture existing on the fringes of the tech scene and a compelling peek at one possible future. Sharply-written and thought-provoking, To Be a Machine is a book that will undoubtedly set your mind to racing and your gears to turning.

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Touring transhumanism 'To Be a Machine' - Maine Edge

How Does the New Turkish Curriculum Look Like? Conservative Changes Dominate – PoliticalCritique.org

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There has been another upgrade to the national education curriculum in Turkey. Among these changes, philosophy lessons have been reduced and the single-party rule applied to classes in the 1940s have been cut. The latest coup attempt has been added under philosophy and the social sciences.

On 16 January, the Ministry of National Education announced the new education curricula for secondary and high schools in Turkey.

The national curriculum has been a recurring topic of debate in Turkey for decades. It has always been controversial, given that all governments and political bodies have wanted to reinvent the educational system in the ideological image of the ruling party.

The number of chapters in the philosophy course books has been generally reduced, while keeping political philosophy and philosophy of science. According to the new curriculum, class hours will remain the same at 72 hours per term, while the expected learning outcome for philosophy has been slashed from 58 to 20 points on Turkeys assessment scale.

This major reduction of philosophys significance in the curriculum echoes the debate from a few years ago on the possibility of studying philosophy in the modern Turkish language. Recep Tayyip Erdoan, the prime minister at the time, said that this was inadequate, insisting that one needs to use the Ottoman Turkish, which borrows the alphabet and most of its vocabulary from Arabic and Persian, or English in order to study philosophy.

If we were to teach philosophy for 20 years, it would be a different country.

Istanbul-born philosopher and President of Philosophical Society of Turkey, Ioanna Kuuradi, said We make philosophy but he does not recognise us as philosophers. In an interview with Szc in March 2016, Kuuradi claimed that ignorance is at root of Turkeys current social and moral crises and that they could be overcome through proper philosophical education: If we were to teach philosophy for 20 years, it would be a different country.

A pro-government conservative education union, Eitim Bir-Sen, recently proposed the removal of Ataturkism, the official ideology describing the founding principles of modern Turkey, from the social sciences curriculum, and starting religious education at first grade.

While Eitim Bir-Sens proposal on compulsory religion classes for first grade students was not introduced, Ataturkism has indeed been scrapped, and the principle of encouraging the observance of religious holidays adopted. In line with the spirit of Eitim Bir-Sens proposal, Darwin & Evolution Theory was also purged from the school syllabus. It had been a controversial matter in Turkey for some time, especially since the Turkish Science Institutes prohibition of publications about evolution.

The new approach will now rely on values education, e.g. the notions of national unity & solidarity as well as national, moral and universal values. The new curriculum refers to values education as having a cultural impact, claiming that it is significant in turning these values into new norms and daily behaviours for society in the future. As part of the new elective course for secondary schools Basic Religious Teachings, jihad will be taught as part of religious values. Positivism and secularism will be categorised under the Problems of Faith chapter, dedicated to the promotion of individualism and the separation of state and religion. Also under the problems of faith heading, students will be taught about deism, agnosticism, atheism, nihilism, satanism, reincarnation and false prophets.

The coup attempt on 15 July 2016, which had a major impact on social and educational life in Turkey, has also been brought into the curriculum. Students will start learning about the coup attempt starting at sixth grade as a part of social science and philosophy classes. However, it is not certain whether previous coups will be referred to in the same classes.

At high school level, the students will now be asked to write essays on Social Resistance against the Anti-Democratic 15 July Coup Attempt within the framework of national-will, rule of law, and democratic understanding. National Will is a common reference in AKP (the ruling Justice and Development Party) campaigns, referring to the strong support behind the party in elections.

Contemporary Turkish and World History classes that focus on World War II will no longer refer to the anti-war efforts of Ismet Inonu, the president of the republic at the time and leader of the single-party CHP (Republican Peoples Party) regime. Nor will it refer to his contributions to Turkeys political and economic activities in the 1940s. Inonu was a general during Turkeys War of Independence, a friend of the founder of republic and was declared National Chief during World War II, while keeping Turkey out of the war at all costs. As Inonus efforts at neutrality are being erased from history books, the transition to a multi-party system and the history of the Democrat Party is put under the spotlight.

The class on contemporary history, which has a chapter on the Cold War Period, will now include topics on Political, Economic, Social and Cultural Developments in Turkey during the Time of the Democrat Party. This in itself was a controversial period, with the start of a multi-party system that brought about the grasp of power by the Adnan Menderes government, starting in 1946. The new topic will focus on the election systems that were initiated in this period, which was heavily criticised for authoritarian tendencies and gerrymandering, due to the Democrat Partys post-election downgrading of urban entities that did not predominantly vote for the ruling party.

The revised educational curriculum will honour Turkish citizens that have had international success. High school chemistry books will now have a topic on Prof. Dr. Aziz Sancar in the chapter on Relations between Inter Chemical Species with his Nobel Prize-winning study on DNA-repair. Contemporary History will include Galatasarays winning of the UEFA Cup in 2000, as well as the national football teams finishing third in the World Cup.

Rewriting the history books from a centre-right political perspective only replaces the existing problems with new ones.

Students will be informed about scientific and technological developments in Turkey, about its satellite programme and communications technologies.

While the new curriculum is being championed by some media outlets in Turkey as the new system that will generate geniuses and inventors, many critical eyes see the decreasing presence of philosophy in the curriculum and hostile approach to secularism and positivism as a problem.

Even though the AKPs efforts to erase ideological traces from national education may appear to modernise the education system through a more results-oriented approach, rewriting the history books from a centre-right political perspective only replaces the existing problems with new ones.

**

This piece was originally published on Katoikos.eu

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How Does the New Turkish Curriculum Look Like? Conservative Changes Dominate - PoliticalCritique.org

Architecture’s Pritzker Prize lauds Spanish trio for ‘a strong sense of place’ – The Globe and Mail

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Architectures biggest award has gone not to a star, but to a group of three Spanish designers deeply committed to creating a sense ofplace.

The Hyatt Foundation announced Wednesday that Rafael Aranda, Carme Pigem and Ramon Vilalta, who lead the Catalan firm RCR Arquitectes, had won the $100,000 (U.S.) Pritzker Architecture Prize. Often called architectures Nobel Prize, it has previously gone to many leading figures in architecture, among them Frank Gehry, Renzo Piano and the late ZahaHadid.

Rafael Aranda, Carme Pigem and RamonVilalta.

Javier LorenzoDomnguez

RCR are little-known outside of Spain; much of their work is in Catalonia, concentrated on their small hometown of Olot, where they set up shop in 1988. While several recent winners of the Pritzker have focused on humanitarian issues designing social housing or temporary shelters RCRs win signals a turn back to interests in craft and, in particular, site and culture. It is a victory for slowarchitecture.

All their works have a strong sense of place and are powerfully connected to the surrounding landscape, the award jury said in a statement. This connection comes from understanding history, the natural topography, customs and cultures, among other things and observing and experiencing light, shade, colours and theseasons.

Bell-Lloc Winery, Palams, Girona,Spain.

Hisao Suzuki

The Pritzker jury cited specific projects, including outdoor space at Les Cols Restaurant in Olot and the firms own office in a former foundry. These projects use the local volcanic rock; at the restaurant, it is in dialogue with pristine glass cubes that evoke minimalist sculpture and Japanese modern architecture, and berms of earth. The space is quite literally rooted in theground.

Similarly, their most recognized work, the Soulages Museum, is carved into the crest of a hill and forms a sort of sculpture in dialogue with landscape. The museum, in the southern French town of Rodez, is devoted to the work of the painter Pierre Soulages. It is a line of blocks clad in weathering steel, the material made famous by the artist Richard Serra. Yet it articulates the local geography, turning a face of glass towards a park and the historic centre of the town, while presenting a tougher, impermeable face toward modern commercialdevelopments.

La Lira Theater Public Open Space in Ripoll, Girona, Spain.(2011)

Hisao Suzuki

We are used to reading the site as of it had its own alphabet, Pigem says in documentary video produced by the Pritzker. And she says elsewhere, A great motivating force is to be able to discover the treasure of each place, or where the magicresides.

These traditional concerns of architecture were sometimes set aside by the Modernist movement of the 20th century in its push for rationalism and efficiency. The past three decades in architecture have been a dialogue between work that is driven by more personal agendas like Frank Gehrys and work that draws from its place. The latter tendency is a strength in Canada, where firms such as Shim-Sutcliffe, Mackay-Lyons Sweetapple and Patkau Architects have developed strong bodies of work that are somewhat local in theirapproaches.

Sant Antoni-Joan Oliver Library, Senior Citizens Center and Candida Perez Gardens in Barcelona, Spain.(2007)

Eugeni Pons

And then, more recently, architecture has taken a turn toward social concerns. The Pritzker has reflected that, beginning with the 2014 choice of the architect Shigeru Ban, whose work has bridged high design and humanitarian concerns. Last years award went to the Chilean architect Alejandro Aravena, best known for social housing that allows residents to contribute their own labour to the process. In social housing, there is no time for whats not strictly necessary, he told me. There is no arbitrariness. Aravenas win seemed to cement a shift in values for the prize to a type of design that aimed to change the world. It was an award for a set of values rather than pureaccomplishment.

Aranda, Pigem and Vilalta represent a gesture the other way, back toward architecture as a medium for subtle and slowcraft.

Row House in Olot, Girona, Spain(2012)

Hisao Suzuki

Their win also breaks ground in that there are three of them, and that one is a woman. Since its beginnings in 1979, the award has almost always gone to an individual, with only two exceptions, and only two winners have been women, which has generated contentious debate within a profession where women are underrepresented in many professional roles. In 1991, the Pritzker went to Robert Venturi, the American architect and theorist but not to Denise Scott Brown, who has been his lifelong collaborator in the office Venturi Scott Brown Associates. In 2013, a group of students at Harvard University organized a petition; they proposed that Venturis Pritzker should retroactively be shared with Scott Brown. The prizes organizers shot that ideadown.

Yet this years award recognizes the value ofcollaboration.

Ideas arrive from dialogue and collaboration by more than one person, says Vilalta in another video. Its almost a reaction against the contemporary world, which has promoted, in an exaggerated way, the value of theindividual.

Indeed architecture is, now more than ever, a collaborative art. And the Pritzkers newest laureates seem ready to confirm that in an atomized and globalized age, there is power in working together, and going slowly, and stayinghome.

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Architecture's Pritzker Prize lauds Spanish trio for 'a strong sense of place' - The Globe and Mail

Can Universities Save the Enlightenment from Populism? – Huffington Post

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The main challenge for higher education in 2017 is to discern how to educate citizens in a world in which the political philosophy of liberalism, the cornerstone of modern universities, is increasingly challenged by populist and nationalist movements.

Universities are a relatively recent invention in the 200,000 or so years in which humans, in forms we would recognize today, inhabit the planet. The oldest universities such as Bologna and Oxford date back ten centuries and along with other medieval universities were first established to transmit religious dogma and support a world order in which most people would endure a stagnant life of misery in hopes of eventual salvation in the afterlife. Those were indeed times in which societies were ruled by very small elites, nobles and religious leaders, whose legitimacy was predicated on claimed links to divinity or prophets. The Italian Renaissance, borne out of the extraordinary convergence of talent from multiple disciplines and areas of human creativity which the House of Medici sponsored in Florence in the fourteenth and fifteenth century, would begin a process of examination of the powerful ideology of the Middle Ages which condemned most humans to a life of servitude to nobles and preachers. Products of the Italian Renaissance were the Renaissance and Humanism which would, over the following two centuries, lay the foundation for an extraordinarily powerful alternative set of ideas. The ideas that ordinary people had rights, and the capacity to improve themselves and their communities. These ideas are central to liberalism the political philosophy founded by John Locke which gave preeminence to the ideas of liberty and equality, and which is the foundation of the freedoms on which democratic societies are founded: freedom of speech, of press, of religion, free markets, civil rights, democracy, secular government, gender equality and international cooperation.

Three products of liberalism are democracy, public education and the modern university. All of them based on great hopes in human reason, assisted by science, to interpret and transform the world. All of them designed on the premise that the aspiration of salvation should be replaced by the aspiration to improve the world. At its core, the liberal project is cosmopolitan, a global project of humanity advancing together towards a world of greater freedom and justice. Each of these creations of the enlightenment is interdependent with the two others: democracy enables public education, and depends on high quality public education for all, modern universities support effective government and enlighten the public to hold governments accountable to people and to the facts, modern universities depend on good public education, and can in turn contribute to the improvement of education.

Globally, access to public education expanded significantly with the consolidation of nation states and the expansion of liberalism in the 1800s, and again after World War II as a result of the creation of a global architecture to promote the values of freedom and equality, liberal ideas, around the world, reflected in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in the United Nations system and other global institutions to advance such rights.

Under liberalism it was assumed that public education could serve democratic political and economic goals with limited trade offs between them. Additional goals such as advancing human rights and modernization were also seen as convergent with political and economic goals. For this reason, most governments advancing education as part of liberalism saw limited trade offs between the goals of education.

The challenges to liberalism from communism and fascism brought alternative goals for public education, challenging the notion that individuals could be free to choose which education to pursue, and emphasizing political and economic goals, as well as downplaying human rights and modernization goals.

The modern research university, chartered by Wilhelm Humboldt in Berlin in 1810, was a product of the liberal project designed to advance truth, through scientific research, the development of rational and critical thought, through education, and the enlightenment of the larger public, through extension. Most universities built since have embraced, to varying degrees, these three goals.

Since the fall of the Berlin wall, the main political challenge to these liberal views came from populism. Populism posits that ordinary people are exploited by elites and challenges the notion of representative democracy with direct participation by the masses. Since direct participation by large numbers in complex societies is impractical, too often populism results in autocratic rule by a leader, who claims to be communicating directly with the masses, unobstructed from intermediary institutions such as political parties, elected representatives to Congress, organizations of civil society, the judiciary or the Press. This notion of direct links between the autocrat and the people undermines the normal division of power and the checks and balances on which democratic government depends. Historically, some political scientists have argued that such autocratic rule of populist leaders can easily give rise to fascism.

Modern populists exploit the following ideas. The first that globalization, and liberal policies, do not benefit all, and that there are important groups of the population who are left behind, and without hope of seeing their conditions improve. They attribute this to elites that are not accountable to those groups, to a model of development that fails to envision a role for these groups which are left behind, and to a state that is captured by administrators and interest groups who advance their own interests at the expense of those of the people. Populists exploit also cultural divides among the population, deep differences in values and worldviews. In the recent presidential election in the United States, these divisions are between the political establishment, which since World War II followed the views of the Hamiltonians and Wilsonians with the older views of the Jeffersonians and Jacksonians. Hamiltonians embraced the cosmopolitan liberal project so that the United States would play a global leadership role in creating a global liberal order to contain the Soviet Union and advance US interests. Wilsonians also advanced a global liberal order in terms of values that would reduce global conflict and violence. They promoted human rights, democratic governance and the rule of law. Jeffersonians believe that minimizing the global role of the United States would reduce costs and risks to the country. Jacksonian populist nationalists, in contrast, believe that advancement in the conditions of American citizens would best pursued delinking from cosmopolitan enlightenment ideals and from the global liberal order.

Populism is therefore a serious challenge to the idea of a universal project to advance freedom, equality and human rights. It is a challenge to the project of globalization and perhaps also a challenge to the idea of representative democracy, with checks and balances that limit the freedoms of rulers. They are also a challenge to the institutions which were invented to advance the liberal project, public schools and the modern university.

What could the challenge from populism mean for public schools and universities?

It would be congruent with populist ideas to seek more power for local groups to define the goals of education, and less role for government and for inter-governmental institutions. Replacing global and national politics with local politics of course does not mean more consensus, as competing ideas exist in local communities as well about the goals of education. Local control may in fact mean more conflict, perhaps with less rules of arbitration. Given that the divisions between cosmopolitans and populists exist in local communities, how will these differences will be resolved? Will the rule of law and expertise continue to play a role? We should expect less trust in and recognition of the authority of governments, experts and elites, including scientists and academics. It is also predictable that we will see a renewed emphasis on identity politics and culture wars in education.

Universities, in so far as they exist to cultivate reason, advance truth and enlighten the public are at odds with the populist worldview. Science and expertise are a problem for populist autocracies that do not value reasoned deliberation or informed understanding of facts as essential to solving controversies.

There are some risks we can expect to emerge from a world of emboldened populism.

The first is a risk to the idea of human rights. If nationalism is the new organizing force, the notion of in group and outgroup is defined by citizenship, not by membership in humanity. Because one of the consequences of globalization has been migration, non citizens will be the first target for exclusion. If cultural wars define the politics of education we should expect to see battles over the rights of cultural and ethnic minorities and contention over who belongs in America or in other nations were populism is emboldened.

A second risk concerns global challenges. The prospects for collective action diminish as the world moves towards national populism, and the goals of education move away from preparing students to understand global interconnectedness and globalization.

A third risk is a breakdown of the institutions that were created to protect freedom, democracy, the rule of law, and basic freedoms, and a breakdown of public education itself. The risk to these institutions of democracy is the risk that populism might evolve into fascism.

The risk of disorder. Lack of trust in institutions, elites and governments, will make the challenge of resolving conflict greater.

Can the institutions created to advance a liberal world order, such as public education and universities, save it?

Since modern universities were created because of the global liberal project to advance freedom and equality, as that project is challenged by populism Universities should renew their civic mission, embracing a new focus on education for democratic citizenship, including global citizenship. This means advancing human rights education, educating about shared global challenges, educating for engaged citizenship, contribute to build the civic sphere, renew their attention to the development of the dispositions and values of their students, as much as their skills and knowledge, boldly provide opportunities to access higher education to students from the most marginalized groups in society, double down on the extension mission to educate the public, and undertake unprecedented efforts to partner with K-12 schools and help improve them.

While these goals are within the reach of what Universities could do, they are not, at present, embraced as priorities by most universities. Whether universities step up in saving the liberal order which gave them life will depend on whether higher education leaders and faculty understand the grave risk facing the project of the Enlightenment itself.

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Can Universities Save the Enlightenment from Populism? - Huffington Post

Manifestly Haraway – Brooklyn Rail

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Donna J. Haraway Manifestly Haraway (University of Minnesota Press, 2016)

In 1983, the Socialist Review asked Donna Haraway to write a few pages about the tentative future of socialist feminism during the Reagan era. Two years later, she published A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s, a difficult, rococo text that not only announced but luxuriated in the enmeshing between human and machine, the leakages between organic matter and artificial intelligence, the prosthetic extension of the subject and its diffusion into fractal assemblages. By the late 20th century, Haraway argued, we are all chimeras, theorized and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism; in short, we are cyborgs.

A creature of fact and fiction, Haraways cyborg describes the reality of accelerating technological mediation while also offering a political metaphor for social construction.From one perspective, writes Haraway, a cyborg world is about the final imposition of a grid of control on the planet, about the final abstraction embodied in a Star Wars apocalypse waged in the name of defense, about the final appropriation of womens bodies in a masculinist orgy of war. Dialectically, however, the cyborg could also prefigure lived social and bodily realities in which people are not afraid of their joint kinship with animals and machines, not afraid of permanently partial identities and contradictory standpoints. From this position, the cyborg offered a postmodernist, non-naturalist, and anti-essentialist politics to socialist feminisma politics disinterested in reproduction, organicism, or myths of origin, and at home with irony, creolization, and, as Haraway would likely put it today, queerness. A cyborg body, Haraway writes, is not innocent; it was not born in a garden; it does not seek unitary identity and so generate antagonistic dualisms without end. The bastard child of weaponized capitalism, the cyborg is also the potential agent of its collapse. Illegitimate offspring, Haraway reminds us, are often exceedingly unfaithful to their origins. Their fathers, after all, are inessential.

Widely known and published as the Cyborg Manifesto, the essay, which opens Manifestly Haraway, is regarded as a theoretical cult classic and a lodestar of posthumanism (though Haraway has distanced herself from that term). Its prose is opaque and heteroglossic, thick with conceptual agglutinations and perverse couplings. One could fault Haraways text for being a bit too infatuated with its own excesses, over-invested in taboo fusions, breached binaries, and other then-trendy pomo tropes. In 2001, the critic Suhail Malik said as much and more, dismissing Haraways cyborg theory as a self-serving sexying-up of critical liberalism via a vague optimism in which all transgressions of boundaries are welcomed. But this casual trivialization ignores the political crisis in which the Cyborg Manifesto was forged, one which is reverberating today.

In 1981, Ronald Reagan, a B-list entertainer dismissed by Republican lites as a lightweight, and ridiculed by liberals as the Candidate from Disneyland, won the presidency with an eerily familiar campaign slogan: Lets Make America Great Again. Buoyed by nostalgic appeals to white populism and the racialized scapegoat of the Welfare Queen, Reagan set into motion the aggressive entrenchment of free-market absolutism, a project that political economist William Davies has termed combative neoliberalism. The immediate political context of the Cyborg Manifesto was one of rising unemployment, cuts to social services, a war on labor, the redistribution of wealth from the working and middle classes to the rich, and a bellicose missile defense system nicknamed Star Wars.

Facing an onslaught of reactionary forces, the U.S. left was also buckling from internal fractures, crumbling consensuses, and foreshortened horizons. Haraway recalls this sense of closure in a conversation with Cary Wolfe in Manifestly Haraway: You could no longer not know that the 60s were well and truly over, and the great hopefulness of our politics and our imaginations needed to come to terms with the serious troubles within our own movements, within our larger historical moment. While socialist, anti-imperialist, environmental, black, womens, and LGBT liberation movements struggled to find common ground, discourses of personal empowerment began to eclipse solidarity, and a generation of radicals was absorbed into an academy in which postmodernism became the de rigueur philosophy of an increasingly abstract, centerless, financialized world. The title of Andre Gorzs 1982 book, Farewell to the Working Class, fitted the mood, Sharon Smith, author of Women and Socialism, wrote in the Spring 1994 issue of International Socialism. Having divorced the source of oppression from class society, and raised the notion of autonomy to a principle, it was only a short step from the politics of movementism to the politics of identity.

Semantic confusion and ideological splinting was felt not only between movements but also within them. It has become difficult to name ones feminism by a single adjectiveor even to insist in every circumstance upon the noun, Haraway observes in the Cyborg Manifesto.

Consciousness of exclusion through naming is acute. Identities seem contradictory, partial, and strategic. With the hard-won recognition of their social and historical constitution, gender, race and class cannot provide the basis for belief in essential unity. There is nothing about being female that naturally binds women. [] Painful fragmentation among feminists (not to mention among women) along every possible fault line has made the concept of woman elusive, an excuse for the matrix of womens dominations of each other.

In particular, Haraways cyborg feminism was motivated by the imperativestill pressing todayto address the [e]mbarrassed silence about race among white radical and socialist-feminists through universalizing myths of sororal unity. In demolishing the idea of woman as an undifferentiated block, the cyborg allowed for a pluralized concept of women with elastic and variable identities beyond being a source of alienated domestic labor or an object of sexual objectification. Rather than rooting politics in a hierarchy of oppressions, it articulated difference within solidarity. Instead of identification, vanguard parties, purity and mothering, it proposed synthetic, big-tent coalitions like Chela Sandovals notion of women of color, inhabited not by birthright but by elective affinity.

Though both are bound in the spiral dance, Id rather be a cyborg than a goddess, Haraway famously finished the manifesto, announcing a steely futurist alternative to the atavistic earth mother rhetoric of certain tendencies within 60s and 70s feminism. The cyborg was and remains a potent aesthetic and erotic cipher, conjuring horrors and fantasies of mechanic integration from carapaced bermenschenJacob Epsteins Rock Drill, Darth Vaderto the replicants of Blade Runner and the bionic concubines of Westworld. (Its hard to not see shades of Haraways cyborg Alice in Westworlds Dolores, herself modeled on Lewis Carrolls heroine.)

But the glamour of the cyborg as an image has somewhat overdetermined the manifestos reception, eclipsing its historical context, political stakes, and the larger scope of Haraways intellectual project that emerges through the other texts collected in Manifestly Haraway. For instance, those who know Haraway only through A Cyborg Manifesto and its memorable finale would be surprised to know that she has recently taken up a more-than-casual interest in primeval goddesses. In her published conversation with Wolfe, Haraway embraces Terra and Gaia as ecological metaphors (goddesses, she explains, are O.K. so long as theyre pre-Olympiad and non-matriarchal); and the book ends with The Chthulucene From Santa Cruz, a beautiful, apocalyptic text invoking snakey Gorgons called the chthonic ones.

In 2003s Companion Species Manifesto, Haraway transitioned from cyborgs to the more cuddly topic of canine companionship as a site of humannonhuman entanglement and relationality. I have come to see cyborgs as junior siblings in the much bigger, queer family of companion species, she wrote, abandoning the postmodern irony and cybernetic edge of A Cyborg Manifesto for a deeply earnest, affect-oriented discourse on the love and reciprocal possession between the author and her Australian shepherd. (Dog-impervious readers like myself might feel somewhat alienated by the purple language about pooper-scoopers and deep tongue doggy-kisses.) Persistent throughout Haraways writing, however, is an emphasis on the co-constitutive interpenetration of humans and their others (machines, animals, and the environment), an insistence that there is no becoming, there is only becoming-with. In her interview with Wolfe, Haraway corrects those who read this latter manifesto as something of a rebuke to her earlier, more famous one: There are folks who asked, Why did you drop your feminist, antiracist, and socialist critique in the Companion Species Manifesto? Well, its not dropped. Its at least as acute, but its produced very differently. She says, Theres a sense in which the Companion Species Manifesto grows more out of an act of love, and the Cyborg Manifesto grows more out of an act of rage.

Perhaps its this sense of anger that makes A Cyborg Manifesto the more urgent text, despite its vintage. It isnt difficult to read hieroglyphs of the present in Haraways panoramic description of the miniaturization of technology, the end of the white family wage, the assault on labor, the precarity and feminization of work, the increasingly fuzzy boundaries between work and play, the technological surrogacy and dispersion of the self (Our machines are disturbingly lively, and we ourselves frighteningly inert). In the months since the election of Donald Trump, who amplified Reagans folky appeal to white America with a more resentful and ferocious rhetoric of cultural revenge against political correctness, arguments about identity politics, a contentious and somewhat obfuscatory term, have become plethoric. The best of such arguments, such as Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylors No Time For Despair, have called for a heterogeneous and inclusive resistance movement without apologizing for the compromised political agenda of the neoliberal Democratic establishment. The worstsee Mark Lillas notorious New York Times op-ed, The End of Identity Liberalismhave insinuated that liberals should stop making such a big fuss over diversity issues like racism and transphobia in order to romance white working-class voters. As Naomi Klein has pointed out, nothing has done more to liberate our lites to build their corporate dystopia than the persistent and systemic pitting of working-class whites against blacks and immigrants, men against women. White supremacy and misogyny are and always have been our elites most potent defenses against a genuine left populist agenda and meaningful democracy. In the fight ahead, its ethically and politically imperative to resist playing a crude, zero-sum game between identity politics and economic populismas if social and economic oppressions werent, as Haraway might put it, deeply braided or, as we might say now following the mainstreaming of Kimberl Crenshaws insights, intersectional. From the perspective of cyborgs, Haraway writes, freed of the need to ground politics in our privileged position of the oppression that incorporates all other dominations, the innocence of the merely violated, the ground of those closer to nature, we can see powerful possibilities. Underneath the cyborgs armor, theres a radical, situated, socialist feminism for these reactionary times.

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Manifestly Haraway - Brooklyn Rail

War on Comments: Google Built an AI To Censor The Web, And The Media Is Celebrating – Breitbart News

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Thats the lowkey Orwellian message that greets visitors to the website of Perspective, Googles new AI system for detecting (and potentially deleting, hiding, or burying) toxic comments on the web.

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Perspective is still in early days of development, but in the future, you may have to adjust your speech in order to satisfy the lofty standards of Google. Otherwise, the companys faceless AI might just have to improve you. Wheres Sarah Connor when you need her?

The good news is that, for now at least, Perspective is about as effective as C-3PO with a lisp. Software engineer and columnist David Auerbach has found the program woefully inept at sorting toxic comments from ordinary ones. Because the AI currently focuses on words rather than meanings, inoffensive comments like, Rape is a horrible crime, or, few Muslims are a terrorist threat, were assigned toxicity ratings of over 75 percent.

Of course, even if Perspective could successfully sort toxic comments from innocuous ones, that doesnt necessarily mean theyre going to be deleted or buried. According to the projects homepage, the systemperforms no function other than detection.

But statements from the projects developers make it clear that censorship is the end goal. Indeed, the system seems to have been developed to augment the lefts ongoing war on comments sections.The software was initially made available just to organizations that are part of Googles Digital News Initiative, including the BBC, The Financial Times, andThe Guardian,whichpromptly began testing the software to moderate their comments sections.

News organizations want to encourage engagement and discussion around their content, but find that sorting through millions of comments to find those that are trolling or abusive takes a lot of money, labour and time, says Jared Cohen, president of Jigsaw, the Google social incubator that built the tool. As a result, many sites have shut down comments altogether. But they tell us that isnt the solution they want.

Google couldnt be clearer: its a censorship bot. And just because its currently limited to news sites and comments sections doesnt mean it wont be rolled out to social networks and the rest of the web. Twitter, which just introduced yet another system to punish users whohurt celebrities feelings,would probably love to get their hands on a working version of Perspective.

Twitter already has a tremendous depth of data on its users, including gender, location, and personal interests. Imagine that data, combined with an AI tool designed to pinpoint inconvenient content, in the hands of a CEO who has done little to conceal his political biases.

The idea of an all-powerful Google robot watching over us all, making sure our speech is improved, has greatly excited mainstream media. Google, says the BBC, is going to make talk less toxic. According to WIRED, Perspective will put a stop to abusive comments that silence vulnerable voices. New York magazine portrays Perspsective as a friendly a robot, a kind of Clippy for the comments section.Our robot overlords are certainly getting a warm welcome

The left are likely to be disappointed though. If Auerbachs early research on Perspective is any guide, the system is designed to filter out impoliteness, not political disagreement. Googles censorbot might turn the comments section and perhaps the web into a grey, sanitized dystopia scrubbed of strong emotions and trollish humor, but it wont get rid of facts.

In other words, myths about gender wage gaps, police racism, and moderate Islam are still going to get debunked. Even Skynet cant keep some things quiet.

You can follow Allum Bokhari on Twitterandadd him on Facebook.Email tips and suggestions to abokhari@breitbart.com.

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War on Comments: Google Built an AI To Censor The Web, And The Media Is Celebrating - Breitbart News

Censorship weaponized against anti-globalist wave – WND.com

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Marine Le Pen

A presidential candidate in France who is riding the wave of anti-globalist populism that helped fuelBrexit and Donald Trumps victory is facing prosecution for tweeting graphic images of ISIS executions.

On Tuesday, the European Union took one step toward allowing the prosecution of Marine Le Pen as the legal affairs committee of the European Parliament voted 18-3 to lift her immunity as a member of parliament, Reuters reported.

Le Pen is under investigation in France for posting three images of ISIS executions on Twitter in 2015.

The images included the beheading of American journalist James Foley.

A Paris prosecutor is examining whether or not the photos violate a law against distribution of violent images.

Le Pen reacted to the EU decision Tuesday.

This only shows French citizens what the EU is, what the European Parliament is and that its all part of the system that wants to stop the French peoples candidate that I am, she said, according to Agence France-Presse

Le Pen, who is leading a tight, three-way race to succeed Francois Hollande, is president of the National Front Party, which opposes French membership in the EU and the mass immigration of people from mostly Islamic countries who largely are not assimilating into French society.

Le Pen tweeted the graphic photographs of ISIS killings in December 2015 in response to a journalist who compared her party to ISIS, which is also known by the Arabic acronym Daesh.

Daesh is THIS! she wrote, along with the photos.

Her tweet drew strong criticism from the victims families and French politicians across the political spectrum.

Le Pens immunity also was lifted in 2013, leading to prosecution of her in 2015 for incitement to discrimination over peoples religious belief because she compared Muslims praying in public to the Nazi occupation of France during World War II. The charges eventually were dropped.

Major terrorist attacks over the past two years by members of the Muslim immigrant community in France, attributed to ISIS, have bolstered the National Fronts popularity.

Le Pen is regarded as more democratic and republican than her nationalist father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, and has sought to soften her partys image, expelling members accused of racism and anti-Semitism, including her father.

How political correctness handcuffs Americas Homeland Security officers is the story former counter-terrorism agentPhilip Haney tells in See Something Say Nothing. Its available now at the WND Superstore!

Nigel Farage, the former UKIP leader who was the face of the successful referendum last yearin Britain to exit the EU, known as Brexit, said in an interview in December he believes that if Le Pen were to win, France would hold its own referendum on leaving the EU, a Frexit.

He summed up his opinion of Le Pen, describing her as very socialist on economic issues but a defender of French sovereignty.

Oh yes, she is (controversial). I mean look, let me absolutely clear about this. Ive never said a bad word about Marine Le-Pen, Ive never said a good word about her party.

That is my position on this. I think she has tried to make things better within the front national. Shes got rid of people who held genuinely extreme positions. I dont agree with her economic analysis at all or her view on trade or many other things.

Its completely different but she does believe in the sovereignty of France.

Incitement to discrimination

Le Pen is not the only member of the European Parliament to be punished for her speech.

Last month, after the parliament refused immunity, UKIPs Jane Collins was ordered by the high court in London to pay 335,000 pounds in damages and court costs for alleging three British members of Parliament had failed to speak out about child abuse carried out by British-Pakistani men in Rotherham, England.

Collinscharged the MPs were guilty of grave misconduct because they kept silent due to political correctness and cowardice.

A report commissioned by the British government supported her claim. It found that failures of political and police leadership contributed to the sexual exploitation of 1,400 children in Rotherham over a 16-year period.

Naming the horror of Islam

The vote Tuesday to lift Le Pens immunity was in response to a request by the French judiciary. The full European Parliament must back the decision. A vote is expected this week, Reuters said.

Prosecutors are considering a charge of publishing violent images, which can carry a penalty of three years in prison and a fine of 75,000 euros, about $79,000.

Reacting to the vote, National Front Vice President Florian Philipott argued: Showing and naming the horror of Islamism allow us to fight against it.

Polls show Le Pen winning the first two rounds of the French presidential election but losing in the runoff.

DHS agent Philip Haneys blockbuster revelations of the federal governments appeasement of supremacist Islam are told in his first-person account, See Something Say Nothing

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Censorship weaponized against anti-globalist wave - WND.com

We can’t just blame the Left for student censorship every side is at it now – Telegraph.co.uk

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Well, not quite. The assumption that students share the political views of their officers forgets that SUs and their overlord - the NUS - are entirely unrepresentative of the people they claim to represent. In UCLs union elections last year, only 12% of the study body bothered to vote. In 2015 at the University of Manchester, turnout reached a national record of around 25%. Hardly a resounding victory for democracy.

Indeed, contrary to the claim that students spend their time printing off topless calendars of Jeremy Corbyn, research carried out by the Universities of Southampton and Sheffield revealed that todays young people are more right-wing and authoritarian than any generation in recent history.

And even if students did support their student unions, the increasingly warped regard for genuine left-wing politics by union officers makes it hard to label their cause as truly left-wing. In an attempt to demonstrate their leftie credentials, working class officers have been created at Manchester, Soas, King's College London, and St Hildas, Oxford to ensure working class students dont feel marginalised.

This demonstrates just how far todays student Left has wandered from the barricades manned by its predecessors. Back in Paris in 1968, student activists took to the streets in a genuine attempt to overthrow capitalism. Todays self-labelled lefties are more concerned with fighting for Meat Free Mondays. Rather than uphold the power of the proletariat, student union officers view their working class peers as vulnerable creatures who need protecting. Marxs claim that workingmen have nothing to lose but their chains no longer resonates. Todays campus warriors just want to make the chains are a bit more comfortable.

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We can't just blame the Left for student censorship every side is at it now - Telegraph.co.uk

To all of Gurmehar Kaur’s trolls, the Delhi high court has a pertinent reminder of the importance of free speech – Quartz

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They shut her up. That was their most valiant act, their only claim to fame, in recent times.

They are ministers of the mighty government of India, a cricketing great, a Bollywood star, an Olympic champ, and a whole army of rabid trolls. Her is Gurmehar Kaur, a 20-year-old student of English literature at New Delhis Lady Shri Ram College for Womenher father being a martyred soldier is irrelevant to the discourse.

Over the past few days, Kaur and her placards had left Indians breathlessly debating freedom of expression, patriotism, peace with Pakistan, and sexual violence against women. Yet, all she did was to post a protest message on Facebook: I am a student from Delhi University. I am not afraid of ABVP. I am not alone. Every student of India is with me. #StudentsAgainstABVP.

ABVP, or the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, is the student wing of Indias ruling Hindutva outfit, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Over the past few days, this organisation has been involved in an ugly battle with political opponents in Delhi University, to which Kaurs college is affiliated.

The ABVP, BJP, and their supporters were furious at #StudentsAgainstABVPs success. And then, an old video-campaign featuring Kaur re-surfaced, in which one of her placards says: Pakistan didnt kill my father, war did.

The nationalists simply went ape-shit after losing their long-held rhetorical fetish, the dead soldier, to his daughter.

Modis junior home minister Kiren Rijiju and urban development minister Venkaiah Naidu, cricketer Virendra Sehwag, actor Randeep Hooda, champion wrestler Babita Kumari Phogat, besides hundreds of rightwing online warriors, launched #MissionTrollKaur. She fought valiantly in the face of even rape threats and abuses, but ultimately gave in:

A nation that takes immense pride in being a democracy had silenced one young dissenting woman.

But then, mightier, more renowned Indians have had to zip up before. So this is hardly news. One of the most illustrious cases was that of Indias most famous modern artist, Maqbool Fida Hussain, who died in exile following years of litigation and threats of physical harm by Hindutva goons over his paintings.

In a beautifully-worded verdict, the Delhi high court in 2008 rubbished all charges against Hussain and his paintings. The judgment by justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul, which starts off with Pablo Picassos famous wordsArt is never chaste. It ought to be forbidden to ignorant innocents, never allowed into contact with those not sufficiently prepared. Yes, art is dangerous. Where it is chaste, it is not artmakes for a riveting read.

While it largely deals with art and the creative fields, the judgment touches upon a variety of issues related to freedom of expression.

The complete text (pdf) ought to be a must-read for Indians. All the more so if you are the hyper-anything kindnationalist, sensitive, or prudish. Trolls, the little-known ones as well as the high-fliers, must keep a bedside copy.

For the benefit of our readers, we have here a few pertinent excerpts:

We welcome your comments at ideas.india@qz.com.

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To all of Gurmehar Kaur's trolls, the Delhi high court has a pertinent reminder of the importance of free speech - Quartz