'Never again' means nothing if Holocaust analogies are always off limits -
[The original post reproduced the full article; I’ve copied some excerpts. Go to the link or the OP for the whole thing.]
Some who criticize drawing parallels between the United States today and Germany of the 1930s suggest that doing so demeans the memories of the Jews, political dissidents, LGBT, disabled and Romani people and others targeted by the Nazis - that not every instance of oppression is genocide, and using this kind of language diminishes the suffering under Hitler.
But the Holocaust didn’t begin with gas chambers, and it’s not business as usual in America right now.
[…] Concentration camps have a history beyond just the Nazis, too. Pitzer’s definition also puts CBP centers in the context of other such camps in France, South Africa, Cuba, the Soviet Union and, of course, here in the United States during World War II, targeting Japanese Americans.
[…] We have long asked the question about why good Germans didn’t intervene earlier, when it was “just” about discriminatory laws, detention, boycotts. Before things got murderous.
Now we have to ask ourselves: Why aren’t we?
(via dberl)
The science world is freaking out over this 25-year-old’s answer to antibiotic resistance:island-living-vetmed-chronicles:
A 25-year-old student has just come up with a way to fight drug-resistant superbugs without antibiotics.
The new approach has so far only been tested in the lab and on mice, but it could offer a potential solution to antibiotic resistance, which is now getting so bad that the United Nations recently declared it a “fundamental threat” to global health.
Antibiotic-resistant bacteria already kill around 700,000 people each year, but a recent study suggests that number could rise to around 10 million by 2050.
In addition to common hospital superbug, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), scientists are now also concerned that gonorrhoea is about tobecome resistant to all remaining drugs.
But Shu Lam, a 25-year-old PhD student at the University of Melbourne in Australia, has developed a star-shaped polymer that can kill six different superbug strains without antibiotics, simply by ripping apart their cell walls.
“We’ve discovered that [the polymers] actually target the bacteria and kill it in multiple ways,” Lam told Nicola Smith from The Telegraph. “One method is by physically disrupting or breaking apart the cell wall of the bacteria. This creates a lot of stress on the bacteria and causes it to start killing itself.”
The research has been published in Nature Microbiology, and according to Smith, it’s already being hailed by scientists in the field as “a breakthrough that could change the face of modern medicine”.
Before we get too carried away, it’s still very early days. So far, Lam has only tested her star-shaped polymers on six strains of drug-resistant bacteria in the lab, and on one superbug in live mice.
But in all experiments, they’ve been able to kill their targeted bacteria - and generation after generation don’t seem to develop resistance to the polymers.
Yes. All the yes. Women in STEM deserve ALLLLLLLL the applause. All of it. And cake. All the cake, too.
I love this solution because it’s just… So simple. Everyone is getting deeper and deeper into pharmacology trying to find new stuff and new combos that’ll overcome bacterial resistance (while Big Pharma rakes in the profits) and this student was like “what if.. We just.. Physically rip it the fuck apart?? What’s it gonna do? Develop resistance to me cutting a bitch?”
Iconic
Medicine: How do we defeat anti-biotic resistant super bugs?
Shu Lam: What if we just beat the shit out of it?
Women! Of! Color! Amazing!! Say her name!!! I’m so proud of her!!!
Did Shu Lam just invent microbial Martial Arts?
-FemaleWarrior, She/They
(via ambris)
I'm Bisexual but I Feel Like I Can't Celebrate Pride -
“Pride month is a time of celebration and remembrance for the LGBTQ community; an important time to recognize all of its members, regardless of their outward presentation.”
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On this day, 30 June 1960, Congo achieved independence from Belgium following decades of brutal colonial rule which killed 8-10 million people – half its population. Belgian authorities used men for forced labour in the rubber industry, having the wives and children of workers who didn’t meet their daily quotas dismembered, killed and even eaten. Following independence, Belgium and other Western powers continued to maintain power and rob the country’s rich natural resources. The first democratically elected Prime Minister, socialist Patrice Lumumba was arrested, tortured and murdered on the instructions of Belgium and the CIA, who then installed a brutal dictator. This is a short history of colonialism in the Congo: https://libcom.org/history/short-history-colonialism-congo-1885-1997 https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1157627574422391/?type=3
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(via the-girl-who-loves-monsters)
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