The Instrumentarian Power of Artificial Intelligence in Data-Driven Fascist Regimes

The Instrumentarian Power of Artificial Intelligence in Data-Driven Fascist Regimes A investigação expõe o uso de um sistema chamado "Habsora" ("O Evangelho"), que utiliza tecnologia de Inteligência Artificial para gerar quatro tipos de alvos: alvo tático, alvo subterrâneo, alvo de energia e casas de família. Os alvos são produzidos de acordo com a probabilidade de que combatentes do Hamas estejam nas instalações. Para cada alvo, é anexado um arquivo que "estipula o número de civis que provavelmente serão mortos num ataque". Esses arquivos fornecem números e baixas calculadas, para que, quando as unidades de inteligência realizam um ataque, o exército saiba exatamente quantos civis provavelmente serão mortos.

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02.03.2024 | by Anaïs Nony

Hair as Freedom

Hair as Freedom Four hundred years after the institution of slavery set off mechanisms devaluing African aesthetics, many on the continent still have a difficult relationship with African women’s hair. Granted, the natural hair movement has gathered momentum in African countries in the past five years, following earlier trends in the US and Europe. Many more young women today wear natural styles unapologetically just like Ms. Universe 2019. Yet resistance to natural hair, in particular afros and dreadlocks, persists.

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23.02.2024 | by Yarri Kamara

Memories of the Poisoned River

 Memories of the Poisoned River The river remembers the arrival of extractivism. One day many years ago, she feels the wake of huge ships against her current and became uneasy. Over time, she comes to share shivers with felled forests, to balk at the blanched palette of monocrop agriculture, to recoil at the sharp poisonous taste of chemical waste, and to deeply mourn the disappearance of her people: people sold into slavery, killed by disease, worked to death in mines, and severed from her nurturing flows by the breaking of their cultures. Oh, what she has seen. Oh, what she has endured.

Mukanda

24.12.2023 | by Imani Jacqueline Brown

Lee-Ann Olwage: “If we are looking to globally improve the lives of people living with dementia, then we cannot overlook the part that concerns different cultural perceptions”

Lee-Ann Olwage: “If we are looking to globally improve the lives of people living with dementia, then we cannot overlook the part that concerns different cultural perceptions” Lee-Ann Olwage, who admits she struggles with her own mental health issues, also has family members who have suffered or are suffering from Alzheimer's. For this reason, she states that, with her work, she aims to create a space in which the people she photographs can play an active role in creating the images and that, above all, makes them feel like the true “heroines” of their own stories.

Face to face

13.12.2023 | by Mariana Moniz

Stop war against humanity in North and East Syria Stop Turkey's war and occupation policies

Stop war against humanity in North and East Syria   Stop Turkey's war and occupation policies The undersigned express our solidarity with the Kurdish movement made up of children, young people, women, diverse identities and the Kurdish people in struggle for their rights to autonomy and self-determination. And through our personal and collective voice we want to let the world know what is happening in Kurdish territory right now.

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08.10.2023 | by várias

Ain’t I a child? Racial Discrimination in Childhood in Portugal

Ain’t I a child? Racial Discrimination in Childhood in Portugal   We demand that the Portuguese state, particularly the justice system, recognize the racial motivation behind this assault. We demand that, once and for all, it abandons a "minimalist" legal understanding of racism. We demand that it breaks away from the harmful pattern of denying racism, which endangers the lives of our children, our youth and the democratic life of this country.

Mukanda

04.10.2023 | by vários

Public Statement

Public Statement Without prejudice to the investigation currently undertaken by the Independent Commission of the Center for Social Studies - whose findings are not yet known - with this statement, we want to express our solidarity and support with all the victims of sexual violence and moral harassment, as well as our support for denouncing these forms of violence anywhere, including at the Centre for Social Studies. We stand against any form of abuse of power

Mukanda

25.09.2023 | by várias

Open Letter to Routledge - Taylor & Francis Group

Open Letter to Routledge - Taylor & Francis Group This controversy raises many questions, two of which we want to bring to the attention of the international academic community: Can we, as an academic community, allow a private publisher to intervene in and even censor such an important, urgent and necessary debate in our professional field? Academic writing is still the core tool of academic knowledge production worldwide, but when we as researchers are no longer allowed to reflect critically about how to transform our field from within, what are the implications for critical reflection on academia from within?

Mukanda

20.09.2023 | by várias

Without taking responsibility for concrete acts of abuse committed, there is no self-criticism

Without taking responsibility for concrete acts of abuse committed, there is no self-criticism We present ourselves as a collective of women who have suffered different types of violence as a result of the pattern of abuse of power that was naturalized in the work teams led by Boaventura de Sousa Santos and considered inevitable by the people who occupied positions of authority in the Centre for Social Studies (CES) for many years. Our initial letter is attached below. Since we started to share our reflections, the number of people has increased. We have been in contact with other women who have experienced stories similar to ours. The abuse experienced is not limited to inconvenient moments promoted by a man incapable of understanding that the world has changed. It is very difficult to believe that a professional sociologist, internationally recognized as one of the greatest left-wing intellectuals, cannot understand the changes in society and adapt to them.

Mukanda

19.09.2023 | by várias

Subject: Book temporarily unavailable as it is under review.

Subject: Book temporarily unavailable as it is under review. We address your Publisher as a collective of victims of harassment involving Boaventura de Sousa Santos and Bruno Sena Martins in the context of Boaventura de Sousa Santos' academic teams. Our collective is currently formed of seven women, of Brazilian, Portuguese, Peruvian and Mexican nationality. Our lived experiences allow us to confirm the abusive pattern described in chapter 12 of the book Sexual Misconduct in Academia: Informing an Ethics of Care in the University. The publication of the book was decisive for our mobilization as a collective and for our decision to gather testimonial and documentary evidence that corroborate the various types of violence described in the mentioned chapter. In this sense, we note with great concern the unavailability for sale of the book.

Mukanda

19.09.2023 | by várias

And we, are we silent?

And we, are we silent? The fact that BSS behaves like a feudal lord no longer surprises us in this “global south”. The same cannot be said of a publisher like Routledge, whose act of censorship does not honor its history (a history that began in 1836 and includes the publication of thinkers and scholars such as Adorno, Einstein, Russell, Popper, Wittgenstein, Jung, Bohm, Hayek, McLuhan, Marcuse, and Sartre). The irony, or hypocrisy, is that Taylor & Francis, the owner of Routledge, even ventures (and rightfully so!) to provide advice to its authors who are victims of harassment in academia...

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11.09.2023 | by João Pedro George

Dear Routledge Editorial Team

Dear Routledge Editorial Team We demand that the editorial immediately republishes the entire book, article included. We demand that the scholars put in the spotlight by the article cease all persecution of the researchers and the other victims that have come forward. We demand that those scholars start walking the talk, and be consequent with their writings. This includes making themselves available for a real process of restorative justice. We demand that academic institutions, including academic presses, seriously commission diverse and unbiased task forces to bring about reparations for the practices of abuse fostered by the racist, capitalist and patriarchal system of which they are part - in a historical and immediate sense. We all know.

Mukanda

04.09.2023 | by várias

Some notes on decolonising Natural History Collections at The University of Coimbra

Some notes on decolonising Natural History Collections at The University of Coimbra These brief notes focus mainly on possible steps towards the discussion about the decolonisation, or decolonisations, of botanical collections and practices at the University of Coimbra. They are not intended to delimit a unidirectional and hierarchical path of activities to be developed and are not a closed script for a decolonial rereading of the collections, which are a constant challenge, always presenting us with open questions and incomplete answers. My views and writings on this subject stem from a position of privilege as an academic working at the UC, which allows me the time, easier access to the collections under analysis and the freedom to appose narratives onto natural and cultural objects long disconnected from their contexts of origin; I am aware of my limitations in identifying additional perspectives and knowledges, which other voices will be able to bring to the open and ongoing debate.

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01.08.2023 | by António Carmo Gouveia

Motherhood in Music in 10 steps: The Invisible Work of Mother Musicians

Motherhood in Music in 10 steps: The Invisible Work of Mother Musicians  The challenge remains: how to create a forward-thinking and progressive community, in which mothers are also represented and included? The work mothers and caregiver musicians cannot be perpetually undervalued or rendered invisible. Continuing to ignore the struggles mothers/caregivers face is unjust, unsustainable and will perpetually leave out many in our field.

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01.08.2023 | by Sara Serpa

Book temporarily unavailable as it is under review.

Book temporarily unavailable as it is under review. The publication of the book was decisive for our mobilization as a collective and for our decision to gather testimonial and documentary evidence that corroborate the various types of violence described in the mentioned chapter. In this sense, we note with great concern the unavailability for sale of the book.

To read

11.07.2023 | by várias

Public letter from Moira Millán to Boaventura Sousa Santos

Public letter from Moira Millán to Boaventura Sousa Santos As a result of the painful and humiliating situation caused by your abuse and the realization that my institutional isolation and helplessness at the time were a response to machismo and racism, I channeled my anger and wounds like a guiding force. I embarked on a journey to the ends of the vast territories of Indigenous peoples in Argentina to establish the Movement of Indigenous Women and Diversities for Good Living. Today, I can say that I walked to heal. The academic indifference I endured was replaced by the love and strength of thousands of Indigenous women who experience the violence you embody and represent daily. Regardless of your concerns that the Right is using these complaints, you know you benefit from the system. The Right needs hypocrites like you.

Mukanda

25.06.2023 | by Moira Ivana Millán

Diego Rivera's Portuguese ancestry

Diego Rivera's Portuguese ancestry It is said in Mexico that good life stories are passionate. They are happy and painful, they tie and untie blind knots in the throat, like a harsh swallow of cheap tequila. We set the tone and enter one of the taciturn taverns of the city of Guanajuato - the so-called "cantinas", where personal tales are distilled as the glasses advance. Rough stone walls in the half-light, damp breath. In my head, Chavela Vargas sings "Tú me acostumbraste." It's night and it's raining softly outside. With a toast, we seal the moment. And we tell a secret life story.

Face to face

27.05.2023 | by Pedro Cardoso

Biodiversity is an abstract concept, interview with Mia Couto

Biodiversity is an abstract concept, interview with Mia Couto Two hours with Mia Couto in an engaging conversation that covers various aspects of his interests and career, his affective geographies, the diversity of peoples and their ways of life as inspiration for the stories, the environment, and the development model to be discovered, and how to treat nature not as a "resource". We talked about hard times of violence, and the utopia of Mozambican Independence. Literary subjects do not predominate, although the Mozambican author wishes he had more time to dedicate to writing. Also thinking about how to take the pleasure of reading further and how to help bring out new writers. A writer in the terrain.

Face to face

22.05.2023 | by Marta Lança

Statement for depatriarchal and non-hierarchical worlds

Statement for depatriarchal and non-hierarchical worlds The Academy (with a capital A and in singular) is for us a field of contestation. And, without a doubt, we are all positioned in it once we dare to enter it, dialogue with it, challenge it, inhabit it and/or co-construct it. Many of us have occupied this space by choice and with conviction. We face this reality every minute of our lives. That is why the manifesto “We all know” resonates and challenges us when it states that epistemic extractivism is structural and not just an isolated event in the Academy. When it affirms that the Academy is hierarchical and hierarchizing and that it promotes the accumulation of power of those at the top.

Mukanda

28.04.2023 | by várias

The sun does not rise in the north

The sun does not rise in the north In the exhibition the sun does not rise in the north, de Miranda proposes one-person tales navigating between fictional and non-fictional narratives in the affective space of the border. The exhibition investigates the landscapes that witness hope, from the journeys of migration between Africa and Europe, set within a duality of existence and citizenship: one contemplating Europe and the other a return to Africa.

I'll visit

26.04.2023 | by Cindy Sissokho