Suchergebnisse

This final post in the series on group project work looks at the oral group exam, which is a traditional Danish type of exam. Oral exams are integral to the Danish educational system from primary school through to university and can take different forms. This post explains the oral group exam based on a project, […]
The post Assessing group research projects: oral group exams with individual grades! appeared first on EU on what track?.

Text here. Includes raising the retirement age for Social Security an indeterminate amount (The Hill). See expenditure reduction in the table below: Source: RSC (2024). Not sure I understand where the 10 year cumulative $1.5 trillion outlay reduction is coming from. Here's the relevant paragraph (from page 108): For instance, the RSC Budget would make […]

Welcome to the Racial Affinity Group Field Guide produced by the Interaction Institute for Social Change (IISC) for public distribution. Affinity groups are an important part of the journey towards understanding and promoting racial equity and racial justice. We are so glad that you have signed up to support people in having these important conversations. ... Read More
The post Racial Affinity Group Field Guide appeared first on Interaction Institute for Social Change.

Two pending cases before the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) provide an opportunity for the CJEU to consolidate group-based refugee protection. At the heart of the cases is a concern with granting refugee protection to groups of persons based on their inherent characteristics, in this case women and girls from Afghanistan. However, as the joined cases of AH and FN highlight, this is often due to an apprehension amongst asylum decision makers over the grant of protection to large groups of persons based on sex and misconceptions surrounding gender-based violence and discrimination.

This is to announce that the Past & Present Reading Group will be meeting to discuss, on a weekly basis, our next text which is: Aileen Moreton-Robinson, The White Possessive: Property, Power and Indigenous Sovereignty (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015).
The post Next Past & Present Reading Group Text appeared first on Progress in Political Economy (PPE).

The story of the Pan-Ugandan Liberation Initiative, a short-lived splinter faction of the more infamous Islamic State-loyal ADF that was destroyed earlier this year, provides important details and context in the ADF's overall ideological trajectory and history.
The post PULI: Uganda's Other (Short-lived) Jihadi Group first appeared on FDD's Long War Journal.

The race is on, as the Bossier City Council this
week launched its Potemkin attempt to run down citizens who threaten to end the political
careers of a majority of its members.

The Council unanimously voted to establish the second
charter review committee in this city's history. Mind you, a year ago this was
the furthest thing from the minds of graybeards Republicans Jeff Free and
David
Montgomery, Democrat Bubba Williams,
and no party Jeff Darby.
But then a group of citizens loosely organized as the Bossier Term Limits Coalition, with
the support of Republican rookie councilors Chris Smith
and Brian
Hammons and republican Mayor Tommy Chandler, came together to gather enough
signatures to amend the city charter by slapping a lifetime three-term limit retroactively
on city officials, with an affirmative vote by the electorate. None of the
graybeards could run in the Mar. 29, 2025 city elections if this passed by the
Dec. 7, 2024 election, as it almost certainly would.

By a series
of legal maneuvers and open defiance four times of the charter, the graybeards
plus Republican rookie Vince Maggio
so far have kept the matter off the ballot, hoping to extend that for more than
the upcoming year by tying up the matter in the courts. Undaunted, the
Coalition has launched another as well as a separate petition amending the
charter to drop the petitioning requirement from a third to a fifth of registered
voters participating in the last city-wide election that would make even easier
outflanking the Council.

These moves terrified the graybeards and their ally
Maggio, thus the countermove to establish the commission. Make no mistake, its
only reason for existence is to come up with a much laxer term limitation, which
likely will take a three-term limit but applying only starting in 2025. Then
the strategy is to get the commission's recommendations on the ballot no later
than either the judiciary ruling the first Coalition petition in order and/or
the second making it on time for the Nov. 5 national election ballot (due Jun.
19), setting up dueling propositions.

That would mean having to convince enough voters
their watered-down term limits version is better, when anecdotal evidence
suggests the electorate prefers a stronger version, So, the commission will
have to find some kind of sweeteners to vote for in their package, which is an
up-or-down vote on all items, to discourage supporting the other. (A very
interesting legal question is what happens if voters approved both.) At the
same time, it will have to battle the proposition dropping the amendment cutoff
from a third to a fifth, because that not only would make it easier for
citizens to continue to go around entrenched interests backing councilors but
it also would make it easier to undo commission recommendations if these
passed. (The current judicial pace suggests the Mar. 4 deadline for the Apr. 27
municipal general election slot won't be made for the contested petition,
although the graybeards and Maggio might worry less about that if it did happen
as this would be a low stimulus election that makes their chances of defeating it
at the ballot box as a standalone item go from highly unlikely to just
improbable.)

The use of the commission as a tool to preserve
careers became obvious in the selection of members. Chandler as mayor has two,
which he used to select outsiders to current city government: Republican Shane
Cheatham, who actually won election to the Council in 2021 only to turn that
down in the hopes of becoming city chief administrative officer who then couldn't
even have his nomination considered because of the graybeards; and Democrat
Lee Jeter, who ran for an at-large Council spot in 2021 and then who the graybeards
(minus Free) rebuffed to replace Cheatham (as well as rejecting Hammons).
Both are on the record as supporting the petition under court review.

Councilors could appoint one member each, but
regrettably supporting documentation for the ordinance didn't identify who appointed
whom. Still, a little detective work by frequent Council public commenter David
Crockett uncovered that two councilors, Williams and Darby, didn't appoint
people from their districts, where Williams at the previous meeting claimed
difficulty in finding people in his district willing to serve. He further
embarrassed the pair when, during commentary at the last meeting, observed that
with minimal effort he discovered someone from each of Williams' and Darby's
districts willing to serve.

That it seemed Williams and Darby didn't make an
effort to pick district residents, implying they targeted known quantities that
likely would toe their line on term limits, seemingly was echoed by other councilors'
selections of people connected to city political insiders. Among them were the
sister-in-law of a contractor family business doing millions of dollars of work
for the city, the wife of the city's longtime contractor for its financial
auditing, the wife of Republican City Marshal Jim Whitman, and Republican
Julianna
Parks, the wife of Republican City Judge Santi Parks and sitting police
juror. (Also selected was Smith's father-in-law, the former head of the area
tourism agency, but who has been out of that job and city politics for many
years.) These aren't exactly the people that would defy the graybeards and
Maggio on the term limits issue.

From the names and distribution of selections, the
graybeards and Maggio have the five votes necessary for their bloc to control
the commission. It's their chosen sham device to cut their losses – the youngest of
the bloc subject to a three-limit rule starting in 2025 by 2039 would be in his
mid-seventies – and to try to combat far greater limitation. Let the race
begin.

Israeli forces killed three gunmen that infiltrated northern Israel from Lebanon on Sunday morning. The trio were claimed by an unknown group calling itself Islamic Azz Brigades.
The post Hezbollah front group likely behind attack in northern Israel first appeared on FDD's Long War Journal.

A new Sinai-based organization calling itself Kataib al-Farouq calls for attacks against Israel.
The post Armed group in the Sinai declares it will fight Israel first appeared on FDD's Long War Journal.

Staatstrojaner-Unternehmen NSO: Soll erstmals Einblick in seinen Quellcode gewähren. – Alle Rechte vorbehalten IMAGO / Omar Marques / SOPA ImagesDas Unternehmen NSO Group soll eine Sicherheitsheitslücke in WhatsApp ausgenutzt haben, um 1.400 Nutzer:innen auszuspähen. Ein US-Gericht hat in einem laufenden Verfahren nun überraschend angeordnet, dass das Unternehmen den Quellcode seines Staatstrojaners für WhatsApp offenlegen muss.

Yevgeny Prigozhin led Wagner Group fighters in what appeared to be a direct challenge to the Russian military establishment. But it's unlikely that the Kremlin will dissolve Wagner's paramilitary enterprise. It is too significant to Russia's greater geostrategic aims and economic strength.

Problem-oriented project learning is integral to Roskilde University pedagogical philosophy, which requires students to become researchers already from their first day at the university. Every semester, the students have to come up a new research idea and find fellow students to work with to carry out a project. The project is worth half their ETCS […]
The post Group formation: from research ideas to project groups appeared first on EU on what track?.

This month’s open thread on climate topics. Many eyes will be focused on whether April temperatures will be the 11th month in row of records… Note that we have updated the data and figures from the Nenana Ice Classic and Dawson City river ice break up pools (the nominal 13th and 5th earliest break-ups (or […]
The post Unforced Variations: May 2024 first appeared on RealClimate.

This month’s open thread on climate topics. Lots more discussion about 2023, aerosols, heat content and imbalances to come I expect… Note, comments should be substantive even if you are arguing with who you perceive to be the worst person in the world. Comments that are mainly personal attacks will just get deleted.
The post Unforced variations: Apr 2024 first appeared on RealClimate.

The month’s open thread on climate topics. More record monthly warmth, but only the second lowest Antarctic sea ice though (growing since 2023!).
The post Unforced variations: March 2024 first appeared on RealClimate.