Melanie Richter-Montpetit

Number of academics working in the UK falls for first time Some universities reduce staff teams by more than a fifth after year of cutbacks and job losses, new data show

'In a further sign of the impact of the financial crisis gripping the sector, new data from the Higher Education Statistics Agency (Hesa) show that 244,755 academic staff were working in the UK in 2024-25.' Previous year number was 246,930.

Professors & senior academics increased; others fell. 1/3

What will follow is a determined attempt to limit the contagion by isolating a couple of individuals (Andrew and Peter Mandelson) who will become utterly disgraced, but will carry the can for the whole system, which will continue largely untouched.

🇵🇸 🇩🇪 Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania refused to accept the “Most Valuable Film” award for her documentary The Voice of Hind Rajab at the Cinema for Peace gala in Berlin on February 16. The ceremony at Berlin’s Hotel Adlon Kempinski was attended by former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and actor Kevin Spacey. The gala also honored former Israeli general Noam Tibon. Ben Hania left her trophy behind in protest against the event providing “political cover” for genocide by “reframing mass civilian killing as self-defense” and “denigrating protesters.” “Peace is not a perfume sprayed over violence, so power can feel refined, and can feel comfortable. And cinema is not image-laundering,” she said.” “The Israeli army killed Hind Rajab; killed her family; killed the two paramedics who came to save her, with the complicity of the world’s most powerful governments and institutions…I refuse to let their deaths become a backdrop for a polite speech about peace.” She said she would return to accept the award when peace is “rooted in accountability for genocide.”

🇵🇸 🇩🇪 Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania refused to accept the “Most Valuable Film” award for her doc. The Voice of Hind Rajab at the Cinema for Peace gala in Berlin on Feb. 16.

The ceremony at Berlin’s Hotel Adlon Kempinski was attended by fmr. U.S. Sec. of State Hillary Clinton & actor Kevin...

how crazy to expect actors and jury members at Berlinale to answer questions on Gaza. They’re only attending a festival funded by the very state that co-funds the genocide and discredits nearly anyone who dares call it that.

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office It comes after Thames Valley Police said they were assessing a complaint over the alleged sharing of confidential material by the former prince with Jeffrey Epstein.

Why hasn't Mandelson been arrested?

www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c7...

19.2.2020: Rassistisches Attentat in Hanau

Heute vor sechs Jahren, am 19. Februar 2020, ereignete sich in Hanau ein rassistisches Attentat, dem neun Menschen zum Opfer fielen. Ibrahim Akkuş, der am 10. Januar 2026 an den Spätfolgen seiner Verletzungen starb, wird als zehntes Opfer des Anschlags gezählt.

Okay, this is quite outstanding from Bedford Council.

"Approaching Yarvin as a 'political philosopher' is approximately as helpful as approaching Jerry Springer as a moral theorist. One comes away with the sense that the joke is only ever on oneself for trying to get to the bottom of him in such terms."

hedgehogreview.com/issues/place...

The Crown's Silence For readers of Annette Gordon-Reed and Nikole Hannah-Jones, the shocking untold story of the British royal family’s centuries-long investment in slavery and...

For no special reason, seems like a good day for everyone to buy @brookenewman.bsky.social’s THE CROWN’S SILENCE, a book detailing how the British Royal Family is a lot of moral degenerates who have benefitted from rape, kidnapping and torture for centuries www.harpercollins.com/products/the...

They saw France bust down the doors of X for being pedophiles and immediately started developing the national sex crime VPN.

Jesse Jackson was an early and ardent supporter of gay rights. In fact, on July 17, 1984 at the DNC in San Fransisco, the first speech EVER at a national political convention calling for gay rights was delivered by none other than Rev. Jackson himself.

If you appreciated my @nybooks.com article, you'll love my new book Blue Power: How Police Organized to Protect and Serve Themselves, out from @basicbooksgroup.bsky.social in April. Order with discount code BLUE20 at www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/stuar...

The U.S. Has Killed More than 100 People in Boat Strikes. We’re Tracking Them All. The Intercept is keeping count of all publicly declared U.S. attacks on boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean and the number of civilians killed.

Since declaring war in the Caribbean Sea & Pacific Ocean, US has killed at least 145 people in lethal strikes on boats.

These never-ending & interchangeable wars (war on drugs, war on terror, and war on migrants) by US Southern Command no longer even have to specify what org they are targeting!

Allegations in Epstein files may amount to 'crimes against humanity,' UN experts say Millions of files related to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein suggest the existence of a "global criminal enterprise" that carried out acts meeting the legal threshold of crimes against humanity,...

Millions of files related to Jeffrey Epstein suggest the existence of a 'global criminal enterprise' that carried out acts meeting the legal threshold of crimes against humanity, a panel of independent experts appointed by the UN Human Rights Council says reut.rs/4rpxDfl

Thanks to a crucial Supreme Court decision on its shadow docket that authorized immigration officers to racially profile people they thought might be undocumented, Operation Metro Surge saw officers target anyone — citizen or not — who wasn’t white for questioning, detention or, in many cases, brutal treatment. ICE began going door-to-door in predominantly minority neighborhoods to ask where residents were born, sometimes dragging them out of their homes at gunpoint. Officers indiscriminately fired pepper spray and tear gas at residents, including into the car of a family, hospitalizing a baby. “What that did was have an incredibly chilling effect on how people move about our communities,” said Richard Carlbom, chairman of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party. “There are U.S. citizens who are Black, brown or Asian who won’t leave their house and we have to deliver food to them on a weekly basis because they’re afraid of being detained.”

One of my biggest fears about the midterms is that ICE could flood the polls with agents who perform Kavanaugh Stops on every non-white person before they get a chance to cast a ballot, then detain them until voting is over. Which is not far-fetched at this point. www.huffpost.com/entry/ice-po...

I don’t know who needs to hear Jesse Jackson leading the kids on Sesame Street in this beautiful call-and-response reminding them that every child is somebody, but here it is

You can completely uninstall/disable copilot on Windows. Your system and local search will run faster afterward. www.howtogeek.com/how-to-rip-o...

Harriet I was looking for a place to host some resources for the Tubman teach-in and decided to put it here temporarily. Here are two readings to prepare for our discussion: Harriet Tubman, Called Moses of…

I've read every Tubman biography at this point. For those interested, the materials from teach-ins I've facilitated about her over the years are here: radicalblackwomen.com/harriet/

WTO chief urges China to shift on trade surplus FILE: Director-General of the World Trade Organization (WTO) Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala at the World Trade Organization (WTO) headquarters in Geneva on February 16, 2024. (Photo by PIERRE ALBOUY /

What a world we live in. WTO chief urges China to trade less.
I don't want to downplay what China could do to "address" this, but this outcome is less a story of Chinese trade policy than it is one of extremely uneven global capitalist development.
business.inquirer.net/574306/wto-c...

Überwachungstechnologie: Wie hartnäckig Palantir die Schweiz umwarb Das umstrittene Tech-Unternehmen blitzte wieder und wieder ab. Teil 1 unserer Recherche.

The Swiss consider Palantir a security risk. In UK Mandelson takes Starmer to Palantir, and they hire MOD officials to hand over British intel over to the US.
p.s. Palantir sued the newspaper Republik for publishing this news.

www.republik.ch/2025/12/08/w...

www.opendemocracy.net/en/palantir-...

I'm still SHOCKED by the obscene rise in billionaire election spending since Citizens United in the NYT piece, despite already knowing that election corruption w/ $ was profound. (Recall that BCRA fought dangerous campaign $ in *2002*)

The article data didn't have a graph, so I made one to show it.

How and why police actually support the federal invasions—I have been working on this article for ~6 months, trying to make sense of Trump’s nationwide surge of DHS officers, how it has evolved, what brought us here, and what will remain after it ends.

Epstein Family Values • EQUATOR The billionaire patriarchs of the American far-right want to rule an economy of masters and servants

Melinda Cooper on Epstein class & billionaire far-right desire to rule a household economy:

"Epstein’s victims experienced the rule of master and servant not just as economic but sexual violence. They were the first to name and resist our emergent political order."

www.equator.org/articles/eps...

Analysis of the compression and reduction of life in the West Bank

European Parliament Votes Overwhelmingly For "The Full Recognition Of Trans Women As Women" The resolution, though nonbinding, is a significant shot at those who seek to erode transgender rights on the continent.

In incredible news, the European Parliament has voted overwhelmingly for "The Full Recognition Of Trans Women As Women."

Even the center-right European People's Party voted for the declaration.

It will form a foundation for their position at the UN Commission on the Status of Women.

Our latest.

Israel nutzt seit Jahren Desinformation als Instrument hybrider Kriegsführung – sollte spätestens seit 2023 *allen* klar sein. Fünf Außenministerien, darunter Wadephul, fallen auf eine Kampagne gegen Albanese rein – und die dpa Berichte erwähnen nicht mal, dass das Video ein Fake ist. Unfassbar

Impact of two decades of humanitarian and development assistance and the projected mortality consequences of current defunding to 2030: retrospective evaluation and forecasting analysis ODA funding has played a decisive role in reducing preventable mortality across LMICs over the past two decades, and the abrupt withdrawal of this support threatens to cause millions of avoidable deat...

Horrific cost of DOGE cuts:

If current projected US foreign aid cuts remain in place, by 2030 "the projected excess deaths would be 9.4 million (95% UI 6.2–12.6) overall and 2.5 million (1.8–3.2) among children younger than 5 years."

www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

That is roughly 10% of the population. To put this into context, it would correspond to:

1,000,800 of Sweden population
8,000,000 of German population
7,000,000 of the UK population,
4,000,000 of Ukrainians.

Today, the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law issued its annual report, A Global Legal Assessment of Serious IHL Violations. In the section on Gaza, their assessment is that at least 200,000 people have been killed in Gaza genocide.

German foreign minister @aussenminister.diplo.de discredits UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese on the basis of fake news that is easily verifiable. Unbelievable.

Full solidarity with Francesca Albanese.