Many of today’s attitudes toward animals have deep philosophical roots. Understanding how those ideas became embedded in culture, law, and social institutions helps explain why changing how we treat animals remains so difficult. By Ondine Sherman [Author’s Note: Humans are animals too. In this article, animals is used as shorthand for nonhuman animals.] At age seven, sitting at the dinner table with my family, I prodded my fork into a thick, squishy brown shape on my plate. M

Delegates walk out as Netanyahu begins his speech at UN -- image via news video screenshot By Vijay Prashad When Benjamin Netanyahu rose to address the United Nations General Assembly on September 24, the rows of empty seats spoke before he did. Diplomats walked out, while others stayed away from the outset. News reports citing an Israeli tally put the number of delegations absent or departing at 77. This was not a recorded UN vote, nor did all 77 stage a coordinated walkout.

United Nations General Assembly Hall -- Mojnsen, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Guillermo R. Barreto This month, like every year, the United Nations General Assembly takes place. Heads of State take the floor to send messages to the world. These messages are broadcast on TV, transcribed, and recorded in official documents and the press. We have heard denunciations of violations of international law, calls for peace and coexistence, and also cynical remarks from leader

US security agreement signing with Denmark's Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Greenland's Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen during the United Nations General Assembly, in New York City, New York, September 22, 2026 -- public domain image By Vijay Prashad Donald Trump’s campaign to bring Greenland under United States control has often been dismissed as bluster. That is a mistake. Behind the language of a property deal lies a serious attempt to revive an old imperial pri

Group photo of BRICS Member/Partner Countries Outreach Invitees and Heads of International Organisations at the 18th BRICS Summit -- Prime Minister's Office (GODL-India), GODL-India, via Wikimedia Commons By Vijay Prashad The 18thBRICS Summit, held in New Delhi on September 12–13, occurred amid an exceptional intensification of international contradictions. Wars in West Asia, unilateral sanctions, tariff barriers, and the weaponisation of finance and technology have exposed t

An Equal Earth map showing country boundaries -- Tom Patterson, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons By Prabir Purkayastha Last week, on 4th September, the United Nations General Assembly adopted an African proposal for a new world map, which shows countries’ true size relative to one another. It aims to correct the view of the world shaped by the widely used world map based on the Mercator Projection, created by Gerardus Mercator, a 16th-century Flemish cartographer. The problem with

Sarah J Malerich, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Jeffrey H. Altschul Cultural heritage is under attack in the United States. The National Historic Preservation Act’s Section 106 regulation, which balances economic development and historic preservation, has been rewritten to leave historic places in the path of the wrecking ball at the federal government’s whim. Developers contend that a new regulation is required because the Section 106 process is too slow, too unpred

Image via X By Vijay Prashad In Minaçu, in the northern part of the Brazilian state of Goiás, the landscape bears the scars of an earlier mineral rush. For decades, the town depended on the Cana Brava asbestos mine, whose prosperity was inseparable from lethal illnesses and a long history of environmental damage. Now Minaçu has been recruited into another promised future. At the Pela Ema mine, Serra Verde extracts rare-earth elements required for electric motors, wind turbine

Axadem, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Vijay Prashad Dear friends and colleagues, The United States and Israel launched a war of aggression against Iran in February of this year. For six months, US missiles and bombs have fallen upon civilian and military targets inside the country. Hospitals, schools, energy facilities, and neighbourhoods have been struck. The 168 schoolgirls killed in Minab have become the terrible symbol of this war. Iranians have been forced to live

Göbeklitepe site in May, 2025 -- public domain image By Erdem Denk While shooting a documentary at Göbeklitepe, I encountered strikingly different historical interpretations of the site. An international group of New Age seekers seemed to be searching for extraterrestrial connections there, but when I pointed out that the enclosures had originally been roofed, they recast the T-shaped pillars as traces of humanity’s mystical past. Representatives of an NGO working with conser

In Bolivar Square, Caracas -- J.A. Vergara, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Guillermo R. Barreto We are living in complex times in which U.S. imperialism is manifesting itself in an extremely aggressive manner, with greater violence and disregard for international law and the sovereignty of peoples, but with a desperation that translates into increasingly irrational decisions that openly threaten not only world peace but the future of all humanity. What we are witnessi

The desire to stylize a mark is older than writing itself, and the typefaces of today shape what we remember, feel, and trust whenever we read. Blombos Cave ochre and artefacts, photo: Henning, © Chris Henshilwood, CC-BY-2.5; Released under the GNU Free Documentation License. By Irina Matuzava The oldest known engravings consist of zigzag patterns and parallel lines, carved into freshwater mussel shells at Trinil on the island of Java, Indonesia. These grooves, made by Homo e

Arkaio Nomisma, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Gary M. Feinman As democracies around the world face mounting challenges and pressures, discussions about autocracy often focus on personalities and ideologies or tend to link governance practices to differences among specific cultural traditions. Yet a growing body of comparative historical research has provided evidence that a more fundamental question deserves attention: How was and how are governments funded? Across t

From the Civil War and World War I to the ongoing conflict in Iran, America’s and other nations’ expectations of war have repeatedly been challenged by the realities that emerge once fighting begins. U.S. Marines in their gas masks during a gas mask drill, France, WWI, 1917 By John P. Ruehl A nominal ceasefire reached in April 2026 has done little to halt the escalation in the Persian Gulf. After Iran’s “attempted surprise attack” against US forces on July 28, the US retaliat

As keyboards and touchscreens replace pens and pencils, the decline of handwriting raises questions about cognition, culture, and creativity. Shixart1985, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Danica Tomber When was the last time you wrote something by hand? Was it a stylus signature at a checkout stand, a kitchen calendar reminder, or a note jotted down on a scrap of paper? These days, writing largely lives in the digital realm. Despite its advantages, handwriting has been pus

Humanitarian organizations invest in education to promote safety, resilience, and social cohesion, but researchers continue to debate its long-term impact on conflict and human well-being. By Chloe Bruce Humanitarian education refers to educational initiatives developed or supported by humanitarian organizations to reduce suffering, protect vulnerable populations, and help communities recover from conflict and disaster. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees define

Once one of the world’s most militarized frontiers, the Russia-China border along the Amur River Basin shows how a long-running territorial dispute can evolve from confrontation to integration. No. 41 Boundary Marker at China–Russia Border -- Ncysea, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons By John P. Ruehl Since the early 1990s, the Russian city of Blagoveshchensk, located on the Amur River, has steadily reemerged as one of Russia’s most important “border trade hubs.” Sitting dir

A girl walks amid the devastation in Gaza, August, 2024 -- Jaber Jehad Badwan, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Vijay Prashad On June 23, the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel release done of the most devastating reports ever produced by a UN investigative body on the Israeli genocide in Gaza. Its title is almost unbearable to read: The Essence of Childhood Has Been

UFC Freedom 250, the mixed martial arts event produced by the Ultimate Fighting Championship, Sunday, June 14, 2026, in the Grand Foyer of the White House -- public domain image By Gary M. Feinman In a March 2026 paper published in the journal Science Advances, which focused on variability in governance along the autocratic-democratic axis, my coauthors and I found that one of the strongest associations for the 40 case observations, which were part of our study, was between t

The famous wall painting from Çatalhöyük depicts tightly clustered domestic houses beneath an erupting volcano. Photo/Illustration by Asya Denk. By Erdem Denk The theme for an exhibition that opened on June 4, 2026, at Ankara University’s Faculty of Political Science (Mülkiye), World’s First City Plan/Map, as part of my Arkeopolitics initiative, was met with reservations by a group of students from the Middle East Technical University’s faculty of architecture. They questione