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Organ donation: Swiss citizens should be able to decide

by Christian Gurtner, editor of the magazine «saldo»*

(30 November 2021) Today, organ donors must give their explicit consent. In future, even silence will be considered as a consent. That is what the Federal Council and parliament want. Now a referendum committee has formed: the voters should have the last word.

Sino-Russian collusion over Taiwan and Ukraine seems improbable but isn’t

by M. K. Bhadrakumar*

(30 November 2021) The “feel-good” from Tuesday’s virtual meeting1 [16 November] between President Joe Biden and President Xi Jinping leaps out of the US-Russian summit in Geneva in June. Biden’s talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin apparently sought to create a “stable and predictable” relationship with Russia but there is talk of war today.

COP26: Greening Finance?

by Thierry Meyssan*

COP26 in Glasgow is an entertaining show, designed to divert the public’s attention from what is going on. The IPCC, the COP’s committee of climate experts, does not predict the apocalypse to deaf governments, but provides them with a discourse to justify their political ambitions. Presidents Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, who are resolutely hostile to the financial projects of the COPs, have refused to attend, while the big bankers are talking about 100 billion dollars of investment.

«Swiss primary schools can no longer afford the absence of men»

by Hanspeter Amstutz*

(29. November 2021) The shortage of teachers in primary and secondary schools threatens to become chronic, as a look at the rising numbers of pupils over the next few years, shows. Although more students than ever are entering teacher training at university colleges of education, the trend towards part-time employment and the excessive number of premature departures from the teaching profession are making for a highly tense situation on the job market. There have always been times of teacher shortage, but the current situation is different in two respects.

«How the Pandemic Is Changing the Norms of Science»

Imperatives like skepticism and disinterestedness are being junked to fuel political warfare that has nothing in common with scientific methodology

von John P. A. Ioannidis*

(29. November 2021)In the past I had often fervently wished that one day everyone would be passionate and excited about scientific research. I should have been more careful about what I had wished for. The crisis caused by the lethal COVID-19 pandemic and by the responses to the crisis have made billions of people worldwide acutely interested and overexcited about science.

U.S. return to UN Human Rights Council – a mockery of its raison d'être

Alfred de Zayas and Adriel Kasonta*

(20 November 2021) The U.S. regained its seat on the UN Human Rights Council in an uncontested vote in the UN General Assembly on October 14, 2021, after the administration of former U.S. President Donald Trump quit the 47-member body in 2018 citing the "chronic bias" against Israel.