#that’s the President of Honduras you know?

[sleepdepravity]

I appreciate addison’s apparent distaste for American colonialism of Hawaii but I get the feeling that I’m not ever going to see this event mentioned in any book about queen lilioukalani.

[moderatetoaboveaverage]

.

[mydaddywiki]

Tim Kaine

Physique: Average Build Height: 5’ 11" (1.8 m)

Timothy Michael Kaine (born February 26, 1958-) is an American lawyer and politician serving as the junior United States senator from Virginia since 2013. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as the 70th governor of Virginia from 2006 to 2010, and as the 38th lieutenant governor of Virginia from 2002 to 2006. Kaine was the Democratic nominee for vice president of the United States in the 2016 election as Hillary Clinton's running mate.

He's handsome and is widely described by people in his political orbit as a likable if less than charismatic figure. Just by the look in his eyes makes me think you can have an all around good time with Tim and could be a hell of a good fuck.

Now, what exciting facts can I tell you about Sen. Kaine? Well, of course he’s married with three children. He plays the harmonica and often travels with several. And he’s fluent in Spanish as a result of his nine months in Honduras. But what is most important is that he is really sexy looking. I’m not sure how knowing all that sits in relation to him being involved in a weekend fuckfest with just the two of us, but I can fantasize.

[matan4il]

Daily update post:

Probably the biggest news in Israel today is how many of the hostages are already confirmed dead. The thing isn't that we didn't know some were. If you've been following my update posts, then you know that more than once, we got the news that a hostage was confirmed to have been killed, and their body held hostage in Gaza. The thing is that up until now, no one talked about the total number of dead, or the number of those with an indication (which still needs to be verified) that they might be dead. So here are the numbers, as published: out of the official number of 136 Israeli hostages in Gaza, 32 are dead bodies, with the IDF trying to determine whether at least 20 more were also killed. That means that it's confirmed there are no more than 104 living hostages abducted from Israel and held in Gaza, and potentially no more than 84.

In the wake of the Oct 7 massacre, Hamas has been self contradictory. On the one hand, they shared footage of the carnage themselves, many times live (this website is dressed as if it's Hamas', and presents some of the evidence from that day, for all the deniers). The footage and testimonies of survivors, as well as forensic evidence collected from the slain shows that civilian communities were intentionally targeted, and that women, men, kids were intentionally raped, maimed and murdered under close proximity, where no mistake about the identity of the victims could have been made. A Hamas senior has openly said that they would repeat the massacre until Israel is destroyed. All of Israel destroyed obviously harms the civilians, including the women and kids. Following the massacre, Hamas has also called for Oct 13 to be a global 'Day of Rage' where Hamas supporters were called upon to attack Israelis and Jews worldwide. They did not specify leaving women and kids out of it, and when Jews are made into targets globally, meaning way beyond Israel and its army, that obviously means civilians. Yet at the same time, Hamas has denied having targeted civilians, that if Hamas did kill them it was due to confusion, and even blamed Israel for the civilian deaths. But now, Israel has released evidence of a book of fatwas (Islamic religious decrees) found in Gaza, which exlpictly allowed the Hamas terrorists to target civilians, including women and kids. The pic on the right shows the cover of the fatwas book, with Hamas' emblem, and the left shows the relevant fatwa.

The newly elected president of Argentina is visiting Israel, to announce the moving of the Argentinian embassy to Jerusalem. I'm just gonna remind everyone that foreign embassies normally are in a country's capital, and that foreign countries don't get to choose a capital instead of a country's own people. In fact, I personally don't know of any other case where foreign nations refuse to acknowledge a country's choice of capital by keeping their embassies out of there. Originally, the refusal to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital happened before the war in 1967 (when the two parts of the city, torn apart by Jordan in 1948, which also ethnically cleansed East Jerusalem of Jews, were re-united), and was connected to the fact that in the 1947 UN partition plan (which wasn't legally binding, and was nullified by the Arabs' refusal to accept it, and them starting a war against Israel), Jerusalem was supposed to be an internationally governed area. In other words, this isn't the world acting on behalf of the Palestinians, it's acting on behalf of its own political and religious interests in the historical Jewish capital, and the city holiest to Judaism for over 3,000 years. Currently, Jerusalem is home to the embassies of the US, Honduras, Guatemala, Kosovo (the first Muslim country to have an embassy there), and Papua New Guinea.

And while it's not an official embassy, because it doesn't represent an actual country, the other day a symbolic one was opened in Jerusalem, the Indigenous People embassy. And to see other native people connecting with the Jews, who are native to the Land of Israel, warms my heart. The embassy may not be an official one, but it has the support of various indigenous leaders from around the world, and its opening was attended by over 100 ambassadors.

This is 42 years old Lara Tannous.

She's a Palestinian from East Jerusalem. On Jan 7, 3 Palestinian terrorists opened fire at the car she was in. Another Palestinian man who was driving along the same road, 32 years old Amar Mansour, was killed immediately. Lara was seriously wounded. She was hospitalized in Hadassah Ein Kerem, the Jerusalem medical center where she's been working as a pharmacist for the last 17 years, but succumbed to her wounds on Jan 24. She was buried in the Palestinian-ruled city of Ramallah. The three terrorists thought they were shooting at Jews. According to at least one source, they were 2 doctors and a male nurse, before choosing to take lives instead. This morning, I happened to undergo a procedure at Hadassah. Before leaving, I noticed there's a corner for the workers or their family members killed on or since Oct 7. Here's the corner dedicated to the hostages, the one to the victims of Palestinian terrorism, and one zoomed in pic, where you can see Lara's photograph a bit better:

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

[bigboysdrinkmilk]

More ppl has been deported under Biden than Trump, which is kinda funny in its irony

I don’t know why the anons on this site have decided I should be the receptacle for all of Joe Biden’s perceived sins. Maybe they just like hearing me talk.

The only time in recent memory I have referenced deportation with regards to the current political climate is that Trump has stated he wants to deport American Muslims after Hamas’ attack on Israel in October.

“Deportation” is a morally neutral legal action. There are plenty of “good” reasons to deport someone—if, say, you’ve identified they are spying for a foreign power or if they had fled to your country to avoid rightful prosecution by the legal systems of their own country.

And there are plenty of “bad” reasons to deport someone—because you are targeting them because of their sincerely held religious beliefs, as an example.

Specifically I would guess that you are referencing Title 42 deportations, of which Biden does have a higher total number. But Biden also experienced a higher total volume of immigrants at the border, and when you take the total number of deportations as a percentage of encounters, you start to see a little different story.

Along the way, Biden has worked to end Trump’s inhumane “Remain in Mexico” policy, which lead to the kidnap, rape, and abuse of more than 1,500 migrants. A Trump-appointed judge ruled Biden had improperly ended the policy, forcing the government back into enforcing it, and the Biden Administration took the fight to the Supreme Court and won, ending the policy officially.

During Trump’s administration, he intentionally separated families at the border. At least 3,900 children were separated from their families.

Biden has worked to reunite the majority of those families—2,500 children have been returned to their parents so far—and rolled out family reunification programs for citizens of certain countries - including Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and Colombia - who have relatives in the US.

Trump made little use of parole—the system by which migrants may be allowed into the country even if they do not currently qualify for a visa—and has said he would end parole status for migrants in his future term.

Biden has been one of the most pro-parole Presidents in history, and as many as 30,000 migrants are able to fly in to the US per month through the program, including vulnerable people from Afghanistan and Ukraine, in particular when they are found to have a credible fear of persecution or torture in their home country.

So, as I have said in post after post, I ask you again—

Will we neglect the *good* because it is not perfect? Will we embrace the *bad* because we are unsatisfied with *good?* Will we risk the ruination of our democratic norms because in a difficult political environment, Biden did the best that was available and politically viable at the time?

Vote blue this November. And when you do, remember that you’re doing it to keep families together, that you’re doing it to grant 30,000 people parole status every month, that you’re doing it to end the inhumane Remain in Mexico policy. And remember that you’re doing it not because the results will be perfect, but because they will be a step forward.

The road will be bumpy. But every bump is worth it.

[1americanconservative]

@robbystarbuck

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There’s a scandal going on in Guatemala that everyone needs to know about. The Attorney General in Guatemala is investigating child trafficking at the US border and it appears that the Biden Admin is retaliating. The interview you’re about to hear is apparently so dangerous that the Secretary General of Guatemala says he was warned by someone claiming to carry a message from the US Embassy that he was “playing with fire” if he took part in the interview. Last week they raided an NGO named Save The Children. Jill Biden used to be the Chair of STC’s board. Investigations into NGO’s like this are a part of Guatemala’s overall investigation as they search out who’s doing the trafficking and where the money’s coming from. Now let’s talk about $$$… Before doing this interview I reached out to

@Oilfield_Rando

@RandoLand_US

for a report on $ the US gives Guatemala. He found over 80 payments to individuals in Guatemala where the names are redacted. Many range from $20,000 to $40,000 per transfer. That’s a LOT of money in Guatemala. Who are they paying and why? Overall the Biden admin has spent over $500M in Guatemala. Why? US taxpayers are paying $125,000 for indigenous “healers” (shamans) in Guatemala and nearly $500,000 to support gender ideology there. Why? One things clear about the Biden Administration: You can’t trust them with money. That’s why

@GoldCoPM

is sponsoring this interview. Since Biden took office, many Americans are worse off. This is not the beacon of prosperity we grew up in. Click here to learn about an IRS loophole thousands of Americans have used to safeguard their money: http://Robby4Gold.com Guatemala’s Secretary General also admitted the US is harboring illegal alien pedophiles and murders. These are people Guatemala WANTS to put in prison but Biden’s Admin is protecting them instead of cooperating. As you’ll find out, it’s clear the AG and SG are being targeted. Guatemala’s President recently met with Sec of State Tony Blinken and Joe Biden. After this interview he announced a plot to remove the AG. If it feels like you’ve seen this movie before… It’s because you have: In Ukraine when Joe Biden forced the firing of a prosecutor who investigated his family. If you're short on time, below you'll find timecodes you can click to jump directly to the parts you want to watch. Accounts and news outlets are free to upload clips of this interview with credit to

@robbystarbuck

. Major thanks to

@MPguatemala

@MPGuatemala_EN

for agreeing to this interview and for being so transparent. 0:00 The Scandal in Guatemala Introduction 4:20 Interview Begins - Explaining the AG’s letter about child trafficking at the US border that the US government may be involved in. 7:12 Clarifying that this investigation involves sexual crimes against children. 8:24 Is there any explanation for the fact that 70% of all unaccompanied minors at the border come from either Guatemala or Honduras that isn’t rooted in child trafficking? 9:14 Clarifying that the claim the Guatemalan AG has includes claims that US officials and Guatemalan officials are allowing this trafficking. 9:40 Did they know Jill Biden used to be the chair of the NGO they raided recently? 12:15 Information on Biden Admin cutting off communication over certain AG office employees being fired by the current AG of Guatemala. 13:27 Does the US affect prosecution rates in Central America with pressure? 14:59 Addressing the media silence in this case 16:00 Bombshell: Secretary General says person sent by US Embassy came to warn him that he was “playing with fire” by doing this interview with me. 18:36 Has the Biden Admin reached out about the allegations of trafficking to figure out how to fix this? 19:43 Did the US Embassy want the Secretary General to cancel this interview? 20:27 Exposing mysterious individual payments made by the US to individuals in Guatemala with redacted names. What does Guatemala know about these payments? 23:38 What influence are people like George Soros having with their money in Central America? 25:25 Is the US funding NGO’s that work with Cartels? 25:50 Why is the US paying $125,000 for Shamans/indigenious healers in Guatemala? 28:00 Exposing nearly $500,000 the US sent to benefit far left gender ideology spreading to Guatemala. 31:24 How communication was cut off when the AG said parents need to consent before kids are taught about sexual/gender ideology topics and is the export of gender ideology from the US damaging social fabrics in Guatemala? 33:15 Is the Guatemalan government being reeducated into this far left ideology? 33:57 Discussing Flyers encouraging illegal aliens to vote at NGO camps. 34:39 Are dangerous criminals able to come in to the US illegally because the Biden Administration is allowing it? 35:22 Guatemala’s experience with Kamala Harris and Samantha Power… Wow… 37:15 Discussing the horrific rape problems at the border and how complicit the Biden Administration is. 39:37 Exposing Rape Trees at the Southern Border 42:00 Is the Biden Admin trying to make Guatemala a satellite state using grant money? 44:06 Are NGO’s teaching illegal aliens to lie for asylum claims? 44:47 Bombshell: Guatemalan Secretary General admits they have criminals on the run in the US who are being harbored by the US including pedophiles and murderers.

https://x.com/robbystarbuck/status/1790082374270623755

[smytherines]

Oh my god this got so long. I swore to myself that I was going to be normal about this and not just dump all of my headcanon immediately but like

Do you ever think about the fact that in the 1950s & 1960s there just were not that many nuclear weapons blueprints out there (and most of the document stealing was done by long term plants, not high risk guys like Curt & Owen)

If you were a spy during the Cold War you were most likely doing regime change. You were arming, training, and supplying coups. You were helping set the stage for American or UK capital to set up shop and repress and enslave Indigenous populations and export every drop of wealth possible from the global south. You were fighting a proxy war against "communism" (which often just meant workers striking for better conditions, at least intially) all across the globe.

With that context I think a lot about the coup in Guatemala in 1954, where the CIA trained and armed the coup and overthrew the democratically elected president of Guatemala (Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán) at the behest of the United Fruit Company. Árbenz was left of center, and he had land reforms planned that would compensate UFCO for their land, appropriate it, and redistribute it to workers. Guatemala offered to pay the value listed on UFCO tax documents (1.2 million), but UFCO demanded 16 million

If I start talking about this I'll never stop, but long story short UFCO had spent 50+ years gobbling up all the land in Guatemala, grew Bananas and exported them for massive profits, and terrorized or outright massacred Indigenous workers to keep them in line. The 1954 coup and the subsequent I think its 36 years of civil war in Guatemala is all down to the CIA doing a coup because the head of the CIA (Allen Dulles) was on the board of United Fruit and they wanted that blood money baby. It was a genocide.

Hard swerve back into it here: I don't know about Owen, but at least Agent Curt Mega had a *very* good chance of participating in the 1954 coup. In creating a literal Banana Republic (a puppet government controlled by US interests). I tend to think Owen was there too because it's more interesting that way. I think it's a mistake to focus exclusively on the Russian cat vs mouse and ignore the larger geopolitical context of the cold war.

Owen "dies" because of Curt's hubris- not just the drinking and talking him into risks he isn't comfortable with, but with his job at A.S.S., because someone else points and Curt shoots. In my headcanon Curt helped to create a banana republic that harmed and killed an incredible number of people, and he is just as careless when he leaves his banana peel on the stairs and "kills" Owen. Curt is absolutely firm in the belief that he is one of the good guys. And I think Owen was prolly the same way- until his body got wrecked and he got abandoned by the man he loved and he had a long, long time to think about the foreign policy of his government and what he and Curt really *did* on their fun lil spy jaunts.

If Owen was in Honduras (where they staged the Guatemala coup), then he has to reckon with the fact that he "died" due to *his own* hubris as well. He has to process that he joined the intelligence game because he grew up during the Blitz, during WWII, but that post WWII Britain was doing the same imperialist bullshit the US was. That Owen wasn't saving the world, he was destroying it. He was crushing half the planet under the thumb of British power. He was enacting the very genocides he joined up to prevent. That's why he wants a world with "no more agencies, no more spies, no more secrets."

So when Chimera offers Owen the chance to undermine US & UK interests, to take the power out of their hands by using and discarding a ridiculous n*zi, Owen just goes for it. I don't subscribe to the Chimera brainwashing theory, I like to think Owen joined Chimera because post-banana he became ideologically aligned with Chimera.

I imagine Chimera pulled him out of the rubble and got him back on his feet, and whispered in his ear about US/UK imperialism. We can argue about whether the ends justify the means, whether he goes too far, whether Chimera has pure intentions (doubt), but Owen isn't just some nightmare monster. He tells Curt "you've been blind" and "no one's innocent." He calls Curt a "caveman" and what is it, an "arrogant brute?" He has a rationale. He believes he is right. He's kind of a dick about it, but he has radicalized in a way Curt hasn't.

I think Owen sees Curt as clinging to cool guy spy shit (and the macho straight guy facade) instead of seeing the world for what it is. I think he probably also thinks about Alan Turing, about the UK arresting gay men- men who had previously been considered national heroes- for doing what Owen does (loving a man). I think he thinks about the US doing an elaborate and very public witchhunt of communists and gay people and anyone else who doesn't conform to good ol American capitalism. I think he insults Curt because he has been through a lot of shit that has changed his perspective, and he cannot believe that Curt *still doesn't see it*

I know there's the whole "DMA killed 1147 people, mostly girls from ages 14 to 22" kickstarter joke, but I'm sorry as much as I love Cynthia it'll be a cold day in hell before I believe anything the US state department says.

I don't think Agent Curt Mega is a perfect adorable babygirl who has never done anything wrong, I don't think Owen is (and has always been) a cruel and sadistic comic book villain. I think these are two men who loved each other in a time where it was very difficult, in a profession where they are literally the property of their respective governments. Where they could be arrested and forced into conversion therapy if they were discovered.

I think they were flawed (Curt cocky and careless, Owen condescending) but loved and respected each other as best they could, and when a massive trauma hits them they break different ways. Curt remains the lawful good, but Owen reframes his sense of right and wrong. I tend to think he did legit torture a lot of people, and even enjoyed it, but I think it was people related to these proxy wars, people related to these coups. People who could advance Chimera's objectives

I think Owen tortures Curt because he hates him, and he doesn't kill Curt (despite having soooo many chances) because he loves him. Owen has so much hesitation in the staircase scene. When Curt brings up their relationship he wavers and his face softens and his gun drops. He brings the gun back up, but despite having Curt at gunpoint for like 3 minutes he doesn't kill him. He hates him, but he loves him. If Curt takes the chance to talk to Owen, then maybe...

But Curt is convinced he is the good guy, which makes Owen the bad guy. And bad guys get put down like dogs. The ideological split is something Curt can't handle, so he shoots and kills his unarmed ex-lover. He just needs a win. He needs it to be over.

I don't have anything against anyone else's headcanon, I think it's a testament to how good Spies Are Forever really is that nearly 8 years later so many people still spend so much time taking apart this comedy musical about gay spies. But for me, it's more compelling if Owen is traumatized and flawed and ideologically opposed to the heroes of our story. I think it's more interesting that Curt kills the man he spent 4 years pining for because he can't accept the possibility that he could be the baddie.

Oh god I have to stop this is too much. But yeah. I've got feelings.

[darkmaga-retard]

Vice President Kamala Harris was never the “border czar.” If you’ve kept up with the media lately, you might have noticed that the commentariat seems intent on clarifying that. Axios, among others, recently “clarified” their reporting on Harris’ border mismanagement and disavowed their previous use of the “border czar” title. Given Axios’s key role in fostering a DNC coup against a sitting president, we can interpret that Democrats recognize the scope of their failure on the southwestern border and want to distance themselves from the consequences. 

The consequences of the Biden-Harris administration’s border policies are well known and well documented. Violence on both sides of the border, record drug overdoses, and strained public institutions have marked a half-decade of utter chaos. The monotony of endless alien crossings and drug seizures obscures the transformational nature of the crisis, rendering the southwest a pot of boiling frogs.

It’s not a shock that the Democrats have decided to distance Harris from her time overseeing aspects of the administration’s border response. But with the Democratic National Convention underway, conservatives are obliged to review Harris’s failures on the border and communicate the consequences of these failures to the electorate. 

Harris was tapped to front the Biden administration’s signature border policy, the so-called “root cause” strategy, in March of 2021. She was placed in charge of “leading the administration’s diplomatic efforts to address the root causes of migration from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.”  At the time, Biden emphatically endorsed Harris as the woman for the job, even going as far as deputizing her to negotiate in his name: “When she speaks, she speaks for me. Doesn’t have to check with me. She knows what she’s doing, and I hope we can move this along.”

[plethoraworldatlas]

Immigrants helped build this country, a fact no amount of racism or xenophobia can erase. Immigrants, including children, work in fields and factories, driving our economy. A group of immigrant men were working late last Tuesday night, filling potholes on Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge.

At 1:27 am, the Dali, a massive cargo vessel, 948-feet long and laden with roughly 4,700 shipping containers, lost power and rammed into the bridge, causing it to collapse. Two survived the disaster, six died. Only two of their bodies have been recovered from the cold, murky water of the Patapsco River.

Their tragic deaths occurred as increased immigrant arrivals are being exploited by former President Donald Trump and his right-wing extremist allies to foment division and to boost Trump’s presidential campaign. Just hours after the bridge collapse, FoxNews host Maria Bartiromo, interviewing Florida Republican Senator Rick Scott, attempted to link the maritime disaster to immigrants at the U.S.’ southern border:

“I want to understand the threats or the potential threats that this country is facing right now given the wide open border, the fact that we don’t know who is in the country. The FBI is looking… to ensure there was no foul play.”

“While we’re being talked about as like this invading horde that’s coming to destroy the country, what does this story actually show us? That immigrants are filling our potholes at night so that we can have a smooth drive to work in the morning.”

This is the same dog-whistle racism that Trump invoked in 2015, launching his first campaign: “When Mexico sends its people…They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” Trump continues his white supremacist ranting, saying at a recent Ohio campaign rally, “I don’t know if you call them people… These are animals and we have to stop it.”

Maximillian Alvarez, editor-in-chief of the Baltimore-based Real News Network, interviewed coworkers of the deceased. He said on the Democracy Now! news hour, “While we’re being talked about as like this invading horde that’s coming to destroy the country, what does this story actually show us? That immigrants are filling our potholes at night so that we can have a smooth drive to work in the morning.”

The six who died while working on the Key Bridge were hardworking men, from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.

Miguel Luna was a welder, a 49-year-old father and grandfather, a native of the Usulután Department in El Salvador, ravaged by the U.S.-backed Salvadoran military and paramilitaries in the 1980s. He played on the professional soccer team in the town of Berlin in his home region. His widow, Maria del Carmen, owns a food truck. Miguel was a beloved member of his community.

Miguel and another victim of the collapse, Maynor Suazo Sandoval, were members of CASA, an immigrant rights non-profit founded in 1986 to build solidarity with those impacted by the U.S.-backed violence in Central America. CASA wrote, “Maynor migrated from Honduras over 17 years ago, and he alongside his brother Carlos were active members in the activist committee of Owings Mills… Carlos said ‘He was always so full of joy, and brought so much humor to our family.’ He was a husband, and father of two.”

Details are still emerging of the other named victims, Alejandro Hernandez Fuentes, 35, of Mexico and Dorlian Ronial Castillo Cabrera, 26, of Guatemala. Their bodies were found inside a pickup truck, submerged in the river. Two more victims, also reportedly from Mexico and Guatemala, remain unnamed by their respective governments.

Details are still emerging of the other named victims, Alejandro Hernandez Fuentes, 35, of Mexico and Dorlian Ronial Castillo Cabrera, 26, of Guatemala. Their bodies were found inside a pickup truck, submerged in the river. Two more victims, also reportedly from Mexico and Guatemala, remain unnamed by their respective governments.

Millions of enslaved people also built this country, a point worth remembering as we mourn the immigrant laborers on the Key Bridge. The bridge was named after Francis Scott Key since, while watching the British navy bombard Fort McHenry in 1814, not far from where the bridge was built in the 1970s, Key wrote the poem that would become the national anthem. His poem has four stanzas, the first made famous as “The Star Spangled Banner.” Key was a slave owner, and denounced those who fled enslavement in 1814 to fight against the United States, for the British, who promised them freedom in return.

“No refuge could save the hireling and slave, From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave,” Key wrote in his poem, words left out of the national anthem, but which nevertheless noticeably rhyme with “Land of the free and home of the brave.” This should be considered by those tasked with naming the replacement bridge.

The lives of Miguel and the five other workers have been cut short, but the hatred of immigrants, sadly, is alive, well and growing this election year. Pledges from President Joe Biden to quickly open Baltimore’s port to commerce parallel campaign rhetoric on both sides to “shut down” the southern border to people seeking asylum.

“Immigrants like Miguel are building bridges to connect communities, not building walls to divide them,” CASA wrote, eulogizing Miguel Luna. Let those words inspire an embrace of immigrant communities, an anthem we can all rally around.

[mattnben-bennmatt]

"I am also my mother’s son" | The Worth of Water excerpt

[Note: This is an excerpt from Gary White and Matt Damon’s book The Worth of Water: Our Story of Chasing Solutions to the World’s Greatest Challenge (March 2022), published by Penguin. This excerpt was retrieved from the sample provided for the Kindle Edition (Loc. 90- 159), and immediately follows this section.]

-

I should probably pause right here to acknowledge that the “celebrity goes to Africa and resolves to change the world” thing has probably triggered your gag reflex. It triggers mine, too. I might, in fact, be that celebrity, but I am also my mother’s son.

My mom, Nancy Carlsson-Paige, who’s in her seventies now, was a professor of early childhood education when I was growing up. She taught at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. From the time I was nine years old, I lived with my mom and brother in a six-family communal house near the school. You know when people complain about the liberal bias of academia, and they paint some ludicrous picture of a kind of super-bookish hippie commune? Yeah, I grew up there. No joke, one of my babysitters was Howard Zinn, the famous Boston University professor who wrote A People’s History of the United States and helped lead the movement to teach history from the perspective of oppressed people rather than the people who did the oppressing. When people call me a Hollywood liberal, part of me wants to fight back—and part of me just wants to say, “Well, Cambridge, not Hollywood.”

During my teenage years in the eighties, one of the big issues you heard a lot about in Cambridge (not at the places where Ben and I were hanging out in Central Square, but definitely around my dinner table) was the upheaval in Central America. The roots of the crisis went back to the 1950s, when the Eisenhower administration ordered the CIA to help overthrow the democratically elected president of Guatemala on the notion that it would stop the spread of communism in our hemisphere. Guatemala’s president was just a left-wing social reformer, not a Communist, but the fear he might secretly be one, or might someday become one, was enough for the United States to support a military coup. Two hundred thousand people died in the civil war that followed. In the seventies and eighties, leftist movements in the region—the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and the FMLN in El Salvador—overthrew a dictatorship and a military junta, respectively. The United States backed the dictators, giving them the training and funding to conduct long and bloody civil wars. There were terrible human rights violations on both sides, but there’s too much tragic history to cover in this book—anyhow, I know some people aren’t going to trust a guy who first learned history from Howard Zinn to tell it.

Suffice it to say that when I was growing up, Cambridge was a major center of resistance to these policies. You’d see churches hosting memorials for victims of political oppression; you’d run into community volunteers walking door to door carrying pictures of war victims, raising money for them. I remember big protests in Boston Common—including one where five hundred people occupied the JFK Federal Building. My mom went to these protests. She was arrested at one of them. And while they didn’t exactly reverse US policy, they did make a difference. Our governor defied the Reagan administration by refusing to send the Massachusetts National Guard to conduct military exercises in Central America. Cambridge declared itself a sanctuary city for refugees from the conflict and chose as our sister city a Salvadoran village that had been devastated by violence; we sent medical supplies and other kinds of support.

Around this time, my mom started learning Spanish and traveling to Central America whenever she could. She went to Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras. She went mainly to get a better sense of what was happening there and to bring the news back home to help strengthen the case against further US intervention. A lot of activists believed that if American citizens were on the ground in these countries, our government wouldn’t risk their lives by invading.

She brought me along on three of the tamer trips. To start with, we’d live with local families and take language classes, and then we’d spend the rest of the trip backpacking around the country, riding on buses filled with chickens. The summer we went to Guatemala, there was still fighting going on up in the mountains. Once, a truck passed me with a bunch of kids in the back. They had camo paint on their faces and guns in their hands. They were on their way to join the battle in the hills. I was seventeen at the time, and they looked like they were around my age or even younger. I’ll never forget making eye contact with one of them and seeing his blank stare. That kid had seen a lot of things I hadn’t and never would.

The next summer—it was 1989 and I’d just finished my first year of college—my mom said: “Matt, I’ve been restraining myself on these trips because you and Kyle need a mom. But you’re both grown now, and you should know I’m not going to do that anymore.” She started going to more dangerous places—including Cambridge’s sister city in El Salvador. The town had been suspected of harboring guerrillas, and while she was there, the Salvadoran army came in, fired their guns in the air, and urinated in the town well to contaminate the water. Thankfully my mom was unhurt. She came home even more intent on engaging with the world—on working to figure out what was going on, and how she could take a more active role in righting injustices.

But her views on all this were complicated. As determined as she was to make a difference, she was also deeply skeptical of people, governments, aid organizations—anyone, really—rushing into struggling communities in the name of help. I remember her telling me that intervention—however well-meaning it might be—can come from a place of condescension, can even reflect a kind of unconscious racism, an assumption that black and brown people just aren’t capable of helping themselves. She couldn’t stand the arrogance of relief workers who thought they had it all figured out, who just needed to bestow their wisdom and largesse on people in need. (Seriously, don’t get her started on this.)

My mom turned this scrutiny on herself, too. She knew her heart was in the right place, but she also knew that wasn’t enough. Her travels showed her how hard it was to truly understand the complexities of life in a country where you’ve never lived, to appreciate a set of circumstances so different from any you’ve ever faced, or to anticipate the consequences of any ideas you bring from the outside. The caricature of the crusading liberal is pretty familiar. But it was clear to me that my mom wasn’t crusading. She was wrestling—with herself and her own hesitations. She was working hard to avoid the traps she saw all around her. She was trying to be humble, never presumptuous, trying to make sure she never imagined, even subconsciously, that she knew more about the circumstances of these Salvadorans or Mexicans or Guatemalans than they did themselves. And so, armed with self-awareness, at least, she got back on a plane to see what she could do.

But a lot of time—years, actually—passed between having those conversations with my mom and applying those lessons myself. They were years in which, for a while, I was living out of a duffel bag, going from friends’ couches to acting jobs and back to friends’ couches—years in which engaging with the world, to be honest, took a back seat to getting bigger and better roles and steady work. Then, when that began to happen, it took all my energies to make sure it kept on happening; then Lucy and I were starting a family, and so on; and before I knew it, it was 2006, and Bono was pestering me to get involved. He had shown that advocating for others didn’t mean you had to stop living your own life. He and U2 didn’t stop recording albums during all those years he’d been campaigning against poverty. He didn’t quit his day job or give any less of himself to his wife, Ali, and their four kids.

And he didn’t hang back out of concern that people were going to roll their eyes every time a rich rock star started talking about poverty, or that they were going to call him a hypocrite or a dilettante or a photo-op philanthropist. People did call him all these things, and still do; it comes with the territory. But Bono takes the position that a little eye-rolling and some snark on social media is a small price to pay for doing something as opposed to, you know, doing nothing, or simply writing checks. Don’t get me wrong: giving to charities is important, and if you’ve been lucky, as I’ve been, you can give something proportionate to the good fortune you’ve received. I’ve always been a big believer in that. But at the same time I had the feeling there was more I could be doing. That trip in 2006 was my first real step toward figuring out what that might be.

[ear-worthy]

Podcasts That Make Us Think: Why Do Some still Deny The Holocaust?

 What podcast made me think this week? It's Playing Anne Frank, a new podcast released on January 24. Using archival material and interviews with surviving cast and crew members, executive editor of the Jewish weekly publication, Forward, Adam Langer presents a story that’s never been told: the backstory of "The Diary of Anne Frank," the Pulitzer Prize-winning play and Oscar-winning film, and how this iconic work shapes those involved in performing it — including high school students putting the show on today.

The Diary of a Young Girl, also known as The Diary of Anne Frank, is a book of the writings from the Dutch-language diary kept by Anne Frank while she was in hiding for two years with her family during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. The family was apprehended in 1944, and Anne Frank died of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945 at the age of 16.

The podcast is notable for its timing because January 27th was International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which is the 78th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. On this annual day of commemoration, we honor the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust and millions of other victims of Nazism. We also promote the attributes of tolerance, collaboration, and empathy that helps to prevent future genocides.

While listening to the Playing Anne Frank podcast, I ask myself a frightening question. Could this horror happen again?  

Sadly, my answer is yes. 

Why do I feel that way?

First, because a recent study found that only 54 percent of the world's population has heard of the Holocaust. Ignorance, is, well, ignorance. Do you think many of the Russian people know of the atrocities committed by their army and soldiers in Ukraine? Of course, they don't. The masses are fed the line that Russia is saving Ukraine from genocide and, in a note of irony, Nazis.

Second, holocaust denialism is grown into a cottage industry, especially in the U.S. In another ironic twist, numerous studies show that present-day Germans accept and denounce the atrocities committed by the Nazis in their country. While, too many in the U.S. link the Holocaust in with the faked moon landing, JFK's assassination, 9/11, and deep state doomsday scenarios.

 Holocaust denial aims to cast doubt on the facts of the Holocaust as they pertain to its Jewish victims, and for years it percolated freely across Facebook. Even though such messages have been banned by Facebook since 2021 (what took them so long?), denialism still exists in the crevasses and effluent of the social media giant. 

Denial adherents claim that Jews fabricated evidence of their own genocide to gain sympathy, extract reparations from Germany and facilitate the allegedly illegal acquisition of Palestinian land for the creation of Israel. 

Why has Holocaust denialism grown in this country specifically? First, it doesn't help that the ex-president of the United States has dinner with a notorious holocaust denier, Nick Fuentes. Although Trump denied knowledge of the denier. Come on. Give the man credit. He cannot be that stupid. After all, he knew Fuentes from the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where hundreds of torch-bearing far-right demonstrators chanted "Jews will not replace us."

On Truth Social, owned by Trump, Holocaust denialism is a rich topic for discussion, festering on Telegram, an instant messaging site, and Gab, a social network – all known for their far-right user bases.

Trump has engaged is so many wild conspiracy theories that the truth is often obscured amid the mudslinging of wild accusations divorced from factual certitude. For example, Trump has suggested that the father of Senator Ted Cruz of Texas helped to assassinate President John F. Kennedy, and that Democrats funded the same migrant caravan traveling from Honduras to the U.S. that worried the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter.

Most Holocaust deniers want to wash away the stain of Nazism in an attempt to make Nazism an acceptable political alternative today. Many have present and past ties with hate groups and are trying to shed that image by masquerading themselves as seekers of historical truth, rather than merchants of bigotry. Holocaust denial is an important tool for anti-Semites, masquerading as a valiant search for the truth.

Second, the term “bothsidesism” has gained considerable momentum in the last few years. It describes the phenomenon of treating every opinion as equally valid, including falsehoods masquerading as objective fact. In October 2021, for example, educators in Southlake, Texas, were told if they had a book on the Holocaust in their classroom library, they would also have to have one that with an “opposing” perspective. In January 2022, Republican State Senator Scott Baldwin of Indiana said that educators “need to be impartial” while teaching students about Nazism.

In June 2022, at the American Library Association’s annual conference, author Nancy Pearl suggested that Holocaust denial books had a place in school libraries.

Other nations don't share that streak of Holocaust denialism. In 2018, Great Britain banned a prominent American Holocaust denier from entering the United Kingdom, according to a copy of correspondence from the interior ministry.

So where are we at? Seventy-eight years after U.S. soldiers found emaciated prisoners near death, mass graves, and a footprint of sadism not seen in the modern world?  

There's hope, and many will not forget. Will never forget. For example, writer Alexander Verbeek recently wrote an article in Medium about Holocaust Remembrance Day.

 In the article, he writes that, "The people who hid Anne Frank were breaking the law. The people who killed her were following the law."

Clearly, these Holocaust deniers need to be reminded of the tragedy of Anne Frank, her courage, and the inspiration we can draw from her ordeal.

In today's world with the January 6th insurrection, the attempt to overthrow the German government several months ago, and the recent attacks in Brazil, we need a reminder of how democracy protects us from the worst instincts of racial supremacists, extremists, and those who blame certain races and religions for their own woes.

Sadly, a conspiracy theory can provide comfort by identifying a convenient scapegoat and thereby making the world seem more straightforward and controllable. 

“People can assume that if these bad guys weren’t there, then everything would be fine,” says Australian cognitive scientist Stephen Lewandowsky in a recent piece. “Whereas if you don’t believe in a conspiracy theory, then you just have to say terrible things happen randomly.”

 At the end of his Medium article about the Holocaust, Verbeek writes: "Let me end with a quote from one of the other four letters that have been found, written by Zalman Gradowski, and found buried at an Auschwitz crematorium site":

"Dear finder of these notes, I have one request of you, which is, in fact, the practical objective for my writing … that my days of hell, that my hopeless tomorrow will find a purpose in the future."

Verbeek ends with: "He wrote so that his execution would find a purpose."

I think that we should never let Mr. Gradowski down.

[totallyclevertitlehere]

Debunking Trump's immigration lies

"Trump's better on immigration than Biden/Harris."

No he's not. Trump removed the legal mechanisms for immigration, which juiced the numbers to make it look like he decreased it overall, but did little to stem the tide of actual illegal immigration in the US (and also, he separated families and locked kids up in cages, but for some reason enough people aren't "compelled" by that argument /s).

So let's look at the fucking facts:

Utterly destroyed internal mechanisms for legal migration, including disrupting the offices. In fact, according to this article:

The COVID‐​19‐​related restrictions were the most severe and impactful part of Trump’s immigration policy.

But actual ILLEGAL immigration?

Trump failed to increase removals because local jurisdictions refused to cooperate with his administration, continuing a trend begun during the Obama administration in response to their deportation efforts. As a result, the population of illegal immigrants remained about the same as when he took office (Figure 4).

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/fact-president-trump-only-reduced-legal-not-illegal-immigration-176905

And as for Kamala Harris? What has she done, not as a border czar but someone focused on "root causes"?

She's raised money. Lots of it, in fact, with particular focus on Central America, to encourage economic reinvestment in their countries to discourage emigration.

“Vice President Harris continues to lead the effort to address the root causes of migration from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador, including by generating more than $5.2 billion in investments into the region to give people economic opportunity at home.

And some of the results?

“She had a very narrow mandate, which was to be the diplomatic representative in Central America at the time when most unauthorized immigration was coming from Central America,” said Andrew Selee, president of the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank based in Washington. Since 2021, immigration from the Central American countries of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, once the leaders in illegal immigration across the southwest border, has fallen from 86,089 in March 2021 to 25,015 in June 2024, according to Customs and Border Protection data. 

And I want to be clear - those reductions are NOT solely because of Kamala Harris, but the fierce efforts of an interconnected network of organizers and government officials working to improve the situation. But I also want to be clear - her efforts have been only to HELP. Not harm.

Now you know!

[tieflingkisser]

Under increasing pressure to migrate, more women are dying at the US-Mexico border

Historically, men made up the majority of those dying in the border desert. But the balance is shifting.

In Southern Arizona, on an over-100-degree day in June, humanitarian aid workers found a group of migrants standing in a thin slice of shade formed by the large steel slats of the border wall. Among them were a pregnant woman, an elderly woman, two women showing signs of heat exhaustion and young children. In total, about 30 people had crossed into the United States and were waiting for the Border Patrol to pick them up so they could make an asylum claim.  They were some of the lucky ones. Advocates say that more and more people are ending up stranded in the desert because of onerous Trump and Biden administration restrictions that make it difficult to ask for asylum at official ports of entry. Instead, people are trying to cross through remote desert areas.

[...]

Crossing the desert is a dangerous gamble, but often the only option left for asylum seekers after their long and arduous journeys from places like Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala and Haiti, which are beset by violence, political instability and poverty.  “We know, based on 20-plus years, that the harder you make it, the greater the risks that they will take in the desert, whether it is in Texas or Arizona,” Jones said. “It means that risk-taking exponentially increases the likelihood you will die.”

[...]

Melanie Nezer, vice president of advocacy and external relations for the Women’s Refugee Commission, said women are driven to migrate for the same reason as men: lack of employment, persecution by local armed gangs and, increasingly, climate change, which is affecting farming yields and food security. Climate-intensified disasters have also led to high levels of displacement around the world and are linked to higher rates of domestic violence and sexual assault in their aftermath. All these factors interact in ways that can lead a person or a family to migrate. “A lot of times when you’re talking about women, you’re also talking about children,” Nezer said. Women, she said, “don’t want their kids to be forcibly recruited by gangs. They want their kids to be able to grow up and go to school and work and have a future.” 

[newstfionline]

Saturday, March 9, 2024

Amid explosive demand, America is running short on power (Washington Post) Vast swaths of the United States are at risk of running short of power as electricity-hungry data centers and clean-technology factories proliferate around the country, leaving utilities and regulators grasping for credible plans to expand the nation’s creaking power grid. In Georgia, demand for industrial power is surging to record highs, with the projection of electricity use for the next decade now 17 times what it was only recently. Arizona Public Service, the largest utility in that state, is also struggling to keep up, projecting it will be out of transmission capacity before the end of the decade absent major upgrades. Northern Virginia needs the equivalent of several large nuclear power plants to serve all the new data centers planned and under construction. Texas, where electricity shortages are already routine on hot summer days, faces the same dilemma. “When you look at the numbers, it is staggering,” said Jason Shaw, chairman of the Georgia Public Service Commission, which regulates electricity. “It makes you scratch your head and wonder how we ended up in this situation. How were the projections that far off? This has created a challenge like we have never seen before.”

Big American companies benefit from Chinese ad spending spree (NYT) While the relationship between the U.S. and China remains contentious, the two superpowers are still as economically entangled as ever. Despite the U.S. military projecting a war with Beijing by 2027, a surprising new connection across the Pacific has developed in recent years—massive Chinese companies looking to gain a global customer base have begun shelling out billions of dollars to advertise through some of America’s largest tech companies like Meta and Google. Temu and Shein are some of China’s biggest overseas ad buyers. According to tracking services, Temu has bought over 1.4 million Google ads and has created 26,000 different ads on Meta platforms. Shein, a close competitor, has run tens of thousands of ads on Google alone. “What companies like Temu have done is really just open a fire hose of money that it is pouring into ads,” said one marketing analyst. What’s the reason behind this spike in sponsorships? “There’s a limit on the degree that a company can grow in China,” said one economic researcher, citing the fact that Chinese companies can face crackdowns if they run afoul of the state. “Xi Jinping is perfectly happy for Chinese companies to make money overseas as long as they toe the line within China.”

Honduran ex-president convicted of helping send tons of cocaine to U.S. (Washington Post) Former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, a onetime American ally, was convicted in a New York court Friday of helping drug traffickers send tons of cocaine to the United States in exchange for hefty bribes that fueled his political career. Hernández was accused of using police and the military to guard U.S.-bound cocaine shipments, and of sharing sensitive U.S. law enforcement information with traffickers. Assistant U.S. Attorney Jacob Gutwillig said Hernández “paved a cocaine superhighway to the United States.” Yet even as Hernández presided over what prosecutors called a “narco-state,” U.S. authorities continued to work closely with him. “How is it possible the U.S. government did not know this stuff was going on?” said Dana Frank, a historian and Honduras expert at the University of California at Santa Cruz. “They chose to look the other way.”

As gangs attack a critical port, ‘Haiti will go hungry soon’ (Washington Post) First the gangs blocked the roads to Haiti’s capital. Then they attacked the airport. Now they have breached the city’s main port, cutting off the capital from one of its last remaining lifelines for food and supplies as the country teeters toward collapse. On Wednesday night, dozens of gang members stormed the most important port terminal in Port-au-Prince, looting containers, damaging the port’s security apparatus and forcing the terminal to suspend its operations indefinitely. “Everything has stopped. Medical supplies, food cannot come to Port-au-Prince. Right now nothing can enter by sea, by air, or by road,” said one manager in the shipping sector, who asked to remain anonymous because he was not authorized to speak to reporters. “It’s a disaster. Hunger will be the next step.”

Young Europeans are embracing the far right. (Washington Post) The surprising voters driving the far right’s surge in Europe scrambled for selfies inside a suburban auditorium. Rita Matias, a 25-year old ultraconservative and social media influencer, had just called for migrant quotas and curbs on abortion in a political debate. Now, her more progressive opponents in staid blazers and pullovers watched like wallflowers as star-struck 18-year-olds jostled for photos with the young woman. “Are you a party member?” she asked one fan, who shyly shook his head. “No? Don’t worry. We’ll get you signed up.” On a continent better known for left-wing youth activism a la Greta Thunberg, polls show that young Europeans are fueling the growth of the far right from France to Sweden to the Netherlands. And in a year when former president Donald Trump is making a bid to take back the White House, multiple European governments may be headed for a rightward shift, propelled by voters in their late teens, 20s and early 30s. “The [mainstream] parties aren’t talking the language of the young, but these more radical parties are,” said Peter Kreko, director of Political Capital, a Budapest-based think tank. “They are channeling the disillusionment of young voters with politics.”

Mutual Frustrations Arise in U.S.-Ukraine Alliance (NYT) More than two years into their wartime alliance, the bond between the United States and Ukraine is showing signs of wear and tear, giving way to mutual frustration and a feeling that the relationship might be stuck in a bit of a rut. It is the stuff that often strains relationships—finances, different priorities and complaints about not being heard. For the Pentagon, the exasperation comes down to a single, recurring issue: American military strategists, including Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III, believe that Ukraine needs to concentrate its forces on one big fight at a time. Instead, President Volodymyr Zelensky, who has vowed to drive Russia out of every inch of Ukraine, expends his forces in battles for towns that U.S. officials say lack strategic value. For its part, Ukraine is increasingly disheartened that American political paralysis has resulted in shortages of ammunition for troops on the front. As each day goes by without a fresh supply of munitions and artillery, and Ukrainian crews ration the shells they have, morale is suffering.

Crowdfunding, Auctions and Raffles: How Ukrainians Are Aiding the Army (NYT) Earlier this year, Daria Chervona, a photo retoucher from Kyiv, was busy trying to raise 78 million Ukrainian hryvnia, about $2 million, for Ukraine’s army, posting daily on social media to urge friends and acquaintances to chip in. That was a high bar, but after a few weeks she announced she had cleared it, reaching her target. Ms. Chervona attributes her success to a system she adopted last summer: dividing the work among dozens of people, each tasked with collecting money from friends, in a process that she said can yield large sums. Each fund-raiser is then highlighted in a social media post with their picture, tapping into civilians’ desire to be recognized as active participants in the war effort. Since the early days of the war, thousands of volunteers have led crowdfunding efforts that have been crucial in supplying the Ukrainian military with critical equipment. They have become part of Ukraine’s social fabric, with nearly 80 percent of the population now donating, according to a recent survey. They have held auctions, organized raffles and invited influencers to participate in promotional clips.

Settling For More Conflict (BBC) Israel has announced plans to build thousands of new houses in the occupied West Bank, expanding the country’s settlements in the West Bank, considered by most of the international community to be illegal. A total of 3,476 new settler homes were announced as part of the plans. “The enemies try to harm and weaken us but we will continue to build and be built up in this land,” wrote Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on X. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken expressed his disappointment with Israel’s expansion plans, reiterating the White House’s position that Israeli settlements in the West Bank are illegal.

Israeli tank ‘likely’ fired machine gun at reporters after deadly shelling, report finds (Reuters) An Israeli tank crew killed a Reuters reporter in Lebanon in October by firing two shells at a clearly identified group of journalists and then “likely” opened fire on them with a heavy machine gun in an attack that lasted 1 minute and 45 seconds, according to a report into the incident published on Thursday. The report, by the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO)—which was contracted by Reuters to analyse evidence from the Oct. 13 attack that killed visuals journalist Issam Abdallah—found that a tank 1.34 km away in Israel fired two 120 mm rounds at the reporters. The first shell killed Abdallah, 37, and severely wounded Agence France-Presse (AFP) photographer Christina Assi, 28.

After months of warnings that Israel’s siege is causing famine, children begin to die in Gaza (AP) After months of warnings over the risk of famine in Gaza under Israel’s bombardment, offensives and siege, children are starting to die. Hunger is most acute in northern Gaza, which has been isolated by Israeli forces and has suffered long cutoffs of food supply deliveries. At least 20 people have died from malnutrition and dehydration at the north’s Kamal Adwan and Shifa hospitals, according to the Health Ministry. Most of the dead are children. Particularly vulnerable children are also beginning to succumb in the south, where access to aid is more regular. At the Emirati Hospital in Rafah, 16 premature babies have died of malnutrition-related causes over the past five weeks, one of the senior doctors told The Associated Press.

Palestinians struggle to connect and get news amid digital shutdowns in Gaza (Reuters) Internet service in Gaza has declined by 80 to 90% following the Israeli invasion, creating extreme challenges to sharing and receiving vital information. Because Israel controls internet infrastructure in Gaza, organizations that help communities in crisis navigate digital shutdowns say the usual workarounds aren’t effective. Adding to the challenge is the lack of functional devices such as phones or laptops as many residents have lost them while fleeing, or can’t charge them regularly. The primary source of news is now radio, and those with phones are turning to Telegram, where neighborhood-based channels are used to connect with loved ones and share vital updates.

Egypt Unlocks $8 Billion IMF Loan to Ease Crisis (Bloomberg) Egypt and the International Monetary Fund agreed to more than double the country’s rescue program to $8 billion, the culmination of recent global efforts to stabilize the cash-strapped regional linchpin squeezed by wars and inflation. The announcement followed swift moves earlier Wednesday to float the currency—tanking the pound as much as 38%—and hike interest rates by a record 600 basis points as the country led by President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi has sought to meet long-standing economic reforms demanded from the IMF and backed by the US. The IMF deal—as well as a crucial $35 billion recent investment commitment from the United Arab Emirates—underscores Egypt’s importance as a Middle East stalwart that’s too big to fail amid Israel’s war with Hamas and a conflict raging in neighboring Sudan.

Gunmen abduct 287 students in the latest school attack in Nigeria’s northwest, headteacher says (AP) Gunmen attacked a school in Nigeria’s northwest region Thursday and abducted at least 287 students, the headteacher told authorities, marking the second mass abduction in the West African nation in less than a week. Abductions of students from schools in northern Nigeria are common and have become a source of concern since 2014 when Islamic extremists kidnapped over 200 schoolgirls in Borno state’s Chibok village.

[arpov-blog-blog]

At the start of the interview, journalist and Televisa anchor Enrique Acevedo cited how a New York Times/Siena poll showed Trump with 42% of Latino support across six battleground states.

Trump’s initial reaction was filled with praise and compliments. It was a far cry from his now infamous anti-Mexican, anti-Latino claims during the 2016 campaign that Mexico was sending drug dealers and rapists to take over the U.S., or the time he told anchor Jorge Ramos to “go back to Univision” when Trump felt Ramos had spoken out of turn at a press conference.

“The Latino vote is so incredible because they’re unbelievable people. They have incredible skills, incredible energy, and they’re very entrepreneurial. All you have to do is look at the owners of Univision,” Trump told Acevedo in English on Thursday night. “They’re unbelievable entrepreneurial people. And they like me. You know, there’s never been anything like it in the Republican Party. I’ve been a Republican and am a Republican, and we have tremendous support from the, I call Hispanic, Latino, you have lots of different terms. But it all means the same thing as far as I’m concerned. It’s, they’re just great people, incredible people. And they also want security if they’re in the United States or if they’re in Mexico or anywhere else. They feel strong about security, and we provide that.”

Those compliments soon veered into other realities that Latinos in the U.S. has grappled with for years. Those “coming in legally” like Cubans, Venezuelans and Nicaraguans should be lauded, Trump told Acevedo. But countries like El Salvador and Honduras “are not sending their best.”

“They’re sending us MS13. They’re sending us gang members from all over the place. They’re sending us people that have mental problems from mental institutions” he said. Later in the interview, he even compared those immigrants to a fictional character. “That’s 'Silence of the Lambs.' That’s Hannibal Lecter. You ever hear of Hannibal Lecter? Not a nice person. But these are people that are very, very disturbed, very, very mentally ill. They’re being dropped into the United States.” (Trump did allow that “good people are coming in, too.”)

Such remarks will elicit only a fraction of the outrage or pushback Trump received when he first ran for president, and not just because his xenophobia is so well documented. Noticias Univision’s decision to broadcast the interview on the main Univision network with Spanish dubbing meant that not only was Trump’s message shared in both languages, but that the Spanish interpreter made the words sound more muted, palatable and measured. Watching the Spanish-language version was like a dubbed movie, with Trump as a native Spanish speaker running for president."

[thesecrettimes]

23 Countries Apply for BRICS Membership as Leaders Prepare to Convene at Summit

23 Countries Apply to Join BRICS South Africa’s Minister of International Relations and Cooperation, Naledi Pandor, revealed at a briefing on the upcoming BRICS summit on Monday that 23 countries have officially applied to join the economic bloc. The BRICS summit will take place on Aug. 22-24 in Johannesburg. South Africa is hosting the BRICS summit this year. South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa, China’s President Xi Jinping, Brazil’s President Luiz Lula da Silva, and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi are expected to attend. However, Russian President Vladimir Putin will not attend in person. According to the South African official, the 23 countries that have applied for BRICS membership are Algeria, Argentina, Bangladesh, Bahrain, Belarus, Bolivia, Venezuela, Vietnam, Cuba, Honduras, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Morocco, Nigeria, State of Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Thailand, United Arab Emirates, and Ethiopia. Pandor noted that at the summit, the leaders of the BRICS countries will be presented with a special report on the principles of expanding the association and a list of countries that want to join the economic bloc. Noting that “BRICS leaders will discuss the expansion of the organization at the summit,” she clarified: It is the leaders who will make the final decision on this issue. “We remember that South Africa was the first country to be admitted to the association after its creation. As the BRICS chairman, South Africa will negotiate at the summit on the expansion model and its principles and criteria. We are gradually moving towards a consensus on BRICS expansion and we hope that it will be reached at the summit,” Pandor continued. 67 Leaders and 20 Representatives Invited to BRICS Summit The South African foreign minister further revealed on Monday that South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa, with consensus support from his fellow BRICS leaders, has invited 67 leaders of countries in Africa, Latin America, Asia, and the Caribbean to the summit. Moreover, she added that 20 representatives of major international organizations have been invited to the BRICS summit, including the secretary-general of the United Nations, the chairperson of the African Union Commission, and the president of the New Development Bank, also known as the BRICS Bank. Furthermore, invitations have been extended to the chairs and executive heads of African Regional Economic Communities and African financial institutions, as well as to the Secretary General of the African Continental Free Trade Area Secretariat and the CEO of the African Union Development Agency. The South African official further shared that 34 countries have confirmed their participation. However, she noted French President Emmanuel Macron was not invited. Macron earlier expressed interest in attending the economic bloc’s summit. What do you think about 23 countries applying to join the BRICS economic bloc? Let us know in the comments section below. Read the full article