#task: rwanda

[batboyblog]

Things Biden and the Democrats did, this week #14

April 12-19 2024

The Department of Commerce announced a deal with Samsung to help bring advanced semiconductor manufacturing and research and development to Texas. The deal will bring 45 billion dollars of investment to Texas to help build a research center in Taylor Texas and expand Samsung's Austin, Texas, semiconductor facility. The Biden Administration estimates this will create 21,000 new jobs. Since 1990 America has fallen from making nearly 40% of the world's semiconductor to just over 10% in 2020.

The Department of Energy announced it granted New York State $158 million to help support people making their homes more energy efficient. This is the first payment out of a $8.8 billion dollar program with 11 other states having already applied. The program will rebate Americans for improvements on their homes to lower energy usage. Americans could get as much as $8,000 off for installing a heat pump, as well as for improvements in insulation, wiring, and electrical panel. The program is expected to help save Americans $1 billion in electoral costs, and help create 50,000 new jobs.

The Department of Education began the formal process to make President Biden's new Student Loan Debt relief plan a reality. The Department published the first set of draft rules for the program. The rules will face 30 days of public comment before a second draft can be released. The Administration hopes the process can be finished by the Fall to bring debt relief to 30 million Americans, and totally eliminate the debt of 4 million former students. The Administration has already wiped out the debt of 4.3 million borrowers so far.

The Department of Agriculture announced a $1 billion dollar collaboration with USAID to buy American grown foods combat global hunger. Most of the money will go to traditional shelf stable goods distributed by USAID, like wheat, rice, sorghum, lentils, chickpeas, dry peas, vegetable oil, cornmeal, navy beans, pinto beans and kidney beans, while $50 million will go to a pilot program to see if USAID can expand what it normally gives to new products. The food aid will help feed people in Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Haiti, Kenya, Madagascar, Mali, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, and Yemen.

The Department of the Interior announced it's expanding four national wildlife refuges to protect 1.13 million wildlife habitat. The refuges are in New Mexico, North Carolina, and two in Texas. The Department also signed an order protecting parts of the Placitas area. The land is considered sacred by the Pueblos peoples of the area who have long lobbied for his protection. Security Deb Haaland the first Native American to serve as Interior Secretary and a Pueblo herself signed the order in her native New Mexico.

The Department of Labor announced new work place safety regulations about the safe amount of silica dust mine workers can be exposed to. The dust is known to cause scaring in the lungs often called black lung. It's estimated that the new regulations will save over 1,000 lives a year. The United Mine Workers have long fought for these changes and applauded the Biden Administration's actions.

The Biden Administration announced its progress in closing the racial wealth gap in America. Under President Biden the level of Black Unemployment is the lowest its ever been since it started being tracked in the 1970s, and the gap between white and black unemployment is the smallest its ever been as well. Black wealth is up 60% over where it was in 2019. The share of black owned businesses doubled between 2019 and 2022. New black businesses are being created at the fastest rate in 30 years. The Administration in 2021 Interagency Task Force to combat unfair house appraisals. Black homeowners regularly have their homes undervalued compared to whites who own comparable property. Since the Taskforce started the likelihood of such a gap has dropped by 40% and even disappeared in some states. 2023 represented a record breaking $76.2 billion in federal contracts going to small business owned by members of minority communities. This was 12% of federal contracts and the President aims to make it 15% for 2025.

The EPA announced (just now as I write this) that it plans to add PFAS, known as forever chemicals, to the Superfund law. This would require manufacturers to pay to clean up two PFAS, perfluorooctanoic acid and perfluorooctanesulfonic acid. This move to force manufacturers to cover the costs of PFAS clean up comes after last week's new rule on drinking water which will remove PFAS from the nation's drinking water.

Bonus:

President Biden met a Senior named Bob in Pennsylvania who is personally benefiting from The President's capping the price of insulin for Seniors at $35, and Biden let Bob know about a cap on prosecution drug payments for seniors that will cut Bob's drug bills by more than half.

[mariacallous]

British exceptionalism means that we do not like to think of our politicians as extremists. Official paranoia, state-sponsored lying, half-mad ideas that play to bigoted prejudices: these evils do not afflict dear, sweet, safe old Blighty.

You need only glance at the press or watch the BBC to know that policies and politicians we would have no problem identifying as radical right if they appeared in Europe or the Trumpian corners of the United States, are treated as mainstream here in the UK.

To be fair, Rishi Sunak is not a typical strongman leader. He is small (5ft 5in) and without physical presence, oratorical skill, or a definable sense of purpose.

Sunak’s manner varies from  wide-eyed chirpiness when discussing his strangely marginal political passions – banning smoking, recruiting more maths teachers – to petulance when confronted with difficulties: “He comes across as snippy, and comes across as thin-skinned — which he is, when people challenge him,” said one former minister.

Labour politicians believe he will fall apart under the scrutiny of a general election campaign.

And yet this mediocre member of the superrich (our modern Malvolio married rather than earned his wealth) who received the best education the Western world can offer at Winchester college and Oxford and Stanford universities, is by any reasonable definition an extremist.

Sunak’s only saving grace is that he is as useless at extremism as he is at everything else and thus there is a limit to how much damage he can cause.

Within the past few hours Sunak passed into law the power to send asylum seekers to the quasi-dictatorship of Rwanda. The deportees will include genuine refugees, the victims of human trafficking, and Afghans who risked their lives serving the British armed forces in the war against the Taliban.

I have no doubt that radical right politicians across Europe would like to possess the same powers. But as things stand only Rishi Sunak has them and is able to set them to the Orwellian task of remoulding reality.

The UK Supreme Court ruled that the government could not deport people to Rwanda because it is not a safe country. It’s a quasi-dictatorship under Paul Kagame, a genuine and genuinely frightening strongman, who is engaged in covert warfare against neighbouring states. There’s no real judicial independence and the Rwandan government breached the terms of a previous asylum deal it had entered into with Israel.

The UK government has got round these objections by announcing that reality is now what Rishi Sunak says it is.

Sunak’s legislation declares that Rwanda is a safe country, even though it isn’t. From now on, an asylum seeker trying to stop the UK deporting him cannot use the actual existing repressions on the ground in Rwanda to challenge the government in UK courts.

Sunak says Rwanda is safe so it must be so. Maybe Sunak will move on to declare that black is white and 2+2=5, but for the time being he is limiting himself to creating an imaginary African republic where all is peace and light.

Lord Anderson, who as a former adviser to the UK state on terrorism is hardly a knee-jerk softie, put it well when he said of the government’s plans to end judicial oversight

“If Rwanda is safe as the government would have us declare, it has nothing to fear from such scrutiny. “Yet we are invited to adopt a fiction, to wrap it in the cloak of parliamentary sovereignty and to grant it permanent immunity from challenge. To tell an untruth and call it truth.”

To insist that lies are the truth is extreme. It is also the logical conclusion of the Brexit policy of concerted lying in the service of political ends, which has been running since 2016.

And speaking of Brexit and before I go any further, I should note that, with the exception of Geert Wilders, no European far-right leader advocates taking his or her country out of the EU. But Rishi Sunak was all for Brexit, and promised that “our nation would be freer, fairer and more prosperous outside the EU”.

We know how that went.

And we almost certainly know how the Rwanda deportations will go. They will fail, and Sunak will be a failed extremist because what he wants is impossible.

Look at it from the point of view of a right-winger who is furious that tens of thousands are crossing the English Channel and entering the country illegally. Throughout his life the Conservatives have betrayed him.  

David Cameron promised to reduce migration from the hundreds to tens of thousands, and failed to deliver. Brexit promised to return control of our borders. Instead, small boats cross the channel in a parody of the Dunkirk evacuation, while legal immigration has gone through the roof.

No pro-European politician would ever say this, but it does not mean that people have not noticed. By leaving the EU, the UK swapped European migrants who were largely white and, if they had a religion, it was Christianity, for migrants from the rest of the world who are largely not white and, if they have a religion, it is unlikely to be Christianity.

Despite all this Sunak is still bellowing that he will stop all the boats, which is as impossible as David Cameron’s fake promise to reduce migration to the tens of thousands.

He is bellowing because Conservatives are terrified that Reform (the latest Farage party) will send the Tories down to a landslide defeat.

They are trying to unite the right by assuming that right-wing and radical-wing voters are stupid, and won’t notice the attempt to con them with impossible promises.

It’s not working. At the moment we are in an unprecedented situation, where Labour enjoys a poll lead on immigration.

For those on left who say there is no difference between Starmer’s Labour and the Tories ought to notice that Labour holds that lead even though it is absolutely opposed to the Rwanda obscenity, when Tony Blair’s Labour party would probably have gone along with it.

In the Commons yesterday, Stephen Kinnock, Labour’s shadow immigration minister, tore into the government.

He pointed out that the cost of the vain attempt to save Sunak’s skin – will be about “£2 million per deportee”. As only a few hundred are ever likely to go, tens of thousands more will be left “in expensive hotels, stuck in a perma-backlog at a staggering cost to the taxpayer.”

Assuming, that is, anyone goes at all.

 Yesterday Sunak made a rather pathetic admission that no plane will leave for 12 weeks. We shall see. Despite the government’s best efforts to rewrite the law and threaten the European Court of Human Rights, there can still be legal challenges which may last until the next election.

Cynics say the government would like nothing better than the flights to be stopped so it can blame left-wing lawyers in the campaign. I think they are attributing intelligence to the prime minister he does not possess.

Put like this, the UK’s failed extremists do not seem so reprehensible.  But look at what they have done. Since David Cameron in 2010 they have never explained the necessity for immigration in an honest conversation with the public.

They have pandered to right-wing and radical right-wing sentiment and then infuriated voters by making promises they could never keep. In doing so they have prepared the ground for genuinely extremist politicians.

We have already paid a price for their trickery with Brexit and I doubt the full bill is in yet.

We are fortunate that Rishi Sunak is too hopeless to be dangerous. We may not be so lucky in the future.

[study-with-aura]

Monday, May 6, 2024

I can tell that it is nearly the end of the study year because all of my pens are starting to give out on me, hence the shift from the fuchsia to the red. This week looks like it will be mostly review except for World History and Biology where there is still material being added.

Needless to say, I had a busy week last week, but I am hoping to be back to posting now starting today. Do you like my flower drawing in my Biology notebook?

Tasks Completed:

Geometry - Constructions Review

Lit and Comp II - Reviewed Units 1-3 vocabulary + read the news + worked on fable writing assignment + CLEP Test practice question

Spanish 2 - Reviewed Los Fines de Semana vocabulary + reviewed the imperfect and irregular imperfect

Bible I - Read Matthew 18

World History - Read over key terms on global issues unit + read the introduction to the unit + looked at an animated map of the breakup of the Soviet Union + looked at a still map of the Soviet satellite states + learned about the breakup of the Soviet Union + watched a news reel from the fall of the Soviet Union + read about the genocide in Bosnia + read about the genocide in Rwanda

Biology with Lab - Learned about angiosperms + completed germination lab prep + prepped lab report

Foundations - Read more on virtue + completed the next quiz on Read Theory + researched for my argumentative speech

Piano - Practiced for two hours in one hour split sessions

Khan Academy - Completed High School Geometry daily mastery challenge + completed High School biology daily mastery challenge + completed World History Unit 6: Lesson 12 (part 1)

CLEP - Completed Sample CLEP Test Questions 31-45

Streaming - Watched The Cuba Libre Story Episode 6

Duolingo - Studied for approximately 30 minutes (Spanish, French, Chinese) + completed daily quests

Reading - Read pages 151-195 of Into the Bright Open by Cherie Dimaline

Chores - Cleaned my bathroom + cleaned windows in my bedroom and in the study

Activities of the Day:

Personal Bible Study (2 Corinthians 12)

Ballet

Contemporary

Journal/Mindfulness

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Aaron Sibarium

Published: Feb 29, 2024

The chief diversity, equity, and inclusion officer of Columbia University's medical school, Alade McKen, plagiarized extensively in his doctoral dissertation, lifting entire pages of material, without attribution, from sources that include Wikipedia, according to a complaint submitted to the university on Wednesday.

The allegations implicate approximately a fifth of McKen's 163-page dissertation, "'UBUNTU' I am because we are: A case study examining the experiences of an African-centered Rites of Passage program within a community-based organization," submitted to Iowa State University's School of Education in 2021. More than two of those pages are a near-verbatim facsimile of Wikipedia's entry on "Afrocentric education," which is not cited anywhere in the dissertation.

Other pages lift paragraphs from well-known African scholars, including the University of Rwanda's Chika Ezeanya-Esiobu, while making small tweaks to their prose, such as reordering certain clauses or changing a "were" to a "was."

Some of the scholars McKen allegedly plagiarized appear in the dissertation's bibliography but not in in-text citations. Others, like Ezeanya-Esiobu, an expert on "indigenous knowledge" who has worked with numerous international agencies, including the World Bank, aren't cited at all.

"The passages you shared can definitely be classified as plagiarism," Ezeanya-Esiobu told the Washington Free Beacon. McKen lifts pages worth of material from Ezeanya-Esiobu's 2019 chapter "A Faulty Foundation: Historical Origins of Formal Education Curriculum in Africa," published in the Frontiers in African Business Research book series.

Columbia's research integrity officer, Naomi Schrag, did not respond to a request for comment. Iowa State University did not respond to a request for comment.

McKen, who holds a certificate in diversity and inclusion from Cornell University, oversees all DEI programs for staff at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, which includes Columbia's flagship medical school, the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, and is the largest campus of NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. The center's DEI initiatives include mandatory "antiracism" training for faculty and admissions officers, as well as an expedited hiring process for minority scholars.

McKen also works with the Columbia provost's office, according to a fall 2023 bulletin announcing his appointment. That office oversees tenure decisions for the entire university, including the medical school. Columbia did not respond to a request for comment about whether McKen has oversight of faculty and doctors.

Before arriving at the medical center, McKen was the assistant dean of recruitment, diversity, and inclusion for Columbia's graduate school of architecture. His current role was created in 2021 when the medical center hired Tonya Richards as its inaugural chief diversity officer. The new position came as the university was embarking on an ambitious plan to address "structural racism" in health care, guided by a 100-person task force drawn from Columbia's four medical schools: the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, as well as the schools of nursing, dentistry, and public health.

"It is very clear that promotion of diversity or even the presence of diversity is insufficient to counter deeply embedded anti-Black racism," read the task force's 2020 report. "Our self-reflection and actions at this time must be focused on the elimination of racism in all aspects of our work."

The complaint against McKen, which was filed anonymously, marks the third time in one month that a diversity administrator at an Ivy League school has been hit with charges of plagiarism. Other complaints have alleged that Harvard Extension School's Title IX coordinator, Shirley Greene, copied paragraphs and tables from other scholars without proper attribution and that Harvard University's chief diversity officer, Sherri Ann Charleston, took credit for an entire study done by her husband. The allegations against both officials followed the downfall of former Harvard president Claudine Gay, who resigned after nearly half her published work was implicated in a plagiarism scandal.

McKen's dissertation contains some of the most extreme examples of plagiarism thus far. The 50-page complaint, which was submitted to Iowa State University as well as Columbia, outlines nearly 60 cases in which McKen, who assumed his post at the medical center last year, borrows passages from Africanists, education scholars, and diversity consultants without attribution.

One of the plagiarized authors is Kwayera Archer-Cunningham, a "change agent" and "well-being coach" who offers courses on "decoloniality." McKen lifts over five paragraphs from Archer-Cunningham's 2007 journal article "Cultural Arts Education as Community Development: An Innovative Model of Healing and Transformation," in New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education.

As with Ezeanya-Esiobu, McKen makes scant changes to the plagiarized text. One passage simply switches the order of two items in a bulleted list while keeping their contents identical, and without citing Archer-Cunningham's paper in parentheses.

The passages appear to run afoul of Iowa State University's plagiarism policy, which state that "it is a violation for students to reproduce another person's paper, work or artistry, even with modifications."

McKen did not respond to a request for comment. Archer-Cunningham, who founded the Brooklyn-based arts academy on which McKen's dissertation research was based, did not respond to a request for comment.

McKen also lifts a jargon-filled passage from LaGarrett King, a scholar of black education at the University of Buffalo who urges the "dismantling" of "white epistemic logic." King is not cited anywhere in the dissertation and did not respond to a request for comment.

Another paragraph cribs from a 2002 paper by Michael Adeyemi and Augustus Adeyinka, "Some Key Issues In African Traditional Education," published in the McGill Journal of Education. McKen never cites the 2002 paper, though he does include a different article by Adeyemi and Adeyinka—both scholars at the University of Botswana—in his bibliography.

Adeyemi and Adeyinka did not respond to a request for comment.

The complaint alleges that McKen plagiarized over 30 authors total, not including Wikipedia. While the allegations only cover his dissertation, McKen has published multiple academic articles, according to his Google Scholar profile, with titles such as "Black Men in Engineering Graduate Education: Experiencing Racial Microaggressions Within the Advisor–Advisee Relationship" and "I Am Because We Are," which explores "how African cultural practices can direct learning toward liberation."

In September, McKen outlined his DEI priorities in a news bulletin for the medical center. "Everyone here," he said, "is committed to doing the work."

==

Since every single domain that underlies DEI - Feminist Theory, Gender Studies, Critical Race Theory, Queer Theory, Queer Studies, Postcolonial Theory, Intersectionality, Whiteness Studies - is academically fraudulent, it would be more surprising if every DEI commissar and apparatchik wasn't also a plagiarist and fraud.

[praesidiummilitum]

Italian Army 9th "Col Moschin" Special Forces Operators about to land at Kigali Airport,Rwanda,early march 1994.

They are part of an international military task force sent to restore order in the country devastated by civil war.

Operatori del 9° "Col Moschin" pronti per sbarcare all'aeroporto di Kigali,Ruanda,Operazione "Ippocampo" inizio marzo 1994.

I militari italiani fanno parte di una task force internazionale inviata nel paese africano squassato dalla guerra tra Hutu e Tutsi.

Gli Incursori,tutti veterani della Somalia e del Kurdistan(e qualcuno anche del Libano) sono vestiti ed equipaggiati col materiale usato durante l'operazione "Ibis" in Somalia,terminata in quei giorni.

L'Operatore in primo piano e' armato con un fucile SPAS 15 calibro .12 automatico.

[bobbinacrossafricatake2]

En Route

May 14-15, 2024

We thought this day would never arrive…..wheels up! Hurrah, we’re on our way!

It’s not clear who was more relieved to be done with all of the trip prep, Jillebob or Sebbie. The worst of it, of course, was making sure our respective jobs were fully covered while we are gone. For Seb, that meant finding coverage for her clients, whether in the middle of a real estate transaction or not. Because in real estate, things happen all the time so being ready at the drop of a hat is the name of the game. Updating and collecting records, passing relevant information to the colleagues backing her up, making introductions, ugh - it’s a lot! For Jill, it meant spending a year working extra time to offset a full month of flexible time off (the new policy of non-accruing leave her company imposed, just as we finalized plans for the trip) and making sure her various tasks were at a point where she did not feel too bad walking away and leaving them in the very capable hands of her terrific colleagues.

But that’s just the beginning. Yikes, the packing! Our most restrictive weight limit is 33 lbs, luggage and carry-on together. We managed to coordinate some electronic stuff, to eliminate redundancy of things we could share. But even so, the priority items are heavy so 33 lbs adds up quickly: cameras, binoculars, iPad and keyboard, sunscreen, bug spray, etc. And even though we plan to use the soap and shampoo provided, there are still personal toiletries that are a must. And all that’s before clothing. Sarah was talking about this packing dilemma to (her neighbor) Lauren’s friend, Ken, to which he replied, “oh, so it’s a clothing optional trip, huh?” Indeed, if not truly clothing optional, it was extra shirts, packing cubes, a few extra socks and such that went into the reject pile. Pack-weigh-remove a few items and repeat… and repeat… and repeat. And a lot of commiserating and consulting with each other. You get the idea. In the end, we’re each pretty close to 33 lbs. No major shopping on this trip! Well, until the very end.

After a few days of Sarah spending time with her housemate for the summer, Elizabeth, to get her situated and Fergie passed to Kim’s loving care for a month, Sarah jumped into an Uber with duffel and carry-on, and headed toward Jill’s place. Jill was waiting at the door and onward we went to Dulles. Richard, our Uber driver, was delightfully chatty. We were giddy with anticipation and it made the journey fast. Jill found it quite therapeutic to wave at her office building as the Uber drove by. We were super early, plenty of time for a glass of wine and catch up on our last preparations and excitement over the trip. We found ourselves pondering what if we never took that first trip to Ireland when we barely knew each other. Would either of had made the trips we’ve done — India, China/Tibet, South Africa/Botswana/Rwanda/Kenya, Churchill, and Galapagos/Costa Rica? We could agree… maybe we would have, but we would have missed out the best travel buddy thing going, and it wouldn’t have been as fun.

Man, it’s a long way to Johannesburg, South Africa! Seven hours across the pond to Amsterdam and another ten going south. When one factors in transportation on either side, it’s over 24 hours door-to-door. We each slept very little on the first flight and more on the second, seemingly more comfortable flight. The layover in Amsterdam was easy - such a nice airport and good opportunity to get at least a little walking in! As our pilot walked up to the gate to board our flight to Johannesburg, a flight attendant asked everyone to give him a hand for his last flight before retirement! We were clearly in good, experienced hands! Movies to entertain, a few magazines, pretty good food, and we made it to the other side.

[lingshanhermit]

Lingshan Hermit: The Seemingly Joyful Sufferings

Typically, those who have come into contact with Buddhism through me can be broadly divided into two types: Buddhists and those who are interested in Buddhism but prefer to maintain a distance in order to stay objective - non-Buddhists. Most Buddhists hope to turn non-Buddhists into Buddhists. Providing Buddhist advice to non-Buddhists thus becomes an enjoyable task for many Buddhists. In this respect, I'm no exception.

I've noticed that many Buddhists and non-Buddhists share a common question. Non-Buddhists who show interest in Buddhism usually admire its philosophy and mostly accept its theories. However, they often express to me that something in Buddhism seems too pessimistic. For instance, they can't accept the "Dharma Seal" in Buddhism that states "all compounded things are suffering". Most people consider this conclusion too pessimistic and arbitrary.

They believe that although there is famine, cold, deception, betrayal, terrorist attacks, and mass slaughters like in Rwanda in the world, there are also joys worth pursuing such as familial love, romantic love, and the sense of accomplishment from work.

Long-term interaction has made me realize that it's not only non-Buddhists who hold these thoughts. Many Buddhists think the same, even though most of them don't voice their doubts. However, this doesn't mean they completely agree with the Buddha's conclusion internally. With these thoughts, you can't possess a sense of renunciation because you think reality isn't bad enough to necessitate renunciation. You believe there are things that aren't so bitter, so you have expectations. Having expectations means there will be suffering.

When we talk about the "compounded happiness", we can give a simple example. When you're tired from standing, you'll want to sit down. At this moment, sitting down is a kind of "compounded happiness" (maybe we should call it "seemingly joyful suffering"). If sitting down is true happiness, then we should be happier the longer we sit. But that's not the case. If you sit for more than an hour, your buttocks start to protest. You'll want to change your position, or you might think standing for a while would be more comfortable. After standing for half an hour, you'll want to sit down again.

This shows that our so-called happiness is just suffering disguised as joy. A friend once told me that work is what brings him the most happiness. I wanted to tell him: the things that bring you joy can also cause you the most damage. If you find yourself unable to work, you'll be in great pain, just like a drug addict who can't find their drugs. From a Buddhist perspective, compounded happiness is like a drug. Although it might bring you a bit of joy, it's more like a quagmire covered with flowers.

Everything is impermanent, and so is the definition of happiness. When you're hungry, you might think that eating ten hamburgers would be happiness. But soon, this (eating hamburgers) turns into suffering. You might only eat five and not want to touch this food anymore. Your happiness has turned into not eating hamburgers.

When your happiness depends on something, it's not true happiness. True happiness is the kind that doesn't need an object. You can't even call it a type of happiness as it transcends both joy and suffering. For example, if your happiness is based on being able to eat Cadbury chocolate frequently, this happiness will soon change. You might not be able to eat what you want, or eating too much might turn it into a form of suffering.

We've all experienced this. When you obtain the thing you've been longing for, you often find that it's not as exciting and joyful as you imagined. What you get is just plainness.

When you get married, you might be full of hope for the future. But after a few years, you find that the person sleeping next to you has become someone who opposes you on almost everything.

What we're discussing here are not the obvious sufferings, not the kind where your hand is cut or you're scolded by someone. There's no debate about such suffering; no one would deny that being beaten is painful. It's easy to reach a consensus on this.

What we need to recognize here are the seemingly joyful sufferings, those that you've perceived as joy until now. When you are noticed, admired, valued, and gladly accept all these, you're actually trapped in them. You indulge yourself in pursuing these seemingly joyful sufferings. The result can only be more suffering. Therefore, recognizing their true nature is very important.

If you still think these things bring happiness, you won't have a firm sense of renunciation. Because you'll anticipate those joys, even though they're fleeting. You might think that even though there are many things not going well in life, overall, joy outweighs suffering. With such thoughts, you won't aspire to become a Buddha.

A Buddhist master once said: if your leg itches, scratching it might provide relief, but if it never itches, that would be even better. Compounded happiness is like scratching an itch.

First published on November 19, 2007.

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灵山居士：那些貌似快乐的痛苦 

[eaglesnick]

“The bedrock of our democracy is the rule of law and that means we have to have an independent judiciary, judges who can make decisions independent of the political winds that are blowing.”   Caroline Kennedy

Spot the difference.

1. “RUSSIA’S upper house of parliament has approved a plan to grant President Putin new powers over the judiciary, despite growing international outcry over the Kremlin’s efforts to re-establish central government control.”  (The Times: 01/10/04)

2. “In November 2016, The Daily Mail ran a cover story with the now infamous title “Enemies of the People” attacking the three judges of the High Court of England and Wales who had ruled that the UK Government needed Parliament’s consent to give notice of Brexit.” (Springer Link: (05/02/21)

3. “Tens of thousands of Israelis have rallied in Jerusalem in support of controversial plans by the far-right government to reform the judiciary. It was the biggest demonstration of its kind yet. Plans include curbing the Supreme Court and giving the government control over the appointment of judges.”

4. “Home Office accused of pressurising judiciary over immigration    decisions…That the Home Office has sought to pressure the immigration tribunal over its bail decisions during a global pandemic shows alarming disrespect for the right to liberty, the rule of law and the separation of powers.” (Guardian: 06/05/20)

5. According to the (Cuban) constitution, the National Assembly controls judicial appointments and suspensions, and the Council of State exercises these powers when the assembly is not in session. The Council of State is also empowered to issue “instructions of a general character” to the courts, whose rulings typically conform to the interests of the PCC in practice. Judges are tasked with enforcing laws on vaguely defined offences such as “public disorder,” “contempt,” “disrespect for authority,” “precriminal dangerousness,” and “aggression,” which are used to prosecute the regime’s political opponents.”  (Freedom House; Cuba: 2021)

6.” Erdogan criticises top court, stoking judicial crisis in Turkey Main opposition party calls it president’s ‘attempt to eliminate the constitutional order…’ The latest crisis showed that Erdogan wants “more control over what happens in Turkey, including a judicial system that does what he wants, such as prosecuting and imprisoning his critics and opponents”, according to analyst Gareth Jenkins." (Aljazeera: 10/11/23)

7. “Supreme Court Judges branded 'enemies of the people’ after blocking Rwanda plan. Philip Davies MP told the Express that the ruling had sparked a “constitutional crisis”. He said: ���I think we have a constitutional crisis on our hands. It is clear that Parliament has passed all the necessary legislation for this to happen, and the job of judges is to implement the laws passed by Parliament, not to rule on whether or not they like the policy.” (Express: 15/11/23)

Did you spot the difference? No, of course not as there are no differences. Dictators,  far-right and far-left governments across the world try - and often succeed - in controlling their   judiciary in order to minimise any legal opposition to their policies. That this is now happening in our country, a country that once prided itself on its democracy and the rule of law is a worrying, dangerous and unwelcome development in UK politics and must be vigorously resisted.

[timmyturnerreturns]

Have you ever wondered how normal Germans could become the evil Nazis and Jew-killers? They were just normal people!? How could they do this to their fellow humans??

1. Dehumanisation. The Nazi ideology called for the removal of Jews from society. The Jews were the parasites of Germany, and they must be separated. At the early stage, only few call for extermination because that would be barbaric! Later, however, we find out that we cannot remove the Jews peacefully. But they are still here and these bloodsuckers must be removed immediately. There's only one way: Extermination.

But right now, nobody normal is willing to do it. Although our dear leader calls for it, we cannot do it. We are still empathetic humans.

2. Drugs. Alcohol, methamphetamine. Maybe cocaine, speed, or something similar (I don't know drugs 🤣). Pump yourself full, until you feel nothing or little. Now you're up to the task. Your human side is gone.

3. Peer pressure. The highest authority called for the extermination. We must complete the task, everybody together. Anyone who chickens out is a coward who lets others carry the burden.

Now you've transformed an ordinary German guy into a Jew-killing Nazi! My source: "Ordinary Men", Christopher Browning

Btw, this works with anyone against anyone.

ISIS, Soviet Union, Macias' Equatorial Guinea, Rwanda 1994, Red Khmer Cambodia, now Russia against Ukraine, basically all people around the world have done this since the beginning of time. This isn't new and will continue until the end of time.

[memoriae-lectoris]

Experts call countries in this middle zone “anocracies”—they are neither full autocracies nor democracies but something in between. […] Citizens receive some elements of democratic rule—perhaps full voting rights—but they also live under leaders with extensive authoritarian powers and few checks and balances. Civil war experts have known about the relationship between anocracy and civil war for a long time. It’s why we were so critical of President Bush’s decision to try to catapult Iraq from autocracy to democracy in 2003. We understood that a major political transition in Iraq was likely to trigger civil war instead. Experts have seen this pattern repeated around the world over the last century.

Serbs went to war against Croats almost immediately after Yugoslavia began to democratize in 1991. The same was true of Spain in the 1930s: Spanish citizens got their first taste of democracy in June 1931 after holding their first democratic elections; five years later, Spanish citizens rose up when the military launched a coup to try to take control of the country. And Rwanda’s plan to democratize was the catalyst for the Hutu genocide against the Tutsis. It’s no coincidence that the biggest civil wars raging today—in Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen—were born from attempts to democratize. [...] Anocracies, particularly those with more democratic than autocratic features— what the task force called “partial democracies”— were twice as likely as autocracies to experience political instability or civil war, and three times as likely as democracies. All the things that experts thought should matter in the outbreak of civil war somehow didn’t. It wasn’t the poorest countries that were at the highest risk of conflict, or the most unequal, or the most ethnically or religiously heterogeneous, or even the most repressive. It was living in a partial democracy that made citizens more likely to pick up a gun and begin to fight.

[lboogie1906]

Attorney Pierre-Richard Prosper (September 19, 1963) is a lawyer, prosecutor, and former government official. He served as the second Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues under President George W. Bush.

He graduated from Boston College and Pepperdine University School of Law.

He was a Deputy District Attorney for Los Angeles County. He spent two years in the Hardcore Gang Division of the Bureau of Special Operations. He was an Assistant US Attorney for the Central District of California. He was assigned to the Narcotics Section, Drug Enforcement Task Force.

He served as a war crimes prosecutor for the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. He was appointed lead trial attorney and prosecuted Prosecutor vs. Jean-Paul Akayesu. He recounts the trial in The Uncondemned.

He served as a career prosecutor at the DOJ where he was Special Assistant to the Assistant AG for the Criminal Division. He was detailed to the State Department where he served as the Special Counsel and Policy Adviser to the previous Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues.

He became a member of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes Panel of Arbitrators and of Conciliators, where he will be asked by disputing parties or by the ICSID to serve on conciliation commissions seeking to resolve international investment commenced under the ICSID Convention or the ICSID Additional Facility Rules.

He holds the position of Partner in the Los Angeles office of Arent Fox LLP. These include advising and representing the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste on matters related to the Petroleum sector, investment, and infrastructure development; successfully negotiating the release of an American citizen detained in the Islamic Republic of Iran, and engaging with senior Iranian officials; and advising and represents the government of Rwanda on a range of matters including international arbitration, litigation, and contract negotiation, among others. He serves as a trustee on the Boston College Board of Trustees. He was appointed to the Pepperdine University School of Law. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence

[head-post]

Channel migrant crossings at highest since Labour came to power

More than 10,000 migrants on small boats have arrived in the UK since Labour’s victory in July, official figures show, Daily Mail reports.

On Monday, 65 people on two boats made the perilous journey, bringing the total number of migrants who have arrived in the UK since Labour was elected on July 4 to 10,024 from 178. It comes after a deadly weekend during which eight people died and more than 1,000 made it safely to the UK.

French authorities launched a rescue operation in the early hours of Tuesday morning after passengers became stranded.

Sources confirmed that 20 people were rescued from one boat, while the remaining migrants continue to make their way towards the British coast. French authorities decided not to disembark additional people as it would have posed too great a risk to their safety.

Since the beginning of the year, 23,598 people on 450 boats have successfully made the dangerous journey. In that time, at least 43 people have died in the Channel, including 20 in September alone.

Following the tragic loss of life in the Channel at the weekend, the Home Office has again pledged to “wipe out the gangs.”

A Home Office spokesman said:

We all want to end dangerous small boat crossings, which threaten lives and undermine our border security. As we have seen with so many recent devastating tragedies in the Channel, the people-smuggling gangs do not care if the vulnerable people they exploit live or die, as long as they pay. We will stop at nothing to dismantle their business models and bring them to justice. We are making progress, bolstering our personnel numbers in the UK and abroad. Our new Border Security Command will strengthen our global partnerships and enhance our efforts to investigate, arrest, and prosecute these evil criminals.

Former police chief Martin Hewitt was recently appointed as the new head of the Border Security Command, tasked with reducing small boat migration.

“No more gimmicks”

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said:

No more gimmicks. This government will tackle the smuggling gangs who trade the lives of men, women and children across borders. Martin Hewitt’s unique expertise will lead a new era of international enforcement to dismantle these networks, protect our shores and bring order to the asylum system.

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper announced that £75 million will be used to increase the number of border officers as part of the government’s efforts to crack down on smugglers, using money diverted from a cancelled deportation scheme in Rwanda.

The money will also be used to buy hidden cameras and better monitoring technology as the Home Office sets up a new Border Security Command, headed by a former police chief, to speed up investigations and increase the likelihood of successful prosecutions.

It was also announced earlier this year that an extra 100 specialist investigators would be allocated to the National Crime Agency (NCA) as part of the crackdown on Channel crossings.

Meanwhile, during a visit to Rome, the Prime Minister said he was “very interested” in Italy’s efforts to curb levels of illegal immigration. He added that the government wants to understand the “dramatic reduction” in the number of migrants crossing the Mediterranean to Italy, amid Labour’s efforts to crack down on criminal gangs involved in people smuggling.

Read more HERE

[mariacallous]

After symbolically holding a Republika Srpska government meeting in the town of Srebrenica on Thursday ahead of the UN General Assembly vote on the genocide resolution, Bosnian Serb political leaders announced a plan for what they called “peaceful separation”.

Milorad Dodik, president of Republika Srpska, said after the meeting that the Serb-dominated entity should separate from the Bosniak- and Croat-dominated Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina entity.

Dodik said that it was impossible for Serbs to continue living “with those who violate the Dayton agreement”, the peace deal that ended Bosnia’s 1992-95 war.

He added that the Republika Srpska government will create a “peaceful separation agreement”, which will be sent to the Federation entity.

Bosnian Serbs and their political partners, particularly in Serbia, have been strongly campaigning against the UN General Assembly resolution, claiming it would “demonise” all Serbs.

The resolution, proposed by Germany and Rwanda, intends to declare July 11 the International Day of Remembrance for the 1995 Srebrenica genocide.

It will state that the UN unreservedly condemns any denial of the genocide in Srebrenica, and call on member states to ensure that court-established facts are taught in their educational systems.

But it only accuses individuals of bearing responsibility for the Srebrenica genocide, not states or ethnic groups.

Dodik also said that the Republika Srpska government, together with local authorities, will form a commission tasked with establishing a date to be annually commemorated as “the day of the victims of Srebrenica”, taking into account both Bosniak and Serb victims.

Republika Srpska Prime Minister Radovan Viskovic incorrectly claimed the UN resolution describes Serbs as a “genocidal people” and compares the victims of Srebrenica victims to those of Auschwitz and the Jasenovac and Donja Gradina concentration camps in Croatia during World War II.

Viskovic also disputed the number of genocide victims in Srebrenica, claiming without factual backup that some of those who were “buried are alive”

“According to all that has been said in scientific and expert circles, a severe crime happened in Srebrenica, and we accept that. All those who committed crimes should be held accountable. What about the 3,500 victims of Serbian nationality in and around Srebrenica?” Viskovic asked.

In July 1995, more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys were killed in massacres by Bosnian Serb forces. In 2007, the International Court of Justice in The Hague characterised the crimes committed against Bosniaks from Srebrenica in 1995 as genocide.

Bosnian Serb wartime political and military leaders Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic have both been sentenced to life imprisonment for genocide by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.

A total of 49 individuals have also been sentenced to more than 700 years in prison by courts in The Hague, Sarajevo and Belgrade for involvement in crimes related to the Srebrenica massacres.

[dailynewztimes]

A civil war in Ethiopia and mounting criticism of Rwanda’s

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[hudsonmckenzie]

UK’s new migration strategy

This summer, few policy sectors have come under as much scrutiny as immigration. Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer is under pressure to address the division and finally implement his agenda to "reduce dependence on migration" after bringing order during the recent riots.

The new strategy, which links labor market demands and immigration policy, was presented by Home Secretary Yvette Cooper in her first parliamentary address on July 30, 2024. This is a synopsis:

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper made it clear that Labour will not change the current immigration policies of the Conservatives. This is something to be noted by an immigration lawyer in Ireland. As a result, the following will continue to be upheld:

Most overseas students were subject to new regulations starting on January 1st, which limited their ability to bring family members to the UK.

Measures prohibiting caregivers and senior caregivers from introducing dependents were introduced on March 11. also required registration with the Care Quality Commission for all caregivers who sponsor migrant labor.

4 April: A significant 48% increase was made to the general wage requirement for applicants seeking a skilled worker visa, from £26,200 to £38,700.

4 April: The new Immigration Salary List took the place of the Shortage Occupation List, doing away with the 20% going rate discount. Employers now have an obligation to pay migrant workers in shortage occupations at the same rate as UK workers. This is quite

23 May: New rules on the admission of overseas students were announced in response to the Migration Advisory Committee's prompt assessment of the Graduate route.

Resolving Skill Shortages With the UK Workforce's Upskilling

Yvette Cooper also emphasized Labour's resolve to address the shortage of domestic skills in order to lessen the UK's reliance on foreign labor. Says she:

"The high rates of international recruitment at the moment are a reflection of labor market weaknesses, particularly the UK's ongoing skills shortage." 

 "We are laying out a different approach, one that connects labor market policies and skills to immigration policy and visa controls, so immigration is not used as a substitute for training or solving domestic workforce issues."

The government has enhanced the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) to collaborate with Skills England as part of the plans. Additionally, it has given the MAC the task of examining how much the engineering and IT sectors depend on foreign labor.

Substituting The Rwanda Scheme

Although the controversial Rwanda policy of the Conservative Party was one of the Labour Party's first decisions, it has not resulted in the "open-door policy" that some on the extreme right of UK politics had predicted. Labour, on the other hand, says it is committed to pursuing strict immigration laws.

Immigration reduction is still a top concern. However, there are differences in the approaches to deterrence and immigration reduction. Starmer claims that the Rwandan policy has "never been a deterrent" and implies that it would be accountable for deporting "less than 1%" of small boat arrivals. Instead, the administration intends to address the root causes of migration and tighten border controls.

Solidifying Border Control

Instead of using the anticipated funds for Rwandan deportation plans, Starmer intends to bolster border security. The administration intends to move forward with a new directive that calls for the appointment of an "exceptional" person to coordinate the actions of law enforcement, intelligence services, border force, and immigration enforcement.

The Home Secretary declared that the new command would constitute a "major upgrade in law enforcement," with much of the funding coming from the deportation plan from Rwanda.

The goal is to take on and destroy the smuggling organizations that are in charge of the hordes of boat crossings. It would "do less and somehow expect to achieve more," according to conservative arguments.

Additionally, the government intends to transfer funding for the Bibby Stockholm barge and other asylum-holding facilities in the UK into clearing the backlog of cases with expedited asylum case processing rather than extending the barge's lease past January 2025.