#they also planning on banning foreign news

[northernflame]

btw just so y'all zionists pieces of shit know, democratic countries aren't supposed to pass laws that ban news channels that contradict the state power (x)

[robertreich]

10 Worst Things About The Trump Presidency

Donald Trump left office with the lowest approval rating of any president ever. But some people now seem to be suffering from amnesia.

Let me jog your memory. Here are 10 Worst Things About the Trump Presidency — in no particular order.

#1. Trump fueled division and sparked a record uptick in hate crimes.

#2. Murder went way up under Trump. He presided over the largest ever single-year increase in homicides in 2020. A number of factors might have contributed to that, but a big one is…

#3. Gun sales broke records under Trump, who has bragged about how he “did nothing” to restrict guns as president in spite of…

#4. Under Trump, America suffered more than 1,700 mass shootings.

#5. Trump said there were "very fine people" among the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville.

I’m halfway to ten. If you think I’m missing something big, leave it in the comments.

#6. Trump allied himself with the Proud Boys, a violent hate group who helped orchestrate the Jan 6 Capitol attack.

#7. Trump’s not wrong when he says…

TRUMP: I got rid of Roe v. Wade.

It is entirely because of Trump’s judicial appointments that 1 in 3 American women of childbearing age now lives in states with abortion bans.

#8. One of Trump’s Supreme Court justices was Brett Kavanaugh, a man accused of sexual assault by multiple women.

#9. Trump’s White House interfered in the FBI’s investigation of Brett Kavanaugh’s alleged sexual assaults.

And now: #10. Trump has been convicted of committing 34 felonies while in office. The criminally false business filings he got convicted for in New York? All of them were committed while he was president.

I’m sorry, did I say the 10 Worst Things About the Trump Presidency? I meant 15.

#11. Trump’s failed pandemic response is estimated to have led to hundreds of thousands of needless deaths. By the time Trump left office, roughly 3,000 Americans were dying of covid every day. That’s a 9/11-scale mass casualty event every single day. How did Trump screw up so badly?

#12. Trump’s White House discarded the pandemic response playbook that had been assembled by the Obama administration.

#13. Trump disbanded the National Security Council’s pandemic response team.

#14. Trump repeatedly lied about the danger of covid, saying it was no worse than the flu or that it would go away on its own.

But behind closed doors, Trump admitted he knew covid was deadly.

#15. Trump promoted fake covid cures like hydroxychloroquine and even injecting people with disinfectants.

After Trump’s “disinfectant” remarks, poison control centers received a spike in emergency calls.

That’s fifteen things. Should I keep going? Ok, I’ll keep going. The 20 Worst Things About the Trump Presidency.

#16. Trump presided over a net loss of 2.9 million American jobs — the worst recorded jobs numbers of any U.S. president in history.

#17. Trump profited off the presidency, making an estimated $160 million from foreign countries while he was president.

#18. Trump also billed the Secret Service over $1 million for the privilege of staying at his golf clubs and other properties while they protected him. That’s your money!

#19. Trump caused the longest government shutdown in U.S. history when he didn’t get funding for his border wall, which he said Mexico was going to pay for.  

#20. Under Trump, the national debt increased by about 40% — more than in any other four-year presidential term — largely because of his tax cuts for the rich and big corporations.

You didn’t really think I was stopping at 20, did you? We’re going to 25 —

#21. Trump separated more than 5,000 children from their parents at the border, with no plan to ever reunite them, putting babies in cages.

#22. The Muslim Ban. Yes, Trump really did try to ban Muslims from entering the country.

#23. Trump sparked international outrage by moving the American Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem while closing the U.S. mission to Palestine.

#24. Trump tasked his son-in-law Jared Kushner with drafting a potential Middle East “peace plan” with zero Palestinian input.

#25. And finally, Trump recognized Israel’s occupation of the Goh-lahn Heights, which is considered illegal under international law.

So there you have it, folks: The 25 Worst — Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Did I mention the impeachments? We’ve got to do the impeachments. Let’s go to 30.

#26. Trump broke the law by trying to withhold nearly $400 million of U.S. aid for Ukraine in an effort to extort a personal political favor from Ukraine’s Pres. Zelensky. Trump wanted Zelensky to interfere in the 2020 election by announcing an investigation into the Bidens. Delaying this aid to Ukraine weakened Ukraine and strengthened Russia.

#27. Trump personally attacked and ruined the careers of everyone who stood in the way of his illegal Ukraine scheme, including Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch and Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman.

#28. To cover up the scheme, Trump ordered the White House and State Department to defy congressional subpoenas.

#29. For these reasons, on December 18, 2019, Trump became the third U.S. president to be impeached. He was charged with Abuse of Power and Obstruction of Congress.

#30. Even while he was being investigated for trying to get Ukraine to interfere in the U.S. election, Trump publicly called for China to interfere in the election.

So those are the 30 Worst Things —

I’ll go to 35.

#31. Long before Election Day, Trump started making false claims that the election would be rigged.

#32. After losing, Trump falsely claimed the election was stolen, even though his own inner circle, including his campaign manager, White House lawyers, and his own Justice Department and attorney general told him it was not.

#33. Trump kept telling his Big Lie even after more than 60 legal challenges to the election were struck down in court, many by Trump-appointed judges.

#34. Trump ordered the Department of Justice to falsely claim that the election “was corrupt.”

#35. Trump and his allies used threats to pressure state leaders in Arizona and Georgia to falsify the election results.

We may go to 40.

#36. When none of the previous schemes worked, Trump and his allies produced fake electoral votes cast by fake electors in multiple swing states. His former White House chief of staff and Rudy Giuliani are among the many members of his inner circle who have been criminally indicted for this scheme.

#37. Trump tried to bully Vice President Pence into obstructing the certification of the election.

#38. Trump invited a mob to the Capitol on Jan 6 with his “be there, will be wild” tweet.

#39. Sworn testimony alleges that when Trump was warned that members of the crowd were carrying deadly weapons, he ordered security metal detectors to be taken down.

#40. Knowing the crowd had deadly weapons, he ordered them to go to the Capitol and…

TRUMP: …fight like hell.

#41 — Yes, yes, I know, bear with me.

Trump betrayed his oath to defend the nation by doing nothing to stop the Jan 6 violence. Instead, according to witness testimony, he sat and watched TV for hours.

#42. On January 13, 2021, Trump became the only president ever to be impeached twice. This time he was charged with incitement of insurrection. It was a bipartisan vote.

#43. The majority of senators — 57 out of 100 — voted to convict Trump, including 7 Republican senators.

So that’s the two impeachments and the Big Lie, but wait, we haven’t dealt with Russia, right? So we’re going to 50.

#44. In a likely obstruction of justice, Trump pressured then FBI Director James Comey to stop the FBI’s investigation into Trump’s National Security Adviser, Michael Flynn. This was documented in the Mueller report.

#45. When Comey didn’t bend to Trump’s will, Trump fired him.

#46. Trump tried to shut down the Mueller investigation by ordering White House Counsel Don McGann to fire Mueller. McGann refused because that would be criminal obstruction of justice.

#47. When news got out that Trump tried to fire Mueller, Trump repeatedly told McGann to lie — to Mueller, to press, to public — and even create a false document to conceal Trump’s attempt to fire Mueller.

#48. Trump ordered his staff not to turn over emails showing Don Jr. had set up a meeting at Trump Tower before the 2016 election with representatives of the Russian government.

#49. Trump convinced Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about Trump’s plans to build a Trump Tower in Moscow, and Cohen served prison time for lying to Congress.

#50. Trump was not charged for criminal obstruction of justice because it’s the Justice Department’s policy not to indict a sitting president, but more than a thousand former federal prosecutors who served under both Republicans and Democrats, signed a letter declaring there was more than enough evidence to prosecute Trump.

So those are the 50 Worst Things About the Trump Presidency. Now I could go on…

And I will! The 75 Worst Things About the Trump Presidency.

#51. Trump said he’d hire only the best people, but…

His campaign chair was convicted of multiple crimes.

So was one of his closest associates.

His deputy campaign chair pleaded guilty to crimes.

So did his personal lawyer

His National Security Adviser

The Chief Financial Officer of his business

A campaign foreign policy adviser

And one of his campaign fundraisers.

They all committed crimes, and Trump pardoned most of them.

#52. Trump said he’d drain the Washington swamp. But he appointed more billionaires, CEOs, and Wall Street moguls to his administration than any administration in history

#53. Trump intervened to get his son-in-law, Jared Kushner top-secret clearance after he was denied over concerns about foreign influence.

#54. Trump hosted a Russian Foreign Minister to the Oval Office, where Trump revealed top-secret intelligence.

Oh, and Trump’s economic policies!

#55 Trump promised that the average American family would see a $4,000 pay raise because of his tax cuts for the wealthy and big corporations. How’d that work out? Did you get a $4,000 raise? Of course not! Nobody did!

#56. Trump vowed to protect American jobs, but offshoring increased and manufacturing fell.

#57. Trump said he would fix America’s infrastructure, but it never happened. He announced so many failed “infrastructure weeks” they became a running joke.

#58. Trump said he would be “the voice” of American workers, but he filled the National Labor Relations Board with anti-union flacks who made it harder for workers to unionize.

#59. Trump’s Labor Department made it easier for bosses to get out of paying workers overtime, which cheated 8 million workers of extra pay.

#60. Trump repeatedly suggested he might serve more than two terms in violation of the Constitution — and continues to do so.

#61. Trump called Haiti and African nations “shithole” countries.

#62. Trump tried to terminate DACA, which protects immigrants brought to the U.S. as children. Luckily this was struck down by the courts.

#63. Trump called climate change a “hoax.”

#64. Trump pulled out of the Paris Climate Agreement.

#65. Trump rolled back more than 100 environmental protections.

#66. Every budget Trump proposed included cuts to Social Security and Medicare.

#67. Trump tried (and failed) to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which would have resulted in 20 million Americans losing insurance. And striking down the ACA’s protections for the roughly 130 million people with pre-existing conditions could have driven up their insurance premiums or led to a loss of coverage.

#68. Trump made it easier for employers to remove birth control coverage from insurance plans.

#69. By the end of Trump’s term, the number of people lacking health insurance had risen by 3 million.

#70. Trump lied. Constantly. He made 30,573 false or misleading claims while president — an average of 21 a day, according to Washington Post fact-checkers.

#71. Trump allegedly took hundreds of classified documents on his way out of the White House, reportedly including nuclear secrets, which he then left unsecured in various parts of Mar-a-Lago, including a bathroom. He was even caught on tape showing them off to people.

#72. Trump seriously discussed the idea of nuking a hurricane.

#73. When Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, Trump delayed $20 billion of aid and allowed Puerto Rico to be without power for 181 days.

#74. Trump suggested withholding federal aid for California wildfire recovery and said the solution was to “clean” the “floors” of the forest.

#75. Trump pulled out of the Iran deal, placing Iran on a path to developing nuclear weapons.

Honestly, there’s so much more, from exchanging “love letters” with North Korea’s brutal dictator to publicly denigrating a Gold Star military widow and making her cry, to the way he attacked journalists, to late night tweet binges.

Look, I can understand why a lot of people want to block all of this out of their memories. But we cannot afford to forget just how terrible Trump’s time in the White House was for this nation.

And we sure as hell can’t afford to put him back there.

[qqueenofhades]

“U.S. President Joe Biden issued a memorandum on Thursday requiring allies who receive military aid from the U.S. to provide ‘credible and reliable written assurances’ of their adherence to international law including international human rights law,” the Times of Israel reported. Israel will need to supply written assurances within 45 days or risk loss of aid. The report added, “The memo did not mention specific countries who would be held up to the new standard, but came amid increasing calls in the U.S. to condition aid to Israel due to concerns over its military operations in Gaza which were triggered by the Oct. 7 attacks, in which Hamas terrorists murdered some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapped 253.” No one should underestimate the impact of the decision. The Associated Press explained, “Democratic senators on Friday called Biden’s directive — meant to bring breadth, oversight, deadlines and teeth to efforts to ensure foreign governments don’t use U.S. military aid against civilians — historic.”

[.......]

Biden also pressed on with intense one-on-one diplomacy. After his comment on Thursday evening that Israel had been “over the top” in Gaza, Biden engaged with Netanyahu on Sunday in a 45-minute conversation — unusually long by most diplomatic standards (and even more so given that no time had to be spent on translation with English-fluent Netanyahu). According to the White House readout, Biden insisted Israel make “credible” arrangements to protect civilians before launching a widely criticized military plan for Rafah, where civilian casualties could mount. He also pressed Netanyahu again to increase humanitarian aid to the Palestinians. Biden’s patient approach with Netanyahu over months has gradually transformed into a private and public pressure campaign. A Biden official told The Post that the leaders had “a pretty detailed back and forth on that.”

-- Biden delivers tough love, takes historic step: Conditioning aid to Israel

Meanwhile Trump?

Trump has said he would implement travel bans on people from certain countries or with certain ideologies, expanding on a policy upheld by the Supreme Court in 2018. Trump previewed some parts of the world that could be subjected to a renewed travel ban in a mid-October speech, pledging to restrict people from the Gaza Strip, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen and "anywhere else that threatens our security." During the speech, Trump focused on the conflict in Gaza, saying he would bar the entry of immigrants who support the Islamist militant group Hamas and send deportation officers to pro-Hamas protests.

Also: Trump vows to expand Muslim ban and bar Gaza refugees if he wins presidency

Really, really not sure how much clearer I can make it here for y'all, but sure. Something something Trump's actually a better choice on this issue/overall (sarcasm).

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

A Nazi rally held in Madison Square Garden, February 20th 1939

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

October 21, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Oct 22, 2024

On Saturday, September 7, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump predicted that his plan to deport 15 to 20 million people currently living in the United States would be “bloody.” He also promised to prosecute his political opponents, including, he wrote, lawyers, political operatives, donors, illegal voters, and election officials. Retired chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley told journalist Bob Woodward that Trump is “a fascist to the core…the most dangerous person to this country.” 

On October 14, Trump told Fox News Channel host Maria Bartiromo that he thought enemies within the United States were more dangerous than foreign adversaries and that he thought the military should stop those “radical left lunatics” on Election Day. Since then, he has been talking a lot about “the enemy from within,” specifically naming Representative Adam Schiff and former House speaker Nancy Pelosi, both Democrats from California, as “bad people.” Schiff was the chair of the House Intelligence Committee that broke the 2019 story of Trump’s attempt to extort Volodymyr Zelensky that led to Trump’s first impeachment. 

Trump’s references to the “enemy from within” have become so frequent that former White House press secretary turned political analyst Jen Psaki has called them his closing argument for the 2024 election, and she warned that his construction of those who oppose him as “enemies” might sweep in virtually anyone he feels is a threat.

In a searing article today, political scientist Rachel Bitecofer of The Cycle explored exactly what that means in a piece titled “What (Really) Happens If Trump Wins?” Bitecofer outlined Adolf Hitler’s January 30, 1933, oath of office, in which he promised Germans he would uphold the constitution, and the three months he took to dismantle that constitution.

By March, she notes,  the concentration camp Dachau was open. Its first prisoners were not Jews, but rather Hitler’s prominent political opponents. By April, Jews had been purged from the civil service, and opposition political parties were illegal. By May, labor unions were banned and students were burning banned books. Within the year, public criticism of Hitler and the Nazis was illegal, and denouncing violators paid well for those who did it.

Bitecofer writes that Trump has promised mass deportations “that he cannot deliver unless he violates both the Constitution and federal law.” To enable that policy, Trump will need to dismantle the merit-based civil service and put into office those loyal to him rather than the Constitution. And then he will purge his political opponents, for once those who would stand against him are purged, Trump can act as he wishes against immigrants, for example, and others.

Ninety years ago, as American reporter Dorothy Thompson ate breakfast at her hotel in Berlin on August 25, 1934, a young man from Hitler’s secret police, the Gestapo, “politely handed me a letter and requested a signed receipt.” She thought nothing of it, she said, “But what a surprise was in store for me!” The letter informed her that, “in light of your numerous anti-German publications,” she was being expelled from Germany.

She was the first American journalist expelled from Nazi Germany, and that expulsion was no small thing. Thompson had moved to London in 1920 to become a foreign correspondent and began to spend time in Berlin. In 1924 she moved to the city to head the Central European Bureau for the New York Evening Post and the Philadelphia Public Ledger. From there, she reported on the rise of Adolf Hitler. She left her Berlin post in 1928 to marry novelist Sinclair Lewis, and the two settled in Vermont.

When the couple traveled to Sweden in 1930 for Lewis to accept the Nobel Prize in Literature, Thompson visited Germany, where she saw the growing strength of the fascists and the apparent inability of the Nazi’s opponents to come together to stand against them. She continued to visit the country in the following years, reporting on the rise of fascism there, and elsewhere. 

In 1931, Thompson interviewed Hitler and declared that, rather than “the future dictator of Germany” she had expected to meet, he was a man of “startling insignificance.” She asked him if he would “abolish the constitution of the German Republic.” He answered: “I will get into power legally” and, once in power, abolish the parliament and the constitution and “found an authority-state, from the lowest cell to the highest instance; everywhere there will be responsibility and authority above, discipline and obedience below.” She did not believe he could succeed: “Imagine a would-be dictator setting out to persuade a sovereign people to vote away their rights,” she wrote in apparent astonishment.

Thompson was back in Berlin in summer 1934 as a representative of the Saturday Evening Post when she received the news that she had 24 hours to leave the country. The other foreign correspondents in Berlin saw her off at the railway station with “great sheaves of American Beauty roses.” 

Safely in Paris, Thompson mused that in her first years in Germany she had gotten to know many of the officials of the German republic, and that when she had left to marry Lewis, they offered “many expressions of friendship and gratitude.” But times had changed. “I thought of them sadly as my train pulled out,” she said, “carrying me away from Berlin. Some of those officials still are in the service of the German Government, some of them are émigrés and some of them are dead.” 

Thompson came home to a nation where many of the same dark impulses were simmering, her fame after her expulsion from Germany following her. She lectured against fascism across the country in 1935, then began a radio program that reached tens of millions of listeners. Hired in 1936 to write a regular column three days a week for the New York Herald Tribune, she became a leading voice in print, too, warning that what was happening in Germany could also happen in America. 

In an echo of Lewis’s bestselling 1935 novel It Can’t Happen Here, she wrote in a 1937 column: “No people ever recognize their dictator in advance…. He always represents himself as the instrument for expressing the Incorporated National Will. When Americans think of dictators they always think of some foreign model. If anyone turned up here in a fur hat, boots and a grim look he would be recognized and shunned…. But when our dictator turns up, you can depend on it that he will be one of the boys, and he will stand for everything traditionally American.” 

In less than two years, the circulation of her column had grown to reach between seven and eight million people. In 1939 a reporter wrote: “She is read, believed and quoted by millions of women who used to get their political opinions from their husbands, who got them from [political commentator] Walter Lippmann.” The reporter likened Thompson to First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, saying they were the two “most influential women in the U.S.”

When 22,000 American Nazis held a rally at New York City’s Madison Square Garden in honor of President George Washington’s birthday on February 20, 1939, Thompson sat in the front row of the press box, where she laughed loudly during the speeches and yelled “Bunk!” at the stage, illustrating that she would not be muzzled by Nazis. After being escorted out, she returned to her seat, where stormtroopers surrounded her. She later told a reporter: “I was amazed to see a duplicate of what I saw seven years ago in Germany. Tonight I listened to words taken out of the mouth of Adolf Hitler.” 

Two years later, In 1941, Thompson returned to the issue she had raised when she mused about those government officials who had gone from thanking her to expelling her. In a piece for Harper’s Magazine titled “Who Goes Nazi?” she wrote: “It is an interesting and somewhat macabre parlor game to play at a large gathering of one’s acquaintances: to speculate who in a showdown would go Nazi,” she wrote. “By now, I think I know. I have gone through the experience many times—in Germany, in Austria, and in France. I have come to know the types: the born Nazis, the Nazis whom democracy itself has created, the certain-to-be fellow-travelers. And I also know those who never, under any conceivable circumstances, would become Nazis.”

Examining a number of types of Americans, she wrote that the line between democracy and fascism was not wealth, or education, or race, or age, or nationality. “Kind, good, happy, gentlemanly, secure people never go Nazi,” she wrote. They were secure enough to be good natured and open to new ideas, and they believed so completely in the promise of American democracy that they would defend it with their lives, even if they seemed too easygoing to join a struggle. “But the frustrated and humiliated intellectual, the rich and scared speculator, the spoiled son, the labor tyrant, the fellow who has achieved success by smelling out the wind of success—they would all go Nazi in a crisis,” she wrote. “Those who haven’t anything in them to tell them what they like and what they don’t—whether it is breeding, or happiness, or wisdom, or a code, however old-fashioned or however modern, go Nazi.”

In Paris following her expulsion from Berlin, Thompson told a reporter for the Associated Press that the reason she had been attacked was the same reason that Hitler’s power was growing. “Chancellor Hitler is no longer a man, he is a religion,” she said.

Suggesting her expulsion was because of her old article disparaging Hitler, in her own article about her expulsion she noted: “My offense was to think that Hitler is just an ordinary man, after all. That is a crime against the reigning cult in Germany, which says Mr. Hitler is a Messiah sent by God to save the German people…. To question this mystic mission is so heinous that, if you are a German, you can be sent to jail. I, fortunately, am an American, so I merely was sent to Paris. Worse things can happen….” 

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[afeelgoodblog]

The Best News of Last Week - May 15, 2023

🐕 - Now It's a Paw-ty

1. World's oldest ever dog celebrates 31st birthday

Bobi was born on 11 May 1992, making him 31 years old, in human years. A big birthday party is planned for Bobi today, according to Guinness World Records.

It will take place at his home in the rural Portuguese village of Conqueiros in Leiria, western Portugal, where he has lived his entire life.

2. The FDA has officially changed its policy to allow more gay and bisexual men to donate blood

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has announced that they’ve eased restrictions on blood donations by men who have sex with men in an effort to address blood shortages. The new policy recommends a series of individual risk-based questions that will apply to all donors, regardless of their sexual orientation, sex, or gender. Gay or bisexual men in monogamous relationships will now be permitted to donate blood.

3. Illinois passes bill to ensure community college credits transfer to public universities

The Illinois General Assembly has passed a bill that would help community college students transfer to public universities.

It would ensure that certain classes taken at community colleges could be transferred to any higher education institution in the state. Some schools currently only count community college coursework as elective credits.

4. Brazilian President Lula recognizes 6 new indigenous territories stretching 620,000 hectares, banning mining and restricting farming within them

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has decreed six new indigenous reserves, banning mining and restricting commercial farming there. The lands - including a vast area of Amazon rainforest - cover about 620,000 hectares (1.5m acres).

Indigenous leaders welcomed the move, but said more areas needed protection.

5. More than 1,000 trafficking victims rescued in separate operations in Southeast Asia

More than 1,000 trafficking victims were rescued in separate operations in Southeast Asia over the last week, officials in Indonesia and the Philippines said. 

Indonesian officials said Sunday they freed 20 of their nationals who were trafficked to Myanmar as part of a cyber scam, amid an increase in human trafficking cases in Southeast Asia. Fake recruiters had offered the Indonesians high-paying jobs in Thailand but instead trafficked them to Myawaddy, about 567 kilometers (352 miles) south of Naypyidaw, the capital, to perform cyber scams for crypto websites or apps, said Judha Nugraha, an official in Indonesia's Foreign Affairs Ministry.

6. A peanut allergy patch is making headway in trials

An experimental “peanut patch” is showing some promise for toddlers who are highly allergic to peanuts. The patch, called Viaskin, was tested on children ages one to three for a late-stage trial, and the results show that the patch helped children whose bodies could not tolerate even a small piece of peanuts safely eat a few.

After one year, two-thirds of the children who used the patch and one-third of the placebo group met the trial’s primary endpoint. The participants with a less sensitive peanut allergy could safely tolerate the peanut protein equivalent of eating three or four peanuts.

7. Critically endangered lemur born at Calgary Zoo

The Calgary Zoo has released pictures of its newest addition, a baby lemur. The zoo says its four-year-old female black-and-white ruffed lemur, Eny, gave birth on April 7. The pup’s father is eight-year-old Menabe. The gender of the pup has not been confirmed but the Calgary Zoo says the pup appears bright-eyed and active and is on the move.

The black-and-white ruffed lemur is registered among the 25 most endangered primates in the world, due mostly to habitat loss and hunting.

----

That's it for this week :)

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[sugarprincessbitch]

Imagine if rhaenyra had a younger sister, one that in appearance is very similar to her mother, Aemma. She is not very close with the other members of her family and often is cast outside because of their differences in attitude, she appears to not have that supposed "blood of the dragon" thing that most of Targaryen have or had.

Because of her tranquil and soft nature, she is very close to her mother never leaving her side, specially when she was with child.

Viserys sort of neglected her as a child, being too occupied with his kingly duties and also with rhaenyra, the apple of his eyes, giving all his attention to her. That is not a factor for the sisters to create resentment with each other or have a bad relationship, in fact they're very close with each other.

When Aemma dies giving birth (cof cof when she was literally murder) everything changes. She snap at her family, specially her father, blaming him of the death of her mother. Claiming in front of everyone that he is a murderer, creating a fracture beyond repair in their relationship (Viserys tried to fix it, but his daughter threw venomous words at him each time he dare to come closer). Her relationship with her sister also went cold, because Rhaenyra was to occupied with her new duties as heir and also due that she didn't want to talk with rhaenyra or anyone at that hurtful time. She close herself to her family, and spent most of her time secluded in her chambers not wanting to talk with anyone.

When the marriage between Alicent and her father was announce (She was angry that viserys married without having at least mourn a year Aemma's death being that super disrespectful, in her opinion, to her mother's memory), that was the straw that broke the camel, and in that same night she escaped from Kings landing at the back of her dragon after robbing eggs from the dragon pit and some expensive jewelry. Viserys was heartbroken at knowing he was guilty of her daughter escape (Also two very angry Rhaenyra and Daemon guilt trip him), but Otto convince him to get angry at his daughter instead, banning her from Kings landing forever. This was part of Otto's plan to get rid of any potential threat. Without his sister as a possible ally, Rhaenyra was more vulnerable at court.

She went to Essos, at first jumping from place to place in were they let her stay for a time. She finally decided to stay in Qohor as the wife of a merchant prince who didn't want to pass the opportunity to have as a wife a Targaryen princess.

When Viserys became old and ill, his last wish was to know the parade of his younger daughter, wanting to see her one last time before he was gone. That was the reason that made her came back to Westeros, but not as the sweet princess that her family and the court remeber, instead as a powerful and ferocious merchant woman (Due to her husband early passing she begun to run his business and exploited it to its maximum potential, making her social status to grow equal as her richness, due to this she became part of a select group of powerful merchants in Essos) known in all the free cities as the "Golden dragon".

Her sudden arrival after 15 years of not knowing nothing about her was a surprise to her family, a glad one (only for the blacks, because the greens where not that happy that she came back). The children of alicent didn't know about her existence, so for them it was a bigger shock to know that they had another sister all this time (Viserys didn't want anyone to talk about her deserter daughter, acting as if she never existed in the first place), and also an exotic one (due to her foreign accent and way of dressing). For aemond and specially Aegon (he is a pervert and likes to see women in little clothes) this was super attractive (Also whe know that Aemond likes older women, Soo...).

[mariacallous]

It's election season in Eastern Europe, and for the Kremlin -- bogged down in Ukraine and desperately in need of allies -- the stakes are higher than ever.

Moldova is holding a presidential election and referendum on October 20 that could help secure the country's future in the EU. Romania has just banned a pro-Kremlin rabble-rouser from running in its November presidential election. And the pro-Kremlin, far-right Revival party in Bulgaria is expected to win a sizable presence in parliament after upcoming elections.

So what is the Kremlin -- and its populist regional allies -- pulling from its playbook to influence the votes?

Don't Be Too Fussy About Who You Work With

Plan A, according to Anton Shekhovtsov, a Ukrainian political scientist and expert on the far right, "was always to cooperate with mainstream forces" and then corrupt them to align with Russian foreign policy interests.

In some countries, Plan A has worked, with the Kremlin maintaining good relations with politicians such as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, and Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico.

"The problem for Moscow," Shekhovtsov said, "is that mainstream forces are less likely than the populists to cooperate with Russia, especially after 2014 (the annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula) and even more so after February 2022 (Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine)."

That has meant increasingly falling back on Plan B. "Russia has tended to align with far-right parties," said Mitchell Orenstein, professor of Russian and East European studies at the University of Pennsylvania, "but it will also form alliances with far-left parties and even support centrist parties to some extent."

Acting pragmatically and working with the political fringes can sometimes bear fruit. For years, Revival leader Kostadin Kostadinov operated in extremist circles, once referring to Romany people as "parasites" and venomously castigating migrants. But now his party, which has opposed democratic reforms and advocated for Bulgaria's withdrawal from NATO, is tipped to finish as high as second in the October 27 parliamentary elections.

Be Careful With The Bags Of Cash

Authorities in Moldova -- which has struggled to shake off Kremlin influence and still has more than 1,000 Russian troops stationed in the breakaway region of Transdniester -- recently announced they had uncovered a scheme led by Ilan Shor, a pro-Russian fugitive accused of the country's biggest-ever bank fraud, to buy votes and disseminate false information about the EU, with more than 130,000 Moldovans receiving over $15 million in Russian cash in September alone.

Such schemes, however, are rarely discovered -- and often very hard to prove, with financial support masked by shell companies and offshore accounts. And for the Kremlin, direct financing is a risky tactic. "They are being very, very cautious," Shekhovtsov said, as "we're talking about criminal activity here because there are no taxes [and parties are] taking money from a foreign power."

A Deluge Of Disinformation

For the Kremlin, a cheaper and more efficient way of boosting its allies in Eastern Europe is to flood the market with disinformation.

In addition to Russian state outlets such as RT, "Russia has websites in different European languages that promote messages beneficial to antiestablishment, populist forces," Shekhovtsov said. "This compensates for the populists' lack of media influence in their own countries."

U.S. tech giant Meta said on October 11 that it had deleted a network of accounts aimed at Russian-speaking Moldovans, which spread pro-Russian content and ran pages masquerading as independent news outlets.

Such operations are often part of larger networks, sometimes known as "mushroom sites," which are created in bulk and on the cheap and monetize the spread of disinformation.

Mobilize Through Fear

If you buy into the disinformation, migrants are coming for your jobs, the LGBT community is coming for your children's souls, foreign-funded NGOs are plotting to topple governments, and only Russia can restore peace to fascist Ukraine.

Igor Dodon, Moldova's Moscow-backed former president, has recently warned, without any evidence, of "LGBT quotas" in state institutions if the country's pro-EU President Maia Sandu wins reelection.

And in Bulgaria, Revival is pushing for a Russian-style foreign-agent law, which would target Western NGOs. "You will be next!" party leader Kostadinov told the America for Bulgaria Foundation, the country's largest foreign donor.

In socially conservative societies, with people disillusioned with democracy and reeling from economic hardship, much of it from the COVID-19 pandemic, such emotional narratives often strike a powerful chord.

By scaremongering about threats to traditional lifestyles and sovereignty, Russia is positioning itself -- not for the first time -- as the region's potential savior.

Tailor The Message

A key part of the Kremlin's strategy is localizing its messaging. "Russia looks for any possible commonality between their approach and the parties they're supporting," Orenstein said. "In one country, they might appeal to pan-Slavism; in another, to Orthodox religious connections; and in yet another, to anti-Ukrainian sentiment."

For example, in Bulgaria, pro-Russian parties play on Soviet nostalgia and well-established narratives of Russia as a liberator from Ottoman rule. In Hungary and Slovakia, pro-Kremlin parties exploit fears about migrants and the perception that the EU is undermining national sovereignty.

In Moldova, Irina Vlah, a pro-Moscow ex-governor, has said the country's large number of Romanian passport holders is evidence of a sinister Romanian plot to take over its smaller and poorer neighbor.

What Is The Kremlin's Endgame?

In the long term, the Kremlin's goal is to undermine the EU and NATO and pull countries in Eastern Europe back into Russia's orbit.

In the short term, it's all about Ukraine. For the Kremlin, that means blowing apart the fragile European consensus that Kyiv is deserving of military and economic support.

What the Kremlin cares about most, Orenstein says, is the "foreign policy orientation" of parties it supports in Eastern Europe -- in order to secure their backing on issues such as sanctions or the status of Crimea.

"You have some parties that [when] they began taking Russian support, they actually changed a lot of their foreign policy positions to orient them towards Russia," Orenstein said.

Crucially, though, Russia doesn't necessarily need explicit support to succeed. Sometimes sowing discord and polarizing populations can also chip away at the democracies and civil societies the Kremlin so desperately fears.

[bisphenol-a]

Tomorrow, Friday November 17, the German Bundestag will vote on a draft law that could decide that naturalization for residents would be dependent on a commitment to Israel’s right to exist.

The bill, which includes a law that would change the criminal code, was submitted by the Christian Democratic Party’s (CDU) parliamentary group.

It would impact individuals seeking residency, asylum, and naturalization, and its intent is to “provide better protection against the further entrenchment and spread of antisemitism that has “immigrated from abroad.”

“Since the day of the attack,” the law states in its introduction, “disgusting rallies and demonstrations have also taken place on German streets, expressing unconcealed joy at the deaths of Jews and revealing an alarming level of antisemitism.”

A majority of protests across Germany have not only been peaceful but have only called for the German government to back a ceasefire to stop the genocide of the Palestinian people.

I attended multiple demonstrations across Germany, and the only visible threat to public safety has been from the police. In fact, I was a witness to one demonstration in Frankfurt where the police banned it from taking place mere minutes before it was about to begin. Hundreds of people were met with water cannons, extreme levels of police presence, and kettling by law enforcement that led to the detainment of over 300 people.

In another I attended in Mannheim, the only act of antisemitism committed was a man on the sidelines of our protest raising his hand in a Nazi salute to antagonize and intimidate pro-Palestinian demonstrators. He was arrested soon after, and local publications reported he was, in fact, not a part of our planned demonstration.

In 2022, over 80 percent of all antisemitic crimes in Germany were committed by the German far right, according to the federal police. However, the new draft bill does not include these statistics. Instead, it attributes violent antisemitism with sympathy with “Hamas terrorism,” which they claim is “cheered and propagated on German streets and schoolyards.”

The bill clearly singles out Arabs and migrants, claiming antisemitism in Germany is now only “imported.”

“A significant portion of those are obviously immigrants from countries in North Africa and the Middle East, where antisemitism and hostility towards Israel have a particular breeding ground,” the draft law states, backed by no concrete evidence for such remarkable claims.

It continues: “as well as their descendants, the instruments of residence, asylum and citizenship law must be used more consistently than before- in addition to general means such as criminal law- in order to combat antisemitism in Germany more effectively.”

In summary, the law not only creates a prerequisite where a citizenship application will only be granted if the individual declares a commitment to Israel’s right to exist and swears that they did not pursue any endeavors directed against Israel, but it can also strip the residency status and the citizenship of dual nationals who have been convicted of an antisemitic crime. This would also include a prison sentence of at least one year.

“Maintaining the legal status quo is not an option,” the draft law says, “as the current legal situation is clearly not suitable for effectively combating the specific antisemitism that is widespread among some foreigners in Germany.”

In Germany, what constitutes an “antisemitic crime” is extremely ambiguous. In 2017, the federal government officially adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) Working Definition of Antisemitism. Advocates, scholars, and legal experts at the European Legal Support Center (ELSC) as well as other organizations for example, have long criticized the IHRA definition, arguing it redefines antisemitism by wrongly conflating criticism of Israel with anti-Jewish racism.

According to a report conducted by ELSC and published earlier this year, the invocation of the definition almost exclusively targets Palestinian rights advocacy, harming Palestinian and Jewish activists in particular.

Now that Germany has specifically labeled the protests as examples of antisemitism that should be criminalized, there is much cause for concern for pro-Palestinian activists. Already, there have been examples such as the stripping of refugee status from a Palestinian activist from Syria and denying residency to Palestinian doctors who have only been a part of a Palestinian cultural group.

...

“Violent excesses at demonstrations- such as the pro-Palestinian demonstrations in October 2023- must be appropriately sanctioned. However, the increasing abuse of the right to demonstrate can often not be adequately punished,” the draft law says. “The regulation of breach of the peace is too narrow.

We have already witnessed banned demonstrations in cities and violent police arrests detaining people only carrying flags and wearing keffiyehs or simply holding anti-war signs. In Berlin, home to one of the largest Palestinian diasporas in Europe, there have been regular police presence and clear examples of racial profiling, and harassment against anyone who might “look” like they are attending a previously banned demonstration. 

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Dan Pfeiffer at The Message Box:

The generally accepted — and oft-repeated — narrative about Trump is that he is a cult-leader who can bend the Republican base to his will. On issues like free trade and foreign policy, he broke with long-standing Republican orthodoxy and faced no repercussions. He attacked Republican stalwarts like the Bush family and John McCain. Not only was there no blowback, Trump also made these folks' personas non-grata in the Republican Party. Whether it’s indictments, his sexual assaults, or his dalliances and dinner dates with Nazis, Trump could force the Republican Party to go along. The GOP is Trump’s party and what he says goes. Trump is a man accountable to no one. This has benefited him politically and brought in folks who hate politics and distrust institutions. But that image became fuzzy last week when Donald Trump bent to the will of anti-abortion extremists in a stunning flip-flop on abortion that tells us everything we need to know about Donald Trump. He poses an existential threat to reproductive freedom for tens of millions of Americans.

The Flip-Flop to End All Flip-Flops

I have written about Trump’s abortion flip-flop a couple of times in the last week, so if you are a regular reader of Message Box, please feel free to skip ahead. If not… In an interview with Dasha Burns of NBC News, Trump implied that he would vote for the amendment on the Florida ballot guaranteeing access to abortion and effectively overturning the state’s six-week ban. Trump is now a Florida resident and many are unsure how he plans to vote on the amendment. Trump’s stated position on abortion is that it's up to the states. For crass political reasons he has been critical of Florida’s extreme ban. A day ago, Trump flip-flopped, telling Fox News that he would vote NO on the amendment. So what happened in the subsequent twenty-four hours?

Well, the evangelical community and anti-abortion activists went ballistic. They blew up the phone lines to Mar-a-Lago or wherever Trump  was laying his head last week. They argued that Trump’s new stance would depress turnout from his base. Ever since Dobbs, Trump cannot get it right. He watched his slate of hand-picked candidates get mowed down in 2022 and he sees the polls showing large majorities oppose the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the sorts of state and national abortion bans of which Republicans have long dreamed. Trump thought his “leave it to the states” policy would help. It didn’t. Floating the idea of voting for the abortion amendment was another desperate effort to get on the right side of the issue that has cost Republicans nearly every election. This time, Trump crossed a line. The anti-abortion faction of the party told him to reverse course and he did so immediately. One of the core tenets of Trump’s political philosophy is to never, under any circumstances admit to wrongdoing. Heck, Trump doubled, tripled, and quadrupled down on defending and dining with Nazis. So the fact that Trump changed course so quickly and with so little resistance on abortion is quite notable.

[...] These folks will be calling the shots in a Trump Administration. They will influence policy and staffing decisions and that should scare the shit out of anyone who cares about reproductive freedom. Dobbs was the beginning — not the end — of the Far Right’s efforts.

Donald Trump being made to cry “uncle” and say that he is voting no on Florida Amendment 4 after being heavily criticized by anti-abortion commentators when he stated that he would initially consider voting in favor of Amendment 4 is proof that the anti-abortion extremists still call the shots in the GOP.

[simply-ivanka]

What Kamala Harris Believes

The Vice President’s political record reveals the views of a California progressive.

Wall Street Journal

Democrats are rapidly unifying behind Kamala Harris as their party nominee, yet the Vice President remains relatively unknown to most Americans. That means it’s important to look at her record to see what she believes.

As VP she’s closely identified with the Biden agenda, for better or worse, and she embraced that record in remarks on Monday. She said President Biden’s first term has “surpassed the legacy” of most Presidents who have served two.

So mark her down as endorsing the spending blowouts that caused inflation, the Green New Deal, entitlement expansions and student loan forgiveness. Until she says otherwise, we should also assume she’s in favor of Mr. Biden’s $5 trillion tax increase in 2025.

The Vice President’s four years as a Senator from California are another window on her worldview. She sponsored a bill to create a $6,000 guaranteed income for families making up to $100,000. Another Harris proposal: A refundable tax credit that would effectively cap rents and utility payments at 30% of income. Liberal economists panned the subsidy because it would drive up rents.

She co-sponsored legislation with Bernie Sanders that would pay tuition at four-year public colleges for students from families making up to $125,000. This is more honest than the Administration’s back-end student loan cancellation. But it would cost $700 billion over a decade and encourage colleges to increase tuition.

Another Bernie mind-meld: Single-payer healthcare. Ms. Harris co-sponsored his Medicare for All legislation paid for by higher income taxes. She tweaked Bernie’s plan when running for President in 2019 by extending the phase-in to 10 years from four and exempting households making less than $100,000 from the “income-based premium.” But it would still put government in charge of all American healthcare over time.

As a San Francisco Democrat, Ms. Harris shares the state’s hostility to fossil fuels. She used her power as California Attorney General to launch an investigation into Exxon Mobil over its carbon emissions. In 2019 she endorsed a nationwide ban on oil and gas fracking, which would cost tens of thousands of jobs and cause power outages like those that often occur in her home state. Expect this to be a GOP talking point in Pennsylvania.

One question to ask is whether the Vice President wants to restructure the Supreme Court. She said in 2019 she was “open” to adding more Justices, but that idea doesn’t poll well. Does she agree with Mr. Biden’s mooted plan to endorse “reforms” to the High Court that would make the Justices subject to Congressional supervision?

Mr. Biden famously put Ms. Harris in charge of border policy, and we know how that has turned out. Rather than push for border policy changes, her first instinct was to blame the rush of migrants on “root causes” in developing countries, including corruption, violence, poverty and “lack of climate adaptation and climate resilience.”

Climate change makes the U.S. border a sieve? Apparently so. “In Honduras, in the wake of hurricanes, we must deliver food, shelter, water and sanitation to the people,” Ms. Harris declared. “And in Guatemala, as farmers endure continuous droughts, we must work with them to plant drought-resistant crops.” These “root causes” take decades to address, and in the meantime she had nothing to say about actual border security.

Ms. Harris’s foreign policy views aren’t well known, or perhaps even well formed, apart from promoting Mr. Biden’s policies. While she has backed the Administration’s military assistance to Ukraine, she has equivocated about support for Israel. In March she chastised Israel for not doing enough to ease a “humanitarian catastrophe.” Leaks to the press say officials at the National Security Council toned down her speech’s criticism of Israel.

She lambasted the Trump Administration for killing Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Gen. Qassem Soleimani, claiming it could lead to bigger war in the Mideast. The killing chastened Iran’s rulers instead, at least until the Biden Administration began to ease sanctions and tried to repeat the 2015 nuclear deal.

It will be especially important for the press to ask Ms. Harris about her national security views. If her handlers control her as much as White House advisers have Mr. Biden, we’ll know they’re afraid that the Vice President might not be able to handle the scrutiny.

A fair conclusion from all of this is that Ms. Harris is a standard California progressive on most issues, often to the left of Mr. Biden. Perhaps as she reintroduces herself to the public in the coming weeks, she will modify some of those views. She would be wise to do so if she wants to win.

Given the rush by Democrats to anoint Ms. Harris as their nominee, the press has a particular obligation to tell the public about who she is and what she really thinks. Does she believe California is a model for the country?

[bruceburgdorf]

The German resistance to the Nazis and Hitler

A common criticism of the now well known 20th July plot was that many of the German conspirators were opposed to how Hitler was leading the war but not the Nazi regime as a whole or only opposed the Nazis once the fate of the war had already been decided. This was however certainly not the case for all who resisted Hitler within Germany.

These two men form part of the exception to this criticism and were consistent in their opposition from the early days of the 1930‘s and throughout the Nazi rule in Germany.

For me one of the greatest tragedies was learning of their names through wartime fiction and not through school, TV documentaries or books about WW2.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer 1906 -1945

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a pastor and theologian who was part of a well educated and connected family. In his early years he travelled and had witnessed the poor treatment of black Americans.

He returned to Germany in the early 1930’s and spoke out against the Nazis before they were elected and became a founding member of the Confession Church. This new church opposed the Nazi interference in religious teachings which sought to revise the bible to exclude Jewish influences and also remove pastors of Jewish descent.

When Bonhoeffer drew the attention of the Nazi party he was banned from public speaking and later banned from the city of Berlin but continued to gather support to oppose the Nazi influence on the church in secret.

He was informed of the 1938 plot to arrest Hitler by his brother in law Hans von Dohnányi who use his position in the Abwehr to keep him informed of the Nazi atrocities and to also get Dietrich himself a position in the Abwehr which protected him from conscription and allowed him to continue his work. He became aware that his brother in law had moved to conspiring to kill Hitler not just arrest him which as a pastor Bonhoeffer was originally against but eventually agreed that they needed to stop Hitler at any cost.

His role was to be a courier, assigned to engage in covert talks with foreign church leaders who could communicate with the Allies. He had hoped his position could allow for peace terms for Germany to be discussed however Allied wartime policy would ignore resistance from with Germany. This was party due to the allies needing to remove any ambiguity when it came to placing the blame on the Germans for the war but also because they had been fooled in the past by an SD agent pretending be be with the resistance and passing on false information. It was nethertheless unfortunate that communication from the real German resistance would be then be ignored.

Bonhoeffer was eventually arrested on grounds of sedition and sent to Tegel prison where he used his teachings and faith to comfort other prisoners and he even impressed some of the guards with his courage and strength and a few of these guards were persuaded to assist him by allowing letters to be sent to his family and one even offered to help him escape although he refused as he was worried of the consequences it may have on his family.

When the diaries of Admiral Canaris of the Abwehr (another key member of the resistance) were discovered he was found to be linked to the 20th July plot and was moved to Buchenwald and eventually Flossenburg concentration camp where he was hanged on 9th April 1945.

Hans von Dohnányi 1902 - 1945

Hans von Dohnányi was like his brother in law, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, well educated. He was a lawyer and also someone who opposed the Nazis before they had come to be elected. He began to write down the Nazi parties crimes which he planned to use as evidence if they were overthrown.

He was recruited into the Abwehr, the military intelligence service, by Hans Oster, a Wehrmacht colonel at that time and later a general but more importantly someone who also opposed the Nazis before the war had began and worked under Admiral Canaris.

The Abwehr had recruited a number of opposers to the Nazis who would work legitimately within the intelligence service but who would secretly also work against their own government. Hans would have access to their archives and he soon learned of Hitler’s military plans for Europe as well as atrocities which were being perpetrated against the Jews and on the eastern front. He became part of the active resistance to arrest Hitler in 1938 along with Hans Oster and others and would later be involved in an assassination attempts on Hitler’s life including in 1943 where a bomb was smuggled onto Hitler's plane but unfortunately didn't detonate.

The previous year Hans had taken part in a secret Abwehr operation to smuggle 13 Jews out of Germany and had illegally transfered government funds to support the Jews who were now living in Switzerland. This transfer of money would then led to his arrest in 1943 and eventual transfer to Sachsenhausen. Hans had worked to bring together civilians and military personnel who opposed the government in an effort to establish a more organised resistance. This lead to his conviction for his involvement in planning of the 20th July plot.

He was executed in Sachsenhausen likely on the same day as Bonhoeffer was executed in Flossenbürg, 9th April 1945 . He is now recognised as one of the righteous among Nations by Israel.

One more note in this great man's legacy is that his grandson is actor Justus von Dohnányi who I admire very much.

[plethoraworldatlas]

Congress’ unfounded plan to ban TikTok under the guise of protecting our data is back, this time in the form of a new bill—the “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act,” H.R. 7521 — which has gained a dangerous amount of momentum in Congress. This bipartisan legislation was introduced in the House just a week ago and is expected to be sent to the Senate after a vote later this week.

A year ago, supporters of digital rights across the country successfully stopped the federal RESTRICT Act, commonly known as the “TikTok Ban” bill (it was that and a whole lot more). And now we must do the same with this bill. 

As a first step, H.R. 7521 would force TikTok to find a new owner that is not based in a foreign adversarial country within the next 180 days or be banned until it does so. It would also give the President the power to designate other applications under the control of a country considered adversarial to the U.S. to be a national security threat. If deemed a national security threat, the application would be banned from app stores and web hosting services unless it cuts all ties with the foreign adversarial country within 180 days. The bill would criminalize the distribution of the application through app stores or other web services, as well as the maintenance of such an app by the company. Ultimately, the result of the bill would either be a nationwide ban on the TikTok, or a forced sale of the application to a different company.

Make no mistake—though this law starts with TikTok specifically, it could have an impact elsewhere. Tencent’s WeChat app is one of the world’s largest standalone messenger platforms, with over a billion users, and is a key vehicle for the Chinese diaspora generally. It would likely also be a target. 

The bill’s sponsors have argued that the amount of private data available to and collected by the companies behind these applications — and in theory, shared with a foreign government — makes them a national security threat. But like the RESTRICT Act, this bill won’t stop this data sharing, and will instead reduce our rights online. User data will still be collected by numerous platforms—possibly even TikTok after a forced sale—and it will still be sold to data brokers who can then sell it elsewhere, just as they do now. 

The only solution to this pervasive ecosystem is prohibiting the collection of our data in the first place. Ultimately, foreign adversaries will still be able to obtain our data from social media companies unless those companies are forbidden from collecting, retaining, and selling it, full stop. And to be clear, under our current data privacy laws, there are many domestic adversaries engaged in manipulative and invasive data collection as well. That’s why EFF supports such consumer data privacy legislation. 

[reasonsforhope]

Odd jobs are few and far between in Nearobo. Peter knows because every day he walks the streets of his village in south-east Liberia looking for one. In a good month, he might make $20 (£16.70). That’s hardly enough to feed himself, let alone his children.

But today things are looking up. As part of an innovative new donation scheme, Peter receives $40 (£33.40) per month for a minimum of three years. No paperwork. No requests for receipts. No catch of any kind, in fact. Just hard cash transferred straight to his mobile phone. 

The 59-year-old casual labourer plans to use the money to buy materials for a new home for himself and his family, he says. “Although it is going to take long, I will continue until my house is completed.”

The scheme is part of a new-look approach to development assistance that, if taken to scale, could potentially turn the £156bn international aid industry on its head.

At least, so says Rory Stewart, the former UK foreign secretary turned podcaster-in-chief (he co-hosts ‘The Rest is Politics’ with Alastair Campbell, a surprise hit which has topped the Apple podcast charts virtually every week since it launched a year ago). From his new base in Amman, Jordan, Stewart heads up GiveDirectly – the world’s fastest growing nonproft – who are behind the initiative.

“It’s a rather radical, simple idea to help people out of extreme poverty. We deliver the cash directly … there’s no middleman and no government getting in the way.”

It feels like an odd statement from someone who has spent much of his life in government service: first as a junior diplomat for eight years (during which he penned a bestselling book about dodging Taliban bullets and hungry wolves whilst walking across Afghanistan), followed by almost a decade as a politician at Westminster.

Pictured: Rory Stewart and GiveDirectly’s Ivan Ntwali talk with a refugee household in Rwanda. Image: GiveDirectly

His enthusiasm is even more surprising given his initial caution. During his various ministerial stints at the UK’s department for international development (including three months as secretary of state), he was an out-and-out “cash sceptic.” 

Giving away money with no strings attached was, he felt at the time, an impossible sell to tax-paying voters. What’s stopping recipients spending it down the pub? Or investing in a hair-brained business venture? 

Quite a lot it turns out. No one knows the value of money more than those who don’t have any, he argues. Give an impoverished mother-of-four $40 (£33.40) cash and, 99 times out of 100, she’ll spend it on something useful: repairs to the house, say, or school fees for her kids...

By virtue of GiveDirectly’s model, participants can spend their money on whatever they choose, but the charity’s research indicates that most goes towards food, medical and education expenses, durables, home improvement and social events.

On the flipside, Stewart also has numerous examples of well-funded aid projects that deliver next to nothing. A decade ago, the then United Nations general secretary Ban Ki-moon estimated that 30 per cent of aid money disappears in corruption. There is little to suggest much has changed.

The aid industry doesn’t need corrupt officials to see its funds evaporate, however; it has its own voluminous bureaucracy. Stewart recalls once visiting a $40,000 (£33,560) water and sanitation project in a school in an unnamed African country. The ‘deliverables’ were two brick latrines and five red buckets for storing water...

The beauty of direct giving, he stresses, is not just that it annuls opportunities for thievery and red tape; it also frees the world’s poorest individuals from the well-meaning but, very often, misplaced guidance of donors. An aid expert in Brussels or Washington DC may well have a PhD in development economics, but who is best to judge what a single mother in a Kinshasa slum needs most and how to obtain it most cheaply: the expert with her degree, or the mother with her hungry children?

Empowering recipients to decide for themselves helps end the kind of “mad world” where aid agencies pay to ship wheat from Idaho, US, to Antananarivo, Madagascar, only for local people to sell it in order to buy what they really want, Stewart reasons.

“So often, these communities are having to turn the goods we send them into cash anyway, but just in a very inefficient and wasteful fashion … instead [with direct cash transfers] they are given the choice and freedom in how to spend it.” 

Pictured: Villagers in Kilif, Kenya, at a public meeting about the GiveDirectly programme. Image: GiveDirectly

Is the system perfect? No, clearly not. Stewart concedes that opportunities for fraud and coercion exist. To minimise these risks, GiveDirectly employs field officers to meet face-to-face with recipients, as well as a team of telephone handlers and internal auditors to follow up on reports of irregularity.

By his reckoning, however, the biggest impediment to direct giving really taking off is donor reticence. At present, only 2 per cent of official aid is given direct in cash. Stewart thinks it should be closer to 60 or 70 per cent...

‘My children will not have to beg anymore’

Happiness Kadzmila from Malawi enrolled on GiveDirectly’s Basic Income project last summer. She will now receive $50 (£41) a month for a year ($600/£496 in total).

What are the biggest hardships you’ve faced in life?

I am a divorced mother of four children. I got divorced in 2020 while I was eight months pregnant with my last-born child. Since then, I have been depending on working on other people’s farms. I get paid $0.49 (£0.43), or a plate of maize flour per day. As a result, it has been a challenge to feed my children, buy clothes for them, and to pay their school fees My firstborn child is in year 4, the school charges $0.69 (£0.61) per day for her. My second is in year 3, I pay $0.49 (£0.43) for him. There were days when I would have no food in my home, and my children would go to my neighbours’ homes to beg for food. This made me feel sorry for my children as a mother.

What does receiving this money mean for you?

I was so happy the day I received cash amounting to $51.75 (£43.56) from GiveDirectly. I used the money to buy maize at $9.88 (£8.32). My children will not have to go to our neighbours to beg for food anymore. I also bought a sheep at $34.58 (£29.10). I will be selling sheep in future when they multiply. I also bought lotion and soap at $1.88 (£1.58).

How will you spend your future payments?

I plan to renovate my house. I have always admired those who sleep in houses made of a roof with iron sheets because they do not have to think of fetching grass every year for a new roof. I will also start a business selling doughnuts to sustain my income after I receive my last transfer. I did not know that an organisation like GiveDirectly would come to help me this way All I can say to those who are giving us this money is ‘thank you’."

-via Positive News, 3/3/23

More and More People to Help

In addition to their universal basic income programs, GiveDirectly also has dedicated programs where you can donate to emergency disaster relief, people living under the protracted civil war and human rights disaster in Yemen, refugees, and survivors of the Syria-Turkey earthquake.

They have also commissioned a number of large-scale, third-party studies on the effectiveness of their numerous universal basic income models. Find these and other projects here.

[milkboydotnet]

A collection of activists and researchers from Filipino and Filipino-American organizations released the findings of a peace mission that concluded last month. The Philippines hosts the United States military in nine joint military facilities across the country through the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA). The groups claim that the American forces are both violating the terms of their stay and operating without transparency to local communities and even to Philippine authorities.

After a three-week fact-finding mission, the Peace Mission International Delegation finds that “the heightening of US militarism and ramping up of EDCA sites is a threat to Philippine independence and sovereignty and the dignity and safety of Filipino communities,” said Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (BAYAN) USA. Meanwhile, Renato Reyes Jr, of BAYAN Philippines explained that the “increased deployment of American weapons and soldiers to the Philippines is meant to provoke a heightened military confrontation with China.”

Secret War

The mission went to two EDCA sites and to one province where American military operations had recently taken place.

In Basa Air Base of Pampanga province, even the Philippine military was barred from certain perimeters.

Lal-lo Airport in Cagayan province is one EDCA site and researchers found that even the provincial government was only made aware of its use by foreigners when it was announced in the news.

None of the locals know what kind of armaments are now stored at the site. Moreover, US personnel are tapping the wider community to store military items and supplies. The mission pointed out that it goes beyond the bounds of EDCA as it does not fall under any of the “Agreed Locations.”

Last month, the Balikatan (shoulder to shoulder) joint military exercises between the US and the Philippines concluded. The war games drew in over 16,000 soldiers and for the first time made armed excursions outside Philippine territories, around a hundred kilometers from Taiwan.

The town of Santa Ana in Cagayan, northeast of the Philippines is just 400 kilometers from Taiwan.

The mission alleges that the residents of Santa Ana, were kept in the dark about using their town as a site for military exercises throughout Balikatan.

The mission also documented US marines visiting local high schools in civic-military operations. Additionally “We documented reports of locals saying that the loud noise from US military jets scares them and their children. Not only did this directly disturb the fish supply that these people survive on, but it is aimed at normalizing foreign military occupation in their country,” said *Alex of the mission, using a pseudonym for security.

Not unlike in Cagayan, residents of Ilocos Norte province to the northwest of the country, only learned of Balikatan coming to their neighborhoods through news on Facebook. Live fire drills were carried out and some allege that explosions were heard just 30 kilometers from their homes.

The mission also criticized the five-day “no sail policy” enforced by the military, dealing a large blow to the livelihood of local fisherfolk.

Around 1,000 fishing families were affected by the fishing ban, with estimated losses at Php10,000 per family, a staggering amount that will take them months to recover from. Local government allotted aid worth Php1500 to just over a hundred families.

“The people of Ilocos deserve much more than to be treated as pawns in a US war game,” said *Glaiza of the group Gabriela.

Invitation for war

Balikatan is just one of over 500 planned exercises slated for this year alone. It comes alongside moves in Washington to significantly boost military aid to the Philippines to contain China and pursue its strategic interests in the Pacific region.

Last April, at the Philippines-United States Bilateral Strategic Dialogue in Washington, D.C., both countries held talks to expand the number of EDCA sites, investing US$128 million for infrastructure around these areas and stockpiling a greater volume of supplies.

This year, Marcos announced intentions to upgrade the country’s defense with a US$35 billion boost over the next 10 years.

His plans dovetail with a proposal in the US Senate dubbed the Philippine Enhanced Resilience Act, or PERA bill, which would allot US$2.5 billion over the next five years to Philippine military advancement.

Reyes criticized Marcos Jr’s inclination to plunge the Philippines into war at the behest of America. On June 12, Philippine Independence Day, Filipinos rallied at the US Embassy in Manila against using the country as a stooge in their agenda.

On the same day, Marcos delivered a speech with much bravado saying “We see it in the tenacity of our soldiers as they protect every inch of our territory, adamant as they are in the certainty that Filipinos do not, and shall never, succumb to oppression.”

However, after seeing how the American interests with the complicity of the Marcos regime is fuelling the escalation of the conflict with China, the mission asks “is the Philippines truly free? And what of the Filipino people who are sure to be caught in the crossfire if war were to break out?”

[queersatanic]

On Monday, the university sent Brandeis [Students for Justice in Palestine] a notice that its status as an official campus group had been rescinded “because it openly supports Hamas, which the United States has designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.” “This decision was not made lightly, as Brandeis is dedicated to upholding free speech principles,” the notice said. ... Brandeis’s decision means the group is no longer an officially sanctioned organization. It will not receive university funding and it is prohibited from using the university’s logo. The group was forced to cancel a vigil Monday that it had planned to hold for the victims of the Israeli bombardment of Gaza.

The original Brandeis SJP statement:

[ID: Four panels of Instagram post, text to follow:

We rise today in unwavering solidarity with the Palestinian resistance in all of its forms. It is a moral imperative to recognize and support the resilience of the people who have endured 75 years of oppression, displacement, and the denial of their basic rights. The Palestinian resistance is a multifaced struggle for self-determination, justice, and the restoration of human dignity. It encompasses not only armed resistance, but also civil disobedience, grassroots organizing, and cultural expression. It is a testament to the unwavering spirit of the people who refuse to be silenced in the face of adversity. We reject the characterization of Palestinian resistance as "terrorism" as indicated in President Ron's email to the student body. Such a label ignores the ongoing occupation of Palestine, the expansion of illegal settlements, and the denial of basic human rights. We must understand that the Palestinian resistance, in all of its manifestations, is a response to a history of dispossession and oppression. To condemn resistance but not the terrorist colonial violence, that resistance came as a response to, is despicable, ahistorical, and a deliberate misrepresentation of what is going on in the occupied land. Instead, we should strive for Justice for the Palestinian people. We encourage our community to follow instagram accounts such as @eye.on.palestine and Resistance News Network on Telegram for live news from the ground, and to reach out to us for any clarification on Al-Aqsa Flood battle. From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free. /ID]

[afeelgoodblog]

The Best News of Last Week - May 29, 2023

Rwanda’s life expectancy has increased by 20 years in the last 20 years

What did Rwanda change? Three developments stand out: low-cost community-based health insurance plans, national investments in rural health posts, and ramped-up foreign collaborations. In 2020, more than 90 percent of Rwanda’s people had some kind of health insurance. This stands out relative to other low-income countries, where on average 31 percent of people have health insurance.

2. Brandon School Division rejects call to remove library books on sexuality, gender identity

Loud cheers erupted inside a packed high school gymnasium after the Brandon School Division rejected a call to remove books dealing with sexuality and gender identity from libraries. Hundreds of people in Manitoba's second-largest city showed up for the marathon school division meeting, which ran into the early morning hours.

The trustees ultimately voted 6-1 to reject a proposal to create a committee of trustees and parents to review books available in division schools.

3. Lotto winner pledges to fund classrooms in his native Mali

Happiness for one lucky North Carolina resident comes not from newfound wealth from a lottery win, but using those winnings to help schoolchildren -- in this case, from Mali.

Souleymane Sana of North Carolina won $100,000 from a scratch-off ticket. Relocating to the United States from Mali -- a war-torn county in West Africa -- Sana is using his earnings to create a non-profit to help school kids from his hometown.

4. Mountain gorillas rebound thanks to Ugandan veterinarian

In 2018, as their population topped 1,000, they were removed from the critically endangered list and their status upgraded to just endangered. That positive step was due, in no small part, to Ugandan veterinarian Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka. 

Her working home is Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, home to roughly half of the world's mountain gorillas. But early on she also realized that to help the animals and keep them free from disease and poaching, she needed to also help their human neighbours, launching successful initiatives to improve the health and well-being of the people living around the park. 

5. Imports of ivory from hippos, orcas and walruses to be banned in UK

Ivory imports from hippopotamuses, orcas and walruses will be banned under new legislation to protect the endangered species from poaching.

The Ivory Act, passed in 2018, targeted materials from elephants, but a loophole meant that animals other than elephants, including hippos, were being targeted for their ivory.

6. Solar power due to overtake oil production investment for first time in 2023

Investment in clean energy will extend its lead over spending on fossil fuels in 2023, the International Energy Agency said on Thursday, with solar projects expected to outpace outlays on oil production for the first time.

Annual investment in renewable energy is up by nearly a quarter since 2021 compared to a 15% rise for fossil fuels, the Paris-based energy watchdog said in its World Energy Investment report.

7. Paralyzed man walks naturally, thanks to wireless ‘bridge’ between brain and spine

Gert-Jan Oskam lost the ability to walk in 2011 when he injured his spine in a cycling accident in China. Six years later, the Dutch man managed to take a few short steps thanks to a small array of electrodes implanted on top of his spinal cord that delivered nerve-stimulating pulses of electricity.

Today in Nature, an international team of researchers reports giving Oskam a better fix, a way to digitally bridge the communication gap between his brain and lower body. Brain waves signaling Oskam’s desire to walk travel from a device implanted in his skull to the spinal stimulator, rerouting the signal around the damaged tissue and delivering pulses of electricity to the spinal cord to facilitate the movement. Oskam can now walk more fluidly, navigate obstacles, and climb stairs.

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