Forgotten Is The New Black
October 25, 2019
“The belly is an ungrateful wretch, it never remembers past favors, it always wants more tomorrow.”
“Only those who decline to scramble up the career ladder are interesting as human beings. Nothing is more boring than a man with a career.” (This is the exact opposite of what is taught at West Point and Stanford where students obsess about modern day generals and the captains of industry. At both schools only those who have made it up the career ladder are deserving of attention.)
– Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn
Forgotten Is The New Black
The partnership between the US and Kurdish-led militia successfully crushed the Islamic State’s self-declared caliphate. As the terrorist group lost the remaining patch of its Syrian territory last March, Kurdish fighters found themselves in charge of about 11,000 captured men and tens of thousands of women and children. Many of these people were foreigners — from Europe, Asia, Africa and the Arab world — and most of their countries refused to take them home or put them on trial, much less integrate them into society.
So the tens of thousands of men, women, children, many orphaned, who had lived in the now collapsed caliphate, being abandoned by their own governments, became charges of a Kurdish-led force that lacked the resources to house, feed and protect them, much less to investigate the adults and provide the children with education and rehabilitation. They simply exist — injured, sickly, hungry — in squalid detention camps and overcrowded prisons.
Turkey’s military incursion against the Kurds set off a new wave of violence and weakened Kurdish control over the area, meaning the fate of this huge population of warehoused people is uncertain. It is a legal and humanitarian crisis, largely ignored by the world, but one that is growing.
The NYT made rare visits to two of the ISIS prisons this week. The assistant warden at one of the prisons told the Times: “We are 100 percent sure that if they have the opportunity to escape from the prison, it will be very dangerous….not only a danger for Syria, it is a danger for the whole world.”
A Classic He Said/She Said/POTUS Said Situation
- On Tuesday the top diplomat in Ukraine, William B. Taylor Jr., testified for 10 hours before House impeachment investigators. He vividly portrayed how multiple senior administration officials told him that President Trump had blocked a $391 million military aid package appropriated for Ukraine by Congress and refused to meet the country’s leader until he agreed to publicly investigate Trump’s political rivals.
- Taylor cited numerous sources inside the government, including a budget official who said during a National Security Council conference call in July that she had been instructed — in a “directive [that] had come from the president” not to approve the aid package for Ukraine. And according to interviews and documents obtained by the NYT, word of the aid freeze had gotten to high-level Ukrainian officials by the first week of August.
- However, as if Taylor’s testimony had occurred in an alternate universe, Trump went on Twitter Wednesday morning to approve of a Republican House member’s reasoning that there couldn’t be a quid pro quo because neither Taylor nor any other witness had “provided testimony that the Ukrainians were aware that military aid was being withheld.” (NYT)
Two Fires Don’t Might A Right
- Climate change is contributing to the number and intensity of wildfires globally. Besides massive fires in California and the Amazon rainforest, large areas of Europe’s forests have burned up this year, and last year Sweden saw its biggest fires in modern history.
- From January to mid-October, the EU has had almost three times the average number of wildfires for the same period over the past decade, with more than 800,000 acres burned so far in 2019.
- Firefighters and ecologists are suggesting that putting out each fire isn’t possible or desirable. To prevent megafires, experts say, authorities should let forests burn naturally — and sometimes even set fires on purpose. (NPR)
Breaking News: What?! Why?!
- British police said 39 bodies were found early Wednesday in a truck container in Waterglade Industrial Park, in southeastern England. Authorities believe the truck is from Bulgaria, a member of the EU, and that it entered the UK on Saturday at Holyhead. The driver is a 25-year-old man from Northern Ireland; he has been arrested on suspicion of murder.
- The chief executive of the UK’s Road Haulage Association released a statement saying the container seems to be a refrigerated unit, and that conditions inside would be both “horrendous” and life-threatening if the cooling elements were turned on with people inside. He added that the shocking discovery “highlights the danger of migrant gangs people-smuggling on lorries.” (NPR)
Additional World News
- China Has ‘Concerning’ Leads Over U.S. in Tech, Defense Department Official Says: Michael Brown sees lack of government investment, as well as tensions between Washington and Silicon Valley, as part of problem (WSJ, $)
- Climate Change Will Cost Us Even More Than We Think: Economists greatly underestimate the price tag on harsher weather and higher seas. Why is that? (NYT, $)
- Iraqi Security Forces Killed 149 People In Recent Protests, Inquiry Concludes (NPR)
- Albanian police say Iranian ‘terror cell’ planned to attack exiles: Paramilitary network allegedly targeted members of MEK in Albania (Guardian)
- Turkey, Russia Reach Deal To Control Syrian Areas Once Patrolled By The U.S. (NPR)
- Brazilians rally to clean beaches amid outrage at Bolsonaro’s oil spill inaction (Guardian)
Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind, Out Of Sanctions
- The Trump administration is lifting sanctions it imposed on Turkey nine days ago for beginning an offensive against Kurdish fighters in northern Syria earlier this month. It was the president’s abrupt decision to withdraw US peacekeeping troops that had allowed Turkey to invade what had been the Kurdish homeland.
- Once the US abandoned the Kurds they were forced to seek help from Russia, which resulted in both Russia and Turkey being able to seize sections of the Kurdish territory.
- After Russia agreed with Turkey to deploy troops to extend a ceasefire along the Syrian border, Trump withdrew the sanctions, saying: “Let someone else fight over this long bloodstained sand.” (BBC)
Tear Down These Walls- Uh I Mean…Wait…
- As the Democrat-led impeachment inquiry continues to pile up devastating evidence against the president, a group of Republican Trump-defenders disrupted three House committee hearings Wednesday morning. The group of shameless representatives chanted ‘Let us in’ as they clamored into one closed-door session, just as a top Pentagon official who oversees Ukraine policy was about to testify.
- Chaos and confusion temporarily shut down the proceedings while Republicans tweeted updates of the disruption from their cellphones, which are not typically permitted in classified areas.
- The infantile, unbecoming behavior of these elected officials clearly shows the desperation some loyalists are feeling as they run out of ways to excuse Trump’s actions. (Guardian)
- Impeachment inquiry: Democrats say diplomat’s testimony is a ‘sea change’ – as it happened (Guardian)
Additional USA News
- Mark Zuckerberg Offers A Choice: The Facebook Way Or The China Way (NPR)
- AOC Questions Mark Zuckerberg on Cambridge Analytica, Facebook’s “Fact Checking” (YouTube)
- For Many, Issue Of Logging In America’s Largest National Forest Cuts Deep (NPR)
- ‘A Game Changer’: Andrew Yang Explains How He’d Give Every American $1,000 Per Month (NPR)
People Must Wash Hands Before Returning To Life
- New research published in The Lancet: Infectious Diseases, finds that people not washing their hands, or not washing them properly, may be a leading cause in the spread of E coli, which is the biggest single cause of bacterial bloodstream infections in the UK. Those with compromised immune systems are particularly at risk.
- A professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine explains: “When you wash your hands with soap, what the soap does is to detach the microbes from your hands, but the microbes remain alive. The important part of washing your hands is rinsing them. That’s what takes the microbes off your hands.”
- Specifically, you must use plenty of soap and be vigorous, rubbing your hands for at least 15 seconds, including the backs. Be sure to also get the backs of each finger and thumb. “That’s the way to mechanically detach all of the organisms from your hands,” she said. (Guardian)
Additional Reads
- As Vaping Devices Have Evolved, So Have Potential Hazards, Researchers Say (NPR) and Teen Vapers Who Want To Quit Look For Help Via Text (NPR)
- Online, no one knows you’re poor: Shauna M Ahern used to make her living by writing a food blog. But when times got tough, she realised keeping up appearances can make you lose sight of life’s meaning (Guardian)
- Something in the Way We Move: We may each have a movement “signature” that, like our face or fingerprints, is unique to us. (NYT, $)
- The body-clock science behind later school start times (BBC)
- The fatigue hitting influencers as Instagram evolves (BBC)