Maybe Now Everyone Will Have a Daily Peanut
February 4, 2020
“There is no other way to guard yourself against flattery than by making men understand that telling you the truth will not offend you.”
“The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him.”
– Niccolò Machiavelli
You’re Damned If Hindu, Damned If Hindon’t
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his governing Bharatiya Janata Party haven’t been shy about pushing their vision of India as a homeland for Hindus. By all accounts the government has become increasingly authoritarian, its leadership determined to dismantle India’s foundation as a secular nation drawing strength from its diversity. Modi’s uber-nationalist agenda has spawned intolerance and sectarian violence. And that, say US immigration lawyers, can be credited for the growing number of Indians hoping to find asylum in the United States.
Since Modi became prime minister in 2014, vigilante violence and religious hate crimes by militant Hindu nationalists have surged. Victims, often Muslims, low-caste individuals, LGBT and other minorities, have endured forced conversions, fatal beatings, even lynch mobs. For those Indians who choose to flee the violence in their country, the journey halfway around the world is no less dangerous. They risk rape, robbery and death on the border — a six-year-old Sikh girl died while crossing the Arizona desert in mid-June.
Most Indian migrants arrive in Mexico, then try crossing the border near Calexico, a small town in the southern California desert. Smugglers often drop them off near a three-foot high border wall, telling them to hop over the barrier and keep walking. Thousands are caught and detained by border patrol — nearly 9,000 in 2018; a decade earlier the number was 77. And for detainees on American soil, dangers still persist: five Indian asylum seekers have been on hunger strike for more than 90 days to protest being held in a Louisiana Ice detention center, and two of them have been force-fed. Additional read: “Women to One Side, Men to the Other”: How the Border Patrol’s New Powers and Old Carelessness Separated a Family (Pro Publica)
Johnson’s New Mission: Terrorexit
- UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has had enough of convicted terrorists getting out of jail, only to start wreaking havoc. Johnson reached this conclusion after an Islamist attacker stabbed two people days after he was set free half way through his prison term.
- The perpetrator was jailed in 2018 for possession of terrorist documents and disseminating terrorist publications. He was shot to death by police after going on a rampage with a stolen knife on a busy London street. Last November another former convict killed two people and wounded three more near London Bridge before police shot him to death.
- Johnson said he had come “to the end of my patience” with freeing offenders before they had completed their sentences and without any scrutiny, and vowed his government would announce fundamental changes in dealing with people convicted of terrorist offenses. (Reuters)
- Boris Johnson hints at allowing GM food imports from US (Guardian)
Sarah Silbiger via Getty Images
A Gift To The Special Relationship
- After last Tuesday’s announcement of Trump’s Middle East peace plan, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu triumphantly promised his cabinet would be voting right away to extend Israeli sovereignty over substantial parts of the occupied West Bank.
- But it seems the White House wasn’t quite ready to endorse an immediate unilateral annexation. The administration urged Netanyahu to wait until after the March 2 Israeli elections before formally annexing any of the occupied territory.
- One Israeli columnist likened Washington’s ‘request’ to a birthday boy being told to wait to open his gift. The delay is embarrassing for the prime minister, who had promised to annex West Bank territory before the last election in September, which ended inconclusively. Since then Netanyahu has been indicted in three corruption cases. (NYT)
Additional World News
- This climate problem is bigger than cars and much harder to solve (Vox)
- A Russian satellite seems to be tailing a US spy satellite in Earth orbit (Verge)
- Taliban’s Continued Attacks Show Limits of U.S. Strategy in Afghanistan (NYT, $) & Americans Demand a Rethinking of the ‘Forever War’ (NYT, $)
- Coronavirus
- New Coronavirus Sparks More Aggressive Global Response Than Flu. Here’s Why. : Goats and Soda (NPR)
- The Chinese doctor who tried to warn about coronavirus (BBC)
- Coronavirus: China admits ‘shortcomings and deficiencies’ (BBC)
- Quieter Response to Coronavirus in Countries Where China Holds Sway (NYT, $)
- Coronavirus Pummels Wuhan, a City Short of Supplies and Overwhelmed (NYT, $)
The Republican’s Black Sheep Wants Change Real Baaaaad
- Why two Republicans are in Iowa challenging President Trump for the GOP nomination is a head-scratcher. They don’t have the proverbial snowball’s chance in hell. Joe Walsh will be the first to tell you: “My party is a cult.” Yet there they are: Walsh, a former congressman from Illinois, and Bill Weld, a former governor of Massachusetts, trying to outlast ice crystals in a fire.
- Walsh’s communications director accuses the Republican National Committee (RNC) and state parties of stitching up the nomination before the race has even begun: denying access to voter data, threatening to blacklist donors, and in some states, keeping Walsh off the ballot altogether. Chalk it up to a learning curve.
- Walsh explains his journey so far: “I knew when I did this it was a long shot. I said at the beginning, I thought it was really, really important that a Republican do this. I’ve been discouraged because I did not see all the mean un-American things the party would do. I’m a conservative Republican; Fox News won’t have me on. Conservative media will ignore me because they’re a cult with Trump … Republican parties in each state: they are a cult for Trump. I didn’t sufficiently get all of that and that’s made this really hard.” (Guardian)
- Iowa Caucus 2020 Live Results And Updates (NPR)
- 2020 Iowa Caucus Live Updates: Delayed Results Lead to Confusion (NYT, $)
Additional USA News
- Why liberal white women pay a lot of money to learn over dinner how they’re racist (Guardian)
- Silicon Valley billionaires like Reid Hoffman and Dustin Moskovitz are funding the Democratic Party (Vox)
- Report: Trump Is Melting Down Over Bloomberg Ads About His Weight (Vanity Fair)
- How Chaos at Chain Pharmacies Is Putting Patients at Risk (NYT, $) & Pharmacists Make Mistakes. You Can Protect Yourself. (NYT, $)
- The People of Las Vegas (Believer Mag) Las Vegas is one of Daily Pnut’s least favorite cities in the entire USA. It’s a city where the largest industry is one that expects their “customers” to lose. The city has a hockey team and is adding a NFL team. Given the gambling industry is heavily predicated on people it makes a lot of cents to have the city be an event driven one. If the NBA were to expand, one can see a NBA franchise landing in the city given the rapid rise of sports gambling: I Used a Handicapping Service to Bet on Sports and Won a Whopping $63.60 (Bloomberg)
- Not to Ruin the Super Bowl, but the Sea Is Consuming Miami (Wired, $) & Welcome to Radio Row, the Super Bowl’s Carnival of Celebrity Promoters (The Ringer)
- Sea level rise accelerating along US coastline, scientists warn (Guardian)
- ‘You basically are nothing’: the Americans shut out of the Iowa caucuses (Guardian)
- Why Democrats share the blame for the rise of Donald Trump (Guardian)
- How Lis Smith Turned Pete Buttigieg Into a Serious Contender (NY Mag)
Clean Up After Yourself or Advertisers Will Eat Your Cookies For Breakfast
- Everyone has seen this classic phrase on websites before: “This site uses cookies to improve your experience. Please accept cookies.” Cookies keep you logged in while you’re scrolling through your favorite social media, making sure you don’t have to re-login every time you click a picture or page. Despite their benefits, however, cookies have also become a tool to track your search history and patterns of behavior online.
- A building block of our online world has become a tool to track you wherever you go in it. Now that browsers like Safari and Firefox are fighting back, the digital advertising industry is looking for new ways to follow you online. It might be good-night cookies and hello brownies next time you’re searching for a new pair of shoes to buy. (Vox)
- Fashion Nova, H&M, Zara: Why we can’t stop buying fast fashion (Vox)
Maybe Now Everyone Will Have a Daily Peanut
- On Friday the US Food and Drug Administration approved the first ever treatment for peanut allergies. The new treatment, named Palforzia from Aimmune Therapeutics Inc., is designed to work by exposing patients to the very substance they had been taught to avoid. The drug is derived from peanut powder, and doses contain the equivalent of small amounts of peanuts.
- To build up their resistance, children ages 4 to 17 years who are prescribed the new therapy start with escalating doses of Palforzia mixed with applesauce or other food each day, and after reaching a certain dose continue on that dose indefinitely.
- However, Aimmune said the list price for Palforzia will be $890 a month, or about $10,680 a year. The treatment would provide a new option for the growing number of children and their families with the life-threatening condition, if they can figure out a way to afford it. (WSJ)
Additional Reads
- Workers blame ‘painful jobs’ for pulling sickies (BBC)
- Why A Day Like Sunday Hasn’t Been Seen In 900 Years (NPR)
- Love is a joint project: For Simone de Beauvoir, authentic love is an ethical undertaking: it can be spoilt by devotion as much as by selfishness (Aeon)
- Here Are the Most Common Airbnb Scams Worldwide (Vice)
- American Dirt controversy: How it happened and what publishers have learned. (Slate)
- FBI warns of new online threat to personal, credit card information (CNBC)
- There is big business in having video content consume our attention:
- Odd Job: This teen vending machine owner makes money on YouTube (Vox)
- $15bn a year: YouTube reveals its ad revenues for the first time (Guardian)
- YouTube Tops 20 Million Premium Subscribers, YouTube TV Over 2 Million (Variety)
- Hamilton is coming to theaters and Disney+, thanks to Disney’s endless hunger for content (The Verge)
- McMillions: the bizarre story of how one man stole $24m from McDonald’s (Guardian)
- Why Amazon is tracking every time you tap your Kindle (Verge)
LAST MORSELS
“All courses of action are risky, so prudence is not in avoiding danger (it’s impossible), but calculating risk and acting decisively. Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth. Develop the strength to do bold things, not the strength to suffer.”
– Niccolò Machiavelli