Israel elections: Netanyahu challengers Gantz and Lapid join forces – BBC News
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Category: International Affairs,
Embracing a community’s practice to promote the measles vaccine
Mimicking a news-sharing custom common among ultraorthodox Jewish communities, two Penn Nursing students created and placed large posters around a Jerusalem neighborhood, deriving content from a mystical technique that assigns a numerical value to each Hebrew letter.
…They used their background and what they’ve learned in nursing school to create an outreach program promoting the measles vaccine geared at an ultra-religious Jewish group called Haredi. Because many in that community get their news from black-and-white posters called ‘pashkevilim’ hung around the neighborhood, the Penn students decided to make one.
….“From our fieldwork, we learned that, especially in insular communities, it’s important to understand what they value. This is something they place high value on.”
Using gematria, they calculated a numerical value of 500 for the Hebrew word for “measles,” then looked for other words and phrases with the same value. They came up with the Biblical phrase for “spiller of blood.”
Embracing a community’s practice to promote the measles vaccine | Penn Today
Very cool.
In Brexit, Could Ireland Wear the Crown?
In other words, as Britain self-combusts, Ireland—with its young workforce, low taxes, and English fluency—is poised to pounce.
…Ahead of the Brexit deadline, Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Barclays moved their EU headquarters from London to Dublin in a bid to minimize disruption; Barclays alone has shifted some $215 billion in asset management to the Irish capital. (Both banks declined to comment on the moves.) Rivals Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, and Goldman Sachs have promised to bulk up their own Dublin operations in the face of U.K. uncertainty, even as they maintain offices in the British capital.
…The ascent of Ireland as a global player and the subtle shift in power between it and the U.K. isn’t going over well with some in Britain—namely, the Brexit supporters who remain in Parliament. One Conservative member derided “the obdurate Irish government” for being overly concerned with border issues. Another was widely condemned in December for suggesting that Downing Street use the threat of economic damage, including food shortages, to compel Ireland to agree to a more favorable deal for the U.K.—an uncomfortable echo of the Great Famine of the 19th century. “We simply cannot allow the Irish to treat us this way,” an unnamed member of Parliament reportedly told a BBC columnist that same month, adding: “The Irish really should know their place.”
…The businesses moving to Dublin, Frankfurt, and Paris are not fly-by-night call centers, sweatshops, or hubs of unattractive work. Rather, they are the white-collar, green-collar, and gold-collar jobs upon which the 21st century’s economic power is being built. Ireland seems prepared to grab them all. “Small is beautiful. It keeps us agile,” says Bushnell, herself not quite 5 feet 3 inches. “We can’t scale nationally. We can only scale internationally. Instead of going wide, we are going deep. That has sent us up the value chain. We’re not call centers anymore. People are taking our calls now.”
If it sounds like the giddy optimism of millennial invincibility, that’s because it is: With a median age of 35.9, Ireland has the youngest population in the EU, putting it on par with such booming populations as those of Brazil, China, Qatar, Singapore, and Thailand. (The EU-wide median is 42.8; Germany claims the highest median age at 45.9.) “We always had cachet but were seen as riding coattails, either of the U.K. or the EU,” says Daniel Mulhall, an Irish ambassador who has served in Britain, Germany, India, and is currently ambassador to the U.S. Times have changed. “We became our own country,” he says. “We have our own ideas at last.”
…A cultural revolution has certainly helped make Ireland more internationally attractive. By referendum, Ireland last year rewrote its constitution to legalize abortion, just three years after it legalized gay marriage, also by referendum. The Irish government last year barred the Catholic Church, which controls 90% of the school system on its behalf, from admissions discrimination on religious grounds. Look no further than Taoiseach Varadkar to mark social progress; he is a gay, unmarried, 38-year-old man of Indian and Irish descent who is the head of government in a country that only decriminalized homosexuality in 1993. In the U.S., this would be the equivalent of the first black president taking office in 1888, not long after the abolition of slavery. “It’s no coincidence,” Traynor says, “that the people fighting for our future here are the ones who can still remember living in its past.”
In Brexit, Could Ireland Wear the Crown? | Fortune
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Troops do not view immigration as a ‘national emergency.’ Not even close.
What makes this group different than your typical illegal immigrant, Nunez-Neto said, is that they aren’t “trying to avoid detection,” and are in fact turning themselves over to officers at ports of entry to enter the asylum process.
…“If the people who have been arriving in increasing numbers are not trying to evade detection, I’m not sure a barrier will really address that flow.”
Troops do not view immigration as a ‘national emergency.’ Not even close.
Can’t see how a nation of immigrants taking in the poor huddle masses, especially refugees who are not trying to evade the law is a problem but it cannot be argued that the suggestion that a wall is a good way to stem the tide of people following the law and dutifully turning themselves in upon arrival at the border to have their refugee claim processed in accordance with United States law is anything but laughable.
Deported parents’ stolen children to be forced into immoral adoptions by strangers, because the US is being run by what might as well be Satan, investigation finds
…An anguished Araceli Ramos Bonilla burst into tears, her face contorted with pain: “They want to steal my daughter!”
…She was arrested crossing the border into Texas and U.S. immigration authorities seized her daughter and told her she would never see the girl again. [emphasis: Peanut Gallery]
An Associated Press investigation drawing on hundreds of court documents, immigration records and interviews in the U.S. and Central America identified holes in the system that allow state court judges to grant custody of migrant children to American families — without notifying their parents. [emphasis: peanut gallery]
…States usually seal child custody cases, and the federal agencies overseeing the migrant children don’t track how often state court judges allow these kids to be given up for adoption. But by providing a child’s name and birthdate to the specific district, probate or circuit court involved, the AP found that it’s sometimes possible to track these children.
…Three days after [mother and child’s forced] separation, court records show, the U.S. government labeled [the child who had entered the country with her mother] an “unaccompanied minor,” which meant she entered the bureaucracy for migrant youth, typically teens, who arrive in the U.S. alone. The toddler was issued a notice to appear on “a date to be set, at a time to be set, to show why you should not be removed from the United States.”
…[The mother’s] case was assigned to Oakdale Immigration Court in Louisiana, where the three judges had denied 95 percent of all asylum requests that year, compared to the national average of about 50 percent. She said she called the list of pro bono lawyers she was provided, to no avail.
Without a lawyer, her chance at asylum slipped away. Like everyone else around her, she was being deported.
The federal government offers all deported parents the chance to take their children with them, but [the mother] said she was ordered to sign a waiver to leave [her child] behind. “The agent put his hand on mine, he held my hand, he forced me to sign,” she said.
…At the time, it was unusual for parents to be deported while their children remained behind in federal foster care, but that occurred again and again this summer. More than 300 parents were deported to Central America without their children this summer, many of whom allege they were coerced into signing paperwork they didn’t understand, affecting their rights to reunify with their children. Some parents also contended that U.S. officials told them their children would be given up for adoption.
“And the reality is that for every parent who is not located, there will be a permanent orphaned child, and that is 100 percent the responsibility of the administration,” U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw said in August while overseeing a lawsuit to stop family separations.
…When [the agency] placed [the child] in the Barrs’ home, the couple signed a form promising they would not try to seek custody because the Office of Refugee Resettlement was legally responsible for the child. But eight months later, [high on their own self-importance and mired in what appears to be abject racism,] that is exactly what they did.
…”The Barrs obtained their temporary guardianship order in violation of federal law,” U.S. prosecutors argued. The Barrs’ attorney and the Michigan judge also violated federal law by seeking and granting guardianship, and failed to inform Ramos or Alexa’s lawyers about the proceedings, they wrote.
…Children traumatically separated from their parents are more likely to suffer from emotional problems throughout their lives, according to decades of scientific research. And some more recent studies have found that separation can damage a child’s memory.
Deported parents may lose kids to adoption, investigation finds
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
The wind in my hair: one woman’s struggle against the hijab
The irony, though, was that Masih’s parents were dedicated supporters of the revolution. “They were poor, they wanted better jobs, they wanted greater opportunities for equality, and they thought the revolution would bring these changes. But before the revolution there was social freedom, women were allowed to participate as equals in much of life – they could do sport, they could go to the gym, there were female judges. The people who backed the revolution wanted political freedom, and they ended up not getting that – plus, they lost their social freedom.”
…The revolution, she says, was a revolution against women. “The first thing that happened was the introduction of the compulsory hijab and everything else came after that, because it was the most visible and essential way of controlling the women. The revolution took our bodies hostage, and it is taking them hostage still.”
…To people who tell her that the hijab is just a bit of cloth, and there are much bigger problems to be faced in the Middle East, Masih has this message: “This is about a government that’s controlling a whole society through women. It makes me so sad when people say it’s a small thing, because everything starts from that infringement of our rights.” A whole culture of intolerance, she says, is built on that; and women bear its brunt, from the age of seven.
The wind in my hair: one woman’s struggle against the hijab | Global | The Guardian
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Pence met with silence after mentioning Trump in Munich speech
The New York Times reported last month that Trump indicated multiple times last year that he wanted the U.S. to withdraw from NATO.
….Pence later noted the U.S.’s move to withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. The decision to withdraw has triggered questions about the potential impact on European security and the global strategic environment amid weakened U.S.–Russia relations.
Pence met with silence after mentioning Trump in Munich speech |
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Germany orders Facebook to change the way it gathers data
In future, Facebook will have to seek German users’ explicit consent to collect and combine such data. Germany’s Federal Cartel Office ordered Facebook to come up with proposals for how to do this. If it doesn’t comply, the regulator can impose fines of up to 10% of the company’s annual turnover, or roughly $5.5 billion in this case.
“We are carrying out what can be seen as an internal divestiture of Facebook’s data,” said Andreas Mundt, the president of the antitrust office. “Facebook will no longer be allowed to force its users to agree to the practically unrestricted collection and assigning of non-Facebook data to their Facebook user accounts.”
…The case could have significant implications for Facebook, particularly if other antitrust regulators follow suit. Europe’s top antitrust regulator, the European Commission, said Thursday it took note of the German decision.
“Regulators are starting not just to show their teeth but to actually bite,” said Paul Bernal, a lecturer in media law at the University of East Anglia.
He said cases like this could eventually lead to regulators trying to break up Facebook because of the enormous control over data it has accumulated over the years.
Germany orders Facebook to change the way it gathers data – CNN
Kleptocracy Is on the Rise in America
During the Cold War, the KGB had developed an expert understanding of the banking byways of the West, and spymasters had become adept at dispensing cash to agents abroad. That proficiency facilitated the amassing of new fortunes. In the dying days of the U.S.S.R., Palmer had watched as his old adversaries in Soviet intelligence shoveled billions from the state treasury into private accounts across Europe and the U.S. It was one of history’s greatest heists.
…Eighteen years before Special Counsel Robert Mueller began his investigation into foreign interference in a U.S. election, Palmer warned Congress about Russian “political donations to U.S. politicians and political parties to obtain influence.” What was at stake could well be systemic contagion: Russian values might infect and then weaken the moral defense systems of American politics and business.
…Newspaper articles in the fall of 1999 showed how billions in Russian money, some of it seemingly tied to an alleged crime boss, had landed in the Bank of New York. These sums startled Bill Clinton’s administration, which readied tough new anti-money-laundering bills, designed to stiffen banking regulations.
…For all the new fastidiousness of the financial system, foreigners could still buy penthouse apartments or mansions anonymously and with ease, by hiding behind shell companies set up in states such as Delaware and Nevada. Those states, along with a few others, had turned the registration of shell companies into a hugely lucrative racket—and it was stunningly simple to arrange such a Potemkin front on behalf of a dictator, a drug dealer, or an oligarch. …Procuring a library card requires more identification in many states than does creating an anonymous shell company.
…Birkenfeld described how he had ensconced himself in the gilded heart of the American plutocracy, attending yacht regattas and patronizing art galleries. He would mingle with the wealthy and strike up conversation. “What I can do for you is zero,” he would say, and then pause before the punch line: “Actually, it’s three zeroes. Zero income tax, zero capital-gains tax, and zero inheritance tax.” Birkenfeld’s unsubtle approach succeeded wildly, as did his bank. As part of an agreement with the Justice Department, UBS admitted to hiding assets totaling some $20 billion in American money.
…The defining document of our era is the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010. The ruling didn’t just legalize anonymous expenditures on political campaigns. It redefined our very idea of what constitutes corruption, limiting it to its most blatant forms: the bribe and the explicit quid pro quo. Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority opinion crystallized an ever more prevalent ethos of indifference—the collective shrug in response to tax avoidance by the rich and by large corporations, the yawn that now greets the millions in dark money spent by invisible billionaires to influence elections.
…In 2017, Reuters examined the sale of Trump Organization properties in Florida. It found that 77 of 2,044 units in the developments were owned by Russians. But that was likely an incomplete portrait. More than one-third of the units had been sold to corporate vehicles, which can readily hide the identity of the true owner. As Oliver Bullough remarks, “They might have belonged to Vladimir Putin, for all anyone else could know.”
Kleptocracy Is on the Rise in America – The Atlantic
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Finding all migrant children separated from their families may be impossible, feds say
The Trump administration said in a court filing that reuniting thousands of migrant children separated from their parents or guardians at the U.S.-Mexico border may not be “within the realm of the possible.”
…Sualog said her office doesn’t have the resources to track down the children, whose numbers could be thousands more than the official estimate.
…“The Trump administration’s response is a shocking concession that it can’t easily find thousands of children it ripped from parents, and doesn’t even think it’s worth the time to locate each of them,” he said in a statement. “The administration also doesn’t dispute that separations are ongoing in significant numbers.”
Finding all migrant children separated from their families may be impossible, feds say
Jeezus f’ing Krrrreyest
Two Towns Forged an Unlikely Bond. Now, ICE Is Severing the Connection – Bloomberg
Workers, not employers, have been saddled with the brunt of the punishment when companies are caught employing undocumented immigrants. The main reason is that they’re easier to prosecute. If someone is caught working without proper employment status, he or she can be prosecuted relatively easily for using fraudulent documents. When going after companies, prosecutors have to show that the employer knew that the workers didn’t have legal status and employed them anyway—a much harder case to make.
…About 8,500 people live in Mount Pleasant, Iowa, and for the past five years or so, the town has averaged 200 to 300 job openings on any given day.
…The job crunch has been intense for years all over town, but increased scrutiny from ICE has made filling open slots even more challenging.
***
…In the statehouse he’s considered a moderate on immigration issues, refusing to follow some colleagues who take a harder, more nativist line. He knows businesses in his district need those workers, and he insists he’s eager to embrace them as neighbors. But why don’t they embrace Mount Pleasant? “Don’t get me wrong,” says Heaton, who’ll retire from the legislature in 2019. “The only thing that upsets me is if they’re coming, they need to blend. I don’t need ‘barrios.’ I don’t need these certain sectors where everything is still the way it was where they came from. If you’re going to meld, then meld.”
By owning up to these mixed feelings, Heaton is a true local representative, voicing opinions that a lot of others share but won’t acknowledge on the record.
…“Who the hell would pull up from where they live,” Heaton wondered, “start out on a multithousand-mile journey, heading north to illegally enter the United States? Who is it that would leave their town, split their family, the whole bit? They must be living in terrible, terrible conditions. I can’t imagine.”
***
…Urizar had been in Mount Pleasant almost three years when Walfred started attending middle school in Uspantán. The boy told his mother the school was crawling with gangs. Older boys were pressuring him to run drugs, he said. Celia was horrified. She spoke to Urizar, and they agreed that the time had come. The boy was old enough to join his father in Mount Pleasant.
…Urizar dreams of a day when all of his children will be able to travel back and forth between the two countries without fear, when they can see their parents whenever they want, and when hard work pays off in peace of mind.
That day isn’t today.
***
…Young’s pastor at the First Presbyterian Church, the Reverend Trey Hegar, had helped arrange the [unofficial] adoption [of the now deported Urizar’s son,] and his congregation raised money to help pay Young’s expenses. When the details were being worked out, Hegar had met with the members of Young’s family, trying to calm their concerns, which were far from superficial. Young might be as sharp as any 82-year-old you’ll ever meet, but she has a bad back, has trouble with stairs, and tires easily. Her family worried that the stress of taking on an undocumented child might seriously erode her health. Even Young understood that fear. But the idea of the boy living alone, orphaned in Mount Pleasant, violated her concept of fairness. “I said, ‘It’ll kill her not to do it,’ Hegar recalled. “This is what she’s living for.”
…Young ducked into the living room to introduce herself and found them slouching on the couches, absorbed in their cellphones.
…“OK, fellas, we’re gonna have a little lesson here,” she said, ordering them to put down their phones. She explained that when a lady walks into a room, they should stand. She offered them a chance for redemption, introducing herself once again. “This is where you say to me, ‘Hi, nice to meet you!’ ”
She truly hated those cellphones, and she didn’t like how Walfred seemed to be adopting his friends’ obsession with them. When the other boys left, she asked Walfred if she’d embarrassed him. “No, Grandma,” he told her. “You were great.”
…As they fished out Walfred’s checkbook, Tangkhpanya took an immediate and protective interest in the boy. She offered an impromptu lesson in balancing an account—a service she’d offered countless newcomers over the years. “People need someone to show them how to do these things,” she says.
…His lobby doubles as a Trailways bus station, and for many foreign-born workers, the Heidelberg is the gateway to Mount Pleasant. Like Tangkhpanya, he’s become an informal guide for newcomers—another example of how the second wave of immigrants is melding with the first, some of whom have created a commercial support network that can be invisible to those who don’t need to look for it.
Next to the front counter, a bank of four red telephones sits on a table, and these attract a steady stream of customers, most of them Spanish speakers who’ve just collected their paychecks. They use the phones to wire cash to places such as Guatemala and Mexico.
…This is why Walfred asked Young to bring him to the Heidelberg. He wanted to send some of his spending money back to his father.
***
…Most of the 32 workers arrested at the Mount Pleasant concrete plant in May are still waiting for their court hearings. Even Urizar, from his house in Chocox, continues to unintentionally tie up courtrooms in Iowa, and his case illustrates the confusion and clutter that permeate the system. When he was transferred to the Hardin County Detention Center, his lawyers weren’t told about the move and had to search for him. Later, at his final hearing before a judge in late June, Urizar didn’t appear in court; no one showed up at the prison to drive him to the courtroom, three hours away. Then Urizar’s lawyers weren’t able to confirm his deportation until six weeks after he’d been flown to Guatemala. Meanwhile, a criminal case against him continues, charging him with illegal reentry into the U.S. and the fraudulent misuse of identification documents, including a Social Security number. His attorneys have repeatedly tried to get the case dismissed, arguing that Urizar’s constitutional rights to due process and legal representation are violated because he can no longer consult with counsel. As of late December, the criminal case against Urizar was still active.
Two Towns Forged an Unlikely Bond. Now, ICE Is Severing the Connection – Bloomberg
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There Is No Crisis At The Border – And DHS Stats Prove It
Due to a combination of changed demographics and improved economic conditions, the era of large-scale illegal migration by Mexicans to the U.S. – the reason cited for building a wall – is over. Today, in a phenomenon that began in the past five years, most of the people apprehended at the border are from Central America and reflect primarily the violent conditions in those countries.
…The “crisis,” from the perspective of administration officials, is that people from Central America are seeking asylum. It is not just an issue of illegal entry, since, as discussed earlier, the data show Border Patrol apprehensions of family units have actually declined slightly compared with the same period last year. Members of the administration would also like to discourage individuals from going to a lawful port of entry to avail themselves of the right under U.S. and international law to apply for asylum. Donald Trump made that clear in a tweet that declared individuals should be sent home without access to “judges or court cases.”
There Is No Crisis At The Border – And DHS Stats Prove It
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Where Does Illegal Immigration Mostly Occur? Here’s What The Data Tell Us
When it comes to people in the country without proper documentation, the majority of them didn’t cross the Mexican border at all. Most of them came to the United States legally — but then don’t leave.
…Visa overstays have outnumbered people who enter the country illegally at the Southern border every year since 2007, according to a report by the Center for Migration Studies. The report’s authors estimate that the number of total visa overstays was 600,000 more than the total number of border crossers and that in 2014, visa overstays accounted for two-thirds of all new undocumented immigrants.
…Those caught by the U.S. government can apply for asylum if they can claim a credible fear that their lives would be in danger by returning to their home countries; some immigrants, in fact, turn themselves in to federal agents to do so. Apprehensions of people attempting to cross the border illegally, however, far outnumber the number of people requesting asylum at the border.
…It is unclear how many of these migrants applied for asylum after arriving in the U.S.[emphasis: Peanut Gallery]— but the total number of asylum cases has been increasing as well.
“A growing percentage of border crossers in recent years have originated in the Northern Triangle states of Central America,” wrote Robert Warren and Donald Kerwin of the Center for Migration Studies. “These migrants are fleeing pervasive violence, persecution and poverty, and a large number do not seek to evade arrest, but present themselves to border officials and request political asylum. Many are de facto refugees, not illegal border crossers,” the authors wrote.
Where Does Illegal Immigration Mostly Occur? Here’s What The Data Tell Us : NPR
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The NRA Welcomed Maria Butina—Even As She Worked to Arm Anti-American Thugs Abroad – Mother Jones
Butina wasn’t just a gun rights fan who attended American University, romanced a veteran Republican operative, and pitched US-Russian collaboration at NRA conventions.
…In the immediate aftermath of the invasion and annexation in March 2014, Butina denounced retaliatory sanctions by the Obama administration and traveled to Crimea to promote the arming of pro-Russian separatists. Her efforts there included pledging support to a leader of a militia group that violently seized a Crimean news outlet it deemed “pro-American” and swiftly repurposed for a Kremlin propaganda operation.
…Butina’s role in Crimea raises additional questions about why the NRA—known historically for its hawkish “freedom loving” image—spent years getting close with a Russian national who was doing work hostile to US national security interests.
…In America, she enthused about gun rights and international friendship. But in Moscow, she used fervently nationalistic rhetoric to endorse the takeover in Crimea and called for backing Russian separatists fighting elsewhere in Ukraine. Ethnic Russians throughout the region, she said, were being culturally oppressed—a theme long pushed by Putin’s regime.
…During an audience Q&A at a political conference in Las Vegas, she asked about foreign policy. Specifically, she wanted to know whether the candidate at the podium might back off from “damaging” US sanctions against Russia.
The answer Donald Trump gave Butina was yes.
The NRA Welcomed Maria Butina—Even As She Worked to Arm Anti-American Thugs Abroad – Mother Jones
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Comments From The Peanut Gallery 