Yesterday, I learned that over the weekend, the chyron atop a news outlet’s building in Surgut, a Russian city far from Moscow, read (in Russian) “Putin is huylo and a thief.” “Huylo” is NSFW and one translator says, “Think of the worst, most obscene possible expression for a very bad person—and that’s the word you need.” Over recent years Russia has put a lot of money and effort into training hackers. I’m sure Putin never expected his face to be eaten. Also, just so y’all know, I am not going to try to keep up with the Trump** trials here. If there is an earth-shaking annoucement midday I may address it in a comment. But the first video in the cideo thread will always be from a legal expert, which means it likely will be about Trump**. Depending on what’s happening, it may not be the only one.
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Short Takes –
Crooks & Liars – Fight Breaks Out Among Russian Forces That Leaves 20 Dead, 40 Injured
Quote – Around 8:00 p.m. [on Saturday, August 12], in the Central Park area of the village [of Mykhailivka], a verbal altercation took place between Kadyrivians and Dagestanis from another division of the Russian Armed Forces. During the quarrel, one of the occupants opened fire in the air from a small automatic weapon. In the course of the fight, one of the occupiers was inflicted with numerous stab wounds, incompatible with life. This led to an open confrontation between units using underbarrel grenade launchers GP-25 “Koster”, hand grenades and small automatic weapons. Click through for story. “Friendly fire.” I often go to the original when a story is from a single source, but I thought I would take their word for this information from the Ukrainian government site. I trust Ukraine … but it’s also under attack – and as my intro noted, Russia has hackers.
The 19th – After hottest summer on record, heat-related illnesses are now being tracked nationwide
Quote – “Each year heat kills more people than any other type of extreme weather event, and the heat is getting worse,” said John Balbus, acting director of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Climate Change and Health Equity. Balbus’ department, in partnership with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, is responsible for developing and maintaining the dashboard. Balbus told The 19th that the dashboard has been in development for about a year and was initially inspired by a similar dashboard that tracks opioid overdoses. Click through for details. I’m glad someone is taking climate change seriously. It’s sad that this is necessary – but it is. The highest temperature at which a human can survive is probably lower than you think it is.
Parody Project – Corruption: Parody of Truckin’ (This really is unfair to Democrats, both in the White House and Congress, who are working so hard to keep democracy.)
Pretty Leopard Gets Stuck In Tight Spot
Beau – Let’s talk about 2 things falling in Russia….
Glenn Kirschner – Trump arguably violates conditions of pretrial release AND tries to insult his way out of a DC trial
The Lincoln Project – Special Counsel Jack Smith on Trump’s Third Indictment
Robert Reich – Why Thousands of Workers Are on Strike
The Ring of Fire – Police Killings Set Record High In 2022 & Arizona’s Secret Surveillance Program
Lion Dog Was Invisible To Everyone
[This is kind of the opposite of a shaggy dog story. It doesn’t build expectations in a certain direction. But it does have a punch line.]
Beau – Let’s talk about Finland, Russia, and David….
Yesterday, the radio opera was “Li zite ‘ngalera” by Leonardo Vinci, neither of which/whom I had ever heard of (Of course I know who Leonardo da Vinci is, but this is an 18th century namealike.) It is a comedy; the title translates to “The Newlyweds;” the libretto is in the Neapolitan dialect (Neapolitan composers as a group are credited with re-shaping operas in the direction of the form we recognize from the 19th and early 20th centuries.) The plot is easily described: Carlo leaves his fiancee Belluccia for greener pastures; she follows him disguised as a man; she ends up cutting him out with his new flame and s couple of other girls and he ends up back with her. But “easily described” is not the same thing as simple. I can see, and you likely can too, all kinds of complications, not even including the one that Belluccia’s father is furious with Carlo, and she has to save his life from her Dad. It premiered in 1722. Handel had left Italy (where he studied Italian opera) in 1710 for the court of Prince George of Hanover (later George I of England), but since he wrote a good number of Italian and Italian-style operas in England and was very successful until “The Beggars’ Opera” hit one out of the park (causing Handel to switch to oratorios), it’s not impossible that he knew it. I didn’t hear any influence on Handel in the music, but I did hear the beginnings of the recitativo-aria pattern which was standard by the time of Mozart. (I also heard some “gender-bending” which was pretty standard in opera at the time. Carlo sung by a woman may have been an attempt to replace a castrato role, but that would not explain the presence of a female character sung by a tenor.) The production is from La Scala from this year.
Since Pat B is away for the weekend on a family outing, I am going to slip in a couple of TJIs which I would ordinarily have sent her.
TJI #1 – (A response to DeSaster’s word salad while being questioned about his travesties of education policy) DeSantis was trying to wrap himself in the Cloak of Invisibility but instead slipped on the Hoodie of Absurdity. – Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
TJI #2 – Justice Alito secured his place in history as the Court’s cranky old man yelling at Americans to “get off my lawn!” – Robert Hubbell
Off to visit Virgil – will post when I return as always.
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Short Takes –
AP News – Biden openly acknowledges 7th grandchild, the daughter of son Hunter and an Arkansas woman
Quote – “Our son Hunter and Navy’s mother, Lunden, are working together to foster a relationship that is in the best interests of their daughter, preserving her privacy as much as possible going forward,” Biden said in a statement. It was his first acknowledgement of the child. This is not a political issue, it’s a family matter,” he said. “Jill and I only want what is best for all of our grandchildren, including Navy.”… The president, who has made a commitment to family central to his public persona, has faced increasing criticism from political rivals and pundits for failing to acknowledge the granddaughter. According to a person familiar with the matter, he was taking the cue from his son while the legal proceedings played out. The person spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private matters. Click through for story. I could have told you that Joe would do this just as soon as Hunter taking responsibility for his actions got to the point it has now reached. And not a moment sooner. (And I can also tell you with no additional evidence but with complete moral certainty that he is incredibly relieved that the time has come. Joe’s primary motivator is love – it’s that simple.)
Letters from an American – July 28, 2023
Quote – On Wednesday, soldiers of the presidential guard overthrew Niger’s democratically elected president, Mohamed Bazoum, and replaced him with a military general, Abdourahmane Tchiani…. Niger is a key player in the struggle to establish democracy in Africa, and Bazoum’s overthrow is part of that larger story. Niger is a landlocked country about twice the size of Texas in the center of the Sahel region in Africa, a dry grassland region that crosses the continent from the Atlantic to the Red Sea…. That region has also been plagued by violent Islamic groups, and strongmen promising to restore order have launched successful coups in the countries of Mali and Burkina Faso, which are Niger’s neighbors. (When Vice President Kamala Harris went to Ghana in March, her visit was partly to shore up democracy in that country, which is on the edge of the Sahel region and under pressure from militants in Sahel countries.) Click through for details. Reuters had this story and so did MSNBC, though not in the headlines. I didn’t see it anywhere else, though I didn’t look everywhere, and of course, Heather has all the history. I find this scary on a level with Trump**.
Glenn Kirschner – Rudy Giuliani admits in court filing that HE LIED about GA election workers Shaye Moss & Ruby Freeman
The Lincoln project is so hot just now that some of them will have to take their time to get posted)
The Lincoln Project – Last Week in the Republican Party – July 25, 2023
VoteVets – Travel Ban
Farron Balanced – Ted Cruz Picked A Fight With Barbie And Lost
Tiny Kitten Becomes An Adventure Cat Like His Brother
Yesterday, Heather Cox Richardson’s “Letter from an American” for the previous night turned out to be a bit unsettling. Netanyahu has managed to push a measure through the Knesset limiting the power of the courts (to check excesses by the executive. It look like “Fascist Jewish State” is no longer an oxymoron. The letter also highlights, I’m sure without intending to, the superiority of the Political Compass, with its four directions, over the left-right distinction to describe political positions. Heather has to say “hard right” when what she really means is “authoritation right,” which I realize is longer, but has an exact definition, which “hard right” does not, and is therefore more clear. Also, as if that wasn’t enough, she touches on Abbott’s war crimes, Gym Jordan’s House Judiciary Committee, and Russia both bombing Odessa and raising the upper limit draft age. Here’s the link in case anyone wants a deeper dive (and hopefully isn’t too depressed already.)
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Short Takes –
Common Dreams – Heatwave Chevron? As US Bakes, Former Meteorologist Names Heatwaves After Oil Companies
Quote – “I’m naming heatwaves to highlight this worsening climate problem and perhaps save lives by getting the public to focus on this weather threat,” [Guy Walton] wrote in an April blog post. “This year I’m naming major heatwaves after oil companies to shame them in the process and to identify culprits that are exacerbating these deadly systems.” Heatwaves are the deadliest type of extreme weather event in the U.S., according to The Weather Channel, killing more people on average each year than tornadoes or hurricanes put together. Yet they do not receive names like hurricanes or wildfires, and some experts have argued that changing this might help people take them more seriously and save lives. Click through for story and evidence. The concept is not original to him – Seville in Spain has been doing it – but IMO it’s a good idea whose time has come.
The Inquirer – Why are Texas and Florida building their own large, sadistic armies?
Quote – This crucible of blood and bone is playing out against the cold slashing metal of barbed wire strung out along the Rio Grande River that divides the United States from Mexico in west Texas. The actors are a new breed of troops, accountable not to Washington but to an ambitious Republican governor in Austin, enforcing his Fox News bromides with brutal force.,,, In a story first broken by the Houston Chronicle’s Benjamin Wermund, based on a whistleblowing email from a state trooper complaining of inhumane conditions at Eagle Pass, and then amplified by the Times’ reporting, we’ve learned the past week that troops under the massive Texas state border operation dubbed Operation Lone Star are committing shocking acts that arguably add up to domestic war crimes. Click through for details. The obvious answer to the question in the headline would appear to be that two governors (two for now, anyway) want to be absolute monarchs in their states and are forming armies to enforce that. But we can’t rule out the possibility that, unchecked, we could be looking at potential insurrection. And a possible shooting Civil War – again.
Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”
I apologize for picking a topic which is presented in a podcast – but with MTG (and other) beginning to call for “deadly force” to “defend out borders,” darn it, it’s important. Let me quickly go over the material here which is being presented. First the podcast itself, which runs 38:37 including credits. then there is the accompanying column, which summarizes the three interviews with the three experts, but does not include all details.
The above is if you listen to the podcast on this page (or at all really.) But I tracked down the precise YouTube link to this particular podcast, and discovered, as I hoped, that it has CC. That means you can watch the captions as you listen, or alternatively you can click the three dots to the right of the “Save” button, select “show transcript” from the short dropdown menu, and quickly load the full transcript. It isn’t perfect – the name “Mend Mariwany” gets transcribed as “ment marijuani,” for instance, and I have no idea what he means by “and Medellin” except that it has to be French to be pronounced that way – but it is more detailed than the summary, by all means. I know, it’s annoying, but there really is a way to get the information, regardless of one’s abilities or preferences.
Around the world, borders between countries are getting tougher. Governments are making it more difficult to move, especially for certain groups of vulnerable people. This comes with a message, subtle or not: that people are moving to higher-income countries to take advantage of the welfare system, or the jobs of people already living there.
But evidence shows that much of what we think about migration – particularly those of us in Europe, North America and Australia – is wrong. Political narratives, often replicated in the media, shape the conversation and public attitudes toward migration.
As the researchers we speak to in this episode of The Conversation Weekly tell us, these narratives are not the full picture. Our interviewees explain what migration really looks like around the world, what drives people to uproot their lives and move, and how some countries in Africa are welcoming refugees.
Challenging the narrative
Heaven Crawley, a researcher at UN University Centre for Policy Research based in New York, has been interested in migration since the late 1980s. Then, the breakup of the former Yugoslavia caused what was often referred to as a refugee “crisis” in Europe.
Language like “crisis” has been a part of the discourse on migration for years. But Crawley thinks of this in a particular way: “It’s absolutely fair to say that there is a crisis associated with migration. It’s normally for the people who are actually moving, because they’re often in situations where there are huge inequalities in the right to move.”
Crawley shared that migration, while “intrinsic to our economies and the way we function”, is not actually the norm. Most people don’t migrate, and those who do mostly move within their country of origin.
She explained how, in Europe especially, perceptions of those who do migrate are often clouded by a narrative that people who move, legally, for work are “good” migrants. Conversely, people who move without visa permission or through clandestine means are viewed as “bad” migrants.
In reality, people moving for any reason is usually a force for good for the country they move to and the people they encounter, Crawley suggested. “People are coming to realise that actually, migration can be very positive in terms of their day-to-day lives, who they mix with, who their family are married to.”
When people decide to migrate, whether seeking economic opportunities or to escape violence or persecution, there are a number of factors influencing where they go. Valentina Di Iasio, a research fellow at the University of Southampton in the UK, has researched what makes people choose one country over another.
Di Iasio and her colleague Jackie Wahba wanted to investigate the theory of the “welfare magnet”, that people choose to migrate to countries where the welfare state is more generous.
But looking specifically at asylum seekers, they found that the strongest “pull factor” attracting people to particular countries is social networks. In other words, it’s not about the economy or welfare state, it’s about “having the possibility to rely on a community that is already there and already established”.
Di Iasio also noted that many countries have policies preventing asylum seekers from working when they first arrive. But she said these policies often backfire, both for people arriving, and the host country’s overall economy: “If you ban asylum seekers from employment, this leads people … to become more dependent on public spending in the short term, and this is not good for anyone.”
Migration in the global south
It’s impossible to understand the global picture of migration if we only look at specific routes – for example, from India to the UK, or from Mexico to the US. According to Crawley, about one third of global migration happens within the global north (Europe, North America, Australia and parts of Asia), one third happens within the global south (South America, Africa and parts of Asia), and the remaining third is between the two.
With that in mind, we spoke to Christopher Changwe Nshimbi, a researcher at the University of Pretoria in South Africa, about a region with frequent movement across borders. He studies the relationship between migration, development and regional integration (countries forming economic and trade relationships with each other) in Africa.
Nshimbi said that more open borders are beneficial to regional integration in Africa. They allow people to move where their skills are needed, and to send remittances (money) back home to family, often within the same region.
And yet, some countries are tightening their migration policies. Part of this, Nshimbi explained, is even influenced by attitudes in the global north. For example, development funding from the European Union is often tied to efforts to curb migration from Africa to the EU. Nshimbi said that when migrants are seen as a threat to high-income European countries: “The tendency seems to be to try and influence the movement … of Africans within the African continent.”
But he said this approach is misguided, and that funding development in low-income countries “doesn’t necessarily translate into people stopping migrating”. In some cases, this funding to stop migration has been used in a way that causes instability and violence – and ultimately, more migration.
Looking toward the future
Nshimbi is now researching how the effects of climate change, such as extreme weather patterns, are leading people to migrate. While this will present challenges for governments, Nshimbi said the history of migration on the continent gives him reason to be optimistic.
He said he wonders why European countries talk about refugee “crises” when countries in Africa regularly host many more refugees. Citing the example of Uganda, he said: “There are shining examples on the continent of countries that, though poor, host large numbers of refugees.”
Again referencing Uganda, Nshimbi said that some countries are used to hosting refugees, providing them with land and resources so they can participate in local economies until they move elsewhere: “A poor country, but they take care of them.”
Listen to the full episode of The Conversation Weekly to learn more about migration around the world, what factors drive people to move, and what some countries in Africa are doing to welcome refugees.
This episode was written and produced by Avery Anapol and Mend Mariwany, who is also the executive producer of The Conversation Weekly. Eloise Stevens does our sound design, and our theme music is by Neeta Sarl.
============================================================== Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, it’s sad but not really surprising to learn that virtually no one, anywhere in the world, has a government which unanimously grasps the value which migration provides to society – any society. And it is much easier to piggy-back on people’s perfectly normal fear of the unknown and turn that into bigotry than it is to actually research, learn, and turn that learning into education which produces welcoming attitudes and thereby helps everyone. Helping everyone attracts neither big donor money not votes.
