BIG RAT GOES VIRAL PEERING OVER TURKEYS INSIDE ATLANTA AREA KROGER’S MARKET

by BLACK ENTERPRISE Editors

December 26, 202112935

https://www.dailydot.com/author/brookesjoberg/

An employee at an Atlanta area Kroger’s supermarket took on a big rat who made its debut and hopped all over frozen turkeys and other trimmings in a refrigerated case.

According to the Daily Dot, a TikToker named @dblack15, posted the now viral video with more than 5 million views of the infectious disease carrying rodent taking a peek at the frozen foods while perched on a freezer before diving in and jumping around, apparently trying to find good food to gnaw on.

While the view for the rat was a good one with plump turkeys for the picking, for the rest of us watching the video, it’s revolting.

The rat jumped from case to case, from turkeys to frozen meat all while an employee tried unsuccessfully to trap the rat in a trash can. Not sure that would even work, but he gets an “A” for his effort to salvage the situation. With a fitting song called ‘Who Want Smoke?’ featuring G Herbo, Lil Durk & 21 Savage, playing on the video, it’s safe to say that the damage is done since the video has gone viral. While it’s not clear where the actual store is, the TikToker posted the Atlanta Kroger was in DeKalb county, Georgia.

Commenters had a field day giving their take on the situation.

“Publix would never,” said one viewer.

“Nah, he just works there inspecting the turkey to make sure they haven’t expired. He should ge a raise,” quipped another.






Although viewers made light of the situation, it certainly isn’t a laughing matter.

In fact, just last month, we reported that Ricardo Land, a TikToker who posted a video of a herd of rats flooding the fast-food Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen chain at 409 8th St. SE, in D.C.’s Eastern Market, got fired from his delivery job for exposing the restaurant when some agile critters were seen creeping up a wall inside the kitchen.

 

Since the video took flight on social media, the health department shut the facility down citing   “health code violations.”

Krogers has yet to respond to the jaw-dropping video.

NGO: Impunity preventing resolution of human rights crisis in Mexico

Online News EditorDecember 26, 2021

 

By Juan Manuel Ramirez

Mexico City, Dec 26 (EFE).- The human rights crisis in which Mexico has been mired for more than a decade has not been reversed in 2021, the same lack of success as in earlier years, due to persistent impunity and violence, civil organizations told EFE.

“The available public indicators confirm it. We’re going to finish out 2021 with more than 35,000 murders during the year, which means that violence has not slacked off and is continuing at very high levels,” the director of the Miguel Agustin Pro Juarez Human Rights Center (Centro Prodh), Santiago Aguirre, told EFE in an interview.

In addition, he said that other indicators such as the number of disappeared people “remain at extraordinarily high levels.”

Aguirre said that the government of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador “cannot speak about the disappearances and the violence as just something inherited from the past. On the contrary, they are a legacy of the present. There have been more than 20,000 people disappeared so far during this administration,” which took office on Dec. 1, 2018.

A report presented in early October by the Mexico Evalua analysis center said that 94.8 percent of the cases reported in Mexico remain unprosecuted as a result of “a system that does not have the tools for prioritization or enough capabilities.”

The report said that the prosecutors offices and their officials have collapsed and that they are launching fewer and fewer investigations.

“On the national level, there are 11 prosecutors, nine experts and 14 ministerial police officers per 100,000 inhabitants, on average,” the organization said.

According to figures from the National Search Commission (CNB), since 1964 Mexico has experienced more then 95,000 disappearances – that is, people who have never been located – the great majority of them since the start of the military’s war on drug trafficking launched in 2006.

Aguirre said that two factors have been of influence in the crisis of violence and human rights violations: the required changes to the justice system have not been made, “the transfer of prosecutors offices to attorney general offices has been disappointing,” and investments have not been made in the area of seeing justice carried out, above all “in the public ministries and prosecutors offices, which is truly the core of impunity in Mexico.”

He added that “It’s not enough to understand the seriousness of the situation reigning in those institutions. Another factor contributing to this crisis being unresolved is the focus on a very centralist and strongly militarized security model.”

Aguirre said that the focus of the current administration “with the armed forces to be the ones taking charge of public safety,” including via … the National Guard, “is not providing the hoped-for results.”

In addition, this poses a risk for human rights because “the strengthening of military activities is happening without the existence of adequate counterweights.”

He said that the National Human Rights Commission is in a “greatly weakened” state and is “losing autonomy, (having) assumed a stance little compatible with the strict monitoring of human rights.”

Despite that, Aguirre emphasized positive actions like the recognition by the undersecretary for Human Rights, Alejandro Encinas, “that there is an H.R. crisis in the country” and certain actions by the National Search Commission.

He also stressed the emphasis the current administration has placed on the issue of inequality, a relevant matter for the H.R. agenda, and measures like the labor reform and the increase in salaries,” but he added that “regrettably, those positive actions are not sufficient.”

The Centro Prodh representatives emphasized that after three years of the current administration, one cannot yet say that violence and the human rights crisis are just a legacy of the past.

He said that although it is true that a huge crisis was inherited by the Lopez Obrador government, “it’s also true that so far during the current administration there have been more than 20,000 disappearances and that … (is) the responsibility of the current authorities.”

“After three years of government, this administration cannot continue with the narrative that (it is dealing with) problems of the earlier administrations,” the executive director of Amnesty International Mexico, Edith Olivares Ferreto, said in an interview with EFE.

She said that when Lopez Obrador took office, “Mexico was beset by a human rights crisis from which it has been unable to emerge and which it’s not going to get out of overnight.”

 

Credit Suisse may take legal action against SoftBank over Greensill debt

December 27, 2021

CNA – Credit Suisse is seeking information through the United States (US) courts which could lead to it taking legal action in Britain against SoftBank Group Corp to recover funds it said are owed to its Greensill-linked supply chain finance funds, US court documents show.

Switzerland’s second-largest bank has been working to recover funds from the collapse of some USD10 billion in funds linked to insolvent supply chain finance firm Greensill.

Credit Suisse declined comment, while SoftBank did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Swiss bank has been focusing on some USD2.3 billion in loans provided by Greensill, which imploded in March, to three counterparties including SoftBank-backed Katerra, for which late payments have accrued.

Katerra filed for bankruptcy in June, and had estimated liabilities of USD1 billion to USD10 billion and assets of USD500 million to USD1 billion, according to court filings at the time.

In a petition filed on Thursday with a US federal court in San Francisco, Credit Suisse is seeking information it said would support a lawsuit it plans to file against SoftBank and other affiliates in Britain over USD440 million it said are owed by Katerra.

“The documents the Subpoena requests are relevant to an anticipated court proceeding in England against, among potentially other parties, SoftBank Group Corp. and certain of its affiliates including SoftBank Vision Fund LP, SoftBank Vision Fund II-2 LP, SVF Abode (Cayman) Limited, SVF II Abode (Cayman) Limited, and SVF Habitat (Cayman) Limited,” attorneys for the bank said in the filings.

Credit Suisse on Thursday filed a section 1782 Discovery, aiming to obtain documents and communications exchanged between SoftBank and Katerra. This statute allows foreign parties to apply to US courts to obtain evidence for use in proceedings.

The Swiss bank is seeking to establish what SoftBank executives, including chair and chief executive Masayoshi Son, knew about Katerra’s restructuring plans by subpoenaing documents through the US courts.

The Financial Times first reported the move on Friday.

How American conservatives normalize anti-Semitism

BY JOHN K. WILSON, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 12/26/21 
THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL

The definition of anti-Semitism, and who gets condemned for it, has become a major political battle in recent years. The Trump administration required colleges to prohibit a controversial definition of anti-Semitism that included criticism of the Israeli government. Ironically, Donald Trump himself recently used anti-Semitic tropes in an interview that condemned Jewish Americans, but this conservative anti-Semitism receives remarkably little coverage from rightwing media outlets. Yet the belief that progressives are the ones primarily responsible for ignoring anti-Semitism is common.

In his recent essay for The Hill, “How American progressives normalize anti-Semitism,” law professor Steven Lubet quotes an anonymous “well-regarded First Amendment scholar” he deems guilty of normalizing “thinly veiled racism.” Since I am the scholar Lubet quoted, I want to defend my position publicly. While the many people who have never heard of me would dismiss the term “well-regarded,” and everyone should question whether my personal beliefs represent the entire progressive movement, my core complaint with Lubet’s analysis is that he seems to accuse anyone who disagrees with his assessments of anti-Semitism of normalizing hatred.

Lubet’s key evidence of me normalizing anti-Semitism is my largely indifferent response to a Virginia state legislator who reacted to a media report that Mossad had known two decades ago that the Bush administration was exaggerating claims about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. As Lubet noted, this legislator “tweeted the fevered accusation that Israel was ‘enabling oil wars burning our planet.’”

While Lubet calls this a “blood libel” (which it definitely isn’t, unless someone thinks Mossad used the war in Iraq to supply its cafeteria), I see it as an example of conspiratorial thinking about government agencies. The truth is that secret organizations such as the KGB, the CIA, and Mossad are powerful and sometimes malicious, which leads some people to imagine conspiracy theories and attribute vast power to them. No, we can’t ignore the long history of anti-Semitism and how it inspires conspiracies about powerful Jews. But we also shouldn’t presume that every conspiracy theory involving Israel is inherently anti-Semitic.

Blaming Mossad for the Bush administration’s war in Iraq is certainly misguided and conspiratorial, and perhaps it is anti-Semitism. But I prefer to see more evidence of anti-Semitic motivation before I accuse a conspiracy nut of “blood libel.” I think we should compile extensive evidence before we attribute hateful intent to every bad idea blurted out on social media. I denounced Rutgers professor Michael Chikindas for his anti-Semitism because the evidence was overwhelming, but I think bigotry needs substantial proof.

One reason why I am reluctant to see anti-Semitism in every harsh critique of Israel is because of the widespread movement to silence criticism of the Israeli government by punishing such expression as a form of anti-Semitism. An exaggerated accusation of anti-Semitism isn’t a theoretical critique, but often the first step toward a call for censorship.

To understand the problem of anti-Semitism, we should focus more on truly influential figures (such as the former president of the United States) rather than minor ones, and be more careful to avoid knee-jerk assessments of bigotry over every stupid idea.

For example, I think Donald Trump is a white supremacist (and devoted an entire chapter in my book about him to make my case), but I would not assert that Trump’s false claims accusing Barack Obama of ordering the FBI to spy on him are evidence of racism. Sometimes a dumb conspiracy theory is just dumb, and not proof of bigotry, even when a bigot says it.

Still, Lubet is correct to worry that some people excuse anti-Semitism for political reasons when it’s committed by their ideological allies. His error is assuming that progressives are the ones normalizing anti-Semitism today.

Instead, the refusal to condemn bigotry is much more common today among conservatives. In a recent interview, Trump complained that “the Jewish people in the United States either don't like Israel or don't care about Israel” and denounced the “Jewish people that run the New York Times.” Trump’s anti-Semitism received some mainstream media attention, including The Hill’s headline: “Trump evokes antisemitic tropes, says Jewish Americans 'don't like Israel.”'

But conservatives who support Trump were notable for their silence. I searched FoxNews.com for any coverage of Trump’s discussion of Jews, and there was nothing — a remarkable omission for a network that obsessively covers nearly everything that Trump says and does. But a Fox News article a few days earlier did declare “Ilhan Omar part of 'systemic' anti-Semitism,” based on far weaker evidence than Trump’s own anti-Semitic tropes.

At a time when leftwing voices are regularly censored for criticizing Israeli policy using false accusations of anti-Semitism, while anti-Semitism by the most powerful conservative figures in the world goes largely ignored, I don’t see any need to apologize for my consistent, principled opposition to anti-Semitism. The hypocrites here are the conservatives who try to silence progressives under the pretense of fighting anti-Semitism while they continue to ignore Donald Trump’s bigotry.

John K. Wilson is the author of eight books, including “Patriotic Correctness: Academic Freedom and Its Enemies” and “President Trump Unveiled: Exposing the Bigoted Billionaire.”

Global terror up amid pandemic: US data

India faced more terrorist attacks in 2020 than in 2019, and 37% of these were in J&K, US state department data has shown. 

BECAUSE THEY ARE OCCUPYING KASHMIR KEEPING IT LOCKED DOWN

 Updated: 27 Dec 2021

Neeraj Chauhan

The data places India in fifth place after Afghanistan, Syria, DR Congo and Yemen on the number of terrorist attacks

NEW DELHI : Data compiled by the US state department shows that India faced more terrorist attacks in 2020 than the previous year, and 37% of these incidents were reported from Jammu and Kashmir.

Not just India, there was more brutality at the hands of terrorist outfits in 2020 worldwide, with overall 10,172 such attacks reported in 98 countries, 1,300 more attacks than in 2019.

The data, analysed by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, contracted with the US state department, places India in fifth place after Afghanistan, Syria, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Yemen in terms of the number of terrorist attacks.

Overall, 679 terrorism-related incidents were reported in India last year, in which 567 people were killed (2% of the global total of fatalities in terrorist attacks). In 2019, 655 terror attacks were recorded in the country.

Even though India was in the top 10 countries for most terrorism incidents last year, it is not in the top 10 for fatalities. Afghanistan reported a maximum of 1,722 terrorist attacks, followed by Syria (1,322) and the Democratic Republic of Congo (999).

The US data reveals that the states in India that experienced the most terror incidents were Jammu and Kashmir with 257 incidents (37.8%), Chhattisgarh with 145 incidents (21.4%), and Jharkhand with 69 incidents (10.2%).

However, the Union home ministry’s data on terror attacks was inconsistent with the US state department as it claimed that 244 terror attacks took place in Jammu and Kashmir in 2020, as shared by the home ministry in the parliament on 23 March.

The Centre has maintained that terror incidents have come down in J&K post abrogation of Article 370 on 5 August 2019, and the security forces have dismantled major terror networks in the Valley.

The ministry didn’t respond to a query on the difference in the number of terror-related incidents.

According to the US data, among perpetrators in India, CPI-Maoist continued to be the fourth-most destructive group in the world in 2020, with 298 incidents and 202 fatalities. The Maoists were behind 44% of the total (679) terror attacks in the country, while Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Hizbul Mujahideen were responsible for 6% of all incidents. It says 29% of terror incidents were not attributable to any outfit in India.

The US state department report further says that “Indian security agencies are effective in disrupting terrorist threats, although gaps remain in inter-agency intelligence and information sharing".

Snow falls in Seattle, Portland during rare cold snap

UPDATED: Sun., Dec. 26, 2021

A worker shovels snow from the stadium field before an NFL football game between the Seattle Seahawks and Chicago Bears, Sunday, Dec. 26, 2021, in Seattle. Snow blanketed parts of the Pacific Northwest on Sunday because of unusually cold temperatures in the region. Between 3 and 5 inches of snow fell in Seattle overnight and frigid temperatures in the region could tie or break records in the coming days. (Stephen Brashear)

Associated Press

SEATTLE – Snow fueled by unusually cold weather blanketed parts of the Pacific Northwest on Sunday, slowing travel but also providing a rare chance to sled and ski in the Seattle area.

Between 3 and 5 inches of snow fell in Seattle overnight Sunday. Observers in Port Angeles, across the Puget Sound on the Olympic Peninsula, reported about 11 inches of snow.

Another 2 to 5 inches of snow were expected to fall in parts of northwest and west central Washington during the day, but the heaviest snow had moved out of the Seattle area by the afternoon, the National Weather Service said.

One robin heads in to join others in an apple tree as they huddle against a winder storm, Sunday, Dec. 26, 2021, in Bellingham, Wash. Snow blanketed parts of the Pacific Northwest on Sunday because of unusually cold temperatures in the region. Between 3 and 5 inches of snow fell in Seattle overnight and frigid temperatures in the region could tie or break records in the coming days.Elaine Thompson/AP

Portland received a dusting of snow from the storm, but the city was expected to get another 2.5 inches by Monday morning, according to the weather service.

“It’s cold enough for snow and there’s enough moisture around, so we have enough snow to see snowfall across the area,” National Weather Service Seattle meteorologist Jacob DeFlitch told the Seattle Times.

Flights out of Seattle-Tacoma International Airport were delayed by an average of about an hour around midday, as planes were de-iced and the runways plowed, the airport said.

Near Grants Pass, Oregon, cars and trucks lined up near a checkpoint on northbound Interstate 5 as officials inspected trucks to see if they had chains to increase their traction on the snow. Trucks that did not have chains were not allowed to continue, the Daily Courier reported.

Cars and trucks line up on northbound Interstate 5 north of Grants Pass, Ore., while waiting at an Oregon Department of Transportation checkpoint enforcing chain requirements Sunday, Dec. 26, 2021. Semi-trucks that did not have chains installed were being turned around and not allowed to proceed past the Hugo, Ore., interchange. 

(Scott Stoddard/Grants Pass Daily Courier via AP)Scott Stoddard/AP

While plows worked to keep highways open, the Washington State Department of Transportation urged people to stay off the roads if possible, warning that roads will stay icy and snowy even after the snow stops because of the cold weather.

Frigid temperatures in the region could tie or break records in the coming days.

The Seattle area is expected to dip as low as 18 degrees Fahrenheit, the lowest in several years. Coeur d’Alene will drop to 5 below by Wednesday.

In Portland in the early part of the week, overnight temperatures will be bitter cold, getting down to the low 20s and high teens.

MIND AND BODY
CAN HUMANS LIVE FOREVER? WHY THERE MAY BE “NO LIMIT” TO LONGEVITY

Methuselahs in waiting.

METHUSELAH TREE

TOM SIEGFRIED AND KNOWABLE MAGAZINE
12.26.2021

IN 1875, Harper’s Weekly declared one Lomer Griffin of Lodi, Ohio, to be, “in all probability,” the oldest man in the union. His age, allegedly, was 116.

There were doubters. Lomer’s own wife, for instance, said he was only 103. And William John Thoms, an English author, and demographer who had just written a book on human longevity expressed skepticism of all such centenarian claims. A human’s maximum life span was about 100, Thoms asserted. Certainly, no claim of age over 110 had ever been verified.

“Evidence of any human being having attained the age, not of 130 or 140, but of 110 years … will be found upon examination utterly worthless,” he wrote.

Centuries of expert testimony (not to mention insurance company data) had established 100 years as the longest possible human lifetime, Thoms insisted — apart from a few “extremely rare” exceptions. He expressed bewilderment that some medical authorities still believed that a lifetime might exceed nature’s rigorously imposed limit.

Yet even today, almost a century and a half after Lomer Griffin’s death in 1878 (at age 119 by some accounts), scientists still dispute what the oldest human age could ever be — and whether there is any limit at all. After all, more than a dozen people are alive today with validated ages over 110 (and many more that are old are still around, just not documented). Yet in only one verified case has anyone lived beyond 120 — the French woman Jeanne Calment, who died in 1997 at age 122.

“The possible existence of a hard upper limit, a cap, on human lifetimes is hotly debated,” write Léo Belzile and coauthors in a paper to appear in Annual Review of Statistics and Its Application. “It is sustained and widespread interest in understanding the limit, if there is any, to the human life span.”

It’s a question with importance beyond just whether people lie about their age to get recognized by Guinness World Records. For one thing, the absence of an upper age limit could affect the viability of social security and pension systems. And determining whether human lifetimes have an inviolate maximum might offer clues to understanding aging, as well as aiding research on prolonging life.

But recent studies have not yet resolved the issue, instead of producing controversy arising from competing claims, note Belzile, a statistician at the business university HEC Montréal in Canada, and colleagues. Some of that controversy, they suggest, stems from incorrect methods of statistical analysis. Their own reanalysis of data on extreme lifetimes indicates that any longevity cap would be at least 130 years and possibly exceed 180. And some datasets, the authors report, “put no limit on the human life span.”

These analyses “suggest that the human life span lies well beyond any individual lifetime yet observed or that could be observed in the absence of major medical advances.”

Such conclusions contradict the old claims of Thoms and others that nature imposed a strict limit to lifetime. Thoms supported that view by quoting the 18th-century French naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon. Lifetime extremes did not seem to vary much from culture to culture despite differences in lifestyles or diets, Buffon pointed out. “It will at once be seen that the duration of life depends neither upon habits, nor customs, nor the quality of food, that nothing can change the fixed laws which regulate the number of our years,” he wrote.

Thoms’ own investigation into reports of superlong lifetimes found that in every instance mistakes had been made — a father confused with a son, for instance, or a birth record identified with the wrong child. And of course, some people simply lied.

Even today, the lack of high-quality data confounds statistical attempts to estimate a maximum life span. “Age overstatement is all too frequent, as a very long life is highly respected, so data on supercentenarians must be carefully and individually validated to ascertain that the reported age at death is correct,” write Belzile and coauthors.

Fortunately, some collections provide verified data on the oldest of the old. One such collection, the International Data Base on Longevity, includes information from 13 countries on supercentenarians (those living to age 110 or beyond) and for 10 countries on semisupercentenarians (those reaching 105 but not making it to 110).

Analyzing such datasets requires the skillful use of multiple statistical tools to infer maximum longevity. A key concept in that regard is called the “force of mortality,” or “hazard function,” a measure of how likely someone reaching a given age is to live a year longer. (A 70-year-old American male, for instance, has about a 2 percent chance of dying before reaching 71.)

Of course, the hazard of dying changes over time — a youngster is generally much more likely to live another year than a centenarian is, for instance. By establishing how death rates change with age, statistical methods can then be applied to estimate the maximum possible life span.

From age 50 or so onward, statistics show, the risk of death increases year by year. In fact, the death rate rises exponentially over much of the adult life span. But after age 80 or so, the rate of mortality increase begins to slow down (an effect referred to as late-life mortality deceleration). Equations that quantify changes in the hazard function show that it levels off at some age between 105 and 110. That means equations derived from lower age groups are unreliable for estimating life span limits; proper analysis requires statistics derived from those aged 105 and up.

Analyses of those groups suggest that by age 110 or so, the rate of dying in each succeeding year is roughly 50 percent (about the same for men as for women). And the data so far do not rule out an even smaller annual chance of death after that.

Depending on the details of the dataset (such as what age ranges are included, and for what country), a possible longevity cap is estimated in the range of 130–180. But in some cases, the statistics imply a cap of at least 130, with no upper limit. Mathematically, that means the highest ages in a big enough population would be infinite — implying immortality.

But in reality, there’s no chance that anybody will beat Methuselah’s Biblical old age record of 969. The lack of a mathematical upper bound does not actually allow a potentially infinite life span.

“Every observed lifetime has been and always will be finite,” Belzile and coauthors write, “so careful translation of mathematical truths into everyday language is required.”

For one thing, a 50 percent chance of living to the next year makes the odds pretty slim that a 110-year-old will live to 130 — about one chance in a million. (That’s the equivalent of tossing coins and getting 20 heads in a row). Nevertheless, if the math is correct in indicating no true longevity cap, the old-age record could continue to climb to ages now unimaginable. Other researchers have pointed out that, with an increasing number of supercentenarians around, it’s conceivable that someone will reach 130 in this century. “But a record much above this will remain highly unlikely,” Belzile and colleagues note.

As for Lomer Griffin, claims of reaching age 119 were clearly exaggerated. By his (third) wife’s reckoning, he was 106 when he died, and his tombstone agrees, giving his dates as 1772–1878. Alas, his birth record (recorded in Simsbury, Connecticut) shows that Lomer (short for his birth name, Chedorlaomer) didn’t really reach 106 at all. He was born April 22, 1774, making him a mere 104 at death. But he still may very well have been the nation’s oldest citizen, because anyone claiming to be older was probably lying about their age as well.

This article originally appeared in Knowable Magazine, an independent journalistic endeavor from Annual Reviews. Read the original article here.

How to make Turkey return to path of democracy

BY HAKKI ÖCAL 

DEC 27, 2021 -

https://www.dailysabah.com

This file photo taken on March 31, 2019, shows an electoral official preparing the ballots during the local elections in Istanbul, Turkey. (AFP Photo)

Critics all start by mentioning "Turkey's authoritarian slide." Then they bring up the crucial factor: "concerns among Western allies," and how the United States and European Union are perplexed as to whether they should help the Turkish people restore their human rights. Because “President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan openly defies global human rights institutions like the Council of Europe and flatly rejects calls from allies like the United States to restore the rule of law and return to a path of democratization.”

I am not joking! The statement can still be found on the website operated by the Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED), which recently held a webinar on “Supporting Democracy and Human Rights in Turkey.” The U.S. and Europe want to do more to help the “poor” Turkish people by preventing the further “deterioration of Turkey’s ties with key transatlantic democracies and institutions" while putting a stop to “the rise of nationalism in Turkish politics.”

These two trends force Western societies to support Turkish civil society. On top of that, Turkey’s “worsening economic crisis and growing political uncertainty” make the task of supporting democracy and human rights very difficult. So, a list of participants was put together for this webinar to propose ways to prevent Turkey’s drift towards authoritarianism. The moderator of this online seminar was Amy Hawthorne, whom you may know from her famous prediction that whoever wins Istanbul, wins Turkey, thus positing that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan will lose the forthcoming elections. She also supported former President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner when he suggested Arab countries collectively intervene to help Palestinians after noticing Palestine's inability to democratically manage the country.

The basic definition of a “decline of democracy” should be based on democratic backsliding and a gradual decline in the quality of democracy. Should it not? Then what possible argument could Hawthorne make to support the notion of the “decline of democracy” that she proposed in her opening statement in that seminar? Can she list one instance of a postponed or disregarded election? Does she have one example of an administrative order to close down a political party? She says Turkey's friends are tired and pessimistic about democracy in the country. The feeling appears to be mutual given the whole world's concern about the future of democracy in the U.S., especially after the Trumpian storming of Congress on Jan. 6. There was a similar event in Turkey on July 15, 2016, when a group of putschists commandeered Turkish air force warplanes and bombarded Parliament; however, the government suppressed the coup bid and arrested all those involved. Everyone except one person: The coup’s leader, Fetullah Gülen, who has been provided a safe haven by Hawthorne’s country.

Since when does “the rise of nationalism” in a country’s politics degenerate its stability? Not once, but three times the former president of Hawthorne’s government openly threatened Turkey with economic destruction. Trump said that he would destroy Turkey overnight, economically and otherwise. Following this, in his first face-to-face talks with President Erdoğan, never mind destroying Turkey, Trump said he would withdraw all U.S. forces from Syria and ask Ankara to take over the mission. Nonetheless, a U.S. president – regardless of how incurious they may be – can have a deep influence on a nation's psyche and as a result, nationalist sentiments may be heightened. Also, Hawthorne’s favorite president, Mr. Joe Biden, made overthrowing Erdoğan's administration (through elections, thank God!) his No. 1 job. Any conscientious observer can understand why people nestle in their nationalistic values when they feel in danger.

But not Hawthorne! She continues to go on about Erdoğan’s autocratic ambitions as if she isn't aware that he was elected by 52% of the votes. This has nothing to do with personal ambitions; it is a constitutional amendment established by referendum. Whoever is elected to the position acquires the duties, rights and obligations that come with it.

Oh, the worsening economic conditions that the POMED moderator and contributors had pinned their hopes of an early election onto, elections that they hope (nay, they know) will eventually bring a "democratic coalition" to power to restore democracy in Turkey? Well, despite the efforts of so-called foreign investors and their domestic collaborators to destabilize the value of the Turkish currency, Erdoğan singlehandedly restored people's trust in the future of the Turkish economy and made the “economic worsening” disappear.

On restoring democracy in Turkey with the help of five dissimilar political parties and groups: the seminar had three young Turkish people as contributors. They look too young to know recent Turkish political history. Between June 1997 and January 1999, Turkey had a similar period, with a three-way coalition government run by nationalists, progressives and conservatives. Not only did it last just 550 days, it was marred by five major political crises, six major economic crises, half of the cabinet ministers were replaced during its term and it left the government in disgrace. (Eventually, its prime minister died heartbroken!) One wonders how those young people who can barely get a job in Turkey with their academic backgrounds find the courage to chime in on the future of Turkish politics?

There are "Turkey experts" in foreign think-tanks, who agree with one another so mindlessly that they create a cult-like following amongst themselves, and ingratiate themselves with their group members and respective governments. The result? Not a single piece of scientific analysis to come from Western academia on the region. Their ethnic identities and political orientation skewed their observations and their reasoning. Take this POMED seminar for example – try to look at it from a U.S. policymaker’s perspective. How sound can its political conclusions be if what was prophesized has been disproven in less than a week?

Palestinians, Israeli forces clash near West Bank outpost
• ASSOCIATED PRESS • DECEMBER 26, 2021

This photo shows a scene after an Israeli army operation that left a few Palestinian men killed, in the West Bank village of Beit Anan, west of Ramallah, Sunday, Sept. 26, 2021. Israeli forces clashed with Palestinians in the West Bank in an area that has seen a recent uptick in friction, the Israeli military and Palestinian medics said. (Nasser Nasser/AP)

TEL AVIV, Israel — Israeli forces clashed with Palestinians in the West Bank in an area that has seen a recent uptick in friction, the Israeli military and Palestinian medics said.

The clashes late Saturday were part of days of tension in the area surrounding a West Bank settlement outpost and a spike in violence elsewhere in the West Bank and east Jerusalem.

During the clashes, the military said, hundreds of Palestinians threw rocks and burned tires and shots were fired in the area. The military said forces responded with live fire and "riot dispersal means," typically tear gas and stun grenades.

The military also said shots were fired from a passing vehicle toward a military post near the West Bank city of Nablus, which is south of Homesh. It was not clear if the shooting was related to the clashes.

The Palestinian Red Crescent said 10 people were wounded by live fire. The Palestinian Health Ministry said one of them, a 17-year-old, was seriously wounded. Dozens of others were wounded by rubber bullets.

A soldier was lightly wounded, the military said.

Homesh, in the northern West Bank, was dismantled as part of Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005. But in recent years, Israeli settlers have returned to pray and established an unauthorized outpost at the site.

Last week, at least one Palestinian gunman opened fire on a car filled with Jewish seminary students next to the outpost. Yehuda Dimentman, 25, was killed and two others were wounded near Homesh, which is considered illegal by the Israeli government.

On Thursday, thousands of Jewish nationalists marched to Homesh to mark the end of the mourning period for Dimentman and on Friday, Israeli forces dismantled structures that settlers had erected at the outpost.

According to Israeli media reports, Jewish settlers were expected to march again to the outpost on Saturday night, drawing calls on Palestinian social media for nearby villagers to be on alert.

The clashes come amid an increase in Israeli-Palestinian violence elsewhere in the West Bank and in east Jerusalem. Earlier this month, an ultra-Orthodox Jew was left seriously injured after being stabbed by a Palestinian attacker outside the walls of Jerusalem's Old City. A week before, a Hamas militant opened fire in the Old City, killing an Israeli man. Both attackers were killed by Israeli forces.

Settler violence against Palestinians has seen a similar increase during the olive harvest. In mid-November, Jewish settlers attacked a group of Palestinian farmers with pepper spray and clubs in the farmland surrounding Homesh, injuring four people.

Israel captured east Jerusalem and the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war, and the territories are now home to over 700,000 Israel settlers. Most of the international community considers Israeli settlements illegal obstacles to peace.

The Palestinians seek east Jerusalem and the West Bank as parts of a future independent state.

NASA looks to religious scholars for answers

NASA has enlisted the help of theologians to examine how the world would react if sentient life was found on other planets and what impacts such a discovery would have on deeply-held beliefs about divinity and creation.

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The US space agency has recruited some 24 scholars so far to participate in a program at Princeton University’s Center of Theological Inquiry (CTI) in New Jersey. The center – which received a $1.1 million NASA grant in 2014 – looks to build “bridges of understanding” between academics of various disciplines, scientists, and policymakers on “global concerns.”

According to the Daily Mail, the program is apparently aimed at answering such big picture questions as “what is life? What does it mean to be alive? Where do we draw the line between the human and the alien? What are the possibilities for sentient life in other places?”

Last week, CTI Director Will Storrar told The Times that NASA’s goal for the program was “serious scholarship being published in books and journals” to address the “profound wonder and mystery and implication of finding microbial life on another planet.”

“We may not discover life for 100 years. Or we may discover it next week,” a NASA expert told the paper, which added that the agency’s growing “astrobiology” department has been looking for new answers to age-old questions for some 25 years.

Among those who have participated in the CTI program is Andrew Davison, a priest and theologian at Cambridge University who holds a PhD in biochemistry. Davison, who was part of the program’s 2016-2017 cohort, noted in a blog post that “religious traditions” were an “important feature in how humanity would work through any such confirmation of life elsewhere.”

Because of that, [religion] features as part of NASA’s ongoing aim to support work on ‘the societal implications of astrobiology,’ working with various partner organizations.

Other religious figures, including the Bishop of Buckingham Alan Wilson, Rabbi Jonathan Romain of Maidenhead Synagogue, and Imam Qari Asim of the Makkah Mosque in Leeds, told The Times that Christian, Jewish, and Islamic teaching would not be affected by the discovery of alien life.

Meanwhile, Carl Pilcher, a former head of NASA’s Astrobiology Institute, said that the agency was “giving an increased emphasis to questions which before the 20th century had largely been the preserve of philosophy and theology and religion.”