Mike Pence flies to Israel on Miriam Adelson’s private jet

The media reporting on the former vice president’s trip didn’t ask the key question: Why?

MARCH 10, 2022

Written by  Eli Clifton

Former Vice President Mike Pence appears to be courting the financial backing of the wealthiest Israeli, Miriam Adelson, who previously used her wealth to back the Republican Party’s support for abrogating from the Iran nuclear deal, moving the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, declaring the Golan Heights to be Israeli territory, “purged the sewer that was a so-called peace process,” according to Adelson, and pushed for former President Trump’s eventual clemency for convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard, a move long opposed by the FBI, Naval Intelligence, and the Pentagon.

Pence reportedly flew to Israel on a private plane owned by the Adelsons, the same means of transportation the family provided to Pollard following his clemency, an immediate departure for Israel with a hero’s welcome on the tarmac in Tel Aviv.

But the connection between Miriam Adelson and her late husband Sheldon Adelson’s foreign policy motivations and their bankrolling of GOP candidates continues to be largely ignored or erased from reporting on Pence’s trip and Miriam’s reemergence, after her husband’s death, as the likely biggest Republican funder of the upcoming election cycles.

Yesterday, Axios reported that Pence traveled to Israel this week on one of the family’s planes. In a lengthy write-up, the online publication highlights that Miriam and her late husband Sheldon contributed nearly $220 million to Republican Party, emphasizing that “Pence broke news in the Israeli press by declaring the next Republican administration — which he predicted would take office in 2025 — would tear up any resurrected nuclear deal President Biden strikes with Iran.” Axios omitted the relevant information that opposing diplomatic efforts to constrain Iran’s nuclear program is a top agenda item for the Adelsons and other major GOP funders.

Jewish Insider reported that Miriam Adelson “upped her political involvement in recent months and intends to spend heavily in the forthcoming cycles” and quoted a Pence confidante conveying that the former vice president “paid his respects at Sheldon Adelson’s gravesite on the Mount of Olives.”

The Adelson-owned Israel Hayom scored an interview with Pence in Israel in which he argued that the Russian invasion of Ukraine made it “unconscionable that the American administration is at the same time negotiating at the side of the Russians to restart the Iranian nuclear deal.” The piece also  described Pence as “known to be a strong supporter of Israel.” The paper did not disclose Miriam Adelson’s role in bringing Pence to Israel or that the paper’s owner was the top funder of Trump and Pence’s 2016 and 2020 campaigns.

And Haaretz highlighted that Pence threw his lot in with Israel’s far-right, “draw[ing] public attention after touring the West Bank city of Hebron with two of Israel’s most notorious right-wing extremists, MK Itamar Ben-Gvir and far-right activist Baruch Marzel” and mentioned Pence “dined with Republican megadonor Miriam Adelson.”

All except Israel Hayom made explicit mention of Miriam Adelson’s role in the trip and her status as a Republican megadonor, but none linked her explicit, and often extreme, foreign policy vision with the courtship undertaken by Trump’s former vice president.

Miriam, for her part, has never hidden her foreign policy motivations for engaging in U.S. politics as a dual-U.S.-Israeli citizen and her contempt for Jewish Americans who increasingly reject the far-right positions taken by former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and current Prime Minister Naftali Bennet.

“By rights, Trump should enjoy sweeping support among U.S. Jews, just as he does among Israelis,” wrote Adelson in a 2019 op-ed. “That this has not been the case (so far — the 2020 election still beckons) is an oddity that will long be pondered by historians. Scholars of the Bible will no doubt note the heroes, sages and prophets of antiquity who were similarly spurned by the very people they came to raise up.”

In an era in which money in politics is a core component of political news and coverage, the courtship of Miriam Adelson is a closely followed component of the political horse race, with pundits and journalists reporting on the outsized role she is likely to play in the 2022 and 2024 elections.

But unlike most reporting on money in politics that suggests a quid-pro-quo between megadonors and their recipients, the media, at least thus-far, continues to largely ignore the Adelsons’ actual influence and motivations for political engagement.

If one listens to Miriam Adelson, it’s clear what motivates her outsized political giving: pursuit of a hawkish U.S. foreign policy in lockstep with Israel’s far-right and largely in opposition to any Israeli concessions as part of a peace process with Palestinians and Republican opposition to any nuclear deal with Iran.

But news coverage of the Republican Party’s biggest donor is superficial, at best, and negligent journalism at worst.

Put another way, the “Five Ws” of journalism are “who,” what,” “when,” “where,” and “why.”

As the richest Israeli, with outspoken foreign policy views, stands ready to become the biggest standalone funder of one of the two U.S. political parties, journalists seem to be avoiding the question of “why?”

UAE’s victory over Houthis at the UN is a grave loss for Yemen

What does Abu Dhabi get out of designating their enemies ‘terrorists’? The ability to prolong the war and the suffering indefinitely.

MARCH 4, 2022

Written by

Daniel Larison

The UN Security Council passed a new Yemen resolution this week that renewed and broadened the arms embargo on the Houthis and described them as a terrorist group.

The resolution was a partial success for the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which had been agitating for even stricter measures against their enemies in the war that they and the Saudis have been waging for the last seven years. It is unusual for the UN Security Council to refer to one of the parties to an ongoing conflict as terrorists. Using this language is bound to make a diplomatic solution to the war in Yemen even more difficult than it was.

The Security Council vote on Monday is a reminder of the UAE’s ongoing involvement in Yemen, the UN’s biased approach to the war, and Washington’s support for both.

The latest resolution reinforced the provisions of the outdated UNSCR 2216 that has defined the UN approach to Yemen since 2015. There has been a desperate need for the Security Council to update the terms of the resolution, but once again they were content to maintain the failed status quo. UNSCR 2216 has long been seen as an obstacle to peace in Yemen, because it gives all parties to the conflict strong incentives to continue fighting.

The Houthis are never going to accept terms that require them to give up all power and disarm before there is a political settlement, and the Saudi coalition and the Hadi government can hide behind the resolution’s unrealistic requirements to keep the war going. As Bruce Riedel concluded last year, “As long as UNSCR 2216 remains the basis for negotiations, the Houthis will refuse to engage.” 

The one-sided condemnations contained in the latest resolution compound the errors of the original. While the resolution condemns “heinous terrorist attacks” on the UAE and Saudi Arabia, there is predictably no mention of the many attacks on civilians carried out by Saudi coalition aircraft. The Houthis have engaged in attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure, as the resolution says, but the Saudi coalition has been doing the same thing for the duration of the war. There is an annex to the new resolution that describes the Houthis’ crimes, but it doesn’t include any references to the thousands of civilians killed by Saudi coalition airstrikes using weapons provided by the U.S. and other Western governments.

There is unlikely to be any diplomatic progress towards ending the war when the Security Council refuses to hold Saudi coalition governments responsible for their atrocities against Yemeni civilians. The Human Rights Council’s decision last year to shut down the Group of Eminent Experts that had been investigating war crimes committed by all sides was a prelude to this week’s failure.

Broadening the arms embargo will have little effect on the Houthis’ ability to wage war, since the embargo was already applied to the entire group in practice, but it could make it more difficult to alleviate the suffering of the Yemeni people. The embargo is the Saudi coalition’s fig leaf for maintaining its killing blockade that allows them to strangle Yemen’s civilian population under the color of international authority. The people of Yemen continue to endure terrible deprivation as a result of the war and blockade. The World Food Program’s David Beasley was warning just last week that 13 million Yemenis are headed for starvation. This resolution will do nothing to help them, and it could very well make things worse. 

The language referring to the Houthis as a terrorist group is apparently not binding on member states, but it was a symbolic win for the lobbying efforts of the UAE, whose government has likewise been pressing the Biden administration to redesignate the Houthis as a foreign terrorist designation in the wake of drone and missile attacks on Abu Dhabi. There is a danger that the UAE could use the language of the new resolution to press the U.S. to designate the group and sanction them accordingly. 

The administration is still debating a full designation of the group as a foreign terrorist organization, which it had removed early on in 2021 because of the severe harm that the designation was already doing to the civilian population. As Peter Salisbury and Michael Hanna recently explained, “While it would likely do little to change the Houthis’ posture, an FTO designation would almost certainly greatly compound the humanitarian catastrophe that has been unfolding in Yemen. This is because it would make conducting any kind of business in Houthi-controlled areas, indeed across the entire country, extremely risky for international firms.” The Trump administration already ran this experiment with its last-minute designation of the group in its final days, and during the short time it was in place it was having severe effects on Yemen’s economy. 

Describing the Houthis this way caused four members on the council to abstain on the resolution. The Norwegian representative said that they were “worried about unintended humanitarian consequences of this new language and that it could negatively affect UN efforts to address large-scale humanitarian needs throughout Yemen.” Ireland’s deputy U.N. ambassador Jim Kelly took the same position: “We remain concerned that the use of this term in a Security Council resolution dealing with sanctions in Yemen may have unintended negative consequences for the millions of Yemeni people living under Houthi control.”

Russia had previously been reluctant to apply the terrorist label to the Houthis, but the UAE gained Russian support for the new language about the Houthis by abstaining on the resolution condemning the invasion of Ukraine. The UAE later voted against Russia on Wednesday’s General Assembly resolution “deploring” Russia’s actions in Ukraine.

Despite the Biden administration’s decision to rush additional U.S. forces to the UAE to protect against further Houthi attacks, the UAE incredibly claims to have felt “abandoned” by Washington after the strikes on Abu Dhabi. Even though the invasion of Ukraine was a much more significant event that required a swift response at the UN, the UAE thinks that the much smaller attacks on their territory that came as a result of their intervention in Yemen deserved comparable treatment. The remarkable thing here is that the UAE imagines that they are in the same position in Ukraine instead of being the aggressor against Yemen that they are.

This should be a lesson to the Biden administration that the UAE, like other regional clients, will never be satisfied with any level of U.S. support and protection. No matter how many weapons the U.S. sells them and no matter how many of our own forces Washington puts in harm’s way on their behalf, these clients will always claim that they are being neglected so that they can squeeze more gifts out of the relationship. This is what comes from constantly indulging and catering to the preferences of these states.

The Biden administration would be wise to ignore the UAE’s demands to designate the Houthis, and it should realize that the UAE takes U.S. backing too much for granted. The recent deployment of jets and ships to the UAE is a misuse of limited resources, and it puts U.S. personnel at risk in support of an indefensible war. The U.S. should withdraw those forces as soon as possible and let the UAE contemplate what real abandonment might look like.

‘What We Value’
Lynn Pasquerella discusses her new book on “public health, social justice and educating for democracy.”

By Scott Jaschik
March 11, 2022


Lynn Pasquerella groups together a series of challenging subjects in her new book, What We Value: Public Health, Social Justice and Educating for Democracy (University of Virginia Press). Pasquerella, president of the American Association of Colleges and Universities, looks at public health and questions of life and death, along with issues of campus controversy and the things that higher education must do to rebuild public trust.

Pasquerella, formerly president of Mount Holyoke College and for many years a philosophy professor at the University of Rhode Island, draws on her wide experiences in higher education for this book. She responded to questions via email.

Q: You note the discomfort of many Americans with death and how we die. What, in terms of education, could help with that?

A: The reluctance on the part of many Americans—both patients and caregivers—to confront death has led to unnecessary suffering at the end of life, especially as technological advancements precede thoughtful reflection about the ethical, legal and social implications of the use of technology often designed to keep people alive at all costs. Such suffering can be reduced through enhanced communication and exercising moral courage by ensuring that patients’ wishes are respected. This requires that health-care providers receive more than a purely technical education and instead be taught to listen critically and with understanding, ask questions that will help discern the patient’s values, encourage patients and family members to tell their stories and share their worries and concerns around death and dying, and to identify their own values.

Beyond the transformation of medical education, engagement with liberal education in college classrooms and through public programming in communities can lessen anxieties and fears surrounding the end of life. When I co-taught courses on the politics of being mortal with my colleague Al Killilea [at the University of Rhode Island], he posited to our students that it is not death we fear as much as annihilation and the absurdity of a meaningless life, suggesting that it is only through a recognition and acceptance of human interdependence that meaning can be given to both death and life. Helping students find meaning and purpose while coming to understand the nature of human interdependence is at the core of a liberal education, which invites individuals to grapple with the most fundamental questions of human existence through the study of philosophy, religion, history, music and the arts.

Q: You discuss an incident in 1998 at the University of Rhode Island, where you were teaching at the time. Can you describe the incident and the lessons from it?

A: In 1998, when I was chair of the philosophy department at the University of Rhode Island, there was a series of campus protests related to allegations of racism under the guise of free speech, ultimately leading to a takeover of the administration building, Taft Hall. The protests were sparked by an incident that occurred just before the December final exam period, when the student newspaper, The Good Five Cent Cigar, ran a nationally syndicated editorial cartoon as a filler. Appearing without commentary, the cartoon depicted a Black man carrying books attempting to enter a classroom. The white professor, standing behind a podium bearing the words “UT Law School,” calls out, “If you’re the janitor, please wait until after class to empty the trash. If you’re one of our minority students, welcome!”

Two days after the appearance of the cartoon, student protestors from a Black activist group called the Brothers United for Action circulated a list of demands that included “a new campus newspaper that reflects a campus-wide commitment to ending racism, sexism, and homophobia, and promotes a vision of cultural empathy and understanding.” The managing editor of the paper responded by defending his selection and publication of the cartoon, maintaining that he “felt that the cartoon was clearly a worthwhile commentary in favor of affirmative action and minority rights.” He attributed anger over its content to confusion due to a lack of familiarity with the 1996 Hopwood v. Texas decision, in which four white students, who were rejected from the law school, successfully challenged the institution’s affirmative action policy in admissions on the grounds of equal protection—a decision many feared would lead to resegregation.

At the time, I happened to be teaching a mixed graduate-/undergraduate-level course entitled Race, Gender, and the Law, and my students were intimately acquainted with every aspect of the Hopwood case. Yet, many of them were either directly involved in the Brothers United protests or agreed with those who read the cartoon as conveying the message that students of color were neither welcome on campus nor deserving of a university education. They cited the lack of accompanying commentary and the timing of the cartoon’s publication, a full year after the circuit court’s decision, as evidence in support of their view.

The editor’s rejoinder was that “This is always a timely issue. It is not like the Texas courts did something, made a decision, and it went away: the repercussions continue.” Reacting to the concerns, the Cigar ran the cartoon again, this time with an editorial response to the protests, explaining that the intention of the satirical cartoon was to show support for affirmative action. Protestors were not satisfied, pointing to the fact that only a month earlier, a racist message had been left on the answering machine in the affirmative action office. Even more egregious, at a Midnight Madness event during the previous basketball season—a season in which a group of students chanted racial epithets at some of the Black players—a white student urinated on an African American disc jockey. In the aftermath of these actions, the decision to run the cartoon took on a different meaning, and the Student Senate Executive Committee proposed a resolution calling for a formal apology by the editors. This coincided with a freeze by the Student Senate on funds allocated to the paper, pending an investigation into their finances.

While the Senate leaders disavowed any connection between the funding freeze and the protests, the newspaper staff regarded the actions as not only retributive, but also as a violation of their First Amendment rights. Their adviser, a journalism professor, joined faculty from philosophy, sociology and politics in facilitating open forums centered on the questions of who gets to decide what constitutes racial offense and the circumstances, if any, whereby offense can serve as a legitimate liberty-limiting principle within the context of college campuses committed to the free exchange of ideas and to safeguarding the equality of educational opportunity.

I learned that taking direct aim at educational disparities and patterns of systemic disadvantage—especially those resulting from historical and contemporary effects of racism—and making equity a pervading focus of educational reform and innovation requires moving beyond the goals of access and compositional diversity to design and deliver experiences that support the success of all students. This, in turn, requires making colleges and universities places of welcome and belonging.

Several of the leaders of the 1998 student protests at URI are still in touch with me, and I have been struck by how many of them cite their protest experience as preparing them for leadership in their communities, in life and in their professions. As we look ahead, knowing that there will continue to be demonstrations, demands and debates, we should seek opportunities to encourage and guide our students in their activism, connecting the curriculum and co-curriculum through community-based learning and other high-impact practices.

Q: You note that, more recently, many colleges in 2020 made changes in response to Black students. While I know you support those changes, did colleges really help Black students?

A: The summer of 2020 constituted a moment of racial reckoning in the U.S., with many campus leaders engaging in dialogue across stakeholders. While these short-term tactics responded to an immediate crisis, they did little to help Black students in the absence of long-term initiatives aimed at strategic hiring and curriculum reform, as well as the broad interrogation of institutional practices and policies to identify and counter inequities. Campuses must be willing to engage in truth-telling conversations about the existence and persistence of inequities and affirm that equity goals need to be embedded within the strategic priorities of the institution, to acknowledge that racialized practices marginalizing students of color must be confronted directly, and to admit that preparation to address structural and systemic racism must be a core component of a liberal education.

Q: You discuss how liberal education should help us overcome our differences. How can it do that? What if one side of those debates doesn’t embrace liberal education?

A: Liberal education instills the habits of heart and mind that encourage individuals to consider the possibility that some of their most fundamentally held beliefs might actually be mistaken. It also engenders a sense of moral and sympathetic imagination as the foundations for empathy and tolerance. These capacities are more critical than ever in the face of a burgeoning economic and racial segregation, isolation and despair resulting from the worst global pandemic in more than a century, increasing polarization and partisanship, and rising authoritarianism. I cite Tony Carnevale’s research on liberal education and authoritarianism, which indicates that liberal education reduces individuals’ sensitivities to potential triggers by providing psychological protection in the form of self-esteem, personal security and autonomy, while fostering a level of interpersonal trust associated with lower inclinations toward expressing authoritarian attitudes and preferences. Exposure of liberal arts majors to diverse contexts, histories, ideas, lifestyles, religions, ways of life and cultures diminishes the likelihood that differing worldviews will trigger authoritarian responses and increases the chances of their being countered with evidence.

The fact that not everyone embraces liberal education means that we need to learn to speak across differences and find common ground by having colleges and universities serve as anchor institutions, illustrating that their success is inextricably linked to the psychological, social, educational and economic well-being of those in the communities in which they are located and those they seek to serve.

Q: You discuss how higher education is no longer seen (unfortunately) as a force for the public good. What can be done to change that?

A: To restore public trust in higher education and destabilize the cultural attitudes at the basis of proposals that both devalue liberal education and those who have rejected it, we need to reframe the narrative, highlighting the fact that in the global knowledge economy, employer demand for graduates with a liberal education is growing. At the same time, those of us in the academy need to take seriously the underlying concerns of our most ardent critics—that higher education is too expensive, too difficult to access and doesn’t teach people 21st-century skills.

This will require getting outside our own language game, drawing attention to the humanistic practices and endeavors people engage in daily, and demonstrating at the local level why our work matters to individual thriving in work, citizenship and life, and to the strength of our democracy.

Argentine paleoartist reconstructing prehistoric animals

Online News EditorMarch 10, 2022

 

By Julieta Barrera

Buenos Aires, Mar 10 (EFE).- Merging science with art, Argentine paleoartist Santiago Reuil, starting with fossil fragments, reconstructs the morphology of animals that went extinct thousands or millions of years ago.

It’s a task that he began almost three decades ago for museums and universities, and which today he is pursuing via his “Paleocarton” audiovisual project, where he invites people to replicate his professional work with everyday materials.

With a passionate interest in paleontology, not to mention being precocious and persevering, Reuil began his career at age 14 when he volunteered at Argentina’s Bernardino Rivadavia Museum of Natural Sciences (MACN), something that he had wanted to do since he was 10.

He worked there for a long time, moving through different laboratories, learning the trade and, later, he began working with different museums and universities around the country and abroad, putting his skills to use in technical and artistic work.

For some years now, Santiago has had his surname attached to a species of sauropod from Argentina’s Patagonia region – Puertasaurus reuili – fossilized remains of which were found by his colleague Pablo Puerta, and for which he reconstructed a vertebra from a mass of tiny bone fragments.

“Many hours of jigsaw puzzle work, trying one fragment against another, and finally I was able to assemble a neck vertebra, which up to that point (had not been done),” the paleoartist told EFE.

Regarding the distinction honoring Puerta and Reuil that comes with the ancient animal’s name, a name bestowed on the beast by MACN paleontologist Fernando Novas, who is in charge of the project, the artist said that “It was one of the most incredible things that had happened to me in my career.”

“In recent years, not many months have passed without our receiving news of a new dinosaur species,” Reuil said, noting that right now he is working on two more reconstructions: an herbivore from Patagonia and a carnivore with the Abelisaurus family that was found in northern Argentina, where its remains had never been uncovered before.

Regarding the scientific study of the latter dino’s fossils, Reuil was invited by his colleagues to participate and he will also be featuring his reconstruction of it in his audiovisual project.

Before fossilized remains can be exhibited in a museums, there are several stages starting with extracting the fossils themselves and proceeding through the reconstruction process, including cleaning and restoring all the bone fragments.

Since it is very rare for a complete skeleton to be found, many of the reconstructions of the dinosaurs’ and other animals’ body structures in museums are prepared with a mixture of fossils and artificial parts, a task that is not as easy as it might sound.

“To make that reconstruction a phylogenetic study is made, that is, we examine what other animals were related to it, what the anatomy of the group to which it belongs is … to see how that general anatomy is adapted to the remains we have and then we do what’s called a parsimonious reconstruction,” he said.

The specialists look for the “simplest” reconstruction that coincides with the anatomy of the group, and “that’s not always easy,” Reuil said. “Depending on the animal with which we’re working or how many remains we have, (that will govern) whether the work is more speculative or more solid.”

In Paleocarton, the audiovisual project that will be made available via Youtube, Reuil is replicating the work he undertakes at museums, but instead of using museum-supplied materials, he uses cardboard: “a material that everyone has access to.”

The paleoartist is taking advantage of the project to explain, among other things that are of interest to him in his work, the details of the theoretical and practical process of reconstruction. “I want it to be understood what it is that we know and what we suppose. When you make a piece of cardboard, nobody’s going to think that it’s a real fossil,” he said.

In every episode of the audiovisual project, paleontologists who are experts in the various groups of animals being worked on help – for intance – to explain the reconstruction of the cranium and provide a detailed scientific discussion about the state of the science on various subjects.

Since he started his career, Reuil said he has noticed a marked increase in the number of people who are devoting themselves to paleontology, an expansion he considered to be excellent since it “increases the speed of knowledge but also the plurality of views or types of research that is being done.”

“Paleontology in Argentina has a great future. There’s a lot to discover. We have a very fossil-rich territory, with lots of paleontological potential,” he said.

EFE mjbd/rgm/cpy/bp

Pepper the robot offers friendly face tackling crimes against children

Online News EditorMarch 2, 2022

 

Barcelona, Spain, Mar 2 (EFE-EPA).- The semi-humanoid robot Pepper is being used by police in the United Arab Emirates to uncover crimes against children such as abuse and exploitation, a sensitive area where a friendly android face could prove more approachable and less traumatic for those involved.

The project from the multinational IT company Inetum uses Pepper’s artificial intelligence-driven ability to read emotions and understand human behavior to interact with the children and assess their responses to questioning when faced with a potentially distressing or even life threatening situation.

“It is one of our most beautiful and resilient projects,” head of innovation at Inetum Spain, Jesus Otero, told Efe at the Mobile World Congress taking place in Barcelona.

“The presence of the robot helps the children to open up and be more expressive in therapy despite the fear they are experiencing,” Otero said.

“It is interesting how this solution, that looks like a toy, actually has some very powerful user cases.”

The robot can either accompany a psychologist during individual therapy or act as an avatar for the children, who often feel more comfortable talking about their experience with the robot and may be more forthcoming about the details of a particular case.

“The robot can recognize faces and interact with people in human language,” Otero said.

Inetum, which is present in 26 countries and employs over 27,000 people, aims to deploy the robot to more police stations to help resolve crimes that involve children.

Pepper the robot was developed by Japanese firm Softbank Production and was first unveiled back in 2014.

While child abuse rates in the UAE are low according to official records, the Acta Scientific Paediatrics journal cited legal experts who warned that 90% of cases could go unreported.

Forty percent of child abuse cases in the UAE involve maids and 45% of child harassment cases are committed by relatives, according to the journal.

The 17th edition of the Mobile World Congress opened its doors on Monday to bustling crowds after it was reigned in last year and canceled in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

This year the MWC brings together 1,500 businesses in the industry and is expected to draw in between 40,000 to 60,000 visitors. EFE

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Future of legal weed in Thailand still hazy amid murky laws

Online News EditorMarch 11, 2022

Bangkok, Mar 11 (EFE-EPA).- Thailand in 2018 became the first country to legalize cannabis for medical use in southeast Asia, a region with some of the world’s harshest narcotics laws. Thai authorities went a step further this year by decriminalizing the drug for recreational use, a historic move that ended nearly a century of tough prohibition of a plant that was once widely used in traditional Thai medicine and cuisine.

While small businesses have sprouted and some are even flourishing, the legislation around cannabis is still murky and the path forward for weed advocates and entrepreneurs alike remains hazy.

“Even though medical marijuana is legal in Thailand, accessibility as a consumer or as a business owner is still difficult,” says Chokwan “Kitty” Chopaka, Thai cannabis advocate and Founder & CEO of Elevated Estate, an industry-leading cannabis-focused expo, fund and consulting firm.

LEGAL UNCERTAINTY

“With recreational use being illegal, the black market is growing. Basically, most problems are about regulations, difficult accessibility, and a lack of knowledge,” Kitty says.

Thai Health Minister and leader of the Bumjaithai Party, Anutin Charnvirakul, signed a measure last month officially dropping cannabis from the list of controlled drugs, paving the way for people to grow plants at home.

But commercial licenses are still hard to come by, and even though recreational use has been decriminalized, demand is still higher on the black market as people are forced to turn to criminal sources because legal distributors have not been established.

“Access to legal cannabis is difficult, and (…) smoking and vaping are not acceptable legally. There is only medical cannabis,” Kitty says.

“Even with medical cannabis, which is being promoted a lot, people don’t want to put up with the difficulties in accessing (the drug legally), so they also turn to black market.

“Legal accessibility is limited. There are also more supplies on the illegal side.”

While people can grow cannabis and hemp for personal consumption, extracted content containing more than 0.2 percent tetrahydrocannabinol, the psychoactive ingredient THC, is, for the time being, still illegal.

The changes have sparked confusion across the board, from potential consumers to police and officials.

Those who want to grow cannabis for household consumption have to inform the local government before germinating their seeds, and must report the cultivation details to officials. People who grow it without notifying the authorities can face fines while those found selling marijuana products without a license can also face a prison sentence.

“I’m afraid to be arrested. I grow only one plant of marijuana and it’s hidden in the backyard garden of my home,” says a Thai villager who calls himself Saman.

“I feel uncertain that the possession of marijuana is still an offense because some parts of it can be used for recreational use.”

Saman uses leaves to cook a popular Thai dish, Tom Yum soup, and a hemp omelet as he thinks it makes the dishes taste better.

GREEN RUSH

The response to cannabis-related business sectors to the recent decriminalized marijuana has been mostly positive.

Many players in Thailand, from big business to small-to-medium enterprises, are jumping on the legal weed train, with many cannabis restaurants and cafes popping up, offering drinks and food made with the leaves.

“I believe this is a good sign for the local cannabis industry. Although the big enterprises will gain the biggest advantage, small-scale businesses like us also get benefits to expand our market chance,” says Vorrapat Artmangkorn, a co-owner of Treekings OG, a small edibles company.

Mexican female-operated auto repair shop helping to shatter stereotypes

Online News EditorMarch 10, 2022

By Sergio Adrian Angeles

Queretaro, Mexico, Mar 10 (EFE)- Maria Fernanda Ornelas checks under the hood of a car and tightens some screws at the W Racing Point Garage in this central highland city, one of the few auto repair shops in Mexico that is entirely female-owned and operated.

After inspecting the engine, she uses a hydraulic jack to raise the vehicle and then lies down on a wheel-driven creeper to get under its belly.

Once she’s properly positioned, Ornelas stretches her arms and gets to work repairing the car – an Audi that a customer will be picking up that afternoon.

Although just over 20 years of age, her experienced hands are the key to keeping customers of W Racing Point Garage happy and getting their vehicles back in tip-top shape.

Ornelas says the presence of that garage in a country where male-chauvinist attitudes and labor discrimination are still commonplace sends a message to the entire population about women’s mechanical capabilities.

“Yes, we can (do car repair). We often need to learn some tricks and have tools on hand that help us exert more force, and things like that. But, yes we can. Anyone who studies and works at it can do it,” the young woman told Efe.

The mere existence of that Queretaro-based garage, where six women are employed, serves to smash stereotypes that perpetuate the idea that auto repair is the exclusive domain of men.

The founder of W Racing Point Garage is Sonia Luna Chavez, who told Efe in an interview that she worked for 37 years at the Mexico City-based National Polytechnic Institute.

She spent almost a third of that time contributing to a gender studies unit that looks to promote a culture of equality and reflects on the challenges women face in a male-dominated labor market.

Luna Chavez noted that hundreds of women study mechanical engineering in Mexico but end up leaving that profession when they seek work in the automotive industry and are only offered low-level administrative positions.

She added that those women find the doors are closed to them even when they have the same degrees and qualifications as male applicants.

“I feel very proud … because six months after opening this repair shop we’ve broken the mold. The idea is to come up with something different, to innovate,” Luna Chavez said on International Women’s Day, which was celebrated on Tuesday.

She added that her garage also offers a workshop where women can train to be automobile mechanics.

“They come to us for practical (guidance) because they say schools give them lots of theory but they don’t feel like they learn enough,” the garage’s founding director said.

Ornelas, for her part, has found in the W Racing Point Garage the ideal place to pursue a passion that dates back to when her father would buy old cars and repair them at home.

Besides delivering high-quality service to customers, W Racing Point Garage also offers a free basic auto mechanics course to all women interested in learning more about their vehicles.

“In this workshop, women of all ages are taught to be in control of their car, to know (how it works), know how to change a tire, how to check oil levels,” Luna Chavez said. EFE

sa/mc

Motherhood and the work-life balance ‘myth’

Online News EditorMarch 8, 2022

 

Madrid, Mar 8 (EFE-EPA).- A radical shift in the way we work due to the Covid-19 pandemic placed a disproportionate burden on working mothers and cast a light on the “myth” of striking a work-life balance, leading Spanish entrepreneurs and campaigners tell Efe.

Laura Baena, founder of Club de Malasmadres (“Bad mothers club,” in English), adds: “In the last two years women have paid for a lack of balance with their salaries and their mental health and this has dealt a heavy blow to equality.”

Spain’s swift enforcement of a strict lockdown and the closure of schools as the pandemic first sank its teeth into the country in March 2020 not only set work and childcare on a collision course for many parents but also highlighted persistent inadequate support structures, given that families were not provided the tools to achieve a work-life balance, Baena says.

“Women have borne the burden of care to a greater extent, as always, and many have had to quit their jobs to be care-givers,” the Malasmadres founder adds.

BURNOUT & MIDNIGHT OIL

Mariona Salvia, founder of Moth Studio, which offers handbags and accessories inspired by motherhood, says that during the pandemic her husband’s work was much more demanding, meaning she had to fit her business around greater childcare demands.

“I was forced to focus on my son,” Salvia adds. “I ended up working in the evening and at night, after the entire day, and at that stage, I did not have much energy nor drive to do so.”

“The emotional burnout was huge (…) I later realized the efforts we made.”

She is not alone.

During Spain’s initial three-month lockdown, “we witnessed many women working into the early hours,’ Eva Serrano Cavero, president of the Spanish Association of Businesswomen (ASEME) tells Efe.

In Spain 34,683 women registered as entrepreneurs between October 2019 to October 2021, 1,456 more than their male counterparts during the same period, according to the ministry of inclusion and social security.

The pressures of the pandemic forced many women out of work, to shutter businesses and, in some cases, to launch new projects to survive, according to Baena, from Club de Malasmadres.

Victoria Gabaldon, editor of Mamagazine, concurs.

“A percentage of mothers start a business out of a need, not out of a commitment to start a business, but simply because they need to work in another way that fits around their current situation,” Victoria Gabaldon, editor of Mamagazine, tells Efe.

“Socially and politically, I think we are light years away from what we need for women to strike a work-life balance,” she adds.

“In fact, I believe that a work-life balance is the great lie of our times.”

RESILIENCE

“I think women in business encounter the same challenges we find in society just because we are women,” Maku Fernández, founder of the Naves de Papel bookstore, says.

Women entrepreneurs and campaigners have, nonetheless, found strength in solidarity.

Serrano Cavero, the ASEME president, tells Efe: “Very strong ties of sisterhood have been forged, which is a very positive and gratifying thing that we have taken from this period.”