It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Monday, July 18, 2022
Gavin Newsom Reveals Real Motivation Behind Ron DeSantis Ad
The Special Olympics officials eventually complied, prompting DeSantis to say it was a victory for the athletes.
Discussing his reasons for taking out the ad on Friday, Newsom told the Sacramento Bee that "he did something that tipped me very directly, and that was going after the Special Olympics."
"That led to the consideration of doing something a little bit more expressive and that was the determination on the ad," he added.
In the 30 second video, Newsom said: "It's Independence Day. Let's talk about what's going on in America.
"Freedom. It's under attack in your state, your Republican leaders, they're banning books, making it harder to vote, restricting speech in classrooms, even criminalizing women and doctors.
"I urge all of you live in Florida to join the fight."
Newsom went on to add: "Or join us in California, where we still believe in freedom, freedom of speech, freedom to choose, freedom from hate and the freedom to love. Don't let them take your freedom."
Speaking at a press conference a few days later, DeSantis hit back at Newsom and claimed people in California were fleeing the state due to his governing.
"Let us be clear, California is driving people away with their terrible governance," he said.
"Some of the best weather in the world in southern California, they have some of the best natural advantages, probably the best natural advantages of any state in this country.
"For the entire history of California, they never lost population until this recent governor got into office and now they are hemorrhaging population.
"It is almost hard to drive people out of a place like California, given all of their natural advantages and yet they are finding a way to do it."
California Governor Gavin Newsom speaks during a news conference in San Francisco, California on May 27, 2022. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis speaks during the inaugural Moms For Liberty Summit at the Tampa Marriott Water Street on July 15, 2022 in Tampa, Florida. Newsom has explained why he attacked DeSantis in his July 4 ad.
JOSH EDELSON AND OCTAVIO JONES/GETTY
Following the initial news of DeSantis' actions against the Special Olympics, Newsom shared an article on Florida Governor's actions.
"Ron DeSantis' values on full display: Bullying. The. Special. Olympics," Newsom tweeted.
Newsweek has contacted Newsom and DeSantis for further comment.
Was Mom A Communist Informer? How A Film Tore A Bulgarian Family Apart
A still from I See Red People shows the filmmaker Bojina Panayotova (left)
with her mother, Milena Makarius.
SOFIA -- At the end of I See Red People, a 2018 documentary that follows a young Bulgarian woman's search into her family's communist past, the mother of the filmmaker reprimands her daughter: "My truth," she says, "does not belong to you."
By that point, relations between director Bojina Panayotova and her mother, Milena Makarius, are at rock bottom following the discovery, over the course of filming, that her mother was listed in the state archives as a collaborator of the communist-era secret police.
The cover of The Janna Dossier.
Now, four years after the movie was released, Makarius is telling her side of the story with the publication of a book, The Janna Dossier, a reference to the code name given to her by her handler in Bulgaria's State Security (DS), the country's notorious and powerful secret police.
"The book is not just a response to the film, it is provoked by the film," Makarius told RFE/RL's Bulgarian Service.
In the book, Makarius, a scholar of medieval French literature who teaches at the University of Limoges in France, writes that she is searching for answers to questions she didn't ask herself before her daughter's film -- both about herself and the people around her.
Eight years old when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, Panayotova moved to France shortly afterward with her academic mother and painter father. Returning to Bulgaria several times in the 2010s, the film documents Panayotova's relentless questioning of her family's past under communism, which culminates in the discovery of her mother's file. A highly sensitive topic in the former communist country, Bulgaria's secret police archives were not opened until 2006, much later than many of its Central and Eastern European neighbors. While the opening of the state archives was welcomed by many as a tool to unearth crimes committed under the communist regime, others feared that too many people could be falsely implicated, largely due to the secret police's habit of inflating the number of collaborators and informers.
As a student in the late 1970s in Sofia, Makarius worked as a translator, regularly meeting with foreigners, in particular at the French Embassy. Her handler, a man Makarius says she thought was just a friend who she would have coffee with once a month, had registered her as a collaborator with the code name Janna. When confronted in the film, the former secret policeman said it was normal for them to "invent agents" to pad out their collaborator networks, at least on paper.
"Disgusting," Makarius said in the documentary as she was shown her file.
The record does not contain anything else -- no details or times or things that Makarius was supposed to have done. It just stated that she was a collaborator, recruited on the grounds of patriotism.
It wasn't just the startling revelation that her mother might be a spy that led to tensions within the family, but Panayotova's unsparing desire to capture everything on film, even when the truth was unpalatable.
"Since these discoveries were made by the two of us together, making the film, within the film, I was very aware that if I withdrew [from the film] it would be…self-incriminating. It would be as if I was holding up a sign advertising my guilt," Makarius says.
WATCH: The trailer for I See Red People:
Both mother and daughter agreed that they would not meet without the camera on until the film was complete. But by the end of the movie, Makarius was upset, her patience worn thin, not wanting to talk to her daughter on Skype because she feared she would be recorded. The filmmaker's father, who is divorced from Makarius, accused his daughter of being fanatical and judgmental, likening her to a legendary communist pioneer who denounced his father to the KGB.
"There was no opportunity to pause -- this is where the movie stops and this is where life will now flow. There was no such possibility in practice," Makarius says.
Since these discoveries were made by the two of us together, making the film, within the film, I was very aware that if I withdrew [from the film] it would be…self-incriminating." -- Milena Makarius
By taking part in her daughter's film, Makarius says she was forced to confront issues she had previously avoided.
"At the time when I lived, during socialism, I didn't think about it because I was young and I was busy with other things. I was living my youth," she says.
After she moved to France, she quickly forgot her life in Bulgaria.
"I turned my back on these things," she says. "This film made me go back into the past, already fully conscious…and somehow rethink everything."
For Makarius, a key theme that emerged during the making of the movie, and later when she was writing the book, was fear.
"I didn't know that I lived in fear," she says. "For the first time, I realized that I lived in a society where fear was part of the air that we breathed. It's so present that it is just taken for granted. You don't see it, it's inside you, not in front of your eyes."
In addition to the State Security file, Makarius also discovered the stories of relatives who suffered at the hands of the communist regime, details which she had never previously known.
To move forward, my generation has to confront this past, even if that makes us imperfect children and offended parents."
-- Bojina Panayotova
"For a reader, it is not only interesting to read another story of another victim of a totalitarian regime, but they will have the opportunity to see how someone faces these stories today, how they resonate in the consciousness of a woman like me," she says.
The film -- and by extension, Makarius's book -- sheds light on the generational differences in how Bulgarians regard the communist past.
"I know that your file is a trace of this time of submission and lies," Panayotova writes to her mother at the end of the film. "But to move forward, my generation has to confront this past, even if that makes us imperfect children and offended parents."
"I was surprised to see how well [the film] was received in France. One of the reasons was not so much that people didn't know about this country and totalitarianism, but exactly this [human] dimension, the dialogue between generations. [It questions whether this dialogue] is possible, how difficult and ambiguous it can be," says Makarius. "You can't say the mother is right or the daughter is right. This has always existed. It is perhaps universal."
At various points in the book, Makarius is critical of what she sees as her daughter's extreme approach to filmmaking. She is still undecided about her daughter's questions. On the one hand, nothing should be hidden, because then the next generations will be left in the dark.
"One cannot interrupt the transmission of memory and history," she says.
However, if one "just throws the truth around," it can be a very heavy burden, Makarius says. She recalls the thesis of Tsvetan Todorov, a Bulgarian historian, philosopher, and literary critic, who said that if the people who suffered the worst consequences of totalitarianism had told their children what happened to them, their children would not have been able to live their own lives.
"I don't think there's a single answer, but the question is interesting and asking it is important," says Makarius
. Dilyana Teoharova is a correspondent for RFE/RL's Bulgarian Service. She is a journalism graduate from Sofia University.
Croatia, Serbia In Diplomatic Dispute After Vucic Barred From World War II Site
Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkafterovic (left), President Zoran Milanovic (center), and parliament speaker Gordan Jandrokovic leave the flower-shaped Jasenovac monument after a ceremony in tribute to the victims killed in the concentration camp during World War II on April 22, 2020.
A diplomatic flare-up has ignited after the Croatian government blocked a private trip by Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic to lay flowers at the site of a World War II concentration camp where tens of thousands of Serbs and others were killed by pro-Nazi authorities in Croatia.
Croatian authorities on July 17 said they only learned of Vucic's planned trip to the site of the former Jasenovac concentration camp through unofficial channels and that such a visit should be "part of arrangements between the two sides."
Croatian Foreign Minister Gordan Grlic-Radman told reporters that "the president of a country is a protected person. Such an arrival requires the involvement of the Croatian authorities."
"We always announce our arrival, but that hasn't happened here. You can't just cross the border."
Serbian authorities immediately reacted by putting restrictions on Croatian officials traveling through its territory.
"From today, all officials of the Croatian state, all holders of official or diplomatic passports, will have to specifically announce and explain their visit or passage through Serbia and will be placed on a special regime of control," Serbian Interior Minister Aleksandar Vulin said.
Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic said Vucic had wanted to visit Jasenovac privately, but that he postponed the trip "for the sake of good relations" between Serbia and Croatia.
"I don't know if he is banned from visiting Croatia or Jasenovac. So he can go anywhere, but not to Jasenovac? Which I think is an incredible precedent," Brnabic said, adding that it was "a brutal trampling on freedom of movement."
Brnabic said Serbia will now request an official visit, "so let's see about these 'European values.'" Vucic -- a former ultranationalist who solidified his grip on power by reinventing himself as a reformer committed to Serbia's drive toward European Union membership -- has scheduled a July 18 news conference.
On Instagram, Vucic posted a photo of the Jasenovac monument and wrote, "The Serbian people will live and they will never forget!"
During World War II, tens of thousands of Serbs, Jews, Roma, and anti-fascist Croats were killed at the Jasenovac camp -- known as "Croatia's Auschwitz." The camp was run by Croatia's Nazi-allied Ustase regime.
Relations between Serbia and Croatia have been strained since Croatia's declaration of independence from the former Yugoslavia in 1991, which set off a four-year conflict with rebel ethnic Serbs supported by Belgrade.
Many Serbian nationalists have accused Croatia's government of not facing up to the actions carried out on its territory during World War II.
The Croatian government, meanwhile, has accused Belgrade of using the issue for its own internal political reasons and for not dealing with its role in the Balkan wars of 1992-95.
Balkan countries sign deal to unlock EU enlargement talks
Bulgaria had for years blocked the start of accession talks due to a conflict over the recognition of the Macedonian language
17.07.2022 Macedonia
Two Balkan states signed an agreement that will allow North Macedonia and Albania to formally start negotiations to join the European Union, a process long-delayed by bilateral quarrels between countries in the volatile region.
Bujar Osmani, North Macedonia’s foreign minister, signed the protocol with his Bulgarian counterpart in Sofia, Bulgaria’s capital, on Sunday.
The move came a day after North Macedonia’s parliament approved a European Union proposal that aims to help resolve a Balkan dispute and unlock the organisation’s enlargement.
Bulgaria had for years blocked the start of accession talks due to a conflict over the recognition of the Macedonian language and the rights of Bulgarian nationals within North Macedonia. Albania’s negotiations were also delayed, as it has been coupled with North Macedonia in the membership procedures.
Roadmap for resolution
The document signed on Sunday will guide Bulgaria and North Macedonia through resolving the disagreements.
“For us it’s a historic opportunity that after 17 years of candidate status the Republic of North Macedonia gets the opportunity to start accession negotiations with the European Union,” Osmani told reporters.
On Saturday, 68 lawmakers in North Macedonia’s 120-member assembly voted in favour of a motion to let the government back a framework for negotiations offered by the EU.
By approving the EU proposal, “we remain on the only road to which nobody offered an alternative,” Prime Minister Dimitar Kovacevski had said on Thursday at the start of a debate that lasted for three days. “We’re starting to quickly move and change the country in the process of negotiations.”
'Difficult tradeoffs'
The deal may allow North Macedonia to hold its first intergovernmental conference with the EU -the formal start of negotiations - “within the next few days,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told lawmakers in Skopje.
The US State Department welcomed the vote. “We recognise the difficult tradeoffs considered in this compromise, which acknowledges and respects North Macedonia’s cultural identity and the Macedonian language,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in an emailed statement.
The former Yugoslav country has faced multiple hurdles on its path to Western integration, including having to change its official name to resolve a dispute with neighboring Greece before joining NATO in 2020.
Still, the deal has sparked tensions in North Macedonia, where thousands have protested for two weeks. The opposition said the EU proposal didn’t sufficiently guarantee recognition of the country’s language and national identity. Both the government in Skopje and EU officials rejected these claims.
Opposition lawmakers heckled Kovacevski on Thursday, holding posters with the sign “No!” and blowing vuvuzelas, a kind of horn, as he spoke. Thousands protested outside the parliament building, with ten people detained.
The EU-backed deal seeks to alleviate doubts among Balkan countries that the bloc is still committed to enlargement, amid concern of growing Russian influence. Their worries that they will be left behind have only intensified since the start of war in Ukraine, which prompted EU leaders to advance a decision to approve both Ukraine and Moldova as membership candidates.
Panama City, Jul 8 (EFE).- Striking Panamanian teachers and their allies will protest indefinitely until President Laurentino Cortizo’s administration presents clear proposals for lowering high fuel and food prices, a union leader said Friday.
“There was an attempt by the government to approach us. Now it seems they want to step back from the call to dialogue, but let’s be honest: if they don’t have anything to propose, we’ll stay in the streets,” the head of the Teachers’ Association of Panama (Asoprof), Diogenes Sanchez, told Efe.
Thousands of people gathered Friday outside the National Assembly building, the seat of the national legislature, in a new peaceful demonstration in this capital.
The protesters chanted, held up banners and played drums to press their demands for a lowering or freezing of fuel prices, a step they see as necessary to bring down the cost of basic food items.
An alliance of teachers, unions and popular organizations, which in May had presented the government a list of 32 demands, began a new round of protests this week that has steadily attracted more support.
The teachers initially declared a 72-hour strike on Wednesday, but that job action was made indefinite a day later following a failed meeting between teachers’ union representatives and Education Minister Maruja Gorday.
The coordinator of the National Union of Educators of Panama (UNEP), Alexis Cazorla, told Efe the union had proposed that authorities set the price of fuels at $3 a gallon (3.78 liters).
The administration is “irresponsibly” claiming they are unable to freeze the price even as government officials have chauffeurs and pay nothing for the gasoline they consume, he said.
Students, indigenous people, workers and members of other unions have joined the teachers in increasingly large demonstrations being held in several regions of Panama.
“The entire country is suffering the effects of the high cost of fuel, and as a knock-on effect all the prices of the basic basket are rising. The people are demanding the government intervene. It can’t turn its back on us,” said Yamir Cordoba, a member of the powerful Suntracs construction workers union, which is proposing a “24-hour warning strike.”
Cortizo’s administration temporarily froze the price per gallon of fuel, which at one point climbed over $6, setting it at $3.95 for some sectors in an attempt to prevent a hike in public transport fares and food prices.
The Panamanian Episcopal Conference, meanwhile, said Friday that it acknowledges and respects people’s right to protest.
But it urged society to work to forge a better country at a time when Panama is emerging from a health crisis that “severely affected the economy and education,” referring to the serious deficiencies in the country’s experience with remote learning during the pandemic.
“We’re calling respectfully on the national government, on social organizations, all men and women of good faith to seek adequate solutions together at this historic moment for our people,” the bishops said in a statement. “We have to find new forms of protests that avoid harming people, particularly the most vulnerable.”
The Episcopal Conference urged Panamanians to “build bridges and tear down the walls that divide us, set our sights on building a country guided by (the principles of) humane, just, equitable and sustainable development for all of its citizens.” EFE
Bangkok, Jul 14 (EFE).- A peculiar international tournament is underway in the Thai capital Bangkok, where 1,400 participants from 39 countries are taking part in a championship whose star players are robots.
RoboCup 2022 pits teams of young scientists against one another as they demonstrate the latest technological advances in robotics, artificial intelligence and computer engineering with competitions in football and search and rescue operations.
The competition at the Bangkok Trade and Exhibition Centre (Bitec), which kicked off Monday and runs until Saturday, looks to promote the use of robots in various sectors from household chores to industry and rescue operations.
On Sunday, Bitec will host an international symposium on robotics.
RoboCup was born in Nagoya, Japan, in 1997, with the idea to create a football team made up of robots that by 2050 would hypothetically be able to compete against human beings.
The tournament was hosted in Sydney in 2019 and the following year it was suspended due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Last year, it was held virtually. EFE
grc/jt/ch
Ecuador scientists develop environmental solutions using sustainable graphene
Loja, Ecuador, Jul 6 (EFE).- A pioneering project in Ecuador to synthesize graphene is starting to yield promising results in the removal of pollutants from water.
Dubbed the ‘material of the future’, graphene — a microscopic hexagonal mesh of carbon atoms — is a highly resistant but very flexible material with a formation similar to that of graphite, which is commonly used in pencils.
“The idea is to contribute to the conservation of the environment with methodologies that are ecological,” Ximena Jaramillo, professor and head of the new materials laboratory at UTPL, tells Efe.
In 2010, initial experiments on the material, which was discovered in 2004, earned Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov the Nobel Prize in Physics.
Today, more than a decade later, researchers are striving to achieve high-quality graphene, but synthesized with non-reactive solvents.
Scientists at UTPL are testing synthesization techniques with water, acids such as ascorbic acid (vitamin C) and even Andean potato extracts.
“The students are very interested not only in making changes and improvements to the production of synthesis, but also in how to apply and present prototypes in different fields,” TalÃa Tene, chemistry professor and member of the Materials Science and Technology research group at UTPL, tells Efe.
Two successful cases have already come out of the laboratory.
The first uses graphene to absorb methylene blue — a salt used as a dye in denim garments — from water, while the second uses the material for the removal of mercury, a heavy metal used in illegal gold mining and a high pollutant in rivers.
“It could be an excellent solution for decontaminating the rivers that run from Ecuador to Peru,” says Tene.
The professor adds that the use of graphene could be applied in medicine and in the early detection of breast cancer.
“Temperature changes in the breast can give a prognosis that there may be a problem. Being a good conductor of heat, graphene oxide, together with electronics, could become a sensor to detect modifications in the breast,” Tene says.
Using natural extracts, scientists at UTPL are striving to obtain a final product similar to the material manufactured in China, but that uses chemical components to synthesize the material.
Another challenge is to increase the scalability of the material produced in the laboratory to be able to produce larger quantities.
“It seems to be a very simple material, but let’s remember that nanomaterials act in small quantities,” Tene says. EFE
db/mp/ks
Turkey’s Erdogan threatens to block Sweden’s Nato bid if conditions not met
Ankara, Jul 18 (EFE).- Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned Monday that his country could still block Sweden’s accession to Nato if Stockholm fails to meet the conditions Ankara set out when it lifted its veto last month.
“We see that Sweden has especially not been living up to its promises,” Erdogan told a news conference in Ankara. “I repeat it again, we will freeze their Nato accession process if the conditions are not met.”
Turkey has accused Stockholm and Helsinki of supporting Kurdish organizations that it regards as terrorists and said it would not lift its veto on their accession to Nato until they met Turkey’s demands.
The three states signed a trilateral memorandum ahead of the Nato summit in Madrid last month in which the Nordic countries agreed to address Ankara’s concerns, including on the fight against terrorism and weapon sales.
In the agreement, the Nordic governments promised energetic measures against the PKK, the Kurdish armed group that has battled a succession of Turkish governments for decades, and to conclude extradition agreements with Turkey.
Erdogan claimed that Sweden had committed to extradite 73 terror suspects to Turkey.
Sweden is home to a Kurdish expatriate population of somewhere between 70,000 to 150,000 people, according to various estimates.
“As Turkey, our stance is clear. The rest is up to them,” Erdogan said.
All 30 existing NATO members must approve Sweden and Finland’s bid to join the alliance.
The Nordic nations applied for membership following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, bucking decades of traditional neutrality. EFE
DT-wr/mp/jt
Indian lawmakers to vote-in next president as tribal woman heads the race
New Delhi, Jul 18 (EFE).- Around 4,800 national and regional lawmakers of India are on Monday set to elect the next president of the country to replace incumbent Ram Nath Kovind through polls in which Droupadi Murmu seems all set to become the first tribal woman to occupy the post.
Voting for the elections began at 10 am on Monday in the Lok Sabha (lower house of the parliament), Rajya Sabha (upper house), and regional assemblies, although the results would not be announced until Thursday.
Murmu, 64, was born in a family of the Santhal tribe in the eastern state of Odisha, and has been backed by the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janta Party led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
As the BJP enjoys a majority in the parliament and heads several provincial governments, Murmu is a clear favorite to become the next president.
BJP’s national president Jagat Prakash Nadda tweeted that Murmu’s candidature “is a defining moment for India & the most glorious moment in our quest for social justice & transformation.”
The opposition’s candidate Yashwant Sinha served as the finance and foreign minister in BJP-led governments between 1999 and 2004, although he later left the party to join the Trinamool Congress, a regional party that is in power in the state of West Bengal.
In an open letter to Indian lawmakers, Sinha wrote on Sunday that the elections were not about the candidates’ identity but their ideology and the ideals they represent.
He accused the BJP of carrying out “daily attacks on democracy” and establishing a “majoritarian supremacy” in the Hindu majority country, over the minorities.
The results of the presidential polls will be announced on Thursday and India’s 15th president since its independence from the British in 1947 would assume office on Jul. 25.
The president’s role in the government is mainly formal and symbolic as per the Indian constitution, with the prime minister vested with the powers to head the executive. EFE
daa/ia
Malaysian authorities seize container of elephant tusks, pangolin scales
Singapore, Jul 18 (EFE).- Malaysian authorities said Monday they had seized a container of elephant tusks, pangolin scales and other animal skulls and bones with an estimated worth of $18 million.
The animal parts were hidden behind sawn timber on a ship coming from Africa that was inspected in Malaysia on July 10, the Customs Department said in a statement.
The container included 6,000kg (around 13,200 pounds) of elephant tusks, 100kg of pangolin scales, 25kg of rhino horns and another 300kg of skeletons, bones and horns of other animals.
Malaysian authorities have opened an investigation into the importer and shipping agent, the department said, without providing further details on the shipment’s final destination.
In China, as well as other countries in Southeast Asia, rhino horn is believed to have medicinal and aphrodisiac properties, although such claims are scientifically baseless.
The belief, coupled with increased purchasing power in the region, is further endangering the already vulnerable populations of rhinos, African elephants and pangolins, among other species that are poached for their body parts.
There are fewer than 20,000 African white rhinos and 6,000 black rhinos in the wild, according to the NGO Save the Rhino.
Asian rhino populations are even more endangered, with no more than 80 Sumatran rhinos and 75 Javan rhinos left in the wild, the NGO estimates. EFE
