Category Archives: Global Politics

Is the GOP Trying to Kill Americans? | Dame Magazine

I’m cussing a lot because I’m furious. Like millions of Americans (despite my Welsh birth, I’m about to become an American citizen) I have never had an employer who paid for my health care. (Actually, I had one employer, who was mandated to provide me with health care for a year through the Writers Guild.) But now this kind of bullshit is back. Donald Trump and the Republicans’ attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act is not a way to curb a bureaucratic mess, but an out and out war on the American people. Because repealing the ACA would mean everyone with a preexisting condition will no longer be able to get health-care coverage. It means those of you middle-income people without health care provided by an employer, but unable to qualify for Medicare, will have to dig deep and find $200 to $300 a month to give to an insurance company who will squabble over each and every doctor’s visit, every dime you spend, every minor symptom you have.After the birth of my son and a horrible divorce, I was crippled with depression and anxiety and PTSD. I credit mental-health-care services—weekly visits to a therapist at $40 a pop even with insurance, monthly visits to a psychiatrist at $50, monthly prescriptions at $20—with saving my life. I am a healthy person. I do yoga, I dance, I eat healthy, I’m active. Being felled by MRSA, a retained placenta, mental-health issues could and would have killed me without insurance.Living in America is prohibitively expensive, and in a big city, even more so. Rent, traffic tickets, tickets for having you dog off leash, tickets for overtaking in the fast lane—it never fucking ends. I often feel like white men are masticating me as they try to suck the sinews off my bones to make stock for their fucking stew. This country is a devastating and unfriendly place to be, and yet here we all are, trying to make the best of it, faced with little choice but to wake up, day after day, work in jobs we hate for pennies our employers argue over, paying rent for homes owned by people who see us as cash cows. I knew this was happening, but the reality of it has devastated me more than I can say. In my ten years of American living, moving here during the Bush era, I began to see real change, and now I am bearing witness to a perilous plunge into a new, worse horror.We need to do everything we can to stop it. Start by picking up the phone: Call. Your. Senator.

Source: Is the GOP Trying to Kill Americans? | Dame Magazine

Egypt Drops Case Against Mob That Attacked Christian Woman – ABC News

“The government is allowing the oppressors to walk free on the streets,” Thabet told the TV channel. “This is our village that we were born and raised in … How can we be the victims and not be able to return to our village and homes?”

Source: Egypt Drops Case Against Mob That Attacked Christian Woman – ABC News

AIPAC’s secretive strategy to transform UK politics | The Electronic Intifada

Adam Schapira and Elliott Miller, two pro-Israel activists, reveal in the first episode of The Lobby that AIPAC provided them with funding to set up the Pinsker Centre, an advocacy group to promote Zionism on UK campuses.Schapira made an unsuccessful bid to be elected president of the Union of Jewish Students, which has received funding from the Israeli embassy. Miller spent a year working at the Israeli foreign ministry’s division that handles relations with the US Congress, which put him in close contact with AIPAC.In October, Miller was filmed being violent and abusive during student protests against a speech by a former Israeli army officer at University College London.Videos online show Miller using Islamophobic abuse against students. “It’s a violent religion,” he shouts at one protester.

Source: AIPAC’s secretive strategy to transform UK politics | The Electronic Intifada

Without Obamacare, I Will Get Sicker, Faster, Until I Die – The New York Times – But GOP does not care, not a whit!

My prognosis is not good, but Obamacare gets me the treatment I need so that I can be myself as long as possible. Without this insurance, my illness would progress more rapidly, until I died.Early on Thursday morning, the Senate voted to begin the process of repealing Obamacare. On Friday, the House followed suit. A repeal of Obamacare — without even knowing what the replacement would be — obviously makes me very scared. I used to be the one helping people as a social worker. Now I’m the one who needs help.17COMMENTSIt’s not too late for Republicans in Congress to change their minds and see reason. It will be at least a few weeks before Congress formally votes on the question of repeal.If one of the last meaningful things I can do is help even one person understand how important it is for millions of people to keep their Obamacare, then my illness will have served its purpose. For that I will be grateful.

Russia Passes a New Bill to Decriminalise Domestic Violence – The Ladies Finger

The bill was introduced by Yelena Mizulina, a senator in the Federation Council, Russia’s upper chamber of Parliament. “You don’t want people to be imprisoned for two years and labelled a criminal for the rest of their lives for a slap,” she had said back in August 2016, when she had first introduced the bill in Parliament. She went on to argue that traditional power dynamics of families should be reflected in the law — and told the Moscow Times that the law must not, “contradict the system of social values that society holds on to.” Mizulina had previously campaigned for anti-LGBTQ legislature against “gay propaganda”. But it has been reported that the bill was not a priority until Vladimir Putin intervened. Apart from starting the change.org petition, Popova also condemned the bill on a Facebook post, arguing that the bill will mean that, “an offender will now beat [his relatives] and pay a small fine.”

Source: Russia Passes a New Bill to Decriminalise Domestic Violence – The Ladies FingerThe Ladies Finger

New York Artist Molly Crabapple Sketches Her Way From Guantanamo Bay to Bangalore – The Ladies FingerThe Ladies Finger

Gaza was bombed and wrecked during the 2014 war, Molly remembers seeing construction workers taking the rebar from a building that has been bombed. “If you’ve ever seen rebar from a building that has been bombed, it is an evil-looking material. It’s like coiled snakes; like nettles.” She saw two men taking the rebar and straightening it with rocks and tools. And in it she saw an image of resilience, taking the rebar and turning it into construction material, but “goddammit, you’re going to rebuild anyway!”

Source: New York Artist Molly Crabapple Sketches Her Way From Guantanamo Bay to Bangalore – The Ladies FingerThe Ladies Finger

US shoe company recalls boot that ‘mistakenly’ leaves swastika prints – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) Not a mistake – they just got caught being stupid trying to profit off of racism and hate.

Conal said it did “not promote hate or discrimination of any kind” and was investigating what had gone wrong.The Reddit post, which has been viewed more than 3 million times, sparked a flurry of jokes on social media.On Amazon, where the boots were sold before being pulled by the company, users left reviews describing the boots as “good for marching into Poland, but not so much for anything else”, and rating them a “nein out of ten”.Other Reddit users pointed out the boot style shared its name — Polar Fox — with that of the codename for a German and Finnish military operation in World War II.

Source: US shoe company recalls boot that ‘mistakenly’ leaves swastika prints – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Russia dossier: what happens next – and could Donald Trump be impeached? | US news | The Guardian

The most sensational details contained in the dossier concern the allegation that Russian spies gathered compromising material, or “kompromat”, on Trump by secretly recording audio and video tape of his sexual activities in the presidential suite of the Ritz Carlton hotel in Moscow. Such content is virtually impossible to prove, or disprove, other than in the unlikely circumstance that tapes were to emerge. A potentially more potent line of inquiry contained in the dossier that could yet cause Trump trouble relates to allegations that members of his team were in close contact with Russian officials in the course of last year’s presidential election over Russian hacking of Democratic emails that were later published by WikiLeaks. Independent reports suggest that US intelligence agencies were already investigating alleged links, such as those between businessman Carter Page and senior Russian officials. The president-elect’s spokesman Sean Spicer this week said that the president-elect “does not know” Page, even though Trump himself last March described Page as a member of his foreign policy team.

Source: Russia dossier: what happens next – and could Donald Trump be impeached? | US news | The Guardian

FBI chief given dossier by John McCain alleging secret Trump-Russia contacts | US news | The Guardian

Most explosively, the report alleges: “FSB has compromised Trump through his activities in Moscow sufficiently to be able to blackmail him.” The president-elect has not responded to the allegations.CNN reported on Tuesday that the FBI was still investigating the credibility of the documents but added that the intelligence chiefs had included a summary of the material in a secret briefing on Russian interference in the election delivered last week to Barack Obama and Donald Trump.The emergence of the documents is potentially explosive, 10 days before Trump’s inauguration and on the eve of his first planned press conference since July last year.

Source: FBI chief given dossier by John McCain alleging secret Trump-Russia contacts | US news | The Guardian