Category Archives: Around the World

“[A] few firings won’t solve the ongoing and underlying problems of objectification and inequality that manifest […] throughout American culture.”

The Atlantic: America’s Sexual-Assault Epidemic. “The Harvey Weinstein scandal rocking Hollywood has now spread throughout the American business world, with a growing list of firings and suspensions among high-profile men.” By Gillian B. White.

“In a sense, the current reckoning with predatory behavior by successful men has come about both because of, and in spite of, the country’s choice of president. […] Yet it’s impossible to contextualize the growing public outcry over sexual assault without considering the short distance, and largely unresolved tension, between Trump’s “you can do anything“ attitude toward women and his subsequent victory over a female candidate. Trump’s repeated denigration of women on the campaign trail, and the fact that he was elected anyway, set the stage for this moment. Viewed in that light, coming forward about experiences of abuse are both an act of personal courage, and a protest against this political moment.”

Link via dangerousmeta.

“Do you know what happened to me on Dizengoff Street?”

New York Times Op-Docs: I Have a Message for You. This is a short video documentary by Matan Rochlit about holocaust survivor Klara Prowisor. “To escape Auschwitz, she left her father to die. Decades later, she got a message from him.”

“My grandmother Lea once told me a story about the woman who lived next door to her in Tel Aviv, of her capture by the Nazis in Belgium and of an unfathomable decision she had to take to save herself. I never forgot it […]

Many years later, once I’d become a documentary filmmaker, I decided to find out whether the woman was still alive.

She was. Klara was 92 years old and still living in the same Tel Aviv apartment. I flew out to see her the following week and asked her to tell me the story I’d heard from my grandmother in her own words.”

“I am not sad that I will die, but I am sad that I won’t be able to take revenge like I would like to.”

Deutsche Welle: Reconstructed Auschwitz prisoner text details ‘unimaginable’ suffering. “A newly reconstructed document written in 1944 by a Greek Jewish prisoner at Auschwitz tells of misery “the human mind can not imagine.” The text was discovered buried in the ground at the Nazi extermination camp.”

“Russian-born historian Pavel Polian … researched the texts for 10 years, and published the findings in his book, “Scrolls from the Ashes.” Such buried messages were found exclusively at Auschwitz, Polian said, “most of them in February or March 1945, right after the camp was liberated.” Nadjari’s was the last to be discovered, he explained, adding that it is highly unlikely any other messages by members of the “Sonderkommando” units are still buried in the ground.

All in all, about 100 of the almost 2,000 Auschwitz inmates tasked with disposing of the many thousands of corpses survived the concentration camp. Of the five who wrote and buried messages, Nadjari was the sole survivor.”

“This is what grudging benevolence rooted in a sense of personal superiority and belief in the power of performance looks like.”

The Washington Post: In Puerto Rico, Trump’s paper-towel toss reveals where his empathy lies.

“Nicholas Vargas, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Florida, noted that Trump doesn’t approach everyone in such a state of callous disconnect. In August, Trump said there were “very fine people“ among the white supremacists at a rally in Charlottesville that left a counterprotester dead. Soon after, he pardoned former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, formally expressing concern for a man known for racially profiling Latinos and housing jail inmates outdoors in tents.

In these cases, Trump showed compassion.

“But when it comes to Puerto Rico and the humanitarian crisis there, what we see is a hands-off, bitter, hardly restrained resentment that anything is expected of him at all,“ said Vargas, who studies issues related to race and ethnicity. “This is a man who has the capacity to empathize. It — even in a catastrophe — is just a selective thing.“

These images show a president without mercy for certain human beings, “people unlike him,“ Vargas said. “That is women, people of color — even in the most dire of circumstances.“ “

“She lives in a tiny rented shed that has no plumbing. She gets water from a brother who lives in a trailer across the road.”

Washington Post: After the check is gone. “The underground economy has long been a part of rural America, where some receiving disability benefits are forced to work to survive.”

“Mallory, W.Va. — For the people of the hollow, opportunity begins where the road ends, and that was where they now went, driving onto a dirt path that vanished into forest. It was here that they came at the end of the month, when the disability checks were long gone, and the next were still days away, and the only option left was also one of the worst.

The goal was simple. Get to the top of the mountain. Collect as many wild roots as possible to sell to a local buyer. Avoid the copperheads and rattlesnakes. Descend before the rains came again and flooded their way out.”

And this is not in a third-world-coutry, it’s in the country that calls itself the “greatest country on earth”.