Category Archives: Community

US politics

Deutsche Welle: US withdraws from UN Human Rights Council. “The Trump administration has yet again pulled the United States out of a major global body — this time the UN Human Rights Council. The move comes a day after the UNHRC criticized Trump’s immigration policies.”

Deutsche Welle: US Attorney General Jeff Sessions claims Nazis did not deport Jews. “The Nazis “were keeping Jews from leaving the country,” Jeff Sessions has claimed. Meanwhile, US President Trump doubled-down on false claims about rising crime in Germany due to immigration.”

“The comments by Sessions came just one day after President Trump wrote on Twitter: “The people of Germany are turning against their leadership as migration is rocking the already tenuous Berlin coalition. Crime in Germany is way up. Big mistake made all over Europe in allowing millions of people in who have so strongly and violently changed their culture!”

As many have gone to lengths to point out, crime in Germany is currently at its lowest rate since 1992.

Not one to be deterred in the face of facts, Trump doubled-down on this claim on Tuesday:

While refugee crime has risen slightly with the increase in refugees, nearly all of these crimes are minor, such as not paying for a bus ticket. There is no data suggesting that people not born in Germany are more likely to commit crimes than those that are.

Rebuffing Trump’s assertion, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the official statistics that showed a 10 percent fall in crime across Germany last year “speak for themselves.””

Deutsche Welle: USA treten aus UN-Menschenrechtsrat aus. “Es hatte sich schon länger abgezeichnet – jetzt ist es offiziell: Die USA haben ihre Mitgliedschaft im Menschenrechtsrat der Vereinten Nationen gekündigt. Sie sind unzufrieden mit der Arbeit des Gremiums.”

Deutsche Welle: Migrantenkinder: Druck auf Republikaner wächst. “Der Proteststurm gegen die Trennung von Migrantenfamilien an der Grenze zu Mexiko zeigt Wirkung. Die Republikaner und US-Präsident Trump suchen eine rasche Lösung des Problems. Fortschritte sind bisher nicht in Sicht.”

“Die Republikaner geraten wegen der vielen Bilder von weinenden und verzweifelten Kindern zunehmend unter Druck – was sie sich vor den wichtigen Kongresswahlen im Herbst nicht erlauben können. Sie sind daher um Schadensbegrenzung bemüht. Mehrere Vertreter der Konservativen gingen auf Distanz zu dem Präsidenten. Trump verteidigte gleichwohl seine umstrittene Politik: Sie sei notwendig, um eine “massive Krise” zu meistern. Er sagte, er werde den Kongress zu einer Lösung auffordern, mit der Einwanderer ohne Papiere gemeinsam mit ihren Kindern inhaftiert werden könnten.

[…]

Derweil kritisierten Guatemala und Mexiko die zwangsweisen Trennungen von Familien an der US-Grenze. Das Vorgehen der US-Regierung sei grausam und unmenschlich, sagte Außenminister Luis Videgaray in Mexiko-Stadt. Von den rund 2000 betroffenen Kindern sei nur ein Prozent aus Mexiko. Der Großteil der Kinder stamme aus den mittelamerikanischen Staaten Guatemala, Honduras und El Salvador. Der Minister kündigte für Freitag ein Treffen mit Behörden aus den betroffenen Ländern an.

Die Regierung Guatemala verurteilte ebenfalls das Vorgehen an der US-Grenze. Dieses zerstöre die Einheit der Familie und verletzte die Menschenrechte. Nach Angaben von Außenministerin Sandra Jovel befinden sich 465 Kinder aus Guatemala in Herbergen in Texas und Arizona. Guatemala forderte die USA auf, die Einwanderungspolitik zu überdenken. Nach Schätzungen leben in den USA rund drei Millionen Menschen aus Guatemala – der Großteil von ihnen als illegale Einwanderer.”

Candid insights on the often excruciating process of moving through and with loss

New York Times: You May Want to Marry My Husband. By Amy Krouse Rosenthal, March 3, 2017.

“I have been trying to write this for a while, but the morphine and lack of juicy cheeseburgers (what has it been now, five weeks without real food?) have drained my energy and interfered with whatever prose prowess remains. Additionally, the intermittent micronaps that keep whisking me away midsentence are clearly not propelling my work forward as quickly as I would like. But they are, admittedly, a bit of trippy fun.

Still, I have to stick with it, because I’m facing a deadline, in this case, a pressing one. I need to say this (and say it right) while I have a) your attention, and b) a pulse.

I have been married to the most extraordinary man for 26 years. I was planning on at least another 26 together.”

New York Times: Amy Krouse Rosenthal, Children’s Author and Filmmaker, Dies at 51. March 13, 2017.

New York Times: My Wife Said You May Want to Marry Me. By Jason B. Rosenthal, June 15, 2018.

I am that guy.

A little over a year ago, my wife, Amy Krouse Rosenthal, published a Modern Love essay called “You May Want to Marry My Husband.“ At 51, Amy was dying from ovarian cancer. She wrote her essay in the form of a personal ad. It was more like a love letter to me.

Those words would be the final ones Amy published. She died 10 days later.

Amy couldn’t have known that her essay would afford me an opportunity to fill this same column with words of my own for Father’s Day, telling you what has happened since. I don’t pretend to have Amy’s extraordinary gift with words and wordplay, but here goes.

Ted.com: The Journey through Loss and Grief, by Jason B. Rosenthal.

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“Look what you made me do.”

The New Yorker: The Language of the Trump Administration Is the Language of Domestic Violence. By Jessica Winter, June 11, 2018.

“Look what you made me do has emerged as the dominant ethos of the current White House. During the 2016 Presidential race, many observers drew parallels between the language of abusers and that of Trump on the campaign trail. Since his election, members of the Trump Administration have learned that language, too, and nowhere is this more vivid than in the rhetoric they use to discuss the Administration’s policies toward the Central American immigrants crossing the U.S. border. Informally since last summer, and officially since April 6th, the Department of Homeland Security has been separating parents from their children at the border, taking the parents into criminal custody and handing the children over to the Department of Health and Human Services to be placed in shelters and foster families, sometimes thousands of miles away from their parents. The process is compounded in its brutality by its perhaps intentional disorder, as a Boston Globe piece detailed on Sunday: parents in custody often have no idea where their children are, how to get them back, or if or when they will see them again.

[…]

There has always been a sickening intimacy to Trump’s insults and cruelties, whether he was sexualizing his daughter or sexually humiliating and physically dominating Hillary Clinton during the second Presidential debate. For many observers, especially women, that debate—coming days after the release of the “Access Hollywood“ tape—triggered a fight-or-flight response, unleashing their own memories of harassment and abuse. And, for many observers, especially parents, the news coverage of the atrocities being committed at the border in the name of American prosperity and security triggers a similar physiological response—except that this time the trigger is instantiated by sadistic, totalitarian force. (I cannot be the only mother of small children who slept on the floor of her kids’ room the night that “All In with Chris Hayes“ reported on a baby seized from his parents, one week past his first birthday.) A slow, quiet terror continues to spread through the American populace. We are all being made into complicit bystanders in Trump’s violence. We are all members of Trump’s toxic, traumatizing family now.”

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“Es läuft ganz gut bei uns”

Deutsche Welle: Migration in den Städten: Es geht auch anders. “”Wir fühlen uns mit dem Thema allein gelassen”, klagen Kommunalpolitiker, wenn es um die Aufnahme von Ausländern geht. Die Bertelsmann Stiftung beschreibt nun, wie Offenheit für Einwanderer gefördert werden kann.”

“Waren Sie schon einmal in Germersheim? Das ist ganz hübsch da, fahren Sie ruhig einmal hin! Die ehemalige Garnisonsstadt, knapp 50 Kilometer südlich von Mannheim gelegen, wird geprägt von ihrer historischen Festung. Das Rathaus, blau und weiß gestrichen, signalisiert dem Besucher: Hier in der Pfalz ist die Welt noch in Ordnung. Was niemand ahnt: Germersheim ist… überfremdet!

“Jaja, das sagt diese Partei mit den hellblauen Plakaten auch. Ich bin da natürlich ganz anderer Ansicht”, lacht Bürgermeister Marcus Schaile (CDU). Der Kommunalpolitiker hat viel Erfahrung damit, Unterschiedlichkeit auf einen Nenner zu bringen. In Zahlen: Rund 22.000 Einwohner leben in Germersheim. Davon hatten laut Zensus 2011 rund 54 Prozent einen Migrationshintergrund. Inzwischen liegt man nach Schätzungen des Bürgermeisters bei etwa 40 Prozent. “Wir haben hier 108 Nationen.”

Germersheim und überfremdet? Auch die Bertelsmann Stiftung sieht die Situation in dem Städtchen anders und lobt die Kommune als “Gestalter”, wenn es um Integration, Offenheit für Zuwanderer und kulturelle Vielfalt geht. “Gestalter” bedeutet: Hier werden die Dinge angepackt, aktiv bewältigt, nichts wird unter den Teppich gekehrt. Für einen Kommunalpolitiker wie den Bürgermeister kann man sich kaum ein schöneres Zeugnis vorstellen. “Es läuft ganz gut bei uns”, sagt Schaile.”

“They asked me to be a guinea pig, and I’ve been donating ever since“

The Washington Post: For six decades, ‘the man with the golden arm’ donated blood — and saved 2.4 million babies.

““He said that I had 13 units of blood and my life had been saved by unknown people,“ Harrison told CNN’s Sanjay Gupta decades later.

At the time, Australia’s laws required blood donors to be at least 18 years old. It would be four years before Harrison was eligible, but he vowed then that he too would become a blood donor when he was old enough.

After turning 18, Harrison made good on his word, donating whole blood regularly with the Australian Red Cross Blood Service.
[…]
Harrison continued donating for more than 60 years, and his plasma has been used to make millions of Anti-D injections, according to the Red Cross. Because about 17 percent of pregnant women in Australia require the Anti-D injections, the blood service estimates Harrison has helped 2.4 million babies in the country.

“Every ampul of Anti-D ever made in Australia has James in it,“ Barlow told the Sydney Morning Herald. “He has saved millions of babies. I cry just thinking about it.“ “

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