Daily Brief Audio Series
There’s an old slogan from rights activists that says: “Some people are gay. Get over it.”
It’s pithy, memorable, easily repeatable – as with all good slogans. It’s also easily repurposed for other uses, like, “Some people are trans. Get over it.”
Most importantly, it puts responsibility on the receiver of the message. It says, it’s not the scapegoated groups that’s the issue here. The issue is you, the individual reader or listener. You are called on to reassess your thinking. Its bluntness is a challenge: this is how reality is, and if what’s in your head can’t accept reality, the problem is what’s in your head.
Authorities in Belarus should maybe meditate on this. The other day, they again attacked lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people. Specifically, they changed the definition of pornography under Belarusian law so it now categorizes depictions of LGBT folks as it does depictions of necrophilia and pedophilia. In short, they’re labelling LGBT lives as “pornography.”
Of course, it’s nothing new exactly in Belarus, which under the dictatorship of Aliaksandr Lukashenka is a human rights hell hole generally. Authorities have attacked LGBT folks there before, too, and public officials are pushing to introduce even criminal penalties for “non-traditional sexual relationships and gender change propaganda.” Belarus is marching in lock-step with its ally, Russia, which has expanded its anti-gay propaganda law and banned the “international LGBT movement” – an organization which, as you know, doesn’t exist.
Putin has been attacking LGBT folks in part to try to boost his support among conservatives abroad, especially in the West over the war in Ukraine. Putin often ludicrously presents his atrocity-ridden invasion of Ukraine as a battle for “traditional values.”
A few months ago, my former colleague Graeme Reid (now with the the UN as an Independent Expert) wrote an article on “Russia, Homophobia and the Battle for ‘Traditional Values.’” In it, he described a competition between two visions of the world:
On one side is the vision of a social order in which the individual is subordinated to [the state’s] notion of ‘culture’ and tradition, brooking no dissent. The competing vision is rights-based and accommodating of diversity.
What anti-LGBT dictators, like Lukashenka and Putin, and their admiring Western demagogues are calling for when they talk about “traditional values” is obvious. They want a world where the state, the government, can deny you your individual freedoms – even your own bodily autonomy – based on “tradition,” which conveniently for them, they get to define. No thanks.
In their authoritarian efforts, they even take steps that deny the very existence of LGBT people.
Those of us who believe in freedom and accept the reality of human diversity have the opposite view. And we say, “Some people are gay. Get over it.”
No war can be reduced to few hundred words.
But today, on the one-year anniversary of Sudan’s ongoing conflict, let’s try to de-complexify the situation by highlighting the four key actors involved in the horrific tragedy that’s been unfolding.
The first two are the main warring parties, which, over the past year, have committed one atrocity after another: the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
The SAF have unlawfully killed civilians. They’ve carried out airstrikes deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure, including hospitals. The SAF has recruited children as fighters and repeatedly obstructed humanitarian aid from reaching those who need it.
On the other side, the RSF and their allied militias have carried out widespread killings of civilians, many ethnically targeted, as in West Darfur. The RSF has engaged in widespread sexual violence and pillage, as well. They’ve also recruited children, and they’ve also hampered humanitarian aid, including by massive looting.
The third of our four groups of people involved in Sudan’s conflict are the victims of the first two, the millions caught up in the horrific viloence of the SAF and the RSF.
In addition to the thousands abused and killed, the conflict has forced 8.5 million people from their homes. About a fifth of them have fled to neighboring countries. Millions who remain make Sudan the world’s largest crisis of internal displacement.
Some 25 million people – that’s about half of the population of Sudan – are now dependent on emergency food supplies. Five million could be at risk of starvation in the coming months.
This brings us to the fourth and final actor in Sudan’s tragedy: the international community.
As we’ve discussed here several times over the past year, the outside world has not been addressing the Sudan crisis with anything like the urgency it demands. Alarm bells have been ringing, but there’s been a spectacular silence in response.
Today could see a shift in the world’s approach. Global and regional leaders are meeting in Paris to put the spotlight on Sudan. They’ll push for an end to the fighting and, hopefully, for a much-needed, massive boost in global funding for humanitarian action.
The Paris conference should also make clear that those responsible for atrocities in Sudan will be held to account. In particular, they should announce concrete measures against those deliberately obstructing aid. Getting the aid to folks who need it has to include discouraging the warring parties from blocking it and stealing it.
One year ago today, Sudan began spiraling out of control. Of the four actors involved, we know what’s been happening with the first three. We need to see a lot more of the fourth.
I spent some time this morning looking at house prices in Texas. I wanted to know what 400 million US dollars could buy you.
No, I’m not planning to move to Texas, and no, I don’t have 400 million lying around.
But that’s the amount of money – Texas taxpayers’ money – the Texas Military Department will reportedly be spending to construct a massive new “Forward Operating Base” near the town of Eagle Pass, on the border with Mexico.
The base is just one part of the US state’s anti-migrant program, called “Operation Lone Star.” We’ve talked about Operation Lone Star’s huge budget and deadly abuses in the Daily Brief before, and highlighted the ugly immorality at the core of the program.
We could also mention that it even hasn’t done what the authorities promised it would do. There is no evidence Operation Lone Star has slowed migration. However, it has cost Texas residents as much as US$ 10 billion.
The pointless new military base is expected to house up to 1,800 national guard members. Given average real estate prices in the area, 400 million dollars could buy every one of them an actual house.
Here’s the math. Divide 400 million by 1,800, and you get US$ 222,222. In Maverick County, where Eagle Pass is located, the median sale price of a home is US$ 258,000, which is a bit high, but in the neighboring counties of Dimmit, Kinney and Zavala, it’s 144,000, and 198,000, and 140,000, respectively. So, yes, 400 million could buy 1,800 nice houses in the area.
Or, you could use that money instead to send those 1,800 national guard members to full, four-year degree programs at Texas A&M University. That costs US$ 30,608 a year for in-state residents, including tuition, fees, housing, food, books, transportation, and other expenses. In fact, you could do that and still have nearly 180 million left over. [400,000,000 – (30,608 x 4 x 1,800)]
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not really suggesting these spending alternatives. I’m not saying these 1,800 people should be prioritized over others in the state.
I’m simply pointing out that 400 million dollars is a lot of taxpayer money. There are thousands of things authorities could be spending it on.
Can they really think of nothing better to do with that money than further militarize the border and plan to commit yet more human rights abuses under Operation Lone Star?
Forced to Fight for Your Oppressors, Daily Brief April 10, 2024
Daily Brief, April 10, 2024.
We’ve committed countless atrocities against your people. We’ve burned down your villages, slaughtered your fathers and brothers, and raped your mothers and sisters. We’ve sent hundreds of thousands of you fleeing over the border, and those of you who remain we brutally repress, with tens of thousands of your families locked up in open-air prisons.
Now, we expect you to fight for us – to lay down your lives to defend us.
The vicious audacity of the Myanmar military’s treatment of the Rohingya minority is almost impossible to imagine. For years, the military has committed crimes against humanity and acts of genocide against the Rohingya, and now they are forcing Rohingya to collaborate with them, to fight alongside them.
And “forcing” is the key word here.
Myanmar’s military has abducted and forcibly recruited more than 1,000 Rohingya Muslim men and boys from across Rakhine State since February. A new report describes how Rohingya have been picked up in nighttime raids, and threatened with arrests and beatings if they don’t join up. Some victims are as young as 15.
The military has also used other threats, made possible by the horrific situation they keep many Rohingya in.
While more than 730,000 Rohingya have fled the country, especially during the military’s 2017 campaign of mass atrocities, some 630,000 Rohingya remain in Myanmar under a system of apartheid and persecution. This includes about 150,000 people held in detention camps. Since the 2021 military coup, the junta has imposed severe movement restrictions and aid blockages on them.
All of this increases their vulnerability to forced recruitment in the military. Join up, they say, or the restrictions will get worse, your rations will be cut, or maybe we’ll unleash another round of mass arrests against your family and your neighbors.
It’s vile, and it gets even worse. The junta is basing their actions on a military conscription law that only applies to Myanmar citizens, yet the Rohingya have long been denied citizenship. A key part of the authorities’ justification for terrorizing the Rohingya for years has been exactly that: they say they’re not citizens at all. And now, they’re expected to join the military like citizens?
What happens to the men and boys after they’re forced into military service will probably come as no surprise. They’re sent to abusive training camps for a short time, and then, many are put on the front lines of the junta’s fight with the Arakan Army armed group.
A number of the forced recruits have already been killed, with some of their bodies not even returned to families. Others have suffered serious injuries. The whereabouts of many more are unknown.
What’s happening in Myanmar, as my expert colleague Shayna Bauchner says, is the military’s “latest exploitation of a community made vulnerable to abuse by design, over decades of oppression.”
The horrific situation in the country has been allowed to fester and deteriorate for years. Crimes like forced recruitment keeps happening because the perpetrators pay no price. The outside world has not been doing enough to support justice and hold junta leaders accountable for their abuses, past and present.
If the future is to be any different, this has to change.
Fadi is from al-Nasser neighborhood in Gaza City. For months, the Israeli government essentially punished him for the Hamas-led attacks of October 7. Fadi had nothing to do with those attacks, of course, because he’s six years old.
Fadi also has cystic fibrosis, a genetic disorder that causes damage to the lungs, and because of the Israeli blockade, his mother struggled to get adequate food and necessary medicines for him. By mid-January, Fadi’s health had deteriorated so badly he could no longer walk. Before the war, he’d weighed 30 kilograms [about 66 pounds]. Now, he weighs 12.
Still, in a sense, Fadi has been one of the lucky ones. He was evacuated from Gaza to a hospital in Cairo, Egypt, at the end of March.
Hundreds of thousands of children remain in Gaza, suffering not only because of the ongoing bombing and other violence, but also because the Israeli government has been using starvation as a weapon of war. This is a war crime, and kids are dying as a result of the policy.
“All evidence points towards a major acceleration of death and malnutrition” in Gaza. Those are the words of the experts – a UN-coordinated partnership of 15 international organizations and UN agencies investigating the hunger crisis in a March 18 report. In northern Gaza, they estimate, 70 percent of people are experiencing catastrophic hunger.
If things continue like this, outright famine is next.
But things don’t have to continue like this. Concerned governments could act. And by act, I don’t mean airdropping aid and proposing temporary seaports we’re all seeing in the news right now. Aid groups and UN officials have called such efforts inadequate to prevent a famine.
What outside governments – in particular, Israel’s friends – need to do is push the Israeli government to behave in accordance with its obligations under international law. They could, and should, impose targeted sanctions and stop arms transfers to press the Israeli government to ensure access to humanitarian aid and basic services in Gaza.
In short, they need to impose serious consequnces on the government of Israel to get it to stop committing the war crime of using starvation as a weapon of war.
There is evidence to suggest this would work, too. Apparently following pressure from the US government, the Israeli cabinet agreed to several measures on April 4 to increase the amount of aid entering Gaza. But it’s still just a trickle. More pressure would bring more results.
Kids like Fadi didn’t attack Israel on October 7, and they aren’t holding any civilian hostages today (also a war crime and one of the reasons Israeli officials gave for their starvation strategy in Gaza). Children shouldn’t be made to suffer for the crimes of militants.
About half of Gaza’s population is children. The government of Israel is pushing hundreds of thousands of innocent kids towards famine. It’s madness. It needs to stop.