Thousands were paid about $700 / month to create distrust and chaos in society.
For 2020 Bernie v Trump would be about as chaotic as you can get.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Category: government
Global migration and the remittance economy
In 1987, reporter Jason DeParle went to sleep on the floor of a shanty in Manila for the first time. He had come to the Philippines to find out more about poverty in the developing world …
… he would spend the next 32 years following their family as they spread out around the world for work and a future outside the slums.
His new book is called A Good Provider Is One Who Leaves and is the story of global migration in the 21st century …
In the news we hear non-stop horror stories about foreign workers being abused. And those happen.
Very under-reported are success stories.
More than 2 million Filipinos depart each year …
About one in seven Filipino workers is employed abroad, and the $32 billion that they send home accounts for 10 percent of the GDP.
A remittance is a transfer of money, often by a foreign worker to an individual in their home country. …
… in 2018 overall global remittance grew 10% to US$689 billion, including US$528 billion to developing countries.
Global migration is far more good than bad.
Interview the families affected before you ASSume to know how they feel.
I Am Malala with Christina Lamb
If you want to know more about life in Pakistan I recommend this autobiography of a teenager.
If you want to know more about the plight of girls and women in extremist Muslim nations, this is the book. Malala is a symbol. She was awarded the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize.
I hadn’t recalled that the Taliban assassin shot Malala and hit both girls sitting either side of her as well. All three survived.
Christina Lamb is an excellent writer, expert in this region. She too was nearly killed by the Taliban, on Benazir Bhutto’s bus when it was blown up in October 2007.
I Am Malala: The Story of the Girl Who Stood Up for Education and was Shot by the Taliban (2013) is an autobiographical book by Malala Yousafzai, co-written with Christina Lamb …
The book details the early life of Yousafzai, her father’s ownership of schools and activism, the rise and fall of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan in Swat Valley and the assassination attempt made against Yousafzai, when she was aged 15, following her activism for female education.
It has received a positive critical reception and won awards, though it has been banned in many schools in Pakistan. …
Swat Valley has been an important tourist destination in the past. And may be again in future. Malala is a Pashtun, the majority of whom follow Sunni Islam.
The leader of the Swat Taliban in Malala’s day was Maulana Fazlullah. He was killed by American drone strike in 2018.
Today Malala is a student at Oxford studying Philosophy, Politics and Economics.
She and her father run the Malala Fund, an organization dedicated to every girl’s right to 12 years of free, safe, quality education. That’s an important cause for me too.
I’m proud to say Malala has honorary Canadian citizenship.
confronting American Gerrymandering
Is any nation worse than the USA for gerrymandering?
Gerrymandering establishes an unfair political advantage for a particular party or group by manipulating district boundaries.
A secretive, high-tech gerrymandering initiative launched 10 years ago threatens to undermine our democracy.
This film, Slay the Dragon, follows everyday people as they fight to make their votes matter.
We must fight, as citizens and voters, to end gerrymandering and save democracy.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Bringing TRIBES together
People have far more in common than they think.
Watch again that great ad from 2017 on this theme.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
That said, if you support Trump — never speak to me again.
There’s a limit.
Joker
- Joaquin Phoenix is brilliant. He certainly deserves the Academy Award for Best Actor.
- The theme of economic inequality is important in 2020. It will be one of the big issues of the next 10 years.
- Joker is a story of mental illness. A cautionary tale warning us to provide better health care or the worst can happen.
- It will be studied by film students for decades alongside Taxi Driver. I thought the cinematography superb. Robert De Niro perfect casting.
Joker .. was inspired by 1970s character studies and the films of Martin Scorsese (particularly Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy) …
The film polarized critics; while Phoenix’s performance, the musical score, cinematography and production values were praised, the dark tone, portrayal of mental illness, and handling of violence divided responses. … (68% on Rotten Tomatoes)
Joker has grossed over $1 billion, making it the first R-rated film to do so …
… the most profitable film based on a comic book …
Phoenix is interested in doing a sequel.
Economist – Gun Violence in America
60% of gun deaths in the USA are suicides.
Mostly white males.
States with stricter firearms regulation have fewer suicides.
67% of Americans want stricter gun laws.
10% want them further relaxed.
Buybacks (voluntary is best, in my opinion) would be one way to start reducing the number of deaths.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
EVERYONE should support planting more TREES
No matter what your opinion on CO2 levels higher than they been for at least the past three million years, you can support planting more trees.
Trees are good in many ways.
Jimmy “MrBeast” Donaldson, some guy who got popular on YouTube, started a campaign that raised enough money for more than 20 million trees to be planted across the United States, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Haiti, Indonesia, Ireland, Madagascar, Mozambique, Nepal, and the United Kingdom.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Secondly, we should STOP subsidizing fossil fuel industries. One study calculated $5 trillion / year in subsidy worldwide.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Greta Thunberg has inspired millions of students to become environmental activists for climate change.
I love to see how some previously unknown teenager scares so many of the rich and powerful worldwide.
She’s the youngest individual Time Person of the Year.
Thunberg was also nominated for the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize.
The Guardians by John Grisham (2019)
Went directly to #1 on The New York Times Bestseller List.
I recommend it.
“The Guardians” is Grisham’s 40th novel; he’s now 64 …
Such creative longevity is not that unusual in the suspense genre, but what is rare is Grisham’s feat of keeping up the pace of producing, on average, a novel a year (in 2017 he published two) without a notable diminishment of ingenuity or literary quality. Dame Agatha Christie, who barely paused between books to sharpen pencils during her near-50-year marathon mystery career, is another such marvel. …
Grisham’s main character here is a so-called “innocence lawyer,” a workaholic attorney-and-Episcopal-priest named Cullen Post. Post has trimmed his life down to the barest of essentials, living in spartan quarters above the nonprofit Guardian Ministries, his workplace in Savannah, Ga. The book focuses on Post’s investigation into the wrongful conviction of a black man named Quincy Miller who was set up to take the fall for the murder of a white lawyer in a small Florida town some 22 years before …
Grisham is a member of the board of directors of the Innocence Project, which campaigns to free and exonerate unjustly convicted people. This book is laser focused on that topic.
This novel was inspired by Jim McCloskey and Centurion Ministries. That organization has freed dozens of wrongfully accused.
When Truth Is All You Have: A Memoir of Faith, Justice, and Freedom for the Wrongly Convicted
Merry Christmas
To everyone. Everywhere.
AP’s Andrew Medichini
Rick McCharles 