Global
Death is the great equalizer. It strips away titles, dissolves influence, and renders meaningless the privileges that once seemed permanent. The senator, the president, the king, and the laborer all arrive at the same destination carrying only one thing: their deeds.
Senator Lindsey Graham has died at the age of seventy-one. His office has confirmed that he passed away after a sudden illness.
For millions, his death is the passing of another American politician. For others—particularly those who watched the devastation of Gaza unfold over the past two years—it marks the end of one of the most influential American voices advocating policies that profoundly shaped the conflict, and affected Palestinian men, women, and children painfully.
This is not the moment to celebrate. Nor is it the moment to erase history.
It is a moment to remember that every life, especially one lived in public service, eventually reaches the point where no speech can be rewritten, no vote recalled, and no interview clarified. The record is closed.
No news story has African Americans more riled up than the death of Nolan Wells, the young African American student-athlete whose lifeless body was pulled from the waters of Horn Island in Mississippi the Monday after he and his friends gathered there for a boating trip on the fourth of July. There are few media outlets, traditional and social that this news story has not saturated thus the details of which will not be rehashed here.
The widely circulated photo of Wells flanked on each side by his white male friends has created a firestorm of suspicion within the African American community, many of whom suspect foul-play. Not everyone however within the Black community is of that opinion.
Fatima Kurtic, a Bosnian genocide survivor and elementary school teacher in Luxembourg, was dismissed after speaking out on social media against the killing of children in Gaza. The Ministry of National Education said the decision was based on posts it considered antisemitic and incompatible with the duties of a civil servant. Fatima disputes that characterization, saying her posts criticized the Israeli government and Zionism—not Jewish people—and that her advocacy has consistently opposed war crimes and the killing of civilians.
Following her dismissal, students, parents, and supporters organized peaceful demonstrations calling for justice and demanding her reinstatement.
Fatima, a Bosnian refugee who arrived in Luxembourg in 20023 at around 8 years and spent 4 years in a refugee camp, spoke to Anadolu after being dismissed last October from her teaching position over social media posts on Palestine. She argues her firing by the Ministry of National Education violates her right to free expression.
Fatima is a fearless truth teller
America's Orange King steps up his attack on voting rights, in an effort to save himself from overwhelming negative views of his administration in the midterm elections. In the past week, this man eliminated the Election Assistance Commission.
EAC Leadership Gutted
President Trump ousted the remaining members of the bipartisan Election Assistance Commission, leaving the agency without a quorum just months before the midterm elections. The commission's two Democratic commissioners, Thomas Hicks and Benjamin Hovland, were fired via email from the White House. Its sole Republican commissioner, Christy McCormick, resigned, and a fourth commissioner had left in April.
The White House justified this action by citing a recent Supreme Court decision (Slaughter) that expanded the president's power to fire members of independent agencies. A White House statement said the president "reserves the right to remove individuals that may not be totally aligned with the important task of securing America's elections".
Vast numbers of angry Albanians have been protesting across their Balkan nation for the past 38 nights. They are enraged by the Trumps’ commercial empire trying to grab the very last undeveloped coastal regions along the Mediterranean and adjoining Adriatic Sea.
The Trumps believed poor, impoverished Albania – until recently Europe’s most threadbare nation - could be hornswoggled by the self-promotion and glitz of the Trump industry into selling part of Europe’s remaining unspoiled coast for a luxury, billion-dollar hotel development. It was supposed to become Trump’s very own Saint-Tropez. I’ve seen the building plans.
Poor little Albania. It was ruled by the Ottoman Turks for over 400 years. The independent, warlike Albanian mountain tribes held off the Turks for centuries and prevented them from invading Italy and snuffing out its Renaissance.
Next came the Stalinists at the end of WWII. A ghastly tyranny, as awful as today’s North Korea, misruled Albania which became at first a Soviet then a Red Chinese ally after Moscow had denounced Stalin.
Donald Trump is now the ultimate face of the U.S. nuclear power industry.
What could go wrong?
If you are advocating atomic energy in any form, you are promoting The Donald’s latest and largest fiscal fleecing of the American people. It mirrors his mega swindles in crypto and so much more—except this time with apocalyptic impact.
It’s a hyper-push for nuclear power.
As The New York Times this week headlined the “Climate Forward” column of Claire Brown: “Trump’s plans for nuclear power lurch ahead.”
Her July 7th piece began: “President Trump wants to quadruple nuclear power production in the United States by 2050. To get there, developers would need to build about a hundred times as much nuclear capacity in the next 25 years as they did in the past 25. In recent weeks, a series of government announcements have nudged the country a bit closer to that goal.”
It continued: “Nuclear power has broad bipartisan support in Congress, and many climate experts have embraced it as a low-emissions source of energy. Other experts remain opposed, arguing that it is too expensive or that the safety risks are too high.”
Not content with attacking America in the present, Prez Don-Jesus WashingChrist is bombing history, via the Trumpsonian. China, in contrast, mainly bombs its minorities. Sorry, cleanses. Sorry, assimilates. That’s different from the cleansing in the cradle of Gimme Your Tired, where we send them back, or forth, to somewhere else. Of course, they come here because we or our forefathers destroyed their back place. Also a quick look at the Times’ connex to the IDF, and the latest in warrior culture. Oh…same thing.