*Evil Fights Evil | The GOP & White College Women | No Free Lunches

“We face up to awful things because we can’t go around them, or forget them. The sooner you say ‘Yes, it happened, and there’s nothing I can do about it,’ the sooner you can get on with your own life. You’ve got children to bring up. So you’ve got to get over it. What we have to get over, somehow we do. Even the worst things.” – Annie Proulx

“You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.” – Henry David Thoreau

Evil Fights Evil: Bitter rivals, the Taliban and the Islamic State (IS), have been warring against each other in Afghanistan. The IS main stronghold is in eastern Afghanistan, but they also had a major group in the northern province of Jowzjan. After a two-day battle this week, in which the Taliban emerged victorious, over 200 IS insurgents and two commanders surrendered to the Afghan government on Wednesday. One of the IS commanders, Mufti Nemat, confirmed the deaths of 40 of his fighters, and the capture of 128 by the Taliban. A spokesman for Afghan commando forces posted on Facebook that the surrenders marked the end of the IS in northern Afghanistan. (NYT)

– It’s time to go thrifting in London! The United States Embassy in London is holding an online auction for surplus goods ranging from rolls of toilet paper to a used Volvo S80. Tick-tock goes the clock, you have until August 8th to pick up a variety of goodies. (NYT)

– Exiled warlord and vice president of the Democratic Republic of Congo Jean-Pierre Bemba has returned after eleven years of banishment. He declared his intention to contest the long-delayed presidential election, but President Joseph Kabila’s government stated that he is ineligible due to a corruption conviction, which Bemba is appealing. (BBC)

– Ontario, a province of Canada, has decided that a basic income project was “unsustainable,” and scrapped it just months after its launch. The project would have granted randomly selected participants almost seventeen thousand Canadian dollars (12,600 USD) a year to live on, which would have costed the province around fifty million Canadian dollars a year. Though Ontario has cut the program, many nations such as the Netherlands and Italy have adopted such programs. (BBC)

– Looters raided the Strangnas Cathedral which sits west of Stockholm, Sweden, and stole priceless royal artifacts. Dating back to the twelfth century, two crowns and a golden orb adorned with a crucifix were stolen by a group of daring raiders who escaped via speedboat. Authorities are now on the hunt for the precious artifacts. (CNN)

– Google’s plan to create a censored search engine for China has been leaked. Code-named “Dragonfly,” the project has been underway since the spring of 2017, and would allow Chinese residents to use the search engine while blacklisting certain sites the government deemed inappropriate. Though supposedly a top secret project, some of the details were leaked by a Google insider, who had moral concerns about the executive decisions being made in executing such a project. “Google and the Chinese government’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not respond to multiple requests for comment on this story.” (Intercept)

– President Trump said this week he would engage in talks anytime with Iranian leaders “without preconditions”. While leaders might not be interested, a 45-year-old building contractor in Tehran seemed to speak for ordinary Iranians when he said: “Of course we should talk to Trump. What’s wrong with talks? We’d be nuts not to talk to him.” Iran’s economic situation is becoming increasingly desperate; its currency has lost 80 percent of its value in the past year, nearly 20 percent in just the past few days. New American sanctions take effect in less than a week, causing foreign investors to flee and arousing fears that things are about to get much worse. Iran’s leaders, however, say Trump must reverse his decision to leave the Iran nuclear deal or there will be no talks.

– Three Russian filmmakers, working on a documentary amid a bloody civil war in the Central African Republic, were ambushed and killed this week. They were investigating Russian military contractors operating in this war-torn country at the behest of President Faustin-Archange Touadera, who is relying on the Kremlin for arms and military training. Russian journalists continue to risk their lives to pursue independent investigative reporting in the face of President Vladimir Putin’s crackdown on press freedoms. Recently two other Russian journalists died in unexplained circumstances in the city of Nizhny Novgorod. (WaPo)

A Disputed Election Before Election Results are Even Revealed: Violence erupted in the aftermath of Zimbabwe’s first election since Robert Mugabe was forced to step down after 37 years of increasingly authoritarian rule. The election was held Monday, but release of the results was delayed, prompting backers of Nelson Chamisa of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party to begin protesting. Chamisa supporters feared a repeat of the disputed 2008 election. At that time the opposition had declared an outright victory. Instead there was a presidential runoff which gave regime advocates time to engage in a violent countrywide intimidation campaign that saw the withdrawal of the opposition candidate and the deaths of 200 of his supporters.

23 candidates competed in Monday’s election, but the top contenders were 40-year-old lawyer and pastor Chamisa, and 75-year-old Emmerson Mnangagwa, who helped engineer Mugabe’s downfall last November. Chamisa set his supporters up for a confrontation Tuesday when he declared an early victory before votes were finalized. By Wednesday small groups of Chamisa backers had armed themselves with metal rods and rocks and were roving through downtown Harare, destroying everything from stoplights to storefronts. Police fired warning shots, water cannons and tear gas attempting to disperse the crowds. Shortly thereafter the army arrived and began firing live rounds into the masses, turning the city into a war zone. At least three people died, and countless others were injured.

Inspector Mueller and the Rule of Law: The first trial arising from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation began Monday in Alexandria, Virginia. President Trump’s former campaign chair Paul Manafort is charged with 18 counts of bank fraud and tax evasion. The prosecution’s opening statement claimed Manafort put “himself and his money above the law” to bankroll a lavish lifestyle. The defense lawyer countered in his statement that it was Manafort’s deputy, Rick Gates, who betrayed his client’s trust and “had his hand in the cookie jar”. On Wednesday President Trump tweeted that the charges against Manafort had nothing to do with “collusion” and Attorney General Jeff Sessions “should stop this Rigged Witch Hunt right now, before it continues to stain our country any further.” (Guardian and NPR)

The GOP is Losing the Votes of White College Women: In 2016, 44 percent of white women with college degrees voted for Donald Trump. Earlier this month former White House advisor Steve Bannon thought getting Republican college-educated women on board for the 2018 election would just be challenging. Later he became more pessimistic, telling Vanity Fair: “The Republican college-educated woman is done. They’re gone…Trump triggers them.” Recent results of the Washington Post-Schar School poll agree with Bannon’s assessment: there’s currently a 47 point gap in favor of Democrats among that demographic. (WaPo)

– “Why Do More Women Donate Organs Than Men? Six in ten kidney donors are women – but some six in ten recipients are men. This may have health consequences for both genders.”

– The Secret Ingredient to China’s Aggression? Sand.” China’s mastery of the world’s most overlooked natural resource is growing, causing one of the most dangerous confrontations between the United States and China to heat up. (NYT)

– “Flynn, Comey, and Mueller – What Trump Knew and When He Knew It: The greatest threat to his presidency is not from his enemies, real or perceived, but from his allies within the White House.” (NYRB)

– Here’s a nifty little book for all writer wannabes. It’s “The Joy of Syntax“, by June Casagrande. It’s subtitled “A simple guide to all the grammar you know you should know. ” Now, whether you take its propositions to heart or not depends on your tolerance level of…well, tolerance. Basically it says how people use language is really how what’s grammatically correct is decided. In other words, there really isn’t a Grammar Penal Code that will list all the writing things you’d be wrong to do. (Whew.) (Literary Hub)

– “Why You Should Stop Washing Your Clothes in Warm Water: While some experts recommend washing truly germ-ridden items—like dirty diapers—in warm or hot water, for most clothes, cold water will work just as well.” (Mental Floss)

– “How a Notorious Gangster Was Exposed by His Own Sister: Astrid Holleeder secretly recorded her brother’s murderous confessions. Will he exact revenge?”(New Yorker)

– “San Francisco Officials to Tech Workers: Buy Your Lunch.” A few San Francisco supervisors have created new ordinances banning employee cafeterias in future corporate construction. Guess there really is no such thing as a free lunch. (NYT)

“I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.” – Henry David Thoreau

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