Move Fast and Break Democracy | Here, Bomb | Mexico’s China Threat

“The best bridge between despair and hope is a good night’s sleep.”

“We estimate that more than 50 percent of all children with an ADHD diagnosis actually have a sleep disorder, yet a small fraction know of their sleep condition and its ramifications. A major public health awareness campaign by governments—perhaps without influence from pharmaceutical lobbying groups—is needed on this issue.”

– Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

Mexico Threatens Trump With China: Mexico’s new president had barely taken office when he had to come up with a plan to deal with thousands of migrants from Central America coming through Mexico on their way to the US. The migrants made it as far as the border at Tijuana, but now they are stuck, and their current chances of gaining asylum in America are slim to none. So last week Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador introduced his plan for the future, one he’s devised by looking to the past. He called it a “Marshall Plan”, similar to the one used to rebuild Europe after WWII. The plan aims to address the root causes of Central American migration, by undertaking an ambitious regional redevelopment effort, and welcoming migrants into Mexico with visas, health cards and employment. Lopez Obrador’s plan starts with a $30 billion investment initiative, the goal being to create jobs so that people won’t have to stream north in the first place.

Mexico’s president hopes his plan will appeal to President Trump. It’s in sharp contrast to what the Trump administration has been doing—imposing harsh detentions, stepping up deportations, building a wall, deploying the military and cutting financial aid to Central America. But Lopez Obrador doesn’t intend to confront Trump over any disagreement—he won’t anger him, but he won’t cave into him either. Mexico’s president intends to try cajoling America’s president into joining the investment initiative. But if Trump doesn’t want to, Lopez Obrador intends to remind him that there’s another player in the region willing to step into the vacuum left by the US, and become a powerful presence in Trump’s backyard: China.

A Philippine Pageant Victory for the People: For a “pageant-mad country roiled by poverty, a devastating war on drugs, and pervasive violence” winning Miss Universe is a huge deal. That’s what 24-year old Philippine-Australian model Catriona Gray did Sunday night in Bangkok. It was the fourth time a Filipina has won in the 66-year old beauty contest’s history. A professor of gender studies at Ateneo de Manila University noted that for a country such as the Philippines, where about a fifth of the population live below the poverty line, pageants allow for “victories that cannot be claimed in the everyday, like [in the] political economy.” Gray said she wants to work with children in the slums of Manila; she also advocates for the legalization of medical marijuana. (WaPo)

Will America First Make America Last?: The top diplomat for the small Balkan country of Slovenia, Melania Trump’s birthplace, came to Washington last week to meet with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and national security adviser John Bolton. Foreign minister Miro Cerar carried a warning: the US must become more visible in Europe or risk being eclipsed by China and Russia. “It’s not enough to have good economic cooperation…the Chinese come to Europe,” Cerar said. While President Trump has been busy turning the US inward with his “America First” agenda, China and Russia have expanded their influence around the world, pouring massive amounts of money into foreign aid and infrastructure projects. Cerar predicts many countries in the Balkans and Eastern Europe will gravitate toward Beijing and Moscow politically as well as economically unless the US becomes “much more present.” (WaPo) Additional read: “Russia Slowly Throttles a Ukrainian Port.” (NYT)

The Neverending Middle East Quagmire Story: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is growing impatient with what the US says is a plan to train 40,000 local fighters to take over security tasks in the areas cleared of Islamic State fighters in Northern Syria. The plan is an effort to assuage Turkey’s opposition to the YPG, the Kurdish People’s Protection Units that forms the bulk of the US-backed ground force fighting against the Islamic State in Syria. Erdogan considers the Syrian Kurdish fighters to be terrorists allied with separatist Kurds in Turkey, and last week he announced an imminent cross-border assault against the YPG. Top administration officials, including President Trump, have been scrambling to head off such an attack. (WaPo) Additional reads: “Turkey says Trump working on extraditing wanted cleric Gulen” (Reuters) and “Former Michael Flynn Business Associates Indicted in Turkey Lobbying Case.” (NPR)

– “Nigeria Says Soldiers Who Killed Marchers Were Provoked. Video Shows Otherwise.” (NYT)

– “Inside The Country Where You Can Buy A Black Man For $400: Slavery is thriving in Libya, where thousands of black Africans hoping to get to Europe instead find themselves bought and sold, forced to work for nothing, and facing torture at the hands of their owners.” (BuzzFeed News)

– “U.S., Canadian Executives Privately ‘Spooked’ About Traveling To China” (NPR)

– “Netanyahu’s son banned from Facebook over hate speech: Yair Netanyahu, 27, barred for 24 hours for anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian comments” (Guardian)

Propagrandabook and Insta-elections: Two new reports authorized by Senate Intelligence Committee investigators reveal that Russia conducted an even more expansive disinformation scheme during the 2016 election cycle than was previously known. The reports offer new details on the activities of the Internet Research Agency (IRA), the Kremlin-backed troll farm based in St. Petersburg that drove Moscow’s online operations, and challenge statements from Facebook and Twitter regarding the IRAs work to suppress voters. The Kremlin’s efforts to sow discord, hurt Hillary Clinton and help Donald Trump infected every major social media platform, including Instagram, and were particularly aimed at African-Americans. The reports echo months-old warnings from US officials that Moscow’s efforts didn’t end after the election, but are continuing to target Americans. (NPR)

– The Cities Where The Cops See No Hate: The victims were beaten or threatened with deadly weapons. They were taunted with racist or anti-gay abuse. Yet the police decided these weren’t hate crimes. (BuzzFeed)

– “Teen Vaping Soared In 2018” (NPR) and “Is vaping better than smoking? Scientists studied pee to find out.” We real cool. We left school. We vape Juul. We begin to drool.

– “6 Simple Rules For Saving Money” (NPR) and “How the 0.001% invest: The family offices through which the world’s wealthiest 0.001% invest are a new force in global finance that few have heard of” (Economist)

– One of the ways we saved money was by throwing away the junk we had in storage and no longer paying storage fees. What we were paying in storage fees was more than what the items we had in storage. “Our lock-and-leave culture: the rise of self-storage and clinging to stuff we hardly use: Moving, downsizing, long-term renovations, deceased estates and divorce are all factors in the relentlessly increasing demand for off-site storage.” (Guardian)

– “From Arizona to Yemen: The Journey of an American Bomb: When a bomb like this explodes, it doesn’t just kill people; it rearranges them.” (NYT) “If a body is what you want, then here is bone and gristle and flesh. Here is the clavicle-snapped wish, the aorta’s opened valves, the leap thought makes at the synaptic gap. Here is the adrenaline rush you crave” (Here, Bullet by Brian Turner)

History is Complicated: The Indian Empire at War and India, Empire and the First World War review – a story finally told: The experience of the 1.5 million men who fought in the Indian army during the first world war is at last being recounted, in books by George Morton-Jack and Santanu Das. (Guardian) And How Britain stole $45 trillion from India: And lied about it. (Al Jazeera) After a petition called Gandhi ‘racist,’ his statue was removed from the University of Ghana. (WaPo)

– “CrossFit is amassing an army of doctors trying to disrupt health care:CEO Greg Glassman believes his program could end chronic disease — and he wants doctors to help him.” (Vox)

– “The Case of Agatha Christie” (London Review of Books)

– “23andMe Informed Me My Husband and I Are Related” (NY Magazine)

– Personal experience has shown that this is absolute truth: “Junk food cravings linked to lack of sleep, study suggests: Researchers say tired people are likely to view unhealthy snacks more favourably.” (Guardian)

“The physical and mental impairments caused by one night of bad sleep dwarf those caused by an equivalent absence of food or exercise.” – Matthew Walker

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