Israel hits Hezbollah targets after football pitch attack kills 12 young people
The Lebanon-based group denies carrying out the deadly strike on children and teenagers as fears of wider conflict grow.
Read in BBC News: https://apple.news/AftMMtjq8QvGoxngzPssrEA
Shared from Apple News
Best Wishes and Hugs,Scottie
MARCIE JONES JUL 27, 2024
Good news!
Snippet:
TRIGGER WARNING: Contains disgusting descriptions of the nasty-ass Guinea Worm, though no photos. Do not Google the photos.
…
So this is very nice, former President Jimmy Carter — who is still alive and 99 years young, though in hospice — has succeeded in his decades-long goal to get Guinea Worm Disease cases down to zero before he dies. (Warning, the picture at that link is disgusting.) There have now been zero cases of Guinea Worm disease in the past three months, and there were only 14 last year. Extremely promising signs that maybe they are truly gone forever! If no more Guinea Worms burst through anybody’s flesh within the next nine months, then it’ll officially be the second disease eradicated by humanity after smallpox.
When the Carter Center started trying to take down big Guinea Worm back in 1988, more than 3.5 million people in Africa and India were suffering from it. And BOY WERE THEY SUFFERING, because while the worm won’t directly kill you, it is agonizing and SO RETCHINGLY GROSS. First, nasty-ass fucking worm larva gets into your guts through dirty drinking water. Then it grows in your stomach for a fucking year. And THEN, a fucking THREE-FOOT WORM POPS OUT OF YOUR SKIN which hurts like fucking hell, obviously. And there is no vaccine or cure, the only solution is to pull this FUCKING DISGUSTING WORM out of your fucking skin by winding it around a fucking STICK.
So it is not the glamorous kind of affliction that makes a good poster for a benefit concert or bake sale, or plays well on an ad with Sarah McLachlan playing in the background. But one fixed relatively simply, with clean drinking water. And so that is what sweet peanut-farming Jimmy worked at. His Carter Center partnered with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and has been quietly toiling to eradicate many other un-glamorous diseases that no one in the year of our Lord 2024 should have to suffer from, including: poliomyelitis (a virus that paralyzes mostly children), mumps, rubella, lymphatic filariasis (aka elephantiasis, a roundworm transmitted by mosquitoes), cysticercosis (tapeworm infection), measles, river blindness, and yaws (a nasty spirochete bacteria that causes bursting lesions). (snip-More)
JULY 24, 2024, 1:49 PM
Same as in every state that tries this.
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Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen is calling legislators back into session this week, assigning them the impossible task of finding $1.85 billion to redirect toward local property tax cuts. Policymakers can run the numbers as many times as they want, but the problem remains that the state will either face deep budget cuts or must raise taxes elsewhere to fund Pillen’s latest plan — or both.
Last year, Nebraska used the cover of temporary budget surpluses to pass sweeping income tax cuts that primarily benefitted wealthy people and out-of-state corporations. These cuts will cost more than $900 million each year once fully phased in. That leaves legislators bent on cutting local property taxes with three options: abandon the income tax cuts, embrace massive spending cuts, or expand regressive fees and sales taxes on everything from vet services to car repairs to home maintenance.
Nebraska families with the lowest incomes — those making about $50,000 a year or less — would bear the brunt of a sales tax expansion. They already pay five times more in sales taxes as a share of income than families with the top 1 percent of incomes, and relying more heavily on the sales tax would only make things worse.
A sweeping property tax cut would also jeopardize hundreds of millions of dollars in funding for the state’s K-12 education system, which has been weakened by a new private school voucher program that siphons money away from public schools. Property taxes are the primary revenue stream for public education in Nebraska and nationally, accounting for more than one in three dollars spent by schools. They pay for classroom books, vocational and technical programs, mental health counseling, and teachers’ salaries, among many other things.
Research suggests that property tax cuts result in disproportionately less funding for districts that serve large numbers of students of color and low-income students. In Nebraska, districts serving the most students of color receive roughly $3,500 less in funding per student than districts serving the fewest students of color. The governor’s proposal could worsen this divide.
Collectively, these changes are a recipe for weaker schools, greater inequality, and higher taxes for working people. Creating a fairer tax system — one that generates enough revenue to fund public education and many services Nebraska families rely on — requires a balanced approach, not a wholesale shift to the state’s most regressive tax.
If policymakers really want to help Nebraskans stay in their homes, they should explore “circuit breaker” policies, which guarantee that people’s property tax bills don’t exceed their ability to pay. And longer term, the state should grapple with how to adequately fund K-12 education, lessening local school districts’ reliance on property taxes to keep the lights on and increasing the amount of funding going to schools overall. But a special session is not the right mechanism for such a massive undertaking, which must balance the needs of students and all Nebraskans.
https://www.cbpp.org/blog/nebraskas-185-billion-math-problem
Hello Everyone. As everyone knows my blog means a lot to me, I have used blogging the friends it brought me as a help against all the bad memories I have in my life. But for the last three weeks I couldn’t really do the blog and today at nearly 1 pm, after being at the computer since 3:30 am, I am just now starting to get to the comments I love.
I went to bed yesterday after a grand meal of a steak and large salad. Even though I did not finish all the steak but did eat the entire salad is because I just don’t eat like I use to, I now eat like an older person. But it was great and grand. But after, I went to bed about four pm.
I woke on and off until 1:30. I tried to go back to sleep but at 3 am Ron’s rescue cat tummy feed me alarm went off so I got up to feed him. At 3:30 I got to my computers. Then I went to the Male survivor site. I found I had several private messages and a bunch of replies to what I wrote before. Plus there were 20 more posts. I read them and replied to those I had something to add to the thread. Plus it is not just one person, every person is adding their thoughts and we all add our responses to them. It took me until 10 am this morning to clear it all out. Then I had to lay down and I slept for an hour and half.
When I got up, I went to the admin on my blog and checked the posts from Ali and Randy. I set them up in tabs to like, add comments to, or just read. I love that both Ail and Randy are adding their thoughts here. First it makes sure there is content when I can not get to it, and second what they both post is their ideas, their concerns, and different from what I might post. As Ron says it broadens the blog to give a far more diverse reason for people to come visit. Not to steal from the Christian or other holy books, but I looked on it and find it good. 😛😀😁😍😎
I have been feeling dragged out and tired. But I am hoping as the cold fades and I have more energy I can do better at handling both the blog and the other sites. I hate the feeling that there is simply not enough of me, and both Ron and Randy are worried about the time I am spending on the abuse site, immersed in others abuse and reliving mine. They are afraid it will cause me a relapse into depression on my own abuse. Yes it is possible I have already had bad dreams and been fighting that at night.
One guy was abducted at age 7, tortured and abused to be made a sex toy for a cult leader. Scary stuff, after a few years he was rescued, but still finds himself hitting himself if he doesn’t refer to the guy who abused him as master. He hits himself before he can stop it. Then he simply gave himself to anyone who demanded it or told him to please him. As a teen and young adult he simply lived in a house with no clothing thinking he had a boyfriend who loved him, but instead the guy would invite friends over and they used him when ever they felt like it. He got to the point that no matter what he was doing guys who were friends with his “boyfriend” simply would grab him and fuck him or tell him to drop down to suck them off. I understand the trained behavior, I was trained to it also. But most of mine stopped when the hell spawn left the house, only the adults were left to use me and occasionally the hell spawn came back or took me to their home to service them. One took me out in his semi and forced me to “please” him when he parked in a truck stop. I was an adult maybe 26 and still had not learned to tell them no. I never went out in his truck again no matter how much he tried to get me to.
The victim and I spend hours talking, writing back and forth. He wants more like a video call or phone call, but I have explained to him those things trigger me. Even now at 61 there are only two people in my life I feel comfortable / OK talking to on the phone, I still resonate with the beatings to never touch a phone as a child. I do much better on a computer or video app on the phone like FaceTime, because I don’t have to look like I am holding a phone to myself, getting open for an angry beating. But with ear buds it works also.
So right now I am tired. Again, I am going to lay down a few minutes because I can not finish this, my eyes are crossing. Yhrrn —————————————————————————————————————————————————————————
Several hours later … I just got up. What happened is along with my normal medication I took a med my doctor wanted me to try that is also given to MS patients. Ron has it at a much smaller dose. He wanted me to try it with my other when my muscles hurt or spasms more than I could stand with my regular medication. I took a half one. When it kicked in, my eyes crossed and I felt so tired, needing to lay down. Once the med cleared my system after a few hours I feel fine again but I will say my pain and spasms are much better. I got so foggy I wrote the last above the line before I went to bed. I decided to leave it in.
So the day is gone by, I have not posted or replied to comments, I have not helped Ron much around the house. I plan to make a sauce tomorrow. I did not even post my meme post this week, but I have not added to it in four days until today. So I think I will hold it a few days, or at least until tomorrow afternoon.
I thank everyone for hanging on here, to listening to me, Ali, or Randy. I feel so much better since I got up, I am going to go to the blog and reply to comments that are there I have not lost yet. As always to those who posted a comment I missed, reposted it or use my email listed to get my attention to it. Know I love you. This is a minor hiccup that is going to work itself out soon. Hugs. Scottie
https://www.rawstory.com/fbi-director-project-2025/
Words of great warning. Take it seriously please. Hugs. Scottie
FBI Director Christopher Wray issued a warning Wednesday about how a controversial right-wing plan for Donald Trump’s second term would impact law enforcement.
In a House Judiciary Committee hearing that focused on the attempted assassination of Trump, Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA) asked Wray about the dangers of Project 2025, a presidential transition initiative organized by the Heritage Foundation.
“What he wants to do is to force the FBI director to appoint, to report directly to him,” Johnson said of the plan. “That’s what he wants to do within the first 120 days. He also wants to eliminate the position of FBI General Counsel.”
“I think the FBI’s Office of General Counsel serves an incredibly important role, including in terms of advising our workforce,” Wray explained. “The idea of having an organization like ours, an independent law enforcement agency like ours that doesn’t have its own general counsel’s office doesn’t make sense to me.”
“That seems like it’s an attempt to neuter the FBI and render it accountable only to the president,” Johnson noted.
Wray acknowledged that he served at the pleasure of the president but said Project 2025 would undermine FBI independence.
“We need to be able to do our work in a way that is free from political interference,” he pointed out.
“You wouldn’t be able to do that by reporting everything you do to the president and getting his authority and approval before you take action, correct?” Johnson asked.
ALSO READ: Milwaukee girded for massive convention protests. But they got something else.
“I don’t think that would be a wise approach,” Wray agreed.
He also refused to endorse a plan to replace 38,000 civil servants in the FBI with what Johnson called “a MAGA group that has pledged its allegiance to Donald Trump.”
“It would be crazy to take 38,000 MAGA loyalists and put them at the FBI,” Johnson argued. “That’s frightening.”
“That’s what Project 2025 proposes and I’m glad to know that you are not with that program.”
Watch the video below from the House Judiciary Committee or click the link here.
This is linked in a Substack I read. In and on its own merit, I’m bringing it here for people to take a look. I think it’ll be worthwhile. I wish that people in Yemen and refugees from Gaza and people in all troubled places had this opportunity, but there it is; we have this. Anyway, take a look, subscribe if you like, or pass it along, and send a good thought into the universe on behalf of parents and children and stopping war.
Becoming a mother amid war in Ukraine by Anastasiia Lapatina
Two days after the birth of my daughter, Russia launched one of its largest air attacks on Kyiv. It was terrifying, but also entirely expected, and that’s the worst part. Read on Substack
Sportswear company issues statement after accusations it was conflating Palestinian identity with terrorism
Ellie Violet Bramley Wed 24 Jul 2024 10.38 EDT
Adidas has apologised to the model Bella Hadid after pulling adverts in which she was promoting a sport shoe first launched to coincide with the 1972 Munich Olympics.
Adidas last week said it was “revising” its campaign after criticism from Israel over Hadid’s involvement in the campaign for the retro SL72 trainers. Hadid is an American whose family has roots in Palestine.
The apology, issued on Instagram, said: “Connections continue to be made to the terrible tragedy that occurred at the Munich Olympics due to our recent SL72 campaign,” referring to the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre when Israeli athletes were taken hostage by the Black September Organization, a Palestinian militant group. Eleven Israelis, a German police officer and five of the attackers died.
The statement continued: “These connections are not meant, and we apologise for any upset or distress caused to communities around the world. We made an unintentional mistake. We also apologise to our partners, Bella Hadid, ASAP Nast, Jules Koundé, and others, for any negative impact on them and we are revising the campaign.”
On Friday, the German-based company had said in a statement it was “revising the remainder of the campaign” after criticism over Hadid’s involvement by Israel on X. “Guess who the face of their campaign is?” read a post on Israel’s official account. “Bella Hadid, a model who has a history of spreading antisemitism and calling for violence against Israelis and Jews.”
Hadid had previously been criticised by Israel for allegedly chanting: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” on a march in 2021.
Adidas was condemned by some Jewish organisations, with the American Jewish Committee labelling its decision as either a “massive oversight or intentionally inflammatory”. Others came out in support of Hadid. One fellow Adidas ambassador, the Palestinian-American author and activist Amani al-Khatahtbeh, posted an email she sent to Adidas on X, in which she said: “Bella Hadid is a model of Palestinian origin that has been a much-needed outspoken advocate for human right.” She added: “Adidas’s disappointing response conflates our Palestinian identity with terrorism.”
Hadid, 27, whose father is the Palestinian businessman Mohamed Hadid, has been vocal in her support for Palestine. In May she expressed her solidarity by wearing a dress crafted out of red and white keffiyehs during the film festival in Cannes. In 2023 she denounced the far-right Israeli national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir for saying Jewish settlers had more rights than Palestinians in occupied territories.
When she appeared on the cover of Vogue magazine in 2021, she said on Instagram: “A Palestinian girl on the cover of Vogue. The joy it brings me to say that … I won’t stop talking about the systematic oppression, pain and humility that Palestinians face on a regular basis.”
Hadid, who recently launched her own wellness brand, has faced death threats for her outspoken support.
The apology to Hadid and her fellow Adidas partners comes amid reports that she is speaking to lawyers about her options.
A trend-setter across fashion, Hadid is perhaps particularly influential in the trainer space – she was a driver of the widespread popularity of the Adidas It-trainer, the Samba, which has been ubiquitous in recent years. She started wearing the SL72s, which are part of a campaign by Adidas to revive a series of its classic trainer models, earlier this year.
| July 27, 1919 |
| A riot began in Chicago when police refused to arrest a white man who was responsible for the death of a young black man, Eugene Williams. The 29th Street Beach on Lake Michigan was used by both black and white Chicagoans. But the man had been throwing stones at the black boys swimming there before hitting Williams. |  |
| The Coroner’s report on the riot described the events as follows: “Five days of terrible hate and passion let loose, cost the people of Chicago 38 lives (15 white and 23 colored), wounded and maimed several hundred, destroyed property of untold value, filled thousands with fear, blemished the city and left in its wake fear and apprehension for the future . . . .” The city’s booming economy, especially jobs in the stockyards, had drawn many blacks during the Great Migration from the South, more than doubling their population in just three years. Only one policeman died in the chaos, Patrolman John Simpson, 31, an African American working out of the Wabash Avenue Station. (Read more: https://www.newhistorian.com/2015/07/29/chicago-race-riot-1919/ |
| July 27, 1953 |
| After three years of bloody and frustrating war leading to stalemate, the United States, the People’s Republic of China and North Korea agreed to a truce, bringing the Korean War—and America’s first experiment with the Cold War concept of “limited war”—to an end (South Korean President Syngman Rhee opposed the truce and refused to sign). U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower had taken office six months earlier, and Soviet leader Josef Stalin had died that March. |
 Korean War Memorialphoto: Heather Stanfield | The armistice signed this day ended hostilities and created the 4000-meter-wide (2.5 miles) demilitarized zone (DMZ), a buffer between North and South Korean forces, but was not a permanent peace treaty. It also set up a system for exchanging prisoners of war: 12,000 held by the North, 75,000 by South Korea, the U.S. and the U.N. allied forces. |
| There were four million military and civilian casualties, including 16,000 from countries which were part of the U.N.-allied forces; 415,000 South and 520,000 North Koreans died.There were also an estimated 900,000 Chinese casualties. 36,516 died out of the nearly 1.8 million Americans who served in the conflict. |
| July 27, 1954 |
| The democratically elected Guatemalan government of Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, after receiving 65% of the vote, was overthrown by CIA-paid and -trained mercenaries. There followed a series of military dictatorships that waged a genocidal war against the indigenous Mayan Indians and against political opponents into the ’90s. Nearly 200,000 citizens died over the nearly four decades of civil war. |
| “They have used the pretext of anti-communism. The truth is very different. The truth is to be found in the financial interests of the fruit company [United Fruit, which controlled more land than any other individual or group in the country. It also owned the railway, the electric utilities, telegraph, and the country’s only port at Puerto Barrios on the Atlantic coast.] and the other U.S. monopolies which have invested great amounts of money in Latin America and fear that the example of Guatemala would be followed by other Latin countries . . . I took over the presidency with great faith in the democratic system, in liberty and the possibility of achieving economic independence for Guatemala.” |  Jacobo Arbenz |
| More about Arbenz https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKarbenz.htm | The real coup story through official U.S. documents https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB4/ |
| July 27, 1996 |
 | Known as the “Weep for Children Plowshares,” four women were arrested for pouring their own blood on weaponry at the Naval Submarine Base at Groton, Connecticut, on the morning of the launch of the last-built Ohio-class submarine, the U.S.S. Louisiana. The 18 such submarines carry about half of the U.S. nuclear deterrent – 24 Trident I & II missiles with a range of 7400 km (4600 miles), each with several warheads known as MIRVs (multiple independently targeted re-entry vehicles). |
| Trident sub being loaded | Details of the action https://www.jonahhouse.org/archive/weep.htm |
https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjuly.htm#july27
Scottie's Playtime 