The Full Belmonte, 2/26/2023
Russia, Iran sending top envoys to UN’s human rights council
FILE - U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres addresses his statement, during the opening of the High-Level Segment of the 43rd session of the Human Rights Council, at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, on Feb. 24, 2020. Guterres will help kick off the latest and longest-ever session of the U.N.'s top human rights body on Monday Feb. 27, 2023, with Iran's foreign minister, a senior Russian envoy, and the top diplomats of France and Germany among scores of leaders set to take part.(Salvatore Di Nolfi/Keystone via AP, File)
“GENEVA (AP) — U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will help kick off the latest and longest-ever session of the U.N.’s top human rights body on Monday, with Iran’s foreign minister, a senior Russian envoy, and the top diplomats of France and Germany among scores of leaders set to take part.
The more than five-week session of the Human Rights Council opens as the world grapples with rights concerns including Russia’s war in Ukraine, repression of dissent in Russia and Belarus, new violence between Palestinians and Israelis, and efforts to solidify a peace deal in Ethiopia that ended two years of conflict between the national government and rebels in the Tigray region.
The council, made up of 47 members countries, takes up an extensive array of human rights issues — including discrimination, the freedom of religion, right to housing or the deleterious impact of economic sanctions targeting governments on regular people — as well as country ‘situations’ like those in Afghanistan, Syria, Myanmar, Nicaragua and South Sudan. It usually meets three times a year.
Proponents say the Geneva-based rights body has grown in importance as a diplomatic venue because the U.N. Security Council in New York has been increasingly divided in recent years due to a major rift between affiliations among its five permanent members: China and Russia on one side, Britain, France and the United States on the other….” Read more at AP News
Israel, Palestinian officials to meet over surge in violence
FILE - Palestinian demonstrators clash with the Israeli army while forces carry out an operation in the West Bank town of Nablus, Tuesday, Aug. 9, 2022. A high-level Palestinian delegation will meet with top Israeli officials in Jordan on Sunday, Feb. 26, 2023, the Palestinian president's office said, in an attempt to reduce surging tensions ahead of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed, File)
“JERUSALEM (AP) — High-level Palestinian and Israeli delegations will meet in Jordan on Sunday, both sides said, in an attempt to reduce surging tensions ahead of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Israel said the prime minister’s national security adviser as well as the chief of the Shin Bet domestic security agency were to attend. The head of the Palestinian intelligence services as well as advisers to President Mahmoud Abbas were expected to join.
The presence of top officials at the meeting, as well as delegations from Egypt, Jordan and the United States, underscored the severity of the crisis. It was also a rare high-level meeting between the sides, coming during a time of rising tensions and after the Palestinians cut security coordination with Israel over the violence.
Abbas’ office said the Palestinians would ‘stress the need to stop all Israeli unilateral actions.’ An Israeli official said the meeting was meant to ease tensions ahead of Ramadan and came after an American request….” Read more at AP News
Migrant boat breaks apart off Italy; 43 dead, 80 survivors
Rescuers recover a body at a beach near Cutro, southern Italy, after a migrant boat broke apart in rough seas, Sunday, Feb. 26, 2023. Rescue officials say an undetermined number of migrants have died and dozens have been rescued after their boat broke apart off southern Italy. (AP Photo/Giuseppe Pipita)
“ROME (AP) — At least 43 migrants perished when their overcrowded wooden boat smashed into rocky reefs just off southern Italy at dawn Sunday, the Italian Coast Guard said.
‘As of now, 80 persons were recovered alive — some of whom succeeded in reaching the shore after the shipwreck — and 43 bodies were found along the shore,’ the Coast Guard statement said shortly before noon.
Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni said that the migrants were crowded into a 20-meter (66-foot) -long boat in ‘adverse weather conditions.’ In a statement released by her office, she expressed ‘her deep sorrow for the many human lives torn away by human traffickers.’
‘It’s inhumane to exchange the live of men, women and children for the ‘price’ of a ticket paid by them in the false prospect for a safe voyage,’ said Meloni, a far-right-wing leader whose governing allies includes the anti-migrant League party.
She vowed to use her leadership to press for crackdowns on departures arranged by human smugglers and to press fellow European Union leaders to help Italy in her quest.
A chunk of the boat, along with piles of splintered wood, littered the beach at Steccato di Cutro, part of Calabria’s coastline along the Ionian sea. Some of the survivors tried to keep warm, wrapped in what appeared to be colorful blankets or sheets.
A helicopter and motorboats were deployed in search efforts, including vessels from state firefighters, border police and the coast guard.
A Coast Guard motorboat rescued two men suffering from hypothermia and recovered the body of a boy in the rough seas, it said in a statement. Firefighter boats, including rescue divers, recovered 28 bodies, including three pulled by a strong current far away from the wreckage.
The Italian news agency AGI said that among the bodies was that of a baby a few months old.
Pope Francis on Sunday lamented that children were among the shipwreck victims.
Francis told the faithful in St. Peter’s Square: ‘I pray for each of them, for the missing and the other migrants who survived.’ The pontiff added he also was praying for the rescuers ‘and for those who give welcome’ to the migrants.
‘It’s an enormous tragedy,’ Crotone Mayor Vincenzo Voce told RAI state TV….” Read more at AP News
A Wealthy ‘Anti-Woke’ Activist Joins the 2024 Presidential Field
Vivek Ramaswamy, 37, has made a name for himself in right-wing circles by opposing corporate efforts to advance political, social and environmental causes.
By Maggie Astor
“Vivek Ramaswamy, a multimillionaire entrepreneur and author, entered the Republican presidential race on Tuesday with an appearance on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show and a video centered on opposition to social justice activism.
Mr. Ramaswamy, 37, is a former biotechnology executive and hedge fund partner who has made a name for himself in right-wing circles by opposing corporate efforts to advance political, social and environmental causes. He has particularly denounced environmental, social and governance investing, or E.S.G., a framework under which financial companies consider the long-term societal effects of their investment decisions.
His announcement video signaled that he would focus his campaign on the notion that conservatives are being culturally victimized by a social and political focus on the effects of racism and other forms of bigotry.
‘We’re in the middle of a national identity crisis,’ the three-and-a-half-minute video begins. ‘Faith, patriotism and hard work have disappeared, only to be replaced by new secular religions like Covidism, climatism and gender ideology.’
His use of the word ‘religions’ was intentional: He wants to cast diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, or D.E.I., as religions, which would prevent companies from forcing employees to abide by them.
If elected, Mr. Ramaswamy said in an interview with The New York Times on Tuesday, his first action would be to repeal Executive Order 11246, which has banned discrimination and required affirmative action for federal contractors since 1965.
In the interview, Mr. Ramaswamy defined ‘Covidism’ as a “stop-it-at-all-costs mentality” against the pandemic — even though state and federal officials are not promoting such an approach, and Mr. Ramaswamy acknowledged that “that ship has mostly passed.”
He similarly described ‘climatism’ as “prioritizing the goal of containing climate change at all costs,” and suggested that fossil fuel and nuclear-powered advances could be used to adapt to and overcome climate change. (Climate scientists are clear that avoiding the worst effects of climate change requires moving away from fossil fuels.)
And gender ideology — a term many on the right use to disparage public acceptance of transgender people — he described as seeking purpose and fulfillment in “artificial sources of identity or skin-deep sources” instead of “the household, the family, the state, the nation, a god.” Earlier in the interview, he had put “transgenderism” on his list of “secular religions,” suggesting that being transgender was a problem; when asked what he meant, he said he had misspoken and should have said “gender ideology.”
He also called for ‘making political expression a civil right’ — meaning it would be illegal for private companies to discriminate against anyone based on their political views. (The First Amendment protects only against government intervention.)
Mr. Ramaswamy’s self-described ‘anti-woke’ message — he wrote the book ‘Woke, Inc.’ — is common among Republicans, who have cast coronavirus mitigation measures like mask and vaccine mandates as tyranny; pursued hundreds of restrictions on transgender people’s medical care, sports participation, bathroom use and more; and accused social media companies like Twitter and Facebook of suppressing conservative voices.
He said what distinguished him from the other Republicans who are running, or are likely to run, was ‘a vision of national identity that dilutes these other agendas to irrelevance.’” [New York Times]
Millions of borrowers have had billions in student loan debt erased and there's more to come. Here's how
“President Joe Biden's student loan debt relief plan is teetering on the edge of a Supreme Court cliff.
Other avenues for forgiving or winnowing student loan borrowers' debt, however, are alive and well. There's even a plan in the works to keep people from borrowing to attend a subpar school.
The administration has streamlined loan forgiveness for people who work in the public sector, canceled the debts of students taken advantage of by predatory colleges and universities and unveiled a new income-driven repayment plan that could reduce how much borrowers have to pay.
Together, these programs affect millions of borrowers, have led to billions in student loan debt being forgiven and could erase billions more. Most are meant to be long-term changes rather than a one-time fix.
Whether the court undoes Biden's signature plan, or not, other programs are essential to addressing the nation's student loan debt in the long run: One-time debt relief would wipe out a chunk of the country’s $1.7 trillion student loan debt portfolio, but it could quickly rebound if widespread borrowing continues unabated.
Changing how student loan payments work
A proposal from the White House, expected to take effect next year would address student loan payments, interest on payments and other aspects of how repaying loans work, for people using a so-called income-driven repayment plan. Nearly all federal student loans are eligible for one of these plans. The changes include:
For undergraduate loans, cutting in half the amount borrowers have to pay each month from 10% to 5% of discretionary income;
Raise the amount of income considered non-discretionary, which means it is protected from being factored in to how much people have to repay, guaranteeing that borrowers earning under 225% of the federal poverty level – that's about what a person making $!5 an hour makes in a year – will not have to make monthly payments.
Forgive loan balances after 10 years of payments, instead of 20 years, for borrowers whose original loan balance was $12,000 or less. The federal Education Department predicts this change means nearly all community college borrowers would be debt-free within 10 years.
Cover borrowers' unpaid monthly interest, so no borrower’s loan balance will grow as long as they make their monthly payments – even when that monthly payment is $0 because their income is low.
About 14,000 people weighed in on the January proposal from the White House.
Easing loan forgiveness for public sector workers
The premise of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, created in 2007, is simple: Give up high private sector wages. Work a public sector job for 10 years. Pay down your student loan debt at the same time. After a decade, the federal government erases whatever's left of that debt.
But when Education Secretary Miguel Cardona took office in 2021, he learned that in the history of the program, only 7,000 people had loans forgiven this way. The program’s complex requirements prevented many borrowers from benefitting. For example, only Direct Loans qualified for the program, cutting out borrowers with Federal Family Education Loans (FFEL). Borrowers had to enroll in specific income-driven repayment plans, and late payments sometimes weren't counted toward a borrower's 10 years of making payments.
The Biden administration temporarily changed PSLF to ease some of the red tape. That translated into billions in student loans forgiven for more than 373,000 people.
Later this year, the Education Department will make permanent some of the temporary changes so more borrowers will qualify to have their debt wiped out.
Easing debt forgiveness for borrowers who have disabilities
Another change later this year: Some of the bureaucracy around discharging federal student loans for borrowers who are considered totally and permanently disabled will ease. One of the changes eliminates checking on these borrowers' incomes every few years. These and other adjustments to rules for borrowers with disabilities are expected to erase outstanding balances worth billions.
Improving debt forgiveness when a college collapses or misleads
New Biden-era rules that take effect later this year are intended to make it easier for borrowers to erase their debt when universities mislead them about the quality of their programs or suddenly close.
In the past, borrowers had to apply for relief through the so-called borrower defense rule. The time-intensive, bureaucratic process left many with debt for incomplete or worthless degrees. As of December, nearly 459,000 applications are pending under that rule.
The new rules also will ban institutions from requiring students to sign non-arbitration clauses and allows legal services groups to take on their cases in class-action suits.
Even ahead of that rule taking effect, the department forgave billions in loans for tens of thousands of students who attended these institutions, using its discretion under federal law. These include the now-defunct Corinthian Colleges and ITT Technical Institute, and others including DeVry University, which the Education Department said mislead students about its job placement rates.
A bigger Pell Grant
The Pell Grant, which aims to cut college costs – for students from low-income families, grew by $900 during the Biden administration. Unlike loans, Pell Grants don't have to be repaid except in rare circumstances.
The maximum Pell available will become $7,400 later this year, but may be smaller depending on a family's income. It can take a bite out of the average price tag for a four-year degree at a public university, which costs about $9,400. The Pell doesn't go as far at a private institution, where the average annual cost climbs to $37,600, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
More than 6 million college students received a Pell Grant in the 2020-21 academic year.
When does FAFSA open for 2023-24? Apply for financial aid now with this step-by-step guide
Discharging student loan debt through bankruptcy
Shedding debt by declaring bankruptcy used to be nearly impossible, but that's changing. In November, the Education Department and Department of Justice made it easier for those with student debt to discharge their obligations via bankruptcy.
Ex-couples can split their student loan debt
Congress passed a law last year allowing couples who combined their student loans when they were married to separate the debt, opening up the possibility for some of these borrowers to have part of their debt forgiven.
Divorce your ex's debt:Biden signs bill allowing former couples to sever joint consolidation student loans
Naming and shaming colleges that fall short
Another proposal aims to help prospective borrowers avoid taking on debt that doesn't pay off.
The Education Department plans to better warn students from spending big on colleges where the payoff may not be so great, something Biden said his administration would do when he announced his student loan forgiveness plan last August.
It's taken the first step, asking for feedback on the best way to identify the programs that provide the least financial value for students.” [USA Today]
‘Dilbert’ dropped by The Post, other papers, after cartoonist’s racist rant
“Newspapers across the United States have pulled Scott Adams’s long-running ‘Dilbert’ comic strip after the cartoonist called Black Americans a ‘hate group’ and said White people should “get the hell away from” them.
The Washington Post, the USA Today network of hundreds of newspapers, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Los Angeles Times and other publications announced they would stop publishing ‘Dilbert’ after Adams’s racist rant on YouTube on Wednesday. Asked on Saturday how many newspapers still carried the strip — a workplace satire he created in 1989 — Adams told The Post: ‘By Monday, around zero.’
The once widely celebrated cartoonist, who has been entertaining extreme-right ideologies and conspiracy theories for several years, was upset Wednesday by a Rasmussen poll that found a thin majority of Black Americans agreed with the statement ‘It’s okay to be White.’
‘If nearly half of all Blacks are not okay with White people … that’s a hate group,’ Adams said on his live-streaming YouTube show. ‘I don’t want to have anything to do with them. And I would say, based on the current way things are going, the best advice I would give to White people is to get the hell away from Black people … because there is no fixing this.’
Adams, 65, also blamed Black people for not ‘focusing on education’ during the show and said, ‘I’m also really sick of seeing video after video of Black Americans beating up non-Black citizens.’
Outrage followed.
By Thursday, The Post began hearing from readers calling for the strip’s cancellation. On Friday, the USA Today Network said that it ‘will no longer publish the Dilbert comic due to recent discriminatory comments by its creator.’ The Gannett-owned chain oversees more than 300 newspapers, including the Arizona Republic, Cincinnati Enquirer, Detroit Free Press, Indianapolis Star, Austin American-Statesman and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
‘In light of Scott Adams’s recent statements promoting segregation, The Washington Post has ceased publication of the Dilbert comic strip,’ a spokesperson for the newspaper said Saturday, noting that it was too late to stop the strip from running in some upcoming print editions, including Sunday’s.
Chris Quinn, the vice president of content for Plain Dealer publisher Advance Ohio, wrote in a letter from the editor Friday that pulling ‘Dilbert’ was ‘not a difficult decision.’ ‘We are not a home for those who espouse racism,’ Quinn wrote.
‘MLive has zero tolerance for racism,’ wrote John Hiner, the vice president of content for MLive Media Group, which oversees eight Michigan-based publications. The San Antonio Express-News wrote: ‘These statements are offensive to our core values.’ The Los Angeles Times noted that it had printed reruns of the comic ‘when the new daily strip did not meet our standards’ four times in the past nine months, and would now cease publication entirely.
‘Scott Adams is a disgrace,’ Darrin Bell, creator of ‘Candorville’ and the first Black artist to win the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning, told The Post on Saturday. ‘His racism is not even unique among cartoonists.’ Bell compared Adams’s views to the Jim Crow era and more recent examples of White supremacy, including ‘millions of angry people trying to redefine the word ‘racism’ itself.’
In fact, Adams did exactly that on his YouTube show Saturday. He offered a long, quasi-Socratic defense of his comments, which he said were taken out of context, and seemed to define racism as essentially any political activity. ‘Any tax code change is racist,’ he said at one point in the show. He denounced racism against ‘individuals’ and racist laws, but said, ‘You should absolutely be racist whenever it’s to your advantage. Every one of you should be open to making a racist personal career decision.’
In the same show, Adams suggested that he had done irreparable harm to a once-sterling career.
‘Most of my income will be gone by next week,’ he told about 3,000 live-stream viewers. ‘My reputation for the rest of my life is destroyed. You can’t come back from this, am I right? There’s no way you can come back from this.’
Set in a dystopian office where the titular character is tormented by a stupid boss and a talking dog, ‘Dilbert’ appeared in more than 2,000 newspapers at its peak, winning Adams the National Cartoonists Society’s Reuben Award in 1998 and spawning a television show that aired on UPN from 1999 to 2000.
The National Cartoonists Society declined to comment. Andrews McMeel Syndication, the company that syndicates ‘Dilbert,’ did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The shift in Adams’s public image was initially intertwined with his praise for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. Since then, he has identified himself with increasingly extremist viewpoints.
In 2019, he apologized to the victims of a mass shooting at the Gilroy Garlic Festival in California for a tweet in which he used the tragedy to advertise an app he created. Adams also claimed in June 2020 that the ‘Dilbert’ television show was canceled because he’s White, adding that it ‘was the third job I lost for being White.’ He tweeted in January 2022 that he planned to ‘self-identify as a Black woman.’ He has suggested Americans were brainwashed into supporting Ukraine, and praised anti-vaccine advocates last month.
Last May, Adams used ‘Dilbert’ to mock workplace diversity and transgender politics through a new character called Dave the Black Engineer.
‘Dilbert’ was dropped last year by Lee Enterprises, a media company that runs 77 newspapers in the United States, though that decision appeared to be part of a larger overhaul. The Times Union reported that it and the San Francisco Chronicle stopped publishing ‘Dilbert’ in recent months, after strips that joked about reparations for slavery and inclusive workplaces.
‘His strip went from being hilarious to being hurtful and mean,’ Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, editor in chief of the Chronicle and a former managing editor at The Post, told the Times Union. ‘Very few readers noticed when we killed it, and we only had a handful of complaints.’
‘Dilbert’ nevertheless continued to run in many major publications — at least until this week.
Asked to comment in more detail about his remarks and the mass cancellations, Adams initially declined. He later told The Post in a text message: ‘Lots of people are angry, but I haven’t seen any disagreement yet, at least not from anyone who saw the context. Some questioned the poll data. That’s fair.’” Read more at Washington Post
Angela Bassett, ‘Wakanda Forever’ top NAACP Image Awards
Angela Bassett poses in the press room with the awards for outstanding actress in a drama series for ‘9-1-1’ and entertainer of the year at the 54th NAACP Image Awards on Saturday, Feb. 25, 2023, at the Civic Auditorium in Pasadena, Calif. (Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP)
“PASADENA, Calif. (AP) — Angela Bassett won entertainer of the year at Saturday’s NAACP Image Awards on a night that also saw her take home an acting trophy for the television series ‘9-1-1.’
The Bassett-led Marvel superhero sequel ‘Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’ won best motion picture at the ceremony, which was broadcast live on BET from Pasadena, California.
Viola Davis won outstanding actress for the action epic ‘The Woman King,’ a project she championed and starred in. Will Smith won for the slavery drama ‘Emancipation,’ his first release since last year’s Academy Awards, where he slapped comedian Chris Rock on stage before winning his first best actor trophy.
‘I never want to not be brave enough as a woman, as a Black woman, as an artist,’ Davis said, referencing a quote from her character in the film, which she called her magnum opus. ‘I thank everyone who was involved with ‘The Woman King’ because that was just nothing but high-octane bravery.’
‘Abbott Elementary’ won for outstanding comedy series. Creator and series star Quinta Brunson invited her costars onstage and praised shows like ‘black-ish’ for paving the way for her series.
The 54 NAACP Image Awards were presented Saturday in Pasadena, California, with Queen Latifah hosting. Serena Williams received the Jackie Robinson Sports award, which recognizes individuals in sports for high achievement in athletics along with their pursuit of social justice, civil rights and community involvement.
The ceremony, which honors entertainers, athletes and writers of color, was hosted by Queen Latifah. Special honorees included Dwyane Wade and Gabrielle Union and civil rights attorney Ben Crump.” [AP News]
“Lives lived: Robert Hébras was the last survivor of a 1944 Nazi massacre in France. He died this month at 97.” [New York Times]