My Weekly Studying and Viewing

Listed below are some highlights of my weekly studying and viewing.

Fiona Harrigan, “The Good Samaritans Who Saved Syrian Refugees,” Motive, December 2023.

Excerpt:

There’s a story about disaster aid that lots of people imagine instinctively, one which’s constructed into our establishments: Governments and main worldwide organizations, armed with assets and authority, are greatest outfitted to rapidly assist individuals harmed by struggle, starvation, and violence.

Dana Sachs affords a special narrative in All Else Failed: The Unlikely Volunteers on the Coronary heart of the Migrant Assist Disaster. 1,000,000 migrants crossed the Mediterranean Sea to achieve Europe within the 12 months 2015 alone. Because the refugees reached shore in Greece, “conventional aid networks proved themselves incapable of delivering a productive response,” she writes. Main humanitarian teams such because the Worldwide Rescue Committee and the United Nations Excessive Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) “provided solely restricted help on the bottom.” The European Union shelled out “hundreds of thousands of euros in assist however did not disburse the funds successfully.”

Harrigan does specific her disappointment that Sachs gained’t attain the conclusion that Harrigan and I share:

There might be humanitarian crises to come back, making it all of the extra essential to put blame and reward on the applicable ft. Sachs writes shifting passages concerning the boundlessness of human generosity, and she or he consistently highlights how volunteers with native data saved the humanitarian assist machine shifting in Greece. Her account suggests a transparent conclusion: that the volunteer effort was higher, not out of necessity, however as a result of it’s higher suited to the duty. However she by no means fairly says that aloud.

Fiona Harrigan, “Trump and DeSantis Won’t Stop at Keeping Out Illegal Immigrants,” Motive, November 17, 2023.
Excerpt:

This isn’t one thing that you just’ll hear former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis say on the marketing campaign path. “We discuss rather a lot about unlawful immigration,” saidDeSantis at an occasion final week. “However nobody actually talks concerning the authorized immigration system and there’s some Republicans that say, ‘So long as it’s authorized, it doesn’t matter.’ I don’t subscribe to that.”

Nor are Trump’s second-term crackdown ambitions restricted solely to undocumented immigrants, The New York Occasions reported on Saturday. As a substitute of focusing on authorized standing, lots of Trump’s insurance policies would goal ideologies he dislikes. “The visas of international college students who participated in anti-Israel or pro-Palestinian protests can be canceled,” per the Occasions. “U.S. consular officers overseas might be directed to broaden ideological screening of visa candidates to dam individuals the Trump administration considers to have undesirable attitudes.”

Fiona Harrigan, with a cautious consideration to info, has turn out to be one in all my favourite writers on immigration.

“Marian Tupy: I Saw Communism with My Own Eyes,” PragerU, November 14, 2023.

I’ve been a fan of Tupy’s work for a while. He wrote the piece “European Union” for the second version of my Concise Encyclopedia of Economics. I knew Marian was an immigrant however I didn’t know from the place. He lays out the every day horror of residing underneath Communism. He additionally says one thing on the 4:14 level that I want he had expanded on. It was that underneath Communism, “You needed to turn out to be an ethical monster.” I imagine him, however I’ll would have appreciated to see extra.

Fiona Harrigan, “Kansas Thinks You Need 1,000 Hours of Training To Remove Hair,” Motive, November 17, 2023.

Excerpt:

For the previous few years, Inexperienced has acquired sugaring providers—a noninvasive, nonhazardous hair elimination process that entails making use of a sugar, water, and lemon juice paste to a shopper’s pores and skin. A sugaring enterprise, she thought, may very well be “one thing that I might do half time” or on “an excellent versatile schedule that may enable me to remain house with my son and likewise present some extra revenue for our household,” Inexperienced tells Motive.

However Inexperienced rapidly discovered that it’s unlawful to take away a single hair from a shopper as a sugarer with out a state-issued occupational license.

I didn’t discover till I went to submit this that, sure, the writer is Fiona Harrigan. She gained the trifecta.