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It's going to be like this at the end/start of every month, isn't it?  Just constant threats of tariffs and goal posts moving.  Canada already announced on December 17, 2024 that they were going to spend 1.3 billion on border security, we just didn't get a lot of the details yet.  All this posturing and destroying trust between two allies was pointless.  Trump just wanted attention and act like he "won." 

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20 January 2025,  new president of USA tries to send human rights back 200 years.

MEANWHILE, in Afghanistan

20 January 2025,  Taliban official speaks out in favor of education for women and girls.

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/feb/03/mohammad-abbas-stanikzai-taliban-minister-flees-afghanistan-over-support-girls-education 

“There is no excuse for this – not now and not in the future,” Stanikzai said. “We are being unjust to 20 million people. “During the time of the prophet Muhammad, the doors of knowledge were open for both men and women,” he said. “There were such remarkable women that if I were to elaborate on their contributions, it would take a considerable amount of time.”

(He was forced to leave the country, but still, very brave)

Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai, Taliban’s deputy foreign minister, left for UAE after criticising ban on secondary school and higher education for girls

A senior Taliban minister who expressed support for reversing the ban on girls’ education in Afghanistan appears to have been forced to flee the country.

Speaking at a graduation ceremony in Khost province, near the Afghan-Pakistani border, on 20 January, Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai, the Taliban’s deputy foreign minister, criticised the government’s ban on girls attending secondary schools and higher education.

“There is no excuse for this – not now and not in the future,” Stanikzai said. “We are being unjust to 20 million people.

“During the time of the prophet Muhammad, the doors of knowledge were open for both men and women,” he said. “There were such remarkable women that if I were to elaborate on their contributions, it would take a considerable amount of time.”

After this speech, and reports of Stanikzai criticising him, the Taliban’s supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, allegedly ordered the minister’s arrest and issued a travel ban, which pushed Stanikzai to leave Afghanistan for the United Arab Emirates.

Stanikzai confirmed to local media he had left for Dubai but claimed it was for health reasons. The Taliban were contacted for comment but did not respond.

Since the Taliban’s takeover in 2021, the rights of women and girls to education, work, travel and appearing in public have been severely curtailed.

Last month, the international criminal court’s chief prosecutor requested arrest warrants for the Taliban’s supreme leader and Afghanistan’s chief justice on the grounds that their persecution of women and girls in Afghanistan is a crime against humanity.

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I don't know how I inadvertently gave my post about the Taliban minister some repeated sentences.  But the idea was worth the emphasis, so I guess my typo makes sense.

 
I mean when a Taliban official can be that brave, why aren't the U.S. Democrat Senators brave enough to vote NO in the confirmation hearings of Tr*mp's cabinet?

Oh and actually more h*ell freezing over ....
Mitch McConnell has been voting no to some of Tr*ump's ideas and nominations.

Edited by janea4old
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https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3lhevo7cdew22
Trump signs an order to withdraw the US from the UN Human Rights Council and "review American involvement and funding in the UN"

(I didn't embed the bluesky post because it's a video of Tr*mp saying those things, and we don't really need to see his face again.  But you can click to see/listen if you want)

 

 

----------

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/feb/04/trump-netanyahu-gaza
Trump says Palestinians have ‘no alternative’ but to leave Gaza
President in effect endorses ethnic cleansing of territory before hosting meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu

Edited by janea4old
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Rubio is now Secretary of State (US equivalent of "foreign minister").

The biggest news is that El*n M*sk shut down "USAID", (the foreign aid agency)
calling it "a criminal organization" on his twitterX.
USAID employees were fired and locked out.  Congresspersons showed up at the USAID office to complain, and were not let in.
Rubio intends to fold foreign aid into his Dept. of State.

USAID is the largest giver of foreign aid, including medical/humanitarian aid worldwide.
That's all shut down.  Including things like vaccines and AIDS treatments in countries that cannot afford them.

Explainer about USAID from  The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/04/what-is-usaid-donald-trump-elon-musk-foreign-aid-freezes

USAID is funded by Congress, so the Executive Branch should not be able to shut it down.
But there is so much chaos right now, that Congress simply cannot catch up to what's happening, and everything is being steamrolled through by El*n M*sk working for Tr*mp.

______________

I have a twitter account, just to read things, but I don't tweet.  Moving over to bluesky.
I still read a few twitter accounts by people who haven't moved over to bluesky yet.
Anyhow, a couple of years ago, I blocked El*on M*sk on twitter so that I wouldn't have to see his nonsense on my feed -- that was back when it was selfish arrogance.

Am now becoming aware (by news reports) by the utterly evil things that M*sk is  outright proclaiming on twitter.
To think this creep is running the U.S. government right now?
He's technically Tr*mp's  unelected consultant/minion, but he seems to have been given full leeway to do whatever, in the capacity as the person running "DOGE" Dept of Government Efficiency - created by Tr*mp for M*sk to run.  Not created by Congress.

Edited by janea4old
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