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🇺🇸 A Dynasty Dashed

🇺🇸 A Dynasty Dashed

Plus, would you tell this person your salary?

The Flag America's Newsletter
July 18, 2022

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Good morning and happy Monday! An African American inventor from Kentucky is why busy streets around the world can run like clockwork…

Plus, this TikTok creator has a series called “Salary Transparent Street,” but many people would say her big question is very invasive…

Also, relax like you would on a tropical island with this Flag Find.

FLAG POLLS

📉 President Biden Job Approval: Approve 42, Disapprove 57 (Rasmussen Reports)

🐘 2022 Generic Congressional Vote: Republicans 47, Democrats 39 (Rasmussen Reports)

🐴 2022 Generic Congressional Vote: Republicans 40, Democrats 43 (NYT/Sienna)

POWERED BY PEG AND AWL

“Let the wild rumpus start!”

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QUICK CLICKS

Biden's Fist Bump, NASA-Roscosmos Cooperation, Ohio Rape Case in Focus

World: Washington Post's Max Boot blasted for calling to 'cut Biden some slack' for MBS fist-bump (Fox News)

World: NASA, Russian Space Agency Sign Deal to Share Space Station Flights - Roscosmos (Reuters)

US: Mom of 10-year-old Ohio girl who got abortion defends child's rapist (NY Post)

World: Zelenskiy fires Ukraine’s spy chief and top state prosecutor (The Guardian)

US: Judge questions FBI arrest tactics against Trump adviser Navarro (POLITICO)

US: Secret Service Deleted Jan. 6 Text Messages After Oversight Officials Requested Them (The Intercept)

World: Europe heat wave: Historic heat grips UK, France as wildfires rage elsewhere (Axios)

US: The new 988 crisis number has launched. Here's what to know (NPR)

Sports: IOC reinstates Jim Thorpe as sole winner of 1912 Olympic decathlon and pentathlon (ESPN)

FOREIGN AFFAIRS

A Dynasty Dashed

Sri Lanka is in political and economic chaos. Much of this can be traced back to April 2021 when chemical fertilizers were temporarily banned, decimating the South Asian island nation’s agriculture. Meanwhile, tourism has been disrupted amid the pandemic, supply chain problems persist, and inflation is rampant.

News Coverage from the Right: Sri Lankan president resigns after fleeing country, Parliament to start search for replacement (Fox News)

News Coverage from the Left: Sri Lanka’s former President has stepped down – but larger problems loom for the crisis-hit country (CNN)

From The Flag: Sri Lanka’s Parliament accepted the resignation of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa on Friday, which he submitted via email after fleeing the country. Protests had been ongoing for months. Here’s more from both sides.

LEFT-LEANING SENTIMENT

A Subjected People Rose Up Against Their Corrupt Government

There is an urgent need to fill the power vacuum in Sri Lanka, but the situation shows corruption and human rights abuses can be defeated.
Sri Lanka collapsed politically due to corruption and apathy despite being a democracy, and that's something the West should take note of.
President Rajapaksas and his family routinely engaged in corruption while also displaying incompetence, leading to his ouster.

“People Power Has Brought Down Sri Lanka’s Strongman. What Now?” Ruth Pollard, Bloomberg Opinion: “Sri Lanka has been in financial crisis for months. There is no fuel, essential medicines are either unavailable or in short supply and food inflation is running at close to 80%. … So what next? The IMF said it hoped for a resolution to Sri Lanka’s political turmoil to allow a resumption of bailout talks … The US called on the parliament ‘to approach this juncture with a commitment to the betterment of the nation — not any one political party,’ … They need to do this quickly — before a potentially dangerous power vacuum develops that could allow extremist groups to exploit the instability. … If there’s one thing these protesters have shown, it is that the Rajapaksas can be defeated. That the corruption and human rights abuses they are both famous and feared for, can be overcome.”

“Watching Sri Lanka’s democracy teeter amid popular uprisings” Michael Paramathasan, Los Angeles Times Op-ed: “A popular revolution is unfolding in Sri Lanka, with the fall of one of Asia’s most powerful political dynasties amid hunger, heartbreak and the immutable resilience of the Sri Lankan people. … Until recently, it was an economic success story — emerging from nearly three decades of civil war that ended in 2009 — and it was a model for public health and educational development in the region. And yet it is now a nation teetering on the verge of collapse … The combustible mix of cronyism, inequality and institutional mistrust that upended a failed government is not unique to Sri Lanka. Exacerbated by the pandemic and pushed to the brink, Sri Lankans have shown how a citizenry will act to correct its course. The United States and other countries should take note. The future of liberal democracy depends on it.”

One more opinion piece from the Left: Good riddance to the Rajapaksas Editorial Board, The Guardian

RIGHT-LEANING SENTIMENT

Leftists Take Note: Sri Lanka Is an Important Lesson for the West

Sri Lanka marks the first “antigreen” revolution, which is a direct rebuke of the American left’s policies regarding the environment and climate.
The fall of Sri Lanka’s government is an ominous sign for the rest of the globe because the various nation's economies are interconnected.
Sri Lanka’s uprising is obviously relevant to its own people, but also shows that corrupt elites are being rejected worldwide.

“Sri Lanka’s Green New Deal Was a Human Disaster” Tunku Varadarajan, Wall Street Journal Op-ed: “The Green Revolution of Norman Borlaug, the American agronomist who did more to feed the world than any man before or since, set Sri Lanka on the path to agricultural abundance in 1970. It was built around chemical fertilizers and crops bred to be disease-resistant. Fifty-two years later, Sri Lanka has pulled off a revolution that is ‘antigreen’ … (following the) imperious decision to impose organic farming on the entire country—which led to widespread hunger after the agricultural economy collapsed—Sri Lanka’s people have wrought the first contra-organic national uprising in history. … Will this environmental visionary be offered refuge at Berkeley? At the headquarters of the Sierra Club? Or even by the Biden administration? Perhaps not… But the truth is, Mr. Rajapaksa was driven from office in part because he was an overzealous green warrior, who imposed on his countrymen a policy that the American environmental left holds sacred.”

“Sri Lanka’s Collapse Points to Global Gloom” Jim Geraghty, National Review: “Sri Lanka’s default may just be the start of a wider financial crisis in the developing world as a result of worsening global economic conditions. The country had the disadvantage of exceptionally poor leadership and bad timing of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. But poor leadership is common in the developing world, and less robust economies are especially susceptible to bad luck. Countries are economically connected in strange ways. In many cases, those connections only become widely known in hindsight, after a crisis has made them obvious. It would be an overstatement to say that fewer Russians and Ukrainians going on vacation plunged Sri Lanka into crisis, but that seemingly innocuous fact was one of many contributing factors. Those in the prosperous West who are cheering for the end of globalization should be careful what they wish for.”

One more opinion piece from the Right: Sri Lanka and the global revolt against the laptop elites Brendan O'Neill, Spiked

FLAG THIS

Food Insecurity, Not a Foreign Concept

A survey conducted earlier this month found more than two out of every three families in Sri Lanka don’t have enough food to eat (Save the Children). Meanwhile, last week the Associated Press reported on long lines at food banks across the US, with inflation at a 41-year high.

Flag Poll: Do you think so-called "green" initiatives contribute to food insecurity?

Click here to share your thoughts👇

FLAG FINDS

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WATERCOOLER

FDR Goes for Three, Supercooling, Lost and Found

On July 18, 1940, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who first took office in 1933 as America’s 32nd president, was nominated for an unprecedented third term. Roosevelt, a Democrat, would eventually be elected to a record four terms in office, the only US president to serve more than two terms.

Life Hacker: How to ‘Supercool’ Your Home (and Why You Should)

Big Think: There are more galaxies in the Universe than even Carl Sagan ever imagined

Medium: In Praise of Cold-Calling Your Friends

Today I Learned The Epic of Gilgamesh was lost to history. Archaeologists didn't rediscover the text until the 19th century

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