Latest news with #Saman
Yahoo
6 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
‘No One Can Offer Any Hope'
Every month or so I get a desperate message from a 25-year-old Afghan refugee in Pakistan. Another came just last week. I've written about Saman in the past. Because my intent today is to write about her place in the moral universe of Elon Musk and Vice President J. D. Vance, I'll compress her story to its basic details: During the Afghan War, Saman and her husband, Farhad (they requested pseudonyms for their own safety), served in the Afghan special forces alongside American troops. When Kabul fell in 2021, they were left behind and had to go into hiding from the Taliban before fleeing to Pakistan. There the couple and their two small children have languished for three years, burning through their limited cash, avoiding the Pakistani police and Taliban agents, seldom leaving their rented rooms—doomed if they're forced to return to Afghanistan—and all the while waiting for their applications to be processed by the United States' refugee program. No other country will provide a harbor to these loyal allies of America, who risked everything for the war effort. Our country has a unique obligation to do so. They had reached the last stage of a very long road and were on the verge of receiving U.S. visas when Donald Trump came back into office and made ending the refugee program one of his first orders of business. Now Saman and her family have no prospect of escaping the trap they're in. 'The stress and anxiety have become overwhelming,' Saman wrote to me last week. 'Every day I worry about the future of my children—what will become of them? Recently, I've developed a new health issue as well. At times, my fingers suddenly become tight and stiff—almost paralyzed—and I can't move them at all. My husband massages them with great effort until they gradually return to normal. This is a frightening and painful experience … Please, in this difficult time, I humbly ask for your help and guidance. What can I do to find a way out of these hardships?' I've brought the plight of Saman and her family to members of Congress, American activist groups, foreign diplomats, and readers of this magazine. No one can offer any hope. The family's fate is in the hands of Trump and his administration. [George Packer: 'What about six years of friendship and fighting together?' ] And, after all, their story is just one small part of the suffering caused by this regime. A full accounting would be impossible to compile, but it already includes an estimated several hundred thousand people dead or dying of AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria because of the elimination of the U.S. Agency for International Development, as well as the starvation of refugee children in Sudan, migrants deported to a Salvadoran Gulag, and victims of domestic violence who have lost their shelter in Maine. In the wide world of the regime's staggering and gratuitous cruelty, the pain in Saman's fingers might seem too trivial to mention. But hers is the suffering that keeps arriving in my phone, the ongoing story that seems to be my unavoidable job to hear and tell. And sometimes one small drama can illuminate a large evil. Since reading Saman's latest text, I can't stop thinking about the people who are doing this to her and her family—especially about Musk and Vance. As for Trump, I find it difficult to hold him morally responsible for anything. He's a creature of appetite and instinct who hunts and feeds in a dark sub-ethical realm. You don't hold a shark morally responsible for mauling a swimmer. You just try to keep the shark at bay—which the American people failed to do. Musk and Vance function at a higher evolutionary level than Trump. They have ideas to justify the human suffering they cause. They even have moral ideas. Musk's moral idea goes by the name longtermism, which he has called 'a close match to my philosophy.' This reductio ad absurdum of utilitarianism seeks to do the greatest good for the greatest number of human beings who will ever live. By this reasoning, the fate of the hundreds of billions of as-yet-unborn people who will inhabit the planet before the sun burns it up several billion years from now is more urgent than whether a few million people die of preventable diseases this year. If killing the American aid programs that helped keep those people alive allows the U.S. government to become lean and efficient enough to fund Musk's grand project of interplanetary travel, thereby enabling human beings to live on Mars when Earth becomes uninhabitable in some distant era, then the good of humanity requires feeding those aid programs, including ones that support refugee resettlement, into the woodchipper. Refugees—except for white South Africans—aren't important enough to matter to longtermism. Its view of humanity is far too large to notice Saman, Farhad, and their children, or to understand why America might have a moral obligation to give this family a safe home. Longtermism is a philosophy with a special appeal for smart and extremely rich sociopaths. It can justify almost any amount of hubris, spending, and suffering. Sam Bankman-Fried, the cryptocurrency mogul who is serving a 25-year sentence for fraud, conspiracy, and money laundering, was a longtermist. It isn't clear that Musk, during his manic and possibly drug-addled months of power in the Trump administration, applied moral reasoning when hacking at the federal government. His erratic behavior and that of his troops in the Department of Government Efficiency seemed driven more by destructive euphoria than by philosophy. But in February, on Joe Rogan's show, Musk used the loftiest terms to explain why the cries of pain caused by his cuts should be ignored: 'We've got civilizational suicidal empathy going on. And it's like, I believe in empathy. Like, I think you should care about other people, but you need to have empathy for civilization as a whole and not commit to a civilizational suicide. The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.' Here is another category of the long view, with an entire civilization in place of the planet's future inhabitants. Musk's sphere of empathy is galactic. In its cold immensity, the ordinary human impulse to want to relieve the pain of a living person with a name and a face disappears. Vance once called himself 'a proud member of both tribes' of the MAGA coalition—techno-futurists like Musk and right-wing populists like Steve Bannon. But when Vance invokes a moral code, it's the opposite of Musk's. The scope of its commitment is as narrow and specific as an Appalachian graveyard—the cemetery in eastern Kentucky where five generations of Vances are buried and where, he told the Republican National Convention last summer, he hopes that he, his wife, and their children will eventually lie. Such a place is 'the source of America's greatness,' Vance said, because 'people will not fight for abstractions, but they will fight for their home.' Politically, this is called blood-and-soil nationalism. Religiously, Vance traces his moral code to the Catholic doctrine of ordo amoris, the proper order of love: first your family, he told Sean Hannity of Fox News, then your neighbor, your community, your nation, and finally—a distant last—the rest of humanity. But Vance's theology is as bad as his political theory. Generations of Americans fought and died for the idea of freedom in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, World War II, and other conflicts. And Christian doctrine does not say to keep out refugees because they're not your kin. Jesus said the opposite: To refuse the stranger was to refuse him. Vance likes to cite Augustine and Aquinas, but the latter was clear about what ordo amoris does not mean: 'In certain cases, one ought, for instance, to succor a stranger, in extreme necessity, rather than one's own father, if he is not in such urgent need.' [From the March 2022 issue: The betrayal] It's a monstrous perversion of both patriotism and faith to justify hurting a young family who, after all they've suffered, still show courage and loyalty to Vance's country. Starting from opposite moral positions, Musk and Vance are equally indifferent to the ordeal of Saman and her family. When empathy is stretched to the cosmic vanishing point or else compressed to the width of a grave, it ceases to be empathy. Perhaps these two elites even take pleasure in the squeals of bleeding-heart humanitarians on behalf of refugees, starving children, international students, poor Americans in ill health, and other unfortunates. And that may be a core value of these philosophies: They require so much inventing of perverse principles to reach a cruel end that the pain of others begins to seem like the first priority rather than the inadvertent result. Think of the range of people who have been drawn to MAGA. It's hard to see what political ideology Elon Musk, J. D. Vance, Glenn Greenwald, Glenn Loury, Nick Fuentes, Bari Weiss, Lil Wayne, Joe Rogan, Bill Ackman, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and Kanye West have in common. The magnetic pull is essentially negative. They all fear and loathe something more than Trump—whether it's wokeness, Palestinians, Jews, Harvard, trans people, The New York Times, or the Democratic Party—and manage to overlook everything else, including the fate of American democracy, and Saman and her family. But overlooking everything else is nihilism. Even if most Americans haven't abandoned their private sense of empathy, many don't seem terribly bothered by the rancidness of their leaders. I confess that this indifference astonishes me. It might be the ugliest effect of Trump's return—the rapid normalization of spectacular corruption, the desensitization to lawless power, the acceptance of moral collapse. Eventually it will coarsen us all. Article originally published at The Atlantic
Atlantic
6 days ago
- General
- Atlantic
‘No One Can Offer Any Hope'
Every month or so I get a desperate message from a 25-year-old Afghan refugee in Pakistan. Another came just last week. I've written about Saman in the past. Because my intent today is to write about her place in the moral universe of Elon Musk and Vice President J. D. Vance, I'll compress her story to its basic details: During the Afghan War, Saman and her husband, Farhad (they requested pseudonyms for their own safety), served in the Afghan special forces alongside American troops. When Kabul fell in 2021, they were left behind and had to go into hiding from the Taliban before fleeing to Pakistan. There the couple and their two small children have languished for three years, burning through their limited cash, avoiding the Pakistani police and Taliban agents, seldom leaving their rented rooms—doomed if they're forced to return to Afghanistan—and all the while waiting for their applications to be processed by the United States' refugee program. No other country will provide a harbor to these loyal allies of America, who risked everything for the war effort. Our country has a unique obligation to do so. They had reached the last stage of a very long road and were on the verge of receiving U.S. visas when Donald Trump came back into office and made ending the refugee program one of his first orders of business. Now Saman and her family have no prospect of escaping the trap they're in. 'The stress and anxiety have become overwhelming,' Saman wrote to me last week. 'Every day I worry about the future of my children—what will become of them? Recently, I've developed a new health issue as well. At times, my fingers suddenly become tight and stiff—almost paralyzed—and I can't move them at all. My husband massages them with great effort until they gradually return to normal. This is a frightening and painful experience … Please, in this difficult time, I humbly ask for your help and guidance. What can I do to find a way out of these hardships?' I've brought the plight of Saman and her family to members of Congress, American activist groups, foreign diplomats, and readers of this magazine. No one can offer any hope. The family's fate is in the hands of Trump and his administration. George Packer: 'What about six years of friendship and fighting together?' And, after all, their story is just one small part of the suffering caused by this regime. A full accounting would be impossible to compile, but it already includes an estimated several hundred thousand people dead or dying of AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria because of the elimination of the U.S. Agency for International Development, as well as the starvation of refugee children in Sudan, migrants deported to a Salvadoran Gulag, and victims of domestic violence who have lost their shelter in Maine. In the wide world of the regime's staggering and gratuitous cruelty, the pain in Saman's fingers might seem too trivial to mention. But hers is the suffering that keeps arriving in my phone, the ongoing story that seems to be my unavoidable job to hear and tell. And sometimes one small drama can illuminate a large evil. Since reading Saman's latest text, I can't stop thinking about the people who are doing this to her and her family—especially about Musk and Vance. As for Trump, I find it difficult to hold him morally responsible for anything. He's a creature of appetite and instinct who hunts and feeds in a dark sub-ethical realm. You don't hold a shark morally responsible for mauling a swimmer. You just try to keep the shark at bay—which the American people failed to do. Musk and Vance function at a higher evolutionary level than Trump. They have ideas to justify the human suffering they cause. They even have moral ideas. Musk's moral idea goes by the name longtermism, which he has called 'a close match to my philosophy.' This reductio ad absurdum of utilitarianism seeks to do the greatest good for the greatest number of human beings who will ever live. By this reasoning, the fate of the hundreds of billions of as-yet-unborn people who will inhabit the planet before the sun burns it up several billion years from now is more urgent than whether a few million people die of preventable diseases this year. If killing the American aid programs that helped keep those people alive allows the U.S. government to become lean and efficient enough to fund Musk's grand project of interplanetary travel, thereby enabling human beings to live on Mars when Earth becomes uninhabitable in some distant era, then the good of humanity requires feeding those aid programs, including ones that support refugee resettlement, into the woodchipper. Refugees—except for white South Africans —aren't important enough to matter to longtermism. Its view of humanity is far too large to notice Saman, Farhad, and their children, or to understand why America might have a moral obligation to give this family a safe home. Longtermism is a philosophy with a special appeal for smart and extremely rich sociopaths. It can justify almost any amount of hubris, spending, and suffering. Sam Bankman-Fried, the cryptocurrency mogul who is serving a 25-year sentence for fraud, conspiracy, and money laundering, was a longtermist. It isn't clear that Musk, during his manic and possibly drug-addled months of power in the Trump administration, applied moral reasoning when hacking at the federal government. His erratic behavior and that of his troops in the Department of Government Efficiency seemed driven more by destructive euphoria than by philosophy. But in February, on Joe Rogan's show, Musk used the loftiest terms to explain why the cries of pain caused by his cuts should be ignored: 'We've got civilizational suicidal empathy going on. And it's like, I believe in empathy. Like, I think you should care about other people, but you need to have empathy for civilization as a whole and not commit to a civilizational suicide. The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.' Here is another category of the long view, with an entire civilization in place of the planet's future inhabitants. Musk's sphere of empathy is galactic. In its cold immensity, the ordinary human impulse to want to relieve the pain of a living person with a name and a face disappears. Vance once called himself 'a proud member of both tribes' of the MAGA coalition—techno-futurists like Musk and right-wing populists like Steve Bannon. But when Vance invokes a moral code, it's the opposite of Musk's. The scope of its commitment is as narrow and specific as an Appalachian graveyard—the cemetery in eastern Kentucky where five generations of Vances are buried and where, he told the Republican National Convention last summer, he hopes that he, his wife, and their children will eventually lie. Such a place is 'the source of America's greatness,' Vance said, because 'people will not fight for abstractions, but they will fight for their home.' Politically, this is called blood-and-soil nationalism. Religiously, Vance traces his moral code to the Catholic doctrine of ordo amoris, the proper order of love: first your family, he told Sean Hannity of Fox News, then your neighbor, your community, your nation, and finally—a distant last—the rest of humanity. But Vance's theology is as bad as his political theory. Generations of Americans fought and died for the idea of freedom in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, World War II, and other conflicts. And Christian doctrine does not say to keep out refugees because they're not your kin. Jesus said the opposite: To refuse the stranger was to refuse him. Vance likes to cite Augustine and Aquinas, but the latter was clear about what ordo amoris does not mean: 'In certain cases, one ought, for instance, to succor a stranger, in extreme necessity, rather than one's own father, if he is not in such urgent need.' From the March 2022 issue: The betrayal It's a monstrous perversion of both patriotism and faith to justify hurting a young family who, after all they've suffered, still show courage and loyalty to Vance's country. Starting from opposite moral positions, Musk and Vance are equally indifferent to the ordeal of Saman and her family. When empathy is stretched to the cosmic vanishing point or else compressed to the width of a grave, it ceases to be empathy. Perhaps these two elites even take pleasure in the squeals of bleeding-heart humanitarians on behalf of refugees, starving children, international students, poor Americans in ill health, and other unfortunates. And that may be a core value of these philosophies: They require so much inventing of perverse principles to reach a cruel end that the pain of others begins to seem like the first priority rather than the inadvertent result. Think of the range of people who have been drawn to MAGA. It's hard to see what political ideology Elon Musk, J. D. Vance, Glenn Greenwald, Glenn Loury, Nick Fuentes, Bari Weiss, Lil Wayne, Joe Rogan, Bill Ackman, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and Kanye West have in common. The magnetic pull is essentially negative. They all fear and loathe something more than Trump—whether it's wokeness, Palestinians, Jews, Harvard, trans people, The New York Times, or the Democratic Party—and manage to overlook everything else, including the fate of American democracy, and Saman and her family. But overlooking everything else is nihilism. Even if most Americans haven't abandoned their private sense of empathy, many don't seem terribly bothered by the rancidness of their leaders. I confess that this indifference astonishes me. It might be the ugliest effect of Trump's return—the rapid normalization of spectacular corruption, the desensitization to lawless power, the acceptance of moral collapse. Eventually it will coarsen us all.
Shafaq News
20-05-2025
- Business
- Shafaq News
Erbil construction fair opens with broad International participation
Shafaq News/ The Erbil International Construction Fair, one of the most prominent events in Iraq and the Kurdistan Region, opened its 15th edition on Tuesday, drawing broad participation from local, regional, and international companies specializing in construction, equipment, and building materials. The event serves as a platform for investors, engineers, and professionals to network and highlight the developments in infrastructure, housing, and engineering services. Exhibitors also showcased a range of advanced machinery and logistics technologies, with several companies exploring plans to expand operations in the region. Speaking to Shafaq News, Hussein Ali, marketing director at a participating firm, described the fair as a key opportunity to engage with investors and stakeholders. He noted the event's contribution to infrastructure and transport projects and its role in introducing international technologies to the local market. Similarly, visitor Saman viewed the fair as a reflection of the Kurdistan Region's urban development, pointing to the presence of major local and global firms as a marker of sector growth. The multi-day fair includes live demonstrations, technical workshops, and seminars focused on sustainable construction, civil engineering, and renewable energy. Organizers expect thousands of visitors from across Iraq and abroad, positioning the event as a contributor to investment and economic activity in the Kurdistan Region and beyond.
Yahoo
17-04-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
A climber with cancer whose life was saved by UK HealthCare? Not exactly.
In our Reality Check stories, Herald-Leader journalists dig deeper into questions over facts, consequences and accountability. Read more. Story idea? hlcityregion@ A sheer rock cliff above a river. Sweeping violins. A climber's sinewy body, her hands and feet clinging to gaps as she makes her perilous ascent. 'I shouldn't be here.' The unidentified climber then explains in voiceover about her dire cancer diagnosis by three doctors who told her she'd never climb again. 'I wanted a different answer,' the voice continues. 'And I got it at UK HealthCare. It took a drug nobody else had yet. Twelve rounds of chemo, A 10-hour surgery a, 16-person team and eight months of rehab. 'But here I am, right where I was never supposed to be.' It's a dramatic, stirring ad, so good that the University of Kentucky's health care arm showed it during both the Super Bowl and the NCAA tournament. But the woman, professional climber Amity Warme, is not a UK patient. According to her Instagram page, she recently suffered a finger injury, but not a terrible cancer diagnosis. And nowhere does the ad say that Warme is an actor or that the story is a dramatization. The one-minute ad — created by UK's longtime advertising partner, Cornett — has raised some eyebrows from both fans and critics, who wonder why UK would bother to use an actor when they have so many real patients whose lives were actually saved by UK doctors. It caught the attention of Lily Saman, a climber who recognized Warme, who is famous in part for five free climbs of El Capitan in Yosemite. 'When I first saw the commercial during the Super Bowl, it really spoke to me on multiple levels,' Saman said in an email. 'I was immediately drawn by the beautiful landscape. As a Red River Gorge climber, I could quickly tell this was not filmed in Kentucky, but I still appreciated that my sport was getting exposure and hoped everyone felt as drawn to it as I was.' Saman's father was diagnosed with cancer that same week. 'When I saw the commercial, I felt hopeful and was inspired by her story,' she said. 'Learning that it was completely fabricated left me feeling very deceived — that I was tricked during a vulnerable time in my life and that I fell for it.' Judging from the comments on YouTube and other social media posts, others agreed. 'Yo! Instead of using a pro climber to tell a bogus story, you could've used a normal native-born Kentucky climber, who miraculously survived a near-fatal accident and was actually treated by UK, and now climbs harder than they ever did before,' said one commenter. 'Hit me up! I'll take pennies on the dollar compared to any desperate pro athlete who is willing to peddle bs for you.' Geoffrey Blair is the director of Marketing and Brand Strategy for the executive vice president of health affairs at UK, a role shared by Eric Monday, the executive VP for finance and administration, and Robert DiPaola, who is also the provost. Blair said that UK HealthCare has run a series of ad campaigns designed to heighten awareness of its advanced medical services for the future, when people might need them. UK's Markey Cancer Center is the state's only National Cancer Institute Designated Cancer Center and treats thousands of patients from the state. 'Amity Warme is not one of our patients, but the character's story dramatized in the TV commercial represents dozens of real UK HealthCare patient journeys each year – someone hit with an unexpected diagnosis who is able to get back to doing the things they love thanks to UK HealthCare,' he said. 'The 'drug no one else had yet' was a nod to treatments available through our clinical trials offerings rather than a specific medication.' Blair said UK always uses 'talent' in broadcast TV commercials because of 'the time commitment needed, the stamina required, and the ability to convey a range of physical actions and emotions as necessary to tell the story.' But they do feature real patients in other ads, like the story of Joshua Taylor, whose heart failure led to 180 days in the hospital, a medically induced coma, months of rehab and a 12-hour transplant surgery to save his life. Blair also said they had hoped to film the ad in Kentucky, but bad weather meant moving to Tennessee, where leaves were still on trees. UK's 2025 contract with Cornett is $696,600. The Super Bowl buy cost almost $50,000, while the NCAA Tournament cost about $64,000. Blair said so far, the 'I shouldn't be here' campaign has lifted awareness of UK HealthCare by more than 320%. 'Metrics for emotional power, emotional activation and positivity have more than doubled,' he said. 'The story in the ad is representative of the types of stories we hear frequently from our doctors and patients: 'I went elsewhere and was told I had no options. I came to UK and underwent extensive treatment that included something only UK was able to give me. Now I'm back to living my life.' ' But experts in ethics in advertising say UK should have been more transparent about what was represented. Andrew Susman, executive director of the Institute for Advertising Ethics in New York City, watched the UK ad and said it violated numerous principles his group uses to train advertising professionals. 'The ad appears to present a first-person account, yet it's unclear whether the narrator is recounting her own experience,' he said. 'If dramatized, that must be clearly disclosed.' He said Federal Trade Commission guidelines require that testimonials reflect real experiences or clearly state otherwise. In addition, Susman said, dramatizing a life-or-death narrative without transparency 'risks manipulating vulnerable viewers —particularly in health care.' All these problems could have been avoided with a simple disclaimer such as 'dramatization based on a true story.' 'Using the real patient—or clearly labeling the dramatization—would honor audience trust while maintaining emotional resonance,' Susman said. Other experts agree. Dr. Gillian Oakenfull, a Professor of Marketing at the Farmer School of Business at Miami University of Ohio, said transparency in health care advertising is critical. 'Without it, there's a real risk of misleading viewers, which could be considered deceptive under most advertising ethics codes,' Oakenfull said in an email. 'Second, the claim of exclusive access to a particular medicine carries weight. While UK's Markey Cancer Center does have an extensive clinical trial program, implying exclusivity without explanation or substantiation can mislead audiences. These types of claims should always be backed up, ideally with clear context around trial participation or partnerships.' Third, she said, the use of a young cancer survivor paired with the rock climbing taps into deep emotional currents. 'That's understandable from a creative standpoint, but when patient representation becomes blurred or dramatized, it opens the door to backlash,' she said. 'The audience is not just watching a brand message—they're engaging with what they believe is a lived experience.' Oakenfull believes that health care advertising has a higher ethical bar. 'Marketing should elevate clarity, truthfulness and respect for the patient journey—not stretch the truth in pursuit of a powerful message,' she said. This will become more important as artificial intelligence becomes more integrated in our lives, and it becomes harder to discern what is real and what is fake. 'When it gets harder to tell the real from the unreal, we need more transparency,' said John Ferre, a professor of communication at the University of Louisville. 'It's a beautifully done ad. It's a terrific ad. But it's not transparent. 'UK HealthCare represents something really, really good,' he said. 'They should stay consistent with that and be clear this is a dramatization.'
