2024
August
20
Tuesday

Monitor Daily Podcast

August 20, 2024
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Mark Sappenfield
Senior global correspondent

One of the less-helpful things the media does is predict things: elections, wars, economic trends. First, we’re usually wrong. Second, predicting doesn’t really help understanding. 

Today’s Monitor presents an alternative. Many people are trying to predict what will happen in Gaza or Venezuela. What we do, instead, is look at where people are working toward outcomes.

Of course, we don’t know what will happen. But the future is made by those working to shape it. Wars will end. Elections will finish. Who is working toward that moment, and what variables are in play? That’s more than guesswork. It’s constructive journalism.


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Today’s stories

And why we wrote them

Hatem Khaled/Reuters
Palestinians make their way back to the eastern side of Khan Yunis after Israeli forces pulled out from the area following a raid in the southern Gaza Strip, July 30, 2024.

Can institutions reform themselves? It’s a question being tested in the midst of war. The Palestinian Authority has launched an ambitious plan to democratize and provide for Gaza’s future, but its leadership is deeply distrusted by the Palestinian people.

Today’s news briefs

• Trump campaign hack: U.S. intelligence says Iran is likely behind the attack, casting the cyber intrusion as part of an effort by Tehran to interfere in American politics and to undermine faith in democratic institutions. 
• Corporal punishment in schools: The governor of Illinois signed a law this month that will ban physical punishment in private schools while reiterating a prohibition on the practice in public schools.

Read these news briefs.

After pro-Palestinian encampments disrupted college campuses this spring, many predicted major clashes at the Democratic National Convention – a repeat of 1968’s DNC. But so far, the protests in Chicago have been smaller than expected.

Cristian Hernandez/AP
Opposition leader María Corina Machado waves to supporters in Caracas, Venezuela, Aug. 17, 2024, during a protest against election results that declared President Nicolás Maduro the winner of the July 28 presidential vote.

Venezuela’s government and opposition have both claimed victory in the July 28 presidential election. But it’s a woman whose name wasn’t even on the ballot who may be stealing the show.

Photos by AP/Reuters
From politicians to business leaders and pop stars, many people of older age – those pictured here range from 70 years old to 90-plus – continue to campaign, invest, and rock on. But gerontological advocates and scientists say ageism is pervasive, anchored in unfair assumptions that a numerical age equates with slowed capabilities.

Intense scrutiny of veteran politicians has prodded America toward greater awareness of how unchallenged ageism affects everyone, not just presidential candidates.

SOURCE:

Pew Research Center, Ballotpedia, U.S. Justice Department, Bloomberg

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Oli Turner and Jacob Turcotte/Staff

Points of Progress

What's going right

In our progress roundup, the meaning of community expands in senior living spaces when they are intentionally designed to be inviting to the public. And in Oaxaca, Mexico, women farmers who work for the benefit of the group are bringing an Indigenous practice to modern use.

Staff

The Monitor's View

Sometimes the worst wars start to end with the quiet acquiescence of their combatants. That may be the case now in Sudan where civilians have endured 16 months of a violent civil war.

Last week, talks to end the war began in Switzerland, but only one of the two warring factions showed up. By the weekend, however, each side had taken a critical step. The armed group attending the talks agreed to enable the delivery of emergency aid to parts of the East African country where hundreds of thousands of people are at risk of starvation. About the same time, and seemingly independently, the other faction opened a vital border crossing for the same purpose.

The mutual acknowledgment of the need to protect innocent life may have opened a door to solving one of the world’s gravest crises. The two sides, led by rival generals who once conspired to overthrow Sudan’s last civilian government, have now sent delegations for talks in Cairo on Tuesday – even as diplomacy continues in Geneva.

“These constructive decisions by both parties will enable the entry of aid needed to stop the famine, address food insecurity and respond to immense humanitarian needs,” international mediators in Geneva said in a joint statement.

The Cairo meeting is now “a crucial step in rebuilding trust and finding common ground between the warring parties,” the Arabian Post editorial board observed. “This latest effort could pave the way for a more stable and peaceful Sudan.”

International humanitarian law is anchored by the Fourth Geneva Convention, which requires that in warfare, “persons taking no active part in the hostilities ... shall in all circumstances be treated humanely.” Recent trends in conflict resolution, the International Committee of the Red Cross noted, have shown that protecting innocent civilians from harm “can have an impact on the success of peace negotiations and agreements, as well as on the chances for post-conflict reconciliation.”

Humanitarian gestures, the ICRC observed, helped the Colombian government build trust with guerrilla factions and strengthen compliance with a 2016 peace accord. More recently, two armed groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo signed a mutual pledge in March to respect and protect civilians caught in the vast African country’s fragmented wars. The agreement followed training courses led by international humanitarian experts. As the leaders of one of the factions told The Associated Press, “Now, we feel – we can see – there’s a change on the ground, and so we can’t let ourselves do whatever we want anymore.”

Since the outbreak of the civil war in Sudan in April 2023, humanitarian aid workers and international peace groups have sought to reduce the use of sexual violence, recruitment of child soldiers, and starvation as tools of war by educating armed groups in humanitarian law. Such efforts reinforce that harming civilians should not be dismissed as “mere unintended consequences of war,” said Christina Markus Lassen, Denmark’s representative to the United Nations Security Council, in a debate on Sudan in May.

Cultivating empathy among belligerents has opened new corridors for much-needed aid to Sudan’s distressed population. Its more enduring effect may be a lasting peace forged by a deeper valuing of innocence.


A Christian Science Perspective

About this feature

Recognizing that God’s children are never doomed to decrepitude frees us from age-related limitations, as a woman experienced after she was faced with knee problems.


Viewfinder

Jose Luis Gonzalez/Reuters
People gather in White Sands National Park to watch a rare supermoon and blue moon in one, near Alamogordo, New Mexico, Aug. 19, 2024. This kind of moon occurs only about every 10 years, based on the definition of a blue moon as a full moon that is the third in a season of four.
( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Jacob Turcotte. )

A look ahead

We’re so glad you could join us today. As part of our continuing coverage of the Democratic convention in the United States, tomorrow we’ll check on vice presidential candidate Tim Walz. Two weeks after his selection, how is his addition affecting the Democratic presidential ticket?

More issues

2024
August
20
Tuesday
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