Dear ###USER_name###,
In the opening scene of David Lynch´s iconic horror film “blue velvet” we see an idyllic suburban American life with happy families almost coming out of an advertisement for cereals: neat clothes, tidy homes, smiling children and neighbours waving good morning to each other from across their lawns. As the camera moves vertically down, we literally go beneath the reality of the perfect suburban life, to what is happening under their freshly cut lawns: monstrous insects unbound. What is sustaining this seemingly innocent (white) American life, is the monstrous horror well hidden beneath it.
And indeed, we are in the time of monsters, as “the old world is dying and the new world is struggling to be born”. What was in the old world order still bound by at least seemingly adhering to the order of international law, is now unleashed. Wars are being launched and it is not yet clear, where they are leading and to where their flames will extend.
In this newsletter we are trying to understand the unleashed monsters and yet not giving up on the notion, that there is something that can be done in the face of all of this violence. In “back to the future” Timo Dorsch and Moritz Krawinkel look at the attack on Venezuela and what it means for the region but also globally. “Dog-eat-dog world” portrays implications of the attacks in west-Asia and most importantly how our partners and colleagues are facing the wars and doing their work as human rights and aid organisations.
“The beginning of the end”, sheds light on the processes in Rojava as the emancipatory project in the region is facing existential threats. Anita Starosta and Timo Dorsch were there recently.
The new global unfolding should however not distract us from the long ongoing horrors, and how they are deepening. In “MAGA meets health” Felix Litschauer unpacks how the MAGA project is directly affecting health politics and Institutions in Africa. While the American ICE thugs are all over the news, Kerem Schamberger and Valeria Hänsel remind us that Europe has a very long story of it´s own “ICE”, working on its outer borders making the Mediterranean a mass graveyard of a kind.
We shall also not forget that the genocide in Gaza is ongoing, and its percussions are taking place beyond Gaza, for example in the cancelling of human rights organisations per se. A percussion also medico and its partners are targeted by.
While the horrors unfold it is our duty not to hide. As human rights defenders, aid organisations, and activists, we – us at medico and you dear readers of this international newsletter- know it best.
In Solidarity,
Radwa Khaled Ibrahim
Editor of the international Newsletter
