On saving a dying language.
And some travel photos.
I’m sitting here with my coffee, still trying to unwind from my whirlwind trip to South Korea and wrap my head around everything that’s happened since. In the week I’ve been back, Israel launched incursions into Lebanon and killed the leader of Hezbollah. Iran fired around 180 missiles into Israel. Over one million people have been displaced from southern Lebanon, and some are even fleeing into Syria because, shockingly, they think that’s a safer place to be right now.
People have been asking me to share some photos from South Korea, and since you might all need a nervous system reset after reading that last paragraph, I will oblige with a little slideshow from Seoul. You’ll notice some protest banners reading “From the river to the sea.” I asked some South Koreans whether that slogan is as controversial there as it is in so many other countries, and I was met with a big shrug. People told me that not many South Koreans are paying attention to events in the Middle East. That protest camp just happened to be located near the U.S. embassy.
Did you know that a language dies every two weeks? I honestly didn’t until the Brazilian freelance writer Raphael Tsavkko Garcia wrote to tell me about his work documenting how people preserve and teach minority languages, including those on the verge of extinction.
This week for Lazo Magazine, Raphael wrote about efforts to save minority languages online. “Roughly 40 percent of the world’s 7,000 or so languages are on the brink of extinction,” he writes. “For many, the death of a language signals the end of a unique worldview.”
You can read his piece by clicking here.
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What I’m writing:
• I wrote a deep dive into South Korea’s military plans as the country prepares for the U.S. presidential election. President Joe Biden has deepened the U.S.-Seoul alliance. But many in the country fear that commitment could wither under another Trump presidency. This story is unlocked and free to read.
My weekly news blurbs:
What I’m reading:
• Spain’s Vox party became the latest far-right group to obtain a loan from a Hungarian bank to finance political campaigns, one of the ways Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is building his influence among fellow European nationalists, Bloomberg reports.
• VSquare has an investigation into Geert Wilders’s trips to Hungary. Hungary paid for Wilders’s extensive security, and the far-right Dutch politician traveled with protection “under the auspices of Viktor Orbán’s elite bodyguards.”
• Albania has announced plans to create a Bektashi-run Vatican City-like microstate, Euronews reports.
• Lithuania referred Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, members of his government, security officials, and military officers to the International Criminal Court, “accusing them of committing crimes against humanity by forcing their people to flee the country, the Associated Press reports.
• Moldovans will vote on whether they want to join the European Union in a referendum later this month — and Moscow is stepping up efforts to get them to a “no,” Politico Europe reports.
• Norway is considering building a fence on its border with Russia, a move inspired by Finland’s Russian border project, the Associated Press reports.
• The United Kingdom agreed to hand over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, ending years of dispute over Britain’s last African colony, the Guardian reports.
• Politico Europe reports that Israel banned United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres from entering the country.
• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the Iranian public in a video suggesting that regime change was looming.
• Israel probably used U.S.-made 2,000-pound bombs in its strike that killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, according to a review of visuals the Israeli Defense Forces released on Telegram. The Washington Post has the write-up.
• Shiite demonstrators in Pakistan’s southern city of Karachi led to violent clashes with the police as people marched toward the U.S. Consulate to denounce the killing of Nasrallah, Reuters reports.
• Saudi Arabia pledged funding for the Palestinian Authority, signaling renewed Saudi backing for Palestinian statehood that could help mend relations between Riyadh and the body that administers the West Bank, the New York Times reports.
• Two U.S. airstrikes in Syria killed 337 militants associated with the self-styled Islamic State group and an al-Qaeda-linked group, the Associated Press reports.
• Pakistan’s capital was sealed off and cell phone services blocked to prevent an anti-government rally by supporters of jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan, Reuters reports.
• A Cambodian woman who worked in Malaysia was arrested and deported to Cambodia after criticizing Cambodian government leaders on social media, the Associated Press reports.
You can write to me for any reason: c.maza@protonmail.com