Dear Commons Community,

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu has sent a letter to the United Nations formally requesting that his country be referred to as “Türkiye”. The move is seen as part of a push by Ankara to rebrand the country and dissociate its name from the bird, turkey, and some negative connotations that are associated with it.  As reported by the Associated Press.

Anadolu Agency said Stephane Dujarric, spokesman to U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres, confirmed receipt of the letter late on Wednesday. The agency quoted Dujarric as saying that the name change had become effective “from the moment” the letter was received.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government has been pressing for the internationally recognized name Turkey to be changed to “Türkiye” (tur-key-YAY) as it is spelled and pronounced in Turkish. The country called itself “Türkiye” in 1923 after its declaration of independence.

In December, Erdogan ordered the use of “Türkiye” to better represent Turkish culture and values, including demanding that “Made in Türkiye” be used instead of “Made in Turkey” on exported products. Turkish ministries began using “Türkiye” in official documents.

Earlier this year, the government also released a promotional video as part of its attempts to change its name in English. The video shows tourists from across the world saying “Hello Türkiye” at famous destinations.

The Turkish presidency’s Directorate of Communications said it launched the campaign “to promote more effectively the use of ‘Türkiye’ as the country’s national and international name on international platforms.”

It was not clear whether the name, with a letter that doesn’t exist in the English alphabet, will catch on widely abroad. In 2016, the Czech Republic officially registered its short-form name, Czechia, and while some international institutions use it, many still refer to the country by its longer name.

Turkey’s English-language state broadcaster TRT World has switched to using “Türkiye” although the word “Turkey” slips in by journalists still trying to get used to the change.

TRT World explained the decision in an article earlier this year, saying Googling “Turkey” brings up a “a muddled set of images, articles, and dictionary definitions that conflate the country with Meleagris – otherwise known as the turkey, a large bird native to North America – which is famous for being served on Christmas menus or Thanksgiving dinners.”

The network continued: “Flip through the Cambridge Dictionary and “turkey” is defined as “something that fails badly” or “a stupid or silly person.”

TRT World argued that Turks prefer their country to be called “Türkiye”, in “keeping with the country’s aims of determining how others should identify it.”

I like the name change!

Tony

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona

Dear Commons Community,

Hundreds of thousands of students who attended the for-profit Corinthian Colleges chain will automatically get their federal student loans canceled, the Biden administration announced yesterday, a move that aims to bring closure to one of the most notorious cases of fraud in American higher education.

Under the new action, anyone who attended the now-defunct chain from its founding in 1995 to its collapse in 2015 will get their federal student debt wiped clean. It will erase $5.8 billion in debt for more than 560,000 borrowers, the largest single loan discharge in Education Department history, according to the agency.  AS reported by the Associated Press.

“As of today, every student deceived, defrauded and driven into debt by Corinthian Colleges can rest assured that the Biden-Harris Administration has their back and will discharge their federal student loans,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said. “For far too long, Corinthian engaged in the wholesale financial exploitation of students, misleading them into taking on more and more debt to pay for promises they would never keep.”

Tens of thousands of former Corinthian students were already eligible for debt cancellation, but they had to file paperwork and navigate an application process that advocates say is confusing and not widely known about. Now, the relief will be made automatic and extended to additional borrowers.

Those who have a remaining balance on their Corinthian debt will also get refunds on payments they have already made, Education Department officials said. But the action does not apply to loans that have already been paid off in full.

At its peak, Corinthian was one of the nation’s largest for-profit college companies, with more than 100 campuses across the country and more than 110,000 students at its Everest, WyoTech and Heald schools.

But the company shut down in 2015 amid widespread findings of fraud. The Obama administration — working with Kamala Harris, who was then California attorney general and later became vice president — found that scores of campuses were falsifying data on the success of their graduates. In some cases, the schools reported that students had found jobs in their fields of study even though they were working at grocery stores or fast food chains.

Hundreds of students told investigators they were pressured to enroll with promises of lucrative employment, only to end up with huge sums of debt and few job prospects. Federal officials also found that the company falsely told students their course credits could be transferred to other colleges.

The case inspired a federal crackdown on for-profit colleges, and the Obama administration promised to forgive loans for Corinthian students whose programs lied about job placement rates. The administration went on to expand a process known as borrower defense to repayment, which allows any defrauded student to apply for debt cancellation.

But an explosion in applications for debt forgiveness, along with political battles over the process, created a years-long backlog in the process, leaving many former Corinthian students still awaiting relief.

As of December, the Education Department reported it had more than 109,000 pending applications from students alleging fraud by their colleges, including many Corinthian students. Borrowers and their advocates have been urging the government to erase all Corinthian debt, saying evidence of misconduct was so widespread that all the chain’s students were the victims of fraud.

The administration announced the action Wednesday as President Joe Biden considers broader student loan forgiveness for millions of Americans. As a candidate, Biden said he supports forgiving $10,000 in student loans for all borrowers. He later indicated that such action should come through Congress, but the White House has said he is considering whether to pursue it through executive action.

Advocates said the Biden administration’s decision brings long-delayed justice.

“This is a tremendous student victory, and it belongs to the tens of thousands of borrowers who were cheated and abused by Corinthian Colleges,” said Eileen Connor, director of the Project on Predatory Student Lending, which has represented Corinthian students in lawsuits. “They never stopped fighting — over three administrations — for the justice they deserve under the law.”

Libby DeBlasio Webster, senior counsel for the advocacy group Student Defense, said the news gives a “fresh start” to former Corinthian students, but she noted that many defrauded students from other for-profit colleges are still awaiting help.

“We also hope today’s news is a sign that other decisions are on the horizon for thousands of similarly situated students who are waiting for this kind of relief,” she said.

This move was long overdue!

Tony

S.E Cupp

Dear Commons Community,

Columnist and cable news contributor S.E Cupp had a candid heartfelt column yesterday entitled, “I am in puddle. How are you holding up?  Buffalo, Uvalde, and the American psyche.”  In it, she described her own mental problems over the past year as “I had suddenly hit a dangerous and scary place with my mental health, overwhelmed with anxiety, unable to see clearly through the fog of bad news, constant worry, inescapable triggers, and the feeling that this was all just the new normal.”

She sought help and “embarked on a mental health treatment journey that included psychotherapy, medication and a dogged attention to my limitations.”

She has made progress but she lamented:

“Whether it’s an ongoing war in Ukraine, a frightening rise in extremism and hate crimes, the anxiety of living with constant COVID uncertainty, daunting economic stresses, a bitterly divided and seemingly broken political system that appears unable to solve crucial problems — from a baby formula shortage to a gun-violence epidemic — or the everyday challenges of parenting, work and life, we are not doing well.

To make matters worse, so much of this feels out of our control and impossible to solve. And when there are potential solutions to a problem — like some common sense ways to keep 18-year-old racists and would-be child murderers from getting their hands on mass killing devices — there are too few willing partners to even try to start.”

She concluded:

“So we wait. We wait for the next punch in the gut, the next awful tragedy, praying it’s not too close to home, white-knuckling it from one hour to the next.

How could anyone function under these kinds of pressures?

It turns out that some of us can’t. I’m envious of those who can. But I’m struggling just to get my footing from one crisis to the next, while managing the challenges every parent faces — sending my kiddo to school, keeping him safe, teaching him about the world around him without terrifying him.

It is overwhelming and debilitating, but I’ll keep working at it. And I know I will recover, once again. But as much as I feel the weight, I know the victims of these tragedies — the surviving families and community — never fully will. My heart is broken for them. And I worry — how much more of this can we take?”

Important message from Ms. Cupp for all of us.

We wish her well!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Archaeologists announced earlier this week that they have uncovered hundreds of ancient Egyptian coffins and bronze statues of deities at a site near Cairo.

The discovery at a cemetery in Saqqara contained statues of the gods Anubis, Amun, Min, Osiris, Isis, Nefertum, Bastet and Hathor along with a headless statue of the architect Imhotep, who built the Saqqara pyramid, Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.  As reported by Reuters.

The 250 coffins, 150 bronze statues and other objects dated to the Late Period, about 500 BC, the ministry said (see video below).

They were accompanied by a musical instrument known as a sistrum and a collection of bronze vessels used in rituals for the worship of the goddess Isis.

The painted wooden coffins were found intact in burial shafts and contained mummies, amulets and wooden boxes. Wooden statues of Nephthys and Isis from an earlier period were also found, both with gilded faces.

One coffin contained a well-preserved papyrus written in hieroglyphs, perhaps verses of the Book of the Dead, and was sent to the laboratory of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo for study, said Mostafa Waziri, Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities.

A collection of cosmetics was found, including kohl containers, as well as bracelets and earrings.

The coffins will be transferred for display at the Grand Egyptian Museum under construction near the Great Pyramids of Giza and due to open later this year.

Saqqara, to the south of the Giza pyramids, has provided a steady stream of archaeological discoveries in recent years. The mission has been excavating in the area since 2018.

I was fortunate to visit Egypt in 2010 and spent two weeks touring the pyramids, temples, and ruins of this incredible culture.  I would love to go back to see this exhibit.  As they say in Giza, “humankind fears time but time  fears the pyramids.”

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The US Supreme Court has blocked a Texas law, prompted by conservative complaints about censorship, aimed at keeping social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter from censoring users based on their viewpoints. 

The court voted 5-4 alignment yesterday to put the Texas law on hold, while a lawsuit plays out in lower courts.

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett voted to grant the emergency request from two technology industry groups that challenged the law in federal court.

The majority provided no explanation for its decision, as is common in emergency matters on what is informally known as the court’s “shadow docket.”

Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Elena Kagan and Neil Gorsuch would have allowed the law to remain in effect.

In dissent, Alito wrote, “Social media platforms have transformed the way people communicate with each other and obtain news.”

It’s not clear how the high court’s past First Amendment cases, many of which predate the Internet age, apply to Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and other digital platforms, Alito wrote in an opinion joined by fellow conservatives Thomas and Gorsuch but not Kagan.

The order follows a ruling last week by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that found a similar Florida law likely violates the First Amendment’s free speech protections.

Republican elected officials in several states have backed laws like those enacted in Florida and Texas that sought to portray social media companies as generally liberal in outlook and hostile to ideas outside of that viewpoint, especially from the political right.

The Texas law was initially blocked by a district judge, but then allowed to take effect by a panel of the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Good decision but the issue is not fully resolved!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Jill Biden is featured on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar for its Freedom Issue, marking the first time the publication has put a first lady in the coveted spot.

The title of the feature, “A First Lady Undeterred,” speaks to the way that Biden has approached the many issues currently facing the world, including a pandemic and a war, with “grace and conviction,” according to the magazine. The magazine’s editor in chief explained that that’s the reason for Biden’s appearance.  As reported by Yahoo News and other media.

“In its 155-year history, Harper’s Bazaar has never had a first lady on its cover. That changes with this issue, about the subject of freedom, featuring Dr. Jill Biden,” editor in chief Samira Nasr wrote in a statement. “We wanted to do this cover with Dr. Biden not as an expression of allegiance to a particular political party but to celebrate a woman who understands the gifts and responsibilities of freedom and who has made it her mission to be there for all Americans and help heal our divided nation.”

Throughout the discussion led and written by Mattie Kahn, Biden speaks to the theme of showing up by sharing how she’s dedicated herself as a wife, a mother, a teacher and a first lady, all while maintaining independence.

“I understand a woman’s need to have something for herself,” she said while reflecting on a prior marriage and divorce that left her struggling to make money and a life of her own. “I knew I would never, ever put myself in that position again — where I didn’t feel like I had the finances to be on my own, that I had to get the money through a divorce settlement. … I drummed that into [my daughter], Ashley: Be independent, be independent. And my granddaughters—you have to be able to stand on your own two feet.”

As the president’s wife, Biden continues to teach English and writing classes by commuting from the White House to Northern Virginia Community College in Alexandria twice a week. Maintaining a balance between her professorial position, which she’s held since 2009, and her duties in the White House is something that she’s had practice with.

“Even as a Senate spouse, I was working, going to grad school, doing campaign events, raising kids,” she said. “That’s the feeling I get. You’re exhausted. You just do it.”

Biden also made use of the conversation to talk about her nearest to her, including the U.S.’s childcare crisis, support for military families and cancer research. She also provided insight into her marriage with President Joe Biden — namely that they take care of arguments over text so as to not fight in front of the Secret Service in what they call “fexting.”

In response to a recent message from the first lady, the president noted that their correspondence isn’t so private. “Joe said, ‘You realize that’s going to go down in history. There will be a record of that.'”

Aside from her duties at the White House and her career independent of that, Biden makes sure to act as a support system for her husband through it all.

“I try to be a support for Joe, because I don’t know how many people are saying to him, ‘That was great. That was brilliant,'” she said. “I try to be that person for him.”

Most deserving recognition for a person of substance!

Tony