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<p>WASHINGTON — Sunday’s <a href="" type="internal">mass shooting in Las Vegas</a> may have pierced the gun lobby’s no-exceptions resistance to compromise.</p>
<p>The National Rifle Association announced Thursday its support for tougher regulation of bump stocks, devices designed to increase the firepower of semi-automatic rifles that authorities found on a dozen of the firearms found in shooter Stephen Paddock’s Mandalay Bay hotel suite.</p>
<p>“The NRA believes that devices to allow semi-automatic rifles to function likely fully automatic rifles should be subject to additional regulations,” read a statement from the NRA’s executive vice president and chief executive, Wayne LaPierre, and Chris Cox, executive director of the NRA Institute for Legislative Action. The statement also faulted the Obama administration for effectively exempting the devices from federal gun laws.</p>
<p>The NRA’s new flexibility mirrors a change in tone from GOP leaders. House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said on MSNBC that “Fully automatic weapons have been banned for a long time. Apparently this (a bump stock) allows you to take a semi-automatic, turn it into a fully-automatic, so clearly that’s something that we need to look into.”</p>
<p>And, at Thursday’s White House press briefing, Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said the administration is “very open” to bump-stock regulation.</p>
<p>The NRA’s announcement came a day after legislation to ban the devices was introduced by Senate and House Democrats. Both measures had long lists of Democratic co-sponsors. All four Nevada Democrats in Washington – Sen. Catherine Cortez-Masto, Rep. Dina Titus, Rep. Ruben Kihuen and Jacky Rosen – support bump stock bans.</p>
<p>NRA changes the landscape</p>
<p>Three days ago, the vast majority of Republicans would be expected to oppose the Democrats’ measures. The NRA’s shift changes the landscape.</p>
<p>“Right now the Republicans are recognizing this event has the potential to change the terms of the debate just a little bit. There might be some momentum for some regulation,” observed UNLV political science professor John Tuman.</p>
<p>Rep. Carlos Curbelo, R-Fla., said Thursday he plans to introduce a bipartisan bump-stock-ban bill Friday with co-sponsor Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass.</p>
<p>“By banning devices that blatantly circumvent already existing law, we can show that Congress is capable of working constructively to make Americans safer,” Curbelo said in a statement. To punctuate that point a “Noah’s Ark” provision requires co-sponsors to sign on with a another member of the other party.</p>
<p>Nevada’s two Republicans in Washington – Sen. Dean Heller and Rep. Mark Amodei – seem wary of the bans, but they have kept their options open.</p>
<p>When asked Thursday if he would support such a measure, Amodei told Fox News, “Show me the bill and I’ll tell you.” He said he wanted to know more about other devices covered in the Democrats’ bill.</p>
<p>“I’m not interested in watering down the Second Amendment,” Heller told Fox News.</p>
<p>In a statement sent to the Review-Journal, Heller said, “As I expressed earlier in the week, the use of the so-called ‘bump stock’ needs to be explored. Yesterday, I spoke to the president about reevaluating and reviewing the Obama administration ruling that allows the use of the device on a semi-automatic weapon.”</p>
<p>Potential election issue</p>
<p>If Republicans don’t change bump stock rules, Tuman sees an issue that can be used against Heller in next year’s election. Heller could vote for a narrow measure and “credibly claim that’s consistent with his support for the Second Amendment,” Tuman said.</p>
<p>Democrats aren’t the only Nevadans who would welcome more restrictions.</p>
<p>“My personal belief is that getting rid of automatic rifles that shoot 55o rounds a minute is not gun control,” said Sig Rogich, a former adviser to President George H.W. Bush. “I don’t think that’s what the Second Amendment is all about.”</p>
<p>The Gun Owners of America did not follow the NRA’s move. In a statement that called the NRA proposal “gun control,” Executive Director Erich Pratt argued, “Any type of ban will be ignored by criminals and only serve to disarm honest citizens.”</p>
<p>Shortly after the Sunday night mass shooting, UCLA constitutional law professor Adam Winkler predicted that Washington would not change gun laws. But by Thursday, he was not so sure.</p>
<p>“If I were a betting man, I might still bet against any new federal laws. But given the unexpected willingness of Republicans to consider gun control, we may indeed see some reform,” he said.</p>
<p>In April, President Donald Trump assured NRA members “I will never, ever infringe on the right of the people to keep and bear arms. Never ever.”</p>
<p>At Thursday’s press briefing, Sanders maintained that the president remains a Second Amendment supporter. She said the administration would welcome a conversation on bump-stock regulation, but added, “I think we all need to take a step back. We had one of the most horrific tragedies that’s ever taken place on U.S. soil.”</p>
<p>Trump’s focus, she said, is on “healing and uniting the country.”</p>
<p>Contact Debra J. Saunders at <a href="" type="internal">[email protected]</a> or at 202-662-7391. Follow <a href="https://twitter.com/debrajsaunders" type="external">@DebraJSaunders</a> on Twitter.</p> | false | 1 | washington sundays mass shooting las vegas may pierced gun lobbys noexceptions resistance compromise national rifle association announced thursday support tougher regulation bump stocks devices designed increase firepower semiautomatic rifles authorities found dozen firearms found shooter stephen paddocks mandalay bay hotel suite nra believes devices allow semiautomatic rifles function likely fully automatic rifles subject additional regulations read statement nras executive vice president chief executive wayne lapierre chris cox executive director nra institute legislative action statement also faulted obama administration effectively exempting devices federal gun laws nras new flexibility mirrors change tone gop leaders house speaker paul ryan rwis said msnbc fully automatic weapons banned long time apparently bump stock allows take semiautomatic turn fullyautomatic clearly thats something need look thursdays white house press briefing press secretary sarah sanders said administration open bumpstock regulation nras announcement came day legislation ban devices introduced senate house democrats measures long lists democratic cosponsors four nevada democrats washington sen catherine cortezmasto rep dina titus rep ruben kihuen jacky rosen support bump stock bans nra changes landscape three days ago vast majority republicans would expected oppose democrats measures nras shift changes landscape right republicans recognizing event potential change terms debate little bit might momentum regulation observed unlv political science professor john tuman rep carlos curbelo rfla said thursday plans introduce bipartisan bumpstockban bill friday cosponsor rep seth moulton dmass banning devices blatantly circumvent already existing law show congress capable working constructively make americans safer curbelo said statement punctuate point noahs ark provision requires cosponsors sign another member party nevadas two republicans washington sen dean heller rep mark amodei seem wary bans kept options open asked thursday would support measure amodei told fox news show bill ill tell said wanted know devices covered democrats bill im interested watering second amendment heller told fox news statement sent reviewjournal heller said expressed earlier week use socalled bump stock needs explored yesterday spoke president reevaluating reviewing obama administration ruling allows use device semiautomatic weapon potential election issue republicans dont change bump stock rules tuman sees issue used heller next years election heller could vote narrow measure credibly claim thats consistent support second amendment tuman said democrats arent nevadans would welcome restrictions personal belief getting rid automatic rifles shoot 55o rounds minute gun control said sig rogich former adviser president george hw bush dont think thats second amendment gun owners america follow nras move statement called nra proposal gun control executive director erich pratt argued type ban ignored criminals serve disarm honest citizens shortly sunday night mass shooting ucla constitutional law professor adam winkler predicted washington would change gun laws thursday sure betting man might still bet new federal laws given unexpected willingness republicans consider gun control may indeed see reform said april president donald trump assured nra members never ever infringe right people keep bear arms never ever thursdays press briefing sanders maintained president remains second amendment supporter said administration would welcome conversation bumpstock regulation added think need take step back one horrific tragedies thats ever taken place us soil trumps focus said healing uniting country contact debra j saunders dsaundersreviewjournalcom 2026627391 follow debrajsaunders twitter | 514 |
<p>Staff Report, NASCAR Wire Service</p>
<p>Distributed by The Sports Xchange</p>
<p>When <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Chase-Elliott/" type="external">Chase Elliott</a> travels to Michigan International Speedway, he must feel like Sisyphus — the king in Greek mythology forced to roll a boulder up a hill, and when he reaches the pinnacle, the boulder rolls off, forcing him to repeat the process for all of eternity.</p>
<p>The No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports driver has made three Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series starts in the Wolverine State and has finished second all three times.</p>
<p>“It’s great,” Elliott said about the two-mile track, which hosts Sunday’s Pure Michigan 400 (3 p.m. ET on NBCSN). “It’s also frustrating to have run second every time we have been there. It’s good I guess that we are inside the top five the past few times we have been there, but at the same time that is frustrating to have been pretty close to having a shot to win there, which would have been very big if we could have pulled that out.</p>
<p>Elliott enters Sunday’s contest coming off a series of solid, yet unspectacular performances. He placed 13th last week at <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Watkins_Glen/" type="external">Watkins Glen</a>, 10th at Pocono, 39th at Indianapolis due to engine trouble and 11th at New Hampshire. Still he ranks 14th on the playoff grid, 39 points ahead of <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Clint_Bowyer/" type="external">Clint Bowyer</a> on the cutoff line. Elliott has little margin of error when it comes to making the postseason, but can guarantee himself a playoff berth by grabbing a win at Michigan.</p>
<p>“I like Michigan, I’ve always liked going up there,” Elliott said. “I really love that area. It’s just a cool part of the United States to go to. I like it up there — it’s a nice area and that is kind of why I like going.”</p>
<p>Sadler hopes to visit Victory Lane at Mid-Ohio</p>
<p><a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Elliott_Sadler/" type="external">Elliott Sadler</a> is sitting high and mighty atop the NASCAR Xfinity Series standings right now — 52 points ahead of William Byron.</p>
<p>He leads the circuit with five stage wins, but hasn’t visited Victory Lane at the end of a race this season. As a result, he trails the three-race, two-stage winner Byron by 12 playoff points.</p>
<p>A win in Saturday’s Mid-Ohio Challenge at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course (3:30 p.m. ET on NBCSN) would help Sadler close the gap and increase his odds of capturing his first NASCAR Xfinity Series championship.</p>
<p>Sadler has finished in the top 10 in all four of his career starts at Mid-Ohio. He has a high finish of sixth at the 13-turn road course (2013, 2015) — the second of three road course races on the Xfinity schedule. The No. 1 Chevrolet driver placed 18th in the first road-course race at Watkins Glen last Saturday.</p>
<p>“Last weekend, we got a good look at what our road course program will be like for these next couple of races,” Sadler said. “With the first road race under our belt, we now know what we can expect. We can really dial in on the handling of our Chevrolet and our strategy. We had a fast car last weekend, just had a little bit of bad luck. I like Mid-Ohio — this weekend should be fun.”</p>
<p>Bell can notch fifth win at Michigan</p>
<p>–No driver in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series is running better than Christopher Bell right now.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/The_Oklahoman/" type="external">The Oklahoman</a> has won three of the last six races, including two of the last three. In 12 starts this season, Bell boasts four wins, eight top-5s, 11 top 10s and a 5.6 average finish. He ranks first in the Camping World Truck Series standings — 18 points ahead of second-place Johnny Sauter.</p>
<p>Bell will go for a fifth victory in Saturday’s LTI Printing 200 at Michigan International Speedway (1 p.m. ET on FS1). He finished 24th in his lone start at the two-mile track last year after an incident on Lap 75.</p>
<p>“I ran really well at Michigan last year until I crashed going for the lead late in the race, so I’m looking forward to going back there this year and trying to redeem myself,” Bell said. “Rudy (Fugle, crew chief) had a really fast Tundra there last year with William (Byron) — he and I worked really well together and were able to stay up front most of the race. Michigan is a place that you can’t really drive away from people, so you have to make sure that your truck handles well in the draft. Using all the aero techniques that you have in your arsenal is going to be the key to success this weekend.”</p>
<p>Race Weekend Guide</p>
<p>Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series</p>
<p>Race: Pure Michigan 400</p>
<p>Place: Michigan International Speedway</p>
<p>Date and Time: Sunday, at 3 p.m. ET</p>
<p>Tune-in: NBCSN, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio</p>
<p>Distance: 400 miles (200 laps); Stage 1 (Ends on lap 60), Stage 2 (Ends on lap 120), Final Stage (Ends on lap 200)</p>
<p>What to Watch For: <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Kyle-Larson/" type="external">Kyle Larson</a> goes for his third straight Michigan win. … <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Martin_Truex/" type="external">Martin Truex</a> Jr. attempts to earn a second consecutive victory and add to his Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series-high four wins. … <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Dale_Earnhardt/" type="external">Dale Earnhardt</a> Jr. needs a win to get into the playoffs and has triumphed twice at Michigan. … <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Kurt_Busch/" type="external">Kurt Busch</a> and <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Matt_Kenseth/" type="external">Matt Kenseth</a> lead active drivers with three Michigan victories. … <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Brad_Keselowski/" type="external">Brad Keselowski</a> tries to get his first checkered at his home track. … <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Daniel-Suarez/" type="external">Daniel Suarez</a> can build on his career-best third-place finish from last weekend at Watkins Glen.</p>
<p>NASCAR Xfinity Series</p>
<p>Race: Mid-Ohio Challenge</p>
<p>Place: Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course</p>
<p>Date and Time: Saturday, at 3:30 p.m. ET</p>
<p>Tune-in: NBCSN, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio</p>
<p>Distance: 169.35 miles (75 laps); Stage 1 (Ends on lap 20), Stage 2 (Ends on lap 40), Final Stage (Ends on lap 75)</p>
<p>What To Watch For: Mid-Ohio marks the second of three road course races for the NASCAR Xfinity Series this month. … Four different drivers have won the four NASCAR Xfinity Series races held at Mid-Ohio. Former winners in Saturday’s field include <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Regan_Smith/" type="external">Regan Smith</a> (2015) and defending victor Justin Marks. … William Byron attempts to add to his series-leading 17 playoff points, and cap off a week that included his announced promotion to the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series in 2018 to driver the No. 5 Chevrolet for Hendrick Motorsports.</p>
<p>NASCAR Camping World Truck Series</p>
<p>Race: LTI Printing 200</p>
<p>Place: Michigan International Speedway</p>
<p>Date and Time: Saturday, at 1 p.m. ET</p>
<p>Tune-in: FS1, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio</p>
<p>Distance: 200 miles (100 laps); Stage 1 (Ends on lap 30), Stage 2 (Ends on lap 60), Final Stage (Ends on lap 100)</p>
<p>What To Watch For: Four races remain until the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series playoffs. Barring more than eight winners, five of the eight playoff berths have been clinched by Christopher Bell, John Hunter Nemechek, Johnny Sauter, Matt Crafton and Kaz Grala. … Darrell Wallace Jr. returns to the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series, driving the No. 99 truck for <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Matthew_Miller/" type="external">Matthew Miller</a>. Wallace has five career NCWTS wins. … Fifteen different drivers have won the 17 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series races at Michigan. <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Greg_Biffle/" type="external">Greg Biffle</a> is the only repeat winner.</p> | false | 1 | staff report nascar wire service distributed sports xchange chase elliott travels michigan international speedway must feel like sisyphus king greek mythology forced roll boulder hill reaches pinnacle boulder rolls forcing repeat process eternity 24 hendrick motorsports driver made three monster energy nascar cup series starts wolverine state finished second three times great elliott said twomile track hosts sundays pure michigan 400 3 pm et nbcsn also frustrating run second every time good guess inside top five past times time frustrating pretty close shot win would big could pulled elliott enters sundays contest coming series solid yet unspectacular performances placed 13th last week watkins glen 10th pocono 39th indianapolis due engine trouble 11th new hampshire still ranks 14th playoff grid 39 points ahead clint bowyer cutoff line elliott little margin error comes making postseason guarantee playoff berth grabbing win michigan like michigan ive always liked going elliott said really love area cool part united states go like nice area kind like going sadler hopes visit victory lane midohio elliott sadler sitting high mighty atop nascar xfinity series standings right 52 points ahead william byron leads circuit five stage wins hasnt visited victory lane end race season result trails threerace twostage winner byron 12 playoff points win saturdays midohio challenge midohio sports car course 330 pm et nbcsn would help sadler close gap increase odds capturing first nascar xfinity series championship sadler finished top 10 four career starts midohio high finish sixth 13turn road course 2013 2015 second three road course races xfinity schedule 1 chevrolet driver placed 18th first roadcourse race watkins glen last saturday last weekend got good look road course program like next couple races sadler said first road race belt know expect really dial handling chevrolet strategy fast car last weekend little bit bad luck like midohio weekend fun bell notch fifth win michigan driver nascar camping world truck series running better christopher bell right oklahoman three last six races including two last three 12 starts season bell boasts four wins eight top5s 11 top 10s 56 average finish ranks first camping world truck series standings 18 points ahead secondplace johnny sauter bell go fifth victory saturdays lti printing 200 michigan international speedway 1 pm et fs1 finished 24th lone start twomile track last year incident lap 75 ran really well michigan last year crashed going lead late race im looking forward going back year trying redeem bell said rudy fugle crew chief really fast tundra last year william byron worked really well together able stay front race michigan place cant really drive away people make sure truck handles well draft using aero techniques arsenal going key success weekend race weekend guide monster energy nascar cup series race pure michigan 400 place michigan international speedway date time sunday 3 pm et tunein nbcsn mrn siriusxm nascar radio distance 400 miles 200 laps stage 1 ends lap 60 stage 2 ends lap 120 final stage ends lap 200 watch kyle larson goes third straight michigan win martin truex jr attempts earn second consecutive victory add monster energy nascar cup serieshigh four wins dale earnhardt jr needs win get playoffs triumphed twice michigan kurt busch matt kenseth lead active drivers three michigan victories brad keselowski tries get first checkered home track daniel suarez build careerbest thirdplace finish last weekend watkins glen nascar xfinity series race midohio challenge place midohio sports car course date time saturday 330 pm et tunein nbcsn mrn siriusxm nascar radio distance 16935 miles 75 laps stage 1 ends lap 20 stage 2 ends lap 40 final stage ends lap 75 watch midohio marks second three road course races nascar xfinity series month four different drivers four nascar xfinity series races held midohio former winners saturdays field include regan smith 2015 defending victor justin marks william byron attempts add seriesleading 17 playoff points cap week included announced promotion monster energy nascar cup series 2018 driver 5 chevrolet hendrick motorsports nascar camping world truck series race lti printing 200 place michigan international speedway date time saturday 1 pm et tunein fs1 mrn siriusxm nascar radio distance 200 miles 100 laps stage 1 ends lap 30 stage 2 ends lap 60 final stage ends lap 100 watch four races remain nascar camping world truck series playoffs barring eight winners five eight playoff berths clinched christopher bell john hunter nemechek johnny sauter matt crafton kaz grala darrell wallace jr returns nascar camping world truck series driving 99 truck matthew miller wallace five career ncwts wins fifteen different drivers 17 nascar camping world truck series races michigan greg biffle repeat winner | 760 |
<p />
<p>Nothing epitomizes the great political changes in Turkey over the course of the last decade than a seemingly minor media item reporting that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his wife Emine Erdogan attended a private iftar dinner (the ritual meal breaking the Ramadan fast each evening) by the invitation of the current Turkish Chief of Staff, General Necdet Özel, at his official residence. It was only a few years earlier that the military leadership came hair trigger close to pulling off a coup to get rid of the AKP leadership. Of course, such a military intrusion on Turkish political life would have been nothing new. Turkey experienced a series of coups during its republican life that started in 1923. The most recent example of interference by the military with the elected leadership in Turkey took place in 1997 when Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan sheepishly left office under pressure amounting to an ultimatum, outlawed his political party, and accepted a withdrawal from political activity for a period of five years in what amounted to a bloodless coup prompted by his alleged Islamic agenda. Unlike the prior coups of 1960, 1971, and 1980 when the military seized power for a period of time, the 1997 bloodless coup was followed by allowing politicians to form a new civilian government. Really, looking back on the period shortly after the AKP came to power in 2002 the big surprise is that a coup did not occur. We still await informed commentary that explains why. For the present, those that value the civilianization of governance can take comfort in the receding prospect of a future military takeover of Turkish political life, and this iftar social occasion is a strong symbolic expression of a far healthier civil-military relationship than existed in the past.</p>
<p>Improving Turkish Civil Military Relations</p>
<p>Somewhat less dramatic, but not less relevant as a sign of this dramatic turn, is the remembrance that shortly after the AKP initially gained control of the government in 2002, it was much publicized that the wives of the elected leaders were not welcome because they wore headscarves at the major social gathering of top military officers at its annual Victory Day Military Ball held at the end of summer in Ankara with much fanfare. A similar issue arose a few years later when ardent Kemalists insisted that Abdullah Gul should not be allowed to serve as Turkey’s president because his wife’s headscarf supposedly signaled to the world that he did not represent the Turkish secular community in the European manner associated with the founder of the republic, Kemal Atatürk.</p>
<p>Recent court testimony by the former Turkish Chief of Staff, Hilmi Özkök, confirms what many had long suspected, that there existed plans in 2003-2004 supported by many high ranking military officers to overrule the will of the Turkish electorate by removing the AKP from its position of governmental leadership and impose martial law. Such grim recollections of just a few years ago should help us appreciate the significance of this recent iftar dinner between the Erdogans and Özels as a strong expression of accommodation between military institutions and the political leaders in Turkey. Such an event helps us understand just how much things have changed, and for the better, with respect to civil-military relations.</p>
<p>We can interpret this event in at least two ways. First, indicating a more relaxed attitude on the part of the military toward Turkish women who wear a headscarf in conformity to Islamic tradition.&#160; Although this sign of normalization is a definite move in the right direction, Turkey has a long way to go before it eliminates the many forms of discrimination against headscarf women that continue to restrict their life and work options in unacceptable ways from the perspective of religious freedom and human rights. Secondly, and crucially, these developments show that the armed forces seem finally to have reconciled itself to the popularity and competence of AKP leadership. This is significant as it conveys the willingness to accept a reduced role for the military in a revamped Turkish constitutional system, as well as exhibiting a trust in the sincerity of AKP pledges of adherence to secular principles that include respect for the autonomy of the military. This latter achievement is quite remarkable, a tribute to the skill with which the Erdogan in particular has handled the civilianization of the Turkish governing process, and for which he is given surprisingly little credit by the international media, and almost none by the Turkish media. Such an outcome was almost inconceivable ten years ago, but today it is taken so for granted as to be hardly worthy of notice.</p>
<p>In 2000 Eric Rouleau, Le Monde’s influential lead writer on the Middle East and France’s former distinguished ambassador to Turkey (1988-1992), writing in Foreign Affairs, emphasized the extent to which “this system [of republican Turkey], which places the military at the very heart of political life” poses by far the biggest obstacle to Turkish entry into the European Union. Indeed, Rouleau and other Turkish experts believed that the Turkish deep state consisting of its security apparatus, including the intelligence organizations, was far too imbued with Kemalist ideology to sit idly by while the secular elites that ran the country since the founding of the republic were displaced by the conservative societal forces that provided the core support to the AKP. And not only were the Kemalist elites displaced, but their capacity to pull the strings of power from behind closed doors was ended by a series of bureaucratic reforms that have made the National Security Council in Ankara a part of the civilian structure of government, and not a hidden and unaccountable and ultimate source of policymaking.</p>
<p>Continuing Political Polarization Within Turkey</p>
<p>At the same time, despite these accomplishments of the AKP, the displaced ‘secularists’ are no happier with Erdogan leadership than they were a decade ago. (It needs to be understood, although the available language makes it difficult to express, that the AKP orientation and policy guidance has itself also been avowedly and consistently secularist in character, although the leaders are privately devout Muslims who steadfastly maintain rituals of prayer and fasting, as well as foregoing alcohol, their political stance on these issues is not different than that of their opponents. Indeed, quite unexpectedly, Erdogan in visiting Cairo after the 2011 Tahrir uprising urged the Egyptians to opt for secularism rather than Islamism.) Those that identify with the opposition to the AKP, and that includes most of the TV and print media, can never find a positive word to say about the domestic and foreign policy of the AKP, although the line of attack has drastically shifted its ground. A decade ago the fiercest attack focused on fears and allegations that the AKP was a stalking horse for anti-secularism. The AKP was accused of having ‘a secret agenda’ centered on an Islamic takeover of the governing process, with grim imaginings of ‘a second Iran’ administered strictly in accordance with sharia. The current unwavering critical line of attack, in contrast, is obsessed with the unsubstantiated belief that Erdogan dreams of being the new sultan of Turkey, dragging the country back toward the dark ages of authoritarian rule. It is odd that the same opposition that would have welcomed a coup against the elected leadership a decade ago now seems so preoccupied with a fear that the far milder AKP is incubating an anti-democratic project designed to destroy Turkish constitutional democracy and end the civil rights of the citizenry.</p>
<p>There are certainly some valid complaints associated with Erdogan’s tendencies to express his strong, and sometimes insensitive, personal opinions on socially controversial topics ranging from abortion to the advocacy of three children families. He needlessly made an offhand remark recently that seemed an insult directed at Alevi religious practices. As well, there are journalists, students, and political activists in fairly large numbers being held in Turkish prisons without being charged with crimes and for activities that should be treated as normal in a healthy democracy. And there are also many allegations that Erdogan is laying the groundwork to become president in a revised constitutional framework that would give the position much greater powers than it now possesses to the distress of opposition forces. In my judgment, on the basis of available evidence, Erdogan is opinionated and uninhibited in expressing controversial views on the spur of the moment, but not seeking to enthrone himself as head of a newly authoritarian Turkey.</p>
<p>This persisting polarization in Turkey extends to other domains of policy, perhaps most justifiably in relation to the unresolved Kurdish issues, which have violently resurfaced after some relatively quiet years. It is reasonable to fault the AKP for promising to resolve the conflict when it was reelected, and then failing to offer the full range of inducements likely to make such a positive outcome happen. It is difficult to interpret accurately the renewal of PKK violence, and the degree to which it is viewed by many segments of Turkish elite opinion as removing all hope of a negotiated solution to this conflict that has long been such a drain on Turkey’s energies, resources, and reputation. The ferocity of this latest stage of this 30 year struggle is not easily explained. To some degree it is a spillover of growing regional tensions with the countries surrounding Turkey, and particularly with the Kurdish movements in these countries, especially Iraq and Syria. There is also the strong possibility that elements of the Kurdish resistance see the fluidity of the regional situation as a second window of opportunity to achieve national self-determination. The first window having been slammed shut in the early republican years by the strong nation-building ideology associated with Kemalist governance of the country.</p>
<p>Also serious is some deserved criticism of Turkey’s Syrian policy that charges the government with an imprudent and amateurish shift from one extreme to the other. First, an ill-advised embrace of Assad’s dictatorial regime a few years ago followed by a supposedly premature and questionable alignment with anti-regime Syrian rebel forces without knowing their true character. Ahmet Davutoglu’s positive initiatives in Damascus were early on hailed as the centerpiece of ‘zero problems with neighbors,’ an approach that his harshest critics now find totally discredited given the deterioration of relations, not only with Syria, but with Iran and Iraq. Again such criticism seems greatly overstated by an opposition that seizes on any failure of governing policy without considering either its positive sides or offering more sensible alternatives. Whatever the leadership in Ankara during the last two years, the changing and unanticipated regional circumstances would require the foreign policy establishment to push hard on a reset button. Mr. Davutoglu has done his best all along to offer a rationale for the changed tone and substance of Turkish foreign policy, especially in relation to Syria, which I find generally convincing, although the coordination of policy toward Syria with Washington seems questionable.</p>
<p>In the larger picture, there were few advance warnings that the Arab Spring would erupt, and produce the uprisings throughout the region that have taken place in the last 20 months. Prior to this tumult the Arab world seemed ultra-stable, with authoritarian regimes having been in place for several decades, and little indication that domestic challenges would emerge in the near future. In these conditions, it seemed sensible to have positive relations with neighbors and throughout the Arab world based on a mixture of practical and principled considerations. There were attractive economic opportunities to expand Turkish trade, investment, and cultural influence; as well, it was reasonable to suppose that Turkish efforts at conflict mediation could open political space for modest moves toward democracy and the protection of human rights might be an appropriate context within which to practice ‘constructive engagement.’</p>
<p />
<p /> | false | 1 | nothing epitomizes great political changes turkey course last decade seemingly minor media item reporting prime minister recep tayyip erdogan wife emine erdogan attended private iftar dinner ritual meal breaking ramadan fast evening invitation current turkish chief staff general necdet Özel official residence years earlier military leadership came hair trigger close pulling coup get rid akp leadership course military intrusion turkish political life would nothing new turkey experienced series coups republican life started 1923 recent example interference military elected leadership turkey took place 1997 prime minister necmettin erbakan sheepishly left office pressure amounting ultimatum outlawed political party accepted withdrawal political activity period five years amounted bloodless coup prompted alleged islamic agenda unlike prior coups 1960 1971 1980 military seized power period time 1997 bloodless coup followed allowing politicians form new civilian government really looking back period shortly akp came power 2002 big surprise coup occur still await informed commentary explains present value civilianization governance take comfort receding prospect future military takeover turkish political life iftar social occasion strong symbolic expression far healthier civilmilitary relationship existed past improving turkish civil military relations somewhat less dramatic less relevant sign dramatic turn remembrance shortly akp initially gained control government 2002 much publicized wives elected leaders welcome wore headscarves major social gathering top military officers annual victory day military ball held end summer ankara much fanfare similar issue arose years later ardent kemalists insisted abdullah gul allowed serve turkeys president wifes headscarf supposedly signaled world represent turkish secular community european manner associated founder republic kemal atatürk recent court testimony former turkish chief staff hilmi Özkök confirms many long suspected existed plans 20032004 supported many high ranking military officers overrule turkish electorate removing akp position governmental leadership impose martial law grim recollections years ago help us appreciate significance recent iftar dinner erdogans Özels strong expression accommodation military institutions political leaders turkey event helps us understand much things changed better respect civilmilitary relations interpret event least two ways first indicating relaxed attitude part military toward turkish women wear headscarf conformity islamic tradition160 although sign normalization definite move right direction turkey long way go eliminates many forms discrimination headscarf women continue restrict life work options unacceptable ways perspective religious freedom human rights secondly crucially developments show armed forces seem finally reconciled popularity competence akp leadership significant conveys willingness accept reduced role military revamped turkish constitutional system well exhibiting trust sincerity akp pledges adherence secular principles include respect autonomy military latter achievement quite remarkable tribute skill erdogan particular handled civilianization turkish governing process given surprisingly little credit international media almost none turkish media outcome almost inconceivable ten years ago today taken granted hardly worthy notice 2000 eric rouleau le mondes influential lead writer middle east frances former distinguished ambassador turkey 19881992 writing foreign affairs emphasized extent system republican turkey places military heart political life poses far biggest obstacle turkish entry european union indeed rouleau turkish experts believed turkish deep state consisting security apparatus including intelligence organizations far imbued kemalist ideology sit idly secular elites ran country since founding republic displaced conservative societal forces provided core support akp kemalist elites displaced capacity pull strings power behind closed doors ended series bureaucratic reforms made national security council ankara part civilian structure government hidden unaccountable ultimate source policymaking continuing political polarization within turkey time despite accomplishments akp displaced secularists happier erdogan leadership decade ago needs understood although available language makes difficult express akp orientation policy guidance also avowedly consistently secularist character although leaders privately devout muslims steadfastly maintain rituals prayer fasting well foregoing alcohol political stance issues different opponents indeed quite unexpectedly erdogan visiting cairo 2011 tahrir uprising urged egyptians opt secularism rather islamism identify opposition akp includes tv print media never find positive word say domestic foreign policy akp although line attack drastically shifted ground decade ago fiercest attack focused fears allegations akp stalking horse antisecularism akp accused secret agenda centered islamic takeover governing process grim imaginings second iran administered strictly accordance sharia current unwavering critical line attack contrast obsessed unsubstantiated belief erdogan dreams new sultan turkey dragging country back toward dark ages authoritarian rule odd opposition would welcomed coup elected leadership decade ago seems preoccupied fear far milder akp incubating antidemocratic project designed destroy turkish constitutional democracy end civil rights citizenry certainly valid complaints associated erdogans tendencies express strong sometimes insensitive personal opinions socially controversial topics ranging abortion advocacy three children families needlessly made offhand remark recently seemed insult directed alevi religious practices well journalists students political activists fairly large numbers held turkish prisons without charged crimes activities treated normal healthy democracy also many allegations erdogan laying groundwork become president revised constitutional framework would give position much greater powers possesses distress opposition forces judgment basis available evidence erdogan opinionated uninhibited expressing controversial views spur moment seeking enthrone head newly authoritarian turkey persisting polarization turkey extends domains policy perhaps justifiably relation unresolved kurdish issues violently resurfaced relatively quiet years reasonable fault akp promising resolve conflict reelected failing offer full range inducements likely make positive outcome happen difficult interpret accurately renewal pkk violence degree viewed many segments turkish elite opinion removing hope negotiated solution conflict long drain turkeys energies resources reputation ferocity latest stage 30 year struggle easily explained degree spillover growing regional tensions countries surrounding turkey particularly kurdish movements countries especially iraq syria also strong possibility elements kurdish resistance see fluidity regional situation second window opportunity achieve national selfdetermination first window slammed shut early republican years strong nationbuilding ideology associated kemalist governance country also serious deserved criticism turkeys syrian policy charges government imprudent amateurish shift one extreme first illadvised embrace assads dictatorial regime years ago followed supposedly premature questionable alignment antiregime syrian rebel forces without knowing true character ahmet davutoglus positive initiatives damascus early hailed centerpiece zero problems neighbors approach harshest critics find totally discredited given deterioration relations syria iran iraq criticism seems greatly overstated opposition seizes failure governing policy without considering either positive sides offering sensible alternatives whatever leadership ankara last two years changing unanticipated regional circumstances would require foreign policy establishment push hard reset button mr davutoglu done best along offer rationale changed tone substance turkish foreign policy especially relation syria find generally convincing although coordination policy toward syria washington seems questionable larger picture advance warnings arab spring would erupt produce uprisings throughout region taken place last 20 months prior tumult arab world seemed ultrastable authoritarian regimes place several decades little indication domestic challenges would emerge near future conditions seemed sensible positive relations neighbors throughout arab world based mixture practical principled considerations attractive economic opportunities expand turkish trade investment cultural influence well reasonable suppose turkish efforts conflict mediation could open political space modest moves toward democracy protection human rights might appropriate context within practice constructive engagement | 1,107 |
<p>The Pro Football Hall of Fame’s annual journey toward its next group of Gold Jacket recipients — this one the Class of 2018 — took another step Tuesday when the roster of candidates was reduced to 25 semifinalists — plus two.</p>
<p>The remaining hopefuls include six first-time eligible candidates: cornerback/safety <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Ronde_Barber/" type="external">Ronde Barber</a>, guard <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Steve_Hutchinson/" type="external">Steve Hutchinson</a>, linebackers <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Ray_Lewis/" type="external">Ray Lewis</a> and <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Brian_Urlacher/" type="external">Brian Urlacher</a>, wide receiver <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Randy_Moss/" type="external">Randy Moss</a> and defensive end/tackle <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Richard_Seymour/" type="external">Richard Seymour</a>.</p>
<p>Rules call for the selection of 25 semifinalists, but the reduction votes by the selection committee resulted in a tie for the 25th spot, so all three former players move on.</p>
<p>Aside from the first-year eligibles, safety LeRoy Butler, defensive ends Leslie O’Neal and Simeon Rice and cornerback Everson Walls became semifinalists for the first time although they were previously eligible.</p>
<p>The group of semifinalists includes 25 players: 12 on offense, 13 on defense and two coaches.</p>
<p>In January, the group will be trimmed to 15 modern-era finalists. All 10 of the finalists from 2017 are semifinalists again. Of that group, coach Don Coryell and safety <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/John-Lynch/" type="external">John Lynch</a> have been finalists four times; guard <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Alan_Faneca/" type="external">Alan Faneca</a>, tackle Joe Jacoby and wide receiver <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Terrell_Owens/" type="external">Terrell Owens</a> two times; and tackle Tony Boselli, wide receiver <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Isaac_Bruce/" type="external">Isaac Bruce</a>, safety <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Brian_Dawkins/" type="external">Brian Dawkins</a>, cornerback Ty Law and center-guard <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Kevin_Mawae/" type="external">Kevin Mawae</a> once.</p>
<p>Four other semifinalists have also been a finalist once, but weren’t last year: Safety Steve Atwater, 2016; running backs Roger Craig, 2010 and <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Edgerrin_James/" type="external">Edgerrin James</a>, 2016; and coach <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Jimmy_Johnson/" type="external">Jimmy Johnson</a>, 2015.</p>
<p>In addition to the 15 finalists, two senior players and one contributor will have their merits discussed “in the room” — as the final debate is known — by the full Selection Committee at their annual dawn-to-dusk meeting on Saturday, February 3, 2018 in Minneapolis, the day before Super Bowl LII.</p>
<p>Already nominated by selection subcommittees are senior finalists Robert Brazile (linebacker, 1975-84 Houston Oilers) and Jerry Kramer (guard, 1958-68 <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Green_Bay_Packers/" type="external">Green Bay Packers</a>) and contributor Bobby Beathard, a personnel executive for the <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Kansas-City-Chiefs/" type="external">Kansas City Chiefs</a> (1966-67), <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Atlanta-Falcons/" type="external">Atlanta Falcons</a> (1968-71) and <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Miami-Dolphins/" type="external">Miami Dolphins</a> (1972-77), and general manager for the <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Washington-Redskins/" type="external">Washington Redskins</a> (1978-88) and <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/San-Diego-Chargers/" type="external">San Diego Chargers</a> (1990-99).</p>
<p>Brazile, Kramer and Beathard will be voted on separately and, like all other finalists, must receive at least 80 percent positive votes from the full Selection Committee.</p>
<p>To be eligible for consideration, a player or coach must not have participated for five consecutive seasons. The list of semifinalists was reduced from an initial group of 108 nominees.</p>
<p>Below is the list of 2018 Modern-Era semifinalists, including positions, years of participation and teams. Also listed are the number of times and years that each was named a semifinalist since this reduction vote was added to the Selection Committee Bylaws in 2004.</p>
<p>–Steve Atwater, Safety — 1989-1998 <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Denver_Broncos/" type="external">Denver Broncos</a>, 1999 <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/New-York-Jets/" type="external">New York Jets</a>; (times as a semifinalist: 7 — 2012-18)</p>
<p>–Ronde Barber, Cornerback/Safety – 1997-2012 <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Tampa-Bay-Buccaneers/" type="external">Tampa Bay Buccaneers</a>; (times as a semifinalist: 1 – 2018)</p>
<p>–Tony Boselli, Tackle — 1995-2001 <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Jacksonville-Jaguars/" type="external">Jacksonville Jaguars</a>, 2002 <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Houston-Texans/" type="external">Houston Texans</a> (injured reserve); (times as a semifinalist: 3 — 2016-18)</p>
<p>–Isaac Bruce, Wide receiver — 1994-2007 Los Angeles/ <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/St-Louis-Rams/" type="external">St. Louis Rams</a>, 2008-09 <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/San-Francisco-49ers/" type="external">San Francisco 49ers</a>; (times as a semifinalist: 4 — 2015-18)</p>
<p>–LeRoy Butler, Safety — 1990-2001 Green Bay Packers; (times as a semifinalist: 1 — 2018)</p>
<p>–Don Coryell, Coach — 1973-77 <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/St-Louis-Cardinals/" type="external">St. Louis Cardinals</a>, 1978-1986 San Diego Chargers; (times as a semifinalist: 10 — 2005, 2010-18)</p>
<p>–Roger Craig, Running back — 1983-1990 San Francisco 49ers, 1991 Los Angeles Raiders, 1992-93 <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Minnesota-Vikings/" type="external">Minnesota Vikings</a>; (times as a semifinalist: 10 — 2009-18).</p>
<p>–Brian Dawkins, Safety, 1996-2008 <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Philadelphia-Eagles/" type="external">Philadelphia Eagles</a>, 2009-2011 Denver Broncos; (times as a semifinalist: 2 – 2017-18)</p>
<p>–Alan Faneca, Guard — 1998-2007 <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Pittsburgh_Steelers/" type="external">Pittsburgh Steelers</a>, 2008-09 New York Jets, 2010 <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Arizona-Cardinals/" type="external">Arizona Cardinals</a>; (times as a semifinalist: 3 — 2016-18)</p>
<p>— <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Torry_Holt/" type="external">Torry Holt</a>, Wide receiver — 1999-2008 St. Louis Rams, 2009 Jacksonville Jaguars; (times as a semifinalist: 4 — 2015-18)</p>
<p>–Steve Hutchinson, Guard – 2001-05 <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Seattle-Seahawks/" type="external">Seattle Seahawks</a>, 2006-2011 Minnesota Vikings, 2012 <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Tennessee-Titans/" type="external">Tennessee Titans</a>; (times as a semifinalist: 1 – 2018)</p>
<p>–Joe Jacoby, Tackle — 1981-1993 Washington Redskins; (times as a semifinalist: 8 — 2005, 2008, 2013-18)</p>
<p>–Edgerrin James, Running back — 1999-2005 <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Indianapolis-Colts/" type="external">Indianapolis Colts</a>, 2006-08 Arizona Cardinals, 2009 Seattle Seahawks; (times as a semifinalist: 4 — 2015-18)</p>
<p>–Jimmy Johnson, Coach — 1989-1993 <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Dallas-Cowboys/" type="external">Dallas Cowboys</a>, 1996-99 Miami Dolphins; (times as a semifinalist: 5 — 2014-18)</p>
<p>–Ty Law, Cornerback — 1995-2004 <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/New_England_Patriots/" type="external">New England Patriots</a>, 2005, 2008 New York Jets, 2006-07 Kansas City Chiefs, 2009 Denver Broncos; (times as a semifinalist: 4 — 2015-18)</p>
<p>–Ray Lewis, Linebacker – 1996-2012 <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Baltimore-Ravens/" type="external">Baltimore Ravens</a>; (times as a semifinalist: 1 — 2018)</p>
<p>–John Lynch, Safety — 1993-2003 Tampa Bay Buccaneers, 2004-07 Denver Broncos; (times as a semifinalist: 6 — 2013-18)</p>
<p>–Kevin Mawae, Center/guard — 1994-97 Seattle Seahawks, 1998-2005 New York Jets, 2006-09 Tennessee Titans; (times as a semifinalist: 4 — 2015-18)</p>
<p>–Karl Mecklenburg, Linebacker — 1983-1994 Denver Broncos; (times as a semifinalist: 7 — 2012-18)</p>
<p>–Randy Moss, Wide receiver – 1998-2004, 2010 Minnesota Vikings, 2005-06 <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Oakland-Raiders/" type="external">Oakland Raiders</a>, 2007-2010 New England Patriots, 2010 Tennessee Titans, 2012 San Francisco 49ers; (times as a semifinalist: 1 — 2018)</p>
<p>–Leslie O’Neal, Defensive end – 1986, 1988-1995 San Diego Chargers, 1996-97 St. Louis Rams, 1998-99 Kansas City Chiefs (times as a semifinalist: 1 — 2018)</p>
<p>–Terrell Owens, Wide receiver — 1996-2003 San Francisco 49ers, 2004-05 Philadelphia Eagles, 2006-08 Dallas Cowboys, 2009 <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Buffalo-Bills/" type="external">Buffalo Bills</a>, 2010 <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Cincinnati-Bengals/" type="external">Cincinnati Bengals</a>; (times as a semifinalist: 3 — 2016-18)</p>
<p>–Simeon Rice, Defensive end – 1996-2000 Arizona Cardinals, 2001-2006 Tampa Bay Buccaneers, 2007 Denver Broncos, 2007 Indianapolis Colts; (times as a semifinalist: 1 – 2018)</p>
<p>–Richard Seymour, Defensive end/tackle – 2001-08 New England Patriots, 2009-2012 Oakland Raiders; (times as a semifinalist: 1 – 2018)</p>
<p>–Brian Urlacher, Linebacker – 2000-2012 <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Chicago_Bears/" type="external">Chicago Bears</a>; times as a semifinalist: 1 — 2018)</p>
<p>–Everson Walls, Cornerback – 1981-89 Dallas Cowboys, 1990-92 <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/New_York_Giants/" type="external">New York Giants</a>, 1992-93 <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Cleveland-Browns/" type="external">Cleveland Browns</a>; (times as a semifinalist: 1 – 2018)</p>
<p>— <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Hines_Ward/" type="external">Hines Ward</a>, Wide receiver — 1998-2011 Pittsburgh Steelers; (times as a semifinalist: 2 – 2017-18)</p>
<p>Seven of the 27 semifinalists spent their entire career with one team: Barber, Butler, Jacoby, Lewis, Mecklenburg, Urlacher and Ward.</p>
<p>Howard Balzer, senior editor and writer for The Sports Xchange, is in his fifth decade covering pro <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/John_Walker/" type="external">football</a> and is a selector for the Pro Football Hall of Fame and a member of the Contributors Subcommittee.</p> | false | 1 | pro football hall fames annual journey toward next group gold jacket recipients one class 2018 took another step tuesday roster candidates reduced 25 semifinalists plus two remaining hopefuls include six firsttime eligible candidates cornerbacksafety ronde barber guard steve hutchinson linebackers ray lewis brian urlacher wide receiver randy moss defensive endtackle richard seymour rules call selection 25 semifinalists reduction votes selection committee resulted tie 25th spot three former players move aside firstyear eligibles safety leroy butler defensive ends leslie oneal simeon rice cornerback everson walls became semifinalists first time although previously eligible group semifinalists includes 25 players 12 offense 13 defense two coaches january group trimmed 15 modernera finalists 10 finalists 2017 semifinalists group coach coryell safety john lynch finalists four times guard alan faneca tackle joe jacoby wide receiver terrell owens two times tackle tony boselli wide receiver isaac bruce safety brian dawkins cornerback ty law centerguard kevin mawae four semifinalists also finalist werent last year safety steve atwater 2016 running backs roger craig 2010 edgerrin james 2016 coach jimmy johnson 2015 addition 15 finalists two senior players one contributor merits discussed room final debate known full selection committee annual dawntodusk meeting saturday february 3 2018 minneapolis day super bowl lii already nominated selection subcommittees senior finalists robert brazile linebacker 197584 houston oilers jerry kramer guard 195868 green bay packers contributor bobby beathard personnel executive kansas city chiefs 196667 atlanta falcons 196871 miami dolphins 197277 general manager washington redskins 197888 san diego chargers 199099 brazile kramer beathard voted separately like finalists must receive least 80 percent positive votes full selection committee eligible consideration player coach must participated five consecutive seasons list semifinalists reduced initial group 108 nominees list 2018 modernera semifinalists including positions years participation teams also listed number times years named semifinalist since reduction vote added selection committee bylaws 2004 steve atwater safety 19891998 denver broncos 1999 new york jets times semifinalist 7 201218 ronde barber cornerbacksafety 19972012 tampa bay buccaneers times semifinalist 1 2018 tony boselli tackle 19952001 jacksonville jaguars 2002 houston texans injured reserve times semifinalist 3 201618 isaac bruce wide receiver 19942007 los angeles st louis rams 200809 san francisco 49ers times semifinalist 4 201518 leroy butler safety 19902001 green bay packers times semifinalist 1 2018 coryell coach 197377 st louis cardinals 19781986 san diego chargers times semifinalist 10 2005 201018 roger craig running back 19831990 san francisco 49ers 1991 los angeles raiders 199293 minnesota vikings times semifinalist 10 200918 brian dawkins safety 19962008 philadelphia eagles 20092011 denver broncos times semifinalist 2 201718 alan faneca guard 19982007 pittsburgh steelers 200809 new york jets 2010 arizona cardinals times semifinalist 3 201618 torry holt wide receiver 19992008 st louis rams 2009 jacksonville jaguars times semifinalist 4 201518 steve hutchinson guard 200105 seattle seahawks 20062011 minnesota vikings 2012 tennessee titans times semifinalist 1 2018 joe jacoby tackle 19811993 washington redskins times semifinalist 8 2005 2008 201318 edgerrin james running back 19992005 indianapolis colts 200608 arizona cardinals 2009 seattle seahawks times semifinalist 4 201518 jimmy johnson coach 19891993 dallas cowboys 199699 miami dolphins times semifinalist 5 201418 ty law cornerback 19952004 new england patriots 2005 2008 new york jets 200607 kansas city chiefs 2009 denver broncos times semifinalist 4 201518 ray lewis linebacker 19962012 baltimore ravens times semifinalist 1 2018 john lynch safety 19932003 tampa bay buccaneers 200407 denver broncos times semifinalist 6 201318 kevin mawae centerguard 199497 seattle seahawks 19982005 new york jets 200609 tennessee titans times semifinalist 4 201518 karl mecklenburg linebacker 19831994 denver broncos times semifinalist 7 201218 randy moss wide receiver 19982004 2010 minnesota vikings 200506 oakland raiders 20072010 new england patriots 2010 tennessee titans 2012 san francisco 49ers times semifinalist 1 2018 leslie oneal defensive end 1986 19881995 san diego chargers 199697 st louis rams 199899 kansas city chiefs times semifinalist 1 2018 terrell owens wide receiver 19962003 san francisco 49ers 200405 philadelphia eagles 200608 dallas cowboys 2009 buffalo bills 2010 cincinnati bengals times semifinalist 3 201618 simeon rice defensive end 19962000 arizona cardinals 20012006 tampa bay buccaneers 2007 denver broncos 2007 indianapolis colts times semifinalist 1 2018 richard seymour defensive endtackle 200108 new england patriots 20092012 oakland raiders times semifinalist 1 2018 brian urlacher linebacker 20002012 chicago bears times semifinalist 1 2018 everson walls cornerback 198189 dallas cowboys 199092 new york giants 199293 cleveland browns times semifinalist 1 2018 hines ward wide receiver 19982011 pittsburgh steelers times semifinalist 2 201718 seven 27 semifinalists spent entire career one team barber butler jacoby lewis mecklenburg urlacher ward howard balzer senior editor writer sports xchange fifth decade covering pro football selector pro football hall fame member contributors subcommittee | 761 |
<p>MONTGOMERY, Ala. — In a stunning victory aided by scandal, Democrat Doug Jones won Alabama’s special Senate election on Tuesday, beating back history, an embattled Republican opponent and President Donald Trump, who urgently endorsed GOP rebel Roy Moore despite a litany of sexual misconduct allegations.</p>
<p>It was the first Democratic Senate victory in a quarter-century in Alabama, one of the reddest of red states, and proved anew that party loyalty is anything but sure in the age of Trump. The Republican loss was a major embarrassment for the president and a fresh wound for the nation’s already divided GOP.</p>
<p>“We have shown not just around the state of Alabama, but we have shown the country the way — that we can be unified,” Jones declared as supporters in a Birmingham ballroom cheered, danced and cried tears of joy. Still in shock, the Democrat struggled for words: “I think that I have been waiting all my life, and now I just don’t know what the hell to say.”</p>
<p />
<p>Moore, meanwhile, refused to concede and raised the possibility of a recount during a brief appearance at a somber campaign party in Montgomery.</p>
<p>“It’s not over,” Moore said. He added, “We know that God is still in control.”</p>
<p />
<p>From the White House, Trump tweeted his congratulations to Jones “on a hard-fought victory” — but added pointedly that “the Republicans will have another shot at this seat in a very short period of time. It never ends!”</p>
<p>Jones takes over the seat previously held by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The term expires in January of 2021.</p>
<p>The victory by Jones, a former U.S. attorney best known for prosecuting two Ku Klux Klansmen responsible for Birmingham’s infamous 1963 church bombing, narrows the GOP advantage in the U.S. Senate to 51-49. That imperils already-uncertain Republican tax, budget and health proposals and injects tremendous energy into the Democratic Party’s early push to reclaim House and Senate majorities in 2018.</p>
<p>Still, many Washington Republicans viewed the defeat of Moore as perhaps the best outcome for the party nationally despite the short-term sting. The fiery Christian conservative’s positions have alienated women, racial minorities, gays and Muslims — in addition to the multiple allegations that he was guilty of sexual misconduct with teens, one only 14, when he was in his 30s.</p>
<p>“Short-term pain, long-term gain,” former Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman, a Republican, tweeted. “Roy Moore and Steve Bannon losing tonight is big win for the GOP. … Moore would have buried GOP in 2018.”</p>
<p>A number of Republicans declined to support Moore, including Alabama’s long-serving Sen. Richard Shelby. But Trump lent his name and the national GOP’s resources to Moore’s campaign in recent days.</p>
<p>Had Moore won, the GOP would have been saddled with a colleague accused of sordid conduct as Republicans nationwide struggle with Trump’s historically low popularity. Senate leaders had promised that Moore would have faced an immediate ethics investigation.</p>
<p>Republicans on Capitol Hill have expressed hopes of scheduling a vote on their tax legislation before Jones is sworn in, but lawmakers are still struggling to devise a compromise bill to bridge the divide between the House and Senate legislation that can win majority support in both chambers.</p>
<p>The Republican loss also gives Democrats a clearer path to a Senate majority in 2018 — albeit a narrow one — in an election cycle where Democrats are far more optimistic about seizing control of the House of Representatives.</p>
<p>Ultimately, Tuesday’s contest came down to which side better motivated its supporters to vote. Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill said turnout likely would not exceed 25 percent of registered voters.</p>
<p>Jones successfully fought to cobble together an unlikely coalition of African-Americans, liberal whites and moderate Republicans.</p>
<p>He had his strongest support across Alabama’s “black belt,” named for the color of its soil, and in the larger urban areas, including Montgomery, Birmingham, Mobile, Tuscaloosa and Huntsville. Turnout in those areas, which features a large African-American population, also ran higher than in some of the more heavily Republican parts of the state.</p>
<p>At his election night headquarters, stunned supporters erupted in celebration as news of his victory was announced. Many danced to the song “Happy.” Some cried.</p>
<p>“I honestly did not know that this was even an option. I didn’t think that we could elect a Democrat,” said 26-year-old campaign volunteer Jess Eddington, her eyes red from tears of joy. “I am so proud we did.”</p>
<p>Moore, who largely avoided public events in the final weeks of the race and spent far less money on advertising than his opponent, bet big — and lost — on the state’s traditional Republican leanings and the strength of his passionate evangelical Christian supporters.</p>
<p>He sidestepped questions about sexual misconduct as he arrived at his polling place on horseback earlier in the day.</p>
<p>Alabama state law calls for a recount if the margin of victory is less than one-half of one percentage point. With all precincts reporting, Jones led by 1.5 points — three times that margin.</p>
<p>If the secretary of state determines there were more write-in votes than the difference between Jones and Moore, the state’s counties would be required to tally those votes. It’s not clear how that would help Moore, who ended the night trailing Jones by more than 20,000 votes.</p>
<p>Democrats were not supposed to have a chance in Alabama, one of the most Republican-leaning states in the nation. Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton here by nearly 28 points just 13 months ago. Yet Moore had political baggage that repelled some moderate Republicans even before allegations of sexual misconduct surfaced.</p>
<p>Virtually the entire Republican establishment, Trump included, supported Moore’s primary opponent, Sen. Luther Strange in September. Trump’s former chief strategist, Steve Bannon, was one of the only early high-profile Moore backers.</p>
<p>Moore was once removed from his position as state Supreme Court chief justice after he refused to remove a boulder-sized Ten Commandments monument at the state court building. A second time, he was permanently suspended for urging state probate judges to refuse marriage licenses to same-sex couples.</p>
<p>Said Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez: “The people of Alabama sent a loud and clear message to Donald Trump and the Republican Party: You can’t call yourself the party of family values as long as you’re willing to accept vile men like Roy Moore as members.”</p> | false | 1 | montgomery ala stunning victory aided scandal democrat doug jones alabamas special senate election tuesday beating back history embattled republican opponent president donald trump urgently endorsed gop rebel roy moore despite litany sexual misconduct allegations first democratic senate victory quartercentury alabama one reddest red states proved anew party loyalty anything sure age trump republican loss major embarrassment president fresh wound nations already divided gop shown around state alabama shown country way unified jones declared supporters birmingham ballroom cheered danced cried tears joy still shock democrat struggled words think waiting life dont know hell say moore meanwhile refused concede raised possibility recount brief appearance somber campaign party montgomery moore said added know god still control white house trump tweeted congratulations jones hardfought victory added pointedly republicans another shot seat short period time never ends jones takes seat previously held attorney general jeff sessions term expires january 2021 victory jones former us attorney best known prosecuting two ku klux klansmen responsible birminghams infamous 1963 church bombing narrows gop advantage us senate 5149 imperils alreadyuncertain republican tax budget health proposals injects tremendous energy democratic partys early push reclaim house senate majorities 2018 still many washington republicans viewed defeat moore perhaps best outcome party nationally despite shortterm sting fiery christian conservatives positions alienated women racial minorities gays muslims addition multiple allegations guilty sexual misconduct teens one 14 30s shortterm pain longterm gain former minnesota sen norm coleman republican tweeted roy moore steve bannon losing tonight big win gop moore would buried gop 2018 number republicans declined support moore including alabamas longserving sen richard shelby trump lent name national gops resources moores campaign recent days moore gop would saddled colleague accused sordid conduct republicans nationwide struggle trumps historically low popularity senate leaders promised moore would faced immediate ethics investigation republicans capitol hill expressed hopes scheduling vote tax legislation jones sworn lawmakers still struggling devise compromise bill bridge divide house senate legislation win majority support chambers republican loss also gives democrats clearer path senate majority 2018 albeit narrow one election cycle democrats far optimistic seizing control house representatives ultimately tuesdays contest came side better motivated supporters vote alabama secretary state john merrill said turnout likely would exceed 25 percent registered voters jones successfully fought cobble together unlikely coalition africanamericans liberal whites moderate republicans strongest support across alabamas black belt named color soil larger urban areas including montgomery birmingham mobile tuscaloosa huntsville turnout areas features large africanamerican population also ran higher heavily republican parts state election night headquarters stunned supporters erupted celebration news victory announced many danced song happy cried honestly know even option didnt think could elect democrat said 26yearold campaign volunteer jess eddington eyes red tears joy proud moore largely avoided public events final weeks race spent far less money advertising opponent bet big lost states traditional republican leanings strength passionate evangelical christian supporters sidestepped questions sexual misconduct arrived polling place horseback earlier day alabama state law calls recount margin victory less onehalf one percentage point precincts reporting jones led 15 points three times margin secretary state determines writein votes difference jones moore states counties would required tally votes clear would help moore ended night trailing jones 20000 votes democrats supposed chance alabama one republicanleaning states nation trump defeated democrat hillary clinton nearly 28 points 13 months ago yet moore political baggage repelled moderate republicans even allegations sexual misconduct surfaced virtually entire republican establishment trump included supported moores primary opponent sen luther strange september trumps former chief strategist steve bannon one early highprofile moore backers moore removed position state supreme court chief justice refused remove bouldersized ten commandments monument state court building second time permanently suspended urging state probate judges refuse marriage licenses samesex couples said democratic national committee chairman tom perez people alabama sent loud clear message donald trump republican party cant call party family values long youre willing accept vile men like roy moore members | 641 |
<p>Since last year's presidential election, media outlets have been reporting on U.S. government investigations into possible use of U.S. social media and "fake news" by Russia to influence American voters in the election. But former White House senior strategist Sebastian Gorka said media outlets should also look to their own organizations to see bias and fake news permeating the fourth estate.</p>
<p>"Fake news or what my White House colleague called the fake news industrial complex, is real," said Gorka, in a one-on-one interview with Circa. His White House colleague, former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon, resigned in early August and returned to Breitbart News as executive chairman.</p>
<p>Gorka served roughly seven months as deputy assistant to President Trump, alongside Bannon, before he resigned from the post in August, amid Trump administration turmoil. After his departure from the White House, Gorka took a position as chief strategist at the Make America Great Again Coalition, a political group named after Trump's campaign slogan.</p>
<p>He said fake news is "not a Twitter catchphrase."</p>
<p>"It is a real problem with the mainstream media in America today and elsewhere," he said. "How do I know this? 'Cause I've been the victim of it and so has the President."</p>
<p />
<p>Gorka hit back at Buzzfeed's article <a href="http://https://www.buzzfeed.com/josephbernstein/heres-how-breitbart-and-milo-smuggled-white-nationalism?bftw&amp;utm_term=.tu48Mene4#.dnDarwJwg" type="external">Alt-White: how the Breitbart Machine Laundered Racist Hate</a>, which alleges that during the presidential campaign, under Bannon, Breitbart courted the alt-right movement to help Trump win the election.</p>
<p>"It's a devil that's been painted on the wall," said Gorka, with regard to the term alt-right. "I don't even believe the word means anything concrete."</p>
<p>He said, "there are racists in America. There are neo-Nazis. There are people who think they are the KKK reborn. We need to treat those people as they deserve to be treated and shun them from normal society."</p>
<p>Gorka said there "is no place for race-based hatred in America. I think that the threat is exaggerated. There is antisemitism in America but how many registered members of the KKK are there in America? Maybe 6,000. Maybe 6,000 out of 330 million. We have to deal with much bigger issues. We have to deal with a political party, and I mean the Democrat party, that looks at all of us based upon our race and our skin color."</p>
<p>Gorka pointed out to comments made by former First Lady Michelle Obama last week when she stated that the Republican Party essentially “all men, all white.”</p>
<p>"Why would you even use descriptors like that," he said. "I don't look at anybody based upon their skin color. I look at how they act and whether it comports with what they say. I've had enough of eight years of divisiveness."</p>
<p>Gorka said he does not judge "somebody based upon their sexual preference, neither does Steve. I don't look at somebody based upon whether they have an accent or where they came from. I look at whether they share the values upon which this public was founded, and as a result I think the alt-right is a political tool for people who want to keep dividing us."</p>
<p>Gorka said media double standards exist and are evident.</p>
<p>He noted that journalists coverage of First Lady Melania Trump is comparably different former First Lady Michelle Obama.</p>
<p>"Can you imagine if, if Melania Trump had been married to President Obama," Gorka said. "I mean every step she took, every outfit she put on, they would have been cascading articles about the beauty of her high-heeled shoes as she got on to Marine One. If she had been President Obama's wife. But why is she suddenly to be vilified? Why aren't there front page articles about this paragon of elegance not being published today?"</p>
<p>Gorka says he has seen his share of vilifying stories about himself, including false news articles calling him a neo-Nazi, among other disparaging names, and notes they are par for the course in what's happening with media outlets who vehemently opposed Trump's win.</p>
<p>But when media outlets target his family, the president's family and the president himself with false or misleading stories, he says it degrades American's faith in the media and diminishes the crucial role it has in a democracy.</p>
<p>"When you have people who call themselves journalists attack the reputation of my dead mother, attack my wife and then attack my teenage high school son and call him a traitor to the right in a headline of their article, that's beyond the pail," Gorka said.</p>
<p>He said there are some "journalists today who are morally bankrupt."</p>
<p>"They spent months calling me, Steve [Bannon], the President racists and anti-Semites, okay? My father protected his Jewish schoolmates on the way to school in the 1940s in Hungary to stop them being beaten up by German occupational forces," he added.</p>
<p>"There is not one sentence, and I challenge the press, not one sentence you can find me ever having written or said, that is antisemitic or against Israel," he added.</p>
<p>"Bannon and the President don't have a racist molecule in their bodies," Gorka said. "Steve Bannon's best friend was Andrew Breitbart who was raised Jewish. The CEO of Breitbart today is Larry Solov who is Jewish," Gorka said. "The senior, editor in Los Angeles is Joel Pollock who is an Orthodox Jew. It is, it is the worst smear. It's just a blood libel, really, against these individuals, against the President and Steve Bannon."</p>
<p><a href="https://www.scribd.com/document/361389499/Sebastian-Gorka-Op-Ed" type="external">Gorka recently wrote an op-ed</a> about the Iran Deal he is distributing to news organizations titled: Mr. President: Use Truth to kill the JCPOA," (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action).</p>
<p><a href="https://www.scribd.com/document/361390323/Dr-Sebastian-Gorka-s-op-ed-about-the-Iran-Deal#from_embed" type="external">Dr. Sebastian Gorka's op-ed about the Iran Deal</a> by <a href="https://www.scribd.com/user/376313932/Presidential-Reporter#from_embed" type="external">Presidential Reporter</a> on Scribd</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>Related Stories: <a href="" type="internal">Controversial Trump adviser Sebastian Gorka is expected to leave the White House</a> <a href="" type="internal">Sebastian Gorka resigned from his position in the White House</a></p> | false | 1 | since last years presidential election media outlets reporting us government investigations possible use us social media fake news russia influence american voters election former white house senior strategist sebastian gorka said media outlets also look organizations see bias fake news permeating fourth estate fake news white house colleague called fake news industrial complex real said gorka oneonone interview circa white house colleague former white house chief strategist steve bannon resigned early august returned breitbart news executive chairman gorka served roughly seven months deputy assistant president trump alongside bannon resigned post august amid trump administration turmoil departure white house gorka took position chief strategist make america great coalition political group named trumps campaign slogan said fake news twitter catchphrase real problem mainstream media america today elsewhere said know cause ive victim president gorka hit back buzzfeeds article altwhite breitbart machine laundered racist hate alleges presidential campaign bannon breitbart courted altright movement help trump win election devil thats painted wall said gorka regard term altright dont even believe word means anything concrete said racists america neonazis people think kkk reborn need treat people deserve treated shun normal society gorka said place racebased hatred america think threat exaggerated antisemitism america many registered members kkk america maybe 6000 maybe 6000 330 million deal much bigger issues deal political party mean democrat party looks us based upon race skin color gorka pointed comments made former first lady michelle obama last week stated republican party essentially men white would even use descriptors like said dont look anybody based upon skin color look act whether comports say ive enough eight years divisiveness gorka said judge somebody based upon sexual preference neither steve dont look somebody based upon whether accent came look whether share values upon public founded result think altright political tool people want keep dividing us gorka said media double standards exist evident noted journalists coverage first lady melania trump comparably different former first lady michelle obama imagine melania trump married president obama gorka said mean every step took every outfit put would cascading articles beauty highheeled shoes got marine one president obamas wife suddenly vilified arent front page articles paragon elegance published today gorka says seen share vilifying stories including false news articles calling neonazi among disparaging names notes par course whats happening media outlets vehemently opposed trumps win media outlets target family presidents family president false misleading stories says degrades americans faith media diminishes crucial role democracy people call journalists attack reputation dead mother attack wife attack teenage high school son call traitor right headline article thats beyond pail gorka said said journalists today morally bankrupt spent months calling steve bannon president racists antisemites okay father protected jewish schoolmates way school 1940s hungary stop beaten german occupational forces added one sentence challenge press one sentence find ever written said antisemitic israel added bannon president dont racist molecule bodies gorka said steve bannons best friend andrew breitbart raised jewish ceo breitbart today larry solov jewish gorka said senior editor los angeles joel pollock orthodox jew worst smear blood libel really individuals president steve bannon gorka recently wrote oped iran deal distributing news organizations titled mr president use truth kill jcpoa joint comprehensive plan action dr sebastian gorkas oped iran deal presidential reporter scribd related stories controversial trump adviser sebastian gorka expected leave white house sebastian gorka resigned position white house | 555 |
<p>Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, who said Sunday he would like his federal agency to be known as the “happy department,” left some unhappy campers in the wake of his shortened trip to Nevada to review its two newest national monuments.</p>
<p>Among those chafed by the last-minute cancellation of promised meetings with local stakeholders were local Paiute tribes and Rep. Dina Titus, D-Nev.</p>
<p>“We have written, we have called (for him) to … meet with the opponents, meet with the tribes, meet with elected officials to hear the whole story,” she said Monday at a news conference in Las Vegas. “Well, that changed at the last minute. He couldn’t stay because he had some kind of Cabinet meeting with whoever is chief of staff this week … which is ridiculous. He could have come a day earlier.”</p>
<p>Two-day visit cut to one</p>
<p>Zinke arrived Sunday morning for what was to have been a two-day visit to tour the Gold Butte and Basin and Range monuments, part of his <a href="" type="internal">review of 22 national monuments</a> and five marine national monuments created by presidential decree since Jan. 1, 1996, to determine whether the designations should be scaled back or eliminated.</p>
<p>He did get a rapid-fire aerial tour of both monuments, which included jaunts on the ground to see some of their wonders. But his staff canceled meetings with local Paiute tribes, Titus and other opponents of changing the monuments’ boundaries, saying he had been summoned to Washington for a Cabinet meeting Monday with President Donald Trump’s new chief of staff, John Kelly.</p>
<p>Zinke met with local officials during a helicopter stop at Whitney Pocket in Gold Butte and also with a few stakeholders, including some representative of the Friends of Gold Butte conservation group and officials involved in artist Michael Heiser’s “City” project in Lincoln County.</p>
<p>During a brief news conference in Bunkerville at the end of the day, Zinke said he had made no decisions yet on the Nevada monuments. But, as he stood in front of the Gold Butte backdrop, he told reporters that one of his goals is to make cultural changes in the agencies under his control.</p>
<p>“We should be the happy department. When you see a BLM truck, you should think ‘land manager’ and not ‘law enforcement,” he said in an indirect reference to the nearby 2014 armed standoff between BLM agents and rancher Cliven Bundy and his supporters.</p>
<p>He’ll have to work to put Darren Daboda, chairman of the Moapa Band of Paiutes, into that frame of mind.</p>
<p>Daboda said at Monday’s news conference that the snub by Zinke was the second time he had bailed on a promised meeting, having also skipped one while <a href="" type="internal">visiting Pahrump in June</a>.</p>
<p>‘Empty promises’</p>
<p>“(It) felt like empty promises from the government … for him to dismiss us as Native Americans, not just my tribe but the Las Vegas tribe. We sort of felt like we’re treated like second-class citizens,” Daboda said, adding that the federal government has a responsibility “to respond to our concerns” about the monument review.</p>
<p>One of his tribe’s issues to ensure protection of areas where traditional pine nut harvests take place. “It’s in our DNA,” he said.</p>
<p>Daboda said that Zinke spoke with him for about 45 minutes by phone on Monday afternoon and that the Interior secretary apologized for having to truncate his trip. He also promised to return to Nevada at an unspecified future date to meet with tribe members.</p>
<p>Patrick Naranjo, UNLV resources coordinator and a member of the Santa Clara Pueblo tribe of New Mexico, was one of the few stakeholders who met with Zinke, during his helicopter tour stop at the Mount Irish petroglyph site in Basin and Range.</p>
<p>“He did give general options that weren’t very helpful for protecting the petroglyph sites. That struck each one of us who were in the meeting as odd,” Naranjo said.</p>
<p>“I do feel like he embraces the identity issue of these locations, what they mean,” he said. “But what I don’t think the secretary understood was how these elevate the institutional profile (of tribes) in Southern Nevada. They reflect the current demography of the people who are here, their current government status, their history of marginalization, their uniqueness living in this land before Western establishment.</p>
<p>“This is North American history in Nevada with the Indian people that are still here.”</p>
<p>At <a href="" type="internal">Sunday’s 20-minute talk with reporters in Bunkerville</a>, Zinke said part of his review will be examining the “fairly loose” definition of monuments created through the Antiquities Act of 1906 and how it applies to large monuments like Gold Butte and Basin and Range, that combined encompass more than 1 million acres.</p>
<p>“If you have a monument on top of a wilderness study area, a monument is managed through proclamation and a wilderness study area is managed by the Wilderness Act until Congress takes action,” he said, noting that wilderness study areas have more stringent requirements.</p>
<p>That raises a question, Zinke said: “Do you manage it by a monument or do you manage it by the wilderness study area? That’s something I’ve asked Congress to clarify.”</p>
<p>Friends of Gold Butte Vice President Terri Rylander — a nonprofit citizens group that advocates protection of Gold Butte’s landscape, cultural resources, wildlife, land and solitude — said the monument’s “current boundaries reflect years of compromise and there’s no need to reduce them.”</p>
<p>Contact Keith Rogers at [email protected] or 702-383-0308. Find him on Twitter: <a href="http://www.twitter.com/@KeithRogers2" type="external">@KeithRogers2</a></p> | false | 1 | interior secretary ryan zinke said sunday would like federal agency known happy department left unhappy campers wake shortened trip nevada review two newest national monuments among chafed lastminute cancellation promised meetings local stakeholders local paiute tribes rep dina titus dnev written called meet opponents meet tribes meet elected officials hear whole story said monday news conference las vegas well changed last minute couldnt stay kind cabinet meeting whoever chief staff week ridiculous could come day earlier twoday visit cut one zinke arrived sunday morning twoday visit tour gold butte basin range monuments part review 22 national monuments five marine national monuments created presidential decree since jan 1 1996 determine whether designations scaled back eliminated get rapidfire aerial tour monuments included jaunts ground see wonders staff canceled meetings local paiute tribes titus opponents changing monuments boundaries saying summoned washington cabinet meeting monday president donald trumps new chief staff john kelly zinke met local officials helicopter stop whitney pocket gold butte also stakeholders including representative friends gold butte conservation group officials involved artist michael heisers city project lincoln county brief news conference bunkerville end day zinke said made decisions yet nevada monuments stood front gold butte backdrop told reporters one goals make cultural changes agencies control happy department see blm truck think land manager law enforcement said indirect reference nearby 2014 armed standoff blm agents rancher cliven bundy supporters hell work put darren daboda chairman moapa band paiutes frame mind daboda said mondays news conference snub zinke second time bailed promised meeting also skipped one visiting pahrump june empty promises felt like empty promises government dismiss us native americans tribe las vegas tribe sort felt like treated like secondclass citizens daboda said adding federal government responsibility respond concerns monument review one tribes issues ensure protection areas traditional pine nut harvests take place dna said daboda said zinke spoke 45 minutes phone monday afternoon interior secretary apologized truncate trip also promised return nevada unspecified future date meet tribe members patrick naranjo unlv resources coordinator member santa clara pueblo tribe new mexico one stakeholders met zinke helicopter tour stop mount irish petroglyph site basin range give general options werent helpful protecting petroglyph sites struck one us meeting odd naranjo said feel like embraces identity issue locations mean said dont think secretary understood elevate institutional profile tribes southern nevada reflect current demography people current government status history marginalization uniqueness living land western establishment north american history nevada indian people still sundays 20minute talk reporters bunkerville zinke said part review examining fairly loose definition monuments created antiquities act 1906 applies large monuments like gold butte basin range combined encompass 1 million acres monument top wilderness study area monument managed proclamation wilderness study area managed wilderness act congress takes action said noting wilderness study areas stringent requirements raises question zinke said manage monument manage wilderness study area thats something ive asked congress clarify friends gold butte vice president terri rylander nonprofit citizens group advocates protection gold buttes landscape cultural resources wildlife land solitude said monuments current boundaries reflect years compromise theres need reduce contact keith rogers krogersreviewjournalcom 7023830308 find twitter keithrogers2 | 514 |
<p>You may remember that in our last installment we left the Republican party — or at least the media’s account thereof — in what Sean O’Casey’s Paycock would have called a terrible state o’ chassis over the succession to John Boehner as Speaker of the House. Of course it was not to be expected that when, in response to desperate pleas from a party so afflicted, a reluctant Paul Ryan stepped forward to unite it (more or less) behind him as the new Speaker, the media were going to let go of so fruitful a “narrative” as this story of frightful chaos in the party they so despise. “Paul Ryan is right about the House being broken. But he probably can’t fix it,” wrote <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/10/29/paul-ryan-is-right-about-the-house-being-broken-but-can-he-fix-it/?wpmm=1&amp;wpisrc=nl_headlines" type="external">Chris Cillizza</a>&#160;in The Washington Post — and, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/ryan-has-a-lot-going-for-him-but-hes-still-unlikely-to-heal-a-broken-house/2015/11/01/6e73549a-80a9-11e5-9afb-0c971f713d0c_story.html?wpmm=1&amp;wpisrc=nl_headlines" type="external">a few days later</a>: “Ryan has a lot going for him. But he’s still unlikely to heal a broken House.” A <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/good-luck-speaker-ryan-youre-going-to-need-it/2015/10/28/2f13ea92-7db8-11e5-afce-2afd1d3eb896_story.html" type="external">Post editorial</a>&#160;was headlined: “Good luck, Speaker Ryan. You’re going to need it.”</p>
<p>The editorial identified the usual suspects in this story of political mugging as the “hard-right” of the party, who are known to themselves as the Freedom Caucus and to the Democratic party’s talking points as “extremists.” Mr Cillizza preferred to stick to the euphemistic “polarization,” but the point was the same — namely that Mr Ryan might be a decent enough fellow but he couldn’t really hope to rein in his party’s lunatic fringe, now supposed to be in the ascendant. Francis X. Clines of The New York Times penned a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/25/opinion/sunday/imagining-capitol-hill-as-a-sci-fi-show.html?emc=edit_th_20151025&amp;nl=todaysheadlines&amp;nlid=57259899" type="external">light-hearted piece</a>&#160;comparing what he called Republicans’ “political cannibalism” and “frantic infighting for political survival amid the nation’s mounting problems” to a forthcoming TV show called “BrainDead” in which “the government has stopped working, and alien spawn have come to Earth and eaten the brains of a growing number of congressmen and Hill staffers.” The show’s creators are quoted as saying, “It seemed like the best way to address the news today — not straight, but as the opening act of a horror movie”</p>
<p>Lest you think this was all just an airing of the journalists’ private opinions, evidence — or something that passes for it in the media — was produced in the shape of a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/28/us/politics/deeply-divided-republican-electorate-drifts-toward-ben-carson-poll-shows.html?emc=edit_th_20151028&amp;nl=todaysheadlines&amp;nlid=57259899" type="external">New York Times/CBS poll</a>&#160;in which respondents were asked: “Would you describe the Republican Party today as united or divided?” Unsurprisingly, since none of the respondents had any way of knowing anything about the state of the Republican Party except for what the media tell them, 22 per cent said united, 75 per cent divided. And even if they had not been told often enough how divided the party was, they could have guessed that “divided” was the safer answer and the one less likely to make them look like dummies who don’t know what’s really&#160;going on. All this, mind you, as Mr Ryan was winning the votes of 236 out of 245 voting Republicans for the Speakership.</p>
<p>Thus having established by better than three-to-one majorities that the media narrative is the one people are willing to tell the media they accept, the poll also showed that, by better than two-to-one, they blamed Republicans “a lot” or “some” for political “gridlock” rather than Democrats. Could this result have been in any way related to the question: “Which do you think Republicans in Congress should do? Compromise some of their positions in order to get things done” (56 per cent) or “Stick to their positions even if it means not getting as much done” (39 per cent)? Do you suppose the pollsters realized that in that question they were giving away what they saw as the correct answer to the one about gridlock? They certainly would have left respondents in no doubt what they believed about the causes of gridlock, though in fact the reason for such divisions as there are in the party is precisely that, under Mr Boehner, it did nothing but&#160;compromise when it had promised their most dedicated supporters to fight.</p>
<p>This is what I believe is known in the polling as in the computing business as “garbage-in-garbage-out,” but it affirms yet again that the news is the media narrative and the media narrative is the news — as well, it seems, as the next season’s TV sit-coms. But the “chaos” narrative must have proved particularly compelling in this early onset election season partly because it fit in so well with that of the presidential contest. The sheer number of competitors, together with the theatrical defiance of the GOP “establishment” by the so-called “outsiders” in the race, especially Donald Trump and Ben Carson, seemed to promise an answering chaos in that other, more high-profile leadership contest that might keep the media tut-tutting all the way to election day. At any rate, the so called “debates” as organized by the media were designed to produce as much chaos as possible by not only pitting the candidates against one another wherever possible but also provoking them with insulting questions designed to create the impression, not entirely inaccurate, that it was in contrast not with the Democrats but with the media, and the media’s notions of political rectitude, that they were being invited to define themselves.</p>
<p>This must have been apparent to the observant in the first two debates, but it became too grossly obvious to be ignored in the third, held in Boulder, Colorado in the week before Hallowe’en, when the CNBC moderators were actually booed by the audience, so blatant was their anti-Republican bias. This was especially the case with John Harwood, who asked Donald Trump if his was “a comic book version of a presidential campaign.” Even the unembarrassable Mr Trump appeared dumbfounded by the question. Later, Ted Cruz got the biggest applause of the night by saying, “The questions that have been asked so far in this debate illustrate why the American people don’t trust the media. This is not a cage match. And, you look at the questions — ‘Donald Trump, are you a comic-book villain?’ ‘Ben Carson, can you do math?’ ‘John Kasich, will you insult two people over here?’ ‘Marco Rubio, why don’t you resign?’ ‘Jeb Bush, why have your numbers fallen?’ How about talking about the substantive issues the people care about?”</p>
<p>Yet the cheers could not mask the fact that it really was a cage match, and designed to be one, as the candidates should have known it would be before they agreed to the media’s terms for appearing. Substantive issues were never going to be on any network’s agenda, if only because too many potential viewers, looking to see the candidates mix it up, would have been bored and tuned out. Their outrage at the way they were treated may have elicited cheers and even been reported sympathetically in the rest of the media — “Media Consensus Is That CNBC Was GOP Debate’s ‘Biggest Loser’” reported <a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/10/29/452814120/5-headlines-the-consensus-is-that-cnbc-was-gop-debates-biggest-loser" type="external">NPR</a>&#160;— but it encouraged them (or their handlers) to get together afterwards and issue a series of complaints and demands for change from the broadcasters of subsequent debates that only made them look like whiners. This was too easy an opening for President Obama, who <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2015/11/02/obama_gleefully_mocks_republicans_they_cant_handle_a_bunch_of_cnbc_moderators.html" type="external">told</a>&#160;a fund-raiser in New York that “Every one of these candidates says, ‘Obama is weak, Putin is kicking sand in his face, when I talk to Putin it is going to straighten him out.’ Just by looking at him, ‘I’m going to — he’s going to be —’ And then it turns out they can’t handle a bunch of CNBC moderators on a debate.’”</p>
<p>It wasn’t the first time that the President or his apologists had attempted to cast domestic political disagreements in terms of international power politics and vice versa — a telling indication of the reason he has so often failed to deal adequately with both kinds of conflict. But in the narrower sense that the Republicans should have known what they were getting into when they signed up for these cage matches, he was right. Who was going to believe them when they said they were shocked — shocked! — to learn that the media were hostile to them and would do anything in their power to embarrass them? Calling CNBC the debate’s “biggest loser” was the mirror image but the functional equivalent of the headlines after the first debate that called Fox News the big winner. Either way, the media were always going to be the stars of the show.</p>
<p>In any case, in a political culture where the new favorite tweeted curse is said to be “die in a fire” — it was invoked upon the head of Germaine Greer for publicly questioning whether a surgeon actually had the power to transform the former Bruce Jenner into a woman — is it even possible to hold a genuine debate anymore? Certainly those debates that we have seen so far in this campaigning season do not suggest that it is. The hate, often on the part of those most vehement against those they call “haters,” has been more subdued when the haters have been brought face to face, but it has still been so unmistakable as to leave anyone watching in no doubt that personal feelings are far more important in our political life than anything that used to be thought of as public policy.</p>
<p>Of course it is the media that creates this impression because personal feelings are much better box office than public policy, but the candidates apparently have to go along with it because otherwise they have no forum and no public presence of a kind that is necessary to be elected to anything above the most local offices. In a well-run polity, it would be absurd, outrageous, for political sages and elder statesmen of the Fox Business channel to decide which of the candidates were to be allowed to make their case to the public — and which on the main stage and which on the “undercard.” And yet even the excluded victims must meekly accept their fate as if it were written in the stars. I’m not a big fan of Lindsay Graham, but I wonder if he couldn’t use his exclusion from the fourth debate as a way to gain access to that unmistakable screw-the-media sentiment that has done so much to power the candidacy of Donald Trump?</p>
<p>Better, however, would be for all the candidates to get together to boycott and bypass the media, including Fox, which the ease of access to streaming video would make it easy for them to do. They needn’t make a fuss over it: just announce that they prefer that not only themselves but their competitors should have a chance to get their message out without any media mediation. They might also point to the effect such mediation has produced in reviving the candidacy of Hillary Clinton, once thought to be in some serious trouble. For when she was called to testify before the House Select Committee on Benghazi, a day after Vice President Biden removed himself as the last plausible alternative to her as the Democratic nominee, it was all media hands to battle stations.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/clinton-back-in-the-benghazi-hot-seat-withstands-republicans-grilling/2015/10/22/3ce69dbe-78e4-11e5-a958-d889faf561dc_story.html?wpmm=1&amp;wpisrc=nl_headlines" type="external">The Washington Post</a>, certainly took no chances that readers might make up their own minds about how the former Secretary of State had performed under Republican interrogation. “GOP lands no clear punches while sparring with Clinton over Benghazi,” wrote David A. Fahrenthold while the hearing was still in progress, while the main headline on the Post’s website the next morning read: “Clinton emerges unscathed from high-stakes Benghazi hearing.” There were several other news stories of a similar tendency and an acknowledged <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/benghazi-business-as-usual/2015/10/22/5a09b31e-7901-11e5-a958-d889faf561dc_story.html" type="external">editorial</a>&#160;in which it was claimed that “the House Select Committee on Benghazi further discredited itself . . . as its Republican members attempted to fuel largely insubstantial suspicions about Hillary Clinton’s role in the 2012 Benghazi attacks.”</p>
<p>These “insubstantial suspicions” included her having publicly attributed the deaths of the ambassador and three other Americans to a spontaneous demonstration when she knew this was not the case and her having intervened in Libya on behalf of the business deal of a friend, Sidney Blumenthal, who was persona non grata at the State Department, when the ambassador himself was apparently unable to reach her with any of his multiple requests for extra security. Damning as these things might have seemed to some, however, they were (to use a favorite Clinton expression) “old news,” while the committee “elicited little new information and offered little hope that their inquiry would find anything significant that seven previous investigations didn’t.”</p>
<p>All our instruments agree: they never laid a glove on her. The New York Times took a similar if less blatantly partisan line, summed up in the conclusion of Amy Chosick’s “ <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/23/us/politics/a-hearing-and-a-house-as-divided-as-the-country-watching-it.html?emc=edit_th_20151023&amp;nl=todaysheadlines&amp;nlid=57259899" type="external">Analysis” piece</a>:</p>
<p>Mrs. Clinton’s discipline and steely demeanor, bordering on dismissive at times, disarmed and irritated congressional Republicans as they questioned her handling of Libya as secretary of state, her response to the Benghazi attack and her frequent contacts with Sidney Blumenthal, a Clinton adviser who had been barred by the White House from working at the State Department.</p>
<p>That the media’s rescue operation was not more widely recognized as such must owe something to the willingness of the GOP candidates to cultivate respectability (if not respect) in the form determined by the media by pretending to take them at their own valuation as objective observers and therefore neutral referees for the debates. But then, even many conservatives seemed to think that Mrs Clinton had been helped rather than hurt by the Committee’s grilling.</p>
<p>I myself didn’t quite see the point of its pressing on with what had already managed to get itself cast, partly as a result of Kevin McCarthy’s faux pas discussed last month, as a partisan exercise. That, much more than any mistakes made at the State Department over Benghazi — mistakes do happen, after all — was the real scandal of the hearings. It was a frank admission that the spirit of partisanship is now such that the Congress is incapable of exercising its constitutional oversight function. Though there is fault on both sides in our coming to this pass — and much more fault in the partisan media — it is primarily the congressional Democrats’ decision to close ranks behind “their” President, no matter what he does, no matter how far he exceeds his constitutionally limited powers, that has caused it.</p>
<p>And at least a part of what has caused that, it seems to me, is the habit of partisanship formed during the ill-advised Republican impeachment of Bill Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky affair — now being turned to such good account by his wife and would-be successor. But before that there were the Clarence Thomas and Robert Bork confirmation hearings, both of which managed to enlist the country’s legislature as full partner in and adjunct to the media scandal culture, which is now also informing the so-called debates, and so cement in place on both sides partisan hatreds that show no signs of ever dying. In this sense, the media topos of political “chaos” at the heart of our government has something to be said for it, though it is the media’s own hunger for scandal and political wickedness (also known as “extremism”) and not the extremism itself which has caused it.</p>
<p>James Bowman is Resident Scholar at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.</p> | false | 1 | may remember last installment left republican party least medias account thereof sean ocaseys paycock would called terrible state chassis succession john boehner speaker house course expected response desperate pleas party afflicted reluctant paul ryan stepped forward unite less behind new speaker media going let go fruitful narrative story frightful chaos party despise paul ryan right house broken probably cant fix wrote chris cillizza160in washington post days later ryan lot going hes still unlikely heal broken house post editorial160was headlined good luck speaker ryan youre going need editorial identified usual suspects story political mugging hardright party known freedom caucus democratic partys talking points extremists mr cillizza preferred stick euphemistic polarization point namely mr ryan might decent enough fellow couldnt really hope rein partys lunatic fringe supposed ascendant francis x clines new york times penned lighthearted piece160comparing called republicans political cannibalism frantic infighting political survival amid nations mounting problems forthcoming tv show called braindead government stopped working alien spawn come earth eaten brains growing number congressmen hill staffers shows creators quoted saying seemed like best way address news today straight opening act horror movie lest think airing journalists private opinions evidence something passes media produced shape new york timescbs poll160in respondents asked would describe republican party today united divided unsurprisingly since none respondents way knowing anything state republican party except media tell 22 per cent said united 75 per cent divided even told often enough divided party could guessed divided safer answer one less likely make look like dummies dont know whats really160going mind mr ryan winning votes 236 245 voting republicans speakership thus established better threetoone majorities media narrative one people willing tell media accept poll also showed better twotoone blamed republicans lot political gridlock rather democrats could result way related question think republicans congress compromise positions order get things done 56 per cent stick positions even means getting much done 39 per cent suppose pollsters realized question giving away saw correct answer one gridlock certainly would left respondents doubt believed causes gridlock though fact reason divisions party precisely mr boehner nothing but160compromise promised dedicated supporters fight believe known polling computing business garbageingarbageout affirms yet news media narrative media narrative news well seems next seasons tv sitcoms chaos narrative must proved particularly compelling early onset election season partly fit well presidential contest sheer number competitors together theatrical defiance gop establishment socalled outsiders race especially donald trump ben carson seemed promise answering chaos highprofile leadership contest might keep media tuttutting way election day rate called debates organized media designed produce much chaos possible pitting candidates one another wherever possible also provoking insulting questions designed create impression entirely inaccurate contrast democrats media medias notions political rectitude invited define must apparent observant first two debates became grossly obvious ignored third held boulder colorado week halloween cnbc moderators actually booed audience blatant antirepublican bias especially case john harwood asked donald trump comic book version presidential campaign even unembarrassable mr trump appeared dumbfounded question later ted cruz got biggest applause night saying questions asked far debate illustrate american people dont trust media cage match look questions donald trump comicbook villain ben carson math john kasich insult two people marco rubio dont resign jeb bush numbers fallen talking substantive issues people care yet cheers could mask fact really cage match designed one candidates known would agreed medias terms appearing substantive issues never going networks agenda many potential viewers looking see candidates mix would bored tuned outrage way treated may elicited cheers even reported sympathetically rest media media consensus cnbc gop debates biggest loser reported npr160 encouraged handlers get together afterwards issue series complaints demands change broadcasters subsequent debates made look like whiners easy opening president obama told160a fundraiser new york every one candidates says obama weak putin kicking sand face talk putin going straighten looking im going hes going turns cant handle bunch cnbc moderators debate wasnt first time president apologists attempted cast domestic political disagreements terms international power politics vice versa telling indication reason often failed deal adequately kinds conflict narrower sense republicans known getting signed cage matches right going believe said shocked shocked learn media hostile would anything power embarrass calling cnbc debates biggest loser mirror image functional equivalent headlines first debate called fox news big winner either way media always going stars show case political culture new favorite tweeted curse said die fire invoked upon head germaine greer publicly questioning whether surgeon actually power transform former bruce jenner woman even possible hold genuine debate anymore certainly debates seen far campaigning season suggest hate often part vehement call haters subdued haters brought face face still unmistakable leave anyone watching doubt personal feelings far important political life anything used thought public policy course media creates impression personal feelings much better box office public policy candidates apparently go along otherwise forum public presence kind necessary elected anything local offices wellrun polity would absurd outrageous political sages elder statesmen fox business channel decide candidates allowed make case public main stage undercard yet even excluded victims must meekly accept fate written stars im big fan lindsay graham wonder couldnt use exclusion fourth debate way gain access unmistakable screwthemedia sentiment done much power candidacy donald trump better however would candidates get together boycott bypass media including fox ease access streaming video would make easy neednt make fuss announce prefer competitors chance get message without media mediation might also point effect mediation produced reviving candidacy hillary clinton thought serious trouble called testify house select committee benghazi day vice president biden removed last plausible alternative democratic nominee media hands battle stations washington post certainly took chances readers might make minds former secretary state performed republican interrogation gop lands clear punches sparring clinton benghazi wrote david fahrenthold hearing still progress main headline posts website next morning read clinton emerges unscathed highstakes benghazi hearing several news stories similar tendency acknowledged editorial160in claimed house select committee benghazi discredited republican members attempted fuel largely insubstantial suspicions hillary clintons role 2012 benghazi attacks insubstantial suspicions included publicly attributed deaths ambassador three americans spontaneous demonstration knew case intervened libya behalf business deal friend sidney blumenthal persona non grata state department ambassador apparently unable reach multiple requests extra security damning things might seemed however use favorite clinton expression old news committee elicited little new information offered little hope inquiry would find anything significant seven previous investigations didnt instruments agree never laid glove new york times took similar less blatantly partisan line summed conclusion amy chosicks analysis piece mrs clintons discipline steely demeanor bordering dismissive times disarmed irritated congressional republicans questioned handling libya secretary state response benghazi attack frequent contacts sidney blumenthal clinton adviser barred white house working state department medias rescue operation widely recognized must owe something willingness gop candidates cultivate respectability respect form determined media pretending take valuation objective observers therefore neutral referees debates even many conservatives seemed think mrs clinton helped rather hurt committees grilling didnt quite see point pressing already managed get cast partly result kevin mccarthys faux pas discussed last month partisan exercise much mistakes made state department benghazi mistakes happen real scandal hearings frank admission spirit partisanship congress incapable exercising constitutional oversight function though fault sides coming pass much fault partisan media primarily congressional democrats decision close ranks behind president matter matter far exceeds constitutionally limited powers caused least part caused seems habit partisanship formed illadvised republican impeachment bill clinton monica lewinsky affair turned good account wife wouldbe successor clarence thomas robert bork confirmation hearings managed enlist countrys legislature full partner adjunct media scandal culture also informing socalled debates cement place sides partisan hatreds show signs ever dying sense media topos political chaos heart government something said though medias hunger scandal political wickedness also known extremism extremism caused james bowman resident scholar ethics public policy center | 1,282 |
<p>JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — A bowl billed as the Heisman winner vs. the top-10 defense lived up to its billing and introduced Mississippi State fans to a new star as the No. 23 Bulldogs survived against Louisville and superstar <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Lamar-Jackson/" type="external">Lamar Jackson</a> 31-27 on Saturday in the TaxSlayer Bowl at EverBank Field.</p>
<p>Jackson set a bowl record with 158 rushing yards for the Cardinals (8-5), but Mississippi State’s defense intercepted him four times — three by safety Mark McLaurin — and sacked him six times. And in the end, the Bulldogs (9-4) batted down Jackson’s Hail Mary in the end zone to secure the win.</p>
<p>“Today we talked about going out and playing four quarters,” Mississippi State interim coach Greg Knox said. “It took four quarters to win that ballgame. We knew what we were facing, <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Heisman_Trophy/" type="external">Heisman Trophy</a> winner, a guy that was capable of putting the team on his back and carrying them to victory.</p>
<p>“But our defense, we talked about playing to their identity, fast, physical, tough. I thought we did that as a team.”</p>
<p>And the new star?</p>
<p>Freshman backup quarterback Keytaon Thompson rushed for 147 yards and three touchdowns while passing for 127 yards. He led the Bulldogs on a game-winning drive late in the fourth quarter in a tremendous show of poise.</p>
<p>“We knew (running) is what he does best so we wanted to capitalize on that,” Knox said. “I gave him our playsheet and told him to mark the ones that he felt most comfortable with and we worked from there. … And he threw some nice passes. I thought our O-line did a great job of protecting him, giving him time to throw. He was able to sit in the pocket.”</p>
<p>Thompson handled the pressure of the starting role well. The Bulldogs took an early 7-0 lead, scoring rather easily on a 56-yard drive capped by an Aeris Williams 5-yard run.</p>
<p>Louisville answered with a nine-play, 51-yard touchdown drive, which was punctuated by a 5-yard touchdown pass from Jackson to Charles Standberry.</p>
<p>Thompson helped the Bulldogs march right back down the field 79 yards and capped the drive with a 14-yard touchdown scamper for a 14-7 lead.</p>
<p>Jackson matched Thompson’s touchdown run with one of his own to start the third quarter, tying the score 14-14.</p>
<p>After Mississippi State got a 23-yard field goal from Jace Christmann, the Cardinals executed a lightning-quick, three-play, 88-yard touchdown drive in the final minute before halftime. Jackson broke free for a 75-yard run, the longest of his career, and then found Jaylen Smith in the end zone for an 11-yard touchdown on the next play.</p>
<p>Up 21-17 at the half despite being outgained 244-223 and converting on just two of seven third downs, Louisville added to its lead with a 23-yard field goal by Blanton Creque with 3:14 left in the third quarter.</p>
<p>But Mississippi State wasn’t done. The Bulldogs intercepted Jackson twice in the third quarter and then capitalized on Jackson’s third interception, a pass that bounced off the hands of Louisville receiver Smith, with a four-play, 22-yard touchdown drive to tie the score at 24-24 early in the fourth quarter.</p>
<p>Creque’s 31-yard field goal gave Louisville the lead, but Thompson led Mississippi State on a game-winning, 11-play touchdown drive. On third-and-9 with under four minutes left, Thompson rushed 13 yards to within inches of the goal line. The Bulldogs punched it in on the next play, taking a 31-27 lead after the extra point.</p>
<p>Jackson, who hadn’t thrown an interception since October before Saturday’s game, tossed his fourth pick as Louisville tried to drive back down. It was a backbreaker for the Cardinals, giving Mississippi State the ball back with just 2:31 left.</p>
<p>“Coach made a great play call at the end,” McLaurin said. “D-line got great movement, especially on the quarterback. The corner ran a blitz. He got home. I (saw) the slant. I really didn’t think he was going to throw it. I stepped up.”</p>
<p>The Bulldogs weren’t able to run out the clock and Louisville got the ball back with 1:39 left. Sacked twice, Jackson converted a fourth-and-20 play, and had a chance for a Hail Mary, but the pass was batted away in the end zone, securing the Bulldog win.</p>
<p>A dejected Jackson was asked about the interceptions in the postgame interview room.</p>
<p>“That was just miscommunication by me. That is on me, nobody else,” Jackson said.</p>
<p>“That’s not true,” Louisville coach <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Bobby_Petrino/" type="external">Bobby Petrino</a> replied. “We win together and lose together. Lamar is a great competitor. Obviously he’s got big shoulders. But he worked extremely hard. He competed extremely hard. We’re in a position to win the game because of how hard he ran the ball, the touchdowns he made.”</p>
<p>Knox and his fellow coaches were coaching their final game at Mississippi State. Holdovers from the Dan Mullen staff, they agreed to coach the bowl game while new coach Joe Moorman hired his coaching staff. After the win, Knox, interim defensive coordinator Ron English and other coaches were seen joyfully hugging the players in an emotional moment.</p>
<p>“The last three, four weeks we’ve been together, it’s been a tough time for everyone. A lot of emotions,” Knox said.</p>
<p>NOTES: Lamar Jackson is the only player in FBS history to rush for at least 1,500 yards and pass for at least 3,500 yards in a season. He has now done it twice (2016 and 2017). … Jackson also entered the 50-50 club with 50 career touchdowns rushing and 50 career touchdowns passing, joining <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Colin_Kaepernick/" type="external">Colin Kaepernick</a> and <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Tim_Tebow/" type="external">Tim Tebow</a> as the only players in FBS history with career totals above 50 and 50. … Louisville WR Jaylen Smith had seven catches for 107 yards. … Attendance at the TaxSlayer Bowl was 41,310 with the crowd fairly evenly split between Louisville and Mississippi State fans.</p> | false | 1 | jacksonville fla bowl billed heisman winner vs top10 defense lived billing introduced mississippi state fans new star 23 bulldogs survived louisville superstar lamar jackson 3127 saturday taxslayer bowl everbank field jackson set bowl record 158 rushing yards cardinals 85 mississippi states defense intercepted four times three safety mark mclaurin sacked six times end bulldogs 94 batted jacksons hail mary end zone secure win today talked going playing four quarters mississippi state interim coach greg knox said took four quarters win ballgame knew facing heisman trophy winner guy capable putting team back carrying victory defense talked playing identity fast physical tough thought team new star freshman backup quarterback keytaon thompson rushed 147 yards three touchdowns passing 127 yards led bulldogs gamewinning drive late fourth quarter tremendous show poise knew running best wanted capitalize knox said gave playsheet told mark ones felt comfortable worked threw nice passes thought oline great job protecting giving time throw able sit pocket thompson handled pressure starting role well bulldogs took early 70 lead scoring rather easily 56yard drive capped aeris williams 5yard run louisville answered nineplay 51yard touchdown drive punctuated 5yard touchdown pass jackson charles standberry thompson helped bulldogs march right back field 79 yards capped drive 14yard touchdown scamper 147 lead jackson matched thompsons touchdown run one start third quarter tying score 1414 mississippi state got 23yard field goal jace christmann cardinals executed lightningquick threeplay 88yard touchdown drive final minute halftime jackson broke free 75yard run longest career found jaylen smith end zone 11yard touchdown next play 2117 half despite outgained 244223 converting two seven third downs louisville added lead 23yard field goal blanton creque 314 left third quarter mississippi state wasnt done bulldogs intercepted jackson twice third quarter capitalized jacksons third interception pass bounced hands louisville receiver smith fourplay 22yard touchdown drive tie score 2424 early fourth quarter creques 31yard field goal gave louisville lead thompson led mississippi state gamewinning 11play touchdown drive thirdand9 four minutes left thompson rushed 13 yards within inches goal line bulldogs punched next play taking 3127 lead extra point jackson hadnt thrown interception since october saturdays game tossed fourth pick louisville tried drive back backbreaker cardinals giving mississippi state ball back 231 left coach made great play call end mclaurin said dline got great movement especially quarterback corner ran blitz got home saw slant really didnt think going throw stepped bulldogs werent able run clock louisville got ball back 139 left sacked twice jackson converted fourthand20 play chance hail mary pass batted away end zone securing bulldog win dejected jackson asked interceptions postgame interview room miscommunication nobody else jackson said thats true louisville coach bobby petrino replied win together lose together lamar great competitor obviously hes got big shoulders worked extremely hard competed extremely hard position win game hard ran ball touchdowns made knox fellow coaches coaching final game mississippi state holdovers dan mullen staff agreed coach bowl game new coach joe moorman hired coaching staff win knox interim defensive coordinator ron english coaches seen joyfully hugging players emotional moment last three four weeks weve together tough time everyone lot emotions knox said notes lamar jackson player fbs history rush least 1500 yards pass least 3500 yards season done twice 2016 2017 jackson also entered 5050 club 50 career touchdowns rushing 50 career touchdowns passing joining colin kaepernick tim tebow players fbs history career totals 50 50 louisville wr jaylen smith seven catches 107 yards attendance taxslayer bowl 41310 crowd fairly evenly split louisville mississippi state fans | 578 |
<p>VLADIKAVKAZ/IVNYA, Russia (Reuters) – At polling station no. 333 in the Russian city of Vladikavkaz, Reuters reporters only counted 256 voters casting their ballots in a regional election on Sunday.</p>
<p>People were voting across Russia in what is seen as a dress rehearsal for next year’s presidential vote. Kremlin candidates for regional parliaments and governorships performed strongly nationwide.</p>
<p>When the official results for polling station no. 333 were declared, the turnout was first given as 1,331 before being revised up to 1,867 on Tuesday. That is more than seven times higher than the number of voters counted by Reuters – with 73 percent of the votes going to United Russia, the party of President Vladimir Putin.</p>
<p>Election officials at the polling station said their tally was correct and there were no discrepancies.</p>
<p>Reuters reporters were there when the polls opened at 08:00 until after the official count had been completed. They saw one man, who said he was a United Russia election observer, approaching the ballot box multiple times and each time putting inside voting papers.</p>
<p>“We must ensure 85 percent for United Russia. Otherwise, the Tsar will stop providing us with money,” the man, Sergei Lyutikov, told a reporter, in an apparent reference to Putin.</p>
<p>Putin is the strong favorite to win re-election next year. Many voters credit him with restoring national pride. However, with the economy forecast to grow only 1 percent this year enthusiasm for Putin is not as strong as it has been. Political analysts say that could result in a weak election turnout.</p>
<p>Reuters reporters observed the vote at six polling stations on Sunday. At all six the reporters found discrepancies, of varying sizes, between the official vote tally and the number of voters the reporters counted.</p>
<p>The reporters were present for the entire voting day except for in one place where a reporter missed the start because they were initially not allowed in.</p>
<p>Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov did not immediately respond to requests for comments for this story.</p>
<p>However, Peskov, on a conference call with reporters on Monday, said the vote showed people trust Putin. He said that there was “zero tolerance” of fraud, with reports of violations of election rules being dealt with swiftly.</p>
<p>Citing election commission data, he said the volume of complaints were down on previous elections, and in most cases the complaints were about secondary issues.</p>
<p>United Russia’s party headquarters, in a statement sent to Reuters, said it gave no orders to anyone to stuff ballots or falsify results. It said all violations would be examined by election commissions and, if the law was broken, those responsible would be punished.</p>
<p>The six polling stations the Reuters reporters visited were in three regions but there were thousands of polling stations operating in Russia on Sunday so the events only offer a small snapshot of what happened.</p>
<p>Reuters reporters are unable to assess if such practices were widespread, or whether they had a material bearing on the outcome of the election.</p>
<p>Opinion polls consistently show that United Russia has more support than any other Russian party.</p>
<p>Golos, a non-governmental organization whose volunteers monitored the voting in 36 regions, said late on Monday it had received reports of 825 violations of election rules. They included multiple reports of inflated turnout figures and ballot-stuffing. However, the NGO said violations were down compared to previous elections.</p>
<p>Russia’s central election commission, asked about the discrepancies witnessed by Reuters did not immediately respond.</p>
<p>Ella Pamfilova, chair of the commission, told a news conference after polls closed that the irregularities that had been reported to her commission would be investigated.</p>
<p>THREATS</p>
<p>At polling station no. 333, located in a further education college in Vladikavkaz, capital of the North Ossetia region, voters on Sunday were electing a new regional parliament.</p>
<p>Lyutikov was there throughout the day. He works as an aide to Vadim Suanov, a United Russia deputy in the outgoing North Ossetia regional legislature, according to the legislature’s website. Suanov, who was running for re-election on Sunday, told Reuters he knew nothing about what his employee did in the polling station.</p>
<p>Lyutikov cast his ballot in the first hours of voting but later inserted ballot papers about 10 times, according to the Reuters witnesses.</p>
<p>Lyutikov told a Reuters reporter not to document him at the ballot box, threatening to break her mobile phone if the pictures and video footage were not deleted. At one point, he showed a reporter his passport, with his name, Sergei Ivanovich Lyutikov and his date of birth, April 17 1984.</p>
<p>While he was approaching the ballot box, he was in sight of Yelena Khadonova, the chair of the election commission for polling station no.333.</p>
<p>Asked about Lyutikov’s actions, she said: “I have nothing to comment on. I haven’t seen anything.”</p>
<p>HOME VOTING</p>
<p>At a parliamentary election last September, Reuters reporters at several polling stations found cases of inflated turnout and ballot-stuffing. Russia election chiefs said they would investigate, and the police launched their own investigation.</p>
<p>After Sunday’s vote, Kremlin candidates were on track to win in all 16 regions where governors were being elected, according to preliminary results. In the six regions where parliaments were being elected, including in North Ossetia, United Russia was in comfortable first place.</p>
<p>United Russia was less dominant in municipal elections in parts of Moscow, where support for opposition candidates is traditionally stronger.</p>
<p>At another location, polling station no. 618 in Belgorod region, a Reuters reporter accompanied election officials on their visits to voters’ houses to administer home voting. The number of home voters was equal to about a quarter of those who voted at the polling station.</p>
<p>Under Russia’s electoral rules, voting at home is reserved for cases where a voter has specifically requested a visit, because for health reasons they are unable to make it to a polling station.</p>
<p>Kremlin opponents and independent monitors say home voting is open to abuse because it is not subject to the same scrutiny as voting in a polling station, where monitors from several parties, and journalists, are often present.</p>
<p>Despite the rule that home voting is only offered on request, several of the people visited by the election officials at their homes said they had not asked to vote at home.</p>
<p>The election officials entered most of houses without knocking on the door. One man in his sixties was smoking a cigarette in his backyard when the election officials arrived.</p>
<p>“First build a road and then we’ll talk,” he told the officials, pointing at a bumpy path leading to his house. He denied he asked them to come, but still cast his vote.</p>
<p>The officials said a relative or neighbor may have made the request on his behalf.</p>
<p>Over the course of two hours, during which the reporter was with the officials at all times, they collected 14 filled ballot papers. When the officials returned to the polling station, they had 18 filled ballot papers.</p>
<p>The officials who made the trip said the tally was correct. The head of the election commission at polling station no. 618, Lyubov Grushko, said: “The difference in numbers is a provocative issue, we won’t discuss it.”</p> | false | 1 | vladikavkazivnya russia reuters polling station 333 russian city vladikavkaz reuters reporters counted 256 voters casting ballots regional election sunday people voting across russia seen dress rehearsal next years presidential vote kremlin candidates regional parliaments governorships performed strongly nationwide official results polling station 333 declared turnout first given 1331 revised 1867 tuesday seven times higher number voters counted reuters 73 percent votes going united russia party president vladimir putin election officials polling station said tally correct discrepancies reuters reporters polls opened 0800 official count completed saw one man said united russia election observer approaching ballot box multiple times time putting inside voting papers must ensure 85 percent united russia otherwise tsar stop providing us money man sergei lyutikov told reporter apparent reference putin putin strong favorite win reelection next year many voters credit restoring national pride however economy forecast grow 1 percent year enthusiasm putin strong political analysts say could result weak election turnout reuters reporters observed vote six polling stations sunday six reporters found discrepancies varying sizes official vote tally number voters reporters counted reporters present entire voting day except one place reporter missed start initially allowed kremlin spokesman dmitry peskov immediately respond requests comments story however peskov conference call reporters monday said vote showed people trust putin said zero tolerance fraud reports violations election rules dealt swiftly citing election commission data said volume complaints previous elections cases complaints secondary issues united russias party headquarters statement sent reuters said gave orders anyone stuff ballots falsify results said violations would examined election commissions law broken responsible would punished six polling stations reuters reporters visited three regions thousands polling stations operating russia sunday events offer small snapshot happened reuters reporters unable assess practices widespread whether material bearing outcome election opinion polls consistently show united russia support russian party golos nongovernmental organization whose volunteers monitored voting 36 regions said late monday received reports 825 violations election rules included multiple reports inflated turnout figures ballotstuffing however ngo said violations compared previous elections russias central election commission asked discrepancies witnessed reuters immediately respond ella pamfilova chair commission told news conference polls closed irregularities reported commission would investigated threats polling station 333 located education college vladikavkaz capital north ossetia region voters sunday electing new regional parliament lyutikov throughout day works aide vadim suanov united russia deputy outgoing north ossetia regional legislature according legislatures website suanov running reelection sunday told reuters knew nothing employee polling station lyutikov cast ballot first hours voting later inserted ballot papers 10 times according reuters witnesses lyutikov told reuters reporter document ballot box threatening break mobile phone pictures video footage deleted one point showed reporter passport name sergei ivanovich lyutikov date birth april 17 1984 approaching ballot box sight yelena khadonova chair election commission polling station no333 asked lyutikovs actions said nothing comment havent seen anything home voting parliamentary election last september reuters reporters several polling stations found cases inflated turnout ballotstuffing russia election chiefs said would investigate police launched investigation sundays vote kremlin candidates track win 16 regions governors elected according preliminary results six regions parliaments elected including north ossetia united russia comfortable first place united russia less dominant municipal elections parts moscow support opposition candidates traditionally stronger another location polling station 618 belgorod region reuters reporter accompanied election officials visits voters houses administer home voting number home voters equal quarter voted polling station russias electoral rules voting home reserved cases voter specifically requested visit health reasons unable make polling station kremlin opponents independent monitors say home voting open abuse subject scrutiny voting polling station monitors several parties journalists often present despite rule home voting offered request several people visited election officials homes said asked vote home election officials entered houses without knocking door one man sixties smoking cigarette backyard election officials arrived first build road well talk told officials pointing bumpy path leading house denied asked come still cast vote officials said relative neighbor may made request behalf course two hours reporter officials times collected 14 filled ballot papers officials returned polling station 18 filled ballot papers officials made trip said tally correct head election commission polling station 618 lyubov grushko said difference numbers provocative issue wont discuss | 688 |
<p>“This is the best job in the world,” says veteran radio personality <a href="http://variety.com/t/elvis-duran/" type="external">Elvis Duran</a> as the iHeartRadio Music Festival kicked off its 2017 edition on Friday night. Staring down a packed interview schedule that includes practically every big name appearing on stage and off – <a href="http://variety.com/t/miley-cyrus/" type="external">Miley Cyrus</a>, Kesha, <a href="http://variety.com/t/pink/" type="external">Pink</a>, Lorde, Harry Styles and <a href="http://variety.com/t/dj-khaled/" type="external">DJ Khaled</a>, among many others – if Elvis Duran is sweating, he’s not showing it. As smooth and personable on-air as he is behind the scenes, it’s no wonder artists gravitate to his morning show on New York’s Z-100.</p>
<p>“I love music, all different types, [but] interviewing new and upcoming artists are my favorite thing,” says Duran, who allowed Variety to shadow him for the two-day concert. “To meet an artist when they first start out is like having a seat on the 50-yard line and watching them get a touchdown. … The Weeknd, Pink, Harry Styles, Lorde, Miley Cyrus, Niall Horan, Kesha — these are all artists I interviewed back before anyone knew who they were. To watch them turn into these superstars is just amazing. They are like my kids.”</p>
<p>The feeling is clearly mutual. Upon stepping into the iHeartRadio broadcast studio, where Duran and co-host Danielle Monaro held court – alongside iHeart personalities Bobby Bones of The Big 98, The Breakfast Club’s DJ Envy and Angela Yee, and Charlamagne the God of Power 105.1 — Miley Cyrus came with a confession: “Elvis my favorite to talk to. … You are really number one, but I am not allowed to say that.”</p>
<p>But Duran is as cool and welcoming to all – from a contest winner to the biggest of stars – aided by a well-oiled machine of iHeart staffers Jennifer Leimgruber, EVP of entertainment programming for Premiere Networks, Dennis Clark, VP of talent development, national programming group, Elizabeth Fazio, director of talent engagement, and Steven Levine of the Elvis Duran Group, who handled bookings and publicity for the Las Vegas event.</p>
<p>Pink is first to enter the radio ring, greeting the room with a, “Hey, y’all.” Duran reminds the singer that her very first time taking flight was at the <a href="http://variety.com/t/iheartradio-festival/" type="external">iHeartRadio festival</a> in 2012 – later on, Harry Styles would joke that he too wanted to fly over the T-Mobile arena crowd, but that Pink stole his harness.</p>
<p />
<p>The One Direction alum in equally charming – and dashing, wearing a red checkered custom Gucci suit, which the iHeart social media team promptly alongside an image of Mike Myers as Austin Powers. Who wore it best? Within seconds, Duran takes the information straight to the airwaves and invites fans to share their thoughts with a hashtag.</p>
<p>Also dressed to impress is 30 Seconds to Mars frontman Jared Leto, who iHeart chairman and CEO Bob Pittman notes, “looked like he was ready for Burning Man” (the executive attends the desert happening every year). Radio is a medium that Leto and his brother, Shannon, will always be loyal to. “I think that radio is a huge and important piece of the puzzle,” Leto tells Variety. “We grew up on radio. We discovered bands like Zeppelin and Pink Floyd and The Who and Kajagoogoo. I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say that radio changed our lives.”</p>
<p>With the show in progress in the arena, Duran continues the broadcast throughout the night and pulls off two more interviews with Big Time Rush alum and Macy’s IHeartRadio Rising Star James Maslow and Bebe Rexha, previewing her two forthcoming Saturday appearances before her surprise appearance later that night with French DJ <a href="http://variety.com/t/david-guetta/" type="external">David Guetta</a>. Although Guetta’s on-air interview is with iHeartradio personality Enrique, he saunters over to Duran, who grills him on the spot. Duran can’t help himself. He is naturally curious.</p>
<p>“I think interviews are good when you are an actual fan of the person you are interviewing,” he says.</p>
<p>The next day, Duran is up bright and early and in a van leading himself and the rest of the crew to the Daytime Village for an afternoon of music. It is here that Duran mingles with fans from all over in a set up complete with artificial turf, a comfortable viewing area with tables, drinks and an open view of the stage. It’s from there that the staff watches country star Kelsea Ballerini and rising star Khalid—who will later surprise the crowd joining Lorde as an on-stage guest—entertain a young and eager crowd.</p>
<p>Speaking to Variety backstage, Ballerini recalled, “Hearing ‘Stupid Boy’ by Keith Urban and stopping in my tracks, thinking that is the kind of music I want to write — something that is so striking that when you hear it, you stop and you listen.”</p>
<p>Duran has several introductions to make during the Daytime Village portion of the festival, including Bebe Rexha, who would be joined by Louis Tomlinson for a surprise performance of their current single, “Next to You,” and Noah Cyrus, who is so excited to see Duran that she rushes down the side stage stairs to give him a big hug and a scoop — she adopted a puppy from the puppy adoption tent.</p>
<p>Backstage, All Time Low singer Alex Gaskarth sings Duran’s praises after the band’s well received set. “He came on board early and was such a supporter of us coming into this new world,” he says. “He has been there for a while, waving the flag and we appreciate that. “</p>
<p>It’s almost 3:30, and Duran needs to rush back to the hotel and pack, as the host has to catch a red-eye back to New York after the Saturday evening show. He and the crew are whisked off the grounds and promptly back at the T-Mobile Arena at 5 p.m., where make-up maestro Barbara Batterman is waiting to apply her magic.</p>
<p />
<p>By 6 p.m., Duran already has a Kesha interview in the can, then has to set off to Lorde’s dressing room for a private one-on-one. Fifteen minutes later, he’s back in the broadcast studio to record a live break with Bones as he awaits an interview with a hoarse Julia Michaels. “I am so proud of you,” Duran says, joking that he was “speaking so much because you can’t.”</p>
<p>The parade of artists entering the broadcasting booth continues, with Niall Horan celebrating his song, “Slow Hands”—reaching No. 1 on the Top 40 radio charts — and Cyrus, decked in a banging white lace get-up adorned with red hearts for the occasion, joking that she’ll “get dumped” by fiancé Liam Hemsworth if she brings another animal home, like the puppy she was cradling.</p>
<p />
<p>The good vibes won’t stop as DJ Khaled fills the room with a giant posse. “I’m grateful to touch the stage,” says the rapper, who will later bring out Travis Scott, Demi Lovato, and Quavo for his closing set.</p>
<p>By 9:30 p.m., it’s time to head over to the Green Room to meet “Scream Queens” star Keke Palmer, looking stunning in red. The two share some laughs and grab a photo before being escorted to the stage, where they stepped out in front of tens of thousands to introduce Horan as the number one artist in America.</p>
<p>With that, Duran returns to the backstage area for a few more on-air breaks and quick goodbyes to the team, but not before wrapping the show with a little IHeartRadio family love: KIIS-FM and “American Idol” host Ryan Seacrest.</p>
<p />
<p>As Duran gets ready to catch the red-eye out of Vegas (“I miss my puppy and I miss my guy,” he says), he takes a moment to acknowledge those who have been there throughout the entire weekend.</p>
<p>“To be honest, I do very little,” he downplays to Variety. “I have to buy clothes to wear on the stage and on camera, that’s all I do. The people who work with us year-round are the ones who put this together. They produce it, they write all our artist information and they prep us for every break. I can’t take credit for it. I just show up. I really do.”</p> | false | 1 | best job world says veteran radio personality elvis duran iheartradio music festival kicked 2017 edition friday night staring packed interview schedule includes practically every big name appearing stage miley cyrus kesha pink lorde harry styles dj khaled among many others elvis duran sweating hes showing smooth personable onair behind scenes wonder artists gravitate morning show new yorks z100 love music different types interviewing new upcoming artists favorite thing says duran allowed variety shadow twoday concert meet artist first start like seat 50yard line watching get touchdown weeknd pink harry styles lorde miley cyrus niall horan kesha artists interviewed back anyone knew watch turn superstars amazing like kids feeling clearly mutual upon stepping iheartradio broadcast studio duran cohost danielle monaro held court alongside iheart personalities bobby bones big 98 breakfast clubs dj envy angela yee charlamagne god power 1051 miley cyrus came confession elvis favorite talk really number one allowed say duran cool welcoming contest winner biggest stars aided welloiled machine iheart staffers jennifer leimgruber evp entertainment programming premiere networks dennis clark vp talent development national programming group elizabeth fazio director talent engagement steven levine elvis duran group handled bookings publicity las vegas event pink first enter radio ring greeting room hey yall duran reminds singer first time taking flight iheartradio festival 2012 later harry styles would joke wanted fly tmobile arena crowd pink stole harness one direction alum equally charming dashing wearing red checkered custom gucci suit iheart social media team promptly alongside image mike myers austin powers wore best within seconds duran takes information straight airwaves invites fans share thoughts hashtag also dressed impress 30 seconds mars frontman jared leto iheart chairman ceo bob pittman notes looked like ready burning man executive attends desert happening every year radio medium leto brother shannon always loyal think radio huge important piece puzzle leto tells variety grew radio discovered bands like zeppelin pink floyd kajagoogoo dont think overstatement say radio changed lives show progress arena duran continues broadcast throughout night pulls two interviews big time rush alum macys iheartradio rising star james maslow bebe rexha previewing two forthcoming saturday appearances surprise appearance later night french dj david guetta although guettas onair interview iheartradio personality enrique saunters duran grills spot duran cant help naturally curious think interviews good actual fan person interviewing says next day duran bright early van leading rest crew daytime village afternoon music duran mingles fans set complete artificial turf comfortable viewing area tables drinks open view stage staff watches country star kelsea ballerini rising star khalidwho later surprise crowd joining lorde onstage guestentertain young eager crowd speaking variety backstage ballerini recalled hearing stupid boy keith urban stopping tracks thinking kind music want write something striking hear stop listen duran several introductions make daytime village portion festival including bebe rexha would joined louis tomlinson surprise performance current single next noah cyrus excited see duran rushes side stage stairs give big hug scoop adopted puppy puppy adoption tent backstage time low singer alex gaskarth sings durans praises bands well received set came board early supporter us coming new world says waving flag appreciate almost 330 duran needs rush back hotel pack host catch redeye back new york saturday evening show crew whisked grounds promptly back tmobile arena 5 pm makeup maestro barbara batterman waiting apply magic 6 pm duran already kesha interview set lordes dressing room private oneonone fifteen minutes later hes back broadcast studio record live break bones awaits interview hoarse julia michaels proud duran says joking speaking much cant parade artists entering broadcasting booth continues niall horan celebrating song slow handsreaching 1 top 40 radio charts cyrus decked banging white lace getup adorned red hearts occasion joking shell get dumped fiancé liam hemsworth brings another animal home like puppy cradling good vibes wont stop dj khaled fills room giant posse im grateful touch stage says rapper later bring travis scott demi lovato quavo closing set 930 pm time head green room meet scream queens star keke palmer looking stunning red two share laughs grab photo escorted stage stepped front tens thousands introduce horan number one artist america duran returns backstage area onair breaks quick goodbyes team wrapping show little iheartradio family love kiisfm american idol host ryan seacrest duran gets ready catch redeye vegas miss puppy miss guy says takes moment acknowledge throughout entire weekend honest little downplays variety buy clothes wear stage camera thats people work us yearround ones put together produce write artist information prep us every break cant take credit show really | 746 |
<p>Michael Strahan, Robin Roberts and George Stephanopoulos opened Monday’s broadcast of “ <a href="http://variety.com/t/good-morning-america/" type="external">Good Morning America</a>” laughing over the strains of a 1972 King Harvest tune about dancing in the moonlight – a teaser for a segment about a bright phenomenon known as a “supermoon.”</p>
<p>The trio is supposed to smile. This is, after all, morning television. But things taking place in the world of A.M. TV are enough to set the hosts at all the shows gritting their teeth.</p>
<p>ABC’s sunrise program is the most watched in the nation, and has been locked in a battle for dominance with NBC’s “Today” for several years. “GMA” regularly wins the most viewers while the NBC staple commands the greatest amount of those Madison Avenue cares about, people between the ages of 25 and 54. Recent events could give “GMA” an edge in that ongoing skirmish – even as the A.M. battle has moved to other fronts. The morning-TV terrain has shifted so fast it’s fair to wonder if any of the shows can maintain command over the long haul.</p>
<p>At a time when President Trump’s early-morning tweets can set the news cycle on its head, TV’s morning shows are being forced to adjust, said Nikki Usher, an associate professor at George Washington University who studies the evolution of news. &#160;“The world is in a very intense moment.”</p>
<p>And so too are TV’s morning mainstays.</p>
<p>Two of the biggest programs in the daypart are without two of their best-known anchors. <a href="http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/nbc-fires-matt-lauer-today-sexual-harassment-1202625608/" type="external">Matt Lauer was ousted from “Today” last week</a>, and <a href="http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/cbs-fires-charlie-rose-1202620661/" type="external">Charlie Rose, fired from “CBS This Morning”</a> last month – both in the wake of allegations of sexual-harassment being leveled against them. In separate statements, the former hosts expressed regret for certain actions while suggesting some accusations were not accurate. At the same time, the broadcast programs are losing viewers. Cable’s morning shows are digging deeply into current events in more avuncular fashion. But the broadcast anchors must appeal to the broadest audience possible, making it hard to engage in <a href="http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/cnn-new-day-chris-cuomo-alisyn-camerota-1202004220/" type="external">the 20-minute long arguments Chris Cuomo has with Trump administration officials</a> on CNN’s “ <a href="http://variety.com/t/new-day/" type="external">New Day</a>,” or hurl derision at the White House as Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough do on “Morning Joe.”&#160; Trump’s affinity for Fox News Channel makes that network the most likely to get access to the president, giving that outlet a leg up on generating headlines.</p>
<p>In the current era, “people don’t want to go into work and get around the water-cooler and talk about movies or what they are going to get for Christmas,” said Usher. “Morning shows are great for easing people into the morning, but today, easing into the morning is a different kind of easing.”</p>
<p>As the shows grapple with viewers’ increased attention to U.S. politics and world affairs, they must also focus on each other. <a href="http://variety.com/2014/tv/news/today-vs-good-morning-america-duel-1201280481/" type="external">While many people focus on “Good Morning America” and “Today,”</a> <a href="http://variety.com/2015/tv/news/cbs-this-morning-tv-news-charlie-rose-1201630178/" type="external">CBS has become competitive in the morning for the first time in years</a>, and the cable programs are taking on new authority. In TV-news circles, producers and anchors are all trying to figure out who NBC might put in place at “Today” opposite <a href="http://variety.com/t/savannah-guthrie/" type="external">Savannah Guthrie</a>, and who might join <a href="http://variety.com/t/gayle-king/" type="external">Gayle King</a> and Norah O’Donnell at “ <a href="http://variety.com/t/cbs-this-morning/" type="external">CBS This Morning</a>.” And of course, they have another question: &#160;Might those shows’ audiences wander elsewhere based on those decisions?</p>
<p>Millions of dollars in ad revenue are at stake, along with a broader profile for news divisions at ABC, NBC, and CBS, or the eyeballs at the big three cable networks: Fox News Channel, MSNBC and CNN. &#160;The first two hours of “Today” alone captured more than $500 million in advertising in 2016, according to Kantar, a tracker of ad spending.</p>
<p>Most anchor changes don’t affect ratings levels, said Brian Hughes, senior vice president of audience intelligence at Magna, the Interpublic Group-owned media buying and research unit. “It would be impossible to separate any impact from the organic viewing changes that are already occurring,” he said.</p>
<p>But some TV-news executives sense a growing new battle for viewer attention. &#160;Already, executives at Fox News Channel are mulling the launch of a promotional campaign to lure “Today” viewers to “Fox &amp; Friends,” according to a person familiar with the matter. Meanwhile, executives at another news outlet are telling on-air staffers who might have hopes of joining the NBC or CBS programs that there’s no way anyone will be let out of a current contract.</p>
<p>At CBS, executives don’t feel immediate pressure to fill Rose’s seat, according to a person familiar with the situation. Rose was absent from “ <a href="http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/charlie-rose-sexual-harassment-news-cbs-employees-1202621478/" type="external">CBS This Morning</a>” for part of February and March of this year owing to heart surgery, and the ratings for the show during that time did not create alarm, this person said.</p>
<p>The network appears willing to consider all options for a replacement, including an outsider or a current staffer. Under David Rhodes, <a href="http://variety.com/t/cbs-news/" type="external">CBS News</a>’ president, the network has leaned towards inside promotions, as recently seen when <a href="http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/jeff-glor-cbs-evening-news-anchor-1202608646/" type="external">Jeff Glor was named to replace Scott Pelley at “CBS Evening News.”</a> Vladmir Duthiers, Bianna Golodryga and John Dickerson are among the <a href="http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/advertising-matt-lauer-charlie-rose-tv-1202626337/" type="external">CBS News</a> staffers slated to fill in on “CBS This Morning.”</p>
<p>Rhodes on one occasion seemed willing to give a new face a chance, when he hired Josh Elliott to work at streaming-news outlet CBSN. CBS News and Elliott parted ways <a href="http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/josh-elliott-cbs-news-cbsn-1201986773/" type="external">under unusual circumstances</a> earlier this year. Leaving the evening-news job open for several weeks after Pelley’s departure may also have sparked new candidates to reach out to the news unit. &#160;CBS News declined to make executives available for comment.</p>
<p>NBC has an event coming up that could buoy a new face at “Today.” NBCUniversal’s coverage of the Winter Olympics is expected to be massive – more than 2,400 hours of coverage in all – and the morning show typically broadcasts from wherever the global games are being held. The Olympics typically give a ratings boost to “Today,” so a new anchor would get much more exposure and could spark new attention for the show.</p>
<p>Whether NBC News can pivot from wrestling with the aftermath of Lauer’s unsavory ouster to filling his role quickly remains to be seen. Hoda Kotb has been anchoring alongside <a href="http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/savannah-guthrie-announces-matt-lauer-firing-video-1202625849/" type="external">Savannah Guthrie</a> in recent days and Kotb, Willie Geist and Craig Melvin are seen as potential candidates for consideration. NBC News declined to make executives available for comment.</p>
<p>As TV-news staffers gaze at those prime anchor jobs, audiences are viewing the daypart a little differently.</p>
<p>ABC, NBC and CBS continue to command the biggest audiences at wake-up time. “GMA” and “Today” each woo more than 4 million people on average, while “CBS This Morning” gets more than 3.5 million. Cable’s morning audience is smaller. Through November 30, “Fox &amp; Friends” captured an average of 1.59 million; “Morning Joe” 964,000; and CNN’s “ <a href="http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/cnn-new-day-chris-cuomo-alisyn-camerota-jeff-zucker-1202467272/" type="external">New Day</a>” 632,000.</p>
<p>But the crowd advertisers favor most is soaring at the cable shows. “Fox &amp; Friends’” viewership among people between 25 and 54 is up 32% to 367,000 through November 30. The audience in the demo has risen 41% at CNN’s “New Day,” to 227,000. And the category is up 32% at MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” to 223,000, according to Nielsen.</p>
<p>The broadcast networks have shed a slice of that audience. Viewership in the demo is off 12% at “GMA” to 1.36 million; down 15% at “Today” to 1.52 million; and off 10% at CBS to 962,000, according to Nielsen.</p>
<p>The broadcast networks have an opportunity as well. The departures of Lauer and Rose give NBC and CBS the chance to shake things up and recalibrate their programs for current demands. New techniques can lend the decades-old shows a new look and feel. <a href="http://variety.com/2016/tv/news/good-morning-america-michael-strahan-live-audience-1201846717/" type="external">ABC has radically transformed the second hour of “Good Morning America”</a> by letting fans come and sit in the studio, and interact with hosts like Strahan and Lara Spencer.</p>
<p>The shows depend less on one or two people than they did in the 1970s and 1980s. “CBS This Morning” has had three co-anchors since it relaunched in 2012, and “ <a href="http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/terry-crews-groped-adam-venit-details-1202615483/" type="external">Good Morning America</a>” these days opens with a trio as well. Many of the programs have a bevy of longtime personnel, including Al Roker at “Today” or Amy Robach and Ginger Zee at “GMA” that viewers often embrace as part of a TV family.</p>
<p>“These shows have so many cast members that any one of them is less important to the show compared to 20 and 30 years ago,” said Larry Chiagouris, a professor of marketing at Pace Univeristy. Even so, he acknowledged, new faces at NBC and CBS could spark new interest in their morning programs.</p>
<p>If that’s the case, the “Good Morning America” anchors may want to watch their choice of music in the days to come. Morning anchors who do too much dancing in the moonlight might be too weary to do battle in the dawn.</p> | false | 1 | michael strahan robin roberts george stephanopoulos opened mondays broadcast good morning america laughing strains 1972 king harvest tune dancing moonlight teaser segment bright phenomenon known supermoon trio supposed smile morning television things taking place world tv enough set hosts shows gritting teeth abcs sunrise program watched nation locked battle dominance nbcs today several years gma regularly wins viewers nbc staple commands greatest amount madison avenue cares people ages 25 54 recent events could give gma edge ongoing skirmish even battle moved fronts morningtv terrain shifted fast fair wonder shows maintain command long haul time president trumps earlymorning tweets set news cycle head tvs morning shows forced adjust said nikki usher associate professor george washington university studies evolution news 160the world intense moment tvs morning mainstays two biggest programs daypart without two bestknown anchors matt lauer ousted today last week charlie rose fired cbs morning last month wake allegations sexualharassment leveled separate statements former hosts expressed regret certain actions suggesting accusations accurate time broadcast programs losing viewers cables morning shows digging deeply current events avuncular fashion broadcast anchors must appeal broadest audience possible making hard engage 20minute long arguments chris cuomo trump administration officials cnns new day hurl derision white house mika brzezinski joe scarborough morning joe160 trumps affinity fox news channel makes network likely get access president giving outlet leg generating headlines current era people dont want go work get around watercooler talk movies going get christmas said usher morning shows great easing people morning today easing morning different kind easing shows grapple viewers increased attention us politics world affairs must also focus many people focus good morning america today cbs become competitive morning first time years cable programs taking new authority tvnews circles producers anchors trying figure nbc might put place today opposite savannah guthrie might join gayle king norah odonnell cbs morning course another question 160might shows audiences wander elsewhere based decisions millions dollars ad revenue stake along broader profile news divisions abc nbc cbs eyeballs big three cable networks fox news channel msnbc cnn 160the first two hours today alone captured 500 million advertising 2016 according kantar tracker ad spending anchor changes dont affect ratings levels said brian hughes senior vice president audience intelligence magna interpublic groupowned media buying research unit would impossible separate impact organic viewing changes already occurring said tvnews executives sense growing new battle viewer attention 160already executives fox news channel mulling launch promotional campaign lure today viewers fox amp friends according person familiar matter meanwhile executives another news outlet telling onair staffers might hopes joining nbc cbs programs theres way anyone let current contract cbs executives dont feel immediate pressure fill roses seat according person familiar situation rose absent cbs morning part february march year owing heart surgery ratings show time create alarm person said network appears willing consider options replacement including outsider current staffer david rhodes cbs news president network leaned towards inside promotions recently seen jeff glor named replace scott pelley cbs evening news vladmir duthiers bianna golodryga john dickerson among cbs news staffers slated fill cbs morning rhodes one occasion seemed willing give new face chance hired josh elliott work streamingnews outlet cbsn cbs news elliott parted ways unusual circumstances earlier year leaving eveningnews job open several weeks pelleys departure may also sparked new candidates reach news unit 160cbs news declined make executives available comment nbc event coming could buoy new face today nbcuniversals coverage winter olympics expected massive 2400 hours coverage morning show typically broadcasts wherever global games held olympics typically give ratings boost today new anchor would get much exposure could spark new attention show whether nbc news pivot wrestling aftermath lauers unsavory ouster filling role quickly remains seen hoda kotb anchoring alongside savannah guthrie recent days kotb willie geist craig melvin seen potential candidates consideration nbc news declined make executives available comment tvnews staffers gaze prime anchor jobs audiences viewing daypart little differently abc nbc cbs continue command biggest audiences wakeup time gma today woo 4 million people average cbs morning gets 35 million cables morning audience smaller november 30 fox amp friends captured average 159 million morning joe 964000 cnns new day 632000 crowd advertisers favor soaring cable shows fox amp friends viewership among people 25 54 32 367000 november 30 audience demo risen 41 cnns new day 227000 category 32 msnbcs morning joe 223000 according nielsen broadcast networks shed slice audience viewership demo 12 gma 136 million 15 today 152 million 10 cbs 962000 according nielsen broadcast networks opportunity well departures lauer rose give nbc cbs chance shake things recalibrate programs current demands new techniques lend decadesold shows new look feel abc radically transformed second hour good morning america letting fans come sit studio interact hosts like strahan lara spencer shows depend less one two people 1970s 1980s cbs morning three coanchors since relaunched 2012 good morning america days opens trio well many programs bevy longtime personnel including al roker today amy robach ginger zee gma viewers often embrace part tv family shows many cast members one less important show compared 20 30 years ago said larry chiagouris professor marketing pace univeristy even acknowledged new faces nbc cbs could spark new interest morning programs thats case good morning america anchors may want watch choice music days come morning anchors much dancing moonlight might weary battle dawn | 881 |
<p>There are no major surprises among 108 players and coaches announced Tuesday as nominees for the Pro Football Hall of Fame’s 2018 class. But that won’t prevent plenty of fireworks when the Selection Committee convenes Saturday, February 3, 2018 in Minneapolis, Minn.</p>
<p>A quick poll of fellow selectors indicates only one apparent slam dunk for the Class of 2018, former <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Baltimore-Ravens/" type="external">Baltimore Ravens</a> linebacker <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Ray_Lewis/" type="external">Ray Lewis</a>.</p>
<p>He and prolific wide receiver <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Randy_Moss/" type="external">Randy Moss</a> are among 11 first-year eligible stars who are on the list. Moss and linebacker <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Brian_Urlacher/" type="external">Brian Urlacher</a> are potential first-year inductees, but not a sure thing.</p>
<p>While many consider Moss a slam dunk, the path into the Hall of Fame is a difficult one, especially for wide receivers with any notable negativity during their NFL career.</p>
<p>That was certainly the case for <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Terrell_Owens/" type="external">Terrell Owens</a>, who is one of 10 finalists returning from the 2017 selection process. Owens apparently lost votes because he was thought to be a difficult teammate, evidenced by being released by multiple teams during his prime. Although Moss is well-liked now, during the middle of his career he all but admitted he didn’t play his best all the time.</p>
<p>The thought of those two controversial receivers being in the selection room at the same time has loomed as potential high drama for several years. When Owens failed to be inducted last year, the stage was set.</p>
<p>For those who may favor one over the other by any significant degree, there is this to consider:</p>
<p>Owens played 219 games (1998-2010), caught 1,078 passes for 15,934 yards and scored 156 touchdowns (three rushing). Moss played 218 games (1998-2012), caught 982 passes for 15,292 yards and scored 156 touchdowns. So, statistics will not separate these two and numbers obviously don’t tell the whole story.</p>
<p>Other first-year eligible nominees: Wide receivers <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Donald_Driver/" type="external">Donald Driver</a>, Randy Moss, <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Steve_Smith/" type="external">Steve Smith</a> (from Giants, Eagles, Rams — not Steve Smith Sr. of Panthers/Ravens who retired last year; offensive linemen Matt Birk (C), <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Steve_Hutchinson/" type="external">Steve Hutchinson</a> (G), <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Jeff_Saturday/" type="external">Jeff Saturday</a> (C); defensive linemen <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Richard_Seymour/" type="external">Richard Seymour</a> (DT), <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Kyle_Vanden_Bosch/" type="external">Kyle Vanden Bosch</a> (DE); defensive back <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Ronde_Barber/" type="external">Ronde Barber</a> (CB/S).</p>
<p>Other finalists from last year returning as nominees: Wide receiver <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Isaac_Bruce/" type="external">Isaac Bruce</a>; offensive linemen Tony Boselli (T), <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Alan_Faneca/" type="external">Alan Faneca</a> (G), Joe Jacoby (T), <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Kevin_Mawae/" type="external">Kevin Mawae</a> (C/G); defensive backs <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Brian_Dawkins/" type="external">Brian Dawkins</a> (SS), Ty Law (CB), <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/John-Lynch/" type="external">John Lynch</a> (S); coach Don Coryell</p>
<p>The full list will be reduced to 18 finalists by Super Bowl week and presented to the full 48-member Pro Football Hall of Fame selection committee on selection Saturday. The finalists will consist of 15 modern-era finalists, the recently named senior finalists, Robert Brazile and Jerry Kramer, and the contributor finalist, Bobby Beathard.</p>
<p>The full list of modern-era nominees (*indicates finalist for 2017 class):</p>
<p>–QUARTERBACKS (5): Randall Cunningham, <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Rich-Gannon/" type="external">Rich Gannon</a>, <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Donovan_McNabb/" type="external">Donovan McNabb</a>, <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Steve_McNair/" type="external">Steve McNair</a>, <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Phil-Simms/" type="external">Phil Simms</a></p>
<p>–RUNNING BACKS (10): <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Tiki_Barber/" type="external">Tiki Barber</a>, Earnest Byner, Roger Craig, <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Corey_Dillon/" type="external">Corey Dillon</a>, <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Eddie_George/" type="external">Eddie George</a>, <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Edgerrin_James/" type="external">Edgerrin James</a>, <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Lorenzo_Neal/" type="external">Lorenzo Neal</a>, <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Fred_Taylor/" type="external">Fred Taylor</a>, <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Herschel_Walker/" type="external">Herschel Walker</a> (also KR), Ricky Watters</p>
<p>–WIDE RECEIVERS (13): *Isaac Bruce, Donald Driver, Henry Ellard (also PR), <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Torry_Holt/" type="external">Torry Holt</a>, <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Chad_Johnson/" type="external">Chad Johnson</a>, Randy Moss, *Terrell Owens, <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Sterling_Sharpe/" type="external">Sterling Sharpe</a>, <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Jimmy_Smith/" type="external">Jimmy Smith</a>, <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Rod_Smith/" type="external">Rod Smith</a>, Steve Smith, <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/John_Taylor/" type="external">John Taylor</a>, <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Hines_Ward/" type="external">Hines Ward</a></p>
<p>–TIGHT END (4): Mark Bavaro, Ben Coates, Ferrell Edmunds, Jay Novacek</p>
<p>–OFFENSIVE LINEMEN (21): <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Willie_Anderson/" type="external">Willie Anderson</a> (T), Matt Birk (C), *Tony Boselli (T), Lomas Brown (T), Ruben Brown (G), Ray Donaldson (C), *Alan Faneca (G), Bill Fralic (G/T), Jay Hilgenberg (C), Chris Hinton (G/T), Kent Hull (C), Steve Hutchinson (G), *Joe Jacoby (T), Mike Kenn (T), *Kevin Mawae (C/G), Tom Nalen (C), Nate Newton (G), Bart Oates (C), Jeff Saturday (C), Richmond Webb (T), Steve Wisniewski (G)</p>
<p>–DEFENSIVE LINEMEN (11): La’Roi Glover (DT/NT), Leonard Marshall (DE/DT), Keith Millard (DT/NT/DE), Leslie O’Neal (DE), Michael Dean Perry (DT/DE), Simeon Rice (DE), Richard Seymour (DT), <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Neil_Smith/" type="external">Neil Smith</a> (DE), Greg Townsend (DE/NT/LB), Kyle Vanden Bosch (DE), Bryant Young (DT)</p>
<p>–LINEBACKERS (15): Carl Banks, Cornelius Bennett, <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Tedy_Bruschi/" type="external">Tedy Bruschi</a>, Seth Joyner, Ray Lewis, Greg Lloyd, Wilber Marshall, <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Clay-Matthews/" type="external">Clay Matthews</a>, <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Willie_McGinest/" type="external">Willie McGinest</a> (also DE), Karl Mecklenburg, Sam Mills, <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Joey_Porter/" type="external">Joey Porter</a>, Darryl Talley, <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Zach_Thomas/" type="external">Zach Thomas</a>, Brian Urlacher</p>
<p>–DEFENSIVE BACKS (12): <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Eric_Allen/" type="external">Eric Allen</a> (CB), Steve Atwater (S), Ronde Barber (CB/S), LeRoy Butler (S), *Brian Dawkins (SS), <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Rodney_Harrison/" type="external">Rodney Harrison</a> (S), *Ty Law (CB), Albert Lewis (CB), *John Lynch (S), <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Dennis_Smith/" type="external">Dennis Smith</a> (S), Everson Walls (CB), Darren Woodson (S)</p>
<p>–KICKERS/PUNTER (3): Gary Anderson (K), <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Sean_Landeta/" type="external">Sean Landeta</a> (P), Nick Lowery (K)</p>
<p>–SPECIAL TEAMS (2): <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Brian_Mitchell/" type="external">Brian Mitchell</a> (KR/PR also RB), Steve Tasker (coverage, also WR)</p>
<p>–COACHES (12): *Don Coryell, <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Bill_Cowher/" type="external">Bill Cowher</a>, Tom Flores, <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Mike_Holmgren/" type="external">Mike Holmgren</a>, <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Jimmy_Johnson/" type="external">Jimmy Johnson</a>, Chuck Knox, Buddy Parker, Richie Petitbon, <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Dan_Reeves/" type="external">Dan Reeves</a>, Marty Schottenheimer, Clark Shaughnessy, Dick Vermeil</p>
<p>— <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Frank-Cooney/" type="external">Frank Cooney</a>, founder and publisher of The Sports Xchange and NFLDraftScout.com, is in his sixth decade covering <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/John_Walker/" type="external">football</a> and third decade as a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame selection committee.</p> | false | 1 | major surprises among 108 players coaches announced tuesday nominees pro football hall fames 2018 class wont prevent plenty fireworks selection committee convenes saturday february 3 2018 minneapolis minn quick poll fellow selectors indicates one apparent slam dunk class 2018 former baltimore ravens linebacker ray lewis prolific wide receiver randy moss among 11 firstyear eligible stars list moss linebacker brian urlacher potential firstyear inductees sure thing many consider moss slam dunk path hall fame difficult one especially wide receivers notable negativity nfl career certainly case terrell owens one 10 finalists returning 2017 selection process owens apparently lost votes thought difficult teammate evidenced released multiple teams prime although moss wellliked middle career admitted didnt play best time thought two controversial receivers selection room time loomed potential high drama several years owens failed inducted last year stage set may favor one significant degree consider owens played 219 games 19982010 caught 1078 passes 15934 yards scored 156 touchdowns three rushing moss played 218 games 19982012 caught 982 passes 15292 yards scored 156 touchdowns statistics separate two numbers obviously dont tell whole story firstyear eligible nominees wide receivers donald driver randy moss steve smith giants eagles rams steve smith sr panthersravens retired last year offensive linemen matt birk c steve hutchinson g jeff saturday c defensive linemen richard seymour dt kyle vanden bosch de defensive back ronde barber cbs finalists last year returning nominees wide receiver isaac bruce offensive linemen tony boselli alan faneca g joe jacoby kevin mawae cg defensive backs brian dawkins ss ty law cb john lynch coach coryell full list reduced 18 finalists super bowl week presented full 48member pro football hall fame selection committee selection saturday finalists consist 15 modernera finalists recently named senior finalists robert brazile jerry kramer contributor finalist bobby beathard full list modernera nominees indicates finalist 2017 class quarterbacks 5 randall cunningham rich gannon donovan mcnabb steve mcnair phil simms running backs 10 tiki barber earnest byner roger craig corey dillon eddie george edgerrin james lorenzo neal fred taylor herschel walker also kr ricky watters wide receivers 13 isaac bruce donald driver henry ellard also pr torry holt chad johnson randy moss terrell owens sterling sharpe jimmy smith rod smith steve smith john taylor hines ward tight end 4 mark bavaro ben coates ferrell edmunds jay novacek offensive linemen 21 willie anderson matt birk c tony boselli lomas brown ruben brown g ray donaldson c alan faneca g bill fralic gt jay hilgenberg c chris hinton gt kent hull c steve hutchinson g joe jacoby mike kenn kevin mawae cg tom nalen c nate newton g bart oates c jeff saturday c richmond webb steve wisniewski g defensive linemen 11 laroi glover dtnt leonard marshall dedt keith millard dtntde leslie oneal de michael dean perry dtde simeon rice de richard seymour dt neil smith de greg townsend dentlb kyle vanden bosch de bryant young dt linebackers 15 carl banks cornelius bennett tedy bruschi seth joyner ray lewis greg lloyd wilber marshall clay matthews willie mcginest also de karl mecklenburg sam mills joey porter darryl talley zach thomas brian urlacher defensive backs 12 eric allen cb steve atwater ronde barber cbs leroy butler brian dawkins ss rodney harrison ty law cb albert lewis cb john lynch dennis smith everson walls cb darren woodson kickerspunter 3 gary anderson k sean landeta p nick lowery k special teams 2 brian mitchell krpr also rb steve tasker coverage also wr coaches 12 coryell bill cowher tom flores mike holmgren jimmy johnson chuck knox buddy parker richie petitbon dan reeves marty schottenheimer clark shaughnessy dick vermeil frank cooney founder publisher sports xchange nfldraftscoutcom sixth decade covering football third decade member pro football hall fame selection committee | 614 |
<p>The idea that left-liberalism now functions as a secular religion is not new. (I’ve taken it up, <a href="http://www.hoover.org/sites/default/files/uploads/documents/0817939628_29.pdf" type="external">here</a>, <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/education-week/360874/wannabe-oppressed-stanley-kurtz" type="external">here</a>, and <a href="http://www.nas.org/articles/ecologism_the_campus_cult_of_victimhood" type="external">here</a>.) But where do this new religion’s adherents receive their dogma? Movies, music, and television are important, but the real answer is college. The conclusion I draw from the National Association of Scholars’ (NAS) latest report, “ <a href="http://www.nas.org/articles/sustainability_higher_educations_new_fundamentalism1" type="external">Sustainability: Higher Education’s New Fundamentalism</a>,” is that many American colleges and universities have reverted to their 18th century mission. They have become divinity schools, training grounds for the new secular religion of left-liberalism, particularly its ecological variant.</p>
<p>Divinity schools are generally affiliated with a denomination. In the case of higher education’s “new fundamentalism,” that denominational affiliation is obviously the Democratic Party. This is what the NAS’s Sustainability Report won’t quite say (understandably, since NAS is a nonpartisan group). Yet it’s important to fill in this final step in the argument, because conservatives and Republicans still don’t get it. America’s colleges and universities are inculcating the eco-religion of “sustainability” as a roundabout way of turning their students into political partisans.</p>
<p>Between Obama’s ill-advised Iran deal, his unconstitutional immigration order, the chaotic Middle East, and any number of other policy kerfuffles, who has time to devote to “cultural” issues like the state of American higher education? When we do fix attention on campus follies like “trigger warnings,” it’s largely for amusement.</p>
<p>This is a mistake.&#160; Silly-seeming campus movements like fossil fuel divestment should be understood as more than mere policy proposals. Fossil-fuel divestment won’t likely happen and wouldn’t achieve its goal of shutting down America’s oil companies even if colleges did divest. Yet fossil-fuel divestment, like other aspects of the campus sustainability movement, is less about changing policy than about training minds, Democratic minds.</p>
<p>Sustainability activists are nominally critics of the Democratic Party. They march on Obama’s White House to force rejection of the Keystone pipeline, and occasionally work against Democratic officeholders unwilling to oppose projects like Keystone. Yet like Tom Steyer, who bankrolls their movement, campus sustainability activists are leading supporters of the Democratic Party and helped elect and re-elect President Obama. Harry Reid’s incessant railing against the Koch brothers during the run-up to the 2014 midterms, comic as it seemed, was a largely unsuccessful effort to push these young people to the polls. It didn’t work in 2014, but has a better chance of doing so in 2016, when some variant of an eco-scare campaign will surely be tried again.</p>
<p>If you want to see today’s Democrat divinity schools at work, have a look at Chapter 4 of the NAS “Sustainability” report, which explains how colleges nudge students to adopt a “sustainable” lifestyle and its accompanying ideology. Consider, for example, the widespread campus bans on bottled water. Supposedly, this is a simple step that a college can take to conserve resources and reduce waste. It will also strike many outsiders as a trivial issue. Yet campus bottled water bans are a form of practical ideological training by way of ritual self-abnegation. You forgo bottled water to prove your righteousness, rejecting in the process the pernicious folly of America’s economic system.</p>
<p>The NAS Sustainability Report highlights a popular eight-minute video (with over 3.5 million views) called “ <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Se12y9hSOM0" type="external">The Story of Bottled Water</a>.” &#160;That video presents the underlying rationale of the bans. It depicts the American society as a “system in crisis,” driven to destructive consumerism by selfish and manipulative capitalists. Businesses allegedly use seductive advertising to “manufacture demand” for things we don’t need, bottled water among them.</p>
<p>The Story of Bottled Water’s take on “manufactured demand” is unconvincing. Supposedly, businesses have scared consumers into buying bottled water by making them suspect the quality of their tap water. It could just as easily be&#160; <a href="http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2015/03/of-bottled-water-and-bobbled-heads.php" type="external">argued</a> that it was environmentalists themselves who scared the public into distrusting tap water. In any case, New York City is famous for the quality of its tap water.&#160; Last time I checked, New Yorkers were buying plenty of bottled water.</p>
<p>Bottled water is a fair topic for debate, but universities have no business weighing in institutionally on the issue. In doing so, they are effectively endorsing the sort of anti-capitalism pushed by The Story of Bottled Water. A university taking a stand on an issue so peripheral to its mission effectively repudiates the idea of college as the home to rational inquiry and debate. &#160;Can anyone doubt which party the graduates of these finishing schools will prefer?</p>
<p>Here’s a quote from Jim Geraghty’s latest “ <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/campaign-spot/416848/hillarys-debut-was-terrible-it-doesnt-matter-jim-geraghty" type="external">Morning Jolt</a>,” where he notes that Hillary Clinton begins with 183 electoral votes, however well or poorly she campaigns: “Credit the Democrats; they’ve built a political machine where the quality of candidate isn’t really a factor. Their base is going to show up and vote, no matter what.” The quality of candidate isn’t a factor, in part, because modern colleges and universities are churning out large numbers of graduates trained to treat Republicans as beyond the pale. Yet Republicans still don’t think of campuses as part of the Democratic political machine, and thus devote almost no time, thought, effort, or resources to fighting back.</p>
<p>While the battle for this country is far from lost, it’s high time that conservatives paid more attention to the supposedly fringe ideas now dominating our campuses, “sustainability” very much included. The fate of the bottled water industry is not at stake, but the minds and votes of a new generation of Americans are.</p>
<p>— Stanley Kurtz is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.</p> | false | 1 | idea leftliberalism functions secular religion new ive taken new religions adherents receive dogma movies music television important real answer college conclusion draw national association scholars nas latest report sustainability higher educations new fundamentalism many american colleges universities reverted 18th century mission become divinity schools training grounds new secular religion leftliberalism particularly ecological variant divinity schools generally affiliated denomination case higher educations new fundamentalism denominational affiliation obviously democratic party nass sustainability report wont quite say understandably since nas nonpartisan group yet important fill final step argument conservatives republicans still dont get americas colleges universities inculcating ecoreligion sustainability roundabout way turning students political partisans obamas illadvised iran deal unconstitutional immigration order chaotic middle east number policy kerfuffles time devote cultural issues like state american higher education fix attention campus follies like trigger warnings largely amusement mistake160 sillyseeming campus movements like fossil fuel divestment understood mere policy proposals fossilfuel divestment wont likely happen wouldnt achieve goal shutting americas oil companies even colleges divest yet fossilfuel divestment like aspects campus sustainability movement less changing policy training minds democratic minds sustainability activists nominally critics democratic party march obamas white house force rejection keystone pipeline occasionally work democratic officeholders unwilling oppose projects like keystone yet like tom steyer bankrolls movement campus sustainability activists leading supporters democratic party helped elect reelect president obama harry reids incessant railing koch brothers runup 2014 midterms comic seemed largely unsuccessful effort push young people polls didnt work 2014 better chance 2016 variant ecoscare campaign surely tried want see todays democrat divinity schools work look chapter 4 nas sustainability report explains colleges nudge students adopt sustainable lifestyle accompanying ideology consider example widespread campus bans bottled water supposedly simple step college take conserve resources reduce waste also strike many outsiders trivial issue yet campus bottled water bans form practical ideological training way ritual selfabnegation forgo bottled water prove righteousness rejecting process pernicious folly americas economic system nas sustainability report highlights popular eightminute video 35 million views called story bottled water 160that video presents underlying rationale bans depicts american society system crisis driven destructive consumerism selfish manipulative capitalists businesses allegedly use seductive advertising manufacture demand things dont need bottled water among story bottled waters take manufactured demand unconvincing supposedly businesses scared consumers buying bottled water making suspect quality tap water could easily be160 argued environmentalists scared public distrusting tap water case new york city famous quality tap water160 last time checked new yorkers buying plenty bottled water bottled water fair topic debate universities business weighing institutionally issue effectively endorsing sort anticapitalism pushed story bottled water university taking stand issue peripheral mission effectively repudiates idea college home rational inquiry debate 160can anyone doubt party graduates finishing schools prefer heres quote jim geraghtys latest morning jolt notes hillary clinton begins 183 electoral votes however well poorly campaigns credit democrats theyve built political machine quality candidate isnt really factor base going show vote matter quality candidate isnt factor part modern colleges universities churning large numbers graduates trained treat republicans beyond pale yet republicans still dont think campuses part democratic political machine thus devote almost time thought effort resources fighting back battle country far lost high time conservatives paid attention supposedly fringe ideas dominating campuses sustainability much included fate bottled water industry stake minds votes new generation americans stanley kurtz senior fellow ethics public policy center | 548 |
<p>Claims that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has twice now reversed his position on a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict illustrate the institutional myopia of mainstream American commentators, as well as how the media serves to manufacture consent for the US policy of supporting Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Download this paper (PDF)</a></p>
<p>When Benjamin Netanyahu declared this week that he would work to prevent a Palestinian state from being established if reelected as Israeli Prime Minister, the mainstream media described it as a “reversal” from a policy speech he gave in 2009, in which he ostensibly expressed support for a two-state solution. Then he insisted two days later that his policy view hasn’t changed, prompting mainstream commentators to accuse him of blatant inconsistency. A closer examination, however, reveals that this inconsistency is an invention of the media. The real lesson from this episode is in how well it illustrates the institutional myopia among mainstream commentators, and how the mainstream discussion serves only to perpetuate the illusions required to maintain US policy towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.</p>
<p>Certainly, when Netanyahu promised to prevent Palestinian statehood, he was saying something he thought that at least a plurality of Israeli voters wanted to hear, in order to win the election. And his tactic appears to have worked.</p>
<p>Pre-election polls showed the Zionist Union ahead of Netanyahu’s Likud party. <a href="#_edn1" type="external">[1]</a> Then, in what the New York Times described as a “seemingly desperate bid to rally support halfway through the balloting,” Netanyahu “went on a tirade against Israel’s Arab citizens.” <a href="#_edn2" type="external">[2]</a> He said that the Israeli right-wing was “in danger” because “Arab voters are streaming in huge quantities to the polling stations.” <a href="#_edn3" type="external">[3]</a> He also promised that a Palestinian state would not be established if he was reelected. <a href="#_edn4" type="external">[4]</a></p>
<p>When&#160;Likud emerged victorious, the Times described it as a “stunning turnabout” attributable to Netanyahu “promising that no Palestinian state would be established as long as he remained in office and insulting Arab citizens.” <a href="#_edn5" type="external">[5]</a></p>
<p>That wasn’t the only turnaround mainstream media has perceived, however. In the New York Times, Jodi Rudoren described Netanyahu’s rejection of Palestinian statehood as having “reversed” his 2009 “endorsement of a two-state solution”. <a href="#_edn6" type="external">[6]</a> Her colleague Isabel Kershner concurred that it was “a reversal of a stance he had taken six years earlier.” <a href="#_edn7" type="external">[7]</a> William Booth in the Washington Post likewise asserted that Netanyahu’s remarks “appeared to reverse” his “previous declarations of support for a sovereign Palestinian state.” <a href="#_edn8" type="external">[8]</a> John Hudson and Column Lynch at Foreign Policy wrote that Netanyahu’s “pre-election declaration that he would never allow the creation of a Palestinian state” had “completely reversed the Israeli leader’s previous support for an independent Palestine as part of a permanent peace deal between the two sides.” <a href="#_edn9" type="external">[9]</a> David Francis likewise claimed at Foreign Policy that Netanyahu had announced “that he was willing to accept the creation of an independent Palestinian state” in his 2009 Bar-Ilan speech, but that he “reversed course” during the election. <a href="#_edn10" type="external">[10]</a></p>
<p>Unsurprisingly, this narrative is being propagated not only by the media, but also by the US government. State Department spokesman Jen Psaki chimed in that Netanyahu’s remarks indicated that he had “changed his position”, and had at least “brought into question” his commitment to a two-state solution. <a href="#_edn11" type="external">[11]</a></p>
<p>But then, just two days later, according to the continuing media narrative, the Israeli Prime Minister reversed himself once again. “I don’t want a one-state solution”, Netanyahu said in an interview with NBC News. “I want a sustainable, peaceful two-state solution.” <a href="#_edn12" type="external">[12]</a></p>
<p>NBC sensationalized it as another “STUNNING REVERSAL”. <a href="#_edn13" type="external">[13]</a> It was “another reversal”, agreed Foreign Policy. <a href="#_edn14" type="external">[14]</a> CNN concurred that “Netanyahu walked back his disavowal of a two-state solution”. <a href="#_edn15" type="external">[15]</a> The Associated Press declared that Netanyahu has now “backtracked from hard-line statements against the establishment of a Palestinian state in the face of a diplomatic backlash.” In particular, Netanyahu’s rejection of Palestinian statehood had “angered the Obama administration, which views a two-state solution as a top foreign policy priority.” <a href="#_edn16" type="external">[16]</a></p>
<p>White House spokesman Josh Earnest noted that the US’s longstanding policy of habitually opposing any UN resolutions critical of Israel—including vetoing an uncontroversial Security Council resolution condemning Israel for illegal settlement activity in 2011—was “predicated on this idea that the two-state solution is the best outcome.” But Netanyahu during the election had said Israel he was “no longer committed to that solution”, which meant, Earnest said, that “we need to reevaluate our position in this matter”. <a href="#_edn17" type="external">[17]</a></p>
<p>The question put to Obama for a Huffington Post interview was revealing: “Given Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent comments on a two-state solution in the close of his campaign, can the US continue to oppose Palestinian efforts to gain statehood at the United Nations?” The US, of course, opposes Palestinian statehood at the UN in the name of supporting Palestinian statehood. The question itself laid bare the US’s true rejectionist policy, scarcely concealed behind a thin veil of rhetoric.</p>
<p>Obama’s answer was also revealing. He said his administration was “evaluating what’s taking place” because “we continue to believe that a two-state solution is the only way for the long-term security of Israel, if it wants to stay both a Jewish state and democratic. And I indicated to him that given his statements prior to the election, it is going to be hard to find a path where people are seriously believing that negotiations are possible.” <a href="#_edn18" type="external">[18]</a></p>
<p>So Obama, too, laid bare the real issues, as far as Washington is concerned. The first problem is that Palestinians exist and have a tendency to procreate, which poses a threat to Israel’s identity. If the Palestinians can’t be made to accept some form of limited autonomy over an area of land they could apply the term “state” to, the alternatives are permanent occupation or annexation. With massive and growing global public opposition to Israel’s occupation and illegal colonization, it will become increasingly difficult for the US to provide the backing required for its continuance. This is what Obama meant a few moments later in the interview, when he said that “the status quo” could not be maintained “in perpetuity”. <a href="#_edn19" type="external">[19]</a> But annexation would come with its own set of problems. The world would not tolerate another apartheid state, but to respect the equal rights of the Palestinians as citizens of Israel would threaten its identify as a “Jewish state”.</p>
<p>Hence the best solution, insofar as US policy is concerned, remains to force the Palestinians to acquiesce to Israel’s demands in direct, US-mediated, negotiations. This brings us to the second problem, which is convincing the public to believe that the so-called “peace process” is actually intended to bring about peace, as opposed to beating the Palestinians into submission. So long as enough of the world believes that the Palestinians should have to negotiate with the Occupying Power over their own independence, Washington will be able to maintain the status quo. If, however, the “peace process” loses its credibility, the US will no longer be able to maintain the same high level of support for Israel’s criminal conduct.</p>
<p>The problem for Netanyahu’s comments, from the view of the Obama administration, is that such honesty makes it hard to maintain illusions.</p>
<p>It is true that Netanyahu did speak words expressing support for a two-state solution in 2009. What neither the Obama administration nor the mainstream media is telling the public, however, is that the two-state “solution” favored by the US and Israel differs entirely from the two-state solution favored by the rest of the planet. Though the mainstream media isn’t enlightening the public about it, what Netanyahu actually said in 2009 is quite relevant.</p>
<p>On June 14, 2009, at Bar-Ilan University in Tel Aviv, Netanyahu gave a speech in which he invited Arab leaders to meet with him to “make peace”. Then he outlined what would be required for the “peace” he desired to occur. He reiterated his demand that the Palestinian leadership must “begin peace negotiations without prior conditions”. This was in accordance with US policy that the Palestinians must enter talks with Israel “without preconditions”, a euphemism meaning while Israel’s expansion of settlements in the occupied West Bank continues, despite this activity being a violation of international law.</p>
<p>Israel, Netanyahu declared, was “committed to international agreements, and expects all sides to fulfill their obligations”. This was in accordance with US policy that the Palestinians must abide by the Oslo Accords and stick to the US-led “peace process” by engaging in negotiations with Israel, rather than appealing to institutions like United Nations, the International Criminal Court (ICC), and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to resolve the conflict through the application of international law.</p>
<p>The “root of the conflict” was not Israel’s occupation, colonization, and rejection of Palestinian self-determination, Netanyahu declared. Rather, it was the refusal of the Palestinians “to recognize the right of the Jewish People to its own state”. This was in accordance with US policy that the Palestinians must recognize Israel’s “right to exist”, as well as the Obama administration’s subsequent acceptance of Netanyahu’s demand in the framework for negotiations that the Palestinians recognize Israel as the “Jewish state”.</p>
<p>Then Netanyahu declared that the illegal colonization of Palestinian land would continue; reiterated Israel’s rejection of the internationally recognized right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland; and announced that any “area in Palestinian hands”, whether or not it was called a “state”, would need to be defenseless (Palestinians could not have an army, could not control their own air space, and could not enter “military treaties”). All these preconditions, too, were in accordance with US policy and its role as mediator in the “peace process”.</p>
<p>If the Palestinians would agree to these demands to surrender their rights and sovereignty, Netanyahu said, only then would he be “ready to agree to a real peace agreement, a demilitarized Palestinian state side by side with the Jewish state.” <a href="#_edn20" type="external">[20]</a></p>
<p>In other words, Netanyahu’s “acceptance” of “a two-state solution” to the conflict consisted of an explicit rejection of Palestinian self-determination, as well as an explicit rejection of the two-state solution founded on the principles of international law that is favored by most of the planet (the exceptions being Israel and its superpower benefactor, the US government).</p>
<p>The international consensus on the two-state solution is grounded in principles of international law that there is a universal right to self-determination and that the acquisition of territory by war is inadmissible. This latter principle was emphasized by the UN Security Council when, in the wake of the June 1967 Israeli-Arab war, it passed Resolution 242, which called on Israel to withdraw from the territories it had occupied: The Syrian Golan Heights; the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula; and the Palestinian territories comprised of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. This principle is also reflected in the 2004 advisory opinion of the ICJ that Israel’s separation wall and settlement regime in the occupied Palestinian territories violate international law.</p>
<p>The governments of Israel and the US may speak of supporting a two-state solution; but what they favor is emphatically not the same as the two-state solution. The entire framework for negotiations under the US-led Oslo “peace process” is premised on rejecting the applicability of international law to the conflict. Its whole purpose is to prevent the implementation of the two-state solution and instead to force a different “solution” on the Palestinians; namely, the Palestinians must surrender their internationally recognized rights, including the right of refugees from the ethnic cleansing of Palestine to return to their homeland. And until the Palestinians agree to these terms of surrender, Israel will continue its oppression and violence against them, as well as prejudice the outcome of “peace process” negotiations on borders by continuing to illegally expand settlements in the occupied West Bank.</p>
<p>Notwithstanding the actual meaning of Netanyahu’s words, the Washington Post reported his Bar-Ilan speech under the headline, “Netanyahu Backs 2-State Goal: Endorsement Comes With Prerequisites for Palestinians”. <a href="#_edn21" type="external">[21]</a> The New York Times headline likewise announced: “Netanyahu Backs Palestinian State, With Caveats”. <a href="#_edn22" type="external">[22]</a> Neither the Post nor the Times bothered to elaborate for readers that the “Prerequisites” or “Caveats” accompanying his words of support in fact consisted of an unambiguous rejection of the two-state solution and included demands that the Palestinians surrender their internationally recognized rights and sovereignty.</p>
<p>President Obama similarly responded to Netanyahu’s speech with praise, calling it an “important step forward” that showed how “committed” Netanyahu was to a two-state solution. <a href="#_edn23" type="external">[23]</a> It was a “positive” step, Obama told the press, while taking the occasion to reemphasize the longstanding US policy of treating Israel’s “security” as “non-negotiable”—unlike Israel’s obligation not to violate international law or Palestinians’ rights, including the right to self-determination and the right of return, which are very much matters to be negotiated away in the framework of the “peace process”. <a href="#_edn24" type="external">[24]</a></p>
<p>Given what Netanyahu actually said, and the true meaning behind his words, it is evident that his 2009 Bar-Ilan speech was perfectly consistent with his election promise to prevent a Palestinian state from being established. So why the pretense to the contrary?</p>
<p>The Obama administration’s policy with regard to the conflict has been and continues to be synonymous with the Netanyahu government’s. The narrative being propagated by the media serves one simple purpose: to obfuscate the fact that this US policy has always been to block implementation of the two-state solution, meaningless rhetoric about support for “a two-state solution” notwithstanding.</p>
<p>That is not to say that there isn’t a difference of opinion between the Obama and Netanyahu regimes. The Obama administration’s frustration with Netanyahu over his recent comments is certainly understandable. The problem with Netanyahu, from the Obama administration’s point of view, is that he makes it very difficult for the US government to sustain the illusion that it supports Palestinian self-determination. Statements like Netanyahu’s make it hard for the US to maintain the perception that it is an “honest broker” in the Israel-Palestinian conflict and that it supports Palestinians’ rights.</p>
<p>It is the same problem that arose in March of 2010 when Israel announced plans for further illegal settlement construction after US Vice President Joe Biden had arrived in the country as part of the administration’s efforts to revive the stalled “peace process”. That sparked what Israeli Ambassador to the US Michael B. Oren theatrically described as “a crisis of historic proportions” in US-Israeli relations. <a href="#_edn25" type="external">[25]</a></p>
<p>There had been countless other Israeli announcements of plans to expand settlements. The distinguishing characteristic of this particular announcement is that it was done while a high-level US official was in the country on a much-publicized mission to restart “peace” talks. The problem was strictly that the timing of this particular announcement drew unwanted attention to the true nature of the US-led “peace process” and risked undermining US efforts at managing perceptions, including among its Arab allies, which in turn undermined the US’s overarching policy in the Middle East, aimed at maintaining its hegemony over the region, including through the use of military force.</p>
<p>“What you’re doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan”, Biden reportedly lectured Netanyahu. “That endangers us and it endangers regional peace.” <a href="#_edn26" type="external">[26]</a></p>
<p>As US Central Command (CENTCOM) commander General David Petraeus explained in testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee, “The enduring hostilities between Israel and some of its neighbors present distinct challenges to our ability to advance our interests in the AOR [CENTCOM Area of Responsibility]. Israeli-Palestinian tensions often flare into violence and large-scale armed confrontations. The conflict foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of US favoritism for Israel. Arab anger over the Palestinian question limits the strength and depth of US partnerships with governments and peoples in the AOR and weakens the legitimacy of moderate regimes in the Arab world. Meanwhile, al-Qaeda and other militant groups exploit that anger to mobilize support.” <a href="#_edn27" type="external">[27]</a></p>
<p>The significance of Netanyahu’s recent remarks is not that they represent typical election flip-flopping or demonstrate some change in Israeli policy. The significance is that his comments summarized the Israeli government’s longstanding policies concerning the Palestinians, and in doing so also revealed the true nature of US policy—and how Netanyahu has been making it exceedingly difficult for the Obama administration to maintain illusions.</p>
<p>As the editor-in-chief of the Israeli daily Haaretz, Aluf Benn, observed, “Benjamin Netanyahu won the election because he delivered a crystal-clear sharp message to his voters: I am the true right and I am committed to the values of the ‘national camp,’ topped by hatred of Arabs and opposition to withdrawal from territories conquered by Israel in 1967. This is what his voters wanted to hear and they rewarded him generously at the polling stations.” <a href="#_edn28" type="external">[28]</a></p>
<p>Haaretz columnist Gideo Levy similarly commented on how Israelis “voted for the man who admitted to having duped half the world during his Bar-Ilan speech” and has now “torn off his mask”. <a href="#_edn29" type="external">[29]</a></p>
<p>The episode lays bare the prevailing racism among Israeli Jews. Indeed, the Zionist project itself is predicated on racist ideology. It was this racist ideology that led to the ethnic cleansing of three-quarters of a million Arabs from Palestine in order to establish the “Jewish state”, and it continues to underlie Israeli policies today—policies that, meaningless rhetoric to the contrary notwithstanding, are fully backed by the US government, financially, diplomatically, and militarily.</p>
<p>Like Netanyahu, other prominent Israelis in government do little to conceal their racism. The New York Times relayed one insightful incident that occurred during the election:</p>
<p>Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s nationalist foreign minister, stared coolly at the Arab politician sitting at the opposite end of a glass table during a televised election debate.</p>
<p>“Why did you come to this studio, why not to Gaza, or Ramallah? Why are you even here?” asked Mr. Lieberman, who frequently calls Israel’s Arab citizens traitors and suggests that their towns be transferred to Palestinian control. “You are not wanted here; you are a Palestinian citizen.”</p>
<p>The politician, Ayman Odeh, the leader of an alliance of Arab parties formed to contest Israeli elections on Tuesday, appeared unruffled.</p>
<p>“I am very welcome in my homeland,” he said, a subtle dig at Mr. Lieberman, an immigrant from the former Soviet republic of Moldova. “I am part of the nature, the surroundings, the landscape,” he said in Arabic-accented Hebrew. <a href="#_edn30" type="external">[30]</a></p>
<p>The true significance of the “flip-flop” incident lays scarcely concealed beneath the surface of the US media’s fictional narrative. Jodi Rudoren acknowledged in the New York Times that Netanyahu “fulfilled many world leaders’ suspicions that he was never really serious about peace negotiations.” <a href="#_edn31" type="external">[31]</a> Times columnist Roger Cohen noted that Netanyahu’s rejection of Palestinian self-determination reflects “a wide section of Israeli society” that “prefers its Palestinians invisible behind barriers.” <a href="#_edn32" type="external">[32]</a> These candid remarks are hardly profound; but they are nevertheless remarkable for having actually appeared in the mainstream discussion—and for illustrating the cognitive dissonance inherent in the media narrative. Indeed, Netanyahu himself stated explicitly that the premise that he had reversed himself was false.</p>
<p>“I haven’t changed my policy”, he told NBC. “I never changed [my position from] my speech in Bar-Ilan University six years ago calling for a demilitarized Palestinian state that recognizes the Jewish state.”</p>
<p>“And I don’t want a one-state solution”, he added later in the interview. “I want a sustainable, peaceful two-state solution, but for that circumstances have to change.” <a href="#_edn33" type="external">[33]</a></p>
<p>That, of course, simply means that the Palestinians will have to accept the US and Israel’s demands to return to the “peace process” and negotiate away their rights rather than appealing to the international community and seeking legal remedy through the application of international law.</p>
<p>The editorial board of the New York Times, too, noticed that Netanyahu’s actual deeds over the past six years (including “aggressively” building illegal settlements “and never engaging seriously in negotiations”) had “long convinced many people that he has no interest in a peace agreement.” Indeed, it must take have taken an extraordinary amount of self-discipline on the part of mainstream American commentators—including the Times editors—to maintain the pretense to the contrary.</p>
<p>The editors indicated that they have finally become convinced: Netanyahu’s rejection of Palestinian statehood, they added, “laid bare his duplicity” and “confirmed Palestinian suspicions”. <a href="#_edn34" type="external">[34]</a> But one can reasonably expect that it won’t be long before the Times editors are back to declaring their opposition to any “unilateral” moves at the UN by the Palestinians and affirming their support for the US-led “peace process”.</p>
<p>Netanyahu spoke honestly about his government’s longstanding policy of rejecting Palestinian self-determination, and it won him an election. He will face criticism at home for seemingly walking back from his promise to oppose a two-state solution if reelected, but it isn’t likely he’ll lose any sleep over this because his actions will prove that he is indeed committed to that election promise.</p>
<p>He will face criticism from the US for having put in jeopardy the Obama administration’s ability to maintain its policy of supporting Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians and rejection of their rights. But the Obama administration let Netanyahu know he had stepped out of line, and Netanyahu obediently reaffirmed his commitment to the US-led “peace process”. That alone was not enough, of course, to provide the requisite cover for the US to maintain its own policy. More will be required of Netanyahu and the new Israeli government. It might take another so-called “freeze” of new approvals for settlement construction, or some other such symbolic commitment to the Oslo process. But it is unlikely that a political gaffe from the Israeli Prime Minister will spell the end of the “peace process”.</p>
<p>At most, it will mean a significant shift in tactics for the US. There is already talk about the US itself now turning to the very institution it has long insisted should have no role in the “peace process” (apart from the Secretariat giving his endorsement to Quartet statements). This is indicated by the Obama’ administration’s statements about reassessing its policy. “We’re currently evaluating our approach”, said State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki. “We’re not going to prejudge what we would do if there was a UN action”. <a href="#_edn35" type="external">[35]</a> The purpose of the shift in tactics would be to maintain the overarching policy. A former member of the Obama administration’s Middle East peace team, Ilan Goldenberg, told Foreign Policy “that Washington might be inclined to support a Security Council resolution backing a two-state solution as an alternative to the Palestinian effort to hold Israel accountable at the ICC.” Such a resolution, Goldenberg added, “could protect Israel from a worse outcome”. <a href="#_edn36" type="external">[36]</a></p>
<p>And the American intelligentsia, of course, will play along with the whole charade, of course, and enlighten the public about the importance of preventing the Palestinians from making “unilateral” moves at the UN and ensuring that any “peace” efforts are undertaken within the framework of the Oslo process. Israel’s occupation and illegal settlement regime will meanwhile continue, as ever, with US support.</p>
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<p><a href="#_ednref1" type="external">[1]</a> Jodi Rudoren, “ <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/18/world/middleeast/israel-election-netanyahu-herzog.html" type="external">Netanyahu Soundly Defeats Chief Rival in Israeli Elections</a>,” New York Times, March 17, 2015.</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref2" type="external">[2]</a> Isabel Kershner, “ <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/18/world/middleeast/netanyahu-israel-elections-arabs.html" type="external">Deep Wounds and Lingering Questions After Israel’s Bitter Race</a>,” New York Times, March 17, 2015.</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref3" type="external">[3]</a> Kershner, “Deep Wounds.”</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref4" type="external">[4]</a> William Booth, “ <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/on-final-day-of-campaign-netanyahu-says-no-palestinian-state-if-he-wins/2015/03/16/4f4468e8-cbdc-11e4-8730-4f473416e759_story.html" type="external">Netanyahu says no Palestinian state if he wins</a>,” Washington Post, March 16, 2015. As the Post reported: “‘I think that anyone who is going to establish a Palestinian state today and evacuate lands is giving attack grounds to the radical Islam against the state of Israel,’ he said in a video interview published Monday on the NRG site. ‘Anyone who ignores this is sticking his head in the sand. The left does this time and time again,’ Netanyahu said. ‘We are realistic and understand.’ Netanyahu was then asked specifically whether he meant that a Palestinian state would not be established if he were reelected prime minister. He answered, ‘Correct.’”</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref5" type="external">[5]</a> Rudoren, “Netanyahu Soundly Defeats Chief Rival.”</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref6" type="external">[6]</a> Jodi Rudoren, “ <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/17/world/middleeast/benjamin-netanyahu-campaign-settlement.html" type="external">Netanyahu Says No to Statehood for Palestinians</a>,” New York Times, March 16, 2015.</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref7" type="external">[7]</a> Kershner, “Deep Wounds.”</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref8" type="external">[8]</a> Booth, “Netanyahu says no Palestinian state.”</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref9" type="external">[9]</a> John Hudson and Colum Lynch, “ <a href="http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/03/18/from-tel-aviv-to-turtle-bay-israel-palestinians-un-resolution/" type="external">From Tel Aviv to Turtle Bay</a>,” Foreign Policy, March 18, 2015.</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref10" type="external">[10]</a> David Francis, “ <a href="http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/03/19/benjamin-netanyahus-flip-flop-flip/" type="external">Benjamin Netanyahu’s Flip-Flop Flip</a>,” Foreign Policy, March 19, 2015.</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref11" type="external">[11]</a> Francis, “Benjamin Netanyahu’s Flip-Flop Flip.”</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref12" type="external">[12]</a> “ <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/netanyahu-nbc-u-s-has-no-greater-ally-israel-n326391" type="external">Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu Tells NBC He Wants a ‘Peaceful Two-State Solution</a>,” NBC News, March 19, 2015.</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref13" type="external">[13]</a> Ibid.</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref14" type="external">[14]</a> Francis, “Benjamin Netanyahu’s Flip-Flop Flip</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref15" type="external">[15]</a> Jeremy Diamond, Kevin Liptak, and Jim Acosta, “ <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/19/politics/netanyahu-palestinian-two-state-solution/" type="external">Obama to ‘reassess’ Israel relationship</a>,” CNN, March 20, 2015.</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref16" type="external">[16]</a> Ian Deitch, “ <a href="https://news.yahoo.com/palestinians-threaten-end-israel-security-cooperation-164234237.html" type="external">Israeli leader backtracks from Palestinian state opposition</a>,” Associated Press, March 19, 2015.</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref17" type="external">[17]</a> Steve Weizman, “ <a href="https://news.yahoo.com/netanyahus-palestinian-backtrack-fails-mollify-us-analysts-144823041.html" type="external">Netanyahu’s Palestinian backtrack fails to mollify US: analysts</a>,” Agence France-Presse, March 20, 2015.</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref18" type="external">[18]</a> Sam Stein, “ <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/21/obama-huffpost-interview-transcript_n_6905450.html" type="external">Here’s The Full Transcript Of Obama’s Interview With HuffPost</a>,” Huffington Post, March 21, 2015.</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref19" type="external">[19]</a> Ibid.</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref20" type="external">[20]</a> “ <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/full-text-of-netanyahu-s-foreign-policy-speech-at-bar-ilan-1.277922" type="external">Full text of Netanyahu’s foreign policy speech at Bar Ilan</a>,” Haaretz, June 14, 2009.</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref21" type="external">[21]</a> Howard Schneider, “ <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/14/AR2009061400741.html" type="external">Netanyahu Backs 2-State Goal</a>,” Washington Post, June 15, 2009.</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref22" type="external">[22]</a> Isabel Kershner, “ <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/15/world/middleeast/15mideast.html" type="external">Netanyahu Backs Palestinian State, With Caveats</a>,” New York Times, June 15, 2009.</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref23" type="external">[23]</a> Schneider, “Netanyahu Backs 2-State Goal.”</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref24" type="external">[24]</a> The White House, “ <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-obama-and-prime-minister-berlusconi-press-availability-6-15-09" type="external">Remarks by President Obama and Prime Minister Berlusconi of Italy in Press Availability</a>,” June 15, 2009.</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref25" type="external">[25]</a> Jeffrey Heller, “ <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/2010/03/15/us-israel-usa-palestinians-envoy-idUSTRE62E11O20100315" type="external">Israeli envoy sees ‘historic crisis’ with U.S.: report</a>,” Reuters, March 15, 2010.</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref26" type="external">[26]</a> Mark Perry, “ <a href="http://mideast.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/03/14/the_petraeus_briefing_biden_s_embarrassment_is_not_the_whole_story" type="external">The Petraeus briefing: Biden’s embarrassment is not the whole story</a>,” Foreign Policy, March 13, 2010.</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref27" type="external">[27]</a> US Congress, <a href="http://www.armed-services.senate.gov/statemnt/2010/03%20March/Petraeus%2003-16-10.pdf" type="external">Statement of General David H. Petraeus, U.S. Army Commander, U.S. Central Command, Before the Senate Armed Services Committee on the Posture of U.S. Central Command</a>, March 16, 2010.</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref28" type="external">[28]</a> Aluf Benn, “ <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.647653" type="external">Netanyahu revealed his true face – and voters loved it</a>,” Haaretz, March 18, 2015.</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref29" type="external">[29]</a> Gideon Levy, “ <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.647555" type="external">Netanyahu deserves the Israeli people, and they deserve him</a>,” Haaretz, March 18, 2015.</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref30" type="external">[30]</a> Diaa Hadid, “ <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/16/world/middleeast/ayman-odeh-arab-alliance-rises-as-force-in-israel-vote.html" type="external">Arab Alliance Rises as Force in Israeli Elections</a>,” New York Times, March 15, 2015.</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref31" type="external">[31]</a> Rudoren, “Netanyahu Says No to Statehood for Palestinians.”</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref32" type="external">[32]</a> Roger Cohen, “ <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/18/opinion/roger-cohen-israels-vote-without-victory.html" type="external">An Uneasy Coalition for Israel</a>,” New York Times, March 17, 2015.</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref33" type="external">[33]</a> Zack Beauchamp, “ <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/3/19/8258515/netanyahu-palestinian-walkback" type="external">Read Netanyahu’s dizzying flip-flop on peace with Palestinians</a>,” Vox, March 19, 2015.</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref34" type="external">[34]</a> Editorial Board, “ <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/18/opinion/an-israeli-election-turns-ugly.html" type="external">An Israeli Election Turns Ugly</a>,” New York Times, March 17, 2015.</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref35" type="external">[35]</a> Hudson and Lynch, “From Tel Aviv to Turtle Bay.”</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref36" type="external">[36]</a> Ibid.</p> | false | 1 | claims israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu twice reversed position twostate solution israelipalestinian conflict illustrate institutional myopia mainstream american commentators well media serves manufacture consent us policy supporting israels crimes palestinian people download paper pdf benjamin netanyahu declared week would work prevent palestinian state established reelected israeli prime minister mainstream media described reversal policy speech gave 2009 ostensibly expressed support twostate solution insisted two days later policy view hasnt changed prompting mainstream commentators accuse blatant inconsistency closer examination however reveals inconsistency invention media real lesson episode well illustrates institutional myopia among mainstream commentators mainstream discussion serves perpetuate illusions required maintain us policy towards israelipalestinian conflict certainly netanyahu promised prevent palestinian statehood saying something thought least plurality israeli voters wanted hear order win election tactic appears worked preelection polls showed zionist union ahead netanyahus likud party 1 new york times described seemingly desperate bid rally support halfway balloting netanyahu went tirade israels arab citizens 2 said israeli rightwing danger arab voters streaming huge quantities polling stations 3 also promised palestinian state would established reelected 4 when160likud emerged victorious times described stunning turnabout attributable netanyahu promising palestinian state would established long remained office insulting arab citizens 5 wasnt turnaround mainstream media perceived however new york times jodi rudoren described netanyahus rejection palestinian statehood reversed 2009 endorsement twostate solution 6 colleague isabel kershner concurred reversal stance taken six years earlier 7 william booth washington post likewise asserted netanyahus remarks appeared reverse previous declarations support sovereign palestinian state 8 john hudson column lynch foreign policy wrote netanyahus preelection declaration would never allow creation palestinian state completely reversed israeli leaders previous support independent palestine part permanent peace deal two sides 9 david francis likewise claimed foreign policy netanyahu announced willing accept creation independent palestinian state 2009 barilan speech reversed course election 10 unsurprisingly narrative propagated media also us government state department spokesman jen psaki chimed netanyahus remarks indicated changed position least brought question commitment twostate solution 11 two days later according continuing media narrative israeli prime minister reversed dont want onestate solution netanyahu said interview nbc news want sustainable peaceful twostate solution 12 nbc sensationalized another stunning reversal 13 another reversal agreed foreign policy 14 cnn concurred netanyahu walked back disavowal twostate solution 15 associated press declared netanyahu backtracked hardline statements establishment palestinian state face diplomatic backlash particular netanyahus rejection palestinian statehood angered obama administration views twostate solution top foreign policy priority 16 white house spokesman josh earnest noted uss longstanding policy habitually opposing un resolutions critical israelincluding vetoing uncontroversial security council resolution condemning israel illegal settlement activity 2011was predicated idea twostate solution best outcome netanyahu election said israel longer committed solution meant earnest said need reevaluate position matter 17 question put obama huffington post interview revealing given prime minister benjamin netanyahus recent comments twostate solution close campaign us continue oppose palestinian efforts gain statehood united nations us course opposes palestinian statehood un name supporting palestinian statehood question laid bare uss true rejectionist policy scarcely concealed behind thin veil rhetoric obamas answer also revealing said administration evaluating whats taking place continue believe twostate solution way longterm security israel wants stay jewish state democratic indicated given statements prior election going hard find path people seriously believing negotiations possible 18 obama laid bare real issues far washington concerned first problem palestinians exist tendency procreate poses threat israels identity palestinians cant made accept form limited autonomy area land could apply term state alternatives permanent occupation annexation massive growing global public opposition israels occupation illegal colonization become increasingly difficult us provide backing required continuance obama meant moments later interview said status quo could maintained perpetuity 19 annexation would come set problems world would tolerate another apartheid state respect equal rights palestinians citizens israel would threaten identify jewish state hence best solution insofar us policy concerned remains force palestinians acquiesce israels demands direct usmediated negotiations brings us second problem convincing public believe socalled peace process actually intended bring peace opposed beating palestinians submission long enough world believes palestinians negotiate occupying power independence washington able maintain status quo however peace process loses credibility us longer able maintain high level support israels criminal conduct problem netanyahus comments view obama administration honesty makes hard maintain illusions true netanyahu speak words expressing support twostate solution 2009 neither obama administration mainstream media telling public however twostate solution favored us israel differs entirely twostate solution favored rest planet though mainstream media isnt enlightening public netanyahu actually said 2009 quite relevant june 14 2009 barilan university tel aviv netanyahu gave speech invited arab leaders meet make peace outlined would required peace desired occur reiterated demand palestinian leadership must begin peace negotiations without prior conditions accordance us policy palestinians must enter talks israel without preconditions euphemism meaning israels expansion settlements occupied west bank continues despite activity violation international law israel netanyahu declared committed international agreements expects sides fulfill obligations accordance us policy palestinians must abide oslo accords stick usled peace process engaging negotiations israel rather appealing institutions like united nations international criminal court icc international court justice icj resolve conflict application international law root conflict israels occupation colonization rejection palestinian selfdetermination netanyahu declared rather refusal palestinians recognize right jewish people state accordance us policy palestinians must recognize israels right exist well obama administrations subsequent acceptance netanyahus demand framework negotiations palestinians recognize israel jewish state netanyahu declared illegal colonization palestinian land would continue reiterated israels rejection internationally recognized right palestinian refugees return homeland announced area palestinian hands whether called state would need defenseless palestinians could army could control air space could enter military treaties preconditions accordance us policy role mediator peace process palestinians would agree demands surrender rights sovereignty netanyahu said would ready agree real peace agreement demilitarized palestinian state side side jewish state 20 words netanyahus acceptance twostate solution conflict consisted explicit rejection palestinian selfdetermination well explicit rejection twostate solution founded principles international law favored planet exceptions israel superpower benefactor us government international consensus twostate solution grounded principles international law universal right selfdetermination acquisition territory war inadmissible latter principle emphasized un security council wake june 1967 israeliarab war passed resolution 242 called israel withdraw territories occupied syrian golan heights egyptian sinai peninsula palestinian territories comprised west bank including east jerusalem gaza strip principle also reflected 2004 advisory opinion icj israels separation wall settlement regime occupied palestinian territories violate international law governments israel us may speak supporting twostate solution favor emphatically twostate solution entire framework negotiations usled oslo peace process premised rejecting applicability international law conflict whole purpose prevent implementation twostate solution instead force different solution palestinians namely palestinians must surrender internationally recognized rights including right refugees ethnic cleansing palestine return homeland palestinians agree terms surrender israel continue oppression violence well prejudice outcome peace process negotiations borders continuing illegally expand settlements occupied west bank notwithstanding actual meaning netanyahus words washington post reported barilan speech headline netanyahu backs 2state goal endorsement comes prerequisites palestinians 21 new york times headline likewise announced netanyahu backs palestinian state caveats 22 neither post times bothered elaborate readers prerequisites caveats accompanying words support fact consisted unambiguous rejection twostate solution included demands palestinians surrender internationally recognized rights sovereignty president obama similarly responded netanyahus speech praise calling important step forward showed committed netanyahu twostate solution 23 positive step obama told press taking occasion reemphasize longstanding us policy treating israels security nonnegotiableunlike israels obligation violate international law palestinians rights including right selfdetermination right return much matters negotiated away framework peace process 24 given netanyahu actually said true meaning behind words evident 2009 barilan speech perfectly consistent election promise prevent palestinian state established pretense contrary obama administrations policy regard conflict continues synonymous netanyahu governments narrative propagated media serves one simple purpose obfuscate fact us policy always block implementation twostate solution meaningless rhetoric support twostate solution notwithstanding say isnt difference opinion obama netanyahu regimes obama administrations frustration netanyahu recent comments certainly understandable problem netanyahu obama administrations point view makes difficult us government sustain illusion supports palestinian selfdetermination statements like netanyahus make hard us maintain perception honest broker israelpalestinian conflict supports palestinians rights problem arose march 2010 israel announced plans illegal settlement construction us vice president joe biden arrived country part administrations efforts revive stalled peace process sparked israeli ambassador us michael b oren theatrically described crisis historic proportions usisraeli relations 25 countless israeli announcements plans expand settlements distinguishing characteristic particular announcement done highlevel us official country muchpublicized mission restart peace talks problem strictly timing particular announcement drew unwanted attention true nature usled peace process risked undermining us efforts managing perceptions including among arab allies turn undermined uss overarching policy middle east aimed maintaining hegemony region including use military force youre undermines security troops fighting iraq afghanistan pakistan biden reportedly lectured netanyahu endangers us endangers regional peace 26 us central command centcom commander general david petraeus explained testimony senate armed services committee enduring hostilities israel neighbors present distinct challenges ability advance interests aor centcom area responsibility israelipalestinian tensions often flare violence largescale armed confrontations conflict foments antiamerican sentiment due perception us favoritism israel arab anger palestinian question limits strength depth us partnerships governments peoples aor weakens legitimacy moderate regimes arab world meanwhile alqaeda militant groups exploit anger mobilize support 27 significance netanyahus recent remarks represent typical election flipflopping demonstrate change israeli policy significance comments summarized israeli governments longstanding policies concerning palestinians also revealed true nature us policyand netanyahu making exceedingly difficult obama administration maintain illusions editorinchief israeli daily haaretz aluf benn observed benjamin netanyahu election delivered crystalclear sharp message voters true right committed values national camp topped hatred arabs opposition withdrawal territories conquered israel 1967 voters wanted hear rewarded generously polling stations 28 haaretz columnist gideo levy similarly commented israelis voted man admitted duped half world barilan speech torn mask 29 episode lays bare prevailing racism among israeli jews indeed zionist project predicated racist ideology racist ideology led ethnic cleansing threequarters million arabs palestine order establish jewish state continues underlie israeli policies todaypolicies meaningless rhetoric contrary notwithstanding fully backed us government financially diplomatically militarily like netanyahu prominent israelis government little conceal racism new york times relayed one insightful incident occurred election avigdor lieberman israels nationalist foreign minister stared coolly arab politician sitting opposite end glass table televised election debate come studio gaza ramallah even asked mr lieberman frequently calls israels arab citizens traitors suggests towns transferred palestinian control wanted palestinian citizen politician ayman odeh leader alliance arab parties formed contest israeli elections tuesday appeared unruffled welcome homeland said subtle dig mr lieberman immigrant former soviet republic moldova part nature surroundings landscape said arabicaccented hebrew 30 true significance flipflop incident lays scarcely concealed beneath surface us medias fictional narrative jodi rudoren acknowledged new york times netanyahu fulfilled many world leaders suspicions never really serious peace negotiations 31 times columnist roger cohen noted netanyahus rejection palestinian selfdetermination reflects wide section israeli society prefers palestinians invisible behind barriers 32 candid remarks hardly profound nevertheless remarkable actually appeared mainstream discussionand illustrating cognitive dissonance inherent media narrative indeed netanyahu stated explicitly premise reversed false havent changed policy told nbc never changed position speech barilan university six years ago calling demilitarized palestinian state recognizes jewish state dont want onestate solution added later interview want sustainable peaceful twostate solution circumstances change 33 course simply means palestinians accept us israels demands return peace process negotiate away rights rather appealing international community seeking legal remedy application international law editorial board new york times noticed netanyahus actual deeds past six years including aggressively building illegal settlements never engaging seriously negotiations long convinced many people interest peace agreement indeed must take taken extraordinary amount selfdiscipline part mainstream american commentatorsincluding times editorsto maintain pretense contrary editors indicated finally become convinced netanyahus rejection palestinian statehood added laid bare duplicity confirmed palestinian suspicions 34 one reasonably expect wont long times editors back declaring opposition unilateral moves un palestinians affirming support usled peace process netanyahu spoke honestly governments longstanding policy rejecting palestinian selfdetermination election face criticism home seemingly walking back promise oppose twostate solution reelected isnt likely hell lose sleep actions prove indeed committed election promise face criticism us put jeopardy obama administrations ability maintain policy supporting israels crimes palestinians rejection rights obama administration let netanyahu know stepped line netanyahu obediently reaffirmed commitment usled peace process alone enough course provide requisite cover us maintain policy required netanyahu new israeli government might take another socalled freeze new approvals settlement construction symbolic commitment oslo process unlikely political gaffe israeli prime minister spell end peace process mean significant shift tactics us already talk us turning institution long insisted role peace process apart secretariat giving endorsement quartet statements indicated obama administrations statements reassessing policy currently evaluating approach said state department spokeswoman jen psaki going prejudge would un action 35 purpose shift tactics would maintain overarching policy former member obama administrations middle east peace team ilan goldenberg told foreign policy washington might inclined support security council resolution backing twostate solution alternative palestinian effort hold israel accountable icc resolution goldenberg added could protect israel worse outcome 36 american intelligentsia course play along whole charade course enlighten public importance preventing palestinians making unilateral moves un ensuring peace efforts undertaken within framework oslo process israels occupation illegal settlement regime meanwhile continue ever us support successlike help support independent journalism click leave tipsuccess 1 jodi rudoren netanyahu soundly defeats chief rival israeli elections new york times march 17 2015 2 isabel kershner deep wounds lingering questions israels bitter race new york times march 17 2015 3 kershner deep wounds 4 william booth netanyahu says palestinian state wins washington post march 16 2015 post reported think anyone going establish palestinian state today evacuate lands giving attack grounds radical islam state israel said video interview published monday nrg site anyone ignores sticking head sand left time time netanyahu said realistic understand netanyahu asked specifically whether meant palestinian state would established reelected prime minister answered correct 5 rudoren netanyahu soundly defeats chief rival 6 jodi rudoren netanyahu says statehood palestinians new york times march 16 2015 7 kershner deep wounds 8 booth netanyahu says palestinian state 9 john hudson colum lynch tel aviv turtle bay foreign policy march 18 2015 10 david francis benjamin netanyahus flipflop flip foreign policy march 19 2015 11 francis benjamin netanyahus flipflop flip 12 israels benjamin netanyahu tells nbc wants peaceful twostate solution nbc news march 19 2015 13 ibid 14 francis benjamin netanyahus flipflop flip 15 jeremy diamond kevin liptak jim acosta obama reassess israel relationship cnn march 20 2015 16 ian deitch israeli leader backtracks palestinian state opposition associated press march 19 2015 17 steve weizman netanyahus palestinian backtrack fails mollify us analysts agence francepresse march 20 2015 18 sam stein heres full transcript obamas interview huffpost huffington post march 21 2015 19 ibid 20 full text netanyahus foreign policy speech bar ilan haaretz june 14 2009 21 howard schneider netanyahu backs 2state goal washington post june 15 2009 22 isabel kershner netanyahu backs palestinian state caveats new york times june 15 2009 23 schneider netanyahu backs 2state goal 24 white house remarks president obama prime minister berlusconi italy press availability june 15 2009 25 jeffrey heller israeli envoy sees historic crisis us report reuters march 15 2010 26 mark perry petraeus briefing bidens embarrassment whole story foreign policy march 13 2010 27 us congress statement general david h petraeus us army commander us central command senate armed services committee posture us central command march 16 2010 28 aluf benn netanyahu revealed true face voters loved haaretz march 18 2015 29 gideon levy netanyahu deserves israeli people deserve haaretz march 18 2015 30 diaa hadid arab alliance rises force israeli elections new york times march 15 2015 31 rudoren netanyahu says statehood palestinians 32 roger cohen uneasy coalition israel new york times march 17 2015 33 zack beauchamp read netanyahus dizzying flipflop peace palestinians vox march 19 2015 34 editorial board israeli election turns ugly new york times march 17 2015 35 hudson lynch tel aviv turtle bay 36 ibid | 2,628 |
<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/067401927X/102-0318547-1797715?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=wwweppcorg-20&amp;linkCode=xm2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creativeASIN=067401927X" type="external">The Case Against Perfection</a>by Michael SandelHarvard University Press, 128 pages, $18.95</p>
<p>Debates about biotechnology tend to be about means. We argue about the limits of what we may do in pursuit of science or medicine. The ends to which new technological powers are put are far less frequently questioned.</p>
<p>In The Case Against Perfection (Harvard University Press, 128 pages, $18.95), Harvard political scientist Michael Sandel seeks to question those ends. Everyone agrees that curing disease is worthwhile, he acknowledges, but what about going beyond cures to improvements of the human whole, aiming not to heal what is broken but to perfect our nature and make human beings — in bioethicist Carl Elliott’s evocative phrase — “better than well”?</p>
<p>This brief book is an extended version of an essay Mr. Sandel published in the Atlantic Monthly in 2004, which in turn was an extension of a paper he wrote for the President’s Council on Bioethics two years earlier. Mr. Sandel was a member of the council from 2001 until 2006 (and I served on the council’s staff for some of that time). His paper was part of the council’s “Beyond Therapy” project, which culminated in a report under that title in 2003. Strangely, Mr. Sandel never directs his readers to that document, which addresses many of the issues he takes up.</p>
<p>The Case Against Perfection explores two arenas in particular: the enhancement of athletes using new biotechnologies, and the genetic selection (and someday perhaps genetic design) of children before birth. With the passion of a sports fan who knows what he likes, Mr. Sandel argues for the integrity of sport as a profound human endeavor. He insists that what we value about athletes has as much to do with natural gifts as superior effort, and that the threat posed by enhancement technologies is, perhaps counterintuitively, a threat to nature more than effort. “To acknowledge the giftedness of life,” he writes,</p>
<p>is to recognize that our talents and powers are not wholly our own doing, nor even fully ours, despite the efforts we expend to develop and to exercise them. It is also to recognize that not everything in the world is open to any use we may desire or devise. An appreciation of the giftedness of life constrains the Promethean project and conduces to a certain humility.</p>
<p>Such humility before the great human mysteries is also at the heart of Mr. Sandel’s critique of what he calls “modern eugenics.” Parental selection and someday parental design of the next generation may not be coercive like early 20th-century eugenics, but, Mr. Sandel argues, it is no less misguided. “The problem with eugenics and genetic engineering,” he writes, “is that they represent the one-sided triumph of willfulness over giftedness, of dominion over reverence, of molding over beholding.” This is of course a deeply conservative sentiment, and while Mr. Sandel is no conservative, he certainly shows himself to be a different kind of liberal than we are accustomed to nowadays.</p>
<p>Mr. Sandel describes three problems with the posture of mastery he finds behind the quest for biotechnological enhancement: It makes us less humble, it makes us responsible for too much, and it diminishes our identification with our fellow man.</p>
<p>The last point is especially intriguing. Mr. Sandel worries that advances in our ability to control human traits will cause us to identify to a diminished degree with those less fortunate, as we lose our ability to put ourselves in their shoes. Yet he never explores the underlying cause of such a failure of solidarity: a loss of faith in the essential liberal principle of human equality.</p>
<p>This oversight is especially evident in his discussion of eugenics. Mr. Sandel is surely right to argue that coercion was never the deepest problem with eugenics, but nor was willfulness its deepest flaw. The most crucial contention of the eugenics movement was not that the state must enforce a collective duty to improve the race, nor that human power would bring an end to human failings, but rather that science had shown the principle of human equality to be unfounded. It is that insight that was rejected when eugenics was finally put aside after World War II. And it is unfortunately that insight that threatens again to rear its head, and to do so, now as then, in particular among progressives.</p>
<p>Mr. Sandel is right to note that when we lose our appreciation for the gifted character of life we lose our humility, and therefore our sympathy, too. But he fails to see that the same attitude informs an implicit rejection of human equality — a rejection he himself evinces in an epilogue to the book devoted to the stem cell debate.</p>
<p>The epilogue feels abrupt and forced. One can hardly escape the conclusion that having voiced fairly conservative views about biotechnology, Mr. Sandel feels compelled to varnish his liberal credentials before signing off. The author’s depth and care disappear, replaced by parlor tricks and patently unsupportable logical leaps. Rather than hubris, he directs his censure at mere inconsistency, arguing that opponents of abortion rights and embryo research really believed what they said, they would picket in vitro fertilization clinics and hold funerals for embryos. And having criticized inconsistency, he then asserts his own position as follows:</p>
<p>Genetic engineering to create designer babies is the ultimate expression of the hubris that marks the loss of reverence for life as a gift. But stem cell research to cure debilitating disease, using unimplanted blastocysts, is a noble exercise of our human ingenuity to promote healing and to play our part in repairing the given world.</p>
<p>The epilogue’s contortions of logic and argument are almost enough to nullify the reader’s sense — built up in the earlier chapters — that behind this book is a serious man contending with serious issues.</p>
<p>But only almost. None of us is immune to blind spots, and thoughtful contention with great questions ought not be dismissed merely because the contender chooses to be less than thoughtful on other questions. Nobody’s perfect, and Mr. Sandel’s book makes an instructive and engaging case that that nobody should be.</p>
<p>— Mr. Levin is director of the Bioethics and American Democracy program at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., and senior editor of the New Atlantis magazine.</p> | false | 1 | case perfectionby michael sandelharvard university press 128 pages 1895 debates biotechnology tend means argue limits may pursuit science medicine ends new technological powers put far less frequently questioned case perfection harvard university press 128 pages 1895 harvard political scientist michael sandel seeks question ends everyone agrees curing disease worthwhile acknowledges going beyond cures improvements human whole aiming heal broken perfect nature make human beings bioethicist carl elliotts evocative phrase better well brief book extended version essay mr sandel published atlantic monthly 2004 turn extension paper wrote presidents council bioethics two years earlier mr sandel member council 2001 2006 served councils staff time paper part councils beyond therapy project culminated report title 2003 strangely mr sandel never directs readers document addresses many issues takes case perfection explores two arenas particular enhancement athletes using new biotechnologies genetic selection someday perhaps genetic design children birth passion sports fan knows likes mr sandel argues integrity sport profound human endeavor insists value athletes much natural gifts superior effort threat posed enhancement technologies perhaps counterintuitively threat nature effort acknowledge giftedness life writes recognize talents powers wholly even fully despite efforts expend develop exercise also recognize everything world open use may desire devise appreciation giftedness life constrains promethean project conduces certain humility humility great human mysteries also heart mr sandels critique calls modern eugenics parental selection someday parental design next generation may coercive like early 20thcentury eugenics mr sandel argues less misguided problem eugenics genetic engineering writes represent onesided triumph willfulness giftedness dominion reverence molding beholding course deeply conservative sentiment mr sandel conservative certainly shows different kind liberal accustomed nowadays mr sandel describes three problems posture mastery finds behind quest biotechnological enhancement makes us less humble makes us responsible much diminishes identification fellow man last point especially intriguing mr sandel worries advances ability control human traits cause us identify diminished degree less fortunate lose ability put shoes yet never explores underlying cause failure solidarity loss faith essential liberal principle human equality oversight especially evident discussion eugenics mr sandel surely right argue coercion never deepest problem eugenics willfulness deepest flaw crucial contention eugenics movement state must enforce collective duty improve race human power would bring end human failings rather science shown principle human equality unfounded insight rejected eugenics finally put aside world war ii unfortunately insight threatens rear head particular among progressives mr sandel right note lose appreciation gifted character life lose humility therefore sympathy fails see attitude informs implicit rejection human equality rejection evinces epilogue book devoted stem cell debate epilogue feels abrupt forced one hardly escape conclusion voiced fairly conservative views biotechnology mr sandel feels compelled varnish liberal credentials signing authors depth care disappear replaced parlor tricks patently unsupportable logical leaps rather hubris directs censure mere inconsistency arguing opponents abortion rights embryo research really believed said would picket vitro fertilization clinics hold funerals embryos criticized inconsistency asserts position follows genetic engineering create designer babies ultimate expression hubris marks loss reverence life gift stem cell research cure debilitating disease using unimplanted blastocysts noble exercise human ingenuity promote healing play part repairing given world epilogues contortions logic argument almost enough nullify readers sense built earlier chapters behind book serious man contending serious issues almost none us immune blind spots thoughtful contention great questions ought dismissed merely contender chooses less thoughtful questions nobodys perfect mr sandels book makes instructive engaging case nobody mr levin director bioethics american democracy program ethics public policy center washington dc senior editor new atlantis magazine | 571 |
<p>Hope is fading for a feel-good ending at the U.S. box office.</p>
<p>After several months of flops like Warner Bros.’ “King Arthur” and EuropaCorp’s “Valerian,” movie studios and theaters are beginning to acknowledge that their streak of record-setting ticket sales may be coming to an end.&#160;AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc., the world’s biggest cinema chain, laid out a worse-than-projected outlook for the North American box office this week.</p>
<p>That announcement dragged down shares of theater stocks, wiping out $1.3 billion from the value of the top four cinema operators in North America since Aug. 1. Even with a new “Star Wars,” a Marvel superhero movie and the sequel to “Blade Runner” on the docket for the holiday season, the box office is unlikely to make up for a “severe hit” in the third quarter, according to Bloomberg Intelligence. To date, receipts are down 2 percent in 2017, and AMC is projecting a 1.5 percent decline for the full year.</p>
<p>The concern is that the slump isn’t just a run of bad luck. Cinema operators have managed for years to keep increasing sales by raising ticket prices amid stagnant attendance, but a sharp drop in filmgoing would make that harder to sustain. And the tried-and-true formula of churning out big-budget sequels and cinematic universes populated with superbeings seems to be wearing on filmgoers. Movies featuring once-reliable draws Jack Sparrow, the Transformers and the Mummy did poorly in the U.S.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, competition is heating up. Netflix Inc. and other digital distributors are creating more original movies, and consumers have more demands on their attention than ever, from Snapchat to YouTube. Further exacerbating the trend, studios are expected to push for a new premium video-on-demand window this year.</p>
<p>It’s possible that Hollywood could reverse the trend next year, when a new movie about Han Solo, an Avengers film, and sequels to “Deadpool” and “Jurassic World” are scheduled.</p>
<p>“This is very typical of the movie business,” said Paul Sweeney, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. “You could make the argument that the slate for next year looks really good, which should grow the market next year in North America. That part’s a cyclical thing, and it’s likely to come back.”</p>
<p>And movie-theater operators Regal Entertainment Group, Cinemark Holdings Inc. and Imax Corp. aren’t facing the same level of pressure as AMC, which is carrying almost $5 billion in debt after expanding its empire to Europe, with acquisitions in the U.K. and Sweden.</p>
<p>Controlled by Chinese billionaire Wang Jianlin’s Dalian Wanda Group Co., AMC has become the poster child for China’s incursion into Hollywood. Concern that Dalian Wanda’s international investments may wane is adding to AMC’s troubles. “With China cracking down on funding for AMC’s majority shareholder, Dalian Wanda, the cinema chain faces murky prospects given its high debt level and appetite for global M&amp;A,” wrote Geetha Ranganathan, a Bloomberg Intelligence analyst.</p>
<p>As an expression of confidence in its future, the theater operator late Thursday announced its board approved as much as $100 million in repurchases of its Class A stock, or about 5 percent of its total equity market value, which includes Class B shares held by Wanda.</p>
<p>Chief Executive Officer Adam Aron said he also plans to buy shares personally over the next 60 days.</p>
<p>Click here for a BI analysis of summer movie profits.</p>
<p>AMC said Tuesday it will cut jobs and plans to write off its investment in National CineMedia LLC, resulting in a loss of as much as $178.5 million. The company will also pursue “strategic pricing” — possibly selectively charging more for hot tickets or offering discounts to fill seats — and cut back on investments in improvements to its theaters, such as reclining seats.</p>
<p>The revised outlook means AMC’s indebtedness is likely to be higher by the end of the year, though probably not enough to lead to a downgrade, said Jason Cuomo, an analyst at Moody’s Investors Service. Dialing back on investments will help the company weather the storm, he said.</p>
<p>“They have some levers they can pull and manage, and they’re not going to stand still,” Cuomo said.</p>
<p>Canada’s Cineplex Inc. also reported poor second-quarter results as movie fans grow tired of franchises, so-called “sequel-itis.” It too will cut spending and jobs, even as it considers price hikes to offset higher minimum wages in Canada. Regal’s earnings missed estimates, while Imax’s were in line with analysts’ projections. Cinemark is scheduled to report second-quarter results on Friday.</p>
<p>The big shadow hanging over the industry is whether studios will push to shorten the time between theater and home release of their movies, from the standard three months to within weeks after theater attendance has dropped off. The concern is that such a premium video-on-demand offering would give consumers less incentive to go see a movie in theaters, knowing they could watch it at home within weeks.</p>
<p>The studios are negotiating with cinema operators over the matter, pushing for an agreement as soon as the end of this year. Reaching a deal may be tricky. Studios are restricted from coordinating among themselves because of antitrust rules — while exhibitors have said they will only agree to deals that boost their bottom line.</p>
<p>Meantime, the industry is counting on Walt Disney Co.’s “Thor: Ragnarok,” opening Nov. 3, and “Star Wars: The Last Jedi,” on Dec. 15, to make the picture brighter.</p>
<p>“Until you see box office turn, people have to assume the worst for everything and that is why see people stay relatively concerned on the space until you get to Q4,” said Eric Wold, an analyst at B. Riley &amp; Co. While he has a buy rating on the stock, he says in the past he may have been too positive. “You have got zero opportunity for positive news until maybe November of Q4 when the slate looks a little bit better.”</p> | false | 1 | hope fading feelgood ending us box office several months flops like warner bros king arthur europacorps valerian movie studios theaters beginning acknowledge streak recordsetting ticket sales may coming end160amc entertainment holdings inc worlds biggest cinema chain laid worsethanprojected outlook north american box office week announcement dragged shares theater stocks wiping 13 billion value top four cinema operators north america since aug 1 even new star wars marvel superhero movie sequel blade runner docket holiday season box office unlikely make severe hit third quarter according bloomberg intelligence date receipts 2 percent 2017 amc projecting 15 percent decline full year concern slump isnt run bad luck cinema operators managed years keep increasing sales raising ticket prices amid stagnant attendance sharp drop filmgoing would make harder sustain triedandtrue formula churning bigbudget sequels cinematic universes populated superbeings seems wearing filmgoers movies featuring oncereliable draws jack sparrow transformers mummy poorly us meanwhile competition heating netflix inc digital distributors creating original movies consumers demands attention ever snapchat youtube exacerbating trend studios expected push new premium videoondemand window year possible hollywood could reverse trend next year new movie han solo avengers film sequels deadpool jurassic world scheduled typical movie business said paul sweeney analyst bloomberg intelligence could make argument slate next year looks really good grow market next year north america parts cyclical thing likely come back movietheater operators regal entertainment group cinemark holdings inc imax corp arent facing level pressure amc carrying almost 5 billion debt expanding empire europe acquisitions uk sweden controlled chinese billionaire wang jianlins dalian wanda group co amc become poster child chinas incursion hollywood concern dalian wandas international investments may wane adding amcs troubles china cracking funding amcs majority shareholder dalian wanda cinema chain faces murky prospects given high debt level appetite global mampa wrote geetha ranganathan bloomberg intelligence analyst expression confidence future theater operator late thursday announced board approved much 100 million repurchases class stock 5 percent total equity market value includes class b shares held wanda chief executive officer adam aron said also plans buy shares personally next 60 days click bi analysis summer movie profits amc said tuesday cut jobs plans write investment national cinemedia llc resulting loss much 1785 million company also pursue strategic pricing possibly selectively charging hot tickets offering discounts fill seats cut back investments improvements theaters reclining seats revised outlook means amcs indebtedness likely higher end year though probably enough lead downgrade said jason cuomo analyst moodys investors service dialing back investments help company weather storm said levers pull manage theyre going stand still cuomo said canadas cineplex inc also reported poor secondquarter results movie fans grow tired franchises socalled sequelitis cut spending jobs even considers price hikes offset higher minimum wages canada regals earnings missed estimates imaxs line analysts projections cinemark scheduled report secondquarter results friday big shadow hanging industry whether studios push shorten time theater home release movies standard three months within weeks theater attendance dropped concern premium videoondemand offering would give consumers less incentive go see movie theaters knowing could watch home within weeks studios negotiating cinema operators matter pushing agreement soon end year reaching deal may tricky studios restricted coordinating among antitrust rules exhibitors said agree deals boost bottom line meantime industry counting walt disney cos thor ragnarok opening nov 3 star wars last jedi dec 15 make picture brighter see box office turn people assume worst everything see people stay relatively concerned space get q4 said eric wold analyst b riley amp co buy rating stock says past may positive got zero opportunity positive news maybe november q4 slate looks little bit better | 593 |
<p>Warner Bros. TV Group has launched an investigation into allegations of inappropriate behavior by <a href="http://variety.com/t/andrew-kreisberg/" type="external">Andrew Kreisberg</a>, an executive producer on the CW shows “Arrow,” “Supergirl,” “The Flash” and “DC’s Legends of Tomorrow,” Variety has learned. Kreisberg, who has been suspended by the studio, has engaged in a pattern of alleged sexual harassment and inappropriate physical contact over a period of years, according to 15 women and four men who have worked with him.</p>
<p>“We have recently been made aware of allegations of misconduct against <a href="http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/supergirl-kara-mon-el-season-3-interview-andrew-kreisberg-1202584433/" type="external">Andrew Kreisberg</a>,” said Warner Bros. TV Group in a statement to Variety. “We have suspended Mr. Kreisberg and are conducting an internal investigation. We take all allegations of misconduct extremely seriously, and are committed to creating a safe working environment for our employees and everyone involved in our productions.”</p>
<p>Kreisberg strongly denies the allegations in this story.</p>
<p>None of the 19 sources for this story wanted to be named for fear of retaliation. Many of the women are current or former employees in a range of positions on those shows, and they cited fear of retaliation from either Warner Bros., the studio that makes those dramas, or from the companies and individuals associated with those programs.</p>
<p>“We were recently made aware of some deeply troubling allegations regarding one of our showrunners,” said Greg Berlanti and Sarah Schechter, who head Berlanti Productions which oversee Kreisberg’s shows. “We have been encouraging and fully cooperating with the investigation into this by Warner Bros. There is nothing more important to us than the safety and well-being of our cast, crew, writers, producers and any staff. We do not tolerate harassment and are committed to doing everything we&#160;can to make an environment&#160;that’s safe to work in and safe to speak up about if it isn’t.”</p>
<p>All the men and women who spoke to Variety describe similar incidents of inappropriate touching and endemic sexual harassment; they often told the same stories and corroborated each other’s accounts.</p>
<p>According to sources who either witnessed this behavior or were subjected to it, Kreisberg is accused of frequently touching people without their permission, asking for massages from uncomfortable female staff members, and kissing women without asking. Almost every source cites a constant stream of sexualized comments about women’s appearances, their clothes, and their perceived desirability.</p>
<p>Kreisberg told Variety, “I have made comments on women’s appearances and clothes in my capacity as an executive producer, but they were not sexualized. Like many people, I have given someone a non-sexual hug or kiss on the cheek.” He denies that any inappropriate touching or massages occurred.</p>
<p>None of the sources Variety spoke to reported Kreisberg to Warner Bros. human resources, on the assumption that they would pay a price for that, given how important his position was at the company. “Going to HR never crossed my mind, because it seems like nothing’s been enforced,” one woman says. But as word spread of this story, human resources began interviewing the women on his staff.</p>
<p>Many women said they found the work environment created by Kreisberg to be so hostile and “toxic” that they leave a room when he enters it. Kreisberg reiterated his denial that he gave any staffers unwanted attention.</p>
<p>“I have proudly mentored both male and female colleagues for many years. But never in what I believe to be an unwanted way and certainly never in a sexual way,” he said. But sources paint a different picture.</p>
<p>“The workplace feels unsafe,” one woman says, a sentiment echoed by others. Said another, “He scares people.”</p>
<p>Last year, a high-level female producer who works with Kreisberg brought her concerns about his inappropriate behavior and his harassment of employees to a senior executive at Berlanti Productions, the company owned by mega-producer Greg Berlanti, who oversees all of the series Kreisberg works on. “There was zero response,” this woman says. “Nothing happened. Nothing changed.”</p>
<p>Sources close to Berlanti Productions says Berlanti was never made aware of any allegations about Kreisberg’s behavior, and if he had, he would have directed them to human resources.</p>
<p>A male writer who worked for one of the CW shows Kreisberg has run says, “It was an environment in which women — assistants, writers, executives, directors — were all evaluated based on their bodies, not on their work.”</p>
<p>This male colleague says that he talked to Kreisberg about his behavior a few times, but “it had no impact,” the co-worker says. So the writer came to understand that “sexual harassment and demeaning women was just pervasive there — like white noise in the background,” he says.</p>
<p>This male colleague has known Kreisberg for some time, and about six years ago, he says he also wrote Kreisberg an email to try to get him to change. After these attempts, he says, Kreisberg often would not speak to him for days, or he would ignore what was said.</p>
<p>Asked if any colleague, anyone from Berlanti Productions or anyone from Warner Bros. ever told him that he should not make sexually harassing comments to women, Kreisberg said, “No.”</p>
<p>According to many interviewed by Variety, Kreisberg’s problematic behavior, particularly around women, got worse once he had a great deal of authority as an executive producer on several shows.</p>
<p>“The power went to his head,” says a male writer. “It became clear to me that it would be very dangerous, career-wise, for me to confront him about his behavior.”</p>
<p>Two women say he would talk about how he hired staffers based on their looks, and one quoted him as saying, “You should have seen the other dogs we interviewed for that position.” Kreisberg denies saying this.</p>
<p>“Younger women were constantly belittled and subjected to nasty comments,” says a writer who has worked with Kreisberg.</p>
<p>A high-level producer at a CW show says that a young woman who worked in two successive lower-level jobs was the object of Kreisberg’s “obsessive crush,” and left due to his unwanted attention, an account confirmed by more than a dozen other sources. This former employee did not respond to multiple requests for comment.</p>
<p>Kreisberg says that he has devoted attention to younger staffers “as a mentor, yes, to both men and women.&#160;In a sexual way, no.”</p>
<p>One woman who had a professional relationship with Kreisberg says that, after a while, the texts that he was sending her took a turn. “It was clear he wanted more than a work relationship,” this woman says. The situation made her uncomfortable, because she did not want anything other than a professional connection with him.</p>
<p>One male writer says that Kreisberg called him into his office to view footage of a woman who was coming in later that day to audition. In the video, the woman was topless.</p>
<p>“My mind went blank. I don’t know what I said,” says the writer, who notes that Kreisberg was grinning. “But my internal reaction was, ‘Why would you show me this — it’s wildly inappropriate!’ I could not get out of there fast enough.”</p>
<p>Kreisberg says that “in doing research on the internet about a prospective actress, we found that she had a role in a premium cable network show. It was not a X-rated show. We clicked on the video and she was topless.”</p>
<p>A woman reports that when a female co-worker walked into his presence, he said, “Wow, you look so tired that I don’t even want to have sex with you anymore.” The woman’s children were present and heard the remark. Kreisberg denies having said this.</p>
<p>Every source agrees that the staffers who received the harshest treatment were usually women. But men were not immune.</p>
<p>A young male “Arrow”-verse staffer recalls that he one day stopped by to see a female colleague, and leaned down on her desk as he talked to her. Without the man’s knowledge, Kreisberg came in, placed his hands on the man’s posterior and began pretending to have sex with him, saying something like, “Well, if you’re offering.” Kreisberg denies that this occurred.</p>
<p>“He laughed, and we all laughed, but I felt very uncomfortable,” this employee says. “I have never had anyone put their hands on me like that in a work situation. He did it because he feels like he can do whatever he wants.”</p>
<p>One female colleague says that Kreisberg “joked” about waking up next to her, while another junior staffer recounts Kreisberg telling a group of employees, in reference to a work trip involving her and Kreisberg, “What happens in Vancouver, stays in Vancouver.” He once asked an array of women for their bra sizes, says a source, citing an impulse to buy a bra for his wife. Kreisberg denies making these comments.</p>
<p>Another woman says that she was asked, in the presence of one other woman, to lie on Kreisberg’s office floor while he assumed a push-up stance over her. Then he asked her to pretend to choke him.</p>
<p>“It was for research, he said,” according to this employee. “I didn’t feel like I had any right to say, ‘This is weird.’” This woman recounts that he mimed having sex with a copy machine once when she and another woman were in the room. She quit over his behavior and the atmosphere it created.</p>
<p>“It is not uncommon in writer’s rooms that we act out what we want production to film,” Kreisberg says. “There was never any sexual intent or overtones.”</p>
<p>Kreisberg and another high-level male producer, at one point, looked at photos of naked women in the presence of two women, one of whom spoke to Variety.&#160;Kreisberg says the photo incident did not happen.</p>
<p>Women say that they avoided having to sit on a couch next to him. Multiple women called that place in the room “the hot seat,” because Kreisberg would keep getting closer and closer to the woman next to him, no matter how many times she moved away from him.</p>
<p>Several sources talked about dressing as plainly as they could; one woman says that she even stopped wearing V-neck shirts. “You would have to watch what you said, what you wore, to try to stop being subjected to sexual innuendo,” says one woman.</p>
<p>“As an assistant in this industry, there’s nowhere for me to go,” recalls one woman who ended up quitting. “So I just took it.”</p> | false | 1 | warner bros tv group launched investigation allegations inappropriate behavior andrew kreisberg executive producer cw shows arrow supergirl flash dcs legends tomorrow variety learned kreisberg suspended studio engaged pattern alleged sexual harassment inappropriate physical contact period years according 15 women four men worked recently made aware allegations misconduct andrew kreisberg said warner bros tv group statement variety suspended mr kreisberg conducting internal investigation take allegations misconduct extremely seriously committed creating safe working environment employees everyone involved productions kreisberg strongly denies allegations story none 19 sources story wanted named fear retaliation many women current former employees range positions shows cited fear retaliation either warner bros studio makes dramas companies individuals associated programs recently made aware deeply troubling allegations regarding one showrunners said greg berlanti sarah schechter head berlanti productions oversee kreisbergs shows encouraging fully cooperating investigation warner bros nothing important us safety wellbeing cast crew writers producers staff tolerate harassment committed everything we160can make environment160thats safe work safe speak isnt men women spoke variety describe similar incidents inappropriate touching endemic sexual harassment often told stories corroborated others accounts according sources either witnessed behavior subjected kreisberg accused frequently touching people without permission asking massages uncomfortable female staff members kissing women without asking almost every source cites constant stream sexualized comments womens appearances clothes perceived desirability kreisberg told variety made comments womens appearances clothes capacity executive producer sexualized like many people given someone nonsexual hug kiss cheek denies inappropriate touching massages occurred none sources variety spoke reported kreisberg warner bros human resources assumption would pay price given important position company going hr never crossed mind seems like nothings enforced one woman says word spread story human resources began interviewing women staff many women said found work environment created kreisberg hostile toxic leave room enters kreisberg reiterated denial gave staffers unwanted attention proudly mentored male female colleagues many years never believe unwanted way certainly never sexual way said sources paint different picture workplace feels unsafe one woman says sentiment echoed others said another scares people last year highlevel female producer works kreisberg brought concerns inappropriate behavior harassment employees senior executive berlanti productions company owned megaproducer greg berlanti oversees series kreisberg works zero response woman says nothing happened nothing changed sources close berlanti productions says berlanti never made aware allegations kreisbergs behavior would directed human resources male writer worked one cw shows kreisberg run says environment women assistants writers executives directors evaluated based bodies work male colleague says talked kreisberg behavior times impact coworker says writer came understand sexual harassment demeaning women pervasive like white noise background says male colleague known kreisberg time six years ago says also wrote kreisberg email try get change attempts says kreisberg often would speak days would ignore said asked colleague anyone berlanti productions anyone warner bros ever told make sexually harassing comments women kreisberg said according many interviewed variety kreisbergs problematic behavior particularly around women got worse great deal authority executive producer several shows power went head says male writer became clear would dangerous careerwise confront behavior two women say would talk hired staffers based looks one quoted saying seen dogs interviewed position kreisberg denies saying younger women constantly belittled subjected nasty comments says writer worked kreisberg highlevel producer cw show says young woman worked two successive lowerlevel jobs object kreisbergs obsessive crush left due unwanted attention account confirmed dozen sources former employee respond multiple requests comment kreisberg says devoted attention younger staffers mentor yes men women160in sexual way one woman professional relationship kreisberg says texts sending took turn clear wanted work relationship woman says situation made uncomfortable want anything professional connection one male writer says kreisberg called office view footage woman coming later day audition video woman topless mind went blank dont know said says writer notes kreisberg grinning internal reaction would show wildly inappropriate could get fast enough kreisberg says research internet prospective actress found role premium cable network show xrated show clicked video topless woman reports female coworker walked presence said wow look tired dont even want sex anymore womans children present heard remark kreisberg denies said every source agrees staffers received harshest treatment usually women men immune young male arrowverse staffer recalls one day stopped see female colleague leaned desk talked without mans knowledge kreisberg came placed hands mans posterior began pretending sex saying something like well youre offering kreisberg denies occurred laughed laughed felt uncomfortable employee says never anyone put hands like work situation feels like whatever wants one female colleague says kreisberg joked waking next another junior staffer recounts kreisberg telling group employees reference work trip involving kreisberg happens vancouver stays vancouver asked array women bra sizes says source citing impulse buy bra wife kreisberg denies making comments another woman says asked presence one woman lie kreisbergs office floor assumed pushup stance asked pretend choke research said according employee didnt feel like right say weird woman recounts mimed sex copy machine another woman room quit behavior atmosphere created uncommon writers rooms act want production film kreisberg says never sexual intent overtones kreisberg another highlevel male producer one point looked photos naked women presence two women one spoke variety160kreisberg says photo incident happen women say avoided sit couch next multiple women called place room hot seat kreisberg would keep getting closer closer woman next matter many times moved away several sources talked dressing plainly could one woman says even stopped wearing vneck shirts would watch said wore try stop subjected sexual innuendo says one woman assistant industry theres nowhere go recalls one woman ended quitting took | 911 |
<p>NEW YORK — A new lawsuit lays out an explosive tale of Trump allies, the White House and Fox News Channel conspiring to push a false story about Democratic leaks and an unsolved killing in order to distract attention from the Russia investigation that has been swirling around the president.</p>
<p>The lawsuit was filed Tuesday against Fox by an investigator who had been looking into the killing of Seth Rich, a former Democratic National Committee staff member who died in 2016 in what police say was a botched robbery. The investigator alleges that Fox quoted him as saying things he never said and was willing to show President Donald Trump its story before it was posted online.</p>
<p>It’s the second time in two days that Trump has been accused of being actively involved in pushing a public narrative to lower the heat of the Russia story. The Washington Post reported that the president had written a misleading statement for his son to give to The New York Times about Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting last summer with a Russian who promised dirt on Democrat Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.</p>
<p>Rich’s death has become fodder for conspiracy theorists, deeply angering the 27-year-old’s family. In May, the story was thrust into the headlines again when Fox posted a story on its website in which investigator Rod Wheeler said there had been contact between Rich and WikiLeaks, the organization that posted a trove of DNC emails last year. The story was heavily promoted by Fox News host Sean Hannity, who has informally advised the president.</p>
<p>In the lawsuit, Wheeler now says that he never made that statement. He also contends he was told his false comments were put in the story because Trump wanted it that way.</p>
<p>Rich’s family released a statement Tuesday night supporting the lawsuit. “While we can’t speak to the evidence that you now have, we are hopeful that this brings an end to what has been the most emotionally difficult time in our lives and an end to conspiracy theories surrounding our beloved Seth,” the family wrote.</p>
<p>Fox says it’s “completely erroneous” to suggest it pushed the story to distract from the Russia investigation. Wheeler has made contradictory statements regarding the case and is simultaneously filing a racial discrimination lawsuit against the network, represented by a lawyer who has other lawsuits against Fox.</p>
<p>White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Trump had no knowledge of the false story before it was posted and that it was “completely untrue” that the White House had any role in shaping it.</p>
<p>Wheeler, a Fox contributor on law enforcement issues, said he was brought into the Rich case by donor and Trump supporter Ed Butowsky. He says Butowsky, who has also made occasional guest appearances on Fox News, was intent on establishing a link between Rich and WikiLeaks.</p>
<p>Two days before the Fox article was published, Wheeler said he got a text message from Butowsky: “Not to add any more pressure but the president just read the article. He wants the article out immediately. It’s now all up to you. But don’t feel the pressure.”</p>
<p>Butowsky said in a phone interview Tuesday he has never met Trump and his text message to Wheeler about the president reading the article was “tongue-in-cheek.”</p>
<p>Fox removed the story from its website a week after it was published, saying “it was not initially subjected to the high degree of editorial scrutiny we require for all of our reporting.” Hannity ultimately backed away, saying he was acting out of respect for Rich’s family.</p>
<p>Wheeler also said that he and Butowsky had met with outgoing White House press secretary Sean Spicer and showed Spicer notes on Wheeler’s investigation. Spicer asked to be kept informed, the lawsuit said.</p>
<p>Spicer plays down the importance of that meeting.</p>
<p>“Ed is a longtime supporter of the president’s agenda who often appears in the media,” Spicer said Tuesday. “He asked for a 10-minute meeting, with no specified topic, to catch up and said he would be bringing along a contributor to Fox News. As Ed himself has noted, he has never met the president and the White House had nothing to do with his story.”</p>
<p>On the day the Fox story was posted, Spicer was asked about the report that Rich had emailed WikiLeaks. He said, “I’m not aware of that” and did not mention that he had met with Butowsky and Wheeler a month earlier.</p>
<p>One of Trump’s attorneys, Jay Sekulow, also devoted attention to the Rich story during several Hannity appearances in May, before his hiring by Trump was announced.</p>
<p>“There’s a lot more to this, I would suspect,” Sekulow said on the May 18 show, which Hannity devoted almost entirely to a discussion about Rich. “You can’t ignore the fact that it was a DNC staffer. You can’t ignore the fact that there was nothing taken from the individual’s body.”</p>
<p>He said that while he hadn’t seen “the files” on Rich, the incident “undercuts” the argument that Russians interfered in the election.</p>
<p>At the time, Trump was facing news stories about the investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 campaign and possible ties between his campaign aides and Moscow. He continues to blast the inquiries as a “witch hunt” aimed at discrediting his election win and tries to focus attention on Clinton, who has largely faded from the headlines.</p>
<p>Jay Wallace, Fox News president, says, “The accusation that FoxNews.com published Malia Zimmerman’s story to help detract from coverage of the Russia collusion issue is completely erroneous.” Malia Zimmerman was a Fox producer on the story.</p>
<p>“The retraction of this story is still being investigated internally and we have no evidence that Rod Wheeler was misquoted by Zimmerman,” Wallace said.</p>
<p>In May, Wheeler told Fox’s local affiliate in Washington that he “absolutely” had sources at the FBI saying that there was information that could link Rich to WikiLeaks. But the station noted that Wheeler subsequently said contradictory things to other news organizations, and the station could not contact him again.</p>
<p>Fox News Channel’s prime-time opinion hosts, particularly Hannity, make no secret of their admiration for Trump. But any charges that the network worked with Trump on a false story could harm the reputations of the network’s journalists.</p>
<p>Trump has fostered an unusually close relationship with Fox and many of its personalities, particularly Hannity. Hannity gave Trump a frequent platform for non-challenging interviews during the campaign, along with advice on air and behind the scenes. The “Fox and Friends” morning show also is a Trump favorite.</p> | false | 1 | new york new lawsuit lays explosive tale trump allies white house fox news channel conspiring push false story democratic leaks unsolved killing order distract attention russia investigation swirling around president lawsuit filed tuesday fox investigator looking killing seth rich former democratic national committee staff member died 2016 police say botched robbery investigator alleges fox quoted saying things never said willing show president donald trump story posted online second time two days trump accused actively involved pushing public narrative lower heat russia story washington post reported president written misleading statement son give new york times donald trump jrs meeting last summer russian promised dirt democrat hillary clintons presidential campaign richs death become fodder conspiracy theorists deeply angering 27yearolds family may story thrust headlines fox posted story website investigator rod wheeler said contact rich wikileaks organization posted trove dnc emails last year story heavily promoted fox news host sean hannity informally advised president lawsuit wheeler says never made statement also contends told false comments put story trump wanted way richs family released statement tuesday night supporting lawsuit cant speak evidence hopeful brings end emotionally difficult time lives end conspiracy theories surrounding beloved seth family wrote fox says completely erroneous suggest pushed story distract russia investigation wheeler made contradictory statements regarding case simultaneously filing racial discrimination lawsuit network represented lawyer lawsuits fox white house press secretary sarah huckabee sanders said trump knowledge false story posted completely untrue white house role shaping wheeler fox contributor law enforcement issues said brought rich case donor trump supporter ed butowsky says butowsky also made occasional guest appearances fox news intent establishing link rich wikileaks two days fox article published wheeler said got text message butowsky add pressure president read article wants article immediately dont feel pressure butowsky said phone interview tuesday never met trump text message wheeler president reading article tongueincheek fox removed story website week published saying initially subjected high degree editorial scrutiny require reporting hannity ultimately backed away saying acting respect richs family wheeler also said butowsky met outgoing white house press secretary sean spicer showed spicer notes wheelers investigation spicer asked kept informed lawsuit said spicer plays importance meeting ed longtime supporter presidents agenda often appears media spicer said tuesday asked 10minute meeting specified topic catch said would bringing along contributor fox news ed noted never met president white house nothing story day fox story posted spicer asked report rich emailed wikileaks said im aware mention met butowsky wheeler month earlier one trumps attorneys jay sekulow also devoted attention rich story several hannity appearances may hiring trump announced theres lot would suspect sekulow said may 18 show hannity devoted almost entirely discussion rich cant ignore fact dnc staffer cant ignore fact nothing taken individuals body said hadnt seen files rich incident undercuts argument russians interfered election time trump facing news stories investigations russian meddling 2016 campaign possible ties campaign aides moscow continues blast inquiries witch hunt aimed discrediting election win tries focus attention clinton largely faded headlines jay wallace fox news president says accusation foxnewscom published malia zimmermans story help detract coverage russia collusion issue completely erroneous malia zimmerman fox producer story retraction story still investigated internally evidence rod wheeler misquoted zimmerman wallace said may wheeler told foxs local affiliate washington absolutely sources fbi saying information could link rich wikileaks station noted wheeler subsequently said contradictory things news organizations station could contact fox news channels primetime opinion hosts particularly hannity make secret admiration trump charges network worked trump false story could harm reputations networks journalists trump fostered unusually close relationship fox many personalities particularly hannity hannity gave trump frequent platform nonchallenging interviews campaign along advice air behind scenes fox friends morning show also trump favorite | 611 |
<p>When it comes to the relationship between congressional Republicans and the Trump administration, 2017 has so far been a year of massive coordination problems. Or at least that’s the term you’d use if you wanted to avoid four-letter words.</p>
<p>This has been most evident in the legislative process around health care, of course. That process isn’t dead (though it has hardly lacked for obituaries, almost since the moment it began), but it has obviously been quite dysfunctional, and prominent among the reasons for that have been a series of misalignments between the two sides of Pennsylvania Avenue.</p>
<p>In the House and then the Senate, members and staff found themselves bizarrely uncertain at almost every point about what the administration’s substantive positions were, and just when they thought they had a handle on those (or when they thought they could ignore them) the president himself would pull the rug out from under whatever conclusions they’d drawn. This often didn’t seem to be done intentionally, in the traditional sense. At the core of the problem on the administration’s side has been the president’s own uncertainty about how the legislative process works and what role he might play in shaping it, but there have also seemed to be strong differences of opinion among his advisors that ended up sending very mixed signals without ever being fully articulated to members of Congress.</p>
<p>At the same time, the White House has also often been oddly uncertain of just where things were headed on the Hill. This wasn’t exactly a function of a lack of communication. There has been a lot of communication. And there were times when the administration was very engaged and also pretty constructive. But at key moments it seemed as if the White House just had the wrong impression of where key members stood on the bills before them and what would happen next, and also found various turns in the process utterly baffling. Obviously, the basic lack of common vision and purpose (and at times even of coherent camps) among congressional Republicans was a major source of this confusion. The process at key moments just hasn’t made any sense, so it’s hard to blame the president’s advisors for being confused—everyone else has been confused too. But the combination of these factors has made for a terrible mess.</p>
<p>The problems underlying that confusion are not unique to health care. And although the effort to avoid them when it comes to tax reform does seem to be going reasonably well (proving again that tax cuts are the only common language among elected Republicans at this point), they are already cropping up on the other pressing priority confronting the elected branches this fall: the budget process.</p>
<p>Every passing day brings closer some key budget deadlines that will soon force a focus on the familiar challenge of keeping the government open. There will be a debt-ceiling vote, there may be a new budget resolution that could get tax reform started, and there will need to be votes on appropriations for the coming 2018 fiscal year. Some of these could be combined, and also combined with some other legislation (like a reauthorization of the Children’s Health Insurance Program) though it doesn’t appear that either the administration or congressional leaders now have a clear strategy for which and how. And none of them will be easy. But the biggest challenge is likely to be the appropriations process.</p>
<p>The basic problem is simple: Mexico isn’t going to pay for the border wall that President Trump wants, and congressional Democrats don’t want to pay for it either.</p>
<p>Why is that a pressing issue in the budget process? Appropriations bills to fund the government will require 60 votes in the Senate, especially since Republicans want to bust the sequester cap on defense. Since time is short (the House, for instance, has about 10 legislative days on the calendar between now and September 30 when the new fiscal year starts) keeping the government open will probably require either a bipartisan continuing resolution to buy some time or a bipartisan budget deal to settle spending levels for the year. Either way, Democrats will resist appropriating money for a border wall but the Trump administration has suggested the president will not accept a bill that doesn’t provide such funding. At this point, it doesn’t seem like Democrats have much of an incentive to give ground on that subject, but it also seems unlikely that the president will incline to give ground on it. A shutdown is entirely possible.</p>
<p>Republican congressional leaders clearly want to avoid a shutdown. But it’s not nearly as clear that the president or his senior team agree. Back in May, Trump&#160; <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/859393829505552385" type="external">tweeted</a>&#160;that “Our country needs a good ‘shutdown’ in September to fix mess!” If he still thinks so, it’s certainly in his power to make that happen. And even if he doesn’t want to, it won’t be all that easy to avoid. Congressional Republicans seem to be assuming that when it comes down to it the president will just back down and accept a funding bill without money for a border wall, or with some symbolic amount. They have come to think they are dealing with the weakest president they’ve ever seen. That may be what happens. But the level of confidence about it seems excessive.</p>
<p>If a shutdown does happen, the executive branch has a lot of control over just how it would work. The Obama administration used that control to maximize the pain involved, in order to put pressure on congressional Republicans. If it wanted to, the Trump administration could work instead to minimize the practical effects of a shutdown, or even to focus those in ways that might pressure Senate Democrats to give ground. But doing that would require careful preparation and disciplined execution, neither of which has so far been the administration’s forte.</p>
<p>And as of now, it just doesn’t seem as though congressional leaders and rank and file members are on the same page as the administration about whether a shutdown is desirable, what the key options are for strengthening the Republican hand in the coming weeks, and what some plausible scenarios look like.</p>
<p>Quite a lot needs to get done over the very few legislative days between now and the end of September to avoid a train wreck on the budget. It could surely happen. But getting a lot done in a short time would be quite a departure from how Washington has worked in 2017.</p>
<p>Yuval Levin is the Hertog Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.</p> | false | 1 | comes relationship congressional republicans trump administration 2017 far year massive coordination problems least thats term youd use wanted avoid fourletter words evident legislative process around health care course process isnt dead though hardly lacked obituaries almost since moment began obviously quite dysfunctional prominent among reasons series misalignments two sides pennsylvania avenue house senate members staff found bizarrely uncertain almost every point administrations substantive positions thought handle thought could ignore president would pull rug whatever conclusions theyd drawn often didnt seem done intentionally traditional sense core problem administrations side presidents uncertainty legislative process works role might play shaping also seemed strong differences opinion among advisors ended sending mixed signals without ever fully articulated members congress time white house also often oddly uncertain things headed hill wasnt exactly function lack communication lot communication times administration engaged also pretty constructive key moments seemed white house wrong impression key members stood bills would happen next also found various turns process utterly baffling obviously basic lack common vision purpose times even coherent camps among congressional republicans major source confusion process key moments hasnt made sense hard blame presidents advisors confusedeveryone else confused combination factors made terrible mess problems underlying confusion unique health care although effort avoid comes tax reform seem going reasonably well proving tax cuts common language among elected republicans point already cropping pressing priority confronting elected branches fall budget process every passing day brings closer key budget deadlines soon force focus familiar challenge keeping government open debtceiling vote may new budget resolution could get tax reform started need votes appropriations coming 2018 fiscal year could combined also combined legislation like reauthorization childrens health insurance program though doesnt appear either administration congressional leaders clear strategy none easy biggest challenge likely appropriations process basic problem simple mexico isnt going pay border wall president trump wants congressional democrats dont want pay either pressing issue budget process appropriations bills fund government require 60 votes senate especially since republicans want bust sequester cap defense since time short house instance 10 legislative days calendar september 30 new fiscal year starts keeping government open probably require either bipartisan continuing resolution buy time bipartisan budget deal settle spending levels year either way democrats resist appropriating money border wall trump administration suggested president accept bill doesnt provide funding point doesnt seem like democrats much incentive give ground subject also seems unlikely president incline give ground shutdown entirely possible republican congressional leaders clearly want avoid shutdown nearly clear president senior team agree back may trump160 tweeted160that country needs good shutdown september fix mess still thinks certainly power make happen even doesnt want wont easy avoid congressional republicans seem assuming comes president back accept funding bill without money border wall symbolic amount come think dealing weakest president theyve ever seen may happens level confidence seems excessive shutdown happen executive branch lot control would work obama administration used control maximize pain involved order put pressure congressional republicans wanted trump administration could work instead minimize practical effects shutdown even focus ways might pressure senate democrats give ground would require careful preparation disciplined execution neither far administrations forte doesnt seem though congressional leaders rank file members page administration whether shutdown desirable key options strengthening republican hand coming weeks plausible scenarios look like quite lot needs get done legislative days end september avoid train wreck budget could surely happen getting lot done short time would quite departure washington worked 2017 yuval levin hertog fellow ethics public policy center | 570 |
<p>This is the week that the Democratic party ran up the white flag when it comes to the surge in Iraq. Leading the surrender was none other than Barack Obama, the Democratic party's presumptive nominee for president and among the most vocal critics of the counterinsurgency plan that has transformed the Iraq war from a potentially catastrophic loss to what may turn out to be a historically significant victory.</p>
<p>On Monday, Obama wrote a New York Times op-ed in which he acknowledged the success of the surge. “In the 18 months since President Bush announced the surge,” Obama wrote, “our troops have performed heroically in bringing down the level of violence. New tactics have protected the Iraqi population, and the Sunni tribes have rejected Al Qaeda–greatly weakening its effectiveness.” A day later, Obama gave a speech in which he declared for the first time that “true success” and “victory in Iraq” were possible. In addition, the Obama campaign scrubbed its presidential website to remove criticism of the surge.</p>
<p>The debate, then, is over, and the (landslide) verdict is in: The surge has been a tremendous success.</p>
<p>Obama, in typical fashion, is trying to use the success of the surge he opposed to justify his long-held commitment to withdraw all combat troops from Iraq as quickly as possible. But turning Iraq into a winning political issue won't be nearly as easy as Obama once thought. He has stepped into a trap of his own making.</p>
<p>The trap was set when Obama repeatedly insisted that his superior “judgment” on Iraq is more important than experience in national security affairs. Judgment, according to Obama, is what qualifies him to be commander in chief. So what can we discern about Obama's judgment on the surge, easily the most important national security decision since the Iraq war began in March 2003?</p>
<p>To answer that question, we need to revisit what Obama said about the surge around the time it was announced. In October 2006–three months before the president's new strategy was unveiled–Obama said, “It is clear at this point that we cannot, through putting in more troops or maintaining the presence that we have, expect that somehow the situation is going to improve, and we have to do something significant to break the pattern that we've been in right now.”</p>
<p>On January 10, 2007, the night the surge was announced, Obama declared, “I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq are going to solve the sectarian violence there. In fact, I think it will do the reverse.” A week later, he insisted the surge strategy would “not prove to be one that changes the dynamics significantly.” And in reaction to the president's January 23 State of the Union address, Obama said,</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>I don't think the president's strategy is going to work. We went through two weeks of hearings on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; experts from across the spectrum–military and civilian, conservative and liberal–expressed great skepticism about it. My suggestion to the president has been that the only way we're going to change the dynamic in Iraq and start seeing political commendation is actually if we create a system of phased redeployment. And, frankly, the president, I think, has not been willing to consider that option, not because it's not militarily sound but because he continues to cling to the belief that somehow military solutions are going to lead to victory in Iraq.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>In July, after evidence was amassing that the surge was working, Obama said, “My assessment is that the surge has not worked.”</p>
<p>Obama, then, was not only wrong about the surge; he was spectacularly wrong. And he continued to remain wrong even as mounting evidence of its success gave way to overwhelming evidence of its success.</p>
<p>But Obama is not alone. Virtually the entire Democratic party, including every Democrat running for president, opposed the surge. For example, Senator Joseph Biden–considered by some pundits a foreign policy sage–declared, a few days before the surge was announced, “If he surges another 20, 30 [thousand], or whatever number he's going to, into Baghdad, it'll be a tragic mistake.”</p>
<p>Hillary Clinton, on the night the surge was announced, said, “Based on the president's speech tonight, I cannot support his proposed escalation of the war in Iraq.”</p>
<p>Senator John Kerry said this in February 2007: “The simple fact is that sending in over 20,000 additional troops isn't the answer–in fact, it's a tragic mistake. It won't end the violence; it won't provide security;  .  .  .  it won't turn back the clock and avoid the civil war that is already underway; it won't deter terrorists, who have a completely different agenda; it won't rein in the militias.”</p>
<p>Kerry's fellow Massachusetts senator, Ted Kennedy, declared that any troop increase would be “an immense new mistake.”</p>
<p>Representative Dennis Kucinich, in this instance speaking for the mainstream of his party, put it this way: “It has been proven time and time again that troop surges don't work.”</p>
<p>In April 2007, Senate majority leader Harry Reid declared the Iraq war “lost” and insisted, “This surge is not accomplishing anything.”</p>
<p>Also in April, Senator Christopher Dodd said, “We don't need a surge of troops in Iraq–we need a surge of diplomacy and politics. Every knowledgeable person who has examined the Iraq situation for the past several years–Baker and Hamilton, senior military officials, junior officers–has drawn the same conclusion–there is no military solution in Iraq. To insist upon a surge is wrong.”</p>
<p>In September 2007, Senator Dick Durbin, the Democratic majority whip, in anticipation of congressional testimony by General Petraeus, said, “By carefully manipulating the statistics, the Bush-Petraeus report will try to persuade us that violence in Iraq is decreasing and thus the surge is working. Even if the figures were right, the conclusion is wrong.”</p>
<p>A month later Representative David Obey, asked if the surge strategy was working, offered the view that if violence is decreasing in Iraq, it may be because insurgents “are running out of people to kill.”</p>
<p>In February of this year, Speaker Nancy Pelosi was asked by CNN's Wolf Blitzer about the success of the surge in Iraq. “Are you not worried, though, that all the gains that have been achieved over the past year might be lost?” Blitzer asked.</p>
<p>“There haven't been gains, Wolf,” Pelosi replied. “The gains have not produced the desired effect, which is the reconciliation of Iraq. This is a failure. This is a failure.”</p>
<p>And as recently as last month, Governor Bill Richardson, when asked if he was ready to concede that John McCain had been right in proposing the surge because it seemed to be having a positive impact, answered, “Absolutely not.”</p>
<p>Democrats, then, have compounded their initial bad judgment about the surge with reckless obstinacy. As ethno-sectarian violence in Iraq rapidly declined, as al Qaeda absorbed tremendous military blows, and as political accommodation and legislative achievements have emerged, Democrats, rather than welcoming the progress, grew agitated. They embraced with religious zeal the belief that the Iraq war was lost; they therefore viewed the success of the surge as a terribly inconvenient development, one they sought to deny to the point that they looked silly and out of touch. Worse, Democrats acted as if they had a vested interest in an American defeat.</p>
<p>Rarely has a political party been so uniformly wrong, in such an obvious way, on such an important matter. And when Americans cast their vote on November 4, they should carefully consider how Barack Obama and the entire Democratic party fought ferociously and relentlessly to undermine a policy that has worked extraordinarily well and may yet prove to be among the most successful military plans in modern times.</p>
<p>— Peter Wehner, former deputy assistant to the president, is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.</p> | false | 1 | week democratic party ran white flag comes surge iraq leading surrender none barack obama democratic partys presumptive nominee president among vocal critics counterinsurgency plan transformed iraq war potentially catastrophic loss may turn historically significant victory monday obama wrote new york times oped acknowledged success surge 18 months since president bush announced surge obama wrote troops performed heroically bringing level violence new tactics protected iraqi population sunni tribes rejected al qaedagreatly weakening effectiveness day later obama gave speech declared first time true success victory iraq possible addition obama campaign scrubbed presidential website remove criticism surge debate landslide verdict surge tremendous success obama typical fashion trying use success surge opposed justify longheld commitment withdraw combat troops iraq quickly possible turning iraq winning political issue wont nearly easy obama thought stepped trap making trap set obama repeatedly insisted superior judgment iraq important experience national security affairs judgment according obama qualifies commander chief discern obamas judgment surge easily important national security decision since iraq war began march 2003 answer question need revisit obama said surge around time announced october 2006three months presidents new strategy unveiledobama said clear point putting troops maintaining presence expect somehow situation going improve something significant break pattern weve right january 10 2007 night surge announced obama declared persuaded 20000 additional troops iraq going solve sectarian violence fact think reverse week later insisted surge strategy would prove one changes dynamics significantly reaction presidents january 23 state union address obama said 160 dont think presidents strategy going work went two weeks hearings senate foreign relations committee experts across spectrummilitary civilian conservative liberalexpressed great skepticism suggestion president way going change dynamic iraq start seeing political commendation actually create system phased redeployment frankly president think willing consider option militarily sound continues cling belief somehow military solutions going lead victory iraq 160 july evidence amassing surge working obama said assessment surge worked obama wrong surge spectacularly wrong continued remain wrong even mounting evidence success gave way overwhelming evidence success obama alone virtually entire democratic party including every democrat running president opposed surge example senator joseph bidenconsidered pundits foreign policy sagedeclared days surge announced surges another 20 30 thousand whatever number hes going baghdad itll tragic mistake hillary clinton night surge announced said based presidents speech tonight support proposed escalation war iraq senator john kerry said february 2007 simple fact sending 20000 additional troops isnt answerin fact tragic mistake wont end violence wont provide security wont turn back clock avoid civil war already underway wont deter terrorists completely different agenda wont rein militias kerrys fellow massachusetts senator ted kennedy declared troop increase would immense new mistake representative dennis kucinich instance speaking mainstream party put way proven time time troop surges dont work april 2007 senate majority leader harry reid declared iraq war lost insisted surge accomplishing anything also april senator christopher dodd said dont need surge troops iraqwe need surge diplomacy politics every knowledgeable person examined iraq situation past several yearsbaker hamilton senior military officials junior officershas drawn conclusionthere military solution iraq insist upon surge wrong september 2007 senator dick durbin democratic majority whip anticipation congressional testimony general petraeus said carefully manipulating statistics bushpetraeus report try persuade us violence iraq decreasing thus surge working even figures right conclusion wrong month later representative david obey asked surge strategy working offered view violence decreasing iraq may insurgents running people kill february year speaker nancy pelosi asked cnns wolf blitzer success surge iraq worried though gains achieved past year might lost blitzer asked havent gains wolf pelosi replied gains produced desired effect reconciliation iraq failure failure recently last month governor bill richardson asked ready concede john mccain right proposing surge seemed positive impact answered absolutely democrats compounded initial bad judgment surge reckless obstinacy ethnosectarian violence iraq rapidly declined al qaeda absorbed tremendous military blows political accommodation legislative achievements emerged democrats rather welcoming progress grew agitated embraced religious zeal belief iraq war lost therefore viewed success surge terribly inconvenient development one sought deny point looked silly touch worse democrats acted vested interest american defeat rarely political party uniformly wrong obvious way important matter americans cast vote november 4 carefully consider barack obama entire democratic party fought ferociously relentlessly undermine policy worked extraordinarily well may yet prove among successful military plans modern times peter wehner former deputy assistant president senior fellow ethics public policy center | 714 |
<p>The dramatic resignation this past Sunday of the newly installed archbishop of Warsaw, Stanislaw Wielgus, who admitted to having agreed to collaborate with the Polish secret police after initially denying any such involvement, has brought into the full glare of international attention a debate that has roiled the Catholic Church in Poland for two years: how should the church respond to the secret police files that are now housed in Poland’s Institute of National Memory (IPN, in the Polish acronym)? Under Polish law, those files are available to both victims of communist-era persecution and legitimate historical researchers; historians had previously learned, and written, that several prominent Polish priests had collaborated, in different ways, with Poland’s communist authorities. The Wielgus affair, which exploded over a period of two brief weeks, is the first time allegations of collaboration have touched a man who subsequently became a member of the Polish hierarchy.</p>
<p>&lt;textbodyblack$3&gt;The IPN materials are what the FBI would call “raw files”: everything the Sluzba Bezpieczenstwa (the Polish secret police, or SB) had on anyone was dumped, undigested, into these files, which were eventually archived in the IPN after the fall of communism. The materials are of wildly divergent reliability. Agents, eager to enhance their own reputations, were not above making things up to meet their quota of “information” (Wielgus, for example, was said to speak Spanish, which he doesn’t). What the IPN files do reflect, however, is the breadth and intensity of the communist campaign to suborn every independent force in Poland, which was staggering: every Polish seminarian, from the day he entered the seminary, had not simply a file, but a watcher/agent, whose job it was to report on the seminarian’s activities and attempt to recruit him. The net result of this massive SB campaign, typical of totalitarian states but almost unimaginable to many in the West, was to generate what IPN officials with whom I have worked describe as a mass of material that, were the individual file folders to be shelved sequentially, would extend for one hundred miles. Moreover, those same IPN officials believe that there is a duplicate, in Moscow, of virtually every piece of paper in those hundred miles of SB files; how, they ask, could it not be so, given the relationship of the SB to the KGB?</p>
<p>&lt;textbodyblack$3&gt;For two years now, the Polish church has debated what it should do about these records. One moment in the Wielgus affair suggests an answer—an answer that has, in fact, been bruited among Polish Catholics for some time. In the wake of the initial allegations against Wielgus, Poland’s human-rights ombudsman, Dr. Janusz Kochanowski, a respected legal scholar charged by the Polish constitution with the protection of citizens’ rights, appointed a three-member commission to determine whether the archbishop’s civil rights had been compromised or his integrity falsely impugned. The commission (consisting of a priest, a historian and a journalist) reviewed the documents, concluded that Wielgus had indeed signed a letter-of-intent-to-collaborate, but did not discover any reports written or signed by Wielgus himself (and was thus unable to determine either the scope of his activity or whether he had done any direct harm to anyone). The commission, unlike some less scrupulous Polish journalists, declined to speculate on his motives, which could not be assessed from the files. This, one might suggest, is precisely the kind of sober, responsible vetting process that Polish church authorities, in cooperation with the Vatican, should have initiated on their own, prior to the nomination of a new archbishop of Warsaw. It is also the kind of process that the church should now initiate in order to clarify and defend the truth of its history.</p>
<p>&lt;textbodyblack$3&gt;From what is known now, it is possible that Stanislaw Wielgus made a one-off, serious mistake as a young priest, by signing an agreement-to-cooperate letter with the SB—and then provided nothing of consequence to the SB, or did anyone any harm. He had been a respected scholar at the Catholic University of Lublin and a successful bishop in Plock; his appointment as archbishop of Warsaw was welcomed by leading Polish Catholics, including those who had argued that the church should take the lead in studying and making public the full details of Catholic collaboration with the SB during the communist period. But when Wielgus’ public denials—first, of any collaboration, and then, of any signed agreement-to-collaborate—were falsified by both the ombudsman’s commission and a special church commission, his moral authority was eroded to the point where a resignation became virtually inevitable.</p>
<p>&lt;textbodyblack$3&gt;&lt;textbodyblack$3&gt;That resignation ought to be seen, by the Polish church leadership, as an opportunity: an opportunity to end the internecine wrangling over the IPN files and initiate the kind of study the Kochanowski commission embodied in microcosm in the Wielgus affair—a study of the IPN materials by responsible clergy and laity in order to provide the Polish people with a reliable portrait of how churchmen behaved during the communist period. Scholars who have already worked in the IPN archives are convinced that any such comprehensive study will not change the basic story line of late-20th- century Polish history: that a heroic Catholic Church, led by Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski and Pope John Paul II, was the foundation and backbone of a successful national resistance to communism’s usurpation of Poland’s liberties. “No Church, no Solidarity, no Revolution of 1989” will remain the master truth of Poland’s history for the decades after 1945.</p>
<p>&lt;textbodyblack$3&gt;Such a study will also, inevitably, show that not every churchman was a hero (even as it will likely show that there were more heroes than scoundrels, and by orders of magnitude). At the same time, such a study, properly conducted, will help Poles, and others, avoid the black-and-white caricatures that misshaped media coverage of the Wielgus affair, as if every act of collaboration were of the same degree of wickedness. From what we already know, thanks to studies in the IPN archives, some churchmen had dealings with the SB for no other reason than that anyone in Poland who wanted a passport had to speak to the SB. Others, like Wieglus, signed agreements-to-cooperate; but there was a wide spectrum of cooperation, some of which did little or no harm. Still others constantly blabbed clerical gossip to the SB, which in the case of a former classmate of John Paul II, seems to have had more to do with ego than with any intent to harm the church. Others were venal, cooperating for money. And still others agreed to work with the SB because they were persuaded, somehow, that doing so would help liberalize the tight-ship church of Cardinal Wyszynski. When all is said and done, it may be that some 10 percent of Poland’s clergy were suborned by the SB, in varying degrees of complicity (and turpitude). But that is itself a compliment to the Polish church, when one considers that estimates of collaboration with the East German secret police, the Stasi, approach 50 percent of the entire population of the old German Democratic Republic.</p>
<p>&lt;textbodyblack$3&gt;The Catholic Church thus has everything to gain by turning the Wielgus affair into an opportunity to deal with the IPN archives in a serious way, making a clean breast of its modern history while helping shape a sophisticated public understanding of the nature of life under totalitarianism—which is already being forgotten among too many Poles (not to mention Westerners). By the same token, Polish Catholicism has a lot to lose, if it does not take the responsibility to tell the full truth about its recent history—and the potential damage reaches far beyond the court of public opinion. For, if every piece of paper in the IPN’s archive is duplicated in Moscow, then the Catholic Church in Poland will be open to blackmail for the foreseeable future, if it does not take the lead in clarifying the truth about its past, with both its glories and failures. For 50 difficult years, from Hitler’s invasion in 1939 until the communist crack-up in 1989, Polish Catholicism fought tenaciously and successfully for its independence, and Poland’s, by emphasizing the liberating power of the truth. That brilliant accomplishment must not be compromised now by a stubborn reluctance to face the full truth of those five decades, a reckoning which is essential to helping Poles of today and tomorrow—and the rest of the world—understand what those truths mean.</p>
<p>George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C. and holds EPPC’s William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies.</p>
<p /> | false | 1 | dramatic resignation past sunday newly installed archbishop warsaw stanislaw wielgus admitted agreed collaborate polish secret police initially denying involvement brought full glare international attention debate roiled catholic church poland two years church respond secret police files housed polands institute national memory ipn polish acronym polish law files available victims communistera persecution legitimate historical researchers historians previously learned written several prominent polish priests collaborated different ways polands communist authorities wielgus affair exploded period two brief weeks first time allegations collaboration touched man subsequently became member polish hierarchy lttextbodyblack3gtthe ipn materials fbi would call raw files everything sluzba bezpieczenstwa polish secret police sb anyone dumped undigested files eventually archived ipn fall communism materials wildly divergent reliability agents eager enhance reputations making things meet quota information wielgus example said speak spanish doesnt ipn files reflect however breadth intensity communist campaign suborn every independent force poland staggering every polish seminarian day entered seminary simply file watcheragent whose job report seminarians activities attempt recruit net result massive sb campaign typical totalitarian states almost unimaginable many west generate ipn officials worked describe mass material individual file folders shelved sequentially would extend one hundred miles moreover ipn officials believe duplicate moscow virtually every piece paper hundred miles sb files ask could given relationship sb kgb lttextbodyblack3gtfor two years polish church debated records one moment wielgus affair suggests answeran answer fact bruited among polish catholics time wake initial allegations wielgus polands humanrights ombudsman dr janusz kochanowski respected legal scholar charged polish constitution protection citizens rights appointed threemember commission determine whether archbishops civil rights compromised integrity falsely impugned commission consisting priest historian journalist reviewed documents concluded wielgus indeed signed letterofintenttocollaborate discover reports written signed wielgus thus unable determine either scope activity whether done direct harm anyone commission unlike less scrupulous polish journalists declined speculate motives could assessed files one might suggest precisely kind sober responsible vetting process polish church authorities cooperation vatican initiated prior nomination new archbishop warsaw also kind process church initiate order clarify defend truth history lttextbodyblack3gtfrom known possible stanislaw wielgus made oneoff serious mistake young priest signing agreementtocooperate letter sband provided nothing consequence sb anyone harm respected scholar catholic university lublin successful bishop plock appointment archbishop warsaw welcomed leading polish catholics including argued church take lead studying making public full details catholic collaboration sb communist period wielgus public denialsfirst collaboration signed agreementtocollaboratewere falsified ombudsmans commission special church commission moral authority eroded point resignation became virtually inevitable lttextbodyblack3gtlttextbodyblack3gtthat resignation ought seen polish church leadership opportunity opportunity end internecine wrangling ipn files initiate kind study kochanowski commission embodied microcosm wielgus affaira study ipn materials responsible clergy laity order provide polish people reliable portrait churchmen behaved communist period scholars already worked ipn archives convinced comprehensive study change basic story line late20th century polish history heroic catholic church led cardinal stefan wyszynski pope john paul ii foundation backbone successful national resistance communisms usurpation polands liberties church solidarity revolution 1989 remain master truth polands history decades 1945 lttextbodyblack3gtsuch study also inevitably show every churchman hero even likely show heroes scoundrels orders magnitude time study properly conducted help poles others avoid blackandwhite caricatures misshaped media coverage wielgus affair every act collaboration degree wickedness already know thanks studies ipn archives churchmen dealings sb reason anyone poland wanted passport speak sb others like wieglus signed agreementstocooperate wide spectrum cooperation little harm still others constantly blabbed clerical gossip sb case former classmate john paul ii seems ego intent harm church others venal cooperating money still others agreed work sb persuaded somehow would help liberalize tightship church cardinal wyszynski said done may 10 percent polands clergy suborned sb varying degrees complicity turpitude compliment polish church one considers estimates collaboration east german secret police stasi approach 50 percent entire population old german democratic republic lttextbodyblack3gtthe catholic church thus everything gain turning wielgus affair opportunity deal ipn archives serious way making clean breast modern history helping shape sophisticated public understanding nature life totalitarianismwhich already forgotten among many poles mention westerners token polish catholicism lot lose take responsibility tell full truth recent historyand potential damage reaches far beyond court public opinion every piece paper ipns archive duplicated moscow catholic church poland open blackmail foreseeable future take lead clarifying truth past glories failures 50 difficult years hitlers invasion 1939 communist crackup 1989 polish catholicism fought tenaciously successfully independence polands emphasizing liberating power truth brilliant accomplishment must compromised stubborn reluctance face full truth five decades reckoning essential helping poles today tomorrowand rest worldunderstand truths mean george weigel distinguished senior fellow ethics public policy center washington dc holds eppcs william e simon chair catholic studies | 753 |
<p />
<p>The US has every characteristic of a failed state.</p>
<p>The US government’s current operating budget is dependent on foreign financing and money creation.</p>
<p>Too politically weak to be able to advance its interests through diplomacy, the US relies on <a href="http://news.antiwar.com/2009/08/25/top-jundallah-figure-says-us-ordered-attacks/" type="external">terrorism</a> and <a href="" type="external">military</a> <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE59H0AH20091019" type="external">aggression</a>.</p>
<p>&lt;img class="size-medium wp-image-2289 alignleft" style="margin: 5px;" title="fed" src="https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/fed-300x168.jpg" alt="fed" width="300" height="168" /&gt;</p>
<p>Costs are out of control, and priorities are skewed in the interest of rich organized interest groups at the expense of the vast majority of citizens. For example, war at all cost, which enriches the armaments industry, the officer corps and the financial firms that handle the war’s financing, takes precedence over the needs of American citizens. There is no money to provide the uninsured with health care, but Pentagon officials have told the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee in the House that every gallon of gasoline delivered to US troops in Afghanistan costs American taxpayers $400.</p>
<p>“It is a number that we were not aware of and it is worrisome,” <a href="http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/63407-400gallon-gas-another-cost-of-war-in-afghanistan-" type="external">said Rep. John Murtha</a>, chairman of the subcommittee.</p>
<p>According to reports, the US Marines in Afghanistan use 800,000 gallons of gasoline per day. At $400 per gallon, that comes to a $320,000,000 daily fuel bill for the Marines alone. Only a country totally out of control would squander resources in this way.</p>
<p>While the US government squanders $400 per gallon of gasoline in order to kill women and children in Afghanistan, many millions of Americans have lost their jobs and their homes and are experiencing the kind of misery that is the daily life of poor third world peoples. Americans are living in their cars and in public parks. America’s cities, towns, and states are <a href="https://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/10/17/budget_misery_grows_for_cities_and_towns/" type="external">suffering</a> from the costs of economic dislocations and the reduction in tax revenues from the economy’s decline.&#160; Yet, Obama has sent more troops to Afghanistan, a country half way around the world that is not a threat to America.</p>
<p>It costs $750,000 per year for each soldier we have in Afghanistan. The soldiers, who are at risk of life and limb, are paid a pittance, but all of the privatized services to the military are rolling in excess profits. One of the great frauds perpetuated on the American people was the privatization of services that the US military traditionally performed for itself. “Our” elected leaders could not resist any opportunity to create at taxpayers’ expense private wealth that could be recycled to politicians in campaign contributions.</p>
<p>Republicans and Democrats on the take from the private insurance companies maintain that the US cannot afford to provide Americans with health care and that cuts must be made even in Social Security and Medicare. So how can the US afford bankrupting wars, much less totally pointless wars that serve no American interest?</p>
<p>The enormous scale of foreign borrowing and money creation necessary to finance Washington’s wars are sending the dollar to historic lows. The dollar has even experienced large declines relative to currencies of third world countries such as Botswana and Brazil. The decline in the dollar’s value reduces the purchasing power of Americans’ already declining incomes.</p>
<p>Despite the lowest level of housing starts in 64 years, the US housing market is flooded with unsold homes, and financial institutions have a huge and rising inventory of foreclosed homes not yet on the market.</p>
<p>Industrial production has collapsed to the level of 1999, wiping out a decade of growth in industrial output.</p>
<p>The enormous bank reserves created by the Federal Reserve are not finding their way into the economy. Instead, the banks are hoarding the reserves as insurance against the fraudulent derivatives that they purchased from the gangster Wall Street investment banks.</p>
<p>The regulatory agencies have been corrupted by private interests. <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/warning/" type="external">Frontline reports</a> that Alan Greenspan, Robert Rubin, and Larry Summers blocked Brooksley Born, the head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission from regulating derivatives. President Obama rewarded Larry Summers for his idiocy by appointing him Director of the National Economic Council. What this means is that profits for Wall Street will continue to be leeched from the diminishing blood supply of the American economy.</p>
<p>An unmistakable sign of third world despotism is a police force that sees the public as the enemy. Thanks to the federal government, our local police forces are now militarized and imbued with hostile attitudes toward the public. SWAT teams have proliferated, and even small towns now have police forces with the firepower of US Special Forces. Summons are increasingly delivered by SWAT teams that tyrannize citizens with broken down doors, a $400 or $500 repair born by the tyrannized resident. Recently a mayor and his family were the recipients of incompetence by the town’s local SWAT team, which mistakenly wrecked the mayor’s home, terrorized his family, and killed the family’s two friendly Labrador dogs.</p>
<p>If a town’s mayor can be treated in this way, what do you think is the fate of the poor white or black? Or the idealistic student who protests his government’s inhumanity?</p>
<p>In any failed state, the greatest threat to the population comes from the government and the police. That is certainly the situation today in the USA. Americans have no greater enemy than their own government. Washington is controlled by interest groups that enrich themselves at the expense of the American people.</p>
<p>The one percent that comprise the superrich are laughing as they say, “let them eat cake.”</p> | false | 1 | us every characteristic failed state us governments current operating budget dependent foreign financing money creation politically weak able advance interests diplomacy us relies terrorism military aggression ltimg classsizemedium wpimage2289 alignleft stylemargin 5px titlefed srchttpswwwforeignpolicyjournalcomwpcontentuploads200910fed300x168jpg altfed width300 height168 gt costs control priorities skewed interest rich organized interest groups expense vast majority citizens example war cost enriches armaments industry officer corps financial firms handle wars financing takes precedence needs american citizens money provide uninsured health care pentagon officials told defense appropriations subcommittee house every gallon gasoline delivered us troops afghanistan costs american taxpayers 400 number aware worrisome said rep john murtha chairman subcommittee according reports us marines afghanistan use 800000 gallons gasoline per day 400 per gallon comes 320000000 daily fuel bill marines alone country totally control would squander resources way us government squanders 400 per gallon gasoline order kill women children afghanistan many millions americans lost jobs homes experiencing kind misery daily life poor third world peoples americans living cars public parks americas cities towns states suffering costs economic dislocations reduction tax revenues economys decline160 yet obama sent troops afghanistan country half way around world threat america costs 750000 per year soldier afghanistan soldiers risk life limb paid pittance privatized services military rolling excess profits one great frauds perpetuated american people privatization services us military traditionally performed elected leaders could resist opportunity create taxpayers expense private wealth could recycled politicians campaign contributions republicans democrats take private insurance companies maintain us afford provide americans health care cuts must made even social security medicare us afford bankrupting wars much less totally pointless wars serve american interest enormous scale foreign borrowing money creation necessary finance washingtons wars sending dollar historic lows dollar even experienced large declines relative currencies third world countries botswana brazil decline dollars value reduces purchasing power americans already declining incomes despite lowest level housing starts 64 years us housing market flooded unsold homes financial institutions huge rising inventory foreclosed homes yet market industrial production collapsed level 1999 wiping decade growth industrial output enormous bank reserves created federal reserve finding way economy instead banks hoarding reserves insurance fraudulent derivatives purchased gangster wall street investment banks regulatory agencies corrupted private interests frontline reports alan greenspan robert rubin larry summers blocked brooksley born head commodity futures trading commission regulating derivatives president obama rewarded larry summers idiocy appointing director national economic council means profits wall street continue leeched diminishing blood supply american economy unmistakable sign third world despotism police force sees public enemy thanks federal government local police forces militarized imbued hostile attitudes toward public swat teams proliferated even small towns police forces firepower us special forces summons increasingly delivered swat teams tyrannize citizens broken doors 400 500 repair born tyrannized resident recently mayor family recipients incompetence towns local swat team mistakenly wrecked mayors home terrorized family killed familys two friendly labrador dogs towns mayor treated way think fate poor white black idealistic student protests governments inhumanity failed state greatest threat population comes government police certainly situation today usa americans greater enemy government washington controlled interest groups enrich expense american people one percent comprise superrich laughing say let eat cake | 515 |
<p>Sanctions are starting to take effect against North Korea, but what is different this time around is&#160;“we are out of time” when it comes to dealing with the country’s increased aggressions, including Thursday night’s missile launch over Japan, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster said Friday.</p>
<p>“I think we ought to make clear, what is different about this approach, is we are out of time, we’ve been kicking the can down the road and we are out of road,” McMaster said during a press briefing, where he appeared alongside U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley. “For those who’ve been commenting about the lack of a military option, there is a military option. It’s not what we prefer to do.”</p>
<p>Rigorous enforcement of the sanctions is important, so the economic and diplomacy can progress as best they can,” said McMaster.</p>
<p>“What we have to do, is call on all nations, call on everyone to do everything they can,” said McMaster. “What’s different, I think, about this approach to North Korea is worth noting. First of all, there is consensus among all key nations that denuclearization of the Korean peninsula is the only acceptable objective.”</p>
<p>Second, he continued, “this is not an issue between the United States and North Korea. This is an issue between the world and North Korea.”</p>
<p>There is time needed, though, for any strategy to work, but enforced sanctions are “a sound approach to a very difficult problem, and we will see if it succeeds,” said McMaster.</p>
<p>But if not, “we will defend our people and our values against these cowardly attacks, and we will always stand with countries around the world to do the same,” he said.</p>
<p>President Donald Trump will attend the United Nations’ General Assembly next week, and his consistent message is “first to promote peace, second to promote prosperity, and third, to uphold sovereignty and accountability,” he said. “A peaceful world depends on the contributions of all nations.&#160;We must share responsibility for national security while each country protects the security of its own people.”</p>
<p>Trump also wishes to further economic cooperation, investment opportunities and new business ties with other governments around the world.</p>
<p>“As always, this administration’s ironclad commitment to free, fair, and reciprocal trade and access to markets will be the bedrock of our economic talks,” said McMaster. “Sovereignty and accountability are the essential foundations of peace and prosperity. America respects the sovereignty of other countries, and expects other nations to do the same end urges all governments to be accountable to their citizens.”</p>
<p>Trump’s Tuesday morning speech will promote peace and prosperity while upholding sovereignty and accountability, said McMaster.</p>
<p>“The president will meet with the leaders of Jordan, the Palestinian authority, United Kingdom and Egypt,” he continued. “He will host a working lunch with African leaders to discuss how the United States can help African nations develop their economies, address urgent challenges and strengthen security relationships and economic relationships between our nations. Finally, on Thursday, the president will meet with the leaders of Turkey, Afghanistan&#160;and Ukraine. The latter two countries in particular have suffered direct and persistent attacks on their sovereignty in recent years.”</p>
<p>Trump also plans a lunch with the leaders of South Korea and Japan, he said. “As Kim Jong Un’s most recent missile launch demonstrates, North Korea remains one of the world’s most urgent and dangerous security problems. It is important that all nations work together to do our utmost to solve that problem.”</p>
<p>Haley commented that next week will “not be short on topics.”</p>
<p>“We can all say it is a new day at the UN,” she said. “The UN has shifted over the past several months. The members are starting to get us to act, whether it is with UN reform, whether it’s with peacekeeping, we are starting to see a lot of changes.”</p>
<p>Next Tuesday’s address will be Trump’s first before the General Assembly, Haley continued, and they are all “very anxious” to hear what he will say.</p>
<p>The president will highlight the UN reform package, being led by the secretary general to streamline processes and the budget, to make the UN more effective, said Haley.</p>
<p>Vice President Mike Pence also will conduct briefings to the Human Rights Council and another on peacekeeping.</p>
<p>“Basically we have saved half a billion dollars in peacekeeping, but before anyone thinks that’s a travesty, basically the way they handle peacekeeping in the past was if there was a challenged area they would throw more troops added,” Haley said. “But they didn’t see if the troops were trained or give them the equipment to do their jobs. Now we are going towards the political solution, making sure the troops are trained and armed, making sure we are more effective. So it’s smarter and cut half a billion dollars and we are in some cases having to increase in some cases having to decrease.”</p>
<p>Meanwhile, when it comes to sanctions, they are proving effective, said Haley.</p>
<p>“They cut 30 percent of the oil [imports], banned all of the laborers, banned 90 percent of the exports, banned joint ventures,” Haley said. “In the words of North Korea, we’ve strangled their economic situation.</p>
<p>But, she stressed, if North Korea continues to be provocative and “reckless,” there will not be much the Security Council will be able to do. I have no problem kicking it to [Defense Secretary] Gen. James Mattis, because I think he has plenty of options.”</p>
<p>Also during the briefing, McMaster was asked what Trump meant in a tweet about the early morning terror attack in London, when he claimed the perpetrators “were in the sights of Scotland Yard.”</p>
<p>“I think what the president was saying is that all of our law enforcement efforts are focused on this terrorist threat for years,” he said. “Scotland Yard has been a leader as our FBI has been a leader. I think if there was a terrorist attack here, we would say they were in the sides of the FBI. I don’t think he meant anything beyond that.”</p> | false | 1 | sanctions starting take effect north korea different time around is160we time comes dealing countrys increased aggressions including thursday nights missile launch japan national security adviser hr mcmaster said friday think ought make clear different approach time weve kicking road road mcmaster said press briefing appeared alongside un ambassador nikki haley whove commenting lack military option military option prefer rigorous enforcement sanctions important economic diplomacy progress best said mcmaster call nations call everyone everything said mcmaster whats different think approach north korea worth noting first consensus among key nations denuclearization korean peninsula acceptable objective second continued issue united states north korea issue world north korea time needed though strategy work enforced sanctions sound approach difficult problem see succeeds said mcmaster defend people values cowardly attacks always stand countries around world said president donald trump attend united nations general assembly next week consistent message first promote peace second promote prosperity third uphold sovereignty accountability said peaceful world depends contributions nations160we must share responsibility national security country protects security people trump also wishes economic cooperation investment opportunities new business ties governments around world always administrations ironclad commitment free fair reciprocal trade access markets bedrock economic talks said mcmaster sovereignty accountability essential foundations peace prosperity america respects sovereignty countries expects nations end urges governments accountable citizens trumps tuesday morning speech promote peace prosperity upholding sovereignty accountability said mcmaster president meet leaders jordan palestinian authority united kingdom egypt continued host working lunch african leaders discuss united states help african nations develop economies address urgent challenges strengthen security relationships economic relationships nations finally thursday president meet leaders turkey afghanistan160and ukraine latter two countries particular suffered direct persistent attacks sovereignty recent years trump also plans lunch leaders south korea japan said kim jong uns recent missile launch demonstrates north korea remains one worlds urgent dangerous security problems important nations work together utmost solve problem haley commented next week short topics say new day un said un shifted past several months members starting get us act whether un reform whether peacekeeping starting see lot changes next tuesdays address trumps first general assembly haley continued anxious hear say president highlight un reform package led secretary general streamline processes budget make un effective said haley vice president mike pence also conduct briefings human rights council another peacekeeping basically saved half billion dollars peacekeeping anyone thinks thats travesty basically way handle peacekeeping past challenged area would throw troops added haley said didnt see troops trained give equipment jobs going towards political solution making sure troops trained armed making sure effective smarter cut half billion dollars cases increase cases decrease meanwhile comes sanctions proving effective said haley cut 30 percent oil imports banned laborers banned 90 percent exports banned joint ventures haley said words north korea weve strangled economic situation stressed north korea continues provocative reckless much security council able problem kicking defense secretary gen james mattis think plenty options also briefing mcmaster asked trump meant tweet early morning terror attack london claimed perpetrators sights scotland yard think president saying law enforcement efforts focused terrorist threat years said scotland yard leader fbi leader think terrorist attack would say sides fbi dont think meant anything beyond | 523 |
<p>INTRODUCTION</p>
<p>“Health care reform is entitlement reform.” <a href="#i" type="external">[i]</a></p>
<p>So said Peter Orszag, President Barack Obama’s first budget director, at a bipartisan fiscal responsibility summit called by the president in February 2009. President Obama had assumed office just a little over a month earlier, and he was signaling to the country and to those present at the White House that his top domestic priority during his first year in office — securing a health care law that covered all Americans with health insurance — was consistent with his commitment to impose renewed fiscal discipline.</p>
<p>He and his team knew there would be many in Congress, even among members of his own party, who would be wary of mounting an all-out effort to pass an ambitious health reform program given the expected cost of such an initiative and the daunting budgetary challenges already facing the country. Most House and Senate members have been aware for many years that rising health entitlement costs — in the form of Medicare and Medicaid expenditures — threaten to push the nation’s finances past the breaking point. If the country can’t pay for its existing health care commitments, how could the president afford to make expensive new promises of subsidized health care to millions of new beneficiaries?</p>
<p>The president wanted to pre-empt this kind of cost and budget critique by making a bold pronouncement. Not only would his reform program cover millions of people with insurance, it would also “bend the cost-curve,” and thereby begin to make the nation’s health entitlement commitments — new as well as old — more affordable for future generations of taxpayers. This argument that health reform would actually improve the nation’s budgetary outlook even as it moved the country toward “universal coverage” became the centerpiece of the administration’s push for Congressional passage.</p>
<p>After a long and divisive legislative debate that lasted well over a year, the president succeeded in getting a health reform bill. Congress passed the legislation, and he signed it into law in March 2010.</p>
<p>Enactment of the new law hasn’t settled matters, though. The public debate continues, and the country remains deeply divided over what was passed. In part, that is due to the unusual and polarizing manner in which the Congressional majority pushed the bill through during its final stages of consideration. It was a bruising battle, and many Republicans believe the steps the administration and Congressional leadership took to avoid the need for bipartisan support simply went too far and ensured the law would be viewed suspiciously by a large percentage of the electorate.</p>
<p>But even if the process used to pass the legislation had been less polarizing, the new law still would be highly controversial. That’s because there are deep and enduring disagreements over the substantive merits of its main provisions, and most especially over how much they actually will cost, now and in the future, and who ultimately will shoulder the burden of extending the law’s new entitlement promises to large numbers of Americans.</p>
<p>These concerns over the costs of the health law have only been reinforced by growing worldwide recognition of the economic risks associated with excessive governmental borrowing and debt. As the rest of the developed world is moving toward retrenchment of their welfare states, Americans are rightly concerned that their government has just piled an enormous new budgetary risk onto an already precarious fiscal outlook. This concern is so pervasive among the electorate that it could very well force Congress to revisit the recently passed health law, and sooner rather than later.</p>
<p>THE NATURE OF THE EXISTING ENTITLEMENT AND FISCAL CRISIS</p>
<p>Just as President Obama was assuming office in early 2009, the United States was entering a period of budgetary and economic risk unlike anything experienced in the post-war era.</p>
<p>In 2008, the U.S. economy fell into a very severe recession, triggered by a calamitous housing and financial crisis. Revenue plummeted, and obligations soared. The federal government ran a budget deficit of 9.9 percent of GDP in 2009 — the highest since World War II, and more than four times the recent historical average of 2.4 percent. <a href="#ii" type="external">[ii]</a> The gap between federal spending and revenue in 2010 is expected to again approach 10 percent of GDP. <a href="#iii" type="external">[iii]</a></p>
<p>These deficits are far in excess of what has been experienced during past recessions. Moreover, projections show that even after a sustained recovery has been underway for several years, and unemployment has fallen to more normal, non-recessionary levels, federal deficits will not return to their post-war norm. If the Obama administration’s 2010 budget plan were to be adopted in full by Congress, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects the federal budget deficit in 2020 would be 5.6 percent of GDP, and the nation’s debt would have reached 90 percent of annual GDP, up from about 40 percent at the end of 2008 (see Figure 1). The cumulative budget deficit over the period 2011 to 2020 from the Obama budget plan would be nearly $9.8 trillion.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>This large run-up in governmental debt is of course partly attributable to the continuing fallout from an unusual and very severe recession. All of the borrowing that has occurred in 2009 and 2010 will drive up net interest costs on a permanent basis, among other things. By 2020, CBO expects net interest on the national debt to rise to more than $900 billion, up from only $187 billion in 2009. <a href="#iv" type="external">[iv]</a> But the large deficits and debt projected for the coming years also reflect increased budgetary pressure from the rapid growth in federal entitlement spending.</p>
<p>In 1970, the federal government spent four percent of GDP on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Based on projections made last year, CBO expected spending on the “Big Three” entitlements to reach 9.8 percent of GDP in 2010 and 11.4 percent of GDP in 2020, or almost triple what it was a half century earlier. <a href="#v" type="external">[v]</a></p>
<p>The growth in entitlement spending has been fueled by two basic factors — rapidly rising per capita health costs and a growing elderly population. CBO has calculated a useful measure of the capacity to finance health costs over time — so-called “excess cost growth,” or real per capita growth in health costs in excess of real per capita GDP growth.</p>
<p>This measure is useful because it shows the extent to which health spending commitments have been taking up a larger and larger share of limited resources. It is quite natural for societies to spend more on health as incomes rise. But spending more on health means less for other priorities, and to many people and businesses, health care is more a fixed cost that they can’t control than a discretionary budget item. Moreover, in the public sector, if health spending continuously grows more rapidly than the tax base, then the government must either perpetually increase tax rates or cut other programs on a regular basis to make room for more health spending.</p>
<p>As shown in Figure 2, “excess cost growth” in Medicare averaged 2.3 percent annually from 1975 to 2007. For Medicaid, the average was 1.9 percent annually during the same period.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Rapidly rising health care costs are expected to continue into the indefinite future, even as the country also experiences an unprecedented demographic transformation with the retirement of the baby boom generation. Between 2010 and 2030, the population aged 65 and older is projected to increase from 41 million to 71 million people (see Figure 3), swelling the ranks of Social Security and Medicare program beneficiaries, as well as those qualifying for long-term care services under Medicaid.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Rising health costs and an aging population will drive up entitlement spending in the coming years even more rapidly than it has grown in the past. Last year, before the health law was enacted, CBO expected the combined costs of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid to rise from 9.8 percent of GDP in 2010 to 14.4 percent in 2030 and 17.9 percent of GDP in 2050 (see Figure 4). The jump in spending over just the next two decades — 4.6 percent of GDP — is roughly equivalent to the size of Social Security today. In other words, the federal government would be adding new spending commitments to the budget equal to the size of the current Social Security program without any new funding to pay for it.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>OFFICIAL COST ASSESSMENTS OF THE HEALTH LAW, AND THEIR LIMITATIONS</p>
<p>Prior to becoming the president’s choice for Director at the Office of Management and Budget in early 2009, Peter Orszag served as head of CBO. While there, he made it something of a personal crusade to advise the media and members of the House and Senate that the long-term budget problem was really a health cost problem. To make his point, he frequently displayed charts showing that, over the next twenty years or so, about two-thirds of the entitlement cost growth would be attributable to factors other than population aging, and mainly rising health costs. <a href="#vi" type="external">[vi]</a></p>
<p>That was the kind of reasoning that administration officials and other proponents of the recently enacted health law brought to their efforts. They never claimed that the health law would address the set of issues surrounding the aging of the population and the additional budgetary burdens associated with moving toward a lower ratio of workers to retirees — in part because they had minimized the significance of this aspect of the problem in their own minds.</p>
<p>Orszag’s claim that population aging is a less significant factor in the entitlement crisis was always a controversial point because it depended on a particular slicing of the cost projections data. Others, looking at exactly the exact same numbers, came away with very different conclusions. <a href="#vii" type="external">[vii]</a></p>
<p>Ironically, with Orszag’s departure from CBO to become President Obama’s first OMB Director in early 2009, CBO’s assessments of the relative importance of aging and rising health cost in the entitlement crisis began to change, and it now tracks with what the critics contended more than two years ago when Orszag was beginning his “health reform is entitlement reform” drumbeat. CBO’s long-term budget projections from last year show that before enactment of the health law, population aging would be responsible for at least 56 percent of the spending growth for the major entitlement programs between now and 2035, and rising health care costs would account for just 32 percent of the cost growth (see Figure 5).</p>
<p>This is not to suggest that rising health care costs are not a major budget problem. They are. But even if that cost growth decelerated, the U.S. would still be under extreme budgetary pressure as the tidal wave of retiring baby boomers hit federal program enrollment. The health law does absolutely nothing to address this fundamental aspect of the entitlement crisis.</p>
<p>What’s even more troubling is that the problem the president and his advisors said they would address hasn’t come close to being solved either. Both CBO and the Chief Actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) have rendered preliminary judgments on whether or not the president succeeded in bending the cost-curve for entitlements, or the health system more generally, as he promised he would. And their answer, for now, lies somewhere between highly doubtful and no, though they never say so explicitly.</p>
<p>CBO recently released an updated version of its projections for federal spending, revenue, deficits, and debt over the coming decades, this time incorporating the expected impact of the provisions of the new health law. As shown in Figure 6, CBO’s new long-term projections still show a crushing burden from entitlement spending growth in coming years. In 2030, spending on Social Security and federal health entitlement programs will reach 14.7 percent of GDP, a jump of 4.3 percent of GDP in just twenty years. <a href="#viii" type="external">[viii]</a></p>
<p>And even that is a rosy scenario, assuming as it does that all of the law’s controversial cuts and taxes will get implemented exactly as written. If those provisions do not survive — and even CBO hints this is a distinct possibility — total entitlement spending will rise even more rapidly, adding another 1 percent of GDP to federal spending in 2030 (see “Alternative Scenario” in Figure 6).</p>
<p>Unfortunately for the White House, the administration’s own employee — Richard S. Foster, the Chief Actuary at CMS — is even more pessimistic than CBO. In an official estimate released after passage of the legislation, he projected that overall national health expenditures would be higher in 2019 than they would be if the law had not been enacted at all. Moreover, he raised serious questions about whether the provisions that do cut costs could be sustained over coming years, especially the across-the-board payment rate reductions in the Medicare program which would drive reimbursement rates down even as health care input costs continued to rise rapidly. If those cuts do not hold — and it is clear he does not think they will — federal and national health spending would go up even more rapidly than his estimates now indicate. <a href="#ix" type="external">[ix]</a></p>
<p>For its part, the administration has continued to point to CBO’s official cost estimate of the legislation to validate its claim that the law will reduce the federal budget deficit. <a href="#x" type="external">[x]</a> That claim — which is not the same as saying the health “cost-curve” has been bent downward — is itself subject to strong criticism because of a series of budgetary gimmicks and implausible assumptions which are in the legislation and therefore were required to be considered in CBO’s analysis. Among other things, the new law doublecounts premiums collected for a new long-term care insurance program, using the premiums both to bolster the claim of deficit reduction in the first ten years of implementation and then to finance new long-term benefits in later years. Of course, the same dollar can’t be spent twice, no matter how much Congress wishes it were not so. Using the long-term care premiums to mask the costs of the health entitlement expansions over the next ten years only means that more debt will have to be incurred later when long-term care benefit claims come due and the premiums, which should have been “saved” for that purpose, are found to have already been spent. <a href="#xi" type="external">[xi]</a></p>
<p>Still, even the administration has essentially admitted that these official cost projections do not validate the claim that cost escalation for the federal health entitlement programs will moderate in any meaningful way due to the legislation. Indeed, Orszag has said that he agrees with a cautious assessment of the cost-cutting potential of the new law. But he also has argued that the potential for cost cutting from the new law is far greater than the official projections indicate, which he believes will become evident as implementation proceeds. <a href="#xii" type="external">[xii]</a></p>
<p>Orszag’s reaction to the official cost assessments of the new health law is illuminating. It’s an acknowledgement of the limits of those projections for policymaking. Yes, CBO and the Chief Actuary provide important information that must be taken into account in the health policymaking process. And the budget process must be built on a foundation of hard numbers produced by independent parties.</p>
<p>But cost estimating is no substitute for sound judgment about setting the basic direction for policy. What’s needed more than anything else in health care is a coherent, reality-based policy prescription for altering the basic dynamics away from cost escalation to productivity improvement and more efficient patient care. That’s the goal. But getting there requires a clear and accurate diagnosis of what is creating the cost problem in the first place.</p>
<p>DIAGNOSING THE CORE COST PROBLEM</p>
<p>The year-long debate over the future of U.S. health care policy was polarizing, but beneath the surface, a surprising consensus was forming around a crucial issue. As the search for answers on rising costs intensified through hearings and briefings with experts from around the country, analysts from both sides of the debate were reaching the same conclusion: The Medicare program, as it operates today, is a primary cause of the cost problem.</p>
<p>Of course, that’s not a conclusion that every member of Congress would agree with. In particular, a sizeable number of House and Senate Democrats made the “public option” modeled on Medicare their highest legislative priority during the legislative debate. Not only do those members disagree that Medicare is the problem, they believe Medicare is the solution. Indeed, support for the “public option” was so important to elements of the Democratic political coalition that President Obama went out of his way to show support for the concept as well — though he moved away from that support when it was clear that the public option’s inclusion in the legislation would doom the entire health reform effort.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, there was more consensus around Medicare’s role in high costs than most debate observers realized. Among the health policy team at the White House and the staff working for Senate Democrats, there was a clear recognition that there would never be any meaningful “bending of the cost-curve” so long as Medicare continued to operate as it does today.</p>
<p>It is hard to overstate the importance of this epiphany. For many years, most Democrats in Congress believed Medicare was more or less an innocent bystander to escalating health care costs, something like a railcar hooked onto a runaway freight train. The only way to slow down Medicare would be to slow down the whole train, and especially the engine pulling the other cars down the tracks. But now there is widespread recognition on both sides of the aisle that Medicare is the engine (or, at a minimum, the most important engine) pulling the rest of the health system down the tracks at an accelerated and dangerous rate.</p>
<p>Of course, no prominent Democrat from the Obama administration or in Congress ever came out and expressed their views on Medicare’s cost-escalating incentives so bluntly. But they didn’t need to. It was obvious in the remedies they were pushing. The White House and leading Senate Democrats argued repeatedly throughout the legislative process that the only way to slow cost growth and build a more efficient health sector would be with “delivery system reform” — in other words, reforms which would alter the ways in which physicians and hospitals provide services to patients. And the key to reforming the delivery system, according to these Democrats, would be changing the Medicare program.</p>
<p>They’re right. Medicare is the problem. Not the only problem, of course. There are other factors which are also driving up costs, including unreformed medical malpractice laws, open-ended federal tax subsidization of job-based insurance, perverse incentives in the federal-state matching program for Medicaid, lack of price transparency, and the growing demand for better medical care that comes with increasing wealth and higher incomes. But the most important reason health care is expensive and needlessly inefficient in the United States is Medicare.</p>
<p>American health care has virtues. The system of job-based insurance for working age people and Medicare for retirees provides ready access to care for most citizens (although there is more problematic access for the poor through Medicaid). We have highly skilled physicians and capital-intensive inpatient institutions that can deliver medical miracles for the sickest among us. U.S. health care is also open to medical innovation in ways that other health systems around the world are not.</p>
<p>But there is no denying that health care in the U.S. is all too often highly inefficient. The system is characterized by extreme fragmentation. Physicians, hospitals, clinics, labs, and pharmacies are all autonomous units that are financially independent. They bill separately from the others when they render services to patients; what’s worse, there’s very little coordination of care among them, which leads to a disastrous level of duplicative services and low quality care that is dangerous for the patients. The bureaucracy is maddening, the paperwork is burdensome and excessive, and there is very little regard for making the care experience convenient and pleasant for the patient.</p>
<p>At the heart of all this dysfunction is Medicare — and more precisely, Medicare’s dominant fee-for-service (FFS) insurance structure.</p>
<p>In June 2009, Atul Gawande wrote an influential article for The New Yorker magazine in which he contrasted the high use, high cost care provided in McAllen, Texas, to the less costly and higher quality care provided at institutions such the Mayo Clinic. <a href="#xiii" type="external">[xiii]</a> But what Gawande never really explored is what allowed a volume-driven delivery structure as epitomized by McAllen to develop in the first place. The answer is Medicare. Without Medicare payments for every physician-prescribed diagnostic test and surgical procedure, the expensive infrastructure that was built in McAllen would never have been viable.</p>
<p>Medicare’s FFS insurance is the largest and most influential payer in most markets. As the name implies, FFS pays any licensed health care provider when a Medicare patient uses services — no questions asked. More than 75 percent of Medicare enrollees — some 35 million people — are in the FFS program. <a href="#xiv" type="external">[xiv]</a> Physicians, hospitals, clinics, and other care organizations most often set up their operations to maximize the revenue they can earn from Medicare FFS payments.</p>
<p>For FFS insurance to make any economic sense at all, the patients must pay some of the cost when they get health care. Otherwise, there is no financial check against the understandable inclination to agree to all of the tests, consultations, and procedures that could be possible, but not guaranteed, steps to better health.</p>
<p>But Medicare’s FFS does not have effective cost-sharing at the point of service. Yes, the program requires cost-sharing, including 20 percent co-insurance to see a physician. But the vast majority of FFS beneficiaries — nearly 90 percent, according to the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) — have additional insurance, in the form of Medigap coverage, retiree wrap-around plans, or Medicaid, which fills in virtually all costs not covered by FFS (see Figure 6). Further, Medicare’s rules also require providers to accept the Medicare reimbursement rates as payment in full, effectively precluding any additional billing to the patient.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>In the vast majority of cases, then, FFS enrollees face no additional cost when they use more services, and health care providers earn more only when service use rises. It is not at all surprising, then, that Medicare has suffered for years from an explosion in volume of services used by FFS participants.</p>
<p>CBO reports that the average beneficiary used 40 percent more physician services in 2005 than they did just eight years earlier. <a href="#xv" type="external">[xv]</a> Spending for physician-administered imaging and other tests was up approximately 40 percent in 2007 compared to 2002, according to MedPAC. <a href="#xvi" type="external">[xvi]</a></p>
<p>FFS also stifles much needed service delivery innovation. The payment rules, established in regulation, reward higher use of last year’s services, offered by last year’s list of qualified providers. New service delivery organizations, pricing approaches, and ways of taking care of a patient (such as over the Internet and phone) are simply not accommodated by payment rules in some cases written a decade ago. Even marginal changes can take years to implement, often after a multi-year test. Providers are thus understandably reluctant to invest in new approaches, no matter how promising, which will only pay off if Medicare accommodates the change. The result is that today’s fragmented and dysfunctional system is virtually frozen in place — for all users of U.S. health care, not just Medicare beneficiaries.</p>
<p>Medicare administrators have understood for many years the problems created by Medicare’s FFS payment systems. They have tried to control costs, despite the rising volume, with ever more intense scrutiny of the payment rates per service. Indeed, the on-going maintenance of the arcane and complex payment systems for hospitals, physicians, nursing homes, and other provider categories is an all-consuming enterprise for the Medicare bureaucracy — and the provider groups that watch the bureaucracy’s every move.</p>
<p>Despite curbing some abuses, these payment systems have not worked to control Medicare costs. As often happens, the regulated have learned how to work the regulator. Politicians and program officials do not want to be accused of disrupting how and where seniors get care. So, naturally, health care providers use exactly that threat — closed facilities and reduced service levels — to narrow the range of possible payment changes from year to year. The yearly ritual to keep physician fees at least even with the level from the prior year is just one example of this phenomenon. With an effective “political” floor on their Medicare payments, many health care providers see no reason to move away from their autonomous structures and integrate with others in a more organized system of care.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>THE FOLLY OF A TOP-DOWN “SOLUTION”</p>
<p>Although analysts from both sides of the aisle recognize the same problem in Medicare’s current design, they have come to very different conclusions about the remedy.</p>
<p>The Obama White House and its allies observed the problem and concluded that what was needed were better payment systems to encourage integration, instead of fragmentation, and to reward quality instead of volume. From their perspective, the solution to today’s inefficient delivery arrangements is a top-down payment reform program, with the federal government using the leverage of Medicare payment policy to essentially build new organizational arrangements through which patients would get their care. The explicit goal is to have Mayo-like delivery systems in every community in the country.</p>
<p>To get there, the administration pushed a number of changes in Medicare, two of which are particularly noteworthy.</p>
<p>The first is a new pilot program to test what are called Accountable Care Organizations, or ACOs. ACOs are the brainchild of Mark McClellan, the former administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and Elliott Fisher, a health policy researcher at Dartmouth College, and a number of collaborators — all of whom have been studying the problems in the nation’s delivery system from a number of governmental and academic vantage points for years. <a href="#xvii" type="external">[xvii]</a></p>
<p>The ACO concept is to allow doctors and hospitals to voluntarily join up with others in new legal entities that are accountable for providing care across institutional and outpatient settings. The idea is to get physicians and hospitals in new organizational arrangements in which they share revenue and keep the savings if they provide quality care at less cost than what FFS Medicare would normally pay. The physicians and hospitals participating in an ACO would keep most of the resulting savings.</p>
<p>In effect, then, ACOs are the latest in a long series of efforts to get physicians and hospitals to form provider-run — as opposed to insurance-driven — managed care entities.</p>
<p>But the key to understanding the ACO concept is that beneficiaries play no role whatsoever in selecting where they get care. They are supposed to get assigned to an ACO based strictly on whom their primary care physician is, and which ACO that physician is affiliated with.</p>
<p>This is an implausible assumption, to say the least. The only way ACOs can work to reduce costs is to become a more integrated and closed network of providers who follow data-driven protocols for care. That means they can’t let their beneficiaries go to see just any specialist. The ACO needs patients to see only the ACO’s preferred list of specialists. But that will be nearly impossible to enforce if beneficiaries never agreed to become part of the managed care environment of an ACO in the first place.</p>
<p>The other prominent Medicare reform pushed by the White House in the health law is the Independent Payment Advisory Board, or IPAB.</p>
<p>The IPAB is a 15-member independent panel appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate and charged with enforcing an upper limit on annual Medicare spending growth. The IPAB has been given the authority to make recommendations for further cuts in Medicare’s costs. Those recommendations will automatically go into effect unless Congress overrides them.</p>
<p>But the IPAB is strictly limited in what it can recommend and implement. It can’t change cost-sharing for covered Medicare services. Indeed, it can’t change the nature of the Medicare entitlement at all, or the rules governing Medigap insurance, or any aspect of the beneficiary’s relationship to the program. The only thing it can do is cut Medicare payment rates for those providing services to the beneficiaries.</p>
<p>This limitation on the IPAB’s mandate reflects the cost-control vision of those who wrote the bill.</p>
<p>The flaw in both the ACO and IPAB concepts is that they assume the federal government will be now able to enforce a vision for cost control that has eluded Medicare’s administrators for more than forty years. The private sector delivery models the White House so admires — like Geisinger, and the Cleveland Clinic, and Intermountain Health Care — operate on a principle of provider exclusivity. They don’t take just any licensed provider into their fold. They operate highly selective, if not totally closed, networks. That’s the way they get control over the delivery system. Low-quality performers are dropped or avoided altogether, and tight processes are established to streamline care and eliminate unnecessary steps.</p>
<p>The federal government has never shown any capacity to enforce what might be called a Medicare “preferred provider network.” Indeed, the whole point of the fee-for-service model that Congress has so jealously protected over the years is that beneficiaries get to see any licensed provider of their choosing, to whom Medicare pays a fixed reimbursement rate. When attempts have been made in the past to steer patients toward preferred physicians or hospitals, they have failed miserably because politicians and regulators find it impossible to make distinctions among hospitals and physician groups based on quality measures that can themselves be disputed.</p>
<p>Instead, the way Congress and Medicare’s regulators have cut costs is with across-the-board payment rate reductions that apply to every licensed provider, and without regard to any measures of quality or efficient performance. Tellingly, that’s exactly how the recent health law achieves most of its Medicare budget cuts. The big savings came from arbitrary cuts in payment updates for institutional providers of care. When push comes to shove, the IPAB will almost certainly fall into the same trap. To cut spending fast and with certainty, the preferred solution will always be deeper payment rate reductions.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>THE RYAN ROADMAP: THE RIGHT WAY TO TRANSFORM HEALTH CARE DELIVERY</p>
<p>Many people suppose that the heart of the disagreement over health care policy was whether or not to expand coverage to more people. But the real debate was over how to allocate resources in the health care sector. Both sides agree that the status quo is unsustainable because federal health entitlement spending will cripple the nation’s economy unless changed, and both sides agree that the country cannot afford to simply subsidize millions of people in a system with runaway cost growth.</p>
<p>So the crucial question was always what to do about cost escalation. Or, more precisely, what changes in Medicare have the best chance of bringing about continual improvement in the productivity and quality of patient care? Resources in health care are scarce, just like they are in every sector of the economy. How can they be allocated so that the interactions between doctors and hospitals and the patients they serve become ever more productive over time? That’s the only way to slow the pace of rising costs without hurting the quality of the care provided to patients or resorting to non-price rationing of services (queues).</p>
<p>The Obama administration believes that a top-down, governmental process is the answer, and that the government can use Medicare’s market dominance to leverage a more efficient health sector nationwide.</p>
<p>But there is nearly half a century of experience with the Medicare program indicating that confidence in “government-engineered” efficiency improvement is entirely misplaced. Efforts to control costs from the top-down have always devolved into price setting and across-the-board payment-rate reductions, which is detrimental to the quality of American medicine. Price controls drive out willing suppliers of services, after which the only way to balance supply and demand is with waiting lists.</p>
<p>The alternative is a bottom-up approach, in which cost-conscious consumers choose between competing insurers and delivery systems based on price and quality. That’s the basis for Congressman Paul Ryan’s reforms to the Medicare program. <a href="#xviii" type="external">[xviii]</a></p>
<p>Rep. Ryan’s “Roadmap” is much, much more than a Medicare reform plan. It is nothing less than a comprehensive plan to put the nation’s finances on a sustainable trajectory, with policies that will promote economic growth and prosperity. It is a top-to-bottom rewrite of the nation’s entitlement program and tax laws. It would completely overhaul today’s anti-growth personal and corporate income tax system, reform Social Security to encourage work and savings, and establish a universal health insurance coverage program through refundable tax credits.</p>
<p>CBO has carefully examined the Roadmap and found that it would bring federal spending commitments (excluding net interest) down from about 27 percent of GDP under a pre-health law baseline in 2040 to about 19 percent of GDP, which is much more in line with the nation’s historical average. <a href="#xix" type="external">[xix]</a> It is the only credible plan now pending before Congress that would actually solve the long-run budget problem.</p>
<p>But there’s no doubt that the key reform upon which the rest of the plan hinges is Medicare. The Roadmap’s Medicare reform would convert the program into a defined contribution program for new entrants after 2020. Instead of a defined benefit entitlement, new Medicare beneficiaries starting in 2021 would get to decide how to use a fixed-dollar contribution provided to them by the Medicare program. In general, the beneficiaries would get to decide which insurance plan they want to enroll in. If the premium were more than the amount they are entitled to from Medicare, then they would pay the difference. If it were less, they would keep all of the savings. The Roadmap includes several other changes to Medicare as well (such as an increase in the retirement age and more income-testing of its benefits), but the core reform is the conversion of the entitlement from a defined-benefit to a defined-contribution model.</p>
<p>The Roadmap’s critics certainly view this change in Medicare as the most important entitlement shift proposed in the Roadmap. They argue that it would do nothing to control health care costs, but would only shift the burden and risk of rapidly rising costs onto individuals because the government’s financial support for Medicare would no longer keep pace with premium growth.</p>
<p>But that’s the wrong way to look at what the Roadmap’s Medicare reform is about and aims to achieve. The goal is not to shift rising premium costs from the government and onto the beneficiaries. The goal is to move away from the cost-increasing incentives of Medicare FFS as the default option for all new Medicare enrollees and set in motion an entirely different market dynamic to achieve greater efficiency and cost-effectiveness. In time, with the Roadmap’s reform, millions of otherwise passive Medicare participants would become active, cost-conscious consumers of insurance and alternative models for securing needed medical services. With cost-conscious consumers looking for the best value for their money, cost-cutting innovation would be rewarded, not punished as it is today. Physicians and hospitals would have strong financial incentives to reorganize themselves to become more productive and efficient and thus capable of capturing a larger share of what would become a highly competitive marketplace. That’s the way to slow the growth of health-care costs. Indeed, it’s the only way to do so without harming the quality of care.</p>
<p>How much would a truly reformed Medicare program slow the pace of rising costs? No one knows for sure, including CBO, because it is very difficult to predict the dynamics of this new marketplace. And certainly the other elements of a broader reform of health care — especially the move toward refundable tax credits for health insurance for the working age population — would need to reinforce the benefits of a Medicare reform to realize its full potential. But uncertain cost projection is no reason not to enact this kind of reform. Cost estimates are unlikely to ever provide definitive guidance one way or another. Fundamentally, policymakers must decide what policy approach is most likely to lead a virtuous cycle of productivity improvement and higher quality throughout the health sector. Can the government impose such improvements through a top-down payment reform through Medicare? Or is it more likely that a well-functioning marketplace would set in motion the forces needed to transform American medical care into a model of efficient, patient-centered care? The Roadmap comes to the sound conclusion that there’s no reason American health care would not benefit from the same transformational power of the marketplace that has done so much to improve products and services in other sectors of the American and global economy.</p>
<p>The government can and should play an important oversight role in such a reformed system. But the difficult organizational changes and innovations necessary to provide better care at lower cost must come from the bottom up, not the top down. In other words, changes should come from those actually delivering the services, not the Congress, or the Department of Health and Human Services, or even an independent rate setting board.</p>
<p>The new Medicare prescription drug benefit was constructed just this way when it was enacted in 2003. Beneficiaries get a fixed dollar entitlement that they can use to buy coverage from a number of different competing plans. The insurers understand that they have to keep costs down to attract price-sensitive enrollees. And the government has no role in setting premiums or drug prices. And how is it working? Costs have come in 40 percent below original expectations.</p>
<p>CONCLUSION</p>
<p>The United States is fast approaching a crisis. The federal government has made spending commitments that far exceed the capacity of the country to finance them. There is a growing consensus that the status quo cannot hold much longer. Something is going to give, perhaps in a very severe debt crisis.</p>
<p>The question is, what kind of proactive reforms could head off a calamity that everyone can now see coming?</p>
<p>President Obama passed his health care program through Congress in large part based on the argument that it did, in fact, represent a clear break from past practice. Yes, the bill expanded entitlement spending to millions of new beneficiaries. But the architects of it all contend that it will also slow the pace of rising health costs, and thus markedly improve the nation’s budget outlook, by fundamentally transforming the way medical care is practiced around the country.</p>
<p>But is that true? The federal government’s health care administrators have been trying to implement exactly the kinds of reforms touted as groundbreaking initiatives in the health law for decades, with little success. The new law provides the possibility of swifter implementation, but the political and information obstacles that have always stymied progress in the past remain. Indeed, the reforms to Medicare in the recently enacted health bill are better much described as more of the same rather than a clear break with past practice.</p>
<p>A more promising approach for addressing the significant challenges we face is a completely new relationship between the government and the beneficiaries of its programs. That’s the premise of the Ryan Roadmap. In particular, in Medicare, the key to changing the cost dynamic is to give more power and control to the beneficiaries themselves. Their choices can lead the health sector to make the revolutionary and cost-cutting changes the government has never been able to successfully impose by regulatory fiat.</p>
<p>James C. Capretta is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and an adjunct scholar at the Galen Institute.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>REFERENCES</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>2009 Annual Report of the Boards of Trustees of the Federal Hospital Insurance and Federal Supplementary Insurance Trust Funds, May 2009</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>An Analysis of the President’s Budgetary Proposal for Fiscal Year 2011, Congressional Budget Office, March 2010</p>
<p>The Long-Term Budget Outlook, Congressional Budget Office, June 2009</p>
<p>The Long-Term Budget Outlook, Congressional Budget Office, June 2010</p>
<p>Letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi from Douglas W. Elmendorf, Director, Congressional Budget Office on the cost estimates for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, March 20, 2010</p>
<p>Letter to the Honorable Paul Ryan, Ranking Member, Committee on the Budget, U.S. House of Representatives from Douglas W. Elmendorf, Director, Congressional Budget Office on the Roadmap for America’s Future Act of 2010, January 27, 2010</p>
<p>“The Cost Conundrum: What a Texas town can teach us about health care,” Atul Gawande, The New Yorker, June 1, 2009</p>
<p>“Labor Markets and Health Care Reform: New Results,” Douglas Holtz-Eakin and Cameron Smith, American Action Forum, May 2010</p>
<p>“The Aggregate Effects of Health Insurance: Evidence from the Introduction of Medicare,” Amy Finkelstein, NBER Working Paper 11619, September 2005</p>
<p>“Fostering Accountable Health Care: Moving Forward in Medicare,” Elliott S. Fisher, Mark B. McClellan, John Bertko, Steven M. Lieberman, Julie J. Lee, Julie L. Lewis, and Jonathan S. Skinner, Health Affairs (web exclusive), January 27, 2009</p>
<p>“Estimated Financial Effects of the ‘Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,’ as Amended,” Richard S. Foster, Chief Actuary, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, April 22, 2010</p>
<p>“A Roadmap for America’s Future: Version 2.0,” Representative Paul D. Ryan, Ranking Member, U.S. House Committee on the Budget, January 2010</p>
<p />
<p><a type="external" href="" />i Peter Orszag, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, at the White House Fiscal Responsibility Summit, February 23, 2009 (http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/press_releases/022309_reform/).</p>
<p><a type="external" href="" />ii The average federal budget deficit, as a percentage of GDP, was 2.4 percent from 1970 through 2008. See Historical Tables, Congressional Budget Office ( <a href="http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/108xx/doc10871/Historicaltables2010Jan_forweb.XLS" type="external">http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/108xx/doc10871/Historicaltables2010Jan_forweb.XLS</a>).</p>
<p><a type="external" href="" />iii An Analysis of the President’s Budgetary Proposal for Fiscal Year 2011, Congressional Budget Office, March 2010.</p>
<p><a type="external" href="" />iv Ibid.</p>
<p><a type="external" href="" />v The Long-Term Budget Outlook, Congressional Budget Office, June 2009 (supplemental data at: http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/102xx/doc10297/SupplementalData2009LTBO.xls).</p>
<p><a type="external" href="" />vi See “Health Care: Capturing the Opportunity in the Nation’s Core Fiscal Challenge,” Peter Orszag, Director of the Congressional Budget Office, Presentation for Princeton University, March 12, 2008 ( <a href="http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/90xx/doc9054/03-12-Princetonwnews.pdf" type="external">http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/90xx/doc9054/03-12-Princetonwnews.pdf</a>).</p>
<p><a type="external" href="" />vii See, for instance, “Honey, I Shrunk the Demographics,” Neil Howe and Richard Jackson, Facing Facts, December 2007 ( <a href="http://www.concordcoalition.org/files/uploaded-pdfs/ff-1220-demographics.pdf" type="external">http://www.concordcoalition.org/files/uploaded-pdfs/ff-1220-demographics.pdf</a>).</p>
<p><a type="external" href="" />viii The Long-Term Budget Outlook, Congressional Budget Office, June 2010 (supplemental data at: <a href="http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/115xx/doc11579/LTBO-2010data.xls" type="external">http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/115xx/doc11579/LTBO-2010data.xls</a>).</p>
<p><a type="external" href="" />ix “Estimated Financial Effects of the ‘Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,’ as Amended,” Richard S. Foster, Chief Actuary, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, April 22, 2010 ( <a href="http://www.politico.com/static/PPM130_oact_memorandum_on_financial_impact_of_ppaca_as_enacted.html" type="external">http://www.politico.com/static/PPM130_oact_memorandum_on_financial_impact_of_ppaca_as_enacted.html</a>).</p>
<p><a type="external" href="" />x See Letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi from CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf on the cost estimates for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, March 20, 2010 ( <a href="http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/113xx/doc11379/AmendReconProp.pdf" type="external">http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/113xx/doc11379/AmendReconProp.pdf</a>).</p>
<p><a type="external" href="" />xi See “The CLASS Act: Repeal Now, or Expect a Permanent Taxpayer Bailout Later,” Brian Riedl and James C. Capretta,The Heritage Foundation (forthcoming).</p>
<p><a type="external" href="" />xii “Orszag: CBO lowballs savings from Obama’s healthcare reform,” Walter Alarkon, The Hill, April 11, 20 10.</p>
<p><a type="external" href="" />xiii “The Cost Conundrum: What a Texas town can teach us about health care,” Atul Gawande, The New Yorker, June 1, 2009 (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/06/01/090601fa_fact_gawande).</p>
<p><a type="external" href="" />xiv 2009 Annual Report of the Boards of Trustees of the Federal Hospital Insurance and Federal Supplementary Insurance Trust Funds, May 2009, Table IV.C1.</p>
<p><a type="external" href="" />xv “Factors Underlying the Growth in Medicare’s Spending for Physician Services,” Congressional Budget Office, June 2007, table 3.</p>
<p><a type="external" href="" />xvi Healthcare Spending and the Medicare Program: A Data Book, Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, June 2009, p. 102.</p>
<p><a type="external" href="" />xvii See “Fostering Accountable Health Care: Moving Forward in Medicare,” Elliott S. Fisher, Mark B. McClellan, John Bertko, Steven M. Lieberman, Julie J. Lee, Julie L. Lewis, and Jonathan S. Skinner, Health Affairs (web exclusive), January 27, 2009.</p>
<p><a type="external" href="" />xviii “A Roadmap for America’s Future: Version 2.0,” Representative Paul D. Ryan, Ranking Member, U.S. House Committee on the Budget, January 2010 ( <a href="http://www.roadmap.republicans.budget.house.gov/UploadedFiles/Roadmap2Final2.pdf" type="external">http://www.roadmap.republicans.budget.house.gov/UploadedFiles/Roadmap2Final2.pdf</a>).</p>
<p><a type="external" href="" />xix Letter to the Honorable Paul Ryan, Ranking Member, Committee on the Budget, U.S. House of Representatives from Douglas W. Elmendorf, Director, Congressional Budget Office on the Roadmap for America’s Future Act of 2010, January 27, 2010, Table 1 (http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/108xx/doc10851/01-27-Ryan-Roadmap-Letter.pdf).</p> | false | 1 | introduction health care reform entitlement reform said peter orszag president barack obamas first budget director bipartisan fiscal responsibility summit called president february 2009 president obama assumed office little month earlier signaling country present white house top domestic priority first year office securing health care law covered americans health insurance consistent commitment impose renewed fiscal discipline team knew would many congress even among members party would wary mounting allout effort pass ambitious health reform program given expected cost initiative daunting budgetary challenges already facing country house senate members aware many years rising health entitlement costs form medicare medicaid expenditures threaten push nations finances past breaking point country cant pay existing health care commitments could president afford make expensive new promises subsidized health care millions new beneficiaries president wanted preempt kind cost budget critique making bold pronouncement would reform program cover millions people insurance would also bend costcurve thereby begin make nations health entitlement commitments new well old affordable future generations taxpayers argument health reform would actually improve nations budgetary outlook even moved country toward universal coverage became centerpiece administrations push congressional passage long divisive legislative debate lasted well year president succeeded getting health reform bill congress passed legislation signed law march 2010 enactment new law hasnt settled matters though public debate continues country remains deeply divided passed part due unusual polarizing manner congressional majority pushed bill final stages consideration bruising battle many republicans believe steps administration congressional leadership took avoid need bipartisan support simply went far ensured law would viewed suspiciously large percentage electorate even process used pass legislation less polarizing new law still would highly controversial thats deep enduring disagreements substantive merits main provisions especially much actually cost future ultimately shoulder burden extending laws new entitlement promises large numbers americans concerns costs health law reinforced growing worldwide recognition economic risks associated excessive governmental borrowing debt rest developed world moving toward retrenchment welfare states americans rightly concerned government piled enormous new budgetary risk onto already precarious fiscal outlook concern pervasive among electorate could well force congress revisit recently passed health law sooner rather later nature existing entitlement fiscal crisis president obama assuming office early 2009 united states entering period budgetary economic risk unlike anything experienced postwar era 2008 us economy fell severe recession triggered calamitous housing financial crisis revenue plummeted obligations soared federal government ran budget deficit 99 percent gdp 2009 highest since world war ii four times recent historical average 24 percent ii gap federal spending revenue 2010 expected approach 10 percent gdp iii deficits far excess experienced past recessions moreover projections show even sustained recovery underway several years unemployment fallen normal nonrecessionary levels federal deficits return postwar norm obama administrations 2010 budget plan adopted full congress congressional budget office cbo projects federal budget deficit 2020 would 56 percent gdp nations debt would reached 90 percent annual gdp 40 percent end 2008 see figure 1 cumulative budget deficit period 2011 2020 obama budget plan would nearly 98 trillion 160 large runup governmental debt course partly attributable continuing fallout unusual severe recession borrowing occurred 2009 2010 drive net interest costs permanent basis among things 2020 cbo expects net interest national debt rise 900 billion 187 billion 2009 iv large deficits debt projected coming years also reflect increased budgetary pressure rapid growth federal entitlement spending 1970 federal government spent four percent gdp social security medicare medicaid based projections made last year cbo expected spending big three entitlements reach 98 percent gdp 2010 114 percent gdp 2020 almost triple half century earlier v growth entitlement spending fueled two basic factors rapidly rising per capita health costs growing elderly population cbo calculated useful measure capacity finance health costs time socalled excess cost growth real per capita growth health costs excess real per capita gdp growth measure useful shows extent health spending commitments taking larger larger share limited resources quite natural societies spend health incomes rise spending health means less priorities many people businesses health care fixed cost cant control discretionary budget item moreover public sector health spending continuously grows rapidly tax base government must either perpetually increase tax rates cut programs regular basis make room health spending shown figure 2 excess cost growth medicare averaged 23 percent annually 1975 2007 medicaid average 19 percent annually period 160 rapidly rising health care costs expected continue indefinite future even country also experiences unprecedented demographic transformation retirement baby boom generation 2010 2030 population aged 65 older projected increase 41 million 71 million people see figure 3 swelling ranks social security medicare program beneficiaries well qualifying longterm care services medicaid 160 rising health costs aging population drive entitlement spending coming years even rapidly grown past last year health law enacted cbo expected combined costs social security medicare medicaid rise 98 percent gdp 2010 144 percent 2030 179 percent gdp 2050 see figure 4 jump spending next two decades 46 percent gdp roughly equivalent size social security today words federal government would adding new spending commitments budget equal size current social security program without new funding pay 160 official cost assessments health law limitations prior becoming presidents choice director office management budget early 2009 peter orszag served head cbo made something personal crusade advise media members house senate longterm budget problem really health cost problem make point frequently displayed charts showing next twenty years twothirds entitlement cost growth would attributable factors population aging mainly rising health costs vi kind reasoning administration officials proponents recently enacted health law brought efforts never claimed health law would address set issues surrounding aging population additional budgetary burdens associated moving toward lower ratio workers retirees part minimized significance aspect problem minds orszags claim population aging less significant factor entitlement crisis always controversial point depended particular slicing cost projections data others looking exactly exact numbers came away different conclusions vii ironically orszags departure cbo become president obamas first omb director early 2009 cbos assessments relative importance aging rising health cost entitlement crisis began change tracks critics contended two years ago orszag beginning health reform entitlement reform drumbeat cbos longterm budget projections last year show enactment health law population aging would responsible least 56 percent spending growth major entitlement programs 2035 rising health care costs would account 32 percent cost growth see figure 5 suggest rising health care costs major budget problem even cost growth decelerated us would still extreme budgetary pressure tidal wave retiring baby boomers hit federal program enrollment health law absolutely nothing address fundamental aspect entitlement crisis whats even troubling problem president advisors said would address hasnt come close solved either cbo chief actuary centers medicare medicaid services cms rendered preliminary judgments whether president succeeded bending costcurve entitlements health system generally promised would answer lies somewhere highly doubtful though never say explicitly cbo recently released updated version projections federal spending revenue deficits debt coming decades time incorporating expected impact provisions new health law shown figure 6 cbos new longterm projections still show crushing burden entitlement spending growth coming years 2030 spending social security federal health entitlement programs reach 147 percent gdp jump 43 percent gdp twenty years viii even rosy scenario assuming laws controversial cuts taxes get implemented exactly written provisions survive even cbo hints distinct possibility total entitlement spending rise even rapidly adding another 1 percent gdp federal spending 2030 see alternative scenario figure 6 unfortunately white house administrations employee richard foster chief actuary cms even pessimistic cbo official estimate released passage legislation projected overall national health expenditures would higher 2019 would law enacted moreover raised serious questions whether provisions cut costs could sustained coming years especially acrosstheboard payment rate reductions medicare program would drive reimbursement rates even health care input costs continued rise rapidly cuts hold clear think federal national health spending would go even rapidly estimates indicate ix part administration continued point cbos official cost estimate legislation validate claim law reduce federal budget deficit x claim saying health costcurve bent downward subject strong criticism series budgetary gimmicks implausible assumptions legislation therefore required considered cbos analysis among things new law doublecounts premiums collected new longterm care insurance program using premiums bolster claim deficit reduction first ten years implementation finance new longterm benefits later years course dollar cant spent twice matter much congress wishes using longterm care premiums mask costs health entitlement expansions next ten years means debt incurred later longterm care benefit claims come due premiums saved purpose found already spent xi still even administration essentially admitted official cost projections validate claim cost escalation federal health entitlement programs moderate meaningful way due legislation indeed orszag said agrees cautious assessment costcutting potential new law also argued potential cost cutting new law far greater official projections indicate believes become evident implementation proceeds xii orszags reaction official cost assessments new health law illuminating acknowledgement limits projections policymaking yes cbo chief actuary provide important information must taken account health policymaking process budget process must built foundation hard numbers produced independent parties cost estimating substitute sound judgment setting basic direction policy whats needed anything else health care coherent realitybased policy prescription altering basic dynamics away cost escalation productivity improvement efficient patient care thats goal getting requires clear accurate diagnosis creating cost problem first place diagnosing core cost problem yearlong debate future us health care policy polarizing beneath surface surprising consensus forming around crucial issue search answers rising costs intensified hearings briefings experts around country analysts sides debate reaching conclusion medicare program operates today primary cause cost problem course thats conclusion every member congress would agree particular sizeable number house senate democrats made public option modeled medicare highest legislative priority legislative debate members disagree medicare problem believe medicare solution indeed support public option important elements democratic political coalition president obama went way show support concept well though moved away support clear public options inclusion legislation would doom entire health reform effort nonetheless consensus around medicares role high costs debate observers realized among health policy team white house staff working senate democrats clear recognition would never meaningful bending costcurve long medicare continued operate today hard overstate importance epiphany many years democrats congress believed medicare less innocent bystander escalating health care costs something like railcar hooked onto runaway freight train way slow medicare would slow whole train especially engine pulling cars tracks widespread recognition sides aisle medicare engine minimum important engine pulling rest health system tracks accelerated dangerous rate course prominent democrat obama administration congress ever came expressed views medicares costescalating incentives bluntly didnt need obvious remedies pushing white house leading senate democrats argued repeatedly throughout legislative process way slow cost growth build efficient health sector would delivery system reform words reforms would alter ways physicians hospitals provide services patients key reforming delivery system according democrats would changing medicare program theyre right medicare problem problem course factors also driving costs including unreformed medical malpractice laws openended federal tax subsidization jobbased insurance perverse incentives federalstate matching program medicaid lack price transparency growing demand better medical care comes increasing wealth higher incomes important reason health care expensive needlessly inefficient united states medicare american health care virtues system jobbased insurance working age people medicare retirees provides ready access care citizens although problematic access poor medicaid highly skilled physicians capitalintensive inpatient institutions deliver medical miracles sickest among us us health care also open medical innovation ways health systems around world denying health care us often highly inefficient system characterized extreme fragmentation physicians hospitals clinics labs pharmacies autonomous units financially independent bill separately others render services patients whats worse theres little coordination care among leads disastrous level duplicative services low quality care dangerous patients bureaucracy maddening paperwork burdensome excessive little regard making care experience convenient pleasant patient heart dysfunction medicare precisely medicares dominant feeforservice ffs insurance structure june 2009 atul gawande wrote influential article new yorker magazine contrasted high use high cost care provided mcallen texas less costly higher quality care provided institutions mayo clinic xiii gawande never really explored allowed volumedriven delivery structure epitomized mcallen develop first place answer medicare without medicare payments every physicianprescribed diagnostic test surgical procedure expensive infrastructure built mcallen would never viable medicares ffs insurance largest influential payer markets name implies ffs pays licensed health care provider medicare patient uses services questions asked 75 percent medicare enrollees 35 million people ffs program xiv physicians hospitals clinics care organizations often set operations maximize revenue earn medicare ffs payments ffs insurance make economic sense patients must pay cost get health care otherwise financial check understandable inclination agree tests consultations procedures could possible guaranteed steps better health medicares ffs effective costsharing point service yes program requires costsharing including 20 percent coinsurance see physician vast majority ffs beneficiaries nearly 90 percent according medicare payment advisory commission medpac additional insurance form medigap coverage retiree wraparound plans medicaid fills virtually costs covered ffs see figure 6 medicares rules also require providers accept medicare reimbursement rates payment full effectively precluding additional billing patient 160 vast majority cases ffs enrollees face additional cost use services health care providers earn service use rises surprising medicare suffered years explosion volume services used ffs participants cbo reports average beneficiary used 40 percent physician services 2005 eight years earlier xv spending physicianadministered imaging tests approximately 40 percent 2007 compared 2002 according medpac xvi ffs also stifles much needed service delivery innovation payment rules established regulation reward higher use last years services offered last years list qualified providers new service delivery organizations pricing approaches ways taking care patient internet phone simply accommodated payment rules cases written decade ago even marginal changes take years implement often multiyear test providers thus understandably reluctant invest new approaches matter promising pay medicare accommodates change result todays fragmented dysfunctional system virtually frozen place users us health care medicare beneficiaries medicare administrators understood many years problems created medicares ffs payment systems tried control costs despite rising volume ever intense scrutiny payment rates per service indeed ongoing maintenance arcane complex payment systems hospitals physicians nursing homes provider categories allconsuming enterprise medicare bureaucracy provider groups watch bureaucracys every move despite curbing abuses payment systems worked control medicare costs often happens regulated learned work regulator politicians program officials want accused disrupting seniors get care naturally health care providers use exactly threat closed facilities reduced service levels narrow range possible payment changes year year yearly ritual keep physician fees least even level prior year one example phenomenon effective political floor medicare payments many health care providers see reason move away autonomous structures integrate others organized system care 160 folly topdown solution although analysts sides aisle recognize problem medicares current design come different conclusions remedy obama white house allies observed problem concluded needed better payment systems encourage integration instead fragmentation reward quality instead volume perspective solution todays inefficient delivery arrangements topdown payment reform program federal government using leverage medicare payment policy essentially build new organizational arrangements patients would get care explicit goal mayolike delivery systems every community country get administration pushed number changes medicare two particularly noteworthy first new pilot program test called accountable care organizations acos acos brainchild mark mcclellan former administrator centers medicare medicaid services elliott fisher health policy researcher dartmouth college number collaborators studying problems nations delivery system number governmental academic vantage points years xvii aco concept allow doctors hospitals voluntarily join others new legal entities accountable providing care across institutional outpatient settings idea get physicians hospitals new organizational arrangements share revenue keep savings provide quality care less cost ffs medicare would normally pay physicians hospitals participating aco would keep resulting savings effect acos latest long series efforts get physicians hospitals form providerrun opposed insurancedriven managed care entities key understanding aco concept beneficiaries play role whatsoever selecting get care supposed get assigned aco based strictly primary care physician aco physician affiliated implausible assumption say least way acos work reduce costs become integrated closed network providers follow datadriven protocols care means cant let beneficiaries go see specialist aco needs patients see acos preferred list specialists nearly impossible enforce beneficiaries never agreed become part managed care environment aco first place prominent medicare reform pushed white house health law independent payment advisory board ipab ipab 15member independent panel appointed president confirmed senate charged enforcing upper limit annual medicare spending growth ipab given authority make recommendations cuts medicares costs recommendations automatically go effect unless congress overrides ipab strictly limited recommend implement cant change costsharing covered medicare services indeed cant change nature medicare entitlement rules governing medigap insurance aspect beneficiarys relationship program thing cut medicare payment rates providing services beneficiaries limitation ipabs mandate reflects costcontrol vision wrote bill flaw aco ipab concepts assume federal government able enforce vision cost control eluded medicares administrators forty years private sector delivery models white house admires like geisinger cleveland clinic intermountain health care operate principle provider exclusivity dont take licensed provider fold operate highly selective totally closed networks thats way get control delivery system lowquality performers dropped avoided altogether tight processes established streamline care eliminate unnecessary steps federal government never shown capacity enforce might called medicare preferred provider network indeed whole point feeforservice model congress jealously protected years beneficiaries get see licensed provider choosing medicare pays fixed reimbursement rate attempts made past steer patients toward preferred physicians hospitals failed miserably politicians regulators find impossible make distinctions among hospitals physician groups based quality measures disputed instead way congress medicares regulators cut costs acrosstheboard payment rate reductions apply every licensed provider without regard measures quality efficient performance tellingly thats exactly recent health law achieves medicare budget cuts big savings came arbitrary cuts payment updates institutional providers care push comes shove ipab almost certainly fall trap cut spending fast certainty preferred solution always deeper payment rate reductions 160 ryan roadmap right way transform health care delivery many people suppose heart disagreement health care policy whether expand coverage people real debate allocate resources health care sector sides agree status quo unsustainable federal health entitlement spending cripple nations economy unless changed sides agree country afford simply subsidize millions people system runaway cost growth crucial question always cost escalation precisely changes medicare best chance bringing continual improvement productivity quality patient care resources health care scarce like every sector economy allocated interactions doctors hospitals patients serve become ever productive time thats way slow pace rising costs without hurting quality care provided patients resorting nonprice rationing services queues obama administration believes topdown governmental process answer government use medicares market dominance leverage efficient health sector nationwide nearly half century experience medicare program indicating confidence governmentengineered efficiency improvement entirely misplaced efforts control costs topdown always devolved price setting acrosstheboard paymentrate reductions detrimental quality american medicine price controls drive willing suppliers services way balance supply demand waiting lists alternative bottomup approach costconscious consumers choose competing insurers delivery systems based price quality thats basis congressman paul ryans reforms medicare program xviii rep ryans roadmap much much medicare reform plan nothing less comprehensive plan put nations finances sustainable trajectory policies promote economic growth prosperity toptobottom rewrite nations entitlement program tax laws would completely overhaul todays antigrowth personal corporate income tax system reform social security encourage work savings establish universal health insurance coverage program refundable tax credits cbo carefully examined roadmap found would bring federal spending commitments excluding net interest 27 percent gdp prehealth law baseline 2040 19 percent gdp much line nations historical average xix credible plan pending congress would actually solve longrun budget problem theres doubt key reform upon rest plan hinges medicare roadmaps medicare reform would convert program defined contribution program new entrants 2020 instead defined benefit entitlement new medicare beneficiaries starting 2021 would get decide use fixeddollar contribution provided medicare program general beneficiaries would get decide insurance plan want enroll premium amount entitled medicare would pay difference less would keep savings roadmap includes several changes medicare well increase retirement age incometesting benefits core reform conversion entitlement definedbenefit definedcontribution model roadmaps critics certainly view change medicare important entitlement shift proposed roadmap argue would nothing control health care costs would shift burden risk rapidly rising costs onto individuals governments financial support medicare would longer keep pace premium growth thats wrong way look roadmaps medicare reform aims achieve goal shift rising premium costs government onto beneficiaries goal move away costincreasing incentives medicare ffs default option new medicare enrollees set motion entirely different market dynamic achieve greater efficiency costeffectiveness time roadmaps reform millions otherwise passive medicare participants would become active costconscious consumers insurance alternative models securing needed medical services costconscious consumers looking best value money costcutting innovation would rewarded punished today physicians hospitals would strong financial incentives reorganize become productive efficient thus capable capturing larger share would become highly competitive marketplace thats way slow growth healthcare costs indeed way without harming quality care much would truly reformed medicare program slow pace rising costs one knows sure including cbo difficult predict dynamics new marketplace certainly elements broader reform health care especially move toward refundable tax credits health insurance working age population would need reinforce benefits medicare reform realize full potential uncertain cost projection reason enact kind reform cost estimates unlikely ever provide definitive guidance one way another fundamentally policymakers must decide policy approach likely lead virtuous cycle productivity improvement higher quality throughout health sector government impose improvements topdown payment reform medicare likely wellfunctioning marketplace would set motion forces needed transform american medical care model efficient patientcentered care roadmap comes sound conclusion theres reason american health care would benefit transformational power marketplace done much improve products services sectors american global economy government play important oversight role reformed system difficult organizational changes innovations necessary provide better care lower cost must come bottom top words changes come actually delivering services congress department health human services even independent rate setting board new medicare prescription drug benefit constructed way enacted 2003 beneficiaries get fixed dollar entitlement use buy coverage number different competing plans insurers understand keep costs attract pricesensitive enrollees government role setting premiums drug prices working costs come 40 percent original expectations conclusion united states fast approaching crisis federal government made spending commitments far exceed capacity country finance growing consensus status quo hold much longer something going give perhaps severe debt crisis question kind proactive reforms could head calamity everyone see coming president obama passed health care program congress large part based argument fact represent clear break past practice yes bill expanded entitlement spending millions new beneficiaries architects contend also slow pace rising health costs thus markedly improve nations budget outlook fundamentally transforming way medical care practiced around country true federal governments health care administrators trying implement exactly kinds reforms touted groundbreaking initiatives health law decades little success new law provides possibility swifter implementation political information obstacles always stymied progress past remain indeed reforms medicare recently enacted health bill better much described rather clear break past practice promising approach addressing significant challenges face completely new relationship government beneficiaries programs thats premise ryan roadmap particular medicare key changing cost dynamic give power control beneficiaries choices lead health sector make revolutionary costcutting changes government never able successfully impose regulatory fiat james c capretta fellow ethics public policy center adjunct scholar galen institute 160 references 160 2009 annual report boards trustees federal hospital insurance federal supplementary insurance trust funds may 2009 160 analysis presidents budgetary proposal fiscal year 2011 congressional budget office march 2010 longterm budget outlook congressional budget office june 2009 longterm budget outlook congressional budget office june 2010 letter house speaker nancy pelosi douglas w elmendorf director congressional budget office cost estimates patient protection affordable care act march 20 2010 letter honorable paul ryan ranking member committee budget us house representatives douglas w elmendorf director congressional budget office roadmap americas future act 2010 january 27 2010 cost conundrum texas town teach us health care atul gawande new yorker june 1 2009 labor markets health care reform new results douglas holtzeakin cameron smith american action forum may 2010 aggregate effects health insurance evidence introduction medicare amy finkelstein nber working paper 11619 september 2005 fostering accountable health care moving forward medicare elliott fisher mark b mcclellan john bertko steven lieberman julie j lee julie l lewis jonathan skinner health affairs web exclusive january 27 2009 estimated financial effects patient protection affordable care act amended richard foster chief actuary centers medicare medicaid services april 22 2010 roadmap americas future version 20 representative paul ryan ranking member us house committee budget january 2010 peter orszag director office management budget white house fiscal responsibility summit february 23 2009 httpwwwwhitehousegovombpress_releases022309_reform ii average federal budget deficit percentage gdp 24 percent 1970 2008 see historical tables congressional budget office httpwwwcbogovftpdocs108xxdoc10871historicaltables2010jan_forwebxls iii analysis presidents budgetary proposal fiscal year 2011 congressional budget office march 2010 iv ibid v longterm budget outlook congressional budget office june 2009 supplemental data httpwwwcbogovftpdocs102xxdoc10297supplementaldata2009ltboxls vi see health care capturing opportunity nations core fiscal challenge peter orszag director congressional budget office presentation princeton university march 12 2008 httpwwwcbogovftpdocs90xxdoc90540312princetonwnewspdf vii see instance honey shrunk demographics neil howe richard jackson facing facts december 2007 httpwwwconcordcoalitionorgfilesuploadedpdfsff1220demographicspdf viii longterm budget outlook congressional budget office june 2010 supplemental data httpwwwcbogovftpdocs115xxdoc11579ltbo2010dataxls ix estimated financial effects patient protection affordable care act amended richard foster chief actuary centers medicare medicaid services april 22 2010 httpwwwpoliticocomstaticppm130_oact_memorandum_on_financial_impact_of_ppaca_as_enactedhtml x see letter house speaker nancy pelosi cbo director douglas elmendorf cost estimates patient protection affordable care act march 20 2010 httpwwwcbogovftpdocs113xxdoc11379amendreconproppdf xi see class act repeal expect permanent taxpayer bailout later brian riedl james c caprettathe heritage foundation forthcoming xii orszag cbo lowballs savings obamas healthcare reform walter alarkon hill april 11 20 10 xiii cost conundrum texas town teach us health care atul gawande new yorker june 1 2009 httpwwwnewyorkercomreporting20090601090601fa_fact_gawande xiv 2009 annual report boards trustees federal hospital insurance federal supplementary insurance trust funds may 2009 table ivc1 xv factors underlying growth medicares spending physician services congressional budget office june 2007 table 3 xvi healthcare spending medicare program data book medicare payment advisory commission june 2009 p 102 xvii see fostering accountable health care moving forward medicare elliott fisher mark b mcclellan john bertko steven lieberman julie j lee julie l lewis jonathan skinner health affairs web exclusive january 27 2009 xviii roadmap americas future version 20 representative paul ryan ranking member us house committee budget january 2010 httpwwwroadmaprepublicansbudgethousegovuploadedfilesroadmap2final2pdf xix letter honorable paul ryan ranking member committee budget us house representatives douglas w elmendorf director congressional budget office roadmap americas future act 2010 january 27 2010 table 1 httpwwwcbogovftpdocs108xxdoc108510127ryanroadmapletterpdf | 4,323 |
<p>In the buildup to this year’s election, Democrats sought to use the stem-cell debate to pressure Republican candidates. Press reports repeatedly asserted that stem-cell research could be a powerful “wedge issue” for the Democrats, and party leaders went out of their way to stress it on the stump. Rep. Nancy Pelosi even placed embryonic-stem-cell research funding on her to-do list for the first 100 hours of a Democratic House.</p>
<p>At first glance, the election results may seem to confirm the intuition that stem-cell research was an effective issue for Democrats. The race in which it played the most prominent role, the Missouri Senate race, ended with a narrow Democratic victory, and the human-cloning referendum in that state also passed by a (nearly identical) slim margin. Several other races in which stem cells played a role also went for the Democrats. But a closer look belies this simple reading of the outcomes. For all of their transformative potential, embryonic stem cells do not seem to turn voters into Democrats or non-voters into voters.</p>
<p>The Show-Me StateThe Missouri cloning initiative offers the clearest picture of stem-cell research as an election issue. The initiative sought to amend the state constitution to prevent state legislators from restricting human cloning for research purposes, and to exempt cloning and embryonic-stem-cell research from state laws that could restrict (or even just discourage) such work. For many months, through an extravagant $30 million campaign, supporters of the initiative sought to persuade Missouri’s voters that the proposed constitutional amendment actually prohibited human cloning and that the research in question would cure all manner of disease and disability. The emotional, if misleading, ads worked at first. Early on, support for the initiative reached 67 percent in one <a href="http://www.missouricures.com/documents/Topline_Dec_05.pdf" type="external">poll</a>, and even as late as October <a href="http://www.surveyusa.com/client/PollReport.aspx?g=a98f7222-194d-4374-afc2-68d6811513b6&amp;c=82" type="external">polls</a> found nearly 60-percent approval. But in the final stretch, opponents of the amendment, spending roughly a tenth the amount its supporters invested, began to highlight the dishonesty at the heart of the amendment campaign. Support for the proposed amendment plummeted. On <a href="http://www.sos.mo.gov/enrweb/statewideresults.asp?eid=189" type="external">Election Day</a>, support for the amendment was 51 percent&#160;— enough to pass the measure, but enough also to show that even in the face of an overwhelming campaign of deception, voters can be moved by the facts about stem-cell research.</p>
<p>The final tally on the ballot initiative bears a striking resemblance to the results of the state’s Senate race, but the details of the vote suggest the relation between them was less than direct. According to <a href="http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2006/pages/results/states/MO/I/01/epolls.0.html" type="external">exit polls</a> (which, of course, must be taken with a grain of salt), more than 20 percent of Democratic challenger Claire McCaskill’s voters voted against the cloning amendment, while 20 percent of Republican incumbent Senator Jim Talent’s supporters voted in favor of it. As a result, the final tally in the Senate race and in the amendment vote look very similar, but each slim majority consists of different voters. The fact that a fifth of Missourians on both sides of the issue voted for a Senate candidate who disagreed with them on the amendment begins to undermine the notion that stem-cell research moved the election in the Democrats’ favor.</p>
<p>The idea that stem-cell research moves independent voters is simply not supported by the <a href="http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2006/pages/results/states/MO/I/01/epolls.0.html" type="external">Missouri data</a>. After a year-long advertising bombardment and a ten to one funding advantage for amendment supporters, 55 percent of independent voters cast their vote for the amendment, while 45 percent opposed it. Independent voters did not break down differently on this subject than on others in the state. Men and women were also evenly split, despite the common contention that the stem-cell issue appeals especially to women voters.</p>
<p>A Dull WedgeEmbryonic-stem-cell research does not seem to have been more significant in other races either. <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-0603270150mar27,1,4476865.story?coll=chi-news-hed&amp;ctrack=1&amp;cset=true" type="external">Back in March</a>, Rep. Rahm Emanuel, head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, traveled to New Jersey to launch a targeted campaign to use the stem-cell-funding debate against six Republicans in very tight races believed to be particularly vulnerable on the subject. The six were Michael Ferguson of New Jersey (in whose district Emanuel made his announcement), Dave Reichert of Washington, Peter Roskam of Illinois, Rick O’Donnell of Colorado, John Gard of Wisconsin, and Richard Pombo of California. On election night, Ferguson, Roskam, and Reichert won (although Reichert’s tight race may require a recount), while O’Donnell, Gard, and Pombo lost. In none of their races did stem-cell research appear to play a critical role. And while it is impossible to say whether the issue affected just the right tiny pocket of voters necessary to win in those races where Democrats won, there was no consistent pattern of votes shifting to the Democrats because of voters’ views on stem-cell research.</p>
<p>Indeed, surveys of public opinion have never supported the notion that stem-cell research is a significant issue in the minds of American voters or that it offers a significant advantage to Democrats. Unlike other “wedge issues,” stem cells never emerge when Americans are asked to volunteer what subjects are most important to them or should be most important to their leaders. And the results of polls that ask specifically about stem-cell research vary widely depending on the wording of the question, suggesting voters are not well informed and do not have hard-set opinions. <a href="http://www.stemcellfunding.org/camr_news.aspx?rid=051606B" type="external">Polls</a> that intentionally avoid mentioning that embryonic-stem-cell research requires the destruction of human embryos or that exaggerate the medical potential of the work tend to produce strong support for federal funding of the research. <a href="http://www.nccbuscc.org/comm/archives/2006/06-109.shtml" type="external">Polls</a> noting that human embryos must be destroyed, or discussing the existence of other non-controversial avenues of stem-cell science but playing down the medical potential of the research, tend to elicit firm opposition.</p>
<p>Polls that simply ask for voters’ views on embryonic-stem-cell research, without stressing either the destruction of embryos or the development of cures, tend to show the country fairly evenly divided. In late August, Newsweek <a href="http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/060826/nysa007.html?.v=67" type="external">asked</a> registered voters, “Do you favor or oppose using federal tax dollars to fund medical research using stem cells obtained from human embryos?” The question did not note that to “obtain” the cells you must destroy the embryo, but also did not claim the cells would cure every disease under the sun. Forty-eight percent supported funding, and 40 percent opposed it. When Newsweek had asked the identical question two years earlier, 50 percent had supported funding and 36 percent opposed it. In 2005, CBS <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/CBSNews_polls/stemcells.pdf" type="external">asked</a> a somewhat similar question and found that only 37 percent of Americans supported expanding federal support for the research beyond President Bush’s current funding policy. Forty-seven percent either disapproved of embryonic-stem-cell research or thought current levels of funding were sufficient.</p>
<p>What Lies BelowBut if most voters seem relatively indifferent to the issue, why have stem cells taken such a prominent place in the liberal political imagination? Some on the Left have surely bought the hype and think the future of medicine is on the line&#160;— and that, as Democratic Rep. Diana DeGette of Colorado preposterously <a href="http://www.democrats.org/a/2006/07/congresswoman_d.php" type="external">claims</a> at every opportunity, embryonic stem cells will “cure diseases that affect 110 million Americans and their families.” But for many on the Left who realize that not every third American is dying of a degenerative illness and that the therapeutic potential of embryonic stem cells remains for now thoroughly speculative, the issue nonetheless resonates, and for reasons that run deep.</p>
<p>The issue offers, for one thing, a foil for the abortion debate. On abortion, the Left finds itself defending an increasingly abstract notion of freedom against (thanks to improving imaging technology) an increasingly concrete case that a human life is at stake. When it comes to stem-cell research, it is pro-lifers who find themselves making an abstract case for the humanity of a ball of cells, while their opponents can point to very concrete sick children and adults whom they claim could be helped by the destruction of embryos. It offers the Left a compassionate “health care” dimension to the case against the humanity of the unborn.</p>
<p>What is more, it allows the Left to claim the authority of science in its fight against conservatives. By depicting opposition to the destruction of nascent life for the sake of medical research as opposition to the progress of science, liberal embryonic-stem-cell advocates can position themselves where they most like to imagine themselves: as partisans of progress, struggling against reactionary and religious zealots who champion only ignorance and pain. Never mind that pro-lifers are defending the liberal ideal of equality by making a case grounded thoroughly in embryology, and never mind that the supposedly scientific case to the contrary amounts to “embryos are awfully small and don’t look like anyone I know.” For many on the Left, this is a fight between science and religion, and therefore the epitome of a progressive struggle.</p>
<p>Ironically, that has much to do with why the stem-cell debate has not become a wedge issue. As The New Republic’s Noam Scheiber noted in an insightful <a href="http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=w060724&amp;s=scheiber072506" type="external">article</a> this summer, the Left seeks to call upon the public’s trust in modern science against the moral qualms of the Right. But the public is actually quite uneasy about the ethical dilemmas of modern biotechnology, and seems to understand what many advocates on both sides do not: that the stem-cell debate is not just another incarnation of the struggle over abortion, but is rather the first real instance of a new kind of public-policy dispute over advances in human biotechnology. Most Americans view new developments in the field with a mix of hope and suspicion. At the very least, they can relate to the concerns of conservatives. That doesn’t mean most Americans agree with the pro-lifers on stem cells, but it means they understand them, and that makes it difficult for the Left to get much political mileage out of the stem-cell debate.</p>
<p>Looking AheadJust as stem cells did not do much to affect the election, it also seems the election will not do much to change federal policy on stem cells. Rep. Nancy Pelosi has promised that, should she be elected Speaker of the House of Representatives, she would quickly bring the stem-cell funding measure vetoed by President Bush this summer up for another vote. President Bush would certainly veto it again. In July, the House fell 51 votes short of overriding the president’s veto. As of this writing (with several races still in recounts) it appears that fifteen of the 179 Republicans who supported the president’s veto were among those who lost their seats this year, but two of them were replaced by Democrats who share their opposition to embryo-destructive research. This leaves opponents of the president’s policy still roughly 38 votes short of a veto override.</p>
<p>But while the new Congress may not reshape the stem-cell debate in the next two years, developments in the field could well do so. Stem-cell scientists are increasingly exploring ways to produce cells with the capacities of embryonic stem cells but without requiring the destruction of embryos. These techniques, most notably somatic-cell reprogramming (by which an adult cell is brought to function like an embryonic stem cell without requiring an egg or an embryo), have seen serious advances in the past two years, and a number of labs are now pursuing them with vigor. They are still new and largely speculative, but so is embryonic-stem-cell research, and indeed these new techniques are further along in humans than the kind of cloning research Missourians just voted to protect.</p>
<p>These emerging techniques would allow the potential future uses of stem-cell science to be explored without doing harm to nascent human lives. This summer, President Bush expressed his support for the exploration and development of these new avenues of stem-cell science. “We must continue to explore these hopeful alternatives,” he said, “so we can advance the cause of scientific research while staying true to the ideals of a decent and humane society.” The U.S. Senate agreed, and voted unanimously to direct the National Institutes of Health to encourage such research. House Democrats unfortunately blocked that effort, preferring stem cells as a political issue over the potential for genuine and uncontroversial scientific advance.</p>
<p>These same Democrats will soon be in charge of the House of Representatives, and they still seem to believe both that the federal government should encourage the destruction of developing human lives for research, and that the fight to do so is a serious political winner for them. They are wrong on both counts.&#160;</p>
<p>— Yuval Levin is a fellow at the <a href="" type="internal">Ethics and Public Policy Center</a> and senior editor of the <a href="http://www.thenewatlantis.com/" type="external">The New Atlantis</a> magazine.</p> | false | 1 | buildup years election democrats sought use stemcell debate pressure republican candidates press reports repeatedly asserted stemcell research could powerful wedge issue democrats party leaders went way stress stump rep nancy pelosi even placed embryonicstemcell research funding todo list first 100 hours democratic house first glance election results may seem confirm intuition stemcell research effective issue democrats race played prominent role missouri senate race ended narrow democratic victory humancloning referendum state also passed nearly identical slim margin several races stem cells played role also went democrats closer look belies simple reading outcomes transformative potential embryonic stem cells seem turn voters democrats nonvoters voters showme statethe missouri cloning initiative offers clearest picture stemcell research election issue initiative sought amend state constitution prevent state legislators restricting human cloning research purposes exempt cloning embryonicstemcell research state laws could restrict even discourage work many months extravagant 30 million campaign supporters initiative sought persuade missouris voters proposed constitutional amendment actually prohibited human cloning research question would cure manner disease disability emotional misleading ads worked first early support initiative reached 67 percent one poll even late october polls found nearly 60percent approval final stretch opponents amendment spending roughly tenth amount supporters invested began highlight dishonesty heart amendment campaign support proposed amendment plummeted election day support amendment 51 percent160 enough pass measure enough also show even face overwhelming campaign deception voters moved facts stemcell research final tally ballot initiative bears striking resemblance results states senate race details vote suggest relation less direct according exit polls course must taken grain salt 20 percent democratic challenger claire mccaskills voters voted cloning amendment 20 percent republican incumbent senator jim talents supporters voted favor result final tally senate race amendment vote look similar slim majority consists different voters fact fifth missourians sides issue voted senate candidate disagreed amendment begins undermine notion stemcell research moved election democrats favor idea stemcell research moves independent voters simply supported missouri data yearlong advertising bombardment ten one funding advantage amendment supporters 55 percent independent voters cast vote amendment 45 percent opposed independent voters break differently subject others state men women also evenly split despite common contention stemcell issue appeals especially women voters dull wedgeembryonicstemcell research seem significant races either back march rep rahm emanuel head democratic congressional campaign committee traveled new jersey launch targeted campaign use stemcellfunding debate six republicans tight races believed particularly vulnerable subject six michael ferguson new jersey whose district emanuel made announcement dave reichert washington peter roskam illinois rick odonnell colorado john gard wisconsin richard pombo california election night ferguson roskam reichert although reicherts tight race may require recount odonnell gard pombo lost none races stemcell research appear play critical role impossible say whether issue affected right tiny pocket voters necessary win races democrats consistent pattern votes shifting democrats voters views stemcell research indeed surveys public opinion never supported notion stemcell research significant issue minds american voters offers significant advantage democrats unlike wedge issues stem cells never emerge americans asked volunteer subjects important important leaders results polls ask specifically stemcell research vary widely depending wording question suggesting voters well informed hardset opinions polls intentionally avoid mentioning embryonicstemcell research requires destruction human embryos exaggerate medical potential work tend produce strong support federal funding research polls noting human embryos must destroyed discussing existence noncontroversial avenues stemcell science playing medical potential research tend elicit firm opposition polls simply ask voters views embryonicstemcell research without stressing either destruction embryos development cures tend show country fairly evenly divided late august newsweek asked registered voters favor oppose using federal tax dollars fund medical research using stem cells obtained human embryos question note obtain cells must destroy embryo also claim cells would cure every disease sun fortyeight percent supported funding 40 percent opposed newsweek asked identical question two years earlier 50 percent supported funding 36 percent opposed 2005 cbs asked somewhat similar question found 37 percent americans supported expanding federal support research beyond president bushs current funding policy fortyseven percent either disapproved embryonicstemcell research thought current levels funding sufficient lies belowbut voters seem relatively indifferent issue stem cells taken prominent place liberal political imagination left surely bought hype think future medicine line160 democratic rep diana degette colorado preposterously claims every opportunity embryonic stem cells cure diseases affect 110 million americans families many left realize every third american dying degenerative illness therapeutic potential embryonic stem cells remains thoroughly speculative issue nonetheless resonates reasons run deep issue offers one thing foil abortion debate abortion left finds defending increasingly abstract notion freedom thanks improving imaging technology increasingly concrete case human life stake comes stemcell research prolifers find making abstract case humanity ball cells opponents point concrete sick children adults claim could helped destruction embryos offers left compassionate health care dimension case humanity unborn allows left claim authority science fight conservatives depicting opposition destruction nascent life sake medical research opposition progress science liberal embryonicstemcell advocates position like imagine partisans progress struggling reactionary religious zealots champion ignorance pain never mind prolifers defending liberal ideal equality making case grounded thoroughly embryology never mind supposedly scientific case contrary amounts embryos awfully small dont look like anyone know many left fight science religion therefore epitome progressive struggle ironically much stemcell debate become wedge issue new republics noam scheiber noted insightful article summer left seeks call upon publics trust modern science moral qualms right public actually quite uneasy ethical dilemmas modern biotechnology seems understand many advocates sides stemcell debate another incarnation struggle abortion rather first real instance new kind publicpolicy dispute advances human biotechnology americans view new developments field mix hope suspicion least relate concerns conservatives doesnt mean americans agree prolifers stem cells means understand makes difficult left get much political mileage stemcell debate looking aheadjust stem cells much affect election also seems election much change federal policy stem cells rep nancy pelosi promised elected speaker house representatives would quickly bring stemcell funding measure vetoed president bush summer another vote president bush would certainly veto july house fell 51 votes short overriding presidents veto writing several races still recounts appears fifteen 179 republicans supported presidents veto among lost seats year two replaced democrats share opposition embryodestructive research leaves opponents presidents policy still roughly 38 votes short veto override new congress may reshape stemcell debate next two years developments field could well stemcell scientists increasingly exploring ways produce cells capacities embryonic stem cells without requiring destruction embryos techniques notably somaticcell reprogramming adult cell brought function like embryonic stem cell without requiring egg embryo seen serious advances past two years number labs pursuing vigor still new largely speculative embryonicstemcell research indeed new techniques along humans kind cloning research missourians voted protect emerging techniques would allow potential future uses stemcell science explored without harm nascent human lives summer president bush expressed support exploration development new avenues stemcell science must continue explore hopeful alternatives said advance cause scientific research staying true ideals decent humane society us senate agreed voted unanimously direct national institutes health encourage research house democrats unfortunately blocked effort preferring stem cells political issue potential genuine uncontroversial scientific advance democrats soon charge house representatives still seem believe federal government encourage destruction developing human lives research fight serious political winner wrong counts160 yuval levin fellow ethics public policy center senior editor new atlantis magazine | 1,192 |
<p>Federal subsidization of insurance coverage for abortion services was among the most contentious issues in the healthcare debate. Pro-life groups stood firm in their opposition to such funding, to the point of opposing the entire legislative package unless it was fully and definitely removed from the bill. Moreover, they worked tirelessly as the legislation was under consideration to advance language that would have made it absolutely clear that direct federal funding of elective abortions would not be a part of the reformed system.</p>
<p>In the end, those efforts came up short because the pro-lifers' supposed congressional allies on the Democratic side abandoned them when it mattered most. The result is that the new law does provide taxpayer funding of elective abortions, for the first time in many years.</p>
<p>But passage of the new law did not end the debate, on abortion coverage or health care more generally. As was evident in the 2010 midterm election, a plurality of Americans remains strongly opposed to the bill that passed. Scores of the new law's most ardent supporters were swept out of office by the voters. Now, a strong movement is building to repeal what was passed and replace it with a reform program more consistent with American values. The push for “repeal and replace” will almost certainly be among the most prominent themes of the new Republican House come January.</p>
<p>However, Richard Stith, a pro-life law professor at Valparaiso University, is urging his fellow pro-lifers to stay off the “repeal and replace” bandwagon. In an <a href="http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2010/11/reforming-the-pro-choice-market" type="external">article for First Things online</a>, he has suggested that a more promising approach for pro-lifers is amending the new law with clear pro-life language.</p>
<p>His logic goes something like this. In the healthcare marketplace of today (before the new law's provisions take effect), private insurance, including plans organized by employers, more often than not covers elective abortions. Under the new law, the government will start running a larger share of the insurance marketplace in 2014, and subsidize it explicitly with tax dollars. That means more Americans who are now in today's private insurance market will get their coverage in the future through a system organized by the government. Because taxpayer money will be involved, pro-lifers sought to extend the prohibition against funding of elective abortions — a prohibition that now applies to other tax-financed health care like Medicaid — to the new government-managed marketplace too. Had they not been defeated in that effort, they would have successfully removed elective abortions from insurance coverage for millions of people who are in plans that pay for such abortions today. So, Stith argues, the solution here is not to revert to the anti-life status quo of today's private insurance market, but to extend the pro-life protections which apply to taxpayer-funded health care to the entire government-managed marketplace that will emerge in 2014.</p>
<p>Stith has a point. It's true that many Americans are unknowingly subsidizing elective abortions through their private health insurance premiums today. They often have no choice in the matter, as their employers are making the decisions about what's covered and what's not in employment-based plans. Stith's perspective is certainly a legitimate position for a pro-lifer to take, given where things stand.</p>
<p>But is it the only legitimate position for pro-lifers? The answer is most definitely “no.”</p>
<p>The issue of how a healthcare system addresses abortion provision is of course of paramount concern. Indeed, it is a necessary condition of an acceptable program that it not force Americans to subsidize the elective abortions of others. That is a non-negotiable first principle that pro-lifers have rightly made their top priority.</p>
<p>But for many Americans, including many pro-lifers, that is a necessary but not sufficient criterion for determining the acceptability of a reform program. There's much, much more to consider. For many pro-lifers, even if the new healthcare law were amended to include the Hyde Amendment (against funding abortion) and Weldon Amendment (conscience protections), the amended law would still be so flawed, because of what it would do to the American economy as well as American health care, that the only remedy is its full repeal and replacement with economically sound reform that is also pro-life. Of course, pro-lifers are under no obligation to share this point of view. It is not a precondition for pro-life sentiments. But neither are pro-lifers under any obligation to accept at face value the supposed benefits of the new law when reason tells them otherwise.</p>
<p>The basic premise of the new healthcare law is that the federal government has the capacity to allocate resources in the health sector to promote equity and efficiency. There is abundant evidence that demonstrates this to be a very dubious assumption. Instead of promoting quality and efficient health care, the government pursues budget cutting with arbitrary, across-the-board payment-rate reductions for those providing medical services. There's no effort to distinguish based on how well or badly they treat their patients. Everyone gets cut at the same rate, and the predictable result is that willing suppliers of services leave the marketplace. The only way to then reconcile supply and demand is with queues and waiting lists, which are commonplace in Canada and the United Kingdom. Putting the government in the cost-control driver's seat is a recipe for a long-term decline in the quality of American medicine.</p>
<p>Further, the new law is based on deceptive budgetary and economic assumptions that mask the true costs of what was passed. The official cost projections are alarming enough — $1 trillion in spending over the next decade, financed by $500 billion in Medicare cuts (mainly in the form of lower payments for services) and another $700 billion in tax hikes. But the reality will be far worse than that. The centerpiece of the new law is a very generous new subsidy program for health insurance, available to families with incomes between 133 and 400 percent of the federal poverty line. Census data shows there are 111 million people in that income range, but official estimates assume only 20 million or so will get the new subsidies. The assumption is that many millions of otherwise qualified people will stay in job-based coverage, and thus lose out on thousands of dollars in federal support. That's never happened before with an entitlement program, and not likely to happen this time. One way or another, the vast majority of those eligible for financial support will end up getting it, and the cost of the new law will soar, by another $1 trillion over ten years <a href="http://americanactionforum.org/files/LaborMktsHCRAAF5-27-10.pdf" type="external">according to one estimate</a>.</p>
<p>There are many other important reasons to have deep reservations about the new law. It will discourage hiring by employers, especially among low-wage workers, because employers will get penalized with fines if those workers end up in government-subsidized insurance. It creates new penalties for marriage, by handing out more subsidies to unmarried couples than to married ones with similar incomes. And it hands over to the government vast new power to insert itself into medical decisions.</p>
<p>Proponents of the new law will argue that its main achievement is covering about 30 million people with insurance who do not have it today. The truth is that many of those people who would gain coverage would do so only because they were forced to sign up or else pay a new fine to the federal government. Many of them are younger and far healthier t han the average American, which is why they hadn't signed up previously. The number of very sick Americans who would gain new coverage under the proposal is far, far less than 30 million.</p>
<p>There are much better ways to address the genuine needs of the uninsured than what was passed. The fundamental problem in American health care is insufficient productivity by the health sector. The solution is not top-down micromanagement from Washington, D.C., but a functioning marketplace in which the government provides oversight but consumers and patients direct the allocation of resources. That can be done by converting today's federal support for insurance into support that the beneficiaries themselves direct and control. Indeed, a crucial reform would be to give all American households a fixed tax credit — about $6,000 per family — that must be used for the purchase of an insurance plan. This would take the place of today's tax preference for job-based plans and would guarantee insurance coverage to the entire U.S. population. It would do so in a way that then engendered the kind of dynamic response in the marketplace that could transform American medicine for the better. And it could be an absolutely pro-life step by inclusion of a clear prohibition against coverage of elective abortions in any plan purchased by the credit.</p>
<p>No one suggests that all pro-lifers must adhere to this kind of thinking and support “repeal and replace.” But, at the same time, it should not be expected that all pro-lifers will be satisfied with adding a Hyde-like amendment to what has already been passed. Pro-lifers in Congress would certainly support that step. But there's a genuine debate still underway in this country about the best way to fix American health care, and many pro-lifers believe firmly that a sensible “repeal and replace” program is the most prudent and principled course.</p>
<p>James C. Capretta is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.</p> | false | 1 | federal subsidization insurance coverage abortion services among contentious issues healthcare debate prolife groups stood firm opposition funding point opposing entire legislative package unless fully definitely removed bill moreover worked tirelessly legislation consideration advance language would made absolutely clear direct federal funding elective abortions would part reformed system end efforts came short prolifers supposed congressional allies democratic side abandoned mattered result new law provide taxpayer funding elective abortions first time many years passage new law end debate abortion coverage health care generally evident 2010 midterm election plurality americans remains strongly opposed bill passed scores new laws ardent supporters swept office voters strong movement building repeal passed replace reform program consistent american values push repeal replace almost certainly among prominent themes new republican house come january however richard stith prolife law professor valparaiso university urging fellow prolifers stay repeal replace bandwagon article first things online suggested promising approach prolifers amending new law clear prolife language logic goes something like healthcare marketplace today new laws provisions take effect private insurance including plans organized employers often covers elective abortions new law government start running larger share insurance marketplace 2014 subsidize explicitly tax dollars means americans todays private insurance market get coverage future system organized government taxpayer money involved prolifers sought extend prohibition funding elective abortions prohibition applies taxfinanced health care like medicaid new governmentmanaged marketplace defeated effort would successfully removed elective abortions insurance coverage millions people plans pay abortions today stith argues solution revert antilife status quo todays private insurance market extend prolife protections apply taxpayerfunded health care entire governmentmanaged marketplace emerge 2014 stith point true many americans unknowingly subsidizing elective abortions private health insurance premiums today often choice matter employers making decisions whats covered whats employmentbased plans stiths perspective certainly legitimate position prolifer take given things stand legitimate position prolifers answer definitely issue healthcare system addresses abortion provision course paramount concern indeed necessary condition acceptable program force americans subsidize elective abortions others nonnegotiable first principle prolifers rightly made top priority many americans including many prolifers necessary sufficient criterion determining acceptability reform program theres much much consider many prolifers even new healthcare law amended include hyde amendment funding abortion weldon amendment conscience protections amended law would still flawed would american economy well american health care remedy full repeal replacement economically sound reform also prolife course prolifers obligation share point view precondition prolife sentiments neither prolifers obligation accept face value supposed benefits new law reason tells otherwise basic premise new healthcare law federal government capacity allocate resources health sector promote equity efficiency abundant evidence demonstrates dubious assumption instead promoting quality efficient health care government pursues budget cutting arbitrary acrosstheboard paymentrate reductions providing medical services theres effort distinguish based well badly treat patients everyone gets cut rate predictable result willing suppliers services leave marketplace way reconcile supply demand queues waiting lists commonplace canada united kingdom putting government costcontrol drivers seat recipe longterm decline quality american medicine new law based deceptive budgetary economic assumptions mask true costs passed official cost projections alarming enough 1 trillion spending next decade financed 500 billion medicare cuts mainly form lower payments services another 700 billion tax hikes reality far worse centerpiece new law generous new subsidy program health insurance available families incomes 133 400 percent federal poverty line census data shows 111 million people income range official estimates assume 20 million get new subsidies assumption many millions otherwise qualified people stay jobbased coverage thus lose thousands dollars federal support thats never happened entitlement program likely happen time one way another vast majority eligible financial support end getting cost new law soar another 1 trillion ten years according one estimate many important reasons deep reservations new law discourage hiring employers especially among lowwage workers employers get penalized fines workers end governmentsubsidized insurance creates new penalties marriage handing subsidies unmarried couples married ones similar incomes hands government vast new power insert medical decisions proponents new law argue main achievement covering 30 million people insurance today truth many people would gain coverage would forced sign else pay new fine federal government many younger far healthier han average american hadnt signed previously number sick americans would gain new coverage proposal far far less 30 million much better ways address genuine needs uninsured passed fundamental problem american health care insufficient productivity health sector solution topdown micromanagement washington dc functioning marketplace government provides oversight consumers patients direct allocation resources done converting todays federal support insurance support beneficiaries direct control indeed crucial reform would give american households fixed tax credit 6000 per family must used purchase insurance plan would take place todays tax preference jobbased plans would guarantee insurance coverage entire us population would way engendered kind dynamic response marketplace could transform american medicine better could absolutely prolife step inclusion clear prohibition coverage elective abortions plan purchased credit one suggests prolifers must adhere kind thinking support repeal replace time expected prolifers satisfied adding hydelike amendment already passed prolifers congress would certainly support step theres genuine debate still underway country best way fix american health care many prolifers believe firmly sensible repeal replace program prudent principled course james c capretta fellow ethics public policy center | 846 |
<p>“Orphan” is one of those words that seems old-fashioned to modern ears — a word that evokes abject poverty in a Dickens novel. But in the years ahead, our reproductive technologies may lead us down a new, terrible path of creating orphans by design. In this case, the problem is not the tragic death of parents but the deliberate creation of children without living biological mothers or fathers — as if such bodily origins do not much matter, as if nurturing were the only dimension of parenthood that still has any meaning.</p>
<p>Over the past few years, a cadre of leading scientists has been working on “gamete harvesting” and “gamete engineering,” techniques that may be moving soon from the laboratory to the clinic. The first technique involves harvesting eggs from aborted fetuses and fertilizing them with sperm in the laboratory. The dead fetus, in other words, is the child’s biological mother. The second technique involves destroying human embryos, deriving embryonic stem cells, and turning those stem cells into sperm or eggs. The dead embryo, in other words, is the child’s biological mother or father. By these methods, we would produce children sprung from the dead, or children whose genetic parents were never allowed to be born, or children who resemble those who never had human faces.</p>
<p>Remarkably, it seems that even stem cells derived from male embryos can produce eggs, and in time stem cells from female embryos may be coaxed to produce sperm. In the age of embryo cloning, there is no reason the embryonic clone of a man cannot be used to provide eggs with a male genome or the embryonic clone of a woman used to produce sperm with a female genome. By this route, men and women are rapidly becoming interchangeable even when it comes to making babies. Armed with a growing mastery over modern biology, we make ourselves, in a sense, post-biological beings. We move beyond male and female.</p>
<p>Dr. Tal Biron-Shental, the lead researcher involved in harvesting eggs from aborted fetuses, offered this all-too-characteristic ethical reflection on her work: “I’m fully aware of the controversy about this — but probably, in some place, it will be ethically acceptable.” Apparently, this is all the justification she needs. And to read the technical descriptions of this research — so cold, so clinical, so inhuman — is to understand how the scientist’s conscience atrophies. Take this abstract, from the June 2005 meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology: “Because embryoid bodies sustain blood development, we reasoned that they might also support primordial germ cell formation. Although there is a lack of markers that can suitably distinguish between ES cells and PGCs, retinoic acid acts to rapidly differentiate ES cells while stimulating proliferation of PGCs.” In other words, it may be possible to destroy embryos and harvest usable eggs and sperm from their tiny cellular cadavers.</p>
<p>As with any technique of assisted reproduction, the public demand for this research is driven primarily by the terrible pain of infertility and the powerful desire to have a child of one’s own. Lineage is the motive, even if it is lineage that is ultimately betrayed. But why, we must ask, would anyone use these novel techniques in particular? And how are gamete harvesting and gamete engineering different from the modern-day sperm bank or egg market? From artificial insemination or in-vitro fertilization (IVF)?</p>
<p>Consider the technique of gamete harvesting. One reason to take eggs from aborted fetuses is that they are easier to get. The dead fetus can no longer be inconvenienced, and the egg-seekers need not trouble to request consent from the fetal “donor.” At present, individuals or couples who cannot produce eggs of their own need to find women who are willing to donate their extra eggs after undergoing fertility treatment or women who are willing to undergo super-ovulation and extraction simply to be egg-donors or egg-sellers.</p>
<p>Finding such women is not easy, since even those women undergoing IVF for themselves have powerful reasons not to donate their extra eggs: If having one’s own biologically related child is so important that women will undergo the ordeal of IVF, then giving away one’s eggs is an affront to the longing that led one to the fertility clinic in the first place. It means leaving one’s progeny in the hands of another. And while the procedure to harvest eggs is not high-risk, the intervention is also not trivial. As a result, the demand for donor eggs outstrips the supply. Using fetal eggs offers a way to bring supply and demand into balance.</p>
<p>For those infertile couples who are interested in keeping reproduction “within the marriage,” so to speak, using eggs from aborted fetuses might have an additional appeal, for there is no living female rival with a claim to motherhood. The resulting child is the progeny of the husband plus “X”: the husband plus the unknowable, the husband and the slain. It produces a child who is biologically motherless—a partial orphan—from the moment of conception.</p>
<p>One need not downplay the great humanity of adoption to wonder about the wisdom of creating children who need to be adopted by the very mothers who carry them to term. This is what artificial conception with donor gametes has always required. And now, carried to gamete harvesting, the dilemma grows even starker.</p>
<p>Even for the child conceived, say, in an anonymous romance, it is still possible to hunt backward to one’s origins, to seek one’s human beginning in time, to search for some link to those who came before. This is also true for the child of an anonymous sperm or egg donor: One’s origins — biologically and genetically — are still the seed of a living or once-living person, with a face we might look upon in real life or in pictures, with a lineage and history of his or her own. The child can still seek out the person he resembles in the flesh, even if the search comes up empty or is stymied. But with the eggs of an aborted fetus, the hunt for one’s origins leads the child back to a void — indeed, to a slain organism never allowed to flourish, never known in person, never mourned in death. It leads back to the machinations of the scientist, making life from scratch.</p>
<p>What about the technique of gamete engineering — the production of sperm or eggs using stem cells from dead embryos, including cloned embryos whose genomes we control? The only compelling reason to use this technology — rather than donor sperm or donor eggs taken from consenting adults — is to create sperm or eggs with the genes of a particular person who could not produce sperm or eggs otherwise: that is, sperm from an infertile man; eggs from an infertile women; eggs from a fertile man; sperm from a fertile woman.</p>
<p>Driven by the desire to have a child of their own, yet faced with the husband’s inability to produce sperm, a married couple might embrace this novel method: clone the husband, destroy the embryo that possesses his genome, harvest embryonic stem cells from that embryo, and turn the stem cells into sperm that bear the genetic imprint of the husband himself. Yet while the sperm carries his genetic information, it is not his sperm. And while such an act is driven by the parental longing for a biologically related child, it requires an act of destruction — taking the life of one’s clone in order to create a child of one’s own. Paternal passion leads to paternal betrayal. The hunger for life leads to an act that denies life, treating embryos simply as objects of manufacture and the young clone simply as a reproductive tool.</p>
<p>Even more radically, this technique might appeal to gay couples seeking children who are, in a sense, the fruit of their union. A gay female couple, for example, could one day clone one partner, destroy the cloned embryo, harvest its stem cells, turn those stem cells into sperm, and use the sperm to fertilize the other female partner. The movement for gay marriage finds an ally in emerging reproductive technologies that might make a novel form of homosexual parenthood possible. The limitations imposed by our maleness or femaleness are transcended by this act of biotechnological liberation. The unity-in-distinctness of fatherhood and motherhood will be further lost in a culture that thinks more about fulfilling desires and getting results than about the deep human meaning of our desires and our actions.</p>
<p>Of course, gamete harvesting and gamete engineering will not only be used by those seeking children. These techniques will also open up new avenues of embryo research and destruction on a mass scale. At present, the greatest practical barrier to creating embryos solely for research purposes — whether by cloning or IVF — is the difficulty of procuring eggs. But if scientists can manufacture an inexhaustible source of human eggs, then the embryo-research industry will advance in leaps and bounds. And as the last remaining connection with a living human progenitor — a consenting egg donor — is lost, whatever moral gravity, restraint, or conscience that still exists among researchers will likely erode. We will produce embryos industrially, and in doing so we will further obscure the human character of what we do (and destroy) in the name of progress.</p>
<p>While the moral hazards of gamete engineering and embryo research are distinct—the first violates the dignity of human procreation itself, the second violates the dignity of nascent human life — these practices are bound together in the instrumental view of human origins that makes them both possible. Like many tragic tales, the choices and actions that decide our fate are understandable, compelling, almost irresistible. Because the desire for a child of one’s own — flesh of one’s flesh — is so fundamental to being human, the infertile rightly seek some remedy. And when God does not answer their cries, the infertile understandably look to technique instead.</p>
<p>But because human procreation — the springing forth of new life from the union of mother and father — rightly commands our reverence and respect, we ought to resist these novel efforts to transcend this defining part of our nature. We ought to, but apparently we cannot. And so we are only a few steps away — gamete engineering today, artificial wombs tomorrow — from manufacturing children without parents from conception to birth.</p>
<p>In its 2004 report <a href="http://www.bioethics.gov/reports/reproductionandresponsibility/" type="external">Reproduction and Responsibility</a>, the President’s Council on Bioethics called for legislation banning the use of eggs or sperm harvested from aborted fetuses or destroyed embryos. So far, Congress has done nothing, even as the research proceeds rapidly ahead. But more deeply, the council sought to recover our understanding of what human procreation really is and really means. As the report put it:</p>
<p>At the very center of the picture of human procreation is the newborn child emerging from his or her mother’s womb. Even as the child arrives, it is a still-developing new life, derived from the union of “seeds” contributed by the two adults who were and are the child’s mother and (biological) father and whose child the newborn baby now becomes. Newly visible to the world after nine months of hidden growth, the child arrives not as “anyone” but as a “someone,” with a defined and distinctive (beginning) identity — human, familial, individual, male or female. Part of any child’s identity as this child lies in its special relationship to two particular human “someones” from whom the child descends. All of the child’s being and identity it owes to a continuous developmental process that began with union of egg and sperm and that continued through an unbroken sequence of embryonic and fetal stages enacted within the womb of the mother. Though father and mother are equal contributors of seed, the mother alone brings the child to birth: its developing life absolutely depends on the protection and silent nurturing of her body, its emerging life depends absolutely on her labor.</p>
<p>Only by recovering this understanding of the body, of motherhood and fatherhood — of children as gifts welcomed into the world rather than made by human hands — will we set the limits we now desperately need. And only by recognizing the central place of bodily origins in shaping human identity can we prevent yet another step toward dehumanization in the name of serving genuine human desires. The existence of orphans is a tragedy that adoptive parents can often redeem. The mass production of orphans is an abomination that would further corrupt our understanding of human dignity.</p>
<p>–Eric Cohen is editor of EPPC’s journal&#160; <a href="http://www.thenewatlantis.com" type="external">The New Atlantis</a> and a resident scholar at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.</p> | false | 1 | orphan one words seems oldfashioned modern ears word evokes abject poverty dickens novel years ahead reproductive technologies may lead us new terrible path creating orphans design case problem tragic death parents deliberate creation children without living biological mothers fathers bodily origins much matter nurturing dimension parenthood still meaning past years cadre leading scientists working gamete harvesting gamete engineering techniques may moving soon laboratory clinic first technique involves harvesting eggs aborted fetuses fertilizing sperm laboratory dead fetus words childs biological mother second technique involves destroying human embryos deriving embryonic stem cells turning stem cells sperm eggs dead embryo words childs biological mother father methods would produce children sprung dead children whose genetic parents never allowed born children resemble never human faces remarkably seems even stem cells derived male embryos produce eggs time stem cells female embryos may coaxed produce sperm age embryo cloning reason embryonic clone man used provide eggs male genome embryonic clone woman used produce sperm female genome route men women rapidly becoming interchangeable even comes making babies armed growing mastery modern biology make sense postbiological beings move beyond male female dr tal bironshental lead researcher involved harvesting eggs aborted fetuses offered alltoocharacteristic ethical reflection work im fully aware controversy probably place ethically acceptable apparently justification needs read technical descriptions research cold clinical inhuman understand scientists conscience atrophies take abstract june 2005 meeting european society human reproduction embryology embryoid bodies sustain blood development reasoned might also support primordial germ cell formation although lack markers suitably distinguish es cells pgcs retinoic acid acts rapidly differentiate es cells stimulating proliferation pgcs words may possible destroy embryos harvest usable eggs sperm tiny cellular cadavers technique assisted reproduction public demand research driven primarily terrible pain infertility powerful desire child ones lineage motive even lineage ultimately betrayed must ask would anyone use novel techniques particular gamete harvesting gamete engineering different modernday sperm bank egg market artificial insemination invitro fertilization ivf consider technique gamete harvesting one reason take eggs aborted fetuses easier get dead fetus longer inconvenienced eggseekers need trouble request consent fetal donor present individuals couples produce eggs need find women willing donate extra eggs undergoing fertility treatment women willing undergo superovulation extraction simply eggdonors eggsellers finding women easy since even women undergoing ivf powerful reasons donate extra eggs ones biologically related child important women undergo ordeal ivf giving away ones eggs affront longing led one fertility clinic first place means leaving ones progeny hands another procedure harvest eggs highrisk intervention also trivial result demand donor eggs outstrips supply using fetal eggs offers way bring supply demand balance infertile couples interested keeping reproduction within marriage speak using eggs aborted fetuses might additional appeal living female rival claim motherhood resulting child progeny husband plus x husband plus unknowable husband slain produces child biologically motherlessa partial orphanfrom moment conception one need downplay great humanity adoption wonder wisdom creating children need adopted mothers carry term artificial conception donor gametes always required carried gamete harvesting dilemma grows even starker even child conceived say anonymous romance still possible hunt backward ones origins seek ones human beginning time search link came also true child anonymous sperm egg donor ones origins biologically genetically still seed living onceliving person face might look upon real life pictures lineage history child still seek person resembles flesh even search comes empty stymied eggs aborted fetus hunt ones origins leads child back void indeed slain organism never allowed flourish never known person never mourned death leads back machinations scientist making life scratch technique gamete engineering production sperm eggs using stem cells dead embryos including cloned embryos whose genomes control compelling reason use technology rather donor sperm donor eggs taken consenting adults create sperm eggs genes particular person could produce sperm eggs otherwise sperm infertile man eggs infertile women eggs fertile man sperm fertile woman driven desire child yet faced husbands inability produce sperm married couple might embrace novel method clone husband destroy embryo possesses genome harvest embryonic stem cells embryo turn stem cells sperm bear genetic imprint husband yet sperm carries genetic information sperm act driven parental longing biologically related child requires act destruction taking life ones clone order create child ones paternal passion leads paternal betrayal hunger life leads act denies life treating embryos simply objects manufacture young clone simply reproductive tool even radically technique might appeal gay couples seeking children sense fruit union gay female couple example could one day clone one partner destroy cloned embryo harvest stem cells turn stem cells sperm use sperm fertilize female partner movement gay marriage finds ally emerging reproductive technologies might make novel form homosexual parenthood possible limitations imposed maleness femaleness transcended act biotechnological liberation unityindistinctness fatherhood motherhood lost culture thinks fulfilling desires getting results deep human meaning desires actions course gamete harvesting gamete engineering used seeking children techniques also open new avenues embryo research destruction mass scale present greatest practical barrier creating embryos solely research purposes whether cloning ivf difficulty procuring eggs scientists manufacture inexhaustible source human eggs embryoresearch industry advance leaps bounds last remaining connection living human progenitor consenting egg donor lost whatever moral gravity restraint conscience still exists among researchers likely erode produce embryos industrially obscure human character destroy name progress moral hazards gamete engineering embryo research distinctthe first violates dignity human procreation second violates dignity nascent human life practices bound together instrumental view human origins makes possible like many tragic tales choices actions decide fate understandable compelling almost irresistible desire child ones flesh ones flesh fundamental human infertile rightly seek remedy god answer cries infertile understandably look technique instead human procreation springing forth new life union mother father rightly commands reverence respect ought resist novel efforts transcend defining part nature ought apparently steps away gamete engineering today artificial wombs tomorrow manufacturing children without parents conception birth 2004 report reproduction responsibility presidents council bioethics called legislation banning use eggs sperm harvested aborted fetuses destroyed embryos far congress done nothing even research proceeds rapidly ahead deeply council sought recover understanding human procreation really really means report put center picture human procreation newborn child emerging mothers womb even child arrives stilldeveloping new life derived union seeds contributed two adults childs mother biological father whose child newborn baby becomes newly visible world nine months hidden growth child arrives anyone someone defined distinctive beginning identity human familial individual male female part childs identity child lies special relationship two particular human someones child descends childs identity owes continuous developmental process began union egg sperm continued unbroken sequence embryonic fetal stages enacted within womb mother though father mother equal contributors seed mother alone brings child birth developing life absolutely depends protection silent nurturing body emerging life depends absolutely labor recovering understanding body motherhood fatherhood children gifts welcomed world rather made human hands set limits desperately need recognizing central place bodily origins shaping human identity prevent yet another step toward dehumanization name serving genuine human desires existence orphans tragedy adoptive parents often redeem mass production orphans abomination would corrupt understanding human dignity eric cohen editor eppcs journal160 new atlantis resident scholar ethics public policy center | 1,163 |
<p>The cast members and crew of the drama series “ <a href="http://variety.com/t/one-tree-hill/" type="external">One Tree Hill</a>” have written a letter accusing former showrunner Mark Schwann of sexual harassment and offering support for their former colleague, Audrey Wauchope.</p>
<p>The cast members and crew, including stars <a href="http://variety.com/t/sophia-bush/" type="external">Sophia Bush</a>,&#160; <a href="http://variety.com/t/hilarie-burton/" type="external">Hilarie Burton</a>, and Bethany Joy Lenz, wrote Monday that they “have chosen this forum to stand together in support of Audrey Wauchope and one another” following statements made by&#160;Wauchope — a former writer on the series — on Twitter Saturday accusing Schwann of harassment. In the letter, 18 women who worked on the show claimed, “Many of us were, to varying degrees, manipulated psychologically and emotionally. More than one of us is still in treatment for post-traumatic stress. Many of us were put in uncomfortable positions and had to swiftly learn to fight back, sometimes physically, because it was made clear to us that the supervisors in the room were not the protectors they were supposed to be. Many of us were spoken to in ways that ran the spectrum from deeply upsetting, to traumatizing, to downright illegal. And a few of us were put in positions where we felt physically unsafe. ”</p>
<p>In her Twitter comments, Wauchope described being subjected to frequent and unwanted touching by Schwahn, who she did not identify by name; seeing Schwahn show naked photos of an actress that he was having a sexual relationship with to staffers without the actress’ knowledge; and Schwahn calling Wauchope’s writing partner into his office to try to talk her out of getting married and into dating him.</p>
<p>Wauchope wrote Saturday, “I’m furious and sad and everything else for the women who have sat on that couch next to that man. And I’m furious and sad and everything else that years later I don’t feel safe to be able to do anything real about this and that it seems to be happening all over this town.”</p>
<p>A teen drama about a groups of young men and women growing up in North Carolina, “ <a href="http://variety.com/2012/tv/news/cw-sets-sked-for-season-finales-1118050888/" type="external">One Tree Hill</a>” aired on the WB from 2003 to 2006, and on the CW from 2006 to 2012. Schwahn created the series, and was showrunner for the entirety of its eight-season run.</p>
<p>In a statement Monday, E!, Universal Cable Productions and Lionsgate Television — the companies behind Schwahn’s current show, “ <a href="http://variety.com/t/the-royals/" type="external">The Royals</a>” — said, “We are monitoring the information carefully. E!, Universal Cable Productions and Lionsgate Television are committed to providing a safe working environment in which everyone is treated respectfully and professionally.”</p>
<p>Read the letter from the “One Tree Hill” cast and crew members below:</p>
<p>To Whom It May Concern,</p>
<p>All of the female cast members of One Tree Hill have chosen this forum to stand together in support of Audrey Wauchope and one another. To use terminology that has become familiar as thesystemic reality of sexual harassment and assault has come more and more to light, <a href="http://variety.com/t/mark-schwahn/" type="external">Mark Schwahn</a>’s behavior over the duration of the filming of One Tree Hill was something of an “open secret.” Many of us were, to varying degrees, manipulated psychologically and emotionally. More than one of us is still in treatment for post-traumatic stress. Many of us were put in uncomfortable positions and had to swiftly learn to fight back, sometimes physically, because it was made clear to us that the supervisors in the room were not the protectors they were supposed to be. Many of us were spoken to in ways that ran the spectrum from deeply upsetting, to traumatizing, to downright illegal. And a few of us were put in positions where we felt physically unsafe. More than one woman on our show had her career trajectory threatened.</p>
<p>The through line in all of this was, and still is, our unwavering support of and faith in one another. We confided in each other. We set up safe spaces to talk about his behavior and how to handle it. To warn new women who joined our ranks. We understood that a lot of it was orchestrated in ways that kept it out of sight for the studio back home. We also understood that no one was fully unaware. The lack of action that has been routine, the turning of the other cheek, is intolerable. We collectively want to echo the calls of women everywhere that vehemently demand change, in all industries.</p>
<p>Many of us were told, during filming, that coming forward to talk about this culture would result in our show being canceled and hundreds of lovely, qualified, hard-working, and talented people losing their jobs. This is not an appropriate amount of pressure to put on young girls. Many of us since have stayed silent publicly but had very open channels of communication in our friend group and in our industry, because we want Tree Hill to remain the place “where everything’s better and everything’s safe” for our fans; some of whom have said that the show quite literally saved their lives. But the reality is, no space is safe when it has an underlying and infectious cancer. We have worked at taking our power back, making the conventions our own, and relishing in the good memories. But there is more work to be done.</p>
<p>We are all deeply grateful for Audrey’s courage. For one another. And for every male cast mate and crew member who has reached out to our group of women to offer their support these last few days. They echo the greater rallying cry that must lead us to change: Believe Women. We are all in this together.</p>
<p>With Love and Courage,</p>
<p>The Cast,</p>
<p><a href="http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/sophia-bush-20th-century-fox-television-1202594579/" type="external">Sophia Bush</a>, <a href="http://variety.com/2017/film/news/ben-affleck-apologizes-hilarie-burton-1202587248/" type="external">Hilarie Burton</a>, Bethany Joy Lenz, Danneel Harris, Michaela McManus, Kate Voegele, Daphne Zuniga, India DeBeaufort, Bevin Prince, Jana Kramer, Shantel Van Santen, and Allison Munn</p>
<p>And Brave Crew,</p>
<p>Audrey Wauchope, Rachel Specter, Jane Beck, Tarin Squillante, Cristy Koebley, JoJo Stephens</p>
<p>And All the rest of the Women We Worked With Who Are Finding Their Voices as We Speak</p> | false | 1 | cast members crew drama series one tree hill written letter accusing former showrunner mark schwann sexual harassment offering support former colleague audrey wauchope cast members crew including stars sophia bush160 hilarie burton bethany joy lenz wrote monday chosen forum stand together support audrey wauchope one another following statements made by160wauchope former writer series twitter saturday accusing schwann harassment letter 18 women worked show claimed many us varying degrees manipulated psychologically emotionally one us still treatment posttraumatic stress many us put uncomfortable positions swiftly learn fight back sometimes physically made clear us supervisors room protectors supposed many us spoken ways ran spectrum deeply upsetting traumatizing downright illegal us put positions felt physically unsafe twitter comments wauchope described subjected frequent unwanted touching schwahn identify name seeing schwahn show naked photos actress sexual relationship staffers without actress knowledge schwahn calling wauchopes writing partner office try talk getting married dating wauchope wrote saturday im furious sad everything else women sat couch next man im furious sad everything else years later dont feel safe able anything real seems happening town teen drama groups young men women growing north carolina one tree hill aired wb 2003 2006 cw 2006 2012 schwahn created series showrunner entirety eightseason run statement monday e universal cable productions lionsgate television companies behind schwahns current show royals said monitoring information carefully e universal cable productions lionsgate television committed providing safe working environment everyone treated respectfully professionally read letter one tree hill cast crew members may concern female cast members one tree hill chosen forum stand together support audrey wauchope one another use terminology become familiar thesystemic reality sexual harassment assault come light mark schwahns behavior duration filming one tree hill something open secret many us varying degrees manipulated psychologically emotionally one us still treatment posttraumatic stress many us put uncomfortable positions swiftly learn fight back sometimes physically made clear us supervisors room protectors supposed many us spoken ways ran spectrum deeply upsetting traumatizing downright illegal us put positions felt physically unsafe one woman show career trajectory threatened line still unwavering support faith one another confided set safe spaces talk behavior handle warn new women joined ranks understood lot orchestrated ways kept sight studio back home also understood one fully unaware lack action routine turning cheek intolerable collectively want echo calls women everywhere vehemently demand change industries many us told filming coming forward talk culture would result show canceled hundreds lovely qualified hardworking talented people losing jobs appropriate amount pressure put young girls many us since stayed silent publicly open channels communication friend group industry want tree hill remain place everythings better everythings safe fans said show quite literally saved lives reality space safe underlying infectious cancer worked taking power back making conventions relishing good memories work done deeply grateful audreys courage one another every male cast mate crew member reached group women offer support last days echo greater rallying cry must lead us change believe women together love courage cast sophia bush hilarie burton bethany joy lenz danneel harris michaela mcmanus kate voegele daphne zuniga india debeaufort bevin prince jana kramer shantel van santen allison munn brave crew audrey wauchope rachel specter jane beck tarin squillante cristy koebley jojo stephens rest women worked finding voices speak | 534 |
<p>Information stored on every desktop computer, smartphone and cloud server since 1995 could be accessed by hackers if two hardware bugs are exploited, a new report has warned.</p>
<p>On Wednesday, security researchers at Google Project Zero <a href="https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/reading-privileged-memory-with-side.html" type="external">disclosed</a> technical details on two security flaws that allow hackers to engage in unauthorized reads of a computer’s memory data, which may contain sensitive information such as passwords.</p>
<p>The researchers discovered that the vulnerabilities affect many CPUs, including those from Intel, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and ARM Holdings, as well as the devices and operating systems running on it.</p>
<p>Read more</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/usa/413591-bossert-claims-north-korea-behind-wannacry/" type="external" /></p>
<p>The first method of attack, known as Spectre, can be exploited by hackers to dissolve the barrier that separates different applications and trick otherwise error-free applications into leaking information stored on their memory.</p>
<p>Last year, researchers <a href="https://cyber.wtf/2017/07/28/negative-result-reading-kernel-memory-from-user-mode/" type="external">demonstrated</a> how hackers could utilize “speculative execution” – a technique used by most modern processors to optimize performance – to gain access to sensitive information.</p>
<p>In order to improve speeds, modern processors execute certain functions speculatively, or before it is known whether they are needed. The technique prevents the delay that would come from executing the functions after they are requested.</p>
<p>Jann Horn, a lead researcher for Project Zero who first reported both vulnerabilities, discovered that attackers can take advantage of this technique in order to read information on the system’s memory that should be inaccessible.</p>
<p>In the original <a href="https://spectreattack.com/spectre.pdf" type="external">report</a>, researchers said the vulnerability affects “billions of devices” that use microprocessors from Intel, AMD, and ARM</p>
<p>The second flaw, known as <a href="https://meltdownattack.com/meltdown.pdf" type="external">Meltdown</a>, allows hackers to “melt” security boundaries between user applications and the operating system normally enforced by hardware. Hackers can exploit the vulnerability to gain access to the memory of other programs and the operating system, which could include passwords and other sensitive data.</p>
<p>In the original <a href="https://meltdownattack.com/meltdown.pdf" type="external">report</a>, researchers said the vulnerability affects “virtually every user of a personal computer.” However, researchers at Google’s Project Zero have only been able to show that ‘Meltdown’ affects Intel microprocessors.</p>
<p>Daniel Gruss, one of the researchers who originally discovered Meltdown, told <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cyber-intel/security-flaws-put-virtually-all-phones-computers-at-risk-idUSKBN1ES1BO" type="external">Reuters</a> the flaw is “probably one of the worst CPU bugs ever found.”</p>
<p>Gruss said Meltdown was the more serious attack, because it was easier for hackers to take advantage of. However, he said that Spectre was much harder to patch, and would be a bigger problem in the future.</p>
<p>In an <a href="https://meltdownattack.com/" type="external">overview</a> of the attacks, researchers said it would be “unusual” for either attack to be blocked by an antivirus, since they are “hard to distinguish from regular benign applications.” Google said, however, that an attacker must first be able to run a malicious code on a computer before they can exploit the vulnerability.</p>
<p>Researchers also warned it would be nearly impossible to detect if hackers had exploited the weakness, since the attack would not leave “any traces in traditional log files.”</p>
<p>In a <a href="https://security.googleblog.com/2018/01/todays-cpu-vulnerability-what-you-need.html" type="external">blog</a> posted Wednesday, Matt Linton, senior security engineer at Google, said there is “no single fix for all three attack variants,” but many vendors made several patches available Wednesday.</p>
<p>Google provided a <a href="https://support.google.com/faqs/answer/7622138" type="external">list</a> of their products that are vulnerable to the attacks, as well as their mitigation status. The company said as soon as they discovered the vulnerabilities, their security teams updated their systems and affected products to protect against the attacks.</p>
<p>Researchers also provided a <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/738975/" type="external">link</a> to software patches for Linux Windows, and OS X that guard against Meltdown attacks.</p>
<p>Microsoft released a <a href="https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4056892/windows-10-update-kb4056892" type="external">patch</a> Wednesday to protect customers against the vulnerabilities. However, the company said some anti-virus vendors will need to update their software to be compatible with the new patches.</p>
<p>Microsoft Patch is out: <a href="https://t.co/t3bIKOu1yR" type="external">https://t.co/t3bIKOu1yR</a>. Note that your AV vendor must set a special registry key! “Due to an issue with some versions of Anti-Virus software, this fix is only being made applicable to the machines where the Anti virus ISV has updated the ALLOW REGKEY.”</p>
<p>— Alex Ionescu (@aionescu) <a href="https://twitter.com/aionescu/status/948695919637221382?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" type="external">January 3, 2018</a></p>
<p>The company has also released an emergency <a href="https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=KB4056892%20" type="external">update</a> for all devices running Windows 10, and further updates are planned. Microsoft also said they are in the process of deploying mitigations to cloud services. However, the fixes will also rely on firmware updates from Intel, AMD, and ARM.</p>
<p>Microsoft said they have not received “any information to indicate that these vulnerabilities had been used to attack our customers,” according to a statement to <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/3/16846784/microsoft-processor-bug-windows-10-fix" type="external">The Verge</a>.</p>
<p>Amazon has also reportedly <a href="https://twitter.com/zerohedge/status/948694524657795073" type="external">said</a> they have protected most of their cloud servers from the vulnerabilities.</p>
<p>AppleInsider <a href="http://appleinsider.com/articles/18/01/03/apple-has-already-partially-implemented-fix-in-macos-for-kpti-intel-cpu-security-flaw" type="external">reports</a> that Apple has already deployed a partial fix for the bug in MacOS 10.3.2 that was released last month.</p>
<p>The report also said that tests show the update does not cause any notable slowdowns.</p>
<p>On Tuesday, The Register first <a href="https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/02/intel_cpu_design_flaw/" type="external">reported</a> on the vulnerabilities, saying the patches to fix the problem would slow computers by 30 percent.</p>
<p>While researchers do not know how much the updates could slow the performance of older processors, Intel released a <a href="https://newsroom.intel.com/news/intel-responds-to-security-research-findings/" type="external">statement</a> Wednesday that said the updates will not “significantly” slow computers for the average user.</p>
<p>“Any performance impacts are workload-dependent, and, for the average computer user, should not be significant and will be mitigated over time.”</p>
<p>Intel rejected claims that either of the vulnerabilities were unique to their products, adding that it affects “many types of computing devices – with many different vendors’ processors and operating systems – are susceptible to these exploits.”</p>
<p>However, AMD said their products were not vulnerable to any of the attacks.</p>
<p>“Due to differences in AMD’s architecture, we believe there is a near zero risk to AMD processors at this time,” representatives of the company told <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/03/amd-rebukes-intel-says-flaw-poses-near-zero-risk-to-its-chips.html" type="external">CNBC</a>.</p>
<p>ARM also released a <a href="https://developer.arm.com/support/security-update" type="external">statement</a> Wednesday that said the “majority” of their products are “not impacted by any variation” of the Spectre attack.</p>
<p>[embedded content]</p> | false | 1 | information stored every desktop computer smartphone cloud server since 1995 could accessed hackers two hardware bugs exploited new report warned wednesday security researchers google project zero disclosed technical details two security flaws allow hackers engage unauthorized reads computers memory data may contain sensitive information passwords researchers discovered vulnerabilities affect many cpus including intel advanced micro devices amd arm holdings well devices operating systems running read first method attack known spectre exploited hackers dissolve barrier separates different applications trick otherwise errorfree applications leaking information stored memory last year researchers demonstrated hackers could utilize speculative execution technique used modern processors optimize performance gain access sensitive information order improve speeds modern processors execute certain functions speculatively known whether needed technique prevents delay would come executing functions requested jann horn lead researcher project zero first reported vulnerabilities discovered attackers take advantage technique order read information systems memory inaccessible original report researchers said vulnerability affects billions devices use microprocessors intel amd arm second flaw known meltdown allows hackers melt security boundaries user applications operating system normally enforced hardware hackers exploit vulnerability gain access memory programs operating system could include passwords sensitive data original report researchers said vulnerability affects virtually every user personal computer however researchers googles project zero able show meltdown affects intel microprocessors daniel gruss one researchers originally discovered meltdown told reuters flaw probably one worst cpu bugs ever found gruss said meltdown serious attack easier hackers take advantage however said spectre much harder patch would bigger problem future overview attacks researchers said would unusual either attack blocked antivirus since hard distinguish regular benign applications google said however attacker must first able run malicious code computer exploit vulnerability researchers also warned would nearly impossible detect hackers exploited weakness since attack would leave traces traditional log files blog posted wednesday matt linton senior security engineer google said single fix three attack variants many vendors made several patches available wednesday google provided list products vulnerable attacks well mitigation status company said soon discovered vulnerabilities security teams updated systems affected products protect attacks researchers also provided link software patches linux windows os x guard meltdown attacks microsoft released patch wednesday protect customers vulnerabilities however company said antivirus vendors need update software compatible new patches microsoft patch httpstcot3bikou1yr note av vendor must set special registry key due issue versions antivirus software fix made applicable machines anti virus isv updated allow regkey alex ionescu aionescu january 3 2018 company also released emergency update devices running windows 10 updates planned microsoft also said process deploying mitigations cloud services however fixes also rely firmware updates intel amd arm microsoft said received information indicate vulnerabilities used attack customers according statement verge amazon also reportedly said protected cloud servers vulnerabilities appleinsider reports apple already deployed partial fix bug macos 1032 released last month report also said tests show update cause notable slowdowns tuesday register first reported vulnerabilities saying patches fix problem would slow computers 30 percent researchers know much updates could slow performance older processors intel released statement wednesday said updates significantly slow computers average user performance impacts workloaddependent average computer user significant mitigated time intel rejected claims either vulnerabilities unique products adding affects many types computing devices many different vendors processors operating systems susceptible exploits however amd said products vulnerable attacks due differences amds architecture believe near zero risk amd processors time representatives company told cnbc arm also released statement wednesday said majority products impacted variation spectre attack embedded content | 568 |
<p>“Your Light Will Rise in the Darkness:&#160; Responding to the Cry of the Poor”</p>
<p>Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture, 15th Annual Fall Conference</p>
<p>University of Notre Dame, October 31, 2014</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p><a href="http://eppc.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Slide1.jpg" type="external" />My thanks to the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture, especially to Carter Snead, my fellow Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, for organizing this rich and timely conference, to David Lutz for suggesting that I participate and offering a friendly challenge to extend the thesis of my book, Redeeming Economics (2010, pbk 2014), and to Marc Peter Neri for adding his wiener to the roast.</p>
<p>In my opening remarks I’d like to accomplish three things. First I’d like to explain how the original Scholastic Economics differed from both Adam Smith’s later Classical economic theory and today’s Neo-Classical Economics, which succeeded it starting in the 1870s; second, how an updated version, “Neo-Scholastic Economics,” is already reshaping&#160; our understanding of secular economic theory and offering new policy solutions; and finally, how Scholastic Economics provided the analytical toolkit or backbone for the much younger body of Catholic social doctrine. <a href="#_edn1" type="external">[1]</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p><a href="http://eppc.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Slide2.jpg" type="external" /></p>
<p>(Click&#160;on&#160;this image and other images on this page to expand)</p>
<p>Dan Hammond of Wake Forest University opened a review by remarking, “Redeeming Economics is likely to be ignored by economists”; but then gave this admirably succinct summary:</p>
<p>What, according to Mueller, is wrong with economics? In the simplest terms familiar to economists, there is an “equation” missing from the model. Economists have “equations” for production, consumption, and exchange, but not for the primary economic choice – the choices of persons. This missing element is a theory of distribution. Mueller argues that Thomas Aquinas had a complete economic model, with all four elements. Drawing on Aristotle and Augustine, Aquinas’s economics explained production (what is produced and how), consumption (utility), exchange (commutative justice), and distribution (production or purchase for whom).</p>
<p>Adam Smith, the father of modern (classical) economics, dropped two of the four equations, those for consumption and distribution. With neoclassical economics the equation for consumption was restored. But neoclassical theory has nothing to say about distribution, leaving the restoration of economics incomplete. Mueller sees this reconstruction (redemption) continuing with his book, with the efforts of other nascent neo-Scholastics and, he predicts, eventually by the profession at large. Thus Mueller himself does not think his book will be ignored. Or perhaps, if it is ignored the deficiency of economics will become evident to practitioners from their experiences doing economics. Mueller expects that economists will find their way to a neo-Scholastic economics that will preserve the best of both Smith and the neoclassicals, while restoring the theory of distribution. (Hammond 2012, 73). <a href="#_edn2" type="external">[2]</a></p>
<p>Mine is the latter view: that “the deficiency of economics will become evident to practitioners from their experiences doing economics” so that “economists will find their way to a neo-Scholastic economics that will preserve the best of both Smith and the neoclassicals, while restoring the theory of distribution.” The technical problem is that with fewer equations than variables to be explained, the classical and neoclassical systems are “underdetermined,” thus requiring economists to adopt circular logic or empirically false assumptions (or both). I realized this by the accident of becoming an economic and financial market forecaster, which requires spelling everything out mathematically and verifiably. But in terms that most ordinary people can understand, the scholastic, classical, and neoclassical systems presuppose three different views of human and divine nature, differing on whether man and God have free will.</p>
<p><a href="http://eppc.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Slide3.jpg" type="external" /></p>
<p>Since Adam Smith essentially “de-Augustinized” economics, it’s important to understand Augustine’s theories of benevolence and beneficence, which Aquinas integrated within the scholastic natural law moral philosophy and economic theory, which prevailed for five centuries before Smith. <a href="#_edn3" type="external">[3]</a></p>
<p>Both Augustine’s anthropology and theology had started from Aristotle’s insight that “every agent acts for an end” <a href="#_edn4" type="external">[4]</a> and Aristotle’s&#160; definition of love—willing some good to some person. <a href="#_edn5" type="external">[5]</a> But Augustine drew an insight that Aristotle had not: every person always acts for the sake of some person(s). For example, when I say, “I love vanilla ice cream,” I really mean that I love myself and use (consume) vanilla ice cream to express that love (and in preference, say, to strawberry ice cream or Brussels sprouts, which order reflects my separate scale of utility). <a href="#_edn6" type="external">[6]</a></p>
<p><a href="http://eppc.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Slide4.jpg" type="external" /></p>
<p>So Augustine’s crucial insight is that we humans always act on not one but two scales of preference—one for persons as ends and the other for other things as means: the scales of personal love and utility, respectively. And we express our preferences for persons with two kinds of external acts, “sale or gift.” <a href="#_edn7" type="external">[7]</a>&#160; Generally speaking, we give our wealth without compensation to people we particularly love, <a href="#_edn8" type="external">[8]</a> and sell it to people we don’t, in order to provide for those we do love. <a href="#_edn9" type="external">[9]</a>&#160; Since it’s always possible to avoid depriving others of their own goods, this is the bare minimum of love expressed as benevolence or goodwill and the measure of what Aristotle called “justice in exchange.” <a href="#_edn10" type="external">[10]</a>&#160; But our positive self-love is expressed by the utility of the goods we provide ourselves, and our positive love of others with beneficence: gifts. Conversely inner hate or malevolence is outwardly expressed by the opposite of a gift: maleficence,&#160; or crime. Instead of giving to you what belongs to me, I take or destroy what belongs to you.</p>
<p><a href="http://eppc.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Slide5.jpg" type="external" /></p>
<p>This understanding of economics entails an alternate view of the history of economics; hence my book begins with a “Brief Structural History of Economics,” which describes and distinguishes the scholastic, classical, and neoclassical theories, as well as the incipient “Neoscholastic” school. <a href="#_edn11" type="external">[11]</a></p>
<p><a href="http://eppc.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Slide6.jpg" type="external" /></p>
<p>But the same analysis distinguishes among schools, such as the Austrian, British, Walrasian, Distributist or “neo-Thomist” schools, and even among individual economists. <a href="#_edn12" type="external">[12]</a></p>
<p>Aristotle had bisected moral philosophy into ethics and politics. But scholastic philosophy and economic theory followed Thomas Aquinas by re-dividing them into three parts <a href="#_edn13" type="external">[13]</a>: Hence the middle three sections of Redeeming Economics are devoted to personal, domestic, and political prudence, or “economy.”</p>
<p><a href="http://eppc.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Slide7.jpg" type="external" /></p>
<p>In each chapter, after re-stating and updating the scholastic economic theory, I focus on a salient practical application in which neoclassical and neoscholastic economics reach divergent empirical predictions–for example, disproving the famous claim by economist Steven D. Levitt, featured in his megabestseller Freakonomics, that the U.S. Supreme Court’s legalization of abortion in 1973 caused the crime rate to fall 15-20 years later, by eliminating potential criminals (Levitt and Dubner 2005, 117-144).</p>
<p><a href="http://eppc.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Slide8.jpg" type="external" /></p>
<p>Actually, as I show, there is a 90% current, inverse relation between “economic fatherhood” and homicide. The data actually show that legalizing abortion raised crime rates immediately and with a lag.</p>
<p><a href="http://eppc.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Slide9.jpg" type="external" /></p>
<p>The final chapter concerns “divine economy,” which was Aristotle’s name for metaphysics. Three alternate world views are presupposed by (Neo-) Scholastic, classical, and neoclassical economics: biblically orthodox natural law, the Stoic and Epicurean philosophies, respectively. Though differing ultimately about immaterial realities–the existence or nature of God or the soul–these three views lead to starkly different behavior among people and starkly different predictions by economists. <a href="#_edn14" type="external">[14]</a></p>
<p><a href="http://eppc.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Slide10.jpg" type="external" /></p>
<p>Scholastic economics and Catholic social thought. To understand the relation between scholastic economics and Catholic social thought, it’s helpful to distinguish the history of economics–that is, the economic theory used by economic thinkers to describe any economic activity–from economic history: how the economic aspect of society develops: for example, the progressive transition of the United States (and in fact most countries) from agriculture to industry to services. Roughly speaking, scholastic economic theory is the analytical toolkit that the popes have used to discuss the new pastoral challenges of economic history as it unfolds.</p>
<p>It may seem that encyclicals on economics are abstract, but in fact they are always tied to analysis of some concrete historical event. The first encyclical of the Church’s modern social thought, in 1891, was called Rerum Novarum — literally, “of new things — in which Pope Leo XIII dealt with the new social and political challenges raised by industrialization. <a href="#_edn15" type="external">[15]</a> Several subsequent encyclicals further developed and applied this analysis as conditions changed.</p>
<p>In the 1960s, after the decolonization of much of Africa, Asia and Central and South America following the Second World War, the horizons of the Church’s social thought widened to embrace the emerging so-called “Third World.” Moved by the poverty he witnessed on his travels, Pope Paul VI argued in Populorum Progressio (“The Development of Peoples”) that “the social question has become worldwide.”</p>
<p>Pope John Paul II elaborated and joined these two strains in his three major encyclicals on economic matters, Laborem Exercens, his encyclical on the dignity and vocation of work, and two others that began by looking back at an earlier papal encyclicals, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis <a href="#_edn16" type="external">[16]</a> and Centesimus Annus, which as the title indicates was issued on the 100th anniversary of Rerum Novarum. <a href="#_edn17" type="external">[17]</a> Its particular merit is to bring both strains of the Church’s social thought into a single unified framework.</p>
<p>Similarly, Benedict XVI’s&#160; <a href="http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20090629_caritas-in-veritate_en.html" type="external">Caritas in Vertitate</a> (“Charity in Truth”) was originally intended for 2007, the fortieth anniversary of Paul VI’s 1967 encyclical&#160; <a href="http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_26031967_populorum_en.html" type="external">Populorum Progressio</a>, and was notable for emphasizing the “gratuitousness” — the giftedness, if you will– of Creation and even the economy. <a href="http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20051225_deus-caritas-est_en.html" type="external">Deus Caritas Est</a>, drafted under John Paul II and published by Benedict XVI, is valuable for its concise description of the relation among the natural law, Catholic social doctrine, the roles of the Church and secular politics. <a href="#_edn18" type="external">[18]</a></p>
<p>Even if we disagree, at least in part, I think the model for disagreement was well expressed by Thomas Aquinas: “We must respect both parties, namely, those whose opinion we follow, and those whose opinion we reject. For both have diligently sought the truth and have aided us in this matter.” <a href="#_edn19" type="external">[19]</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>John D. Mueller response</p>
<p>“How Should We Describe General or Social Justice?”</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Both David Lutz and Marc Peter Neri have presented stimulating papers offering me friendly challenges to extend my analysis.</p>
<p><a href="http://eppc.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Slide11.jpg" type="external" /></p>
<p>David Lutz’s paper begins with an accurate overview of the “neoscholastic” economic theory outlined in Redeeming Economics, <a href="#_edn20" type="external">[20]</a> then attempts to extend this theory “in the direction of a theory of management.” <a href="#_edn21" type="external">[21]</a></p>
<p>“As a contribution to a revised theory of the business firm,” he says, “I propose that we look to the species of Aristotelian justice that Mueller does not mention”–namely what Aristotle and Aquinas called “general justice.” <a href="#_edn22" type="external">[22]</a> He goes on to note that the term “general justice” is now commonly called “social justice,” though the latter term is “problematic.” <a href="#_edn23" type="external">[23]</a> But following Heinrich Pesch,, he proposes to rename&#160; general or social justice as “contributive justice,” <a href="#_edn24" type="external">[24]</a> and in doing so borrows a chart from Josef Pieper’s book, The Cardinal Virtues, to illustrate his conception of the relations&#160; among distributive justice, commutative justice and general justice.</p>
<p><a href="http://eppc.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Slide12.jpg" type="external" /></p>
<p>Marc Peter Neri summarizes his argument with another triangle, using the concepts Logos, Ethos and Pathos, which Aristotle described as the three principles of rhetoric:&#160; Logos to represent personal ownership, Ethos professional virtue, and Pathos to sympathy with human need.</p>
<p>While I think there is merit in both schemes, I’d like to offer a word of caution against mistaking a symmetrical diagram for the human reality the diagram attempts to describe.</p>
<p>Aquinas’s key passage, which David Lutz helpfully cited, states that general justice is “general ‘virtually,'” but not “essentially,” as for example “‘animal’ is general in relation to man and horse.” <a href="#_edn25" type="external">[25]</a></p>
<p><a href="http://eppc.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Slide13.jpg" type="external" /></p>
<p>Table 2-1 in Redeeming Economics compares Aristotle’s with Aquinas’s “maps” of human knowledge and of human virtues, listing all the particular virtues. I would like to present that table here, but including “general justice” where it seems to belong. <a href="#_edn26" type="external">[26]</a> As Aquinas says, “there must be one supreme virtue essentially distinct from every other virtue, which directs all the virtues to the common good; and this virtue is legal justice.” <a href="#_edn27" type="external">[27]</a> He notes that corresponding (and superior) to the “special virtue” of general justice, which orders other virtues to the common good, is the “special virtue” of charity, which orders all particular virtues to God. <a href="#_edn28" type="external">[28]</a></p>
<p>As I noted in Redeeming Economics, in his “solidarist” economics, Heinrich “Pesch got the original Scholastic economic theory almost but not quite right.” <a href="#_edn29" type="external">[29]</a> I specifically mention the fact that by omitting Augustine’s theory of personal gifts, Pesch makes distributive justice do all the work.</p>
<p>But it is also characteristic of Pesch and his followers to conflate social or general with distributive justice: for example in the statement David Lutz quoted in a version of the paper he presented earlier this year: “The term social justice is today generally used as a synonym of what used to be called distributive justice.” <a href="#_edn30" type="external">[30]</a> As David says, this understanding is “problematic,” but he doesn’t explain exactly why.</p>
<p>Equating social justice with distributive justice is incorrect because distributive justice always refers to common goods. To mistake general or social justice as equivalent to distributive justice, one must erroneously presume that all goods are common goods. If we accept the term “social justice” as equivalent to general justice, it must refer to all goods–not just common goods, but also personal gifts of individual goods, which, as I noted, Pesch’s economic theory omitted.</p>
<p>I do think that the term “contributive justice” can have a coherent meaning, though not as a synonym for general or social justice. Distributive justice may have either a positive or negative sign–for example, negative when I pay my taxes to support the public goods of national defense or administration of justice, but positive for any recipients of the resulting benefit (say, when paying a soldier or judge). The first can properly be called “contributive” justice, and if so, the second might be called “redistributive justice.”</p>
<p>So if one wishes to say that justice is “threefold,” naming distributive, commutative and legal justice, it is necessary simultaneously to acknowledge that the first two are particular kinds of justice–directed by, but different from, the third, “special virtue” of general justice.</p>
<p>To Marc Peter Neri I pose the question: Must (or even can) we choose, say, between logos and pathos? I don’t think so. G.K. Chesterton once observed that a man is fortunate to marry the woman he loves, but he is more fortunate to love the woman he marries. The first is a kind of deep or passionate affection, while the second is an act of&#160; the rational will. Most higher animals love in the first way; only persons love in the second way; and only human persons, being rational animals, love in both ways at the same time.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>References</p>
<p>&#160;Aquinas, T. (1982 [1267]) On Kingship, to the King of Cyprus. (Tr. Phelan, G.B.) Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies. Toronto.</p>
<p>Aquinas, T. (1993 [1271-72]). Commentary on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, (Tr.) Litzinger, C.I., O.P., Notre Dame, IN: Dumb Ox Books [1964 Henry Regnery Company].</p>
<p>Aquinas, T. (2007 [1271-72]). Commentary on Aristotle’s Politics, (Tr.) Regan, R.J., Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett Publishing.</p>
<p>Aquinas, T. (1981 [1265-72]). [Summa Theologiae] Summa Theologica, 5 vols.. (Tr.) Fathers of the Dominican Province, 1948, New York: Benziger Brothers. Reprinted in Westminster, MD: Christian Classics,</p>
<p>Aristotle (1954 [c. 350 BC]). The Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle, (Tr.) Ross, W.D.; Oxford: World’s Classics, Oxford University Press. Retrieved on April 15, 2009 from http://www.constitution.org/ari/ethic_00.htm</p>
<p>Aristotle (1962 [c. 350 BC]). The Politics, (Tr.) Sinclair, T.A., Baltimore: Penguin Books.</p>
<p>Aristotle (1932 [335-322 BC]). The Rhetoric of Aristotle, (Tr.) Cooper, L. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.</p>
<p>Augustine, A. (395/6). On Free Will, in (Tr. &amp; Ed.) Burleigh, J.H.S (1953), pp. 102-217.</p>
<p>Augustine, A. (396/7). On Christian Doctrine. Grand Rapids, MI: Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL). Retrieved on January 9, 2002 from http://www.ccel.org/a/augustine/doctrine/doctrine.html.</p>
<p>Augustine, A. (397). To Simplician—On Various Questions, in (Tr. &amp; Ed.) Burleigh, J.H.S. (1953), pp. 370-406.</p>
<p>Augustine, A. (401). Of the good of marriage. (Tr.) Cornish, Rev. C.L., From Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol. 3. (Ed.) Schaff, P. (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1887.) Revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight. Retrieved&#160; on February 2, 2005 from http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1309.htm.</p>
<p>Augustine, A. (1984 [413-426/427]). Concerning the City of God Against the Pagans. (Tr.) Bettenson, H., (Ed.) O’Meara, J.,&#160; New York: Penguin Classics.</p>
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<p>(Tr. &amp; Ed.) Burleigh, J.H.S. (1953). Augustine: Earlier Writings, Philadelphia: Westminster Press.</p>
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<p>Burke, J. (2010) “Distributive Justice and Subsidiarity: The Firm and the State in the Social Order,” Journal of Markets &amp; Morality 13(2), 297-317.</p>
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<p>Hamilton, A. (1775). The Farmer Refuted. The Works of Alexander Hamilton I, (Ed.) Lodge, H.C., New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904). Retrieved from http://oll.libertyfund.org/Home3/Book.php'recordID=0249.01</p>
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<p>Hamilton, A., (1791). Report on Manufactures in 4 Works of Alexander Hamilton, (Ed.) Lodge, H.C., retrieved at http://oll.libertyfund.org/Home3/HTML-voice.php'recordID=0249.04.</p>
<p>Hammond, D. J. (2012) Review of Redeeming Economics: Rediscovering the Missing Element. by John D. Mueller. Faith &amp; Economics 59 (Spring) 73-77.</p>
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<p>Jevons, &#160;W.S. (1871). The Theory of Political Economy , London, Macmillan.</p>
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<p>Lutz, D.W. (2014a) Redeeming Management: The Role of Contributive Justice. Philosophy of Management Conference paper, DePaul University, Chicago, IL. (14-16 July).</p>
<p>_________ (2014b). “Poverty and Contributive Justice.” Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture Conference paper (October 31).</p>
<p>Madison, J. (1787). Federalist No. 10, (Ed.) Carey, G.W. (2001 [1818]). Accessed from http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/788/108577 on 2009-11-01</p>
<p>Madison, J. (1788). Federalist No. 51, in (Ed.) Carey, G.W. (2001 [1818]), Accessed from http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/788/108659/2274491 on 2009-09-11</p>
<p>Madison, J. (1792). Property. (29 Mar.) in (Eds.) Hutchinson et al (1962-77), pp. 266-68, at http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/print_documents/v1ch16s23.html</p>
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<p>Michael, R. T., and Becker, G.S. (1973). On the New Theory of Consumer Behavior, The Swedish Journal of Economics 75(4), pp. 378-395, reprinted in Becker, G.S. (1976), pp. 131-149.</p>
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<p>Mueller, J.D. (2006a).&#160; How Does Fiscal Policy Affect the American Worker? Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics and Public Policy 20(2), pp. 563-619; Retrieved from http://www.eppc.org/publications/pubID.2671/pub_detail.asp.</p>
<p>Mueller, J.D. (2006b). Dismal Science. Claremont Review of Books 6(2), pp. 47-48 (Spring). Retrieved from http://www.eppc.org/publications/pubID.2608/pub_detail.asp.</p>
<p>Mueller, J.D. (2008). Infant Industry: The Past and Future of the American System. Lehrman American Studies Center Summer Institute Seminar Paper, pp. 1-35 (June 17). James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions and Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI). Princeton University, Princeton, N.J. Retrieved from http://www.eppc.org/publications/pubID.3926/pub_detail.asp on 30 October 2009.</p>
<p>Mueller, J.D., (2014 [2010]). Redeeming Economics: Rediscovering the Missing Element, Wilmington, DE: ISI Books. Paperback with updated charts and tables 2014.</p>
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<p>Smith, A. (1966 [1776]), An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, London: W. Strahan and T. Cadell, 2 vols. Facsimile published by Augustus M. Kelley Publishers, New York, 1966. The definitive Cannan edition is available online: Smith, A., An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. (Ed.) Cannan, E., 1904. Library of Economics and Liberty. Retrieved April 15, 2009 from http://www.econlib.org/library/Smith/smWN.html</p>
<p>Smith, A. (1982 [1795]). Essays on Philosophical Subjects. in (Ed.) Wightman, W. P. D. and Bryce, J. C. Vol. III of the Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1982). Chapter: SECTION IV: The History of Astronomy, Retrieved on April 15, 2009 from http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/201/56020/916315.</p>
<p>Spiegel, H.W. (1971). The Growth of Economic Thought, Durham, NC: Duke University Press,</p>
<p>Stewart-Robertson, J.C.&#160; and Norton, D.F. (1984) Thomas Reid on Adam Smith’s Theory of Morals, Journal of the History of Ideas 45, 314.</p>
<p>Stigler, G.J. (1958). Ricardo and the 93 Per Cent Labor Theory of Value. The American Economic Review, Vol. XLVIII (June 1958), reprinted in Stigler 1965, pp. 326-342.</p>
<p>Stigler, G.J. (1969). Does Economics Have a Useful Past? History of Political Economy 1, reprinted in Stigler, G.J. (1982), pp. 107-118;</p>
<p>Stigler, G.J. (1965). Essays in the History of Economics, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.</p>
<p>Stigler, G.J. (1982). The Economist as Preacher and Other Essays, Chicago: University of Chicago.</p>
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<p>Viner, J. (1972). The Role of Providence in the Social Order: An Essay in Intellectual History. American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia.</p>
<p>Viner, J. (1978). Religious Thought and Economic Society: Four chapters of an unfinished work. (Eds.) Jacques Melitz and Donald Winch. Duke University Press. Durham, NC.</p>
<p>Walras, L. (1954 [1874]). Elements of Pure Economics, or the Theory of Social Wealth [Éléments d’économie politique pure, ou théorie de la richesse sociale]. (Tr.) Jaffe, W. Homewood, IL: Richard D. Irwin.</p>
<p>Worland, S.T. (1967). Scholasticism and Welfare Economics University of Notre Dame Press. Notre Dame, IN.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref1" type="external">[1]</a> These opening remarks are adapted from presentations at panels on Redeeming Economics at annual conferences of the History of Economics Society (HES) in 2011 and Association for Private Enterprise Education (APEE) in 2012, published in Biddle and Emmett eds. (2013).</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref2" type="external">[2]</a> In the book I note that I use the term “redeem” in the sense of “fulfill (an earlier promise or pledge).” If, as I believe, the next phase in economics is Neoscholastic, it will have fulfilled its original promise.</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref3" type="external">[3]</a> In the book I typically use the term “final distribution,” to distinguish it from “distribution” as the term has been used since Adam Smith. The original scholastic theory of distribution comprises Augustine’s theory of personal distribution–gifts and their opposite, crimes–and in every social community (like a family or political community), what Aristotle called “distributive justice.” Smith conflated what is more properly called “compensation” or “justice in exchange” with distribution properly so called, by introducing the assumption that “every individual … intends only his own gain.” (Smith 1966 [1776], Wealth of Nations, IV.ii.9, accessed on 19 September 2009 from http://www.econlib.org/library/Smith/smWN13.html#IV.2.9. I recount Smith’s oversimplification of the scholastic economic theory he had been taught by his teacher Frances Hutcheson in Mueller 2010 chapter 3.</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref4" type="external">[4]</a> This concise&#160; formulation seems to be that of Aquinas, paraphrasing Aristotle’s Physics, ii, 5: Summa 1-II Q1. A2: http://www.newadvent.org/summa/2001.htm; cf. http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/physics.2.ii.html.</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref5" type="external">[5]</a> Aristotle (1932 [335-322 B.C.]), p. 2, p. 4, pp. 102-103.</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref6" type="external">[6]</a> Augustine also introduced the important distinction between “private” goods like bread, which inherently only one person at a time can consume, and “public” goods (like national defense, enforcement of justice, or even this panel) which, at least within certain limits, many people can simultaneously enjoy, because they are not “diminished by being shared” (i.e., scarce) Augustine (395-396), viii, 19, p. 146. Private goods are now sometimes called “rival” goods. The formulation “diminished by being shared” is from Augustine (396/397), I, 2.</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref7" type="external">[7]</a> Augustine (395/396), p. 131.</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref8" type="external">[8]</a> To be more precise, love with both benevolence and beneficence.</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref9" type="external">[9]</a> Or rather, love only with benevolence but not beneficence.</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref10" type="external">[10]</a> Aristotle 1954 [c. 350 BC], V, v; pp. 117-122.</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref11" type="external">[11]</a> The simplified version merely lists “yes” or “no” to denote the presence or absence of each fundamental element of economics. The three schools of neoclassical economics originated with&#160; Jevons 1871, Menger 1976 [1871], and Walras 1954 [1874]).</p>
<p>I presented the (neo-)scholastic system and contrasted it with subsequent classical and neoclassical revisions in Redeeming Economics (Mueller 2010) as follows (pp. 375, 400, 416):</p>
<p>(1) CKi + CLi = YiDii/SDij [final distribution function],</p>
<p>where CKi, and CLi represent the use (“consumption”) by Person i of the services of his or her human capital, Li, and nonhuman capital, Ki; Yi is total compensa­tion (labor and property income) of Person i; Dii is the significance of Person i to himself, and SDij is the significance of all persons to Person i.</p>
<p>For clarity and simplicity later on, we will define</p>
<p>(5) Yi = rKi+ wLi</p>
<p>meaning that Yi is the total net factor compensation (labor and property income) of Person i; and</p>
<p>(6) Ti = Yi – YiDii/dDij.</p>
<p>By substituting (5) and (6), (1) may therefore be restated as</p>
<p>(1a) CKi, + CLi = Yi – Ti.</p>
<p>This makes clear that the difference between Person i’s total consumption, CKi + CLi, and total compensation, Yi, is equal to Ti—(net) personal, domestic, and political “transfer payments” from Person i to other persons. Transfer payments comprise any income not received as compensation for contributing to current production. “Net” means that personal gifts made are offset by gifts received, while taxes are treated as transfers paid to the government and balanced against government transfers received.</p>
<p>For a purely selfish person, the distributive share Dii/SDij is 100 percent; for a person who makes gifts to others, less than 100 percent; for a criminal, more than 100 percent; and for the victim of crime (or abortion), less than zero percent.</p>
<p>(2) Ui = f(CKi, CLi) [utility function],</p>
<p>where Ui is the ranking by Person i (“utility”) of CKi, and CLi, the units con­sumed in use by Person i of the services of his or her nonhuman goods, Ki, and human capital, Li, respectively. In reality, K and L are not two goods but two classes of goods consumed: (K1, K2, . . . ,Kn) and (L1, L2, . . . ,Ln). Scarcity implies that the value of each unit consumed declines as the number of units increases (dU/dC&lt;0: “declining marginal utility”) and that goods are “used up”—that is, rendered unusable—by consumption (for example, CKi = -DKi).</p>
<p>(3a) dKi = f1(Ki, Li) [production function for nonhuman capital];</p>
<p>(3b) dLi = f2(Ki, Li) [production function for human capital];</p>
<p>where DKi is the change in the stock (production) of nonhuman goods and dLi the change in the stock of “human capital,” owned by Person i.</p>
<p>(4) PKdKi+PLdLi = rKi+wLi, where PK and PL are the unit prices of K and L, respectively, w labor compensation per unit of L, r property compensation per unit of K. (PL is a market price only in a slave-owning society, like ancient Ath­ens or the antebellum American South.)</p>
<p>To summarize: The neoclassical economists restored the utility function (equation [2] above). They restored the two-factor production function (3a) and (3b). But until about 1960, they interpreted both human and nonhuman capital as being limited to tangible factors. The neoclassical economists followed Adam Smith in ignoring the dis­tribution function in theory, but in practice they have assumed that everyone is purely selfish, thus adding the restrictive assumption Dii/SDij = 1. As with Adam Smith, this special assumption collapses equation (1) into:</p>
<p>(1b) CKi +CLi = Yi.</p>
<p>It also means of course that there are no personal gifts, crimes, common goods, or distributive justice:</p>
<p>(6a) Ti = 0.</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref12" type="external">[12]</a> For example, I might note my own migration from the Chicago School as of Mueller 1996 to the Neo-Scholastic School in Mueller 2014 [2010].</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref13" type="external">[13]</a> Aquinas, T. (1981 [1265-72]) II-II Q47 A11 contra and corpus, http://www.newadvent.org/summa/3047.htm#article11, and Q50 A3, http://www.newadvent.org/summa/3050.htm.</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref14" type="external">[14]</a> To stay within our time limits, I will not summarize these world views in my oral remarks. But briefly put: In (neo-) scholastic natural law, economics is a theory of rational providence, describing how we “rational,” “matrimonial,” and “political animals” choose both persons as “ends” (which we express by our personal and collective gifts) and the scarce means to be used (consumed) by or for those persons, which we make real through production and exchange.</p>
<p>By dropping both distribution (the choice of persons as ends) and consumption (the choice of other things as means), Smith expressed the Stoic pantheism that viewed the universe “to be itself a Divinity, an Animal”&#160; with God as its immanent soul, so that sentimental humans choose neither ends nor means rationally; instead, “every individual…intends only his own gain…and is led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.”</p>
<p>By restoring utility (the choice of means) but not distribution (the choice of persons as ends), neoclassical economics expressed the Epicurean materialism that claims humans somehow evolved as merely clever animals, highly adept at calculating means but having no choice other than self-gratification, since “reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions,” as Hume put it.</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref15" type="external">[15]</a> While affirming the right of private property, and predicting the failure of communism, he insisted on the dignity and rights of workers and the need to protect the weakest, by government intervention if necessary.</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref16" type="external">[16]</a> SRS was&#160; published on the 20th anniversary of Populorum Progressio, and was intended to fill “the need for a fuller and more nuanced concept of development” than had previously been put forward. In it, he argued that the terms “poverty” and “development” mean poverty or development of the whole person, not just the economic or political system.</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref17" type="external">[17]</a> In it, the pope looked back at what remains valid in the social thought begun in that encyclical, but also took note of the “new things” which had emerged, such as changes in the nature of Western economies and the collapse of communism.</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref18" type="external">[18]</a> “25. Thus far, two essential facts have emerged from our reflections:</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref19" type="external">[19]</a> Aquinas paraphrasing Aristotle in his Commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics 1073a14-1073b17 (tr. By Rowan)</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref20" type="external">[20]</a> David Lutz’s paper seeks to contribute to a philosophical theory of business management within the tradition of natural law and virtues, mentioning Plato, Aristotle and Cicero as well as such medieval philosophers as Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas, but also modern philosophers and economists including (particularly) Heinrich Pesch (1854-1926), Josef Pieper (1904-1997) and Alasdair MacIntyre (b. 1929).</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref21" type="external">[21]</a> I place in endnotes comments I did not have time to make in my oral remarks. Unfortunately, I did not have time to emphasize my agreement with his point, the fruit of many years in Africa, that “Efforts to alleviate Africa’s material poverty should focus not only on the distribution of existing wealth to Africans, but also on the production of new wealth by Africans.”</p>
<p>David Lutz gives a pretty thorough precis of my recounting of the history of economics, from its scholastic beginnings when Thomas Aquinas’s integrated elements from Aristotle and Augustine of Hippo, Adam Smith’s radical over-simplification, the reinvention and updating of Augustine’s theory of utility starting in the 1870s, and finally, my claim that we have already entered the next “neo-scholastic” phase.</p>
<p>David’s point of entry is working out a neo-scholastic theory of business management[, about which he correctly says I wrote relatively little, beyond reclaiming Aquinas’s threefold division of moral philosophy into personal, domestic and political prudence or “economy,” and noting that the modern business firm and non-profit organization are both offshoots of the ancient household: the modern household specializes in producing and maintaining people, while the modern business firm specializes in producing and maintaining productive property, and the modern non-profit specializes in distributing gifts beyond the household.</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref22" type="external">[22]</a> “Both distributive justice and commutative justice play important roles in Mueller’s theory. But the tradition of Aristotle and Aquinas understands that there is a third kind of justice. Aristotle makes a distinction between justice as a particular virtue, which includes distributive and commutative justice, and justice as a general virtue, which is concerned with obedience to just laws and promotes the good of the community.&#160; Aquinas follows Aristotle in understanding ‘general’ or ‘legal’ justice to be directed toward the common good.”</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref23" type="external">[23]</a> “Although some authors prefer to call it ‘social justice,’ this name is problematic, since it has a wide range of meanings within contemporary discussions of justice and is often used to mean distributive justice.”</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref24" type="external">[24]</a> Lutz argues, “When economic production is understood not only in terms of ‘combining the useful services of people and of property,’ but also as meeting the demands of contributive justice, management can become an integral part of Mueller’s theory of neo-Scholastic economics. The purpose of management is neither to maximize long-term shareholder value nor merely to benefit stakeholders, but to contribute to the common good, the good of a community.”</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref25" type="external">[25]</a> Aquinas, T. (1981 [1265-72]), S.T. II-II Q58&#160; corpus, available at http://www.ccel.org/a/aquinas/summa/SS/SS058.html#SSQ58A6THEP1.&#160; Aquinas concludes the passage: “It follows therefore that the good of any virtue, whether it orders a man toward his very self, or orders him toward some other individual persons, is referable to the common good, to which justice is ordered. And according to this the acts of every virtue can belong to justice insofar as it orders a man toward the common good. It is in this sense that justice is called ‘general virtue.’ And since it belongs to law to order to the common good, as stated above, whence it is that such justice, said in a way to be ‘general,’ is called ‘legal justice,’ because through it a man harmonizes with the law ordering the acts of all the virtues to the common good.” John Goyette, whom David Lutz also cites, paraphrases Aquinas (I think pretty accurately) as follows: “The virtue of legal justice aims at the good of the whole political community and thereby serves all those who participate in that whole. Because it orders or directs all the other moral virtues, legal justice is called ‘general virtue’ (virtus generalis), and the actions of all the other virtues are said to belong to justice, to become in some sense acts of justice. While the virtue of particular justice is limited or restricted to certain kinds of actions, ‘general justice’ pertains to the full range of human actions by ordering the actions of all the other virtues to the common good.” Goyette (2013), p. 148.</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref26" type="external">[26]</a> My omission of general justice from Redeeming Economics was probably related to my deformation professionelle of being an economic and financial market forecaster: As I suggest below, while particular virtues like justice in exchange and distributive justice can be unambiguously quantified, the “special virtues” of general justice and charity apparently cannot.</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref27" type="external">[27]</a> S.T. II-II Q58 ad4, available at http://www.ccel.org/a/aquinas/summa/SS/SS058.html#SSQ58A6THEP1. This suggests that general or social justice may not be unambiguously quantifiable. Yet there may be great heuristic value in attempts to do so, for example Luigi Toma’s effort to devise a “Catholic Social Thought Index (CSTI) in Toma 2014.</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref28" type="external">[28]</a> III Q23&#160; A4: http://www.newadvent.org/summa/3023.htm#article4. To place general justice and charity in proper perspective, it is helpful to quote the final two sentences in The Four Cardinal Virtues which immediately precede the chart that David Lutz uses to illustrate his argument about general justice: “For it is true, as Thomas says, that ‘mercy without justice is the mother of dissolution’; but also that ‘justice without mercy is cruelty.’ Now it becomes possible to state the inner limits of justice: ‘To be willing to watch over peace and harmony among men through the commandments of justice is not enough when charity has not taken firm root among them.'” Pieper 1965, 112-113.</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref29" type="external">[29]</a> In assessing Pesch correctly, I say,&#160; “We must start by clearing the ground of debris strewn by decades of brawling admirers and detractors,” and go on:</p>
<p>“Pesch’s admirers are typified by Richard E. Mulcahy, who claimed in The Economics of Heinrich Pesch (1952) that ‘Pesch is the first theorist who constructed an integrated economic theory based on Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophy.” Its publisher similarly calls the Lehrbuch ‘a kind of Summa Economica.’ Actually, as we’ve seen, the first theorist who constructed an integrated economic theory based on Thomistic philosophy was Thomas Aquinas, whose outline was taught and developed at the highest university level for five centuries before Adam Smith. The term Aristotelian-Thomistic flags the debility that prevented Pesch from producing a modern summary of Scholastic economics: its neglect of a central feature, St. Augustine’s theory of personal gifts.</p>
<p>“Though extraordinarily fruitful, the Thomistic revival of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in which Pesch participated was burdened by a neo-Thomism that viewed Aquinas as restating an essentially Aristotelian philosophy. As I have suggested, the formula of Scholastic economics, is Aristotle + Augustine = Aquinas. The neo-Thomist formula, on the other hand, is “AA economics”: Aristotle = Aquinas (= Catholic social doctrine. Which raises the obvious question: After Aristotle, why do we need Aquinas or Catholic social doctrine?).” Mueller 2014 [2010], p. 118.</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref30" type="external">[30]</a> Burke (2010), p. 297, cited in Lutz 2014a.</p> | false | 1 | light rise darkness160 responding cry poor notre dame center ethics culture 15th annual fall conference university notre dame october 31 2014 160 thanks notre dame center ethics culture especially carter snead fellow fellow ethics public policy center organizing rich timely conference david lutz suggesting participate offering friendly challenge extend thesis book redeeming economics 2010 pbk 2014 marc peter neri adding wiener roast opening remarks id like accomplish three things first id like explain original scholastic economics differed adam smiths later classical economic theory todays neoclassical economics succeeded starting 1870s second updated version neoscholastic economics already reshaping160 understanding secular economic theory offering new policy solutions finally scholastic economics provided analytical toolkit backbone much younger body catholic social doctrine 1 160 click160on160this image images page expand dan hammond wake forest university opened review remarking redeeming economics likely ignored economists gave admirably succinct summary according mueller wrong economics simplest terms familiar economists equation missing model economists equations production consumption exchange primary economic choice choices persons missing element theory distribution mueller argues thomas aquinas complete economic model four elements drawing aristotle augustine aquinass economics explained production produced consumption utility exchange commutative justice distribution production purchase adam smith father modern classical economics dropped two four equations consumption distribution neoclassical economics equation consumption restored neoclassical theory nothing say distribution leaving restoration economics incomplete mueller sees reconstruction redemption continuing book efforts nascent neoscholastics predicts eventually profession large thus mueller think book ignored perhaps ignored deficiency economics become evident practitioners experiences economics mueller expects economists find way neoscholastic economics preserve best smith neoclassicals restoring theory distribution hammond 2012 73 2 mine latter view deficiency economics become evident practitioners experiences economics economists find way neoscholastic economics preserve best smith neoclassicals restoring theory distribution technical problem fewer equations variables explained classical neoclassical systems underdetermined thus requiring economists adopt circular logic empirically false assumptions realized accident becoming economic financial market forecaster requires spelling everything mathematically verifiably terms ordinary people understand scholastic classical neoclassical systems presuppose three different views human divine nature differing whether man god free since adam smith essentially deaugustinized economics important understand augustines theories benevolence beneficence aquinas integrated within scholastic natural law moral philosophy economic theory prevailed five centuries smith 3 augustines anthropology theology started aristotles insight every agent acts end 4 aristotles160 definition lovewilling good person 5 augustine drew insight aristotle every person always acts sake persons example say love vanilla ice cream really mean love use consume vanilla ice cream express love preference say strawberry ice cream brussels sprouts order reflects separate scale utility 6 augustines crucial insight humans always act one two scales preferenceone persons ends things means scales personal love utility respectively express preferences persons two kinds external acts sale gift 7160 generally speaking give wealth without compensation people particularly love 8 sell people dont order provide love 9160 since always possible avoid depriving others goods bare minimum love expressed benevolence goodwill measure aristotle called justice exchange 10160 positive selflove expressed utility goods provide positive love others beneficence gifts conversely inner hate malevolence outwardly expressed opposite gift maleficence160 crime instead giving belongs take destroy belongs understanding economics entails alternate view history economics hence book begins brief structural history economics describes distinguishes scholastic classical neoclassical theories well incipient neoscholastic school 11 analysis distinguishes among schools austrian british walrasian distributist neothomist schools even among individual economists 12 aristotle bisected moral philosophy ethics politics scholastic philosophy economic theory followed thomas aquinas redividing three parts 13 hence middle three sections redeeming economics devoted personal domestic political prudence economy chapter restating updating scholastic economic theory focus salient practical application neoclassical neoscholastic economics reach divergent empirical predictionsfor example disproving famous claim economist steven levitt featured megabestseller freakonomics us supreme courts legalization abortion 1973 caused crime rate fall 1520 years later eliminating potential criminals levitt dubner 2005 117144 actually show 90 current inverse relation economic fatherhood homicide data actually show legalizing abortion raised crime rates immediately lag final chapter concerns divine economy aristotles name metaphysics three alternate world views presupposed neo scholastic classical neoclassical economics biblically orthodox natural law stoic epicurean philosophies respectively though differing ultimately immaterial realitiesthe existence nature god soulthese three views lead starkly different behavior among people starkly different predictions economists 14 scholastic economics catholic social thought understand relation scholastic economics catholic social thought helpful distinguish history economicsthat economic theory used economic thinkers describe economic activityfrom economic history economic aspect society develops example progressive transition united states fact countries agriculture industry services roughly speaking scholastic economic theory analytical toolkit popes used discuss new pastoral challenges economic history unfolds may seem encyclicals economics abstract fact always tied analysis concrete historical event first encyclical churchs modern social thought 1891 called rerum novarum literally new things pope leo xiii dealt new social political challenges raised industrialization 15 several subsequent encyclicals developed applied analysis conditions changed 1960s decolonization much africa asia central south america following second world war horizons churchs social thought widened embrace emerging socalled third world moved poverty witnessed travels pope paul vi argued populorum progressio development peoples social question become worldwide pope john paul ii elaborated joined two strains three major encyclicals economic matters laborem exercens encyclical dignity vocation work two others began looking back earlier papal encyclicals sollicitudo rei socialis 16 centesimus annus title indicates issued 100th anniversary rerum novarum 17 particular merit bring strains churchs social thought single unified framework similarly benedict xvis160 caritas vertitate charity truth originally intended 2007 fortieth anniversary paul vis 1967 encyclical160 populorum progressio notable emphasizing gratuitousness giftedness creation even economy deus caritas est drafted john paul ii published benedict xvi valuable concise description relation among natural law catholic social doctrine roles church secular politics 18 even disagree least part think model disagreement well expressed thomas aquinas must respect parties namely whose opinion follow whose opinion reject diligently sought truth aided us matter 19 160 160 john mueller response describe general social justice 160 david lutz marc peter neri presented stimulating papers offering friendly challenges extend analysis david lutzs paper begins accurate overview neoscholastic economic theory outlined redeeming economics 20 attempts extend theory direction theory management 21 contribution revised theory business firm says propose look species aristotelian justice mueller mentionnamely aristotle aquinas called general justice 22 goes note term general justice commonly called social justice though latter term problematic 23 following heinrich pesch proposes rename160 general social justice contributive justice 24 borrows chart josef piepers book cardinal virtues illustrate conception relations160 among distributive justice commutative justice general justice marc peter neri summarizes argument another triangle using concepts logos ethos pathos aristotle described three principles rhetoric160 logos represent personal ownership ethos professional virtue pathos sympathy human need think merit schemes id like offer word caution mistaking symmetrical diagram human reality diagram attempts describe aquinass key passage david lutz helpfully cited states general justice general virtually essentially example animal general relation man horse 25 table 21 redeeming economics compares aristotles aquinass maps human knowledge human virtues listing particular virtues would like present table including general justice seems belong 26 aquinas says must one supreme virtue essentially distinct every virtue directs virtues common good virtue legal justice 27 notes corresponding superior special virtue general justice orders virtues common good special virtue charity orders particular virtues god 28 noted redeeming economics solidarist economics heinrich pesch got original scholastic economic theory almost quite right 29 specifically mention fact omitting augustines theory personal gifts pesch makes distributive justice work also characteristic pesch followers conflate social general distributive justice example statement david lutz quoted version paper presented earlier year term social justice today generally used synonym used called distributive justice 30 david says understanding problematic doesnt explain exactly equating social justice distributive justice incorrect distributive justice always refers common goods mistake general social justice equivalent distributive justice one must erroneously presume goods common goods accept term social justice equivalent general justice must refer goodsnot common goods also personal gifts individual goods noted peschs economic theory omitted think term contributive justice coherent meaning though synonym general social justice distributive justice may either positive negative signfor example negative pay taxes support public goods national defense administration justice positive recipients resulting benefit say paying soldier judge first properly called contributive justice second might called redistributive justice one wishes say justice threefold naming distributive commutative legal justice necessary simultaneously acknowledge first two particular kinds justicedirected different third special virtue general justice marc peter neri pose question must even choose say logos pathos dont think gk chesterton observed man fortunate marry woman loves fortunate love woman marries first kind deep passionate affection second act of160 rational higher animals love first way persons love second way human persons rational animals love ways time 160 references 160aquinas 1982 1267 kingship king cyprus tr phelan gb pontifical institute medieval studies toronto aquinas 1993 127172 commentary aristotles nicomachean ethics tr litzinger ci op notre dame dumb ox books 1964 henry regnery company aquinas 2007 127172 commentary aristotles politics tr regan rj indianapolis cambridge hackett publishing aquinas 1981 126572 summa theologiae summa theologica 5 vols tr fathers dominican province 1948 new york benziger brothers reprinted westminster md christian 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work eds jacques melitz donald winch duke university press durham nc walras l 1954 1874 elements pure economics theory social wealth Éléments déconomie politique pure ou théorie de la richesse sociale tr jaffe w homewood il richard irwin worland st 1967 scholasticism welfare economics university notre dame press notre dame 160 160 160 1 opening remarks adapted presentations panels redeeming economics annual conferences history economics society hes 2011 association private enterprise education apee 2012 published biddle emmett eds 2013 2 book note use term redeem sense fulfill earlier promise pledge believe next phase economics neoscholastic fulfilled original promise 3 book typically use term final distribution distinguish distribution term used since adam smith original scholastic theory distribution comprises augustines theory personal distributiongifts opposite crimesand every social community like family political community aristotle called distributive justice smith conflated properly called compensation justice exchange distribution properly called introducing assumption every individual intends gain smith 1966 1776 wealth nations ivii9 accessed 19 september 2009 httpwwweconliborglibrarysmithsmwn13htmliv29 recount smiths oversimplification scholastic economic theory taught teacher frances hutcheson mueller 2010 chapter 3 4 concise160 formulation seems aquinas paraphrasing aristotles physics ii 5 summa 1ii q1 a2 httpwwwnewadventorgsumma2001htm cf httpclassicsmiteduaristotlephysics2iihtml 5 aristotle 1932 335322 bc p 2 p 4 pp 102103 6 augustine also introduced important distinction private goods like bread inherently one person time consume public goods like national defense enforcement justice even panel least within certain limits many people simultaneously enjoy diminished shared ie scarce augustine 395396 viii 19 p 146 private goods sometimes called rival goods formulation diminished shared augustine 396397 2 7 augustine 395396 p 131 8 precise love benevolence beneficence 9 rather love benevolence beneficence 10 aristotle 1954 c 350 bc v v pp 117122 11 simplified version merely lists yes denote presence absence fundamental element economics three schools neoclassical economics originated with160 jevons 1871 menger 1976 1871 walras 1954 1874 presented neoscholastic system contrasted subsequent classical neoclassical revisions redeeming economics mueller 2010 follows pp 375 400 416 1 cki cli yidiisdij final distribution function cki cli represent use consumption person services human capital li nonhuman capital ki yi total compensation labor property income person dii significance person sdij significance persons person clarity simplicity later define 5 yi rki wli meaning yi total net factor compensation labor property income person 6 ti yi yidiiddij substituting 5 6 1 may therefore restated 1a cki cli yi ti makes clear difference person total consumption cki cli total compensation yi equal tinet personal domestic political transfer payments person persons transfer payments comprise income received compensation contributing current production net means personal gifts made offset gifts received taxes treated transfers paid government balanced government transfers received purely selfish person distributive share diisdij 100 percent person makes gifts others less 100 percent criminal 100 percent victim crime abortion less zero percent 2 ui fcki cli utility function ui ranking person utility cki cli units consumed use person services nonhuman goods ki human capital li respectively reality k l two goods two classes goods consumed k1 k2 kn l1 l2 ln scarcity implies value unit consumed declines number units increases dudclt0 declining marginal utility goods used upthat rendered unusableby consumption example cki dki 3a dki f1ki li production function nonhuman capital 3b dli f2ki li production function human capital dki change stock production nonhuman goods dli change stock human capital owned person 4 pkdkipldli rkiwli pk pl unit prices k l respectively w labor compensation per unit l r property compensation per unit k pl market price slaveowning society like ancient athens antebellum american south summarize neoclassical economists restored utility function equation 2 restored twofactor production function 3a 3b 1960 interpreted human nonhuman capital limited tangible factors neoclassical economists followed adam smith ignoring distribution function theory practice assumed everyone purely selfish thus adding restrictive assumption diisdij 1 adam smith special assumption collapses equation 1 1b cki cli yi also means course personal gifts crimes common goods distributive justice 6a ti 0 12 example might note migration chicago school mueller 1996 neoscholastic school mueller 2014 2010 13 aquinas 1981 126572 iiii q47 a11 contra corpus httpwwwnewadventorgsumma3047htmarticle11 q50 a3 httpwwwnewadventorgsumma3050htm 14 stay within time limits summarize world views oral remarks briefly put neo scholastic natural law economics theory rational providence describing rational matrimonial political animals choose persons ends express personal collective gifts scarce means used consumed persons make real production exchange dropping distribution choice persons ends consumption choice things means smith expressed stoic pantheism viewed universe divinity animal160 god immanent soul sentimental humans choose neither ends means rationally instead every individualintends gainand led invisible hand promote end part intention restoring utility choice means distribution choice persons ends neoclassical economics expressed epicurean materialism claims humans somehow evolved merely clever animals highly adept calculating means choice selfgratification since reason ought slave passions hume put 15 affirming right private property predicting failure communism insisted dignity rights workers need protect weakest government intervention necessary 16 srs was160 published 20th anniversary populorum progressio intended fill need fuller nuanced concept development previously put forward argued terms poverty development mean poverty development whole person economic political system 17 pope looked back remains valid social thought begun encyclical also took note new things emerged changes nature western economies collapse communism 18 25 thus far two essential facts emerged reflections 19 aquinas paraphrasing aristotle commentary aristotles metaphysics 1073a141073b17 tr rowan 20 david lutzs paper seeks contribute philosophical theory business management within tradition natural law virtues mentioning plato aristotle cicero well medieval philosophers augustine hippo thomas aquinas also modern philosophers economists including particularly heinrich pesch 18541926 josef pieper 19041997 alasdair macintyre b 1929 21 place endnotes comments time make oral remarks unfortunately time emphasize agreement point fruit many years africa efforts alleviate africas material poverty focus distribution existing wealth africans also production new wealth africans david lutz gives pretty thorough precis recounting history economics scholastic beginnings thomas aquinass integrated elements aristotle augustine hippo adam smiths radical oversimplification reinvention updating augustines theory utility starting 1870s finally claim already entered next neoscholastic phase davids point entry working neoscholastic theory business management correctly says wrote relatively little beyond reclaiming aquinass threefold division moral philosophy personal domestic political prudence economy noting modern business firm nonprofit organization offshoots ancient household modern household specializes producing maintaining people modern business firm specializes producing maintaining productive property modern nonprofit specializes distributing gifts beyond household 22 distributive justice commutative justice play important roles muellers theory tradition aristotle aquinas understands third kind justice aristotle makes distinction justice particular virtue includes distributive commutative justice justice general virtue concerned obedience laws promotes good community160 aquinas follows aristotle understanding general legal justice directed toward common good 23 although authors prefer call social justice name problematic since wide range meanings within contemporary discussions justice often used mean distributive justice 24 lutz argues economic production understood terms combining useful services people property also meeting demands contributive justice management become integral part muellers theory neoscholastic economics purpose management neither maximize longterm shareholder value merely benefit stakeholders contribute common good good community 25 aquinas 1981 126572 st iiii q58160 corpus available httpwwwccelorgaaquinassummassss058htmlssq58a6thep1160 aquinas concludes passage follows therefore good virtue whether orders man toward self orders toward individual persons referable common good justice ordered according acts every virtue belong justice insofar orders man toward common good sense justice called general virtue since belongs law order common good stated whence justice said way general called legal justice man harmonizes law ordering acts virtues common good john goyette david lutz also cites paraphrases aquinas think pretty accurately follows virtue legal justice aims good whole political community thereby serves participate whole orders directs moral virtues legal justice called general virtue virtus generalis actions virtues said belong justice become sense acts justice virtue particular justice limited restricted certain kinds actions general justice pertains full range human actions ordering actions virtues common good goyette 2013 p 148 26 omission general justice redeeming economics probably related deformation professionelle economic financial market forecaster suggest particular virtues like justice exchange distributive justice unambiguously quantified special virtues general justice charity apparently 27 st iiii q58 ad4 available httpwwwccelorgaaquinassummassss058htmlssq58a6thep1 suggests general social justice may unambiguously quantifiable yet may great heuristic value attempts example luigi tomas effort devise catholic social thought index csti toma 2014 28 iii q23160 a4 httpwwwnewadventorgsumma3023htmarticle4 place general justice charity proper perspective helpful quote final two sentences four cardinal virtues immediately precede chart david lutz uses illustrate argument general justice true thomas says mercy without justice mother dissolution also justice without mercy cruelty becomes possible state inner limits justice willing watch peace harmony among men commandments justice enough charity taken firm root among pieper 1965 112113 29 assessing pesch correctly say160 must start clearing ground debris strewn decades brawling admirers detractors go peschs admirers typified richard e mulcahy claimed economics heinrich pesch 1952 pesch first theorist constructed integrated economic theory based aristotelianthomistic philosophy publisher similarly calls lehrbuch kind summa economica actually weve seen first theorist constructed integrated economic theory based thomistic philosophy thomas aquinas whose outline taught developed highest university level five centuries adam smith term aristotelianthomistic flags debility prevented pesch producing modern summary scholastic economics neglect central feature st augustines theory personal gifts though extraordinarily fruitful thomistic revival late nineteenth early twentieth centuries pesch participated burdened neothomism viewed aquinas restating essentially aristotelian philosophy suggested formula scholastic economics aristotle augustine aquinas neothomist formula hand aa economics aristotle aquinas catholic social doctrine raises obvious question aristotle need aquinas catholic social doctrine mueller 2014 2010 p 118 30 burke 2010 p 297 cited lutz 2014a | 4,257 |
<p>For six seasons, <a href="http://variety.com/t/hilarie-burton/" type="external">Hilarie Burton</a> played Peyton Sawyer, the female lead on “ <a href="http://variety.com/t/one-tree-hill/" type="external">One Tree Hill</a>,” a Warner Bros. teen drama created by <a href="http://variety.com/t/mark-schwahn/" type="external">Mark Schwahn</a>. For the first two seasons, Burton said, she struggled against Schwahn’s efforts to gratuitously sexualize her character — fights that earned her a reputation for being “difficult.”</p>
<p>But after the show’s second season, according to Burton, inappropriate behavior by Schwahn that she and her costars dismissed as social awkwardness grew more intense.</p>
<p>“Things took a turn in season three,” Burton said. “That’s when Mark decided that I was his muse.”</p>
<p>Speaking to Variety, Burton recalled years of harassment and assault that she alleges Schwahn perpetrated against her and other women on the show. She claimed that Schwahn twice forced himself on her, kissing her on the mouth without warning and against her will. She said Schwahn touched her inappropriately while in the presence of his wife. All in all, she described a culture on “One Tree Hill” in which Schwahn pitted women against each other, was verbally abusive, and spread false rumors about physical relationships he claimed to have had with female cast members.</p>
<p>She is not alone. A former writer on the show, Michelle Furtney-Goodman, recalled to Variety an incident in which Schwahn, in front of the show’s writing staff, forced her head down between her knees, balanced a soda can on her, and joked about her performing oral sex. Another female actor, speaking anonymously, described pushing Schwahn away after he grabbed her suddenly and pulled her between his thighs. The alleged incident occurred on set, in front of crew.</p>
<p>A representative for Schwahn declined to comment on the record for this story.</p>
<p>Schwahn was <a href="http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/the-royals-mark-schwahn-1202615898/" type="external">suspended</a> Wednesday from his current job, as showrunner on E! drama “The Royals,” which he also created. The suspension came two days after Burton and 17 other women sent a signed letter to Variety <a href="http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/one-tree-hill-3-1202614198/" type="external">accusing Schwahn of sexual harassment</a>. That letter was prompted by a Twitter thread that “One Tree Hill” season seven writer Audrey Wauchope posted Nov. 11.</p>
<p>In the Twitter thread, Wauchope described being subjected to frequent and unwanted touching by a male showrunner she had worked for; seeing him display naked photos of an actress that he was having a sexual relationship with to staffers without the actress’ knowledge; and calling Wauchope’s writing partner into his office to try to talk her out of getting married and into dating him.</p>
<p>Wauchope did not identify Schwahn by name. But as multiple women who worked on “One Tree Hill” began tweeting their support for her — including several actresses such as Burton, Sophia Bush, and Bethany Joy Lenz — it became obvious that the showrunner she had written about was Schwahn.</p>
<p>Wauchope decided to share her experience after reading a <a href="http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/warner-bros-sexual-harassment-andrew-kreisberg-1202612522/" type="external">report by Variety’s Maureen Ryan</a> detailing alleged sexual harassment by “Arrow” and “Flash” showrunner Andrew Kreisberg. She did not expect to attract much attention.</p>
<p>“I never thought that anyone would read that and that it would turn into this,” she told Variety. “I was just trying to explain why these staff jobs can be so toxic if you have a showrunner who is an abuser or a harasser.”</p>
<p>Within a day of her initial Twitter posts, the show’s female cast members began texting each other, formulating a plan for a joint response and show of support. Wauchope and other writers came on board, and the letter was published Nov. 12.</p>
<p>“Many of us were, to varying degrees, manipulated psychologically and emotionally. More than one of us is still in treatment for post-traumatic stress,” the cast and crew wrote in the letter. “Many of us were put in uncomfortable positions and had to swiftly learn to fight back, sometimes physically, because it was made clear to us that the supervisors in the room were not the protectors they were supposed to be. Many of us were spoken to in ways that ran the spectrum from deeply upsetting, to traumatizing, to downright illegal. And a few of us were put in positions where we felt physically unsafe.”</p>
<p>In an interview with Variety the day after the letter was published, Burton described in detail her experience working with Schwahn, who was showrunner on all eight seasons of the series — which aired first on the WB, then the CW. A former MTV veejay, Burton said Schwahn positioned himself as a mentor; pushing her character to the forefront, allowing her to sit in on production meetings, and offering support for her dream of starting a record label. “I realize now that I was being groomed as bait,” she said.</p>
<p>Burton described a pattern of behavior in which Schwahn would allegedly manipulate female cast members by playing them against each other — and that he would often encourage new female actors on the show to develop social relationships with Burton as a way to draw them into his orbit. Actress Danneel Ackles, who joined the series in season three, said that Schwahn encouraged her to develop a friendship with Burton, telling Ackles (née Harris), “Hilarie’s one of the good guys. Hang out with her.”</p>
<p>Burton said that she received multiple late-night phone calls from Schwahn during production of season three in which Schwahn, who was married, tearfully declared his love for Ackles, with whom he claimed to be having a physical relationship. (Ackles told Variety that she never had such a relationship with Schwahn.) Burton said that, on one such phone call, she reprimanded Schwahn and told him that she did not want to be his confidant regarding the alleged affair. The next day, she said, she received flowers with an unsigned note that read “Thank you for being my secret keeper.”</p>
<p>In 2006, Schwahn invited Burton and Ackles to attend an outdoor concert with him and his wife. “I thought, ‘Oh, well, his wife’s coming,” Burton said. “Great. Maybe there’s nothing going on and I’m being paranoid.” But at the show, Burton said, Schwahn, with one arm around his wife, put the hand of his other arm on the small of Burton’s back and slid his hand beneath the waistband of her pants. Burton said that she eventually excused herself to get a drink. Ackles confirmed that she saw Schwahn slide his hand into Burton’s pants.</p>
<p>For season four, Warner Bros. Television held a contest in which high school students nationwide vied to host the production of an episode of “One Tree Hill.” Burton and Schwahn traveled together to Honey Grove, Texas, to announce that the town would serve as a season-four location. The two traveled back to the production’s permanent home in Wilmington, N.C. together — taking a flight from Texas to Raleigh, N.C., then a roughly two-hour limo ride from Raleigh to Wilmington.</p>
<p>It was during the limo ride that Schwahn first allegedly forced himself on Burton.</p>
<p>Schwahn, according to Burton, said that he was about to call CW president Dawn Ostroff and pitch her an idea in which season five would pick up five years after the end of season four. Knowing Burton’s desire to produce, he would allow her to listen in on the call. Burton sat on the opposite side of the limo’s passenger cabin as Schwahn explained the idea to Ostroff. After a few minutes, Schwahn motioned for Burton to sit next to him and listen in, which she did.</p>
<p>“I’m leaning in listening, and when it’s Dawn Ostroff’s turn to talk, he just leans over and starts kissing me,” Burton said. “I push him off, but I can’t say anything, because he’s on the phone fighting for our show to stay on the air. I’m just in this position where I’m thinking, ‘You’ve got to take it, Hil. Just laugh it off. You’ll get to Wilmington in 45 minutes.’”</p>
<p>According to Ackles, Schwahn, after arriving on set that day, approached Ackles and told her that he and Burton had “made out” on the limo ride from Raleigh. Ackles called Burton, who told her about the incident on the phone call with Ostroff.</p>
<p>A few weeks after the trip to Texas, Burton received an invitation from Schwahn to “the kissing club.” A note arrived at Burton’s residence, she said, sealed in a black lipstick kiss, inviting her to meet Schwahn at 9 p.m. at Deluxe, a local restaurant. “He had this grand idea that it was going to be this swingers make-out club where people who are in relationships can make out with no strings attached,” she said. Burton, who was living at the time with a boyfriend who was a crew member on the show, did not go to the meeting.</p>
<p>“There was no way I was going to go,” she said. “So I stood him up, and he was pretty angry about it.”</p>
<p>In February 2007, the bulk of the crew and cast went to Texas to shoot the contest episode. After the episode wrapped, Schwahn arrived late to a party attended by Burton and several cast and crew members at a local bar. That’s when he allegedly forced himself on her for the second time.</p>
<p>“I’m at the bar waiting to get drinks for the hairdresser and me, and he leans over and he kisses me in front of everybody,” she said. “Right on the mouth. It was something I had to get out of. It wasn’t a peck. It wasn’t ‘Hey, sis, how’s your day?’ It was a boyfriend kiss.”</p>
<p>Another actress who worked on the series told Variety that Burton told her about the incidents in the limo and at the party in Texas, neither of which she was present at.</p>
<p>The same actress, who asked not to be named in this story, told Variety that during season one, she approached Schwahn on set with a question about her sides. Schwahn, she said, put his arm around her, ran his hand from her upper back to the small of her back, then pulled her in between his legs. The actress said that she then hit Schwahn in the chest, told him not to touch her that way, and returned to her question.</p>
<p>The same actress said that when she later told Schwahn that he should stop touching the actresses on set, he threatened her job.</p>
<p>In season 4, Schwahn and several members of the cast traveled to Miami for an event that was part of a sponsorship deal between the show and Sunkist. Ackles said that during the trip, Schwahn, after calling her phone more than 10 times, came to her hotel room in the evening and began knocking on the door for several minutes, asking to be let in. Ackles said that she did not answer, but that Schwahn continued to knock and that she eventually exited to the room’s balcony, until he stopped knocking and left.</p>
<p>According to Burton, Schwahn came to her room shortly thereafter. She opened the door and Schwahn entered, she said, and began complaining that Ackles would not open her door for him.</p>
<p>During shooting of the season-four finale, Burton said, Schwahn approached her from behind and began rubbing her shoulders, then her back.</p>
<p>Burton said that she wheeled around and told Schwahn, “You gotta stop. Mark, I’m telling you, as your friend, your wife is going to hear about this shit. You’re going to lose your job. You can’t touch the girls anymore.”</p>
<p>Schwahn, she said, “was furious. I guess other people maybe heard it. I had reprimanded him in front of people. And that’s unforgivable.” Early the next morning, after shooting had wrapped, Schwahn ordered her into his office, and, according to Burton, screamed at her for half an hour. “He went crazy,” she said, adding, “I know exactly what this man’s hands look like, and they are my fucking nightmare. I think of hands when I think of him, because they were relentless.”</p>
<p>Burton — now in a recurring role on another Warner Bros. series, Fox’s “Lethal Weapon” — left “One Tree Hill” after her contract ran out at the end of season six. She said that she turned down a substantial raise from Warner Bros. Television to return for season seven, but did not speak to anyone at Warner Bros. about Schwahn’s alleged inappropriate behavior. “I didn’t want Warner Bros. to view me as a problem, because they had been so supportive” she said. “I wanted to work at Warner Bros. again. I’m working at Warner Bros. now.”</p>
<p>Ackles left the show in season five. On her last day in Wilmington, she said, Schwahn appeared outside her apartment in the early morning as she prepared to fly to Los Angeles to begin shooting the feature “Harold &amp; Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay.” “ <a href="http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/one-tree-hills-cast-chad-michael-murray-creator-mark-schwahn-sexual-harassment-1202615207/" type="external">Mark Schwahn</a> is standing outside my apartment — would not leave, wants to say goodbye, wants one last hug, would not get in his car,” she said. “I could not go outside and get in my car, because he wouldn’t leave.” Schwahn left, she said, after she told him through an intercom that she would call the police if he did not.</p>
<p>Ackles returned to the show for multiple episodes in season seven. She said that she agreed to return in part because the proposed storyline would see her character married to Paul Johansson, an older actor on the series. “He would never do anything like that in front of Paul,” she said.</p>
<p>As showrunner, Schwahn split time between Wilmington and the show’s office in Burbank. Michelle Furtney-Goodman was one of the women who worked in that office. Now head of development for production company Super Delicious, Furtney-Goodman met Schwahn while working as an assistant to WB president Jordan Levin. She became Schwahn’s assistant for season three of “One Tree Hill,” then was promoted to staff writer the following season.</p>
<p>During a writers’ room discussion of the one episode she wrote in season four, she said, Schwahn began rubbing her shoulders. He then moved his fingers into her hair.</p>
<p>“He announced to the room that the back of my head was so flat and that I was the perfect woman, because I could give a guy a blowjob and he could rest his drink on the back of my head,” Furtney-Goodman said. “After that, he proceeded to push my head between my knees and balance a soda can on the back of my head. I remember looking at the carpet and thinking, ‘Oh my god, this is really happening.’”</p>
<p>Furtney-Goodman extricated herself from Schwahn and walked to the front of the room, telling everyone that she needed to look at the white board. She said that she faced the board with her back to the writers “blinking back tears.” She then went to the bathroom, where, she said, “I splashed some water on my face, then went back to work like nothing happened.”</p>
<p>A writer who was present in the room at the time of the incident confirmed Furtney-Goodman’s account. A second writer on the show who was not present in the room at the time said that Furtney-Goodman called her later that day and described the incident to her.</p>
<p>Furtney-Goodman did not report the incident to Warner Bros. “I was scared that if I said anything, I would never work in this town again,” she said.</p>
<p>Wauchope’s writing partner Rachel Specter confirmed that, as Wauchope revealed in her Twitter thread, when Specter asked Schwahn for time off for her wedding, he suggested that she not get married and instead start dating him.</p>
<p>Specter also said that one day in the writers room, Schwahn approached her after she had peeled a strip of gel nail polish off her finger and placed it on the table in front of her. Schwahn, she said, picked the nail-polish strip up and held it in his hand as he spoke about another topic. “I pretended to not notice that he was holding it,” she said. “He continued talking, not missing a beat. Then he opened up his wallet and put it in his wallet behind his license, and put his wallet back in his pocket.”</p>
<p>Another female writer on the show who spoke with Variety, but asked not to be named, said that she was subjected to frequent unwanted and inappropriate touching by Schwahn of her back, hair, and shoulders, and observed him behave in the same way toward other women.</p>
<p>One former male “One Tree Hill” writer, James Stoteraux, told Variety via email that Schwahn gave him as a Christmas present a T-shirt with the words “I’m not a gynecologist, but I’ll take a look” printed on it, and that Schwahn became annoyed when Stoteraux refused to wear it. Stoteraux, who worked on seasons two and three, called the “One Tree Hill” office “a toxic, demoralizing workplace.” When he left the show after season three, he wrote, “I was relieved to be out of there.”</p>
<p>Burton said her experience with Schwahn has had a negative impact on her career. Since leaving “One Tree Hill,” she has refused to audition and refused to work for showrunners she does not already know. She was dropped by her agent after she refused to allow herself to be considered for series-regular roles during pilot season, hesitant to be locked into a longterm contract with a showrunner she didn’t know. (After a period of working with only a manager, she is now represented by APA.)</p>
<p>“The fear of being forced into another one of these situations was crippling,” she said. “I never wanted to be the lead female on any show ever, ever, ever again.”</p>
<p>Representatives for Warner Bros. Television did not respond to requests for comment.</p>
<p>Burton said that she hopes through speaking out, she can affect change in union practices. She said that only once in her nearly two-decade career has she seen a set representative for SAG-AFTRA or its predecessor, Screen Actors Guild. That came while shooting “White Collar” in New York.</p>
<p>“When you’re out on location you can isolate people, and it’s way easier to manipulate people when they’re isolated,” she said. “It would be so important, especially for these location-based shows, where you are away from your agents and your managers and your parents when you’re as young as we were, that you have someone that checks in and just asks basic questions.” Burton suggested that SAG-AFTRA reps should make visits to sets outside of New York and Los Angeles at least every other month.</p>
<p>A SAG-AFTRA representative did not respond to a request for comment.</p>
<p>Schwahn was suspended Wednesday from his new show, E! drama “The Royals,” which he created and served as showrunner on for four seasons. Representatives for E! and “The Royals” producers Universal Cable Productions and Lionsgate Television declined to comment for this story. In a statement Wednesday, E!, UCP, and Lionsgate said that they “take sexual harassment allegations very seriously, investigate them thoroughly and independently, and take appropriate action.”</p>
<p>Hours after Schwahn’s suspension, “The Royals” star Alexandra Park posted a statement on Twitter expressing support for the women who worked on “One Tree Hill.”</p>
<p>“I have a responsibility as someone who was working under Mark Schwahn on ‘The Royals’ to acknowledge these claims,” Park wrote on Twitter. “I am devastated to admit to myself, to my colleagues, and to this industry that I too, have been exposed to this reprehensible behavior.” Her co-star Elizabeth Hurley later posted a statement saying that she “had absolutely no idea” that Park “was feeling frightened and sexually intimidated by Mark.”</p>
<p>On Thursday, Park and Hurley’s colleagues — 25 women who work on the show, actresses and crew members — issued a letter saying, “Despite hearing rumours about his behaviour on ‘One Tree Hill,’ those of us involved from the early stages went into the filming of the pilot hoping they were just that – rumours. By the time we wrapped this had irrevocably proven not to be the case. It became all too apparent reading their statement earlier this week that the betrayal and anger so many of us had experienced during our time on ‘The Royals’ is not exclusively ours. And we were angry then, and we are angry now.”</p> | false | 1 | six seasons hilarie burton played peyton sawyer female lead one tree hill warner bros teen drama created mark schwahn first two seasons burton said struggled schwahns efforts gratuitously sexualize character fights earned reputation difficult shows second season according burton inappropriate behavior schwahn costars dismissed social awkwardness grew intense things took turn season three burton said thats mark decided muse speaking variety burton recalled years harassment assault alleges schwahn perpetrated women show claimed schwahn twice forced kissing mouth without warning said schwahn touched inappropriately presence wife described culture one tree hill schwahn pitted women verbally abusive spread false rumors physical relationships claimed female cast members alone former writer show michelle furtneygoodman recalled variety incident schwahn front shows writing staff forced head knees balanced soda joked performing oral sex another female actor speaking anonymously described pushing schwahn away grabbed suddenly pulled thighs alleged incident occurred set front crew representative schwahn declined comment record story schwahn suspended wednesday current job showrunner e drama royals also created suspension came two days burton 17 women sent signed letter variety accusing schwahn sexual harassment letter prompted twitter thread one tree hill season seven writer audrey wauchope posted nov 11 twitter thread wauchope described subjected frequent unwanted touching male showrunner worked seeing display naked photos actress sexual relationship staffers without actress knowledge calling wauchopes writing partner office try talk getting married dating wauchope identify schwahn name multiple women worked one tree hill began tweeting support including several actresses burton sophia bush bethany joy lenz became obvious showrunner written schwahn wauchope decided share experience reading report varietys maureen ryan detailing alleged sexual harassment arrow flash showrunner andrew kreisberg expect attract much attention never thought anyone would read would turn told variety trying explain staff jobs toxic showrunner abuser harasser within day initial twitter posts shows female cast members began texting formulating plan joint response show support wauchope writers came board letter published nov 12 many us varying degrees manipulated psychologically emotionally one us still treatment posttraumatic stress cast crew wrote letter many us put uncomfortable positions swiftly learn fight back sometimes physically made clear us supervisors room protectors supposed many us spoken ways ran spectrum deeply upsetting traumatizing downright illegal us put positions felt physically unsafe interview variety day letter published burton described detail experience working schwahn showrunner eight seasons series aired first wb cw former mtv veejay burton said schwahn positioned mentor pushing character forefront allowing sit production meetings offering support dream starting record label realize groomed bait said burton described pattern behavior schwahn would allegedly manipulate female cast members playing would often encourage new female actors show develop social relationships burton way draw orbit actress danneel ackles joined series season three said schwahn encouraged develop friendship burton telling ackles née harris hilaries one good guys hang burton said received multiple latenight phone calls schwahn production season three schwahn married tearfully declared love ackles claimed physical relationship ackles told variety never relationship schwahn burton said one phone call reprimanded schwahn told want confidant regarding alleged affair next day said received flowers unsigned note read thank secret keeper 2006 schwahn invited burton ackles attend outdoor concert wife thought oh well wifes coming burton said great maybe theres nothing going im paranoid show burton said schwahn one arm around wife put hand arm small burtons back slid hand beneath waistband pants burton said eventually excused get drink ackles confirmed saw schwahn slide hand burtons pants season four warner bros television held contest high school students nationwide vied host production episode one tree hill burton schwahn traveled together honey grove texas announce town would serve seasonfour location two traveled back productions permanent home wilmington nc together taking flight texas raleigh nc roughly twohour limo ride raleigh wilmington limo ride schwahn first allegedly forced burton schwahn according burton said call cw president dawn ostroff pitch idea season five would pick five years end season four knowing burtons desire produce would allow listen call burton sat opposite side limos passenger cabin schwahn explained idea ostroff minutes schwahn motioned burton sit next listen im leaning listening dawn ostroffs turn talk leans starts kissing burton said push cant say anything hes phone fighting show stay air im position im thinking youve got take hil laugh youll get wilmington 45 minutes according ackles schwahn arriving set day approached ackles told burton made limo ride raleigh ackles called burton told incident phone call ostroff weeks trip texas burton received invitation schwahn kissing club note arrived burtons residence said sealed black lipstick kiss inviting meet schwahn 9 pm deluxe local restaurant grand idea going swingers makeout club people relationships make strings attached said burton living time boyfriend crew member show go meeting way going go said stood pretty angry february 2007 bulk crew cast went texas shoot contest episode episode wrapped schwahn arrived late party attended burton several cast crew members local bar thats allegedly forced second time im bar waiting get drinks hairdresser leans kisses front everybody said right mouth something get wasnt peck wasnt hey sis hows day boyfriend kiss another actress worked series told variety burton told incidents limo party texas neither present actress asked named story told variety season one approached schwahn set question sides schwahn said put arm around ran hand upper back small back pulled legs actress said hit schwahn chest told touch way returned question actress said later told schwahn stop touching actresses set threatened job season 4 schwahn several members cast traveled miami event part sponsorship deal show sunkist ackles said trip schwahn calling phone 10 times came hotel room evening began knocking door several minutes asking let ackles said answer schwahn continued knock eventually exited rooms balcony stopped knocking left according burton schwahn came room shortly thereafter opened door schwahn entered said began complaining ackles would open door shooting seasonfour finale burton said schwahn approached behind began rubbing shoulders back burton said wheeled around told schwahn got ta stop mark im telling friend wife going hear shit youre going lose job cant touch girls anymore schwahn said furious guess people maybe heard reprimanded front people thats unforgivable early next morning shooting wrapped schwahn ordered office according burton screamed half hour went crazy said adding know exactly mans hands look like fucking nightmare think hands think relentless burton recurring role another warner bros series foxs lethal weapon left one tree hill contract ran end season six said turned substantial raise warner bros television return season seven speak anyone warner bros schwahns alleged inappropriate behavior didnt want warner bros view problem supportive said wanted work warner bros im working warner bros ackles left show season five last day wilmington said schwahn appeared outside apartment early morning prepared fly los angeles begin shooting feature harold amp kumar escape guantanamo bay mark schwahn standing outside apartment would leave wants say goodbye wants one last hug would get car said could go outside get car wouldnt leave schwahn left said told intercom would call police ackles returned show multiple episodes season seven said agreed return part proposed storyline would see character married paul johansson older actor series would never anything like front paul said showrunner schwahn split time wilmington shows office burbank michelle furtneygoodman one women worked office head development production company super delicious furtneygoodman met schwahn working assistant wb president jordan levin became schwahns assistant season three one tree hill promoted staff writer following season writers room discussion one episode wrote season four said schwahn began rubbing shoulders moved fingers hair announced room back head flat perfect woman could give guy blowjob could rest drink back head furtneygoodman said proceeded push head knees balance soda back head remember looking carpet thinking oh god really happening furtneygoodman extricated schwahn walked front room telling everyone needed look white board said faced board back writers blinking back tears went bathroom said splashed water face went back work like nothing happened writer present room time incident confirmed furtneygoodmans account second writer show present room time said furtneygoodman called later day described incident furtneygoodman report incident warner bros scared said anything would never work town said wauchopes writing partner rachel specter confirmed wauchope revealed twitter thread specter asked schwahn time wedding suggested get married instead start dating specter also said one day writers room schwahn approached peeled strip gel nail polish finger placed table front schwahn said picked nailpolish strip held hand spoke another topic pretended notice holding said continued talking missing beat opened wallet put wallet behind license put wallet back pocket another female writer show spoke variety asked named said subjected frequent unwanted inappropriate touching schwahn back hair shoulders observed behave way toward women one former male one tree hill writer james stoteraux told variety via email schwahn gave christmas present tshirt words im gynecologist ill take look printed schwahn became annoyed stoteraux refused wear stoteraux worked seasons two three called one tree hill office toxic demoralizing workplace left show season three wrote relieved burton said experience schwahn negative impact career since leaving one tree hill refused audition refused work showrunners already know dropped agent refused allow considered seriesregular roles pilot season hesitant locked longterm contract showrunner didnt know period working manager represented apa fear forced another one situations crippling said never wanted lead female show ever ever ever representatives warner bros television respond requests comment burton said hopes speaking affect change union practices said nearly twodecade career seen set representative sagaftra predecessor screen actors guild came shooting white collar new york youre location isolate people way easier manipulate people theyre isolated said would important especially locationbased shows away agents managers parents youre young someone checks asks basic questions burton suggested sagaftra reps make visits sets outside new york los angeles least every month sagaftra representative respond request comment schwahn suspended wednesday new show e drama royals created served showrunner four seasons representatives e royals producers universal cable productions lionsgate television declined comment story statement wednesday e ucp lionsgate said take sexual harassment allegations seriously investigate thoroughly independently take appropriate action hours schwahns suspension royals star alexandra park posted statement twitter expressing support women worked one tree hill responsibility someone working mark schwahn royals acknowledge claims park wrote twitter devastated admit colleagues industry exposed reprehensible behavior costar elizabeth hurley later posted statement saying absolutely idea park feeling frightened sexually intimidated mark thursday park hurleys colleagues 25 women work show actresses crew members issued letter saying despite hearing rumours behaviour one tree hill us involved early stages went filming pilot hoping rumours time wrapped irrevocably proven case became apparent reading statement earlier week betrayal anger many us experienced time royals exclusively angry angry | 1,757 |
<p>The Obama administration has issued a sweeping new policy on transgender students, directing every public school in the country, including most public universities and colleges, to open bathrooms and locker rooms to transgender persons. The policy states that, “[w]hen a school provides sex-segregated activities and facilities, transgender students must be allowed to participate in such activities and access such facilities consistent with their gender identity.”</p>
<p>What triggers the student’s right to transgender access? The student’s say-so is good enough. The letter states that the student’s claim to a new gender identity is itself sufficient proof of transgender status. “Under Title IX, there is no medical diagnosis or treatment requirement that students must meet as a prerequisite to being treated consistent with their gender identity.”</p>
<p>Characterized as “significant guidance,” but not as an additional legal requirement, the directive nevertheless carries an implied warning: schools that don’t comply will risk lawsuits or the loss of federal funds.</p>
<p>The Obama administration insists the new policy must be enforced over the objections of the school community. Existing state laws and local policies protecting bathroom and locker room privacy must give way to transgender “equal access” claims even if “other students, parents or community members raise objections or concerns” or express “discomfort.”</p>
<p>This is gender ideology at work. And schools are ground zero for the promotion of gender ideology. Pope Francis warns that gender ideology is fast unraveling our cultural belief in the most basic fact of human existence — our creation by God as male or female. It’s no surprise that many young people are losing their belief in the reality of God at the same time they’re losing their grip on the reality of the human person.</p>
<p>Today, most Catholic children attend public schools, so a Catholic response should directly address the experiences of these children and their families. The government’s transgender policy follows decades long efforts by LGBT activists to promote gender ideology under the banner of creating “welcoming schools.’‘ Public education effectively evangelizes children to conform to, if not embrace, gender ideology; new norms shape our children’s beliefs and expectations about identity, sexuality and family; schools propose new heroes (the “brave transgender student”) and validate politicized gender “science.” Curricular and extracurricular programs teach “gender-fluidity” (detached from biology) and encourage students to “explore their identities” and gender.</p>
<p>A teacher-training program at the University of Colorado Boulder, for example, instructs teachers that, “[d]isrupting heteronormativity is good for all kids. … Our job as educators is not to ‘figure out’ what gender box to put that kid in, but to create a safe space for that student to explore their gender.” Thousands of teachers (including preschool teachers) have participated in the training over the past two years.</p>
<p>Catholic children absorb gender ideology from the surrounding culture, including their schools. As they realize their religious beliefs are unpopular, they may reject Catholic beliefs or keep their heads down and their mouths shut, fearing embarrassment and hostility.</p>
<p>Forced conformity on a daily basis takes its toll, however, reducing confidence and creating confusion. It wears away at even the most strongly held beliefs — including the belief in God as our creator, who made us male and female.</p>
<p>Polls show that in two short years, American support for bathroom choices based on gender identity (versus birth sex) has gone from roughly 25 percent to 43 percent. Young people prove most vulnerable to gender ideology: they overwhelmingly (62 percent) support gender identity rather than birth sex as the relevant criteria for transgender bathroom privileges.</p>
<p>The majority (54 percent) of young adults ages 18-29 — the future parents of America — now say that parents should let children choose their genders, regardless of their sex at birth. In other words, most young people don’t know, or don’t believe in, the fundamental truth, as Pope Francis wrote, that “biological sex and the socio-cultural role of sex (gender) can be distinguished but not separated” (Amoris Laetitia, No. 56).</p>
<p>Chances are, gender ideology has not topped the agenda at your parish council, parent-teacher meetings or teacher in-service days. So it’s worth asking: Are parish clergy and teachers knowledgeable about gender ideology? About Christian anthropology? Can they clearly distinguish gender ideology and Christian anthropology? Would they be comfortable addressing these topics with individuals and groups? Can they make the case to young people that the Church’s teachings on the person, the body and human sexuality are true, grounded in reality and lead to happiness?</p>
<p>How and when does your Catholic school, religious education or faith formation program present Church’s teachings on the human person? Who hears that teaching? (The proverbial choir?) Is the Christian understanding of the person woven throughout the curriculum or confined to a standalone lesson on sexuality? Do your men’s and women’s programs, your senior and young adult programs, address these issues?</p>
<p>Does every child in your parish have the opportunity for a Catholic education? Is it affordable? (Almost half of U.S. Catholics under the age of 30 are Hispanic, a population more likely to attend public schools, where gender ideology predominates.) Does your parish support the Catholic families who seek to shield their kids from daily gender indoctrination in public schools and need alternatives (Catholic schools, homeschooling or online schools)?</p>
<p>Gender mainstreaming dictates the inclusion of LGBT vocabulary, people, history and themes across the public school curriculum. Does your parish school use public school curricular materials? If so, have those materials been reviewed and problems flagged?</p>
<p>Do teachers and parents affiliated with the religious education program understand how gender ideology is mainstreamed in local public schools? Can they spot situations that might confuse vulnerable children? Do they know how to respond? Religious education programs may be “flying blind” reacting to anecdotes and individual parent complaints with little feel for school environments.</p>
<p>How effective is your parish at encouraging religious education participation? Is your youth group vibrant? Are parents with kids in religious education or youth groups invited to join parish social or formation events? In other words, is your parish a home for young people and their families during these crucial years?</p>
<p>Even ideologues can’t change reality. The Church — an expert in humanity — must continue to affirm the truth in a clear and confident voice, exposing the harms of gender ideology and reproposing the truth about the person.</p>
<p>We have an advantage: Catholicism’s clear logic, hopeful perspective and inspiring account of what it means to be human stand in stark contrast to the confusion and dysfunction following from gender ideology. In the end, the truth resonates deeply within every human being, but we must be willing — and courageous enough — to propose it.</p>
<p>Theresa Farnan, PhD, is an adjunct professor at Franciscan University in Ohio. Mary Rice Hasson is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C.</p> | false | 1 | obama administration issued sweeping new policy transgender students directing every public school country including public universities colleges open bathrooms locker rooms transgender persons policy states school provides sexsegregated activities facilities transgender students must allowed participate activities access facilities consistent gender identity triggers students right transgender access students sayso good enough letter states students claim new gender identity sufficient proof transgender status title ix medical diagnosis treatment requirement students must meet prerequisite treated consistent gender identity characterized significant guidance additional legal requirement directive nevertheless carries implied warning schools dont comply risk lawsuits loss federal funds obama administration insists new policy must enforced objections school community existing state laws local policies protecting bathroom locker room privacy must give way transgender equal access claims even students parents community members raise objections concerns express discomfort gender ideology work schools ground zero promotion gender ideology pope francis warns gender ideology fast unraveling cultural belief basic fact human existence creation god male female surprise many young people losing belief reality god time theyre losing grip reality human person today catholic children attend public schools catholic response directly address experiences children families governments transgender policy follows decades long efforts lgbt activists promote gender ideology banner creating welcoming schools public education effectively evangelizes children conform embrace gender ideology new norms shape childrens beliefs expectations identity sexuality family schools propose new heroes brave transgender student validate politicized gender science curricular extracurricular programs teach genderfluidity detached biology encourage students explore identities gender teachertraining program university colorado boulder example instructs teachers disrupting heteronormativity good kids job educators figure gender box put kid create safe space student explore gender thousands teachers including preschool teachers participated training past two years catholic children absorb gender ideology surrounding culture including schools realize religious beliefs unpopular may reject catholic beliefs keep heads mouths shut fearing embarrassment hostility forced conformity daily basis takes toll however reducing confidence creating confusion wears away even strongly held beliefs including belief god creator made us male female polls show two short years american support bathroom choices based gender identity versus birth sex gone roughly 25 percent 43 percent young people prove vulnerable gender ideology overwhelmingly 62 percent support gender identity rather birth sex relevant criteria transgender bathroom privileges majority 54 percent young adults ages 1829 future parents america say parents let children choose genders regardless sex birth words young people dont know dont believe fundamental truth pope francis wrote biological sex sociocultural role sex gender distinguished separated amoris laetitia 56 chances gender ideology topped agenda parish council parentteacher meetings teacher inservice days worth asking parish clergy teachers knowledgeable gender ideology christian anthropology clearly distinguish gender ideology christian anthropology would comfortable addressing topics individuals groups make case young people churchs teachings person body human sexuality true grounded reality lead happiness catholic school religious education faith formation program present churchs teachings human person hears teaching proverbial choir christian understanding person woven throughout curriculum confined standalone lesson sexuality mens womens programs senior young adult programs address issues every child parish opportunity catholic education affordable almost half us catholics age 30 hispanic population likely attend public schools gender ideology predominates parish support catholic families seek shield kids daily gender indoctrination public schools need alternatives catholic schools homeschooling online schools gender mainstreaming dictates inclusion lgbt vocabulary people history themes across public school curriculum parish school use public school curricular materials materials reviewed problems flagged teachers parents affiliated religious education program understand gender ideology mainstreamed local public schools spot situations might confuse vulnerable children know respond religious education programs may flying blind reacting anecdotes individual parent complaints little feel school environments effective parish encouraging religious education participation youth group vibrant parents kids religious education youth groups invited join parish social formation events words parish home young people families crucial years even ideologues cant change reality church expert humanity must continue affirm truth clear confident voice exposing harms gender ideology reproposing truth person advantage catholicisms clear logic hopeful perspective inspiring account means human stand stark contrast confusion dysfunction following gender ideology end truth resonates deeply within every human must willing courageous enough propose theresa farnan phd adjunct professor franciscan university ohio mary rice hasson fellow ethics public policy center washington dc | 693 |
<p>Hurricane Harvey’s second act across southern Texas is turning into an economic catastrophe — with damages likely to stretch into tens of billions of dollars and an unusually large share of victims lacking adequate insurance, according to early estimates.</p>
<p>Harvey’s cost could mount to $24 billion when including the impact of relentless flooding on the labor force, power grid, transportation and other elements that support the region’s energy sector, Chuck Watson, a disaster modeler with Enki Research, said by phone on Sunday. That would place it among the top eight hurricanes to ever strike the U.S.</p>
<p>Click <a href="http://www.newsmax.com/hottopics/topic/Hurricane-Harvey/367/" type="external">here</a> for more on Hurricane Harvey</p>
<p>“A historic event is currently unfolding in Texas,” Aon Plc wrote in an alert to clients. “It will take weeks until the full scope and magnitude of the damage is realized,” and already it’s clear that “an abnormally high portion of economic damage caused by flooding will not be covered,” the insurance broker said.</p>
<p>Many forecasters were hesitant over the weekend to make preliminary estimates for how much insurers might pay, potentially speeding recovery. Researchers were shifting from examining Harvey’s landfall Friday as a roof-lifting category 4 hurricane to the havoc it later created inland as a tropical storm. Typical insurance policies cover wind but not flooding, which often proves costlier. Blaming one or the other takes time.</p>
<p>Read more on the storm, click <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-27/flooding-replaces-high-wind-as-harvey-threat-to-texas-gulf-coast" type="external">HERE</a>: Flooding replaces high wind as Harvey slams coast</p>
<p>In the Houston area, rainfall already has surpassed that of tropical storm Allison in 2001, which wreaked roughly $12 billion of damage in current dollars. In that case, only about $5 billion was covered by insurance, according to Aon.</p>
<p>Those storms are dwarfed by Hurricane Katrina, which struck in 2005 and devastated New Orleans. By some estimates, it inflicted $160 billion in total economic damage.</p>
<p />
<p>Most people with flood insurance buy policies backed by the federal government’s National Flood Insurance Program. As of April, less than one-sixth of homes in Houston’s Harris County had federal coverage, according to Aon. That would leave more than 1 million homes unprotected in the county. Coverage rates are similar in neighboring areas. Many cars also will be totaled.</p>
<p>“A lot of these people are going to be in very serious financial situations,” said Loretta Worters, a spokeswoman for the Insurance Information Institute. “Most people who are living in these areas do not have flood insurance. They may be able to collect some grants from the government, but there are not a lot, usually they’re very limited. There are no-interest to low-interest loans, but you have to pay them back.”</p>
<p>The federal program itself is already struggling with $25 billion of debt. The existing program is set to expire on Sept. 30 and is up for review in Congress, which ends its recess Sept. 5.&#160;</p>
<p>Investors Brace</p>
<p>Costs still will likely soar for insurance companies and their reinsurers, biting into earnings. As Harvey bore down on the coastline Friday, William Blair &amp; Co., a securities firm that tracks the industry, said the storm could theoretically inflict $25 billion of insured losses if it landed as a “large category 3 hurricane.”</p>
<p>Policyholder-owned State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co. has the largest share in the market for home coverage in Texas, followed by Allstate Corp., which is publicly traded. William Blair estimated that, in that scenario, Allstate could incur $500 million of pretax catastrophe losses, shaving 89 cents off of earnings per share.</p>
<p>Investors began bracing for losses last week. But many didn’t believe that Harvey could wipe out bonds that were issued to protect insurers against storm damage in the region, according to Brett Houghton, a managing principal at Fermat Capital Management. His firm manages more than $5 billion, with allocations to catastrophe bonds.</p>
<p>The Swiss Re Cat Bond Price Return Index dropped 0.44 percent in the week ended Aug. 25, the steepest decline since January. The benchmark is recalculated every Friday, so it’s unclear how the debt performed as the storm continued through Sunday. Reinsurers, which provide a backstop for primary carriers, also may get burned. That group include Bermuda-based companies Arch Capital Group Ltd., Axis Capital Holdings Ltd. and RenaissanceRe Holdings Ltd., according to a note last week from Meyer Shields, an analyst at&#160;Keefe, Bruyette &amp; Woods.</p>
<p>Interrupting Business</p>
<p>Businesses are probably better covered than individuals. Companies across the retailing, manufacturing, health-care and hospitality industries will be seeking reimbursements from insurers for lost revenue during the storm and subsequent repairs, said Aon’s Jill Dalton, who helps manage claims.</p>
<p>But for Texas’s massive energy industry, it’s still too early to project how badly the storm will disrupt supply and distribution. That’s because the devastation keeps spreading.</p>
<p>“If it continues to rain, I just don’t think the situation is going to get better any time soon,” said Rick Miller, who leads Aon’s U.S. property practice. “In fact, it could get a lot worse.”&#160;</p> | false | 1 | hurricane harveys second act across southern texas turning economic catastrophe damages likely stretch tens billions dollars unusually large share victims lacking adequate insurance according early estimates harveys cost could mount 24 billion including impact relentless flooding labor force power grid transportation elements support regions energy sector chuck watson disaster modeler enki research said phone sunday would place among top eight hurricanes ever strike us click hurricane harvey historic event currently unfolding texas aon plc wrote alert clients take weeks full scope magnitude damage realized already clear abnormally high portion economic damage caused flooding covered insurance broker said many forecasters hesitant weekend make preliminary estimates much insurers might pay potentially speeding recovery researchers shifting examining harveys landfall friday rooflifting category 4 hurricane havoc later created inland tropical storm typical insurance policies cover wind flooding often proves costlier blaming one takes time read storm click flooding replaces high wind harvey slams coast houston area rainfall already surpassed tropical storm allison 2001 wreaked roughly 12 billion damage current dollars case 5 billion covered insurance according aon storms dwarfed hurricane katrina struck 2005 devastated new orleans estimates inflicted 160 billion total economic damage people flood insurance buy policies backed federal governments national flood insurance program april less onesixth homes houstons harris county federal coverage according aon would leave 1 million homes unprotected county coverage rates similar neighboring areas many cars also totaled lot people going serious financial situations said loretta worters spokeswoman insurance information institute people living areas flood insurance may able collect grants government lot usually theyre limited nointerest lowinterest loans pay back federal program already struggling 25 billion debt existing program set expire sept 30 review congress ends recess sept 5160 investors brace costs still likely soar insurance companies reinsurers biting earnings harvey bore coastline friday william blair amp co securities firm tracks industry said storm could theoretically inflict 25 billion insured losses landed large category 3 hurricane policyholderowned state farm mutual automobile insurance co largest share market home coverage texas followed allstate corp publicly traded william blair estimated scenario allstate could incur 500 million pretax catastrophe losses shaving 89 cents earnings per share investors began bracing losses last week many didnt believe harvey could wipe bonds issued protect insurers storm damage region according brett houghton managing principal fermat capital management firm manages 5 billion allocations catastrophe bonds swiss cat bond price return index dropped 044 percent week ended aug 25 steepest decline since january benchmark recalculated every friday unclear debt performed storm continued sunday reinsurers provide backstop primary carriers also may get burned group include bermudabased companies arch capital group ltd axis capital holdings ltd renaissancere holdings ltd according note last week meyer shields analyst at160keefe bruyette amp woods interrupting business businesses probably better covered individuals companies across retailing manufacturing healthcare hospitality industries seeking reimbursements insurers lost revenue storm subsequent repairs said aons jill dalton helps manage claims texass massive energy industry still early project badly storm disrupt supply distribution thats devastation keeps spreading continues rain dont think situation going get better time soon said rick miller leads aons us property practice fact could get lot worse160 | 516 |
<p>Nowhere is the significance of Shakespeare to ­America, and of America to Shakespeare’s legacy, more vivid than in the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. Opened in 1932, just down the street from the Capitol and across from the&#160;Library of Congress, the library is the heroic product of Henry Folger, a top Standard Oil executive who became a nonpareil collector of ­Shakespeareana, and his wife, Emily, who was as devoted to the Bard as to her husband. Their story is told in&#160;The Millionaire and the Bard by Andrea Mays.</p>
<p>Mays is the biographer for whom Folger has been waiting nearly a posthumous century. She was inspired by her own reading in Folger’s exceedingly well-supplied library, which she ransacked from end to end, opening “box after box of documents, artifacts, engravings, and books.” Every Shakespeare scholar in the world knows the library, but surprisingly little is known of the man who built it. This ignorance struck Mays as a grave injustice, so she set out to tell the story of Henry Folger. He was an all-American world-beater in his chosen field and dedicated himself to making a fortune sufficient to satisfy a craving no one can really explain. He then amassed a literary trove whose richness thrilled him every day of his life and enabled him to erect a monument worthy of one of history’s greatest writers.</p>
<p>His was “a hoarder’s impulse,” Mays writes, “in search of a grand obsession.” But unlike many American stories of vast fortunes and obsessive consumption, Folger’s impulse to acquire ends ­happily—and gives us a treasure of texts that might otherwise have been lost.</p>
<p>For Shakespeare’s guiding spirit was essentially entrepreneurial, and the preservation of his plays was not a priority. Mays writes that he “never authorized the publication of any of his plays for two reasons. First, it simply was not the custom. Dramas were meant to be seen, not read. Shakespeare and his fellow playwrights thought of themselves as entertainers, not literary paragons. They did not write for all time, but for their own.”</p>
<p>Moreover, Shakespeare could not have preserved his plays in print even had he wanted to: “playwrights,&#160;Shakespeare included, did not own the rights to their plays. The idea of intellectual property was in its infancy in early modern England. For a fee of two to five pounds, a play’s author sold all commercial rights to the theater company that would produce it.” Although, as Mays points out, ­Shakespeare had a hand in several of the ­moneymaking aspects of theater life, he was not entitled to publish his own work.</p>
<p>Where modern bibliophilia has “fetishized an author’s original manuscripts,” in Shakespeare’s time the so-called foul papers were worth literally no more than the paper they were written on. Paper was hard to come by, and an autographed version of a timeless play might be recycled for just about any purpose. “Centuries ago, the pages of a disbound copy of the First Folio were once used in Spain to wrap fish,” Mays notes. Today, collectors fantasize about the marvels that could be concealed where no one has ever thought to look. “A single page written in Shakespeare’s hand might now fetch several million dollars,” she writes.</p>
<p>But Henry Folger did not dream of ­unearthing such a rarity; he went after the prizes he knew were available, and he was unrelenting in his pursuit, especially of copies of the First Folio of 1623. This was the first edition of Shakespeare’s collected plays, comprising 36 works, all the extant plays but Pericles. Previously, his plays had been printed just one play per volume, not made for looks, nor made to last. The folio, on the other hand, was an exemplar of publishing elegance and durability.</p>
<p>The First Folio was the brainchild of two shareholders in the leading actors’ troupe of the day, who had known the rarest vocational intimacy with Shakespeare, having acted in his plays under his instruction. These men cherished the memory of their colleague, who had died in 1616 at the age of 52, and they were determined to make his name triumph over the ravages of time. Their monumental task involved tracking down the several available versions of each play, from whatever odds and ends they could find of the original manuscripts. These odds and ends often presented an unintelligible thicket, and were justly called the foul papers. The scribe’s more readable handiwork, known as the fair copy, was often covered with a director’s chicken scratches. The actors’ copies contained full lines only for each particular character, to prevent opportunists from selling the entire script to another company. Most of these sources for the First Folio have disappeared.</p>
<p>Folger acquired 82 copies of the First Folio, each singular in some respect. He scooped up 1,400 copies of the Bard’s collected works in 9,700 volumes. On both fronts the ­Folger Library outpaced every other library in the world. Folger took a particular pleasure in acquiring volumes that had been owned by literary and political eminences like Samuel Johnson, David Garrick, King George III, Queen Victoria, John Dryden, Sir Walter Scott, Percy Shelley, Samuel Coleridge, Walt Whitman, Edwin Booth, George Washington, John Adams, and Abraham Lincoln. He prided himself in his comprehensive knowledge of Shakespeareana. He once decided not to go through with the purchase of a volume supposedly owned by Lincoln, because when he perused the pages of Macbeth, the play that Lincoln is known to have returned to again and again, they were evidently untouched.</p>
<p>Francis Bacon earned a niche all his own, though Folger did not share the renegade belief that Bacon was the real Shakespeare. Books known to have been sources for Shakespeare were also collected. No fewer than 5,000 volumes were seized upon for their allusions to Shakespeare or his work. Prompt books owned by celebrated actors and some 250,000 playbills filled the vaults. A gifted amateur singer and organist, Folger ­gathered 1,000 volumes on Shakespeare and music, and he even extended the collection to period musical instruments.</p>
<p>The money to underwrite this vast project came from Henry Folger’s work as John Rockefeller’s right-hand man. He worked demonically hard to learn arcana of paraffin wax, kerosene refining, and petroleum greases, and rose impressively fast. After Standard Oil was cut up into pieces, Henry Folger became president of the Standard Oil Company of New York in 1911, owning shares worth some $400 million in current dollars. Erasmus said, “When I have some money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I buy food.” Henry Folger had money for books and food alike. When he retired in 1928 he devoted himself to creating a library worthy to display them.</p>
<p>“A man like Henry Folger was more than a serious collector. He lived through his collection,” Mays writes. He dickered and haggled and sized up the vulnerabilities of potential sellers as a general in the field takes the measure of the enemy. Deploying his shrewdest business wiles, he ­gathered up a treasure meant to outlast him ­forever, his true life’s work.</p>
<p>Joseph Adams, the first director of research at the Folger Shakespeare Library, spoke at its opening in 1932. In the “city of monuments” that Washington, D.C., had become, he said, three stood out “in size, dignity and beauty, conspicuous above the rest: the memorials to Washington, Lincoln, and Shakespeare.”&#160; These men are “the three great personal forces that have molded the political, the spiritual, and the intellectual life of our nation.”</p>
<p>Henry Folger did not live to see this opening. But his legacy, the Folger Shakespeare Library, continues to stand, a haven for those who appreciate human excellence. One hopes that the names of Henry and Emily Folger will be remembered along with that of William Shakespeare.</p>
<p>Algis Valiunas is a literary journalist and a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.</p> | false | 1 | nowhere significance shakespeare america america shakespeares legacy vivid folger shakespeare library washington dc opened 1932 street capitol across the160library congress library heroic product henry folger top standard oil executive became nonpareil collector shakespeareana wife emily devoted bard husband story told in160the millionaire bard andrea mays mays biographer folger waiting nearly posthumous century inspired reading folgers exceedingly wellsupplied library ransacked end end opening box box documents artifacts engravings books every shakespeare scholar world knows library surprisingly little known man built ignorance struck mays grave injustice set tell story henry folger allamerican worldbeater chosen field dedicated making fortune sufficient satisfy craving one really explain amassed literary trove whose richness thrilled every day life enabled erect monument worthy one historys greatest writers hoarders impulse mays writes search grand obsession unlike many american stories vast fortunes obsessive consumption folgers impulse acquire ends happilyand gives us treasure texts might otherwise lost shakespeares guiding spirit essentially entrepreneurial preservation plays priority mays writes never authorized publication plays two reasons first simply custom dramas meant seen read shakespeare fellow playwrights thought entertainers literary paragons write time moreover shakespeare could preserved plays print even wanted playwrights160shakespeare included rights plays idea intellectual property infancy early modern england fee two five pounds plays author sold commercial rights theater company would produce although mays points shakespeare hand several moneymaking aspects theater life entitled publish work modern bibliophilia fetishized authors original manuscripts shakespeares time socalled foul papers worth literally paper written paper hard come autographed version timeless play might recycled purpose centuries ago pages disbound copy first folio used spain wrap fish mays notes today collectors fantasize marvels could concealed one ever thought look single page written shakespeares hand might fetch several million dollars writes henry folger dream unearthing rarity went prizes knew available unrelenting pursuit especially copies first folio 1623 first edition shakespeares collected plays comprising 36 works extant plays pericles previously plays printed one play per volume made looks made last folio hand exemplar publishing elegance durability first folio brainchild two shareholders leading actors troupe day known rarest vocational intimacy shakespeare acted plays instruction men cherished memory colleague died 1616 age 52 determined make name triumph ravages time monumental task involved tracking several available versions play whatever odds ends could find original manuscripts odds ends often presented unintelligible thicket justly called foul papers scribes readable handiwork known fair copy often covered directors chicken scratches actors copies contained full lines particular character prevent opportunists selling entire script another company sources first folio disappeared folger acquired 82 copies first folio singular respect scooped 1400 copies bards collected works 9700 volumes fronts folger library outpaced every library world folger took particular pleasure acquiring volumes owned literary political eminences like samuel johnson david garrick king george iii queen victoria john dryden sir walter scott percy shelley samuel coleridge walt whitman edwin booth george washington john adams abraham lincoln prided comprehensive knowledge shakespeareana decided go purchase volume supposedly owned lincoln perused pages macbeth play lincoln known returned evidently untouched francis bacon earned niche though folger share renegade belief bacon real shakespeare books known sources shakespeare also collected fewer 5000 volumes seized upon allusions shakespeare work prompt books owned celebrated actors 250000 playbills filled vaults gifted amateur singer organist folger gathered 1000 volumes shakespeare music even extended collection period musical instruments money underwrite vast project came henry folgers work john rockefellers righthand man worked demonically hard learn arcana paraffin wax kerosene refining petroleum greases rose impressively fast standard oil cut pieces henry folger became president standard oil company new york 1911 owning shares worth 400 million current dollars erasmus said money buy books left buy food henry folger money books food alike retired 1928 devoted creating library worthy display man like henry folger serious collector lived collection mays writes dickered haggled sized vulnerabilities potential sellers general field takes measure enemy deploying shrewdest business wiles gathered treasure meant outlast forever true lifes work joseph adams first director research folger shakespeare library spoke opening 1932 city monuments washington dc become said three stood size dignity beauty conspicuous rest memorials washington lincoln shakespeare160 men three great personal forces molded political spiritual intellectual life nation henry folger live see opening legacy folger shakespeare library continues stand appreciate human excellence one hopes names henry emily folger remembered along william shakespeare algis valiunas literary journalist fellow ethics public policy center | 717 |
<p />
<p>The world’s coral reefs, vital to much of our ocean’s ecology, are under double threat from rising water temperatures and carbon dioxide absorption acidifying the oceans waters. Both threats are very real and are on the front lines of what scientists have been calling a threat to mankind’s survival.</p>
<p>Yet there are potential solutions to both of these problems, one being the cultivation of hot water tolerant corals and the other the propagation of algae (and possibly even plankton) that can tolerate high acid levels in sea water (algae, as a part of the photosynthesis process, “eat” carbon dioxide).</p>
<p>For the first threat, rising water temperatures, there are corals here in the Red Sea where I live that not only survive but in many cases thrive in hot waters. I have measured water temperatures of up to 95 degrees Fahrenheit where corals suffer little or no damage from “bleaching”. The water temperature here rarely drops below levels that kill reefs in the rest of the world.</p>
<p>What is needed is to cultivate our hot water resistant corals, sort of like ocean coral nurseries, and to use these corals to “re-forest” reefs worldwide. Of course, this needs to be started immediately on a massive scale, but this is a political, not technological problem for growing coral has already started and is not very complicated or difficult.</p>
<p>The second problem, carbon dioxide absorption acidifying the oceans and damaging the ability of corals and shellfish to use calcium carbonate to make their shells, is more complicated.</p>
<p>Algae and plankton “eat” carbon dioxide, and some scientists suspect rising levels of carbon dioxide in ocean waters may help explain some of the massive, and deadly, algae blooms that have broken out around the planet. The question is, if we propagate algae, doesn’t this pose a threat to oxygen levels in the oceans and raise the stress levels the oceans are already facing?</p>
<p>The answer to this problem is that filter feeders, both fish and shellfish, feed on algae and plankton. Mullet and milk fish, both very tasty and healthy, live exclusively on algae and plankton. Oysters, scallops, clams, mussels and other shellfish also depend on algae to survive. We have varieties of pearl oysters (that once produced the famous red sea pearls) that are easily propagated year round, thrive in hot water, suck up large quantities of algae and can be harvested for human consumption in as little as three months. Pearl oysters (as are all oysters) are a particularly healthy food, high in protein, low in fat and if processed correctly very tasty.</p>
<p>Again, growing oysters, and other shell fish, is not very complicated, basically requiring floating cages or ropes to anchor on and need very little maintenance. The main problem is storms damaging the infrastructure, but there are undoubtedly solutions to this challenge.</p>
<p>The same can be said for growing fish filter feeders. Doing this in the world’s oceans will certainly take some work, but what choice do we have?</p>
<p>Rising ocean water temperatures are not exclusively bad news. Marine life in general sees its metabolic rate increase as water temperatures increase.</p>
<p>Research by an Eritrean scientist presently completing his Ph.D. in China has demonstrated that fish metabolism peaks in water temperature of 86 degrees Fahrenheit. In other words, hot water means fish and other sea life grow faster and can help provide sustenance for the worlds populations being threatened by the increasing droughts caused by global warming.</p>
<p>Of course, higher levels of carbon dioxide also increase plant growth rates (nutrition, water, sunlight and carbon dioxide are all equally essential for photosynthesis). Just pick up any marijuana publication and read the ads to see claims of by just how much.</p>
<p>Plants thrive in levels of carbon dioxide up to 2,000 ppm, with claims being made that such levels increase plant metabolism but up to 50%.</p>
<p>Of course, humans can’t tolerate such levels, with even 10 minutes at 1,000 ppm leaving one with a headache and even nausea.</p>
<p>As I said earlier, solutions to raising water temperatures and acidification levels in our oceans are political, not technological.</p>
<p>Here in Eritrea on the shores of the Red Sea we have already begun to organize solutions to these problems as well as beginning to do the basic research needed to prove our claims to the world’s scientists.</p>
<p>In one sense, Eritrea is fortunate, for we have conditions making our coastal waters the best in the world for ocean based aquaculture. To start with, we have very warm, even hot water along with high salinity levels (the Red Sea, due to low fresh water input and high evaporation rates has the highest salinity level in the world with research showing high salinity levels increasing marine metabolism) providing an excellent basis for marine production.</p>
<p>The Red Sea is the world’s calmest body of water, with no hurricanes or typhoons and what storms that do occur are very mild in comparison.</p>
<p>The Eritrean coast includes some 350 islands that provide ideal, “lagoon” conditions for aquaculture. The currents are year round and sufficient to provide the circulation needed to bring nutrients to feed marine life. Add to this the five rivers running off the highlands during the rainy season feeding the coast with high levels of silt that provide the nutrition our algae and plankton thrive on and Eritrea has some 5,000 square kilometers of the best aquaculture grounds in the world.</p>
<p>Even if the rest of the world continues to sit by and await climate change induced disaster, we here in Eritrea have started to do what it will take to protect our people from the coming challenges.</p>
<p>The questions is, will the political, and economic isolation being imposed on us by the USA and its vassals in the west be allowed to stifle our contributions to solving these problems for the rest of the world?</p> | false | 1 | worlds coral reefs vital much oceans ecology double threat rising water temperatures carbon dioxide absorption acidifying oceans waters threats real front lines scientists calling threat mankinds survival yet potential solutions problems one cultivation hot water tolerant corals propagation algae possibly even plankton tolerate high acid levels sea water algae part photosynthesis process eat carbon dioxide first threat rising water temperatures corals red sea live survive many cases thrive hot waters measured water temperatures 95 degrees fahrenheit corals suffer little damage bleaching water temperature rarely drops levels kill reefs rest world needed cultivate hot water resistant corals sort like ocean coral nurseries use corals reforest reefs worldwide course needs started immediately massive scale political technological problem growing coral already started complicated difficult second problem carbon dioxide absorption acidifying oceans damaging ability corals shellfish use calcium carbonate make shells complicated algae plankton eat carbon dioxide scientists suspect rising levels carbon dioxide ocean waters may help explain massive deadly algae blooms broken around planet question propagate algae doesnt pose threat oxygen levels oceans raise stress levels oceans already facing answer problem filter feeders fish shellfish feed algae plankton mullet milk fish tasty healthy live exclusively algae plankton oysters scallops clams mussels shellfish also depend algae survive varieties pearl oysters produced famous red sea pearls easily propagated year round thrive hot water suck large quantities algae harvested human consumption little three months pearl oysters oysters particularly healthy food high protein low fat processed correctly tasty growing oysters shell fish complicated basically requiring floating cages ropes anchor need little maintenance main problem storms damaging infrastructure undoubtedly solutions challenge said growing fish filter feeders worlds oceans certainly take work choice rising ocean water temperatures exclusively bad news marine life general sees metabolic rate increase water temperatures increase research eritrean scientist presently completing phd china demonstrated fish metabolism peaks water temperature 86 degrees fahrenheit words hot water means fish sea life grow faster help provide sustenance worlds populations threatened increasing droughts caused global warming course higher levels carbon dioxide also increase plant growth rates nutrition water sunlight carbon dioxide equally essential photosynthesis pick marijuana publication read ads see claims much plants thrive levels carbon dioxide 2000 ppm claims made levels increase plant metabolism 50 course humans cant tolerate levels even 10 minutes 1000 ppm leaving one headache even nausea said earlier solutions raising water temperatures acidification levels oceans political technological eritrea shores red sea already begun organize solutions problems well beginning basic research needed prove claims worlds scientists one sense eritrea fortunate conditions making coastal waters best world ocean based aquaculture start warm even hot water along high salinity levels red sea due low fresh water input high evaporation rates highest salinity level world research showing high salinity levels increasing marine metabolism providing excellent basis marine production red sea worlds calmest body water hurricanes typhoons storms occur mild comparison eritrean coast includes 350 islands provide ideal lagoon conditions aquaculture currents year round sufficient provide circulation needed bring nutrients feed marine life add five rivers running highlands rainy season feeding coast high levels silt provide nutrition algae plankton thrive eritrea 5000 square kilometers best aquaculture grounds world even rest world continues sit await climate change induced disaster eritrea started take protect people coming challenges questions political economic isolation imposed us usa vassals west allowed stifle contributions solving problems rest world | 552 |
<p>Russian Wushu Sanda world champion Muslim Salikhov is making his UFC debut on November 25. The Dagestan native, who is coming off a run of nine first-round finishes, spoke exclusively to RT Sport ahead of the event.</p>
<p>Salikhov, 33, has won all the possible titles in Wushu Sanda, including the ‘King of Kung Fu’ tournament, made his MMA debut back in 2011, since then recording 12 victories and one loss.</p>
<p>Remarkably, with the exception of just one decision win, all of his victories have come in the first round – 10 by way of knockout and one via submission (triangle choke).</p>
<p>The only MMA loss, as Salikhov told RT Sport, came because he was unaware of the type of tournament that his former manager had signed him up to. Thinking that he was entering a kickboxing tournament, Salikhov said that he was taken by surprise when his opponent started to wrestle him.</p>
<p>For those who haven’t heard of Wushu Sanda before, it’s a martial art based on the study and practices of traditional Kung Fu and modern combat fighting techniques, which was originally developed in the Chinese military.</p>
<p>Wushu Sanda tournaments are well attended in China, and Salikhov, who became the first non-Chinese fighter to win the title of ‘King of Sanda’ (also known as King of Kung Fu) back in 2006, is something of a popular figure in the country.</p>
<p>As&#160;the ‘King of Kung Fu’ has contested most of his MMA bouts in China, the UFC unsurprisingly offered him a fight at their tournament in Shanghai, which will be held next weekend.</p>
<p>RT Sport contacted Salikhov&#160;to learn more about the ‘King of Kung Fu’ from Dagestan, his upcoming UFC debut, and the nickname he received in China.</p>
<p>WE COME FROM THE SHAOLIN OF DAGESTAN</p>
<p>RT: You’re making your UFC debut next weekend on the Shanghai card, how are your preparations for the fight going?</p>
<p>Muslim Salikhov: We’re currently preparing in China, in the city of Chengdu, where our friends from Dagestan have an MMA school. Our coach here is Magomed Gadzhiev, plus freestyle wrestling coaches from Dagestan. Their school here develops Chinese MMA, so to speak. We have everything we need to prepare here. They’re fantastic hosts. I’ve been coming here for a long time already, as I’ve had many fights in China, both in Wushu and MMA. So from here we’ll go to Shanghai.</p>
<p>RT: What aspects are you working on at the moment?</p>
<p>MS: Now it’s mostly about my game plan, some tactical aspects for the fight. Garcia is a well-rounded fighter, good at both striking and wrestling. I’ll try to use my speed advantage in this fight. Plus, of course, I’m cutting weight and following a diet.</p>
<p>RT: You’re a pretty big welterweight. How much do you normally cut for your fights? And what’s your walk-around weight?</p>
<p>MS:&#160;My walk-around weight is&#160;about 89-90kg (198lb). But I’ve always fought as a welterweight all of my career, and it’s never been a problem for me to make the weight. First UFC offered me a fight in the middleweight category, but as I said I’ve fought at welterweight all my life, so I don’t have plans to go up in weight class.</p>
<p>RT: Is there anyone in particular among the UFC welterweights that you’d be interested in fighting in the future?</p>
<p>MS: It’s a very hard division, but I don’t really like picking my opponents. It’s the organization’s job to do the matchmaking. My job is to show entertaining fights. The better I fight, the better opponents I’ll get in the future. But if I had to pick one, I’d say ‘Wonderboy’ Thompson. I like his technique and what he does in the cage.</p>
<p>RT: We know that you train with your friend Zabit Magomedsharipov, who also comes from a Wushu background and will fight on the Shanghai card. He had his UFC debut in September and it was a very entertaining fight. Has he raised the bar for you as well?</p>
<p>MS: Well, Zabit is Zabit. He proved himself even before his UFC debut, being a champion in ACB (Absolute Championship Berkut). We didn’t expect him to perform any different, at least I didn’t. If we’re talking about my performance, my goal is always to show my best. I don’t look to win on points, I’m always looking to put on a show.</p>
<p>RT: We know that you and Zabit also come from the same school in Dagestan – ‘Five Directions Of The World’. Could you tell us a little more about this school?</p>
<p>MS: We come from the same coach, Gusein Magomaev, the founder of Five Directions Of The World. Obviously we were in different age groups. I’d even say that our styles differ. I’m seven years older than Zabit, and have practiced Wushu a lot longer. But yes, we come from the same coach. Five Directions Of The World is a boarding school in the mountains of Dagestan, kids stay there for six days a week to study and train. There are plenty of martial arts at this school, not just Wushu.</p>
<p>RT: What does the name of the school mean?</p>
<p>MS: The concept, which originates in oriental culture, was created by our coach Gusein Magomaev, who studied philosophy, and who I’d say is a philosopher himself. The symbol of the school is a pyramid, which has four edges at the bottom, which point north, south, east and west, while the top of it points to space. I can’t really explain the full meaning in short. It’s worth a separate discussion. In short, they call this school The Shaolin of Dagestan. At least, here in China.</p>
<p>PUTIN’S BODYGUARD</p>
<p>RT: Talking about China, we know that you’re really famous there. Do you get recognized by people on the street a lot?</p>
<p>MS: Wushu Sanda is a big sport in China. So yes, people do recognize me on the streets, and ask for pictures. Sometimes even taxi drivers recognize me and say that they won’t charge me for a ride (laughing). I really feel at home in China. I’m not very well known in Russia, except maybe for my native Dagestan. But when I go to places like Moscow or St. Petersburg, there are usually a few hardcore MMA fans who recognize me. In China it’s just regular people who ask me for pictures.</p>
<p>RT: We also know that you have a special nickname in the Wushu world, or let’s say in China. The way they introduce you at tournaments.</p>
<p>MS: Yes, that’s right. They call me ‘Putin’s bodyguard.’ When it all started I constantly denied it, saying, ‘no, I’m not Putin’s body guard.’ But they still did it at tournaments and press conferences, every time. So I figure I should just let it go. Instead of denying it, I began saying, ‘I’m not supposed to talk about it’ (laughing). China is a very different, very special place. You have to come here and experience it yourself. The way they see things, the way they see life. They have a different mentality.</p>
<p>RT: One important aspect of being popular in the UFC, besides the fighting itself, is the ability to speak English. How well do you know English?</p>
<p>MS: I actually speak some English. I lived for almost three years in Thailand, where English is the international language for all foreigners. Plus, I’ve been to many training camps in the States, in Brazil. I haven’t really taken any English classes or anything. But I did learn some by communicating with people. So, yes, I can communicate and give interviews, for example.</p>
<p>RT: Should UFC fans expect some callouts or trash talk from you?</p>
<p>MS: I’ll never start insulting my opponent first. If anyone insults me, of course I won’t keep quiet. But I have no intention to ‘talk shit,’ as they say. I respect my opponents, and I expect them to respect me. But if they don’t, they’ll pay for it in the cage.</p>
<p>RT: You’re coming off a series of nine first-round finishes, eight of which were straight knockouts. Should UFC fans expect to see more of the same in the octagon?</p>
<p>MS: Of course I want to finish all my fights in the first round. The quicker you finish your fights, the longer you last as an athlete. Plus, it’s a great show for the fans. They want to see more knockouts, more finishes. And every time I have a fight ahead of me I always think, ‘will I be able to finish it quickly this time?’ It’s a challenge for me, too. But, I’m always 100 percent ready for a full fight. I’d never go in the cage unprepared. I’m always there to steal the show.</p>
<p>by <a href="https://twitter.com/DenisGeykoRT" type="external">Denis Geyko</a> for RT Sport</p> | false | 1 | russian wushu sanda world champion muslim salikhov making ufc debut november 25 dagestan native coming run nine firstround finishes spoke exclusively rt sport ahead event salikhov 33 possible titles wushu sanda including king kung fu tournament made mma debut back 2011 since recording 12 victories one loss remarkably exception one decision win victories come first round 10 way knockout one via submission triangle choke mma loss salikhov told rt sport came unaware type tournament former manager signed thinking entering kickboxing tournament salikhov said taken surprise opponent started wrestle havent heard wushu sanda martial art based study practices traditional kung fu modern combat fighting techniques originally developed chinese military wushu sanda tournaments well attended china salikhov became first nonchinese fighter win title king sanda also known king kung fu back 2006 something popular figure country as160the king kung fu contested mma bouts china ufc unsurprisingly offered fight tournament shanghai held next weekend rt sport contacted salikhov160to learn king kung fu dagestan upcoming ufc debut nickname received china come shaolin dagestan rt youre making ufc debut next weekend shanghai card preparations fight going muslim salikhov currently preparing china city chengdu friends dagestan mma school coach magomed gadzhiev plus freestyle wrestling coaches dagestan school develops chinese mma speak everything need prepare theyre fantastic hosts ive coming long time already ive many fights china wushu mma well go shanghai rt aspects working moment ms mostly game plan tactical aspects fight garcia wellrounded fighter good striking wrestling ill try use speed advantage fight plus course im cutting weight following diet rt youre pretty big welterweight much normally cut fights whats walkaround weight ms160my walkaround weight is160about 8990kg 198lb ive always fought welterweight career never problem make weight first ufc offered fight middleweight category said ive fought welterweight life dont plans go weight class rt anyone particular among ufc welterweights youd interested fighting future ms hard division dont really like picking opponents organizations job matchmaking job show entertaining fights better fight better opponents ill get future pick one id say wonderboy thompson like technique cage rt know train friend zabit magomedsharipov also comes wushu background fight shanghai card ufc debut september entertaining fight raised bar well ms well zabit zabit proved even ufc debut champion acb absolute championship berkut didnt expect perform different least didnt talking performance goal always show best dont look win points im always looking put show rt know zabit also come school dagestan five directions world could tell us little school ms come coach gusein magomaev founder five directions world obviously different age groups id even say styles differ im seven years older zabit practiced wushu lot longer yes come coach five directions world boarding school mountains dagestan kids stay six days week study train plenty martial arts school wushu rt name school mean ms concept originates oriental culture created coach gusein magomaev studied philosophy id say philosopher symbol school pyramid four edges bottom point north south east west top points space cant really explain full meaning short worth separate discussion short call school shaolin dagestan least china putins bodyguard rt talking china know youre really famous get recognized people street lot ms wushu sanda big sport china yes people recognize streets ask pictures sometimes even taxi drivers recognize say wont charge ride laughing really feel home china im well known russia except maybe native dagestan go places like moscow st petersburg usually hardcore mma fans recognize china regular people ask pictures rt also know special nickname wushu world lets say china way introduce tournaments ms yes thats right call putins bodyguard started constantly denied saying im putins body guard still tournaments press conferences every time figure let go instead denying began saying im supposed talk laughing china different special place come experience way see things way see life different mentality rt one important aspect popular ufc besides fighting ability speak english well know english ms actually speak english lived almost three years thailand english international language foreigners plus ive many training camps states brazil havent really taken english classes anything learn communicating people yes communicate give interviews example rt ufc fans expect callouts trash talk ms ill never start insulting opponent first anyone insults course wont keep quiet intention talk shit say respect opponents expect respect dont theyll pay cage rt youre coming series nine firstround finishes eight straight knockouts ufc fans expect see octagon ms course want finish fights first round quicker finish fights longer last athlete plus great show fans want see knockouts finishes every time fight ahead always think able finish quickly time challenge im always 100 percent ready full fight id never go cage unprepared im always steal show denis geyko rt sport | 776 |
<p>By Hideyuki Sano</p>
<p>TOKYO (Reuters) – Asian shares fell on Thursday, weighed down by a plunge in high-flying tech shares on fears that a long boom in micro-chips may have peaked, while virtual currency bitcoin steadied after a roller-coaster ride in the previous session.</p>
<p>The digital currency’s 10-fold increase in price this year has stoked worries of a bubble and potential crash that could rattle conventional financial markets.</p>
<p>() rose nearly 3 percent to around $10,100 during Asian trading on Thursday. On Wednesday, it surged to a record high of $11,395, before it slipped to a low of $9,250.</p>
<p>European shares were seen falling slightly, with spread-betters expecting Britain’s FTSE () to fall 0.3 percent and France’s CAC () and Germany’s DAX () to fall 0.1 percent.</p>
<p>MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan () dropped 1.3 percent, with technology bellwether Samsung Electronics (KS:) falling 4.3 percent to two-month lows and Taiwan’s TSMC (TW:) down 3.6 percent.</p>
<p>Japan’s Nikkei () reversed early losses to end 0.6 percent higher, though the country’s electronic machinery makers index &lt;.IELEC.T&gt; was down 1.5 percent.</p>
<p>In the U.S., the Nasdaq Composite () dropped 1.27 percent as investors shifted to financials and other sectors even as the S&amp;P 500 () was almost flat and the Dow Jones Industrial Average () gained 0.44 percent. ()</p>
<p>Shares of Amazon.com (O:), Apple (O:), Google parent Alphabet (O:) and Facebook (O:) fell between 2 percent and 4 percent. Among the year’s other high fliers, Netflix (O:) slid 5.5 percent.</p>
<p>Possibly weighing on them were concerns, sparked by a Morgan Stanley (NYSE:) report earlier this week, that “super-cycle” in memory chip demand is likely to peak soon.</p>
<p>“It is true that if you look at the world’s semiconductor sales on chart, their year-on-year growth appears to be peaking out. Given the current high sales level, some market players would be naturally worried,” said Hiroshi Watanabe, economist at Sony Financial Holdings.</p>
<p>“But if you look at what’s driving demand, it’s not just smart phones and actually a lot of things, such as data centres. The world’s demand is likely to continue expanding in 2018 and I don’t see the need to be pessimistic now,” he said.</p>
<p>Some market players said selling in tech shares had more to do with profit-taking ahead of the end of the year, and described the slide as a healthy correction.</p>
<p>“Tech shares have done so well over the past year. There are many shares that saw their prices doubling. So investors have been on guard. They have been looking for an opportune time to sell,” said Norihiro Fujito, senior investment analyst at Morgan Stanley.</p>
<p>The Nasdaq index is still up 26.8 percent so far this year, more than 9 percentage points above gains in the S&amp;P. The ex-Japan Asia-Pacific MSCI index edged up 0.5 percent for the month, taking its gains for far this year to more than 30 percent.</p>
<p>On the other hand, U.S. bond yields rose across the maturities and the dollar gained some traction after the U.S. third-quarter GDP growth was revised up to an annualised 3.3 percent , from the initial estimate of 3.0 percent .</p>
<p>That was the fastest growth in three years, though economists noted that inventories, goods yet to be sold, accounted for nearly a quarter of GDP growth.</p>
<p>The U.S. Senate on Wednesday took a step toward passage of tax legislation that is a top White House priority, setting up a likely decisive vote later this week.</p>
<p>But it remained unclear if the bill has enough Republican support to become law.</p>
<p>The 10-year U.S. Treasuries yield rose to 2.389 percent (), edging near this month’s high of 2.414 percent.</p>
<p>There was no immediate market response after U.S. President Donald Trump nominated Carnegie Mellon University professor Marvin Goodfriend, viewed as a policy hawk, to be a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.</p>
<p>The euro traded at $1.1863, steady in early Asian trade but has been on retreat since it had hit a two-month high of $1.1961 on Monday.</p>
<p>The dollar also firmed to 112.00 yen from Monday’s ten-week low of 110.85 yen.</p>
<p>The British pound hit a two-month high of $1.3480 after European Union diplomats said that Britain has moved “close” to EU demands over Brexit.</p>
<p>Among Asian currencies, the South Korean won stepped back from a 2-1/2-year high set the previous day after the country’s central bank raised interest rates for the first time in more than six years, which had been widely expected.</p>
<p>Oil traded cautiously ahead of an OPEC meeting in Vienna later in the day, with members set to debate an extension of the group’s supply-cut agreement.</p>
<p>While the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and key non-member Russia look set to prolong oil supply cuts until the end of 2018, they have signalled that they may review the deal when they meet again in June if the market overheats.</p>
<p>U.S. crude futures () traded at $57.41 per barrel in early Asian trade, up 0.2 percent, while Brent futures () rose 0.4 percent to $63.37 a barrel.</p>
<p>(This version of the story has been refiled to add new graphic and fix typo in paragraph 2)</p> | false | 1 | hideyuki sano tokyo reuters asian shares fell thursday weighed plunge highflying tech shares fears long boom microchips may peaked virtual currency bitcoin steadied rollercoaster ride previous session digital currencys 10fold increase price year stoked worries bubble potential crash could rattle conventional financial markets rose nearly 3 percent around 10100 asian trading thursday wednesday surged record high 11395 slipped low 9250 european shares seen falling slightly spreadbetters expecting britains ftse fall 03 percent frances cac germanys dax fall 01 percent mscis broadest index asiapacific shares outside japan dropped 13 percent technology bellwether samsung electronics ks falling 43 percent twomonth lows taiwans tsmc tw 36 percent japans nikkei reversed early losses end 06 percent higher though countrys electronic machinery makers index ltielectgt 15 percent us nasdaq composite dropped 127 percent investors shifted financials sectors even sampp 500 almost flat dow jones industrial average gained 044 percent shares amazoncom apple google parent alphabet facebook fell 2 percent 4 percent among years high fliers netflix slid 55 percent possibly weighing concerns sparked morgan stanley nyse report earlier week supercycle memory chip demand likely peak soon true look worlds semiconductor sales chart yearonyear growth appears peaking given current high sales level market players would naturally worried said hiroshi watanabe economist sony financial holdings look whats driving demand smart phones actually lot things data centres worlds demand likely continue expanding 2018 dont see need pessimistic said market players said selling tech shares profittaking ahead end year described slide healthy correction tech shares done well past year many shares saw prices doubling investors guard looking opportune time sell said norihiro fujito senior investment analyst morgan stanley nasdaq index still 268 percent far year 9 percentage points gains sampp exjapan asiapacific msci index edged 05 percent month taking gains far year 30 percent hand us bond yields rose across maturities dollar gained traction us thirdquarter gdp growth revised annualised 33 percent initial estimate 30 percent fastest growth three years though economists noted inventories goods yet sold accounted nearly quarter gdp growth us senate wednesday took step toward passage tax legislation top white house priority setting likely decisive vote later week remained unclear bill enough republican support become law 10year us treasuries yield rose 2389 percent edging near months high 2414 percent immediate market response us president donald trump nominated carnegie mellon university professor marvin goodfriend viewed policy hawk member federal reserve board governors euro traded 11863 steady early asian trade retreat since hit twomonth high 11961 monday dollar also firmed 11200 yen mondays tenweek low 11085 yen british pound hit twomonth high 13480 european union diplomats said britain moved close eu demands brexit among asian currencies south korean stepped back 212year high set previous day countrys central bank raised interest rates first time six years widely expected oil traded cautiously ahead opec meeting vienna later day members set debate extension groups supplycut agreement organization petroleum exporting countries key nonmember russia look set prolong oil supply cuts end 2018 signalled may review deal meet june market overheats us crude futures traded 5741 per barrel early asian trade 02 percent brent futures rose 04 percent 6337 barrel version story refiled add new graphic fix typo paragraph 2 | 527 |
<p>One aspect of the controversy surrounding NFL players’ national-anthem protests has been ignored: Taking a knee ought to be seen, in some larger framework, as a violation of the principle of separation of church and state. The problem is metaphysical, not legal or political. But the metaphysics has already resulted in real consequences — for fans, the NFL, the players themselves, and our already divisive politics.</p>
<p>Watching almost any sport, if it is played well and understood with knowledge, brings pleasure. Each game is a spontaneous story, unfolding in the expectation that something extraordinary might happen. A magic of improvisation releases endorphins in the body and (at best) elevates something in the spirit of athletes and spectators alike. Now and then the result is awe — a kind of enchantment.</p>
<p>When I was a boy I saw Ted Williams play. The image of his swing, a thing of pure beauty — pure act! — is with me a lifetime later. It has a quality of the privately sacred, as such memories may — a glimpse of the perfect, tucked away in my mind sometime in the Eisenhower administration. I have forgotten a trillion things in my life, but not that. Why is that frozen instant indelible, precious to me?</p>
<p>In another memory, Michael Jordan floats forever through the air toward the basket, in the way that we float in dreams.</p>
<p>Or this: I am in Tokyo — jet-lagged, up night after night from midnight to 6&#160;a.m., too tired to read or think or sleep. I watch hours of sumo wrestling on Japanese television: At first, I’m fascinated, incredulous, and amused to see two hippos in a shoving match, interpreted in an unintelligible language. But as I study the enormous men in Tokugawa briefs, I begin to enter into another dimension, to see into the alien rituals and aesthetics and physics of their timing, their subtleties of shifted weight, their stillness and sudden, electrical violence. They are masses of flesh and breath strangely and delicately managed. It becomes an amazing, improbable dance, perfected in another world.</p>
<p>All games at their best have a metaphysics. In the fall of 1967, as my 17-year-old brother Mike was dying of cancer, I took him to Shea Stadium to watch Joe Namath play against the Dolphins. Joe Willy was perfect that day, as if he meant to bestow upon poor Mike the gift of a sequence of perfect instants: passes short and long, all of them precise and beautiful. One pass arced high above the field and floated forever before landing softly in the receiver’s fingers for a touchdown 60 yards downfield. Mike for that afternoon forgot about dying and looked at me with an expression of excitement and wonder. The perfect floating pass from Namath and the expression on Mike’s face — both images bound together like binary stars — remain with me in that part of my mind that I think of as the church — a sanctuary.</p>
<p>It’s only that mystic dimension that makes games worth watching, and worth paying to watch — that opens them up to a possibility of things unexpected and gladdening and extraordinary, of life heightened by remarkable deeds.</p>
<p>When NFL players drop to one knee and bow their heads during the national anthem, an obscure deflation occurs: The gesture shatters the fourth wall a little, enough to break the spell. It introduces another subject altogether, a different storyline.</p>
<p>Such displays sacrifice the dimension of the game that gives it life — and, by the way, monetary value. They make the game banal. They sabotage the art — a higher art, in its transcendence — and drag it to earth, to politics and grievance. That’s the effect, anyway, regardless of the higher ideals that are professed.</p>
<p>No, no, Kaepernick et al. reply — what we are doing is the&#160;truly&#160;sacred work. This is about more than politics. It is precisely about the higher things, about social justice and injustice, the history of American racism, the legacy of slavery. These matters belong to the true church in our minds, if not in yours. And anyway, who are you kidding? Football is not mystical; it is about violence and concussions and brain damage and venality.</p>
<p>You may say so. You may be right, on a lower plane of truth. But you are making a bad trade. You are playing a game you do not understand, and you may find that all of that physical violence is ultimately about metaphysics after all.</p>
<p>The gesture of taking a knee, and the controversy that comes with it, works, unbidden, to effect a chemical change in the fan’s mind — any fan’s mind, regardless of race or politics. It subtly changes the conscious and subconscious mind — not on the subject of race and social justice, as the players intend, but instead, on the unexpectedly fragile experience of the game itself, which in this new light tends to lose meaning and mystique. The mind swivels away. The life goes out of it. The fan now looks at the game a little coldly, as if it had become a stranger to him, and wonders why he ever fell in love with it.</p>
<p>For, as intended, the kneeling has forced me into an internal argument, pro and con, about the treatment that blacks receive in the American justice system, about the answering arguments made by police faced with such charges, and so on. I acknowledge a point in the realm of social justice — and grant in any case that the players enjoy the right of free speech.</p>
<p>Grievance and accusation. The overworked conscience frets and squirms through another Sunday of an ignoble year. What I sought was temporary relief from argument and stupidity. But there is no refuge.</p>
<p>The players do not grasp this. When they kneel, the gods depart. And after the gods, the fans — or, in any case, the capacity for awe that was the reason the fans came to the game in the days when they were in love with it.</p>
<p>They will find other ways to keep the Sabbath. But this minor phenomenon of desacralization is typical of the age. The old King is dead and mystique is dead, and we live in the reign of Goneril and Regan.</p>
<p>— Lance Morrow is the Henry Grunwald Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.</p> | false | 1 | one aspect controversy surrounding nfl players nationalanthem protests ignored taking knee ought seen larger framework violation principle separation church state problem metaphysical legal political metaphysics already resulted real consequences fans nfl players already divisive politics watching almost sport played well understood knowledge brings pleasure game spontaneous story unfolding expectation something extraordinary might happen magic improvisation releases endorphins body best elevates something spirit athletes spectators alike result awe kind enchantment boy saw ted williams play image swing thing pure beauty pure act lifetime later quality privately sacred memories may glimpse perfect tucked away mind sometime eisenhower administration forgotten trillion things life frozen instant indelible precious another memory michael jordan floats forever air toward basket way float dreams tokyo jetlagged night night midnight 6160am tired read think sleep watch hours sumo wrestling japanese television first im fascinated incredulous amused see two hippos shoving match interpreted unintelligible language study enormous men tokugawa briefs begin enter another dimension see alien rituals aesthetics physics timing subtleties shifted weight stillness sudden electrical violence masses flesh breath strangely delicately managed becomes amazing improbable dance perfected another world games best metaphysics fall 1967 17yearold brother mike dying cancer took shea stadium watch joe namath play dolphins joe willy perfect day meant bestow upon poor mike gift sequence perfect instants passes short long precise beautiful one pass arced high field floated forever landing softly receivers fingers touchdown 60 yards downfield mike afternoon forgot dying looked expression excitement wonder perfect floating pass namath expression mikes face images bound together like binary stars remain part mind think church sanctuary mystic dimension makes games worth watching worth paying watch opens possibility things unexpected gladdening extraordinary life heightened remarkable deeds nfl players drop one knee bow heads national anthem obscure deflation occurs gesture shatters fourth wall little enough break spell introduces another subject altogether different storyline displays sacrifice dimension game gives life way monetary value make game banal sabotage art higher art transcendence drag earth politics grievance thats effect anyway regardless higher ideals professed kaepernick et al reply the160truly160sacred work politics precisely higher things social justice injustice history american racism legacy slavery matters belong true church minds anyway kidding football mystical violence concussions brain damage venality may say may right lower plane truth making bad trade playing game understand may find physical violence ultimately metaphysics gesture taking knee controversy comes works unbidden effect chemical change fans mind fans mind regardless race politics subtly changes conscious subconscious mind subject race social justice players intend instead unexpectedly fragile experience game new light tends lose meaning mystique mind swivels away life goes fan looks game little coldly become stranger wonders ever fell love intended kneeling forced internal argument pro con treatment blacks receive american justice system answering arguments made police faced charges acknowledge point realm social justice grant case players enjoy right free speech grievance accusation overworked conscience frets squirms another sunday ignoble year sought temporary relief argument stupidity refuge players grasp kneel gods depart gods fans case capacity awe reason fans came game days love find ways keep sabbath minor phenomenon desacralization typical age old king dead mystique dead live reign goneril regan lance morrow henry grunwald senior fellow ethics public policy center | 528 |
<p>By Sarah Dadouch</p>
<p>BEKAA, Lebanon (Reuters) – In a tent in Lebanon surrounded by snow, Syrian refugees Ammar and Khadija were married by a tribal leader from their homeland in a wedding they would soon come to regret.</p>
<p>What they had hoped would be a milestone on the path back to normal life became the start of a bureaucratic nightmare.</p>
<p>One year on, it shows no sign of ending for them, their newly born son or for many other refugees from Syria, whose misery at losing their homes has been compounded by a new fear they may never be able to return.</p>
<p>It is a dilemma with knock-on effects for stability in Lebanon, sheltering more than a million Syrian refugees, and potentially for other countries in the Middle East and Europe they may flee to if tension spills over.</p>
<p>After they had agreed their union with the sheikh in the insulated tent that had become home to Khadija’s family, the newlyweds both spent months digging potatoes in the Bekaa valley, one of Lebanon’s poorest districts, to make ends meet.</p>
<p>Only after they had a baby boy, Khalaf, did they realize the wedding had been a mistake.</p>
<p>When the couple went to register his birth at the local registry, they were told they could not because they had no official marriage certificate.</p>
<p>Without registration, Khalaf is not entitled to a Syrian passport or other ID enabling him to go there. Without proper paperwork, he also risks future detention in Lebanon.</p>
<p>Asked why they did not get married by an approved religious authority, Ammar and Khadija looked at each other before answering: “We didn’t know.”</p>
<p>CATCH 22</p>
<p>Laws and legislation seem very remote from the informal settlements in the northern Bekaa Valley, where Syrian refugee tents sit on the rocky ground amongst rural tobacco fields. Marriages by unregistered sheikhs are common but hard to quantify because authorities often never hear of them.</p>
<p>For whereas in Syria, verbal tribal or religious marriages are easy to register, Lebanon has complex and costly procedures.</p>
<p>You first need to be married by a sheikh approved by one of the various religious courts that deal with family matters, who gives you a contract. Then you have to get a marriage certificate from a local notary, transfer it to the local civil registry and register it at the Foreigners’ Registry.</p>
<p>Most Syrians do not complete the process, as it requires legal residency in the country, which must be renewed annually and costs $200, although the fee was waived for some refugees this year. Now they have had a child, Ammar and Khadija also need to go through an expensive court case.</p>
<p>The casual work Ammar depends on — picking potatoes, onions or cucumbers in five hour shifts starting at 6 am — pays 6,000 LBP ($4) a day, not enough to live on, let alone put aside.</p>
<p>“One bag of diapers costs 10,000 liras,” he said.</p>
<p>Sally Abi Khalil, Country Director in Lebanon for UK-based charity Oxfam, said 80 percent of Syrian refugees do not have valid residency, one of the main reasons why they do not register their marriages, alongside the issue of the sheikhs.</p>
<p>“Babies born to couples who didn’t register their marriage risk becoming stateless,” she said. D-REUTERSNEWS-T004/I41a553a0111811e6b2f6d9823502ce72</p>
<p>Refugees can only legally make money if they have a work permit, which requires legal residency, a Catch 22 situation partially tackled in February when the fee was waived for those registered with the UNHCR prior to 2015 and without a previous Lebanese sponsor.</p>
<p>Lebanon’s Directorate General of Personal Status took another step to help the refugees on September 12, when it issued a memo which waived the parents’ and child’s residency prerequisite for birth registration, it said.</p>
<p>But if you are married by an unauthorized sheikh, which includes all Syrian sheikhs, the process is more complicated, made worse by a clock ticking over the fate of your offspring, whose birth has to be registered within a year.</p>
<p>“In registering marriages, the biggest problem we faced was the sheikh,” said Rajeh, a Syrian refugee, speaking for his community in a village in southern Lebanon. “In Syria, the child would be ten years old and you can register him in one day.”</p>
<p>POLITICAL PRESSURE</p>
<p>If the one-year deadline is missed in Lebanon, parents have to open a civil court case estimated to cost more than one hundred dollars and still requiring legal residency, which Ammar and Khadija, who met in the informal settlement, do not have.</p>
<p>Legal residency becomes a requirement in Lebanon at the age of 15. At that point, many Syrians pull their children from school and do not let them stray far from the house or neighborhood for fear they will be stopped and detained.</p>
<p>More than half of those who escaped the Syrian conflict that began in 2011 are under 18 years old, and around one in six are babies and toddlers, said Tina Gewis, a legal specialist from the Norwegian Refugee Council.</p>
<p>Politicians pressured by some Lebanese saying the country has carried too much of the burden of the refugee crisis are pushing harder for the return of the displaced to Syria, raising the stakes since documentation is required for repatriation.</p>
<p>If they have used an unauthorized sheikh, couples are encouraged to redo their marriages, said Sheikh Wassim Yousef al-Falah, Beirut’s sharia (Islamic law) judge, who said the court’s case load had tripled with the influx of Syrian refugees.</p>
<p>But that is not an option for Ammar and Khadija because a pregnancy or the birth of a child rules that option out.</p>
<p>Gewis said that in any case new marriages risked complicating future inheritance or other legal issues and costs were prohibitive, with courts charging up to $110 to register even straightforward marriages by an approved sheikh.</p>
<p>Ziad al Sayegh, a senior advisor in Lebanon’s newly-formed Ministry of State for Displaced Affairs said Beirut was keen to help the refugees overcome their difficulties.</p>
<p>“We don’t want them to be stateless, because if you’re stateless you have a legal problem that will affect the child and affect the host country,” he said.</p> | false | 1 | sarah dadouch bekaa lebanon reuters tent lebanon surrounded snow syrian refugees ammar khadija married tribal leader homeland wedding would soon come regret hoped would milestone path back normal life became start bureaucratic nightmare one year shows sign ending newly born son many refugees syria whose misery losing homes compounded new fear may never able return dilemma knockon effects stability lebanon sheltering million syrian refugees potentially countries middle east europe may flee tension spills agreed union sheikh insulated tent become home khadijas family newlyweds spent months digging potatoes bekaa valley one lebanons poorest districts make ends meet baby boy khalaf realize wedding mistake couple went register birth local registry told could official marriage certificate without registration khalaf entitled syrian passport id enabling go without proper paperwork also risks future detention lebanon asked get married approved religious authority ammar khadija looked answering didnt know catch 22 laws legislation seem remote informal settlements northern bekaa valley syrian refugee tents sit rocky ground amongst rural tobacco fields marriages unregistered sheikhs common hard quantify authorities often never hear whereas syria verbal tribal religious marriages easy register lebanon complex costly procedures first need married sheikh approved one various religious courts deal family matters gives contract get marriage certificate local notary transfer local civil registry register foreigners registry syrians complete process requires legal residency country must renewed annually costs 200 although fee waived refugees year child ammar khadija also need go expensive court case casual work ammar depends picking potatoes onions cucumbers five hour shifts starting 6 pays 6000 lbp 4 day enough live let alone put aside one bag diapers costs 10000 liras said sally abi khalil country director lebanon ukbased charity oxfam said 80 percent syrian refugees valid residency one main reasons register marriages alongside issue sheikhs babies born couples didnt register marriage risk becoming stateless said dreutersnewst004i41a553a0111811e6b2f6d9823502ce72 refugees legally make money work permit requires legal residency catch 22 situation partially tackled february fee waived registered unhcr prior 2015 without previous lebanese sponsor lebanons directorate general personal status took another step help refugees september 12 issued memo waived parents childs residency prerequisite birth registration said married unauthorized sheikh includes syrian sheikhs process complicated made worse clock ticking fate offspring whose birth registered within year registering marriages biggest problem faced sheikh said rajeh syrian refugee speaking community village southern lebanon syria child would ten years old register one day political pressure oneyear deadline missed lebanon parents open civil court case estimated cost one hundred dollars still requiring legal residency ammar khadija met informal settlement legal residency becomes requirement lebanon age 15 point many syrians pull children school let stray far house neighborhood fear stopped detained half escaped syrian conflict began 2011 18 years old around one six babies toddlers said tina gewis legal specialist norwegian refugee council politicians pressured lebanese saying country carried much burden refugee crisis pushing harder return displaced syria raising stakes since documentation required repatriation used unauthorized sheikh couples encouraged redo marriages said sheikh wassim yousef alfalah beiruts sharia islamic law judge said courts case load tripled influx syrian refugees option ammar khadija pregnancy birth child rules option gewis said case new marriages risked complicating future inheritance legal issues costs prohibitive courts charging 110 register even straightforward marriages approved sheikh ziad al sayegh senior advisor lebanons newlyformed ministry state displaced affairs said beirut keen help refugees overcome difficulties dont want stateless youre stateless legal problem affect child affect host country said | 568 |
<p>By Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss</p>
<p>NEW YORK (Reuters) – When U.S. entrepreneur Bharath Rao looked around for the best place to raise money for his crypto-currency derivatives trading business, the United States did not make his list. Instead he chose the East African island nation Seychelles to sell the trading platform’s tokens.</p>
<p>Rao, a San Diego-based technology veteran who has worked for major Wall Street banks, is not alone.</p>
<p>Confronted with national regulators’ intensifying scrutiny of digital currency fund-raising, known as initial coin offerings, many entrepreneurs are moving businesses to locations more welcoming to crypto-currencies and known for low taxes.</p>
<p>Dozens of start-ups have flocked to Singapore, Switzerland, Eastern Europe and the Caribbean this year, according to interviews with entrepreneurs and company registration data made available to Reuters.</p>
<p>Like bitcoin, the best-known crypto-currency created in 2009, the coins use encryption and a blockchain transaction database enabling fast and anonymous transfer of funds without centralized payment systems.</p>
<p>The numbers compiled by crypto-currency research firm Smith + Crown show how national regulators’ attempts to curb coin sales may just shift business elsewhere.</p>
<p>The United States leads with 34 digital currency start-up registrations so far this year, but that reflects Silicon Valley’s role as a technology hub and the depth of U.S. financial markets rather than a welcoming regulatory climate.</p>
<p>Singapore registered 21 entities, up from one in 2016, followed by 19 in Switzerland, up from three last year, according to Smith + Crown. Central Europe saw 14 companies registered this year, compared with one in 2016 and the Caribbean hosted 10, up from two last year.</p>
<p>“The data affirms our sense that Switzerland and Singapore remain go-to locations, but the U.S. could remain for companies raising large amounts of money,” said Matt Chwierut, Smith + Crown’s research director.</p>
<p>SWISS ADVANTAGE</p>
<p>Switzerland does not have specific rules on digital coin sales, but some parts of an offer may fall under existing regulations, the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) said in September.</p>
<p>So far, four of the five largest token sales, raising a total of over $600 million, were carried out by firms registered in Zug, a low-tax region south of Zurich known as the “crypto-valley” of the world.</p>
<p>In contrast, China and South Korea banned digital coin sales this year and regulators in the United States, Malaysia, Dubai, United Kingdom and Germany warned investors that current scant oversight exposed them to risks of fraud, hacking or theft.</p>
<p>Soaring registrations in “friendly” jurisdictions show how hard it is for national watchdogs to regulate digital coin sales. It is a challenge regulators begin to recognize.</p>
<p>“We are talking to other regulators, and we know that there are a lot of bilateral discussions taking place,” the Dubai Financial Services Authority said in an email to Reuters.</p>
<p>The U.S. Securities Exchange Commission declined to comment about the migration of coin issuers to remote jurisdictions.</p>
<p>The United Kingdom’s Financial Conduct Authority and Securities Commission Malaysia reiterated their stance that digital coin sales are high-risk, speculative investments and that retail investors should be aware of that.</p>
<p>A spokesman for Germany’s Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) told Reuters “hopping” within the European Union would be “largely futile” since the EU supervisory authority has adopted the same stance as BaFin on the issue.</p>
<p>The Dubai regulator pointed out that seeking out friendly jurisdictions was not unusual, but regulators still needed to warn about the inherent risks in digital coin sales.</p>
<p>Financial regulators from South Korea and China were not immediately available for comment.</p>
<p>In the United States, the SEC’s July 25 ruling that digital coins should be regulated as securities had a short-lived chilling effect on the crypto-currency market. Short-lived, because many U.S. startups thought they could avoid such scrutiny by selling “utility tokens,” which gave buyers access to products or services rather than a stake in the company.</p>
<p>Still, concerns that regulators’ views might evolve, have made potential U.S. coin issuers consider sales overseas.</p>
<p>“Our lawyers certainly think regulations on utility tokens could change. So for safety, the ICO should be done outside the U.S.,” said Arran Stewart, co-founder of U.S.-based Job.com, an online employment platform which plans a token offering in the Cayman Islands in February.</p>
<p>In fact, out of 15 start-ups interviewed by Reuters only one, Airfox, sold digital tokens in the United States, raising $15 million last month. Others have either carried out a coin sale overseas or are planning one.</p>
<p>Rao, who started Leverj, a decentralized crypto-currency futures trading platform, said he picked Seychelles for fund-raising because of its openness to crypto-currencies.</p>
<p>“It has not issued anything negative on crypto,” Rao said.</p>
<p>GONE IN MINUTES</p>
<p>Digital coin sales soared to about $3.6 billion by mid-November, compared with just over $100 million in the whole of 2016, according to Autonomous NEXT, which tracks technology in the financial services industry.</p>
<p>Typically, issuers publish a “white paper” describing their business plan and the news of new coin sales spread via online forums and websites tracking new offers. Investors pay for them with bitcoins or ether – two most widely accepted crypto-currencies – via a company’s website.</p>
<p>The ease with which start-ups can raise millions of dollars with little scrutiny in as little as minutes, has alarmed regulators, but without unified approach they hold little sway over that new funding market.</p>
<p>“It’s very difficult for governments to work together in any organized fashion,” said Lewis Cohen, a partner at Hogan Lovells in New York, which has a team of lawyers specializing in blockchain.</p>
<p>“Different jurisdictions will look at token sales through different lenses and it would be very difficult to get on a completely harmonized place.”</p>
<p>Nimble and lightly-regulated crypto-currency companies can straddle borders with ease.</p>
<p>For example, BANKEX, which aims to convert illiquid assets into tokens to be traded on its crypto-currency platform, is registered in Delaware and plans a coin offering in the Cayman Islands this month, said the company’s CEO Igor Khmel.</p>
<p>Hogan Lovell’s Cohen said that while it would be foolish to shut token sales down, they should be regulated, or self-regulated.</p>
<p>“We may need to have some guard rails,” he said.</p>
<p>“I don’t think it’s really fair for legitimate platforms that are trying to create new and innovative business models to be thrown in with other less scrupulous parties who may see token sales as a way of making a fast buck.”</p>
<p>(For a graphic on blockchain the key, click http://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/rngs/MERCURIA-BLOCKCHAIN/01003028050/MERCURIA-BLOCKCHAIN.jpg)</p>
<p>(For a graphic on ICO jurisdictions, click http://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/rngs/BLOCKCHAIN-REGULATION-TOKENS/010051LB3L0/index.html)</p> | false | 1 | gertrude chavezdreyfuss new york reuters us entrepreneur bharath rao looked around best place raise money cryptocurrency derivatives trading business united states make list instead chose east african island nation seychelles sell trading platforms tokens rao san diegobased technology veteran worked major wall street banks alone confronted national regulators intensifying scrutiny digital currency fundraising known initial coin offerings many entrepreneurs moving businesses locations welcoming cryptocurrencies known low taxes dozens startups flocked singapore switzerland eastern europe caribbean year according interviews entrepreneurs company registration data made available reuters like bitcoin bestknown cryptocurrency created 2009 coins use encryption blockchain transaction database enabling fast anonymous transfer funds without centralized payment systems numbers compiled cryptocurrency research firm smith crown show national regulators attempts curb coin sales may shift business elsewhere united states leads 34 digital currency startup registrations far year reflects silicon valleys role technology hub depth us financial markets rather welcoming regulatory climate singapore registered 21 entities one 2016 followed 19 switzerland three last year according smith crown central europe saw 14 companies registered year compared one 2016 caribbean hosted 10 two last year data affirms sense switzerland singapore remain goto locations us could remain companies raising large amounts money said matt chwierut smith crowns research director swiss advantage switzerland specific rules digital coin sales parts offer may fall existing regulations swiss financial market supervisory authority finma said september far four five largest token sales raising total 600 million carried firms registered zug lowtax region south zurich known cryptovalley world contrast china south korea banned digital coin sales year regulators united states malaysia dubai united kingdom germany warned investors current scant oversight exposed risks fraud hacking theft soaring registrations friendly jurisdictions show hard national watchdogs regulate digital coin sales challenge regulators begin recognize talking regulators know lot bilateral discussions taking place dubai financial services authority said email reuters us securities exchange commission declined comment migration coin issuers remote jurisdictions united kingdoms financial conduct authority securities commission malaysia reiterated stance digital coin sales highrisk speculative investments retail investors aware spokesman germanys federal financial supervisory authority bafin told reuters hopping within european union would largely futile since eu supervisory authority adopted stance bafin issue dubai regulator pointed seeking friendly jurisdictions unusual regulators still needed warn inherent risks digital coin sales financial regulators south korea china immediately available comment united states secs july 25 ruling digital coins regulated securities shortlived chilling effect cryptocurrency market shortlived many us startups thought could avoid scrutiny selling utility tokens gave buyers access products services rather stake company still concerns regulators views might evolve made potential us coin issuers consider sales overseas lawyers certainly think regulations utility tokens could change safety ico done outside us said arran stewart cofounder usbased jobcom online employment platform plans token offering cayman islands february fact 15 startups interviewed reuters one airfox sold digital tokens united states raising 15 million last month others either carried coin sale overseas planning one rao started leverj decentralized cryptocurrency futures trading platform said picked seychelles fundraising openness cryptocurrencies issued anything negative crypto rao said gone minutes digital coin sales soared 36 billion midnovember compared 100 million whole 2016 according autonomous next tracks technology financial services industry typically issuers publish white paper describing business plan news new coin sales spread via online forums websites tracking new offers investors pay bitcoins ether two widely accepted cryptocurrencies via companys website ease startups raise millions dollars little scrutiny little minutes alarmed regulators without unified approach hold little sway new funding market difficult governments work together organized fashion said lewis cohen partner hogan lovells new york team lawyers specializing blockchain different jurisdictions look token sales different lenses would difficult get completely harmonized place nimble lightlyregulated cryptocurrency companies straddle borders ease example bankex aims convert illiquid assets tokens traded cryptocurrency platform registered delaware plans coin offering cayman islands month said companys ceo igor khmel hogan lovells cohen said would foolish shut token sales regulated selfregulated may need guard rails said dont think really fair legitimate platforms trying create new innovative business models thrown less scrupulous parties may see token sales way making fast buck graphic blockchain key click httpfingfxthomsonreuterscomgfxrngsmercuriablockchain01003028050mercuriablockchainjpg graphic ico jurisdictions click httpfingfxthomsonreuterscomgfxrngsblockchainregulationtokens010051lb3l0indexhtml | 686 |
<p>An odd weekend in Thoroughbred racing found the winners of the Kentucky Derby winner Always Dreaming and Preakness winner Cloud Computing humbled at Saratoga and long shots ruling in the $1 million Haskell in New Jersey.</p>
<p>Paid Up Subscriber won Sunday’s feature at Saratoga by 32 1/2 lengths. Take that, Secretariat!</p>
<p>And ace jockey <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Mike_Smith/" type="external">Mike Smith</a> fell off a horse — not his fault and he wasn’t hurt but it scrambled the results of an important race.</p>
<p>Sanity was more the order of the weekend on the international front as Enable proved she’s the best 3-year-old filly in Europe and maybe the best of all horses in that venue. Roly Poly won again, though, so she and her stablemate, Winter, still may have a say in all that.</p>
<p>France, Germany and South Africa had big races.</p>
<p>All that, later. Now, hear this:</p>
<p>Classic</p>
<p>Sunday’s $600,000 Grade II Jim Dandy at Saratoga was billed as a showdown between Kentucky Derby winner Always Dreaming and Preakness victor Cloud Computing. But neither of them was in the picture as Good Samaritan, making his first start on the main track, rallied from last of five and blasted down the stretch to win by 4 3/4 lengths. Giuseppe the Great, another who did not contest any of the Triple Crown races, was second as Always Dreaming faded from the pace to finish third, beaten more than 5 lengths. Pavel was fourth and Cloud Computing finished last after chasing Always Dreaming through the early furlongs. Good Samaritan, a Harlan’s Holiday colt, ran 1 1/8 miles on a fast track in 1:50.69 with <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Joel_Rosario/" type="external">Joel Rosario</a> in the irons. He won at first asking over the Saratoga turf last August, took the Grade II Summer Stakes at Woodbine in his second start and most recently was fourth in the Grade I Belmont Derby on July 8.</p>
<p>Good Samaritan’s trainer, <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Bill_Mott/" type="external">Bill Mott</a>, said he and Elliot Walden of WinStar Farm decided to keep the colt on the grass when it became clear he wasn’t going to be ready for the Triple Crown trail. “Last week, we came to the conclusion we should try this race,” Mott added. “Initially, it was going to be the Travers and then the way this was coming up it looked like we were going to have a decent pace in this race and the horse was doing so well that we decide to make this choice.” Now, he said, after Good Samaritan “looked pretty good” in the Jim Dandy, “We’ll certainly nominate for the Travers and we’ll talk about it. I don’t see why we wouldn’t give it a try.”</p>
<p>Sunday’s $1 million Grade I betfair.com Haskell Invitational at Monmouth Park wound up with a field of seven 3-year-olds — six of them also-rans in the Kentucky Derby. Naturally, it was the horse with the worst finish at Louisville, Girvin, who came running late to snatch the Monmouth win by a nose from McCraken with Practical Joke third and Irish War Cry fourth. Girvin finished 13th in the Run for the Roses, beaten 19 1/2 lengths. McCraken was eighth in the Derby, Practical Joke was fifth and Irish War Cry finished 10th. Battle of Midway, who got show money in the Derby, finished sixth in Sunday’s race, beating only Hence, who was 11th in Louisville.</p>
<p>For all of that, Girvin, a Tale of Ekati colt, is no bum. He won the Grade II Risen Star and Grade II Louisiana Derby before the Churchill Downs debacle and finished second, a nose behind Irap, in the Grade III Ohio Derby June 24. His Haskell win carried a guaranteed spot in the Breeders’ Cup Classic in November through the “Win and You’re In” plan.</p>
<p>Trainer Joe Sharp said he and owner Brad Grady discussed Girvin’s campaign after the Kentucky Derby “and we thought it was right by Girvin to give him a freshening. We thought the Ohio Derby was a good spot for him and close to home. From his effort there, we thought he deserved a shot in the Haskell. He was such a confident horse today.”</p>
<p>Sunday’s $100,000 Grade III Monmouth Cup was run at 1 1/16 miles but could have been a prep for any of the Breeders’ Cup Championship races from the Sprint up to the Classic. Whatever might be, Sharp Azteca was as sharp as he needed to be — and then some — as he pressed the early pace, then kicked away from the other three starters and won by 7 1/2 lengths, ridden out by Paco Lopez. Donegal Moon, Just Call Kenny and Classy Class completed the order of finish. Sharp Azteca, a 4-year-old Freud colt, has done his best work at 7 furlongs. In his only previous try at 1 1/16 miles, he led and faded to finish second to Texas Chrome at Louisiana Downs. The Monmouth Cup win gives trainer Jorge Navarro plenty of options going forward, including a potential start in the Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile, which will be run around two turns at Del Mar. “Mission accomplished,” he said. “We put the mile and a sixteenth away.”</p>
<p>Distaff</p>
<p>Stellar Wind hooked up in a long stretch duel with Vale Dori in Sunday’s $300,000 Grade I Clement Hirsch at Del Mar, finally winning by a neck over that stubborn foe. Faithfully was another 1 1/2 lengths back in third with a good effort. Stellar Wind, a Curlin mare trained by <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/John_Sadler/" type="external">John Sadler</a>, ran 1 1/16 miles on a fast track in 1:43.92 with <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Victor_Espinoza/" type="external">Victor Espinoza</a> in the irons. The result was almost an exact replica of the Grade I Beholder Mile at Santa Anita on June 3, when Stellar Wind beat Vale Dori by a neck with a similar late surge. Stellar Wind now has won five of her last six races. In the midst of that span, she finished fourth in last year’s Longines Breeders’ Cup Distaff. “It looked like it was going to set up pretty much like the last race,” Sadler said. “Vale Dori is the speed. We know we can’t sit off her too far. You’ve got to hook into her and wear her down. No plans now. We’ll start looking tomorrow. But for now, we’re really happy.”</p>
<p>Only three faced the starter for Sunday’s $200,000 Grade III Shuvee Handicap at Saratoga and, in the end, it seemed there was only one to greet the placing judges. Paid Up Subscriber, with <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/John_Velazquez/" type="external">John Velazquez</a> up, let the other two go first, then quickly took charge and ran away to win by 32 1/2 lengths. Terra Promessa was 4 lengths ahead of Apologynotaccepted. Paid Up Subscriber, a 5-year-old <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Candy_Ride/" type="external">Candy Ride</a> mare, finished 9 furlongs on a fast track in a pedestrian 1:51.31. She was second to Songbird in her last start. “When I got to the half-mile pole, it looked like it was turning my way, and from then on it was pretty easy for her,” Velazquez said. “The other horses took back at the three-eighths pole, so when I got to the front, I decided to put the pressure on. She handled it very well.”</p>
<p>Secretariat won the 1973 <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Belmont_Stakes/" type="external">Belmont Stakes</a> by a paltry 31 lengths.</p>
<p>Money’soncharlotte led from the start in Sunday’s $100,000 Grade III Molly Pitcher at Monmouth Park and coasted in first, 1 1/2 lengths in front of Eskenformoney. The favorite, Carrumba, flattened out in the stretch and finished third. Money’soncharlotte, a 5-year-old <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Mizzen_Mast/" type="external">Mizzen Mast</a> mare, got 1 1/16 miles on a fast track in 1:42.80 with Paco Lopez in the irons, notching her second straight win. Both came at the Jersey shore oval. “We pointed for this,” said winning trainer <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Kelly_Breen/" type="external">Kelly Breen</a>. “Monmouth is her home track and she’s been training great. She’s good right now and when a filly is good, she’s really good.”</p>
<p>Sprint</p>
<p>Ransom the Moon got a clear shot up the rail in the stretch to win Saturday’s $300,000 Grade I <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Bing_Crosby/" type="external">Bing Crosby</a> at Del Mar as his two main rivals, Roy H and Mo Candy, were floated out to the middle of the track by a riderless horse and had to settle for second and third. The riderless steed was Drefong, second-favorite behind Roy H. Drefong, making his first start since winning last November’s Breeders’ Cup Sprint, ducked in at the chute just after the start, forcing jockey Mike Smith to abandon ship. Smith was not injured. His load lightned, Drefong took up a rail position alongside the leaders and played a major role in the outcome. Ransom the Moon, unaffected by the antics, ran 6 furlongs on a fast track in 1:09.63 with Flavien Prat in the irons, earning a guaranteed spot in this year’s Breeder’s Cup Sprint through the “Win and You’re In” program. Prat said he thought on the turn that the free-running Drefong “was going to cause me problems. But I stayed behind him and then on the turn, he went outside and took the leader out with him. I got to go inside and it worked out perfectly … I got lucky today. Sometimes racing is like that.” Trainer Phil D’Amato said he likely will give Ransom the Moon, a 5-year-old son of <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Malibu_Moon/" type="external">Malibu Moon</a>, a prep at Santa Anita where he won the Grade II Kona Gold Stakes in May and then return to Del Mar for the Breeders’ Cup Sprint.</p>
<p>Coal Front, the odds-on favorite, took them all the way in Saturday’s $200,000 Grade II Amsterdam for 3-year-olds at Saratoga, winning by 1 1/2 lengths over a late-running Excitations. Singing Bullet faded late to finish a distant third. Coal Front, a Stay Thirsty colt, covered 6 1/2 furlongs on a fast track in 1:16.05 for jockey John Velazquez, notching his third straight win. “It’s hard to win a race, much less the first three,” said trainer <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Todd_Pletcher/" type="external">Todd Pletcher</a>. “He beat a pretty strong group of older horses last time, and then to step up into a graded stakes, it just seems like he’s getting better and better.” Pletcher said he will consider Coal Front for the $500,000 Grade I Allen Jerkens Stakes on Aug. 26. “He’s a horse with a strong pedigree and enough talent to stretch out when the time is right,” Pletcher added.</p>
<p>In Saturday’s $350,000 Grade I Alfred G. Vanderbilt Handicap at Saratoga, El Deal was out and winging from the start and kicked away dramatically in the stretch to win by 8 lengths. Awesome Banner was second, a head in front of the favorite, Limousine Liberal. El Deal, a 5-year-old son of Munnings, got 6 furlongs on a fast track in 1:09.26 under <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Javier_Castellano/" type="external">Javier Castellano</a>. He won his two previous starts at Charles Town and Monmouth Park but was tackling more accomplished foes in the Vanderbilt for trainer Jorge Navarro. “I wasn’t going to take him to Mountaineer,” Navarro said. “He wasn’t going to prove anything there. We’re getting ready for the Breeders’ Cup and big races at the end of the year, so I wanted owners to have fun. I called them up and said I thought it was time to see what he’s about. I guess he is what he is.”</p>
<p>Turf</p>
<p>Hunter O’Riley came flying on the outside in the final furlong of Saturday’s $250,000 Grade II Bowling Green at Saratoga and was up in time to win by a neck over Bigger Picture and another neck from Sadler’s Joy. The favorite, Ascend, rose to the lead at the top of the lane, then faded to finish fourth. Hunter O’Riley, a 4-year-old Tiz Wonderful ridgling, ran 1 3/8 miles over the firm inner turf course in 2:12.94 with <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Florent-Geroux/" type="external">Florent Geroux</a> in the irons. It was his first stakes win although he did take a tough 1 1/2-miles allowance event on the Keeneland grass during the spring meeting. Winning trainer Jimmy Toner said he figured Hunter O’Riley was running for third or fourth. “It’s like one of those things,” he said in the winner’s circle. “You’re going to get that breakout race, and today was that breakout race so we’re really excited.”</p>
<p>Dragon Bay battled for the lead in Saturday’s $175,000 (Canadian) Grade II Nijinsky Stakes at Woodbine, finally seized the advantage and then held off the late run of the favorite, Can’thelpbelieving, to preserve the victory by 1 1/2 lengths. Pumpkin Rumble contested the early pace and held on for third. Dragon Bay, a 4-year-old Parading gelding, ran 1 1/4 miles on firm turf in 2:02.10 with Gary Boulanger handling the reins. Dragon Bay won the Grade II Eclipse Stakes in May but was sixth in the Grade II King Edward in his last start. “We kind of get caught between distance and surfaces,” said winning trainer Stuart Simon. He’ll do just about anything you ask of him to be honest. He’s just a dream horse, he really is. He’s been a gift to us and we’re just happy to have him.”</p>
<p>Money Multiplier almost doubled his backers’ investment in the win pool in Sunday’s $200,000 Grade II Monmouth Stakes at Monmouth Park. The 5-year-old Lookin At Lucky ridgling tracked the pace down the backstretch, took the lead on the turn and won by 1 1/2 lengths over Irish Strait. Kharafa was third. Not quite an even-money favorite, Money Multiplier paid $3.80 to win after finishing 9 furlongs on firm turf in 1:47.91 for jockey Javier Castellano. It was his first race since finishing sixth in the Breeders’ Cup Turf last fall. “It didn’t quite work out the way I thought it would,” said winning trainer <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Chad_Brown/" type="external">Chad Brown</a>, “with him getting jammed up behind a really slow pace. Javier used good judgment to pull him out of there and just pass everyone.” He said he will look to the Grade I Sword Dancer at Saratoga on Aug. 26.</p>
<p>My Italian Babbo outfinished the favorite, He Will, in Saturday’s $150,000 California Dreamin’ Stakes for state-breds at Del Mar, winning by a head it was another 2 lengths back to Soi Phet in third. My Italian Babbo, a 5-year-old Pappa Clem gelding, ran 1 1/16 miles on firm turf in 1:41.91 with <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Corey_Nakatani/" type="external">Corey Nakatani</a> in the irons. It was his fourth career win in his first stakes try.</p>
<p>Filly &amp; Mare Turf</p>
<p>Wekeela got through an opening on the rail turning for home in Sunday’s $100,000 Grade III WinStar Matchmaker at Monmouth Park and sailed home first by 3/4 length. War Flag rallied outside to take second by 1 length over the odds-on favorite, Miss Temple City. Wekeela, a 5-year-old French-bred mare by Hurricane Run, scored her second win from five U.S. starts. She was second in two others and four of the five races have been graded stakes. She also was competitive at the highest level in Europe when trained by Jean-Claude Rouget. While Miss Temple City did not return to the winner’s circle, she improved on her 13th-place finish in the Group 1 <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Queen_Anne_Stakes/" type="external">Queen Anne Stakes</a> at Royal Ascot in her last start. “My plan was to be right behind the horses, saving as much ground as possible,” said winning rider Javier Castellano. “You need to have a perfect trip to beat Miss Temple City and that’s what happened.”</p>
<p>Turf Sprint</p>
<p>Jennifer Lynnette was away last in Saturday’s $125,000 (Canadian) Royal North Stakes for fillies and mares at Woodbine, came four-wide down the stretch and caught pacesetter Kasuga in the final strides, winning by a head. Nobody’s Fault was 4 3/4 lengths farther back in third. Jennifer Lynnette, a 4-year-old Elusive Quality filly, ran 6 furlongs on firm going in 1:08.17 with <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Patrick_Husbands/" type="external">Patrick Husbands</a> at the controls. She has won three of her last five. The Royal North was her first graded stakes win. “It looked like a pretty tough race in terms of my horse,” Husbands said. “I just said the only way I feel like I can win is just wait and give her one run. I let the field go then she picked it up and she got to the outside and just started to run.”</p>
<p>International</p>
<p>England</p>
<p>Neither a driving rain nor the resulting soft turf could prevent 3-year-old filly Enable from running away from her older male rivals to win Saturday’s Group 1 <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/King_George_VI/" type="external">King George VI</a> and <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Elizabeth_II/" type="external">Queen Elizabeth</a> Handicap at Ascot by 4 1/2 lengths. Ulysses, winner of the Group 1 Coral-Eclipse in his last start, finished second and Group 2 Hardwicke Stakes winner Idaho finished third. Idaho’s full brother, multiple international Group 1 winner Highland Reel, was fourth while running gamely over ground that never has suited him.</p>
<p>With <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Frankie_Dettori/" type="external">Frankie Dettori</a> in the irons, Enable was eager early in the 1 1/2-miles race and stuck close to the pace. Dettori pushed the button shortly after the field was set down for the drive and Enable quickly put the matter to rest. The Juddmonte Farms homebred is by Nathaniel, the 2011 King George winner. She scored her third straight Group 1 victory following the Group 1 Investec Oaks at Epsom and the Group 1 Darley Irish Oaks at the Curragh.</p>
<p>British bookmakers reacted to the King George victory by making Enable the favorite for the Oct. 1 Group 1 Prix de l’ <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Arc_de_Triomphe/" type="external">Arc de Triomphe</a> at Chantilly.</p>
<p>France</p>
<p>While Enable stamped herself the best middle-distance filly in training in Europe, Roly Poly staked out some ground of her own at the mile distance, edging Via Ravenna by a neck in a thrilling finish to Sunday’s Group 1 Prix Rothschild at Deauville. Siyoushake was only a short head farther back in third. Qemah, last year’s winner and this year’s favorite, missed the break and could not sustain a stands-side challenge in the final yards. She finished fourth under new rider Cristian Demuro. <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Ryan_Moore/" type="external">Ryan Moore</a> hustled Roly Poly out of the gate turned back a challenge from Usherette, a Godolphin-owned Shamardal filly, and barely had enough left to handle first Siyoushake and finally Via Ravenna. Roly Poly is a War front filly owned by Coolmore and trained by <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Aidan_O_Brien/" type="external">Aidan O’Brien</a>. She now has two straight Group 1 wins, which followed a pair of Group 1 seconds behind her stablemate, Winter.</p>
<p>Germany</p>
<p>Iquitos scored his second top-level victory, besting Best Solution by 1 1/2 lengths in the Grosser Dallmayr-Preis Bayerisches Zuchtrennen July 30 in Munich. Potempkin was third and the favorite, Enjoy Vijay, settled for fourth in the 1 1/4-mile event, run over good turf. Iquitos, a 5-year-old son of Adlerflug, notched his first Group 1 win last September in the Longines <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Grosser_Preis_von_Baden/" type="external">Grosser Preis von Baden</a> and moved on to the Group 1 Japan Cup two months later, where he finished seventh, beaten only 4 lengths in an impressive performance by Kitasan Black.</p>
<p>South Africa</p>
<p>Many of South Africa’s top horses lined up for Saturday’s Group 1 World Sports Betting Champions Cup at Greyville but it was Sail South, a 17-1 shot who shadowed pacesetting Captain America, got by that one in the final 100 meters and won by 1 1/4 lengths. Matador Man came flying down the center of the narrow stretch but could do no better than third. Superstar filly Bela-Bela made a late run on the inside to finish fourth, Black Arthur was seventh, It’s My Turn was eighth and Marinaresco, the Group 1 Vodacom Durban July winner a month earlier, never ran a lick and beat only Judicial. Brett Crawford trains the top two but would have forecast the result in the opposite direction.</p>
<p>Around the ovals:</p>
<p>Del Mar</p>
<p>Miss Sunset led from the start in Sunday’s $150,000 Fleet Treat Stakes for California-bred 3-year-old fillies, then drew off smartly to win by 5 1/2 lengths. Queen Bee to You was best of the rest, a neck in front of Dreamy Gal. Miss Sunset, an Into Mischief filly, ran 7 furlongs on a fast track in 1:24.34 with Mike Smith aboard.</p>
<p>Mr. Hinx pressed the pace in Friday’s $150,000 Real Good Deal Stakes for California-bred 3-year-olds, took over the lead in the lane and held off the favorite, <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Ann_Arbor/" type="external">Ann Arbor</a> Eddie, by 1/2 length at the wire. Edwards Going Left was third. Mr. Hinx, a Ministers <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Wild_Cat/" type="external">Wild Cat</a> gelding, ran 7 furlongs on a fast track in 1:22.79 for jockey Flavien Prat.</p>
<p>Saratoga</p>
<p>Outplay outran all six rivals in Friday’s restricted $100,000 Curlin Stakes for 3-year-olds, leading from the start and winning off by 5 3/4 lengths. Small Bear beat the others with Perfect Partner another 3/4 length back in third. Outplay, a Bernardini colt, ran 9 furlongs on a fast track in 1:50.59 with John Velazquez in the irons.</p>
<p>Celtic Chaos worked to the lead in the stretch in Thursday’s $100,000 John Morrissey Stakes for New York-breds, bumped with Ostorlenka near the finish and prevailed by a neck over that rival. Papa Shot came like a shot from the back of the field to finish third. Celtic Chaos, a 4-year-old Dublin colt, ran 6 1/2 furlongs on a muddy, sealed track in 1:17.65 with Eric Cancel in the irons.</p>
<p>Prairie Meadows</p>
<p>Secret Passion and Line of Credit dueled for the lead throughout Thursday’s $65,000 Prairie Gold Lassie Stakes for 2-year-old fillies with the former prevailing by a nose. It was 5 more lengths back to Flat Out Gittin It in third and the odds-on favorite, Amberspatriot, finished sixth without making any impact. Secret Passion, a Kentucky-bred filly by Archarcharch, ran 6 furlongs on a fast track in 1:10.90, scoring her second straight win with Shane Laviolette riding.</p>
<p>The Tabulator rallied by pacesetting favorite Mr. Jagermeister in the stretch run of Friday’s $65,000 Prairie Gold Stakes for 2-year-olds and won by 2 1/4 lengths over that foe. Land Battle was another 7 3/4 length back in third. The Tabulator, a Dialed In colt, ran 6 furlongs in 1:10.09 with <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Jose_Valdivia/" type="external">Jose Valdivia</a> Jr. up. The Arlington-based colt now is 2-for-2 for trainer Larry Rivelli.</p>
<p>Monmouth Park</p>
<p>Chublicious got the lead in the stretch in Sunday’s $60,000 John J. Reilly Handicap for New Jersey-breds and held on gamely to win by a head from Fast Friar. The winner’s entrymate, Visionary Ruler, was third so Mello Groove completed the trifecta. Chublicious, a 6-year-old gelding by Hey Chub, got 6 furlongs on a fast track in 1:08.37 with Antonio Gallardo at the controls.</p>
<p>Mo Maverick stalked the pace in Saturday’s $60,000 Lamplighter Stakes for 3-year-olds, bid for the lead on the turn and went on to win by 1 1/2 lengths. Dover Cliffs, Harlan Strong and Holiday Bonus were second, third and fourth in a close bunch. Mo Maverick, an Uncle Mo colt, finished 1 1/16 miles over good turf in 1:42.80 with <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Eddie_Castro/" type="external">Eddie Castro</a> riding.</p>
<p>Woodbine</p>
<p>Niigon’s Eclipse took the lead in the stretch run in Sunday’s $125,000 (Canadian) Victoriana Stakes for Ontario-sired fillies and mares and held on through the final yards to win by a neck over Flipcup. Internal Bourbon was third, another 1/2 length in arrears. Niigon’s Eclipse, a 4-year-old daughter of Niigon, ran 1 1/16 miles on firm turf in 1:40.68 with Patrick Husbands aboard.</p>
<p>Inflexibility stalked the pace in Sunday’s $225,000 (Canadian) Wonder Where Stakes for Canadian-foaled 3-year-old fillies, gradually wore down pacesetting Enstone and won by 1/2 length over that one. Mythical Mission was third. Inflexibility, a Scat Daddy filly, toured 1 1/4 miles on firm turf in course-record time of 1:58.88 with Luis Contreras in the irons. Unraced as a 2-year-old, Inflexibility has developed quickly, posting third-place finishes in the Woodbine Oaks and Queen’s Plate. She now has two wins from five starts.</p>
<p>Canterbury Park</p>
<p>Hot Shot Kid held the lead in the stretch in Saturday’s $85,000 Minnesota Derby for state-bred colts and geldings and held on to win by 3/4 length over Got Even Smarter. Fireman Oscar was another 8 1/4 lengths up the track in third. Hot Shot Kid, a Majestic Warrior gelding, ran 1 mile and 70 yards on a fast track in 1:42.91 with Alex Canchari up.</p>
<p>Double Bee Sting, the even-money favorite, kicked clear late in Saturday’s $85,000 Minnesota Oaks for state-bred fillies, winning by 6 lengths. Two Be Royal was best of the rest, 2 1/4 lengths ahead of Pinup Girl. Double Bee Sting, a daughter of Stay Thirsty, ran 1 mile and 70 yards in 1:43.54 with Jareth Loveberry in the irons.</p>
<p>Albuquerque</p>
<p>Pink Cotton, the favorite, had them all the way in Saturday’s $50,000 Duke City Sprint for 3-year-olds and won by 3/4 length over onrushing long shot Evolve. Ranger Rod was third. Pink Cotton, a High Cotton colt, ran 5 1/2 furlongs on a fast track in 1:04.29 with Elvin Gonzalez in the irons.</p>
<p>Evangeline Downs</p>
<p>Ready Prospector seized a big lead in Saturday’s $75,000 D.S. Shine Young Futurity for Louisiana-bred 2-year-old colts and geldings, then just did hold on, beating the favorite, I Want a Picture, by a head. Cajun Creed was well back in third. Ready Prospector, a Custom for Carlos gelding, ran 5 1/2 furlongs on a sealed, wet-fast track in 1:05.46 with <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Gerard_Melancon/" type="external">Gerard Melancon</a> riding.</p>
<p>She’screative dueled to the lead in the 2-year-old filly companion feature and then cleared her rivals, winning by 2 1/4 lengths. Eye Craft, the early challenger, held second with Born to D’ Wild another 4 lengths back in third. She’screative, a Creative Cause filly, got 5 1/2 furlongs on the wet-fast track in 1:06.53 under Dusty Shepherd.</p>
<p>Emerald Downs</p>
<p>Riser rose to the occasion in Sunday’s $75,000 Emerald Downs Derby. Sent off the favorite, the Mizzen Mast colt quickly took the lead, opened a daylight advantage and found himself a comfortable 1 1/4 lengths out front at the end. Aqua Frio was second; More Power to Him, third. Riser got 9 furlongs on a fast track in 1:49.41 with Eswan Flores in the irons.</p> | false | 1 | odd weekend thoroughbred racing found winners kentucky derby winner always dreaming preakness winner cloud computing humbled saratoga long shots ruling 1 million haskell new jersey paid subscriber sundays feature saratoga 32 12 lengths take secretariat ace jockey mike smith fell horse fault wasnt hurt scrambled results important race sanity order weekend international front enable proved shes best 3yearold filly europe maybe best horses venue roly poly though stablemate winter still may say france germany south africa big races later hear classic sundays 600000 grade ii jim dandy saratoga billed showdown kentucky derby winner always dreaming preakness victor cloud computing neither picture good samaritan making first start main track rallied last five blasted stretch win 4 34 lengths giuseppe great another contest triple crown races second always dreaming faded pace finish third beaten 5 lengths pavel fourth cloud computing finished last chasing always dreaming early furlongs good samaritan harlans holiday colt ran 1 18 miles fast track 15069 joel rosario irons first asking saratoga turf last august took grade ii summer stakes woodbine second start recently fourth grade belmont derby july 8 good samaritans trainer bill mott said elliot walden winstar farm decided keep colt grass became clear wasnt going ready triple crown trail last week came conclusion try race mott added initially going travers way coming looked like going decent pace race horse well decide make choice said good samaritan looked pretty good jim dandy well certainly nominate travers well talk dont see wouldnt give try sundays 1 million grade betfaircom haskell invitational monmouth park wound field seven 3yearolds six alsorans kentucky derby naturally horse worst finish louisville girvin came running late snatch monmouth win nose mccraken practical joke third irish war cry fourth girvin finished 13th run roses beaten 19 12 lengths mccraken eighth derby practical joke fifth irish war cry finished 10th battle midway got show money derby finished sixth sundays race beating hence 11th louisville girvin tale ekati colt bum grade ii risen star grade ii louisiana derby churchill downs debacle finished second nose behind irap grade iii ohio derby june 24 haskell win carried guaranteed spot breeders cup classic november win youre plan trainer joe sharp said owner brad grady discussed girvins campaign kentucky derby thought right girvin give freshening thought ohio derby good spot close home effort thought deserved shot haskell confident horse today sundays 100000 grade iii monmouth cup run 1 116 miles could prep breeders cup championship races sprint classic whatever might sharp azteca sharp needed pressed early pace kicked away three starters 7 12 lengths ridden paco lopez donegal moon call kenny classy class completed order finish sharp azteca 4yearold freud colt done best work 7 furlongs previous try 1 116 miles led faded finish second texas chrome louisiana downs monmouth cup win gives trainer jorge navarro plenty options going forward including potential start breeders cup dirt mile run around two turns del mar mission accomplished said put mile sixteenth away distaff stellar wind hooked long stretch duel vale dori sundays 300000 grade clement hirsch del mar finally winning neck stubborn foe faithfully another 1 12 lengths back third good effort stellar wind curlin mare trained john sadler ran 1 116 miles fast track 14392 victor espinoza irons result almost exact replica grade beholder mile santa anita june 3 stellar wind beat vale dori neck similar late surge stellar wind five last six races midst span finished fourth last years longines breeders cup distaff looked like going set pretty much like last race sadler said vale dori speed know cant sit far youve got hook wear plans well start looking tomorrow really happy three faced starter sundays 200000 grade iii shuvee handicap saratoga end seemed one greet placing judges paid subscriber john velazquez let two go first quickly took charge ran away win 32 12 lengths terra promessa 4 lengths ahead apologynotaccepted paid subscriber 5yearold candy ride mare finished 9 furlongs fast track pedestrian 15131 second songbird last start got halfmile pole looked like turning way pretty easy velazquez said horses took back threeeighths pole got front decided put pressure handled well secretariat 1973 belmont stakes paltry 31 lengths moneysoncharlotte led start sundays 100000 grade iii molly pitcher monmouth park coasted first 1 12 lengths front eskenformoney favorite carrumba flattened stretch finished third moneysoncharlotte 5yearold mizzen mast mare got 1 116 miles fast track 14280 paco lopez irons notching second straight win came jersey shore oval pointed said winning trainer kelly breen monmouth home track shes training great shes good right filly good shes really good sprint ransom moon got clear shot rail stretch win saturdays 300000 grade bing crosby del mar two main rivals roy h mo candy floated middle track riderless horse settle second third riderless steed drefong secondfavorite behind roy h drefong making first start since winning last novembers breeders cup sprint ducked chute start forcing jockey mike smith abandon ship smith injured load lightned drefong took rail position alongside leaders played major role outcome ransom moon unaffected antics ran 6 furlongs fast track 10963 flavien prat irons earning guaranteed spot years breeders cup sprint win youre program prat said thought turn freerunning drefong going cause problems stayed behind turn went outside took leader got go inside worked perfectly got lucky today sometimes racing like trainer phil damato said likely give ransom moon 5yearold son malibu moon prep santa anita grade ii kona gold stakes may return del mar breeders cup sprint coal front oddson favorite took way saturdays 200000 grade ii amsterdam 3yearolds saratoga winning 1 12 lengths laterunning excitations singing bullet faded late finish distant third coal front stay thirsty colt covered 6 12 furlongs fast track 11605 jockey john velazquez notching third straight win hard win race much less first three said trainer todd pletcher beat pretty strong group older horses last time step graded stakes seems like hes getting better better pletcher said consider coal front 500000 grade allen jerkens stakes aug 26 hes horse strong pedigree enough talent stretch time right pletcher added saturdays 350000 grade alfred g vanderbilt handicap saratoga el deal winging start kicked away dramatically stretch win 8 lengths awesome banner second head front favorite limousine liberal el deal 5yearold son munnings got 6 furlongs fast track 10926 javier castellano two previous starts charles town monmouth park tackling accomplished foes vanderbilt trainer jorge navarro wasnt going take mountaineer navarro said wasnt going prove anything getting ready breeders cup big races end year wanted owners fun called said thought time see hes guess turf hunter oriley came flying outside final furlong saturdays 250000 grade ii bowling green saratoga time win neck bigger picture another neck sadlers joy favorite ascend rose lead top lane faded finish fourth hunter oriley 4yearold tiz wonderful ridgling ran 1 38 miles firm inner turf course 21294 florent geroux irons first stakes win although take tough 1 12miles allowance event keeneland grass spring meeting winning trainer jimmy toner said figured hunter oriley running third fourth like one things said winners circle youre going get breakout race today breakout race really excited dragon bay battled lead saturdays 175000 canadian grade ii nijinsky stakes woodbine finally seized advantage held late run favorite canthelpbelieving preserve victory 1 12 lengths pumpkin rumble contested early pace held third dragon bay 4yearold parading gelding ran 1 14 miles firm turf 20210 gary boulanger handling reins dragon bay grade ii eclipse stakes may sixth grade ii king edward last start kind get caught distance surfaces said winning trainer stuart simon hell anything ask honest hes dream horse really hes gift us happy money multiplier almost doubled backers investment win pool sundays 200000 grade ii monmouth stakes monmouth park 5yearold lookin lucky ridgling tracked pace backstretch took lead turn 1 12 lengths irish strait kharafa third quite evenmoney favorite money multiplier paid 380 win finishing 9 furlongs firm turf 14791 jockey javier castellano first race since finishing sixth breeders cup turf last fall didnt quite work way thought would said winning trainer chad brown getting jammed behind really slow pace javier used good judgment pull pass everyone said look grade sword dancer saratoga aug 26 italian babbo outfinished favorite saturdays 150000 california dreamin stakes statebreds del mar winning head another 2 lengths back soi phet third italian babbo 5yearold pappa clem gelding ran 1 116 miles firm turf 14191 corey nakatani irons fourth career win first stakes try filly amp mare turf wekeela got opening rail turning home sundays 100000 grade iii winstar matchmaker monmouth park sailed home first 34 length war flag rallied outside take second 1 length oddson favorite miss temple city wekeela 5yearold frenchbred mare hurricane run scored second win five us starts second two others four five races graded stakes also competitive highest level europe trained jeanclaude rouget miss temple city return winners circle improved 13thplace finish group 1 queen anne stakes royal ascot last start plan right behind horses saving much ground possible said winning rider javier castellano need perfect trip beat miss temple city thats happened turf sprint jennifer lynnette away last saturdays 125000 canadian royal north stakes fillies mares woodbine came fourwide stretch caught pacesetter kasuga final strides winning head nobodys fault 4 34 lengths farther back third jennifer lynnette 4yearold elusive quality filly ran 6 furlongs firm going 10817 patrick husbands controls three last five royal north first graded stakes win looked like pretty tough race terms horse husbands said said way feel like win wait give one run let field go picked got outside started run international england neither driving rain resulting soft turf could prevent 3yearold filly enable running away older male rivals win saturdays group 1 king george vi queen elizabeth handicap ascot 4 12 lengths ulysses winner group 1 coraleclipse last start finished second group 2 hardwicke stakes winner idaho finished third idahos full brother multiple international group 1 winner highland reel fourth running gamely ground never suited frankie dettori irons enable eager early 1 12miles race stuck close pace dettori pushed button shortly field set drive enable quickly put matter rest juddmonte farms homebred nathaniel 2011 king george winner scored third straight group 1 victory following group 1 investec oaks epsom group 1 darley irish oaks curragh british bookmakers reacted king george victory making enable favorite oct 1 group 1 prix de l arc de triomphe chantilly france enable stamped best middledistance filly training europe roly poly staked ground mile distance edging via ravenna neck thrilling finish sundays group 1 prix rothschild deauville siyoushake short head farther back third qemah last years winner years favorite missed break could sustain standsside challenge final yards finished fourth new rider cristian demuro ryan moore hustled roly poly gate turned back challenge usherette godolphinowned shamardal filly barely enough left handle first siyoushake finally via ravenna roly poly war front filly owned coolmore trained aidan obrien two straight group 1 wins followed pair group 1 seconds behind stablemate winter germany iquitos scored second toplevel victory besting best solution 1 12 lengths grosser dallmayrpreis bayerisches zuchtrennen july 30 munich potempkin third favorite enjoy vijay settled fourth 1 14mile event run good turf iquitos 5yearold son adlerflug notched first group 1 win last september longines grosser preis von baden moved group 1 japan cup two months later finished seventh beaten 4 lengths impressive performance kitasan black south africa many south africas top horses lined saturdays group 1 world sports betting champions cup greyville sail south 171 shot shadowed pacesetting captain america got one final 100 meters 1 14 lengths matador man came flying center narrow stretch could better third superstar filly belabela made late run inside finish fourth black arthur seventh turn eighth marinaresco group 1 vodacom durban july winner month earlier never ran lick beat judicial brett crawford trains top two would forecast result opposite direction around ovals del mar miss sunset led start sundays 150000 fleet treat stakes californiabred 3yearold fillies drew smartly win 5 12 lengths queen bee best rest neck front dreamy gal miss sunset mischief filly ran 7 furlongs fast track 12434 mike smith aboard mr hinx pressed pace fridays 150000 real good deal stakes californiabred 3yearolds took lead lane held favorite ann arbor eddie 12 length wire edwards going left third mr hinx ministers wild cat gelding ran 7 furlongs fast track 12279 jockey flavien prat saratoga outplay outran six rivals fridays restricted 100000 curlin stakes 3yearolds leading start winning 5 34 lengths small bear beat others perfect partner another 34 length back third outplay bernardini colt ran 9 furlongs fast track 15059 john velazquez irons celtic chaos worked lead stretch thursdays 100000 john morrissey stakes new yorkbreds bumped ostorlenka near finish prevailed neck rival papa shot came like shot back field finish third celtic chaos 4yearold dublin colt ran 6 12 furlongs muddy sealed track 11765 eric cancel irons prairie meadows secret passion line credit dueled lead throughout thursdays 65000 prairie gold lassie stakes 2yearold fillies former prevailing nose 5 lengths back flat gittin third oddson favorite amberspatriot finished sixth without making impact secret passion kentuckybred filly archarcharch ran 6 furlongs fast track 11090 scoring second straight win shane laviolette riding tabulator rallied pacesetting favorite mr jagermeister stretch run fridays 65000 prairie gold stakes 2yearolds 2 14 lengths foe land battle another 7 34 length back third tabulator dialed colt ran 6 furlongs 11009 jose valdivia jr arlingtonbased colt 2for2 trainer larry rivelli monmouth park chublicious got lead stretch sundays 60000 john j reilly handicap new jerseybreds held gamely win head fast friar winners entrymate visionary ruler third mello groove completed trifecta chublicious 6yearold gelding hey chub got 6 furlongs fast track 10837 antonio gallardo controls mo maverick stalked pace saturdays 60000 lamplighter stakes 3yearolds bid lead turn went win 1 12 lengths dover cliffs harlan strong holiday bonus second third fourth close bunch mo maverick uncle mo colt finished 1 116 miles good turf 14280 eddie castro riding woodbine niigons eclipse took lead stretch run sundays 125000 canadian victoriana stakes ontariosired fillies mares held final yards win neck flipcup internal bourbon third another 12 length arrears niigons eclipse 4yearold daughter niigon ran 1 116 miles firm turf 14068 patrick husbands aboard inflexibility stalked pace sundays 225000 canadian wonder stakes canadianfoaled 3yearold fillies gradually wore pacesetting enstone 12 length one mythical mission third inflexibility scat daddy filly toured 1 14 miles firm turf courserecord time 15888 luis contreras irons unraced 2yearold inflexibility developed quickly posting thirdplace finishes woodbine oaks queens plate two wins five starts canterbury park hot shot kid held lead stretch saturdays 85000 minnesota derby statebred colts geldings held win 34 length got even smarter fireman oscar another 8 14 lengths track third hot shot kid majestic warrior gelding ran 1 mile 70 yards fast track 14291 alex canchari double bee sting evenmoney favorite kicked clear late saturdays 85000 minnesota oaks statebred fillies winning 6 lengths two royal best rest 2 14 lengths ahead pinup girl double bee sting daughter stay thirsty ran 1 mile 70 yards 14354 jareth loveberry irons albuquerque pink cotton favorite way saturdays 50000 duke city sprint 3yearolds 34 length onrushing long shot evolve ranger rod third pink cotton high cotton colt ran 5 12 furlongs fast track 10429 elvin gonzalez irons evangeline downs ready prospector seized big lead saturdays 75000 ds shine young futurity louisianabred 2yearold colts geldings hold beating favorite want picture head cajun creed well back third ready prospector custom carlos gelding ran 5 12 furlongs sealed wetfast track 10546 gerard melancon riding shescreative dueled lead 2yearold filly companion feature cleared rivals winning 2 14 lengths eye craft early challenger held second born wild another 4 lengths back third shescreative creative cause filly got 5 12 furlongs wetfast track 10653 dusty shepherd emerald downs riser rose occasion sundays 75000 emerald downs derby sent favorite mizzen mast colt quickly took lead opened daylight advantage found comfortable 1 14 lengths front end aqua frio second power third riser got 9 furlongs fast track 14941 eswan flores irons | 2,651 |
<p>Two years ago today, Pope Francis was introduced to the world in a rainy St. Peter’s Square, asking for prayers. George Weigel, who was there that night with NBC News, is the author of more than 20&#160;books, including the two-volume biography of John Paul II,&#160;Witness to Hope&#160;and&#160; <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/247596/popes-legacy-george-weigel" type="external">The End and the Beginning</a>,&#160;and, most recently,&#160; <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/339783/setting-world-ablaze-interview" type="external">Evangelical Catholicism</a>&#160;and&#160; <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/374507/path-rome-kathryn-jean-lopez" type="external">Roman Pilgrimage</a>.&#160;​He is Distinguished Senior Fellow at the <a href="" type="internal">Ethics and Public Policy Center</a> where he holds the William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies. He talks here with NRO about Pope Francis and the Church. — KJL</p>
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<p>Kathryn Jean Lopez: Why is Pope Francis in an evangelical hurry, as you’ve put it?</p>
<p>George Weigel: Because he has felt the mercy of God in his own life and wants to share that experience with others. Because he sees a world in need of the Gospel, and of friendship with Jesus Christ, as an antidote to the self-absorption and loneliness that are eating away at the solidarity of the human community. Because, in the Vatican, &#160;if you don’t get something new done quickly you may not get it done at all. Because he’s 78 years old and knows that his will be a short pontificate.</p>
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<p>KJL: You’ve written that he has “reanimated the papacy.” What does that mean for Church teaching?</p>
<p>GW: I hope it means that the new interest in the pope evokes a new interest in the Church’s teaching, of which the pope is the custodian. Francis ought to be taken at his word when he says, as he has often done, that he is a son of the Church who believes and teaches what the Catholic Church believes and teaches. If his media-generated popularity, fragile as that may turn out to be when the world discovers that the pope is really a Catholic, opens windows of possibility for explaining that divine mercy leads us to the truths God revealed to us (and inscribed into the world and into us), then his reanimation of the papacy will advance the “Church in permanent mission” for which he called in&#160;Evangelii Gaudium, which is the grand strategy document of his pontificate.</p>
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<p>KJL: In that same article for the Tablet, a British magazine, you said, “All over the world, Francis is news, and when the Pope is news, so is the Church and the Gospel.” Is that still good news when the pope seems to be interpreted in different ways by different people? When the Gospel seems to be interpreted in different ways by different people?</p>
<p>GW: That’s the obvious challenge, perhaps even danger, here. By its very nature as a custodial office, the papacy can’t be a Rorschach test, into which people read whatever they like – whatever they fear or hope for. So when media “narratives” about Francis get set in concrete, and act as filters bending or distorting (or ignoring) aspects of his vision and his teaching that don’t fit the established story line, the Church has a problem. There’s an obvious investment in some media circles in the “narrative” of “the pope who’s finally going to get with it.” And as a friend at a major American newspaper said to me when I complained about this tendency in his own paper, “You know how these media narratives are. They’re like bamboo.” Meaning, once they start growing, you can’t kill them.</p>
<p>Perhaps the dumbest of these story lines is that Francis has re-opened conversation and debate in a Church that had been closed and claustrophobic for 35 years under John Paul II and Benedict XVI. I defy anyone who, over the last 35 years, has spent time on the campuses of Notre Dame or Georgetown, or who has read the National Catholic Reporter, or who has gone to a meeting of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, to make that claim without experiencing a twinge of conscience that says, “I should wash my mouth out with soap.”</p>
<p>The most enduring of the false narratives is that the signature phrase of the early pontificate — “Who am I to judge?” — was a matter of the pope jettisoning millennia of Catholic moral teaching. It was not. It was a specific response to the circumstances of a man who had repented and was trying to live an upright life; it was, in a word, what any sensible pastor, facing that specific set of circumstances, would say. But ripped out of context, it has become an all-purpose filter through which everything else — including the pope’s multiple reaffirmations of Humanae Vitae, Paul VI’s encyclical on the morally appropriate means of family planning — gets airbrushed out of the picture.</p>
<p>And then there’s the trope about an impending “global-warming encyclical.” The pope is preparing an encyclical on nature and the environment, including the human environment (which includes the moral imperative of a culturally affirmed and legally recognized right to life from conception until natural death). So what happens? A low-ranking Vatican official with gauchiste tendencies and a marked talent for self-promotion gives an interview to the Guardian, one of the most consistently anti-Catholic newspapers in the world, in which he claims that this is a global-warming encyclical — which he couldn’t possibly have known, as the document wasn’t drafted yet. The Guardian loves it, because it fits the story line of the long-awaited Great Catholic Cave-In. So the story wafts across the Atlantic, where it’s picked up with glee by Catholic progressives and horror by some Catholic conservatives — and the battle of the blogs is on, full blast. No one bothers to ask whether there’s any basis in fact for the assertion that this is going to be a “global-warming encyclical.” So when climate change gets some attention in a 100-page document, the most important parts of which will have to do with the theology of stewardship and the theology of “human ecology,” it’s almost certainly going to be rapturously embraced, or bitterly opposed, as a “global-warming encyclical,” despite the evidence that it’s much more broadly gauged than that.</p>
<p>More pro-active Vatican communications might be able to do something about all this, but when the Holy See is constantly in the mode of, “No, what the pope really meant was . . . ,” the game has already been largely forfeited.</p>
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<p>KJL: What is it that is so powerful about Pope Francis’s example? His gestures?</p>
<p>GW: The world needs a pastor, whether it knows it or not. And Francis communicates the pastoral embrace of the Church, the breadth and inclusiveness of Catholicism symbolized by the Bernini colonnade around St. Peter’s Square, in a powerful way. What is amazing here is that he started doing this at age 76; there was none of it in Buenos Aires, as least on a vast scale. So here’s a contrast to John Paul II, who was an immensely attractive public figure in Cracow and then brought that capacity to inspire-by-example to Rome — although some of the narrative-merchants seem to have forgotten that.</p>
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<p>KJL: What is it about the missionary mandate of the Church that modern-day Catholics miss in the West?</p>
<p>GW: We’re used to institutional-maintenance Catholicism, in which the institution ticks along by its own inertia and people are “born” into the Church. Francis knows that is over and done with: “Kept” Catholicism, whether “kept” by legal establishment or by cultural habit, has no future. The only future is intentional Catholicism, evangelical Catholicism. That’s what he and the other bishops of Latin America proclaimed at their Aparecida meeting in Brazil in 2007.&#160; And that’s what the liveliest parts of the world Church today — ranging from the booming Church in Africa to FOCUS missionaries on American campuses — are living: a Catholicism that has discovered that it doesn’t have a mission, it is a mission. The people who are behind the curve of the Catholic future are the institutional-maintenance types. The Germans now seem the primary example of this — which is another reason to scratch the head at their seeming determination to force the whole Church to adopt the Catholic Lite approach that has, in a bizarre inversion, emptied German churches of congregants while vastly expanding the German Church’s bureaucracies.</p>
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<p>KJL: All this focus Francis has put on family, and all the debates he has seemed to encourage, what is that about? Where do we wind up? Is there a danger in the risks he seems to have taken?</p>
<p>GW: The pope knows that the marriage culture is in crisis throughout the world, and so is the family. He comes to that conviction as a pastor, not as Brad Wilcox or Charles Murray. So he wants to challenge the Church to find pastoral responses to that crisis that meet real human needs. The turmoil of the Synod last October was in large part the result of the Synod’s being hijacked by a small cabal of northern-European bishops, determined to make the entire exercise a referendum on some things the rest of the Church already considers settled: the permanence of marriage and the conditions for receiving Holy Communion worthily. I think the Synod of October 2015 is going to get back to that broader agenda — at least I hope it does, and I’ve reason to believe that there are many bishops determined that that will be the case.</p>
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<p>KJL: What do you say to conservative friends who are nervous — or disappointed, or dismissive, or livid, or heartbroken — about the pope?</p>
<p>GW: “You don’t believe what you read in the papers about anything else; why do you believe it about the pope?” That’s where I’d start.</p>
<p>I’d then suggest that these people, if they’re Americans, look back on the last 35 years of our ecclesial experience and take heart from that. The dramatic reform of seminaries continues. The priests and bishops who take their pastoral model from John Paul II will continue to do so, perhaps learning a lesson or two from Francis along the way — and they’ll be the overwhelming majority of the Church’s ordained ministers ten, twenty, thirty years from now. The dynamically orthodox orders of religious women will continue to grow, and the dying orders, which long ago opted for the lightest of Catholic Lite, will continue to die. Younger theologians will continue to pursue and understand truth rather than deconstructing it, as a lot of their elders seemed to want to do. Vital parishes built on the Bible and the sacraments, committed to evangelizing their neighborhoods, will continue to flourish. The poor will be served, the sick healed, and the dying comforted. None of that is going to change, and I’d wager that it’s going to get better. The Church in the United States turned a corner about three decades ago, and the idea that we’re going back to the incoherence of the late Sixties and Seventies is, frankly, silly. Let’s have a little faith in what the Holy Spirit has done among us these past 35 years.</p>
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<p>KJL: What do you say to liberals who warn Francis (like that Rolling Stone cover a year or so ago) that he’d better not be like Benedict, that he’d better be the pope of their ideological hopes and dreams?</p>
<p>GW: That anyone would imagine finding insight in a Rolling Stone article on a pope, be he Francis, Benedict XVI, Agapitus I, or Leo the Great, is beyond my comprehension; it would be like seeking the inside scoop on the rock scene inForeign Affairs. What I hope my liberal friends (and I have more than a few) take from this pontificate is that mercy and truth are never separable in Catholic pastoral life. The Church offers the medicine of the divine mercy so that healed souls can grasp the truth that will liberate them in the fullest meaning of human freedom. I’d also hope that my liberal friends, who find in this pope a critic of what they’re pleased to call “culture-warrior” Catholics, will read carefully, and ponder even more carefully, what Pope Francis had to say about the “ideological colonization” implicit in Western decadence when he was giving robust pro-life, pro-family talks in the Philippines earlier this year. (In fact, the nervous conservatives should read those texts, too.)</p>
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<p>KJL: Is there any shot at cleansing some of the ideology that’s crept into Church circles and getting back to something more sacramental?</p>
<p>GW: That’s happening all the time in the best parishes in the Church, where the transformative power of the Eucharist is experienced through the dignified celebration of Holy Mass, and people are empowered for mission because of that.</p>
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<p>KJL: Why are people responding to him so favorably? He blows Pew polls off the charts. Is there a real impact he’s making?</p>
<p>GW: The impact remains to be seen; I don’t think we can measure the enduring impact of John Paul II, for example, for another hundred, perhaps two hundred, years. The short-term impact is that people are encouraged to give the Church another look. It’s up to the liveliest parts of the Church — the dynamically orthodox parts of the Church — to seize that opportunity.</p>
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<p>KJL: What is the “encounter” he talks about? What are the “peripheries”?</p>
<p>GW: Again, the pope takes his vocabulary from his pastoral experience, not from the rhetorical tool kit of liberation theology, with its Marxist yammering about “center” and “periphery.” The “peripheries,” for Francis, are all those who have fallen through the cracks of late-modernity and post-modernity — in his native Argentina, because of colossal corruption, political and financial. The pope speaks with great passion about the shame we should all feel when, as he puts it, “a man does not have the dignity of earning bread for his family,” but is turned into a peripheral person, a welfare client, a dependent. The “encounter” with the people on the peripheries is intended to draw them into the circle of common care and concern — that call to encounter is, to use a favorite world of John Paul II’s, a call to solidarity. And that means, it seems to me, aggressive Catholic efforts to empower the poor — and a profound Catholic challenge to all those cultural forces that are eroding stable families, which are the elementary schools where we learn to take responsibility for our lives, which is the highest exercise of freedom.</p>
<p>The emphasis on the “peripheries” is also a distinctively “Franciscan” way of expressing the pope’s respect for untutored popular piety — a respect, I might add, that was shared by St. John Paul II. No one who reads and reveres the New Testament should doubt for a second that the pious poor and marginalized have something to teach all of us — including German theologian-bishops — about the truth of the Gospel and the mysteries of the Kingdom of God.</p>
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<p>KJL: What have your conversations with him been like?</p>
<p>GW: Robust, quite candid, occasionally whimsical, very friendly; everything’s on the table.</p>
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<p>KJL: Has the Vatican changed on account of him? What does the future hold?</p>
<p>GW: The most important appointment Pope Francis has made is the appointment of the Australian cardinal, George Pell, as the Vatican’s financial overseer. The colossal mess in Vatican finances that Francis inherited two years ago has been cleaned up, and cleaned out. Real budgeting and accounting procedures are in place; so are real professionals, not somebody’s nephew. The job now is to institutionalize all of that, and I wouldn’t bet against Cardinal Pell, who hasn’t shied away from contact sports since his days as an Australian-rules football star.</p>
<p>It would seem that the rest of the re-design of the Roman Curia is not going nearly as well. And the contrast between these two realities, two years on, underscores a point I learned long ago about the papacy: One of the most important qualities in a pope is his judgment of people — can he get around him the people who can put into practice his vision of what the Church must be doing now to fulfill its mandate from the Lord?</p>
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<p>KJL: Who is Jesus Christ to Pope Francis?</p>
<p>GW: The Lord with whom he speaks for hours every day in prayer. The Risen One who reached out, touched his life, and called him into mission.</p>
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<p>KJL: What’s the most constructive Catholic response to him?</p>
<p>GW: The papacy is an impossible job. So the best thing Catholics can do for the pope is to pray for him.</p>
<p>Then they owe him the loyalty that is expressed in speaking the truth to him — and that puts a premium on knowing whether what you’re happy about, on unhappy about, has a basis in fact, or is merely a reflection of the “narrative.” By the same token, the new and stringent Ultramontanism on the Catholic Left — in which even the mildest questions about how things are working in this pontificate are denounced as treasonous disloyalty — is an affront to the open conversation for which the pope has called.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>KJL: What is his visit to the United States going to mean for the Church here?</p>
<p>GW: For us, it’s going to be a great gathering of the vast and multifaceted Catholic family. For him, it’s an opportunity to experience the vitality of Catholicism in America, which, despite all its problems, is the best embodiment of his “Church in permanent mission” in the developed world.</p>
<p>— Kathryn Jean Lopez is senior fellow at the&#160;National Review Institute, editor-at-large of&#160;National Review Online, and founding director of&#160;Catholic Voices USA. George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center.</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | false | 1 | two years ago today pope francis introduced world rainy st peters square asking prayers george weigel night nbc news author 20160books including twovolume biography john paul ii160witness hope160and160 end beginning160and recently160 evangelical catholicism160and160 roman pilgrimage160he distinguished senior fellow ethics public policy center holds william e simon chair catholic studies talks nro pope francis church kjl 160 kathryn jean lopez pope francis evangelical hurry youve put george weigel felt mercy god life wants share experience others sees world need gospel friendship jesus christ antidote selfabsorption loneliness eating away solidarity human community vatican 160if dont get something new done quickly may get done hes 78 years old knows short pontificate 160 kjl youve written reanimated papacy mean church teaching gw hope means new interest pope evokes new interest churchs teaching pope custodian francis ought taken word says often done son church believes teaches catholic church believes teaches mediagenerated popularity fragile may turn world discovers pope really catholic opens windows possibility explaining divine mercy leads us truths god revealed us inscribed world us reanimation papacy advance church permanent mission called in160evangelii gaudium grand strategy document pontificate 160 kjl article tablet british magazine said world francis news pope news church gospel still good news pope seems interpreted different ways different people gospel seems interpreted different ways different people gw thats obvious challenge perhaps even danger nature custodial office papacy cant rorschach test people read whatever like whatever fear hope media narratives francis get set concrete act filters bending distorting ignoring aspects vision teaching dont fit established story line church problem theres obvious investment media circles narrative pope whos finally going get friend major american newspaper said complained tendency paper know media narratives theyre like bamboo meaning start growing cant kill perhaps dumbest story lines francis reopened conversation debate church closed claustrophobic 35 years john paul ii benedict xvi defy anyone last 35 years spent time campuses notre dame georgetown read national catholic reporter gone meeting leadership conference women religious make claim without experiencing twinge conscience says wash mouth soap enduring false narratives signature phrase early pontificate judge matter pope jettisoning millennia catholic moral teaching specific response circumstances man repented trying live upright life word sensible pastor facing specific set circumstances would say ripped context become allpurpose filter everything else including popes multiple reaffirmations humanae vitae paul vis encyclical morally appropriate means family planning gets airbrushed picture theres trope impending globalwarming encyclical pope preparing encyclical nature environment including human environment includes moral imperative culturally affirmed legally recognized right life conception natural death happens lowranking vatican official gauchiste tendencies marked talent selfpromotion gives interview guardian one consistently anticatholic newspapers world claims globalwarming encyclical couldnt possibly known document wasnt drafted yet guardian loves fits story line longawaited great catholic cavein story wafts across atlantic picked glee catholic progressives horror catholic conservatives battle blogs full blast one bothers ask whether theres basis fact assertion going globalwarming encyclical climate change gets attention 100page document important parts theology stewardship theology human ecology almost certainly going rapturously embraced bitterly opposed globalwarming encyclical despite evidence much broadly gauged proactive vatican communications might able something holy see constantly mode pope really meant game already largely forfeited 160 kjl powerful pope franciss example gestures gw world needs pastor whether knows francis communicates pastoral embrace church breadth inclusiveness catholicism symbolized bernini colonnade around st peters square powerful way amazing started age 76 none buenos aires least vast scale heres contrast john paul ii immensely attractive public figure cracow brought capacity inspirebyexample rome although narrativemerchants seem forgotten 160 kjl missionary mandate church modernday catholics miss west gw used institutionalmaintenance catholicism institution ticks along inertia people born church francis knows done kept catholicism whether kept legal establishment cultural habit future future intentional catholicism evangelical catholicism thats bishops latin america proclaimed aparecida meeting brazil 2007160 thats liveliest parts world church today ranging booming church africa focus missionaries american campuses living catholicism discovered doesnt mission mission people behind curve catholic future institutionalmaintenance types germans seem primary example another reason scratch head seeming determination force whole church adopt catholic lite approach bizarre inversion emptied german churches congregants vastly expanding german churchs bureaucracies 160 kjl focus francis put family debates seemed encourage wind danger risks seems taken gw pope knows marriage culture crisis throughout world family comes conviction pastor brad wilcox charles murray wants challenge church find pastoral responses crisis meet real human needs turmoil synod last october large part result synods hijacked small cabal northerneuropean bishops determined make entire exercise referendum things rest church already considers settled permanence marriage conditions receiving holy communion worthily think synod october 2015 going get back broader agenda least hope ive reason believe many bishops determined case 160 kjl say conservative friends nervous disappointed dismissive livid heartbroken pope gw dont believe read papers anything else believe pope thats id start id suggest people theyre americans look back last 35 years ecclesial experience take heart dramatic reform seminaries continues priests bishops take pastoral model john paul ii continue perhaps learning lesson two francis along way theyll overwhelming majority churchs ordained ministers ten twenty thirty years dynamically orthodox orders religious women continue grow dying orders long ago opted lightest catholic lite continue die younger theologians continue pursue understand truth rather deconstructing lot elders seemed want vital parishes built bible sacraments committed evangelizing neighborhoods continue flourish poor served sick healed dying comforted none going change id wager going get better church united states turned corner three decades ago idea going back incoherence late sixties seventies frankly silly lets little faith holy spirit done among us past 35 years 160 kjl say liberals warn francis like rolling stone cover year ago hed better like benedict hed better pope ideological hopes dreams gw anyone would imagine finding insight rolling stone article pope francis benedict xvi agapitus leo great beyond comprehension would like seeking inside scoop rock scene inforeign affairs hope liberal friends take pontificate mercy truth never separable catholic pastoral life church offers medicine divine mercy healed souls grasp truth liberate fullest meaning human freedom id also hope liberal friends find pope critic theyre pleased call culturewarrior catholics read carefully ponder even carefully pope francis say ideological colonization implicit western decadence giving robust prolife profamily talks philippines earlier year fact nervous conservatives read texts 160 kjl shot cleansing ideology thats crept church circles getting back something sacramental gw thats happening time best parishes church transformative power eucharist experienced dignified celebration holy mass people empowered mission 160 kjl people responding favorably blows pew polls charts real impact hes making gw impact remains seen dont think measure enduring impact john paul ii example another hundred perhaps two hundred years shortterm impact people encouraged give church another look liveliest parts church dynamically orthodox parts church seize opportunity 160 kjl encounter talks peripheries gw pope takes vocabulary pastoral experience rhetorical tool kit liberation theology marxist yammering center periphery peripheries francis fallen cracks latemodernity postmodernity native argentina colossal corruption political financial pope speaks great passion shame feel puts man dignity earning bread family turned peripheral person welfare client dependent encounter people peripheries intended draw circle common care concern call encounter use favorite world john paul iis call solidarity means seems aggressive catholic efforts empower poor profound catholic challenge cultural forces eroding stable families elementary schools learn take responsibility lives highest exercise freedom emphasis peripheries also distinctively franciscan way expressing popes respect untutored popular piety respect might add shared st john paul ii one reads reveres new testament doubt second pious poor marginalized something teach us including german theologianbishops truth gospel mysteries kingdom god 160 kjl conversations like gw robust quite candid occasionally whimsical friendly everythings table 160 kjl vatican changed account future hold gw important appointment pope francis made appointment australian cardinal george pell vaticans financial overseer colossal mess vatican finances francis inherited two years ago cleaned cleaned real budgeting accounting procedures place real professionals somebodys nephew job institutionalize wouldnt bet cardinal pell hasnt shied away contact sports since days australianrules football star would seem rest redesign roman curia going nearly well contrast two realities two years underscores point learned long ago papacy one important qualities pope judgment people get around people put practice vision church must fulfill mandate lord 160 kjl jesus christ pope francis gw lord speaks hours every day prayer risen one reached touched life called mission 160 kjl whats constructive catholic response gw papacy impossible job best thing catholics pope pray owe loyalty expressed speaking truth puts premium knowing whether youre happy unhappy basis fact merely reflection narrative token new stringent ultramontanism catholic left even mildest questions things working pontificate denounced treasonous disloyalty affront open conversation pope called 160 kjl visit united states going mean church gw us going great gathering vast multifaceted catholic family opportunity experience vitality catholicism america despite problems best embodiment church permanent mission developed world kathryn jean lopez senior fellow the160national review institute editoratlarge of160national review online founding director of160catholic voices usa george weigel distinguished senior fellow ethics public policy center 160 | 1,485 |
<p>It’s hardly “Heaven’s Gate,” but there’s a similar grandiosity of ambition — and a familiar sense of folly —&#160;to <a href="http://variety.com/t/scott-cooper/" type="external">Scott Cooper</a>’s “ <a href="http://variety.com/t/hostiles/" type="external">Hostiles</a>,” a $40 million, independently produced, sure-to-be-R-rated Western in a marketplace where even a more broadly appealing oater, like Seth MacFarlane’s tongue-in-cheek “A Million Ways to Die in the West,” can barely earn that kind of money back. But “Hostiles” is no spoof; it’s a deadly serious examination of the strained relationship between white men and Native Americans in this country, one that acknowledges the racism and brutality the U.S. Army showed to frontier tribes, while giving a bigoted cavalry officer played by <a href="http://variety.com/t/christian-bale/" type="external">Christian Bale</a> a chance to redeem himself.</p>
<p>Debuting at the <a href="http://variety.com/t/telluride-film-festival/" type="external">Telluride film festival</a> without a distributor in place, this impressively mounted, intellectually corrupt period piece isn’t your traditional Western, and clearly fancies itself a revisionist take on so many black-and-white us-vs.-them tales, in which unambiguously heroic white men protect their women and children from red-skinned enemies. But just how progressive is a movie that draws a false equivalency between individual Indian attacks and large-scale, government-sanctioned genocide?</p>
<p>So, while taking a much harder edge to the feel-good hug-an-Indian West of “Dances With Wolves,” “Hostiles” ultimately falls back on the same one-dimensional archetypes, depicting Native Americans either as ruthless savages or as stoic sages, with nothing in between. And though it basically argues that the surest way to overcome racism is to spend some time getting to know “the other,” Cooper’s film offers audiences no such opportunity, depriving its native characters of so much as a single scene in which they are treated as anything more than abstract plot devices in service of the white folks’ enlightenment.</p>
<p>By contrast, the film is exceptionally well-attuned to the complexity of its white characters, whose anti-Native-American hatred is nearly always “justified” by backstory. For example, after learning that Bale’s character was once left for dead with a Kiowa war spear in his gut, can anyone blame him for taking bloodthirsty delight in the extermination of his enemies? And after witnessing how Comanches use a pioneer family for target practice, who could fault Rosalee Quaid ( <a href="http://variety.com/t/rosamund-pike/" type="external">Rosamund Pike</a>) for being traumatized by the next group of natives to cross her path?</p>
<p>The premise here is that both characters, Capt. Joseph Blocker (Bale) and Rosalee, have reason to hate Native Americans, but that such hostility is bad, and to facilitate their awakening, the movie invents a cross-country journey in which both are forced to travel with a group of Cheyenne prisoners (including native stars Adam Beach and Q’orianka Kilcher, who barely register as characters). Though he’d actually prefer being court martialed to fulfilling the assignment, Blocker reluctantly agrees to escort chief Yellow Hawk (Wes Studi) and his family to Montana, so the old warrior can die on his own land.</p>
<p>Back in his time, Yellow Hawk was a vicious killer of white men, and it offends Blocker’s principles to let someone like him go free (a mile or so from the fort, he pulls out a pair of very large knives and debates whether to serve his own brand of justice then and there). But, convenient to the story (yet never satisfactorily explained), the once-proud chief has been mellowed by cancer and seven years in an Army prison, and now, he’s fit to serve as the exception who challenges Blocker’s stereotypes — “the good Indian” whose company will bring Blocker and his band of racist cavalry officers around (as if there’s any sacrifice that can absolve them of the part they played in the battle of Wounded Knee).</p>
<p>“Those were the good old days,” says Blocker’s oldest friend, Master Sgt. Thomas Metz (Rory Cochrane), who made his first kill at age 14. Something happens to a man when he’s seen and caused that much death, and Cooper is clearly invested in trying to explore that aspect of the American character, whose soul “has never yet melted,” per the D.H. Lawrence quotation that introduces the film. (“Hostiles” has a curious provenance, “based upon the manuscript by Donald Stewart,” the screenwriter of “Missing” and “The Hunt for the Red October,” who died 18 years ago, and it’s hard to know just how much of the original material remains.)</p>
<p>At one point, Metz refers to the time “I was fightin’ for the Grays” — slang for his days as a Confederate soldier. But the fact that he and Blocker are friends implies that the captain has previously found it possible to forgive his rivals. Why should it be any different with Native Americans? What’s more, the movie goes out of its way to include a scene in which he tells a badly wounded, black-skinned Buffalo Soldier, Henry Woodson (Jonathan Majors), that he’s the best soldier he’s ever known —&#160;as if to illustrate the selectivity of his racial hatred.</p>
<p>Still, these were different times in America’s past, and peaceful coexistence didn’t seem plausible at the time —&#160;a point Cooper reminds by forcing Blocker to endure a liberal diatribe over dinner with Lt. Colonel Ross McCowan (Peter Mullan), as his wife (Robyn Malcolm) verbalizes a more progressive modern view. In 1892, however, white settlers found themselves under constant threat of being shot and scalped, playing a defensive game against the local “savages” — terrifyingly illustrated in “Hostiles’” opening scene, in which a group of Comanches ride up to a homestead and slaughter all but Rosalee, who barely escapes with her own life.</p>
<p>It’s not every director who can show three kids (including an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes) perforated by bullets without so much as flinching, but that’s Cooper’s M.O., refined over the three films since his relatively marshmallowy “Crazy Heart”: As in “Black Mass” before this, violence packs more punch if depicted matter-of-factly, which somehow registers as “realistic” these days (although one suspects that it would be far more horrifying if his victims suffered slow, agonizing deaths after being shot).</p>
<p>Cooper’s style is undeniably elegant, from its unhurried pace (in which heavily accented characters let long silences fill the space their lines) to the rich, widescreen imagery (positively stunning, its landscapes ranging far beyond the de-facto Monument Valley vistas so often seen in Westerns). Making the most of that scenery, DP Masanobu Takayanagi eschews closeups in favor of carefully blocked, painterly compositions. This was the effect “War for the Planet of the Apes” was going for,&#160;though Cooper isn’t asking audiences to acknowledge his good taste, but simply giving them room, both physical and emotional (and further encouraged by Max Richter’s restrained tonal score), to project themselves onto the scene.</p>
<p>That’s one of the reasons some viewers have found the film to be so profound: Because they themselves are profound, and the movie demands that its audiences flesh out what is left unspoken by its rugged characters (whose tough-to-understand lines ought to be subtitled in the same old-timey typeface used to translate the Cheyenne dialogue). Pike is especially terrific, delivering what could well be her best performance, as a woman who suffers a crippling loss and still manages to feel so much. Even Ben Foster (typecast as a demented Indian-killer) manages to complicate the question of what makes his character a psychopath and Bale’s a hero —&#160;to which Blocker’s answer, “I was just doing my job,” seems wholly inadequate. But why should Foster’s psychopath deserve such consideration, when the natives barely register as people? And why should audiences allow themselves to care for characters whom Cooper has no qualms about killing?</p>
<p>Be warned, the last paragraph of this review addresses the ending. Pretty much everybody dies in “Hostiles,” as if the alternative (survival) might be considered too sentimental for Cooper’s ruthless cred. Body count aside, “Hostiles” also features a happy ending, albeit one whose politics are the most problematic of any film this year. Though the last shot inspired applause at the Telluride film festival, think about what it is really saying. Bale’s character is a monster, as can be said of anyone who takes pleasure in killing, and though it’s satisfying to see him transformed, the movie isn’t at all clear about how or why —&#160;or even at what point —&#160;that happens. Cooper shows restraint at times (keeping the rape scene off screen, for example), but it’s empathy that’s called for.</p>
<p>Reviewed at Telluride Film Festival, Sept. 3, 2017. (Also in Toronto film festival — Special Presentations.) Running time: 133 MIN.</p>
<p>Producers: Scott Cooper, John Lesher, Ken Kao. Executive producers: Will Weiske, Donald Stewart. Co-producers: Sean Murphy, Josh Rosenbaum, Jennifer Semler, Alex Walton.</p>
<p>Director: Scott Cooper. Screenplay: Cooper, based upon a manuscript by Donald Stewart. Camera (color, widescreen): Masanobu Takayanagi. Editor: Tom Cross. Music: Max Richter.</p>
<p>Christian Bale, Rosamund Pike, Wes Studi, Jesse Plemons, Adam Beach, Rory Cochrane, Peter Mullan, Scott Wilson, Paul Anderson, Timothée Chalamet, Ben Foster, Jonathan Majors, John Benjamin Hickey, Q’orianka Kilcher, Tanaya Beatty, Bill Camp, Scott Shepherd, Ryan Bingham, Robyn Malcolm. (English, Cheyenne dialogue)</p> | false | 1 | hardly heavens gate theres similar grandiosity ambition familiar sense folly 160to scott coopers hostiles 40 million independently produced suretoberrated western marketplace even broadly appealing oater like seth macfarlanes tongueincheek million ways die west barely earn kind money back hostiles spoof deadly serious examination strained relationship white men native americans country one acknowledges racism brutality us army showed frontier tribes giving bigoted cavalry officer played christian bale chance redeem debuting telluride film festival without distributor place impressively mounted intellectually corrupt period piece isnt traditional western clearly fancies revisionist take many blackandwhite usvsthem tales unambiguously heroic white men protect women children redskinned enemies progressive movie draws false equivalency individual indian attacks largescale governmentsanctioned genocide taking much harder edge feelgood huganindian west dances wolves hostiles ultimately falls back onedimensional archetypes depicting native americans either ruthless savages stoic sages nothing though basically argues surest way overcome racism spend time getting know coopers film offers audiences opportunity depriving native characters much single scene treated anything abstract plot devices service white folks enlightenment contrast film exceptionally wellattuned complexity white characters whose antinativeamerican hatred nearly always justified backstory example learning bales character left dead kiowa war spear gut anyone blame taking bloodthirsty delight extermination enemies witnessing comanches use pioneer family target practice could fault rosalee quaid rosamund pike traumatized next group natives cross path premise characters capt joseph blocker bale rosalee reason hate native americans hostility bad facilitate awakening movie invents crosscountry journey forced travel group cheyenne prisoners including native stars adam beach qorianka kilcher barely register characters though hed actually prefer court martialed fulfilling assignment blocker reluctantly agrees escort chief yellow hawk wes studi family montana old warrior die land back time yellow hawk vicious killer white men offends blockers principles let someone like go free mile fort pulls pair large knives debates whether serve brand justice convenient story yet never satisfactorily explained onceproud chief mellowed cancer seven years army prison hes fit serve exception challenges blockers stereotypes good indian whose company bring blocker band racist cavalry officers around theres sacrifice absolve part played battle wounded knee good old days says blockers oldest friend master sgt thomas metz rory cochrane made first kill age 14 something happens man hes seen caused much death cooper clearly invested trying explore aspect american character whose soul never yet melted per dh lawrence quotation introduces film hostiles curious provenance based upon manuscript donald stewart screenwriter missing hunt red october died 18 years ago hard know much original material remains one point metz refers time fightin grays slang days confederate soldier fact blocker friends implies captain previously found possible forgive rivals different native americans whats movie goes way include scene tells badly wounded blackskinned buffalo soldier henry woodson jonathan majors hes best soldier hes ever known 160as illustrate selectivity racial hatred still different times americas past peaceful coexistence didnt seem plausible time 160a point cooper reminds forcing blocker endure liberal diatribe dinner lt colonel ross mccowan peter mullan wife robyn malcolm verbalizes progressive modern view 1892 however white settlers found constant threat shot scalped playing defensive game local savages terrifyingly illustrated hostiles opening scene group comanches ride homestead slaughter rosalee barely escapes life every director show three kids including infant wrapped swaddling clothes perforated bullets without much flinching thats coopers mo refined three films since relatively marshmallowy crazy heart black mass violence packs punch depicted matteroffactly somehow registers realistic days although one suspects would far horrifying victims suffered slow agonizing deaths shot coopers style undeniably elegant unhurried pace heavily accented characters let long silences fill space lines rich widescreen imagery positively stunning landscapes ranging far beyond defacto monument valley vistas often seen westerns making scenery dp masanobu takayanagi eschews closeups favor carefully blocked painterly compositions effect war planet apes going for160though cooper isnt asking audiences acknowledge good taste simply giving room physical emotional encouraged max richters restrained tonal score project onto scene thats one reasons viewers found film profound profound movie demands audiences flesh left unspoken rugged characters whose toughtounderstand lines ought subtitled oldtimey typeface used translate cheyenne dialogue pike especially terrific delivering could well best performance woman suffers crippling loss still manages feel much even ben foster typecast demented indiankiller manages complicate question makes character psychopath bales hero 160to blockers answer job seems wholly inadequate fosters psychopath deserve consideration natives barely register people audiences allow care characters cooper qualms killing warned last paragraph review addresses ending pretty much everybody dies hostiles alternative survival might considered sentimental coopers ruthless cred body count aside hostiles also features happy ending albeit one whose politics problematic film year though last shot inspired applause telluride film festival think really saying bales character monster said anyone takes pleasure killing though satisfying see transformed movie isnt clear 160or even point 160that happens cooper shows restraint times keeping rape scene screen example empathy thats called reviewed telluride film festival sept 3 2017 also toronto film festival special presentations running time 133 min producers scott cooper john lesher ken kao executive producers weiske donald stewart coproducers sean murphy josh rosenbaum jennifer semler alex walton director scott cooper screenplay cooper based upon manuscript donald stewart camera color widescreen masanobu takayanagi editor tom cross music max richter christian bale rosamund pike wes studi jesse plemons adam beach rory cochrane peter mullan scott wilson paul anderson timothée chalamet ben foster jonathan majors john benjamin hickey qorianka kilcher tanaya beatty bill camp scott shepherd ryan bingham robyn malcolm english cheyenne dialogue | 898 |
<p>Dec. 29 (UPI) — Crewmembers serving aboard the USS <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/John_S._McCain/" type="external">John S. McCain</a> were overworked, unprepared and unhappy in the year leading up to its collision with a merchant vessel in the Pacific that killed 10 Navy sailors, according to a report obtained by UPI.</p>
<p>In a 163-page report detailing the results of a mandatory climate survey aboard the Navy destroyer, its 142 crew members rated 17 of 18 major categories “below service average.” The survey, conducted July 21, 2016 — 13 months before the Aug. 21, 2017 crash — included questions on exhaustion, job satisfaction, organizational effectiveness and leadership prowess.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, a Government Accountability Office report requested by Rep. <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Joe_Courtney/" type="external">Joe Courtney</a>, D-Conn., shows the McCain — and the USS Fitzgerald, which was also involved in a deadly crash in the Pacific over the summer — had several expired certifications for weapons and guidance systems.</p>
<p>Seven sailors died aboard the Fitzgerald, when it collided with a container ship off Japan on June 17. The McCain ran into a merchant ship east of the Straits of Malacca and Singapore. The Navy concluded both <a href="https://www.upi.com/Fitzgerald-McCain-collisions-were-avoidable-US-Navy-report-finds/2261509552629/" type="external">accidents were “avoidable”</a> and caused by multiple human errors. Crew fatigue was a factor in the Fitzgerald crash. The two top commanders on both vessels were relieved of duty.</p>
<p>The new reports outline the depth of some of the known problems on board the ships in the months leading up to the collisions.</p>
<p>A spokeswoman declined to comment on the specifics of the climate survey or the GAO report, but said the Navy is working to prevent future accidents.</p>
<p>“Through the Operational Pause, Comprehensive Review, Strategic Readiness Review and the immediate actions taken in the Pacific Fleet, the Navy is making substantive changes to prevent the tragic events of this summer from happening again,” Lt. Marycate Walsh said.</p>
<p>Exhausted at sea</p>
<p>In the survey, 110 of the 142 sailors aboard the McCain gave unfavorable responses when asked if they felt “mentally worn out.” Additionally, 98 reported feeling “physically worn out” and 97 felt “emotionally worn out.”</p>
<p>In September, the GAO said some sailors were working 100 hours a week.</p>
<p>“Under the current criteria they actually expect the sailors to actually work 81 hours — 70 hours on-duty and the 11 hours for the other things,” John Pendleton, director of defense capabilities and management at GAO, said in a Sept. 19 Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.</p>
<p>Officials have said the long hours are the result of a drawdown of sailors in the Navy, leaving an increased workload for a smaller force.</p>
<p>Onboard leadership, morale</p>
<p>In the survey, the McCain’s crew were narrowly split in its assessment of onboard leadership, with more than 50 percent reporting that their leaders work well together, communicate efficiently and are consistent in enforcing policies.</p>
<p>More than 49 percent, however, gave unfavorable responses.</p>
<p>Questions on job satisfaction, organizational performance and trust in leadership produced a similarly split response.</p>
<p>One of the biggest separations surrounded organizational cohesion. On the question of whether “members trust each other,” 79 of 142 crewmembers gave unfavorable answers.</p>
<p>More than 95 crewmembers, however, gave a favorable response for support of fellow service members in order to “get the job done,” in addition to working as a team and “members looking out for each other’s welfare.”</p>
<p>Overall, the poll on organizational cohesion was almost 62 percent favorable and 38 percent unfavorable.</p>
<p>More than half, 55 percent, responded unfavorably to the statement “most days I am enthusiastic about my work.” Thirty-four percent said they don’t like their jobs.</p>
<p>Processes and preparedness</p>
<p>McCain crewmembers were divided over several issues when it came to evaluating organizational processes. When asked if “relevant job information is shared among members,” 77, or 53 percent, gave favorable remarks, while 66, or 46 percent, had unfavorable ratings.</p>
<p>The Navy’s probe of the crash found that the “McCain’s commanding officer disregarded recommendations from his executive officer, navigator and senior watch officer to set sea and anchor watch teams in a timely fashion to ensure the safe and effective operation of the ship.”</p>
<p>Seventy-six crew members in the survey replied favorably when asked whether “decisions are made after reviewing relevant information.” Sixty-six crewmembers, or 46 percent, gave unfavorable replies.</p>
<p>The GAO found the McCain and the Fitzgerald to have several expired training certifications and lapsed requirements — some for more than two years.</p>
<p>Seven of the McCain’s 22 certifications were expired as of June 26, 2017, and the McCain’s strike warfare-naval surface fire support and strike warfare-cruise missile tactical certifications had been expired for more than two years.</p>
<p>On the Fitzgerald, 15 of the 22 required certifications within the same timeframe as the McCain, had lapsed. The ship’s strike warfare support certification was a month short of being expired for two years in June, while its cruise missile tactical qualification had been expired for 11 months.</p>
<p>“Lapsed certifications are a problem being addressed,” Walsh said. “While the investigation did not specifically note lapsed certifications as a causal factor for the collisions, we have recognized that they are a problem and have made changes to address that problem. The Navy is, and has been since the collisions occurred, taking actions to improve our readiness.”</p> | false | 1 | dec 29 upi crewmembers serving aboard uss john mccain overworked unprepared unhappy year leading collision merchant vessel pacific killed 10 navy sailors according report obtained upi 163page report detailing results mandatory climate survey aboard navy destroyer 142 crew members rated 17 18 major categories service average survey conducted july 21 2016 13 months aug 21 2017 crash included questions exhaustion job satisfaction organizational effectiveness leadership prowess meanwhile government accountability office report requested rep joe courtney dconn shows mccain uss fitzgerald also involved deadly crash pacific summer several expired certifications weapons guidance systems seven sailors died aboard fitzgerald collided container ship japan june 17 mccain ran merchant ship east straits malacca singapore navy concluded accidents avoidable caused multiple human errors crew fatigue factor fitzgerald crash two top commanders vessels relieved duty new reports outline depth known problems board ships months leading collisions spokeswoman declined comment specifics climate survey gao report said navy working prevent future accidents operational pause comprehensive review strategic readiness review immediate actions taken pacific fleet navy making substantive changes prevent tragic events summer happening lt marycate walsh said exhausted sea survey 110 142 sailors aboard mccain gave unfavorable responses asked felt mentally worn additionally 98 reported feeling physically worn 97 felt emotionally worn september gao said sailors working 100 hours week current criteria actually expect sailors actually work 81 hours 70 hours onduty 11 hours things john pendleton director defense capabilities management gao said sept 19 senate armed services committee hearing officials said long hours result drawdown sailors navy leaving increased workload smaller force onboard leadership morale survey mccains crew narrowly split assessment onboard leadership 50 percent reporting leaders work well together communicate efficiently consistent enforcing policies 49 percent however gave unfavorable responses questions job satisfaction organizational performance trust leadership produced similarly split response one biggest separations surrounded organizational cohesion question whether members trust 79 142 crewmembers gave unfavorable answers 95 crewmembers however gave favorable response support fellow service members order get job done addition working team members looking others welfare overall poll organizational cohesion almost 62 percent favorable 38 percent unfavorable half 55 percent responded unfavorably statement days enthusiastic work thirtyfour percent said dont like jobs processes preparedness mccain crewmembers divided several issues came evaluating organizational processes asked relevant job information shared among members 77 53 percent gave favorable remarks 66 46 percent unfavorable ratings navys probe crash found mccains commanding officer disregarded recommendations executive officer navigator senior watch officer set sea anchor watch teams timely fashion ensure safe effective operation ship seventysix crew members survey replied favorably asked whether decisions made reviewing relevant information sixtysix crewmembers 46 percent gave unfavorable replies gao found mccain fitzgerald several expired training certifications lapsed requirements two years seven mccains 22 certifications expired june 26 2017 mccains strike warfarenaval surface fire support strike warfarecruise missile tactical certifications expired two years fitzgerald 15 22 required certifications within timeframe mccain lapsed ships strike warfare support certification month short expired two years june cruise missile tactical qualification expired 11 months lapsed certifications problem addressed walsh said investigation specifically note lapsed certifications causal factor collisions recognized problem made changes address problem navy since collisions occurred taking actions improve readiness | 524 |
<p>According to a new report, scientific evidence fails to support the “born that way” theory of sexual orientation. In addition, there is “no evidence” that “all children who express gender-atypical thoughts or behavior should be encouraged to become transgender,” the findings state.</p>
<p>The report, <a href="http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/number-50-fall-2016" type="external">“Sexuality and Gender: Findings from the Biological, Psychological, and Social Sciences,”</a> is co-authored by Dr. Lawrence Mayer and Dr. Paul McHugh, both of Johns Hopkins University, and published in The New Atlantis, a journal of technology and society. While Mayer, an epidemiologist trained in psychiatry, insists that the “report is about science and medicine, nothing more and nothing less,” it is expected that, in light of the “great chasm between much of the public discourse and what science has shown,” the findings will generate intense pushback from cultural voices that advocate for LGBT-affirming policies. Emboldened by court victories and federal executive actions following the Supreme Court’s decision legalizing same-sex marriage, activists have depicted their efforts to further LGBT civil rights as grounded on settled science.</p>
<p>But, as Mayer and McHugh, a leading psychiatrist, make clear, the science is far from settled. The authors reviewed the findings of hundreds of peer-reviewed studies on gender and sexuality, and their conclusions challenge some of the popular cultural myths that surround questions of sexual orientation and gender identity.</p>
<p>Myth 1: Science proves that homosexuality and other forms of sexual orientation are biologically based (the “born that way” theory).</p>
<p>The authors reviewed several possible explanations for the “born that way” hypothesis, including genetics, exposure to prenatal hormones and neurobiological differences. They argue that science is not settled when it comes to understanding the origins of sexual attraction, sexual desires and sexual behaviors. In fact, the authors note, a scientific explanation of “sexual orientation” is problematic because the term “sexual orientation” means widely different things — sexual desire, sexual attraction, patterns of sexual behavior — to different people and therefore is hard to measure accurately.</p>
<p>In addition, by presuming that sexual orientation is rooted in genetics, researchers or clinicians may miss other relevant factors — including, for example, childhood physical or sexual abuse, which is experienced in disproportionately high numbers by nonheterosexuals. Moreover, if nonheterosexual desires, preferences and behavior were indeed biological, one might expect them to remain fixed throughout a person’s life. Instead, “there is now considerable scientific evidence that sexual desires, attractions, behaviors and even identities can, and sometimes do, change over time.” Adolescents especially exhibit fluidity of sexual desire, although the authors note “opposite-sex attraction and identity seem to be more stable than same-sex or bisexual attraction and identity.”</p>
<p>Myth 2: Social stress from stigma and discrimination is the root cause of the poor mental health of persons identifying as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender. Removing social stress, by normalizing nonheterosexual behaviors, will resolve these issues.</p>
<p>The “social stress” model proposes that stigma and discrimination directly cause the numerous mental health issues disproportionately found in the nonheterosexual population. The report identifies several shortcomings of the social stress model: Scientific evidence for the social stress model is limited, the parameters of social stress (what it is, what it means) are vaguely defined, and the model itself “does not put forth a complete explanation for the disparities” in mental health “between nonheterosexuals and heterosexuals.” In addition, the social stress model is unable to “explain the mental health problems of a particular patient.” They conclude that, “The social stress model probably accounts for some of the poor mental health outcomes experienced by sexual minorities, though the evidence supporting the model is limited, inconsistent and incomplete.” They recommend “more high-quality longitudinal studies” to assess the model’s usefulness.</p>
<p>Myth 3: A transgender person’s gender identity does not match the person’s sex at birth, so the transgender person is “trapped in the wrong body.”</p>
<p>The new report strongly counters this transgender myth. “The hypothesis that gender identity is an innate, fixed property of human beings that is independent of biological sex — that a person might be ‘a man trapped in a woman’s body’ or ‘a woman trapped in a man’s body’ — is not supported by scientific evidence.” A variation of this myth argues that a transgender person has, for example, a “male brain,’’ but a woman’s body. After reviewing studies of neurobiological differences in the brains of transgender persons, the report’s authors state that “all interpretations, usually in popular outlets,” suggesting that brain differences between transgender people and others are “the cause” of being transgendered are “unwarranted.”</p>
<p>Myth 4: Early transitioning, using medical treatments like puberty blockers, is the best way to treat transgender children.</p>
<p>The study’s authors emphatically reject this myth as not only unfounded in science but also potentially harmful to children. “The notion that a 2-year-old, having expressed thoughts or behaviors identified with the opposite sex, can be labeled for life as transgender has absolutely no support in science.” Moreover, Mayer and McHugh warn, “An area of particular concern involves medical interventions for gender-nonconforming youth. They are increasingly receiving therapies that affirm their felt genders and even hormone treatments or surgical modifications at young ages. But the majority of children who identify as a gender that does not conform to their biological sex will no longer do so by the time they reach adulthood. We are disturbed and alarmed by the severity and irreversibility of some interventions being publicly discussed and employed for children.” Because of the “scientific uncertainty” over treatments in children and the “lack of reliable studies on the long-term effects,” the report’s authors “strongly urge caution” toward such “premature” and “drastic” interventions.</p>
<p>The report by Mayer and McHugh challenges current cultural myths surrounding gender and human sexuality, but their primary purpose in writing the report is concern for the well-being of transgender and nonheterosexual individuals. Many of these individuals have been promised — by cultural narratives if not physicians — that social affirmation of their chosen gender or sexual orientation will improve their lives and even resolve their psychological issues. The data, however, proves that this is not true. Mental health statistics paint a sobering picture of the mental and physical health challenges facing transgender and nonheterosexual persons. According to the report, members of the nonheterosexual population, compared to members of the heterosexual population, have approximately:</p>
<p>— 1 1/2 times higher risk of anxiety disorders.</p>
<p>— Twice the risk of depression</p>
<p>— 1 1/2 times the risk of substance abuse.</p>
<p>— Nearly 2 1/2 times the risk of suicide.</p>
<p>Transgender individuals fare worst of all, with lifetime suicide rates estimated at 41 percent; those who underwent sex-reassignment were about five times more likely to attempt suicide and about 19 times more likely to die by suicide.</p>
<p>Mayer and McHugh’s report contradicts the conventional, highly politicized narrative that “transitioning” and “coming out” will solve the problems of nonheterosexuals or gender-dysphoric children. In fact, these experts argue, nonheterosexual and gender-dysphoric persons deserve better than being steered into life-changing decisions and radical treatments on the basis of faulty science. They deserve compassionate care rooted in sound scientific evidence.</p>
<p>— Mary Rice Hasson is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.&#160;Theresa Farnan, PhD, is an adjunct professor at Franciscan University in Ohio.</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | false | 1 | according new report scientific evidence fails support born way theory sexual orientation addition evidence children express genderatypical thoughts behavior encouraged become transgender findings state report sexuality gender findings biological psychological social sciences coauthored dr lawrence mayer dr paul mchugh johns hopkins university published new atlantis journal technology society mayer epidemiologist trained psychiatry insists report science medicine nothing nothing less expected light great chasm much public discourse science shown findings generate intense pushback cultural voices advocate lgbtaffirming policies emboldened court victories federal executive actions following supreme courts decision legalizing samesex marriage activists depicted efforts lgbt civil rights grounded settled science mayer mchugh leading psychiatrist make clear science far settled authors reviewed findings hundreds peerreviewed studies gender sexuality conclusions challenge popular cultural myths surround questions sexual orientation gender identity myth 1 science proves homosexuality forms sexual orientation biologically based born way theory authors reviewed several possible explanations born way hypothesis including genetics exposure prenatal hormones neurobiological differences argue science settled comes understanding origins sexual attraction sexual desires sexual behaviors fact authors note scientific explanation sexual orientation problematic term sexual orientation means widely different things sexual desire sexual attraction patterns sexual behavior different people therefore hard measure accurately addition presuming sexual orientation rooted genetics researchers clinicians may miss relevant factors including example childhood physical sexual abuse experienced disproportionately high numbers nonheterosexuals moreover nonheterosexual desires preferences behavior indeed biological one might expect remain fixed throughout persons life instead considerable scientific evidence sexual desires attractions behaviors even identities sometimes change time adolescents especially exhibit fluidity sexual desire although authors note oppositesex attraction identity seem stable samesex bisexual attraction identity myth 2 social stress stigma discrimination root cause poor mental health persons identifying gay lesbian bisexual transgender removing social stress normalizing nonheterosexual behaviors resolve issues social stress model proposes stigma discrimination directly cause numerous mental health issues disproportionately found nonheterosexual population report identifies several shortcomings social stress model scientific evidence social stress model limited parameters social stress means vaguely defined model put forth complete explanation disparities mental health nonheterosexuals heterosexuals addition social stress model unable explain mental health problems particular patient conclude social stress model probably accounts poor mental health outcomes experienced sexual minorities though evidence supporting model limited inconsistent incomplete recommend highquality longitudinal studies assess models usefulness myth 3 transgender persons gender identity match persons sex birth transgender person trapped wrong body new report strongly counters transgender myth hypothesis gender identity innate fixed property human beings independent biological sex person might man trapped womans body woman trapped mans body supported scientific evidence variation myth argues transgender person example male brain womans body reviewing studies neurobiological differences brains transgender persons reports authors state interpretations usually popular outlets suggesting brain differences transgender people others cause transgendered unwarranted myth 4 early transitioning using medical treatments like puberty blockers best way treat transgender children studys authors emphatically reject myth unfounded science also potentially harmful children notion 2yearold expressed thoughts behaviors identified opposite sex labeled life transgender absolutely support science moreover mayer mchugh warn area particular concern involves medical interventions gendernonconforming youth increasingly receiving therapies affirm felt genders even hormone treatments surgical modifications young ages majority children identify gender conform biological sex longer time reach adulthood disturbed alarmed severity irreversibility interventions publicly discussed employed children scientific uncertainty treatments children lack reliable studies longterm effects reports authors strongly urge caution toward premature drastic interventions report mayer mchugh challenges current cultural myths surrounding gender human sexuality primary purpose writing report concern wellbeing transgender nonheterosexual individuals many individuals promised cultural narratives physicians social affirmation chosen gender sexual orientation improve lives even resolve psychological issues data however proves true mental health statistics paint sobering picture mental physical health challenges facing transgender nonheterosexual persons according report members nonheterosexual population compared members heterosexual population approximately 1 12 times higher risk anxiety disorders twice risk depression 1 12 times risk substance abuse nearly 2 12 times risk suicide transgender individuals fare worst lifetime suicide rates estimated 41 percent underwent sexreassignment five times likely attempt suicide 19 times likely die suicide mayer mchughs report contradicts conventional highly politicized narrative transitioning coming solve problems nonheterosexuals genderdysphoric children fact experts argue nonheterosexual genderdysphoric persons deserve better steered lifechanging decisions radical treatments basis faulty science deserve compassionate care rooted sound scientific evidence mary rice hasson fellow ethics public policy center160theresa farnan phd adjunct professor franciscan university ohio 160 | 717 |
<p>My column on the Iraq war didn't sit well with my <a href="http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/03/15/iraq-war-triumphalism-ignores-a-key-matter-dead-civilians/" type="external">Politics Daily colleague David Corn</a>. Those who have followed Corn's work over the years won't find that particularly surprising. But let's try to untangle his latest arguments.</p>
<p>In his column responding to mine, in an effort to counteract my “triumphalism,” Corn writes: “But, of course, the ultimate outcome of the Iraq war — whatever the results of the latest election — remains unknown.” That is correct — and it's why in my piece I wrote:</p>
<p>Whether [the progress we've seen] lasts is impossible to know; it will be up to the Iraqis themselves to take this opportunity to make something durable out of what has been accomplished so far.</p>
<p>It is also why I wrote <a href="http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ODExMjM4ZmZkZTZhZjMwNmIzMGUyMmI5YmZmZmIzMmI" type="external">earlier this month</a>, “The successes there remain fragile and can still be undone. Iraq has proven to be treacherous terrain for foreign powers.” I added that in Iraq “nothing is guaranteed; 'Everything in Iraq is hard,' Ambassador [Ryan] Crocker once said.”</p>
<p>This is hardly “triumphalism.” In addition, Corn said we can “continue to debate . . . whether Bush's late surge did help nudge Iraq in a better (or less worse) direction.” He is, of course, free to continue to debate it — but Corn has a rather difficult case to make. There is no disputing the fact that the surge has made things a great deal better. Even most of the harshest critics of the Iraq war (like Joe Klein) have conceded that reality. <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/meast/01/01/iraq.us.deaths/index.html" type="external">A CNN report</a> from earlier this year found that December 2009 was the first month since the beginning of the Iraq war in which there were no U.S. combat deaths and that the monthly civilian death toll fell to its lowest level since the 2003 war began. “Daily violence has drastically dropped across the country over the past two years,” the report said. That is in large part a result of the surge.</p>
<p>One can certainly argue that the surge hasn't redeemed the Iraq war itself — it might still have been a mistake to have gone to war despite the success of the surge — but that the surge was effective is beyond dispute by serious people.</p>
<p>As for the “Bush lied” mantra cited by Corn: I fully understand that this remains an article of religious faith among many of those on the left. But there is no real evidence for it.</p>
<p>In October 2002, the director of central intelligence issued a National Intelligence Estimate of Iraq's continuing programs of weapons of mass destruction. That document contained the consensus judgments of the intelligence community, based upon the best information available about the Iraqi threat. <a href="http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/library/reports/2002/nie_iraq_october2002.htm" type="external">The NIE reported</a>:</p>
<p>We judge that Iraq has continued its weapons of mass destruction program, in defiance of U.N. resolutions and restrictions. Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons, as well as missiles with ranges in excess of U.N. restrictions. If left unchecked, it probably will have a nuclear weapon during this decade.</p>
<p>Scores of Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, Jay Rockefeller, Joe Biden and Barack Obama; the United Nations as well as the United States; and intelligence agencies from around the world all believed Saddam Hussein possessed WMD ( <a href="http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N02/682/26/PDF/N0268226.pdf?OpenElement" type="external">U.N. Resolution 1441</a>, which was passed unanimously, recognized “the threat Iraq's non-compliance with Council resolutions and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles poses to international peace and security”). Even nations which opposed the war believed this. In March 2002, for example, August Hanning, the chief of German intelligence, <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2002/03/25/020325fa_FACT1?currentPage=all" type="external">said</a>, “It is our estimate that Iraq will have an atomic bomb in three years.”</p>
<p>The March 31, 2005, Report to the President by the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction — also known as the <a href="http://www.gpoaccess.gov/wmd/pdf/full_wmd_report.pdf" type="external">Silberman-Robb Report</a> — makes it clear that the allegations of willful misrepresentations by the Bush administration were false. Among the bi-partisan report's findings:</p>
<p>The Intelligence Community's Iraq assessments were . . . riddled with errors. Contrary to what some defenders of the Intelligence Community have since asserted, these errors were not the result of a few harried months in 2002. Most of the fundamental errors were made and communicated to policymakers well before the now-infamous NIE of October 2002, and were not corrected in the months between the NIE and the start of the war.</p>
<p>The NIE simply didn't communicate how weak the underlying intelligence was. This was, moreover, a problem that was not limited to the NIE. Our review found that after the publication of the October 2002 NIE but before Secretary of State Colin Powell's February 2003 address to the United Nations, intelligence officials within the CIA failed to convey to policymakers new information casting serious doubt on the reliability of a human intelligence source known as 'Curveball.' This occurred despite the pivotal role Curveball's information played in the Intelligence Community's assessment of Iraq's biological weapons programs, and in spite of Secretary Powell's efforts to strip every dubious piece of information out of his proposed speech. In this instance, once again, the Intelligence Community failed to give policymakers a full understanding of the frailties of the intelligence on which they were relying. [emphases in the original]</p>
<p>As problematic as the October 2002 NIE was, it was not the Community's biggest analytic failure on Iraq. Even more misleading was the river of intelligence that flowed from the CIA to top policymakers over long periods of time — in the President's Daily Brief (PDB) and in its more widely distributed companion, the Senior Executive Intelligence Brief (SEIB). These daily reports were, if anything, more alarmist and less nuanced than the NIE.</p>
<p>The notion that President Bush would lie his way into a war in which the lie itself would be revealed months after the war began is simply irrational. So is the notion that someone like Gen. Colin Powell — a man of unquestionable honor — willfully misled the public in his U.N. speech. It is not enough for the left that a terrible (and worldwide) mistake was made; they must spin it into a government-wide conspiracy.</p>
<p>Now let's turn to the main point of Corn's column:</p>
<p>The Iraqi civilians who were killed or who lost relatives or homes were not asked their consent for the invasion. Bush and Cheney decided their fate. Yes, Iraqis were living within a repressive state. But, no doubt, many of them had made their accommodations and were not willing to sacrifice a family member for possible regime change. Most citizens of tyrannical states manage to get by. (Ask the Chinese.) At times, populations do rise up, and in these instances, people knowingly assume risks and make sacrifices. (See Iran.) Yet in one of the most anti-democratic actions imaginable, Bush decided that he knew what was best for the Iraqi people — and over a hundred thousand perished.</p>
<p>Here several points need to be made. The first is that any war — including the most just in our history, such as the war against Nazi Germany and Japan — tragically involves the death of innocent civilians. Among the differences between WW II and the Iraq war is that civilian populations were n't intentionally targeted in the latter and many fewer people perished.</p>
<p>Second, I would be among the last people on the planet to excuse the human rights abuses of China. But in Saddam Hussein we were dealing with one of those rare figures who belong in the category of Pol Pot and Hitler in terms of the sheer malevolence of his regime. We know that during his reign, children and young people were tortured, forcing their parents and relatives to confess to alleged political offenses. Schoolchildren were summarily shot in public — and families of executed children were made to pay for the bullets and coffins used. International human rights groups have documented the methods used in the torture chambers of Iraq; they included electric shock, burning with hot irons, dripping acid on the skin, mutilation with electric drills, cutting out of tongues and rape. Saddam Hussein routinely executed political opponents and political prisoners. Human Rights Watch concluded that the Iraqi regime committed the crime of genocide against Iraqi Kurds — and estimates are that more than 300,000 Iraqis were executed during Saddam Hussein's reign.</p>
<p>Dexter Filkins, the widely respected New York Times reporter — and no neo-conservative hawk — <a href="" type="external">wrote</a>:</p>
<p>For here, in Hussein, was one of the world's indisputably evil men: he murdered as many as a million of his people, many with poison gas. He tortured, maimed and imprisoned countless more. His unprovoked invasion of Iran is estimated to have left another million people dead. His seizure of Kuwait threw the Middle East into crisis. More insidious, arguably, was the psychological damage he inflicted on his own land. Hussein created a nation of informants — friends on friends, circles within circles — making an entire population complicit in his rule.</p>
<p>It's worth noting that Corn is accusing President Bush of acting arrogantly and anti-democratically in liberating the Iraqi people from Saddam's tyranny — even as Corn, from the safety and comfort of the offices of Mother Jones, had somehow divined that Iraqis were satisfied to “get by” and “make their accommodations” with unspeakable oppression. From all evidence, the Iraqis appear to prefer democracy to a jackboot forever stomping on their faces. Who knew?</p>
<p>Then there is this claim by Corn:</p>
<p>But no one should lose sight of the fact that millions of Iraqis have already lived through the worst due to American actions.</p>
<p>Here's the thing, though: Most of the casualties weren't caused by the United States but by the insurgents and al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), aided by Iran — the forces that opposed the liberation. One of the criteria for whether a war is fought justly is the effort to avoid civilian casualties. Does Corn deny that the United States and our allies took great pains to minimize civilian casualties?</p>
<p>Here is the truth some on the left cannot seem to handle: The United States freed the people of Iraq from Saddam and attempted to protect them from the savagery of his remnants, at enormous cost to our nation. The ruthlessness of our enemies turned out to be worse than anyone would have hoped, and we surely made mistakes in the post-major combat phase of the war. To criticize those mistakes is perfectly valid, and so is the argument that the war wasn't worth the cost. Still, a morally serious individual would place the responsibility for the deaths of Iraqi civilians where it belongs: not with America but instead with those who have a burning hatred for her and for liberty. To continually overlook this point is — let's be generous here — an odd omission.</p>
<p>Peter Wehner is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C. He served in the Bush White House as director of the office of strategic initiatives.</p> | false | 1 | column iraq war didnt sit well politics daily colleague david corn followed corns work years wont find particularly surprising lets try untangle latest arguments column responding mine effort counteract triumphalism corn writes course ultimate outcome iraq war whatever results latest election remains unknown correct piece wrote whether progress weve seen lasts impossible know iraqis take opportunity make something durable accomplished far also wrote earlier month successes remain fragile still undone iraq proven treacherous terrain foreign powers added iraq nothing guaranteed everything iraq hard ambassador ryan crocker said hardly triumphalism addition corn said continue debate whether bushs late surge help nudge iraq better less worse direction course free continue debate corn rather difficult case make disputing fact surge made things great deal better even harshest critics iraq war like joe klein conceded reality cnn report earlier year found december 2009 first month since beginning iraq war us combat deaths monthly civilian death toll fell lowest level since 2003 war began daily violence drastically dropped across country past two years report said large part result surge one certainly argue surge hasnt redeemed iraq war might still mistake gone war despite success surge surge effective beyond dispute serious people bush lied mantra cited corn fully understand remains article religious faith among many left real evidence october 2002 director central intelligence issued national intelligence estimate iraqs continuing programs weapons mass destruction document contained consensus judgments intelligence community based upon best information available iraqi threat nie reported judge iraq continued weapons mass destruction program defiance un resolutions restrictions baghdad chemical biological weapons well missiles ranges excess un restrictions left unchecked probably nuclear weapon decade scores democrats including hillary clinton ted kennedy john kerry jay rockefeller joe biden barack obama united nations well united states intelligence agencies around world believed saddam hussein possessed wmd un resolution 1441 passed unanimously recognized threat iraqs noncompliance council resolutions proliferation weapons mass destruction longrange missiles poses international peace security even nations opposed war believed march 2002 example august hanning chief german intelligence said estimate iraq atomic bomb three years march 31 2005 report president commission intelligence capabilities united states regarding weapons mass destruction also known silbermanrobb report makes clear allegations willful misrepresentations bush administration false among bipartisan reports findings intelligence communitys iraq assessments riddled errors contrary defenders intelligence community since asserted errors result harried months 2002 fundamental errors made communicated policymakers well nowinfamous nie october 2002 corrected months nie start war nie simply didnt communicate weak underlying intelligence moreover problem limited nie review found publication october 2002 nie secretary state colin powells february 2003 address united nations intelligence officials within cia failed convey policymakers new information casting serious doubt reliability human intelligence source known curveball occurred despite pivotal role curveballs information played intelligence communitys assessment iraqs biological weapons programs spite secretary powells efforts strip every dubious piece information proposed speech instance intelligence community failed give policymakers full understanding frailties intelligence relying emphases original problematic october 2002 nie communitys biggest analytic failure iraq even misleading river intelligence flowed cia top policymakers long periods time presidents daily brief pdb widely distributed companion senior executive intelligence brief seib daily reports anything alarmist less nuanced nie notion president bush would lie way war lie would revealed months war began simply irrational notion someone like gen colin powell man unquestionable honor willfully misled public un speech enough left terrible worldwide mistake made must spin governmentwide conspiracy lets turn main point corns column iraqi civilians killed lost relatives homes asked consent invasion bush cheney decided fate yes iraqis living within repressive state doubt many made accommodations willing sacrifice family member possible regime change citizens tyrannical states manage get ask chinese times populations rise instances people knowingly assume risks make sacrifices see iran yet one antidemocratic actions imaginable bush decided knew best iraqi people hundred thousand perished several points need made first war including history war nazi germany japan tragically involves death innocent civilians among differences ww ii iraq war civilian populations nt intentionally targeted latter many fewer people perished second would among last people planet excuse human rights abuses china saddam hussein dealing one rare figures belong category pol pot hitler terms sheer malevolence regime know reign children young people tortured forcing parents relatives confess alleged political offenses schoolchildren summarily shot public families executed children made pay bullets coffins used international human rights groups documented methods used torture chambers iraq included electric shock burning hot irons dripping acid skin mutilation electric drills cutting tongues rape saddam hussein routinely executed political opponents political prisoners human rights watch concluded iraqi regime committed crime genocide iraqi kurds estimates 300000 iraqis executed saddam husseins reign dexter filkins widely respected new york times reporter neoconservative hawk wrote hussein one worlds indisputably evil men murdered many million people many poison gas tortured maimed imprisoned countless unprovoked invasion iran estimated left another million people dead seizure kuwait threw middle east crisis insidious arguably psychological damage inflicted land hussein created nation informants friends friends circles within circles making entire population complicit rule worth noting corn accusing president bush acting arrogantly antidemocratically liberating iraqi people saddams tyranny even corn safety comfort offices mother jones somehow divined iraqis satisfied get make accommodations unspeakable oppression evidence iraqis appear prefer democracy jackboot forever stomping faces knew claim corn one lose sight fact millions iraqis already lived worst due american actions heres thing though casualties werent caused united states insurgents al qaeda iraq aqi aided iran forces opposed liberation one criteria whether war fought justly effort avoid civilian casualties corn deny united states allies took great pains minimize civilian casualties truth left seem handle united states freed people iraq saddam attempted protect savagery remnants enormous cost nation ruthlessness enemies turned worse anyone would hoped surely made mistakes postmajor combat phase war criticize mistakes perfectly valid argument war wasnt worth cost still morally serious individual would place responsibility deaths iraqi civilians belongs america instead burning hatred liberty continually overlook point lets generous odd omission peter wehner senior fellow ethics public policy center washington dc served bush white house director office strategic initiatives | 1,002 |
<p><a href="http://variety.com/t/andrew-lack/" type="external">Andrew Lack</a> <a href="http://variety.com/2015/tv/news/andrew-lack-will-face-challenges-in-return-to-nbcu-as-news-chief-1201447765/" type="external">touched down at NBC News</a> for a second tour of duty in the Spring of 2015, just as NBC was grappling with a crisis borne out of a false claim Brian Williams made on the company’s flagship “NBC Nightly News.” Now Lack finds himself in another precarious moment.</p>
<p>As the overseer of both <a href="http://variety.com/t/nbc-news/" type="external">NBC News</a> and <a href="http://variety.com/t/msnbc/" type="external">MSNBC</a>, Lack must quickly hit upon a new direction for NBC’s venerable “Today” show, arguably the linchpin of the news division, now that veteran anchor <a href="http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/nbc-fires-matt-lauer-today-sexual-harassment-1202625608/" type="external">Matt Lauer has been fired</a> for what NBC called “inappropriate sexual behavior.” And he must do so amid recent scrutiny that has been paid to <a href="http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/eric-deggans-contributor-nbc-news-msnbc-1202620885/" type="external">NBC News</a> in the wake of a decision to allow Ronan Farrow, a recent contributor to “Today,” to take a bombshell report about <a href="http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/nbc-news-ronan-farrow-harvey-weinstein-what-happened-1202586648/" type="external">sexual harassment by movie mogul</a> Harvey Weinstein to the New Yorker after starting it under the aegis of NBC News.</p>
<p>Lack has guided NBC News through tumult in the past. When he was named president of NBC News in 1993, the unit had suffered a black eye in the form of a “Dateline” broadcast in which producers admitted to rigging a pickup truck to catch fire as part of a report on General Motors trucks. GM in turn sued NBC for defamation.</p>
<p>But the Lauer case is a different matter entirely. While it’s not about journalism per se, it has the potential to impugn the news unit’s standing. More allegations are likely to surface, and viewers who watch “Today” – caught unaware Wednesday when anchors Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb announced his termination in the opening moments of the program – are certain to wonder what happened to the news personality who has greeted them for more than two decades each morning on NBC.</p>
<p>NBC News has avoided airing blockbuster stories about famous men harassing women. In the fall of last year, Donald Trump, then a presidential candidate, was caught on a 2005 outtake from NBC’s “Access Hollywood” bragging to correspondent Billy Bush about sexually assaulting and harassing women. <a href="http://variety.com/2016/tv/news/nbcuniversal-donald-trump-billy-bush-access-hollywood-tv-news-1201890316/" type="external">As NBC News started to</a> vet the information, it lost control of it.</p>
<p>Someone — the identity of whom has yet to be revealed — sent a copy to the Washington Post, which made it available to the public within hours. NBC News ceded ownership of a major news story, though it was the first to air it on TV. “My gut would have been to put that story on the air” as soon as possible, said Jeff Zucker, president of CNN Worldwide (and the former CEO of NBCU), speaking about the incident a few days after it happened.</p>
<p>And Lack faces the bizarre as well. President Trump in a tweet issued Wednesday morning suggested executives at Comcast and NBC News should be fired for “putting out so much Fake News.” Trump also urged people to “Check out Andy Lack’s past!” Trump hurled invective at <a href="http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/morning-joe-msnbc-scarborough-mika-pre-tape-thanksgiving-1202623078/" type="external">MSNBC</a> president Phil Griffin and the cable-news outlet’s morning host Joe Scarborough.</p>
<p>NBC News declined to make executives available for comment.</p>
<p>Lack strikes a colorful figure in the news business – often enthusiastic, always willing to try a new idea that bears no small degree of risk. <a href="http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/brian-williams-msnbc-11th-hour-trust-trump-1202597588/" type="external">Brian Williams’ career has rebounded</a>&#160;since Lack put him in place in a well-regarded 11 p.m. news hour on MSNBC. It’s Lack who lured former Fox News Channel anchor Megyn Kelly to NBC for a salary reported to be worth $17 million a year and quickly outfitted her with a 9 a.m. morning show that is very different from the third hour of “Today” to which many viewers were accustomed.</p>
<p>It’s also under Lack that MSNBC, often known for its progressively themed primetime programming, has tested out anchors who don’t hew to the network’s template. Greta van Susteren, the former Fox News Channel host, didn’t get satisfactory ratings during less than seven months in MSNBC’s 6 p.m. slot. But Nicolle Wallace, a former communications official in the George W. Bush White House, has thrived since taking over MSNBC’s 4 p.m. hour <a href="http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/msnbc-nicolle-wallace-1202402655/" type="external">in April of this year.</a></p>
<p>Under Lack’s direction, MSNBC’s daytime schedule has dropped the liberal lens on the news and instead become a showcase for NBC News reporting. Hallie Jackson, Katy Tur, Craig Melvin, and others have expanded their profile and the network’s primetime ratings have soared in a post-Trump landscape.</p>
<p>But “Today” is not a cable-news channel that can be tweaked hour by hour. It’s an institution. And Lack, NBC News President Noah Oppenheim and other executives will have to move quickly and decisively to keep that ship moving. When an anchor leaves one of the big broadcast morning programs, it upsets a viewer’s morning routine. Some member of the audience may get a wandering eye, and prove willing to check out Chris Cuomo and Allisyn Camerota on CNN’s “New Day” or Robin Roberts, George Stephanopoulos and Michael Strahan at ABC’s “Good Morning America.”</p>
<p>Lack has long proven eager to hit homes runs. But with the viewership for “Today” at stake and questions lingering over why NBC News has seemed reluctant to pursue allegations of sexual harassment , the news executive can’t afford to miss during his next time at bat.</p> | false | 1 | andrew lack touched nbc news second tour duty spring 2015 nbc grappling crisis borne false claim brian williams made companys flagship nbc nightly news lack finds another precarious moment overseer nbc news msnbc lack must quickly hit upon new direction nbcs venerable today show arguably linchpin news division veteran anchor matt lauer fired nbc called inappropriate sexual behavior must amid recent scrutiny paid nbc news wake decision allow ronan farrow recent contributor today take bombshell report sexual harassment movie mogul harvey weinstein new yorker starting aegis nbc news lack guided nbc news tumult past named president nbc news 1993 unit suffered black eye form dateline broadcast producers admitted rigging pickup truck catch fire part report general motors trucks gm turn sued nbc defamation lauer case different matter entirely journalism per se potential impugn news units standing allegations likely surface viewers watch today caught unaware wednesday anchors savannah guthrie hoda kotb announced termination opening moments program certain wonder happened news personality greeted two decades morning nbc nbc news avoided airing blockbuster stories famous men harassing women fall last year donald trump presidential candidate caught 2005 outtake nbcs access hollywood bragging correspondent billy bush sexually assaulting harassing women nbc news started vet information lost control someone identity yet revealed sent copy washington post made available public within hours nbc news ceded ownership major news story though first air tv gut would put story air soon possible said jeff zucker president cnn worldwide former ceo nbcu speaking incident days happened lack faces bizarre well president trump tweet issued wednesday morning suggested executives comcast nbc news fired putting much fake news trump also urged people check andy lacks past trump hurled invective msnbc president phil griffin cablenews outlets morning host joe scarborough nbc news declined make executives available comment lack strikes colorful figure news business often enthusiastic always willing try new idea bears small degree risk brian williams career rebounded160since lack put place wellregarded 11 pm news hour msnbc lack lured former fox news channel anchor megyn kelly nbc salary reported worth 17 million year quickly outfitted 9 morning show different third hour today many viewers accustomed also lack msnbc often known progressively themed primetime programming tested anchors dont hew networks template greta van susteren former fox news channel host didnt get satisfactory ratings less seven months msnbcs 6 pm slot nicolle wallace former communications official george w bush white house thrived since taking msnbcs 4 pm hour april year lacks direction msnbcs daytime schedule dropped liberal lens news instead become showcase nbc news reporting hallie jackson katy tur craig melvin others expanded profile networks primetime ratings soared posttrump landscape today cablenews channel tweaked hour hour institution lack nbc news president noah oppenheim executives move quickly decisively keep ship moving anchor leaves one big broadcast morning programs upsets viewers morning routine member audience may get wandering eye prove willing check chris cuomo allisyn camerota cnns new day robin roberts george stephanopoulos michael strahan abcs good morning america lack long proven eager hit homes runs viewership today stake questions lingering nbc news seemed reluctant pursue allegations sexual harassment news executive cant afford miss next time bat | 521 |
<p>Anxious lower middle class families are shaping up to be the crucial political constituency of this year's election. Polls show that financial security is their biggest concern. They worry about health and education costs, about retirement, and about their prospects for getting ahead. Their insecurity has markedly reduced public support for free trade and contributed to public concerns about immigration. They also appear to be behind a great deal of the generally uneasy mood of the electorate.</p>
<p>The Democratic candidates have noticed and are championing an old-fashioned economic populism that stokes voters' fears and seeks to direct them toward welfare state-style solutions that expand the role of government.</p>
<p>Among Republicans, only Mike Huckabee has made a real effort to speak to the lower middle class. On the stump, his economic message is always directed at the working family: “We're losing manufacturing jobs, homeowners face a credit crisis, high fuel costs are spiraling, and families are hurting,” he noted in a recent campaign ad. But this conservative populism is often merely a rhetorical echo of its liberal counterpart. His distinctive proposal, a form of national sales tax, would hurt many working families.</p>
<p>The other Republican candidates are not even trying to appeal to these voters, which could prove very costly in key states, especially in the upper Midwest, in November. Lower middle class parents have been a crucial Republican constituency in recent years. More important, these voters are the heart and soul of the kind of American culture that Republicans want to promote: industrious and striving, family-oriented, culturally conservative, religious, and patriotic.</p>
<p>With talk of recession in the air, many Republicans will be tempted to make pro-growth tax policies, and particularly cuts to the corporate income tax, the entirety of their economic message. Growth is indispensable. But these voters' concerns made them sour on the economy even at the height of the boom. Higher growth will not by itself address their concerns. Republicans should be careful not to seem more intent on cutting corporate taxes than on listening to these voters.</p>
<p>Without their support, after all, it will be hard to sustain a pro-growth politics. The silence on the right about their problems could lead these voters to conclude that protectionism, redistribution, and nationalized health care are the answers. But there are free-market, conservative solutions, and the Republican candidates can highlight them.</p>
<p>Health care is a particular concern for lower middle class workers. They worry about losing their insurance if they lose their jobs, or getting stuck in jobs they do not want because they cannot carry their insurance with them to new ones. Their wages have stagnated–almost entirely because of rising health care costs. These voters could be persuaded to support a government-run health care system–as the Democrats are trying to do–but surveys suggest that they would prefer a solution that does not risk taking power away from them and their doctors, or compromising their quality of care.</p>
<p>Republican candidates actually already have a set of policy proposals to address these concerns, but they have yet to campaign on their relevance to lower middle class families. The frontrunners have all proposed ending the tax penalty on individuals who buy their own insurance (rather than get it through work). That simple change would make it much easier for people who work for small businesses, or are out of work, to afford coverage–coverage that would stay with them from job to job. The candidates have also proposed a series of measures to increase competition in the health care industry, which would help control rising costs without a government takeover.</p>
<p>These policies would not achieve the Democrats' goal of “universal coverage.” They wouldn't force everyone to buy insurance. But they would seriously reduce the number of people without insurance, make insurance more affordable for those who want it, and make it more portable and secure. Voters care more about these goals than about universality. Yet Republicans continue to talk about health care as though getting more people insured were the only policy goal, or, worse, as though voters were deeply concerned with abstractions like improving market efficiencies.</p>
<p>Equally worrying to the lower middle class voter is the high cost of raising a family. Lower-income families are especially burdened by payroll taxes like Social Security and Medicare. An expanded child tax credit applied against the payroll tax would offer relief to exactly the families who need it. (By raising a child, they are already making a large contribution to Social Security.) Most parents will prefer money in their pockets to the liberal answer of subsidies for day care and housing.</p>
<p>Uncontrolled immigration has also exerted downward pressure on wages at the lower end of the labor market. Republicans, who all agree on the need to stop illegal immigration, should make it clear that they will reduce that pressure by sharply cutting the inflow of lower skilled workers across the border. The debates surrounding how to handle illegal immigrants already here, and how to organize our system of legal immigration and improve assimilation, will and should continue. But a substantial reduction in future illegal immigration is almost everyone's goal, and would offer economic benefits to working families that Republicans can tout.</p>
<p>The Republican frontrunners can speak to the concerns of lower middle class voters with such a three-pronged platform, which reduces their health care stress, eases their tax burden, and enforces immigration laws. It's a platform that would be good for American families and good for Republican prospects. It would also rebuff the new populists on both the left and right who are heightening anxieties, not easing them, and are ignoring the real limits to what the government can do.</p>
<p>— Yuval Levin is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Ramesh Ponnuru is a senior editor at National Review.</p> | false | 1 | anxious lower middle class families shaping crucial political constituency years election polls show financial security biggest concern worry health education costs retirement prospects getting ahead insecurity markedly reduced public support free trade contributed public concerns immigration also appear behind great deal generally uneasy mood electorate democratic candidates noticed championing oldfashioned economic populism stokes voters fears seeks direct toward welfare statestyle solutions expand role government among republicans mike huckabee made real effort speak lower middle class stump economic message always directed working family losing manufacturing jobs homeowners face credit crisis high fuel costs spiraling families hurting noted recent campaign ad conservative populism often merely rhetorical echo liberal counterpart distinctive proposal form national sales tax would hurt many working families republican candidates even trying appeal voters could prove costly key states especially upper midwest november lower middle class parents crucial republican constituency recent years important voters heart soul kind american culture republicans want promote industrious striving familyoriented culturally conservative religious patriotic talk recession air many republicans tempted make progrowth tax policies particularly cuts corporate income tax entirety economic message growth indispensable voters concerns made sour economy even height boom higher growth address concerns republicans careful seem intent cutting corporate taxes listening voters without support hard sustain progrowth politics silence right problems could lead voters conclude protectionism redistribution nationalized health care answers freemarket conservative solutions republican candidates highlight health care particular concern lower middle class workers worry losing insurance lose jobs getting stuck jobs want carry insurance new ones wages stagnatedalmost entirely rising health care costs voters could persuaded support governmentrun health care systemas democrats trying dobut surveys suggest would prefer solution risk taking power away doctors compromising quality care republican candidates actually already set policy proposals address concerns yet campaign relevance lower middle class families frontrunners proposed ending tax penalty individuals buy insurance rather get work simple change would make much easier people work small businesses work afford coveragecoverage would stay job job candidates also proposed series measures increase competition health care industry would help control rising costs without government takeover policies would achieve democrats goal universal coverage wouldnt force everyone buy insurance would seriously reduce number people without insurance make insurance affordable want make portable secure voters care goals universality yet republicans continue talk health care though getting people insured policy goal worse though voters deeply concerned abstractions like improving market efficiencies equally worrying lower middle class voter high cost raising family lowerincome families especially burdened payroll taxes like social security medicare expanded child tax credit applied payroll tax would offer relief exactly families need raising child already making large contribution social security parents prefer money pockets liberal answer subsidies day care housing uncontrolled immigration also exerted downward pressure wages lower end labor market republicans agree need stop illegal immigration make clear reduce pressure sharply cutting inflow lower skilled workers across border debates surrounding handle illegal immigrants already organize system legal immigration improve assimilation continue substantial reduction future illegal immigration almost everyones goal would offer economic benefits working families republicans tout republican frontrunners speak concerns lower middle class voters threepronged platform reduces health care stress eases tax burden enforces immigration laws platform would good american families good republican prospects would also rebuff new populists left right heightening anxieties easing ignoring real limits government yuval levin fellow ethics public policy center ramesh ponnuru senior editor national review | 555 |
<p>WASHINGTON — Democrats are charging the Trump administration of using a politically driven process to undermine protections to public lands as environmental groups gird for a legal battle to stop the shrinking of national monuments under review — including two in Nevada.</p>
<p>Gold Butte National Monument and Basin and Range National Monument were on a list of 22 national monuments designated by presidents since Jan. 1, 1996 that President Donald Trump directed by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to review.</p>
<p>Trump ordered the review to determine whether designations under the 1906 Antiquities Act should be rescinded or scaled back.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Zinke submitted his report last</a> <a href="" type="internal">Thursday</a>, but the White House and Interior Department have not publicly released Zinke’s recommendations, prompting frustration by Democrats and environmental groups that support the designations. &lt;img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/stephens-media/image/upload/v1501399003/monumentsweb.jpg" style="float:right; margin: 1em 0 1em 1em; width:100%; max-width: 300px" alt="(Wes Rand/Las Vegas Review-Journal)" /&gt;</p>
<p>“This is an extraordinary attack on the American tradition of protecting public lands that are open to all,” said Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., who complained that the Trump administration has not confirmed media reports that Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument is recommended for alteration.</p>
<p>Merkley said the “administration is leaning on a politically driven process to undermine protections for our unique geology, biology, climate and iconic American landscapes.”</p>
<p>In Nevada, Republican Sen. Dean Heller said he was briefed by Zinke on the recommendations. <a href="" type="internal">Heller said he expected “minor” changes</a> at both Nevada monuments.</p>
<p>Other Nevada lawmakers also have voiced frustration over the lack of information coming from the White House. Rep. Ruben Kihuen, D-Nev., whose congressional district includes Gold Butte, did not receive notice of any changes to the national monument prior to the submission of the review by Zinke.</p>
<p>The Interior Department released the report summary, but it lacks details on specific monuments and focuses instead on the process.</p>
<p>A White House spokeswoman said the president has received Zinke’s draft report and “is currently reviewing his recommendations to determine the best path forward for the American people.”</p>
<p>Environmental groups are waiting to see whether the president sends the recommendations to Congress, or whether Trump decides to alter existing national monument boundaries through an executive order.</p>
<p>A group of 121 environmental lawyers sent a letter to Zinke and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross earlier this year stating the Antiquities Act grants presidents the authority to designate national monuments, but not the authority to rescind or alter them.</p>
<p>Those lawyers also noted that under the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, only Congress has the authority to reduce the size of national monuments.</p>
<p>In the case of the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument in California and Oregon, the Western Environmental Law Center said the Trump administration is seeking to alter the boundaries to “gift-wrap pieces of the Pacific Northwest’s crown jewel of biodiversity for the logging industry.”</p>
<p>Susan Jane Brown with WELC said the group “is not surprised, but we are ready.”</p>
<p>In December 2016, President Barack Obama designated 335,000 acres in Nevada as the Gold Butte National Monument, and 1.3 million acres in Utah as Bears Ears National Monument, calling both cultural, historical and natural treasures.</p>
<p>Republicans in both states decried the designations as a federal overreach, taking away access to commercial interests like cattle grazing and mineral development.</p>
<p>Heller had urged Obama not to make the declaration, saying new designations, “especially ones in Nevada,” need to be considered in an open process that would require congressional support.</p>
<p>But then-Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Rep. Dina Titus, D-Nev., as well as tribal leaders, urged Obama to make the Gold Butte designation to protect the land for public use.</p>
<p>Reid and Titus also applauded Obama for declaring 704,000 acres in Lincoln and Nye counties as the Basin and Range National Monument in 2015.</p>
<p>Congressional Republicans from Nevada, and Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, called the Basin and Range declaration a federal “land grab.”</p>
<p>It was noted then that the designation cut off a possible rail route through Utah to the mothballed Yucca Mountain nuclear repository.</p>
<p>Trump proposed in his budget blueprint for 2018 reviving the licensing process on Yucca Mountain to determine whether it is a viable place to permanently store nuclear waste.</p>
<p>In Utah, Native-American tribes and other supporters of Bears Ears National Monument have said they plan to litigate any administration effort to scale back boundaries there.</p>
<p>Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, Bishop and other Republicans in the Utah congressional delegation had urged Trump rescind the Bears Ears designation, as well as the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument established by President Bill Clinton in 1996, which falls under the Zinke review period.</p>
<p>Contact Gary Martin at 202-662-7390 or [email protected]. Follow <a href="http://www.twitter.com/@garymartindc" type="external">@garymartindc</a> on Twitter.</p>
<p>Antiquities Act</p>
<p>A group of 121 environmental lawyers sent a letter to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross earlier this year stating the Antiquities Act grants presidents the authority to designate national monuments, but not the authority to rescind or alter them.</p>
<p>Those lawyers also noted that under the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, only Congress has the authority to reduce the size of national monuments.</p>
<p /> | false | 1 | washington democrats charging trump administration using politically driven process undermine protections public lands environmental groups gird legal battle stop shrinking national monuments review including two nevada gold butte national monument basin range national monument list 22 national monuments designated presidents since jan 1 1996 president donald trump directed interior secretary ryan zinke review trump ordered review determine whether designations 1906 antiquities act rescinded scaled back zinke submitted report last thursday white house interior department publicly released zinkes recommendations prompting frustration democrats environmental groups support designations ltimg srchttpsrescloudinarycomstephensmediaimageuploadv1501399003monumentswebjpg stylefloatright margin 1em 0 1em 1em width100 maxwidth 300px altwes randlas vegas reviewjournal gt extraordinary attack american tradition protecting public lands open said sen jeff merkley dore complained trump administration confirmed media reports cascadesiskiyou national monument recommended alteration merkley said administration leaning politically driven process undermine protections unique geology biology climate iconic american landscapes nevada republican sen dean heller said briefed zinke recommendations heller said expected minor changes nevada monuments nevada lawmakers also voiced frustration lack information coming white house rep ruben kihuen dnev whose congressional district includes gold butte receive notice changes national monument prior submission review zinke interior department released report summary lacks details specific monuments focuses instead process white house spokeswoman said president received zinkes draft report currently reviewing recommendations determine best path forward american people environmental groups waiting see whether president sends recommendations congress whether trump decides alter existing national monument boundaries executive order group 121 environmental lawyers sent letter zinke commerce secretary wilbur ross earlier year stating antiquities act grants presidents authority designate national monuments authority rescind alter lawyers also noted federal land policy management act congress authority reduce size national monuments case cascadesiskiyou national monument california oregon western environmental law center said trump administration seeking alter boundaries giftwrap pieces pacific northwests crown jewel biodiversity logging industry susan jane brown welc said group surprised ready december 2016 president barack obama designated 335000 acres nevada gold butte national monument 13 million acres utah bears ears national monument calling cultural historical natural treasures republicans states decried designations federal overreach taking away access commercial interests like cattle grazing mineral development heller urged obama make declaration saying new designations especially ones nevada need considered open process would require congressional support thensenate minority leader harry reid dnev rep dina titus dnev well tribal leaders urged obama make gold butte designation protect land public use reid titus also applauded obama declaring 704000 acres lincoln nye counties basin range national monument 2015 congressional republicans nevada rep rob bishop rutah chairman house natural resources committee called basin range declaration federal land grab noted designation cut possible rail route utah mothballed yucca mountain nuclear repository trump proposed budget blueprint 2018 reviving licensing process yucca mountain determine whether viable place permanently store nuclear waste utah nativeamerican tribes supporters bears ears national monument said plan litigate administration effort scale back boundaries sen orrin hatch rutah bishop republicans utah congressional delegation urged trump rescind bears ears designation well grand staircaseescalante national monument established president bill clinton 1996 falls zinke review period contact gary martin 2026627390 gmartinreviewjournalcom follow garymartindc twitter antiquities act group 121 environmental lawyers sent letter interior secretary ryan zinke commerce secretary wilbur ross earlier year stating antiquities act grants presidents authority designate national monuments authority rescind alter lawyers also noted federal land policy management act congress authority reduce size national monuments | 553 |
<p>In the depressing aftermath of Congress's passage of the Democratic health-care legislation, there has been an understandable temptation among conservatives to think that all their effort over the last year to derail what was coming down the tracks may have been for naught. After all, the bill did pass. The president and his allies got their signing ceremony and their victory lap, as well as a barrage of premature but predictable pronouncements from the national media that we are now witnessing a historic moment of irreversible liberal progress.</p>
<p>And there's no use sugarcoating what has happened. It's a debacle from every possible vantage point. The Democrats have created another massive entitlement program while expanding federal power and reach in a manner not seen since the heyday of Franklin D. Roosevelt. If allowed to stand, the new health-care law will tether America's middle class to the federal government in ways that will fundamentally alter – and not for the better – the relationship between citizens and the state. The result will be worse health care, distorted politics, less medical innovation and economic vitality, and depleted wealth.</p>
<p>Still, conservative opposition was not a waste of time or effort. On a matter of such import, the fight had to be waged, no matter the odds. Moreover, conservatives did win the battle for the hearts and minds of the electorate. Most voters think the Democratic plan will drive costs up and reduce the quality of American medicine. Conservative arguments clearly contributed to the shaping of public opinion, and with public opinion running against them, the administration and its allies were forced to make crucial concessions that may yet prove decisive in what will almost certainly be a very long war over the future of American health care.</p>
<p>For starters, there is no public option in the new law, at least not of the kind that single-payer enthusiasts had advocated. Most Democrats wanted to create an option for working-age Americans built on the Medicare model, which is to say built on government-determined payment rates for services. By employing price controls, a Medicare-like public option would have been able to charge artificially low premiums, thus undercutting private competitors.</p>
<p>Conservatives, however, were successful in portraying the public option as a slippery slope to enrollment of the entire population in a government-run insurance program. And despite the superficial appeal of price caps, most voters were able to see past the rhetoric to the harms federal micromanagement would bring: queues, restrictions on access, and government-enforced rationing of care. This concern was more than enough to turn independent voters solidly against the idea (by 3-to-1 in one summer 2009 poll), which in turn precipitated a rift among Democrats that single-payer advocates were never able to overcome.</p>
<p />
<p>To be sure, the president and his allies never had any intention of actually changing course and trimming their big-government ambitions. But they couldn't entirely ignore what had played out in August without losing momentum for their initiative. So, in an unusual address to a joint session of Congress last September, the president made this commitment: He would ensure that the health-reform legislation would cost “only” $900 billion over a decade.</p>
<p>Predictably, that promise was broken. The final bill costs well over $1 trillion when all spending is counted. But to even stay within shouting distance of it, the Democrats in Congress had to employ all manner of gimmicks and sleight of hand to hide the true cost of their program, including delaying the implementation of its major spending provisions until 2014. That helped them shave some $50 to $100 billion from the CBO's cost projection through 2019.</p>
<p>It also gave Republicans a very substantial opening to exploit. The president is already daring his adversaries to try to take away the “rights” and benefits that he says the new legislation has bestowed on the American people. To which Republicans should reply as often as necessary: What benefits? What rights? Little of real value has come immediately into effect, and most of the plan's provisions won't be implemented for more than three years. In the interim, there will be two federal election cycles, which, given the intensity of the opposition and the partisan manner by which the bill was enacted, are all but certain to become referenda on Obamacare. The self-congratulatory speeches the president has been giving in the aftermath of congressional passage of the bill are not the last words in this struggle, by a long shot. Those are reserved for the voters. They will decide the fate of the Democratic health-care reform plan with the votes they cast this November and again in 2012.</p>
<p>To that end, it is imperative that Republicans make repeal of Obamacare the centerpiece of their effort to pick up a sizeable number of House and Senate seats in this year's elections, and possibly regain control of one or both of the chambers of Congress. Even if the politics were not favorable, the issue is so important, and the stakes so high for the country, that the party of limited government would have no choice but to continue the fight. Happily for Republicans, though, it is evident that an undiluted call for full repeal, coupled with a genuine and aggressive reform plan, is a political winner.</p>
<p>The public remains just as polarized now as it was before passage. A clear plurality still opposes the government-heavy program Congress assembled, and the public is even unhappier about how the Democrats forced their plan upon the country in spite of unambiguous signals that the electorate did not want it. The only response that is fitting for such a brazen act of political arrogance is a sharp rebuke at the ballot box. Republican candidates should give voice to voter outrage by promising to undo – in its entirety, and as swiftly as possible – what should not have passed in the first place.</p>
<p>Of course, so long as President Obama sits in the Oval Office, repeal is almost certainly beyond reach. Even the most optimistic assumptions about Republican gains would leave them well short of the votes necessary to override a veto. But the voters do not expect miracles here. If Republicans regain full or partial control of Congress, they can stand for repeal even as they open up many new fronts in the struggle to ultimately undo Obamacare.</p>
<p>For instance, beginning as early as 2011, well before new coverage is extended to anyone, millions of seniors will see large cuts in their Medicare benefits as deep reductions in Medicare Advantage payment rates force insurers to scale back their coverage or drop current offerings altogether. These cuts are supposed to help pay for the expensive new entitlement that the Democrats have promised. Republicans should channel the inevitable displeasure among seniors into legislation to restore the Medicare funds at the expense of a further delay in the health-care bill's implementation timeline. If successful, they wo uld likely push the start date back another two years.</p>
<p>Full repeal will almost certainly need to wait until after the 2012 presidential election. In that campaign, the Republican candidate will have the opportunity to offer the country an alternative vision. That vision should include the promise of repeal, the case for which will have been bolstered by the tax increases, premium hikes, and Medicare cuts that will have kicked in by then. But the Republican candidate must couple the call for repeal with a concrete framework for what would be put in its place.</p>
<p>The starting point must be a commitment to build a functioning marketplace in the health sector. That's the only way to simultaneously address the cost and improve the quality of American medicine. Today we endure misallocated resources and expensive and inefficient care principally because of misguided governmental policy. In particular, open-ended subsidization of health insurance – through the tax code, Medicare, and Medicaid – has largely undermined the incentives for productivity improvement or cost-conscious consumption. The result is cost growth that far outpaces the nation's general rise in income.</p>
<p>An effective reform program would begin to address the cost problem by making changes throughout federal health-care law. But the trick is to do so in a way that allows for gradual change and decentralized decision-making. Republicans must not make the same mistake as the Democrats and embark on a one-size-fits-all federal reform plan that creates more disruption than the public can tolerate or absorb.</p>
<p>The basic framework should be a federal partnership with the states. The federal government would take steps to address problems in the Medicare program and the tax treatment of health insurance, as well as provide the base funding needed for state-by-state initiatives. Individuals buying insurance outside of employment would get a tax credit. In Medicare, beneficiaries would be given more choices, including the option of taking their entitlement in the form of catastrophic insurance and a deposit into a Health Savings Account. They would also be asked to make modest co-payments for any services they receive outside the normal network they have selected for their care, even if they have Medigap coverage (which means they now pay nothing at the point of service, regardless of where they get it).</p>
<p>The federal government could offer grants to help fund state reform programs consistent with a move toward a functioning national marketplace. States would have wide discretion to make design decisions based on local needs and political cultures, but to qualify for federal funding, states would have to follow the basic guidelines of a market-based reform plan.</p>
<p>A key change at the state level would be new protections for people with preexisting medical conditions. People who have stayed continuously insured could buy individual insurance without any condition exclusion and with some limits on the size of the premium they could be charged for the health risk they pose. This change would require robust funding and reform of state high-risk pools, which would be a primary aim of the new federal grant program.</p>
<p>In addition, states would facilitate portable insurance for small-business workers, much as the state of Utah has done, and federal tax credits would serve as a primary source of funding for many of today's working uninsured to buy health insurance. States would also be required to open up their insurance markets to out-of-state customers in order to foster more competition and choice, and to implement sensible medical-malpractice reform in order to root out unnecessary costs from “defensive” care. In addition, states could choose to gradually move their non-disabled Medicaid population into the same marketplace through which tax-credit recipients buy their insurance coverage.</p>
<p>This reform approach would involve new federal costs, of course, but they would be a mere fraction of the cost of Obamacare. In comparison with the just-passed legislation, the Republican alternative would be both a spending cut and a tax cut. The costs associated with the tax credit could be covered by placing an upper limit on the size of tax-preferred premiums allowable in job-based plans. This limit would replace the “Cadillac tax” on insurers in Obamacare. The impact of the two methods would be similar, but a premium limit would be more transparent, in that employees would be paying directly for expensive coverage. This system would be more effective in getting consumers to use health-care resources efficiently.</p>
<p>The costs associated with high-risk pools could be covered by redirecting some of the funding that Medicaid now pays to hospitals that see a disproportionate share of low-income and uninsured patients. Devoting these funds instead to the expansion of private insurance coverage should be possible without reducing access to care, since hospitals that lose subsidy payments from Medicaid would gain many insured patients, whose private coverage would pay more generous rates. The tax credits and high-risk-pool funding could be made contingent on securing the offsetting savings, thus ensuring that there would be no increase in the federal budget deficit.</p>
<p>Some Republicans and conservatives may wish to turn the page and move on from health care. Unfortunately, they don't really have that option. Health care is the key issue in all the big and consequential political fights of the day – over the budget, taxes, regulation, and the role and competency of centralized government. If the Right abandons this fight now, all of its other battles will be much harder to win. And there's no political reason to not continue the fight. The public does not want a government-heavy program that will drive costs higher and undermine the quality of American medicine. What it wants is a sensible reform that brings gradual change, treats people fairly, opens promising avenues to cover the uninsured, and poses no risk to the economy. If Republicans deliver such a plan, they can win this war yet.&#160;</p> | false | 1 | depressing aftermath congresss passage democratic healthcare legislation understandable temptation among conservatives think effort last year derail coming tracks may naught bill pass president allies got signing ceremony victory lap well barrage premature predictable pronouncements national media witnessing historic moment irreversible liberal progress theres use sugarcoating happened debacle every possible vantage point democrats created another massive entitlement program expanding federal power reach manner seen since heyday franklin roosevelt allowed stand new healthcare law tether americas middle class federal government ways fundamentally alter better relationship citizens state result worse health care distorted politics less medical innovation economic vitality depleted wealth still conservative opposition waste time effort matter import fight waged matter odds moreover conservatives win battle hearts minds electorate voters think democratic plan drive costs reduce quality american medicine conservative arguments clearly contributed shaping public opinion public opinion running administration allies forced make crucial concessions may yet prove decisive almost certainly long war future american health care starters public option new law least kind singlepayer enthusiasts advocated democrats wanted create option workingage americans built medicare model say built governmentdetermined payment rates services employing price controls medicarelike public option would able charge artificially low premiums thus undercutting private competitors conservatives however successful portraying public option slippery slope enrollment entire population governmentrun insurance program despite superficial appeal price caps voters able see past rhetoric harms federal micromanagement would bring queues restrictions access governmentenforced rationing care concern enough turn independent voters solidly idea 3to1 one summer 2009 poll turn precipitated rift among democrats singlepayer advocates never able overcome sure president allies never intention actually changing course trimming biggovernment ambitions couldnt entirely ignore played august without losing momentum initiative unusual address joint session congress last september president made commitment would ensure healthreform legislation would cost 900 billion decade predictably promise broken final bill costs well 1 trillion spending counted even stay within shouting distance democrats congress employ manner gimmicks sleight hand hide true cost program including delaying implementation major spending provisions 2014 helped shave 50 100 billion cbos cost projection 2019 also gave republicans substantial opening exploit president already daring adversaries try take away rights benefits says new legislation bestowed american people republicans reply often necessary benefits rights little real value come immediately effect plans provisions wont implemented three years interim two federal election cycles given intensity opposition partisan manner bill enacted certain become referenda obamacare selfcongratulatory speeches president giving aftermath congressional passage bill last words struggle long shot reserved voters decide fate democratic healthcare reform plan votes cast november 2012 end imperative republicans make repeal obamacare centerpiece effort pick sizeable number house senate seats years elections possibly regain control one chambers congress even politics favorable issue important stakes high country party limited government would choice continue fight happily republicans though evident undiluted call full repeal coupled genuine aggressive reform plan political winner public remains polarized passage clear plurality still opposes governmentheavy program congress assembled public even unhappier democrats forced plan upon country spite unambiguous signals electorate want response fitting brazen act political arrogance sharp rebuke ballot box republican candidates give voice voter outrage promising undo entirety swiftly possible passed first place course long president obama sits oval office repeal almost certainly beyond reach even optimistic assumptions republican gains would leave well short votes necessary override veto voters expect miracles republicans regain full partial control congress stand repeal even open many new fronts struggle ultimately undo obamacare instance beginning early 2011 well new coverage extended anyone millions seniors see large cuts medicare benefits deep reductions medicare advantage payment rates force insurers scale back coverage drop current offerings altogether cuts supposed help pay expensive new entitlement democrats promised republicans channel inevitable displeasure among seniors legislation restore medicare funds expense delay healthcare bills implementation timeline successful wo uld likely push start date back another two years full repeal almost certainly need wait 2012 presidential election campaign republican candidate opportunity offer country alternative vision vision include promise repeal case bolstered tax increases premium hikes medicare cuts kicked republican candidate must couple call repeal concrete framework would put place starting point must commitment build functioning marketplace health sector thats way simultaneously address cost improve quality american medicine today endure misallocated resources expensive inefficient care principally misguided governmental policy particular openended subsidization health insurance tax code medicare medicaid largely undermined incentives productivity improvement costconscious consumption result cost growth far outpaces nations general rise income effective reform program would begin address cost problem making changes throughout federal healthcare law trick way allows gradual change decentralized decisionmaking republicans must make mistake democrats embark onesizefitsall federal reform plan creates disruption public tolerate absorb basic framework federal partnership states federal government would take steps address problems medicare program tax treatment health insurance well provide base funding needed statebystate initiatives individuals buying insurance outside employment would get tax credit medicare beneficiaries would given choices including option taking entitlement form catastrophic insurance deposit health savings account would also asked make modest copayments services receive outside normal network selected care even medigap coverage means pay nothing point service regardless get federal government could offer grants help fund state reform programs consistent move toward functioning national marketplace states would wide discretion make design decisions based local needs political cultures qualify federal funding states would follow basic guidelines marketbased reform plan key change state level would new protections people preexisting medical conditions people stayed continuously insured could buy individual insurance without condition exclusion limits size premium could charged health risk pose change would require robust funding reform state highrisk pools would primary aim new federal grant program addition states would facilitate portable insurance smallbusiness workers much state utah done federal tax credits would serve primary source funding many todays working uninsured buy health insurance states would also required open insurance markets outofstate customers order foster competition choice implement sensible medicalmalpractice reform order root unnecessary costs defensive care addition states could choose gradually move nondisabled medicaid population marketplace taxcredit recipients buy insurance coverage reform approach would involve new federal costs course would mere fraction cost obamacare comparison justpassed legislation republican alternative would spending cut tax cut costs associated tax credit could covered placing upper limit size taxpreferred premiums allowable jobbased plans limit would replace cadillac tax insurers obamacare impact two methods would similar premium limit would transparent employees would paying directly expensive coverage system would effective getting consumers use healthcare resources efficiently costs associated highrisk pools could covered redirecting funding medicaid pays hospitals see disproportionate share lowincome uninsured patients devoting funds instead expansion private insurance coverage possible without reducing access care since hospitals lose subsidy payments medicaid would gain many insured patients whose private coverage would pay generous rates tax credits highriskpool funding could made contingent securing offsetting savings thus ensuring would increase federal budget deficit republicans conservatives may wish turn page move health care unfortunately dont really option health care key issue big consequential political fights day budget taxes regulation role competency centralized government right abandons fight battles much harder win theres political reason continue fight public want governmentheavy program drive costs higher undermine quality american medicine wants sensible reform brings gradual change treats people fairly opens promising avenues cover uninsured poses risk economy republicans deliver plan win war yet160 | 1,190 |
<p />
<p>What is there about the Iranian election of June 12 that has led to it being one of the leading stories in media around the world every day since? Elections whose results are seriously challenged have taken place in most countries at one time or another in recent decades.</p>
<p>Countless Americans believe that the presidential elections of 2000 and 2004 were stolen by the Republicans, and not just inside the voting machines and in the counting process, but prior to the actual voting as well with numerous Republican Party dirty tricks designed to keep poor and black voters off voting lists or away from polling stations.</p>
<p>&lt;img class="size-medium wp-image-1550 alignleft" style="margin: 5px;" title="ahmadinejad" src="https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/ahmadinejad-300x169.jpg" alt="ahmadinejad" width="270" height="152" srcset="https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/ahmadinejad-300x169.jpg 300w, https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/ahmadinejad-478x270.jpg 478w, https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/ahmadinejad-280x157.jpg 280w, https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/ahmadinejad-118x66.jpg 118w, https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/ahmadinejad-479x270.jpg 479w, https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/ahmadinejad.jpg 500w" sizes="(max-width: 270px) 100vw, 270px" /&gt; The fact that large numbers of Americans did not take to the streets day after day in protest, as in Iran, is not something we can be proud of. Perhaps if the CIA, the Agency for International Development (AID), several US government-run radio stations, and various other organizations supported by the National Endowment for Democracy (which was created to serve as a front for the CIA, literally) had been active in the United States, as they have been for years in Iran, major street protests would have taken place in the United States.</p>
<p>The classic “outside agitators” can not only foment dissent through propaganda, adding to already existing dissent, but they can serve to mobilize the public to strongly demonstrate against the government. In 1953, when the CIA overthrew Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, they paid people to agitate in front of Mossadegh’s residence and elsewhere and engage in acts of violence; some pretended to be supporters of Mossadegh while engaging in anti-religious actions. And it worked, remarkably well. [1]</p>
<p>Since the end of World War II, the United States has seriously intervened in some 30 elections around the world, adding a new twist this time, Twittering. The State Department asked Twitter to postpone a scheduled maintenance shutdown of its service to keep information flowing from inside Iran, helping to mobilize protesters. [2] The New York Times reported: “An article published by the Web site True/Slant highlighted some of the biggest errors on Twitter that were quickly repeated and amplified by bloggers: that three million protested in Tehran last weekend (more like a few hundred thousand); that the opposition candidate Mir Hussein Mousavi was under house arrest (he was being watched); that the president of the election monitoring committee declared the election invalid last Saturday (not so).” [3]</p>
<p>In recent years, the United States has been patrolling the waters surrounding Iran with warships, halting Iranian ships to check for arms shipments to Hamas or for other illegal reasons, financing and “educating” Iranian dissidents, using Iranian groups to carry out terrorist attacks inside Iran, kidnapping Iranian diplomats in Iraq, kidnapping Iranian military personnel in Iran and taking them to Iraq, continually spying and recruiting within Iran, manipulating Iran’s currency and international financial transactions, and imposing various economic and political sanctions against the country. [4]</p>
<p>“I’ve made it clear that the United States respects the sovereignty of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and is not at all interfering in Iran’s affairs,” said U.S. President Barack Obama with a straight face on June 23. Some in the Iranian government [have been] accusing the United States and others outside of Iran of instigating protests over the elections. These accusations are patently false and absurd.” [5]</p>
<p>“Never believe anything until it’s officially denied,” British writer Claud Cockburn famously said.</p>
<p>In his world-prominent speech to the Middle East on June 4, Obama mentioned that “In the middle of the Cold War, the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government.” So we have the president of the United States admitting to a previous overthrow of the Iranian government while the United States is in the very midst of trying to overthrow the current Iranian government. This will serve as the best example of hypocrisy that’s come along in quite a while.</p>
<p>So why the big international fuss over the Iranian election and street protests? There’s only one answer. The obvious one. The announced winner, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is a Washington ODE, an Officially Designated Enemy, for not sufficiently respecting the Empire and its Israeli partner-in-crime; indeed, Ahmadinejad is one of the most outspoken critics of U.S. foreign policy in the world.</p>
<p>So ingrained is this ODE response built into Washington’s world view that it appears to matter not at all that Mousavi, Ahmadinejad’s main opponent in the election and very much supported by the protesters, while prime minister 1981-89, bore large responsibility for the attacks on the US embassy and military barracks in Beirut in 1983, which took the lives of more than 200 Americans, and the 1988 truck bombing of a US Navy installation in Naples, Italy, that killed five persons. Remarkably, a search of US newspaper and broadcast sources shows no mention of this during the current protests. [6] However, the Washington Post saw fit to run a story on June 27 that declared: “the authoritarian governments of China, Cuba and Burma have been selectively censoring the news this month of Iranian crowds braving government militias on the streets of Tehran to demand democratic reforms.”</p>
<p>Can it be that no one in the Obama administration knows of Mousavi’s background? And do none of them know about the violent government repression on June 5 in Peru of the peaceful protests organized in response to the US-Peru Free Trade Agreement? A massacre that took the lives of between 20 and 25 indigenous people in the Amazon and wounded another 100. [7] The Obama administration was silent on the Peruvian massacre because the Peruvian president, Alan Garcia, is not an ODE.</p>
<p>And neither is Mousavi, despite his anti-American terrorist deeds, because he’s opposed to Ahmadinejad, who competes with Hugo Chavez to be Washington’s Number One ODE. Time magazine calls Mousavi a “moderate”, and goes on to add: “It has to be assumed that the Iranian presidential election was rigged,” offering as much evidence as the Iranian protestors, i.e., none at all. [8]</p>
<p>It cannot of course be proven that the Iranian election was totally honest, but the arguments given to support the charge of fraud are not very impressive, such as the much-repeated fact that the results were announced very soon after the polls closed. For decades in various countries election results have been condemned for being withheld for many hours or days. Some kind of dishonesty must be going on behind the scenes during the long delay it was argued. So now we’re asked to believe that some kind of dishonesty must be going on because the results were released so quickly. It should be noted that the ballots listed only one electoral contest, with but four candidates.</p>
<p>Phil Wilayto, American peace activist and author of a book on Iran, has observed:</p>
<p>All of which is of course not to say that Iran is not a relatively repressive society on social and religious issues, and it’s this underlying reality which likely feeds much of the protest; indeed, many of the protesters may not even have strong views about the election per se, particularly since both Ahmadinejad and Mousavi are members of the establishment, neither is any threat to the Islamic theocracy, and the election can be seen as the kind of power struggle you find in virtually every country.</p>
<p>But that is not the issue I’m concerned with here. The issue is Washington’s long-standing goal of regime change. If the exact same electoral outcome had taken place in a country that is an ally of the United States, how much of all the accusatory news coverage and speeches would have taken place?</p>
<p>In fact, the exact same thing did happen in a country that is an ally of the United States, three years ago when Felipe Calderon appeared to have stolen the presidential election in Mexico and there were daily large protests for more than two months; but the American and international condemnation was virtually non-existent compared to what we see today in regard to Iran.</p>
<p>Iranian leaders undertook a recount of a random ten per cent of ballots and recertified Ahmadinejad as the winner. How honest the recount was I have no idea, but it’s more than Americans got in 2000 and 2004.</p>
<p>____________________</p>
<p>[1] William Blum, Killing Hope, chapter 9</p>
<p>[2] Associated Press, June 16, 2009</p>
<p>[3] New York Times, June 21, 2009</p>
<p>[4] See Seymour Hersh, New Yorker magazine, June 29, 2008; ABC News, May 22, 2007; and Paul Craig Roberts in CounterPunch, June 19-21, 2009 for descriptions of some of these and other anti-Iran covert activities.</p>
<p>[5] White House press conference, June 23, 2009</p>
<p>[6] The only mention is by Jeff Stein in “CQ Politics” [Congressional Quarterly], online, June 22, 2009, “according to former CIA and military officials”.</p>
<p>[7] Center for International Policy (Washington, DC) report, June 16, 2009</p>
<p>http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6191</p>
<p>[8] Time magazine, June 29, 2009, p.26</p>
<p>[9] AlterNet.org, June 14, 2009; Wilayto is the author of “In Defense of Iran: Notes from a U.S. Peace Delegation’s Journey through the Islamic Republic”</p> | false | 1 | iranian election june 12 led one leading stories media around world every day since elections whose results seriously challenged taken place countries one time another recent decades countless americans believe presidential elections 2000 2004 stolen republicans inside voting machines counting process prior actual voting well numerous republican party dirty tricks designed keep poor black voters voting lists away polling stations ltimg classsizemedium wpimage1550 alignleft stylemargin 5px titleahmadinejad srchttpswwwforeignpolicyjournalcomwpcontentuploads200907ahmadinejad300x169jpg altahmadinejad width270 height152 srcsethttpswwwforeignpolicyjournalcomwpcontentuploads200907ahmadinejad300x169jpg 300w httpswwwforeignpolicyjournalcomwpcontentuploads200907ahmadinejad478x270jpg 478w httpswwwforeignpolicyjournalcomwpcontentuploads200907ahmadinejad280x157jpg 280w httpswwwforeignpolicyjournalcomwpcontentuploads200907ahmadinejad118x66jpg 118w httpswwwforeignpolicyjournalcomwpcontentuploads200907ahmadinejad479x270jpg 479w httpswwwforeignpolicyjournalcomwpcontentuploads200907ahmadinejadjpg 500w sizesmaxwidth 270px 100vw 270px gt fact large numbers americans take streets day day protest iran something proud perhaps cia agency international development aid several us governmentrun radio stations various organizations supported national endowment democracy created serve front cia literally active united states years iran major street protests would taken place united states classic outside agitators foment dissent propaganda adding already existing dissent serve mobilize public strongly demonstrate government 1953 cia overthrew iranian prime minister mohammed mossadegh paid people agitate front mossadeghs residence elsewhere engage acts violence pretended supporters mossadegh engaging antireligious actions worked remarkably well 1 since end world war ii united states seriously intervened 30 elections around world adding new twist time twittering state department asked twitter postpone scheduled maintenance shutdown service keep information flowing inside iran helping mobilize protesters 2 new york times reported article published web site trueslant highlighted biggest errors twitter quickly repeated amplified bloggers three million protested tehran last weekend like hundred thousand opposition candidate mir hussein mousavi house arrest watched president election monitoring committee declared election invalid last saturday 3 recent years united states patrolling waters surrounding iran warships halting iranian ships check arms shipments hamas illegal reasons financing educating iranian dissidents using iranian groups carry terrorist attacks inside iran kidnapping iranian diplomats iraq kidnapping iranian military personnel iran taking iraq continually spying recruiting within iran manipulating irans currency international financial transactions imposing various economic political sanctions country 4 ive made clear united states respects sovereignty islamic republic iran interfering irans affairs said us president barack obama straight face june 23 iranian government accusing united states others outside iran instigating protests elections accusations patently false absurd 5 never believe anything officially denied british writer claud cockburn famously said worldprominent speech middle east june 4 obama mentioned middle cold war united states played role overthrow democratically elected iranian government president united states admitting previous overthrow iranian government united states midst trying overthrow current iranian government serve best example hypocrisy thats come along quite big international fuss iranian election street protests theres one answer obvious one announced winner mahmoud ahmadinejad washington ode officially designated enemy sufficiently respecting empire israeli partnerincrime indeed ahmadinejad one outspoken critics us foreign policy world ingrained ode response built washingtons world view appears matter mousavi ahmadinejads main opponent election much supported protesters prime minister 198189 bore large responsibility attacks us embassy military barracks beirut 1983 took lives 200 americans 1988 truck bombing us navy installation naples italy killed five persons remarkably search us newspaper broadcast sources shows mention current protests 6 however washington post saw fit run story june 27 declared authoritarian governments china cuba burma selectively censoring news month iranian crowds braving government militias streets tehran demand democratic reforms one obama administration knows mousavis background none know violent government repression june 5 peru peaceful protests organized response usperu free trade agreement massacre took lives 20 25 indigenous people amazon wounded another 100 7 obama administration silent peruvian massacre peruvian president alan garcia ode neither mousavi despite antiamerican terrorist deeds hes opposed ahmadinejad competes hugo chavez washingtons number one ode time magazine calls mousavi moderate goes add assumed iranian presidential election rigged offering much evidence iranian protestors ie none 8 course proven iranian election totally honest arguments given support charge fraud impressive muchrepeated fact results announced soon polls closed decades various countries election results condemned withheld many hours days kind dishonesty must going behind scenes long delay argued asked believe kind dishonesty must going results released quickly noted ballots listed one electoral contest four candidates phil wilayto american peace activist author book iran observed course say iran relatively repressive society social religious issues underlying reality likely feeds much protest indeed many protesters may even strong views election per se particularly since ahmadinejad mousavi members establishment neither threat islamic theocracy election seen kind power struggle find virtually every country issue im concerned issue washingtons longstanding goal regime change exact electoral outcome taken place country ally united states much accusatory news coverage speeches would taken place fact exact thing happen country ally united states three years ago felipe calderon appeared stolen presidential election mexico daily large protests two months american international condemnation virtually nonexistent compared see today regard iran iranian leaders undertook recount random ten per cent ballots recertified ahmadinejad winner honest recount idea americans got 2000 2004 ____________________ 1 william blum killing hope chapter 9 2 associated press june 16 2009 3 new york times june 21 2009 4 see seymour hersh new yorker magazine june 29 2008 abc news may 22 2007 paul craig roberts counterpunch june 1921 2009 descriptions antiiran covert activities 5 white house press conference june 23 2009 6 mention jeff stein cq politics congressional quarterly online june 22 2009 according former cia military officials 7 center international policy washington dc report june 16 2009 httpamericasirconlineorgam6191 8 time magazine june 29 2009 p26 9 alternetorg june 14 2009 wilayto author defense iran notes us peace delegations journey islamic republic | 903 |
<p>By Ulf Laessing and Aidan Lewis</p>
<p>BANI WALID, Libya (Reuters) – Elders of a powerful tribe that defended the regime of former leader Muammar Gaddafi have a message for the United Nations as it tries to broker peace in Libya – talk to us or you will fail.</p>
<p>&#160;&#160;&#160; The U.N. launched a new round of negotiations in September to unite a country that splintered along political, ideological and tribal lines during and after the 2011 NATO-backed uprising that unseated Gaddafi.</p>
<p>&#160;&#160;&#160; Western officials hope the talks will pave the way for elections next year and produce a functioning government that could curb militant activity, tackle migrant smuggling and stabilize the oil-rich nation’s rapidly deteriorating economy.</p>
<p>But conversations with the robed elders of the Warfalla tribe at their meeting in a hall in the former Gaddafi stronghold of Bani Walid show how difficult that will be.</p>
<p>Located 145km (90 miles) southeast of Tripoli, the isolated hilltop town did not accept the fall of Gaddafi in 2011 and held out against rebels two months longer than the capital.</p>
<p>&#160;&#160;&#160; “We are for dialogue… but the U.N. has never contacted us,” said Muftah Eftais, leader of the council of elders.</p>
<p>Winning over losers of the 2011 revolution will be key to stabilizing the North African country. The Warfalla account for 1.5 million out of six million Libyans, according to the elders council.</p>
<p>&#160;&#160;&#160; “We are represented in all regions. If the U.N. wants a solution for Libya you need to talk (to us) the tribes,” said Eftais, drawing words of support from the assembled tribesmen.</p>
<p>&#160;&#160;&#160; The U.N. Libya office said its envoy, Ghassan Salame, met a group of Libyan notables including a Warfalla representative from Bani Walid in late October, and that other members of the U.N. mission had been in touch with town officials on political, human rights, humanitarian and economic matters.</p>
<p>At least two Warfalla delegates have also taken part in the latest talks in Tunis, a U.N. official said, but Eftais said the elders did not feel represented by them, highlighting Libya’s multi-layered divisions.</p>
<p>“WE WERE IN PARADISE”</p>
<p>Bani Walid residents express their loyalty to the old regime much more openly than they did on a Reuters visit to the town in 2014.</p>
<p>In the main square a Gaddafi-era green flag is hoisted next to pictures of “martyrs” killed in the 2011 violence and subsequent fighting.</p>
<p>The elders govern Bani Walid and control their own armed force, in the absence of any national authority or army. Asked if life was better under Gaddafi, several exclaimed: “We were in paradise.”</p>
<p>Cut off from Tripoli, they said their town has suffered even more than others from late public salary payments that have left people across the country struggling to get by, and from what they say are arbitrary detentions for their support of Gaddafi.</p>
<p>“None of us 60 elders have been to Tripoli since 2011 because we fear getting arrested,” Eftais said.</p>
<p>Two elders died in an ambush by unidentified gun men on the way home from peace talks in a town west of Bani Walid.</p>
<p>Some say claims of isolation and discrimination are exaggerated.</p>
<p>“The problem with Bani Walid is that they sided with Gaddafi and Gaddafi lost, and they can’t live with that,” said Abdulrahman Swehli, the head Tripoli’s High State Council who is from the rival town of Misrata.</p>
<p>“MUSICAL CHAIRS”</p>
<p>Economic troubles have deepened in Libya since 2014, when a battle for the capital led to rival parliaments and governments being set up in Tripoli and the east.</p>
<p>A 2015 agreement sought to unite the two camps but instead created a third, U.N.-selected government, led by Prime Minister Fayez Seraj. It has struggled to make an impact after failing to win approval from military commander Khalifa Haftar, the dominant figure in eastern Libya.</p>
<p>The new U.N. talks, held in Tunis, were suspended last month as neither side could agree on what role Haftar should play. He is said to have presidential ambitions but is a divisive figure.</p>
<p>The Bani Walid elders say they do not support either camp.</p>
<p>&#160;&#160;&#160; “We are neither with Seraj nor with Haftar. Since 2011 the same people have been… in the GNC (parliament), government, playing musical chairs,” said Eftais.</p>
<p>The elders want the talks to take place in Libya, under the supervision of Libyans.</p>
<p>After negotiations between rival parliaments, the U.N. says it is planning a “national conference” that would gather hundreds of representatives from across Libya and make any deal as inclusive as possible, bridging deep communal rifts.</p>
<p>Bani Walid’s enmity with Misrata, a wealthy port city 125 km to the northeast, shows how deep such divisions can run.</p>
<p>Historical hostility between two communities that fought in the early 20th century was reignited when Misrata was shelled for weeks by Gaddafi forces in 2011.</p>
<p>The following year, Bani Walid was attacked by fighters from Misrata and other towns, who daubed slogans on the walls that can still be seen today.</p>
<p>In 2014 Misratans became the dominant force in Tripoli and the main source of military opposition to Haftar.</p>
<p>But Misratan Islamist-leaning armed groups have been sidelined, while Haftar has managed to consolidate power in the east with help from tribal allies and foreign backers including Egypt and the United Arab Emirates.</p>
<p>NOSTALGIA</p>
<p>As in other towns that forged alliances with Gaddafi during his 42-year rule, many in Bani Walid are nostalgic.</p>
<p>State employees are often unpaid, schools and hospitals have been run down, and citizens have been caught up in the intermittent conflict.</p>
<p>Several residents said they would vote for the late Gaddafi’s most prominent son, Saif al-Islam, who made a last stand in Bani Walid before disappearing into the desert. His whereabouts are not clear.</p>
<p>“Life was 100 times better under the old system. We had security, a salary, health care,” said Mohamed Hussein, a 40-year old who was searching with his cousin for iron in the ruins of hotel.</p>
<p>&#160;&#160;&#160; “We are trying to sell the iron for maybe 10 dinars $1.2 on the black market) because our salaries have not come through.” &#160;</p>
<p>&#160;&#160;&#160; The hotel has not been rebuilt as a drop in oil revenues due to armed group blockades has left little spare cash in what was once one of the richest countries in the Middle East.</p> | false | 1 | ulf laessing aidan lewis bani walid libya reuters elders powerful tribe defended regime former leader muammar gaddafi message united nations tries broker peace libya talk us fail 160160160 un launched new round negotiations september unite country splintered along political ideological tribal lines 2011 natobacked uprising unseated gaddafi 160160160 western officials hope talks pave way elections next year produce functioning government could curb militant activity tackle migrant smuggling stabilize oilrich nations rapidly deteriorating economy conversations robed elders warfalla tribe meeting hall former gaddafi stronghold bani walid show difficult located 145km 90 miles southeast tripoli isolated hilltop town accept fall gaddafi 2011 held rebels two months longer capital 160160160 dialogue un never contacted us said muftah eftais leader council elders winning losers 2011 revolution key stabilizing north african country warfalla account 15 million six million libyans according elders council 160160160 represented regions un wants solution libya need talk us tribes said eftais drawing words support assembled tribesmen 160160160 un libya office said envoy ghassan salame met group libyan notables including warfalla representative bani walid late october members un mission touch town officials political human rights humanitarian economic matters least two warfalla delegates also taken part latest talks tunis un official said eftais said elders feel represented highlighting libyas multilayered divisions paradise bani walid residents express loyalty old regime much openly reuters visit town 2014 main square gaddafiera green flag hoisted next pictures martyrs killed 2011 violence subsequent fighting elders govern bani walid control armed force absence national authority army asked life better gaddafi several exclaimed paradise cut tripoli said town suffered even others late public salary payments left people across country struggling get say arbitrary detentions support gaddafi none us 60 elders tripoli since 2011 fear getting arrested eftais said two elders died ambush unidentified gun men way home peace talks town west bani walid say claims isolation discrimination exaggerated problem bani walid sided gaddafi gaddafi lost cant live said abdulrahman swehli head tripolis high state council rival town misrata musical chairs economic troubles deepened libya since 2014 battle capital led rival parliaments governments set tripoli east 2015 agreement sought unite two camps instead created third unselected government led prime minister fayez seraj struggled make impact failing win approval military commander khalifa haftar dominant figure eastern libya new un talks held tunis suspended last month neither side could agree role haftar play said presidential ambitions divisive figure bani walid elders say support either camp 160160160 neither seraj haftar since 2011 people gnc parliament government playing musical chairs said eftais elders want talks take place libya supervision libyans negotiations rival parliaments un says planning national conference would gather hundreds representatives across libya make deal inclusive possible bridging deep communal rifts bani walids enmity misrata wealthy port city 125 km northeast shows deep divisions run historical hostility two communities fought early 20th century reignited misrata shelled weeks gaddafi forces 2011 following year bani walid attacked fighters misrata towns daubed slogans walls still seen today 2014 misratans became dominant force tripoli main source military opposition haftar misratan islamistleaning armed groups sidelined haftar managed consolidate power east help tribal allies foreign backers including egypt united arab emirates nostalgia towns forged alliances gaddafi 42year rule many bani walid nostalgic state employees often unpaid schools hospitals run citizens caught intermittent conflict several residents said would vote late gaddafis prominent son saif alislam made last stand bani walid disappearing desert whereabouts clear life 100 times better old system security salary health care said mohamed hussein 40year old searching cousin iron ruins hotel 160160160 trying sell iron maybe 10 dinars 12 black market salaries come 160 160160160 hotel rebuilt drop oil revenues due armed group blockades left little spare cash one richest countries middle east | 615 |
<p>Jared Kushner and Russia’s ambassador to Washington discussed the possibility of setting up a secret and secure communications channel between Donald Trump’s transition team and the Kremlin, using Russian diplomatic facilities in an apparent move to shield their pre-inauguration discussions from monitoring, according to U.S. officials briefed on intelligence reports.</p>
<p>Ambassador Sergey Kislyak reported to his superiors in Moscow that Kushner, son-in-law and confidant to then-President-elect Trump, made the proposal during a meeting on Dec. 1 or 2 at Trump Tower, according to intercepts of Russian communications that were reviewed by U.S. officials. Kislyak said Kushner suggested using Russian diplomatic facilities in the United States for the communications.</p>
<p>The meeting also was attended by Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser.</p>
<p>The White House disclosed the meeting only in March, playing down its significance. But people familiar with the matter say the FBI now considers the encounter, as well as another meeting Kushner had with a Russian banker, to be of investigative interest.</p>
<p>Kislyak reportedly was taken aback by the suggestion of allowing an American to use Russian communications gear at its embassy or consulate – a proposal that would have carried security risks for Moscow as well as the Trump team.</p>
<p>Neither the meeting nor the communications of Americans involved were under U.S. surveillance, officials said.</p>
<p>The White House declined to comment. Robert Kelner, a lawyer for Flynn, declined to comment. The Russian Embassy did not respond to requests for comment.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>Russia at times feeds false information into communication streams it suspects are monitored as a way of sowing misinformation and confusion among U.S. analysts. But officials said that it’s unclear what Kislyak would have had to gain by falsely characterizing his contacts with Kushner to Moscow, particularly at a time when the Kremlin still saw the prospect of dramatically improved relations with Trump.</p>
<p>Kushner’s apparent interest in establishing a secret channel with Moscow, rather than relying on U.S. government systems, has added to the intrigue surrounding the Trump administration’s relationship with Russia.</p>
<p>To some officials, it also reflects a staggering naivete.</p>
<p>The FBI closely monitors the communications of Russian officials in the United States, and it maintains a nearly constant surveillance of its diplomatic facilities. The National Security Agency monitors the communications of Russian officials overseas.</p>
<p>Current and former U.S. intelligence officials said that although Russian diplomats have secure means of communicating with Moscow, Kushner’s apparent request for access to such channels was extraordinary.</p>
<p>“How would he trust that the Russians wouldn’t leak it on their side?” said one former senior intelligence official. The FBI would know that a Trump transition official was going in and out of the embassy, which would cause “a great deal” of concern, he added. The entire idea, he said, “seems extremely naive or absolutely crazy.”</p>
<p>The discussion of a secret channel adds to a broader pattern of efforts by Trump’s closest advisers to obscure their contacts with Russian counterparts. Trump’s first national security adviser, Flynn, was forced to resign after a series of false statements about his conversations with Kislyak. Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from matters related to the Russia investigation after it was revealed that he had failed to disclose his own meetings with Kislyak when asked during congressional testimony about any contact with Russians.</p>
<p>Kushner’s interactions with Russians — including Kislyak and an executive for a Russian bank under U.S. sanctions — were not acknowledged by the White House until they were exposed in media reports.</p>
<p>It is common for senior advisers of a newly elected president to be in contact with foreign leaders and officials. But new administrations are generally cautious in their handling of interactions with Moscow, which U.S. intelligence agencies have accused of waging an unprecedented campaign to interfere in last year’s presidential race and help elect Trump.</p>
<p>Obama administration officials say members of the Trump transition team never approached them about arranging a secure communications channel with their Russian contacts, possibly because of concerns about leaks.</p>
<p>The State Department, the White House National Security Council and U.S. intelligence agencies all have the ability to set up secure communications channels with foreign leaders, though doing so for a transition team would be unusual.</p>
<p>Trump’s advisers were similarly secretive about meetings with leaders from the United Arab Emirates. The Obama White House only learned that the crown prince of Abu Dhabi was flying to New York in December to see Kushner, Flynn and Stephen Bannon, another top Trump adviser, because U.S. border agents in the UAE spotted the Emirate leader’s name on a flight manifest.</p>
<p>Russia would also have had reasons of its own to reject such an overture from Kushner. Doing so would require Moscow to expose its most sophisticated communications capabilities — which are likely housed in highly secure locations at diplomatic compounds — to an American.</p>
<p>The Post was first alerted in mid-December to the meeting by an anonymous letter, which said, among other things, that Kushner had talked to Kislyak about setting up the communications channel. This week, officials who reviewed the letter and spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence said the portion about the secret channel was consistent with their understanding of events.</p>
<p>For instance, according to those officials and the letter, Kushner conveyed to the Russians that he was aware that it would be politically sensitive to meet publicly, but it was necessary for the Trump team to be able to continue their communication with Russian government officials.</p>
<p>In addition to their discussion about setting up the communications channel, Kushner, Flynn and Kislyak also talked about arranging a meeting between a representative of Trump and a “Russian contact” in a third country whose name was not identified, according to the anonymous letter.</p>
<p>The Post reported in April that Erik Prince, the former founder of the private security firm Blackwater and an informal adviser to the Trump transition team, met on Jan. 11 — nine days before Trump’s inauguration — in the Seychelles islands in the Indian Ocean with a representative of Russian President Vladimir Putin.</p> | false | 1 | jared kushner russias ambassador washington discussed possibility setting secret secure communications channel donald trumps transition team kremlin using russian diplomatic facilities apparent move shield preinauguration discussions monitoring according us officials briefed intelligence reports ambassador sergey kislyak reported superiors moscow kushner soninlaw confidant thenpresidentelect trump made proposal meeting dec 1 2 trump tower according intercepts russian communications reviewed us officials kislyak said kushner suggested using russian diplomatic facilities united states communications meeting also attended michael flynn trumps first national security adviser white house disclosed meeting march playing significance people familiar matter say fbi considers encounter well another meeting kushner russian banker investigative interest kislyak reportedly taken aback suggestion allowing american use russian communications gear embassy consulate proposal would carried security risks moscow well trump team neither meeting communications americans involved us surveillance officials said white house declined comment robert kelner lawyer flynn declined comment russian embassy respond requests comment russia times feeds false information communication streams suspects monitored way sowing misinformation confusion among us analysts officials said unclear kislyak would gain falsely characterizing contacts kushner moscow particularly time kremlin still saw prospect dramatically improved relations trump kushners apparent interest establishing secret channel moscow rather relying us government systems added intrigue surrounding trump administrations relationship russia officials also reflects staggering naivete fbi closely monitors communications russian officials united states maintains nearly constant surveillance diplomatic facilities national security agency monitors communications russian officials overseas current former us intelligence officials said although russian diplomats secure means communicating moscow kushners apparent request access channels extraordinary would trust russians wouldnt leak side said one former senior intelligence official fbi would know trump transition official going embassy would cause great deal concern added entire idea said seems extremely naive absolutely crazy discussion secret channel adds broader pattern efforts trumps closest advisers obscure contacts russian counterparts trumps first national security adviser flynn forced resign series false statements conversations kislyak attorney general jeff sessions recused matters related russia investigation revealed failed disclose meetings kislyak asked congressional testimony contact russians kushners interactions russians including kislyak executive russian bank us sanctions acknowledged white house exposed media reports common senior advisers newly elected president contact foreign leaders officials new administrations generally cautious handling interactions moscow us intelligence agencies accused waging unprecedented campaign interfere last years presidential race help elect trump obama administration officials say members trump transition team never approached arranging secure communications channel russian contacts possibly concerns leaks state department white house national security council us intelligence agencies ability set secure communications channels foreign leaders though transition team would unusual trumps advisers similarly secretive meetings leaders united arab emirates obama white house learned crown prince abu dhabi flying new york december see kushner flynn stephen bannon another top trump adviser us border agents uae spotted emirate leaders name flight manifest russia would also reasons reject overture kushner would require moscow expose sophisticated communications capabilities likely housed highly secure locations diplomatic compounds american post first alerted middecember meeting anonymous letter said among things kushner talked kislyak setting communications channel week officials reviewed letter spoke condition anonymity discuss sensitive intelligence said portion secret channel consistent understanding events instance according officials letter kushner conveyed russians aware would politically sensitive meet publicly necessary trump team able continue communication russian government officials addition discussion setting communications channel kushner flynn kislyak also talked arranging meeting representative trump russian contact third country whose name identified according anonymous letter post reported april erik prince former founder private security firm blackwater informal adviser trump transition team met jan 11 nine days trumps inauguration seychelles islands indian ocean representative russian president vladimir putin | 592 |
<p>NEW YORK — President-elect Donald Trump is facing an early test with fellow Republicans over U.S. relations with Russia, as lawmakers seek to investigate a CIA assessment that Russia interfered in the November election and issue warnings over the incoming president’s potential pick for secretary of state.</p>
<p>Trump said Sunday the recent CIA assertion that Russian hacking had sought to help his candidacy was “ridiculous,” and he praised ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson, who has emerged as the leading contender to lead the State Department.</p>
<p>But two key Senate Republicans — John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a leading Trump critic — joined with two Democrats in seeking a bipartisan investigation into the Kremlin’s activities during the election. And McCain, the party’s 2008 presidential nominee, questioned whether Trump should nominate Tillerson, citing the executive’s longstanding business ties with Moscow.</p>
<p>“It’s a matter of concern to me that he has such a close personal relationship with Vladimir Putin,” McCain said of Tillerson. “And obviously they’ve done enormous deals together.” In an interview with CBS’ “Face the Nation,” McCain said, “That would color his approach to Vladimir Putin and the Russian threat.”</p>
<p>Russia expects to figure prominently at the start of a week in which Trump is expected to name more members of his Cabinet, which also has vacancies in the departments of Energy, Agriculture and Veterans Affairs. Trump is also planning a news conference on Thursday to outline how he intends to separate himself from his sprawling business enterprise.</p>
<p />
<p>During his campaign, Trump weathered turbulent relations with fellow Republicans but has since forged a more united front with GOP lawmakers since his November victory over Hillary Clinton.</p>
<p>The CIA recently concluded with “high confidence” that Russia sought to influence the U.S. election on behalf of Trump, raising red flags among lawmakers concerned about the sanctity of the U.S. voting system and potentially straining relations at the start of Trump’s administration.</p>
<p>In a wide-ranging interview with “Fox News Sunday,” Trump dismissed those concerns as little more than partisan griping. “I think the Democrats are putting it out because they suffered one of the greatest defeats in the history of politics in this country. And frankly, I think they’re putting it out. And it’s ridiculous,” Trump said.</p>
<p>The incoming president said he did not necessarily oppose calls from President Barack Obama for an inquiry into the 2016 campaign hacking but said it should not be solely focused on a single culprit.</p>
<p>“If you’re gonna to do that, I think you should not just say ‘Russia.’ You should say other countries also, and maybe other individuals,” he said. The White House has said the probe would focus on any breaches by other countries along with hacking committed in previous elections.</p>
<p>Trump’s decision-making on whom to select for secretary of state has stretched out over several weeks. He has been considering former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, a one-time vocal Trump critic, Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, who leads the Foreign Relations Committee, and Tillerson, the oil industry executive who met twice with Trump during the past week.</p>
<p>In the television interview, Trump pointed to Tillerson’s deep relations with Moscow as a selling point. As ExxonMobil’s head, he maintained close ties with Russia and was awarded by Putin with the Order of Friendship in 2013, an honor for a foreign citizen.</p>
<p />
<p>“A great advantage is he knows many of the players, and he knows them well. He does massive deals in Russia. He does massive deals for the company,” Trump said, while also citing Corker and Romney.</p>
<p>“These are all very different types of people,” he said. “But when you ask me about Rex, I mean, he’s a world-class player. There’s no question about it.” By Sunday afternoon, Tillerson had still not been formally offered the job, according to a person with knowledge of the process who spoke on condition of anonymity.</p>
<p>Democrats have warned that plucking Tillerson for State would put the leader of the world’s largest oil company in a pivotal role on issues like climate change and the future of the Keystone XL pipeline. They also question whether he would apply diplomatic pressure on Russia’s conflict with Ukraine.</p>
<p>Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., said the developments “raise serious questions about whether the incoming administration will adequately stand up to Russia’s aggression.”</p>
<p>The prospect of Tillerson also received a cool reception from some Republican members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which would consider his nomination.</p>
<p>Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, who unsuccessfully challenged Trump for the GOP nomination, wrote on Twitter, “Being a ‘friend of Vladimir’ is not an attribute I am hoping for from a (hashtag)SecretaryOfState.”</p>
<p>Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said he would reserve judgment. The committee also includes Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., a Trump detractor during the campaign.</p>
<p>Russia’s influence has also been seized upon by a small group of Democratic electors who call themselves the “Hamilton Electors” and are trying to persuade electors to back another Republican because they contend Trump is unfit to be president.</p>
<p>Trump won 306 electoral votes in the election, a comfortable margin to make him the next president when the electoral college meets Dec. 19. But the Hamilton Electors want the CIA and FBI to provide more details on Russia’s influence before that date.</p>
<p>“We believe that we should do our job faithfully as electors and not just rubber stamp the election,” said Michael Baca, a Democratic elector from Colorado who co-founded the group.</p> | false | 1 | new york presidentelect donald trump facing early test fellow republicans us relations russia lawmakers seek investigate cia assessment russia interfered november election issue warnings incoming presidents potential pick secretary state trump said sunday recent cia assertion russian hacking sought help candidacy ridiculous praised exxonmobil ceo rex tillerson emerged leading contender lead state department two key senate republicans john mccain arizona lindsey graham south carolina leading trump critic joined two democrats seeking bipartisan investigation kremlins activities election mccain partys 2008 presidential nominee questioned whether trump nominate tillerson citing executives longstanding business ties moscow matter concern close personal relationship vladimir putin mccain said tillerson obviously theyve done enormous deals together interview cbs face nation mccain said would color approach vladimir putin russian threat russia expects figure prominently start week trump expected name members cabinet also vacancies departments energy agriculture veterans affairs trump also planning news conference thursday outline intends separate sprawling business enterprise campaign trump weathered turbulent relations fellow republicans since forged united front gop lawmakers since november victory hillary clinton cia recently concluded high confidence russia sought influence us election behalf trump raising red flags among lawmakers concerned sanctity us voting system potentially straining relations start trumps administration wideranging interview fox news sunday trump dismissed concerns little partisan griping think democrats putting suffered one greatest defeats history politics country frankly think theyre putting ridiculous trump said incoming president said necessarily oppose calls president barack obama inquiry 2016 campaign hacking said solely focused single culprit youre gon na think say russia say countries also maybe individuals said white house said probe would focus breaches countries along hacking committed previous elections trumps decisionmaking select secretary state stretched several weeks considering former massachusetts gov mitt romney onetime vocal trump critic sen bob corker tennessee leads foreign relations committee tillerson oil industry executive met twice trump past week television interview trump pointed tillersons deep relations moscow selling point exxonmobils head maintained close ties russia awarded putin order friendship 2013 honor foreign citizen great advantage knows many players knows well massive deals russia massive deals company trump said also citing corker romney different types people said ask rex mean hes worldclass player theres question sunday afternoon tillerson still formally offered job according person knowledge process spoke condition anonymity democrats warned plucking tillerson state would put leader worlds largest oil company pivotal role issues like climate change future keystone xl pipeline also question whether would apply diplomatic pressure russias conflict ukraine sen bob casey dpa said developments raise serious questions whether incoming administration adequately stand russias aggression prospect tillerson also received cool reception republican members senate foreign relations committee would consider nomination sen marco rubio florida unsuccessfully challenged trump gop nomination wrote twitter friend vladimir attribute hoping hashtagsecretaryofstate sen rand paul rky said would reserve judgment committee also includes sen jeff flake rariz trump detractor campaign russias influence also seized upon small group democratic electors call hamilton electors trying persuade electors back another republican contend trump unfit president trump 306 electoral votes election comfortable margin make next president electoral college meets dec 19 hamilton electors want cia fbi provide details russias influence date believe job faithfully electors rubber stamp election said michael baca democratic elector colorado cofounded group | 531 |
<p>Even Palestinians who seem unlikely to exercise their right of return consider their lives within the context of the Nakba and exile as an essential one.</p>
<p>When ISIS militias swept into Mosul, Iraq, in June 2014, Ibrahim Mahmoud plotted his flight, along with his whole family, which included 11 children. Once upon a time, Ibrahim was himself a child escaping another violent campaign carried out by equally angry militias.</p>
<p>In his lifetime, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/ap-palestinian-refugee-driven-into-new-exile-by-is-2016-1" type="external">Ibrahim became a refugee twice</a>, once when he was nine years old living in Haifa, Palestine, and yet again and more recently, in Mosul.</p>
<p>Just weeks before Israel declared its independence in 1948, Ibrahim lost his homeland and fled Haifa along with tens of thousands of Palestinian Muslims and Christians after Israeli militias conquered the city in a military operation they called Bi’ur Hametz, or Passover Cleaning.</p>
<p>Over 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from or fled the horrors of the militia-instigated war, and those who are still alive along with their descendants <a href="http://www.unrwa.org/palestine-refugees" type="external">number over five million refugees</a>.</p>
<p>Between 1948 and 2014, life was anything but kind to Ibrahim and his family. At first, they sold falafel, and his children left school to join the work force at a young age. They all had cards that listed them as ‘Palestinian refugees’, and to date know of no other identity.</p>
<p>When the Americans invaded Iraq in 2003, they granted their soldiers and the Shia militias a free hand in that Arab country. The once relatively thriving and peaceful Palestinian community of refugees in Iraq was shattered. Now, according to the UN’s refugee agency, <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/1.697392" type="external">no more than 3,000 Palestinian refugees</a> are still living in Iraq, many of them in refugee camps.</p>
<p>Ibrahim has finally managed to escape Mosul, and now lives in a dirty and crowded refugee camp within Kurdish-controlled territories in the north. Considering his old age and faltering health, his story could possibly, and most likely end there, but certainly not that of his children and grandchildren.</p>
<p>Ibrahim’s tragedy is not unique within the overall Middle East refugee crisis. Nonetheless, if seen within its painfully protracted historical context, Palestinian exile is almost unprecedented in its complexity and duration. Few other refugee populations had struggled with an exile which defined them, one generation after the other, as Palestinians have.</p>
<p>To offer a new perspective on this issue, about a year ago, I led a group of Palestinian researchers with the aim of offering a unique and modern study of Palestinian exile, wherein the 1948 Nakba (or Catastrophe) was examined within a larger context of space and time, not only in Palestine itself, but throughout the region, and the world as well. The stories borne out of this research will appear in a book that is tentatively entitled: Exiled.</p>
<p>Since the first refugee was expelled from his land in 1948, international aid workers, politicians, journalists, and eventually, historians, examined the Palestinian experience seemingly from all angles.</p>
<p>Exile was then first seen as a political crisis to which the only solution was the return of refugees, as instructed in United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) <a href="http://www.unrwa.org/content/resolution-194" type="external">Resolution 194</a>.</p>
<p>When that possibility grew dim, other resolutions followed, all expressing the political contexts of each era: in 1950, ‘74, ‘82, ‘83, etc. (An article by Ben Zakkai in Mondoweiss titled “ <a href="http://mondoweiss.net/2010/09/notes-on-international-law-and-the-right-of-return" type="external">Notes on international law and the right of return</a>” is most insightful in this regard.)</p>
<p>Regardless of the nature of the discussion pertaining to Palestinian refugees—be it legal, political or moral—the refugees themselves were rarely consulted, except as subjects of <a href="http://www.pcpsr.org/en/node/493" type="external">selective and sometimes dehumanizing poll questions</a>, which draw their conclusions from refuges voting either “Yes” or “No”, or even neither.</p>
<p>Many conclusions were drawn from various polls that were often commissioned to reach political conclusions, and each time such results are published, academic, media and political storms often ensue. For Israel, the key concern is for the Palestinians to <a href="http://mondoweiss.net/2011/03/the-nakba-law-and-erasing-history" type="external">simply disconnect from their historic homeland</a>. In contrast, for <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/09/2011922135540203743.html" type="external">refugee advocates</a> the struggle has always been to demonstrate that the refugees’ desire to return remains as strong today as it was nearly 68 years ago.</p>
<p>But between Israeli laws aimed at <a href="http://mondoweiss.net/2011/03/the-nakba-law-and-erasing-history" type="external">punishing Palestinians for commemorating their Nakba</a> and efforts to keep the Right of Return central to the debate, an actual disconnect happened between the likes of Ibrahim Mahmoud of Haifa/Mosul, along with millions like him and the rest of us. However, this disconnect was not in keeping with Israeli hopes; instead it was based on a very real, human perspective.</p>
<p>For Ibrahim, as is the case for Palestinian refugees in Syrian, <a href="http://www.thenational.ae/world/middle-east/shatilas-population-unknown-as-palestinian-refugee-camp-bursts-at-seams" type="external">Lebanon</a>, Iraq, Palestine itself, and all over the world, the matter of exile is regarded from neither a political nor a legal perspective. It is an everyday reality that has left numerous scars and manifestations on the refugees’ identities as people, their perception of themselves, of their surroundings, of ‘home’, their internalization of the past, their understanding of the present and their aspirations for their futures.</p>
<p>After examining profiles, reviewing hundreds of answered questionnaires and conducting thorough interviews with many refugees, it became clear to us that in the minds of all Palestinians, the Nakba is not a separate question to be discussed and resolved through political concessions or pressures. Nor was it a legal question either, one so convoluted that it needed to be assigned to the ‘ <a href="http://www.badil.org/en/publication/press-releases/13-1999/124-press1999.html" type="external">final status negotiations</a>’ between Israel and the PLO—negotiations which never happened anyway.</p>
<p>Even Palestinians who seem unlikely to exercise their right of return consider their lives within the context of the Nakba and exile as an essential one.</p>
<p>Our study, Exiled, which will be presented in a narrative, non-academic format centers on the assumption that the question of identity can better be examined through the accumulation of personal narratives which could eventually help us isolate collective common denominators, so that we can offer answers to such question as: “What are the group identifiers of Palestinians in the modern era?” and “How strong is the common Palestinian identity in an <a href="http://www.irinnews.org/report/89571/middle-east-palestinian-refugee-numbers-whereabouts" type="external">age of geographic</a>, political and ideological splits, regional turmoil and divisive military occupation?”</p>
<p>One of our findings so far is that Palestinians, including those who had relatively stable lives and successful careers in exile, are unified by a common tragedy, and that neither Muslims nor Christians, despite their unique narratives and claim to identity, are in fact much different in terms of that collective self-perception. The Nakba and exile seem to hover above Palestinians as the most common foundation for the modern Palestinian narrative.</p>
<p>According to this narrative, the Nakba was not an historical event that existed sometime between 1947 and ‘48 and ended with UNGA Resolution 194, which is yet to be implemented.</p>
<p>In fact, it is an ongoing story, a journey that neither ended at a psychological nor practical levels. Those who were expelled from Safad in 1948, for example, then fled Jordan in 1970, then Lebanon in 1982 and finally Yarmouk in 2012, are testament to the reality that, unlike common wisdom, exile for Palestinians is not specific in time or space, but a cyclical process that is experienced by every single Palestinian, <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/abbas-says-he-has-no-right-to-live-in-safed-and-has-no-demands-on-pre-1967-israel/" type="external">even those who would declare that they have no intentions of returning</a> to Palestine.</p>
<p>In other words, the study of Palestinian exile, and the collective aspiration of the Palestinian people when it comes to their right of return is far more complex than a simple question that can be addressed based on a “Yes” or “No’ answer. Nor is it a matter that is open for political negotiations.</p>
<p>It is far more encompassing and is best articulated by the refugees themselves; without it Ibrahim Mahmoud, his children and all of his descendants will always be exiled, always refugee.</p> | false | 1 | even palestinians seem unlikely exercise right return consider lives within context nakba exile essential one isis militias swept mosul iraq june 2014 ibrahim mahmoud plotted flight along whole family included 11 children upon time ibrahim child escaping another violent campaign carried equally angry militias lifetime ibrahim became refugee twice nine years old living haifa palestine yet recently mosul weeks israel declared independence 1948 ibrahim lost homeland fled haifa along tens thousands palestinian muslims christians israeli militias conquered city military operation called biur hametz passover cleaning 750000 palestinians expelled fled horrors militiainstigated war still alive along descendants number five million refugees 1948 2014 life anything kind ibrahim family first sold falafel children left school join work force young age cards listed palestinian refugees date know identity americans invaded iraq 2003 granted soldiers shia militias free hand arab country relatively thriving peaceful palestinian community refugees iraq shattered according uns refugee agency 3000 palestinian refugees still living iraq many refugee camps ibrahim finally managed escape mosul lives dirty crowded refugee camp within kurdishcontrolled territories north considering old age faltering health story could possibly likely end certainly children grandchildren ibrahims tragedy unique within overall middle east refugee crisis nonetheless seen within painfully protracted historical context palestinian exile almost unprecedented complexity duration refugee populations struggled exile defined one generation palestinians offer new perspective issue year ago led group palestinian researchers aim offering unique modern study palestinian exile wherein 1948 nakba catastrophe examined within larger context space time palestine throughout region world well stories borne research appear book tentatively entitled exiled since first refugee expelled land 1948 international aid workers politicians journalists eventually historians examined palestinian experience seemingly angles exile first seen political crisis solution return refugees instructed united nations general assembly unga resolution 194 possibility grew dim resolutions followed expressing political contexts era 1950 74 82 83 etc article ben zakkai mondoweiss titled notes international law right return insightful regard regardless nature discussion pertaining palestinian refugeesbe legal political moralthe refugees rarely consulted except subjects selective sometimes dehumanizing poll questions draw conclusions refuges voting either yes even neither many conclusions drawn various polls often commissioned reach political conclusions time results published academic media political storms often ensue israel key concern palestinians simply disconnect historic homeland contrast refugee advocates struggle always demonstrate refugees desire return remains strong today nearly 68 years ago israeli laws aimed punishing palestinians commemorating nakba efforts keep right return central debate actual disconnect happened likes ibrahim mahmoud haifamosul along millions like rest us however disconnect keeping israeli hopes instead based real human perspective ibrahim case palestinian refugees syrian lebanon iraq palestine world matter exile regarded neither political legal perspective everyday reality left numerous scars manifestations refugees identities people perception surroundings home internalization past understanding present aspirations futures examining profiles reviewing hundreds answered questionnaires conducting thorough interviews many refugees became clear us minds palestinians nakba separate question discussed resolved political concessions pressures legal question either one convoluted needed assigned final status negotiations israel plonegotiations never happened anyway even palestinians seem unlikely exercise right return consider lives within context nakba exile essential one study exiled presented narrative nonacademic format centers assumption question identity better examined accumulation personal narratives could eventually help us isolate collective common denominators offer answers question group identifiers palestinians modern era strong common palestinian identity age geographic political ideological splits regional turmoil divisive military occupation one findings far palestinians including relatively stable lives successful careers exile unified common tragedy neither muslims christians despite unique narratives claim identity fact much different terms collective selfperception nakba exile seem hover palestinians common foundation modern palestinian narrative according narrative nakba historical event existed sometime 1947 48 ended unga resolution 194 yet implemented fact ongoing story journey neither ended psychological practical levels expelled safad 1948 example fled jordan 1970 lebanon 1982 finally yarmouk 2012 testament reality unlike common wisdom exile palestinians specific time space cyclical process experienced every single palestinian even would declare intentions returning palestine words study palestinian exile collective aspiration palestinian people comes right return far complex simple question addressed based yes answer matter open political negotiations far encompassing best articulated refugees without ibrahim mahmoud children descendants always exiled always refugee | 686 |
<p>WASHINGTON — Former FBI Director James Comey told a nationally televised hearing Thursday that President Donald Trump fired him to blunt an investigation into campaign ties to Russian meddling in the presidential election.</p>
<p>Comey, testifying under oath before the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Trump defamed him and the FBI when he claimed the firing was due to the director’s poor leadership that left the law enforcement agency in disarray.</p>
<p>“Lies, plain and simple,” Comey testified in one of the most highly awaited congressional hearings broadcast on television and cable networks.</p>
<p>In a dramatic appearance that lasted nearly three hours, Comey detailed his deep distrust of Trump.</p>
<p>Comey outlined four months of presidential conversations that centered on the FBI investigation into possible collusion between Trump campaign officials and the Russians who meddled in the 2016 election. He said that was the basis for his dismissal.</p>
<p>“I was fired because of the Russia investigation,” Comey said.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p>Trump, in a Washington speech to a faith group, did not mention Comey. He declined comment at a White House event later.</p>
<p>But his lawyer, Marc Kasowitz, said after the hearing that Comey confirmed “the president was not under investigation as part of any probe into Russian interference.”</p>
<p>White House supporters and some Republicans echoed that line.</p>
<p>“Nothing that’s happened that you have testified to here today has impeded the investigation of the FBI?” Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, asked.</p>
<p>“No,” Comey replied.</p>
<p>Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, called the president’s behavior “shocking” and vowed to continue the panel’s probe.</p>
<p>“We are going to get to the bottom of this,” Warner said. “The American people deserve to know.”</p>
<p>Creating a ‘cloud’</p>
<p>Comey said he was fired to change “the way the investigation was being conducted.”</p>
<p>“That is a very big deal, and not just because it involves me,” he said.</p>
<p>His statements bolstered bombshell written testimony he released a day before his appearance.</p>
<p>In that testimony, Comey said the president expressed his concerns that the FBI investigation into Russian meddling and his campaign was creating a “cloud.”</p>
<p>Although Trump was assured by Comey that he was not under investigation, the president dangled the director’s job in the conversation during a White House dinner. Comey said the president’s comments were awkward and made him uncomfortable.</p>
<p>“I was honestly concerned that he might lie about the nature of our meeting, so I thought it really important to document,” Comey said, explaining that he began writing detailed notes.</p>
<p>Several senators, including Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., asked why the 6-foot 8-inch tall Comey didn’t confront Trump and tell the president his questions were troubling or improper.</p>
<p>“I was just so stunned by the conversation,” Comey said.</p>
<p>He asked Attorney General Jeff Sessions to prevent Trump from directly contacting the FBI about the investigation because it was “inappropriate and should never happen.”</p>
<p>After his firing, the former FBI director asked a friend at Columbia Law School to leak a memo detailing the conversations with the president to the media.</p>
<p>“I thought it might prompt the appointment of a special counsel,” Comey revealed.</p>
<p>Former FBI Director Robert Mueller was appointed by the Justice Department as a special counsel after the firing. He is conducting a criminal investigation into allegations of collusion and and obstruction of justice charges.</p>
<p>Kasowitz said the president’s legal team would “leave it to the appropriate authorities to determine whether these leaks should be investigated along with all those others being investigated.”</p>
<p>Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., said Comey’s testimony “reiterates the importance of the ongoing independent investigation. The future of our country’s democracy depends on it.”</p>
<p>Comey and Clinton</p>
<p>Trump won a shocking victory in November over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who blamed her loss in part on Russian hacking and Comey, who announced just before the election the extended FBI scrutiny into the release of classified information from her private email servers.</p>
<p>In his last appearance before the Senate, Comey defended his handling of the Clinton email investigation, and spoke publicly about the Russian probe. He was fired days later by Trump, on May 9, who cited Comey’s handling of the Clinton probe.</p>
<p>Comey told the committee Trump demanded his “loyalty,” a claim disputed by the president’s attorney, and wanted him to alter the direction of the Russian probe.</p>
<p>Trump wanted an investigation into former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who was under FBI scrutiny for his calls to Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak after the election, dropped, Comey said.</p>
<p>Those contacts with the Russian ambassador led to the resignation of Flynn, who lied to Vice President Mike Pence about the conversations.</p>
<p>“He is a good guy. I hope you can let it go,” Comey recalled Trump asking. “I did not say I would ‘let it go.’ ”</p>
<p>Warner said any interference by the president would be appalling.</p>
<p>Following the hearing, Comey met in a closed-door session with the committee to discuss deeper aspects of the FBI investigation and communications that were classified.</p>
<p>Comey strode out after the closed-door session and walked by reporters and a bank of television cameras on the way out of the Hart Senate Office Building.</p>
<p>Contact Gary Martin at 202-662-7390 or [email protected]. Follow @garymartindc on Twitter. White House correspondent Debra J. Saunders contributed to this report.</p> | false | 1 | washington former fbi director james comey told nationally televised hearing thursday president donald trump fired blunt investigation campaign ties russian meddling presidential election comey testifying oath senate intelligence committee said trump defamed fbi claimed firing due directors poor leadership left law enforcement agency disarray lies plain simple comey testified one highly awaited congressional hearings broadcast television cable networks dramatic appearance lasted nearly three hours comey detailed deep distrust trump comey outlined four months presidential conversations centered fbi investigation possible collusion trump campaign officials russians meddled 2016 election said basis dismissal fired russia investigation comey said trump washington speech faith group mention comey declined comment white house event later lawyer marc kasowitz said hearing comey confirmed president investigation part probe russian interference white house supporters republicans echoed line nothing thats happened testified today impeded investigation fbi sen john cornyn rtexas asked comey replied sen mark warner dva top democrat intelligence committee called presidents behavior shocking vowed continue panels probe going get bottom warner said american people deserve know creating cloud comey said fired change way investigation conducted big deal involves said statements bolstered bombshell written testimony released day appearance testimony comey said president expressed concerns fbi investigation russian meddling campaign creating cloud although trump assured comey investigation president dangled directors job conversation white house dinner comey said presidents comments awkward made uncomfortable honestly concerned might lie nature meeting thought really important document comey said explaining began writing detailed notes several senators including dianne feinstein dcalif asked 6foot 8inch tall comey didnt confront trump tell president questions troubling improper stunned conversation comey said asked attorney general jeff sessions prevent trump directly contacting fbi investigation inappropriate never happen firing former fbi director asked friend columbia law school leak memo detailing conversations president media thought might prompt appointment special counsel comey revealed former fbi director robert mueller appointed justice department special counsel firing conducting criminal investigation allegations collusion obstruction justice charges kasowitz said presidents legal team would leave appropriate authorities determine whether leaks investigated along others investigated sen catherine cortez masto dnev said comeys testimony reiterates importance ongoing independent investigation future countrys democracy depends comey clinton trump shocking victory november former secretary state hillary clinton blamed loss part russian hacking comey announced election extended fbi scrutiny release classified information private email servers last appearance senate comey defended handling clinton email investigation spoke publicly russian probe fired days later trump may 9 cited comeys handling clinton probe comey told committee trump demanded loyalty claim disputed presidents attorney wanted alter direction russian probe trump wanted investigation former national security adviser michael flynn fbi scrutiny calls russian ambassador sergey kislyak election dropped comey said contacts russian ambassador led resignation flynn lied vice president mike pence conversations good guy hope let go comey recalled trump asking say would let go warner said interference president would appalling following hearing comey met closeddoor session committee discuss deeper aspects fbi investigation communications classified comey strode closeddoor session walked reporters bank television cameras way hart senate office building contact gary martin 2026627390 gmartinreviewjournalcom follow garymartindc twitter white house correspondent debra j saunders contributed report | 512 |
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<p>Two historical trends have been significant to the Middle East’s socio-political development and will continue to shape the region’s future: a long-term Muslim determination to resist Western hegemony, and a widening self-assertion by minorities within their own polities. Hezbollah – The Party of God – is the product of these political and psychological forces that, in one form or another, persist throughout the region regardless of sect.</p>
<p>Recent changes in the composition of the Lebanese government reflect the ascendancy of Hezbollah in Lebanese affairs over the past two decades. Through its forceful backing of Mikati, Hezbollah has clearly demonstrated that it is the dominant political and military force in Lebanon, while simultaneously helping Iran and Syria to gain more influence in the Lebanese theatre. Thanks to its smart positioning, successes against Israel, and social services network, Hezbollah has grown into an independent actor in the Lebanese political scene and this necessitates a sharp focus on the movement as an actor in itself.</p>
<p>Early in the life of Hezbollah, the organization was amorphous and decision-making was decentralized. Nevertheless, with time and with the increasing need to better coordinate and control the decisions and the actions of the organization, Hezbollah has matured into a more hierarchical and more effective institution. This evolution reflects Hezbollah’s growing strength and stature on the Lebanese scene, and its determination not to limit its activities to resistance only. This is clearly evident in its heavy reliance on the use of widespread media network in order to propagate its doctrine and its vision to all of its followers in Lebanon and the wider Muslim world. Currently, it operates a number of powerful means of communications the most prominent of which are al-Manar Television and Radio al-Nour.</p>
<p>For Hezbollah, moreover, the support that it has received from Iran and Syria has almost become the raison d’être of the organisation. The connection is of such intensity that some have argued that Hezbollah is a mere proxy for Syria and Iran in their attempts to carry out their foreign policies by other, more ambiguous, means. In reality, however, the actual influence of external actors has never been to such an extent and thus to see Hezbollah as a proxy element of Iran and Syria is erroneous.</p>
<p>Although state support has been crucial to Hezbollah, the organization has also felt limited by it. In other words, Hezbollah’s power also relies on its standing at home and regional image both of which have suffered from appearing to be a proxy. As a “conventional political party”, Hezbollah has to work with a number of other political parties and organizations. As a “welfare agency”, it has to deal with other Lebanese sects, while, as a militia, it has to “consider the regional balance of power” when engaging in resistance. <a href="https://csis.org/media/csis/pubs/060817_isr_hez_lessons.pdf" type="external">Anthony Cordesman</a> reported from Israel in August 2006 that no serving Israeli official, intelligence officer, or other military officers with whom he had spoken felt that Hezbollah had acted under the direction of Iran or Syria.</p>
<p>In fact, to achieve a level of autonomy from state sponsorship the Party has sought out aid and support from other sources so it can detach itself from any external sources that would limit the decisions and activities of the organization.</p>
<p>Hezbollah has entered into large-scale business operations by opening co-operative supermarkets in the suburbs of Beirut and other parts of Lebanon. It has revenue coming in from school fees, bookshops, farms, fisheries, factories, and bakeries. It manufactures Islamic clothing which it exports to the expatriate Lebanese Shiite community around the globe. The group has also entered the booming property market in Lebanon and the UAE. Furthermore, many sympathetic individuals in the west have created venture companies that invested Hezbollah money in stocks and shares of commodities. It also uses its faction in the Lebanese Parliament to persuade and/or pressure the government to finance its projects in Shiite population centres.</p>
<p>Historically, tistorically he Lebanese state has never served the Lebanese Shi‘a well. The Shi‘a have been an ignored and deprived underclass that has never received an equal share of the Lebanese infrastructure, political representation, or economic benefits. Consequently, Shi‘a have little confidence that the state can or will meet their needs and thus place greater confidence in Hezbollah as their political instruments.</p>
<p>Hezbollah’s ability, unprecedented in Arab history, to stand up to a superior Israeli military machine and force it to a truce is electrifying. Its character is mainstream Shiite, but its rhetoric focuses on Arab unity, the illegitimacy of the Israeli state, and the need for change in Arab leadership. It represents a powerful regional current and thus cannot be easily suppressed or disarmed. It is a highly credited organisation among the Arab public and a powerful voice for the Shiites in Lebanese affairs which has linked them to the larger Shiite community in the region, especially Iran.</p>
<p>What this observation implies, therefore, is that Hezbollah will willingly seek to remain above the state rather than to be the state. Hezbollah was drawn deeper into Lebanese politics due to its need to protect its armed status after the Syrian withdrawal. Hence, it is primarily concerned about having a dominant say in Lebanon foreign and security policy to ensure the immunity of its armed status from UN resolutions or Lebanon’s relations with the outside world.</p>
<p>Moreover, Hezbollah’s status as a non-state actor is beneficial to the Party because it exempts it from international obligations and restrictions that are imposed upon states and their conducts of foreign policy or military operations. In essence, this is a quality that makes Hezbollah more attractive to the Iranian government and thus helps the Hezbollah’s leadership to secure uninterrupted fellow of financial and military aids from Tehran. This is especially the case now since the Lebanese cabinet, imposed by Hezbollah, is unlikely to be capable of constraining Hezbollah’s strategic choices in matters of war and peace.</p>
<p>In addition, Syria may have appeared as the main beneficiary of the recent changes at the top of the Lebanese state by having an ally in the Office of the Prime Minister, thereby regaining its influence in Lebanon. Nonetheless, it cannot realistically run the show should Hezbollah chooses not to cooperate with it. Syria’s ability to influence political developments in Lebanon was closely tied to its ability to play local politicians against one another due to its direct military presence. This is no longer the case and that it is Syria that needs Hezbollah in order to be able to influence political outcomes there. And in all these, one thing is clear and that is that from now on what Hezbollah says and does matter greatly.</p> | false | 1 | two historical trends significant middle easts sociopolitical development continue shape regions future longterm muslim determination resist western hegemony widening selfassertion minorities within polities hezbollah party god product political psychological forces one form another persist throughout region regardless sect recent changes composition lebanese government reflect ascendancy hezbollah lebanese affairs past two decades forceful backing mikati hezbollah clearly demonstrated dominant political military force lebanon simultaneously helping iran syria gain influence lebanese theatre thanks smart positioning successes israel social services network hezbollah grown independent actor lebanese political scene necessitates sharp focus movement actor early life hezbollah organization amorphous decisionmaking decentralized nevertheless time increasing need better coordinate control decisions actions organization hezbollah matured hierarchical effective institution evolution reflects hezbollahs growing strength stature lebanese scene determination limit activities resistance clearly evident heavy reliance use widespread media network order propagate doctrine vision followers lebanon wider muslim world currently operates number powerful means communications prominent almanar television radio alnour hezbollah moreover support received iran syria almost become raison dêtre organisation connection intensity argued hezbollah mere proxy syria iran attempts carry foreign policies ambiguous means reality however actual influence external actors never extent thus see hezbollah proxy element iran syria erroneous although state support crucial hezbollah organization also felt limited words hezbollahs power also relies standing home regional image suffered appearing proxy conventional political party hezbollah work number political parties organizations welfare agency deal lebanese sects militia consider regional balance power engaging resistance anthony cordesman reported israel august 2006 serving israeli official intelligence officer military officers spoken felt hezbollah acted direction iran syria fact achieve level autonomy state sponsorship party sought aid support sources detach external sources would limit decisions activities organization hezbollah entered largescale business operations opening cooperative supermarkets suburbs beirut parts lebanon revenue coming school fees bookshops farms fisheries factories bakeries manufactures islamic clothing exports expatriate lebanese shiite community around globe group also entered booming property market lebanon uae furthermore many sympathetic individuals west created venture companies invested hezbollah money stocks shares commodities also uses faction lebanese parliament persuade andor pressure government finance projects shiite population centres historically tistorically lebanese state never served lebanese shia well shia ignored deprived underclass never received equal share lebanese infrastructure political representation economic benefits consequently shia little confidence state meet needs thus place greater confidence hezbollah political instruments hezbollahs ability unprecedented arab history stand superior israeli military machine force truce electrifying character mainstream shiite rhetoric focuses arab unity illegitimacy israeli state need change arab leadership represents powerful regional current thus easily suppressed disarmed highly credited organisation among arab public powerful voice shiites lebanese affairs linked larger shiite community region especially iran observation implies therefore hezbollah willingly seek remain state rather state hezbollah drawn deeper lebanese politics due need protect armed status syrian withdrawal hence primarily concerned dominant say lebanon foreign security policy ensure immunity armed status un resolutions lebanons relations outside world moreover hezbollahs status nonstate actor beneficial party exempts international obligations restrictions imposed upon states conducts foreign policy military operations essence quality makes hezbollah attractive iranian government thus helps hezbollahs leadership secure uninterrupted fellow financial military aids tehran especially case since lebanese cabinet imposed hezbollah unlikely capable constraining hezbollahs strategic choices matters war peace addition syria may appeared main beneficiary recent changes top lebanese state ally office prime minister thereby regaining influence lebanon nonetheless realistically run show hezbollah chooses cooperate syrias ability influence political developments lebanon closely tied ability play local politicians one another due direct military presence longer case syria needs hezbollah order able influence political outcomes one thing clear hezbollah says matter greatly | 586 |
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<p>Jewish Quarter, the Old City, DAMASCUS– It’s always encouraging when one comes upon some inspiring human enterprise, here in Syria or elsewhere, that refutes the worn shibboleths and clichés about how this or that group, or this or that religion, hates others and won’t cease targeting them until they are destroyed and burning in Hell.</p>
<p>In Syria today, there is much evidence to refute the claims, often politically motivated, that Jewish cultural heritage sites are being singled out for destruction by rabid anti-Semites. One example of this is the Eliyahu Hanabi Synagogue in the neighborhood of Jobar, on the outskirts of Damascus. For centuries, Jobar has been inhabited by a peaceful, mixed community of Muslims, Christians, and Jews, many of whom often attended events together at the synagogue.</p>
<p>Reports this week in Zionist media about the destruction of the 400-year-old (not 2000-year-old, as claimed, erroneously, by one report in Israeli media) synagogue, along with the loss of all its contents, are similar to reports over the past three years which turned out to be patently false. This observer has been waiting for clearance to visit the site, to learn exactly what happened there this week, to assess its current condition and inventory its religious artifacts, which comprise part of Syria’s, and humanity’s, collective heritage.</p>
<p>One of the more virulent charges to come forth this week, particularly from the colonial Zionist regime occupying Palestine, is the mantra of ‘see what the hatred of those Arabs for the Jewish people has done.’ Admittedly it’s an effective fund-raising mechanism—as well as a handy intimidation tool—for the Zionist lobby, as it scrabbles to retain control of the US government and American public sentiment, a public which seems to be growing increasingly vexed by the lobby’s actions and which are finally pulling back from rubber-stamping the crimes of the apartheid regime.</p>
<p>Jobar is a suburb of Damascus, and location-wise the Eliyahu Hanabi Synagogue (measuring approximately 17 meters long by 15.7 meters wide) sits undeniably at a crossroads, in an area that has been occupied by rebel forces since the beginning of the Syrian conflict—which means it was sure to get damaged. With each shelling of the district over the past three years, claims were made that the synagogue had been destroyed by government forces. One such report, published on April Fool’s Day in 2013 by the Times of Israel and widely circulated by Zionist media outlets, claimed that, “The 2,000-year-old Jobar Synagogue in the Syrian capital of Damascus—the country’s holiest Jewish site—was looted and burned to the ground by government forces.” The report was patently false but got spread far and wide, despite the fact that there have been no government forces in Jobar since the conflict began. Two copy-cat reports followed later in 2013, but they were equally false. Nearly a year later, however, in March of 2014, media reports conceded that the synagogue was still standing, with only minor damage, and that its contents appeared to be in good condition.</p>
<p>This observer has received credible reports about certain stolen artifacts, including gold chandeliers, from the Eliyahu Hanabi Synagogue being offered for sale. It is well known in Syria that certain militia and other opportunists have been financing themselves by selling this country’s cultural heritage whenever and wherever they get the opportunity. There is in fact a multi-million-dollar black market in this type of illicit trade. Security agencies in Syria, in coordination with Interpol, have been alerted to the thefts of Jewish property, just as with thefts of other antiquities, and they periodically issue what are referred to as “watch for and confiscate” lists of stolen artifacts.</p>
<p>It is not true, based upon this observer’s many personal experiences in Syria, that Arabs hate Jews, although they would have plenty of reasons to, or that animosities between the two peoples are irreversible and irretrievable; and the reason I say this is that, increasingly, in the Middle East as well as globally, people are beginning to distinguish between Jews as individuals (as “people of the book” and basically more or less like the rest of us) and fascist Zionism—an ideology being exposed as the greatest enemy and threat to Jews everywhere.</p>
<p>The latest, but so far unverified, information received by this observer from rebel sources claiming to have “contacts” in the Jobar Synagogue indicate that some early 20th century artifacts, including gold chandeliers and icons, were stolen early on in the conflict, and also that the area surrounding the synagogue has been shelled sporadically over the past nearly two years, resulting in modest damage to the exterior walls. This information was obtained as of last month. Conditions may well have changed this week. Other Syrian sources indicate that there has been interior damage with some scattered rubble in the nave and prayer rooms of the temple. But there has been no confirmation to claims of thousands of manuscripts, including Bibles, being looted from Jobar. On the contrary, many documents, including Bibles and other artifacts, were transferred by the local Jobar Council, with the full cooperation of the Syrian government, to an Ottoman-era synagogue in the Old City of Damascus for safekeeping. The location, which this observer has visited and where many Jobar Synagogue artifacts are today in storage, is one of six areas in Syria currently listed on the World Heritage List of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The site currently has round-the-clock government security that continues to guard the Old City of Damascus. It is also one of the 11 synagogues that President Assad had promised in 2011 to repair and restore—but, alas, that’s a project that the rebellion has put on hold.</p>
<p>In light of all the unverified claims about the synagogue in Jobar, one is reminded again of the decade-long US/UK War against Iraq and the false reporting about what happened at certain archaeological sites in that country. Specifically we might recall the Iraqi Jewish artifacts that Ahmad Chalabi claimed he was able to ‘rescue’ for the Coalition Provisional Authority. Chalabi, of the ill-fated Iraqi National Congress, along with the Bush administration’s Coalition Provisional Authority, sought to gain some much needed good press for himself and pals Richard Perle, Nathan Sharansky, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld—this after April 2003 reports of thousands of priceless ancient artifacts being looted from Iraqi museums. The war planners were being castigated for their failure to protect Iraq’s cultural treasures, and it soon became clear that some of Chalabi’s pronouncements regarding the fate of Jewish artifacts were false and politically self-serving. Discredited, Chalabi’s party did not win any seats in the December 2005 election.</p>
<p>Some suspect similar political grandstanding motives in the current reports about Jobar, and it may be a while before credible eyewitness accounts from the scene are gathered. At that point we will we know the truth about the fate of the Eliyahu Hanabi Synagogue and the whole of Jobar. A delegation, including a Jewish representative from Damascus as well as this observer, has been trying to visit the area, but armed conflict and the continued occupation of the synagogue by rebels has prevented us so far from gaining entry.</p>
<p>What’s important to note, though, is that the people of Syria and their government have made herculean efforts to avoid what happened in Iraq, and to assure the preservation of their global cultural heritage, of which Jewish antiquities are an important pillar. One example of these efforts is the fascinating case of the Dura-Europos Synagogue, discovered in 1932.</p>
<p>The synagogue in Dura Europos had survived in such good condition because of its location, near a small Roman garrison on the Euphrates River. Parts of the building, which abutted the main city wall, were requisitioned by the Roman army and filled with sand as a defensive measure against northern and eastern marauders. The city was abandoned after Rome’s fall, never to be resettled, and the lower walls of the rooms remained buried and largely intact until excavated. The archaeological dig discovered many Jewish wall-paintings and also Christian texts written in Hebrew. Especially interesting perhaps was the discovery of paintings in the synagogue depicting limited aspects of Mithraism, a religion practiced in the Roman Empire between the first and 4th centuries and that was especially popular within the ranks of the Roman legions. Named for the Persian god Mithra, many Syrians followed the cult, as did some Roman senators who resisted the ‘new’ Christianity.</p>
<p>Itemized in the list below are specific Jewish-Syrian antiquities, including Old-Testament-themed paintings, this observer has verified as being under protection. Keep in mind, these are only a few examples, among many thousands, that I have been advised appear to be in excellent condition as of late May 2014:</p>
<p>Despite the current and legitimate focus on Jobar, the record of the Syrian people on preserving their cultural heritage, especially during the current crisis, is admirable. Two weeks ago, this observer visited the old city of Homs, and spent a fair bit of time at the Um Al-Zenar Church of Saint Mary, Church of the Holy Belt, which dates from 52 AD. Tradition has it that this seat of the Syriac Orthodox archbishopric contains a venerated relic, and indeed the Bishop spoke to me about it one day as he shoveled rubble from around the altar. The relic is claimed to be a section of the belt of St. Mary, the mother of Jesus, and is said to be hidden near a below-ground spring. One arrives at the spring by walking down a long, very narrow, pitch black set of stone steps. The Holy Water that can be found there, a small pond in essence, is filled with fragments of stone and wood chunks from the fighting, yet supposedly this water has curative powers. I scooped up a couple of handfuls, and it was indeed very refreshing, but did nothing, so far, to cure my leg problem.</p>
<p>Be that as it may, this observer was struck by the number of parishioners, along with volunteers from the neighborhood, mostly Muslims, covered in dust and soot as they worked at cleaning out the rubble. In the courtyard in front of the church this observer stoked a still smoldering heap of burned bibles and other church documents and icons, which I was told rebels had torched as they prepared to vacate the compound earlier this month. Two days after I departed Homs, the Um Al-Zenar Church, though a partially burned out shell devoid of pews and religious artifacts, held its first Holy Communion since the conflict began.</p>
<p>From my experience, Syrians, without exception, are deeply connected with their cultural heritage and do not distinguish all that much among its origins. Many Syrians are proud to help others protect and rebuild their damaged religious and cultural sites, and in fact it seems to be a unifying factor among this besieged population. People this observer speaks with as he travels around Syria to visit archeological sites seem to blame both sides for the damage, but they tend to focus more on the task of restoring their heritage sites. Space does not allow me to enumerate the countless examples of this, but I will mention one.</p>
<p>This observer was served tea one day by some members of the Jewish community in the old City of Damascus, including my friend Saul, who claims to be the last Jewish tailor in Syria, as well as the lovely elderly ladies known as ‘the Jewish sisters’ and whose apartment is near where St. Paul, according to tradition, converted to Christianity. The view expressed by my hosts that day—and I believe them—is that Jewish cultural heritage in Syria is being respected, protected and preserved with the same care as Muslim, Christian, and pagan antiquities.</p> | false | 1 | jewish quarter old city damascus always encouraging one comes upon inspiring human enterprise syria elsewhere refutes worn shibboleths clichés group religion hates others wont cease targeting destroyed burning hell syria today much evidence refute claims often politically motivated jewish cultural heritage sites singled destruction rabid antisemites one example eliyahu hanabi synagogue neighborhood jobar outskirts damascus centuries jobar inhabited peaceful mixed community muslims christians jews many often attended events together synagogue reports week zionist media destruction 400yearold 2000yearold claimed erroneously one report israeli media synagogue along loss contents similar reports past three years turned patently false observer waiting clearance visit site learn exactly happened week assess current condition inventory religious artifacts comprise part syrias humanitys collective heritage one virulent charges come forth week particularly colonial zionist regime occupying palestine mantra see hatred arabs jewish people done admittedly effective fundraising mechanismas well handy intimidation toolfor zionist lobby scrabbles retain control us government american public sentiment public seems growing increasingly vexed lobbys actions finally pulling back rubberstamping crimes apartheid regime jobar suburb damascus locationwise eliyahu hanabi synagogue measuring approximately 17 meters long 157 meters wide sits undeniably crossroads area occupied rebel forces since beginning syrian conflictwhich means sure get damaged shelling district past three years claims made synagogue destroyed government forces one report published april fools day 2013 times israel widely circulated zionist media outlets claimed 2000yearold jobar synagogue syrian capital damascusthe countrys holiest jewish sitewas looted burned ground government forces report patently false got spread far wide despite fact government forces jobar since conflict began two copycat reports followed later 2013 equally false nearly year later however march 2014 media reports conceded synagogue still standing minor damage contents appeared good condition observer received credible reports certain stolen artifacts including gold chandeliers eliyahu hanabi synagogue offered sale well known syria certain militia opportunists financing selling countrys cultural heritage whenever wherever get opportunity fact multimilliondollar black market type illicit trade security agencies syria coordination interpol alerted thefts jewish property thefts antiquities periodically issue referred watch confiscate lists stolen artifacts true based upon observers many personal experiences syria arabs hate jews although would plenty reasons animosities two peoples irreversible irretrievable reason say increasingly middle east well globally people beginning distinguish jews individuals people book basically less like rest us fascist zionisman ideology exposed greatest enemy threat jews everywhere latest far unverified information received observer rebel sources claiming contacts jobar synagogue indicate early 20th century artifacts including gold chandeliers icons stolen early conflict also area surrounding synagogue shelled sporadically past nearly two years resulting modest damage exterior walls information obtained last month conditions may well changed week syrian sources indicate interior damage scattered rubble nave prayer rooms temple confirmation claims thousands manuscripts including bibles looted jobar contrary many documents including bibles artifacts transferred local jobar council full cooperation syrian government ottomanera synagogue old city damascus safekeeping location observer visited many jobar synagogue artifacts today storage one six areas syria currently listed world heritage list un educational scientific cultural organization unesco site currently roundtheclock government security continues guard old city damascus also one 11 synagogues president assad promised 2011 repair restorebut alas thats project rebellion put hold light unverified claims synagogue jobar one reminded decadelong usuk war iraq false reporting happened certain archaeological sites country specifically might recall iraqi jewish artifacts ahmad chalabi claimed able rescue coalition provisional authority chalabi illfated iraqi national congress along bush administrations coalition provisional authority sought gain much needed good press pals richard perle nathan sharansky dick cheney donald rumsfeldthis april 2003 reports thousands priceless ancient artifacts looted iraqi museums war planners castigated failure protect iraqs cultural treasures soon became clear chalabis pronouncements regarding fate jewish artifacts false politically selfserving discredited chalabis party win seats december 2005 election suspect similar political grandstanding motives current reports jobar may credible eyewitness accounts scene gathered point know truth fate eliyahu hanabi synagogue whole jobar delegation including jewish representative damascus well observer trying visit area armed conflict continued occupation synagogue rebels prevented us far gaining entry whats important note though people syria government made herculean efforts avoid happened iraq assure preservation global cultural heritage jewish antiquities important pillar one example efforts fascinating case duraeuropos synagogue discovered 1932 synagogue dura europos survived good condition location near small roman garrison euphrates river parts building abutted main city wall requisitioned roman army filled sand defensive measure northern eastern marauders city abandoned romes fall never resettled lower walls rooms remained buried largely intact excavated archaeological dig discovered many jewish wallpaintings also christian texts written hebrew especially interesting perhaps discovery paintings synagogue depicting limited aspects mithraism religion practiced roman empire first 4th centuries especially popular within ranks roman legions named persian god mithra many syrians followed cult roman senators resisted new christianity itemized list specific jewishsyrian antiquities including oldtestamentthemed paintings observer verified protection keep mind examples among many thousands advised appear excellent condition late may 2014 despite current legitimate focus jobar record syrian people preserving cultural heritage especially current crisis admirable two weeks ago observer visited old city homs spent fair bit time um alzenar church saint mary church holy belt dates 52 ad tradition seat syriac orthodox archbishopric contains venerated relic indeed bishop spoke one day shoveled rubble around altar relic claimed section belt st mary mother jesus said hidden near belowground spring one arrives spring walking long narrow pitch black set stone steps holy water found small pond essence filled fragments stone wood chunks fighting yet supposedly water curative powers scooped couple handfuls indeed refreshing nothing far cure leg problem may observer struck number parishioners along volunteers neighborhood mostly muslims covered dust soot worked cleaning rubble courtyard front church observer stoked still smoldering heap burned bibles church documents icons told rebels torched prepared vacate compound earlier month two days departed homs um alzenar church though partially burned shell devoid pews religious artifacts held first holy communion since conflict began experience syrians without exception deeply connected cultural heritage distinguish much among origins many syrians proud help others protect rebuild damaged religious cultural sites fact seems unifying factor among besieged population people observer speaks travels around syria visit archeological sites seem blame sides damage tend focus task restoring heritage sites space allow enumerate countless examples mention one observer served tea one day members jewish community old city damascus including friend saul claims last jewish tailor syria well lovely elderly ladies known jewish sisters whose apartment near st paul according tradition converted christianity view expressed hosts dayand believe themis jewish cultural heritage syria respected protected preserved care muslim christian pagan antiquities | 1,079 |
<p>The Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction wasn't dubbed the “super committee” for nothing.</p>
<p>In theory at least, it had immense and unprecedented power. If the select committee had been able to produce a consensus plan on deficit reduction, that legislation would have been guaranteed an up or down vote in the House and Senate—with no amendments allowed from the other duly elected members of either body. No corner of the federal budget was beyond its potential reach. It had the power to change tax laws, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and every other program too. And once the committee settled on a deficit-cutting plan, the super committee's recommendations would have been rushed to the House and Senate floors for votes, with just one month separating the deadline for committee action from the final votes in Congress. That would have made it very difficult for opponents of the plan to get organized and stop it. In sum, the super committee was twelve members with the power to literally rewrite U.S. fiscal policy from top to bottom—all in one piece of highly privileged legislation.</p>
<p>All that was needed to unlock this unusual concentration of power was seven votes. The debt ceiling legislation which created the super committee stipulated that seven of the twelve committee members had to agree to a deficit reduction plan before it could be “fast-tracked” in the House and Senate. It further stipulated that the twelve super committee members would be appointed by the respective House and Senate party leaders (with three appointments coming from each). This meant that the committee would have six Democrats and six Republican members, and that the seven-vote requirement would preclude the committee from advancing any proposal that did not have some level of bipartisan support behind it.</p>
<p>Of course, in the end, that proved to be a bridge too far. The super committee disbanded this week without reaching a deal, dashing the hopes of many who saw it as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to make big and dramatic changes in federal spending and tax policy.</p>
<p>In reality, though, there never should have been much hope that the super committee would succeed. That's because, despite the power handed over to it, the committee was operating in an environment marked by a deep partisan divide over fiscal policy. Yes, the committee had the theoretical power to write any bill it wanted. But that wouldn't guarantee passage in the House and Senate. The rank-and-file members would still need to support it, which meant that the super committee members really could not stray too far from the balance of opinion in their respective party caucuses.</p>
<p>Much has been written and said in recent days about the divide over taxes. And it is true that differences over tax policy contributed mightily to the stalemate.</p>
<p>But it is also true that there are deep and fundamental disagreements over health care policy—disagreements that run so deep that even if there had been a meeting of the minds on taxes, a deal may not have been struck.</p>
<p>The problems start with the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). That law—passed on an entirely partisan basis in 2010—has significant implications for future federal tax and spending policy. It is often overlooked that the PPACA, among many other things, imposes a very large tax hike, amounting to more than $500 billion over a decade and eventually reaching more than one percentage point of the gross domestic product (GDP) on an annual basis, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Of course, these taxes were put into the legislation to partially pay for the $1 trillion in new spending the law also set in motion, but it is undeniable that imposing such a large tax hike in the health law has made it more difficult to consider further tax hikes for deficit reduction.</p>
<p>The president and his allies want to wall off the PPACA from the larger budgetary debate and limit whatever adjustments are to be made to the non-PPACA elements of the federal budget. That's awfully hard for Republicans to swallow, especially since the president has said frequently that “everything should be on table.” Evidently, that admonition is directed at Republican priorities, not his own. The premise of the super committee was that bipartisan accord will be necessary for progress on the budget, but it will be near impossible to build a bipartisan budget deal on a foundation that includes a partisan health care plan.</p>
<p>The divide over Medicare is just as wide. Republicans believe that Medicare needs fundamental reform. Earlier this year, the House Republicans drafted a budget plan that included a “premium support” structure for Medicare. Future program enrollees (those under the age of 55) would take part in a market-based Medicare program, built much as the prescription drug benefit is today around consumer choice and competition among private plans. The president and the Democrats have a completely different vision for the program. They would not move the program toward competition and choice but would instead rely on payment rate reductions, some of which have already been enacted in the PPACA. The president also supports empowering a panel—called the Independent Payment Advisory Board, or IPAB—to enforce caps on Medicare spending with further rate cuts as necessary.</p>
<p>These two divergent approaches to Medicare reform encapsulate the differing visions of the parties on health care. Republicans believe a functioning marketplace is the key to cost control and higher productivity in the health sector, while the president and his allies in Congress believe that government regulation of reimbursement rates is the way to slow the pace of rising costs.</p>
<p>The United States, along with the rest of the industrialized west, faces many challenges in the years ahead, most especially in terms of paying for a social welfare system in an era of shifting demographics and relentless global competition. The two major political parties have very different visions for how to confront these challenges, with implications for every aspect of government policy, including health care. Although the super committee was delegated a lot of power to tackle these problems, it was premature. At this point, what policymakers need most is guidance from the electorate about which vision for 21st century governance the nation prefers. The coming 2012 election should clarify matters substantially.</p>
<p>James C. Capretta is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He was an associate director at the Office of Management and Budget from 2001 to 2004.</p> | false | 1 | joint select committee deficit reduction wasnt dubbed super committee nothing theory least immense unprecedented power select committee able produce consensus plan deficit reduction legislation would guaranteed vote house senatewith amendments allowed duly elected members either body corner federal budget beyond potential reach power change tax laws social security medicare medicaid every program committee settled deficitcutting plan super committees recommendations would rushed house senate floors votes one month separating deadline committee action final votes congress would made difficult opponents plan get organized stop sum super committee twelve members power literally rewrite us fiscal policy top bottomall one piece highly privileged legislation needed unlock unusual concentration power seven votes debt ceiling legislation created super committee stipulated seven twelve committee members agree deficit reduction plan could fasttracked house senate stipulated twelve super committee members would appointed respective house senate party leaders three appointments coming meant committee would six democrats six republican members sevenvote requirement would preclude committee advancing proposal level bipartisan support behind course end proved bridge far super committee disbanded week without reaching deal dashing hopes many saw onceinageneration opportunity make big dramatic changes federal spending tax policy reality though never much hope super committee would succeed thats despite power handed committee operating environment marked deep partisan divide fiscal policy yes committee theoretical power write bill wanted wouldnt guarantee passage house senate rankandfile members would still need support meant super committee members really could stray far balance opinion respective party caucuses much written said recent days divide taxes true differences tax policy contributed mightily stalemate also true deep fundamental disagreements health care policydisagreements run deep even meeting minds taxes deal may struck problems start patient protection affordable care act ppaca lawpassed entirely partisan basis 2010has significant implications future federal tax spending policy often overlooked ppaca among many things imposes large tax hike amounting 500 billion decade eventually reaching one percentage point gross domestic product gdp annual basis according congressional budget office course taxes put legislation partially pay 1 trillion new spending law also set motion undeniable imposing large tax hike health law made difficult consider tax hikes deficit reduction president allies want wall ppaca larger budgetary debate limit whatever adjustments made nonppaca elements federal budget thats awfully hard republicans swallow especially since president said frequently everything table evidently admonition directed republican priorities premise super committee bipartisan accord necessary progress budget near impossible build bipartisan budget deal foundation includes partisan health care plan divide medicare wide republicans believe medicare needs fundamental reform earlier year house republicans drafted budget plan included premium support structure medicare future program enrollees age 55 would take part marketbased medicare program built much prescription drug benefit today around consumer choice competition among private plans president democrats completely different vision program would move program toward competition choice would instead rely payment rate reductions already enacted ppaca president also supports empowering panelcalled independent payment advisory board ipabto enforce caps medicare spending rate cuts necessary two divergent approaches medicare reform encapsulate differing visions parties health care republicans believe functioning marketplace key cost control higher productivity health sector president allies congress believe government regulation reimbursement rates way slow pace rising costs united states along rest industrialized west faces many challenges years ahead especially terms paying social welfare system era shifting demographics relentless global competition two major political parties different visions confront challenges implications every aspect government policy including health care although super committee delegated lot power tackle problems premature point policymakers need guidance electorate vision 21st century governance nation prefers coming 2012 election clarify matters substantially james c capretta fellow ethics public policy center associate director office management budget 2001 2004 | 598 |
<p>Echoing previous administrations, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has said the “new” strategy in Syria will involve a long-term American military presence and regime change in order to secure US interests.</p>
<p>Speaking at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution Wednesday, Tillerson sought to distance President Donald Trump’s policy in Syria from former President Barack Obama’s approach.</p>
<p>“We cannot make the same mistakes that were made in 2011, when a premature departure from Iraq allowed Al-Qaeda in Iraq to survive and eventually morph into ISIS,” Tillerson said.</p>
<p>Instead, he said, the US now intends to maintain an open-ended military presence in Syria, and that the American mission in the country will be&#160;“conditions based.”</p>
<p>Read more</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/usa/415649-senate-syria-hearing-russia-iran/" type="external" /></p>
<p>Tillerson said the US will remain in Syria until several “key ends states” are met. These include, the defeat of the Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL), the overthrow of Syrian President Bashar Assad, and stamping out the Iranian influence in the country.</p>
<p>However, his talking points are eerily similar to those made by the previous administrations.</p>
<p>Tillerson made clear that US troops will remain in Syria until the Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) and Al-Qaeda are defeated.</p>
<p>“Let us be clear, the United States will maintain a military presence in Syria, focused on ensuring ISIS cannot reemerge,” Tillerson said, adding that the terrorist organizations are “still a grave threat.”</p>
<p>He&#160;said the US would stay in the country until “ISIS and Al-Qaeda in Syria suffer an enduring defeat; do not present a threat to the homeland; and do not resurface in a new form; and that Syria never again serves as a platform or safe haven for terrorists to organize, recruit, finance, train and carry out attacks on American citizens at home or abroad or against our allies.”</p>
<p>Ungoverned spaces, especially in conflict zones, are breeding grounds for ISIS and other terrorist organizations. The fight against ISIS is not over, he said. &#160;</p>
<p>“ISIS currently has one foot in the grave, and by maintaining an American military presence in Syria until the full and complete defeat of ISIS is achieved, it will soon have two,” Tillerson said. &#160;</p>
<p>His speech resounded with the same points previously made by Obama, who was still sending more Special Forces into Syria to fight IS&#160;up until the end of his presidency.</p>
<p>The US Secretary of State’s policy also goes directly against one of Trump’s campaign promises that he would “pursue a new foreign policy that finally learns from the mistakes of the past.”</p>
<p>“We will stop looking to topple regimes and overthrow governments, folks,” Trump <a href="https://www.rt.com/usa/368951-trump-us-toppling-regimes-isis/" type="external">said</a> during the first stop of his “thank you” tour in 2016. &#160;</p>
<p>Tillerson, however, appeared to deviate from Trump’s script, and said the US must ensure the Assad is overthrown “through an incremental process of constitutional reform and UN-supervised elections.”</p>
<p>“A stable, unified and independent Syria ultimately requires post-Assad leadership in order to be successful,” Tillerson said.&#160;“The departure of Assad through the UN-led Geneva process will create the conditions for a durable peace within Syria and security along the border for Syria’s neighbors.”</p>
<p>Tillerson urged Moscow to implement UN Security Council resolution <a href="https://www.un.org/press/en/2015/sc12171.doc.htm" type="external">2254</a>, which he said was a&#160;“political framework for peace and stability in a unified Syria.”</p>
<p>The resolution, which was passed in 2015, calls for free and open elections in Syria, which Tillerson said would “result in the permanent departure of Assad and his family from power.”</p>
<p>However, after the resolution was passed, former US Secretary of State John Kerry said it would “facilitate a transition within Syria to a credible, inclusive, nonsectarian governance within six months.”</p>
<p>“The process would lead to the drafting of a new constitution and arrangements for internationally supervised election within 18 months,” Kerry said in a <a href="https://geneva.usmission.gov/2015/12/19/ambassador-power-unsc-resolution-2254-sends-clear-message-that-killing-in-syria-must-end/" type="external">statement</a>.</p>
<p>Tillerson’s policy mirrors the Obama administration’s, which also insisted that Assad must be overthrown. “The future of Syria must be determined by its people, but President Bashar al-Assad is standing in their way,” Obama said in a written <a href="https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2011/08/18/president-obama-future-syria-must-be-determined-its-people-president-bashar-al-assad" type="external">statement</a>. “For the sake of the Syrian people, the time has come for President Assad to step aside.”</p>
<p>Tillerson also said the US would remain in Syria until “Iranian influence in Syria is diminished, their dreams of a northern arch are denied, and Syria’s neighbors are secure from all threats emanating from Syria.”</p>
<p>“US disengagement from Syria would provide Iran the opportunity to further strengthen its position in Syria,” Tillerson added. “As a destabilized nation and one bordering Israel, Syria presents an opportunity that Iran is all too eager to exploit.”</p>
<p>His remarks here also echo the previous administration, which also linked their strategy in Syria to Iran.</p>
<p>In 2012, Obama said that if Syria were able to have a representative government, it would “be a profound loss for Iran.”</p>
<p>However, Obama later backed off from this strategy as the Iran nuclear deal beckoned. Trump has repeatedly warned that the US will withdraw from the deal if it is not changed.</p>
<p>“I am waiving the application of certain nuclear sanctions, but only in order to secure our European allies’ agreement to fix the terrible flaws of the Iran nuclear deal. This is a last chance,” Trump said in a statement last week. “In the absence of such an agreement, the United States will not again waive sanctions in order to stay in the Iran nuclear deal. And if at any time I judge that such an agreement is not within reach, I will withdraw from the deal immediately.”</p>
<p>[embedded content]</p> | false | 1 | echoing previous administrations secretary state rex tillerson said new strategy syria involve longterm american military presence regime change order secure us interests speaking stanford universitys hoover institution wednesday tillerson sought distance president donald trumps policy syria former president barack obamas approach make mistakes made 2011 premature departure iraq allowed alqaeda iraq survive eventually morph isis tillerson said instead said us intends maintain openended military presence syria american mission country be160conditions based read tillerson said us remain syria several key ends states met include defeat islamic state formerly isisisil overthrow syrian president bashar assad stamping iranian influence country however talking points eerily similar made previous administrations tillerson made clear us troops remain syria islamic state formerly isisisil alqaeda defeated let us clear united states maintain military presence syria focused ensuring isis reemerge tillerson said adding terrorist organizations still grave threat he160said us would stay country isis alqaeda syria suffer enduring defeat present threat homeland resurface new form syria never serves platform safe terrorists organize recruit finance train carry attacks american citizens home abroad allies ungoverned spaces especially conflict zones breeding grounds isis terrorist organizations fight isis said 160 isis currently one foot grave maintaining american military presence syria full complete defeat isis achieved soon two tillerson said 160 speech resounded points previously made obama still sending special forces syria fight is160up end presidency us secretary states policy also goes directly one trumps campaign promises would pursue new foreign policy finally learns mistakes past stop looking topple regimes overthrow governments folks trump said first stop thank tour 2016 160 tillerson however appeared deviate trumps script said us must ensure assad overthrown incremental process constitutional reform unsupervised elections stable unified independent syria ultimately requires postassad leadership order successful tillerson said160the departure assad unled geneva process create conditions durable peace within syria security along border syrias neighbors tillerson urged moscow implement un security council resolution 2254 said a160political framework peace stability unified syria resolution passed 2015 calls free open elections syria tillerson said would result permanent departure assad family power however resolution passed former us secretary state john kerry said would facilitate transition within syria credible inclusive nonsectarian governance within six months process would lead drafting new constitution arrangements internationally supervised election within 18 months kerry said statement tillersons policy mirrors obama administrations also insisted assad must overthrown future syria must determined people president bashar alassad standing way obama said written statement sake syrian people time come president assad step aside tillerson also said us would remain syria iranian influence syria diminished dreams northern arch denied syrias neighbors secure threats emanating syria us disengagement syria would provide iran opportunity strengthen position syria tillerson added destabilized nation one bordering israel syria presents opportunity iran eager exploit remarks also echo previous administration also linked strategy syria iran 2012 obama said syria able representative government would profound loss iran however obama later backed strategy iran nuclear deal beckoned trump repeatedly warned us withdraw deal changed waiving application certain nuclear sanctions order secure european allies agreement fix terrible flaws iran nuclear deal last chance trump said statement last week absence agreement united states waive sanctions order stay iran nuclear deal time judge agreement within reach withdraw deal immediately embedded content | 532 |
<p>Television writers rooms are not like most workplaces. They’re creative spaces where people — many of whom gravitated toward the field because they blanched at thoughts of working straight jobs — spitball freely and rely on the group to police bad ideas. Intimate personal stories are often shared. Behavior that would not be tolerated elsewhere is given a pass, to the purported benefit of the final product.</p>
<p>That idea is being challenged by the sexual harassment and assault allegations engulfing Hollywood. In November, two seasoned showrunners were fired or suspended from their series after being accused of misconduct by multiple women who worked for them. Among the allegations made against <a href="http://variety.com/t/mark-schwahn/" type="external">Mark Schwahn</a> in a Variety report about his time on Warner Bros. drama “One Tree Hill” was that he forced a female writer’s head between her knees and balanced a soda can on it while making a joke about her ability to perform oral sex. “Flash” and “Arrow” EP <a href="http://variety.com/t/andrew-kreisberg/" type="external">Andrew Kreisberg</a> responded to an allegation made in a Variety story that he asked a female employee to lie on his office floor while he assumed a push-up stance over her, saying, “It is not uncommon in writers rooms that we act out what we want production to film.”</p>
<p>Schwahn was suspended from his current post as showrunner on E! drama “The Royals.” Kreisberg was fired from The CW’s Warner Bros.-produced superhero shows. The moves have intensified questions about how writers work together and whether their standards for workplace behavior should change.</p>
<p>“I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone in a writers room turn to everyone and say, ‘Are we comfortable with this sense of humor that we’re doing right now? This might be a rough room. Are you all game? Is there anyone here who is offended and having a hard time being here?’” says “Love” and “Crashing” executive producer Judd Apatow. “Maybe those conversations will happen now.”</p>
<p>In 2006, the California State Supreme Court threw out a lawsuit by a former “Friends” writers assistant who claimed that she had been sexually harassed in the writers room, having been present as male writers discussed vulgar sexual themes regarding the show’s characters. Justice Martin R. Baxter wrote that the state “does not outlaw sexually coarse and vulgar language or conduct that merely offends,” noting that “the ‘Friends’ production was a creative workplace focused on generating scripts for an adult-oriented comedy show featuring sexual themes.”</p>
<p>The ruling remains famous in television-industry circles. Many viewed it as establishing writers rooms as spaces exempt from normal workplace standards.</p>
<p>“Everyone I knew was talking about that ‘Friends’ lawsuit,” says “One Day at a Time” executive producer Gloria Calderon Kellett. “But what was great about that was that there was a conversation about appropriateness.”</p>
<p>“I’ve been around when the boys were being stupid and I’ve just tried to ignore it. But now that I’m in charge, I don’t have to put up with shit.”gloria Calderon Kellett</p>
<p>That discussion has been rekindled by recent harassment and assault allegations.</p>
<p>“I think that the conversation that’s happening now is really essential to women being able to say, ‘Here’s what I will stand for and here’s what I won’t stand for’ in a way that was certainly difficult to be able to do, certainly at the beginning of my career,” says Calderon Kellett. Young female writers “are just happy to get the job. You’re one of the few women there. You don’t want to say anything or do anything so that you’re not the woman there any more.”</p>
<p>She adds: “I’ve been around when the boys were being stupid and I’ve just tried to ignore it. But now that I’m in charge, I don’t have to put up with shit.”</p>
<p>As the number of shows on television has increased, so too has the number of female showrunners. But growth in percentage representation for female writers has been slow — and sometimes nonexistent. UCLA’s 2017 Hollywood Diversity Report found the share of female writing credits in cable and broadcast TV up only 3% in the 2014-15 season from two years earlier. But the same study found that the percentage of female cable and broadcast series creators had fallen slightly in 2014-15 from 2011-12.</p>
<p>Holly Sorensen, creator of YouTube Red’s “Step Up: High Water,” says that concern over workplace harassment doesn’t come up in conversations with other female showrunners. But “it comes up with every other TV writer,” she says. “For women who run rooms, it’s not even an issue. But I know a lot of men are nervous right now. And it’s a confusing time.”</p>
<p>“Power” creator Courtney Kemp differentiates between what goes on in the writers room and what happens outside it in the larger production office.</p>
<p>“I think that it’s about the culture of the building and not the room itself,” she says. “The writers room itself should be as anything goes as it can, because it fosters creativity. But when you start to have a campaign against one person or you start to make it so that people feel unsafe, that transcends the actual writers room space — that becomes an office or a cultural thing.”</p>
<p>Kemp warns against trying to change the culture inside writers rooms as Hollywood examines workplace behavior. “I don’t think that writers rooms themselves are going to be able to change without the quality of the work changing too,” she says. “I do think there are plenty of writers rooms in town where people are not abused and people have a good time. I know a lot of people who like their jobs. They can be really fun.” The broader problem, she adds, is the industry’s “culture of abuse” that extends beyond gender and sexuality. “It’s much more pervasive than that. We’re looking at one thing, because it’s salacious.”</p>
<p>But as more women in television step forward with claims of harassment and assault, what passes as acceptable behavior in a writers room is being questioned. And the answers are not yet evident.</p>
<p>“When you’re being creative, you’re unlocking your unconscious mind, and if you want a lot of people to sit in a room throwing out ideas, there’s going to be alot of weird stuff that comes out,” Apatow says. “If you’re expecting people to spill like that, it’s not always pretty. So where are the boundaries? That’s a very good question. And certainly there should be some boundaries.”</p> | false | 1 | television writers rooms like workplaces theyre creative spaces people many gravitated toward field blanched thoughts working straight jobs spitball freely rely group police bad ideas intimate personal stories often shared behavior would tolerated elsewhere given pass purported benefit final product idea challenged sexual harassment assault allegations engulfing hollywood november two seasoned showrunners fired suspended series accused misconduct multiple women worked among allegations made mark schwahn variety report time warner bros drama one tree hill forced female writers head knees balanced soda making joke ability perform oral sex flash arrow ep andrew kreisberg responded allegation made variety story asked female employee lie office floor assumed pushup stance saying uncommon writers rooms act want production film schwahn suspended current post showrunner e drama royals kreisberg fired cws warner brosproduced superhero shows moves intensified questions writers work together whether standards workplace behavior change dont think ive ever seen anyone writers room turn everyone say comfortable sense humor right might rough room game anyone offended hard time says love crashing executive producer judd apatow maybe conversations happen 2006 california state supreme court threw lawsuit former friends writers assistant claimed sexually harassed writers room present male writers discussed vulgar sexual themes regarding shows characters justice martin r baxter wrote state outlaw sexually coarse vulgar language conduct merely offends noting friends production creative workplace focused generating scripts adultoriented comedy show featuring sexual themes ruling remains famous televisionindustry circles many viewed establishing writers rooms spaces exempt normal workplace standards everyone knew talking friends lawsuit says one day time executive producer gloria calderon kellett great conversation appropriateness ive around boys stupid ive tried ignore im charge dont put shitgloria calderon kellett discussion rekindled recent harassment assault allegations think conversation thats happening really essential women able say heres stand heres wont stand way certainly difficult able certainly beginning career says calderon kellett young female writers happy get job youre one women dont want say anything anything youre woman adds ive around boys stupid ive tried ignore im charge dont put shit number shows television increased number female showrunners growth percentage representation female writers slow sometimes nonexistent uclas 2017 hollywood diversity report found share female writing credits cable broadcast tv 3 201415 season two years earlier study found percentage female cable broadcast series creators fallen slightly 201415 201112 holly sorensen creator youtube reds step high water says concern workplace harassment doesnt come conversations female showrunners comes every tv writer says women run rooms even issue know lot men nervous right confusing time power creator courtney kemp differentiates goes writers room happens outside larger production office think culture building room says writers room anything goes fosters creativity start campaign one person start make people feel unsafe transcends actual writers room space becomes office cultural thing kemp warns trying change culture inside writers rooms hollywood examines workplace behavior dont think writers rooms going able change without quality work changing says think plenty writers rooms town people abused people good time know lot people like jobs really fun broader problem adds industrys culture abuse extends beyond gender sexuality much pervasive looking one thing salacious women television step forward claims harassment assault passes acceptable behavior writers room questioned answers yet evident youre creative youre unlocking unconscious mind want lot people sit room throwing ideas theres going alot weird stuff comes apatow says youre expecting people spill like always pretty boundaries thats good question certainly boundaries | 561 |
<p>The Franco-German director Dominik Moll’s new film is called Harry, Un Ami Qui Vous Veut du Bien, which means, “Harry, a friend who only wants the best for you.” For its American release it has been given the slightly misleading English title of With A Friend Like Harry. . ., but in other English-speaking countries it has been known as Harry, He’s Here to Help. Both English titles suggest a rollicking comedy rather more than the French title does, and there is no doubt of the comic element in this exceedingly strange but most enjoyable little film. But its comedy is–how shall we say?–complicated to say the least. Compared by many overseas viewers to a Hitchcock product, it is rather, perhaps, what Hitchcock might have become if he had lived and worked on into the post-modern period.</p>
<p>Or, to put it another way, this is a Hitchcock movie that also sends up Hitchcock. The sinister stranger, eponymous Harry (Sergi López), who disrupts the life of an ordinary family is a very Hitchcockian character, and yet his strangeness somehow seems more natural. He is a self-invented character–in the way that people so often are self-consciously self-invented these days–and not a Hitchcock- or even a Moll-invented one. He delights in his own eccentricity, instead of taking it for granted, and yet it never seems merely put on for show. There are also touches of Beckett and touches of Pinter here and there, but what I like about the film is that everything is firmly anchored in the realistic conventions of the cinema. These help to accomplish here what film at its best does, which is to make extraordinary people seem ordinary and ordinary people extraordinary.</p>
<p>The obviously extraordinary person is Harry. It is impossible to praise Mr Lopez’s performance too highly. His entry into the life of a former schoolmate, Michel (Laurent Lucas), his wife, Claire (Mathilde Seigner) and their three small daughters, who represent the ordinary, comes with the cataclysmic force of an earthquake, even though the social niceties are so scrupulously observed that at first the family hardly notices the transformation he is effecting. In fact, the real focus of interest in the film is those same social niceties, the conventions of civilization which are stretched here to the breaking point but which nevertheless have a double purpose in the film: they make frightening and frankly incredible incident believable and they stand for all the ordinariness in the lives of its heroes that has to be broken down and swept away if anything extraordinary, good or bad, is to happen. In the end something does happen, but we aren’t quite sure whether it is good or bad.</p>
<p>The story begins on the French equivalent of an Interstate highway one hot August afternoon. Michel and Claire are driving south to their holiday cottage in the mountains. The car is hot, the two older girls are restive and complaining and the baby is sick. They stop at a rest area and, as Michel is splashing water on his face in the men’s room he is conscious of someone staring at him. It is Harry. Being stared at by a stranger in the men’s room is disconcerting, but Harry is smiling. He expects Michel to recognize him. Michel does not. To jog his memory, Harry reminds him of the time when, during a game of handball, the two of them collided and Harry lost a tooth. Michel still doesn’t remember. “I often don’t recognize people,” he explains apologetically.</p>
<p>Harry asks: “Do you still write?”</p>
<p>“What?” Soon we learn that Michel doesn’t recognize himself either, at least not as a writer. When, more to be polite than anything else, he acquiesces in Harry’s suggestion that they drive together to the cottage, Harry astounds him by reciting from memory a poem he, Michel, once wrote for the school magazine, “The Dagger in the Skin of the Night.” It is the only poem he ever wrote, and the kind of thing he would be embarrassed to acknowledge now, but for Harry’s enthusiasm. “I read it so often it sank in,” the latter explains and turns to his rather voluptuous girlfriend, Plum (Sophie Guillemin). “Plum likes it too,” he says.</p>
<p>“Dick often recites it to me,” she confirms, explaining that she likes to call Harry Dick. Harry/Dick goes on to recall Michel’s single prose effort, also published in the school magazine: an unfinished science fiction story called “The Flying Monkeys,” which he calls “one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever read.” When he presses Michel by asking “Why did you stop writing?” the latter doesn’t know what to say.</p>
<p>“It was never a priority,” he ventures, as if he can’t think of any better reason. We assume that he has just grown out of it, as most adolescents dabbling in literary creation do. But Harry won’t allow us, or Michel, this easy explanation. As often in French films, artistic creation stands for a kind of human ideal, but in this case it becomes one against the will, almost, of the creator and only because of the fierce advocacy of a man who, as time goes on, seems more and more like one mentally deranged. Harry is rich, and he likes to solve problems, and he soon sets out to clear away all the obstacles to a return to his supposed literary vocation in Michel’s ordinary family life–including, eventually, his family itself. Even more strangely, Michel begins to find himself drawn into Harry’s delusion–if it is a delusion–that he is a writer.</p>
<p>One of the questions raised obliquely by this amusing yet disturbing film is that of how to make aesthetic judgments in the post-modern era, when Shakespeare and Batman comics are treated on terms of equality. What makes Michel’s putative literary oeuvre worth the trouble to him to produce it? The answer, so far as Michel is concerned, is just one passionate reader. Even a madman. Even a madman who’s no longer around to read his future output. “We have to overreact,” says Harry at one point. “It’s the only way to fulfilment.” I don’t think I agree with this way of thinking. Not at all. But in the context of this wonderful film it makes the kind of impression that “The Dagger in the Skin of the Night” made on Harry.</p> | false | 1 | francogerman director dominik molls new film called harry un ami qui vous veut du bien means harry friend wants best american release given slightly misleading english title friend like harry englishspeaking countries known harry hes help english titles suggest rollicking comedy rather french title doubt comic element exceedingly strange enjoyable little film comedy ishow shall saycomplicated say least compared many overseas viewers hitchcock product rather perhaps hitchcock might become lived worked postmodern period put another way hitchcock movie also sends hitchcock sinister stranger eponymous harry sergi lópez disrupts life ordinary family hitchcockian character yet strangeness somehow seems natural selfinvented characterin way people often selfconsciously selfinvented daysand hitchcock even mollinvented one delights eccentricity instead taking granted yet never seems merely put show also touches beckett touches pinter like film everything firmly anchored realistic conventions cinema help accomplish film best make extraordinary people seem ordinary ordinary people extraordinary obviously extraordinary person harry impossible praise mr lopezs performance highly entry life former schoolmate michel laurent lucas wife claire mathilde seigner three small daughters represent ordinary comes cataclysmic force earthquake even though social niceties scrupulously observed first family hardly notices transformation effecting fact real focus interest film social niceties conventions civilization stretched breaking point nevertheless double purpose film make frightening frankly incredible incident believable stand ordinariness lives heroes broken swept away anything extraordinary good bad happen end something happen arent quite sure whether good bad story begins french equivalent interstate highway one hot august afternoon michel claire driving south holiday cottage mountains car hot two older girls restive complaining baby sick stop rest area michel splashing water face mens room conscious someone staring harry stared stranger mens room disconcerting harry smiling expects michel recognize michel jog memory harry reminds time game handball two collided harry lost tooth michel still doesnt remember often dont recognize people explains apologetically harry asks still write soon learn michel doesnt recognize either least writer polite anything else acquiesces harrys suggestion drive together cottage harry astounds reciting memory poem michel wrote school magazine dagger skin night poem ever wrote kind thing would embarrassed acknowledge harrys enthusiasm read often sank latter explains turns rather voluptuous girlfriend plum sophie guillemin plum likes says dick often recites confirms explaining likes call harry dick harrydick goes recall michels single prose effort also published school magazine unfinished science fiction story called flying monkeys calls one beautiful things ive ever read presses michel asking stop writing latter doesnt know say never priority ventures cant think better reason assume grown adolescents dabbling literary creation harry wont allow us michel easy explanation often french films artistic creation stands kind human ideal case becomes one almost creator fierce advocacy man time goes seems like one mentally deranged harry rich likes solve problems soon sets clear away obstacles return supposed literary vocation michels ordinary family lifeincluding eventually family even strangely michel begins find drawn harrys delusionif delusionthat writer one questions raised obliquely amusing yet disturbing film make aesthetic judgments postmodern era shakespeare batman comics treated terms equality makes michels putative literary oeuvre worth trouble produce answer far michel concerned one passionate reader even madman even madman whos longer around read future output overreact says harry one point way fulfilment dont think agree way thinking context wonderful film makes kind impression dagger skin night made harry | 545 |
<p>By Karin Strohecker</p>
<p>LONDON (Reuters) – Two decades after Yusuf Karodia launched Mancosa, a distance learning school to teach South Africans business skills, he sold up to UK private equity firm Actis.</p>
<p>From nurseries to exam tutoring and adult education, teaching businesses are booming as populations rise and cash-strapped governments fail to keep up with demand.</p>
<p>With 263 million children out of school worldwide, according to 2014 data from the United Nations, investors are keen to access a growing sector with few publicly-listed companies.</p>
<p>Karodia said Actis was one of a stream of interested private investors.</p>
<p>“We had about an overture a week to partner with someone,” he told Reuters.</p>
<p>Mancosa is now part of Actis’s expanding higher education portfolio in Africa. It has spent $275 million since 2014, investing in education institutes across the continent which it groups under the brand name Honoris Universities and plans to list on a stock market in the next two to three years.</p>
<p>Karodia, who will also get a stake in Honoris, says there is huge demand for education in Africa.</p>
<p>“Quality education – especially coming from the private sector – is going to play an ever increasingly important role,” he said.</p>
<p>The International Commission on Financing Global Education Opportunity estimates that international financing for education in low- and middle-income countries will need to increase from today’s estimated $16 billion per year to $89 billion by 2030.</p>
<p>Jetilde Carlos is a 22-year old final year finance student at the Varsity College in Cape Town, owned by Johannesburg-listed ADvTECH Group. Carlos missed out on a place at a state university.</p>
<p>“Its not that my parents had the money but they really wanted a better life for me. They didn’t want me to sit at home looking for job when I might not even find one,” she said.</p>
<p>“The degree is worth it in the end” &#160;</p>
<p>Investors are keen for a slice of the market because the fee-paying structure guarantees a regular income stream. The sector is also relatively resilient to economic ups and downs as parents increasingly prioritize their children’s education.</p>
<p>“It goes with the whole consumer spending (trend) in emerging markets, and as income levels rise and there is more disposable income available what you’re seeing is the population is looking to spend in areas such as education,” said Patricia Ribeiro, an equity portfolio manager at American Century Investments.</p>
<p>Carlos paid a deposit of 25,000 rand ($1,876.38). If you pay up front the total is 70,500 rand but the monthly payments that she has chosen bring the total to about 90,000 rand for one year’s tuition.</p>
<p>EXPLOSIVE GROWTH</p>
<p>The sector is dominated by private equity players. MSCI’s emerging equity index contains only three education stocks – New York-listed Chinese firms TAL and New Oriental Education and Brazil’s Kroton.</p>
<p>Morgan Stanley describes shares in Chinese education operators as “attractive”.</p>
<p>China’s education market catering for children from nursery to end of secondary school will grow 8 percent annually to become a 3 trillion yuan ($460 billion) market in 2020, the bank told clients.</p>
<p>Recent regulatory changes are set to benefit private tutoring firms, many of which prepare high-school pupils for university.</p>
<p>TAL said in July that student enrolment was up more than 60 percent year-on-year, with a matching rise in revenue. Its stock has soared 180 percent since January.</p>
<p>New Oriental Education projects revenue growth of as much as 24 percent in the three months to end-August. Its shares are up 114 percent since the start of 2017.</p>
<p>“China is very exam-driven from kindergarten on and they are competing more and more with U.S. schools,” said Sandra Ackermann-Schaufler, senior portfolio manager for emerging markets at SEI.</p>
<p>“If anyone thinks it’s tough to get into U.S. universities they should look at the top Chinese universities….the growth you could see is explosive growth.”</p>
<p>Valuations are soaring, possibly because fund managers are chasing too few companies. TAL’s price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio is nearly 130, while New Oriental Education hovers around 50. In contrast, MSCI’s emerging equity index trades at a P/E of around 12.</p>
<p>“If you look at PE historically or if you look at PE this year, they look very expensive,” Julian Mayo, portfolio manager at Charlemagne Capital.</p>
<p>QUALITY CONTROL</p>
<p>Brazil became another destination for those seeking exposure to education stocks after 2009 when the government boosted loan programs for students attending for-profit colleges.</p>
<p>One of the main beneficiaries was Brazil’s largest for-profit college operator Kroton Educacional.</p>
<p>While the recent recession in Latin America’s biggest economy led to a fall in student loans, the biggest companies are already well-established, fund managers said.</p>
<p>Results published last month showed revenue growing near double-digits on the quarter, with gross margins well above 70 percent. Kroton’s stock has risen more than 50 percent since the start of the year.</p>
<p>The Gulf region also offers opportunities. Kuwait-based HumanSoft, which establishes and manages private universities and colleges listed in 2005.</p>
<p>United Arab Emirates-based GEMS Education, which operates more than 250 schools across 14 countries and counts Blackstone (NYSE:) among its stakeholders, has indicated plans to list.</p>
<p>In Africa, many governments want more private investors in education but they are approaching it cautiously. They want regulations in place to ensure the quality is high.</p>
<p>Pelonomi Venson-Moitoi, Minister of International Affairs and Cooperation in Botswana said some young people had left private universities with certificates that “opened no doors”.</p>
<p>She said it was difficult to make sure “the people who are investing in education are not fraudsters, what we are finding is that some people are not there to deliver quality education.”</p>
<p>“We learned this very badly ourselves… but now people come in and invest, and this is taking a huge load off the government,” she said.</p> | false | 1 | karin strohecker london reuters two decades yusuf karodia launched mancosa distance learning school teach south africans business skills sold uk private equity firm actis nurseries exam tutoring adult education teaching businesses booming populations rise cashstrapped governments fail keep demand 263 million children school worldwide according 2014 data united nations investors keen access growing sector publiclylisted companies karodia said actis one stream interested private investors overture week partner someone told reuters mancosa part actiss expanding higher education portfolio africa spent 275 million since 2014 investing education institutes across continent groups brand name honoris universities plans list stock market next two three years karodia also get stake honoris says huge demand education africa quality education especially coming private sector going play ever increasingly important role said international commission financing global education opportunity estimates international financing education low middleincome countries need increase todays estimated 16 billion per year 89 billion 2030 jetilde carlos 22year old final year finance student varsity college cape town owned johannesburglisted advtech group carlos missed place state university parents money really wanted better life didnt want sit home looking job might even find one said degree worth end 160 investors keen slice market feepaying structure guarantees regular income stream sector also relatively resilient economic ups downs parents increasingly prioritize childrens education goes whole consumer spending trend emerging markets income levels rise disposable income available youre seeing population looking spend areas education said patricia ribeiro equity portfolio manager american century investments carlos paid deposit 25000 rand 187638 pay front total 70500 rand monthly payments chosen bring total 90000 rand one years tuition explosive growth sector dominated private equity players mscis emerging equity index contains three education stocks new yorklisted chinese firms tal new oriental education brazils kroton morgan stanley describes shares chinese education operators attractive chinas education market catering children nursery end secondary school grow 8 percent annually become 3 trillion yuan 460 billion market 2020 bank told clients recent regulatory changes set benefit private tutoring firms many prepare highschool pupils university tal said july student enrolment 60 percent yearonyear matching rise revenue stock soared 180 percent since january new oriental education projects revenue growth much 24 percent three months endaugust shares 114 percent since start 2017 china examdriven kindergarten competing us schools said sandra ackermannschaufler senior portfolio manager emerging markets sei anyone thinks tough get us universities look top chinese universitiesthe growth could see explosive growth valuations soaring possibly fund managers chasing companies tals pricetoearnings pe ratio nearly 130 new oriental education hovers around 50 contrast mscis emerging equity index trades pe around 12 look pe historically look pe year look expensive julian mayo portfolio manager charlemagne capital quality control brazil became another destination seeking exposure education stocks 2009 government boosted loan programs students attending forprofit colleges one main beneficiaries brazils largest forprofit college operator kroton educacional recent recession latin americas biggest economy led fall student loans biggest companies already wellestablished fund managers said results published last month showed revenue growing near doubledigits quarter gross margins well 70 percent krotons stock risen 50 percent since start year gulf region also offers opportunities kuwaitbased humansoft establishes manages private universities colleges listed 2005 united arab emiratesbased gems education operates 250 schools across 14 countries counts blackstone nyse among stakeholders indicated plans list africa many governments want private investors education approaching cautiously want regulations place ensure quality high pelonomi vensonmoitoi minister international affairs cooperation botswana said young people left private universities certificates opened doors said difficult make sure people investing education fraudsters finding people deliver quality education learned badly people come invest taking huge load government said | 595 |
<p>Shell Oil knew of human rights abuses by Nigerian forces amid a crackdown on a local tribe opposed to extraction activity on its lands, Amnesty International said. Shell also “motivated” troops to deal with the uprising, which left dozens dead and injured.</p>
<p>The rights group has reviewed a cache of the company’s internal documents, including strategy papers, internal memos and letters to officials, as well as witness statements, revealing that the Anglo-Dutch oil giant directly engaged in Nigerian military’s brutal campaign to silence anti-pollution protesters in the oil-rich tribal region of Ogoniland back in the 1990s.</p>
<p>Read more</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/business/384316-shell-money-laundering-nigeria/" type="external" /></p>
<p>“Shell was the single most important company in Nigeria and in 1995 pumped almost one million barrels of crude oil a day,” the report states. That in turn constituted roughly half of the African nation‘s total daily oil production. More than that, Shell Nigeria had, “access to the biggest low cost hydrocarbon resource base in the [company] Group, with enough oil to sustain production for almost 100 years at current levels,” according to the Amnesty <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/AFR44/7393/2017/en/" type="external">report</a>.&#160;</p>
<p>Understandably enough, pumping oil at such a pace had devastating impact on the environment in Ogoniland, which led to widespread protests among the local Ogoni tribe. Shell knew of the environmental impact, with Bopp Van Dessel, a company official who resigned over the issue, saying in 1996: “Any Shell site that I saw was polluted. Any terminal that I saw was polluted. It was clear to me that Shell was devastating the area.”</p>
<p>The Ogoni protests that unfolded not only deprived Shell and the Nigerian government of access to wells in that area, they also threatened to hamper operating of pipeline carrying oil from other regions across Ogoniland. To make matters worse, Shell encouraged and even aided Nigerian government – led by General Sani Abacha, who seized power 1993 coup – to suppress the protest movement with coercive force.</p>
<p>Abacha, who “seemed to find it unbelievable that such a small tribe could have the effrontery to cause such a lot of trouble,” greenlit the establishment of a so-called Internal Security Task Force (ISTF) to “restore and maintain law and order in Ogoniland.” The task force’s raids on Ogoni villages resembled gruesome tactics of Latin American death squads, as they carried out “numerous extrajudicial executions and other unlawful killings, raped women and girls and detained and tortured many people.”</p>
<p>According to an Amnesty International report as of June 1994, some 30 villages had been attacked and “more than 50 members of the Ogoni ethnic group are reported to have been extra-judicially executed.” In July that year, the Dutch ambassador told Shell that the Nigerian Army had killed some 800 Ogonis.</p>
<p>The company was well-aware of the military’s conduct, according to the report. “There is irrefutable evidence that Shell knew that the Nigerian security forces committed grave violations when they were deployed to address community protests,” it states.</p>
<p>The inquiry also cites an internal memo dated February 23, 1993, showing that senior Shell staff were worried that calling for a “military presence … will attract a potential confrontation which may have catastrophic results.”</p>
<p>Shell not only knew of the army’s brutality, but it in fact motivated the government to resolve the “problem” of the Ogoni protests. Shortly after General Abacha seized power, the company wrote to local authorities that “community disturbances, blockade and sabotage” had led to a drop in production and asked for help to “minimize the disruptions,” according to Amnesty’s findings. Shell even went as far as singling out Ogoni communities where these “disturbances” had taken place.</p>
<p>Members of the ISTF – one of the units deployed against Ogoni protesters – were actually on Shell’s pay, Amnesty revealed. In March 1994, Shell paid its commander, Major Paul Okuntimo, and 25 of his men, a kind of an “honorarium” to show “gratitude and motivation for a sustained favourable disposition towards [Shell] in future assignments.”</p>
<p>Read more</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/op-edge/343009-nigeria-delta-oil-ecocide/" type="external" /></p>
<p>The payment, made just days after Okuntimo’s troops opened fire on peaceful protesters outside the Shell HQ in Port Harcourt, amounted to $900, which was described as covering the cost of lunches and “special duty allowance.”</p>
<p>During the 1990s, Shell also lent material support and assistance to the Nigerian military, Amnesty said, citing witness accounts by Major Okuntimo’s orderly, Boniface Ejiogu. He testified in May 1994 that he saw Okuntimo transported in a Shell-operated helicopter, and soldiers ferried in buses and boats provided by the company. He said that when the ISTF planned “night operations,” Okuntimo would call George Ukpong, then head of security for Shell, to request the use of company pickup trucks.</p>
<p>“Sometimes Shell played a more direct role in the bloodshed – for example by transporting armed forces to break up protests, even when it became clear what the consequences would be. This clearly amounts to enabling or facilitating the horrific crimes that followed,” Audrey Gaughran, director of Global Issues at Amnesty International, said.</p>
<p>Responding to RT’s request for comment, Shell said “Amnesty International’s allegations concerning SPDC [Shell Nigeria] are false and without merit,” adding that they “did not collude with the authorities to suppress community unrest and in no way encouraged or advocated any act of violence in Nigeria.”</p>
<p>Shell was condemned in 2002 by the African Commission of Human Rights, “but only indirectly because there were no means to take the corporation to court,” Melik Ozden, director of the Europe-Third World Centre (CETIM), told RT. He added that “there is no possibility of the company being charged… the general strategy of transnational corporations in such cases is to avoid condemnation and avoid court cases.”</p> | false | 1 | shell oil knew human rights abuses nigerian forces amid crackdown local tribe opposed extraction activity lands amnesty international said shell also motivated troops deal uprising left dozens dead injured rights group reviewed cache companys internal documents including strategy papers internal memos letters officials well witness statements revealing anglodutch oil giant directly engaged nigerian militarys brutal campaign silence antipollution protesters oilrich tribal region ogoniland back 1990s read shell single important company nigeria 1995 pumped almost one million barrels crude oil day report states turn constituted roughly half african nations total daily oil production shell nigeria access biggest low cost hydrocarbon resource base company group enough oil sustain production almost 100 years current levels according amnesty report160 understandably enough pumping oil pace devastating impact environment ogoniland led widespread protests among local ogoni tribe shell knew environmental impact bopp van dessel company official resigned issue saying 1996 shell site saw polluted terminal saw polluted clear shell devastating area ogoni protests unfolded deprived shell nigerian government access wells area also threatened hamper operating pipeline carrying oil regions across ogoniland make matters worse shell encouraged even aided nigerian government led general sani abacha seized power 1993 coup suppress protest movement coercive force abacha seemed find unbelievable small tribe could effrontery cause lot trouble greenlit establishment socalled internal security task force istf restore maintain law order ogoniland task forces raids ogoni villages resembled gruesome tactics latin american death squads carried numerous extrajudicial executions unlawful killings raped women girls detained tortured many people according amnesty international report june 1994 30 villages attacked 50 members ogoni ethnic group reported extrajudicially executed july year dutch ambassador told shell nigerian army killed 800 ogonis company wellaware militarys conduct according report irrefutable evidence shell knew nigerian security forces committed grave violations deployed address community protests states inquiry also cites internal memo dated february 23 1993 showing senior shell staff worried calling military presence attract potential confrontation may catastrophic results shell knew armys brutality fact motivated government resolve problem ogoni protests shortly general abacha seized power company wrote local authorities community disturbances blockade sabotage led drop production asked help minimize disruptions according amnestys findings shell even went far singling ogoni communities disturbances taken place members istf one units deployed ogoni protesters actually shells pay amnesty revealed march 1994 shell paid commander major paul okuntimo 25 men kind honorarium show gratitude motivation sustained favourable disposition towards shell future assignments read payment made days okuntimos troops opened fire peaceful protesters outside shell hq port harcourt amounted 900 described covering cost lunches special duty allowance 1990s shell also lent material support assistance nigerian military amnesty said citing witness accounts major okuntimos orderly boniface ejiogu testified may 1994 saw okuntimo transported shelloperated helicopter soldiers ferried buses boats provided company said istf planned night operations okuntimo would call george ukpong head security shell request use company pickup trucks sometimes shell played direct role bloodshed example transporting armed forces break protests even became clear consequences would clearly amounts enabling facilitating horrific crimes followed audrey gaughran director global issues amnesty international said responding rts request comment shell said amnesty internationals allegations concerning spdc shell nigeria false without merit adding collude authorities suppress community unrest way encouraged advocated act violence nigeria shell condemned 2002 african commission human rights indirectly means take corporation court melik ozden director europethird world centre cetim told rt added possibility company charged general strategy transnational corporations cases avoid condemnation avoid court cases | 566 |
<p>FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — Linebacker Dont’a Hightower tested the free-agent waters this spring before the Pro Bowler returned to the <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/New_England_Patriots/" type="external">New England Patriots</a> on a four-year, $43 million contract. Until this week, though, Hightower had not been on the practice field with his teammates, missing training camp and the first two preseason games while on PUP.</p>
<p>After being removed from PUP and returning to the practice field Aug. 22, the team captain talked about his return to the New England team he first joined as a first-round pick out of Alabama in 2012.</p>
<p>“It’s good. Glad I didn’t have to relocate,” Hightower said. “Stressful, but glad it’s over with. Glad I’m here, that I’m back and I’m glad I’m back on the field.”</p>
<p>After a college career under head coach <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Bill_Belichick/" type="external">Bill Belichick</a> pal <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Nick_Saban/" type="external">Nick Saban</a>, Hightower’s versatility and style have always fit well in New England’s defense.</p>
<p>“It’s meant a lot (to be a Patriot),” Hightower said. “I’ve been here my whole career. It wasn’t a hard a change from what I had in college. I was definitely used to it, so it wasn’t a big change. I feel like I’ve had a lot of success in programs like this. Alabama and New England are not too far different. So just the culture around here, the teammates, the coaches around here is just second to none anywhere. So, when it came down to making my decision, it wasn’t too hard a choice.”</p>
<p>And despite the late start, Hightower is focused on getting back to work for a Patriots team that begins its title defense in a mere two weeks.</p>
<p>“Now it’s more about me getting acclimated back to <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/John_Walker/" type="external">football</a>,” Hightower said of being ready to play. “I’ve got all the little rehab stuff out of the way. Now it’s time to focus on football.”</p>
<p>—</p>
<p>Tight end <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Rob_Gronkowski/" type="external">Rob Gronkowski</a> saw somewhat unexpected preseason action last Saturday night in Houston. Prior to his snaps against the Texans, the All-Pro tight end hadn’t played in the preseason since 2012.</p>
<p>At times, like last summer when Gronkowski dealt with a hamstring issue, the absence was due to injury. Other times, it seemed more like a precaution for the oft-injured big man.</p>
<p>This summer, though, with Gronkowski coming off last December’s back surgery that was the third of his football career, he’s embracing his preseason work.</p>
<p>“I’m glad I was out there,” Gronkowski said of a little more than a dozen reps in Houston. “It felt good just to get the game speed. You can never get enough reps. You can never get enough practice reps. So, it felt great to go out there and get my feet wet and see what it’s all about again.</p>
<p>“I just felt the benefit when I was out there; the speed of the game, live game speed. It’s been a while for me. I felt the benefit of getting in sync blocking-wise, the cadence and everything like that. I’m taking all positives out of it.”</p>
<p>Another change this offseason has seen Gronkowski take part in some of quarterback <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Tom_Brady/" type="external">Tom Brady</a>‘s now-famous diet and workout program – aka the TB12 Method. That’s included, apparently, the frat-boy tight end giving up both coffee and alcohol.</p>
<p>“I don’t do that stuff right now. It’s football time. I never really have done that stuff during football time,” Gronkowski said as he prepared for New England’s trip to Detroit for the third preseason game of the summer.</p>
<p>—</p>
<p>Brady should see his most extended action Aug. 25 in Detroit against the Lions in the Patriots’ third preseason game. Historically, Brady and the bulk of the offense have played at least half the third preseason game, often even going into the third quarter.</p>
<p>Brady acknowledged there is a balance going on between normal preparations for preseason action and beginning to think about the Sept. 7 regular-season opener against the Chiefs that’s just around the corner. Still, his work against the Lions is a key part of the overall process.</p>
<p>“For me, it’s just feeling the rhythm of the game, and it’s different than practice,” Brady said. “The rhythm of practice is very different, and the only way to simulate the game is to play. I can draw on a lot of experience, but it’s nice to get out there and actually do it. I mean, it was fun being out there last week. It will be, obviously, fun being out there this week, but you’re just trying to build up for one game, the start of the season in September. Everything is building toward that. Those snaps that you’re taking with new players are really important. It was nice to get (running back) Rex (Burkhead) a touchdown pass (last week against Houston), and just for him to feel what it’s like for all us to look at another guy’s eyes in the huddle during the course of a game and saying, ‘Look, this is where we’re at. This is football. This is exactly what we’re going to be doing when the season kicks off on Thursday night.'”</p>
<p>—</p>
<p>While guys like Brady, Gronkowski and the rest of the Patriots’ stars will be getting their final significant preseason reps Friday night in Detroit, the bottom of the New England roster will also be battling it out for roster spots and roles. There is only one cutdown date in the NFL this year, coming on Sept. 2.</p>
<p>That’s less than two weeks for guys to prove their worth to Belichick.</p>
<p>“This is the National Football League and there is pressure every week,” Belichick declared in his usual matter-of-fact manner. “There is pressure this week. There is going to be pressure in October. There is going to be pressure in November. We’re going to be under stress all year every week. We’re going to be under stress out on the field every week against every opponent. Playing in the National Football League, that’s what you sign up for. If you’re looking for vacation weeks and weeks off where we play some Division 4 team and all of that, that doesn’t happen in this league. There is stress every week. So, is there stress in training camp? Yeah, there is plenty of it.</p>
<p>“There is pressure every week in this league. If there’s too much pressure in August, it’s probably going to be too much pressure in November. This is the world we live in. You tell me a week in this National Football League when there is not pressure, I don’t know when that is. Every week is a tough week. Every week is a good team, good players, good coaches, work hard that have a lot of things that you’ve got to deal with, and if you don’t deal with them then you’re not going to win that week. That’s the NFL.”</p> | false | 1 | foxborough mass linebacker donta hightower tested freeagent waters spring pro bowler returned new england patriots fouryear 43 million contract week though hightower practice field teammates missing training camp first two preseason games pup removed pup returning practice field aug 22 team captain talked return new england team first joined firstround pick alabama 2012 good glad didnt relocate hightower said stressful glad glad im im back im glad im back field college career head coach bill belichick pal nick saban hightowers versatility style always fit well new englands defense meant lot patriot hightower said ive whole career wasnt hard change college definitely used wasnt big change feel like ive lot success programs like alabama new england far different culture around teammates coaches around second none anywhere came making decision wasnt hard choice despite late start hightower focused getting back work patriots team begins title defense mere two weeks getting acclimated back football hightower said ready play ive got little rehab stuff way time focus football tight end rob gronkowski saw somewhat unexpected preseason action last saturday night houston prior snaps texans allpro tight end hadnt played preseason since 2012 times like last summer gronkowski dealt hamstring issue absence due injury times seemed like precaution oftinjured big man summer though gronkowski coming last decembers back surgery third football career hes embracing preseason work im glad gronkowski said little dozen reps houston felt good get game speed never get enough reps never get enough practice reps felt great go get feet wet see felt benefit speed game live game speed felt benefit getting sync blockingwise cadence everything like im taking positives another change offseason seen gronkowski take part quarterback tom bradys nowfamous diet workout program aka tb12 method thats included apparently fratboy tight end giving coffee alcohol dont stuff right football time never really done stuff football time gronkowski said prepared new englands trip detroit third preseason game summer brady see extended action aug 25 detroit lions patriots third preseason game historically brady bulk offense played least half third preseason game often even going third quarter brady acknowledged balance going normal preparations preseason action beginning think sept 7 regularseason opener chiefs thats around corner still work lions key part overall process feeling rhythm game different practice brady said rhythm practice different way simulate game play draw lot experience nice get actually mean fun last week obviously fun week youre trying build one game start season september everything building toward snaps youre taking new players really important nice get running back rex burkhead touchdown pass last week houston feel like us look another guys eyes huddle course game saying look football exactly going season kicks thursday night guys like brady gronkowski rest patriots stars getting final significant preseason reps friday night detroit bottom new england roster also battling roster spots roles one cutdown date nfl year coming sept 2 thats less two weeks guys prove worth belichick national football league pressure every week belichick declared usual matteroffact manner pressure week going pressure october going pressure november going stress year every week going stress field every week every opponent playing national football league thats sign youre looking vacation weeks weeks play division 4 team doesnt happen league stress every week stress training camp yeah plenty pressure every week league theres much pressure august probably going much pressure november world live tell week national football league pressure dont know every week tough week every week good team good players good coaches work hard lot things youve got deal dont deal youre going win week thats nfl | 590 |
<p>Conservatives today are in a funk. The strains of governing, the challenges of war, and the frustration of an unsuccessful mid-term election have contributed to unease and unhappiness. But deeper than these issues is an intellectual fatigue and uncertainty about where the attention of the conservative movement now should be directed.</p>
<p>What domestic issues can unite and motivate conservatives to great political exertions, and can win the allegiance of the public?</p>
<p>In this respect, the right is partially a victim of its own successes. If 25 years ago you had asked an American conservative to name the preeminent domestic policy challenges of the day, you probably would have gotten back, along with a general worry about cultural decline, some combination of welfare, taxes, and crime.</p>
<p>Few conservatives today would name any of these three as the foremost problems, and even on the cultural front they could point to some advances. This is due, in large part, to a series of conservative successes that have transformed American politics and made conservative theories of economics, law enforcement, and welfare the accepted wisdom. Success has not been complete in any of these areas, of course, but the struggle over first principles, over which way to go in general, has been won.</p>
<p>Today the left — which for decades fought vigorously on all three fronts — offers scant opposition on any of them. No leading Democrats are arguing that we undo conservative achievements on welfare and crime. And even on taxes, which liberals want to increase, no Democrats are arguing that we return to the days when the top rate of taxation was 70%.</p>
<p>But what now? On what issues can conservative principles point to popular reforms today? The most prominent domestic policy concerns of the day would seem, at first glance, to favor the left. Health care, income inequality, and the environment, among other issues, have long been identified with American liberals, and conservatives have been uncomfortable taking them up.</p>
<p>But the notion that the left owns these issues is not a fact inherent in the problems themselves; rather, it is a failure of conservative imagination. In fact, it is precisely these kinds of issues that should now be front and center on the conservative agenda, not only because the public cares about them, but also because the left is far more vulnerable on them than it seems. Conservatives should fight precisely on what is perceived to be liberal turf, as they have done successfully before.</p>
<p>Welfare reform — the most successful social policy innovation in generations — offers a powerful model. For decades welfare was the quintessential liberal issue, and while conservatives offered serious reasons for concern and opposition, they did not offer enough in the way of concrete reforms.</p>
<p>But when conservatives finally turned their attention to reforming the welfare system — applying basic conservative premises about the centrality of the family, the power of economic incentives, and the value of self reliance — they took control of the issue and eventually enacted a sweeping and dramatically successful reform. Democrats had been right to focus on welfare, but their approach was disastrous. Republicans were wrong to ignore it, but once they took it on and offered an alternative, they won.</p>
<p>Something of a similar dynamic now presents itself on a range of other issues. Health care, for instance, is the foremost liberal issue of the moment. Since conservatives have been absent from the argument, liberals have persuaded themselves that the public wants national government-funded, if not government-run, health care. By committing to this course, the left has actually made itself quite vulnerable.</p>
<p>The idea of a new and enormous government bureaucracy with deep reach into the life of every family is inherently disconcerting — and rightfully so, given the Canadian and much of the European experience. It threatens to add to, not diminish, the public’s health care anxieties.</p>
<p>An effort to describe the problem in its particulars and frame it in terms of the security and stability of families, the proper ordering of economic incentives, and the need for prudence in taking on a challenge of such scale would highlight the extremism of the Democrats’ proposed solution. It also would open the public to a set of reasonable reforms — to the tax system, to Medicaid, and to insurance regulation — that offer greater stability, lower costs, and better access to private coverage.</p>
<p>Health care today, like welfare 15 years ago, offers conservatives an opportunity both to correct gross inefficiencies and failures of public policy and to highlight the left’s instinct for statism and overreaching. Understood in terms of conservative first principles, it presents a great opportunity, not political quicksand.</p>
<p>If anything comes close to being as important as health care on the Democrats’ agenda, it is income inequality. It is the watchword of every prominent Democrat. Conservatives have wanted nothing to do with it. But here again, conservatives should seize an opportunity to make a case for their economic vision.</p>
<p>The debate over inequality must be transformed, as Arthur Brooks has argued, into a case for economic mobility. The problem with the gap between the rich and the poor, after all, is not that the rich are rich, but that the poor are poor. The solution, then, is not best understood through the prism of economic equality — a meaningless notion, good only for fanning envy and disillusion — but through the prism of economic mobility.</p>
<p>The key steps toward mobility have long been clear: school, work, and marriage. Conservatives know how to make that case and translate it into policy. They must do so, and again make clear the basic difference between their notion and the left’s notion of freedom and the role of government.</p>
<p>The environment, too, is carelessly taken to be a liberal issue these days. Again, conservatives have been terrified of touching it for too long. Here, too, they should be more assertive.</p>
<p>Once we acknowledge the fact that global temperatures are rising slightly and that human activity is among the causes, we are left to ask what should be done. Here, as in health care, the Democrats’ proposals are a gross overreach. It’s as if steep punitive taxation is the goal and climate change arguments are just a means to get there.</p>
<p>As chief executive officer of Applied Predictive Technologies, Jim Manzi, has written, global warming calls for investments in research for climate modeling, mitigating the effects of fossil fuels, and pursuing other sources of energy. Republicans, again, have an opportunity to provide constructive proposals to counter the reckless and excessive prescriptions of the left, and to plainly describe them as such.</p>
<p>In these areas and others, conservatives have ready-made opportunities to take the initiative and to make a case for reform aimed at advancing the interests of the American family. As in the past, they would do this best by returning to their guiding principles — the defense and promotion of virtue and liberty — and by applying them to the key issues of today.</p>
<p>They should take on the left where the left seems strongest and, as in the past, show how solutions that begin from conservative assumptions will better appeal to the American public, and will better address the country’s problems.</p>
<p>— Messrs. Levin and Wehner are fellows at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.</p> | false | 1 | conservatives today funk strains governing challenges war frustration unsuccessful midterm election contributed unease unhappiness deeper issues intellectual fatigue uncertainty attention conservative movement directed domestic issues unite motivate conservatives great political exertions win allegiance public respect right partially victim successes 25 years ago asked american conservative name preeminent domestic policy challenges day probably would gotten back along general worry cultural decline combination welfare taxes crime conservatives today would name three foremost problems even cultural front could point advances due large part series conservative successes transformed american politics made conservative theories economics law enforcement welfare accepted wisdom success complete areas course struggle first principles way go general today left decades fought vigorously three fronts offers scant opposition leading democrats arguing undo conservative achievements welfare crime even taxes liberals want increase democrats arguing return days top rate taxation 70 issues conservative principles point popular reforms today prominent domestic policy concerns day would seem first glance favor left health care income inequality environment among issues long identified american liberals conservatives uncomfortable taking notion left owns issues fact inherent problems rather failure conservative imagination fact precisely kinds issues front center conservative agenda public cares also left far vulnerable seems conservatives fight precisely perceived liberal turf done successfully welfare reform successful social policy innovation generations offers powerful model decades welfare quintessential liberal issue conservatives offered serious reasons concern opposition offer enough way concrete reforms conservatives finally turned attention reforming welfare system applying basic conservative premises centrality family power economic incentives value self reliance took control issue eventually enacted sweeping dramatically successful reform democrats right focus welfare approach disastrous republicans wrong ignore took offered alternative something similar dynamic presents range issues health care instance foremost liberal issue moment since conservatives absent argument liberals persuaded public wants national governmentfunded governmentrun health care committing course left actually made quite vulnerable idea new enormous government bureaucracy deep reach life every family inherently disconcerting rightfully given canadian much european experience threatens add diminish publics health care anxieties effort describe problem particulars frame terms security stability families proper ordering economic incentives need prudence taking challenge scale would highlight extremism democrats proposed solution also would open public set reasonable reforms tax system medicaid insurance regulation offer greater stability lower costs better access private coverage health care today like welfare 15 years ago offers conservatives opportunity correct gross inefficiencies failures public policy highlight lefts instinct statism overreaching understood terms conservative first principles presents great opportunity political quicksand anything comes close important health care democrats agenda income inequality watchword every prominent democrat conservatives wanted nothing conservatives seize opportunity make case economic vision debate inequality must transformed arthur brooks argued case economic mobility problem gap rich poor rich rich poor poor solution best understood prism economic equality meaningless notion good fanning envy disillusion prism economic mobility key steps toward mobility long clear school work marriage conservatives know make case translate policy must make clear basic difference notion lefts notion freedom role government environment carelessly taken liberal issue days conservatives terrified touching long assertive acknowledge fact global temperatures rising slightly human activity among causes left ask done health care democrats proposals gross overreach steep punitive taxation goal climate change arguments means get chief executive officer applied predictive technologies jim manzi written global warming calls investments research climate modeling mitigating effects fossil fuels pursuing sources energy republicans opportunity provide constructive proposals counter reckless excessive prescriptions left plainly describe areas others conservatives readymade opportunities take initiative make case reform aimed advancing interests american family past would best returning guiding principles defense promotion virtue liberty applying key issues today take left left seems strongest past show solutions begin conservative assumptions better appeal american public better address countrys problems messrs levin wehner fellows ethics public policy center | 616 |
<p>WASHINGTON — Conservatives in Nevada and Utah reacted angrily to President Barack Obama’s designation of the Gold Butte and Bears Ears areas as national monuments, but any effort to roll back the actions will face steep political and legislative hurdles.</p>
<p>Obama used the Antiquities Act on Wednesday to designate 300,000 acres in Nevada and 1.35 million acres in Utah as national monuments, calling Gold Butte — southeast of Las Vegas near the town of Mesquite — and Bears Ears cultural, historical and natural treasures.</p>
<p>But the action was immediately met with opposition from conservatives in both states who claimed the president abused the law to shield the public lands from state and private use.</p>
<p>U.S. Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, the chairman of the House Committee on Natural Resources, vowed to do everything possible to repeal the declaration.</p>
<p>“We will use every tool at our disposal to do the right thing — whether it be legislative action, judicial action, even executive action,” Bishop said in a statement.</p>
<p>Bishop had introduced legislation in the last Congress to shelter the Bears Ears region in Utah, but the House failed to act on it before adjourning. Environmentalists opposed portions of that legislation.</p>
<p>In Nevada, Republican U.S. Sen. Dean Heller has opposed designations of national monuments by executive order and had urged Obama not to designate Gold Butte as a national monument. He said he would continue to fight for an open process that would require congressional support for new designations. Gold Butte Map</p>
<p>New land designations, “especially ones in Nevada,” need to be considered in an open and public congressional process so that all voices and stakeholders can be heard, he said.</p>
<p>Obama was urged to make the Gold Butte designation by U.S. Sen. Harry Reid and U.S. Rep. Dina Titus, both Democrats, who argued there was a need to protect the public land from vandalism and misuse.</p>
<p>Since the Antiquities Act was passed in 1906, 16 presidents have designated 152 national monuments using the authority, according to the National Parks Conservation Association.</p>
<p>The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld previous use of the act to set aside public lands, most notably in the Southwest, for conservation and to protect artifacts.</p>
<p>President-elect Donald Trump has not weighed in on the recent land declarations, but experts said Thursday he can’t act unilaterally to roll back his predecessor’s action.</p>
<p>NEXT MOVE IS UP TO CONGRESS</p>
<p>Authority to change a designation rests with Congress, said Christy Goldfuss, managing director at the White House Council on Environmental Quality.</p>
<p>When Congress passed the Antiquities Act, it granted presidential authority to declare monuments, but gave no authority to reverse a designation, said Heidi McIntosh, managing attorney for the Rocky Mountain region of Earthjustice, a nonprofit environmental law organization.</p>
<p>The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, has urged Congress to repeal the law, citing Obama’s set aside of land in Colorado, Hawaii and Illinois as abuse of legislation originally passed to protect against the looting of archeological sites.</p>
<p>The foundation said recent declarations have thwarted economic opportunity and removes states and private citizens from decisions made on land use.</p>
<p>Still, legislation to curb or repeal the Antiquities Act would take 60 votes to break a filibuster in the incoming Senate, where Republicans will have a slim 52-48 majority.</p>
<p>And both Goldfuss and McIntosh said that despite the opposition, the declarations in both states enjoy local support from governments, tribal leaders and residents who sought the designations.</p>
<p>Congressional action to negate their designation “would come at a pretty high political cost,” McIntosh said.</p>
<p>She also said the two new national monuments were unique in that tribal communities will have a role in management decisions at Bears Ears and Gold Butte.</p>
<p>Environmentalists, Native American leaders and congressional Democrats applauded Obama’s decision to designate Gold Butte as a national monument, in essence closing a gap of public land between Lake Mead and the Grand Canyon to commercial use.</p>
<p>The area would remain open to hiking and camping, while protecting natural habitat for Bighorn Sheep, mountain lions and the Mojave Desert tortoise. Gold Butte also contains Native American artifacts and historical sites from early pioneer ranchers and Spanish explorers.</p>
<p>‘UNILATERAL LAND GRAB’</p>
<p>Gold Butte became a flashpoint in 2014 because of an armed standoff by Cliven Bundy, his family and militiamen. The standoff was prompted by government officials who rounded up cattle on the federal land under the Bureau of Land Management.</p>
<p>BLM employees returned to the land in 2016.</p>
<p>Bundy and 17 others are facing a trial in federal court in Las Vegas in February on criminal charges arising from the standoff.</p>
<p>After Obama announced his decision on Gold Butte, the Bundy family issued a news release chastising the president for making “our ranch and home a national monument.”</p>
<p>The Bundys called on Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt “to fight this to the fullest extent of the law!”</p>
<p>Laxalt denounced the declaration as a “unilateral land grab” that adds another layer of unnecessary federal control to the state of Nevada.</p>
<p>But he did not signal whether the state would take action against the presidential decision.</p>
<p>Contact Gary Martin at <a href="" type="internal">[email protected]</a>. Follow <a href="https://twitter.com/garymartindc" type="external">@garymartindc</a> on Twitter.</p>
<p>RELATED</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">President Obama declares Gold Butte a national monument</a></p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Conservatives in Nevada, Utah howl over Obama’s national monument declarations</a></p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Reid says he’s ‘confident’ Obama will designate Gold Butte a national monument</a></p>
<p /> | false | 1 | washington conservatives nevada utah reacted angrily president barack obamas designation gold butte bears ears areas national monuments effort roll back actions face steep political legislative hurdles obama used antiquities act wednesday designate 300000 acres nevada 135 million acres utah national monuments calling gold butte southeast las vegas near town mesquite bears ears cultural historical natural treasures action immediately met opposition conservatives states claimed president abused law shield public lands state private use us rep rob bishop rutah chairman house committee natural resources vowed everything possible repeal declaration use every tool disposal right thing whether legislative action judicial action even executive action bishop said statement bishop introduced legislation last congress shelter bears ears region utah house failed act adjourning environmentalists opposed portions legislation nevada republican us sen dean heller opposed designations national monuments executive order urged obama designate gold butte national monument said would continue fight open process would require congressional support new designations gold butte map new land designations especially ones nevada need considered open public congressional process voices stakeholders heard said obama urged make gold butte designation us sen harry reid us rep dina titus democrats argued need protect public land vandalism misuse since antiquities act passed 1906 16 presidents designated 152 national monuments using authority according national parks conservation association us supreme court upheld previous use act set aside public lands notably southwest conservation protect artifacts presidentelect donald trump weighed recent land declarations experts said thursday cant act unilaterally roll back predecessors action next move congress authority change designation rests congress said christy goldfuss managing director white house council environmental quality congress passed antiquities act granted presidential authority declare monuments gave authority reverse designation said heidi mcintosh managing attorney rocky mountain region earthjustice nonprofit environmental law organization heritage foundation conservative think tank urged congress repeal law citing obamas set aside land colorado hawaii illinois abuse legislation originally passed protect looting archeological sites foundation said recent declarations thwarted economic opportunity removes states private citizens decisions made land use still legislation curb repeal antiquities act would take 60 votes break filibuster incoming senate republicans slim 5248 majority goldfuss mcintosh said despite opposition declarations states enjoy local support governments tribal leaders residents sought designations congressional action negate designation would come pretty high political cost mcintosh said also said two new national monuments unique tribal communities role management decisions bears ears gold butte environmentalists native american leaders congressional democrats applauded obamas decision designate gold butte national monument essence closing gap public land lake mead grand canyon commercial use area would remain open hiking camping protecting natural habitat bighorn sheep mountain lions mojave desert tortoise gold butte also contains native american artifacts historical sites early pioneer ranchers spanish explorers unilateral land grab gold butte became flashpoint 2014 armed standoff cliven bundy family militiamen standoff prompted government officials rounded cattle federal land bureau land management blm employees returned land 2016 bundy 17 others facing trial federal court las vegas february criminal charges arising standoff obama announced decision gold butte bundy family issued news release chastising president making ranch home national monument bundys called nevada attorney general adam laxalt fight fullest extent law laxalt denounced declaration unilateral land grab adds another layer unnecessary federal control state nevada signal whether state would take action presidential decision contact gary martin gmartinreviewjournalcom follow garymartindc twitter related president obama declares gold butte national monument conservatives nevada utah howl obamas national monument declarations reid says hes confident obama designate gold butte national monument | 573 |
<p />
<p>I grew up by the Gaza sea. Throughout my childhood, I could never quite comprehend how such a giant a body of water, which promised such endless freedom, could also border on such a tiny and cramped stretch of land – a land that was perpetually held hostage, even as it remained perpetually defiant.</p>
<p>From a young age, I would embark with my family on the short journey from our refugee camp to the beach. We went on a haggard cart, laboriously pulled by an equally gaunt donkey. The moment our feet touched the warm sand, the deafening screams would commence. Little feet would run faster than Olympic champions and for a few hours all our cares would dissipate. Here there was no occupation, no prison, no refugee status. Everything smelled and tasted of salt and watermelon. My mother would sit atop a torn, checkered blanket to secure it from the wild winds. She would giggle at my father’s frantic calls to his sons, trying to stop them from going too deep into the water.</p>
<p>I would duck my own head underwater, and hear the haunting humming of the sea. Then I’d retreat, stand back and stare at the horizon.</p>
<p>When I was five or six, I believed that immediately behind the horizon there was a country called Australia. People from there were free to go and come as they pleased. There were no soldiers, guns, or snipers. The Australians – for some unknown reason – liked us very much, and would one day visit us. When I revealed my beliefs to my brothers, they were not convinced. But my fantasy grew, as did the list of all the other countries immediately behind the horizon. One of these was America, where people spoke funny. Another was France, where people ate nothing but cheese.</p>
<p>I would scavenge the beach looking for “evidence” of the existing world beyond the horizon. I looked for bottles with strange lettering, cans and dirty plastic washed ashore from faraway ships. My joy would be compounded when the letters were in Arabic. I would struggle to read them myself. I also learned of such countries as Saudi Arabia, Algeria and Morocco. People who lived there were Arabs like us, and Muslims who prayed five times a day. I was dumbfounded. The sea was apparently more mysterious than I’d ever imagined.</p>
<p>Before the first Palestinian uprising of 1987, the Gaza beach was yet to be declared off-limits and converted into a closed military zone. The fishermen were still allowed to fish, although only for a few nautical miles. We were allowed to swim and picnic, although not past 6 pm. Then one day the Israeli army jeeps came whooshing down the paved road that separated the beach from the refugee camp. They demanded immediate evacuation at gunpoint. My parents screamed in panic, herding us back to the camp in only our swimming shorts.</p>
<p>Breaking news on Israeli television declared that the Israeli navy had intercepted Palestinian terrorists on rubber boats making their way towards Israel. All were killed or captured, except for one that might be heading towards the Gaza Sea. Confusion was ominous, especially as I saw images of captured Palestinian men on Israeli television. They were hauling the dead bodies of their Palestinian comrades while being surrounded by armed, triumphant Israeli troops.</p>
<p>I tried to convince my father to go and wait by the beach for the other Palestinians. He smiled pityingly and said nothing. The news later declared the boat was perhaps lost at sea, or had sunk. Still, I wouldn’t lose hope. I begged my mother to prepare her specialty tea with sage, and leave out some toasted bread and cheese. I waited until dawn for the “terrorists” lost at sea to arrive at our refugee camp. If they made it, I wanted them to have something to eat. But they never arrived.</p>
<p>After this incident, boats began showing up on the horizon. They belonged to the Israeli navy. The seemingly hapless Gaza sea was now dangerous and rife with possibilities. Thus, my trips to the beach increased. Even as I grew older, and even during Israeli military curfews, I would climb to the roof of our house, and stare at the horizon. Some boats, somewhere, somehow were heading towards Gaza. The harder life became, the greater my faith grew.</p>
<p>Today, decades later, I stand by some alien sea, far away from home, from Gaza. I have been denied the right to visit Palestine for years. I stand here and I think of all those back home, waiting for the boats to arrive. This time the possibility is real. I follow the news, with the stifling awareness of a grown up, and also with the giddiness and trepidation of my six year old self. I imagine Freedom Flotilla loaded with food, medicine and toys, immediately behind the horizon, getting close to turning the old dream into reality. The dream that all the countries that my brothers thought were fictitious in fact existed, embodied in five ships and 700 peace activists. They represented humanity, they cared for us. I thought of some little kids making a feast of toasted bread, yellow cheese and sage tea, waiting for their saviors.</p>
<p>When breaking news declared that the boats had been attacked just before crossing the Gaza horizon, killing and wounding many activists, the six-year-old in me was crushed. I wept. I lost the power to articulate. No political analysis could suffice. No news reports could explain to all the six-years-olds in Gaza why their heroes were murdered and kidnapped, simply for trying to breach the horizon.</p>
<p>But despite the pain that is now too deep, the lives that were so unfairly taken, the tears that were shed across the world for the Freedom Flotilla, I know now that my fantasy was not a child’s dream. That there were people from Australia, France, Turkey, Morocco, Algeria, the US and many other countries, who were coming to us in boats loaded with gifts from those who, for some reason, really liked us.</p>
<p>I cannot wait to get to Gaza, on top of a boat, so I can tell my brothers, “I told you so.”</p> | false | 1 | grew gaza sea throughout childhood could never quite comprehend giant body water promised endless freedom could also border tiny cramped stretch land land perpetually held hostage even remained perpetually defiant young age would embark family short journey refugee camp beach went haggard cart laboriously pulled equally gaunt donkey moment feet touched warm sand deafening screams would commence little feet would run faster olympic champions hours cares would dissipate occupation prison refugee status everything smelled tasted salt watermelon mother would sit atop torn checkered blanket secure wild winds would giggle fathers frantic calls sons trying stop going deep water would duck head underwater hear haunting humming sea id retreat stand back stare horizon five six believed immediately behind horizon country called australia people free go come pleased soldiers guns snipers australians unknown reason liked us much would one day visit us revealed beliefs brothers convinced fantasy grew list countries immediately behind horizon one america people spoke funny another france people ate nothing cheese would scavenge beach looking evidence existing world beyond horizon looked bottles strange lettering cans dirty plastic washed ashore faraway ships joy would compounded letters arabic would struggle read also learned countries saudi arabia algeria morocco people lived arabs like us muslims prayed five times day dumbfounded sea apparently mysterious id ever imagined first palestinian uprising 1987 gaza beach yet declared offlimits converted closed military zone fishermen still allowed fish although nautical miles allowed swim picnic although past 6 pm one day israeli army jeeps came whooshing paved road separated beach refugee camp demanded immediate evacuation gunpoint parents screamed panic herding us back camp swimming shorts breaking news israeli television declared israeli navy intercepted palestinian terrorists rubber boats making way towards israel killed captured except one might heading towards gaza sea confusion ominous especially saw images captured palestinian men israeli television hauling dead bodies palestinian comrades surrounded armed triumphant israeli troops tried convince father go wait beach palestinians smiled pityingly said nothing news later declared boat perhaps lost sea sunk still wouldnt lose hope begged mother prepare specialty tea sage leave toasted bread cheese waited dawn terrorists lost sea arrive refugee camp made wanted something eat never arrived incident boats began showing horizon belonged israeli navy seemingly hapless gaza sea dangerous rife possibilities thus trips beach increased even grew older even israeli military curfews would climb roof house stare horizon boats somewhere somehow heading towards gaza harder life became greater faith grew today decades later stand alien sea far away home gaza denied right visit palestine years stand think back home waiting boats arrive time possibility real follow news stifling awareness grown also giddiness trepidation six year old self imagine freedom flotilla loaded food medicine toys immediately behind horizon getting close turning old dream reality dream countries brothers thought fictitious fact existed embodied five ships 700 peace activists represented humanity cared us thought little kids making feast toasted bread yellow cheese sage tea waiting saviors breaking news declared boats attacked crossing gaza horizon killing wounding many activists sixyearold crushed wept lost power articulate political analysis could suffice news reports could explain sixyearsolds gaza heroes murdered kidnapped simply trying breach horizon despite pain deep lives unfairly taken tears shed across world freedom flotilla know fantasy childs dream people australia france turkey morocco algeria us many countries coming us boats loaded gifts reason really liked us wait get gaza top boat tell brothers told | 563 |
<p />
<p>Recent remarks by <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-22425058" type="external">Carla Del Ponte</a>, a Swiss investigator of the UN Independent Commission of Inquiry, have changed the nature of debate on the use of chemical weapons in Syria’s civil war. Momentum had been building up for months against Bashar al-Assad’s government, first on the basis of accusations that such weapons were in use, followed by heavy hints by anti-Assad groups and Western politicians that the Damascus regime was guilty of chemical warfare against its opponents and civilians. There is no doubt about the unspeakable brutality committed by both sides in the conflict, but chemical warfare, if proven, would mean escalation to another level involving serious war crimes.</p>
<p>Carla Del Ponte, Switzerland’s former attorney general and prosecutor of the UN tribunals for former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, is no pushover. She is now a member of the Commission of Inquiry on Syria, appointed under the auspices of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. Contrary to subsequent insinuations that she did not know what she was talking about, Del Ponte had chosen her words carefully. She had said that witness testimony made it appear that “some chemical weapons were used, in particular nerve gas.” And it appeared to have been used by the “opponents, by the rebels.” There is “no indication at all that the Syria government … used chemical weapons.” She said she was a “little bit stupefied” that the first indications were of the use of nerve gas by the opponents.</p>
<p>Del Ponte’s remarks, made amid reports of gains by Syrian government forces, seemed to undermine the position of rightwing hawks in Washington like Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, and in London Prime Minister David Cameron and Foreign Secretary William Hague. These are some of the powerful figures who craft Western policy, but hardly objective and credible voices on Syria and the wider Middle East.</p>
<p>Within hours, enthusiastic interventionists in Washington and a somewhat reluctant Obama administration were scrambling to adjust. The White House said the United States believed that chemical weapons were used by the Assad regime. In a stark reminder of Iraq in 2003, the British Prime Minister <a href="http://www.standard.co.uk/panewsfeeds/chemical-weapon-used-in-syria-8608109.html" type="external">David Cameron</a> insisted in Parliament: “I can tell the House that there is a growing body of limited but persuasive information that the [Syrian] regime has used and continues to use chemical weapons.” His Foreign Secretary William Hague agreed. Mainstream television channels and newspapers remained broadly uncritical, unquestioning, even generous in giving the benefit of the doubt to Hague, despite lessons of Iraq.</p>
<p>Persuading those who are ideologically drunk and politically myopic is often a hopeless undertaking. Hunger for war and lust for power or for distant resources always impair both reason and morality. The developing situation on the ground has made the war hawks struggle for credibility. For them, the last resort is to assert with dead certainty their “belief” that it is Bashar al-Assad’s forces who have employed chemical weapons and committed war crimes. How could “freedom fighters” do this?</p>
<p>The changing reality of Syria’s long and brutal war, in which government forces show much greater resilience than their opponents’ predictions, has generated some desperation among the rebels and worry in the American and European capitals about Islamist factions gaining control of the anti-Assad campaign. The capture by rebels of UN peacekeeping troops in Syria, freed after a week of behind-the-scenes activity, tells the story, bringing a little more balance in the scenario usually painted before us.</p>
<p>It was the second time in two months that UN peacekeepers had been held by a rebel faction. The United States and its allies are trapped between delusions of total victory in the Middle East and its true consequences – emergence of anti-Western forces such as Al-Nusra Front that are even more aggressive and erratic.</p>
<p>The outcome of the recent Moscow visit of President Obama’s new secretary of state John Kerry is instructive. America’s agreement with Russia that they co-sponsor an international conference to find a negotiated settlement raised some eyebrows in Washington and among U.S. allies in Europe and the Arab world. President Vladimir Putin seemed to have prevailed in his insistence that Assad’s exit cannot be a precondition. But this precondition is the starting point for the Syrian rebels and many of their foreign supporters who have a wider Middle East agenda. A commentary in Italy’s rightwing publication <a href="http://www.biyokulule.com/view_content.php?articleid=5933" type="external">Il Geornale</a> said in its headline, “Obama’s Defeat: To Pacify Syria He Is In Cahoots With Putin.”</p>
<p>Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain, struggling to maintain his authority within his Conservative Party and coalition with the Liberal Democrats, immediately flew off to Moscow for talks with Putin in an attempt to see that any international conference on Syria is held in London; Cameron’s trip to Washington would be next; Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel planned a visit of his own to Moscow after ordering two secret air attacks against Syrian military facilities in a week; and Israeli and Western newspapers issued warnings that Russia was about to supply S-300 missiles to Assad.</p>
<p>As for Russia, Foreign Minister <a href="http://rt.com/news/russia-syria-weapons-sell-103/" type="external">Sergey Lavrov</a> maintains that Moscow is “not planning to supply Syria with any weapons beyond the current contracts,” which, he says, are “for defensive purposes.” Russia’s message to Washington, delivered a year ago, continues to be “ <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/world-politics/hands-off-syria-and-iran-russia/story-fn9hkofv-1226360612995" type="external">hands off Syria and Iran</a>.” Obama continues his rhetorical maneuvers. And the war goes on.</p> | false | 1 | recent remarks carla del ponte swiss investigator un independent commission inquiry changed nature debate use chemical weapons syrias civil war momentum building months bashar alassads government first basis accusations weapons use followed heavy hints antiassad groups western politicians damascus regime guilty chemical warfare opponents civilians doubt unspeakable brutality committed sides conflict chemical warfare proven would mean escalation another level involving serious war crimes carla del ponte switzerlands former attorney general prosecutor un tribunals former yugoslavia rwanda pushover member commission inquiry syria appointed auspices un high commissioner human rights contrary subsequent insinuations know talking del ponte chosen words carefully said witness testimony made appear chemical weapons used particular nerve gas appeared used opponents rebels indication syria government used chemical weapons said little bit stupefied first indications use nerve gas opponents del pontes remarks made amid reports gains syrian government forces seemed undermine position rightwing hawks washington like senators john mccain lindsey graham london prime minister david cameron foreign secretary william hague powerful figures craft western policy hardly objective credible voices syria wider middle east within hours enthusiastic interventionists washington somewhat reluctant obama administration scrambling adjust white house said united states believed chemical weapons used assad regime stark reminder iraq 2003 british prime minister david cameron insisted parliament tell house growing body limited persuasive information syrian regime used continues use chemical weapons foreign secretary william hague agreed mainstream television channels newspapers remained broadly uncritical unquestioning even generous giving benefit doubt hague despite lessons iraq persuading ideologically drunk politically myopic often hopeless undertaking hunger war lust power distant resources always impair reason morality developing situation ground made war hawks struggle credibility last resort assert dead certainty belief bashar alassads forces employed chemical weapons committed war crimes could freedom fighters changing reality syrias long brutal war government forces show much greater resilience opponents predictions generated desperation among rebels worry american european capitals islamist factions gaining control antiassad campaign capture rebels un peacekeeping troops syria freed week behindthescenes activity tells story bringing little balance scenario usually painted us second time two months un peacekeepers held rebel faction united states allies trapped delusions total victory middle east true consequences emergence antiwestern forces alnusra front even aggressive erratic outcome recent moscow visit president obamas new secretary state john kerry instructive americas agreement russia cosponsor international conference find negotiated settlement raised eyebrows washington among us allies europe arab world president vladimir putin seemed prevailed insistence assads exit precondition precondition starting point syrian rebels many foreign supporters wider middle east agenda commentary italys rightwing publication il geornale said headline obamas defeat pacify syria cahoots putin prime minister david cameron britain struggling maintain authority within conservative party coalition liberal democrats immediately flew moscow talks putin attempt see international conference syria held london camerons trip washington would next benjamin netanyahu israel planned visit moscow ordering two secret air attacks syrian military facilities week israeli western newspapers issued warnings russia supply s300 missiles assad russia foreign minister sergey lavrov maintains moscow planning supply syria weapons beyond current contracts says defensive purposes russias message washington delivered year ago continues hands syria iran obama continues rhetorical maneuvers war goes | 515 |
<p>Back in the halcyon days of <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/01/23/is-obama-turning-america-into-france.html" type="external">2013</a>, and again in <a href="https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-francification-of-america/" type="external">2014</a>, I wrote about “the Francification of America” — or the tendency of America to adopt some of the worst traits of my home country of France.</p>
<p>At the time, I saw this phenomenon as mainly driven by the left (after all, if they’re being honest, many progressives, at least those who haven’t spent much time in France, would say, “Turn America into France? Awesome!”). It wasn’t just the American left’s relentless expansion of government that was turning America into France, but also the rise of higher education credentialism and the ensuing rise of a privileged insider caste moving smoothly between the halls of government and big business.</p>
<p>But now, it seems that America’s Francification is coming from the right, and in particular from President Trump. Instead of making America great again, he’s turning America into France. Here are three striking ways.</p>
<p>1. Lepénisme</p>
<p>I’m certainly not the first to comment on the ideological cousinage between President Trump and France’s Marine Le Pen. Both draw on populist anger at the self-dealing elite class and respond with an agenda that involves an embrace of (if we’re being generous) patriotism shading into nationalism, immigration crackdowns, trade wars, economic nationalism, and robust government activism in the economy.</p>
<p>Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek once commented that America is the only place in the world where one can be both a conservative and a classical liberal. Indeed, that’s what drew me to American politics. Continental conservatism tends to veer much more toward blood-and-soil authoritarianism, whereas the uniqueness of American conservatism is that in seeking to preserve what is best in America it seeks to preserve a specific cultural heritage, yes, but also the heritage of liberal institutions enshrined in America’s founding documents. This is what gave America’s conservative movement its unique and immensely valuable mix of cultural conservatism and economic and political liberalism.</p>
<p>It seems more likely than not that Trump’s incompetence will mean the ideas he has embraced will incinerate by association. But he has undoubtedly infused American politics with the French conservative style, to the detriment of the American conservative style.</p>
<p>2. Crony capitalism</p>
<p>As Americans were still digesting the stunning election result last November, the president-elect was already engineering an ad hoc deal with the company Carrier to keep industrial jobs in America. This move left much of the commentariat, left and right, baffled. But it is a familiar one to any observer of French politics, where they have become so common as to be boring.</p>
<p>No foreign trip by a French president is complete without the “deal-signing ceremony” where the French president will sign or oversee the signing of deals by French companies with local companies, perhaps sometimes to the slight befuddlement of the locals.</p>
<p>Domestically, as well, it seems that the French Treasury’s main job is using a mix of carrots and sticks (mostly carrots, really) to “keep jobs at home” — with all that that implies in terms of favoritism and crony capitalism (since the guys in the Treasury staff making the decisions more often than not end up working for those companies). Recently, the French government ordered a bunch of trains to keep a factory run by the French company Alstom going, even though, tragicomically, no one knew what to use the trains for. So now it looks like the trains will be put on regional lines even though they are high-speed trains that are not intended for those tracks. Great.</p>
<p>Given the positive polling results, Trump has wasted no time in pursuing more such French-style “deals.” Indeed, he seems to view it as a centerpiece of his agenda.</p>
<p>3. Anti-Semitism</p>
<p>Perhaps the most worrisome of all these developments is the return, after many decades, of anti-Semitism as a real thing in American politics. Although, mercifully, nobody thinks there is a real electoral constituency, even a small one, for anti-Semitism (as opposed to the one there might supposedly be for other forms of coded racial appeals), it remains the fact that since Trump’s campaign and election, anti-Semitism in public discourse, even to wonder whether it is there, has become a topic in the American public conversation. Whether or not the Trump administration is animated by prejudice against Jews or plans to exploit prejudice against Jews, the fact that this is even something anyone has to think about is astonishing.</p>
<p>The administration’s Holocaust Remembrance Day statement, which omitted a mention of the Jewish people and, worse, administration spokespeople’s ensuing doubling down on the awful statement, generated a quick burst of outrage. But our attention was quickly diverted to the next shiny object.</p>
<p>France has a long and depressing history with anti-Semitism, dating back to medieval prejudice, snaking through the Dreyfus affair, traditional Catholic anti-Semitism, the official anti-Semitism of the Vichy regime, the pliancy or collaboration of the majority of the French people with the Holocaust, and contemporary far-right expressions of anti-Semitism. While Marine Le Pen, unlike her father, has thus far scrupulously avoided any ill-advised comments about Jews, and ruthlessly policed the ranks of her own party in this regard, France’s large Muslim community has now created a constituency for left-wing anti-Semitism at least as virulent as the right-wing kind. While America has known casual anti-Semitism (say, from WASPs), and the more venomous anti-Semitism of groups like the KKK, its history in that regard looks positively pristine compared to France’s. And in recent decades, almost no one has had reason to worry about anti-Semitism in American political discourse.</p>
<p>This has now changed. Whatever this portends for American politics, it’s not good, and it’s certainly French.</p>
<p>Félicitations, Donald. Vraiment.</p>
<p>Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.</p> | false | 1 | back halcyon days 2013 2014 wrote francification america tendency america adopt worst traits home country france time saw phenomenon mainly driven left theyre honest many progressives least havent spent much time france would say turn america france awesome wasnt american lefts relentless expansion government turning america france also rise higher education credentialism ensuing rise privileged insider caste moving smoothly halls government big business seems americas francification coming right particular president trump instead making america great hes turning america france three striking ways 1 lepénisme im certainly first comment ideological cousinage president trump frances marine le pen draw populist anger selfdealing elite class respond agenda involves embrace generous patriotism shading nationalism immigration crackdowns trade wars economic nationalism robust government activism economy austrian economist friedrich hayek commented america place world one conservative classical liberal indeed thats drew american politics continental conservatism tends veer much toward bloodandsoil authoritarianism whereas uniqueness american conservatism seeking preserve best america seeks preserve specific cultural heritage yes also heritage liberal institutions enshrined americas founding documents gave americas conservative movement unique immensely valuable mix cultural conservatism economic political liberalism seems likely trumps incompetence mean ideas embraced incinerate association undoubtedly infused american politics french conservative style detriment american conservative style 2 crony capitalism americans still digesting stunning election result last november presidentelect already engineering ad hoc deal company carrier keep industrial jobs america move left much commentariat left right baffled familiar one observer french politics become common boring foreign trip french president complete without dealsigning ceremony french president sign oversee signing deals french companies local companies perhaps sometimes slight befuddlement locals domestically well seems french treasurys main job using mix carrots sticks mostly carrots really keep jobs home implies terms favoritism crony capitalism since guys treasury staff making decisions often end working companies recently french government ordered bunch trains keep factory run french company alstom going even though tragicomically one knew use trains looks like trains put regional lines even though highspeed trains intended tracks great given positive polling results trump wasted time pursuing frenchstyle deals indeed seems view centerpiece agenda 3 antisemitism perhaps worrisome developments return many decades antisemitism real thing american politics although mercifully nobody thinks real electoral constituency even small one antisemitism opposed one might supposedly forms coded racial appeals remains fact since trumps campaign election antisemitism public discourse even wonder whether become topic american public conversation whether trump administration animated prejudice jews plans exploit prejudice jews fact even something anyone think astonishing administrations holocaust remembrance day statement omitted mention jewish people worse administration spokespeoples ensuing doubling awful statement generated quick burst outrage attention quickly diverted next shiny object france long depressing history antisemitism dating back medieval prejudice snaking dreyfus affair traditional catholic antisemitism official antisemitism vichy regime pliancy collaboration majority french people holocaust contemporary farright expressions antisemitism marine le pen unlike father thus far scrupulously avoided illadvised comments jews ruthlessly policed ranks party regard frances large muslim community created constituency leftwing antisemitism least virulent rightwing kind america known casual antisemitism say wasps venomous antisemitism groups like kkk history regard looks positively pristine compared frances recent decades almost one reason worry antisemitism american political discourse changed whatever portends american politics good certainly french félicitations donald vraiment pascalemmanuel gobry fellow ethics public policy center | 536 |
<p>There are two perfect, transcendent moments in the Tale of Autumn, or Conte d’Automne, which is the fourth and perhaps the best of Eric Rohmer’s magisterial series, “Tales of the Four Seasons.” The first of these is when we suddenly realize that the simple story of two women, married Isabelle (Marie Rivière) and her divorced friend Magali (Béatrice Romand), whom she is trying to fix up with a man, is far from being as simple as it has seemed hitherto. All right, it was a little weird that Isabelle placed a personal ad in Magali’s name, since Magali herself absolutely refused, and that she then began a tentative romance with Gerald (Alain Libolt), whom she met through the ad, again in Magali’s name. But we think we see where Rohmer is going with this. We can see Gerald becoming more and more interested in Isabelle and can imagine what will happen when she breaks the news to him that she is married and really has been wooing on behalf of her friend, whom he has never met.</p>
<p>But it doesn’t happen as we expect. In fact Gerald finds it fairly easy to transfer the interest he has built up in Isabelle to Magali, even though the two women are physical and emotional opposites. It is Isabelle who can’t let go. Suddenly we realize that her solicitousness on behalf of an old friend’s love life has really been a vicarious attempt to enliven her own, which has seemed up to this point to be completely untroubled. In fact it is the married Isabelle, far more than the unmarried Magali who is desperate for masculine attention. And for just a moment, before the moment passes, she is prepared to risk everything for a man she hardly knows. At the same time, she is not wrong, not at all wrong, when she says to Gerald by way of explanation for the pass she has made at him: “I want all men to love me — especially those I don’t love.”</p>
<p>This incident also casts a light on the other strand of the plot, in which Magali’s son’s new girlfriend, Rosine (Alexia Portal) is also trying to matchmake on her behalf. Having decided that she doesn’t much like the son after all, she stays with him because she has so quickly formed a close bond with his mother. “I fell for her, not him,” she tells her previous boyfriend, Étienne (Didier Sandre), the much older professeur de philo whom she is trying to get rid of. Then, teasingly: “I replaced you not with a boyfriend but with his mother.” Naturally, her own interest in Magali makes her think that Étienne would be perfect for her. Not only would this get rid of the boyfriend and make Magali happy, she thinks, but “Then he would be taboo for me and I for him. I’d love that.”</p>
<p>In this case we could probably figure out for ourselves the subtext of Rosine’s solicitude for Magali, but the parallel example of Isabelle helps to make the film’s point about the distance to be traveled between spring and autumn in a woman’s life, between the cold, adventurous — even predatory — Rosine and the warm but lonely Magali, each of whom finds something to complete her in the other. This point is also nicely shaded by memories of a younger Miss Romand’s memorable performances as a young (but early young and late young), unmarried girl in two of Rohmer’s greatest films, Claire’s Knee (1969) and Le Beau Mariage (1982).</p>
<p>The second moment comes as a throwaway. You might almost miss it, except that it has such tremendous implications for what otherwise looks like a wonderfully and surprisingly warm and happy ending. To get it, you have to cast your memory back to a conversation between Gerald and Isabelle when the latter was interviewing him, as it were, on behalf of Magali. When he thought he was talking to a sympathetic Isabelle, he confided in her that he loved industrial architecture, and that the ugly smokestacks of the local power station seemed beautiful to him. Later, at the wedding party for Isabelle’s daughter where shy Magali, unbeknownst to her, is to meet not only Gerald but also Étienne at their respective sponsors’ behest, shows her only passion when she is shocked that the hedge has been cut down that screened the view of the power station.</p>
<p>At this point we don’t yet know the outcome of the potentially farcical situation that Rohmer has arranged for us. As it becomes apparent to us — Gerald is a hit and Étienne a flop — we find ourselves wishing more than either Isabelle or Rosine for Magali’s happiness. But at the very moment when, surprisingly, her prospects seem brightest and even before we have time to worry about the complications that seem to threaten what would otherwise be a promising relationship, if we had experienced it as the characters do, the thing seems already futile. At some point in the hopeful future when they are on their second or third date, Gerald will reveal a love for smokestacks and Magali will reveal that she cannot love a man who loves smokestacks.</p>
<p>Or not. Perhaps the story would be even better and more piquant in its melancholy if she were to swallow her own dislike of smokestacks for Gerald’s sake. But either way, Rohmer has already qualified for us in his inimitably Rohmerian way the hope that is so natural for beginning lovers and for lovers of romance — namely, that they represent a harmony of thought and feeling that bespeaks the melding of two souls. No, no. This is a tale of autumn, of middle age, when romance is still possible — maybe — but not that starry-eyed kind that we see in Isabelle’s daughter, the bride, who can’t stand Magali. Or not for more than a minute or two. To produce all this autumnal meditation, Rohmer gives us nothing more than this tiny hint of what the future is likely to hold.</p>
<p>Otherwise, he asks us to be completely caught up in the tentative coming together of Gerald and Magali — and the poor lost souls that their hopeful match leaves behind. Isabelle, for one, but also Rosine (Alexia Portal), the would-be matchmaker, Etienne, her chosen match, and Leo, Rosine’s boyfriend and Magali’s son, who doesn’t know (or who really does know) that Rosine doesn’t care for him at all, but only goes out with him because she fell in love with his mother. The trail of heartbreak is there for all to see, but Rohmer makes it as easy for us to ignore as it is for the other incorrigible romantics whose lives he chronicles.</p> | false | 1 | two perfect transcendent moments tale autumn conte dautomne fourth perhaps best eric rohmers magisterial series tales four seasons first suddenly realize simple story two women married isabelle marie rivière divorced friend magali béatrice romand trying fix man far simple seemed hitherto right little weird isabelle placed personal ad magalis name since magali absolutely refused began tentative romance gerald alain libolt met ad magalis name think see rohmer going see gerald becoming interested isabelle imagine happen breaks news married really wooing behalf friend never met doesnt happen expect fact gerald finds fairly easy transfer interest built isabelle magali even though two women physical emotional opposites isabelle cant let go suddenly realize solicitousness behalf old friends love life really vicarious attempt enliven seemed point completely untroubled fact married isabelle far unmarried magali desperate masculine attention moment moment passes prepared risk everything man hardly knows time wrong wrong says gerald way explanation pass made want men love especially dont love incident also casts light strand plot magalis sons new girlfriend rosine alexia portal also trying matchmake behalf decided doesnt much like son stays quickly formed close bond mother fell tells previous boyfriend Étienne didier sandre much older professeur de philo trying get rid teasingly replaced boyfriend mother naturally interest magali makes think Étienne would perfect would get rid boyfriend make magali happy thinks would taboo id love case could probably figure subtext rosines solicitude magali parallel example isabelle helps make films point distance traveled spring autumn womans life cold adventurous even predatory rosine warm lonely magali finds something complete point also nicely shaded memories younger miss romands memorable performances young early young late young unmarried girl two rohmers greatest films claires knee 1969 le beau mariage 1982 second moment comes throwaway might almost miss except tremendous implications otherwise looks like wonderfully surprisingly warm happy ending get cast memory back conversation gerald isabelle latter interviewing behalf magali thought talking sympathetic isabelle confided loved industrial architecture ugly smokestacks local power station seemed beautiful later wedding party isabelles daughter shy magali unbeknownst meet gerald also Étienne respective sponsors behest shows passion shocked hedge cut screened view power station point dont yet know outcome potentially farcical situation rohmer arranged us becomes apparent us gerald hit Étienne flop find wishing either isabelle rosine magalis happiness moment surprisingly prospects seem brightest even time worry complications seem threaten would otherwise promising relationship experienced characters thing seems already futile point hopeful future second third date gerald reveal love smokestacks magali reveal love man loves smokestacks perhaps story would even better piquant melancholy swallow dislike smokestacks geralds sake either way rohmer already qualified us inimitably rohmerian way hope natural beginning lovers lovers romance namely represent harmony thought feeling bespeaks melding two souls tale autumn middle age romance still possible maybe starryeyed kind see isabelles daughter bride cant stand magali minute two produce autumnal meditation rohmer gives us nothing tiny hint future likely hold otherwise asks us completely caught tentative coming together gerald magali poor lost souls hopeful match leaves behind isabelle one also rosine alexia portal wouldbe matchmaker etienne chosen match leo rosines boyfriend magalis son doesnt know really know rosine doesnt care goes fell love mother trail heartbreak see rohmer makes easy us ignore incorrigible romantics whose lives chronicles | 538 |
<p>Throughout what U.S. Catholics called the “Long Lent” of 2002, when every week seemed to bring revelations of clerical sexual abuse and its mishandling by the church’s bishops, some observers suggested that this crisis was the byproduct of some distinctive features of Catholic life: a celibate priesthood, a church governed by male bishops, a demanding sexual ethic. “Modernize” the church by changing all that, they argued, and these horrible problems would abate, even disappear.</p>
<p>Sexual abuse is indeed horrible, but there is no empirical evidence that it is a uniquely, predominantly, or even strikingly Catholic problem. The sexual abuse of the young is a global plague. In the United States, some 40 to 60 percent of such abuse takes place within families-often at the hands of live-in boyfriends or the second (or third, or fourth) husband of a child’s mother; those cases have nothing to do with celibacy. The case of a married Wilmington, Dela., pediatrician charged with 471 counts of sexual abuse in February has nothing to do with celibacy. Neither did the 290,000 cases of sexual abuse in American public schools between 1991 and 2000, estimated by Charol Shakeshaft of Virginia Commonwealth University. And given the significant level of abuse problems in Christian denominations with married clergy, it’s hard to accept the notion that marriage is somehow a barrier against sexually abusive clergy. (Indeed, the idea of reducing marriage to an abuse-prevention program ought to be repulsive.) Sexual abusers throughout the world are overwhelmingly noncelibates.</p>
<p>Too many of the church’s bishops failed to grasp the drastic measures required to address the sexual abuse of the young-that’s obvious, and has been admitted by the bishops of the United States and two popes. Yet it is hard to see what these failures had to do with gender. Like others, many bishops had a misplaced faith in the power of psychiatrists and psychologists to “fix” sexual predators, thinking these men could be “cured” and quietly returned to ministry without damaging the church’s reputation. In his recent scathing letter to the Catholic Church in Ireland, Pope Benedict XVI denounced bishops who were more concerned with protecting the church’s image than with protecting vulnerable young people. It’s a critique that was applicable decades ago in the United States-but the same criticism can be made of teachers-union leaders and state legislators today who ignore or try to bury reports of sexual abuse in America’s public schools.</p>
<p>So, yes, aspects of clerical culture in the U.S. and elsewhere contributed to the problem, but that same deplorable circle-the-wagons instinct has warped the response to this plague in other sectors of society. The difference is that the Catholic Church in America has taken more rigorous action since 2002 to protect the young people in its care than any other similarly situated institution, to the point where the church is likely America’s safest environment for young people.</p>
<p>There may be a grain of truth in the suggestion that women’s perspectives on these issues would have helped mitigate the Catholic crisis of clerical sexual abuse and episcopal misgovernance: in the past the male clerical culture of Catholicism seems to have blunted in some Catholic clergy a natural and instinctive revulsion at the sexual abuse of the young-a revulsion, it is suggested, that a woman would immediately feel and act upon. But the sad, further truth is that there are no gender guarantees when it comes to sexual abuse: the physical and sexual abuse of young Irish girls in “Magdalene Asylums” decades ago was committed by religious sisters.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, it should also be noted that the U.S. church’s handling of abuse and misgovernance since 2002 has been immensely strengthened by the insight and professional expertise of many women-just as we also ought to recognize that laywomen, single and married, are usually the teachers who make today’s Catholic schools safe and successful. Moreover, women are the great majority of the volunteers and paid staff who make Catholic parishes both safe and vital. The notion that women don’t have anything to do with how the Catholic Church operates confuses the Catholic Church with the higher altitudes of “the Vatican,” and ignores how Catholic life is actually lived in America and Europe.</p>
<p>As for doctrine: what ought to be obvious about sexual abuse in the Catholic Church is that these grave sins and crimes were acts of infidelity, denials of the truths the church teaches. A priest who takes seriously the vows of his ordination is not a sexual abuser or predator. And if a bishop takes seriously his ordination oath to shepherd the Lord’s flock, he will always put the safety of the Master’s little ones ahead of concerns about public scandal. Catholic Lite is not the answer to what has essentially been a crisis of fidelity.</p>
<p>Since 2002, with strong support from then-cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (and from him still as Benedict XVI), the Catholic Church in America has developed and enforced policies and procedures to ensure the safety of the young that offer an important model for the world church. There were only six credible reports of sexual abuse of the young in the U.S. church last year. And while that is six too many in a church that ought to hold itself to the highest standards, it is nonetheless remarkable in a community of 68 million people.</p>
<p>What is essential throughout the world, however, is that the church become more Catholic, not less. John Paul II’s “Theology of the Body” proposed an understanding of faithful and fruitful human love as an icon of God’s inner life. That vision is far nobler, far more compelling, and far more humane than the sex-as-contact-sport teaching of the sexual revolution, the principal victims of which seem to be vulnerable young people. Those who are genuinely committed to the protection of the young might ponder whether Catholicism really needs to become Catholic Lite-or whether the Augean stables of present-day culture need a radical cleansing.</p>
<p>George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of Washington’s Ethics and Public Policy Center, where he holds the William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies, and the author of The Courage To Be Catholic: Crisis, Reform, and the Future of The Church (Basic Books).</p> | false | 1 | throughout us catholics called long lent 2002 every week seemed bring revelations clerical sexual abuse mishandling churchs bishops observers suggested crisis byproduct distinctive features catholic life celibate priesthood church governed male bishops demanding sexual ethic modernize church changing argued horrible problems would abate even disappear sexual abuse indeed horrible empirical evidence uniquely predominantly even strikingly catholic problem sexual abuse young global plague united states 40 60 percent abuse takes place within familiesoften hands livein boyfriends second third fourth husband childs mother cases nothing celibacy case married wilmington dela pediatrician charged 471 counts sexual abuse february nothing celibacy neither 290000 cases sexual abuse american public schools 1991 2000 estimated charol shakeshaft virginia commonwealth university given significant level abuse problems christian denominations married clergy hard accept notion marriage somehow barrier sexually abusive clergy indeed idea reducing marriage abuseprevention program ought repulsive sexual abusers throughout world overwhelmingly noncelibates many churchs bishops failed grasp drastic measures required address sexual abuse youngthats obvious admitted bishops united states two popes yet hard see failures gender like others many bishops misplaced faith power psychiatrists psychologists fix sexual predators thinking men could cured quietly returned ministry without damaging churchs reputation recent scathing letter catholic church ireland pope benedict xvi denounced bishops concerned protecting churchs image protecting vulnerable young people critique applicable decades ago united statesbut criticism made teachersunion leaders state legislators today ignore try bury reports sexual abuse americas public schools yes aspects clerical culture us elsewhere contributed problem deplorable circlethewagons instinct warped response plague sectors society difference catholic church america taken rigorous action since 2002 protect young people care similarly situated institution point church likely americas safest environment young people may grain truth suggestion womens perspectives issues would helped mitigate catholic crisis clerical sexual abuse episcopal misgovernance past male clerical culture catholicism seems blunted catholic clergy natural instinctive revulsion sexual abuse younga revulsion suggested woman would immediately feel act upon sad truth gender guarantees comes sexual abuse physical sexual abuse young irish girls magdalene asylums decades ago committed religious sisters nevertheless also noted us churchs handling abuse misgovernance since 2002 immensely strengthened insight professional expertise many womenjust also ought recognize laywomen single married usually teachers make todays catholic schools safe successful moreover women great majority volunteers paid staff make catholic parishes safe vital notion women dont anything catholic church operates confuses catholic church higher altitudes vatican ignores catholic life actually lived america europe doctrine ought obvious sexual abuse catholic church grave sins crimes acts infidelity denials truths church teaches priest takes seriously vows ordination sexual abuser predator bishop takes seriously ordination oath shepherd lords flock always put safety masters little ones ahead concerns public scandal catholic lite answer essentially crisis fidelity since 2002 strong support thencardinal joseph ratzinger still benedict xvi catholic church america developed enforced policies procedures ensure safety young offer important model world church six credible reports sexual abuse young us church last year six many church ought hold highest standards nonetheless remarkable community 68 million people essential throughout world however church become catholic less john paul iis theology body proposed understanding faithful fruitful human love icon gods inner life vision far nobler far compelling far humane sexascontactsport teaching sexual revolution principal victims seem vulnerable young people genuinely committed protection young might ponder whether catholicism really needs become catholic liteor whether augean stables presentday culture need radical cleansing george weigel distinguished senior fellow washingtons ethics public policy center holds william e simon chair catholic studies author courage catholic crisis reform future church basic books | 579 |
<p>Minnijean Brown-Trickey will walk up to the doors of Little Rock Central High celebrating a victory this week, almost 60 years to the day since she was first set upon, spat at and terrorized by a white mob for enrolling at the former all-white school in Arkansas.</p>
<p>Now an activist and non-violence mentor for children, the 75 year old will <a href="http://www.centralhigh60th.org/8302017-2/" type="external">commemorate</a> a group of black students who famously held firm in a battle to integrate US schools. &#160;</p>
<p>The pupils became known as the Little Rock Nine, with Brown, Melba Beals, Elizabeth Eckford, Ernest Green, Gloria Karlmark, Carlotta LaNier, Thelma Mothershed, Terrence Roberts, and Jefferson Thomas a target for those seeking to maintain the segregated status quo in Arkansas.</p>
<p>The episode saw local Governor Orval Faubus garner international coverage for flouting federal law as he used the Arkansas National <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/1994-12-15/news/mn-9162_1_orval-faubus" type="external">Guard</a>, under the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xERXusiEszs" type="external">guise</a> of a peacekeeping force, to block the nine students from school grounds.</p>
<p>The crisis escalated over the course of September 1957 until members of an elite infantry division were called into the city when, to paraphrase President Dwight D Eisenhower, the local government failed to eliminate <a href="https://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/research/online_documents/civil_rights_little_rock/1957_09_24_Press_Release.pdf" type="external">violent opposition</a>.</p>
<p>Minnijean Brown</p>
<p>Growing up in 1940s Arkansas, where public transport, restaurants and drinking fountains were segregated by skin color, Brown was acutely aware of the unfair society in which she lived. However, Brown tells RT.com that it wasn’t until her first day at Little Rock Central High School that she experienced mass, vitriolic hatred.</p>
<p>“In my family there was a great effort to protect me from individual prejudice. But you can’t be protected from institutional oppression,” she explained.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/usa/386506-la-riots-rodney-king-verdict/" type="external">READ MORE:&#160;Rodney King verdict at 25: How iconic video laid bare police brutality &amp; lit fuse of LA race riots</a></p>
<p>“I really thought that going to Central High was going to be simple. I thought it was going to be fun, and to walk into this mob, well you just get your heart broken and it never heals. You’re just so shocked.”</p>
<p>What transpired was a litmus test for a new era in US education, brought about by grassroots <a href="http://www.naacp.org/latest/celebrating-50-years-of-school-integration-in-little-rock/" type="external">activism</a> and the 1954 US Supreme Court <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/347/483/case.html" type="external">ruling</a> in Brown v Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas which determined that racially divided schooling was unconstitutional and “inherently unequal.”</p>
<p>In the book ‘Little Rock: Race and Resistance at Central High School,’ Karen Anderson wrote how in Arkansas, African American schools were reliant on support from outside philanthropists such as Julius Rosenwald. The white Central High School, meanwhile, received full funding to the tune of $1.5 million from the state.</p>
<p>White riots</p>
<p>Up until the morning of September 4, 1957, Brown had been more concerned about what she would wear to class, than the thought of crossing a racial divide. But, on arriving at the school, she and the others were met by adults and children screaming for them to be lynched.</p>
<p>“Even though we lived in a segregated society and things were denied us, we were still brainwashed by the thought of the United States being the best place in the world. We said all those pledges and anthems. Brainwashing is some very powerful stuff, so it made it even more shocking because in my 15-year-old innocence I couldn’t imagine this happening,” she said.</p>
<p>“My mother said I was just worried about what I was going to wear the first day and getting new shows. I was feeling excited.</p>
<p>“The Arkansas National Guard had all the streets blocked off and a perimeter around the whole school. I think five of us walked up together. It sounded like a sports event, a large number of people screaming, but they were screaming hatred like ‘kill them.’”</p>
<p>The incident made <a href="https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/23132155/" type="external">headlines</a> throughout <a href="http://tucson.com/morguetales/sept-arizona-daily-star-front-pages-fights-over-school-integration/collection_0232341e-8f3d-11e7-b857-1f18d55dca0a.html" type="external">America</a>, and produced the infamous image of white bigotry – student Hazel Bryan shouting abuse from behind Elizabeth Eckford.</p>
<p>“When I see those pictures I think they gave away their dignity and it landed on us because we were just standing there looking pretty bewildered. We were shaking in our boots,” Brown told RT.com.</p>
<p>Caught between a ring of guardsmen and an increasingly angry pack of segregationists, the children had to abandon their efforts. But she says the hatred succeeded only in making her more determined to go to school.</p>
<p>“What the guards would do was when a white kid came up they opened and let them in. But they completely stopped us. When I have to think about it it triggers me to this day.”</p>
<p>She adds: “I was going to go to school no matter what because when you see people behaving like that you say: ‘You’re not going to stop me… you’re not going to stop me with your brutality.”</p>
<p>‘Berserk’ mob</p>
<p>On September 23, the students actually made it inside the school through a side entrance only to be evacuated before lunchtime, when a 1,000-strong mob gathered on the school grounds.</p>
<p>“They were hanging effigies and they kicked and beat this black reporter,” said Brown.</p>
<p>“We were in there about an hour and a half when we were told that we had to leave for our safety. We had to go to an underground area where we got into two police cars. They told use to put our heads down and don’t look up. The drivers were told ‘once you start, do not stop’.</p>
<p>“I think the most interesting thing I can say about that day was the driver of my car had a gun and a billy club – &#160;he was a cop – and his hands were shaking.”</p>
<p>Infantry spring to action</p>
<p>Worldwide coverage of the trouble forced the hand of US President Dwight D Eisenhower, who ordered the 101st Airborne Division to disperse “demagogic extremists” and end interference at the school.</p>
<p>On September 25, 1957, the Little Rock Nine would enter through the front door of Central High surrounded by uniformed soldiers carrying rifles and bayonets. The group’s ordeal was only just beginning, however, as they would be subjected to torrents of abuse throughout the year.</p>
<p>Brown believes integration was designed to fail in Arkansas, given only nine black students were part of the process and that she herself was eventually expelled in February 1957 for calling a female student, who had thrown a purse filled with metal locks at her head, ‘white trash.’</p>
<p>“It really wasn’t supposed to happen the way it did. I think everyone thought that we would be scared away and we wouldn’t continue.</p>
<p>“All I did was learn how to survive in that horrific circumstance. But we did and I’m so proud of us for that.”</p> | false | 1 | minnijean browntrickey walk doors little rock central high celebrating victory week almost 60 years day since first set upon spat terrorized white mob enrolling former allwhite school arkansas activist nonviolence mentor children 75 year old commemorate group black students famously held firm battle integrate us schools 160 pupils became known little rock nine brown melba beals elizabeth eckford ernest green gloria karlmark carlotta lanier thelma mothershed terrence roberts jefferson thomas target seeking maintain segregated status quo arkansas episode saw local governor orval faubus garner international coverage flouting federal law used arkansas national guard guise peacekeeping force block nine students school grounds crisis escalated course september 1957 members elite infantry division called city paraphrase president dwight eisenhower local government failed eliminate violent opposition minnijean brown growing 1940s arkansas public transport restaurants drinking fountains segregated skin color brown acutely aware unfair society lived however brown tells rtcom wasnt first day little rock central high school experienced mass vitriolic hatred family great effort protect individual prejudice cant protected institutional oppression explained read more160rodney king verdict 25 iconic video laid bare police brutality amp lit fuse la race riots really thought going central high going simple thought going fun walk mob well get heart broken never heals youre shocked transpired litmus test new era us education brought grassroots activism 1954 us supreme court ruling brown v board education topeka kansas determined racially divided schooling unconstitutional inherently unequal book little rock race resistance central high school karen anderson wrote arkansas african american schools reliant support outside philanthropists julius rosenwald white central high school meanwhile received full funding tune 15 million state white riots morning september 4 1957 brown concerned would wear class thought crossing racial divide arriving school others met adults children screaming lynched even though lived segregated society things denied us still brainwashed thought united states best place world said pledges anthems brainwashing powerful stuff made even shocking 15yearold innocence couldnt imagine happening said mother said worried going wear first day getting new shows feeling excited arkansas national guard streets blocked perimeter around whole school think five us walked together sounded like sports event large number people screaming screaming hatred like kill incident made headlines throughout america produced infamous image white bigotry student hazel bryan shouting abuse behind elizabeth eckford see pictures think gave away dignity landed us standing looking pretty bewildered shaking boots brown told rtcom caught ring guardsmen increasingly angry pack segregationists children abandon efforts says hatred succeeded making determined go school guards would white kid came opened let completely stopped us think triggers day adds going go school matter see people behaving like say youre going stop youre going stop brutality berserk mob september 23 students actually made inside school side entrance evacuated lunchtime 1000strong mob gathered school grounds hanging effigies kicked beat black reporter said brown hour half told leave safety go underground area got two police cars told use put heads dont look drivers told start stop think interesting thing say day driver car gun billy club 160he cop hands shaking infantry spring action worldwide coverage trouble forced hand us president dwight eisenhower ordered 101st airborne division disperse demagogic extremists end interference school september 25 1957 little rock nine would enter front door central high surrounded uniformed soldiers carrying rifles bayonets groups ordeal beginning however would subjected torrents abuse throughout year brown believes integration designed fail arkansas given nine black students part process eventually expelled february 1957 calling female student thrown purse filled metal locks head white trash really wasnt supposed happen way think everyone thought would scared away wouldnt continue learn survive horrific circumstance im proud us | 599 |
<p>Brexiteer Nigel Farage has attacked Theresa May’s EU deal, stating it allows the UK to “move on to the next stage of humiliation.” Business leaders, however, said they were “breathing a huge sigh of relief.”</p>
<p>Farage, the former leader of UKIP, took to Twitter following Friday morning’s announcement of a deal struck allowing negotiations in the withdrawal from the EU to move to the second phase. He tweeted: “A deal in Brussels is good news for Mrs May as we can now move on to the next stage of humiliation.”&#160;Farage has been critical of the negotiations, accusing the UK government of “betraying” the Brexit expectations of millions of voters after conceding ground on the Irish border.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/uk/412398-brexit-deal-ireland-may/" type="external">READ MORE:&#160;Confirmed! Brexit deal brokered between May and EU – no hard border for N. Ireland</a></p>
<p>Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon welcomed the move to the next stage of talks, but raised some concerns, tweeting: “Move to phase 2 of talks good – but devil is in the detail and things now get really tough. If #Brexit is happening (wish it wasn’t) staying in single market &amp; customs union is only sensible option. And any special arrangements for NI must be available to other UK nations.”</p>
<p>Move to phase 2 of talks good – but devil is in the detail and things now get really tough. If <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Brexit?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" type="external">#Brexit</a> is happening (wish it wasn’t) staying in single market &amp; customs union is only sensible option. And any special arrangements for NI must be available to other UK nations.</p>
<p>— Nicola Sturgeon (@NicolaSturgeon) <a href="https://twitter.com/NicolaSturgeon/status/939034962187010049?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" type="external">December 8, 2017</a></p>
<p>An aside – a UK government that is able to say that come what may, it will avoid hard borders with Ireland/NI after Brexit can never again tell Scotland that independence would mean a hard border between Scotland and rUK</p>
<p>— Nicola Sturgeon (@NicolaSturgeon) <a href="https://twitter.com/NicolaSturgeon/status/939043713917030401?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" type="external">December 8, 2017</a></p>
<p>Not leave the EU. <a href="https://t.co/lQ0SAZqyj4" type="external">https://t.co/lQ0SAZqyj4</a></p>
<p>— Nicola Sturgeon (@NicolaSturgeon) <a href="https://twitter.com/NicolaSturgeon/status/939058587762118657?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" type="external">December 8, 2017</a></p>
<p>The Democratic Union Party (DUP), which props up May’s Tory government, said there is still more work to do to establish how Irish border arrangements will look after Brexit.“We believe there is still more work to be done to improve the paper. Specifically, more work is needed around the areas of cooperation where it would be necessary to have alignment of rules and standards,” the DUP said in a statement, adding that more needs to be done to establish how alignment could be effected without staying in the EU’s single market and customs union.</p>
<p>The DUP also said that its support for the final deal would depend on its contents, and that it had cautioned May about its reservations.</p>
<p>Adam Marshall, the director general of the British Chambers of Commerce, was far more positive about the negotiation breakthrough. In a statement he said: “Businesses will be breathing a sigh of relief that ‘sufficient progress’ has been achieved.” He added: “After the noise and political brinksmanship of recent days, news of a breakthrough in the negotiations will be warmly welcomed by companies across the UK.”</p>
<p>Marshall said business will “particularly cheer the mutual commitment to a transition period to support business confidence and trade.” They will want details of this confirmed swiftly in the new year when negotiators move on to the big questions around our future trade relationship with the EU, he added.</p>
<p>Brexit minister David Davis said Britain had taken a big step forward. “Today is a big step forward in delivering Brexit. Been a lot of work but glad the Commission have now recommended that sufficient progress has been reached,” Davis tweeted.</p>
<p>Chancellor Philip Hammond congratulated May, saying a deal in Brussels is a boost for Britain’s economy. He said on Twitter: “Delighted a deal agreed in Brussels that paves way for further progress on talks about future UK/EU relationship. A positive step. Today’s announcement in Brussels is a boost for Britain’s economy. Now let’s conclude a trade deal that supports Britain’s jobs, businesses and prosperity.”</p>
<p>Delighted a deal agreed in Brussels that paves way for further progress on talks about future UK/EU relationship. A positive step. Congratulations <a href="https://twitter.com/theresa_may?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" type="external">@theresa_may</a></p>
<p>— Philip Hammond (@PhilipHammondUK) <a href="https://twitter.com/PhilipHammondUK/status/939033419324854272?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" type="external">December 8, 2017</a></p>
<p>Today’s announcement in Brussels is a boost for Britain’s economy. Now let’s conclude a trade deal that supports Britain’s jobs, businesses and prosperity.</p>
<p>— Philip Hammond (@PhilipHammondUK) <a href="https://twitter.com/PhilipHammondUK/status/939036501538611200?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" type="external">December 8, 2017</a></p>
<p>Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt tweeted it was time for Mrs. May’s critics “to recognise her extraordinary strength &amp; resilience which, whatever the hurdles ahead, will deliver stage 2 just as it has delivered stage 1.”</p>
<p>Time for <a href="https://twitter.com/theresa_may?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" type="external">@theresa_may</a> critics to recognise her extraordinary strength &amp; resilience which, whatever the hurdles ahead, will deliver stage 2 just as it has delivered stage 1</p>
<p>— Jeremy Hunt (@Jeremy_Hunt) <a href="https://twitter.com/Jeremy_Hunt/status/939029530676576256?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" type="external">December 8, 2017</a></p>
<p>This deal gives our brilliant EU doctors &amp; nurses binding guarantees about their residence rights. NHS staff please spread the word to European colleagues: this is your home, we value your life-saving work, and we want you to stay.</p>
<p>— Jeremy Hunt (@Jeremy_Hunt) <a href="https://twitter.com/Jeremy_Hunt/status/939052992736751616?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" type="external">December 8, 2017</a></p>
<p>Environment Secretary Michael Gove, an influential pro-Brexit voice in May’s cabinet, has also signaled his support for the deal. “This is a significant personal political achievement for the Prime Minister… Earlier this week, there were all sorts of doomsayers who thought there would be no prospect of an agreement. They’ve been proven wrong,” he told BBC radio.</p>
<p>Amber Rudd, the home secretary, also said she was delighted with the news. She said on Twitter: “Delighted we’ve reached an agreement which will give both Europeans here in the UK and British citizens in the EU binding guarantees about their residence rights.” She added: “I hope this will now give those concerned real peace of mind. We are building a new system so that the application process will be smooth and simple. For now, EU citizens in the UK, do not need to do anything.”</p>
<p>1/2 Delighted we’ve reached an agreement which will give both Europeans here in the UK and British citizens in the EU binding guarantees about their residence rights.</p>
<p>— Amber Rudd MP (@AmberRuddHR) <a href="https://twitter.com/AmberRuddHR/status/939040427813961728?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" type="external">December 8, 2017</a></p>
<p>2/2 I hope this will now give those concerned real peace of mind. We are building a new system so that the application process will be smooth and simple. For now, EU citizens in the UK, do not need to do anything.</p>
<p>— Amber Rudd MP (@AmberRuddHR) <a href="https://twitter.com/AmberRuddHR/status/939041082721128448?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" type="external">December 8, 2017</a></p> | false | 1 | brexiteer nigel farage attacked theresa mays eu deal stating allows uk move next stage humiliation business leaders however said breathing huge sigh relief farage former leader ukip took twitter following friday mornings announcement deal struck allowing negotiations withdrawal eu move second phase tweeted deal brussels good news mrs may move next stage humiliation160farage critical negotiations accusing uk government betraying brexit expectations millions voters conceding ground irish border read more160confirmed brexit deal brokered may eu hard border n ireland scottish first minister nicola sturgeon welcomed move next stage talks raised concerns tweeting move phase 2 talks good devil detail things get really tough brexit happening wish wasnt staying single market amp customs union sensible option special arrangements ni must available uk nations move phase 2 talks good devil detail things get really tough brexit happening wish wasnt staying single market amp customs union sensible option special arrangements ni must available uk nations nicola sturgeon nicolasturgeon december 8 2017 aside uk government able say come may avoid hard borders irelandni brexit never tell scotland independence would mean hard border scotland ruk nicola sturgeon nicolasturgeon december 8 2017 leave eu httpstcolq0sazqyj4 nicola sturgeon nicolasturgeon december 8 2017 democratic union party dup props mays tory government said still work establish irish border arrangements look brexitwe believe still work done improve paper specifically work needed around areas cooperation would necessary alignment rules standards dup said statement adding needs done establish alignment could effected without staying eus single market customs union dup also said support final deal would depend contents cautioned may reservations adam marshall director general british chambers commerce far positive negotiation breakthrough statement said businesses breathing sigh relief sufficient progress achieved added noise political brinksmanship recent days news breakthrough negotiations warmly welcomed companies across uk marshall said business particularly cheer mutual commitment transition period support business confidence trade want details confirmed swiftly new year negotiators move big questions around future trade relationship eu added brexit minister david davis said britain taken big step forward today big step forward delivering brexit lot work glad commission recommended sufficient progress reached davis tweeted chancellor philip hammond congratulated may saying deal brussels boost britains economy said twitter delighted deal agreed brussels paves way progress talks future ukeu relationship positive step todays announcement brussels boost britains economy lets conclude trade deal supports britains jobs businesses prosperity delighted deal agreed brussels paves way progress talks future ukeu relationship positive step congratulations theresa_may philip hammond philiphammonduk december 8 2017 todays announcement brussels boost britains economy lets conclude trade deal supports britains jobs businesses prosperity philip hammond philiphammonduk december 8 2017 health secretary jeremy hunt tweeted time mrs mays critics recognise extraordinary strength amp resilience whatever hurdles ahead deliver stage 2 delivered stage 1 time theresa_may critics recognise extraordinary strength amp resilience whatever hurdles ahead deliver stage 2 delivered stage 1 jeremy hunt jeremy_hunt december 8 2017 deal gives brilliant eu doctors amp nurses binding guarantees residence rights nhs staff please spread word european colleagues home value lifesaving work want stay jeremy hunt jeremy_hunt december 8 2017 environment secretary michael gove influential probrexit voice mays cabinet also signaled support deal significant personal political achievement prime minister earlier week sorts doomsayers thought would prospect agreement theyve proven wrong told bbc radio amber rudd home secretary also said delighted news said twitter delighted weve reached agreement give europeans uk british citizens eu binding guarantees residence rights added hope give concerned real peace mind building new system application process smooth simple eu citizens uk need anything 12 delighted weve reached agreement give europeans uk british citizens eu binding guarantees residence rights amber rudd mp amberruddhr december 8 2017 22 hope give concerned real peace mind building new system application process smooth simple eu citizens uk need anything amber rudd mp amberruddhr december 8 2017 | 629 |
<p>The past two months have laid bare the emptiness of the president’s most prominent Obamacare promises.&#160; Millions are losing the plans they have and like against their wishes, contrary to the president’s oft-repeated pledge.&#160; And those being forced into Obamacare could lose access to the doctors and hospitals they trust, also contrary to assurances from the president.&#160; The evidence demonstrating that these commitments cannot be met is so overwhelming that even the administration has abandoned defense of the president’s previous statements.</p>
<p>But there’s still one claim the Obama administration hasn’t yet admitted will not come true, which is that Obamacare will drive overall health costs down, rather than up.&#160; More precisely, the administration continues to insist that the law is responsible for slowing the pace of rapidly rising health costs and will continue to slow the growth of such costs in the future, with great economic benefits for families and the entire country.</p>
<p>That’s the contention in a just released white paper from the president’s Council of Economic Advisers (CEA).&#160; But the CEA paper is just as misleading and flawed as previous efforts to defend the president’s other discredited promises.&#160; The clear evidence indicates that precisely the opposite of what CEA asserts is true.</p>
<p>The CEA paper attempts to make the case for Obamacare by looking at trends from the most recent release of National Health Expenditure (NHE) projections.&#160; The NHE data, compiled by the independent Office of the Actuary in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), does show a slowdown in health spending in recent years.&#160; NHE spending growth per capita has averaged 3.1 percent since 2010, down from 5.9 percent in the previous decade.</p>
<p>But the slowdown did not start abruptly in 2010.&#160; In 2002, NHE spending per capita rose 8.5 percent and then began to slow over the ensuring years.&#160; In 2008, NHE spending per capita rose just 3.7 percent – two years before Obamacare was enacted.</p>
<p>Though the CEA paper fails to mention it, the HHS actuaries recently published their own paper explaining in detail why their estimates of health costs over the coming decade are lower now than they were a few years ago. They pointed to economic conditions, fiscal policy changes (such as the 2 percent sequester of Medicare payments), and a slowdown in growth in Medicaid, Medicare, and other government programs due to factors unrelated to Obamacare.</p>
<p>Moreover, the actuaries noted that the effects of Obamacare itself increased their expectation of higher health costs.&#160; This shouldn’t be surprising. The law’s Medicaid expansion and new subsidies for insurance offered in the exchanges will greatly increase the demand for health services, and soaring demand always increases prices and costs.&#160; The actuaries forecast that Obamacare will increase overall national health spending over the period 2012 to 2022 by $621 billion.&#160; In 2014 alone, Obamacare will increase NHE growth from 4.5 percent to 6.1 percent.&#160; Over the full decade, the law will add an average of 0.1 percentage point to cost growth every year.&#160; By 2022, the actuaries expect NHE spending to reach 19.9 percent of GDP, up from 17.9 percent in 2012.&#160; None of this is mentioned in the CEA white paper.</p>
<p>The CEA argues that new academic assessments rule out the recession as the full explanation for the slowdown.&#160; But the actuaries make it clear that recent trends are well within the historical relationship between economic performance and health spending growth rates. If anything is happening to explain the decade-long downward trend, it’s the 2003 liberalization of high-deductible insurance plans, in combination with Health Savings Accounts.&#160; Enrollment in these consumer-driven plans has soared from 1 million in 2005 to over 15 million people this year.</p>
<p>The CEA paper also touts Obamacare’s changes to Medicare, claiming that these cuts will lead to system-wide efficiency gains.&#160; But, again, exactly the opposite result is likely to occur. One of the most significant changes targets the private sector component of the program, called Medicare Advantage, with $200 billion in cuts over ten years.&#160; These cuts will force millions of seniors out of the Medicare plans they like and want to keep and back into the fragmented and inefficient fee-for-service component of Medicare.&#160; The CEA paper claims that changes in Medicare can lead to spillover effects in the rest of the health system. That is true.&#160; But there’s also abundant research showing that high enrollment in Medicare Advantage leads to cost reductions in fee-for-service and the commercial market too. That’s because hospitals and physician participating in more efficient Medicare Advantage plans tend to practice in a similar fashion for their non-Medicare Advantage patients too.&#160; Cutting Medicare Advantage simply puts more people into costly and inefficient fee-for-service medicine, with no real prospect of improved cost performance anytime soon.</p>
<p>The other big Medicare cut is a 1.1 percentage point reduction in the payment increases given to hospitals and other providers every year.&#160; The claims of long-term deficit reduction from Obamacare are based entirely on this blunt, across-the-board reduction that makes no distinction among the high and low value providers of care.&#160; The cumulative effect of this cut would be devastating for seniors enrolled in Medicare.&#160; By 2019, Medicare’s actuaries expect it to leave 15 percent of hospitals and other facilities with negative total margins, and thus little choice but to limit their Medicare admissions.&#160; By 2030, the percentage of facilities in this position would reach 25 percent.&#160; The actuaries are so dubious that these cuts can be sustained that they, as well as the Congressional Budget Office, have issued alternative Medicare projections that assume the cuts will be overturned.&#160; If they are, the supposed deficit reduction from Obamacare that CEA touts would vanish altogether.</p>
<p>Most Americans have been skeptical from day one about the president’s cost claims for Obamacare.&#160; Commonsense indicates that a program entitling millions of people to new health benefits is likely to increase cost pressures, not reduce them. Nothing in the CEA paper should convince anyone to abandon their skepticism.</p>
<p>James C. Capretta is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.</p> | false | 1 | past two months laid bare emptiness presidents prominent obamacare promises160 millions losing plans like wishes contrary presidents oftrepeated pledge160 forced obamacare could lose access doctors hospitals trust also contrary assurances president160 evidence demonstrating commitments met overwhelming even administration abandoned defense presidents previous statements theres still one claim obama administration hasnt yet admitted come true obamacare drive overall health costs rather up160 precisely administration continues insist law responsible slowing pace rapidly rising health costs continue slow growth costs future great economic benefits families entire country thats contention released white paper presidents council economic advisers cea160 cea paper misleading flawed previous efforts defend presidents discredited promises160 clear evidence indicates precisely opposite cea asserts true cea paper attempts make case obamacare looking trends recent release national health expenditure nhe projections160 nhe data compiled independent office actuary department health human services hhs show slowdown health spending recent years160 nhe spending growth per capita averaged 31 percent since 2010 59 percent previous decade slowdown start abruptly 2010160 2002 nhe spending per capita rose 85 percent began slow ensuring years160 2008 nhe spending per capita rose 37 percent two years obamacare enacted though cea paper fails mention hhs actuaries recently published paper explaining detail estimates health costs coming decade lower years ago pointed economic conditions fiscal policy changes 2 percent sequester medicare payments slowdown growth medicaid medicare government programs due factors unrelated obamacare moreover actuaries noted effects obamacare increased expectation higher health costs160 shouldnt surprising laws medicaid expansion new subsidies insurance offered exchanges greatly increase demand health services soaring demand always increases prices costs160 actuaries forecast obamacare increase overall national health spending period 2012 2022 621 billion160 2014 alone obamacare increase nhe growth 45 percent 61 percent160 full decade law add average 01 percentage point cost growth every year160 2022 actuaries expect nhe spending reach 199 percent gdp 179 percent 2012160 none mentioned cea white paper cea argues new academic assessments rule recession full explanation slowdown160 actuaries make clear recent trends well within historical relationship economic performance health spending growth rates anything happening explain decadelong downward trend 2003 liberalization highdeductible insurance plans combination health savings accounts160 enrollment consumerdriven plans soared 1 million 2005 15 million people year cea paper also touts obamacares changes medicare claiming cuts lead systemwide efficiency gains160 exactly opposite result likely occur one significant changes targets private sector component program called medicare advantage 200 billion cuts ten years160 cuts force millions seniors medicare plans like want keep back fragmented inefficient feeforservice component medicare160 cea paper claims changes medicare lead spillover effects rest health system true160 theres also abundant research showing high enrollment medicare advantage leads cost reductions feeforservice commercial market thats hospitals physician participating efficient medicare advantage plans tend practice similar fashion nonmedicare advantage patients too160 cutting medicare advantage simply puts people costly inefficient feeforservice medicine real prospect improved cost performance anytime soon big medicare cut 11 percentage point reduction payment increases given hospitals providers every year160 claims longterm deficit reduction obamacare based entirely blunt acrosstheboard reduction makes distinction among high low value providers care160 cumulative effect cut would devastating seniors enrolled medicare160 2019 medicares actuaries expect leave 15 percent hospitals facilities negative total margins thus little choice limit medicare admissions160 2030 percentage facilities position would reach 25 percent160 actuaries dubious cuts sustained well congressional budget office issued alternative medicare projections assume cuts overturned160 supposed deficit reduction obamacare cea touts would vanish altogether americans skeptical day one presidents cost claims obamacare160 commonsense indicates program entitling millions people new health benefits likely increase cost pressures reduce nothing cea paper convince anyone abandon skepticism james c capretta senior fellow ethics public policy center visiting fellow american enterprise institute | 603 |
<p>At her Supreme Court confirmation hearing in 1993, Ruth Bader Ginsburg repeatedly explained that the judicial obligation of impartiality required that she give “no hints, no forecasts, no previews” about how she might “vote on questions the Supreme Court may be called upon to decide.” As she declared in her opening statement:</p>
<p>A judge sworn to decide impartially can offer no forecasts, no hints, for that would show not only disregard for the specifics of the particular case, it would display disdain for the entire judicial process.</p>
<p>Alas, Justice Ginsburg is no longer following the ethical line recognized by nominee Ginsburg. In recent months, an “increasingly chatty” Ginsburg — that’s Linda Greenhouse’s <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/27/opinion/judge-on-the-spot.html?_r=0" type="external">characterization</a> — has given very clear hints about how she will vote on the hot-button question of whether the Constitution somehow forbids states from retaining the perennial definition of marriage as the union of a man and a woman.</p>
<p>Last August, a National Law Journal reporter <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/bench-memos/386244/justice-ginsburg-chatty-cathy-part-4-ed-whelan" type="external">asked</a> Ginsburg what the Court’s 2013 decision in Windsor v. United States portends for the battle against state marriage laws:</p>
<p>NLJ: When the 5–4 majority in United States v. Windsor struck down the marriage definition in the Defense of Marriage Act, Justice [Anthony] Kennedy’s opinion had two major strands in it: federalism and equal protection. Both sides in the same-sex marriage debate and litigation are relying on Windsor: opponents using federalism; supporters using equal protection. Did the court send conflicting signals in that decision? [Brackets in original.]</p>
<p>Instead of declining to answer — at a time when certiorari petitions on decisions striking down state marriage laws were pending before the Court — Ginsburg volunteered her views on this central question about the meaning of&#160;Windsor:</p>
<p>GINSBURG: In the federalism theme, marriage and family law have traditionally been the states’ domain and that goes one way. But then there is this eloquent statement about liberty and freedom to be what you are. The predecessor cases, also written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, those were not federalism cases, starting with Romer v. Colorado and then Lawrence v. Texas. I guess if you put those three together, you say the main theme is the right to be treated with equal dignity. [Emphasis added.]</p>
<p>I certainly believe that, on a proper understanding of what marriage is, state laws that define marriage as a male-female union treat all individuals “with equal dignity.” But it is quite clear that Ginsburg was broadcasting a very different message.</p>
<p>Then, just last week, a Bloomberg interviewer <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2015-02-12/ginsburg-doubt-gay-marriage-won-t-be-widely-accepted" type="external">posed this question</a> to Ginsburg:</p>
<p>Are you concerned that if this court this year were to say that there is a constitutional right for same-sex couples to marry that there are parts of the company — country that would not be able to accept or would not accept that decision?</p>
<p>Again declining to fend off the question, Ginsburg responded:</p>
<p>I think it’s doubtful that it wouldn’t be accepted. The change in people’s attitudes on that issue has been enormous. In recent years, people have — have said this is the way I am. And others looked around, and we discovered it’s our next door neighbor, we’re very fond of them. Or it’s our child’s best friend. Or even our child. I think that as more and more people came out and said, ‘This who I am,’ and the rest of us recognized that they are one of us, that there — there was a familiarity with people that didn’t exist in the beginning when the race problem was on the front burner, because we lived in segregated communities and it was truly a we/they kind of thing. But not so, I think, of the gay-rights movement. So I think it would not take — it would not take a large adjustment. And, of course, we shouldn’t speak much more about this subject, because one way or another, it will be decided before we leave town in June. [Emphasis added.]</p>
<p>To those familiar with Ginsburg’s view of the role of the Court, her thoughts about what the American public will accept are closely linked to how she will rule on this matter. A fervent believer in a supposed constitutional right to abortion, Ginsburg has nonetheless been <a href="http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/13/ginsburgs-roe-v-wade-blindspot/" type="external">famously critical</a> of Roe v. Wade for moving “too far, too fast” and thus triggering a pro-life backlash. Devoid of any firm anchor in the Constitution’s text and original meaning, her “living Constitution” approach takes its cues from how she reads “the climate of the age” (as she put it in her confirmation testimony). So when Ginsburg states that a Supreme Court ruling in favor of a constitutional right for same-sex couples would be accepted and would not trigger a backlash, she is very clearly signaling that she will vote in favor of such a right. (Ginsburg’s belated recognition that “we shouldn’t speak much more about this subject” can’t undo the damage.)</p>
<p>Under <a href="http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/28/455" type="external">federal law</a>, a justice or judge is obligated to “disqualify h[er]self in any proceeding in which [her] impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” It’s widely accepted, it’s worth emphasizing, that such disqualification can’t be rooted in views that a justice expressed in previous judicial opinions or in the justice’s explanation of those views. That explains why Ginsburg, at her confirmation hearing, was willing to provide “helpful clarifications” about her “13 years of opinions” as a D.C. Circuit judge. That also explains why the claims two years ago for Justice Scalia’s recusal from the marriage cases then pending were <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/bench-memos/335796/idiotic-claims-scalias-recusal-marriage-cases-ed-whelan" type="external">baseless</a>.</p>
<p>Ginsburg’s public comments provide ample reason to question her impartiality. Indeed, it’s no surprise (but still appalling) that the Human Rights Campaign is using Ginsburg’s comments to solicit signatures for the amicus brief that it will be submitting to the Court in the pending marriage cases:</p>
<p />
<p>For the very reasons that nominee Ginsburg recognized in her confirmation-hearing testimony, Justice Ginsburg’s gratuitous volunteering of very clear hints about how she will vote on an issue that she has never before addressed in a judicial opinion violates the judicial ethic of impartiality and requires her recusal from the pending marriage cases. Anything less would, in her words, “display disdain for the entire judicial process.”</p>
<p>Human nature being what it is, it’s not easy for a justice to recuse in a closely divided case that she obviously cares passionately about. This is exactly the situation Justice Scalia faced a dozen years ago in the wake of his public comments criticizing a Ninth Circuit ruling against the Pledge of Allegiance. As Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/assessment/2003/10/scaliapalooza.single.html" type="external">wrote</a> at the time, Scalia was “intellectually honest enough to know that he slipped,” and he thus “recused himself from what would have been one of the most important church–state cases of his career.” His recusal meant that “the court may well split 4–4 on the case, in which case the 9th Circuit’s decision will stand, for all the states in its jurisdiction.” (In the end, the remaining eight justices all voted to reverse the Ninth Circuit, five on grounds of lack of standing and three on the merits.)</p>
<p>We will soon see whether Justice Ginsburg is “intellectually honest enough to know that [she] slipped” and to recuse herself from the pending marriage cases.</p>
<p>— Edward Whelan is president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a leading contributor to National Review Online’s Bench Memos blog.</p> | false | 1 | supreme court confirmation hearing 1993 ruth bader ginsburg repeatedly explained judicial obligation impartiality required give hints forecasts previews might vote questions supreme court may called upon decide declared opening statement judge sworn decide impartially offer forecasts hints would show disregard specifics particular case would display disdain entire judicial process alas justice ginsburg longer following ethical line recognized nominee ginsburg recent months increasingly chatty ginsburg thats linda greenhouses characterization given clear hints vote hotbutton question whether constitution somehow forbids states retaining perennial definition marriage union man woman last august national law journal reporter asked ginsburg courts 2013 decision windsor v united states portends battle state marriage laws nlj 54 majority united states v windsor struck marriage definition defense marriage act justice anthony kennedys opinion two major strands federalism equal protection sides samesex marriage debate litigation relying windsor opponents using federalism supporters using equal protection court send conflicting signals decision brackets original instead declining answer time certiorari petitions decisions striking state marriage laws pending court ginsburg volunteered views central question meaning of160windsor ginsburg federalism theme marriage family law traditionally states domain goes one way eloquent statement liberty freedom predecessor cases also written justice anthony kennedy federalism cases starting romer v colorado lawrence v texas guess put three together say main theme right treated equal dignity emphasis added certainly believe proper understanding marriage state laws define marriage malefemale union treat individuals equal dignity quite clear ginsburg broadcasting different message last week bloomberg interviewer posed question ginsburg concerned court year say constitutional right samesex couples marry parts company country would able accept would accept decision declining fend question ginsburg responded think doubtful wouldnt accepted change peoples attitudes issue enormous recent years people said way others looked around discovered next door neighbor fond childs best friend even child think people came said rest us recognized one us familiarity people didnt exist beginning race problem front burner lived segregated communities truly wethey kind thing think gayrights movement think would take would take large adjustment course shouldnt speak much subject one way another decided leave town june emphasis added familiar ginsburgs view role court thoughts american public accept closely linked rule matter fervent believer supposed constitutional right abortion ginsburg nonetheless famously critical roe v wade moving far fast thus triggering prolife backlash devoid firm anchor constitutions text original meaning living constitution approach takes cues reads climate age put confirmation testimony ginsburg states supreme court ruling favor constitutional right samesex couples would accepted would trigger backlash clearly signaling vote favor right ginsburgs belated recognition shouldnt speak much subject cant undo damage federal law justice judge obligated disqualify proceeding impartiality might reasonably questioned widely accepted worth emphasizing disqualification cant rooted views justice expressed previous judicial opinions justices explanation views explains ginsburg confirmation hearing willing provide helpful clarifications 13 years opinions dc circuit judge also explains claims two years ago justice scalias recusal marriage cases pending baseless ginsburgs public comments provide ample reason question impartiality indeed surprise still appalling human rights campaign using ginsburgs comments solicit signatures amicus brief submitting court pending marriage cases reasons nominee ginsburg recognized confirmationhearing testimony justice ginsburgs gratuitous volunteering clear hints vote issue never addressed judicial opinion violates judicial ethic impartiality requires recusal pending marriage cases anything less would words display disdain entire judicial process human nature easy justice recuse closely divided case obviously cares passionately exactly situation justice scalia faced dozen years ago wake public comments criticizing ninth circuit ruling pledge allegiance slates dahlia lithwick wrote time scalia intellectually honest enough know slipped thus recused would one important churchstate cases career recusal meant court may well split 44 case case 9th circuits decision stand states jurisdiction end remaining eight justices voted reverse ninth circuit five grounds lack standing three merits soon see whether justice ginsburg intellectually honest enough know slipped recuse pending marriage cases edward whelan president ethics public policy center leading contributor national review onlines bench memos blog | 645 |
<p>The next step on the path to independence is for the UK to separate itself from US foreign policy.</p>
<p>In the most substantial democratic decision in our nation's history, we chose to reject fear-based campaigning, the interests of big business and protectionist regionalism, and instead opt for a return to self-governance. It was a seismic result, and one which crowns an already chaotic year in political history.</p>
<p>But there is another kind of independence that Brexit could well instigate, and that is a separation from our over-reliance on American foreign policy. Transforming our relationship with European allies, adjusting trade links and redefining our place in the world will be at the cornerstone of British politics over the next couple of years. Stepping back from political union and restructuring our links with Europe gives Britain the opportunity to assess its continued adoption of U.S. foreign policy.</p>
<p>As Zbigniew Brzezinski noted in his book The Grand Chessboard (p. 43), "[Great Britain] continues to wield some degree of global influence, but it is neither a restless major power nor is it motivated by an ambitious vision. It is America's key supporter, a very loyal ally, a vital military base, and a close partner in critically important intelligence activities."</p>
<p>Whilst inside the European Union, the United States knows it can rely on Britain to further American geo-political interests, with regards to such things as the ongoing Ukraine crisis or populist far-Left and far-Right uprisings that threaten what's called "stability". This, I feel, was the real reason Washington favoured the United Kingdom's membership of the European Union so strongly.</p>
<p>When he came to London to intervene in our referendum debate (a stunt which, to my amusement, backfired dramatically), president Obama's real plea to the British people was to maintain links with European partners that proved most fruitful in supporting Washington's political objectives. My colleagues and I at Vote Leave anticipated that the move would not go down well with our electorate, and expected many to see the intervention as simply America doing what it does best on the world stage: butting in where it doesn't belong.</p>
<p>In the days since the "leave" vote was cast, the Obama administration, and in particular U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry have been very clear that the "special relationship" between Britain and the United States will endure European Union secession, despite claims by the president that withdrawal would see the UK move to the "back of the queue" in trade talks, intelligence sharing and world order.</p>
<p>I am unequivocal, first and foremost, in my belief that there is no such thing as a US-UK "special" relationship. Undeniably there are irreversible links between the two nations (linguistically, historically and ideologically), but such alliances are commonplace and should not be painted as anything more. My own view is that much of the enduring friendship is merely a convenient compromise between a country seeking to maintain its weakening global hegemony, and a country attempting to relive past imperialism by sitting in the warmth of true global influence.</p>
<p>British politicians are known for their vanity on the global stage. On occasion, we love to pretend that we still have our nineteenth century international significance, and nailing ourselves next to the world's most powerful country allows us to revive such nostalgia. To a large extent, this posturing is unhelpful. Our military engagements have promoted, rather than suppressed, instability, and our willingness to act as loyal subordinate (with the exception of military action in Syria a few years ago) has left many in Britain wondering whether we have surrendered our geo-strategic independence, as well.</p>
<p>With Britain set to leave the European Union, its use in the eyes of White House officials changes. Once outside, it cannot easily help to promote the strategic interests of the United States, as its ability to influence European Union decision making is, quite obviously, stifled. I would argue that this presents the UK with an opportunity to develop its approach to foreign affairs on a more independent basis.</p>
<p>To a certain extent it is true that Britain is a retired geo-strategic player. We lack the designs on global regions and other countries that we used to have, in the days of the empire and of the British mandate, and those we refer to as our enemies are usually labelled as such without any substantive justification. But it is not accurate to say that our ability to influence world order is diminished, or that it must always be carried out in a way that is congruent with ambitions deriving from Washington. Upon Brexit, I would like to see Britain's relationship with the United States remain strong and positive, as cultural and trade links would ensure, but a little more procedural autonomy and diplomatic flexibility would be tremendously beneficial to us.</p>
<p>It is particularly interesting to note that Washington will be very wary of the European project unravelling and being weakened at a time when political turbulence permeates throughout Ukraine, Turkey and the Mediterranean, and considering America's direct contribution certainly to two of these problems, it might be worth considering that sometimes working free of U.S. involvement might be an avenue worth pursuing.</p>
<p>At a time of frailty on the continent, it is imperative that Britain exercises its diplomatic prowess in order to preserve solid relationships and assure European countries who feel in some way betrayed or rejected that mutual cooperation shall continue. Instability (itself a code word, meaning "threatening to American interests") has taken centre stage and Britain must carve out its own approach towards bolstering international relations.</p>
<p>This means that, for a while at least, Brexit can instigate a second kind of political independence. It can encourage the UK to stamp its own authority on foreign policy and help to rebrand Europe, irrespective of Washington's goals.</p> | false | 1 | next step path independence uk separate us foreign policy substantial democratic decision nations history chose reject fearbased campaigning interests big business protectionist regionalism instead opt return selfgovernance seismic result one crowns already chaotic year political history another kind independence brexit could well instigate separation overreliance american foreign policy transforming relationship european allies adjusting trade links redefining place world cornerstone british politics next couple years stepping back political union restructuring links europe gives britain opportunity assess continued adoption us foreign policy zbigniew brzezinski noted book grand chessboard p 43 great britain continues wield degree global influence neither restless major power motivated ambitious vision americas key supporter loyal ally vital military base close partner critically important intelligence activities whilst inside european union united states knows rely britain american geopolitical interests regards things ongoing ukraine crisis populist farleft farright uprisings threaten whats called stability feel real reason washington favoured united kingdoms membership european union strongly came london intervene referendum debate stunt amusement backfired dramatically president obamas real plea british people maintain links european partners proved fruitful supporting washingtons political objectives colleagues vote leave anticipated move would go well electorate expected many see intervention simply america best world stage butting doesnt belong days since leave vote cast obama administration particular us secretary state john kerry clear special relationship britain united states endure european union secession despite claims president withdrawal would see uk move back queue trade talks intelligence sharing world order unequivocal first foremost belief thing usuk special relationship undeniably irreversible links two nations linguistically historically ideologically alliances commonplace painted anything view much enduring friendship merely convenient compromise country seeking maintain weakening global hegemony country attempting relive past imperialism sitting warmth true global influence british politicians known vanity global stage occasion love pretend still nineteenth century international significance nailing next worlds powerful country allows us revive nostalgia large extent posturing unhelpful military engagements promoted rather suppressed instability willingness act loyal subordinate exception military action syria years ago left many britain wondering whether surrendered geostrategic independence well britain set leave european union use eyes white house officials changes outside easily help promote strategic interests united states ability influence european union decision making quite obviously stifled would argue presents uk opportunity develop approach foreign affairs independent basis certain extent true britain retired geostrategic player lack designs global regions countries used days empire british mandate refer enemies usually labelled without substantive justification accurate say ability influence world order diminished must always carried way congruent ambitions deriving washington upon brexit would like see britains relationship united states remain strong positive cultural trade links would ensure little procedural autonomy diplomatic flexibility would tremendously beneficial us particularly interesting note washington wary european project unravelling weakened time political turbulence permeates throughout ukraine turkey mediterranean considering americas direct contribution certainly two problems might worth considering sometimes working free us involvement might avenue worth pursuing time frailty continent imperative britain exercises diplomatic prowess order preserve solid relationships assure european countries feel way betrayed rejected mutual cooperation shall continue instability code word meaning threatening american interests taken centre stage britain must carve approach towards bolstering international relations means least brexit instigate second kind political independence encourage uk stamp authority foreign policy help rebrand europe irrespective washingtons goals | 533 |
<p>Get your insurance through your employer? The ongoing political turmoil around “Obamacare” all but guarantees you’ll still be able to do that.</p>
<p>Ask Walt Rowen, whose business is etching glass, but whose experience managing century-old, family-owned Susquehanna Glass makes him something of an expert on healthcare. He’s provided coverage to employees, then canceled it, steering them to the health insurance exchange. But with those premiums rising, Rowen this year is again covering his 70 or so workers under the umbrella of employer-sponsored health insurance.</p>
<p>Employer-provided health insurance is so ingrained in the American workplace that people expect it to continue even as politicians thrash out the role of government in healthcare. That’s according to polling, business owners and consumers. And in a nearly saturated labor market, employers don’t want to give workers a reason to work somewhere else.</p>
<p>“I think a company — any size company — would be incredibly afraid to just cancel its insurance policy and say the hell with it,” says Rowen, whose company is located in Columbia, Pennsylvania. He said that could result in employees fleeing, especially in states where the Affordable Care Act insurance markets are weak.</p>
<p>With the GOP crusade to repeal and replace “Obamacare” failing, the federal mandates that people have insurance and that employers with more than 50 workers provide it seem likely to stay in place in the foreseeable future. The Trump administration on Tuesday pledged to keep working with Congress on a rewrite. “Obamacare’s mandates saddled many with healthcare costs they simply couldn’t afford,” said White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders.</p>
<p>For now, the Trump administration is considering whether or not to continue paying the law’s cost-sharing subsidies, which have helped lower premiums. Without those subsidies, it’s estimated that premiums will rise and insurers will leave markets.</p>
<p>The ACA requires companies with 50 or more full-time employees to provide insurance to employees and their dependents. The Kaiser Family Foundation says nearly 96 percent of companies of that size already were offering coverage before the law took effect in 2014. Nearly 35 percent of companies with fewer than 50 workers also were offering insurance.</p>
<p>Removing the employer mandate wouldn’t sit well with a wide swath of the American public.</p>
<p>A poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research says 61 percent oppose revoking the requirement, including 58 percent of Republicans.</p>
<p>Workers have been getting their health insurance through their employers for decades, since the U.S. government exempted employer-paid health benefits from wage controls and income tax during World War II.</p>
<p>Nearly 90 percent of workers are in companies that provide health benefits, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation/HRET annual survey in 2016. Taking into account dependents, roughly half of Americans are covered by employer-based insurance.</p>
<p>Large companies “need to attract and retain employees and they’d be at a competitive disadvantage if they stopped offering health benefits,” said William Kramer, executive director for national health policy for the Pacific Business Group on Health.</p>
<p>As a result, human resource consultants say it’s likely that businesses will remain committed to offering coverage. Some experts question whether the ACA’s employer mandate makes much, if any, difference when there’s a solid business case for providing health care: With unemployment low and the labor market tight, benefits give employers an advantage in recruiting and retaining the best workers.</p>
<p>“What kind of message are you giving to employees if you say, ‘I’m going to take this away?’ Are you really willing to risk losing people?” asks David Lewis, CEO of OperationsInc, based in Norwalk, Connecticut.</p>
<p>Even if the employer mandate had been repealed, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that larger companies would have been hard-pressed to cancel their health benefits, although some smaller firms would have done so.</p>
<p>“As soon as you take it back, you cause massive employee dissatisfaction,” said Jay Starkman, CEO of Engage PEO, a human resources provider whose clients include many small and mid-sized businesses.</p>
<p>Rowen, the glass business owner, says his health insurance decisions had less to do with the employer mandate than with cost and employee retention.</p>
<p>In the four years before the ACA took effect, Susquehanna Glass had fewer than 50 employees and saw its premiums rise between 15 percent and 20 percent a year. “We were fiddling all the time trying to keep our health care costs for our employees as affordable as possible,” Rowen recalls.</p>
<p>He hired an expert to help his employees find insurance on the exchange in Pennsylvania. Lower-paid employees qualified for subsidies, while higher-paid workers could afford plans or went on their spouses’ plans, he said. In some cases, Rowen gave bonuses or raises to help workers afford insurance.</p>
<p>He says he owed a penalty of about $40,000 for not providing insurance — less than the six figures he thinks he would have paid to provide group insurance.</p>
<p>But by 2016, he said, his workers were complaining that their premiums were increasing. Susquehanna Glass by that time had grown to about 70 employees — enough to qualify for less-expensive group plans joined by medium-sized businesses. Many of his new employees were younger and less expensive to insure. He found that purchasing group health insurance would cost just over $100,000 — not as much as he’d feared.</p>
<p>“If they were not able to get an affordable one with me and they found another company that does offer one,” he says, “They might be forced to make the decision to leave me.”</p> | false | 1 | get insurance employer ongoing political turmoil around obamacare guarantees youll still able ask walt rowen whose business etching glass whose experience managing centuryold familyowned susquehanna glass makes something expert healthcare hes provided coverage employees canceled steering health insurance exchange premiums rising rowen year covering 70 workers umbrella employersponsored health insurance employerprovided health insurance ingrained american workplace people expect continue even politicians thrash role government healthcare thats according polling business owners consumers nearly saturated labor market employers dont want give workers reason work somewhere else think company size company would incredibly afraid cancel insurance policy say hell says rowen whose company located columbia pennsylvania said could result employees fleeing especially states affordable care act insurance markets weak gop crusade repeal replace obamacare failing federal mandates people insurance employers 50 workers provide seem likely stay place foreseeable future trump administration tuesday pledged keep working congress rewrite obamacares mandates saddled many healthcare costs simply couldnt afford said white house spokeswoman sarah huckabee sanders trump administration considering whether continue paying laws costsharing subsidies helped lower premiums without subsidies estimated premiums rise insurers leave markets aca requires companies 50 fulltime employees provide insurance employees dependents kaiser family foundation says nearly 96 percent companies size already offering coverage law took effect 2014 nearly 35 percent companies fewer 50 workers also offering insurance removing employer mandate wouldnt sit well wide swath american public poll associated pressnorc center public affairs research says 61 percent oppose revoking requirement including 58 percent republicans workers getting health insurance employers decades since us government exempted employerpaid health benefits wage controls income tax world war ii nearly 90 percent workers companies provide health benefits according kaiser family foundationhret annual survey 2016 taking account dependents roughly half americans covered employerbased insurance large companies need attract retain employees theyd competitive disadvantage stopped offering health benefits said william kramer executive director national health policy pacific business group health result human resource consultants say likely businesses remain committed offering coverage experts question whether acas employer mandate makes much difference theres solid business case providing health care unemployment low labor market tight benefits give employers advantage recruiting retaining best workers kind message giving employees say im going take away really willing risk losing people asks david lewis ceo operationsinc based norwalk connecticut even employer mandate repealed congressional budget office estimated larger companies would hardpressed cancel health benefits although smaller firms would done soon take back cause massive employee dissatisfaction said jay starkman ceo engage peo human resources provider whose clients include many small midsized businesses rowen glass business owner says health insurance decisions less employer mandate cost employee retention four years aca took effect susquehanna glass fewer 50 employees saw premiums rise 15 percent 20 percent year fiddling time trying keep health care costs employees affordable possible rowen recalls hired expert help employees find insurance exchange pennsylvania lowerpaid employees qualified subsidies higherpaid workers could afford plans went spouses plans said cases rowen gave bonuses raises help workers afford insurance says owed penalty 40000 providing insurance less six figures thinks would paid provide group insurance 2016 said workers complaining premiums increasing susquehanna glass time grown 70 employees enough qualify lessexpensive group plans joined mediumsized businesses many new employees younger less expensive insure found purchasing group health insurance would cost 100000 much hed feared able get affordable one found another company offer one says might forced make decision leave | 559 |
<p>WASHINGTON — Attorney General Jeff Sessions has ended policies that directed federal prosecutors to use discretion before prosecuting marijuana offenses in states that legalized its use.</p>
<p>The Department of Justice portrayed the announcement, made by press release and a memo to U.S. attorneys, as “a return to the rule of law.” The change is a reversal of policies initiated under President Barack Obama and the so-called Cole Memo.</p>
<p>Sessions’ memorandum, which came three days after California legalized recreational marijuana sales, presented a departure from President Donald Trump’s positions during the 2016 campaign.</p>
<p>Asked at a press briefing if Trump sees marijuana as a state or federal issue, Press Secretary Sarah Sanders responded, “Whether it’s marijuana or whether it’s immigration, the president strongly believes that we should enforce federal law.”</p>
<p>But speaking in Sparks in October 2015, Trump said he favored of medical marijuana laws and respecting the rights of states to set their own pot policies.</p>
<p>“The marijuana thing is such a big thing. I think medical should happen — right? Don’t we agree? I think so,” said Trump, the first president in more than two decades who says he never tried the drug. “And then I really believe we should leave it up to the states.”</p>
<p>Asked to expand on how her Thursday statement fit with Trump’s campaign talk, Sanders replied in an email, “His opinion hasn’t changed and neither has the law. The president isn’t in the business of picking and choosing what laws we should enforce.”</p>
<p>“The president doesn’t think we should have chain migration in this country,” Sanders added, “but it’s the law so it continues. Unlike the previous president, just because he doesn’t like a policy, the president knows how government works.”</p>
<p>Nevada began recreational marijuana sales began in July and have brought in more than $19 million in tax revenue to the state.</p>
<p>Eight states and the District of Columbia have legalized the drug for recreational use, and 29 states have legalized medical pot, but states do not have the authority to remove marijuana from Schedule I list — which includes heroin and LSD as “drugs with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse” — under the federal Controlled Substances Act. Thus, state laws cannot prevent federal marijuana prosecutions.</p>
<p>Congress reacts</p>
<p>In 2014, Congress passed an amendment co-sponsored by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., that prohibits the federal government from using federal funds to prosecute medical marijuana businesses in states that have legalized it. Congress has passed versions of the amendment routinely since then.</p>
<p>Rohrabacher on Thursday scolded Sessions for “a profound misreading of the Constitution, which allows states, not the heavy-handed federal government, to determine such issues. How ironic that the attorney general has long championed states’ rights when it suits other parts of his agenda!”</p>
<p>An amendment Rohrabacher now co-authors with Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., is in effect through Jan. 19 when the current spending resolution ends. Rohrabacher’s office expects Congress to include the amendment in future spending bills, but there is no certainty.</p>
<p>During a conference call, Rohrabacher said he hoped Sessions’ decision will mobilize opponents of the federal war on drugs to pass a permanent ban on federal marijuana prosecutions contrary to state laws. Rohrabacher also argued that medical marijuana use could alleviate America’s opioid epidemic.</p>
<p>Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colorado, tweeted that the Justice Department “has trampled on the will of the voters” in Colorado and other states. He said the action contradicts what Sessions told him before the attorney general was confirmed and that he was prepared “to take all steps necessary” to fight the step, including holding up the confirmation of Justice Department nominees.</p>
<p>GOP consultant Rob Stutzman criticized the decision as going against states’ rights, “a fundamental tenet of how Republicans have cast visions of government for decades.”</p>
<p>Nevada senators weigh in</p>
<p>“Knowing Attorney General Sessions’ deference to states’ rights, I strongly encourage the DOJ to meet with Governor Sandoval and Attorney General Laxalt to discuss the implications of changes to federal marijuana enforcement policy,” Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., said in a statement.</p>
<p>Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., also argued for states’ rights.</p>
<p>“Attorney General Sessions says he is a headstrong advocate for states’ rights. However, his decision giving free rein to federal prosecutors to target the cannabis industry in states where voters and legislatures have chosen to legalize and regulate the use of marijuana exposes his hypocrisy,” Cortez Masto said in a statement. “In states like Nevada, voters have spoken loud and clear that marijuana must be regulated and taxed, and that the state should be able to enforce its marijuana laws without federal interference.”</p>
<p>Uncertainty</p>
<p>The move will likely add to confusion about whether it’s OK to grow, buy or use marijuana in states where the drug is legal. It comes just after shops opened in where sales are projected to bring in $1 billion annually in tax revenue within several years. Polls show a solid majority of Americans believe the drug should be legal.</p>
<p>Sessions had long been expected to ramp up enforcement. Marijuana advocates argue that legalizing the drug eliminates the need for a black market and will likely reduce violence, since criminals would no longer control the marijuana trade.</p>
<p>The Obama administration in 2013 announced it would not stand in the way of states that legalize marijuana, so long as officials acted to keep it from migrating to places where it remained outlawed and keep it out of the hands of criminal gangs and children. The memo written by then-Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole, had cleared up some of the uncertainty about how the federal government would respond as states began legalizing marijuana.</p>
<p>Sessions’ policy will let U.S. attorneys across the country decide what kinds of federal resources to devote to marijuana enforcement, people familiar with the decision said. Dayle Elieson, who this week was appointed as Nevada’s U.S. Attorney, takes over the role on Friday. Her position on marijuana is unclear.</p>
<p>Sessions and some law enforcement officials in states such as Colorado blame legalization for a number of problems, including drug traffickers who have taken advantage of lax marijuana laws to illegally grow and ship the drug across state lines, where it can sell for much more. The decision was a win for marijuana opponents who had been urging Sessions to take action.</p>
<p>“There is no more safe haven with regard to the federal government and marijuana, but it’s also the beginning of the story and not the end,” said Kevin Sabet, president and CEO of Smart Approaches to Marijuana, who was among several anti-marijuana advocates who met with Sessions last month. “This is a victory. It’s going to dry up a lot of the institutional investment that has gone toward marijuana in the last five years.”</p>
<p>A task force Sessions convened to study pot policy made no recommendations for upending the legal industry but instead encouraged Justice Department officials to keep reviewing the Obama administration’s more approach to marijuana enforcement, something Sessions promised to do since he took office.</p>
<p>The change also reflects yet another way in which Sessions, who served as a federal prosecutor at the height of the drug war in Mobile, Alabama, has reversed Obama-era criminal justice policies that aimed to ease overcrowding in federal prisons and contributed to a rethinking of how drug criminals were prosecuted and sentenced. While his Democratic predecessor Eric Holder told federal prosecutors to avoid seeking long mandatory minimum sentences when charging certain lower-level drug offenders, for example, Sessions issued an order demanding the opposite, telling them to pursue the most serious charges possible against most suspects.</p>
<p>Contact Debra J. Saunders at <a href="" type="internal">[email protected]</a> or at 202-662-7391. Follow @DebraJSaunders on Twitter.</p>
<p>The Associated Press contributed to this report.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.scribd.com/document/368423749/Ag-Marijuana-Enforcement-1-4-18-0#from_embed" type="external">Ag Marijuana Enforcement 1.4.18 0</a> by <a href="https://www.scribd.com/user/234057260/Las-Vegas-Review-Journal#from_embed" type="external">Las Vegas Review-Journal</a> on Scribd</p>
<p /> | false | 1 | washington attorney general jeff sessions ended policies directed federal prosecutors use discretion prosecuting marijuana offenses states legalized use department justice portrayed announcement made press release memo us attorneys return rule law change reversal policies initiated president barack obama socalled cole memo sessions memorandum came three days california legalized recreational marijuana sales presented departure president donald trumps positions 2016 campaign asked press briefing trump sees marijuana state federal issue press secretary sarah sanders responded whether marijuana whether immigration president strongly believes enforce federal law speaking sparks october 2015 trump said favored medical marijuana laws respecting rights states set pot policies marijuana thing big thing think medical happen right dont agree think said trump first president two decades says never tried drug really believe leave states asked expand thursday statement fit trumps campaign talk sanders replied email opinion hasnt changed neither law president isnt business picking choosing laws enforce president doesnt think chain migration country sanders added law continues unlike previous president doesnt like policy president knows government works nevada began recreational marijuana sales began july brought 19 million tax revenue state eight states district columbia legalized drug recreational use 29 states legalized medical pot states authority remove marijuana schedule list includes heroin lsd drugs currently accepted medical use high potential abuse federal controlled substances act thus state laws prevent federal marijuana prosecutions congress reacts 2014 congress passed amendment cosponsored rep dana rohrabacher rcalif prohibits federal government using federal funds prosecute medical marijuana businesses states legalized congress passed versions amendment routinely since rohrabacher thursday scolded sessions profound misreading constitution allows states heavyhanded federal government determine issues ironic attorney general long championed states rights suits parts agenda amendment rohrabacher coauthors rep earl blumenauer dore effect jan 19 current spending resolution ends rohrabachers office expects congress include amendment future spending bills certainty conference call rohrabacher said hoped sessions decision mobilize opponents federal war drugs pass permanent ban federal marijuana prosecutions contrary state laws rohrabacher also argued medical marijuana use could alleviate americas opioid epidemic sen cory gardner rcolorado tweeted justice department trampled voters colorado states said action contradicts sessions told attorney general confirmed prepared take steps necessary fight step including holding confirmation justice department nominees gop consultant rob stutzman criticized decision going states rights fundamental tenet republicans cast visions government decades nevada senators weigh knowing attorney general sessions deference states rights strongly encourage doj meet governor sandoval attorney general laxalt discuss implications changes federal marijuana enforcement policy sen dean heller rnev said statement sen catherine cortez masto dnev also argued states rights attorney general sessions says headstrong advocate states rights however decision giving free rein federal prosecutors target cannabis industry states voters legislatures chosen legalize regulate use marijuana exposes hypocrisy cortez masto said statement states like nevada voters spoken loud clear marijuana must regulated taxed state able enforce marijuana laws without federal interference uncertainty move likely add confusion whether ok grow buy use marijuana states drug legal comes shops opened sales projected bring 1 billion annually tax revenue within several years polls show solid majority americans believe drug legal sessions long expected ramp enforcement marijuana advocates argue legalizing drug eliminates need black market likely reduce violence since criminals would longer control marijuana trade obama administration 2013 announced would stand way states legalize marijuana long officials acted keep migrating places remained outlawed keep hands criminal gangs children memo written thendeputy attorney general james cole cleared uncertainty federal government would respond states began legalizing marijuana sessions policy let us attorneys across country decide kinds federal resources devote marijuana enforcement people familiar decision said dayle elieson week appointed nevadas us attorney takes role friday position marijuana unclear sessions law enforcement officials states colorado blame legalization number problems including drug traffickers taken advantage lax marijuana laws illegally grow ship drug across state lines sell much decision win marijuana opponents urging sessions take action safe regard federal government marijuana also beginning story end said kevin sabet president ceo smart approaches marijuana among several antimarijuana advocates met sessions last month victory going dry lot institutional investment gone toward marijuana last five years task force sessions convened study pot policy made recommendations upending legal industry instead encouraged justice department officials keep reviewing obama administrations approach marijuana enforcement something sessions promised since took office change also reflects yet another way sessions served federal prosecutor height drug war mobile alabama reversed obamaera criminal justice policies aimed ease overcrowding federal prisons contributed rethinking drug criminals prosecuted sentenced democratic predecessor eric holder told federal prosecutors avoid seeking long mandatory minimum sentences charging certain lowerlevel drug offenders example sessions issued order demanding opposite telling pursue serious charges possible suspects contact debra j saunders dsaundersreviewjournalcom 2026627391 follow debrajsaunders twitter associated press contributed report ag marijuana enforcement 1418 0 las vegas reviewjournal scribd | 785 |
<p>By Alexander Winning</p>
<p>JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma is a fierce campaigner against racial inequality whose hostility to big business has rattled investors in South Africa. She is also one of two front runners to be the country’s next president.</p>
<p>The 68-year-old is vying to succeed her ex-husband, President Jacob Zuma, as leader of the ruling African National Congress at a party vote this weekend, an outcome that would make her favourite for the presidency after a parliamentary election due in 2019.</p>
<p>A medical doctor and former chair of the Commission of the African Union, a pan-continental grouping, Dlamini-Zuma has pledged during her campaign to “radically” tackle the racial inequality that persists in South Africa 23 years after the end of white minority rule.</p>
<p>Backers of her main rival, Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa, say she is peddling populist rhetoric and would rule in the mould of her former husband, whose decade in power has been plagued by corruption scandals. Dlamini-Zuma declined to be interviewed for this story.</p>
<p>The choice between Dlamini-Zuma and Ramaphosa will influence South Africa’s economic policy trajectory, as well the country’s role in Africa and beyond.</p>
<p>Investors are worried by Dlamini-Zuma’s hostility towards international companies, which she says form part of a “white monopoly capital” cabal dominating South Africa’s wealth.</p>
<p>“A Dlamini-Zuma victory would signal a sharp rhetorical shift towards more leftist economic policy,” said John Ashbourne, an Africa-focused economist at Capital Economics. “A further credit ratings downgrade would be almost inevitable.”</p>
<p>Yet Dlamini-Zuma’s supporters point to a commitment to changing the lives of South Africa’s black majority. Lynne Jones, a psychiatrist and author who lived with Dlamini-Zuma when they were students together in the English city of Bristol in the 1970s, says her determination to fight injustice is rooted in her own personal story.</p>
<p>Jones remembers a day four decades ago when Dlamini-Zuma lay on her bed and wept after being forced to miss her brother’s funeral because the apartheid-era security services had hounded her out of South Africa.</p>
<p>“She was fiercely intelligent and determined,” said Jones.</p>
<p>“Here was someone who had put their whole life on the line and given up home and family for what they believed. It was eye-opening.”</p>
<p>AFRICAN NATIONALIST</p>
<p>The race between Ramaphosa, a unionist-turned-millionaire businessman, and Dlamini-Zuma is too close to call, political analysts say.</p>
<p>Her campaign team told Reuters in written comments it was confident she would be elected ANC leader.</p>
<p>Ramaphosa, who is popular among swathes of the ANC disillusioned with Zuma, is promising to end corruption, boost a flatlining economy and deliver jobs to the poor in a country where more than a quarter of the population is unemployed.</p>
<p>Dlamini-Zuma, by contrast, is an African nationalist and has the support of the influential ANC youth and women’s leagues, which both tend to support socialist policies.</p>
<p>Known for her fierce temper and hostility towards the West, she was described in one 2001 U.S. diplomatic cable on WikiLeaks as a “truculent and petulant foreign minister”.</p>
<p>Another cable to Washington suggested she could be charming.</p>
<p>“Belying her reputation as fierce and formidable, the Minister was soft spoken and smiling in this meeting – articulate but gentle, candid but warm,” Donald Gips, then U.S. ambassador to South Africa, wrote in 2010.</p>
<p>The most common criticism of Dlamini-Zuma is that she is beholden to Zuma and his powerful patronage network. Zuma has publicly endorsed her.</p>
<p>“She is bold and you can’t fool her. She is someone you can trust,” Zuma told a rally recently.</p>
<p>The couple met in Swaziland in the 1980s, when they were both in the ANC underground. They were married for more than a decade and have four children together.</p>
<p>RELIANCE ON ZUMA</p>
<p>In a rare interview last month, Dlamini-Zuma challenged her opponents to find any evidence of corruption in her long political career.</p>
<p>“I don’t loot government coffers. I’ve never done so, and I will not do so,” she told ANN7 television.</p>
<p>But for some senior figures in the ANC, she has not done enough to distance herself from the corruption scandals that have dogged President Zuma.</p>
<p>“She has not said anything on ‘state capture’,” ANC chief whip Jackson Mthembu told Reuters, using a South African term to describe private interests unduly controlling government funds.</p>
<p>Dlamini-Zuma says accusations that she is piggy-backing off Zuma are “insulting” given her career, first as a doctor to ANC leaders fighting apartheid and then as a cabinet minister under every South African president since 1994.</p>
<p>As health minister in Nelson Mandela’s cabinet, she laid the foundations for free public healthcare for the poor, took a hard line on smoking and made medicines more accessible.</p>
<p>As foreign minister she fostered friendships with African countries and emerging economies like China, even when this angered the West.</p>
<p>But she also made errors of judgment.</p>
<p>In 1996, Dlamini-Zuma awarded a contract for more than $3 million to a friend for a play, Sarafina II, to raise awareness about AIDS and was later found to have ignored tender rules.</p>
<p>Political analyst Ralph Mathekga said that paled in comparison to recent government malpractice. He said: “14 million rand in the Sarafina scandal now seems like peanuts when compared with the looting under Zuma.”</p>
<p>(For a graphic on ‘ANC election in South Africa’ click http://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/rngs/SAFRICA-POLITICS/010051Z44FX/SAFRICA-POLITICS-ANC.jpg)</p>
<p>(For a graphic on ‘South African economy’ click http://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/rngs/SAFRICA-ECONOMY/010051ZX4HL/index.html)</p> | false | 1 | alexander winning johannesburg reuters nkosazana dlaminizuma fierce campaigner racial inequality whose hostility big business rattled investors south africa also one two front runners countrys next president 68yearold vying succeed exhusband president jacob zuma leader ruling african national congress party vote weekend outcome would make favourite presidency parliamentary election due 2019 medical doctor former chair commission african union pancontinental grouping dlaminizuma pledged campaign radically tackle racial inequality persists south africa 23 years end white minority rule backers main rival deputy president cyril ramaphosa say peddling populist rhetoric would rule mould former husband whose decade power plagued corruption scandals dlaminizuma declined interviewed story choice dlaminizuma ramaphosa influence south africas economic policy trajectory well countrys role africa beyond investors worried dlaminizumas hostility towards international companies says form part white monopoly capital cabal dominating south africas wealth dlaminizuma victory would signal sharp rhetorical shift towards leftist economic policy said john ashbourne africafocused economist capital economics credit ratings downgrade would almost inevitable yet dlaminizumas supporters point commitment changing lives south africas black majority lynne jones psychiatrist author lived dlaminizuma students together english city bristol 1970s says determination fight injustice rooted personal story jones remembers day four decades ago dlaminizuma lay bed wept forced miss brothers funeral apartheidera security services hounded south africa fiercely intelligent determined said jones someone put whole life line given home family believed eyeopening african nationalist race ramaphosa unionistturnedmillionaire businessman dlaminizuma close call political analysts say campaign team told reuters written comments confident would elected anc leader ramaphosa popular among swathes anc disillusioned zuma promising end corruption boost flatlining economy deliver jobs poor country quarter population unemployed dlaminizuma contrast african nationalist support influential anc youth womens leagues tend support socialist policies known fierce temper hostility towards west described one 2001 us diplomatic cable wikileaks truculent petulant foreign minister another cable washington suggested could charming belying reputation fierce formidable minister soft spoken smiling meeting articulate gentle candid warm donald gips us ambassador south africa wrote 2010 common criticism dlaminizuma beholden zuma powerful patronage network zuma publicly endorsed bold cant fool someone trust zuma told rally recently couple met swaziland 1980s anc underground married decade four children together reliance zuma rare interview last month dlaminizuma challenged opponents find evidence corruption long political career dont loot government coffers ive never done told ann7 television senior figures anc done enough distance corruption scandals dogged president zuma said anything state capture anc chief whip jackson mthembu told reuters using south african term describe private interests unduly controlling government funds dlaminizuma says accusations piggybacking zuma insulting given career first doctor anc leaders fighting apartheid cabinet minister every south african president since 1994 health minister nelson mandelas cabinet laid foundations free public healthcare poor took hard line smoking made medicines accessible foreign minister fostered friendships african countries emerging economies like china even angered west also made errors judgment 1996 dlaminizuma awarded contract 3 million friend play sarafina ii raise awareness aids later found ignored tender rules political analyst ralph mathekga said paled comparison recent government malpractice said 14 million rand sarafina scandal seems like peanuts compared looting zuma graphic anc election south africa click httpfingfxthomsonreuterscomgfxrngssafricapolitics010051z44fxsafricapoliticsancjpg graphic south african economy click httpfingfxthomsonreuterscomgfxrngssafricaeconomy010051zx4hlindexhtml | 522 |
<p>In the past two weeks, Barack Obama has not looked like his familiar self on the campaign trail. The grand, inspirational calls to hope before large crowds have grown less frequent, and a new kind of Obama performance has debuted: the defensive, stammering press conference in which the candidate dodges a few hard questions and rushes off.</p>
<p>Two names from Obama's past have been chiefly responsible for this changed tone and feel: Tony Rezko and Jeremiah Wright. Rezko, the indicted Chicago businessman and longtime Obama fundraiser, highlights Obama's rather murky political beginnings. Any politician who rises as quickly as Obama did on the South Side of Chicago is bound to have made some questionable friends along the way, and the Rezko affair has certainly started some people in the press and the political world wondering what else might lurk undiscovered in the senator's past.</p>
<p>Meanwhile Wright, the pastor of Obama's Chicago church, highlights the continuing mystery of Obama's basic ideology. Is he the cool and level-headed post-political politician who addresses every difficult issue by first expounding on how everyone, on all sides, has a point? Or is he a radical liberal who nods from the pews as his pastor leads the congregation in a chorus of “God damn America,” insists that the September 11 attacks were “chickens . . . coming home to roost,” and dubs the country “The US of KKK A”? Obama's past fidelity to Wright has been unequivocal. The senator and his wife — who were married by Wright and had their children baptized by him — gave Wright's church more than $20,000 in donations in 2006 alone. And as Obama made clear in his speech on the subject in Philadelphia this week, he surely had a sense of Wright's strong views.</p>
<p>Just what the Wright and Rezko affairs actually tell us about Obama's past and his views is hard to discern at this point. But for Democrats, the greatest worry must involve not the substance of either scandal, but the fact that Obama's links to these controversies are only now emerging in full. What further unpleasant surprises await? What if this new and less appealing Obama is the real one?</p>
<p>The fact is, the Democratic party may be about to hitch its wagon to a remarkably unknown star, without much sense of what troubles may lie in his past — and the party's future.</p>
<p>The risks of running a relative unknown can be great. In 1988, Michael Dukakis seemed to offer real promise, as far as Washington Democrats could tell. He was a successful governor with an interesting life story, intelligent and well spoken, and even possessed of ethnic and blue-collar credentials. Only too late did they learn that they had nominated a thoroughly stereotypical, dogmatic liberal, and a boring one to boot.</p>
<p>In 2000, George W. Bush was also not a well-known quantity, and in the week before the election, with the polls looking up, word suddenly emerged of a drunk-driving charge he had never divulged. Bush's support suffered, and the country was left with the Florida debacle in which Bush barely eked out an Electoral College win in a way that hung a question mark over the start of his presidency.</p>
<p>Obama actually combines these two risks of the unknown. He is, like Dukakis, a standard-issue liberal with no interesting exceptions to speak of, though the public does not yet realize it. And he has, like George W. Bush, done some things he shouldn't have (and, evidently, associated with people voters wouldn't much like), which are only slowly emerging over the course of the campaign.</p>
<p>But Obama might face an even greater problem. While he certainly is not well-known to voters, neither is he an unfamiliar presence in the way Bush and Dukakis were when they were nominated. Over the past year, after all, he has become something of a media superstar and built a presence in the quarters of our culture inhabited by ordinary voters, not just political junkies — that is, people who may have paid virtually no attention to the candidates until much later in previous election cycles, but who have already seen a lot of Obama this year. For these voters, learning more about Obama will not only be disconcerting, it will be disillusioning, which is far worse. Obama's trouble is not only that people know little about him, but also that much of what they know is not true.</p>
<p>The candidate of hope, idealism, and unity will be hurt more than most candidates would be by the “revelation” that as a Democratic senator he voted with the Democrats just about all the time. The candidate of getting beyond divisive issues will be damaged by details of what he has said about abortion, for instance. The candidate of a new kind of politics could look like a hypocrite as Americans learn more about his South Side connections. The candidate of post-racial America will have to do much more than simply say he had no idea his longtime pastor was an anti-American race baiter.</p>
<p>The “Obama-mania” of this past fall and winter was bound to be impossible to sustain, and we have already begun to see it lose its shine. It has, of course, helped Obama get within arm's reach of the Democratic nomination, and it will likely get him across the finish line. But in the general election, as the real Obama — for good and bad — comes to be better known, the heights he reached these last few months may well prove very costly. Obama will have a lot going for him, to be sure, and this remains a good year for the Democrats. But to the extent that both he and John McCain will introduce themselves to voters anew this summer and fall, Obama has much more to lose than McCain, and much less to gain.</p>
<p>In fact, McCain is in some respects in the opposite position. He will be hurt by some of what voters will learn about him; he will seem surprisingly old to people who haven't seen him much, for instance, and word of his temper will certainly get out. But what voters don't know about him is, on the whole, better for him than what they do know. Everyone has a sense that McCain comported himself with dignity as a prisoner of war, but the full extent and details of his story will deeply impress the American public. Everyone knows that he comes from a military family and believes in service, but when voters learn that he has two sons in harm's way in the military, they will think even better of him.</p>
<p>Obama's reintroduction will be much more difficult and risky. And for Democrats, the unknowns in that process must be the most frightening prospect. What further surprises lurk in Obama's little-known personal history? The last few weeks have made that question suddenly crucial.</p>
<p>— Yuval Levin is the Hertog fellow at the <a href="" type="internal">Ethics and Public Policy Center</a> and senior editor of <a href="http://www.thenewatlantis.com/" type="external">The New Atlantis</a> magazine.</p> | false | 1 | past two weeks barack obama looked like familiar self campaign trail grand inspirational calls hope large crowds grown less frequent new kind obama performance debuted defensive stammering press conference candidate dodges hard questions rushes two names obamas past chiefly responsible changed tone feel tony rezko jeremiah wright rezko indicted chicago businessman longtime obama fundraiser highlights obamas rather murky political beginnings politician rises quickly obama south side chicago bound made questionable friends along way rezko affair certainly started people press political world wondering else might lurk undiscovered senators past meanwhile wright pastor obamas chicago church highlights continuing mystery obamas basic ideology cool levelheaded postpolitical politician addresses every difficult issue first expounding everyone sides point radical liberal nods pews pastor leads congregation chorus god damn america insists september 11 attacks chickens coming home roost dubs country us kkk obamas past fidelity wright unequivocal senator wife married wright children baptized gave wrights church 20000 donations 2006 alone obama made clear speech subject philadelphia week surely sense wrights strong views wright rezko affairs actually tell us obamas past views hard discern point democrats greatest worry must involve substance either scandal fact obamas links controversies emerging full unpleasant surprises await new less appealing obama real one fact democratic party may hitch wagon remarkably unknown star without much sense troubles may lie past partys future risks running relative unknown great 1988 michael dukakis seemed offer real promise far washington democrats could tell successful governor interesting life story intelligent well spoken even possessed ethnic bluecollar credentials late learn nominated thoroughly stereotypical dogmatic liberal boring one boot 2000 george w bush also wellknown quantity week election polls looking word suddenly emerged drunkdriving charge never divulged bushs support suffered country left florida debacle bush barely eked electoral college win way hung question mark start presidency obama actually combines two risks unknown like dukakis standardissue liberal interesting exceptions speak though public yet realize like george w bush done things shouldnt evidently associated people voters wouldnt much like slowly emerging course campaign obama might face even greater problem certainly wellknown voters neither unfamiliar presence way bush dukakis nominated past year become something media superstar built presence quarters culture inhabited ordinary voters political junkies people may paid virtually attention candidates much later previous election cycles already seen lot obama year voters learning obama disconcerting disillusioning far worse obamas trouble people know little also much know true candidate hope idealism unity hurt candidates would revelation democratic senator voted democrats time candidate getting beyond divisive issues damaged details said abortion instance candidate new kind politics could look like hypocrite americans learn south side connections candidate postracial america much simply say idea longtime pastor antiamerican race baiter obamamania past fall winter bound impossible sustain already begun see lose shine course helped obama get within arms reach democratic nomination likely get across finish line general election real obama good bad comes better known heights reached last months may well prove costly obama lot going sure remains good year democrats extent john mccain introduce voters anew summer fall obama much lose mccain much less gain fact mccain respects opposite position hurt voters learn seem surprisingly old people havent seen much instance word temper certainly get voters dont know whole better know everyone sense mccain comported dignity prisoner war full extent details story deeply impress american public everyone knows comes military family believes service voters learn two sons harms way military think even better obamas reintroduction much difficult risky democrats unknowns process must frightening prospect surprises lurk obamas littleknown personal history last weeks made question suddenly crucial yuval levin hertog fellow ethics public policy center senior editor new atlantis magazine | 602 |
<p>Elon Musk of Tesla and Walt Disney’s Bob Iger have quit. Jeffrey Immelt of General Electric and JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon have dissented.</p>
<p>President Donald Trump’s business brain trust — originally these executives, plus some 50 other chief executive officers chosen to help shape White House policy — has so far come up short on big ideas.</p>
<p>In fact, there’s been little activity for the strategy and policy forum and the manufacturing group, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified. After initial meetings early in Trump’s presidency — which the White House promoted with great fanfare — his administration hasn’t convened the groups for months or set firm dates for future meetings, according to the people.</p>
<p>As turmoil has engulfed Washington, some prominent business leaders, including several of these informal advisers, have begun to distance themselves from the president.</p>
<p>Tesla Inc. CEO Musk and Walt Disney Co. CEO Iger went even further, quitting in June after Trump withdrew from the Paris climate accord. Former Uber Technologies Inc. CEO Travis Kalanick quit in February, following Trump’s controversial executive order on immigration.</p>
<p>CEO President</p>
<p>It’s a remarkable turnabout for the first CEO president, who pitched himself during the campaign as a savvy dealmaker who’d cut taxes and reduce regulations to unleash U.S. companies.</p>
<p>After vowing to impose business discipline on Washington and surrounding himself with executives, he’s presided over a chaotic administration that’s struggled to deliver business-like results. He has been pushing to cut corporate tax rates — an issue dear to CEOs — but the effort is log-jammed behind the Obamacare battle and multiple investigations of Russia’s interference in the election, including possible ties to Trump’s team.</p>
<p>The manufacturing group spearheaded by Dow Chemical Co. CEO Andrew Liveris hasn’t met in five months. Ford Motor Co. CEO Mark Fields was ousted by the automaker’s board in May and hasn’t been replaced.</p>
<p>And the strategy and policy forum, led by Blackstone Group CEO Stephen Schwarzman, last convened on April 11, despite the president saying he’d like it to get together monthly.</p>
<p>“The purpose of this group isn’t for general discussion, which is okay,” Schwarzman said at the first meeting Feb. 3. “But the real purpose is to get things done, to advise the government as to areas where we can do things a lot better as a country, for all Americans, and de-bottleneck some things.”</p>
<p>Scheduling Problem</p>
<p>Christine Anderson, a spokeswoman for Blackstone, declined to comment.&#160;A person familiar with the forum said scheduling has been a problem, and the goal is to meet in the fall. Schwarzman&#160;and a handful of other CEOs from the group participated in discussions last month between top U.S. and Chinese economic officials and executives. The talks broke up, with the two superpowers unable to produce a joint statement.</p>
<p>Liveris, an outspoken supporter of the president, said after the February manufacturing meeting the executives would come back in two months with solutions ranging from rebuilding infrastructure to regulatory reform.</p>
<p>Rachelle Schikorra, a Dow spokeswoman, said in an email the group had a “very busy and productive” second quarter. Some members contributed “subject matter experts” and engaged in “information exchanges” before Trump signed an executive order June 15 to expand apprenticeship programs, which the group discussed. She directed questions about another meeting to the White House, which hasn’t made any public announcements recently about either group.</p>
<p>Listening to CEOs</p>
<p>“We spent the first few months of the administration meeting with hundreds of CEOs to listen and are now putting those learnings into action,” a White House official said. “The roundtables and council meetings have directly impacted the administration’s policies in areas like workforce development, deregulation and tax reform. We will continue to meet with and engage with CEOs across all relevant policies.”</p>
<p>A lot has happened since April to sour the president’s relationship with industry chieftains. Namely, Trump announced June 1 that he would withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Agreement on climate, prompting criticism across corporate America. In addition to the departures of Musk and Iger from the&#160;strategy and policy forum, other members of the groups also disagreed.</p>
<p>“Collaboration is a good thing between nations.”&#160;JPMorgan CEO&#160;Dimon told Bloomberg Television. “Obviously the Trump administration felt differently about that, but we wish they’d stayed in.”</p>
<p>General Electric Co. CEO Immelt tweeted he was “disappointed” with the decision, adding “climate change is real” and the onus now falls on industry to lead.</p>
<p>Executives who aren’t in the groups also expressed concern, with Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s Lloyd Blankfein taking to Twitter for the first time to deride the move.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, FedEx Corp. CEO Fred Smith — who also isn’t in either group — is spearheading creation of an alternative tax-overhaul plan amid divisions in Washington over proposals the administration and Congress have offered.</p>
<p>“We at FedEx, like many major U.S. companies, are concerned the window for tax reform is closing,” Smith said in a June 26 email. “Our current federal tax system is simply not globally competitive, retarding investment and the high-paying jobs that follow.”</p> | false | 1 | elon musk tesla walt disneys bob iger quit jeffrey immelt general electric jpmorgan chases jamie dimon dissented president donald trumps business brain trust originally executives plus 50 chief executive officers chosen help shape white house policy far come short big ideas fact theres little activity strategy policy forum manufacturing group according people familiar matter asked identified initial meetings early trumps presidency white house promoted great fanfare administration hasnt convened groups months set firm dates future meetings according people turmoil engulfed washington prominent business leaders including several informal advisers begun distance president tesla inc ceo musk walt disney co ceo iger went even quitting june trump withdrew paris climate accord former uber technologies inc ceo travis kalanick quit february following trumps controversial executive order immigration ceo president remarkable turnabout first ceo president pitched campaign savvy dealmaker whod cut taxes reduce regulations unleash us companies vowing impose business discipline washington surrounding executives hes presided chaotic administration thats struggled deliver businesslike results pushing cut corporate tax rates issue dear ceos effort logjammed behind obamacare battle multiple investigations russias interference election including possible ties trumps team manufacturing group spearheaded dow chemical co ceo andrew liveris hasnt met five months ford motor co ceo mark fields ousted automakers board may hasnt replaced strategy policy forum led blackstone group ceo stephen schwarzman last convened april 11 despite president saying hed like get together monthly purpose group isnt general discussion okay schwarzman said first meeting feb 3 real purpose get things done advise government areas things lot better country americans debottleneck things scheduling problem christine anderson spokeswoman blackstone declined comment160a person familiar forum said scheduling problem goal meet fall schwarzman160and handful ceos group participated discussions last month top us chinese economic officials executives talks broke two superpowers unable produce joint statement liveris outspoken supporter president said february manufacturing meeting executives would come back two months solutions ranging rebuilding infrastructure regulatory reform rachelle schikorra dow spokeswoman said email group busy productive second quarter members contributed subject matter experts engaged information exchanges trump signed executive order june 15 expand apprenticeship programs group discussed directed questions another meeting white house hasnt made public announcements recently either group listening ceos spent first months administration meeting hundreds ceos listen putting learnings action white house official said roundtables council meetings directly impacted administrations policies areas like workforce development deregulation tax reform continue meet engage ceos across relevant policies lot happened since april sour presidents relationship industry chieftains namely trump announced june 1 would withdrew us paris agreement climate prompting criticism across corporate america addition departures musk iger the160strategy policy forum members groups also disagreed collaboration good thing nations160jpmorgan ceo160dimon told bloomberg television obviously trump administration felt differently wish theyd stayed general electric co ceo immelt tweeted disappointed decision adding climate change real onus falls industry lead executives arent groups also expressed concern goldman sachs group incs lloyd blankfein taking twitter first time deride move meanwhile fedex corp ceo fred smith also isnt either group spearheading creation alternative taxoverhaul plan amid divisions washington proposals administration congress offered fedex like many major us companies concerned window tax reform closing smith said june 26 email current federal tax system simply globally competitive retarding investment highpaying jobs follow | 531 |
<p />
<p>Each time Israel fails to keep its ‘side of the bargain’, the Palestinian Authority responds with the same redundant language. The cycle has become so utterly predictable that one wonders why the Palestinian Authority officials even bother protesting Israeli action. They must be well aware that their cries, genuine or otherwise, will only fall on deaf ears. They know that their complaints could not possibly contribute to a paradigm shift in Israel’s behavior, or the US position on it.</p>
<p>Let’s take a look at the context for the language of the Palestinian Authority’s complaints. In a speech made in early July, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas referred to any direct talks with Israel as ‘futile.’ Thousands of newspapers and news sites beamed this ‘headline’, highlighting the word ‘futile’ between inverted commas – as if it constituted some kind of earth-shattering revelation. But anyone following the Middle East, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in particular, already knows that such talks will be ‘futile’. More, Israel has hardly made secret its lack of desire for a peaceful and just settlement.</p>
<p>Mr. Abbas, however, has managed to insert his relevance as a ‘player’ in the conflict, using one cleverly coined word. This word has had as much of an impact in Arabic as it has in English.</p>
<p>Of course, none of this means that Abbas has actually adopted a serious shift in course. One need not dig up old archives to remember that the PA president felt the same way about the so-called ‘proximity talks’ with Israel last May. Before they began, he also expressed his opinion that the talks would be futile. He further insisted that no talks, direct or otherwise, would resume without a complete Israeli halt in settlement construction in occupied East Jerusalem. After this grand declaration, Abbas went along with the proximity talks charade, while Palestinian families continued to be uprooted from their homes in their historic city. Only one barrier was removed before embarking on the proximity talks: Abbas and his men quit complaining.</p>
<p>Nearly two months later, when it is evident to all that the proximity talks were indeed ‘futile’ – especially as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has triumphed over US President Barack Obama in his most recent visit to Washington – Mr. Abbas finds himself in desperate need for another line of defense. Thus, the new campaign attacking predictably ‘futile’ direct talks with Israel.</p>
<p>Mr. Abbas is not the only actor in this drama. Others have also been doing their job, as efficiently and as true to form as ever. Yasser Abed Rabbo, who has worn several hats in the past and is now one of Mr. Abbas’s aides, stated that the PA “will not enter new negotiations that could take more than 10 years.” This promise – that the Palestinian leadership will not be fooled into talks for the sake of talking and with no timeframe – is not the first of its kind to come from Abed Rabbo, and it’s unlikely to be the last. Abbas’ aide will most likely continue sharing the same tired insight over and over again, because it’s the scripted part that any ‘moderate’ – as in self-seeking – Palestinian official must reiterate to remain relevant. How else could they give the impression that the PA still serves the role of the bulwark against Israeli illegal territorial encroachment and military occupation?</p>
<p>Ahmed Qurei, former Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister and ex-Prime Minister, recently spoke at a Hebrew University Conference, entitled: “The Israeli-Palestinian Proximity Talks: Lessons from Past Negotiations.” The conference was organized by Hebrew University’s Harry S. Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace. The place and occasion of this conference could not be more significant. First, much of the Hebrew University was built on ‘ethnically cleansed’ Palestinian land. Second, Qurei spoke at an Israeli University in an occupied city, at a time when activists and academics from all over the world, including several from Israel, are leading a cultural and academic boycott of Israeli universities to protest the terrible role these institutions have played in Israeli violence against Palestinians.</p>
<p>Worse, immediately before his speech, Qurei had met with former Israeli Foreign Minister and acting Prime Minister, Tzipi Livni. Livni had ordered and supervised the unprecedented killing and maiming of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza between December 2008 and January 2009. The level of inhumanity she displayed during those days was met with outrage around the world, including from many in Israel itself. But all the blood was brushed under the carpet, as “Livni (and) Abu Ala exchange(d) ‘niceties’”, according to the Jerusalem Post.</p>
<p>Just try to imagine the fury that all Palestinians – and especially those besieged in destroyed Gaza – must have felt as Qurei and Livni shook hands and smiled for cameras. As for Qurei’s academic and political contributions, the Post reported that, “at the conference, Qurei said Netanyahu had not really frozen West Bank settlement construction, and added that Israel’s actions were preventing direct talks.”</p>
<p>Considering the numerous compromises that Qurei afforded in his very attendance of the conference, and his handshaking with Livni, one fails to understand the point of such statements.</p>
<p>These empty declarations will have no bearing on the outcome of events, nor will they force Netanyahu and his right-wing government to think twice as they carry on demolishing homes and uprooting trees. But they are more important than ever for the PA, as voices are rising in Washington, in London and elsewhere, demanding that the US and its partners acknowledge, if not ‘engage’ Hamas. Such a prospect is bad news for the West Bank Palestinian leadership, which understands that its relevance to the ‘peace process’ hinges on the constant dismissal of Hamas. Therefore, the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah will continue to adhere to its methodology: don’t criticize Israel too harshly, so as not to lose favor; follow the US dictates, so as to maintain a ‘moderate’ status and many privileges; and always give an impression to Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims that the PA is the one and only defender of Jerusalem.</p>
<p>One wonders how much longer the Palestinian leadership can sustain this act, which is in fact the real exercise of futility.</p> | false | 1 | time israel fails keep side bargain palestinian authority responds redundant language cycle become utterly predictable one wonders palestinian authority officials even bother protesting israeli action must well aware cries genuine otherwise fall deaf ears know complaints could possibly contribute paradigm shift israels behavior us position lets take look context language palestinian authoritys complaints speech made early july palestinian president mahmoud abbas referred direct talks israel futile thousands newspapers news sites beamed headline highlighting word futile inverted commas constituted kind earthshattering revelation anyone following middle east israelipalestinian conflict particular already knows talks futile israel hardly made secret lack desire peaceful settlement mr abbas however managed insert relevance player conflict using one cleverly coined word word much impact arabic english course none means abbas actually adopted serious shift course one need dig old archives remember pa president felt way socalled proximity talks israel last may began also expressed opinion talks would futile insisted talks direct otherwise would resume without complete israeli halt settlement construction occupied east jerusalem grand declaration abbas went along proximity talks charade palestinian families continued uprooted homes historic city one barrier removed embarking proximity talks abbas men quit complaining nearly two months later evident proximity talks indeed futile especially israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu triumphed us president barack obama recent visit washington mr abbas finds desperate need another line defense thus new campaign attacking predictably futile direct talks israel mr abbas actor drama others also job efficiently true form ever yasser abed rabbo worn several hats past one mr abbass aides stated pa enter new negotiations could take 10 years promise palestinian leadership fooled talks sake talking timeframe first kind come abed rabbo unlikely last abbas aide likely continue sharing tired insight scripted part moderate selfseeking palestinian official must reiterate remain relevant else could give impression pa still serves role bulwark israeli illegal territorial encroachment military occupation ahmed qurei former palestinian authority foreign minister exprime minister recently spoke hebrew university conference entitled israelipalestinian proximity talks lessons past negotiations conference organized hebrew universitys harry truman institute advancement peace place occasion conference could significant first much hebrew university built ethnically cleansed palestinian land second qurei spoke israeli university occupied city time activists academics world including several israel leading cultural academic boycott israeli universities protest terrible role institutions played israeli violence palestinians worse immediately speech qurei met former israeli foreign minister acting prime minister tzipi livni livni ordered supervised unprecedented killing maiming thousands palestinians gaza december 2008 january 2009 level inhumanity displayed days met outrage around world including many israel blood brushed carpet livni abu ala exchanged niceties according jerusalem post try imagine fury palestinians especially besieged destroyed gaza must felt qurei livni shook hands smiled cameras qureis academic political contributions post reported conference qurei said netanyahu really frozen west bank settlement construction added israels actions preventing direct talks considering numerous compromises qurei afforded attendance conference handshaking livni one fails understand point statements empty declarations bearing outcome events force netanyahu rightwing government think twice carry demolishing homes uprooting trees important ever pa voices rising washington london elsewhere demanding us partners acknowledge engage hamas prospect bad news west bank palestinian leadership understands relevance peace process hinges constant dismissal hamas therefore palestinian authority ramallah continue adhere methodology dont criticize israel harshly lose favor follow us dictates maintain moderate status many privileges always give impression palestinians arabs muslims pa one defender jerusalem one wonders much longer palestinian leadership sustain act fact real exercise futility | 569 |
<p>One of John F. Kennedy’s favorite books was John Buchan’s 1940 memoir, “Pilgrim’s Way.” Buchan, who served as a member of Parliament for the combined Scottish universities, wrote, “Public life is regarded as the crown of a career, and to young men it is the worthiest ambition.” Politics, he added, “is still the greatest and most honorable adventure.”</p>
<p>These days it would be hard to find a handful of people in America who agree with Buchan’s sentiment. According to a 2015 Pew Research Center survey, trust in government is at one of the lowest levels in a half-century. Almost three-quarters of Americans believe elected officials put their own interests ahead of the country’s interest. Much of the public has utter contempt for the political class.</p>
<p>Some of this is justified. Politicians aren’t putting forward solutions to the problems facing many Americans. There’s also their hypocrisy and corruption, as well as the triviality and rhetorical wasteland that characterizes much of public discourse. But that is hardly the whole of it. There are very good people who are quietly doing their jobs well and with integrity. I would hasten to point out, too, that voters are complicit in this problem, because they choose the people who represent them. The people who plant the flowers have some responsibility for the condition of the garden.</p>
<p>Repairing our politics begins with understanding the nature of the enterprise. Alleviating the public’s bitter mistrust of politics requires coming to terms with its mundane realities and limits.</p>
<p>If the 20th-century American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr were to comment on the current state of affairs, he would warn us against cynicism and idealism, writes Wilfred M. McClay, a historian at the University of Oklahoma. Our disappointments arise from our excessive expectations. “We assume we are better people than we seem to be,” according to Professor McClay, “and we assume that our politics should therefore be an endlessly uplifting pursuit, full of joy and inspiration and self-actualization rather than endless wrangling, head-butting, and petty self-interest.”</p>
<p>Politics is less than perfect because we are less than perfect. We therefore need to approach it with some modesty. Politics is not like mathematics, where clear premises and deductive reasoning can lead to exact answers. We would all do better if we took to heart the words of the political scientist Harry Clor, author of “On Moderation.” “There are truths to be discovered,” he wrote, but they are “complex and many-sided; the best way to get to them is by engaging contrary ideas in a manner approximating dialogue.”</p>
<p>In the throes of partisan disagreements, it can be tempting to think of American politics as a Manichaean struggle of good versus evil. As someone who has been involved in his share of intense political debates, and has been a senior White House aide, I’m keenly aware of how easy it is to adopt this parochial mind-set, to feel that one is part of a tribal community.</p>
<p>Instead, we need the self-confidence to admit that at best we possess only a partial understanding of the truth, which can be enlarged by refining our views in light of new arguments, new circumstances and new insights. But this requires us to listen to others, to weigh their arguments with care, and maybe even to learn from them.</p>
<p>“You used to not be able to talk about politics at a polite dinner party because you would probably have a fight,” Lilliana Mason, who teaches political science at the University of Maryland,&#160; <a href="http://eppc.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=be333e74ea841be93db60da61&amp;id=395944c019&amp;e=6c1a7f5b6c" type="external">recently told</a>&#160;The Washington Post, in a revealing article about how most Trump voters in Virginia, where I live, don’t know any Clinton voters and vice versa. “Increasingly, you can talk about politics at a dinner party because most of the people at the dinner party probably agree with you.”</p>
<p>In creating a world that continually reinforces what we believe, it gets harder to comprehend the attitudes animating others. The more distant our opponents are, the more likely we are to dismiss and dehumanize them. There’s no common ground, no acknowledgment that those who hold different views from us might have a legitimate point, an understandable grievance, a reasonable concern. This is when politics becomes blood sport.</p>
<p>We are in living through an especially partisan time now, but factionalism has always been a problem, under every type of political system. One possible answer comes from Montaigne, who pretty much invented the essay as we know it: “I embark upon discussion and argument with great ease and liberty,” he writes in “On the Art of Conversation.” “Since opinions do not find in me a ready soil to thrust and spread their roots into, no premise shocks me, no belief hurts me, no matter how opposite to my own they may be.”</p>
<p>“Whenever we meet opposition, we do not look to see if it is just, but how we can get out of it, rightly or wrongly,” he wrote a little later in the same essay. “Instead of welcoming arms we stretch out our claws.” Calmly, as always, he proposes a solution: “When I am contradicted it arouses my attention, not my wrath. I move toward the man who contradicts me: he is instructing me. The cause of truth ought to be common to both of us.”</p>
<p>Our low regard for politics is leading us to undervalue the craft of governing, to lose sight of the idea that there is anything at all that “ought to be common to both of us,” never mind truth. We are attracted to political novices and so-called outsiders, which leaves open the possibility of the rise of demagogic figures. Such a person might say, as the Republican nominee for president has: “I’ll give you everything. I will give you what you’ve been looking for for 50 years. I’m the only one.”</p>
<p>Our democratic belief that anyone can be a political leader paradoxically feeds into the anti-democratic belief that we should look to one person to quickly and easily save us. No one, alone, can fix it, and in our system of government, this authoritarian approach is a prescription for catastrophe. Our confusion about and contempt for politics is also blinding us to the possibility that it can advance the human good. There are those moments in American history when great issues of justice have been at stake, from ending slavery and segregation to opposing Communism and fascism to protecting the physically disabled and the unborn.</p>
<p>More often, though, politics is about making institutions work somewhat better, helping people’s lives at the margins, giving men and women the room to make the most of their talents and skills. It’s about making our schools better and our communities safer. The people who give up on politics and who reflexively denigrate those who are practitioners of it are doing a disservice to our country. Skepticism is fine; caustic cynicism is not.</p>
<p>“Political activity is a type of moral activity,” the British political theorist Bernard Crick wrote in “In Defense of Politics.” “It does not claim to settle every problem or to make every sad heart glad,” he added, “but it can help some way in nearly everything and, where it is strong, it can prevent the vast cruelties and deceits of ideological rule.”</p>
<p>Thinking about politics as a moral activity may seem unimaginable during this malicious and degrading political year. But doing so, in a realistic and sober way, is the first step toward repairing America’s shattered political culture and restoring politics to the pride of place it deserves in our national life.</p>
<p>Peter Wehner, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, served in the last three Republican administrations and is a contributing opinion writer for the&#160;New York Times.</p> | false | 1 | one john f kennedys favorite books john buchans 1940 memoir pilgrims way buchan served member parliament combined scottish universities wrote public life regarded crown career young men worthiest ambition politics added still greatest honorable adventure days would hard find handful people america agree buchans sentiment according 2015 pew research center survey trust government one lowest levels halfcentury almost threequarters americans believe elected officials put interests ahead countrys interest much public utter contempt political class justified politicians arent putting forward solutions problems facing many americans theres also hypocrisy corruption well triviality rhetorical wasteland characterizes much public discourse hardly whole good people quietly jobs well integrity would hasten point voters complicit problem choose people represent people plant flowers responsibility condition garden repairing politics begins understanding nature enterprise alleviating publics bitter mistrust politics requires coming terms mundane realities limits 20thcentury american theologian reinhold niebuhr comment current state affairs would warn us cynicism idealism writes wilfred mcclay historian university oklahoma disappointments arise excessive expectations assume better people seem according professor mcclay assume politics therefore endlessly uplifting pursuit full joy inspiration selfactualization rather endless wrangling headbutting petty selfinterest politics less perfect less perfect therefore need approach modesty politics like mathematics clear premises deductive reasoning lead exact answers would better took heart words political scientist harry clor author moderation truths discovered wrote complex manysided best way get engaging contrary ideas manner approximating dialogue throes partisan disagreements tempting think american politics manichaean struggle good versus evil someone involved share intense political debates senior white house aide im keenly aware easy adopt parochial mindset feel one part tribal community instead need selfconfidence admit best possess partial understanding truth enlarged refining views light new arguments new circumstances new insights requires us listen others weigh arguments care maybe even learn used able talk politics polite dinner party would probably fight lilliana mason teaches political science university maryland160 recently told160the washington post revealing article trump voters virginia live dont know clinton voters vice versa increasingly talk politics dinner party people dinner party probably agree creating world continually reinforces believe gets harder comprehend attitudes animating others distant opponents likely dismiss dehumanize theres common ground acknowledgment hold different views us might legitimate point understandable grievance reasonable concern politics becomes blood sport living especially partisan time factionalism always problem every type political system one possible answer comes montaigne pretty much invented essay know embark upon discussion argument great ease liberty writes art conversation since opinions find ready soil thrust spread roots premise shocks belief hurts matter opposite may whenever meet opposition look see get rightly wrongly wrote little later essay instead welcoming arms stretch claws calmly always proposes solution contradicted arouses attention wrath move toward man contradicts instructing cause truth ought common us low regard politics leading us undervalue craft governing lose sight idea anything ought common us never mind truth attracted political novices socalled outsiders leaves open possibility rise demagogic figures person might say republican nominee president ill give everything give youve looking 50 years im one democratic belief anyone political leader paradoxically feeds antidemocratic belief look one person quickly easily save us one alone fix system government authoritarian approach prescription catastrophe confusion contempt politics also blinding us possibility advance human good moments american history great issues justice stake ending slavery segregation opposing communism fascism protecting physically disabled unborn often though politics making institutions work somewhat better helping peoples lives margins giving men women room make talents skills making schools better communities safer people give politics reflexively denigrate practitioners disservice country skepticism fine caustic cynicism political activity type moral activity british political theorist bernard crick wrote defense politics claim settle every problem make every sad heart glad added help way nearly everything strong prevent vast cruelties deceits ideological rule thinking politics moral activity may seem unimaginable malicious degrading political year realistic sober way first step toward repairing americas shattered political culture restoring politics pride place deserves national life peter wehner senior fellow ethics public policy center served last three republican administrations contributing opinion writer the160new york times | 664 |
<p>A sad and at times bizarre story out of Vassar shows how profoundly troubled America’s colleges now are. The&#160; <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/341991/fossil-fuel-divestment-stanley-kurtz" type="external">campus fossil-fuel divestment campaign</a>&#160;that’s swept across the nation over the past few months has intensified the atmosphere of leftist indoctrination now typical of many schools, turning classic notions of education as the free exchange of ideas into a distant memory. In the blink of an eye, fossil fuel producers have been turned into the equivalent of apartheid enforcers, while the Occupy movement has risen from the dead to become a free-ranging campus mob.</p>
<p>Our harrowing tale of political correctness run amuck will show Vassar’s fossil-fuel divestment campaign stoking a climate of fear that touches not only conservative students, but even moderates, who dare not draw the ire of this new campus crusade.</p>
<p>Yet a climate of political intimidation was present at Vassar well before the advent of the divestment movement, and it’s worth attending to that background before turning to today’s divestment debate.</p>
<p>Consider a September 2012&#160; <a href="http://newspaperarchives.vassar.edu/cgi-bin/vassar?a=d&amp;d=miscellany20120920-01.2.32&amp;srpos=3&amp;e=-------en-20--1--txt-IN-luka+lad" type="external">opinion piece</a>&#160;by sophomore Luka Ladan in Vassar’s student paper,&#160;The Miscellany News. Ladan tells of election-year political science classes that regularly devolve into snickering sessions aimed at Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan and other Republican candidates. Professors take the lead, teaming up with liberal students to mock Republicans and anyone else who leans right. The Vassar students I’ve contacted (some afraid to speak for attribution) largely confirm this picture. Sophomore computer science major Jarret Holtz, told me, “I don’t feel that [conservative students at Vassar] are able to freely express their views at all.”</p>
<p>How could they be, when Vassar has found semi-official ways of engaging in partisan politics. Take Vassar’s “College Committee on Sustainability” (CCS), part of the school’s&#160; <a href="http://pages.vassar.edu/ccs/about/" type="external">official</a>structure of governance. About a week before the 2012 election, the CCS website pointed to the upcoming vote and told students to educate themselves on the issues by following the news. CCS then&#160; <a href="http://pages.vassar.edu/ccs/sustainable-community-challenge-democracy-is-calling/" type="external">suggested</a>&#160;that students consult three leftist sources of national news and opinion (no other national sources were provided),&#160; <a href="http://grist.org/" type="external">Grist</a>,&#160; <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/" type="external">Mother Jones</a>, and&#160; <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/" type="external">Aljazeera</a>. Following-up just before election day, CCS&#160; <a href="http://pages.vassar.edu/ccs/sustainable-community-challenge-democracy-redux/" type="external">reminded</a>&#160;students about these outlets and urged them to vote. CCS did add that it was not the place of Vassar’s sustainability committee to endorse particular candidates. Yet given its recommendations for reading, few can doubt which political party this official arm of the college was supporting.</p>
<p>Vassar’s fossil-fuel divestment movement is a product of this thoroughly politicized campus atmosphere, where students feign boldness by inching just a bit to the left of the school’s semi-official political posture. So it’s no surprise that on February 24, the Vassar Student Association&#160; <a href="http://s149435.gridserver.com/2013/02/27/vsa-council-endorses-twice-tabled-divestment-resolution/" type="external">passed</a>&#160;a divestment resolution by a margin of 23-1. As with the “debate” on fossil-fuel divestment&#160; <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/342198/fossil-fuel-divestment-part-3-stanley-kurtz" type="external">at Harvard</a>, no student prior to that vote mounted a challenge to the fundamental premises of the movement: that fossil-fuel producers are “public enemies” every bit as contemptible as South African apartheid, that catastrophic levels of global warming are imminent, and that America’s fossil-fuel industry can be effectively shut down by government fiat without massive social harm.</p>
<p>In the wake of this near-unanimous but ill-informed student vote, Vassar’s Moderate, Independent, Conservative Alliance (MICA), led by junior, cognitive science major Julian Hassan, invited Alex Epstein, President of the&#160; <a href="http://industrialprogress.net/" type="external">Center for Industrial Progress</a>&#160;and a proponent and defender of America’s conventional energy industries, to speak at Vassar. In doing so, Hassan and MICA crossed a red line. In effect, they started the debate that should have begun long before any student vote on divestment was taken. That’s when the spit hit the fan.</p>
<p>Picking up on Epstein’s book title,&#160; <a href="http://industrialprogress.net/book/" type="external">Fossil Fuels Improve the Planet</a>, Hassan posted links to what he called MICA’s “Vassar Loves Fossil Fuels” campaign on student facebook pages, and placed event slips for the Epstein talk in student mailboxes. Posters advertizing the lecture were promptly covered or ripped down, and widespread campus ridicule followed. Hassan says that at this point, his room lock was broken. Who broke it or why is unknown, yet the timing is curious. Hassan now had legitimate concerns for his safety.</p>
<p>Then came an&#160; <a href="http://s149435.gridserver.com/2013/03/27/not-in-my-backyard-former-mica-leaders-oppose-vassar-loves-fossil-fuels-drive/" type="external">opinion piece</a>&#160;in&#160;The Miscellany News&#160;denouncing MICA’s invitation to Epstein. Students Jeremy Bright and Will Serio, both former presidents of MICA, argued that ridicule had rightly been heaped on the Epstein invitation and objected to an attempt to “redirect the discourse” on divestment by challenging the core premises of the movement. In other words, Bright and Serio objected to a real debate.</p>
<p>The divestment campaign consistently fails to acknowledge the massive the social and economic costs that would follow a federally mandated phase-out the fossil-fuel industry, a point Epstein forcefully and thoughtfully brings across in his talks. Yet Bright and Serio said that it would have been smarter to have students to mock Epstein’s YouTube videos for free than to shell out $2,430 in student funds to bring him to Vassar to speak.</p>
<p>I am far from taking the divestment campaign’s founder and leader, Bill McKibben as&#160; <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/341994/fossil-fuel-divestment-part-2-stanley-kurtz" type="external">my guide</a>&#160;in such matters, but if even McKibben was willing to respectfully&#160; <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_a9RP0J7PA" type="external">debate</a>&#160;Epstein at Duke University, why shouldn’t Vassar students hear from Epstein as well? And if Vassar’s Political Science, Sociology, and International Studies Departments can serve as&#160; <a href="http://newspaperarchives.vassar.edu/cgi-bin/vassar?a=d&amp;d=miscellany20111117-01.2.13&amp;e=-------en-20--1--txt-IN-------" type="external">official co-sponsors</a>&#160;of a teach-in on behalf of the extremist and openly anti-capitalist Occupy Wall Street movement, how is inviting an libertarian defender of American industry to Vassar out of bounds?</p>
<p>It gets worse. After bemoaning the supposed waste of student funds on Epstein in the&#160;Miscellany, Serio and another student privately approached Hassan and pressured him to pay Epstein the agreed-upon fee&#160;not&#160;speak at Vassar. When I wrote Serio to ask why, he said that he’d wanted to avoid the “imminent negative campus response” to Epstein’s talk. He also claimed that since Vassar’s student government had already passed a divestment resolution, the lecture would only “[reignite] an issue that had already been settled.”</p>
<p>In all my years of reporting on campus conflicts, this is the most appalling instance of political correctness I can recall. That students would advocate paying an articulate libertarian conservative&#160;not&#160;to speak on campus signifies the near-collapse of the ethos of classic liberal education. If Epstein’s views were as indefensible as Serio claims, questioning him in person would be precisely the way to expose that. Any way you slice it, students would learn from the talk. Yet Serio would prefer to spend thousands in student funds to prevent the dreaded Epstein from speaking.</p>
<p>Inadvertently, Serio has revealed the harm of the divestment campaign. Politicizing college endowments is the surest way to kill free debate on campus. Once a school takes an official stand on an issue of public controversy, campus opponents are effectively silenced. In Serio’s eyes, even a hastily-passed and ill-informed student divestment resolution sufficed to delegitimate further debate. After speaking to a number of Vassar students, I’m convinced that avoiding the anger and ridicule of divestment proponents is the reason even campus moderates felt the need to distance themselves from the Epstein invitation.</p>
<p>I don’t want to be too hard on young Mr. Serio. (Half the point of college is to make mistakes.) I’ve read some of his writings and they’re thoughtful and non-doctrinaire. Ultimately, students like Serio are responding to an atmosphere of political pressure and cramped debate that the administration and faculty have allowed or encouraged at Vassar. Political intimidation among Vassar’s students flourishes on the model provided by adults.</p>
<p>Ripped-up lecture ads and demands that Epstein be paid to walk away from Vassar were only the beginning. Shortly before Epstein’s lecture, a Vassar student issued a bizarre threat on his facebook page. Lashing out at “‘Middle-class’ Industrial Capitalist A**holes” (no asterisks in the original), he threatened to walk in on Epstein’s talk and do physical damage to himself, horrifying the audience as a way of disrupting the lecture. This alarmed MICA and prompted a call to campus security, which was present at the event as a result.</p>
<p>At the lecture, maybe thirty people (about a third of those present, not counting the 130 online viewers) waited in the audience to launch a pre-planned walkout, to be signaled when a protester interrupted the talk to read a statement attacking Epstein. A number of the protesters entered the room wearing&#160; <a href="http://www.wearepowershift.org/blogs/fossil-fools-divestment-action-vassar-college" type="external">masks</a>&#160;of former Vice-President Cheney. Non-protesting students told me that the masked protesters turned the room tense and uncomfortable, since their presence implicitly threatened some sort of disruption. Others said the protesters were using “Occupy tactics” (Occupiers who vandalize businesses typically wear masks). I was also told that a number of the students who walked out were veterans of the Occupy movement.</p>
<p>Vigorous but peaceful protests outside a lecture with masks and street theater are fine, of course. Interrupting a talk is different. It’s got nothing to do with education, for one thing. As Epstein wrote me afterwards, “While some bodies walked out of the room in the middle of the speech, their minds never really walked in.” And a brief interruption tolerated becomes a precedent for more serious interruptions down the line.</p>
<p>The students I contacted were angry about the walkout and embarrassed for Vassar. The protesters, on the other hand, tweeted a&#160; <a href="https://twitter.com/ethanbuckner/status/317784645209051136/photo/1" type="external">proud picture</a>&#160;with a poster they’d ripped down. These students may fancy themselves courageous, but hiding behind masks and refusing to risk public contradiction by questioning a political opponent is cowardly.</p>
<p>As for the talk itself, you can&#160; <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4n2335k3uA" type="external">watch it</a>&#160;on video. The walkout comes at about 29 minutes into the tape. You can hear students criticizing the protesters as they leave. (A brief video with a better camera angle on the walkout can be found&#160; <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeMJN1VywiQ" type="external">here</a>.) But the real takeaway from the video is that, agree or disagree, the dreaded Epstein laid out a perfectly reasonable case for the importance of fossil fuels and the dangers of putting the industry that produces them out of business without an economically viable substitute. The notion that a talk like this is out of place at a an institution of higher education is pernicious. If anything, students desperately need to hear Epstein’s side of the story.</p>
<p>I asked Vassar’s administration for a comment on the walkout, the ripping down of ads for the talk, and on the threat by a student to harm himself at the talk as a protest. Acting Vassar College President, Jonathan Chenette has so far addressed only the walkout. Chenette’s statement, forwarded to me by Vassar, emphasizes that Epstein took the walkout in stride (true), yet added that the students who “[exited] rather than engaging” had “lost an opportunity for exchange and questioning.” (I have some serious concerns about this statement, but I’ll raise them when I reproduce the full text in a follow-up post.) My first response to Chenette’s statement is that it won’t do much to address the underlying problems at Vassar, which run deep.</p>
<p>There may be faculty at Vassar who still respect the ideals of liberal education as classically understood. Notwithstanding that, Vassar appears to have passed a tipping point beyond which these ideals no longer meaningfully operate where they’re most needed. Classes filled with courteous and respectful discussion don’t mean much if students dare not raise questions that half the country might ask.</p>
<p>Is Vassar an isolated case? Unfortunately, no. In light of the extraordinary&#160; <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2013/04/03/the_sad_state_of_liberal_education_at_bowdoin_117774.html" type="external">report</a>&#160;on Bowdoin College just released by the National Association of Scholars, the corruption of liberal education at Vassar appears to be the rule, not the exception. Meanwhile, the fossil-fuel divestment campaign sweeping across America’s campuses has greatly magnified an already egregious situation. This is a dilemma for the country. Vassar’s problem is our problem now.</p>
<p>Stanley Kurtz is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.</p> | false | 1 | sad times bizarre story vassar shows profoundly troubled americas colleges the160 campus fossilfuel divestment campaign160thats swept across nation past months intensified atmosphere leftist indoctrination typical many schools turning classic notions education free exchange ideas distant memory blink eye fossil fuel producers turned equivalent apartheid enforcers occupy movement risen dead become freeranging campus mob harrowing tale political correctness run amuck show vassars fossilfuel divestment campaign stoking climate fear touches conservative students even moderates dare draw ire new campus crusade yet climate political intimidation present vassar well advent divestment movement worth attending background turning todays divestment debate consider september 2012160 opinion piece160by sophomore luka ladan vassars student paper160the miscellany news ladan tells electionyear political science classes regularly devolve snickering sessions aimed mitt romney paul ryan republican candidates professors take lead teaming liberal students mock republicans anyone else leans right vassar students ive contacted afraid speak attribution largely confirm picture sophomore computer science major jarret holtz told dont feel conservative students vassar able freely express views could vassar found semiofficial ways engaging partisan politics take vassars college committee sustainability ccs part schools160 officialstructure governance week 2012 election ccs website pointed upcoming vote told students educate issues following news ccs then160 suggested160that students consult three leftist sources national news opinion national sources provided160 grist160 mother jones and160 aljazeera followingup election day ccs160 reminded160students outlets urged vote ccs add place vassars sustainability committee endorse particular candidates yet given recommendations reading doubt political party official arm college supporting vassars fossilfuel divestment movement product thoroughly politicized campus atmosphere students feign boldness inching bit left schools semiofficial political posture surprise february 24 vassar student association160 passed160a divestment resolution margin 231 debate fossilfuel divestment160 harvard student prior vote mounted challenge fundamental premises movement fossilfuel producers public enemies every bit contemptible south african apartheid catastrophic levels global warming imminent americas fossilfuel industry effectively shut government fiat without massive social harm wake nearunanimous illinformed student vote vassars moderate independent conservative alliance mica led junior cognitive science major julian hassan invited alex epstein president the160 center industrial progress160and proponent defender americas conventional energy industries speak vassar hassan mica crossed red line effect started debate begun long student vote divestment taken thats spit hit fan picking epsteins book title160 fossil fuels improve planet hassan posted links called micas vassar loves fossil fuels campaign student facebook pages placed event slips epstein talk student mailboxes posters advertizing lecture promptly covered ripped widespread campus ridicule followed hassan says point room lock broken broke unknown yet timing curious hassan legitimate concerns safety came an160 opinion piece160in160the miscellany news160denouncing micas invitation epstein students jeremy bright serio former presidents mica argued ridicule rightly heaped epstein invitation objected attempt redirect discourse divestment challenging core premises movement words bright serio objected real debate divestment campaign consistently fails acknowledge massive social economic costs would follow federally mandated phaseout fossilfuel industry point epstein forcefully thoughtfully brings across talks yet bright serio said would smarter students mock epsteins youtube videos free shell 2430 student funds bring vassar speak far taking divestment campaigns founder leader bill mckibben as160 guide160in matters even mckibben willing respectfully160 debate160epstein duke university shouldnt vassar students hear epstein well vassars political science sociology international studies departments serve as160 official cosponsors160of teachin behalf extremist openly anticapitalist occupy wall street movement inviting libertarian defender american industry vassar bounds gets worse bemoaning supposed waste student funds epstein the160miscellany serio another student privately approached hassan pressured pay epstein agreedupon fee160not160speak vassar wrote serio ask said hed wanted avoid imminent negative campus response epsteins talk also claimed since vassars student government already passed divestment resolution lecture would reignite issue already settled years reporting campus conflicts appalling instance political correctness recall students would advocate paying articulate libertarian conservative160not160to speak campus signifies nearcollapse ethos classic liberal education epsteins views indefensible serio claims questioning person would precisely way expose way slice students would learn talk yet serio would prefer spend thousands student funds prevent dreaded epstein speaking inadvertently serio revealed harm divestment campaign politicizing college endowments surest way kill free debate campus school takes official stand issue public controversy campus opponents effectively silenced serios eyes even hastilypassed illinformed student divestment resolution sufficed delegitimate debate speaking number vassar students im convinced avoiding anger ridicule divestment proponents reason even campus moderates felt need distance epstein invitation dont want hard young mr serio half point college make mistakes ive read writings theyre thoughtful nondoctrinaire ultimately students like serio responding atmosphere political pressure cramped debate administration faculty allowed encouraged vassar political intimidation among vassars students flourishes model provided adults rippedup lecture ads demands epstein paid walk away vassar beginning shortly epsteins lecture vassar student issued bizarre threat facebook page lashing middleclass industrial capitalist aholes asterisks original threatened walk epsteins talk physical damage horrifying audience way disrupting lecture alarmed mica prompted call campus security present event result lecture maybe thirty people third present counting 130 online viewers waited audience launch preplanned walkout signaled protester interrupted talk read statement attacking epstein number protesters entered room wearing160 masks160of former vicepresident cheney nonprotesting students told masked protesters turned room tense uncomfortable since presence implicitly threatened sort disruption others said protesters using occupy tactics occupiers vandalize businesses typically wear masks also told number students walked veterans occupy movement vigorous peaceful protests outside lecture masks street theater fine course interrupting talk different got nothing education one thing epstein wrote afterwards bodies walked room middle speech minds never really walked brief interruption tolerated becomes precedent serious interruptions line students contacted angry walkout embarrassed vassar protesters hand tweeted a160 proud picture160with poster theyd ripped students may fancy courageous hiding behind masks refusing risk public contradiction questioning political opponent cowardly talk can160 watch it160on video walkout comes 29 minutes tape hear students criticizing protesters leave brief video better camera angle walkout found160 real takeaway video agree disagree dreaded epstein laid perfectly reasonable case importance fossil fuels dangers putting industry produces business without economically viable substitute notion talk like place institution higher education pernicious anything students desperately need hear epsteins side story asked vassars administration comment walkout ripping ads talk threat student harm talk protest acting vassar college president jonathan chenette far addressed walkout chenettes statement forwarded vassar emphasizes epstein took walkout stride true yet added students exited rather engaging lost opportunity exchange questioning serious concerns statement ill raise reproduce full text followup post first response chenettes statement wont much address underlying problems vassar run deep may faculty vassar still respect ideals liberal education classically understood notwithstanding vassar appears passed tipping point beyond ideals longer meaningfully operate theyre needed classes filled courteous respectful discussion dont mean much students dare raise questions half country might ask vassar isolated case unfortunately light extraordinary160 report160on bowdoin college released national association scholars corruption liberal education vassar appears rule exception meanwhile fossilfuel divestment campaign sweeping across americas campuses greatly magnified already egregious situation dilemma country vassars problem problem stanley kurtz senior fellow ethics public policy center | 1,138 |
<p>It’s hard to say how it happened, but over the past decade, <a href="http://variety.com/t/ben-stiller/" type="external">Ben Stiller</a> has effectively cornered the market on playing malcontent middle-aged white guys. So, while this is the first time he’s actually embodied Brad Sloan — the married and miserable fiftysomething who frets his way through “Brad’s Status” —&#160;this latest performance is basically just a slight variation on the characters he tackled in “While We’re Young,” “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” and, most recently, “The Meyerowitz Stories.”</p>
<p>A piercing satire of first-world privilege from sardonic maestro <a href="http://variety.com/t/mike-white/" type="external">Mike White</a> (the writer behind “Beatriz at Dinner” and HBO’s “Enlightened”), “Brad’s Status” takes a tough, critical look at a one-time idealist (and fulltime egotist) who’s about to send his teenage son Troy (Austin Abrams) off to college. Instead of putting himself in his son’s shoes, Brad spends most of his time obsessing about his own failures, comparing where his personal life trajectory has taken him with those of his old university pals (amusingly played by Michael Sheen, Luke Wilson, Jemaine Clement and White himself). To Brad, the unctuous quartet appear to be living the dream, while he’s stuck living in Sacramento.</p>
<p>Most of “Brad’s Status” takes place on a visit to east-coast colleges, where Troy —&#160;who’s something of a musical prodigy —&#160;stands a good chance at being accepted to Harvard U. And yet, instead of being elated for his son’s success, Brad is preoccupied with the fact that his own college buddies appear to be much richer and happier than he is. Without giving anything away, the movie builds to a classical music recital in Cambridge, Mass., and there, dead-center in the audience, is Brad, playing world’s smallest violin.</p>
<p>That’s a metaphor, of course, though Stiller’s nearly wall-to-wall narration serves as a whiny backbone for the film. Brad’s interior monologue is well-written, but also largely unnecessary (surely half the words would have done, and silence, especially in the concert scene, might have allowed audiences to read a bit more into what the character was feeling). Still, Brad’s general irritability is nicely reinforced by a discordant string score from Mark Mothersbaugh, which serves to put audiences on edge as the dyspeptic character grouses: “It’s stupid to compare lives, but when I do, I feel somehow I’ve failed, and over time, the feelings get worse,” he complains, which isn’t half as horrible as his later remark, “What if Troy’s wins made me feel even more a failures, what if I became envious of my own son?”</p>
<p>Earlier, as if to forebode the point, White includes a wonderfully awkward scene in which Brad walks in on Troy, who’s in his room wearing only a towel. (It could be worse: 20 years ago, around the time of “Chuck &amp; Buck,” master-of-discomfort White might have written it so Brad caught him pleasuring himself, or looking at port.) Seeing Troy shirtless, it’s as if he’s recognizing his son for the first time as an adult, and by extension, as competition —&#160;which is certainly the unspoken subtext of a later scene, when he waits for Troy to fall asleep, then slips out to spend time with the pretty Harvard student, Ananya (Shazi Raja), we have reason to believe Troy might have hooked up with at band camp.</p>
<p>Whether or not that assumption is correct, it’s clear that dad is elbowing in on his son’s territory. Only a supreme narcissist could see it the other way around. But Brad is a supreme narcissist, and as such, he makes for an extremely unpleasant protagonist — which is kinda White’s point. That means “Brad’s Status” is a movie for those who can handle watching someone who is, paradoxically, always in the process of over-analyzing himself (trapped in his own head, as it were) and so totally un-self-aware at the same time (incapable of considering others’ perspectives or experience). It’s a film with the courage to be unlikable and the confidence to be complex, trusting audiences to navigate Brad’s whirling, restless mental state as it swings from jealousy to pride to what Ananya (correctly) identifies as “white privilege, male privilege, first-class problems” —&#160;otherwise known as entitlement.</p>
<p>Ananya’s an incredibly useful character because she’s able to put Brad’s solipsistic soul-search in perspective —&#160;although it’s not clear that she’s allowed to be much more than that. White seems to be awarding himself points for inclusivity, by sprinkling the film with people of color, the way movies like “Her” and “La La Land” count themselves diverse for employing what we might call “off-white extras” on the margins. It’s not the same thing, but it’s not an entirely bad thing either.</p>
<p>“Brad’s Status” is a blindingly white movie, and though we know White himself if more progressive than that (as “Beatriz at Dinner” demonstrated), there’s no denying that his insights and stiletto-fine criticisms feel like relics of a previous century, nearly as old-fashioned as Merchant Ivory movies. This is the kind of mainstream relic against which “Dear White People” (and “Get Out,” and “Moonlight,” and a vital new wave of independently voiced counter-programmers) tend to react, but it doesn’t mean that they should go away, just that the marketplace ought to make room for what were once seen as “marginal” perspectives. No question that it remains unfairly easy for White to get a movie like this made, greenlit with a typecast Stiller in the lead (great as Stiller is as such roles, conveying even more via body language than he does by dialogue, it might be nice to see another, slightly younger actor give it a shot).</p>
<p>Again, White is savvy enough to know what he’s doing, and what he’s doing is exploring the obliviousness of a character who considers himself liberal. Back when Brad went to school, he wanted to change the world, and while the classmates played by Sheen (now a top White House adviser), Wilson (a married-well entrepreneur with a private jet), Clement (a dot-commer with a beach house and a dream life) and White (a flaming gay filmmaker whose pool-party pad was featured in Architecture Digest) either sold out or cashed in, Brad followed his idealism and went into the non-profit sector. Now, he’s married to Melanie (Jenna Fischer), whose healthy sense of contentment seems to irritate his own dissatisfaction, and obsessed with the Facebook and Instagram feeds of former peers whom he now considers rivals.</p>
<p>This tech angle — which clearly inspires the film’s play-on-words title, simultaneously referring to both Brad’s social standing and the way he represents himself online —&#160;is perhaps the film’s one false note. “Brad’s Status” simply doesn’t feel like a 2017 film, and it’s strange how un-tech-savvy Brad is for someone who works as a social-media consultant. Chances are, Brad’s never heard of Twitter siren Sarah Hagi, but he’s precisely the sort she had in mind when she coined the phrase, “Lord, give me the confidence of a mediocre white man” — while White has the nerve to make said privilege the subject of an entire movie.</p>
<p>Reviewed at Rodeo screening room, Los Angeles, Aug. 29, 2017. (In Toronto Film Festival — Platform.) MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 102 MIN.</p>
<p>An Amazon Studios release, presented with Sidney Kimmel Entertainment of a Sidney Kimmel Entertainment, Plan B Entertainment production. Producers: Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, David Bernad, Sidney Kimmel. Executive producers: Brad Pitt, Carla Hacken, John Penotti, Mark Kamine, Sarah Esberg, Bruce Toll, Co-producers: Mark O’Connor, Dylan Tarason.</p>
<p>Director, writer: Mike White. Camera (color, widescreen): Xavier Grobet. Editor: Heather Persons. Music: Mark Mothersbaugh.</p>
<p>Ben Stiller, Austin Abrams, Jenna Fischer, Luke Wilson, Jemaine Clement, Shazi Raja, Luisa Lee, Micahel Sheen.</p> | false | 1 | hard say happened past decade ben stiller effectively cornered market playing malcontent middleaged white guys first time hes actually embodied brad sloan married miserable fiftysomething frets way brads status 160this latest performance basically slight variation characters tackled young secret life walter mitty recently meyerowitz stories piercing satire firstworld privilege sardonic maestro mike white writer behind beatriz dinner hbos enlightened brads status takes tough critical look onetime idealist fulltime egotist whos send teenage son troy austin abrams college instead putting sons shoes brad spends time obsessing failures comparing personal life trajectory taken old university pals amusingly played michael sheen luke wilson jemaine clement white brad unctuous quartet appear living dream hes stuck living sacramento brads status takes place visit eastcoast colleges troy 160whos something musical prodigy 160stands good chance accepted harvard u yet instead elated sons success brad preoccupied fact college buddies appear much richer happier without giving anything away movie builds classical music recital cambridge mass deadcenter audience brad playing worlds smallest violin thats metaphor course though stillers nearly walltowall narration serves whiny backbone film brads interior monologue wellwritten also largely unnecessary surely half words would done silence especially concert scene might allowed audiences read bit character feeling still brads general irritability nicely reinforced discordant string score mark mothersbaugh serves put audiences edge dyspeptic character grouses stupid compare lives feel somehow ive failed time feelings get worse complains isnt half horrible later remark troys wins made feel even failures became envious son earlier forebode point white includes wonderfully awkward scene brad walks troy whos room wearing towel could worse 20 years ago around time chuck amp buck masterofdiscomfort white might written brad caught pleasuring looking port seeing troy shirtless hes recognizing son first time adult extension competition 160which certainly unspoken subtext later scene waits troy fall asleep slips spend time pretty harvard student ananya shazi raja reason believe troy might hooked band camp whether assumption correct clear dad elbowing sons territory supreme narcissist could see way around brad supreme narcissist makes extremely unpleasant protagonist kinda whites point means brads status movie handle watching someone paradoxically always process overanalyzing trapped head totally unselfaware time incapable considering others perspectives experience film courage unlikable confidence complex trusting audiences navigate brads whirling restless mental state swings jealousy pride ananya correctly identifies white privilege male privilege firstclass problems 160otherwise known entitlement ananyas incredibly useful character shes able put brads solipsistic soulsearch perspective 160although clear shes allowed much white seems awarding points inclusivity sprinkling film people color way movies like la la land count diverse employing might call offwhite extras margins thing entirely bad thing either brads status blindingly white movie though know white progressive beatriz dinner demonstrated theres denying insights stilettofine criticisms feel like relics previous century nearly oldfashioned merchant ivory movies kind mainstream relic dear white people get moonlight vital new wave independently voiced counterprogrammers tend react doesnt mean go away marketplace ought make room seen marginal perspectives question remains unfairly easy white get movie like made greenlit typecast stiller lead great stiller roles conveying even via body language dialogue might nice see another slightly younger actor give shot white savvy enough know hes hes exploring obliviousness character considers liberal back brad went school wanted change world classmates played sheen top white house adviser wilson marriedwell entrepreneur private jet clement dotcommer beach house dream life white flaming gay filmmaker whose poolparty pad featured architecture digest either sold cashed brad followed idealism went nonprofit sector hes married melanie jenna fischer whose healthy sense contentment seems irritate dissatisfaction obsessed facebook instagram feeds former peers considers rivals tech angle clearly inspires films playonwords title simultaneously referring brads social standing way represents online 160is perhaps films one false note brads status simply doesnt feel like 2017 film strange untechsavvy brad someone works socialmedia consultant chances brads never heard twitter siren sarah hagi hes precisely sort mind coined phrase lord give confidence mediocre white man white nerve make said privilege subject entire movie reviewed rodeo screening room los angeles aug 29 2017 toronto film festival platform mpaa rating r running time 102 min amazon studios release presented sidney kimmel entertainment sidney kimmel entertainment plan b entertainment production producers dede gardner jeremy kleiner david bernad sidney kimmel executive producers brad pitt carla hacken john penotti mark kamine sarah esberg bruce toll coproducers mark oconnor dylan tarason director writer mike white camera color widescreen xavier grobet editor heather persons music mark mothersbaugh ben stiller austin abrams jenna fischer luke wilson jemaine clement shazi raja luisa lee micahel sheen | 747 |
<p>Earlier this year, in a review of Panic by Henry Bromell, I observed that it was possible to appreciate a film which is an impressive bit of propaganda for a political position with which you profoundly disagree. Just think of Leni Riefenstahl’s The Triumph of the Will. Nowadays, the most assiduous ideologues among film-makers are feminists, and the best of these come from countries where women really do have something to complain about. Two recent Iranian films illustrate the point. Like Bromell’s movie, Jafar Panahi’s The Circle and Marzieh Meshkini’s The Day I Became a Woman direct their fire at what the feminists have taught us to call the “patriarchy,” but this is a patriarchy—enforced by the Muslim clergy upon a hitherto partially-modernized Iran for the past 23 years—that is a patriarchy and proud of it. But those of us who don’t have any stake in the success or failure of Islamic law will find it easier to go with the flow of this film than it would be for a pious believer in the Koran.</p>
<p>For even conservative Westerners can hardly be very pleased by the image of institutional male supremacy as presented in these two films—which of course is the point. You won’t see here any women who are happy to be subordinate to their husbands or fathers or content to be relegated to the home and child-rearing, though there are presumably one or two such to be found even in Iran. The deck, in short, is stacked against the Koran and Islamic law, although the fact is likely to be more annoying to Muslims than to non-Muslims, who are therefore in a better position to appreciate the movies’ virtues. And these are considerable. The great achievement of both directors (Ms Meshkini’s film was written by her husband, Mohsen Makhmalbaf) is to make us care about their unhappy women as if they resembled real people instead of owing their existence, as we know they do, to their usefulness in illustrating a political argument.</p>
<p>Mr. Panahi’s film begins with nothing but a black screen and a soundtrack. Over the opening credits we hear, somewhere, the sounds of a woman in childbirth. With the end of credits come the film’s first articulate words: “It’s a girl.” It is at this point that we—like the new-born child liberated from the darkness—begin to see, perhaps metaphorically as well as literally. For we see a nurse telling the child’s grandmother that “It’s an adorable little girl.” Granny, however, is less than thrilled. “Are you sure?” she asks. “The ultrasound said boy. The relatives were expecting a boy. Now they’ll want a divorce.” Then, meeting her son-in-law’s family on their way into the hospital, she lies to them in order to escape from the womb-like hospital into the streets of Teheran, where most of the rest of the film takes place.</p>
<p>This is itself a daring statement, as the street is a public space where, in a country that so largely confines wives and mothers to the home, the presence of women still has some of the power to shock which is linguistically fossilized in the English word “streetwalker.” We see a woman being arrested for some unnamed crime while her two friends escape, one to try to travel alone to her native province, another to try to find an old lover. Granny is left to her anguish over the birth of her daughter’s daughter and these two women’s stories are each in turn taken up for a while. The rest of the film consists of a series of linked vignettes designed to show the gamut of social problems affecting women in Iran: one is seeking an illegal abortion and another is a victim of domestic violence, while a third is disowned by her family for obscure but (we gather) not uncommon reasons. A prostitute is arrested in the street as a single and friendless mother reluctantly tries to abandon her child so that it will get better care than she can give it.</p>
<p>In the end, all these women the threads of whose stories have been taken up and dropped in turn are brought together again in a powerfully symbolic representation of their common predicament. The Day I Became a Woman has a somewhat similar structure, but is much more subtle in making its point. In its first segment, a young girl is trying to understand why, on her ninth birthday, she is to have to don the chador and no longer be allowed to play with her male playmate. Finally she strikes a deal with her mother: as she wasn’t born until noon on this day nine years ago, she can continue to play with Hassan until noon—whereupon she must return home to a lifetime of segregation from men and close supervision of her contact with them. She takes with her a stick which, thrust into the ground, will tell her it is noon when it has no more shadow.</p>
<p>The poignancy of this little episode is emotionally if not intellectually conclusive. The traditional Islamic view of the proper position of women in society doesn’t stand a chance. In subsequent vignettes, a girl on a bicycle, riding with a lot of other girls on bicycles, is pursued by her husband and his brothers who are on horseback and who demand that she return to her family. Then an old woman arrives in the city with her life’s savings which, as she is escorted around the shops by street urchins eager for tips, she proceeds to spend on kitchen appliances. These she has set up for display on the beach, and then loaded onto a raft for transport back to her remote rural home. The striking visual nature both of the girls pedaling furiously on their bicycles and of the old woman sitting content on her raft full of expensive Western white goods makes a point about women’s lives in a traditional society as forceful as Panahi’s.</p>
<p>One thing I liked about these two movies was the sense they give one of the inevitability of Western-style social “progress,” at least in a world dominated by the Western-style popular culture of movies, music and television. One can hardly even imagine a cinematic apology for the Islamic (or, indeed, any other) patriarchy—assuming for the moment that patriarchy exists. Such a thing would be impossibly, well, uncinematic. In the classic distinction made by the art historian Wilhelm Worringer a century ago, the movies are essentially empathetic, rather than abstract. And empathy, itself a feminine virtue, will always overwhelm the masculine and abstract arguments for sexual differentiation and subordination on the silver screen. If you want to know how we got from a social system not completely unlike the Iranian to where we are now, just look at these two movies.</p> | false | 1 | earlier year review panic henry bromell observed possible appreciate film impressive bit propaganda political position profoundly disagree think leni riefenstahls triumph nowadays assiduous ideologues among filmmakers feminists best come countries women really something complain two recent iranian films illustrate point like bromells movie jafar panahis circle marzieh meshkinis day became woman direct fire feminists taught us call patriarchy patriarchyenforced muslim clergy upon hitherto partiallymodernized iran past 23 yearsthat patriarchy proud us dont stake success failure islamic law find easier go flow film would pious believer koran even conservative westerners hardly pleased image institutional male supremacy presented two filmswhich course point wont see women happy subordinate husbands fathers content relegated home childrearing though presumably one two found even iran deck short stacked koran islamic law although fact likely annoying muslims nonmuslims therefore better position appreciate movies virtues considerable great achievement directors ms meshkinis film written husband mohsen makhmalbaf make us care unhappy women resembled real people instead owing existence know usefulness illustrating political argument mr panahis film begins nothing black screen soundtrack opening credits hear somewhere sounds woman childbirth end credits come films first articulate words girl point welike newborn child liberated darknessbegin see perhaps metaphorically well literally see nurse telling childs grandmother adorable little girl granny however less thrilled sure asks ultrasound said boy relatives expecting boy theyll want divorce meeting soninlaws family way hospital lies order escape womblike hospital streets teheran rest film takes place daring statement street public space country largely confines wives mothers home presence women still power shock linguistically fossilized english word streetwalker see woman arrested unnamed crime two friends escape one try travel alone native province another try find old lover granny left anguish birth daughters daughter two womens stories turn taken rest film consists series linked vignettes designed show gamut social problems affecting women iran one seeking illegal abortion another victim domestic violence third disowned family obscure gather uncommon reasons prostitute arrested street single friendless mother reluctantly tries abandon child get better care give end women threads whose stories taken dropped turn brought together powerfully symbolic representation common predicament day became woman somewhat similar structure much subtle making point first segment young girl trying understand ninth birthday chador longer allowed play male playmate finally strikes deal mother wasnt born noon day nine years ago continue play hassan noonwhereupon must return home lifetime segregation men close supervision contact takes stick thrust ground tell noon shadow poignancy little episode emotionally intellectually conclusive traditional islamic view proper position women society doesnt stand chance subsequent vignettes girl bicycle riding lot girls bicycles pursued husband brothers horseback demand return family old woman arrives city lifes savings escorted around shops street urchins eager tips proceeds spend kitchen appliances set display beach loaded onto raft transport back remote rural home striking visual nature girls pedaling furiously bicycles old woman sitting content raft full expensive western white goods makes point womens lives traditional society forceful panahis one thing liked two movies sense give one inevitability westernstyle social progress least world dominated westernstyle popular culture movies music television one hardly even imagine cinematic apology islamic indeed patriarchyassuming moment patriarchy exists thing would impossibly well uncinematic classic distinction made art historian wilhelm worringer century ago movies essentially empathetic rather abstract empathy feminine virtue always overwhelm masculine abstract arguments sexual differentiation subordination silver screen want know got social system completely unlike iranian look two movies | 560 |
<p>Two separate juries in Los Angeles and Baltimore have awarded multi-million dollar settlements to two innocent men wrongfully convicted of murder after police were found to have withheld evidence and pressured witnesses to testify against them.</p>
<p>After spending 27 years behind bars for a murder he didn’t commit, Frank O’Connell was awarded a $15 million payout by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on Wednesday, the largest single-plaintiff settlement in the past 10 years.</p>
<p>“This brings a sense of closure. It’s been a long road,” O’Connell said, according to <a href="http://ktla.com/2017/11/21/i-had-my-life-taken-away-says-wrongfully-convicted-man-who-will-get-15m-settlement-from-l-a-county/" type="external">KTLA</a>. “It’ll be a new beginning for me, and I can really start my life over. I can’t make up for the time that was stolen from me, but I can take positive action with what’s left.”</p>
<p>O’Connell was arrested in 1984 for the fatal shooting of Jay French, the ex-husband of a woman with whom O’Connell was having an affair.</p>
<p>Jeanne Lyon, French’s ex-wife, told detectives that O’Connell moved in with her the summer before the shooting. At the time, Lyon was fighting a custody battle with her ex-husband, and her friends told detectives she had talked about killing French to gain custody.</p>
<p>One neighbor picked O’Connell out of a lineup and said that French, when he was dying, identified the shooter as the “guy in the yellow Pinto,” according to <a href="http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2017/11/21/la-man-wrongfully-imprisoned/" type="external">CBS News</a>. Another neighbor told detectives that he had jump-started O’Connell’s Pinto and seen him kissing Lyon.</p>
<p>At the age of 27, O’Connell was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. &#160;</p>
<p>Read more</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/usa/410311-chicago-crooked-cops-exonerations/" type="external" /></p>
<p>During his 27 years in prison, O’Connell never admitted to the shooting, even when the parole board said his doing so was the only way to make them consider granting him parole.</p>
<p>“I said I would never come in and lie to you and admit to a crime I didn’t commit. I will spend the rest of my life in here and die before I do that,” Frank says he told the parole board, according to <a href="http://abc7.com/%2415-million-payout-for-man-wrongfully-imprisoned-for-27-years/2681233/" type="external">ABC News</a>.</p>
<p>While O’Connell was in prison, investigators for Centurion Ministries, a nonprofit group that <a href="http://centurion.org/about-us/" type="external">claims</a> to be the first organization in the world dedicated to the vindication of the wrongly convicted, discovered prosecutors failed to disclose exculpatory evidence during his original trial.</p>
<p>Detectives also received an anonymous tip that Lyon paid a hitman to kill her ex-husband. Lyon has denied any wrongdoing.</p>
<p>The witness who identified O’Connell also recanted and said he felt pressured by detectives to identify O’Connell as the gunman. The eyewitness is partially sighted and was 40 feet away when the shooting took place.</p>
<p>In 2012, a judge determined O’Connell should be released after ruling the detectives improperly influenced witnesses and failed to allow the defense access to evidence.</p>
<p>“There was a deliberate effort to misrepresent the interviews of witnesses in this case,” Ronald Kaye, O’Connell’s attorney, said, according to ABC News. “This was no mistake … this was an effort to essentially defraud the court.”</p>
<p>Frank and his family filed a civil lawsuit against the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department after his conviction was overturned. The county spent nearly $1.4 million defending the Sheriff’s Department before agreeing to a $15 million settlement.</p>
<p>“I’m a little disappointed I never got an apology, and I realize it may never happen, but I don’t carry it with me,” O’Connell said, according to the <a href="http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-ln-frank-oconnell-settlement-20171121-story.html" type="external">Los Angeles Times</a>.</p>
<p>A federal jury awarded Sabein Burgess a $15 million payout on Tuesday in his lawsuit against the Baltimore Police Department and two detectives. Burgess spent nearly two decades in prison for a murder he did not commit.</p>
<p>“I’m very happy for the verdict. But my losses were so severe. I lost my father and my grandma while I was locked up. I had a daughter born within days of my trial, and when I came out she was 19 ½ with two kids. The one thing I had for all those years was the truth. They couldn’t take that away from me,” Burgess said, according to the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/exonerated-baltimore-man-15-million-verdict-brings-justice/2017/11/22/f5a76bca-cff5-11e7-a87b-47f14b73162a_story.html?utm_term=.395d99b81907" type="external">Associated Press</a>.</p>
<p>In 1994, police found Burgess holding his dead girlfriend in his arms, according to the <a href="https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/casedetail.aspx?caseid=4375" type="external">National Registry of Exonerations</a>, a law school project that tracks exonerations in the US.</p>
<p>Burgess told police that he left the house to return some videos and fill up his gas tank. When he returned, he said that he found his girlfriend, Michelle Dyson, had been shot in the chest and head.</p>
<p>At his trial, a Baltimore police laboratory technician testified that Burgess had gunshot residue on his hands.</p>
<p>Read more</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/uk/399568-alex-henry-joint-enterprise/" type="external" /></p>
<p>The prosecution contested Burgess’s statements, saying the car’s tank was not filled and there were no videotapes found. The defense did not call any witnesses.</p>
<p>After a two-day trial, Burgess was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.</p>
<p>In 1998, Charles Dorsey, a prisoner serving 45 years for attempted murder and armed robbery, wrote several letters to Burgess’s mother and his trial lawyer, confessing that he was the one who had murdered Dyson. Detectives interviewed Dorsey, who told them the caliber of the gun used to murder Dyson, as well as where she was shot, but they concluded that he did not know other details that the killer would have known.</p>
<p>In 2011, the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project uncovered evidence that the prosecution had not turned over documents to Burgess’s trial lawyer. Included in the documents was an interview police had with Dyson’s 6-year-old son Brian, who said that he saw someone order his mother to go to the basement.</p>
<p>In 2012, Brian signed an affidavit stating that he saw two men take his mother to the basement and neither of them was Burgess. One of the men was a person of interest in the case.</p>
<p>Charges were dismissed in 2014, and Burgess was released. The next year, he filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the Baltimore police department and two homicide detectives for wrongful conviction.</p>
<p>Burgess accused the Baltimore Police Department and two homicide detectives, Gerald Goldstein and Steven Lehman, of fabricating the gunshot residue evidence to convict him.</p>
<p>His lawsuit said that his case was the result of “policies and practices of pursuing wrongful convictions through reliance on profoundly flawed investigations,” according to the Associated Press.</p>
<p>Baltimore City Solicitor Andre Davis told the <a href="http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/bs-md-ci-burgess-appeal-20171122-story.html" type="external">Baltimore Sun</a> that the city plans to appeal the decision, saying the money awarded to Burgess would be “a regrettable and unanticipated hit on the budget.”</p>
<p>“There will be an appeal without question,” Davis told the Sun. “We really thought we had a very strong case on the facts and the law.”</p> | false | 1 | two separate juries los angeles baltimore awarded multimillion dollar settlements two innocent men wrongfully convicted murder police found withheld evidence pressured witnesses testify spending 27 years behind bars murder didnt commit frank oconnell awarded 15 million payout los angeles county board supervisors wednesday largest singleplaintiff settlement past 10 years brings sense closure long road oconnell said according ktla itll new beginning really start life cant make time stolen take positive action whats left oconnell arrested 1984 fatal shooting jay french exhusband woman oconnell affair jeanne lyon frenchs exwife told detectives oconnell moved summer shooting time lyon fighting custody battle exhusband friends told detectives talked killing french gain custody one neighbor picked oconnell lineup said french dying identified shooter guy yellow pinto according cbs news another neighbor told detectives jumpstarted oconnells pinto seen kissing lyon age 27 oconnell sentenced 25 years life prison 160 read 27 years prison oconnell never admitted shooting even parole board said way make consider granting parole said would never come lie admit crime didnt commit spend rest life die frank says told parole board according abc news oconnell prison investigators centurion ministries nonprofit group claims first organization world dedicated vindication wrongly convicted discovered prosecutors failed disclose exculpatory evidence original trial detectives also received anonymous tip lyon paid hitman kill exhusband lyon denied wrongdoing witness identified oconnell also recanted said felt pressured detectives identify oconnell gunman eyewitness partially sighted 40 feet away shooting took place 2012 judge determined oconnell released ruling detectives improperly influenced witnesses failed allow defense access evidence deliberate effort misrepresent interviews witnesses case ronald kaye oconnells attorney said according abc news mistake effort essentially defraud court frank family filed civil lawsuit los angeles county sheriffs department conviction overturned county spent nearly 14 million defending sheriffs department agreeing 15 million settlement im little disappointed never got apology realize may never happen dont carry oconnell said according los angeles times federal jury awarded sabein burgess 15 million payout tuesday lawsuit baltimore police department two detectives burgess spent nearly two decades prison murder commit im happy verdict losses severe lost father grandma locked daughter born within days trial came 19 ½ two kids one thing years truth couldnt take away burgess said according associated press 1994 police found burgess holding dead girlfriend arms according national registry exonerations law school project tracks exonerations us burgess told police left house return videos fill gas tank returned said found girlfriend michelle dyson shot chest head trial baltimore police laboratory technician testified burgess gunshot residue hands read prosecution contested burgesss statements saying cars tank filled videotapes found defense call witnesses twoday trial burgess convicted firstdegree murder sentenced life prison 1998 charles dorsey prisoner serving 45 years attempted murder armed robbery wrote several letters burgesss mother trial lawyer confessing one murdered dyson detectives interviewed dorsey told caliber gun used murder dyson well shot concluded know details killer would known 2011 midatlantic innocence project uncovered evidence prosecution turned documents burgesss trial lawyer included documents interview police dysons 6yearold son brian said saw someone order mother go basement 2012 brian signed affidavit stating saw two men take mother basement neither burgess one men person interest case charges dismissed 2014 burgess released next year filed federal civil rights lawsuit baltimore police department two homicide detectives wrongful conviction burgess accused baltimore police department two homicide detectives gerald goldstein steven lehman fabricating gunshot residue evidence convict lawsuit said case result policies practices pursuing wrongful convictions reliance profoundly flawed investigations according associated press baltimore city solicitor andre davis told baltimore sun city plans appeal decision saying money awarded burgess would regrettable unanticipated hit budget appeal without question davis told sun really thought strong case facts law | 608 |
<p>By Tom Allard and Agustinus Beo Da Costa</p>
<p>JAKARTA (Reuters) – Indonesian police will deploy as many as 30,000 personnel to guard an anti-communist rally on Friday, as the country’s military chief and Islamist groups stoke fears of a hard left revival in the world’s most populous Muslim nation.</p>
<p>Protesters will gather outside Indonesia’s parliament on the eve of the 52nd anniversary of the murder of six Army generals and a young lieutenant by rebel armed forces personnel, an incident that led to a retaliatory pogrom that killed at least 500,000 alleged communists.</p>
<p>The massacres ushered in more than 30 years of authoritarian rule under Suharto, the former general who led the communist purge.</p>
<p>Earlier this month, Armed Forces Commander General Gatot Nurmantyo instructed military officers to screen a Suharto-era propaganda film depicting the deaths of the generals and the crushing of an alleged Communist coup to “prevent what happened in 1965 from recurring”.</p>
<p>The three-and-a-half-hour film, criticized by historians for inaccuracies and failing to depict the massacre of leftists, has been widely shown in villages and mosques in the past week. During Suharto’s rule, it was broadcast annually on the night of Sept 30th, the date of the alleged abortive coup. It was also compulsory viewing for students.</p>
<p>Indonesia’s Communist Party, once one of the world’s largest, remains outlawed, and there appears to be little evidence of a Marxist ideology taking hold in Indonesia.</p>
<p>Instead, analysts and government advisers said, the fomenting of a “red scare” was aimed at Indonesia’s reformist president Joko Widodo, widely known as Jokowi, and long falsely accused of being the descendant of communists.</p>
<p>Indonesia’s growing economic ties with China are also frequently cited by those concerned about rising communist influence in Indonesia.</p>
<p>“I see Jokowi being the factor behind the rise of communism in Indonesia because of the cooperative relationship with China,” said Yudi Syamhudi Suyuti, one of the protest organizers and a failed political candidate for the opposition Gerindra Party, in comments posted online.</p>
<p>ISLAMIC DEFENDERS FRONT</p>
<p>Friday’s rally has been organized by hardline Islamist groups led by the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI).</p>
<p>“We reject and fight against the awakening of the Indonesian Communist Party,” Slamet Maarif, the chairman of the rally’s organizing committee and spokesman for the FPI, told Reuters.</p>
<p>The FPI led huge rallies last year that successfully demanded the jailing for blasphemy of Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, Jakarta’s then governor and an ethnic Chinese Christian.</p>
<p>Maarif predicted 50,000 protesters would join Friday’s rally, which will also urge parliament to overturn a presidential regulation allowing the government to ban mass organizations deemed a threat to national unity. Hizbut Tahrir, an Islamist group that wants Indonesia to become a caliphate, was disbanded under the regulation in July.</p>
<p>A Jakarta police spokesman, Argo Yuwono, expected only 15,000 people to turn up.</p>
<p>“We will deploy 30,000 police personnel,” he said on Tuesday, noting the risk that more could arrive. During an anti-Purnama rally in December last year, police arrested eight people for treason in an alleged plot for protesters to occupy the parliament building.</p>
<p>“We have anticipated all [possibilities],” Yuwono said.</p>
<p>On Wednesday, a national police spokesman Setyo Wasisto, said police would adapt their deployment depending on the number of protesters. “We have prepared for defending parliament,” he said.</p>
<p>Tobias Basuki, an Indonesian political analyst, said Nurmantyo had clear political ambitions. The armed forces chief, due to retire in March, courted further controversy this month when he falsely claimed 5,000 weapons had been illegally imported “on behalf” of Widodo.</p>
<p>“There’s not much evidence at all of a communist revival but as we head to the 2019 [presidential] election the communist fear-mongering is being used by various groups,” said Basuki. “We are seeing a coalescing conspiracy theory from military groups and Islamist groups for political purposes.”</p>
<p>Nurmantyo has declined to publicly comment after the chief security minister and defense minister corrected his claim about the imported weapons. A military spokesman, Major General Wuryanto, said Nurmantyo did not “carry out political moves”.</p>
<p>SMEAR CAMPAIGN</p>
<p>Widodo was the subject of a smear campaign during the 2014 presidential election claiming he was a descendant of Communists and had Chinese ancestry. The campaign, mostly prosecuted on social media, coincided with a fall in Widodo’s high approval ratings at the time.</p>
<p>In a sign of the potency and persistence of the rumors, both Widodo and his mother Sujiatmi Notomiharjo have this year publicly denied any communist links.</p>
<p>The military has resisted attempts by rights groups and academics to discuss the 1965 slaughter, one of the worst mass murders of the 20th century. It’s not popular with segments of the public, either. Earlier this month, protesters clashed with police as they tried to break up a seminar in Jakarta on the 1965 killings.</p>
<p>Bonnie Triyana, an Indonesian historian, said the country has never fully acknowledged or become reconciled over the anti-communist killings even after Indonesia became a democracy in 1998. Most Indonesians had little idea of the scale of the pogrom, he said.</p>
<p>“Politicians today exploit the collective amnesia of the people,” he said.</p> | false | 1 | tom allard agustinus beo da costa jakarta reuters indonesian police deploy many 30000 personnel guard anticommunist rally friday countrys military chief islamist groups stoke fears hard left revival worlds populous muslim nation protesters gather outside indonesias parliament eve 52nd anniversary murder six army generals young lieutenant rebel armed forces personnel incident led retaliatory pogrom killed least 500000 alleged communists massacres ushered 30 years authoritarian rule suharto former general led communist purge earlier month armed forces commander general gatot nurmantyo instructed military officers screen suhartoera propaganda film depicting deaths generals crushing alleged communist coup prevent happened 1965 recurring threeandahalfhour film criticized historians inaccuracies failing depict massacre leftists widely shown villages mosques past week suhartos rule broadcast annually night sept 30th date alleged abortive coup also compulsory viewing students indonesias communist party one worlds largest remains outlawed appears little evidence marxist ideology taking hold indonesia instead analysts government advisers said fomenting red scare aimed indonesias reformist president joko widodo widely known jokowi long falsely accused descendant communists indonesias growing economic ties china also frequently cited concerned rising communist influence indonesia see jokowi factor behind rise communism indonesia cooperative relationship china said yudi syamhudi suyuti one protest organizers failed political candidate opposition gerindra party comments posted online islamic defenders front fridays rally organized hardline islamist groups led islamic defenders front fpi reject fight awakening indonesian communist party slamet maarif chairman rallys organizing committee spokesman fpi told reuters fpi led huge rallies last year successfully demanded jailing blasphemy basuki tjahaja purnama jakartas governor ethnic chinese christian maarif predicted 50000 protesters would join fridays rally also urge parliament overturn presidential regulation allowing government ban mass organizations deemed threat national unity hizbut tahrir islamist group wants indonesia become caliphate disbanded regulation july jakarta police spokesman argo yuwono expected 15000 people turn deploy 30000 police personnel said tuesday noting risk could arrive antipurnama rally december last year police arrested eight people treason alleged plot protesters occupy parliament building anticipated possibilities yuwono said wednesday national police spokesman setyo wasisto said police would adapt deployment depending number protesters prepared defending parliament said tobias basuki indonesian political analyst said nurmantyo clear political ambitions armed forces chief due retire march courted controversy month falsely claimed 5000 weapons illegally imported behalf widodo theres much evidence communist revival head 2019 presidential election communist fearmongering used various groups said basuki seeing coalescing conspiracy theory military groups islamist groups political purposes nurmantyo declined publicly comment chief security minister defense minister corrected claim imported weapons military spokesman major general wuryanto said nurmantyo carry political moves smear campaign widodo subject smear campaign 2014 presidential election claiming descendant communists chinese ancestry campaign mostly prosecuted social media coincided fall widodos high approval ratings time sign potency persistence rumors widodo mother sujiatmi notomiharjo year publicly denied communist links military resisted attempts rights groups academics discuss 1965 slaughter one worst mass murders 20th century popular segments public either earlier month protesters clashed police tried break seminar jakarta 1965 killings bonnie triyana indonesian historian said country never fully acknowledged become reconciled anticommunist killings even indonesia became democracy 1998 indonesians little idea scale pogrom said politicians today exploit collective amnesia people said | 519 |
<p>Is fast food good for you? The answer is obvious, to the point that the question sounds insane, and one reason it’s obvious is that <a href="http://variety.com/t/morgan-spurlock/" type="external">Morgan Spurlock</a>’s “Super Size Me,” back in 2004, colored in the answer in a highly entertaining and informative way. Spurlock’s 30-day-McDonald’s-binge documentary was an experiment that took the form of a gluttonous fantasy (what would it be like to pig out on McDonald’s every day?), and it demonstrated what any halfway informed person already knew: that fast food, as good as it tastes, is bad for your heart and (maybe) your soul — that it makes you fat, sluggish, and demonstrably unhealthy.</p>
<p>So what’s left for Spurlock to demonstrate in “Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken!”? A lot more than you’d expect. As it turns out, the reality of fast food — that it’s succulent addictive junk —&#160;is now competing with a counter-myth: that it’s all a lot healthier than it used to be. And one of the reasons it’s competing with that myth is because of “Super Size Me.” Spurlock’s film turned the spotlight on what’s actually going on in your body when you eat a hamburger and fries at McDonald’s. And so the McDonald’s corporation, like any shrewd company, got busy.</p>
<p>Did they get busy making their food healthier? Here and there, but mostly they got busy pretending to make their food healthier, constructing a massive propaganda campaign designed to protect their brand by convincing people that McDonald’s had seen the light on greasy calories and clogged arteries. The rest of the fast-food industry followed suit. The result? Consumers are now in far greater denial of the toxic qualities of fast food than they were when “Super Size Me” came out.</p>
<p>“Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken!” is Spurlock’s attempt to rectify that situation. Yet it’s now clear, more than it was then, that he may be fighting a borderline impossible battle. “Super Size Me 2” is built around what’s meant to be another irresistible what-if-I-did-this' logistical culinary stunt. Playing off the notion that sometimes the only way to solve a problem “is to become a part of that problem,” Spurlock decides to open his own fast-food restaurant. In theory, it’s a fun idea, and it gives Spurlock a hooky way to demonstrate how the sausage — or, in this case, the chicken sandwich with the grill stripes literally painted on — gets made.</p>
<p>He builds his one-shot franchise outlet from the ground up, and each step along the way provides another McNugget of a lesson for the audience in how the fast food we crave actually gets created. First off, Spurlock buys an independent hatchery in Alabama, demonstrating in the process that 99 percent of America’s chicken farms are owned by what he calls Big Chicken: the five vertically integrated corporations (Tyson, Perdue, etc.) that control the industry. He calls his hatchery “Morganic Farms,” but he can’t make his chickens organic, because that’s too expensive. And when it comes to the issue of whether they’ll be free-range or not, he learns that the industry definition of “free-range” — a term that makes a lot of us feel both humane and hungry — is more slippery than we thought.</p>
<p>Spurlock’s chickens are massed inside, under less horrific conditions than some of the guerrilla footage of chicken farms has revealed over the last decade. But as long as they’re given the theoretical option of stepping outside (in this case, into an area of about four square feet), that counts as “free-range.” Grilled chicken is healthier than fried chicken, but Spurlock interviews consumers who salivate at the thought of anything fried and turn up their nose at grilled for being boring. So he comes up with a “healthy” gimmick: He will make a chicken patty that’s grilled&#160;and&#160;fried, giving his customers the best of both worlds.</p>
<p>Beyond that, he investigates the use of the tantalizing words that fast-food corporations now ritually employ to seduce you into thinking that the food they’re marketing is healthy. On the menus, they bombard the customer with words like “fresh,” “natural,” “no additives,” “made from scratch,” and the substitution of the light-and-tasty-sounding “crispy” for the dreaded old-school “fried.” Throw in a salad or two, and America, from what the film shows us, is now convinced that what it’s eating somehow isn’t an orgy of utterly non-nutritious and processed-to-within-an-inch-of-its-life fake food.</p>
<p>As Spurlock learns, all those meaningless words — and the new plain brown “environmental” wrappers — create something that the fast-food industry calls a “health halo.” It’s an aura of being good for you. Spurlock, like McDonald’s, paints a bunch of those words and slogans on the walls of his restaurant — a former Wendy’s along a fast-food strip of Columbus, Ohio, that he refurbishes with nice bright green-and-white colors. The whole launch of his restaurant isn’t serious, it’s a piece of conceptual satire: a sham-healthy experience. But the local public buys it.</p>
<p>Spurlock, with slightly thinner hair than he had in “Super Size Me,” is still the same funny and ebullient documentary host in his trademark hipster-handlebar mustache, and he remains an engagingly non-hectoring crusader. “Super Size Me 2” is half a good movie, because it teaches you something. But maybe not enough. Spurlock, as instrumental as he has been in putting these issues on the table, doesn’t seem to fully get what his own movie is about.</p>
<p>He spends a lot of the film’s time — too much of it — on his chicken farm, because he knows that the sight of Morgan Spurlock running his own little mass-produced poultry industry makes for good visual theater. He also captures the plight of farmers who are treated like indentured servants by Big Chicken. Yet the ultimate subject of “Super Size Me 2” isn’t chicken farming; it’s advertising. It’s the Orwellian counter-reality that fast-food companies are now selling us. And Spurlock would have done well to get a glimpse behind the curtain and show us how more of&#160;that gets created.</p>
<p>In the 13 years since “Super Size Me,” we’ve seen the rise of a veritable cottage industry of documentary food exposés that spotlight what it really is that we’re eating every day. The most brilliant and mind-boggling of those films is Robert Kenner’s “Food, Inc.” (2008), which was essentially the documentary version of Eric Schlosser’s “Fast Food Nation.” It made the extraordinary point that the processed food that constitutes the overwhelming bulk of most people’s diets is made with techniques that were pioneered by the fast-food industry. What we’re eating is, in essence, an illusion (corn syrup and chemicals pretending to be spaghetti sauce, etc.). “Super Size Me,” like “Food, Inc.,” was in its catchy way bringing the news, but “Super Size Me 2” is now just one more chapter in a genre that Spurlock helped create. It has its amusing (and enlightening) moments, but in many ways it’s just dancing around the meat of the matter.</p> | false | 1 | fast food good answer obvious point question sounds insane one reason obvious morgan spurlocks super size back 2004 colored answer highly entertaining informative way spurlocks 30daymcdonaldsbinge documentary experiment took form gluttonous fantasy would like pig mcdonalds every day demonstrated halfway informed person already knew fast food good tastes bad heart maybe soul makes fat sluggish demonstrably unhealthy whats left spurlock demonstrate super size 2 holy chicken lot youd expect turns reality fast food succulent addictive junk 160is competing countermyth lot healthier used one reasons competing myth super size spurlocks film turned spotlight whats actually going body eat hamburger fries mcdonalds mcdonalds corporation like shrewd company got busy get busy making food healthier mostly got busy pretending make food healthier constructing massive propaganda campaign designed protect brand convincing people mcdonalds seen light greasy calories clogged arteries rest fastfood industry followed suit result consumers far greater denial toxic qualities fast food super size came super size 2 holy chicken spurlocks attempt rectify situation yet clear may fighting borderline impossible battle super size 2 built around whats meant another irresistible whatifididthis logistical culinary stunt playing notion sometimes way solve problem become part problem spurlock decides open fastfood restaurant theory fun idea gives spurlock hooky way demonstrate sausage case chicken sandwich grill stripes literally painted gets made builds oneshot franchise outlet ground step along way provides another mcnugget lesson audience fast food crave actually gets created first spurlock buys independent hatchery alabama demonstrating process 99 percent americas chicken farms owned calls big chicken five vertically integrated corporations tyson perdue etc control industry calls hatchery morganic farms cant make chickens organic thats expensive comes issue whether theyll freerange learns industry definition freerange term makes lot us feel humane hungry slippery thought spurlocks chickens massed inside less horrific conditions guerrilla footage chicken farms revealed last decade long theyre given theoretical option stepping outside case area four square feet counts freerange grilled chicken healthier fried chicken spurlock interviews consumers salivate thought anything fried turn nose grilled boring comes healthy gimmick make chicken patty thats grilled160and160fried giving customers best worlds beyond investigates use tantalizing words fastfood corporations ritually employ seduce thinking food theyre marketing healthy menus bombard customer words like fresh natural additives made scratch substitution lightandtastysounding crispy dreaded oldschool fried throw salad two america film shows us convinced eating somehow isnt orgy utterly nonnutritious processedtowithinaninchofitslife fake food spurlock learns meaningless words new plain brown environmental wrappers create something fastfood industry calls health halo aura good spurlock like mcdonalds paints bunch words slogans walls restaurant former wendys along fastfood strip columbus ohio refurbishes nice bright greenandwhite colors whole launch restaurant isnt serious piece conceptual satire shamhealthy experience local public buys spurlock slightly thinner hair super size still funny ebullient documentary host trademark hipsterhandlebar mustache remains engagingly nonhectoring crusader super size 2 half good movie teaches something maybe enough spurlock instrumental putting issues table doesnt seem fully get movie spends lot films time much chicken farm knows sight morgan spurlock running little massproduced poultry industry makes good visual theater also captures plight farmers treated like indentured servants big chicken yet ultimate subject super size 2 isnt chicken farming advertising orwellian counterreality fastfood companies selling us spurlock would done well get glimpse behind curtain show us of160that gets created 13 years since super size weve seen rise veritable cottage industry documentary food exposés spotlight really eating every day brilliant mindboggling films robert kenners food inc 2008 essentially documentary version eric schlossers fast food nation made extraordinary point processed food constitutes overwhelming bulk peoples diets made techniques pioneered fastfood industry eating essence illusion corn syrup chemicals pretending spaghetti sauce etc super size like food inc catchy way bringing news super size 2 one chapter genre spurlock helped create amusing enlightening moments many ways dancing around meat matter | 626 |
<p />
<p>On January 31, 1968, the combined forces of North Vietnam (DRV or Democratic Force of Vietnam) and the NLF (National Liberation Front) launched a spectacular series of attacks throughout the contested territory of all of South Vietnam. As many as 100 Vietnamese cities and towns were simultaneously attacked, 36 of 44 provincial capitals were captured, and the impregnable American Embassy complex in Saigon was penetrated. These attacks were all repelled in a few days, with the Vietnamese taking huge losses, 37,500 estimated deaths, which came on top of 90,000 lost soldiers in the preceding months. The American commander, General Westmoreland, had confidently predicted prior to the Tet Offensive that the NLF would never be able to replace such losses, and victory for the United States in the Vietnam War was near at hand.</p>
<p>During the Tet Offensive the American losses were announced as 2,500. This ratio of comparative deaths, and the fact that the DRV/NLF could not maintain their presence in any of the urban areas that they briefly controlled, led Westmoreland and counterinsurgency experts to claim a military victory for their side. Add to this the evidence that the purpose of these coordinated attacks on the points of governmental control in Vietnam was not to kill or even to seize control of the country but to inspire popular uprisings, and these never materialized.&#160; This was acknowledged by the DRV commander General Tran Do, who affirmed that the purpose of the Tet Offensive was to stimulate a spontaneous uprising among the Vietnamese population against the American military occupation of the country. This perception of defeat by both sides seemed authoritative, and yet, and this is the point, irrelevant. In General Do’s words at the time: “In all honesty, we didn’t achieve our main objective, which was to spur uprisings throughout the South. Still, we inflicted heavy casualties on the Americans, and their puppets, and this was a big gain for us.”</p>
<p>But far more consequential than the American casualties that was certainly upsetting to backers of the war in Washington was the traumatic impact of the Tet Offensive on American public opinion and related Congressional support for continuing the Vietnam War. This impact was also foreign to the military imagination of the Vietnamese at the time. As General Do put it, “As for making an impact in the United States, it had not been our intention—but it turned out to be a fortunate result.” Exposed by the Tet Offensive was what was called at the time ‘the credibility gap,’ the space between the optimistic assessments by the White House that the war was being won, and the realities of the conflict.&#160; The Tet Offensive was understood at the time throughout the United States as a massive refutation of the claim that the Vietnamese adversary was knocking at the door of defeat, on the verge of surrender or collapse. As a result of the Tet Offensive, Lyndon Johnson decided to withdraw from the presidential race for his reelection in 1968, declared a pause in the bombing of North Vietnam to give diplomacy a chance, and rejected a request from Saigon for additional American troops.</p>
<p>It is true the war dragged on for several more years with heavy casualties on both sides, but the Tet Offensive changed the American goal from ‘victory’ to ‘peace with honor,’ that is, ‘defeat in disguise.’ The subsequent Christmas bombing of the North and the disastrous invasion of Cambodia in 1970 were part of the bloody effort during the Nixon/Kissinger period of American leadership to produce ‘honor.’ Actually, when the war finally came to an abrupt end in 1975, the dominant image at the time being that of Vietnamese collaborators with the American intervention desperately seeking to escape from Vietnam by clamoring aboard a helicopter taking off from the roof of the embassy. Not honor, but humiliation, chaos, and defeat became the end game for the United States in Vietnam; or put differently, the price paid with lives and devastation to achieve what was called ‘a decent interval’ between the American departure and the collapse of the client regime in Saigon.</p>
<p>To this day, counterinsurgency insiders contend that the United States snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, and this conviction has partly explained why American policymakers have failed (or refused) to learn the defining lesson of Vietnam: the virtual impossibility in the early 21st century&#160; of turning military superiority on the battlefield enjoyed by the intervening side into a favorable political outcome against an adversary that occupies the commanding heights of national self-determination. This learning disability has led directly to subsequent failed efforts, especially in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks: Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. Military superiority succumbs over time to the strong historical tides of the last seven decades favoring the logic of self-determination. Among other explanations for this conclusion that cuts against the grain of political realism if this:&#160; the intervening side gets tired of an unresolved struggle if it last more than a few years. As the Afghan saying goes: “You’ve got the watches, we’ve got the time.” Nationalist endurance is far stronger than is geopolitical endurance, and this acts as an equalizer with respect to the asymmetries of military capabilities.</p>
<p>But my reason for recalling the Tet Offensive is less about this primary feature of conflict in our time, especially in the setting of what Mary Kaldor has usefully called ‘new wars,’ than it is to comment upon contradictory perceptions of victory. These conflicts tend to be resolved on political battlefield far from the sites of military struggle, although each in its own way. What seems to count most in the end is a decisive shift in political perceptions on the home front of the intervening side.&#160; Neither the successful response to the attacks in terms of casualties or restored control of the cities in South Vietnam, nor the failure of the attacks to be followed by popular uprisings mattered in the end so far as the historical significance of the Tet Offensive is concerned. It hardly mattered that the military appraisal made by both sides was wrong, although the Vietnamese side was less wrong as the spike in American casualties added considerable weight to the political reassessments of the conflict by the White House and aroused much anger among the American people.</p>
<p>This recollection is not meant to be an exercise in historical memory or even in the differences between how the military thinks and how the political process in a liberal democracy works.&#160; It is more an expression of frustration about the unwillingness of the Obama presidency to acknowledge the failure of the mission to achieve its goals in Afghanistan.&#160; As with Vietnam, the public is continually told by the military commanders about how well things are going, and even when unexpected setbacks take place, these are discounted as ‘one-off’ incidents that should not be allowed to become occasions for reappraisal. There was recent disappointment in some circles within the United States that were skeptical about continuing the intervention in Afghanistan when the execution of Osama Bin Laden was not followed by a credible and liberating claim from Washington of ‘mission accomplished,’ an ironic recourse to the Bush miscalculation in the early months of the Iraq War. Such a claim would have played well throughout the American heartland, and probably given Obama a clear path to reelection in 2012. Public opinion according to recent polls reinforces such an interpretation: 59% of Americans would like to see all American troops taken out of Afghanistan immediately or within a year, while only 22% believe that the United States has sufficiently defined goals to make the war worthy of American military engagement.</p>
<p>This same skepticism among Americans about foreign military intervention now applies more generally, although it could shift quickly if a foreign source of terrorism was able to inflict major damage on perceived American interests. According to Newsmax (August 11, 2011), only 24% of Americans support the U.S. military role in Libya, and 75% believe that the United States should not engage in overseas military action “unless the cause is vital to our national security.” It is obvious that the Libya does not qualify as ‘vital,’ and the justification relied upon did not even pretend that ‘security’ was the rationale for military intervention, but invoked ‘humanitarism.’ Of course, leaders will always argue that an intervention undertaken is vital, and could hardly do less, considering that lives of citizens are put at risk. But what these poll results show is the relative wisdom of the unacknowledged force of public opinion: rejection of humanitarianism as an adequate basis for war-making and disbelief in the post-facto security arguments put forth by elected leaders; healthy doubts about the self-serving claims of the military to be on the verge of victory. But such wars go on, however dysfunctional, the bodies pile up, and the political opposition is disregarded, and this despite the American empire teetering on the edge of financial disaster.</p>
<p>Several observations follow. During the Vietnam Era, public opinion counted for more when the government was making its political calculations about continuing an unpopular war. Unquestionably, there has been a decline in democratic accountability in the United States with respect to war/peace issues. In part, this reflected the presence of a robust peace movement during the Vietnam War, which in turn arose as a response to the military draft that touched the lives of middle class America. Now there is no draft, the war is fought with drones and private contracting firms. Furthermore, the weaponry and tactics are designed to minimize American casualties relative to the destruction inflicted. Unfortunately, the lessons learned from a decade of warfare in Vietnam were not about whether to intervene in new wars but how. It may be that in place of international law and political prudence, both of which should rationally discourage intervention contra the political weight of self-determination, the new source of restraint will derive from fiscal pressures to reduce defense spending. So far the militarist consensus in Washington has largely exempted the bloated U.S. defense budget from the knives of the cost cutters, who while besides being social reactionaries are military hawks. Even the more socially sensitive Obama democrats have largely continued to acquiesce in this willingness to treat defense spending as non-discretionary, as well as sustaining Israeli militarism with enhanced annual subsidies.</p>
<p>I had hoped that the helicopter incident on August 6th, the 66th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing, in which 30 persons died, including members of the Navy Seals Elite Unit, would provide the excuse the Obama administration should have been waiting for to say finally that it was time to bring American troops home and end involvement in the struggle over the future of Afghanistan. It is common knowledge by now that the Afghanistan War is being fought against the nationalist Taliban and on behalf of a corrupted and incompetent Kabul regime for the political control of the country. This is a clear instance of a new war that will not be decided once and for all on the battlefield by soldiers and weapons or through the anachronistic agency of foreign intervention. The strategic justifications for the war in relation to a future sanctuary for a reconstituted Al Qaeda or in relation to the destabilization of Pakistan are extremely speculative, and seem more intelligently addressed by withdrawal from a military engagement that fans the flames of anti-Americanism, gives extremism a good name, and manifests the impotence of American imposed military solutions.</p>
<p>It adds up to a single moral, legal, and prudential imperative: when in doubt, stop the killing and the dying!</p> | false | 1 | january 31 1968 combined forces north vietnam drv democratic force vietnam nlf national liberation front launched spectacular series attacks throughout contested territory south vietnam many 100 vietnamese cities towns simultaneously attacked 36 44 provincial capitals captured impregnable american embassy complex saigon penetrated attacks repelled days vietnamese taking huge losses 37500 estimated deaths came top 90000 lost soldiers preceding months american commander general westmoreland confidently predicted prior tet offensive nlf would never able replace losses victory united states vietnam war near hand tet offensive american losses announced 2500 ratio comparative deaths fact drvnlf could maintain presence urban areas briefly controlled led westmoreland counterinsurgency experts claim military victory side add evidence purpose coordinated attacks points governmental control vietnam kill even seize control country inspire popular uprisings never materialized160 acknowledged drv commander general tran affirmed purpose tet offensive stimulate spontaneous uprising among vietnamese population american military occupation country perception defeat sides seemed authoritative yet point irrelevant general dos words time honesty didnt achieve main objective spur uprisings throughout south still inflicted heavy casualties americans puppets big gain us far consequential american casualties certainly upsetting backers war washington traumatic impact tet offensive american public opinion related congressional support continuing vietnam war impact also foreign military imagination vietnamese time general put making impact united states intentionbut turned fortunate result exposed tet offensive called time credibility gap space optimistic assessments white house war realities conflict160 tet offensive understood time throughout united states massive refutation claim vietnamese adversary knocking door defeat verge surrender collapse result tet offensive lyndon johnson decided withdraw presidential race reelection 1968 declared pause bombing north vietnam give diplomacy chance rejected request saigon additional american troops true war dragged several years heavy casualties sides tet offensive changed american goal victory peace honor defeat disguise subsequent christmas bombing north disastrous invasion cambodia 1970 part bloody effort nixonkissinger period american leadership produce honor actually war finally came abrupt end 1975 dominant image time vietnamese collaborators american intervention desperately seeking escape vietnam clamoring aboard helicopter taking roof embassy honor humiliation chaos defeat became end game united states vietnam put differently price paid lives devastation achieve called decent interval american departure collapse client regime saigon day counterinsurgency insiders contend united states snatched defeat jaws victory conviction partly explained american policymakers failed refused learn defining lesson vietnam virtual impossibility early 21st century160 turning military superiority battlefield enjoyed intervening side favorable political outcome adversary occupies commanding heights national selfdetermination learning disability led directly subsequent failed efforts especially aftermath 911 attacks afghanistan iraq libya military superiority succumbs time strong historical tides last seven decades favoring logic selfdetermination among explanations conclusion cuts grain political realism this160 intervening side gets tired unresolved struggle last years afghan saying goes youve got watches weve got time nationalist endurance far stronger geopolitical endurance acts equalizer respect asymmetries military capabilities reason recalling tet offensive less primary feature conflict time especially setting mary kaldor usefully called new wars comment upon contradictory perceptions victory conflicts tend resolved political battlefield far sites military struggle although way seems count end decisive shift political perceptions home front intervening side160 neither successful response attacks terms casualties restored control cities south vietnam failure attacks followed popular uprisings mattered end far historical significance tet offensive concerned hardly mattered military appraisal made sides wrong although vietnamese side less wrong spike american casualties added considerable weight political reassessments conflict white house aroused much anger among american people recollection meant exercise historical memory even differences military thinks political process liberal democracy works160 expression frustration unwillingness obama presidency acknowledge failure mission achieve goals afghanistan160 vietnam public continually told military commanders well things going even unexpected setbacks take place discounted oneoff incidents allowed become occasions reappraisal recent disappointment circles within united states skeptical continuing intervention afghanistan execution osama bin laden followed credible liberating claim washington mission accomplished ironic recourse bush miscalculation early months iraq war claim would played well throughout american heartland probably given obama clear path reelection 2012 public opinion according recent polls reinforces interpretation 59 americans would like see american troops taken afghanistan immediately within year 22 believe united states sufficiently defined goals make war worthy american military engagement skepticism among americans foreign military intervention applies generally although could shift quickly foreign source terrorism able inflict major damage perceived american interests according newsmax august 11 2011 24 americans support us military role libya 75 believe united states engage overseas military action unless cause vital national security obvious libya qualify vital justification relied upon even pretend security rationale military intervention invoked humanitarism course leaders always argue intervention undertaken vital could hardly less considering lives citizens put risk poll results show relative wisdom unacknowledged force public opinion rejection humanitarianism adequate basis warmaking disbelief postfacto security arguments put forth elected leaders healthy doubts selfserving claims military verge victory wars go however dysfunctional bodies pile political opposition disregarded despite american empire teetering edge financial disaster several observations follow vietnam era public opinion counted government making political calculations continuing unpopular war unquestionably decline democratic accountability united states respect warpeace issues part reflected presence robust peace movement vietnam war turn arose response military draft touched lives middle class america draft war fought drones private contracting firms furthermore weaponry tactics designed minimize american casualties relative destruction inflicted unfortunately lessons learned decade warfare vietnam whether intervene new wars may place international law political prudence rationally discourage intervention contra political weight selfdetermination new source restraint derive fiscal pressures reduce defense spending far militarist consensus washington largely exempted bloated us defense budget knives cost cutters besides social reactionaries military hawks even socially sensitive obama democrats largely continued acquiesce willingness treat defense spending nondiscretionary well sustaining israeli militarism enhanced annual subsidies hoped helicopter incident august 6th 66th anniversary hiroshima bombing 30 persons died including members navy seals elite unit would provide excuse obama administration waiting say finally time bring american troops home end involvement struggle future afghanistan common knowledge afghanistan war fought nationalist taliban behalf corrupted incompetent kabul regime political control country clear instance new war decided battlefield soldiers weapons anachronistic agency foreign intervention strategic justifications war relation future sanctuary reconstituted al qaeda relation destabilization pakistan extremely speculative seem intelligently addressed withdrawal military engagement fans flames antiamericanism gives extremism good name manifests impotence american imposed military solutions adds single moral legal prudential imperative doubt stop killing dying | 1,038 |
<p>Nov. 12 (UPI) — He might be one of the reasons why <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Aaron_Rodgers/" type="external">Aaron Rodgers</a> is a member of the <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Green_Bay_Packers/" type="external">Green Bay Packers</a>, but Mike Sherman says the team can win without him.</p>
<p>Sherman spoke to UPI on Friday about the Packers’ quarterback situation. Rodgers suffered a broken collarbone in the Packers’ 23-10 loss to the <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Minnesota-Vikings/" type="external">Minnesota Vikings</a> on Oct. 15 at U.S. Bank Stadium.</p>
<p>After the injury, the Packers signed Jerod Evans to the practice squad and placed Rodgers on injured reserve. Green Bay promoted Joe Callahan from the practice squad to back up Hundley on the active roster.</p>
<p>The Packers (4-4) are 0-3 since losing Rodgers. Green Bay was 4-1 in the five games before Rodgers’ injury.</p>
<p>“It’s hard to replace a future Hall of Fame quarterback like Aaron Rodgers, so the expectation levels that [Hundley] would have to have [are] about that of an Aaron Rodgers at this point in his career,” Sherman told UPI. “He has a great opportunity to step out. I’m sure some of the game plan is modified to fit his skill level as opposed to what fit Aaron.”</p>
<p>“They have a great staff of coaches over there. They will figure out the best way to win the <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/John_Walker/" type="external">football</a> game without Aaron Rodgers. They’ve done it before and I’m sure they’ll do it again. He’s a great player however; he changes how the defense plays. He changes how the offense plays. He’s a big factor, so like I said, they’ve got a great group of coaches over there and they’ll figure this out.”</p>
<p>Hundley, 24, had never earned an NFL start entering the 2017 season. He was a fifth round pick in the 2015 NFL Draft out of UCLA. The 6 foot 3, 227 pound passer has completed 58.8 percent of his throws for 489 yards, a touchdown and four interceptions in four games this season.</p>
<p>Hundley was compared to former <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Washington-Redskins/" type="external">Washington Redskins</a> quarterback <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Jason_Campbell/" type="external">Jason Campbell</a> in his 2015 NFL.com scouting report.</p>
<p>“Someone will draft him, but I don’t think he will ever be a starter. He can’t read coverages and struggles to process,” an AFC scout said of Hundley before the draft, <a href="http://www.nfl.com/draft/2015/profiles/brett-hundley?id=2552588" type="external">according to NFL.com</a>. “It is going to take a few years before he looks like a backup in my opinion. He has a long way to go.”</p>
<p>Sherman, who was the coach of the Packers when the franchise drafted Rodgers with the No. 24 overall pick in the 2005 NFL Draft despite the team having <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Brett_Favre/" type="external">Brett Favre</a> at the helm, said Rodgers has the same amount of weight on his shoulders as the NFL’s most elite gunslingers.</p>
<p>“Someone always steps when someone goes down,” Sherman said. “From wherever they come from players will step up. As I mentioned, Aaron Rodgers has a lot of weight on his shoulders. Now another player will say I gotta do more. And another player will say I gotta do more. Sometimes, even though this adversity is as tough as it is, players rise to the occasion being presented to them. I think the Packers will rise to the occasion they are presented with, that’s without Aaron.”</p>
<p>The Packers fired Sherman in 2006, following a 4-12 season. It was his only losing record in six seasons with the franchise. Sherman’s Packers went to the playoffs four consecutive seasons from 2001 through 2004.</p>
<p>“I think with any premier quarterback in the NFL there is always a lot on your shoulders,” Sherman said. “I don’t think it’s any more or less for Aaron than it is for some of these other premier quarterbacks. I’m sure <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Tom_Brady/" type="external">Tom Brady</a> feels there Is a lot on his shoulders. <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Drew_Brees/" type="external">Drew Brees</a> feels there is a lot on his shoulders. I don’t think there is anymore or any less.”</p>
<p>Sherman said he couldn’t comment on if the Packers should add a more experienced quarterback to their active roster because he hasn’t “studied their depth chart.”</p>
<p>He also said the Packers knew early on that Rodgers would be a good quarterback. That was despite limited reps in practice behind a seasoned Favre.</p>
<p>“But you knew he could be a good quarterback, Sherman said. “His ability to escape pressure, being calm under pressure, his running and throwing on the run, his ability to make all the throws outside the pocket as well as inside the pocket.”</p>
<p>“I don’t know if anybody can say they saw all of those things when he was a rookie, but we knew he was a student of the game. I know he really watched Brett and how Brett did things. I think he benefited from those years of watching Brett and has defenitley capitalized on that, but also his own ability. He has developed his arm strength and abilty to escape. He’s just such a tremendous quarterback, not just for the Packers, but historically in the National Football League.”</p>
<p>Hundley will make his third career start Sunday against the Chicago Bears, a defense that has allowed the fewest passing touchdowns in the NFC this season.</p>
<p>“When I’m out there I just like chewing my gum and having fun,” <a href="http://www.packers.com/media-center/videos/Hundley-We-gotta-put-points-on-the-board/fc03e336-b304-4749-84bf-22a0df2353b5" type="external">Hundley told reporters Wednesday.</a> “I just try to have fun. This is a game of football we are blessed to be playing. The name of the game is winning, but at the same time I can’t do something that’s not me. I’m just to make this thing go. I have to play my game and that’s the best I can give to this team. If I do more than me, I’m getting out of my comfort zone and things probably won’t go right.”</p>
<p>“When I’m out there I’m myself. I never have and never will try to be Aaron. But I learn from Aaron. So there are small things that Aaron learned from Brett. And there are small things that Brett learned from Aaron. So I’m sure on tape you will see some things that Aaron does, but at the same time it’s just those things that I’ve picked up and implemented into my game. But at the end of the day, I’m still me.</p> | false | 1 | nov 12 upi might one reasons aaron rodgers member green bay packers mike sherman says team win without sherman spoke upi friday packers quarterback situation rodgers suffered broken collarbone packers 2310 loss minnesota vikings oct 15 us bank stadium injury packers signed jerod evans practice squad placed rodgers injured reserve green bay promoted joe callahan practice squad back hundley active roster packers 44 03 since losing rodgers green bay 41 five games rodgers injury hard replace future hall fame quarterback like aaron rodgers expectation levels hundley would aaron rodgers point career sherman told upi great opportunity step im sure game plan modified fit skill level opposed fit aaron great staff coaches figure best way win football game without aaron rodgers theyve done im sure theyll hes great player however changes defense plays changes offense plays hes big factor like said theyve got great group coaches theyll figure hundley 24 never earned nfl start entering 2017 season fifth round pick 2015 nfl draft ucla 6 foot 3 227 pound passer completed 588 percent throws 489 yards touchdown four interceptions four games season hundley compared former washington redskins quarterback jason campbell 2015 nflcom scouting report someone draft dont think ever starter cant read coverages struggles process afc scout said hundley draft according nflcom going take years looks like backup opinion long way go sherman coach packers franchise drafted rodgers 24 overall pick 2005 nfl draft despite team brett favre helm said rodgers amount weight shoulders nfls elite gunslingers someone always steps someone goes sherman said wherever come players step mentioned aaron rodgers lot weight shoulders another player say got ta another player say got ta sometimes even though adversity tough players rise occasion presented think packers rise occasion presented thats without aaron packers fired sherman 2006 following 412 season losing record six seasons franchise shermans packers went playoffs four consecutive seasons 2001 2004 think premier quarterback nfl always lot shoulders sherman said dont think less aaron premier quarterbacks im sure tom brady feels lot shoulders drew brees feels lot shoulders dont think anymore less sherman said couldnt comment packers add experienced quarterback active roster hasnt studied depth chart also said packers knew early rodgers would good quarterback despite limited reps practice behind seasoned favre knew could good quarterback sherman said ability escape pressure calm pressure running throwing run ability make throws outside pocket well inside pocket dont know anybody say saw things rookie knew student game know really watched brett brett things think benefited years watching brett defenitley capitalized also ability developed arm strength abilty escape hes tremendous quarterback packers historically national football league hundley make third career start sunday chicago bears defense allowed fewest passing touchdowns nfc season im like chewing gum fun hundley told reporters wednesday try fun game football blessed playing name game winning time cant something thats im make thing go play game thats best give team im getting comfort zone things probably wont go right im im never never try aaron learn aaron small things aaron learned brett small things brett learned aaron im sure tape see things aaron time things ive picked implemented game end day im still | 522 |
<p>1. <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Phil_Mickelson/" type="external">Phil Mickelson</a>, United States — Mickelson played his best golf late in the season, including his 3-0-1 record in helping lead the United States to another Presidents Cup last week at Liberty National Golf Club in Jersey City, N.J. Not only did he excel on the course, but the 47-year-old was a leader for his younger teammates in the team room. Mickelson helped finish the victory by beating Adam Hadwin of Canada, 2 and 1, in his 100th career match for the United States in the Ryder and Presidents Cups. He is the highest-ranked player in the field for the 2017-18 PGA Tour Opener at No. 30 in the world and wants to get off to a good start after he made it through the first three events of the FedExCup playoffs last month before falling short of the Tour Championship. Mickelson has claimed 11 of his 42 career titles in California, but is winless since the 2013 Open Championship at Turnberry. He is making his third start in the tournament and missed the cut in 2007 before tying for eighth last year.</p>
<p>2. Brendan Steele, United States — Steele will defend his title in the Safeway Open after a two-week break since he finished 33rd in the FedExCup point standings and missed the Tour Championship by three spots. He had four finishes in the top 10 and 10 in the top 25 last season, including his second victory on the PGA Tour in the opener at Silverado, the other coming in the 2011 Valero Texas Open. Steele trailed Patton Kizzire by five strokes entering the final round of the Safeway last year before making birdies on the last three holes to finish off a 7-under-par 65 and beat Kizzire by one shot. The run started with a three-foot birdie putt on the 16th hole, followed by an 18-footer on the 17th and was capped by a seven-footer on the last hole to wrap up his ninth victory as a professional. Two years ago, Steele took the lead into the final round before closing with a 76 to slide all the way to a tie for 17th.</p>
<p>3. <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Webb_Simpson/" type="external">Webb Simpson</a>, United States — After finishing the 2016-17 season with a strong run, Simpson is looking forward to getting the new campaign off on the right foot after taking a week off since his tie for 13th in the Tour Championship. He had three top-10 finishes in his last five starts and a total of six for the season, including a playoff loss to Hideki Matsuyama of Japan in the Waste Management Phoenix Open and wound up 17th in the final FedExCup point standings. Simpson struggled for a while after the ban of his anchored putter at the start of 2016, but was much better with a conventional putter last season. He could be close to his first victory since the 2013 Shriners Hospitals for Children Open, his fourth PGA Tour title, which came a year after he won the <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/US-Open/" type="external">U.S. Open</a> at the Olympic Club in San Francisco. Simpson is making his fifth start in what is now the Safeway Open, with his best result a tie for 13th in 2009, but he missed the cut the last two years at Silverado.</p>
<p>4. Tony Finau, United States — Following a season in which he reached the Tour Championship for the first time, Finau is looking to get out of the gate quickly this week when he makes his fourth start in the Safeway Open. He tied for 12th in his first appearance at Silverado in 2015, but hasn’t played as well the last two years with a tie for 32nd and a tie for 26th. However, Finau is looking to pick up where he left off in the playoffs two weeks ago, finishing the season with ties for seventh in both the BMW Championship and the Tour Championship. He recorded in the top 10 on eight occasions in 2016-17, with his best result a tie for third in the Valero Texas Open, and finished 19th in the FedExCup standings. There is sentiment on the PGA Tour that Finau is a blooming talent who is ready to break out in a big way and add to his only title on the circuit, which came in the 2016 Puerto Rico Open, when he turned back <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Steve_Marino/" type="external">Steve Marino</a> with a birdie on the third playoff hole.</p>
<p>5. <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Kevin_Na/" type="external">Kevin Na</a>, United States — Not only is Na coming off a tie for fourth in the Wyndham Championship and a tie for sixth in the Dell Technologies Championship in two of his last four events of last season, he has a terrific record in what is now the Safeway Open. Two years ago, he took the lead after the third round with an 8-under-par 64, but managed only a 70 on the final day and lost to a birdie by <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Emiliano-Grillo/" type="external">Emiliano Grillo</a> on the second playoff hole. Last year, Na finished solo seventh in his title defense, and before the tournament moved to Silverado he tied for 15th in 2011 and tied for third in 2014 by shooting 64-64 on the weekend. His only PGA Tour victory came in the 2011 <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Justin_Timberlake/" type="external">Justin Timberlake</a> Shriners for Hospitals Children Open, and last season he posted five top-10 finishes and made it through three rounds of the FedExCup playoffs before bowing out, but shot 8-under-par 63 in his final round of the season.</p>
<p>6. <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Zach_Johnson/" type="external">Zach Johnson</a>, United States — Having missed the Tour Championship and the Presidents Cup, Johnson comes off a two-week a break as he tries to regain the form that made him a two-time major champion. His last victory came in the 2015 Open Championship in a playoff over <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Marc_Leishman/" type="external">Marc Leishman</a> of Australia and <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Louis_Oosthuizen/" type="external">Louis Oosthuizen</a> of South Africa on the Old Course at St. Andrews. Last season, he recorded only four results in the top 10, the best second in the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational, and he wound up 48th in the FedExCup standings to make it through three rounds of the playoffs before failing to qualify for the Tour Championship. Looking to make his quick turn-around become a fast start to the new season, Zach is playing in the Safeway Open for the first time. He usually waits until the RSM Classic at his home in Sea Island, Ga., to get started and figures to be in the field for that event next month since the title sponsor also is one of his backers.</p>
<p>7. Adam Hadwin, Canada — Coming off an 0-2-1 record in the Presidents Cup even though he played better than the record might indicate, Hadwin will try to put that in his rear-view mirror quickly when he makes his fifth start in what is now the Safeway Open. He tied for seventh in 2011 at CordeValle, but in the last three years he tied for 53rd, tied for 41st and missed the cut last season at Silverado. Hadwin bounced back from that opener last year to finish in the top 10 on five occasions and the top 25 a total of 10 times, including his first PGA Tour victory in the Valspar Championship. Hadwin, who also won the Chile Classic and the Chiquita Classic on the Web.com Tour in 2014 among his 12 victories as a pro, made it all the way through the FedExCup playoffs last month before tying for 23rd in the Tour Championship to wind up 26th in the final point standings.</p>
<p>8. Emiliano Grillo, Argentina — Another player from the International team who is looking to put last week’s Presidents Cup defeat to the United States behind quickly, Grillo is coming back to the Safeway Open, in which he claimed his only PGA Tour victory two years ago. After earning his card on the big circuit by winning the 2015 Web.com Tour Championship, he made won his debut as a PGA Tour member a few weeks later by shooting 69-65 on the weekend at Silverado before defeating Kevin Na with a birdie on the second playoff hole. That kick-started a season in which he was voted the PGA Tour’s Rookie of the Year, but last year was not nearly as good, starting with a tie for sixth in his Safeway title defense. Grillo had only two top-10 finished last season, the best a tie for seventh in the <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Arnold_Palmer/" type="external">Arnold Palmer</a>, but he wasn’t that far off with seven results in the top 25, including solo 11th finishes in the Players Championship and the WGC-HSBC Champions.</p>
<p>9. <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Bill_Haas/" type="external">Bill Haas</a>, United States — Disappointed by barely missing the Tour Championship, which he won in 2011 to wrap up the FedExCup, Haas will be trying to get the new season off to a good start with his fourth appearance in the Safeway Open. He tied for 20th last year in his only appearance at Silverado, and also tied for 20th in 2008 at Grayhawk Golf Club in Arizona. Haas recorded only four finishes in the top 10 last season, but did post 12 results in the top 25 and was on the bubble to make the top 30 and qualify for the Tour Championship before he could manage only a tie for 53rd in the BMW Championship. He has six victories in his PGA Tour career, the last in the 2015 Humana Challenge, and the highlights of his 2016-17 season were third in the Dell Technologies Match Play, a tie for fourth in the WGC-HSBC Champions and a tie for fifth in the U.S. Open at Erin Hills.</p>
<p>10. <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Ryan_Moore/" type="external">Ryan Moore</a>, United States — A five-time winner on the PGA Tour, Moore finished off a sub-par 2016-17 season when he tied for 20th in the BMW Championship, third event of the FedExCup playoffs, and failed to qualify for the 30-player field in the Tour Championship. He is another player trying to turn things around and start the new season on the right foot in the Safeway Open at Silverado, where he tied for 10th in 2016. He also tied for eighth in 2009 and tied for sixth in 2007, when the tournament was played at Grayhawk Golf Club in Arizona. Moore, whose last victory came in the 2016 <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/John_Deere/" type="external">John Deere</a> Classic, finished in the top 10 only twice last season with a tie for third in the SBS Championship and a tie for ninth in the Masters. He did post 10 results in the top 25, including a tie for 13th in the PGA Championship at Quail Hollow two months ago. Part of the reason for his down season was a shoulder injury that caused him to miss the U.S. Open.</p> | false | 1 | 1 phil mickelson united states mickelson played best golf late season including 301 record helping lead united states another presidents cup last week liberty national golf club jersey city nj excel course 47yearold leader younger teammates team room mickelson helped finish victory beating adam hadwin canada 2 1 100th career match united states ryder presidents cups highestranked player field 201718 pga tour opener 30 world wants get good start made first three events fedexcup playoffs last month falling short tour championship mickelson claimed 11 42 career titles california winless since 2013 open championship turnberry making third start tournament missed cut 2007 tying eighth last year 2 brendan steele united states steele defend title safeway open twoweek break since finished 33rd fedexcup point standings missed tour championship three spots four finishes top 10 10 top 25 last season including second victory pga tour opener silverado coming 2011 valero texas open steele trailed patton kizzire five strokes entering final round safeway last year making birdies last three holes finish 7underpar 65 beat kizzire one shot run started threefoot birdie putt 16th hole followed 18footer 17th capped sevenfooter last hole wrap ninth victory professional two years ago steele took lead final round closing 76 slide way tie 17th 3 webb simpson united states finishing 201617 season strong run simpson looking forward getting new campaign right foot taking week since tie 13th tour championship three top10 finishes last five starts total six season including playoff loss hideki matsuyama japan waste management phoenix open wound 17th final fedexcup point standings simpson struggled ban anchored putter start 2016 much better conventional putter last season could close first victory since 2013 shriners hospitals children open fourth pga tour title came year us open olympic club san francisco simpson making fifth start safeway open best result tie 13th 2009 missed cut last two years silverado 4 tony finau united states following season reached tour championship first time finau looking get gate quickly week makes fourth start safeway open tied 12th first appearance silverado 2015 hasnt played well last two years tie 32nd tie 26th however finau looking pick left playoffs two weeks ago finishing season ties seventh bmw championship tour championship recorded top 10 eight occasions 201617 best result tie third valero texas open finished 19th fedexcup standings sentiment pga tour finau blooming talent ready break big way add title circuit came 2016 puerto rico open turned back steve marino birdie third playoff hole 5 kevin na united states na coming tie fourth wyndham championship tie sixth dell technologies championship two last four events last season terrific record safeway open two years ago took lead third round 8underpar 64 managed 70 final day lost birdie emiliano grillo second playoff hole last year na finished solo seventh title defense tournament moved silverado tied 15th 2011 tied third 2014 shooting 6464 weekend pga tour victory came 2011 justin timberlake shriners hospitals children open last season posted five top10 finishes made three rounds fedexcup playoffs bowing shot 8underpar 63 final round season 6 zach johnson united states missed tour championship presidents cup johnson comes twoweek break tries regain form made twotime major champion last victory came 2015 open championship playoff marc leishman australia louis oosthuizen south africa old course st andrews last season recorded four results top 10 best second wgcbridgestone invitational wound 48th fedexcup standings make three rounds playoffs failing qualify tour championship looking make quick turnaround become fast start new season zach playing safeway open first time usually waits rsm classic home sea island ga get started figures field event next month since title sponsor also one backers 7 adam hadwin canada coming 021 record presidents cup even though played better record might indicate hadwin try put rearview mirror quickly makes fifth start safeway open tied seventh 2011 cordevalle last three years tied 53rd tied 41st missed cut last season silverado hadwin bounced back opener last year finish top 10 five occasions top 25 total 10 times including first pga tour victory valspar championship hadwin also chile classic chiquita classic webcom tour 2014 among 12 victories pro made way fedexcup playoffs last month tying 23rd tour championship wind 26th final point standings 8 emiliano grillo argentina another player international team looking put last weeks presidents cup defeat united states behind quickly grillo coming back safeway open claimed pga tour victory two years ago earning card big circuit winning 2015 webcom tour championship made debut pga tour member weeks later shooting 6965 weekend silverado defeating kevin na birdie second playoff hole kickstarted season voted pga tours rookie year last year nearly good starting tie sixth safeway title defense grillo two top10 finished last season best tie seventh arnold palmer wasnt far seven results top 25 including solo 11th finishes players championship wgchsbc champions 9 bill haas united states disappointed barely missing tour championship 2011 wrap fedexcup haas trying get new season good start fourth appearance safeway open tied 20th last year appearance silverado also tied 20th 2008 grayhawk golf club arizona haas recorded four finishes top 10 last season post 12 results top 25 bubble make top 30 qualify tour championship could manage tie 53rd bmw championship six victories pga tour career last 2015 humana challenge highlights 201617 season third dell technologies match play tie fourth wgchsbc champions tie fifth us open erin hills 10 ryan moore united states fivetime winner pga tour moore finished subpar 201617 season tied 20th bmw championship third event fedexcup playoffs failed qualify 30player field tour championship another player trying turn things around start new season right foot safeway open silverado tied 10th 2016 also tied eighth 2009 tied sixth 2007 tournament played grayhawk golf club arizona moore whose last victory came 2016 john deere classic finished top 10 twice last season tie third sbs championship tie ninth masters post 10 results top 25 including tie 13th pga championship quail hollow two months ago part reason season shoulder injury caused miss us open | 988 |
<p />
<p>India has major, continuing, and long-standing problems with its consequential neighbors. With China it has an unresolved border dispute. The Kashmir dispute remains a key roadblock with Pakistan. With Bangladesh, it has not even begun to tackle the emotive issue of illegal migration. While the government is progressing on expanding trade and other dimensions of the bilateral relationships, it is not making any headway on these crucial and potentially disruptive issues.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">&lt;img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-2731" style="margin: 5px;" title="stock-india-pakistan" src="https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/stock-india-pakistan-300x215.jpg" alt="" width="270" height="194" srcset="https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/stock-india-pakistan-300x215.jpg 300w, https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/stock-india-pakistan-280x200.jpg 280w, https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/stock-india-pakistan-118x84.jpg 118w, https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/stock-india-pakistan.jpg 400w" sizes="(max-width: 270px) 100vw, 270px" /&gt;</a>The strategic paradigm the UPA government operates in is a cross between Nehruvianism and neo-liberalism. It believes that linkages in less troubled areas in which prospects of mutual gain exist, such as in trade, people to people contact etc., would subsequently help create the conditions and goodwill for and constituencies interested in tackling the more difficult areas of the relationship. This expectation is true even in the case of Pakistan, with which India has currently ‘paused’ the dialogue process.</p>
<p>This effort alone is not good enough to bring the bilateral relations on to an even keel. Additionally, the government needs to address the issues of ‘high politics’ by first arriving at an internal consensus. This entails engaging with the arguments originating in the realist-hyper realist-nationalist paradigm.</p>
<p>The assumptions and prescriptions in this strategic paradigm being different, the conclusions it arrives at on bilateral relations are expectedly different. Taking a view of international relation that privileges power and its use, it prefers the Indian state to be mindful of power play, particularly in balancing China and its expanding interest and presence in the other two neighbors.</p>
<p>On China, the recent media controversies on Chinese intrusiveness on the border and the government’s defensiveness on the allegations indicate the sway of the paradigm in strategic thinking in India. The reaction to Sharm es Sheikh that has since held up India’s reaching out to Pakistan also is a testimony to the good health of this paradigm. While the recent ‘historic’ visit of the Bangladeshi Prime Minister went off well, the issue of illegal migration was off the agenda. Thus, even where there is a certain like-mindedness in approach, India appears unable take up the major issues.</p>
<p>The expectation is that outstanding issues will eventually get resolved and India, in any case, has the capacity to cope with any unpalatable fallout in the interim. The problem that can arise by their very presence, even if on a back burner, is their potential for explosion.</p>
<p>With respect to China, a prognostication is on a border war as early as 2012. With Bangladesh, the manifesto of the opposition party in the last election had it that it would take action on the question of illegal migration within 100 days of being elected to power. The impact on India’s social harmony can be assessed. The fear of another terror attack from Pakistan remains, with a Council on Foreign Affairs report, authored by Daniel Markey, assessing that India would respond militarily.</p>
<p>Since these risks are not worth running, the government requires taking up the debate with the realist-nationalist paradigm. Presently, the strategic discourse is dominated by the realist-nationalists. The institutions in the security field including security think tanks, the military and the intelligence agencies are largely of this persuasion. The hold up in progressing matters in these cases can be attributed to the government’s inability to carry the argument. The government, constantly having to look over its shoulder, is unable to take the Nehruvian-liberal paradigm that it otherwise professes to operate in, to its logical conclusion.</p>
<p>This means it needs to take up the issues in the open domain through a public information campaign. Precedence exists in the government taking up the challenge of traditional thinking on Indo-US ties by staking its longevity on the floor of the parliament for the sake of the nuclear deal. Taking cue from this it can be expected to have the tactical capacity to go down this route. The question of ‘political will’ remains.</p>
<p>The main party in the coalition, the Congress, cannot be expected to step in, busy as it is with domestic issues such as price rise, agitations for smaller states, and widening its base in the more electorally consequential provinces. It is the government’s responsibility to take up the issues, given that these have a security dimension with a short and long term fuse. Since in light of its weakness, it cannot go down all three roads simultaneously, it could select the one it needs to do so with the greatest urgency.</p>
<p>This can easily be arrived at since in Markey’s words, ‘India faces the real prospect of another major terrorist attack by Pakistan-based terrorist organizations in the near future.’ That the log jam in relations with Pakistan can have grievous implications is assessed by Markey in his report, ‘Terrorism and Indo-Pakistani Escalation’, as: ‘The more egregious the terrorist attack and the more India’s leadership is convinced that members of the Pakistani state sponsored it, the more it will be treated as an act of war. Under these conditions, New Delhi would consider a wider range of options, including, for instance, a large ground-force mobilization of the sort India conducted in 2001-2002 in the wake of the terrorist attack on the Indian parliament or a naval blockade.’</p>
<p>The year since the Mumbai 26/11 outrage had terrorists knocking at the gates of Islamabad. India’s realists-nationalists have so far held up the government’s preferred response option of resuming the stalled peace process in the hope that Pakistan going under is in India’s interests. The government needs to take a stand and in reaching out to Pakistan launch itself into a public debate. While the inter-strategic paradigm debate can be expected to continue in the editorial columns, on TV and in security journals, ultimately it is the voice of the people that would adjudicate. In this the government can be sure that both its case and its hands would stand strengthened. Mr. Manmohan Singh needs to strike again.</p> | false | 1 | india major continuing longstanding problems consequential neighbors china unresolved border dispute kashmir dispute remains key roadblock pakistan bangladesh even begun tackle emotive issue illegal migration government progressing expanding trade dimensions bilateral relationships making headway crucial potentially disruptive issues ltimg classalignleft sizemedium wpimage2731 stylemargin 5px titlestockindiapakistan srchttpswwwforeignpolicyjournalcomwpcontentuploads201001stockindiapakistan300x215jpg alt width270 height194 srcsethttpswwwforeignpolicyjournalcomwpcontentuploads201001stockindiapakistan300x215jpg 300w httpswwwforeignpolicyjournalcomwpcontentuploads201001stockindiapakistan280x200jpg 280w httpswwwforeignpolicyjournalcomwpcontentuploads201001stockindiapakistan118x84jpg 118w httpswwwforeignpolicyjournalcomwpcontentuploads201001stockindiapakistanjpg 400w sizesmaxwidth 270px 100vw 270px gtthe strategic paradigm upa government operates cross nehruvianism neoliberalism believes linkages less troubled areas prospects mutual gain exist trade people people contact etc would subsequently help create conditions goodwill constituencies interested tackling difficult areas relationship expectation true even case pakistan india currently paused dialogue process effort alone good enough bring bilateral relations even keel additionally government needs address issues high politics first arriving internal consensus entails engaging arguments originating realisthyper realistnationalist paradigm assumptions prescriptions strategic paradigm different conclusions arrives bilateral relations expectedly different taking view international relation privileges power use prefers indian state mindful power play particularly balancing china expanding interest presence two neighbors china recent media controversies chinese intrusiveness border governments defensiveness allegations indicate sway paradigm strategic thinking india reaction sharm es sheikh since held indias reaching pakistan also testimony good health paradigm recent historic visit bangladeshi prime minister went well issue illegal migration agenda thus even certain likemindedness approach india appears unable take major issues expectation outstanding issues eventually get resolved india case capacity cope unpalatable fallout interim problem arise presence even back burner potential explosion respect china prognostication border war early 2012 bangladesh manifesto opposition party last election would take action question illegal migration within 100 days elected power impact indias social harmony assessed fear another terror attack pakistan remains council foreign affairs report authored daniel markey assessing india would respond militarily since risks worth running government requires taking debate realistnationalist paradigm presently strategic discourse dominated realistnationalists institutions security field including security think tanks military intelligence agencies largely persuasion hold progressing matters cases attributed governments inability carry argument government constantly look shoulder unable take nehruvianliberal paradigm otherwise professes operate logical conclusion means needs take issues open domain public information campaign precedence exists government taking challenge traditional thinking indous ties staking longevity floor parliament sake nuclear deal taking cue expected tactical capacity go route question political remains main party coalition congress expected step busy domestic issues price rise agitations smaller states widening base electorally consequential provinces governments responsibility take issues given security dimension short long term fuse since light weakness go three roads simultaneously could select one needs greatest urgency easily arrived since markeys words india faces real prospect another major terrorist attack pakistanbased terrorist organizations near future log jam relations pakistan grievous implications assessed markey report terrorism indopakistani escalation egregious terrorist attack indias leadership convinced members pakistani state sponsored treated act war conditions new delhi would consider wider range options including instance large groundforce mobilization sort india conducted 20012002 wake terrorist attack indian parliament naval blockade year since mumbai 2611 outrage terrorists knocking gates islamabad indias realistsnationalists far held governments preferred response option resuming stalled peace process hope pakistan going indias interests government needs take stand reaching pakistan launch public debate interstrategic paradigm debate expected continue editorial columns tv security journals ultimately voice people would adjudicate government sure case hands would stand strengthened mr manmohan singh needs strike | 542 |
<p>As many as 10 workers in Yellowstone National Park’s maintenance division will be disciplined after an investigation found female employees were subjected to sexual harassment and other problems.</p>
<p>The move comes as widespread reports of harassment, bullying and other misconduct have tarnished the image of the National Park Service and its parent agency, the U.S. Interior Department.</p>
<p>Investigators have uncovered problems at many of the nation’s premier parks — Yellowstone, Yosemite, the Grand Canyon, Canaveral National Seashore — as well as inappropriate behavior toward female employees by the Interior Department’s former director of law enforcement.</p>
<p>A report on sexual harassment at Florida’s De Soto National Memorial, which is run by the park service, was released this week by an employee advocacy group that got the document through a public records request.</p>
<p>At Yellowstone, the Interior Department’s Office of Inspector General launched its investigation last year, after a park employee complained to a local magazine and members of Congress that a pervasive “men’s club” environment had encouraged the exploitation and abuse of female workers.</p>
<p>The inspector general’s investigation also found that government-issued charge cards in the maintenance division had been misused. Yellowstone Superintendent Dan Wenk said the punishments stem from both harassment and charge-card misuse but declined to be more specific, citing employee privacy.</p>
<p>The review was shared with park officials on March 13. More than four months later, the personnel actions will be handed down and could range from letters of counseling or reprimand, to suspensions or firing, Wenk said. The workers can appeal before the penalties, to be proposed by Aug. 1 or soon afterward, become final.</p>
<p>A letter of counseling is not considered a disciplinary action, Wenk said.</p>
<p>Since the harassment allegations emerged last year, park supervisors have undergone mandatory sexual harassment training. Similar training is happening this summer for all seasonal and permanent employees.</p>
<p>In disclosing the upcoming discipline, Wenk echoed prior comments of senior officials within the park service and Interior: They’re trying to change an embedded culture that has allowed misconduct to proliferate.</p>
<p>“I’m concerned that people understand what acceptable behavior in the workplace is,” Wenk said. “We’re setting out very clear expectations for how people comport themselves.”</p>
<p>Investigators found that between 2010 and 2016, six women who previously worked in the maintenance division had faced derogatory comments or actions that made them feel uncomfortable. They said the division’s supervisor described the culture at Yellowstone as a “good old boy system” that was rampant in the 1990s but has improved over time.</p>
<p>The park is taking other steps, including instituting a new policy intended to curb the misuse of alcohol by employees after hours at remote work locations. And there will be a park-wide audit of employees’ use of charge cards, Wenk said.</p>
<p>There’s been no indication Wenk, who became superintendent in 2011, knew about the allegations at Yellowstone and ignored them. He has said he first became aware of them just before an article published last September in The Montana Pioneer.</p>
<p>The superintendents of Yosemite and the Grand Canyon retired in recent months following allegations of sexual harassment and hostile work environments.</p>
<p>At least 18 Yosemite employees came forward with allegations, and working conditions were said to be so bad that they were labeled “toxic.” At the Grand Canyon, male employees reportedly preyed on female colleagues, demanded sex and retaliated against women who refused.</p>
<p>The superintendent of Canaveral National Seashore in Florida was put on paid leave last year amid allegations that the park’s former chief ranger, Edwin Correa, sexually harassed three employees over five years.</p>
<p>Correa agreed to perform 50 hours of community service to resolve a misdemeanor charge after he was accused of kissing and touching another ranger against her will, the Dayton Beach News-Journal reported in June.</p>
<p>He was no longer employed as of May 12, the park service said. Canaveral Superintendent Myrna Palfrey returned to work May 28 after no wrongdoing on her part was found, the agency said.</p>
<p>The Interior Department’s law enforcement director, Tim Lynn, retired this spring after investigators disclosed in February that he had displayed a “pattern of unprofessional behavior” by touching and hugging female employees and making flirtatious remarks.</p>
<p>At De Soto National Memorial in Bradenton, Florida, a female employee reported that a male employee inappropriately touched her and made unwanted comments numerous times, according to a Feb. 6 inspector general’s report obtained by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.</p>
<p>The employees’ names were redacted. The report said the case was referred to federal prosecutors, who declined to pursue charges.</p>
<p>The head of the employee advocacy group said the disclosure of the De Soto investigation underscored that such problems remain entrenched despite the planned actions at Yellowstone and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s pledge to show zero tolerance toward sexual harassment.</p>
<p>“The park service still doesn’t get it,” executive director Jeff Ruch said. “Generally, the high-level managers and supervisors escape responsibility and (the agencies) are more than willing to take action against lower-level people.”</p>
<p>Zinke spokeswoman Heather Swift said the actions at Yellowstone reflect that leaders of individual parks feel newly empowered to confront harassment.</p>
<p>“His (Zinke’s) leadership will create a culture where people are valued for their work and not discriminated against,” Swift said.</p> | false | 1 | many 10 workers yellowstone national parks maintenance division disciplined investigation found female employees subjected sexual harassment problems move comes widespread reports harassment bullying misconduct tarnished image national park service parent agency us interior department investigators uncovered problems many nations premier parks yellowstone yosemite grand canyon canaveral national seashore well inappropriate behavior toward female employees interior departments former director law enforcement report sexual harassment floridas de soto national memorial run park service released week employee advocacy group got document public records request yellowstone interior departments office inspector general launched investigation last year park employee complained local magazine members congress pervasive mens club environment encouraged exploitation abuse female workers inspector generals investigation also found governmentissued charge cards maintenance division misused yellowstone superintendent dan wenk said punishments stem harassment chargecard misuse declined specific citing employee privacy review shared park officials march 13 four months later personnel actions handed could range letters counseling reprimand suspensions firing wenk said workers appeal penalties proposed aug 1 soon afterward become final letter counseling considered disciplinary action wenk said since harassment allegations emerged last year park supervisors undergone mandatory sexual harassment training similar training happening summer seasonal permanent employees disclosing upcoming discipline wenk echoed prior comments senior officials within park service interior theyre trying change embedded culture allowed misconduct proliferate im concerned people understand acceptable behavior workplace wenk said setting clear expectations people comport investigators found 2010 2016 six women previously worked maintenance division faced derogatory comments actions made feel uncomfortable said divisions supervisor described culture yellowstone good old boy system rampant 1990s improved time park taking steps including instituting new policy intended curb misuse alcohol employees hours remote work locations parkwide audit employees use charge cards wenk said theres indication wenk became superintendent 2011 knew allegations yellowstone ignored said first became aware article published last september montana pioneer superintendents yosemite grand canyon retired recent months following allegations sexual harassment hostile work environments least 18 yosemite employees came forward allegations working conditions said bad labeled toxic grand canyon male employees reportedly preyed female colleagues demanded sex retaliated women refused superintendent canaveral national seashore florida put paid leave last year amid allegations parks former chief ranger edwin correa sexually harassed three employees five years correa agreed perform 50 hours community service resolve misdemeanor charge accused kissing touching another ranger dayton beach newsjournal reported june longer employed may 12 park service said canaveral superintendent myrna palfrey returned work may 28 wrongdoing part found agency said interior departments law enforcement director tim lynn retired spring investigators disclosed february displayed pattern unprofessional behavior touching hugging female employees making flirtatious remarks de soto national memorial bradenton florida female employee reported male employee inappropriately touched made unwanted comments numerous times according feb 6 inspector generals report obtained public employees environmental responsibility employees names redacted report said case referred federal prosecutors declined pursue charges head employee advocacy group said disclosure de soto investigation underscored problems remain entrenched despite planned actions yellowstone interior secretary ryan zinkes pledge show zero tolerance toward sexual harassment park service still doesnt get executive director jeff ruch said generally highlevel managers supervisors escape responsibility agencies willing take action lowerlevel people zinke spokeswoman heather swift said actions yellowstone reflect leaders individual parks feel newly empowered confront harassment zinkes leadership create culture people valued work discriminated swift said | 545 |
<p>EDEN PRAIRIE, Minn. — Two days after starting quarterback <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Sam_Bradford/" type="external">Sam Bradford</a> boarded a private jet en route to Florida to get a second opinion on his ailing left knee, the entire morale surrounding the <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Minnesota-Vikings/" type="external">Minnesota Vikings</a> was lifted by an unlikely source.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Case_Keenum/" type="external">Case Keenum</a>.</p>
<p>Yeah, the same Case Keenum who looked jittery and overwhelmed when he started the week before in a loss at Pittsburgh.</p>
<p>The journeyman won his 10th career game in his 26th start as he and the entire offense played near flawless football while destroying the Buccaneers 34-17 at U.S. Bank Stadium on Sunday.</p>
<p>So, head coach <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Mike_Zimmer/" type="external">Mike Zimmer</a>, what was the difference this week?</p>
<p>“I think a lot of it had to do with the timing of when he knew he was going to play, changing the plan,” Zimmer said Monday. “I think he was confident going in, felt good about the plays, and then you have to give all the guys some credit. They executed.</p>
<p>“The offensive line, we ran the ball well, (Dalvin) Cook had some really good runs, the offensive line blocked, protected well. We made some really good catches. (Adam) Thielen had a great catch. (Stefon) Diggs had a great catch. Sometimes it’s just how it goes.”</p>
<p>As for Bradford, Zimmer still isn’t saying much. He said Monday that Bradford is day to day, and that he doesn’t know what will happen Sunday when the Vikings host the Lions.</p>
<p>Bradford has missed the last two games because of swelling and instability in the left knee that he had reconstructed through ACL surgery in 2013 and 2014.</p>
<p>Andrews agreed with the Vikings’ doctors, who said there is no structural damage to the knee and that surgery is not needed.</p>
<p>Bradford was back at Winter Park on Monday after spending time in Pensacola, Fla., visiting Dr. <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/James_Andrews/" type="external">James Andrews</a>, who performed both of Bradford’s ACL surgeries.</p>
<p>“I had a nice talk with him (Monday),” Zimmer said. “Just a nice, easy talk.”</p>
<p>The lack of stress in that conversation might have something to do with the fact Keenum led the Vikings to an easy 17-point win.</p>
<p>Keenum wasn’t sacked and was hit only three times. He responded by completing 25 of 33 passes for a career-high 369 yards, three touchdowns, a 142.1 passer rating and no turnovers.</p>
<p>The performance vaulted the Vikings’ offense to No. 2 in the league, a lofty ranking that hasn’t been reached by this team in quite a while.</p>
<p>Zimmer, of course, isn’t too excited about rankings after three games. Nor is he concerned about the people who were already writing the Vikings off when Bradford was declared out for a second straight week.</p>
<p>“We just try to go one week at a time and see what happens,” Zimmer said Monday. “It’s a week-to-week proposition in the NFL. Media and everybody, it’s, ‘This week we’re great, next week if we lose we’re terrible.’</p>
<p>“It’s just the way it is. We just try to do the best we can to prepare and get better each week. And that’s really all we’re trying to do now is prepare for Detroit.”</p>
<p>—</p>
<p>For the first time since <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Colin_Kaepernick/" type="external">Colin Kaepernick</a> began the series of national anthem protests during the 2016 preseason, the Vikings engaged in a public demonstration of unity. Sparked by President <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Donald_Trump/" type="external">Donald Trump</a>‘s comments criticizing players who knelt during the national anthem, the Vikings stood and linked arms before Sunday’s home game. Coaches, owners Zygi and Mark Wilf, and general manager Rick Spielmen joined in the linking of arms.</p>
<p>After initially deferring to NFL commissioner <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Roger_Goodell/" type="external">Roger Goodell</a>‘s statement in response to Trump, the Wilfs did put out a statement right before kickoff. It didn’t mention Trump, but said, “rather than making divisive comments, we believe in promoting thoughtful, inspiring conversation that unifies our communities. We are proud of our players, coaches and staff for the important role they play in our community.”</p>
<p>Head coach Mike Zimmer was asked about the team’s pregame show of solidarity and Trump’s comments.</p>
<p>“I’m glad our guys are a team,” he said. “I’m a football coach. I’m not a politician. I’m not going to get into any of that.”</p>
<p>Veteran defensive end Brian Robison added: “For us it was about our team, showing solidarity and showing a unified front and made sure everyone knew we are a brotherhood. I think there’s a lot of comments that are going outside the football facilities and I think we were able to stand up and make a big-time statement today with what we did.”</p>
<p>—</p>
<p>Receiver <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Stefon-Diggs/" type="external">Stefon Diggs</a> had two touchdown catches, tying his career high of four in a season — after three games.</p>
<p>In his second start in place of the injured Sam Bradford, Case Keenum targeted Diggs 11 times. Diggs caught eight of them for 173 yards with touchdowns of 17 and 59 yards. The latter came on a free play when Keenum called for a quick snap to catch the Bucs with 12 men on the field.</p>
<p>“It’s fun when that guy is on the field,” Keenum said of Diggs. “He’s a special dude.”</p>
<p>NOTES: RB <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Dalvin-Cook/" type="external">Dalvin Cook</a> scored the first touchdown of his NFL career. The 1-yard score came while he had 169 yards from scrimmage. He had 97 yards rushing on 27 carries, and 72 yards receiving on just five catches. … WR <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Adam-Thielen/" type="external">Adam Thielen</a> has 19 catches this season. That’s the eighth-highest total after three games in franchise history. <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Percy_Harvin/" type="external">Percy Harvin</a> had the most, 27, in 2012. Thielen’s 299 yards receiving is the third-highest total through three games. Gene Washington had the most, 397, in 1969. … QB Case Keenum is 10-16 in his career as a starter, but he is 3-0 against the Bucs. He posted career highs for passer rating (142.1) and passing yards (369). … FS Harrison Smith grabbed the 13th interception of his career. He returned it 12 yards, giving him 288 career return yards, seventh-most in Vikings history. …DE Everson Griffen had another sack and has four in three games.</p>
<p>REPORT CARD VS. BUCCANEERS</p>
<p>PASSING OFFENSE: A-plus — With a lot of fans turning to Twitter to give up on the season, Case Keenum played the game of his life, leading the Vikings to an unexpected offensive explosion. Keenum completed 25 of 33 passes for three touchdowns and career highs in yards (369) and passer rating (142.1). Receivers Stefon Diggs and Adam Thielen continued to attack defenses down the field, combining for 271 yards on 13 catches. Diggs had two touchdowns, while Thielen set the tone with a great over-the-shoulder catch for 45 yards on the third play of the game.</p>
<p>RUSHING OFFENSE: A — The average per carry wasn’t great at 3.4. But the Vikings showed again just how far they’ve come in terms of blocking and hitting holes since they finished dead last in rushing a year ago. Offensive coordinator <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Pat-Shurmur/" type="external">Pat Shurmur</a> was able to call a balanced game (37 rushes, 33 passes) because the running game was sound. The game opened with Dalvin Cook rushing for gains of six and four yards before Keenum hit Thielen for a 45-yard gain. Cook finished with 97 yards and his first career touchdown on 27 carries.</p>
<p>PASS DEFENSE: B — <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Jameis-Winston/" type="external">Jameis Winston</a> threw for 328 yards and two touchdowns, but the Vikings offset that with three interceptions. The Vikings didn’t have a takeaway in their first two games. Trae Waynes, Andrew Sendejo and Harrison Smith all intercepted errant passes. Cornerback <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Xavier-Rhodes/" type="external">Xavier Rhodes</a> shadowed big receiver <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Mike_Evans/" type="external">Mike Evans</a> for most of the game. Evans finished with only 67 yards on six catches (9.6).</p>
<p>RUSH DEFENSE: A – The offense jumped on the Bucs so fast and so hard that Tampa Bay had to abandon the run early. The Bucs only ran the ball nine times, finishing with 26 yards. They had no runs longer than four yards.</p>
<p>SPECIAL TEAMS: B — After missing point-after attempts in each of the first two games, Kai Forbath went unnoticed with four successful extra points in four tries. He also went 2 for 2 on field goals of 20 and 37 yards. The Vikings, however, did surrender a 50-yard kickoff return. And kickoff returner <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Jerick-McKinnon/" type="external">Jerick McKinnon</a> continues to struggle. His only return was 20 yards to the 15-yard line.</p>
<p>COACHING: A — Give the coaches a lot of credit for marching everybody forward in the face of the uncertainty at quarterback. In three games since offensive coordinator Pat Shurmur had his interim tag removed, the Vikings have had two veteran quarterbacks – Sam Bradford and Case Keenum – post career-high passer ratings. Bradford had a 143.0 in the opener. Keenum had a 142.1 on Sunday. Defensively, the Vikings are healthy and playing very well in front of the home crowd. Shurmur and Zimmer were aggressive on both sides of the ball, and the result was an energized performance against a team that was coming off a big win the week before.</p> | false | 1 | eden prairie minn two days starting quarterback sam bradford boarded private jet en route florida get second opinion ailing left knee entire morale surrounding minnesota vikings lifted unlikely source case keenum yeah case keenum looked jittery overwhelmed started week loss pittsburgh journeyman 10th career game 26th start entire offense played near flawless football destroying buccaneers 3417 us bank stadium sunday head coach mike zimmer difference week think lot timing knew going play changing plan zimmer said monday think confident going felt good plays give guys credit executed offensive line ran ball well dalvin cook really good runs offensive line blocked protected well made really good catches adam thielen great catch stefon diggs great catch sometimes goes bradford zimmer still isnt saying much said monday bradford day day doesnt know happen sunday vikings host lions bradford missed last two games swelling instability left knee reconstructed acl surgery 2013 2014 andrews agreed vikings doctors said structural damage knee surgery needed bradford back winter park monday spending time pensacola fla visiting dr james andrews performed bradfords acl surgeries nice talk monday zimmer said nice easy talk lack stress conversation might something fact keenum led vikings easy 17point win keenum wasnt sacked hit three times responded completing 25 33 passes careerhigh 369 yards three touchdowns 1421 passer rating turnovers performance vaulted vikings offense 2 league lofty ranking hasnt reached team quite zimmer course isnt excited rankings three games concerned people already writing vikings bradford declared second straight week try go one week time see happens zimmer said monday weektoweek proposition nfl media everybody week great next week lose terrible way try best prepare get better week thats really trying prepare detroit first time since colin kaepernick began series national anthem protests 2016 preseason vikings engaged public demonstration unity sparked president donald trumps comments criticizing players knelt national anthem vikings stood linked arms sundays home game coaches owners zygi mark wilf general manager rick spielmen joined linking arms initially deferring nfl commissioner roger goodells statement response trump wilfs put statement right kickoff didnt mention trump said rather making divisive comments believe promoting thoughtful inspiring conversation unifies communities proud players coaches staff important role play community head coach mike zimmer asked teams pregame show solidarity trumps comments im glad guys team said im football coach im politician im going get veteran defensive end brian robison added us team showing solidarity showing unified front made sure everyone knew brotherhood think theres lot comments going outside football facilities think able stand make bigtime statement today receiver stefon diggs two touchdown catches tying career high four season three games second start place injured sam bradford case keenum targeted diggs 11 times diggs caught eight 173 yards touchdowns 17 59 yards latter came free play keenum called quick snap catch bucs 12 men field fun guy field keenum said diggs hes special dude notes rb dalvin cook scored first touchdown nfl career 1yard score came 169 yards scrimmage 97 yards rushing 27 carries 72 yards receiving five catches wr adam thielen 19 catches season thats eighthhighest total three games franchise history percy harvin 27 2012 thielens 299 yards receiving thirdhighest total three games gene washington 397 1969 qb case keenum 1016 career starter 30 bucs posted career highs passer rating 1421 passing yards 369 fs harrison smith grabbed 13th interception career returned 12 yards giving 288 career return yards seventhmost vikings history de everson griffen another sack four three games report card vs buccaneers passing offense aplus lot fans turning twitter give season case keenum played game life leading vikings unexpected offensive explosion keenum completed 25 33 passes three touchdowns career highs yards 369 passer rating 1421 receivers stefon diggs adam thielen continued attack defenses field combining 271 yards 13 catches diggs two touchdowns thielen set tone great overtheshoulder catch 45 yards third play game rushing offense average per carry wasnt great 34 vikings showed far theyve come terms blocking hitting holes since finished dead last rushing year ago offensive coordinator pat shurmur able call balanced game 37 rushes 33 passes running game sound game opened dalvin cook rushing gains six four yards keenum hit thielen 45yard gain cook finished 97 yards first career touchdown 27 carries pass defense b jameis winston threw 328 yards two touchdowns vikings offset three interceptions vikings didnt takeaway first two games trae waynes andrew sendejo harrison smith intercepted errant passes cornerback xavier rhodes shadowed big receiver mike evans game evans finished 67 yards six catches 96 rush defense offense jumped bucs fast hard tampa bay abandon run early bucs ran ball nine times finishing 26 yards runs longer four yards special teams b missing pointafter attempts first two games kai forbath went unnoticed four successful extra points four tries also went 2 2 field goals 20 37 yards vikings however surrender 50yard kickoff return kickoff returner jerick mckinnon continues struggle return 20 yards 15yard line coaching give coaches lot credit marching everybody forward face uncertainty quarterback three games since offensive coordinator pat shurmur interim tag removed vikings two veteran quarterbacks sam bradford case keenum post careerhigh passer ratings bradford 1430 opener keenum 1421 sunday defensively vikings healthy playing well front home crowd shurmur zimmer aggressive sides ball result energized performance team coming big win week | 871 |
<p><a href="http://variety.com/t/elizabeth-mcgovern/" type="external">Elizabeth McGovern</a>, until recently the gracious mistress of PBS’s “ <a href="http://variety.com/t/downton-abbey/" type="external">Downton Abbey</a>,” has a far more fractious household to manage in “Time and the Conways,” J.B. Priestley’s 1937 drawing-room play about the fluctuating fortunes of a well-to-do family in postwar England. Mrs. Conway’s six grown children are played in a hodgepodge of acting styles in this <a href="http://variety.com/t/roundabout-theater-company/" type="external">Roundabout Theater Company</a> revival directed by Rebecca Taichman. But even an imperfect Priestley play offers food for thought, and McGovern is always a pleasure to watch.</p>
<p>Nobody looks good in the gracefully written but too-broadly acted first scene of the play, which is set in 1919.&#160; (In the original production of this flawed work, this scene was the entire first act; on these shores, an intermission at this point might cause a stampede for the exits.) The first World War is over and the Conways are in the mood to celebrate. After all, their own soldier-son, Robin (Matthew James Thomas, a dull prettyboy in uniform), has come home unscathed. But the buoyant feelings of relief, hope and great expectations that Priestley sensed in the UK at the end of the war are spoiled here by comic hysteria and hammy acting.</p>
<p>The party in full swing at the hospitable Conway house, built in comfortably decorous style by set designer Neil Patel, isn’t for Robin, the pampered younger son who is expected to succeed brilliantly at something-or-other in the postwar economy worthy of his non-existent talents. It isn’t even for his self-effacing elder brother, who came home to little fanfare. The occasion is the 21st birthday of sister Kay (Charlotte Parry, consistently smart and sensitive to nuance), the creative daughter who plans to write brilliant novels.</p>
<p>In terms of dramatic structure, the party is also the occasion for Priestley to introduce and identify all the principals in the family.</p>
<p>Alan (Gabriel Ebert, who grows and grows in this subtly sly role), the eldest, has taken a desk job (“Just a clerk, y’know”) at the Town Hall. Madge (Brooke Bloom), the serious one, sees herself as a Socialist firebrand who will give brilliant speeches and save the world. Hazel (Anna Camp), the beautiful daughter, wants to make a brilliant marriage. Sweet Carol (Anna Baryshnikov, totally charming), the youngest, is eager to start her life. Friends like the businessman Ernest Beevers (Steven Boyer, overdoing the low-class accent) and flighty Joan Helford (Cara Ricketts, giving a silly performance of a silly girl), are also drawn into the social mix as potential marriage partners.</p>
<p>At the center of it all is the egocentric but vivacious Mrs. Conway, a great beauty in her day and still the belle of the ball, who wants this wonderful moment to never end. “I feel we can all be happy again,” she coos, outdoing all her daughters at dressing up and entertaining the guests in the other room. “Now that the horrible war’s all over and people are sensible again.” Selfish and snobby she may be, but McGovern (who looks wonderful in the flattering black gown Paloma Young designed for this endless scene) doesn’t pretend otherwise.</p>
<p>There’s an air of desperation about the game of charades that Priestley surely wanted in this scene. But important lines keep getting lost in all the giddy nonsense of putting on clown noses, fright wigs, and silly costumes.&#160; And while the party would seem to celebrate new beginnings, the rebirth of a nation’s lost idealism, only Baryshnikov, who is quite young herself, conveys the sense of hope and innocence that Priestley also intuited at the end of the devastating war in which he served and never forgot.</p>
<p>The second act, which is set almost twenty years later, in 1937 – in a scene change that is executed with a great visual flourish — takes the Conways into the future they made for themselves. Now that they no longer have to play young and stupid, the cast seems to perk up, even in roles that now show them older, wiser and vastly more cynical.</p>
<p>It would be unkind to reveal all the changes in their lives (the men have mostly turned into beasts); but it must be said that Kay, the earnest girl novelist, is now a hard-bitten journalist on the despised celebrity beat.&#160; “I tell myself too many people are writing novels,” she says, with a wry laugh. Parry makes a nice subtle job of showing how her life has hurt, but not hardened her.&#160; Bloom is kind to Madge, the gung-ho Socialist who hit an ideological wall. And Camp’s Hazel, who was never kind, is awful to Alan, who shows new signs of life in Ebert’s sensitive perf.</p>
<p>Only Mrs. Conway hasn’t changed. Under McGovern’s gentle physical touches, she’s less agile, more subdued. But scratch her surface (at your peril), you’ll find she’s still the same thoughtless, self-centered beauty who thinks nothing of insulting her children to their faces. “When you were younger, I never liked you as much as I did Hazel,” she tells Kay, “but now I think I was wrong.” The only alteration in her character is that, in addition to their adoration, she now expects them to solve her financial problems.</p>
<p>Like Carol, forever the baby of the family and never far from her mind, Kay has presentiments of something “out there” — beyond this world. “You feel, quite suddenly, that it isn’t real enough – and you want something to be real.“ That’s one of several references to the author’s theme of the illusion of linear time, a notion taken from the metaphysical philosopher John W. Dunne that time past, present, and future co-exist in different dimensions.</p>
<p>Priestley best articulates his faith in that soothing belief system in the last movement of the play, when Kay has a metaphysical epiphany vividly realized by Neil Patel (set), Christopher Akerlind (lighting), and especially Matt Hubbs (sound). It’s a great scene, but first we have to get there, and the erratic directorial style makes that rougher than it needs to be.</p>
<p>Broadway Review: ‘Time and the Conways’American Airlines Theater; 734 seats; $139 top. Opened Oct. 10, 2017. Reviewed Oct. 6. Running time: TWO HOURS, 20 MIN.</p>
<p>ProductionA <a href="http://variety.com/2017/legit/news/travesties-broadway-tom-hollander-1202528899/" type="external">Roundabout Theater Company</a> presentation of a play in two acts by J.B. Priestley.</p>
<p>CreativeDirected by Rebecca Taichman. Sets, Neil Patel; costumes, Paloma Young; lighting, Christopher Akerlind; sound, Matt Hubbs; hair &amp; wigs, Leah J. Loukas; dialect consultant, Deborah Hecht; fight director, Thomas Schall; production stage manager, James Latus.</p>
<p>Cast <a href="http://variety.com/2017/film/news/haley-lu-richardson-elizabeth-mcgovern-chaperone-1202512277/" type="external">Elizabeth McGovern</a>; Steven Boyer, Anna Camp, Gabriel Ebert, Charlotte Parry, Matthew James Thomas, Anna Baryshnikov, Brooke Bloom, Alfredo Narciso, Cara Ricketts</p> | false | 1 | elizabeth mcgovern recently gracious mistress pbss downton abbey far fractious household manage time conways jb priestleys 1937 drawingroom play fluctuating fortunes welltodo family postwar england mrs conways six grown children played hodgepodge acting styles roundabout theater company revival directed rebecca taichman even imperfect priestley play offers food thought mcgovern always pleasure watch nobody looks good gracefully written toobroadly acted first scene play set 1919160 original production flawed work scene entire first act shores intermission point might cause stampede exits first world war conways mood celebrate soldierson robin matthew james thomas dull prettyboy uniform come home unscathed buoyant feelings relief hope great expectations priestley sensed uk end war spoiled comic hysteria hammy acting party full swing hospitable conway house built comfortably decorous style set designer neil patel isnt robin pampered younger son expected succeed brilliantly somethingorother postwar economy worthy nonexistent talents isnt even selfeffacing elder brother came home little fanfare occasion 21st birthday sister kay charlotte parry consistently smart sensitive nuance creative daughter plans write brilliant novels terms dramatic structure party also occasion priestley introduce identify principals family alan gabriel ebert grows grows subtly sly role eldest taken desk job clerk yknow town hall madge brooke bloom serious one sees socialist firebrand give brilliant speeches save world hazel anna camp beautiful daughter wants make brilliant marriage sweet carol anna baryshnikov totally charming youngest eager start life friends like businessman ernest beevers steven boyer overdoing lowclass accent flighty joan helford cara ricketts giving silly performance silly girl also drawn social mix potential marriage partners center egocentric vivacious mrs conway great beauty day still belle ball wants wonderful moment never end feel happy coos outdoing daughters dressing entertaining guests room horrible wars people sensible selfish snobby may mcgovern looks wonderful flattering black gown paloma young designed endless scene doesnt pretend otherwise theres air desperation game charades priestley surely wanted scene important lines keep getting lost giddy nonsense putting clown noses fright wigs silly costumes160 party would seem celebrate new beginnings rebirth nations lost idealism baryshnikov quite young conveys sense hope innocence priestley also intuited end devastating war served never forgot second act set almost twenty years later 1937 scene change executed great visual flourish takes conways future made longer play young stupid cast seems perk even roles show older wiser vastly cynical would unkind reveal changes lives men mostly turned beasts must said kay earnest girl novelist hardbitten journalist despised celebrity beat160 tell many people writing novels says wry laugh parry makes nice subtle job showing life hurt hardened her160 bloom kind madge gungho socialist hit ideological wall camps hazel never kind awful alan shows new signs life eberts sensitive perf mrs conway hasnt changed mcgoverns gentle physical touches shes less agile subdued scratch surface peril youll find shes still thoughtless selfcentered beauty thinks nothing insulting children faces younger never liked much hazel tells kay think wrong alteration character addition adoration expects solve financial problems like carol forever baby family never far mind kay presentiments something beyond world feel quite suddenly isnt real enough want something real thats one several references authors theme illusion linear time notion taken metaphysical philosopher john w dunne time past present future coexist different dimensions priestley best articulates faith soothing belief system last movement play kay metaphysical epiphany vividly realized neil patel set christopher akerlind lighting especially matt hubbs sound great scene first get erratic directorial style makes rougher needs broadway review time conwaysamerican airlines theater 734 seats 139 top opened oct 10 2017 reviewed oct 6 running time two hours 20 min productiona roundabout theater company presentation play two acts jb priestley creativedirected rebecca taichman sets neil patel costumes paloma young lighting christopher akerlind sound matt hubbs hair amp wigs leah j loukas dialect consultant deborah hecht fight director thomas schall production stage manager james latus cast elizabeth mcgovern steven boyer anna camp gabriel ebert charlotte parry matthew james thomas anna baryshnikov brooke bloom alfredo narciso cara ricketts | 651 |
<p>WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has narrowed his choice to fill the Supreme Court vacancy to three judges and said he expects to make his decision in the coming days.</p>
<p>A person familiar with the selection process said the three judges, all white men who sit on federal appeals courts, were on the list of 21 potential high court picks Trump announced during the presidential campaign.</p>
<p>The leading contenders — who all have met with Trump — are William Pryor, Neil Gorsuch and Thomas Hardiman, the person said, speaking anonymously because he was not authorized to speak publicly about internal decisions.</p>
<p>Pryor, 54, is an Alabama-based judge on the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Gorsuch, 49, is on the Denver-based 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Hardiman, 51, is based in Pittsburgh for the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. All three were nominated by President George W. Bush for their current posts.</p>
<p>Trump has promised to seek someone in the mold of conservative icon Antonin Scalia, <a href="" type="internal">who died nearly a year ago</a> after serving on the Supreme Court for more than 29 years. Senate Republicans prevented President Barack Obama from filling the seat, a political gamble that paid off when Trump was elected.</p>
<p>Trump was scheduled to meet later Tuesday with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, Sen. Chuck Grassley and Sen. Dianne Feinstein to discuss the court vacancy. McConnell wrote on Twitter, “I appreciate his soliciting our advice.” Trump said he plans to announce his choice next week.</p>
<p>McConnell led the Senate in refusing to even to consider Obama’s nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to take Scalia’s seat, announcing on the night that Scalia died that the vacancy should be filled not by Obama, but by the next president.</p>
<p>Schumer, D-N.Y., said last week on CNN that the Democrats would inevitably push back against anyone Trump nominates for the Supreme Court.</p>
<p>“It’s hard for me to imagine a nominee that Donald Trump would choose that would get Republican support, that we could support,” he said.</p>
<p>Daniel Goldberg, legal director of the liberal Alliance for Justice, said his group almost certainly would oppose anyone from Trump’s list. “President Trump has made clear what kind of justice he intends to nominate. He said he intends to nominate a reactionary who doesn’t share the constitutional values of the American people and who will undermine fundamental constitutional protections,” Goldberg said.</p>
<p>Conservatives said the contenders all share Scalia’s commitment to the text and meaning of the Constitution. “These are not stealth candidates. Their records are there for everyone to see and to understand. Their judicial philosophy is well within the mainstream of American legal thought,” said Leonard Leo, a conservative lawyer who has been advising Trump on the filling the vacancy.</p>
<p>Of the three leading candidates, only Pryor faced significant opposition when nominated to the appeals court. Senate Democrats refused to allow a vote on his nomination, leading Bush initially to give Pryor a temporary recess appointment. In 2005, the Senate confirmed him 53-45, after senators reached an agreement to curtail delaying tactics for appellate judgeships.</p>
<p>Gorsuch was approved by a voice vote in 2006. Schumer and Feinstein were among the 95 senators who voted for Hardiman’s confirmation in 2007. Hardiman is a colleague of Trump’s sister, Judge Maryanne Trump Barry.</p>
<p>Pryor has a reputation as staunch conservative with a taste for academic rigor. He once called the landmark 1973 decision legalizing abortion the “worst abomination in the history of constitutional law.” As Alabama attorney general, he also angered some conservatives for urging a judicial discipline panel to remove Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore from office after he refused to obey a court order take down a Ten Commandments monument from the lobby of the state judicial building.</p>
<p>Some conservatives also have recently criticized Pryor for his vote in 2011 in favor of a transgender woman who sued for sex discrimination.</p>
<p>Gorsuch is the closest on Trump’s list to a Washington insider — the son of former EPA administrator Anne Gorsuch, educated in the Ivy League and at Oxford, law clerk to Justice Anthony Kennedy and Bush-era Justice Department official.</p>
<p>His opinions and outside writings, praised for their clear, colloquial style, include a call for courts to second-guess government regulations, defense of religious freedom and skepticism toward law enforcement. He has contended that courts give too much deference to government agencies’ interpretations of statutes. He sided with groups that held religious objections to the Obama administration’s requirements that employers provide health insurance that includes contraception.</p>
<p>Hardiman has sided with jails seeking to strip-search inmates arrested for even minor offenses and has supported gun rights, dissenting in a 2013 case that upheld a New Jersey law to strengthen requirements for carrying a handgun in public. Last year, he joined two 3rd Circuit colleagues in affirming the $1 billion settlement of NFL concussion claims, rejecting complaints that men with depression and mood disorders were left out of the deal. A Massachusetts native, he settled in Pittsburgh, where his wife comes from a family of prominent Democrats.</p>
<p>Trump praised the candidates on his roster after signing several executive actions Tuesday in the Oval Office. “We have outstanding candidates,” the president said. “And we’ll pick a truly great Supreme Court justice.”</p>
<p>He said he would be making a decision this week, and announcing it next week.</p> | false | 1 | washington president donald trump narrowed choice fill supreme court vacancy three judges said expects make decision coming days person familiar selection process said three judges white men sit federal appeals courts list 21 potential high court picks trump announced presidential campaign leading contenders met trump william pryor neil gorsuch thomas hardiman person said speaking anonymously authorized speak publicly internal decisions pryor 54 alabamabased judge 11th us circuit court appeals gorsuch 49 denverbased 10th us circuit court appeals hardiman 51 based pittsburgh 3rd us circuit court appeals three nominated president george w bush current posts trump promised seek someone mold conservative icon antonin scalia died nearly year ago serving supreme court 29 years senate republicans prevented president barack obama filling seat political gamble paid trump elected trump scheduled meet later tuesday senate majority leader mitch mcconnell senate democratic leader chuck schumer sen chuck grassley sen dianne feinstein discuss court vacancy mcconnell wrote twitter appreciate soliciting advice trump said plans announce choice next week mcconnell led senate refusing even consider obamas nomination judge merrick garland take scalias seat announcing night scalia died vacancy filled obama next president schumer dny said last week cnn democrats would inevitably push back anyone trump nominates supreme court hard imagine nominee donald trump would choose would get republican support could support said daniel goldberg legal director liberal alliance justice said group almost certainly would oppose anyone trumps list president trump made clear kind justice intends nominate said intends nominate reactionary doesnt share constitutional values american people undermine fundamental constitutional protections goldberg said conservatives said contenders share scalias commitment text meaning constitution stealth candidates records everyone see understand judicial philosophy well within mainstream american legal thought said leonard leo conservative lawyer advising trump filling vacancy three leading candidates pryor faced significant opposition nominated appeals court senate democrats refused allow vote nomination leading bush initially give pryor temporary recess appointment 2005 senate confirmed 5345 senators reached agreement curtail delaying tactics appellate judgeships gorsuch approved voice vote 2006 schumer feinstein among 95 senators voted hardimans confirmation 2007 hardiman colleague trumps sister judge maryanne trump barry pryor reputation staunch conservative taste academic rigor called landmark 1973 decision legalizing abortion worst abomination history constitutional law alabama attorney general also angered conservatives urging judicial discipline panel remove alabama chief justice roy moore office refused obey court order take ten commandments monument lobby state judicial building conservatives also recently criticized pryor vote 2011 favor transgender woman sued sex discrimination gorsuch closest trumps list washington insider son former epa administrator anne gorsuch educated ivy league oxford law clerk justice anthony kennedy bushera justice department official opinions outside writings praised clear colloquial style include call courts secondguess government regulations defense religious freedom skepticism toward law enforcement contended courts give much deference government agencies interpretations statutes sided groups held religious objections obama administrations requirements employers provide health insurance includes contraception hardiman sided jails seeking stripsearch inmates arrested even minor offenses supported gun rights dissenting 2013 case upheld new jersey law strengthen requirements carrying handgun public last year joined two 3rd circuit colleagues affirming 1 billion settlement nfl concussion claims rejecting complaints men depression mood disorders left deal massachusetts native settled pittsburgh wife comes family prominent democrats trump praised candidates roster signing several executive actions tuesday oval office outstanding candidates president said well pick truly great supreme court justice said would making decision week announcing next week | 559 |
<p>America’s political institutions are consumed by a crisis of legitimacy. Public faith in our system of government has crumbled. Many believe it’s deeply corrupt, or rigged for the benefit of others. This view crosses party lines—or rather, our partisan divisions seem increasingly to turn on who is to blame for American democracy’s decline and fall.</p>
<p>The 2016 election results have swelled the ranks of those convinced that our democracy is a sham, particularly on the left. And the prominence of academics among them has boosted an already bourgeoning scholarly literature of democracy skepticism. Contributors to this fashionable genre differ on the particulars: most are elitist champions of meritocracy, as they understand it, but some make a more populist case against rule by experts. There are those who ground their case in empirical evidence of the ignorance of voters, others in some idea of justice or utility.</p>
<p>Essentially all, however, are agreed on one point: the case for democracy is hopelessly naïve, romantic, and overdue for refutation. Three books published in 2016—Jason Brennan’s Against Democracy, David Van Reybrouck’s Against Elections, and Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels’s Democracy for Realists—offer engaging introductions to key facets of the case. All are forceful, well written, and rooted in plainly genuine concerns for liberty or civic virtue. But both individually and in combination, they suggest a willful blindness to the challenges our country confronts, and the role that our constitutional republic’s institutions might play in addressing them.</p>
<p>Brennan, a professor of economics and public policy at Georgetown University’s business school, offers a case we might naturally expect to hear from a critic of democracy. The trouble, he says, is that the people simply do not know enough to govern, so that trusting them with immense power is a terrible mistake. An extensive social-science literature describes the political ignorance of the American population. He draws, in great detail, on the assessments of this ignorance to suggest that not only the reality but even the ideal of democracy is misguided.</p>
<p>Indeed, Brennan thinks politics is bad for us. The problem, in his telling, is not exactly that most people know next to nothing about politics—after all, most of us know next to nothing about pediatrics or architecture. The problem is that people engage in politics despite this patent incompetence. Politics therefore becomes applied ignorance, and diminishes us all. “I contend that for most of us, political liberty and participation are, on the whole, harmful,” he writes.</p>
<p>He doesn’t leave it there. “We no longer have to speculate, as [John Stuart] Mill did, about what politics does to us,” Against Democracy assures us. “Psychologists, sociologists, economists, and political scientists have spent more than sixty years studying how people think about, react to, and make decisions in politics.” And what they’ve found is that most of us are horribly ill-equipped for self-government.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>The solution, therefore, is not to make people less ignorant but to leave politics to the experts. And these experts…might they be professors of economics and public policy? Brennan isn’t coy:</p>
<p>While I no doubt suffer from some degree of confirmation and self-serving bias, perhaps I justifiably believe that I—a named professor of strategy, economics, ethics, and public policy at an elite research university, with a Ph.D. from the top-ranked political philosophy program in the English-speaking world, and a strong record of peer-reviewed publications in top journals and academic presses—have superior political judgment on a great many political matters compared to many of my fellow citizens.</p>
<p>He means it. His solution to the problems that bedevil our democracy is to give the better educated more power. It’s an old idea, of course. Brennan’s version would use a variety of tests of knowledge, education, or intelligence as prerequisites for voting. Or else it would empower “epistocratic councils” (that is, bodies of experts deemed fit to rule thanks to their specialized knowledge) alongside our democratic institutions, which would set the agenda and rein in excesses. A libertarian in good standing, Brennan makes this case not in the name of an all-knowing state but to maximize individual freedom and government efficiency. His argument reflects the growing libertarian inclination to technocracy. It’s most evident among legal scholars reinventing originalism to endorse rule by “engaged” judges who vindicate our rights, but is also increasingly common among political scientists who want calm, knowledgeable experts (“vulcans,” Brennan calls them) to protect our freedom from the public.</p>
<p>For Brennan, sheer common sense dictates that we discard our sentimental attachment to democratic forms. Nor does Winston Churchill’s argument—bad as it is, democracy is the least bad option available—settle the question. “Overall, democratic governments tend to perform better than the alternatives we have tried,” Brennan writes. “But perhaps some of the systems we haven’t tried are even better.”</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>Brennan’s “realism” turns out to encompass self-consciously edgy experiments in giving the government powers neither derived from, nor constrained by, the consent of the governed. Ironically, however, his recommendations turn out to be less edgy than he implies. He thinks restrictions on voting based on education or intelligence might be ideal, but acknowledges that they would run afoul of powerful taboos. Brennan suggests instead various limits on the electorate imposed by empowering parallel non-democratic institutions to check our democratic ones. A body of economists could compel Congress at least to vote on entitlement reform, for example, or could overrule a state tax referendum. He describes these as novel and exciting despite the fact that, in different forms, such restraints are commonplace in our constitutional system. He does point out, in passing, that the Supreme Court is “a kind of epistocratic council.” But Against Democracy generally doesn’t acknowledge that many checks on democratic power already exist in the American system, or used to exist before the democratizing reforms of the past century. Furthermore, our constitutional refinements of democracy generally take democratic legitimacy seriously, a problem to which Brennan is all but indifferent.</p>
<p>Instead, Brennan justifies restraining the popular will solely in terms of utility. “Democracy’s value is purely instrumental,” he writes. “The only reason to favor democracy over any other political system is that it is more effective at producing just results, according to procedure-independent standards of justice.” And yet it turns out that this supposedly clear-eyed view of government’s purpose is actually naïve, while our constitutional system—anchored in self-evident truths and built to take account of the very human limitations Brennan thinks social scientists have only just discovered—is realistic, in every sense of the term. The limits of our knowledge, if not indeed the fallenness of man, may well argue against pure democracy, but they argue even more strongly against unchecked epistocracy.</p>
<p>The celebrated Belgian writer and scholar David Van Reybrouck sees this problem clearly. His book focuses at least as much on Europe as America, but Van Reybrouck insists his case applies just as powerfully to our circumstances. In contrast to Brennan, he argues that the democratic process empowers elites at the expense of the public, a result he regards as fulfilling rather than betraying republicanism. Elections—that is, the definitive institution of representative or republican democracy—have always been meant to elevate an elite, keeping democracy in check even while advancing it.</p>
<p>Against Elections quotes James Madison’s assertion in The Federalist that “the aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society.” Van Reybrouck disapproves of this aim as elitist. “Democracy is not government by the best in our society,” he writes, “because such a thing is called aristocracy, elected or not.” In any case, most modern democracies fail to achieve anything resembling this outcome, and instead just empower an elite unworthy of its status.</p>
<p>The only solution is to recognize that democracy does not require elections. He acknowledges our “unshakable belief” that “democracy is inconceivable without elections,” but urges consideration of ancient Athenian democracy, where many crucial offices were assigned by lot. Using random selection from an eligible pool to fill at least some political positions—alongside elections, if not in place of them—would be much more democratic than popular voting. It would also allow for a greater diversity of views to be expressed in public policy and break the stranglehold of the elites. This kind of selection by “sortition” is how we choose juries, and Van Reybrouck points to instances around the modern democratic world where it has been used to help shape key decisions and encourage deliberation.</p>
<p>It is, of course, easy to poke holes in the case for sortition as a practical solution to the problems bedeviling the advanced democracies. And Van Reybrouck is never entirely clear about whether he sees it as a way to select legislators or even executives, as opposed to being the organizing principle for other institutions that share power with elected officials. Because his purpose is essentially diagnostic, he’s uninterested in implementation details (and at times also careless about the history of democracy, ancient and modern). Against Elections suggests that the problem with democracy is that it would have the people choose their betters rather than letting the people govern themselves.</p>
<p>But it is precisely in this diagnosis that the argument’s defect becomes most clear. Van Reybrouck’s case seems at first glance to be the opposite of Brennan’s: rather than expert rule, he argues for total democracy, on the premise that an average sampling of the public would govern better than our political class. Both Brennan and Van Reybrouck argue that the democratic public must be understood as incapable of rationality. In response, Brennan wants to empower a rational minority, while Van Reybrouck wants governance by a random selection of citizens, thereby maintaining democracy’s capacity to represent the public without pretending that people can effectively choose how they wish to be represented.</p>
<p>At least implicitly, Van Reybrouck is offering a form of democracy suited to an age of identity politics. In this sense, his diagnosis goes much deeper than Brennan’s, to the root of what many critics of democracy dislike about it. His proposed solution is not persuasive, but his short, pithy, readable, and well translated book performs a real service in articulating the apprehension.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>Among other things, Against Elections helps to illuminate the worry underlying Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels’s Democracy for Realists, the most comprehensive and impressive product of the latest spate of academic criticism of democracy. Their book, neither short nor pithy, is admirably rigorous, with a starting point much like Brennan’s. “Our view is that conventional thinking about democracy has collapsed in the face of modern social-scientific research,” they assert. The “history of democratic thought—including much contemporary political science—is marked by an addiction to romantic theories.”</p>
<p>They review the social-science literature on voter apathy and ignorance, and assess evidence of voters’ inability to hold politicians accountable for their conduct in office. Individual voters do not think or act in ways that democratic theory imagines, they conclude, and cannot reasonably be expected to bear the responsibility our system assigns them.</p>
<p>But unlike Brennan, Achen and Bartels—political scientists at Princeton and Vanderbilt, respectively—ask just how and why voters do arrive at their choices. Democracy for Realists offers a “group theory of democracy” that explains political loyalties as functions of “social identities and group attachments,” rather than simply individual views. Our democratic processes, it argues, need to take account of this fact. This contention is surely right in many respects, but may owe too much to Achen and Bartels’s toolkit, and its limitations. Contemporary social-science methods are inherently disposed to explain political divisions in terms of measurable group identities, rather than harder-to-measure political ideas and priorities.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>Achen and Bartels are admirably restrained in drawing implications from their central insight. They generally limit themselves to considering how it should change contemporary political science:</p>
<p>We conclude that group and partisan loyalties, not policy preferences or ideologies, are fundamental in democratic politics. Thus, a realistic theory of democracy must be built, not on the French Enlightenment, on British liberalism, or on American progressivism, with their devotion to human rationality and monadic individualism, but instead on the insights of the critics of these traditions, who recognized that human life is group life.</p>
<p>Incorporating this critique would indeed be an advance for modern social science. But Achen and Bartels too readily assume that rejecting hyper-individualism entails denying political preferences’ philosophical roots. Doing so awards an unmerited victory to the view that a more communitarian political theory would describe a less ideological politics. The theory they desire needs a more robust understanding of political ideas.</p>
<p>And such a theory is hardly unimaginable. Several times, in fact, Achen and Bartels come close to recognizing that one already exists. James Madison’s account in Federalist No. 10 of the roots of political differences, they note, “prefigures most of the key psychological ideas of the group theory of politics.” Later, they remark in passing that “Madison also anticipated the experimental finding of 20th-century psychologists that group attachments are easily generated and profoundly felt.”</p>
<p>They might have said much more along those lines. The Madisonian constitutional system is grounded in a sophisticated understanding of how a free society’s citizens form and hold opinions. Alexander Hamilton offers a subtle teaching in The Federalist about the challenge of persuading people who bring thoroughly intertwined interests, attachments, and ideas to the political process. This reality, Hamilton suggests, should lead us to reject both cynicism and naïveté, by considering an argument’s merits and the motives that might drive it. And it led the framers to array America’s governing institutions with overlapping electorates and intermixed authorities, mitigating the practical consequences of our cognitive limitations and assorted biases.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>Seen in this light, Achen and Bartels’s argument turns out to be a critique not of American constitutional democracy but of what some progressive reforms, undertaken with democratic intent, have done to it. Though they may not realize or intend it, theirs is a case for constitutional recovery. And it raises the question of whether the broader genre of social-scientific skepticism about republican institutions might not actually point toward much the same solution.</p>
<p>What if a naïve faith in voters’ rationality is not the source of our system’s difficulties? What if the problem is that the public wants to tell its leaders something they don’t want to hear? What if the literature of anti-democratic political science, like so much of our elite conversation about politics, is just a way to tell the public to shut up? What if, as a result, the leaders who secure a hearing for public frustrations manage to do so by working around or undermining our institutions, rather than by harnessing them? What if that willful elite ignorance is why our institutions face a crisis of legitimacy, leading to elections that force us to choose between bland technocrats and reckless brutes?</p>
<p>In other words, what if our constitution-bound democratic republicanism is not the problem but the solution—not a romantic delusion but the epitome of realism? If that were so, what then would this moment demand, both of citizens and of those who would be practitioners of a political science that deserves the name?</p>
<p>Yuval Levin is the Hertog Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.</p> | false | 1 | americas political institutions consumed crisis legitimacy public faith system government crumbled many believe deeply corrupt rigged benefit others view crosses party linesor rather partisan divisions seem increasingly turn blame american democracys decline fall 2016 election results swelled ranks convinced democracy sham particularly left prominence academics among boosted already bourgeoning scholarly literature democracy skepticism contributors fashionable genre differ particulars elitist champions meritocracy understand make populist case rule experts ground case empirical evidence ignorance voters others idea justice utility essentially however agreed one point case democracy hopelessly naïve romantic overdue refutation three books published 2016jason brennans democracy david van reybroucks elections christopher achen larry bartelss democracy realistsoffer engaging introductions key facets case forceful well written rooted plainly genuine concerns liberty civic virtue individually combination suggest willful blindness challenges country confronts role constitutional republics institutions might play addressing brennan professor economics public policy georgetown universitys business school offers case might naturally expect hear critic democracy trouble says people simply know enough govern trusting immense power terrible mistake extensive socialscience literature describes political ignorance american population draws great detail assessments ignorance suggest reality even ideal democracy misguided indeed brennan thinks politics bad us problem telling exactly people know next nothing politicsafter us know next nothing pediatrics architecture problem people engage politics despite patent incompetence politics therefore becomes applied ignorance diminishes us contend us political liberty participation whole harmful writes doesnt leave longer speculate john stuart mill politics us democracy assures us psychologists sociologists economists political scientists spent sixty years studying people think react make decisions politics theyve found us horribly illequipped selfgovernment solution therefore make people less ignorant leave politics experts expertsmight professors economics public policy brennan isnt coy doubt suffer degree confirmation selfserving bias perhaps justifiably believe ia named professor strategy economics ethics public policy elite research university phd topranked political philosophy program englishspeaking world strong record peerreviewed publications top journals academic presseshave superior political judgment great many political matters compared many fellow citizens means solution problems bedevil democracy give better educated power old idea course brennans version would use variety tests knowledge education intelligence prerequisites voting else would empower epistocratic councils bodies experts deemed fit rule thanks specialized knowledge alongside democratic institutions would set agenda rein excesses libertarian good standing brennan makes case name allknowing state maximize individual freedom government efficiency argument reflects growing libertarian inclination technocracy evident among legal scholars reinventing originalism endorse rule engaged judges vindicate rights also increasingly common among political scientists want calm knowledgeable experts vulcans brennan calls protect freedom public brennan sheer common sense dictates discard sentimental attachment democratic forms winston churchills argumentbad democracy least bad option availablesettle question overall democratic governments tend perform better alternatives tried brennan writes perhaps systems havent tried even better brennans realism turns encompass selfconsciously edgy experiments giving government powers neither derived constrained consent governed ironically however recommendations turn less edgy implies thinks restrictions voting based education intelligence might ideal acknowledges would run afoul powerful taboos brennan suggests instead various limits electorate imposed empowering parallel nondemocratic institutions check democratic ones body economists could compel congress least vote entitlement reform example could overrule state tax referendum describes novel exciting despite fact different forms restraints commonplace constitutional system point passing supreme court kind epistocratic council democracy generally doesnt acknowledge many checks democratic power already exist american system used exist democratizing reforms past century furthermore constitutional refinements democracy generally take democratic legitimacy seriously problem brennan indifferent instead brennan justifies restraining popular solely terms utility democracys value purely instrumental writes reason favor democracy political system effective producing results according procedureindependent standards justice yet turns supposedly cleareyed view governments purpose actually naïve constitutional systemanchored selfevident truths built take account human limitations brennan thinks social scientists discoveredis realistic every sense term limits knowledge indeed fallenness man may well argue pure democracy argue even strongly unchecked epistocracy celebrated belgian writer scholar david van reybrouck sees problem clearly book focuses least much europe america van reybrouck insists case applies powerfully circumstances contrast brennan argues democratic process empowers elites expense public result regards fulfilling rather betraying republicanism electionsthat definitive institution representative republican democracyhave always meant elevate elite keeping democracy check even advancing elections quotes james madisons assertion federalist aim every political constitution ought first obtain rulers men possess wisdom discern virtue pursue common good society van reybrouck disapproves aim elitist democracy government best society writes thing called aristocracy elected case modern democracies fail achieve anything resembling outcome instead empower elite unworthy status solution recognize democracy require elections acknowledges unshakable belief democracy inconceivable without elections urges consideration ancient athenian democracy many crucial offices assigned lot using random selection eligible pool fill least political positionsalongside elections place themwould much democratic popular voting would also allow greater diversity views expressed public policy break stranglehold elites kind selection sortition choose juries van reybrouck points instances around modern democratic world used help shape key decisions encourage deliberation course easy poke holes case sortition practical solution problems bedeviling advanced democracies van reybrouck never entirely clear whether sees way select legislators even executives opposed organizing principle institutions share power elected officials purpose essentially diagnostic hes uninterested implementation details times also careless history democracy ancient modern elections suggests problem democracy would people choose betters rather letting people govern precisely diagnosis arguments defect becomes clear van reybroucks case seems first glance opposite brennans rather expert rule argues total democracy premise average sampling public would govern better political class brennan van reybrouck argue democratic public must understood incapable rationality response brennan wants empower rational minority van reybrouck wants governance random selection citizens thereby maintaining democracys capacity represent public without pretending people effectively choose wish represented least implicitly van reybrouck offering form democracy suited age identity politics sense diagnosis goes much deeper brennans root many critics democracy dislike proposed solution persuasive short pithy readable well translated book performs real service articulating apprehension among things elections helps illuminate worry underlying christopher achen larry bartelss democracy realists comprehensive impressive product latest spate academic criticism democracy book neither short pithy admirably rigorous starting point much like brennans view conventional thinking democracy collapsed face modern socialscientific research assert history democratic thoughtincluding much contemporary political scienceis marked addiction romantic theories review socialscience literature voter apathy ignorance assess evidence voters inability hold politicians accountable conduct office individual voters think act ways democratic theory imagines conclude reasonably expected bear responsibility system assigns unlike brennan achen bartelspolitical scientists princeton vanderbilt respectivelyask voters arrive choices democracy realists offers group theory democracy explains political loyalties functions social identities group attachments rather simply individual views democratic processes argues need take account fact contention surely right many respects may owe much achen bartelss toolkit limitations contemporary socialscience methods inherently disposed explain political divisions terms measurable group identities rather hardertomeasure political ideas priorities achen bartels admirably restrained drawing implications central insight generally limit considering change contemporary political science conclude group partisan loyalties policy preferences ideologies fundamental democratic politics thus realistic theory democracy must built french enlightenment british liberalism american progressivism devotion human rationality monadic individualism instead insights critics traditions recognized human life group life incorporating critique would indeed advance modern social science achen bartels readily assume rejecting hyperindividualism entails denying political preferences philosophical roots awards unmerited victory view communitarian political theory would describe less ideological politics theory desire needs robust understanding political ideas theory hardly unimaginable several times fact achen bartels come close recognizing one already exists james madisons account federalist 10 roots political differences note prefigures key psychological ideas group theory politics later remark passing madison also anticipated experimental finding 20thcentury psychologists group attachments easily generated profoundly felt might said much along lines madisonian constitutional system grounded sophisticated understanding free societys citizens form hold opinions alexander hamilton offers subtle teaching federalist challenge persuading people bring thoroughly intertwined interests attachments ideas political process reality hamilton suggests lead us reject cynicism naïveté considering arguments merits motives might drive led framers array americas governing institutions overlapping electorates intermixed authorities mitigating practical consequences cognitive limitations assorted biases seen light achen bartelss argument turns critique american constitutional democracy progressive reforms undertaken democratic intent done though may realize intend case constitutional recovery raises question whether broader genre socialscientific skepticism republican institutions might actually point toward much solution naïve faith voters rationality source systems difficulties problem public wants tell leaders something dont want hear literature antidemocratic political science like much elite conversation politics way tell public shut result leaders secure hearing public frustrations manage working around undermining institutions rather harnessing willful elite ignorance institutions face crisis legitimacy leading elections force us choose bland technocrats reckless brutes words constitutionbound democratic republicanism problem solutionnot romantic delusion epitome realism would moment demand citizens would practitioners political science deserves name yuval levin hertog fellow ethics public policy center | 1,433 |
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