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Javier E

Opinion | When the Right Ignores Its Sex Scandals - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...pressler-sex-scandal-sbc.html

right scandal ignorance deliberate leader misconduct abuse culture policy

shared by Javier E on 28 Jan 24 - No Cached
  • Late last month, the Southern Baptist Convention settled a sex abuse lawsuit brought against a man named Paul Pressler for an undisclosed sum. The lawsuit was filed in 2017 and alleged that Pressler had raped a man named Duane Rollins for decades, with the rapes beginning when Rollins was only 14 years old.
  • Pressler is one of the most important American religious figures of the 20th century. He and his friend Paige Patterson, a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, are two of the key architects of the so-called conservative resurgence within the S.B.C.
  • The conservative resurgence was a movement conceived in the 1960s and launched in the 1970s that sought to wrest control of the S.B.C. from more theologically liberal and moderate voices. It was a remarkable success. While many established denominations were liberalizing, the S.B.C. lurched to the right and exploded in growth, ultimately becoming the largest Protestant denomination in the United States.
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  • Pressler and Patterson were heroes within the movement. Patterson led Baptist seminaries and became president of the convention. Pressler was a Texas state judge and a former president of the Council for National Policy, a powerful conservative Christian activist organization.
  • Both men are now disgraced. In 2018, the board of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary fired Patterson after it found that he’d grossly mishandled rape allegations — including writing in an email that he wanted to meet alone with a woman who had reported being raped to “break her down” — at both Southwestern and another Baptist seminary.
  • Pressler’s story is in some ways eerily similar to that of Harvey Weinstein. Both were powerful men so brazen about their misconduct that it was an “open secret” in their respective worlds. Yet they were also so powerful that an army of enablers coalesced around them, protecting them from the consequences of their actions.
  • The suit set off a sprawling investigation into S.B.C. sexual misconduct by The Houston Chronicle and The San Antonio Express-News. Their report, called “Abuse of Faith,” documented hundreds of sex abuse cases in the S.B.C. and led to the denomination commissioning an independent investigation of its handling of abuse.
  • The American right exists in a news environment that reports misconduct on the left or in left-wing institutions loudly and with granular detail. When Weinstein fell and that fall prompted the cascade of revelations that created the #MeToo moment, the right was overrun with commentary on the larger lessons of the episode, including scathing indictments of a Hollywood culture
  • the coverage, or lack thereof, of Pressler’s fall also helps explain why we’re so very polarized as a nation.
  • the bottom line is clear: For decades, survivors of sex abuse “were ignored, disbelieved or met with the constant refrain that the S.B.C. could take no action due to its polity regarding church autonomy — even if it meant that convicted molesters continued in ministry with no notice or warning to their current church or congregation.”
  • the coverage on the right also fit a cherished conservative narrative: that liberal sexual values such as those in Hollywood invariably lead to abuse.
  • stories such as Pressler’s complicate this narrative immensely. If both the advocates and enemies of the sexual revolution have their Harvey Weinsteins — that is, if both progressive and conservative institutions can enable abuse — then all that partisan moral clarity starts to disappear
  • We’re all left with the disturbing and humbling reality that whatever our ideology or theology, it doesn’t make us good people. The allegedly virtuous “us” commits the same sins as the presumptively villainous “them.”
  • How does a typical conservative activist deal with this reality? By pretending it doesn’t exist.
  • Shortly after the Pressler settlement was announced, I looked for statements or commentary or articles by the conservative stalwarts who cover left-wing misconduct with such zeal. The silence was deafening.
  • I’m reminded of the minimal right-wing coverage of Fox News’s historic defamation settlement with Dominion Voting Systems, the largest known media defamation settlement of all time. I consistently meet conservatives who might know chapter and verse of any second-tier scandal in the “liberal media” but to this day have no clue that the right’s favorite news outlet broadcast some of the most expensive lies in history.
  • t’s more like a cultivated ignorance, in which news outlets and influencers and their audiences tacitly agree not to share facts that might complicate their partisan narratives.
  • the dynamic is even worse when stories of conservative abuse and misconduct break in the mainstream media. Conservative partisans can simply cry “media bias!” and rely on their followers to tune it all out. To those followers, a scandal isn’t real until people they trust say it’s real.
Javier E

Infected blood inquiry: Another state failure - will things ever change? - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...c1997z82gdro

state failure candor duty truth bureaucracy UK scandal blood Ireland culture history

shared by Javier E on 21 May 24 - No Cached
  • Blame spread, accountability avoided.And the net result was year after year of stasis, the initial injustice made all the worse by a collective unwillingness to acknowledge it, let alone address it.
  • Mr, now Lord, Cameron said the government was “deeply sorry” after a public inquiry unequivocally blamed the British Army for one of the most controversial days in Northern Ireland's history, when 13 civil rights marchers were shot dead and 15 others were wounded.For 38 years, so many had waited for those words.Obfuscation, delay and denials until finally the truth emerged.
  • So you can be secretary of state, of all things, and still be misled?“It’s incredible. Most serious questions should be asked of Whitehall departments
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  • The big question, then, is how do you bring about widespread, deep-seated cultural change within the organs of government and institutions connected to it?
  • Can you legislate to change a culture?
  • Sir Brian Langstaff, the report author, thinks you might be able to – or at least make a start.
  • He suggests there should be a so-called duty of candour demanded in law for civil servants and others.It would then become a legal obligation to speak up, rather than a cultural expectation to shut up.Whistleblowing would be mandatory.But will it happen, and will it make any difference?
Javier E

Israeli Military Says Hamas Can't Be Destroyed, Escalating Feud With Netanyahu - WSJ - 0 views

www.wsj.com/...g-feud-with-netanyahu-c72f549e

israel strategy war military goals netanyahu 2024

shared by Javier E on 21 Jun 24 - No Cached
  • A rift between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the country’s military leadership is spilling increasingly into the open after the armed forces’ top spokesman said Netanyahu’s aim of destroying Hamas in Gaza is unachievable.“The idea that we can destroy Hamas or make Hamas disappear is misleading to the public,” military spokesman Daniel Hagari told Israeli television on Wednesday.
  • The exchange was an illustration of months of tensions between Netanyahu and the country’s military leadership, who argue that Hamas could only be defeated if Israel replaces it with another governing authority in Gaza. During more than eight months of war, the Israeli military has invaded swaths of the Gaza Strip, only to see Hamas reconstitute itself in areas when Israeli forces withdraw.“What we can do is grow something different, something to replace it,” Hagari said Wednesday. “The politicians will decide” who should replace Hamas, he said.
  • The friction between Netanyahu and the military establishment had burst into public view earlier in the war. In May, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant delivered a speech calling on the government to decide who should replace Hamas in Gaza. The lack of a decision, he said, left Israel with only two choices: Hamas rule or a complete Israeli military takeover of the strip.
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  • The Israeli military relies on reservist soldiers, some of whom have described growing exhaustion as Israel manages conflicts for months on end on multiple fronts, including the border with Lebanon and in the West Bank. An end to fighting in Gaza would give Israeli forces a respite that analysts say is needed, especially if fighting with Hezbollah escalates further.
  • Israel Ziv, a retired Israeli general and veteran of multiple wars, said tensions between the Israeli military and security establishment and Netanyahu are at a record high.“The IDF feels and the security echelon feels that we exhausted the purpose of the war. We reached the maximum tactical peak that we can achieve,” he said. “As long as Rafah was there, they could say finish the job. OK it’s finished now.”
  • Netanyahu has rejected a series of proposals for possible alternatives to Hamas, including an American plan to bring in the Palestinian Authority and Arab calls for a Palestinian unity government that would include Hamas. Some military analysts and former Israeli officials have questioned whether installing a new government in Gaza was ever possible, given that Hamas has managed to survive the Israeli military assault.
  • “We need to make a decision,” said Ziv. “Even a bad decision, that’s OK. Let’s say [we] occupy Gaza in the next few years because we need to clear up the last few terrorists. OK, it’s a bad decision, but it’s a decision. The military needs to know.”
  • The dispute between Netanyahu and the military centers in part on how officials define a defeat of Hamas. An Israeli military official said the army considers a battalion “dismantled” not when all its fighters are killed, but when its command structure and ability to carry out organized attacks are eliminated. 
  • Military analysts say that Hamas’s militia forces are likely to survive the Israeli military operation even in Rafah, in part because the Israeli army’s approach leaves many lower-ranking Hamas fighters in place. Hamas’s top leadership in the enclave, including its leader, Yahya Sinwar, have also eluded Israeli forces throughout the war.
  • “Hamas is preserving its forces in Rafah rather than engaging the Israel Defense Forces, likely because Hamas does not believe Israel’s Rafah operation will be decisive,” said an assessment this week from the Institute for the Study of War and the American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Project.
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