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proudsa

Obama in Hiroshima: Why It's So Hard for Countries to Apologize - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...483617

obama hiroshima war politics History atlantic

shared by proudsa on 26 May 16 - No Cached
  • When Barack Obama goes to Hiroshima on May 27, becoming the first sitting U.S. president to visit the site of the world’s first nuclear attack, he will not apologize on behalf of his country for carrying out that strike 71 years ago.
  • But he will affirm America’s “moral responsibility,” as the only nation to have used nuclear weapons, to prevent their future use. He will recognize the painful past, but he won’t revisit it. When it’s all over, we still won’t know whether or not he thinks there’s something about the atomic bombings to be sorry for.
  • This is especially true with the Hiroshima bombing, where the competing stories about what happened are so morally complex. Nevertheless, political apologies do occur.
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • Lind compared Trudeau’s statement to President Bill Clinton’s apology for America’s failure to intervene in the Rwandan Genocide. Clinton was saying sorry for inaction rather than action, she said, and there was no American constituency to be offended by his expression of regret.
  • Germany’s various apologies for the crimes of the Nazis, Lind added, are the shining exception in international affairs, not the rule: “The world we live in is one in which countries routinely whitewash their past violence. They routinely even lie about their past violence. They sometimes glorify their past violence.”
  • ut Lind has found that apologies and reparations for those wrongs can be damaging as well, since such actions are likely to polarize people within those countries. The best approach, she says, is recognizing and remembering wrongs in ways that unify rather than divide—that emphasize shared suffering, not perpetrators and victims.
  • “Liberals have this idea that the way to be a strong nation is to be transparent about the past, and to be self-critical, and to constantly question your leaders, and constantly ask, ‘Are we living up to our own values?’ And so this kind of historical reckoning with the past [that Obama is undertaking in Hiroshima]—they love that
  • Conservatives, meanwhile, “say that national strength comes from national unity, and national unity is best served by instilling pride in people, and pride comes from remembering the really great things that we’ve done, and remembering what’s different and great about America. … And so they would say, ‘What are you doing talking about all the people we killed? Why aren’t you celebrating that we brought democracy to Japan?
  • Politics. Everyone has their own story.
  • The vast majority of Japanese don’t think the atomic bombings were justified, and that belief has only become more widespread over time. But Japanese leaders have not demanded that the U.S. government apologize for the attacks, in part because they don’t want to jeopardize the flourishing U.S.-Japanese alliance or encourage calls for Japan to apologize for its own wartime aggression.
  • This lack of a demand from the Japanese, Lind argues, has created the friendly space in which a visit like Obama’s can take place—and in which the two countries can adopt a common narrative about the atomic bombings.
  • Lind compared the situation to the way in which American and European leaders, including German leaders, now gather in Normandy to commemorate the Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied France
  • “For most Japanese, Obama’s visit actually fits with the Japanese story about the bomb—that the atomic bomb gave Japan its postwar mission for peace,”
  • that the atomic bomb ended the war and saved American lives. So the Japanese bomb story begins in 1945 and goes forward in the mission for peace. The American bomb story ends in ’45. Those are two separate stories. They will not cross. And the president’s position that the lesson of the past is for a non-nuclear future, it’s almost like a third story.”
  • proudsa on 05 Jun 16
     
    Another view on reflecting about Hrioshima
Javier E

Inside a Battle Over Race, Class and Power at Smith College - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...smith-college-race.html

college race class power BLM white privilege

shared by Javier E on 26 Feb 21 - No Cached
  • NORTHAMPTON, Mass. — In midsummer of 2018, Oumou Kanoute, a Black student at Smith College, recounted a distressing American tale: She was eating lunch in a dorm lounge when a janitor and a campus police officer walked over and asked her what she was doing there.
  • The officer, who could have been carrying a “lethal weapon,” left her near “meltdown,” Ms. Kanoute wrote on Facebook, saying that this encounter continued a yearlong pattern of harassment at Smith.
  • “All I did was be Black,” Ms. Kanoute wrote. “It’s outrageous that some people question my being at Smith College, and my existence overall as a woman of color.”
  • ...42 more annotations...
  • The college’s president, Kathleen McCartney, offered profuse apologies and put the janitor on paid leave. “This painful incident reminds us of the ongoing legacy of racism and bias,” the president wrote, “in which people of color are targeted while simply going about the business of their ordinary lives.”
  • a law firm hired by Smith College to investigate the episode found no persuasive evidence of bias. Ms. Kanoute was determined to have eaten in a deserted dorm that had been closed for the summer; the janitor had been encouraged to notify security if he saw unauthorized people there. The officer, like all campus police, was unarmed.
  • Smith College officials emphasized “reconciliation and healing” after the incident. In the months to come they announced a raft of anti-bias training for all staff, a revamped and more sensitive campus police force and the creation of dormitories — as demanded by Ms. Kanoute and her A.C.L.U. lawyer — set aside for Black students and other students of color.
  • But they did not offer any public apology or amends to the workers whose lives were gravely disrupted by the student’s accusation.
  • The atmosphere at Smith is gaining attention nationally, in part because a recently resigned employee of the school, Jodi Shaw, has attracted a fervent YouTube following by decrying what she sees as the college’s insistence that its white employees, through anti-bias training, accept the theory of structural racism.
  • The story highlights the tensions between a student’s deeply felt sense of personal truth and facts that are at odds with it.
  • Those tensions come at a time when few in the Smith community feel comfortable publicly questioning liberal orthodoxy on race and identity, and some professors worry the administration is too deferential to its increasingly emboldened students.
  • “My perception is that if you’re on the wrong side of issues of identity politics, you’re not just mistaken, you’re evil,” said James Miller, an economics professor at Smith College and a conservative.
  • Faculty members, however, pointed to a pattern that they say reflects the college’s growing timidity in the face of allegations from students, especially around the issue of race and ethnicity.
  • In 2016, students denounced faculty at Smith’s social work program as racist after some professors questioned whether admissions standards for the program had been lowered and this was affecting the quality of the field work. Dennis Miehls, one of the professors they decried, left the school not long after.
  • This is a tale of how race, class and power collided at the elite 145-year-old liberal arts college, where tuition, room and board top $78,000 a year and where the employees who keep the school running often come from working-class enclaves beyond the school’s elegant wrought iron gates
  • “Stop demanding that I admit to white privilege, and work on my so-called implicit bias as a condition of my continued employment,”
  • Student workers were not supposed to use the Tyler cafeteria, which was reserved for a summer camp program for young children. Jackie Blair, a veteran cafeteria employee, mentioned that to Ms. Kanoute when she saw her getting lunch there and then decided to drop it. Staff members dance carefully around rule enforcement for fear students will lodge complaints.
  • “We used to joke, don’t let a rich student report you, because if you do, you’re gone,” said Mark Patenaude, a janitor.
  • A well-known older campus security officer drove over to the dorm. He recognized Ms. Kanoute as a student and they had a brief and polite conversation, which she recorded. He apologized for bothering her and she spoke to him of her discomfort: “Stuff like this happens way too often, where people just feel, like, threatened.”
  • That night Ms. Kanoute wrote a Facebook post: “It’s outrageous that some people question my being at Smith, and my existence overall as a woman of color.”
  • Her two-paragraph post hit Smith College like an electric charge. President McCartney weighed in a day later. “I begin by offering the student involved my deepest apology that this incident occurred,” she wrote. “And to assure her that she belongs in all Smith places.”
  • Ms. McCartney did not speak to the accused employees and put the janitor on paid leave that day.
  • Ms. McCartney appeared intent on making no such missteps in 2018. In an interview, she said that Ms. Kanoute deserved an apology and swift action, even before the investigation was undertaken. “It was appropriate to apologize,” Ms. McCartney said. “She is living in a context of ‘living while Black’ incidents.”The school’s workers felt scapegoated.
  • “It is safe to say race is discussed far more often than class at Smith,” said Prof. Marc Lendler, who teaches American government at the college. “It’s a feature of elite academic institutions that faculty and students don’t recognize what it means to be elite.”
  • The repercussions spread. Three weeks after the incident at Tyler House, Ms. Blair, the cafeteria worker, received an email from a reporter at The Boston Globe asking her to comment on why she called security on Ms. Kanoute for “eating while Black.” That puzzled her; what did she have to do with this?
  • The food services director called the next morning. “Jackie,” he said, “you’re on Facebook.” She found that Ms. Kanoute had posted her photograph, name and email, along with that of Mr. Patenaude, a 21-year Smith employee and janitor.
  • “This is the racist person,” Ms. Kanoute wrote of Ms. Blair, adding that Mr. Patenaude too was guilty. (He in fact worked an early shift that day and had already gone home at the time of the incident.) Ms. Kanoute also lashed the Smith administration. “They’re essentially enabling racist, cowardly acts.”
  • Ms. Blair was born and raised and lives in Northampton with her husband, a mechanic, and makes about $40,000 a year. Within days of being accused by Ms. Kanoute, she said, she found notes in her mailbox and taped to her car window. “RACIST” read one. People called her at home. “You should be ashamed of yourself,” a caller said. “You don’t deserve to live,” said another.
  • Smith College put out a short statement noting that Ms. Blair had not placed the phone call to security but did not absolve her of broader responsibility. Ms. McCartney called her and briefly apologized. That apology was not made public.
  • By September, a chill had settled on the campus. Students walked out of autumn convocation in solidarity with Ms. Kanoute. The Black Student Association wrote to the president saying they “do not feel heard or understood. We feel betrayed and tokenized.”
  • Smith officials pressured Ms. Blair to go into mediation with Ms. Kanoute. “A core tenet of restorative justice,” Ms. McCartney wrote, “is to provide people with the opportunity for willing apology, forgiveness and reconciliation.”
  • Ms. Blair declined. “Why would I do this? This student called me a racist and I did nothing,” she said.
  • On Oct. 28, 2018, Ms. McCartney released a 35-page report from a law firm with a specialty in discrimination investigations. The report cleared Ms. Blair altogether and found no sufficient evidence of discrimination by anyone else involved, including the janitor who called campus police.
  • Still, Ms. McCartney said the report validated Ms. Kanoute’s lived experience, notably the fear she felt at the sight of the police officer. “I suspect many of you will conclude, as did I,” she wrote, “it is impossible to rule out the potential role of implicit racial bias.”
  • Ms. McCartney offered no public apology to the employees after the report was released. “We were gobsmacked — four people’s lives wrecked, two were employees of more than 35 years and no apology,” said Tracey Putnam Culver, a Smith graduate who recently retired from the college’s facilities management department. “How do you rationalize that?”
  • Rahsaan Hall, racial justice director for the A.C.L.U. of Massachusetts and Ms. Kanoute’s lawyer, cautioned against drawing too much from the investigative report, as subconscious bias is difficult to prove. Nor was he particularly sympathetic to the accused workers.
  • “It’s troubling that people are more offended by being called racist than by the actual racism in our society,” he said. “Allegations of being racist, even getting direct mailers in their mailbox, is not on par with the consequences of actual racism.”
  • Ms. Blair was reassigned to a different dormitory, as Ms. Kanoute lived in the one where she had labored for many years. Her first week in her new job, she said, a female student whispered to another: There goes the racist.
  • Anti-bias training began in earnest in the fall. Ms. Blair and other cafeteria and grounds workers found themselves being asked by consultants hired by Smith about their childhood and family assumptions about race, which many viewed as psychologically intrusive. Ms. Blair recalled growing silent and wanting to crawl inside herself.
  • The faculty are not required to undergo such training. Professor Lendler said in an interview that such training for working-class employees risks becoming a kind of psychological bullying. “My response would be, ‘Unless it relates to conditions of employment, it’s none of your business what I was like growing up or what I should be thinking of,’” he said.
  • In addition to the training sessions, the college has set up “White Accountability” groups where faculty and staff are encouraged to meet on Zoom and explore their biases, although faculty attendance has fallen off considerably.
  • The janitor who called campus security quietly returned to work after three months of paid leave and declined to be interviewed. The other janitor, Mr. Patenaude, who was not working at the time of the incident, left his job at Smith not long after Ms. Kanoute posted his photograph on social media, accusing him of “racist cowardly acts.”
  • “I was accused of being the racist,” Mr. Patenaude said. “To be honest, that just knocked me out. I’m a 58-year-old male, we’re supposed to be tough. But I suffered anxiety because of things in my past and this brought it to a whole ’nother level.”
  • He recalled going through one training session after another in race and intersectionality at Smith. He said it left workers cynical. “I don’t know if I believe in white privilege,” he said. “I believe in money privilege.”
  • This past autumn the university furloughed her and other workers, citing the coronavirus and the empty dorms. Ms. Blair applied for an hourly job with a local restaurant. The manager set up a Zoom interview, she said, and asked her: “‘Aren’t you the one involved in that incident?’”
  • “I was pissed,” she said. “I told her I didn’t do anything wrong, nothing. And she said, ‘Well, we’re all set.’”
horowitzza

Japan doesn't want the U.S. to apologize for bombing Hiroshima. Here's why - LA Times - 0 views

www.latimes.com/...ma-apology-20160429-story.html

japan u s bombing hiroshima

shared by horowitzza on 30 Apr 16 - No Cached
  • For years, the question has lingered: Should the U.S. apologize for dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima
  • No sitting U.S. president has visited the city since it was largely destroyed in an atomic blast during World War II
  • Secretary of State John Kerry may have foreshadowed what’s to come when he visited Hiroshima this month and called the experience “gut-wrenching.”
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  • Does Japan even want an apology?
  • Likely not. A secret 2009 state department cable published by Wikileaks in 2011 indicated Japan was cool to the idea and worried that it would only serve to energize anti-nuclear activists in the country.
  • the government’s official stance was that it would be more meaningful for the U.S. and Japan to “aim for a peaceful and safe world without nuclear weapons.”
  • An apology also could harden the opposition to using nuclear power in Japan, a sentiment that blossomed after the meltdown at Fukushima. The administration has made nuclear power a major part of its energy policy.
  • “Why doesn’t the Japanese government want Mr. Obama to apologize? Because it tears the scab off a much bigger wound that Japan wants healed,”
  • “If Obama apologizes at Hiroshima, it draws attention to Japanese behavior elsewhere in Asia during the ’30s and ’40s.
  • I think the American people should know that not only the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but the firebombing of Tokyo in which thousands died, were illegal acts against humanity. They were civilian massacres.”
  • A 2015 opinion poll by a Russian news agency found that 60% of the Japanese public wanted an apology for the bombing.
  • But what the Japanese government and the public want aren’t always the same.
  • horowitzza on 30 Apr 16
     
    Examines whether or not the US should apologize for the Hiroshima bombings
Javier E

Opinion | Britain's Boris Johnson Made a Terrible Mistake: He Apologized - The New York... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...nson-britain-resignations.html

shame apology blame

shared by Javier E on 07 Jul 22 - No Cached
  • Scandals tend to break not at the point people “find out” about bad behavior — stories of Mr. Pincher’s misconduct had long been circling in Westminster, for example — but when they think a majority of others judge it to be wrong. People, after all, rarely make ethical judgments in a vacuum.
  • In politics, where support can be counted to the number, that perhaps holds especially true. Offered in the hope of mitigating damage, apologies often instead open the floodgates. By confirming you did something wrong, you give your accusers permission to pursue retribution. It puts beyond doubt that they are correct to judge you.
  • This is not a new phenomenon even if, in these brazen times, the political cost of apology seems to have risen. Richard Nixon, for example, sealed his tarnished reputation when he apologized for his actions
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  • Mr. Johnson seemed, more than any of his predecessors, to grasp this fact. His knack for not apologizing was remarkable. His breezy denials induced a sort of cognitive dissonance in the minds of those accusing him — Was there some fact they had missed? Were they going mad? Was he? — and permitted supporters to make their own denials, too. In recent months, it produced a sort of moral vacuum in Britain’s government, in which nobody seemed to have the power to hold the prime minister to account.
Javier E

François Hollande's Apology Tour-and What Americans Should Learn From It | Th... - 0 views

www.tnr.com/...what-americans-should-learn-it

france history responsibility apology us

shared by Javier E on 23 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • Not only has France apologized for some past actions, it has also stopped boasting of others. in 2005, the government of Jacques Chirac quietly but firmly refused to mark in any but the most restrained way the bicentennial of the Battle of Austerlitz—arguably, the greatest French military victory of all time, carried out by Napoleon Bonaparte against Austria and Russia. Modern France, it was explained, had no business celebrating a bloodbath carried out by a repressive, undemocratic ruler as part of a campaign of naked imperial expansionism.
  • in the past quarter-century, conservatives have successfully cast any attempt to discuss the country’s historical record impartially in the political realm as a species of heresy—“blaming America first,” as Jeanne Kirkpatrick put it as far back as 1984. A turning point of sorts came in 1994, when the Smithsonian Institution planned an exhibit of the aircraft that dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, accompanied by material that highlighted the human toll of the bombing,  inviting debate on its morality.  The outcry from conservatives and veterans groups was deafening, and few politicians dared to defend the Smithsonian, which eventually canceled the exhibit.
  • It would be wrong to say that the French have moved away from sentiments of patriotism and national pride. But the country’s cultural and political elites now tend, overwhelmingly, to phrase their patriotism in terms of “ideals” and “values” to which, they readily admit, the country has often failed to live up.
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  • Both of France’s major political parties, Hollande’s Socialists and Sarkozy’s UMP, embrace this stance of “openness” to the world (as the political scientist Sophie Meunier phrases it). It only finds real opposition among the anti-capitalist radicals of the far left, and the reactionary nationalists of the far right. And openness to the world tends to prompt the rejection of narrowly chauvinist national pride, and a readiness to admit one’s own country’s faults and crimes.
  • anyone who strikes an overly contentious nationalist pose in French politics risks association with the far-right National Front, whose founder, Jean-Marie Le Pen, has predictably denounced Hollande, declaring that only God has the authority to recognize French guilt or innocence.
  • In France, in short, apologizing for your country can be good politics. It is in America where being a politician means never being able to say you’re sorry.
anonymous

George HW Bush apologizes actress he sexually assaulted | Daily Mail Online - 0 views

www.dailymail.co.uk/...sh-sexually-assaulted-her.html

georgebush president assault US Culture

shared by anonymous on 25 Oct 17 - No Cached
  • George HW Bush apologizes actress he sexually assaulted
  • Bush has apologized saying it was an 'attempt at humor.' 
  • President George H.W. Bush apologizes after actress claimed he 'sexually assaulted' her and insists his 'attempt at humor' was misinterpreted
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • President George H.W. Bush APOLOGIZES after actress claimed he 'sexually assaulted' her and insists his 'attempt at humor' was misinterpreted
  • Lind took to Instagram sharing this image along with the photo in question to make the claims against the former president on Tuesday 
  • The incident allegedly happened during a photo-op at a private screening for the AMC series 'Turn'
  • The actress has not offered definitive evidence of the alleged misconduct
ethanmoser

October surprises: How Wikileaks and ObamaCare hikes are shaking up the race | Fox News - 0 views

www.foxnews.com/...hikes-are-shaking-up-race.html

wikileaks obamacare politics us

shared by ethanmoser on 28 Oct 16 - No Cached
  • October surprises: How Wikileaks and ObamaCare hikes are shaking up the race
  • “A lot has to do with her instincts.” Tanden concurred again: “Her instincts can be terrible.”
  • The spike in ObamaCare premiums and dwindling insurance options gives Donald Trump a much-needed issue against Hillary Clinton, a longtime champion of universal health care.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • The latest Wikileaks dump shows that Clinton’s own inner circle was worried about her dissembling and reluctance to apologize over the email mess, even as the campaign ripped the press for raising those questions. --The media are a bit bored with the story line that she’s clobbering him and want the race to tighten.
  • But now we have Podesta himself and former Clinton aide Neera Tanden writing frankly about Hillary’s penchant for secrecy and terrible political judgment.
  • Podesta ripped two longtime loyalists, lawyer Cheryl Mills and spokesman Philippe Reines, along with Clinton attorney David Kendall, for not being “forthcoming on the facts.”
  • This roller-coaster campaign has a couple of twists and turns left, and that’s not good news for the woman who many in the media are ready to inaugurate.
  • When the press was harping on the fact that Clinton would not apologize for having a private server, and campaign officials were pushing back hard, it turns out that some privately agreed with the critics.
  • “Everyone wants her to apologize. And she should. Apologies are like her Achilles heel.”
  • The disclosure that ObamaCare premiums are rising an average of 25 percent—more in some states, less in others—has provided a measure of vindication for the program’s conservative detractors. It has also given Trump, who wants to repeal ObamaCare, new ammunition against Clinton, who wants to reform it—in part by increasing government subsidies.
  • The steep premium hikes, and dwindling insurance options in some areas, make clear that President Obama oversold the program.
  • Now Trump clearly bobbled a statement about his own employees being affected by ObamaCare—only a small percentage are, his company pays the rest—but that doesn’t neutralize the larger issue.
  • he press has been hungry for a new story line so people don’t check out in the final two weeks. The Wikileaks dump, ObamaCare news and some tightening polls in Florida are all it takes. Perhaps the media will shelve the speculation about Clinton’s Cabinet and treat this once again as a horse race.
katyshannon

Cruz fires spokesman over 'inaccurate' Rubio video - CNNPolitics.com - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...yler-marco-rubio-video-apology

cruz fires spokesman video politics US

shared by katyshannon on 23 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • Ted Cruz asked his communications director Rick Tyler to resign Monday after Tyler distributed a video that falsely depicted Marco Rubio dismissing the Bible.
  • The incident comes a day before the Nevada Republican caucuses and in the wake of accusations from rival campaigns in recent weeks about Cruz's campaign tactics. Donald Trump has called Cruz a "liar" and Rubio and Ben Carson have also blasted the Texas senator.
  • Trump, Rubio and Carson have all attacked Cruz for his ethics ever since Cruz's victory in Iowa. Cruz later underperformed in South Carolina two contests later.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • Cruz says he spent the morning investigating what happened before making his decision. Campaign manager Jeff Roe confirmed that Tyler had formally resigned."I have made clear in this campaign we will conduct this campaign with the very highest standards and integrity," Cruz told reporters Monday, adding that Tyler is a "good man."
  • A former, longtime spokesman for Newt Gingrich, Tyler was a senior aide and one of the Cruz campaign's first hires in the run-up to his presidential announcement.
  • Trump immediately sought to capitalize on the moment."Wow, Ted Cruz falsely suggested Marco Rubio mocked the Bible and was just forced to fire his Communications Director. More dirty tricks!," he tweeted.
  • Tyler had apologized late Sunday for the incident."I want to apologize to Sen. Marco Rubio for posting an inaccurate story about him here earlier today," said Tyler, the spokesman, wrote in a Facebook post.The latest dust-up comes as the two senators' campaigns have been clashing heatedly for days about "dishonesty" and "lies" on the trail.
  • And Rubio's campaign similarly rubbed salt in the wound, praising Tyler's skills but saying he "had the unenviable task of working for a candidate willing to do or say anything to get elected."
  • Rubio said he accepts Tyler's apology, but called for the Cruz campaign to hold someone accountable.
  • The flub by the Cruz campaign comes after Rubio finished narrowly ahead of Cruz for second place in the South Carolina primary Saturday, behind Donald Trump. In the heated contest there, the Cruz campaign was repeatedly accused by both Rubio and Trump for being dishonest and engaging in dirty tactics.
millerco

Trump Responds to Fury Over 'Roseanne,' but Not Her Racist Remarks - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...roseanne-barr-trump.html

US trump History politics apology roseanne

shared by millerco on 31 May 18 - No Cached
  • It was not the racist comment that made the president angry. It was the apology from ABC.
  • Wading into a public outcry over remarks by the comedian Roseanne Barr, President Trump did not condemn the Twitter post about a black former aide to President Barack Obama that led to the swift cancellation of Ms. Barr’s ABC sitcom.
  • Instead, he expressed his own grievances on Wednesday and Thursday with what the network’s on-air personalities have said about him, and insisted he was the one who deserved an apology.
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  • The president, referring to himself in the third person, complained on Twitter that Mr. Iger had “never called President Donald J. Trump to apologize for the HORRIBLE statements made and said about me on ABC.”
brookegoodman

Evangeline Lilly apologizes for refusing to self-quarantine - CNN - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

crisis

shared by brookegoodman on 27 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • (CNN)Evangeline Lilly apologized Thursday for some controversial remarks she made about why she was refusing to self-quarantine amid the coronavirus pandemic.
  • In the caption she wrote, "I am writing you from my home where I have been social distancing since Mar 18th -- when social distancing was instituted in the small community where I am currently living."
  • In an earlier post Lilly had written, "Just dropped my kids off at gymnastics camp. They all washed their hands before going in. They are playing and laughing. #businessasusual."
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • In her Thursday posting, Lilly explained that at the time she made her original post, authorities had advised residents who live in her community to not congregate in groups of more than 250 and to practice regular hand washing, which she said her family was doing.
  • The star also offered her "direct and special apologies to those most affected by this pandemic."
ethanshilling

Fallen British Empire Soldiers Overlooked Because of Racism, Inquiry Finds - The New Yo... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...k-soldiers-racism-inquiry.html

britain racism history

shared by ethanshilling on 22 Apr 21 - No Cached
  • Tens of thousands of soldiers from Africa and Asia who died during World War I in the service of what was then the British Empire were not properly commemorated, partly because of prejudice and racism, according to the findings of an inquiry issued on Thursday.
  • The report, written by an independent committee, found that the graves of 45,000 to 54,000 people who died serving the British war effort — largely East Africans, West Africans, Egyptians and Indians — did not receive appropriate memorials.
  • First reported by The Guardian newspaper on Wednesday, the inquiry found that, though some colonial subjects had volunteered their service, “an equally high proportion may have been coerced or forcibly conscripted by the military and colonial authorities,” especially in African colonies and in Egypt.
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  • Those who died, in some cases, were commemorated collectively on memorials rather than with their own individual headstones or grave markers, like their European counterparts were. In other cases, soldiers who were missing had their names recorded in registers rather than in stone.
  • The war grave findings come as British institutions grapple with a reckoning over racial injustice, fueled by Black Lives Matter protests that erupted across the country last summer.
  • Statues of slave traders have been torn down in some cities in Britain, and museums in the country have been working to highlight links to slavery and colonialism in their exhibits.
  • “No apology can ever make up for the indignity suffered by The Unremembered,” Mr. Lammy said on Twitter in response to the inquiry. But recognition that the commission had failed to treat Black African and other ethnic minority soldiers the same as others was a “watershed moment,” he said
  • Responding to the findings, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission apologized for “historic failings” and said that it was fully committed to delivering on a series of recommendations made in the report.
  • The British defense secretary, Ben Wallace, apologized on behalf of the government on Thursday. “There can be no doubt that prejudice played a part in some of the commissioners’ decisions,” he said in Parliament.
  • But Kehinde Andrews, professor of Black Studies at Birmingham City University, said “It’s really farcical that in the 21st century, now, they want to apologize.”
  • Many Britons were unaware that nonwhite colonial subjects were involved in the empire’s wars, and that was because of gaps in the history that is taught in schools, Professor Andrews said. “If government institutions were serious, you have to fundamentally rebuild the school curriculum from scratch,” he added.
  • “This was 100 years ago,” he said, adding that the current accounting of past wrongs was “too little, too late.”
anonymous

France's Macron Admits Some Guilt For Rwanda's Genocide : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...ome-guilt-for-rwandas-genocide

shared by anonymous on 06 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • In a key speech on his visit to Rwanda, French President Emmanuel Macron said he recognizes that France bears a heavy responsibility for the 1994 genocide in the central African country.
  • Macron solemnly detailed how France had failed the 800,000 victims of the genocide but he stopped short of an apology.France "was not an accomplice" in the genocide but ended up siding with Rwanda's "genocidal regime" and bore an "overwhelming responsibility" in the slide toward the massacres,
  • When the genocide started, "the international community took close to three months, three interminable months, before reacting and we, all of us, abandoned hundreds of thousands of victims."
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • France's failures contributed to "27 years of bitter distance" between the two countries, he said.
  • Although Macron didn't apologize, he won praise from Rwandan President Paul Kagame for his "powerful speech."
  • Macron said they were opening "a new page" and rebuilding ties that are "strong and irreversible."
  • Macron also said that he'd come with 100,000 coronavirus vaccines for Rwanda.
  • Rwandans who had hoped for an apology said they were disappointed by Macron's speech."We don't want to hear him talk about responsibility, about France's role in the genocide," genocide survivor Dan Karenzi told The Associated Press. "We, the survivors, wanted to hear Macron apologizing to us officially. I am really disappointed."
  • Macron's trip builds on a series of French efforts since his election in 2017 to repair ties between the two countries.
maddieireland334

Hiroshima bombing was Japan's fault, says Chinese state media - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...fault-says-chinese-state-media

Hiroshima Obama History China

shared by maddieireland334 on 29 May 16 - No Cached
  • President Obama became the first sitting U.S. president to visit the Japanese city of Hiroshima, site of the first use of a nuclear bomb in warfare more than seven decades ago. He did not apologize for his nation's act — which led to the deaths of an estimated 140,000 people — but made a somber speech about the need for disarmament.
  • The decision by President Harry Truman to deploy this terrifying weapon was, according to the China Daily, "a bid to bring an early end to the war and prevent protracted warfare from claiming even more lives."
  • The editorial reminded all that Japan's imperialist regime had brought on the onslaught after a decade of expansionist war and brutal occupation elsewhere in Asia.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • "It was the war of aggression the Japanese militarist government launched against its neighbors and its refusal to accept its failure that had led to U.S. dropping the atomic bombs," it concluded.
  • To this day, governments in Beijing and Seoul both complain about Japan's perceived failures to fully atone for and properly remember the violence unleashed by its military.
  • The Chinese rhetoric was similar to what was aired in April following U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry's own visit to Hiroshima.
  • An editorial by the state-run Xinhua news agency said "it is Tokyo's lasting moral obligation to let that notorious chapter known by every citizen of the country and make compensations and apologies fair and square to the affected individuals and facilities, not just in Japan but also in other stricken nations."
sgardner35

Ted Cruz apologizes for Biden joke - CNNPolitics.com - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...ed-cruz-joe-biden-joke-apology

shared by sgardner35 on 04 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • While the line is often well-received on his campaign trail, this time it fell flat. Biden's son, Beau, passed away from brain cancer on Saturday.
  • "It was a mistake to use an old joke about Joe Biden during his time of grief, and I sincerely apologize. The loss of his son is heartbreaking and tragic, and our prayers are very much with the Vice President and his family," Cruz wrote.
Grace Gannon

Swiss Company Apologizes for Hitler Coffee Cream Containers - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...r-coffee-cream-containers.html

Hitler Mussolini dictators Swiss Company

shared by Grace Gannon on 23 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • Grace Gannon on 23 Oct 14
     
    A Swiss Company recently withdrew over 2,000 coffee cream containers, their labels possessing images of dictators Hitler and Mussolini. This error in production and distribution occurred when an external company asked to feature vintage cigar labels on the coffee cream containers, two of which were portraits of the dictators. Migros, a Swiss retail store, has apologized for this "unforgivable incident," horrified that such coffee cream containers found their way into the homes of thousands of people.
malonema1

No Apologies: Trump Doesn't Back Down On Remarks About African Nations Or Immigr : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...gerias-leader-muhammadu-buhari

US crisis trump culture

shared by malonema1 on 01 May 18 - No Cached
  • In his first meeting at the White House with a sub-Saharan African leader, President Trump said controversial remarks he reportedly made, in which he referred to some developing nations as "shithole countries," didn't come up. Trump, however, didn't deny making the comment, and as Nigeria's president, Muhammadu Buhari, chuckled, Trump said at a news conference Monday, "You do have some countries that are in very bad shape — and very tough places to live in." Trump also chose not to apologize, when given the opportunity, for his immigration
  • Apologizing, Trump said, "wouldn't make 10 cents' worth of difference." Instead, he called U.S. laws "a disaster" and said the U.S. and those laws are laughed at all over the world "for their stupidity."
  • NPR and other news outlets reported in January that during a closed-door meeting with lawmakers at the White House Trump questioned why the United States continues to admit immigrants from "shithole countries" like Haiti and African countries.
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  • The allegation Monday by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Iran has lied about pursuit of nuclear weapons, Trump said, means, "I've been 100 percent right." And he said that while he wasn't ready to reveal his decision on whether to withdraw from the Iran deal, "that doesn't mean we won't negotiate a real agreement." Netanyahu said that "in a few days' time, President Trump will decide what to do" about the Iranian deal. He added, "I'm sure he'll do the right thing."
saberal

Lankford Apologizes to Black Constituents for Election Objections - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...lankford-apology-election.html

US politics history Culture

shared by saberal on 15 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • Senator James Lankford, an Oklahoma Republican who spent weeks trying to reverse the results of the presidential election before changing his mind at the last moment, apologized on Thursday to Black constituents who felt he had attacked their right to vote.
  • “After decades of fighting for voting rights, many Black friends in Oklahoma saw this as a direct attack on their right to vote, for their vote to matter, and even a belief that their votes made an election in our country illegitimate,” he wrote,
  • Democrats in Congress have viewed Mr. Lankford as a rare, cooperative partner on voting rights, and his decision to join those Republicans seeking to disenfranchise tens of millions of voters — many of them Black citizens living in Philadelphia, Detroit, Milwaukee and Atlanta — came as a surprise.
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  • he had never intended to “diminish the voice of any Black American.” Still, he added, “I should have recognized how what I said and what I did could be interpreted by many of you.”
  • Mr. Lankford and other Republicans had claimed that by challenging the election results, they were exercising their independence and acting in the interests of constituents who were demanding answers.
  • In a joint statement that night with Senator Steve Daines, Republican of Montana, Mr. Lankford called on “the entire Congress to come together and vote to certify the election results.”
  • Mr. Lankford has faced calls from Black leaders to resign from the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission, which is designed to commemorate the racist massacre in the city’s Greenwood district, an affluent Black community known as Black Wall Street. The massacre, which took place 100 years ago this spring, was one of the worst instances of racist violence in American history. A white mob destroyed the neighborhood and its Black-owned businesses, and up to 300 residents were killed.
katherineharron

Opinion: The fight over Marjorie Taylor Greene poses a threat to the entire country - CNN - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

gop

shared by katherineharron on 05 Feb 21 - No Cached
  • he civil war raging inside the GOP may look like a problem for the Republican Party, but it is much more. It is a flashing red light for the entire country, warning America that if it continues on this path, it will become a country without guardrails against extremist ideologies.
  • The First Amendment guarantees freedom of speech, and there's no prohibition against believing crazy ideas.
  • It's no wonder the venerable former Republican Sen. John Danforth said the GOP has become a "grotesque caricature" of what it used to be.
  • ...22 more annotations...
  • that was before House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy declined to punish the execrable Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, other than a statement condemning her views. The QAnon follower's embrace of baseless conspiracy theories, along with violent, racist, Islamophobic and anti-Semitic statements are repulsive not just to many Americans, but to decent people around the world.
  • McCarthy presided over a meeting weighing the fate of Greene and of Rep. Liz Cheney, who committed the grave sin of condemning former President Donald Trump for inciting a mob to attack the Capitol in an assault on American democracy so stunning that even McCarthy briefly found his spine and criticized Trump.
  • Cheney survived a vote to remove her from leadership by a vote of 145- 61. And Greene, after apologizing to her colleagues in the closed-door party meeting Wednesday night, was not penalized, but met with a standing ovation.
  • Greene offered what largely amounted to a non-apology, expressing regret for some of her past comments. Hours later, in a dramatic Congressional session, 219 House Democrats, along with 11 Republicans, did what McCarthy should have and stripped Greene of her committee assignments.
  • By embracing Greene, Republicans are moving the Overton window, the range of views that are considered politically acceptable. Unfortunately, that has an impact on the entire country, however much the Democrats try to correct for the moral failings of Republicans.
  • After the closed-door meeting on Wednesday, McCarthy justified his inaction on Greene by saying, "This Republican Party's a very big tent, everyone's invited in."
  • But the tent is becoming increasingly comfortable for racists, anti-Semites, conspiracy theorists and reality deniers.
  • It's the party of the twice impeached Trump, a man who Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham described in 2015 as "a race-baiting, xenophobic religious bigot," who "doesn't represent my party."
  • Graham, as we know, did a 180 on Trump. He, too, found integrity too politically risky, and debased himself by embracing Trump.
  • It was the tolerance of Trump's rhetoric -- which was previously considered beyond the pale -- that paved the road to Greene's election and the attack on the Capitol last month.
  • Just two years ago, Republicans stripped Rep. Steve King from all committee assignments. King, who had made countless racist statements, had asked in an interview with the New York Times, "White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization -- how did that language become offensive."
  • "That is not the party of Lincoln," he declared, "and it's definitely not American."
  • The party has changed.
  • Like many elected Republicans, Greene rejected the incontrovertible fact that President Joe Biden won the election. But she goes much further. She repeatedly showed support on social media for assassinating prominent Democrats, shared an image of herself holding a gun alongside other congresswomen with a caption that mentioned going "on the offense against these socialists" and claimed the 2018 California wildfires were deliberately set by a Jewish financier using a space laser.
  • When Greene was still a candidate running for Congress, the Republican Party initially distanced itself from her.
  • Rep. Steve Scalise, the House Republicans' number two, went even further, calling her statements "disgusting," and added they "don't reflect the values of equality and decency that make our country great."
  • But then Trump threw his arms around his fervent admirer, calling her "a real WINNER," and a "future Republican star."
  • On Wednesday, McCarthy defended Greene and said, "I think it would be helpful if you could hear exactly what she told all of us -- denouncing Q-on, I don't know if I say it right," McCarthy disingenuously claimed, "I don't even know what it is.
  • Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, of all people, seems to be an outlier among Republican leadership in condemning Greene. "Loony lies and conspiracy theories are a cancer for the Republican Party and our country. Somebody who's suggested that perhaps no airplane hit the Pentagon on 9/11, that horrifying school shootings were pre-staged, and that the Clintons crashed JFK Jr.'s airplane is not living in reality."
  • The GOP welcomed into the fold an extremist, during a time when Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has ordered an urgent examination of extremism in US military ranks; during a time when Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas says the threat of domestic terrorism is "persistent."
  • The new domestic terrorist threat comes from the extremist fringes that espouse the same ideas that McCarthy seemed to welcome into the GOP's "very big tent."
  • Extremists and their supporters are winning battles in the Republican civil war, and the entire country is paying a price.
aidenborst

Trump Health Official Apologizes for Facebook Outburst - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ichael-caputo-coronavirus.html

us politics crisis trump culture GOP pandemic

shared by aidenborst on 16 Sep 20 - No Cached
  • Michael R. Caputo, the assistant secretary of health for public affairs, apologized Tuesday morning to the health secretary, Alex M. Azar II, and to his staff members for a bizarre and incendiary Facebook outburst in which he accused federal government scientists working on the pandemic of “sedition” and warned of coming violence from left-wing “hit squads.”
  • Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, said Mr. Azar should resign
  • he accused the the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of harboring a “resistance unit” dedicated to ousting President Trump, urged his gun-owning followers to buy ammunition because “it’s going to be hard to get” and said his mental health “had definitely failed.”
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  • Senator Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrat on the Senate committee that oversees the Department of Health and Human Services, urged Mr. Azar to fire Mr. Caputo.
  • he was under stress because of questions about his physical health and threats to his safety and that of his family. He apologized for embarrassing Mr. Azar and the department.
  • A department spokeswoman called Mr. Schumer’s comments “uninformed” and misleading, and an effort to discredit “the historic work of the Trump administration” in battling the pandemic.
  • Mr. Caputo, a media-savvy former Trump campaign aide with no background in health, has worked aggressively to control the media strategy on pandemic issues.
  • The New York Times and other news outlets published accounts of how Mr. Caputo and a top aide, Dr. Paul Alexander, had routinely worked to revise, delay or even scuttle the core health bulletins of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in an effort to paint the administration’s pandemic response in a more positive light.
martinelligi

Texas Vaccination Site Apologizes For Refusing COVID-19 Shots To 2 Eligible People : Co... - 0 views

www.npr.org/...id-19-shots-to-two-eligible-pe

pandemic vaccination immigration

shared by martinelligi on 23 Feb 21 - No Cached
  • The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley is apologizing for turning away two people eligible for COVID-19 vaccinations on Saturday because they could not prove they live in the United States.
  • Proof of residency and citizenship are not required to get the vaccine, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services — as stated in guidance on the agency's website. UT-RGV spokesperson Patrick Gonzalez confirmed the university did not follow state protocol.
  • "[Dad] said that [the health worker] told him in front of everybody, 'you don't have a social, so we can't help you at all. And it's only for U.S. citizens,' "
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • The Rio Grande Valley is located near the U.S.-Mexico border and is a majority Hispanic region with a large number of undocumented and mixed-status families.
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