Trump’s policy style represents a sharp break from that of his predecessors. It is highly personalized and temperamental. It relies on threats and bullying. It is prone to boasting, exaggeration, and lies about actual successes.
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Trump's defective industrial policy - Livemint - 0 views
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It is ironic that the same people who extol Chinese gains from globalization are often alarmed that a US administration may copy the Chinese approach and explicitly endorse industrial policies.
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. On the other hand, his policymaking-by-tweet suggests he doesn’t have much interest in building the institutionalized dialogue, with all the required safeguards, that sound industrial policy requires
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Aide to Md. lawmaker fabricated article on fraudulent votes for Clinton - The Washingto... - 0 views
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Del. David E. Vogt III (R-Frederick) said he terminated Cameron Harris “on the spot” after learning that he was the mastermind behind ChristianTimesNewspaper.com and its fabricated Sept. 30 article, which reported that there were tens of thousands of “fraudulent Clinton votes found” in an Ohio warehouse.
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Harris, who graduated from Davidson College in North Carolina in May, had worked for the Republican delegate since June. He did not return a call for comment, but he apologized in a Twitter post to “those disappointed by my actions” and called for a “larger dialogue about how Americans approach the media” and other issues.
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Harris told the Times that he created fake news to earn money. After investing $5 for the domain name, he earned about $22,000 in online advertising revenue.
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In an interview with the Times, Harris expressed guilt for spreading lies but also a sense of pride in doing it so well.
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“At first it kind of shocked me — the response I was getting,” he said. “How easily people would believe. It was almost like a sociological experiment.”
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Trump Tells Xi Jinping U.S. Will Honor 'One China' Policy - The New York Times - 0 views
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“stressed that he fully understood the great importance for the U.S. government to respect the One China policy,”
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Mr. Trump is about to welcome Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, for an extravagant three-day visit
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Mr. Trump said he was prepared to pull back from the pact unless Tokyo did more to reimburse the United States for defending Japanese territory.
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Mr. Tillerson specifically rejected the idea, advanced by Mr. Trump, that Taiwan be used as a bargaining chip in a broader negotiation with China on trade, security and other issues.
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Relations between Washington and Beijing had been frozen since December, when Mr. Trump took a congratulatory phone call from Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-wen
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He also said he “looks forward to working with President Xi to develop a constructive relationship that benefits both the United States and China.”
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“This letter means they’re looking for creative ways to stabilize this relationship when Trump and Xi can’t talk due to differences over Taiwan policy,”
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Mr. Tillerson, officials said, suggested that Mr. Trump publicly reaffirm his commitment to the One China policy as a way of breaking the deadlock and getting the two presidents back on the phone.
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conversation last week with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull of Australia turned contentious when Mr. Turnbull urged Mr. Trump to honor an agreement made under Mr. Obama to accept 1,250 refugees from an offshore detention center.
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the fact that Mr. Trump and Mr. Xi had not talked since Mr. Trump took office in January has drawn increasing scrutiny.
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During the campaign, Mr. Trump advocated a 45 percent tariff on Chinese exports to the United States, complaining that China manipulated the value of its currency.
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Jared Kushner, who is a senior adviser to Mr. Trump, met with Mr. Cui before the embassy event, part of a blossoming dialogue between the two men.
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relationships between some of Mr. Trump’s advisers and leading Chinese companies with close links to the Communist Party may also be strengthening ties.
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In Iraq, 'Romeo and Juliet' Portrays Montague and Capulet as Shiite and Sunni - NYTimes... - 0 views
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It is not poison or a dagger that takes the lives of the young lovers, but a suicide bomb. The Montagues and Capulets are divided not just by family, but also by religious sect. And the dialogue in the Iraqi adaptation of “Romeo and Juliet” is sprinkled with references to Blackwater, Iranians and the American reconstruction effort.
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Jon Stewart, Religion Teacher Extraordinaire | Religion & Politics - 0 views
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Stewart and his writers do two things that make them unique on popular television. First, they cover — and yes, I would say “cover,” not just satirize or mock — a wide range of religions. If you watched only The Daily Show, you would nonetheless learn, in time, about Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and a whole spectrum of smaller faiths, a category that I would argue includes atheism. And second, they pay attention to points of theology that more traditional news and talk shows skip over. Using chunks of time that would be unthinkable on a network newscast — six minutes for a segment on Mormonism! — The Daily Show teaches the finer points of belief, mining them for humor but at the same time serving a real educational function.
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The Daily Show approaches American religion in the spirit of tolerance, but not with the wimpy, eager-to-please hand-wringing that characterizes so much liberal dialogue in this country. Rather, religions are shown to be strange and possibly cringe-inducing: our job is to take an honest look, then tolerate them anyway. It’s a call to rigorous citizenship.
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There is no apparent ideology, either religious or skeptical, animating Stewart’s treatment of religion. More than anything, he and his writers have the scrupulosity of objective journalists. They win laughs without deforming, or even exaggerating, the religion’s actual beliefs. This is an extraordinary feat. Most religious humor, especially on television or in the movies, depends on stereotypes, which are by definition crude and reductive. Stewart’s writers, by contrast, find humor in the specifics of each faith.
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Pope Francis' Letter to G20 Leaders on the Syrian War: Full Text - 0 views
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Pope Francis is taking the opportunity to speak out about the war in Syria. The Pope issued a statement that comes down squarely on the side of non-military intervention. It's addressed to Vladimir Putin, but speaks to the G20 leaders and the world public.
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the world economy will only develop if it allows a dignified way of life for all human beings, from the eldest to the unborn child, not just for citizens of the G20 member states but for every inhabitant of the earth, even those in extreme social situations or in the remotest places.
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it is clear that, for the world’s peoples, armed conflicts are always a deliberate negation of international harmony, and create profound divisions and deep wounds which require many years to heal. Wars are a concrete refusal to pursue the great economic and social goals that the international community has set itself, as seen, for example, in the Millennium Development Goals.
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Without peace, there can be no form of economic development. Violence never begets peace, the necessary condition for development.
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It is regrettable that, from the very beginning of the conflict in Syria, one-sided interests have prevailed and in fact hindered the search for a solution that would have avoided the senseless massacre now unfolding.
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To the leaders present, to each and every one, I make a heartfelt appeal for them to help find ways to overcome the conflicting positions and to lay aside the futile pursuit of a military solution. Rather, let there be a renewed commitment to seek, with courage and determination, a peaceful solution through dialogue and negotiation of the parties, unanimously supported by the international community.
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Moreover, all governments have the moral duty to do everything possible to ensure humanitarian assistance to those suffering because of the conflict, both within and beyond the country’s borders.
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shared by julia rhodes on 28 Jan 14
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At Neutral Site, Syrians Feel Free to Confront the Other Side - NYTimes.com - 0 views
www.nytimes.com/...o-confront-the-other-side.html
psychology language bias truth history syria percpetion politics policy crisis culture
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Opposition activists and citizen journalists pop up everywhere: in hotel lobbies, on sidewalks, even at a breakfast table overlooking snowcapped mountains.
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Here in neutral and secure Switzerland, Syrian government delegates used to meeting journalists only inside a government-controlled bubble are finding that almost anyone can come up to them anytime, anywhere, and ask anything.
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New encounters — some cordial, some not — have swept Syrians of all stripes out of their comfort zones. That could make a difference eventually, in a war so polarized that opposing sides do not even agree on basic facts, let alone on how to solve the conflict and on who is most responsible.
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With a cameraman, they asked them if they would accept Mr. Assad’s ouster through negotiations. Many protesters answered politely, but others yelled “God, Bashar and nothing else!” and began shoving and shouting. A man grabbed Mr. Hadad’s phone and threw it.
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“Do you think we’re happy you’re slaughtering the Syrians?” Mr. Hadad said he answered. Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militia, has intervened on the government’s side. The man replied that Hezbollah was fighting to protect a revered shrine near Damascus.“You killed half of Syria for the sake of a shrine,” Mr. Hadad said, and anger flickered across the man’s face.“If I were in an Arab country, I wouldn’t dare,” Mr. Hadad recalled. He said he then relented and told the man that dialogue between them would help.
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shared by Javier E on 10 Jul 13
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Summer Reading: How to Shake Up the Status Quo - NYTimes.com - 0 views
opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/...how-to-shake-up-the-status-quo
innovation social books classics ideas creativity entrepreneur
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what better time to compile a short reading list for anyone interested in shaking up the status quo.
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“Innovation and Entrepreneurship” is a road map for anyone who wants to learn to think like an innovator in any field.
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Drucker identifies seven key sources of innovative opportunity, including such things as changes in demographics, perceptions and meaning, as well as industry structures. But the most important, he notes, are unexpected successes, which can reveal new possibilities and discrepancies between reality as it is assumed to be and reality as it is, in fact.
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Langer uses the term mindfulness, which is commonly associated with meditation, to describe a state of being in which one becomes oriented in the present, open to new information, sensitive to context, aware of different perspectives and untrapped by old categories.
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How do you help people enter this state? One way is to help people reject absolute categories in favor of open-ended frames
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Framing questions and instructions conditionally — or prompting people to be in the present in other ways — consistently leads to more creativity: musicians play with more energy and nuance; camp counselors provide better feedback to children; children think more critically in school.
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Once you discover these values systems, you begin to recognize how they play out in society every day: how they shape behaviors in institutions that evolved out of different traditions
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we possess these two radically different ways of dealing with our needs, we also have two radically different systems of morals and values — both systems valid and necessary,”
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Jacobs labels these systems “commercial” and “guardian” moral syndromes — the former historically associated with commerce, the latter with the military and government.
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In the commercial syndrome, Jacobs identifies 15 values, including: “shun force,” “collaborate easily with strangers and aliens,” “be open to inventiveness and novelty,” “dissent for the sake of the task,” “be thrifty,” “be optimistic.”
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By contrast, in the “guardian” syndrome she finds a parallel set of values like: “exert prowess,” “be obedient and disciplined,” “adhere to tradition,” “deceive for the sake of the task,” “be ostentatious,” “be fatalistic.”
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Jane Jacobs is famous for her classic, “The Death and Life of Great American Cities.” In “Systems of Survival,” she asserts that our ethical frameworks have grown out of the fact that there are two ways that human beings ensure their survival: taking and trading.
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her analysis helps explain whether institutions that blend value sets —like nonprofits or certain government departments — will encounter cultural obstacles or discover unforeseen opportunities.
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Why do once vibrant institutions become calcified as they mature? Why do they lose their creative edge as they become more efficient? “A society decays when its institutions and individuals lose their vitality,”
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he outlines what societies must do to renew their institutions on a continuing basis. It begins by helping individuals renew themselves: helping them to develop the self-knowledge and spiritedness needed to “to assault the complacency and rigidity of the status quo.” He outlines qualities of mind that are needed for this task: versatility and adaptability, the ability to tolerate ambiguity, the willingness to fail
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“Instead of giving young people the impression that their task is to stand a dreary watch over the ancient values,” writes Gardner, “we should be telling them the grim but bracing truth that it is their task to re-create those values continuously in their own behavior, facing the dilemmas and catastrophes of their own time.”
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The New York Times > Magazine > In the Magazine: Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of... - 1 views
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The Delaware senator was, in fact, hearing what Bush's top deputies -- from cabinet members like Paul O'Neill, Christine Todd Whitman and Colin Powell to generals fighting in Iraq -- have been told for years when they requested explanations for many of the president's decisions, policies that often seemed to collide with accepted facts. The president would say that he relied on his ''gut'' or his ''instinct'' to guide the ship of state, and then he ''prayed over it.''
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That a deep Christian faith illuminated the personal journey of George W. Bush is common knowledge. But faith has also shaped his presidency in profound, nonreligious ways. The president has demanded unquestioning faith from his followers, his staff, his senior aides and his kindred in the Republican Party. Once he makes a decision -- often swiftly, based on a creed or moral position -- he expects complete faith in its rightness.
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This is one key feature of the faith-based presidency: open dialogue, based on facts, is not seen as something of inherent value. It may, in fact, create doubt, which undercuts faith. It could result in a loss of confidence in the decision-maker and, just as important, by the decision-maker.
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has spent a lot of time trying to size up the president. ''Most successful people are good at identifying, very early, their strengths and weaknesses, at knowing themselves,'' he told me not long ago. ''For most of us average Joes, that meant we've relied on strengths but had to work on our weakness -- to lift them to adequacy -- otherwise they might bring us down. I don't think the president really had to do that, because he always had someone there -- his family or friends -- to bail him out. I don't think, on balance, that has served him well for the moment he's in now as president. He never seems to have worked on his weaknesses.''
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Details vary, but here's the gist of what I understand took place. George W., drunk at a party, crudely insulted a friend of his mother's. George senior and Barbara blew up. Words were exchanged along the lines of something having to be done. George senior, then the vice president, dialed up his friend, Billy Graham, who came to the compound and spent several days with George W. in probing exchanges and walks on the beach. George W. was soon born again. He stopped drinking, attended Bible study and wrestled with issues of fervent faith. A man who was lost was saved.
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Rubenstein described that time to a convention of pension managers in Los Angeles last year, recalling that Malek approached him and said: ''There is a guy who would like to be on the board. He's kind of down on his luck a bit. Needs a job. . . . Needs some board positions.'' Though Rubenstein didn't think George W. Bush, then in his mid-40's, ''added much value,'' he put him on the Caterair board. ''Came to all the meetings,'' Rubenstein told the conventioneers. ''Told a lot of jokes. Not that many clean ones. And after a while I kind of said to him, after about three years: 'You know, I'm not sure this is really for you. Maybe you should do something else. Because I don't think you're adding that much value to the board. You don't know that much about the company.' He said: 'Well, I think I'm getting out of this business anyway. And I don't really like it that much. So I'm probably going to resign from the board.' And I said thanks. Didn't think I'd ever see him again.''
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challenges -- from either Powell or his opposite number as the top official in domestic policy, Paul O'Neill -- were trials that Bush had less and less patience for as the months passed. He made that clear to his top lieutenants. Gradually, Bush lost what Richard Perle, who would later head a largely private-sector group under Bush called the Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee, had described as his open posture during foreign-policy tutorials prior to the 2000 campaign. (''He had the confidence to ask questions that revealed he didn't know very much,'' Perle said.) By midyear 2001, a stand-and-deliver rhythm was established. Meetings, large and small, started to take on a scripted quality.
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By summer's end that first year, Vice President Dick Cheney had stopped talking in meetings he attended with Bush. They would talk privately, or at their weekly lunch. The president was spending a lot of time outside the White House, often at the ranch, in the presence of only the most trustworthy confidants.
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A cluster of particularly vivid qualities was shaping George W. Bush's White House through the summer of 2001: a disdain for contemplation or deliberation, an embrace of decisiveness, a retreat from empiricism, a sometimes bullying impatience with doubters and even friendly questioners.
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Top officials, from cabinet members on down, were often told when they would speak in Bush's presence, for how long and on what topic. The president would listen without betraying any reaction. Sometimes there would be cross-discussions -- Powell and Rumsfeld, for instance, briefly parrying on an issue -- but the president would rarely prod anyone with direct, informed questions.
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''When I was first with Bush in Austin, what I saw was a self-help Methodist, very open, seeking,'' Wallis says now. ''What I started to see at this point was the man that would emerge over the next year -- a messianic American Calvinist. He doesn't want to hear from anyone who doubts him.''
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, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.
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The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''
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''If you operate in a certain way -- by saying this is how I want to justify what I've already decided to do, and I don't care how you pull it off -- you guarantee that you'll get faulty, one-sided information,'' Paul O'Neill, who was asked to resign his post of treasury secretary in December 2002, said when we had dinner a few weeks ago. ''You don't have to issue an edict, or twist arms, or be overt.''
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George W. Bush and his team have constructed a high-performance electoral engine. The soul of this new machine is the support of millions of likely voters, who judge his worth based on intangibles -- character, certainty, fortitude and godliness -- rather than on what he says or does.
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shared by julia rhodes on 24 Oct 13
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Tunisian Protests, by Islamist and Secular Groups, Delay Talks on Constitution - NYTime... - 0 views
www.nytimes.com/...lay-talks-on-constitution.html
policy economics culture nytimes com protests groups delay talks constitution tunisa post arab spring
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Deadly violence and street protests in Tunisia on Wednesday postponed talks intended to end a political standoff that had thwarted completion of a new constitution in the birthplace of, and a relative bright spot in, the Arab Spring revolts.
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the second anniversary of Tunisia’s first free election, the promise appeared to have slipped away again with attacks from two fronts on the moderate Islamist governing party, from militant hard-liners on one side and secular political factions on the other.
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slamist militants in Sidi Bouzid, an interior province, killed at least six security officers on Wednesday and wounded several others, apparently in an attempt to disrupt the reconciliation
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Flashes of violence by hard-line Islamists have vexed Tunisia since the ouster of the former dictator Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011.
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Ali Larayedh, of the moderate Islamic party Ennahda, as a condition of the dialogue. Tunisia’s main labor union group and secular political leaders have insisted that Mr. Larayedh step down within three weeks, almost as soon as the factions can agree on a caretaker government of nonpartisan experts.
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Mr. Larayedh reiterated his party’s position that he would resign only upon the ratification of a new constitution and the beginning of a new electoral process, not at the start of the talks or by the end of a three-week deadline.
Hillary Clinton Confronts Civil Rights Generation Gap - The New York Times - 0 views
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In Europe, a Right to Be Forgotten Trumps the Memory of the Internet - John Hendel - Te... - 0 views
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Why, then, have our two sprawling yet similar Western cultures responded so differently to Internet privacy?
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Yale law professor James Whitman sees the differing concepts of privacy as a battle between liberty and dignity
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In Europe, the courts balance a right to a free press with rights of privacy, of personality, and of dignity, protected in Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. In America, the implicit right to privacy always fell flat when running against the Supreme Court's fidelity to the First Amendment.
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"It's almost absurd to say we have the right to disappear from public domain," said Martin Abrams, a policy director with leading global privacy think tank Hunton & Williams. "We're really talking about the right not to be observed in the first place.... We've been focused on symptoms rather than the underlying issues."
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Data will inevitably be out there, Abrams believes, and what matters now is a dialogue about how to retire certain data.
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Europe is used to legally processing all its data, whereas America grants far more permissive rights of observation of behavior and its data -- which, when extended to the Internet, affect how companies observe and model our activity. The Europeans resist this digital observation without consent. But the European model runs strongly against American traditions of free press and expression.
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Europeans are, Werro continues, equally sensitive to the use of personal images and especially the "merchantability" of personal data by corporations.
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the European sensibility is colliding in powerful ways directly with U.S.-based, transnational corporations bred on American values of both expression and profit. The fight is hardly over.
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shared by Javier E on 27 Mar 11
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The Right to Not Be Offended - Hit & Run : Reason Magazine - 0 views
reason.com/...the-right-to-not-be-offended
offense religion respect deference ethinic political correctness
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Treating people with respect is a fine goal, but Collini notices that respect tends to be shown with special deference to so-called “out groups.” Claims of offense that would otherwise be ignored are instead given credence and even deference. Collini also correctly identifies the people who tend to fall into this trap. Very few “progressive” forces, for example, would have shown any “understanding” of hurt Christian feelings if Jesus had been mocked in a Danish newspaper.
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Collini’s central passage: “Where arguments are concerned—that is, matters that are pursued by means of reasons and evidence—the most important identity we can acknowledge in another person is the identity of being an intelligent reflective human being.”
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“This does not mean assuming that people are entirely—or even primarily—rational, and it does not mean that people are, in practice, always and only persuaded by reasons and evidence. It means treating other people as we wish to be treated ourselves in this matter—namely, as potentially capable of understanding the grounds for any action or statement that concerns us. But to so treat them means that, where reason and evidence are concerned, they cannot be thought of as primarily defined by being members of the ‘Muslim community or ‘Black community’ or ‘gay community’...
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if one decides to criticize a culture or a tradition or a work of art, doing so is not an act of Western arrogance. Criticism is not Western or Eastern or Christian or Jewish, and those facing criticism—and those societies and cultures facing criticism—should respond in a spirit of openness about truth. To withhold criticism from certain communities or religions is, in Collini’s word, a form of condescension towards them. It denies these groups the ability to engage in constructive dialogue, and to fortify their own values. In the final analysis, everyone loses.
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The Profound Contradiction of Saving Private Ryan - John Biguenet - The Atlantic - 0 views
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a handpicked squad of Rangers are sent to extricate a paratrooper, James Ryan, from the intense fighting behind enemy lines because his three brothers have been killed in combat. Despite the efforts of his subordinates to dissuade him from authorizing the mission, General George C. Marshall determines to save Ryan's mother from a fourth telegram of condolence
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The great bulk of dialogue in Saving Private Ryan not directly connected to the prosecution of battles is dedicated to an ongoing debate about the morality of the squad's mission. No one makes a case that their mission is heroic. It is idiocy and, as far as the soldiers are concerned, immoral idiocy.
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Saving Private Ryan offers not a single word about love of country. Generals may still talk like their Civil War counterparts, but soldiers in the field have ceased to cloak their duty in such sentiments.
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The mission can't be justified on moral or patriotic grounds, and yet the toughest soldier in the squad, Sergeant Horvath, says saving Private Ryan might be the one decent thing they "were able to pull out of this whole godawful, shitty mess."
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Spielberg never suggests that we are any better than our enemy or, to put it more generously, that they are any worse than we are.
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this is not a patriotic film; if anything, it argues that patriotism is beside the point in modern warfare. Even the mission itself has no heroic or patriotic aim; there is no hill to be taken, no redoubt to be stormed. Its goal, according to Captain Miller, is public relations.
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there is no shortage of cruelty and brutality. Nazis move through battle-scarred streets indifferently finishing off wounded Americans, but, early in the film, we have witnessed callous GIs mowing down surrendering Germans with a laugh.
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Schindler's List and Amistad are, in fact, about guilt and responsibility. They are not, as many imagine, noble memorials to the millions of victims of the Holocaust and slavery; rather, they are agonized meditations on all of those somehow implicated in those vast human tragedies.
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How can the sentimental tableau of a weeping old man, his wife, his son, his daughter-in-law, and his grandchildren possibly serve as a fit conclusion to so savage and unsentimental a film?
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he described his father's own war stories: "I was supposed to wave the flag and be patriotic and say that without his efforts I wouldn't have the freedoms I had or even the freedom to have the bicycle I was riding." Only later did the director realize that it wasn't "a bunch of bunk he was telling me."
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Private Ryan, a dazed kid surrounded by the bodies of men who were absurdly ordered to their deaths to save him, is given the equally absurd command by the dying hero, Captain Miller, to "earn this" and must now bear the terrible, impossible order until his own death.
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at the end of Saving Private Ryan, as a grandfather and his son and grandchildren pay homage to those whose deaths we have just witnessed, the living are called not merely to bear witness to the achievement of fallen heroes; the living are, in fact, the achievement itself. Like Private Ryan, we cannot help but ask what we've done to deserve such sacrifice by others and beg their forgiveness for what we have cost them. And like James Ryan, all we can do to justify that sacrifice is to live our lives as well as we are able.
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Saving Private Ryan is not about those who suffered; it is about those who have been spared suffering. Spielberg's subject, in the end, is not the courage of the soldiers who fought at Normandy; his subject is the debt owed them by their children and their children's children.
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'Eichmann Before Jerusalem,' by Bettina Stangneth - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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“Eichmann in Jerusalem” in many ways mirrored Eichmann’s own self-presentation. She insisted that, contrary to expectations, the man in the dock was not some kind of demonic Nazi sadist but a thoughtless, relatively anonymous, nonideological bureaucrat dutifully executing orders for the emigration, deportation and murder of European Jewry. Arendt’s insights — that genocide and bureaucratic banality are not necessarily opposed, that fanatical anti-Semitism (or for that matter, any ideological predisposition) is not a sufficient precondition for mass murder — remain pertinent.
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as Bettina Stangneth demonstrates in “Eichmann Before Jerusalem,” her critical — albeit respectful — dialogue with Arendt, these insights most certainly do not apply to Eichmann himself. Throughout his post-1945 exile he remained a passionate, ideologically convinced National Socialist.
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Since he had a penchant for tailoring his endless chatting and voluminous writings to what he believed his audience desired, it may not be immediately evident why his statements in Buenos Aires should be considered more authentic than the “little man” portrait he painted in Jerusalem. The answer lies in the stance he took against what his Nazi and radical-right audience wanted to hear. For they were intent on either denying the Holocaust altogether, or outlandishly regarding it as either a Zionist plot to obtain a Jewish state or a conspiracy of the Gestapo (not the SS) working against Hitler and without his knowledge. Eichmann dashed these expectations. Not only did he affirm that the horrific events had indeed taken place; he attested to his decisive role in them. Hardly anonymous, he insisted on his reputation as the great mover behind Jewish policy, which became part of the fear, the mystique of power, surrounding him. As Stangneth observes: “He dispatched, decreed, allowed, took steps, issued orders and gave audiences.”
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Like many Nazi mass murderers, he possessed a puritanical petit-bourgeois sense of family and social propriety, indignantly denying that he indulged in extramarital relations or that he profited personally from his duties, and yet he lived quite comfortably with the mass killing of Jews. This was so, Stangneth argues, because Eichmann was far from a thoughtless functionary simply performing his duty. He proceeded quite intentionally from a set of tenaciously held Nazi beliefs (hardly consonant with Arendt’s puzzling contention that he “never realized what he was doing”). His was a consciously wrought racial “ethics,” one that pitted as an ultimate value the survival of one’s own blood against that of one’s enemies. He defined “sacred law” as what “benefits my people.” Morality was thus not universal or, as Eichmann put it, “international.” How could it be, given that the Jewish enemy was an international one, propounding precisely those universal values?
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In the trial in Jerusalem Eichmann cynically invoked Kantian morality, but as a free man in Argentina he declared that “the drive toward self-preservation is stronger than any so-called moral requirement.” Kantian universalism was diametrically opposed to his racially tinged völkisch outlook. He had been a “fanatical warrior” for the law, “which creates order and destroys the sick and the ‘degenerate,’ ” and which had nothing to do with humanist ideals or other weaknesses. From a surprising admission of German inferiority — “we are fighting an enemy who . . . is intellectually superior to us” — it followed that total extermination of the Jewish adversary “would have fulfilled our duty to our blood and our people and to the freedom of the peoples.”
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She documents the almost incredible lack of interest, inactivity, even cover-ups by the numerous groups charged with bringing Eichmann to justice. It now appears that by 1952, German intelligence services — and to some degree Jewish and Israeli bodies — were aware of Eichmann’s whereabouts, yet for various political reasons did nothing to apprehend him. Remarkably, Eichmann actually drafted an unpublished letter to Chancellor Adenauer proposing to go back to Germany to stand trial. Convinced of his blamelessness, he felt sure that he would receive only a light sentence and, like many other Nazis at the time, go on to live a comfortable German life. The story of Eichmann before Jerusalem is thus also a tale of missed opportunities to hold the trial in Germany and create a genuine new beginning in an era that wished the dark past would simply go away.
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no future discussion will be able to confront the Eichmann phenomenon and its wider political implications without reference to this book. To what degree the man’s biography is unique or exemplary of mass murderers in general remains, of course, an open question.
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Building the First Slavery Museum in America - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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As a descendant of Irish laborers, he has no direct ties to slaveholders; still, in a departure from the views held by many Southern whites, Cummings considered the issue a personal one. “If ‘guilt’ is the best word to use, then yes, I feel guilt,” he said. “I mean, you start understanding that the wealth of this part of the world — wealth that has benefited me — was created by some half a million black people who just passed us by. How is it that we don’t acknowledge this?”
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the German Coast Uprising, an event rarely mentioned in American history books. In January 1811, at least 125 slaves walked off their plantations and, dressed in makeshift military garb, began marching in revolt along River Road toward New Orleans. (The area was then called the German Coast for the high number of German immigrants, like the Haydels.) The slaves were suppressed by militias after two days, with about 95 killed, some during fighting and some after the show trials that followed. As a warning to other slaves, dozens were decapitated, their heads placed on spikes along River Road and in what is now Jackson Square in the French Quarter.
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just in case you’re worried about people getting distracted by the pretty house over there, the last thing you’ll see before leaving here will be 60 beheaded slaves.”
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“It is disturbing,” Cummings said as he pulled out past Whitney’s gate. “But you know what else? It happened. It happened right here on this road.”
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“If the Germans built a museum dedicated to American slavery before one about their own Holocaust, you’d think they were trying to hide something. As Americans, we haven’t yet figured out how to come to terms with slavery. To some, it’s ancient history. To others, it’s history that isn’t quite history.”
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Next year, the National Museum of African American History and Culture is scheduled to be dedicated in Washington as part of the Smithsonian Institution, a project supported by $250 million in federal funding; exhibits on slavery will stand alongside those containing a trumpet played by Louis Armstrong and boxing gloves worn by Muhammad Ali.
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“It has to be said that the end note in most of these museums is that civil rights triumphs and America is wonderful,” says Paul Finkelman, a historian who focuses on slavery and the law. “We are a nation that has always readily embraced the good of the past and discarded the bad. This does not always lead to the most productive of dialogues on matters that deserve and require them.”
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What makes slavery so difficult to think about, from the vantage point of history, is that it was both at odds with America’s founding values — freedom, liberty, democracy — and critical to how they flourished.
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created equal” was drafted by men who were afforded the time to debate its language because the land that enriched many of them was tended to by slaves. The White House and the Capitol were built, in part, by slaves. The economy of early America, responsible for the nation’s swift rise and sustained power, would not have been possible without slavery.
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“Slavery gets understood as a kind of prehistory to freedom rather than what it really is: the foundation for a country where white supremacy was predicated upon African-American exploitation,” says Walter Johnson, a Harvard professor. “This is still, in many respects, the America of 2015.”
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“If one word comes to mind to summarize what is in John’s head in doing this,” Seck said, “that word would be ‘reparations.’ Real reparations. He feels there is something to be done in this country to make changes.”
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People have tried to do a museum like this for years, and I’m still stunned that this guy made it happen,” he said afterward. “There I was, coming down to talk about how in trying to tell the story, it’s often one step forward and two steps back, and boom, here’s the Whitney.” Holloway was particularly taken by the museum’s subversive approach. “Having been on a number of tours where the entire focus is on the Big House, the way they’ve turned the script inside out is a brilliant slipping of the skirt,” he said. “The mad genius of the whole thing is really resonant. Is it an art gallery? A plantation tour? A museum? It’s almost this astonishing piece of performance art, and as great art does, it makes you stop and wonder.”
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A Wi-Fi Barbie Doll With the Soul of Siri - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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A recent study conducted by researchers at Georgetown University, for instance, compared two groups of toddlers. One group played with plush toys that had been preprogrammed to say the child’s name, and to say that they had the same favorite food and song as the child; the other played with plush toys that called each child “Pal” and liked different things. When the same toy character on-screen presented math skills — like arranging cups in order of size — the first group of toddlers performed better than those who played with less-personalized plush toys
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toys able to personalize their responses to children in real time could have an even greater effect on them.
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Mr. Jacob hit upon the idea of developing conversational characters for children a few years ago after his daughter Toby, then 7, asked him if she could use Skype to talk to her stuffed animals. He had previously worked as the chief technology officer at Pixar Animation Studios. So he talked over the possibility with a former Pixar colleague, Martin Reddy. They decided to start ToyTalk.
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To develop a system that could both understand a child’s comments and say something engaging back, the company built its own platform to process spoken language — one tailored to the pitch of children’s voices, their prosody and vocabulary. Now, for instance, when a child says “totes jelly” to a ToyTalk app, the language processor understands the phrase actually means: “I’m totally jealous.
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The company also spent months testing out jokes, songs, rhymes and questions on focus groups of children to develop conversational characters complete with their own biographies and story arcs. Mr. Jacob sees creating conversation trees for these characters as a new art form, neither film nor video game.
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the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, an advocacy group in Boston, asked Mattel to shelve the talking doll. The group said the voice recordings amounted to “eavesdropping” and could be used to exploit the intimate feelings of children. “Whatever the child says will be manipulated and used to insinuate these dolls further into girls’ lives,” said Susan Linn, the group’s director.
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Mattel said the company was “committed to safety and security” and that Hello Barbie’s technology included “a number of safeguards to ensure that stored data is secure and can’t be accessed by unauthorized users.”
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If ToyTalk has any influence, however, Hello Barbie, rather than dooming children’s privacy, could just as well usher in a new era of interactive playthings where children can develop elaborate conversations with toys similar to the way Minecraft players build out entire landscapes.
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Of course, society may not be ready for children en masse seeking illusory relationships with intelligent devices — even if they are just mimicking their parents
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The Halloween Costume Controversy at Yale's Silliman College - The Atlantic - 2 views
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Watching footage of that meeting, a fundamental disagreement is revealed between professor and undergrads.
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Christakis believes that he has an obligation to listen to the views of the students, to reflect upon them, and to either respond that he is persuaded or to articulate why he has a different view. Put another way, he believes that one respects students by engaging them in earnest dialogue.
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But many of the students believe that his responsibility is to hear their demands for an apology and to issue it. They see anything short of a confession of wrongdoing as unacceptable. In their view, one respects students by validating their subjective feelings.
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In “The Coddling of the American Mind,” Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt argued that too many college students engage in “catastrophizing,” which is to say, turning common events into nightmarish trials or claiming that easily bearable events are too awful to bear. After citing examples, they concluded, “smart people do, in fact, overreact to innocuous speech, make mountains out of molehills, and seek punishment for anyone whose words make anyone else feel uncomfortable.”
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As students saw it, their pain ought to have been the decisive factor in determining the acceptability of the Halloween email. They thought their request for an apology ought to have been sufficient to secure one. Who taught them that it is righteous to pillory faculty for failing to validate their feelings, as if disagreement is tantamount to disrespect? Their mindset is anti-diversity, anti-pluralism, and anti-tolerance, a seeming data-point in favor of April Kelly-Woessner’s provocative argument that “young people today are less politically tolerant than their parents’ generation.”
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This notion that one’s existence can be invalidated by a fellow 18-year-old donning an offensive costume is perhaps the most disempowering notion aired at Yale.
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It ought to be disputed rather than indulged for the sake of these students, who need someone to teach them how empowered they are by virtue of their mere enrollment; that no one is capable of invalidating their existence, full stop; that their worth is inherent, not contingent; that everyone is offended by things around them; that they are capable of tremendous resilience; and that most possess it now despite the disempowering ideology foisted on them by well-intentioned, wrongheaded ideologues encouraging them to imagine that they are not privileged.
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Here’s one of the ways that white men at Yale are most privileged of all: When a white male student at an elite college says that he feels disempowered, the first impulse of the campus left is to show him the extent of his power and privilege. When any other students say they feel disempowered, the campus left’s impulse is to validate their statements. This does a huge disservice to everyone except white male students.
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That isn’t to dismiss all complaints by Yale students. If contested claims that black students were turned away from a party due to their skin color are true, for example, that is outrageous. If any discrete group of students is ever discriminated against, or disproportionately victimized by campus crime, or graded more harshly by professors, then of course students should protest and remedies should be implemented.