Chris Hedges's Blog, page 575

U.S. Team Heads to Singapore to Prepare in Case Summit Is a Go

WASHINGTON — A White House team is heading to Singapore this weekend as previously planned to prepare for a possible summit between President Donald Trump and North Korea’s leader, a further sign that the meeting Trump called off might get back on track.

Trump on Friday welcomed the North’s conciliatory response to his letter withdrawing from the June 12 meeting and said it was even possible the meeting with Kim Jong Un could take place on the originally planned date.

“They very much want to do it; we’d like to do it,” he said. Trump later tweeted that the two countries were “having very productive talks.”

On Saturday, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said a team will leave for Singapore as scheduled “to prepare should the summit take place.” The team will be led by Joe Hagin, deputy chief of staff for operations.

These developments, combined with a surprise meeting Saturday between Kim and South Korea’s president, Moon Jae-in, rekindled hopes of progress toward halting the North’s nuclear weapons program.

Meeting at a border truce village, Kim and Moon discussed carrying out the peace commitments they reached in their first summit, as well as Kim’s potential meeting with Trump, Moon’s office said. Moon was expected on Sunday to reveal the outcome of the meeting.

White House officials noted that Trump had left the door open with Thursday’s letter to Kim, which blamed “tremendous anger and open hostility” by Pyongyang for his decision to pull out of the summit but also urged Kim to call him.

By Friday, North Korea had issued a statement saying it was still “willing to give the U.S. time and opportunities” to reconsider talks “at any time, at any format.” Trump rapidly tweeted that the statement was “very good news” and told reporters that “we’re talking to them now.”

Trump views the meeting as a legacy-defining opportunity and has relished the press attention and the speculation about a possible Nobel Peace Prize. He made a quick decision to accept the meeting in March, over the concerns of many top aides, and has remained committed, even amid rising concerns about the challenges he faces in scoring a positive agreement.

Asked Friday if the North Koreans were playing games with their communications, Trump responded: “Everybody plays games. You know that better than anybody.”

He did not detail the nature of the new U.S. communication with the North. At the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said “diplomats are still at work on the summit, possibility of a summit, so that is very good news.” He characterized the recent back-and-forth as the “usual give and take.”

The U.S. and North Korea do not have formal diplomatic relations, complicating the task of communicating between the two governments. Under the Trump administration, the CIA, where now-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo served as director, has taken an unusually prominent role in back-channel negotiations.

Pompeo last year assembled a working group at the CIA called the Korea Mission Center, which gradually assumed the lead role in talks with the North Koreans, and the group’s director, a retired senior CIA official with deep experience in the region, became the main U.S. interlocutor with Pyongyang.

The group did not supplant the State Department’s traditional mode of communication with the North, which is known as the “New York Channel” and involves U.S. diplomats and their North Korean counterparts posted to the United Nations. But it did play the major role in organizing Pompeo’s two trips to Pyongyang, once as CIA director and once as secretary of state.

Trump, in his letter to Kim, objected specifically to a statement from a top North Korean Foreign Ministry official. That statement referred to Vice President Mike Pence as a “political dummy” for his comments on the North and said it was up to the Americans whether they would “meet us at a meeting room or encounter us at nuclear-to-nuclear showdown.”

Trump then said from the White House that a “maximum pressure campaign” of economic sanctions and diplomatic isolation would continue against North Korea — with which the U.S. is technically still at war — though he added that it was possible the summit could still take place at some point.

U.S. defense and intelligence officials have repeatedly assessed the North to be on the threshold of having the capability to strike anywhere in the continental U.S. with a nuclear-tipped missile — a capacity that Trump and other U.S. officials have said they would not tolerate.

Trump, speaking Friday to graduates at the U.S. Naval Academy, did not mention North Korea directly, but he stressed the United States’ military might.

He said, “The best way to prevent war is to be fully prepared for war.”

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Associated Press writers Matthew Lee and Robert Burns contributed to this report.

Health Care CEOs Lead the Way in Pay

The highest pay packages go to CEOs at health care companies. For the second time in three years, chief executives in the health care field led the S&P 500 in terms of total compensation. The typical CEO in the industry made $14.9 million last year, which means half earned more than that, and half made less.

A look at the top and bottom-paid CEOs last year, by industry, as calculated by The Associated Press and Equilar, an executive data firm.

Top paid:

1. Health care, median compensation of $14.9 million, up 10 percent from a year earlier.

2. Industrial goods, $13.9 million, up 9 percent

3. Basic materials, $12.7 million, up 16 percent

Bottom paid:

1. Utilities, $9.3 million, up 8 percent

2. Financial, $10.4 million, up 10 percent

3. Services, $11.3 million, up 5 percent

Broadcom’s Tan, CBS’ Moonves Among Highest-Paid CEOs

Here are the highest-paid CEOs for 2017, as calculated by The Associated Press and Equilar, an executive data firm.

The AP’s compensation study covered 339 executives at S&P 500 companies who have served at least two full consecutive fiscal years at their respective companies, which filed proxy statements between Jan. 1 and April 30. Some companies with highly paid CEOs do not fit these criteria, such as Oracle.

Compensation often includes stock and option grants that the CEO may not receive for years unless certain performance measures are met. For some companies, big raises occur when CEOs get a stock grant in one year as part of a multi-year grant.

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1. Hock Tan

Broadcom

$103.2 million

Change from last year: Up 318 percent

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2. Leslie Moonves

CBS

$68.4 million

Change: flat

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3. W. Nicholas Howley

TransDigm

$61 million

Change: Up 223 percent

(Howley left the CEO position last month.)

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4. Jeffrey Bewkes

Time Warner

$49 million

Change: Up 50 percent

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5. Stephen Kaufer

TripAdvisor

$43.2 million

Change: Up 3,400 percent

(Kaufer’s 2017 compensation excludes $4.8 million in incremental fair value relating to the modification of awards granted in 2013.)

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6. David Zaslav

Discovery Communications

$42.2 million

Change: Up 14 percent

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7. Robert Iger

Walt Disney

$36.3 million

Change: Down 11 percent

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8. Stephen Wynn

Wynn Resorts

$34.5 million

Change: Up 23 percent

(Wynn left the CEO position in February.)

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9. Brenton Saunders

Allergan

$32.8 million

Change: Up 693 percent

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10. Brian Roberts

Comcast

$32.5 million

Change: Down 1 percent

Pope Francis: A Man of His Word (Audio and Transcript)

In this week’s episode of “Scheer Intelligence,” host and Truthdig Editor in Chief Robert Scheer talks with legendary film director Wim Wenders about his latest documentary, “Pope Francis: A Man of His Word.”

Wenders, who was raised Catholic, says, “When I was offered the opportunity to get close to him and make a film on him, I didn’t hesitate for a second. Because I thought, this man is one of the most important men of our time, and he is a moral authority like nobody else right now, and I have a chance to really speak to him at length, several times, and the Vatican to open their archives for me to make a film on him. … They gave me that chance to have access to that very, very special man for the first time, I think, ever, that any pope was involved in a film.”

Wenders also praises the pope’s sincerity. “This guy is the real deal,” he says. “He’s not pretending to be anything. He’s not playing a part or role. He’s not putting up an act. That’s who he is. And when he looked me in the eye, and when he talked to everybody, and we shot the film in a way that he looks everybody in the eye; we shot it with a device that makes Pope Francis look at you when you see the film. Because I figured, if I have this unbelievable chance to be sitting face to face with him for eight hours, four times, two hours, then I don’t want to just have that for myself; I need to share that.”

“Pope Francis: A Man of His Word” is playing in select theaters.

Listen to the interview in the player above and read the transcript below. Find past episodes of “Scheer Intelligence” here.

–posted by Emily Wells

Full transcript:

Robert Scheer: Hi, this is another edition of Scheer Intelligence, where I hasten to say the intelligence comes from my guests. In this case, no question: Wim Wenders, originally Wilhelm Wenders, a documentarian, feature-film director, a brilliant force in films. And I’m really excited to be discussing this current film, Pope Francis – A Man of His Word. And it’s a documentary about the current Pope Francis, but it begins with Francis of Assisi, and the whole idea of the vow of poverty and reforming, a commandment from Christ to reform one’s one house. And you begin the movie really talking about this image, and one wonders, does the Catholic Church have this pope at just the right moment; is it the house that requires reforming, or are you referring to the world as requiring, as the house that requires reforming and saving and changing. So why don’t you just introduce that, the subject of [the] current pope. Who I have to say, this film appeals to my own feelings about this pope, that he has actually dared to challenge us on the most fundamental questions that we face, both with his words and his actions.

Wim Wenders: Already the first second I saw him, well, the world saw him, more than five years ago when he was elected, just before that, they announced on that balcony in St. Peter that the new pope would take on the name of Franciscus, which is Francis. And as I’ve studied nine years of Latin almost for nothing, it was at least good at that moment when they said that in Latin, I got it. And I realized that no pope was called Francis, and I was flabbergasted. I didn’t think anybody would ever dare to take up that name, because the name of Francis is a huge responsibility for any pope. And that’s why no pope before ever dared to do so, because that is quite a package that comes with that name. And that saint who lived in the 13th century was a huge reformer of the church for me. He was a hero of humanity. He was the only saint I ever knew what he had done, and all other saints remained sort of anonymous in my head. But I knew St. Francis was into things that are so essential for all of us. He was into nature in a visionary way at the time, like 800 years ago; he realized something was getting out of whack between nature and ourselves. And so he was the very first ecologist. And then St. Francis also had an incredible social consciousness, and identified with the outcasts and the poor of his time, and really lived a life of radical solidarity with the poor and outcasts. So a pope who would take on that name had to address these two subjects, big-time. When I was offered the opportunity to get close to him and make a film on him, I didn’t hesitate for a second. Because I thought, this man is one of the most important men of our time, and he is a moral authority like nobody else right now, and I have a chance to really speak to him at length, several times, and the Vatican to open their archives for me to make a film on him. An independent film, of course; this is not a commission, or not a film produced by the Vatican, but it’s an independent film. And they gave me that chance to have access to that very, very special man for the first time, I think, ever, that any pope was involved in a film.

RS: You were originally Catholic by birth, in, right, 1945?

WW: Yeah. By birth and by education.

RS: My own family, my father’s side, came from a Protestant background in Germany. And a half-brother of mine in this country actually was in the American Army Air Force, he actually bombed the area, and then he visited. And he was so alienated by the role of the Church in our home community, Mackenbach, near Kaiserslautern, small village. Because the church, the Protestant church, it’s certainly been compromised by its relation to power, to Hitler. And so had the Catholic Church. And I just, and a lot of the feeling I found in my own relatives in Germany was they wanted nothing more to do with religion; their religion had failed them. And–

WW: They were not alone.

RS: Yes. [Laughs] So why don’t we begin with your introduction to Catholicism, and here and now at this point in your life you end up actually celebrating–and in the best sense of the word, celebrating–well, celebrating a pope who I believe is worthy of celebration. So take us through your own journey to this point.

WW: Well, I was born right into post-war Germany. I was born into a completely destroyed country. And the one positive thing about that, because of course when you grow up you don’t know anything else, the one positive thing about that, I had a strong sense of community when I grew up. People were in solidarity with each other, because that’s all they had, each other; there was nothing. And I grew up in a Catholic family, and my father was a great example of a Christian life. He was a doctor, and he did his profession from his Christian beliefs, and he was there 100 percent for his patients, seven days a week. And very often we didn’t see him for days, because he was at the hospital. So I grew up really as a believer until the age of 15 or 16, and I even though I might become a priest. Because when you grow up, the only thing that you really consider is the professions you know, and apart from my father’s profession, medicine, the only people who had impressed me were priests. So I considered that. But along came rock ‘n’ roll and jukeboxes and pinball machines, and then I started to drift away from the church, like many, many others in my generation. And with some huge detours—I mean, I was a student in ’68, and of course I was a socialist at the time, and I studied philosophy, and I was very involved in existentialism. And along came the ’70s with all the things they were throwing at us, and the ’80s, and I got interested in Eastern religions. And with the death of my father in the late ’80s, I was confronted with my own belief again, because he died very consciously, very optimistically looking forward to it. He was not afraid of it. And I accompanied him in the last few months of his life, and that made me really reconsider where I was coming from. And I returned to my childhood belief only as a grownup, and that wasn’t quite the same. I became a Protestant and converted, and now consider myself a Christian. But not really an ecumenical Christian; I can go to a Catholic church, I can go to a Protestant church; when I lived in Los Angeles for 15 years I was in a Presbyterian community. So I am a Christian, yes, but I’m also a very open person. And I loved that this pope was so open to everybody, and was so welcoming to other religions, and that was another heritage of St. Francis. That man, 800 years ago, when there were the bloodiest wars between Christianity and Islam, he went at great personal risk to Egypt to speak with the highest authority of the Islamic world at the time to end the bloodshed. So the name of Francis, even in the area of peace between religions, is a huge obligation today.

RS: In your film, Pope Francis – A Man of His Word, it’s important because his word is provocative in the best sense. Going back to Francis, the commandment that he hears from Christ, “Go and restore my house”—that is a house that religion did a lot to destroy, organized religion. And you had all, ever since, whether it’s Islam, whether it’s a Christian religion, and so forth, you can go down the list, the fact is a great deal of harm has come from religion. And this pope came at a time when the Church, the Catholic Church, was in disrepute. Maybe he was selected only because he was the kind of person who could restore the Church. And he deals in your film with a whole series of provocative questions concerning the environment, concerning poverty, war and peace, pedophilia, and so forth. And you know, for a nonbeliever in that church, at first you want to question—well, now you’re telling this, and why didn’t you tell us before. And the film provides some real answers. He does trace responsibility back to the Church, as well as to other centers of power.

WW: Of course he does. But first of all, he really appeals to each and everybody to the most simple things that really we all take for granted, and then again we can’t. I mean, our Constitution in America, as well as anywhere in Europe, tells us that all people are created equal. But our society, our politics, our economics, don’t let us treat each other as if we’re equals. People more and more have a tendency to exclude others, and exclusion is the opposite of what people should do to each other, and it’s certainly the opposite of what Christians should do to each other, or to other people. So in many ways, Pope Francis is just saying the very obvious to everybody today. But because nobody is saying it anymore, it has become so meaningful these days. Because we’re living in a world that is basically used to the fact that it has become pretty immoral, and that nobody speaks anymore with any moral authority. A lot of the people who govern this world in powerful positions, morally they’re incapable of doing so. And all of a sudden there is a pope who takes upon that responsibility, and reminds us of so many simple things that we should, that we all thought we could take for granted, but we don’t anymore. You know, when we entered the 21st century, we thought this was going to be the golden age of humanity, but instead it got darker and darker. And we need a little light in this darkness, and I felt that Pope Francis was able to shed some light into the present darkness.

RS: Yeah, but it’s a message, again, that you know, is a challenge. You used the concept from St. Francis, taking the gospel seriously. And it means, you know, it can’t just be one nation, and thank God, you know—every politician says it, you know; it’s this kind of an echo of false patriotism in a way—my country, my God, and so forth. And what this pope is saying, you know, wait a minute—he’s attacking, for example, you have a number of headlines, of phrases that are themselves, could be the subject of a whole investigation. But the culture of waste—I mean, there’s a very profound attack on the whole celebration of international capitalism, and now the Chinese, so you have international communism capitalism; you have this sort of embrace of the consumer—

WW: They are not that different anymore. They act, at least, the same, that’s for sure.

RS: Yeah. So you have this great embrace of the culture, what the pope calls the culture of waste. And then you have the losers, and they’re—you don’t have to think about them; they’re discarded people. And then here this pope comes and reminds us, no, they can’t be discarded. And you have a figure, maybe there’s a billion people that are hungry in the world right now. And you know, I don’t want this movie to sound like a greeting card, because it’s quite the opposite. It says, sure, you can use these phrases about Christianity and the one common—but there’s an obligation. And this pope, in his quiet, down-to-earth way, reminds us of this obligation to the poor, to people who are criminal, to the environment, to peace. It’s a very, it reminds me of Pope John, who came along I guess in the early ’60s and late ’50s was the last time I can remember a pope that could command the world’s attention legitimately because of the power of the truth that he was expressing. Is that not really the theme of this movie? And I asked you, when you meet this pope, he seems real, and that’s what your movie conveys.

WW: Yeah. He is a very real person. The very first time he came into the room, when we did our first interview, and when myself and my entire crew were quite nervous, by entering and by looking around he made it clear already—hey, guys, don’t be scared of me, I’m just like everybody else. And the first thing he did was greeting everybody. Handshake, a few words with each and everybody in the crew, the electricians just as well as the so-called important people like a producer or director. He treated us all alike, and he made it clear, I’m one who is also just like any of you, I’m not special. And he lives that convincingly. And he doesn’t take limousines, but when arrived in the garden where we shot, he peeled himself out of the smallest car available in Italy, which is a Panda. And he didn’t move into the palace that popes used to live in, but he went and stayed in a little pensione. So he really lives what he preaches, and that is the, that is a necessary thing today; you can’t just claim things and mean something else. He means what he says. And in the end, after I really got to know him better, and followed him closer, and saw all these documents from all over the world on his journeys and all the places where he went, [like] prisons and hospitals and refugee camps—I realized he truly was a man of his word. He stood by what he said. And he doesn’t just meet heads of state, and when he came to America he just didn’t speak in front of the Senate or the U.N.; he also went to hospitals, and he went into American prisons. And who on this planet does that? Who goes to countries and sees poor people and goes to slums and goes to refugee camps, and also meets the president? I don’t know anybody else who does it. So I think he is a man of his word, and I think words in our day and age don’t mean much anymore, so somebody had to come and call attention to words anymore, and that words mean something, and that words do have, can have a moral authority.

RS: We’re talking about Pope Francis – A Man of His Word, a terrific documentary film that–and when I say terrific, because it provokes though. It doesn’t, it doesn’t hit you over the head with the authority of a particular religion or even of this man. What he seems to do with his basic style is actually raise questions and encourage critical thinking. For example, the exchange on the airplane that you have where he’s talking about homosexuality, and who is he to judge. And he has a position that still will not satisfy many people; it doesn’t satisfy me. He has a similar position that doesn’t satisfy a lot of people on the question of choice and birthing and so forth; doesn’t satisfy me. But he doesn’t present it in a didactic way that, you know, he’s somehow the vessel of God, and you’re going to take it or leave it, but you’re going to be punished. He’s actually, this pope, like Pope John, the last pope that I would be doing a program on, raises questions about: Who are we? What are we here for? What is our stewardship? And he does it in ways that actually are quite surprising. The discussion about homosexuality, again, won’t satisfy a lot of people, but it makes you think about the basic humanity of the people that otherwise are condemned or what have you, or with labels.

WW: Yeah. And I don’t know any of his predecessors who would have said, who am I to judge, as long as somebody is a good person, who am I to judge. And that “Who am I to judge” is a huge turn from other ways of treating any of these subjects. It’s true, he says God loves us all, and he even goes that far and says, God loves you even if you’re an atheist, and if you reject his love he has the same love for you, and that’s the only bond that we have as humans. And we are really, really brothers, and we have to take that seriously, and we cannot pretend we are anything else. We need to face that fraternity, and that we are a common family on this planet. So who am I to judge anybody who’s thinking differently from me?

RS: Which is incredible coming from the pope.

WW: Yeah. It is.

RS: And we should remind people of this history. I mean, I talked about half of my family being Protestant; the other half were Jewish. And I remember growing up as a kid in New York, and every once in a while somebody would punch me in the nose and say, “You killed our Lord.” And I didn’t even know what they were talking about, “You killed our Lord”; well, that was a position the Catholic Church supported up until recent history, right? It was, I think, under Pope John where it was officially declared, you know, that this basic anti-Semitic canard had to be rejected forcefully. But this is true of all religions—people claim to be Muslims, Hindus, you know, Buddhists, and they kill other people in the name of a lord. So they say they have the right to judge, they’ve been encouraged to judge, right, by their religion. And here’s a pope—and as I say, he’s just the right pope for that church for this moment, and for the world for this moment, because he is saying, you know—no. We have to take seriously the complexity of this situation, and of the human experience, and then return to some basics. And so, is this guy the real deal?

WW: This guy is the real deal. He’s not pretending to be anything. He’s not playing a part or role. He’s not putting up an act. That’s who he is. And when he looked me in the eye, and when he talked to everybody, and we shot the film in a way that he looks everybody in the eye; we shot it with a device that makes Pope Francis look at you when you see the film. Because I figured, if I have this unbelievable chance to be sitting face-to-face with him for eight hours, four times, two hours, then I don’t want to just have that for myself; I need to share that. So we shot it with a sort of a teleprompter, except of course the pope doesn’t see his answers, he saw my face, and by looking at me and by talking to me, he now speaks to everybody. And he is the real deal; he is not phony. And long before he was pope, already as a bishop and a common priest, he had shared this solidarity and sympathy with the poor. And his message then wasn’t a different message from what he has now. He is a very open and incredibly kind person, and humble. And that humility he still has; he doesn’t think highly of him[self] because he’s now a pope. On the contrary, he thinks he has to be even more humble.

RS: [omission for station break] Let me talk a little bit about your other films. Because this was kind of a character break. In terms of documentaries, one that comes to mind is the Buena Vista Social Club, which Ry Cooder was involved in. And you’ve zeroed in on different aspects of life, and I know when I’ve talked to filmmakers I have the chance to interview, they say, God, they would be tongue-tied, because you are a legend. And I mentioned before, when we were talking, Werner Hertzog, you remind me very much of him. That these are, you are two German filmmakers who seem, like this pope you’re describing, to be searching for truth rather than hammering it into our heads. And there’s a real range of your curiosity and your humility, that you bring to filmmaking, and yet you’ve been highly celebrated. So let me just ask you now how you appraise your own work, and how this film fits in.

WW: There is different ways to approach a documentary, obviously. There is, documentaries for some people are ways to research something, or to criticize something, or to bring something to light that is bad in the environment, in social justice. And my approach to my documentaries, like you mentioned Buena Vista Social Club or Salt of the Earth or Pina, my approach is that I like something very, very much, like the music of these old men in Havana; the choreography, and this whole new art form by Pina Bausch; or the unbelievable social photography of this Brazilian photographer. And I like something, and I want to share it. And that is my approach. It’s not a critical approach; other people can do that much better. It’s more of a loving approach, I want to share something. And I want to tell of my admiration, of my excitement about somebody’s art or somebody’s beauty, and somebody’s creation. So I like to disappear in my documentaries. I don’t want to appear, I want to make something else appear. So my films don’t have much of a critical distance, like other filmmakers prefer, but they are films about immersing in another world and another subject. And celebrate the music of these old men in Havana, or celebrate the art of Pina Bausch. And in this case here with Pope Francis, I really want to bring, to show as many people as possible how important I think the message of this man is, and what it really means that there’s a pope who calls himself Francis, and what does that mean in the 21st century. And I want to create that context, and really wanted to make this film so this man, through my film, could really look into everybody’s eyes who sees this film, and talk to each and everybody. Because that’s what he is, he’s an incredible communicator. And if you are face to face with him, you feel that he’s really deeply looking into you, and how serious he is about communicating, and how serious he is about what he thinks is wrong with our times, or what he thinks is lacking. And how he thinks we’re—well, not Christians, for instance, talking to Christians, or not taking care of our planet, talking to everybody on this planet. He is really concerned about many issues, and he’s not really talking to us only as the pope, and only for the Catholic Church; he talks to us with the authority of a man who has earned that authority by living what he says.

RS: For people who are not familiar with the encyclicals and other proclamations of this pope, I really would recommend that they read some. I know, you know, I was not inclined to think, oh, this pope’s going to have the answers and raise the right questions, until I read his document on the environment. And I thought, wow. And then the one on poverty, and wow. And then the one on peace, wow. And the “wow” is how clear, and yet simple, the advice and the questioning is, you know; and like, on poverty, do we really believe each of us has equal potential and value and worth and a soul? The basic question of the Good Samaritan, you know, and Luke. Do we really, when we bomb people, do we really think that they are, have children, or these children could be our own children? And you know, you go right down the list in this documentary. Why don’t you flesh it out, the different points that are raised? Because there are four or five.

WW: Yeah. He spoke in front of the American, both houses. And he said, well, all you guys, all you men and women in front of me, most of you are descendants of immigrants. And let’s look at these immigrants differently. And he himself is a son of immigrants in Argentina. He had a way of really catching the attention of the Senate by talking about immigration and migration, and this being one of the most important social issues of our time, these millions of people on the road right now in Africa and South America, or in Asia.

RS: Or on the border with Mexico and California.

WW: For instance, for instance, there we go. And it’s happening right here, and it’s happening in my country, in Germany, just as well as here in America. And he talks about borders, and he talks about the fact that closing borders has never helped anything. And certainly in the long run, never helped the population that it tries to protect; it’s turned, borders turn against everybody. And it goes on and on and on; this is just one example.

RS: Well you know, we’re going to have to end this here, but I want to pay tribute to you for making this film. You know, sometimes you watch things and they make you angry, but they make you feel hopeful. And the idea that somehow this old religion of the Catholic Church, and its interpretation of Christianity, which as I said before has been involved in not always wonderful activities, and sometimes deadly wrong, and so forth. And in a moment when it’s really a low point for the Catholic Church, to suddenly have a pope, it almost—if there is an Almighty, it almost seems like a gift. [Laughs] And this whole idea, I just want to end on this kind of critical idea from St. Francis that you raised, and maybe say a final word about it. But, “Go and restore my house”—by that house, though, it means all the people in this house, whether the house is the world, or it’s the universe, or it’s the Church. But it’s all of them, and it means somebody stuck in a prison; it’s somebody who did something wrong and was punished; it’s somebody who’s poor; it’s somebody who lives in a country you don’t understand their language. That is what this movie really is about, and what you’re saying this man is all about. He does not accept these barriers, these borders; he’s a bridge to everything, to everyone.

WW: You put it into very good words, Bob. I’m grateful for you. And you also have to know, this man has an incredibly positive radiation. He doesn’t have a dark outlook at the world. As bad as things are, he seems to be of sheer, endless optimism. And he doesn’t say to us, it’s all going down the drain; he says, it’s not going down the drain if we only remember that each and every one of us has his or her part in this. And I think that’s the most encouraging message he has, that is, a message of hope. And if there is darkness all around us, well, we can bring light into it.

RS: Well, that’s words to live by. And that’s it for this edition of Scheer Intelligence. My guest has been filmmaker Wim Wenders. His newest film is Pope Francis – A Man of His Word. The producers for Scheer Intelligence are Rebecca Mooney and Josh Scheer. Our engineers at KCRW are Mario Diaz and Kat Yore. We had help today from Paul Ruest at Argot Studios in New York. I’m Robert Scheer. See you next week.

Irish Voters Backing Abortion Rights by Wide Margin

DUBLIN—Abortion rights activists proclaimed victory for Irish women Saturday as referendum results indicated voters in largely Roman Catholic Ireland overwhelmingly backed repealing a 1983 constitutional ban on abortions.

Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, speaking Saturday after exit polls suggested voters chose to liberalize Ireland’s strict abortion laws by a margin of more than two to one, called the result the culmination of a “quiet revolution.”

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“The people have spoken,” said Varadkar, a medical doctor who campaigned for repeal in Friday’s historic referendum. “The people have said that we want a modern constitution for a modern country, that we trust women and we respect them to make the right decision and the right choices about their health care.”

Varadkar said the large margin of victory will give his government a greater mandate when drafting abortion legislation that will be submitted for parliamentary approval in a matter of months.

Voters were asked whether they wanted to keep or repeal the Eighth Amendment to Ireland’s Constitution, which requires authorities to treat a fetus and its mother as equals under the law. It outlawed all abortions until 2014, when the procedure started being allowed in rare cases when a woman’s life was in danger.

Campaigners who have fought for more than three decades to remove the Eighth Amendment abortion ban from Ireland’s Constitution hailed the referendum vote as a major breakthrough for the largely Catholic nation.

“This is a monumental day for women in Ireland,” said Orla O’Connor, co-director of the Together for Yes group. “This is about women taking their rightful place in Irish society, finally.”

The vote is a “rejection of an Ireland that treated women as second-class citizens,” she said, adding: “This is about women’s equality and this day brings massive change, monumental change for women in Ireland, and there is no going back.”

If the partial results hold up, the referendum would likely end the need for thousands of Irish women to travel abroad — mostly to neighboring Britain — for abortions they can’t get at home.

The mood was jubilant at Dublin’s Intercontinental hotel, where the Together For Yes group was celebrating its apparent victory.

Some supporters had tears of joy running down their cheeks, and many women hugged each other. Cheers erupted every time partial results were shown on two big screens transmitting the latest television news.

Opponents of the repeal movement have conceded they have no chance of victory.

John McGuirk, spokesman for the Save the 8th group, told Irish television Saturday that many Irish citizens will not recognize the country they are waking up in. The group said on its website that Irish voters have created a “tragedy of historic proportions,” but McGuirk said the vote must be respected.

“You can still passionately believe that the decision of the people is wrong, as I happen to do, and accept it,” he said.

Official counting for Friday’s referendum on whether or not to liberalize Ireland’s abortion laws was still underway, and final results were not expected until later Saturday. More than half of the country’s 40 regions had been counted by 4:00 p.m. and showed 68 percent supporting the amendment’s repeal.

Exit polls from the Irish Times and broadcaster RTE suggested the Irish people have voted by nearly 70 percent to repeal the Eighth Amendment.

It indicated that about 72 percent of women voted “yes” along with about 66 percent of men. The strongest backing came from younger voters — the exit poll said the only age group in which a majority voted “no” were voters who are 65 or older. The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 1.6 percent.

The magnitude of the predicted victory exceeded the expectations of abortion rights activists. Surprisingly, they also suggest that supporters of more liberal abortion laws may have triumphed throughout the country, not just in the cosmopolitan capital, Dublin, where a strong youth vote had been anticipated.

Ireland’s parliament will be charged with coming up with new abortion laws in the coming months. The government proposes to allow abortion in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, with later terminations allowed in some cases.

Katherine Zappone, the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, said she is confident new abortion legislation can be approved by parliament and put in place before the end of the year.

“I feel very emotional,” she said. “I’m especially grateful to the women of Ireland who came forward to provide their personal testimony about the hard times that they endured, the stress and the trauma that they experienced because of the eighth amendment.”

Early results declared Saturday afternoon pointed to a landslide win for abortion rights campaigners across the country. The first constituency to declare — traditionally conservative Galway East — returned a 60 percent vote to repeal the abortion ban. Results from urban centers were even more decisive. Dublin Central posted 76.5 percent for repeal, while two constituencies in the southern capital of Cork City polled 64 percent and almost 69 percent.

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Leo Enright contributed.

North and South Korean Leaders Hold Surprise 2nd Summit

SEOUL, South Korea—North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in met for the second time in a month on Saturday, holding a surprise summit at a border truce village to discuss Kim’s potential meeting with President Donald Trump, Moon’s office said.

Kim and Moon met hours after South Korea expressed relief over revived talks for a summit between Trump and Kim following a whirlwind 24 hours that saw Trump cancel the highly anticipated meeting before saying it’s potentially back on.

The quickly arranged meeting seemed to demonstrate Kim’s urgency to secure a summit with Trump, which may provide his best shot at saving his economy from crushing sanctions and win security assurances in a region surrounded by enemies, analysts say.

It remains unclear whether Kim would ever agree to fully abandon his nuclear arsenal in return. Moon has insisted Kim can be persuaded to abandon his nuclear facilities, materials and bombs in a verifiable and irreversible way in exchange for credible security and economic guarantees.

Moon, who brokered the summit between Washington and Pyongyang, likely used Saturday’s meeting to confirm Kim’s willingness to enter nuclear negotiations with Trump and clarify what steps Kim has in mind in the process of denuclearization, said Hong Min, a senior analyst at Seoul’s Korea Institute for National Unification.

“While Washington and Pyongyang have expressed their hopes for a summit through published statements, Moon has to step up as the mediator because the surest way to set the meeting in stone would be an official confirmation of intent between heads of states,” Hong said.

South Korean presidential spokesman Yoon Young-chan said Moon will reveal details of his meeting with Kim on Sunday.

Koh Yu-hwan, a North Korea expert at Seoul’s Dongguk University and a policy adviser to Moon, said the two leaders likely discussed bridging the gap between Washington and Pyongyang on what a deal on the North’s nuclear weapons would look like.

U.S. officials have talked about a comprehensive one-shot deal in which North Korea fully eliminates its nukes first and receives rewards later. But Kim, through two summits with Chinese President Xi Jinping in March and May, has called for a phased and synchronized process in which every action he takes is met with a reciprocal reward from the United States.

Koh said Moon would try to persuade Kim to accept an alternative approach advocated by Seoul, in which the North’s comprehensive commitment and credible actions toward denuclearization are followed by a phased but compressed process of declaration, inspection and verifiable dismantling. Before he canceled the summit, Trump this past week did not rule out an incremental approach that would provide incentives along the way to the North.

Trump tweeted earlier Saturday that a summit with Kim, if it does happen, will likely take place on June 12 in Singapore as originally planned.

Following an unusually provocative 2017 in which his engineers tested a purported thermonuclear warhead and three long-range missiles theoretically capable of striking mainland U.S. cities, Kim has engaged in a flurry of diplomatic activity in recent months. In addition to his summits with Moon and Xi, Kim also has had two meetings with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

It wasn’t immediately clear how the rival Koreas organized what appeared to be an emergency summit. Ahead of their first meeting last month, Kim and Moon established a hotline that they said would enable direct communication between the leaders and would be valuable to defuse crises, but it was unclear whether it was used to set up the latest meeting.

Photos released by South Korea’s presidential office showed Moon arriving at the North Korean side of the Panmunjom truce village and shaking hands with Kim’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, before sitting down with Kim for their summit.

Moon was accompanied by his spy chief, Suh Hoon, while Kim was joined by Kim Yong Chol, a former military intelligence chief who is now a vice chairman of the North Korean ruling party’s central committee tasked with inter-Korean relations.

The two leaders embraced as Moon departed.

Moon’s office said that during their two-hour meeting, the two leaders also discussed carrying out the peace commitments they agreed to at their first summit, held at the South Korean side of Panmunjom on April 27, but didn’t elaborate.

At their first meeting, Kim and Moon announced vague aspirations for a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula and permanent peace, which Seoul has tried to sell as a meaningful breakthrough to set up the summit with Trump.

But relations between the two Koreas chilled in recent weeks, with North Korea canceling a high-level meeting with Seoul over South Korea’s participation in regular military exercises with the United States and insisting that it will not return to talks unless its grievances are resolved.

South Korea was caught off guard by Trump’s abrupt cancellation of his summit with Kim, with the U.S. president citing hostility in recent North Korean comments. Moon said Trump’s decision left him “perplexed” and was “very regrettable.” He urged Washington and Pyongyang to resolve their differences through “more direct and closer dialogue between their leaders.”

Trump’s back-and-forth over his summit plans with Kim has exposed the fragility of Seoul as an intermediary. It fanned fears in South Korea that the country may lose its voice between a rival intent on driving a wedge between Washington and Seoul and an American president who thinks less of the traditional alliance with Seoul than his predecessors did.

Trump’s decision to pull out of the summit came just days after he hosted Moon at the White House, where he openly cast doubts on the Singapore meeting but offered no support for continued inter-Korean progress, essentially ignoring the North’s recent attempts to coerce the South.

In a letter to Kim announcing the cancellation, Trump objected specifically to a statement from senior North Korean diplomat Choe Son Hui. Choe had referred to Vice President Mike Pence as a “political dummy” for earlier comments he made about North Korea and said it was up to the Americans whether they would “meet us at a meeting room or encounter us (in a) nuclear-to-nuclear showdown.”

North Korea issued an unusually restrained and diplomatic response to Trump, saying it was still willing to sit for talks with the United States “at any time, (in) any format.”

“The first meeting would not solve all, but solving even one at a time in a phased way would make the relations get better rather than making them get worse,” North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan said in a statement carried by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency, which mainly targets an external audience.

Notably, the statement did not appear in Saturday’s edition of Rodong Sinmun, which is the official mouthpiece of the North’s ruling party and is widely read by North Koreans.

Scandal Over Doctor’s Actions Forces Out USC President

LOS ANGELES—The president of the University of Southern California has agreed to step down amid a raging sex scandal involving a university gynecologist who is accused of conducting inappropriate exams for decades, the chairman of the school’s board of trustees said Friday.

The university’s board has “agreed to begin an orderly transition and commence the process of selecting a new president,” Rick J. Caruso, the board’s chairman, said in a letter to students and faculty members.

The letter did not say when C.L. Max Nikias would leave his post.

“We have heard the message that something is broken and that urgent and profound actions are needed,” Caruso said.

The announcement came days after hundreds of students, professors and alumni demanded Nikias’ ouster, alleging that USC failed to respond to complaints of misconduct involving Dr. George Tyndall, a gynecologist who worked at a university clinic for 30 years.

Tyndall routinely made crude comments, took inappropriate photographs and forced plaintiffs to strip naked and groped them under the guise of medical treatment for his “sexual gratification,” according to civil lawsuits filed this week.

At least a dozen lawsuits have been filed so far and police are interviewing alleged victims to see if any crime was committed.

The Los Angeles Times reported earlier this month that complaints about Tyndall weren’t properly address by USC for years and university officials never reported him to the medical board, even after he was quietly forced into retirement.

Tyndall, 71, denied wrongdoing in interviews with the Times and hasn’t responded to phone calls and emails requesting comment from The Associated Press.

USC has said Tyndall was placed on administrative leave in 2016 and never returned to treating students after officials received a complaint from a staff member at the health clinic. The staff member alleged that Tyndall made inappropriate comments to a patient in front of medical assistants.

The university said it has previously reviewed complaints that Tyndall made racially inappropriate comments.

Nikias, 65, who became the university’s president in 2010, had recently come under fire amid a string of scandals, including a report from the Los Angeles Times in July about how a USC medical school dean used drugs and partied with prostitutes.

A spokesman for USC said the university had no further comment.

___

Associated Press writer Brian Melley contributed to this report.

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Trump’s Curious Pardon of Former Heavyweight Champ Jack Johnson

As you no doubt heard—or maybe you didn’t in the latest flurry of scandals and outrages—President Trump has posthumously pardoned former heavyweight champion Jack Johnson. A more perfect match between president and African-American icon could not be imagined.

Born in 1878—or sometime around then (there are no surviving records)—Johnson grew up in the port city of Galveston, Texas, a town relatively, for the time and place, relaxed on racial matters. He grew up playing with white kids, unaware of the restrictions he would face in the outside world as he grew older. When, in later life, he was confronted by those boundaries, he simply ignored them.

John Arthur Johnson held the crown from 1908-1915, the first black man to claim it. At 6 feet tall and around 200 pounds, he was big for his day, a solid puncher with either hand, and an outstanding defensive fighter. How good he was is still a subject of debate among boxing historians, as Johnson never faced a top-flight heavyweight during his prime. For what it’s worth, though, Nat Fleischer—who founded Ring magazine, “The Bible of Boxing,” in 1922—thought that Johnson was the best ever.

Jack Johnson won the title in 1908 in Sydney, Australia, from Tommy Burns, who, at about 5 feet 7 inches and 190 pounds, was perhaps the most insignificant man ever to hold the division crown. Johnson toyed with his much smaller foe, cutting up his face, slapping away his punches and taunting him: “Tawmee, Tawmee, is that hardest you can hit?”

The fight was so lopsided that Jack London, watching from ringside, called it “a hopeless slaughter.” In his dispatch, London sent out a call for what would quickly come to be called “A Great White Hope,” former champion Jim Jefferies. “Jefferies,” London said, “must now emerge from his alfalfa farm and remove that golden smile from Jack Johnson’s face. Jeff, it’s up to you. The White Man must be rescued.”

The Johnson-Jefferies fight, held in Reno, Nev., in 1910, was the first bout to be billed as “The Fight of the Century.” It might have been that if they’d fought a few years earlier. Jefferies, who had won the title in 1899 by knocking out Ruby Bob Fitzsimons, was, at his peak, 6 foot 2 inches and 220 pounds, and Fleischer thought young Jefferies to be nearly the equal of Johnson. But by 1910, he was 35 and had been inactive for years. Living on his California farm, he had ballooned to around 300 pounds and had to lose 70 of them in just a few months. His performance against Johnson was pathetic. In the 15th round, Johnson, who had mostly sparred with a helpless Jefferies, dropped the former champ three times, and Jefferies’ handlers rushed into the ring to save their man the ignominy of being knocked out.

Black euphoria over Johnson’s victory was met with white fury as black men all over the country were attacked, beaten and even lynched. One report a few days after the fight claimed 20 murdered. If Johnson was dismayed by the violence, he gave no sign.

Now rich enough to afford automobiles, he raced them down public streets, and when stopped by white policemen, whipped out some bills from his wallet and told them to “Keep the change.” According to a story that has never been verified but certainly could be true, Henry Ford gave Johnson a new car every year, assuming that when he was pulled over for speeding, a photo of a grinning Jack beside his shiny new Ford would appear in newspapers across the country. The old saw “You can’t buy publicity like that” comes to mind.

Johnson mocked and taunted his white opponents and derided his black rivals, including the great Sam Langford, whom he refused to meet in the ring. The first champion of the gloved era, John L. Sullivan, refused to fight a black man, but Johnson drew his own color barrier. That color barrier did not apply out of the ring: Johnson publicly romanced and even married a white woman. The singer Ethel Waters, who apparently resisted Johnson’s ardent advances, told him, “It’s universally known, Jack, that you have the white fever.”

Johnson expressed no solidarity with other black Americans and even took pains to distance himself from their spokesmen. As Paul Beston writes in his superb history of the American heavyweight division, “The Boxing Kings,” “[W.E.B.] DuBois and [Booker T.] Washington agreed that a black man in the public eye had broader responsibilities to the race. Johnson didn’t think so. ‘I have found no better way of avoiding racial prejudice,’ he wrote, ‘than to act in my relations with people of other races as if prejudice did not exist.’ Individualism was his creed.”

Simply put, Johnson lived a philosophy as free from identity politics as a Fox News commentator.

In 2004 biography, “Unforgiveable Blackness,” (the basis for the Ken Burns documentary), Geoffrey Ward demolished the myth of Jack Johnson as a role model for black activists. “He never seems to have been interested in collective action of any kind. How could he be when he saw himself always as a unique individual apart from everyone else?”

Johnson lost the title to the ponderous Jess Willard (6 feet 6 inches tall, 250 pounds) in Havana in a 26-round knockout in 1915. Johnson would later claim that he could have gotten up but, lying on his back, he lifted his hand to shield his eyes from the sun (as shown in the film). There’s no clear evidence that this is what happened, nor is it clear that the fight was fixed, as rumored, nor is it clear what the fight told us about Johnson (who was 37 and overweight) or Willard (a mediocre fighter at best, who was butchered in four rounds by Jack Dempsey just three years later).

The law didn’t get Johnson for fixing fights, though lots of fighters, managers and promoters back then were known to be involved in fixes, and, in fact, the taint has never left the fight game. The law got Johnson on the Mann Act of 1910, also known as the White-Slave Traffic Act, which prohibited the transporting of women across state lines for what was deemed “immoral purposes,” or, stated another way, prostitution. In the wake of public outrage against the black man who insulted white opponents and slept with white women, the feds almost immediately went to work to build a case against Johnson as soon as he won the title from Burns in 1910; it took them three years.

In September 1912, Johnson’s white mistress, Etta Duryea, the ex-wife of a Wall Street broker, took her own life. Duryea had reportedly been drinking through bouts of depression spurred by Johnson’s infidelities and, she confessed to friends, physical abuse. After a brief but intense period of mourning, Johnson began keeping company with Lucy Cameron, an 18-year-old white girl who had been arrested the year before for practicing a trade even older than Jack’s. Cameron’s mother charged Johnson with kidnapping and pimping her daughter; the charges were, at best, contrived, and after Johnson was arrested in Chicago, he was released on bail. Johnson married Lucy, and the case fell apart.

The feds wouldn’t quit. They found another prostitute—white, of course—Belle Schreiber, who testified that Johnson had indeed taken her across state lines for professional purposes. Again, the government’s case was shaky, but that was of no concern to the all-white jury and Illinois Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis, who sentenced him to federal prison for a year. Landis’s service to the white race would not be forgotten: Years later, he was named the first commissioner of big league baseball and banned several members of the championship 1919 White Sox from the game for throwing the World Series.

Jack and Belle skipped the country for Europe, and for two years, he made money fighting exhibitions with second-rate challengers. Johnson would later claim that he agreed to throw his fight against Willard for a big payday, at least $30,000 (more than $700,000 today) and a light sentence.

This was never proven. Still, Johnson’s claims were plausible. He served a year in Leavenworth, where he taught prisoners to box, and, according to one news story, was granted special favors from prison guards for autographing boxing gloves and other items. In 1927 he published a memoir, “In The Ring and Out,” which was surprisingly well received. With the book, Johnson, in effect, printed his own legend. In 1946 he was driving to New York for a Joe Louis fight—Johnson, jealous of the second black man to win the heavyweight title, derided Louis’s abilities and enjoyed baiting him from ringside. He crashed his Ford into a light pole near Raleigh, N.C., and was pronounced dead at 68.

The coroner cited “shock” as the official cause of death. One of Johnson’s longtime pals told reporters, “That just can’t be right. Nothing in this world could have shocked that cat.”

But the Johnson legend was just getting started. In an era of burgeoning black consciousness, he evolved into the kind of folk hero that he never aspired to in life. In 1967, Howard Sackler’s play, “The Great White Hope,” with a powerhouse performance by a perfectly cast James Earl Jones as black heavyweight Jack Jefferson, made its debut, and in 1970 was adapted into a much-honored film.

A year later, the coolest black man on the planet, Miles Davis, released “Jack Johnson” (later reissued as “A Tribute to Jack Johnson”) as the soundtrack for a documentary.

Unless, that is, the coolest black man on the planet was Muhammad Ali. Ali sometimes sounded as if he thought he was the reincarnation of the first black champ: “I am Jack Johnson!” he was fond of saying. No, he wasn’t. Ali was persecuted for his association with a controversial black separatist group, the Black Muslims, and for his political views, especially his refusal to be inducted into the armed forces during the Vietnam War.

Sylvester Stallone’s bid for a Johnson pardon wasn’t the first. The bell for the first round was rung by Ken Burns, whose definitive 2004 documentary, “Unforgiveable Blackness,” would air on PBS. Sen. John McCain and Rep. Peter King proposed legislation to encourage President George W. Bush to issue a pardon. Bush showed some interest and then backed off. In 2016, the 70th anniversary of Johnson’s death, in a bipartisan effort, McCain and Harry Reid petitioned President Obama. Perhaps wisely, Obama took a pass.

Not that the Mann Act rap on Johnson ever had much credence. Gerald Early, chairman of Black American Studies at Washington University in St. Louis and editor of, among other books, “The Muhammad Ali Reader,” says, “I think it is fine to pardon Johnson. It was obviously a racial[ly] motivated prosecution that was done under a very poorly conceived piece of legislation. But there were other questionable or debatable prosecutions under the act that should be looked into as well, Chuck Berry’s for instance. In as much the law is an example of federal overreach and has clearly not done well what it was purported to be trying to do—namely, protect women from [being] prostituted—probably many who were imprisoned under the act should be pardoned.”

So Jack Johnson is now, officially, an innocent man. Good for him. Yet every American president from FDR to Trump (including Richard Nixon, who coaxed Jackie Robinson into the Republican Party) have failed to exonerate a far worthier man, Joe Louis. Louis held the heavyweight title for more than 12 years, 1937-1949, and defended it a record 25 times. But bad management, bad investments and terrible spending habits—not to mention an easy mark for friends and family members with their hand out—put him in deep trouble with the IRS over the last 30-odd years of his life.

Louis never went to jail for it, but it was a cloud hanging over his head, even though he cut a deal with the IRS that left him income to live on. But for a while, one of the greatest champions ever was reduced to refereeing wrestling matches for a living. This was a man who flew almost 80,000 miles to box exhibitions for American troops during World War II, demanding only that audiences be integrated, and was awarded the Legion of Merit for donating entire purses to Army and Navy relief funds.

This was a man who, in 1938, on the eve of World War II, had millions of Americans, black and white, rooting for him when he knocked out German champion Max Schmeling in the first round of their rematch.

He did more to bring black and white Americans together than any African-American up to his time. Yet the image of Joe Louis, caught almost exactly between the two dynamic careers of Jack Johnson and Muhammad Ali, has faded. It’s due for a revival, and that might begin with a symbolic exoneration of his tax penalty. It would do Louis no more tangible good than a pardon would for Johnson. But it would once again put Louis’s story where it belongs—at the center of American sports culture.

When Louis lost his first fight with Schmeling in 1936 in New York, African-American men openly wept on the streets of Harlem. Some suffered heart attacks listening to the fight on the radio. Lena Horne, performing at a night club that evening, broke down when she heard the news. Her mother reproached her, “You don’t even know the man.” Lena replied that she didn’t have to know him: “He belongs to all of us.”

And so Joe Louis does, then and now. Much more so than Jack Johnson, who never really belonged to any but himself.

Johnson did get a bum rap on the Mann Act, but the Jack Johnson whose brand Republicans want is the Johnson character of “The Great White Hope,” the man anointed by Miles Davis and Muhammad Ali. That man never existed in real life, and if Barack Obama had pardoned Johnson, you can bet Fox News would have revived the real Johnson and screamed bloody murder.

***

An after-note: Johnson’s most bizarre bout was with the great middleweight champion Stanley Ketchel, whom Johnson outweighed by more than 40 pounds. Many say there was supposed to have been an “arrangement” that Ketchel would only spar to Johnson, giving him an easy decision. But Ketchel decided to try his luck and decked the champion. Johnson’s reaction looks like a bad stunt in a Hollywood boxing match. As the late boxing historian Bert Sugar told me, “If you saw that fight in a movie, you’d say it looked phony.”

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Global Warming Grows Less Nutritious Rice

Global warming could bring a serious problem for the two billion people on the planet who depend on one grain for their staple diet: less nutritious rice to sustain them. Scientists have found that rice grown at higher levels of carbon dioxide has an overall lower nutritional value.

The grain contains lower levels of protein, and iron and zinc – metals vital for health in trace form – and also consistent declines in vitamin B.

This finding is not based on computer simulation of a plant’s response to notionally higher atmospheric levels of the greenhouse gas CO2, nor on laboratory studies under glass and in artificial conditions. It is based on open air field trials.

That is, extra carbon dioxide is piped to the plants to mimic the ratios expected at the end of the century as ever more people burn ever greater quantities of fossil fuels. And it has been tested in many locations in rice-growing countries over many years.

The finding remains true – although at different levels of impact – for the 18 varieties or hybrids of rice tested so far.

Ten nations depend upon rice for daily food supplies. The people most likely to feel the consequences of reduced nutritional support – and these include impaired cognitive development, a feebler immune system, obesity and diabetes – are likely to be those who are poorest. The researchers estimate that 600 million people for whom rice provides more than half their daily diet could be affected.

Scientists from China, Japan, the US and Australia report in the journal Science Advances that they began their research, using what they call the technique of free air carbon dioxide enrichment, in 1998, to recreate what they expect to be the conditions under which farmers will grow crops a few decades from now.

They found on average that the test rice had 10% less protein, 8% less iron and 5.1% less zinc compared with rice grown by farmers under existing conditions. There were also declines of 17% in the vitamins B1 (thiamine) and of more than 16% in vitamin B2 (riboflavin). Vitamin B5, or pantothenic acid levels, were down more than 12%. Folate or vitamin B9 levels were down 30%.

“People say more CO2 is more plant food – and it is. But how plants respond to that sudden increase in food will impact human health as well, from nutritional deficits, to ethnopharmacology, to seasonal pollen allergies – in ways we don’t yet understand,” said Lewis Ziska, a plant physiologist with the US Department of Agriculture research service, one of the authors.

Hungry billion

Up to a billion people in the world are what bureaucrats politely call “food insecure.” There has already been concern about the impact of higher levels of carbon dioxide on protein in potatoes, maize and other cereals.

As global temperatures rise in response to ever greater levels of CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, harvests of all the staple cereals could in any case decline – sometimes as a response to ever wilder extremes of heat, rain and windstorm – by between 20 and 40%. But so far, there has been little research on the impact of climate change on the nutritional qualities of each staple.

The study puts the case more coolly: “For those populations that are highly rice-dependent, any CO2-induced change in the integrated nutritional value of rice grains could disproportionately affect human health.” And the scientists end their study by saying:

“Overall, these results indicate that the role of rising CO2 on reducing rice quality may represent a fundamental, but under-appreciated, human health effect associated with anthropogenic climate change.”

The Art of Resistance: A Look at the Poor People’s Campaign’s ‘Justice Art Movement’

On May 24, an assembly of artists and activists hosted by the Poor People’s Campaign shared songs, artwork and cultural stories at BloomBars in Washington, D.C. The campaign’s “Justice Art Movement” holds weekly events to incorporate artistic works into the movement.

The performances artfully illustrated this week’s focus of the Poor People’s Campaign, “Linking Systemic Racism and Poverty: Voting Rights, Immigration, Xenophobia, Islamophobia, and the Mistreatment of Indigenous Communities.”

The two guest performers of the evening, Raye Zaragoza and Taina Asili, both sang songs of their heritage and racial inequality. “Growing up, I didn’t know where my place was in the American dream. My mom is an immigrant and my dad is indigenous. I saw all the racism they both went through,” Zaragoza shared before performing her song “American Dream.” “The way they were treated was similar. They were both outsiders.”

Puerto Rican performer Asili further illuminated the role of inclusivity in the Poor People’s Campaign while paying homage to the movement’s historical underpinnings. “Remembering the legacy of resistance, that beautiful legacy that has brought us to today, this moment didn’t come out of nowhere. This has been passed on to us, this powerful movement. I sing this in honor of our ancestors who did this powerful work,” Asili said before performing her original work “Sofrito.”

As the performers sang of injustice, the second level of the venue displayed the visual artwork of the campaign. Twenty-five screenprints by 24 artists were displayed as part of a collaboration between the Poor People’s Campaign and the artist cooperative “Just Seeds.” The prints, which can also be seen being held up in the crowds at the Poor People’s Campaign’s actions, are hung on the wall where visitors can study them.

PHOTO ESSAY | 5 photosphoto essay

Leaders of the campaign stressed the importance of incorporating the arts in protest. “The role of arts and culture we know historically have always played such a critical role in social movements” said Charon Hribar, co-director of cultural arts and theomusicology of the Poor People’s Campaign. “Right now with the Poor People’s Campaign, we’re really trying to center the role of music, arts, visual arts and culture as something that helps connect people and helps ground people in the struggles that have come before us.”

Sesheida Young, the D.C. cultural arts director of the Poor People’s Campaign, echoes these sentiments. “The songs have lyrics that connect us in a more inclusive manner, of our struggles, of our oppressions, of our marginalizations, but most importantly, the things that we can unify on.”

Both Hribar and Young incorporated their art into the movement by teaching the audience protest songs for the following week. This week, the pair taught songs related to ending the war economy.

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