Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 1080

The Penguin Random House Book Powerhouse Is Coming Very Soon

It was not so many months ago, in October of last year, when we learned that publishers Random House and Penguin would merge, per their parent companies Bertelsmann and Pearson. The news rocked at least a few folks in the industry to their core, brought waves of discussion of what exactly a "Random Penguin" might be, and had us wondering what the combination of two of the biggest publishers might mean for the book business at large. Today it appears that the merger is on schedule, and may even happen more quickly than anticipated, reports Crain's Matthew Flamm: An internal memo went out to Penguin staffers Friday morning in which Penguin Group CEO John Makinson said the merger will close early in the second half of the year. So, soon! 

Random Penguin supporters can thank the speed of regulatory approvals, which have come quickly from around the world. The go-ahead from Canada arrived last week, and the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, and the E.U. cleared the merger before that. "Only China has yet to green light the transaction," writes Flamm. Even so, the merger won't happen before early July, due to the need for "integration planning and business continuity."

According to the terms of the merger, Bertlesmann will maintain a 53 percent stake in the new company, and Pearson will keep 47 percent. And, oh yes, the company will be called Penguin Random House. But we all know what most of us will be thinking its name is.

       

How Hezbollah Trained an Operative to Spy on Israeli Tourists

A rare inside look at Hezbollah during a recent terror trial in Cyprus portrayed a militant group with the prowess of an intelligence service: meticulous overseas reconnaissance, Western operatives with elaborate covers, training at secret bases where recruits and instructors wear masks for maximum security.

And the conviction last month of a confessed Hezbollah operative for doing terrorist surveillance of Israeli tourists has heated up a debate that continues to divide the West: Whether the European Union, like the United States and Israel, should designate Hezbollah as a terrorist group.

In a report to be published by a West Point think tank next week, a former U.S. counterterror official argues that the Cyprus case and an attack on Israelis in Bulgaria last year show that Hezbollah has returned to aggressive operations on European soil. Western counterterror agencies largely share that analysis, which has spurred a proposal by Britain for the European Union to designate Hezbollah's military wing as a terrorist organization.

"In Cyprus you have a case that underwent full judicial scrutiny, and a conviction in a European court," said Matthew Levitt, the report's author, a former top Treasury Department intelligence official who is now a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "You have all this evidence. You have a European Hezbollah operative who was also doing courier work across Europe. What else do they need?"

Decisions in the 27-nation European Union move slowly through a bureaucratic labyrinth, especially on diplomatically sensitive questions. But the current debate departs from traditional European reluctance to confront a militant group that is a powerhouse in the government and on the streets of Lebanon.

In Paris, Berlin and other capitals, the terrorist activity and Hezbollah's military support for the Assad regime in Syria's civil war have challenged a strategy of maintaining cordial relations with Hezbollah to prevent retaliation and preserve diplomatic leverage.

"It has been and will be the most serious discussion on Hezbollah they've had," said a U.S. counterterror official who requested anonymity because he is not authorized to speak publicly. "Stability in Lebanon has been one of the main European arguments for not designating Hezbollah. But when they see what Hezbollah is doing Syria, which is exacerbating instability there and creating spillover into Lebanon, causing instability there as well, it changes this perspective."

On July 18 last year, the bombing of an airport bus carrying Israeli tourists at the Bulgarian beach resort of Burgas killed six people. Investigators said they identified two alleged Hezbollah operatives as suspects, although little evidence has been made public.

The court verdict in Cyprus carries more weight in the legalistic European Union. There are also parallels between the Burgas bombing and the surveillance and potential targets described by Hossam Yaakoub, the Lebanese-Swedish operative whom police in Cyprus arrested days before the attack in Bulgaria. His statements are extraordinary because of the wealth of detailed revelations about the inner workings of Hezbollah.

"The case provides unique insights into how (Hezbollah) recruits and trains new operatives," Levitt writes in a case study of the Cyprus trial that will appear Monday in the CTC Sentinel, a publication of the Combating Terrorism Center at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point.

The military think tank provided ProPublica with an advance copy of the article, "Hizb Allah Resurrected: the Party of God Returns to Tradecraft." ProPublica separately obtained the 26 pages of depositions that Yaakoub, 24, gave Cypriot police.

During the past decade, arrests, raids and infiltration by spy agencies have produced a great deal of information about the operations, training camps and leadership of al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In contrast, Hezbollah remains a secretive, disciplined militant group with worldwide reach and a vast war chest. Iran, a close ally, provides arms, funds, training and strategic direction. Hezbollah's paramilitary operations, social welfare work and political power have won a formidable reputation in the Arab world and beyond. It is a militant group that increasingly resembles a state entity.

"I believe in the armed struggle of Hezbollah until the liberation of Lebanon," Yaakoub told his interrogators, according to the Cypriot police depositions. "Hezbollah is the political party, which supports the people of Lebanon and fights for the rights of our country … Although I believe in the armed struggle for the liberation of Lebanon from Israel, I am not in favor of the terrorist attacks against innocent people. For me, war and terrorism are two different things."

A three-judge panel in Cyprus nonetheless found that Yaakoub was preparing the terrain to attack Israeli tourists and other Jews on the island as part of Hezbollah's holy war. The Cypriot police presumably received a tip about him from Israeli intelligence, Levitt said, and followed him as he documented and photographed flights arriving from Israel, buses transporting Israeli tourists, kosher restaurants and other potential targets.

Step-by-Step Training

After his arrest last July 7, Yaakoub reacted with the practiced cool of a well-trained operative, according to the depositions. He denied everything. He explained that he was traveling with a Swedish passport because his family had moved to Sweden six months after he was born and he had lived there until he was 14. He described himself as a Beirut-based trader in souvenirs, clothes and other merchandise. He backed up his story with company documents and names of local clients.

As police confronted him with detailed evidence, however, his resistance began to crumble. During an interrogation that began after midnight a week after his arrest, he admitted the truth: "I am an active member of the Hezbollah for about four years now. I was recruited by a Lebanese called Reda in 2007… He told me that he needed me for the secret mission of Hezbollah … my secret mission would be surveillance and undercover activities."

Yaakoub fits a classic profile, according to Levitt and other experts. Hezbollah takes advantage of the global Lebanese diaspora to recruit operatives with Western passports. Bulgarian authorities, for instance, are seeking two Lebanese suspects who traveled with authentic Australian and Canadian passports — and fake U.S. driver licenses — in the airport bus bombing last year.

Canadians, Swedes and Colombians of Lebanese descent have allegedly taken part in past plots. And Yaakoub told police he trained in Lebanon alongside a fighter who spoke English with an American accent, according to the deposition.

The training began with five to seven months of lessons in tradecraft in Beirut from an instructor named Yousef. He taught the recruit about cover stories and clandestine operations, sending him at one point to deliver an envelope to a man in Istanbul. Next came military training with pistols, rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and C-4 explosives at secret camps in south Lebanon. The sessions were designed for maximum operational security.

"They took me from different spots in Beirut, using closed vans so I could not see," Yaakoub said, according to the deposition. "Each training group consisted of 10-13 people. Both the trainees and instructors wore hoods, so they could not recognize each other. We had individual tents and exercises were performed in a separate place. It was forbidden to see each other."

Soon Hezbollah chiefs sent Yaakoub on courier missions to the French city of Lyon and to Amsterdam, where he thought he recognized the voice of his contact as one of his masked classmates from Beirut. The deployment of Yaakoub in Europe coincides with a dangerous strategic shift by Hezbollah, experts say.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Hezbollah and Iran conducted bombings, kidnappings and hijackings on Israeli, American and European targets from Argentina to Lebanon to France, inflicting hundreds of casualties. In the early 2000s, the group curtailed operations outside the Middle East theater, focusing on its struggle with Israel.

In 2010, however, leaders of Hezbollah and Iran launched an aggressive new terror campaign. They wanted to retaliate against Israel for the assassinations of Hezbollah warlord Imad Mughniyeh in 2008 and of Iranian nuclear scientists in subsequent years, according to Western counterterror officials.

"Even before the Burgas attack, we were growing concerned about what Hezbollah is doing around the world," the U.S. counterterror official said. "They are plotting in a way we hadn't seen since the 1990s. There is certainly a feeling that Iran and Hezbollah have ramped up their networks."

Reactivating Terror Wing

Iran and Hezbollah decided on a new offensive in which the Quds Force, the external operations wing of Iran's intelligence service, would hit hard targets such as Israeli and Saudi diplomats, according to Levitt's article. Hezbollah, meanwhile, would focus on Israeli tourists and other soft targets, Levitt asserts, citing information from U.S., Israeli and European security agencies.

As a result, Hezbollah revamped the Islamic Jihad Organization, its international terrorist wing, according to Levitt.

"New operatives were recruited from the elite of (Hezbollah's) military wing for intelligence and operational training, while existing IJO operatives were moved into new positions," the article says. "At the same time, the IJO invested in the development of capabilities and tradecraft that had withered since the 2001 decision to rein in operations."

The past two years have brought a spate of attacks and plots. The Iranian security forces are accused in cases including the assassination of a Saudi diplomat in Pakistan, a bomb attack on an Israeli diplomat in India and a foiled plot to kill the Saudi ambassador in Washington, D.C.

Alleged Hezbollah plots have been discovered as well. In January of last year, Thai police found a warehouse full of bomb-making chemicals for an alleged plot against Israeli targets. The chief suspect in that case resembles Yaakoub: an accused Hezbollah operative with dual Lebanese and Swedish citizenship.

Meanwhile, Yaakoub did patient undercover work in Cyprus, according to his confession and evidence at his trial. Hezbollah provided expense money and a salary of $600 a month. He burnished his cover story by registering his import-export firm, looking into acquiring a warehouse, meeting with clients and, on his handler's advice, developing a social life on the island.

Acting on instructions from Beirut, he watched Israeli tourists arrive on flights and charted their movements on airport buses and at hotels, using codes to disguise his notes and communicate with fellow operatives, according to his confession.

The surveillance takes on ominous significance in light of the Burgas attack, in which a young man with a backpack bomb blew up a bus as it picked up Israeli tourists at the airport. The attacker died in the blast. European investigators believe he was not a suicide bomber, but rather a dupe or the victim of a premature explosion. Hezbollah has denied any role in Burgas.

Yaakoub's reconnaissance featured very specific tasks for reasons that are not yet clear. He identified Internet cafes for his handlers. He obtained three SIM cards for mobile phones. He meticulously studied an area behind a hospital, taking photos and drawing a map.

"I am not aware of the organization's objectives on the matter, nor do I know why they sent me to this mission," he told interrogators, according to the deposition. Despite his confessions, he refused to accept that he was involved in terrorism, declaring:

"It was just collecting information about the Jews, and that is what my organization is doing everywhere in the world."

Reaction in Europe

The conviction of Yaakoub adds to mounting evidence of Hezbollah activity across Europe. And it creates a headache for the European Union. Most governments in Europe have a markedly different view of Hezbollah than Israel or the United States, which see it as a terrorist organization pure and simple. Only the Netherlands agrees with that assessment. Britain has designated Hezbollah's military wing as a terror organization, but not the political leadership.

The motives of other European governments vary. Especially on the left, sectors of European political parties and public opinion tend to see Hezbollah more favorably than Americans do. They accept the view that it is a resistance movement, not a terrorist organization.

Nations such as Spain and Italy are also reluctant to confront the group because they have military peacekeeping contingents in Lebanon that are vulnerable to retaliation. In addition, key European powers such as France and Germany described their relationships with Hezbollah on pragmatic grounds.

French officials assert that if they designated Hezbollah as a terrorist group, it would cut them off diplomatically from a powerful force in Lebanon and the Middle East. Tensions between Hezbollah and Europe could further destabilize the conflict-ridden political environment in Lebanon, the argument goes.

The common wisdom has begun to change because of increasing exasperation with Hezbollah's actions in Europe, signs of involvement in crime and corruption, and its military role in Syria, experts say. Earlier this year, British diplomats began to push their proposal that the EU label Hezbollah's military wing a terrorist group.

This would curtail funding and political support for the group in Europe, but maintain a channel for dialogue, British officials say. U.S. officials and experts think there is no distinction between Hezbollah's political and military leadership, but they think the proposal would be powerful and timely.

"It would send a strong message," Levitt said.

The discussions about the proposal have intensified in the European Union in recent weeks, according to U.S. and European officials. Political and economic crises in Bulgaria and Cyprus have complicated matters, however, because those countries were taking a lead role along with Britain.

"We have been pretty active on this issue," a senior British diplomat said. "We are keen to do it. But it is a slow process."

 

 

       

What Is Steubenville Still Hiding?

Nobody knows exactly what investigators were looking for when they raided Steubenville High School in Ohio this week, as well as the local school board and a local computer forensics firm. But as the grand jury kicks off next week looking for charges in the aftermath of the Steubenville rape case looked upon by a nation, all signs point to something big. Or at least big enough to bring another social media uproar about rape, cover-ups, and big-time high school football. And guess which Big Red football coach decided to speak out again?

The Secret Search Warrants: A Digital Trail at School?

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(Investigators leaving Steubenville High School on Thursday with documents, servers, and computers. Photo by Jennifer Abney/WXPI, via Facebook.)

Toward the end of the school day Thursday, more than eight months after a Steubenville Big Red pre-season game turned into a serious of house parties and a series of attacks on a 16-year-old girl, local police and investigators showed up — as if out of nowhere — at Steubenville High. They stayed on campus into the night, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine told the Associated Press, executing search warrants that were either new or unheard of — and certainly fascinating. "Steubenville Police assisted the Attorney General in the search warrants," said William McCafferty,  the local police chief who "begged" for evidence when the initial crime was reported. Officials for Steubenville city schools, who have been publicly silent (save for one brief statement) since that fateful August night that brought a social media and judicial storm upon the Ohio town, confirmed the search in a a statement released Friday reading in part that "we have been from the beginning and are continuing to fully cooperate with the authorities in this investigation."

But this is a new investigation, and this week's search appears to have an urgency of its own, as DeWine's grand jury prepares to convene on Tuesday. The attorney general said the searches at Steubenville city schools were "just part of that effort" — an effort he announced after two Steubenville High students and football players, Trent Mays and Ma'lik Richmond, were found guilty of rape. "We cannot bring finality to this matter without the convening of a grand jury," DeWine said at the time. "I anticipate numerous witnesses will be called. The grand jury, quite frankly, could meet for a number of days."

Grand juries, by their nature, are conducted in secret, and the warrants executed on Thursday remain sealed — and so it remains unclear whether investigators were searching computers, paperwork, or physical evidence. DeWine has said the grand jury will be looking for, among other things, at the crimes of failure to report a felony, tampering with evidence. DeWine explained that "indictments could be returned and additional charges could be filed" in light of the jury, the nine members of which were seated last week but will begin hearing testimony and reviewing evidence on April 30. He also called the grand jury "a very good investigative tool as well as a very deliberative body," which makes the timing of the school search all the more interesting.

The attacks happened on the night of August 11, and Trent Mays and Ma'lik Richmond were arrested on August 22, the first day of school. Many students were at the parties that night, but key witnesses were granted immunity in the rape trial, and DeWine has said it would take extraordinary circumstances for that not to apply in any grand jury findings. As to who might be in trouble next, attention may shifting to adults, both educators at Steubenville High and the parents involved in the parties. Could electronic records at the school and elsewhere provide evidence for charges?

The search on Thursday, after all, wasn't limited to the school: The AP reports that the offices of the city school board were also searched, along with "Vestige Ltd., a digital evidence company in northeastern Ohio." According to its website, Vestige aspires to be "the leading provider of Computer Forensic services for the use in civil litigation, law enforcement, criminal proceedings and corporate policy administration." In short, they help their clients and attorneys with digital data. That could point to possible Internet correspondence or smartphone usage, which became a signature of a rape trial full of tweets, text messages, and lurid videos. Specifics will be hard to come by in the week ahead, and while DeWine has dismissed rumors of a police cover-up, his grand jury investigation may now turn to focus on policed finding new details about other adults — perhaps the most famous one in all of Steubenville.

The Powerful Coach Speaks: A Centerpiece of the New Investigation?

[image error]Steubenville head football coach Reno Saccoccia, fresh off a two-year renewal of his contract in a secondary role as Steubenville High's director of administrative services, granted a rare (if brief) interview this week to the Cleveland Plain Dealer's Christopher Evans. Saccoccia did not confirm or deny the suggestion—raised in court and playing out across social media and many online protests calling for him to be investigated or fired by the school—that he knew about the attack and tried to protect his players:

"Do you think I knew about it,?" Saccoccia asks me.

"Evidence suggests you did," I tell him.

"I have no comment," Saccoccia says.

That isn't very revealing. But, considering Saccoccia's past run-ins with reporters, like when he got "nearly nose to nose" with the The New York Times last fall — "You're going to get yours," he said, "and if you don't get yours, somebody close to you will" — the new interview is actually pretty civil. But it leaves open the question about how much Saccoccia knew, when he knew it, and whether he reported anything to the school or the authorities. During the trial last month, evidence pointed to Mays, the Steubenville quarterback convicted on multiple counts, had sent this text message to a friend:

I got Reno. He took care of it and shit ain't gonna happen, even if they did take it to court. Like he was joking about it so I’m not worried.

Again, this is just a text message. It could be just a bluff from a nervous young man who would become a convicted of rape in juvenile court. After all, Mays appears to have grossly exaggerated his account of the night over text message to the family of the Jane Doe victim in the morning after of the attack. He had texted Doe's father: "I just took care of your daughter when she was drunk and made sure she was safe."

As we have outlined in detail, Saccoccia appears bound by Ohio law, as a school authority, to report "that a child under eighteen years of age ... has suffered or faces a threat of suffering any physical or mental wound, injury, disability, or condition of a nature that reasonably indicates abuse or neglect of the child." And it appears he was not quick to act: He suspended two other players who filmed and photographed the rape of the 16-year-old girl, but not until eight games into Big Red's 10-game regular season. Saccoccia also served as a character witness for Mays and Richmond during a pretrial hearing.

The national spotlight will shine on Steubenville again next week, however secret the grand jury proceedings remain. The 135,000-plus signatures on a petition for the school to fire Saccoccia may grow. Saccoccia will also have a chance to clear his name. "No one is a target at this point," DeWine said after calling the grand jury. But he added: "We are not excluding anyone, either." Indeed, whatever is in those boxes at Steubenville High — or the untold text messages and emails the nine members of the new jury are about to review — will only make the spotlight shine brighter. Stay tuned to our Steubenville coverage for the latest.

       

The Senate's Passes Bill to End FAA Furloughs Just in Time to Fly Home

In a marathon session before a weeklong recess, Senators finally found a way to agree on something Thursday night, when they passed a bill to end flight controller furloughs. Thanks to the sequester, the Federal Aviation Administration has to figure out a way to save $637 million before September 30, so cuts must be made. The furloughs kicked in this week, leaving many airports short on air traffic controllers and contributing to thousands of delays. Then there's the safety risk on top of that. Big mess. However, the Senate's new bill would allow the FAA to move the $253 million it needs to avoid furloughs from its $400 million-strong new airport fund to make up the difference. 

This is great news for travelers. And would you believe that people are actually saying nice things about the Senate? For once, the do-nothing Congress did something that will actually make everybody's lives better. They failed to do that last week, when a series of much-anticipated gun control measures fizzled following a confusing vote and filibuster. This earned the upper house a week's worth of lambasting. (Jon Stewart did it best.) Of course, the Senate's been irking Americans for a long time, which is part of the reason that the approval rating of Congress plummeted to its lowest level ever a few months ago. 

But now that it's done its job, the Senate can sit back and smile for a second. The bill must still clear the House, where a vote's expected to take place on Friday. Thankfully, though, the Senators got their job done just in time to hop on planes bound for their home districts. America can breathe easier knowing they won't be stuck in airports for hours every time they want to fly. The gun thing is a done deal, though. 

       

The Latest Videos of Alleged Chemical Weapons Use in Syria Are Terribly Disturbing

Around the same time that the White House announced that it believe the Assad regime had crossed the "red line" President Obama set months ago, some troubling videos of alleged victims of a chemical attack made their way around the web. Originally uploaded to a British-trained doctor's Facebook page, the most troubling of them all shows several young men foaming at the mouth and others with tubes down their through. There appear to be some series of burns or lesions on the skin of a few victims of Assad loyalists' April 13 assault on Aleppo. It's grainy, shaky and only 30-seconds-long, but it's disturbing. The video is also embedded at the bottom of this post. Watch at your own risk. It's graphic.

This is hardly the first time we've seen a video of purported chemical weapons use. They've been popping up here and there for at least the past six months, while the Assad regime continued to deny that they were using chemical weapons. As early as January of this year, after Obama had drawn his red line, the State Department was receiving reports of chemical weapons use. Meanwhile, more videos came out, some of which might have served as part of the evidence that Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel mentioned on Thursday morning when he announced that the U.S., like Israel intelligence did this week, believed that the Assad regime was using chemical weapons.

It is tough to tell what's real and what's not on YouTube. Accordingly some have labelled the videos of potential victims as fakes, a way to stir up support and possibly resources for the rebels. Maybe some are. But there are a lot of these videos at this point. The New York Times pulled together a series of them on The Lead and adds some handy translations of the dialogue in the video, including this rather compelling monologue from one of the doctors. "We don't want relief efforts," he said. "If you're not capable of just sending us medicine, you will be held accountable by God."

Now that we've seen the suffering and heard the cry for help, will the U.S. swoop in to the rescue like we always do (or whatever)? Probably not.

This video is graphic:

       

Yahoo Chairman Steps Down So Let's All Talk About Marissa Mayer

Fred Amoroso resigned his position as chairman of Yahoo Inc., a position he'd held for only 14 months, on Thursday. Obviously, everybody immediately wondered what CEO Marissa Mayer did wrong. But there's not really any compelling reason to believe that Mayer had anything to do with the departure. Amoroso told the board that he only intended to remain chairman for a year. It's been a year and two months, and Amoroso even offered to stick around until June. 

But wait, weren't we talking about Marissa Mayer? No, not really. Nicolas Carlson at Business Insider is, though. In the moments after the news broke Carlson spoke to three anonymous sources at Yahoo who painted a problematic portrait of Amoroso's history with Mayer. Carlson reports:

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer wasn't his first choice for CEO. The day after Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson was booted from the company, following allegations that he lied on his resume, Amoroso stood up at an all-employee meeting at Yahoo and said that Ross Levinsohn was going to be interim CEO, and that he should be the permanent CEO. Then Yahoo hired Marissa Mayer to be Yahoo's permanent CEO. The minute that happened, the clock started ticking on Amoroso.

Well, that might be true. But the whole blame-the-boss thing isn't going so great these days. Earlier this week, Politico's Dylan Byers lit up the Internet with a condemning profile of New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson. Critics called Byers story a hit piece and scolded him for being sexist. Everybody gets mad at their boss, they said, and some gossipy statements from anonymous sources don't tell the whole story. 

It would be disingenuous to call Carlson's take on the Yahoo leadership shuffle a hit piece. There are a lot of other things that happened that led to Amoroso's departure slash dismissal. Some bloggers will jump on the bandwagon and wonder whether the Mayer conflict predicated Amoroso's decline. Others will revisit Mayer's no-work-from-home policy, a story that the tech scene just gobbled up. Here's this new boss being a boss. Everybody freak out!

But seriously, we wish Amoroso luck in his future endeavors. Perhaps he'll get to use that home office after all.

       

What Comes Next for West, Texas?

On Thursday afternoon, President Obama spoke at memorial service for twelve firefighters killed during the catastrophic explosion at a fertilizer plant in West, Texas on April 17. Delivered at Baylor University, in Waco, Obama's remarks were plaintive and measured — "We need people who so love their neighbors as themselves that they’re willing to lay down their lives down for them," he said — but otherwise avoided the question of what happens next for the small town of West — the victims, the survivors, and the West Fertilizer Company, which owned the plant.

Regulations

Most pressingly, it's unclear whether WFC — or companies like it — will face stricter regulations due to the explosion, the origin of which are still unknown. As documented by Scientific American, the facility last underwent a comprehensive safety inspection nearly three decades ago, since which it periodically submitted to partial inspections by an array of different government agencies, paying fines here and there. It's unclear why WFC didn't undergo more inspections; The Huffington Post noted that the company may have been exempt from certain regulations because of its size or the fertilizer industry's low number of injuries. 

It's equally uncertain whether politicians will throw their weight behind preventing these sorts of incidents from happening again. Labor reporter Mike Elk pointed out on Twitter that, during his remarks today, Obama omitted any mention of occupational safety regulations — a deviation from his eulogy for the 29 miners killed at an explosion in the Upper Big Branch Mine in April 2010. (In that speech he asked, "How can a nation that relies on its miners not do everything in its power to protect them?") The parallels between the West explosion and Upper Big Branch are debatable — fertilizer plants are not as notoriously unsafe as subterranean coal mines — but last week's explosion introduces new questions, like the acceptable proximity between homes and large quantities of explosive material.

The Courts

Fox News reported on Wednesday that, less than a week after the explosion, West Fertilizer Company had been hit with at least four lawsuits from insurance companies. One woman, who filed a lawsuit by herself, claimed "$500,000 to $1 million in damages" from the company, claiming the explosion at the plant destroyed her apartment, vehicle, and possessions. None of these actions are particularly surprising, but they do highlight the character of the local reaction.

The Los Angeles Times reported on Wednesday that West citizens have yet to muster indignation against either WFC or the government authorities charged with overseeing them. "The attitudes of local residents partly reflect the character of a small Texas town," the paper noted, quoting a resident who said that people tend not to bother each other. "But the views are also part of a long political tradition in Texas of shunning heavy government regulation despite some of the worst industrial accidents in the nation's history. Among other accidents, a 2005 explosion at a BP refinery killed 15, a 1990 chemical plant incident killed 17 and a 1947 fertilizer explosion killed well over 500 people."

So early on in the aftermath of the explosion, it's difficult to say what's going to happen next — either in government policy or in the legal system. But it's clear that something will happen, whether under updated regulations or the status quo. "Given the scope of the tragedy, experts assume OSHA will rack up every possible violation it can uncover, possibly pushing a tab into the millions of dollars," The Huffington Post noted last week. One of those experts told them: "[Occupational Safety and Health Administration]  will bang them up. ... They're going to find every little thing they can ... The ironic thing is you never see fines [that] big unless it's got national attention."

       

Nicki Minaj: Movie Star

Today in show business news: Nicki Minaj is going to try her hand at film acting, Duck Dynasty is huge, and MTV gets into the Scream business.

It begins. Nick Minaj, who wanted to be an actress before she was a rapper, has landed her first movie role. She's just signed on to play a supporting part in the Cameron Diaz comedy The Other Woman. In it, an unwitting mistress (Diaz) teams up with her fella's wife (Leslie Mann) and another mistress (Kate Upton) to get revenge on the bad guy (Game of Thrones's Nikolaj Coster-Waldau). Minaj will be playing "Diaz's opinionated assistant at a law firm, a woman on her third marriage." Ah, so it's one of those little supporting character comedy roles, a few quick and sassy things here and there and we're out. So it's not exactly a juicy role, but it might work for her, right? Will this be the beginning of a grand acting career for Ms. Minaj, à la previous rappers like Mark Wahlberg or Ice-T? Who knows! But you have to start somewhere, and this seems like a good enough place as any. I mean, what did we expect, some soft-focus Lasse Hallström film? A quiet character study from Mike Leigh? Hm. Now that I type those things I suddenly want them to happen. This Other Woman experiment better go well. [The Hollywood Reporter]

Welp, that Duck Dynasty show that everyone keeps telling me to watch sure is popular. The A&E reality series, about a Louisiana family who makes duck hunting gear, closed out its third season with a whopping 9.6 million viewers and a 4.3 rating in the 18-49 demo. Just how big is that? Well in that particular rating, it beat both Survivor and American Idol. A cable reality show about a weird family that makes duck noises beat two of the biggest American reality shows of all time. By a lot. Survivor only had a 2.9, while Idol had a 3.3. So Duck Dynasty creamed them. The end of an era, the beginning of a new era, whatever is happening here, something is happening! What does broadcast network TV mean anymore? And when will it stop meaning something someday soon? Who knows. Maybe not. Maybe people just really like ducks. And zombies. The Walking Dead is kicking butt on basic cable too. A zombie reality show can't be too far off. [Entertainment Weekly]

MTV has announced that they're developing a TV pilot based on the Scream movies. Yeah, you might also know the movies by their other name, Neve Campbell's Mortgage Payments. Who knows how it's going to work. I guess the killer will just be on the loose for a really, really long time? Or there are successive killers? Or there are no killers and instead it's werewolves and other ghouls and all the guys are shirtless. That's worked for MTV recently, so why not repeat the formula. Speaking of repeating the formula, Snooki & JWOWW has been renewed for a third season. Despite everything, those girls just keep clinging on. It's oddly respectable, isn't it? They've really done quite well for themselves over the years. They're millionaires, right? They've got to be millionaires at this point. Which is crazy. But, hey, that's America. [Deadline]

Here's a new full-length trailer for Pixar's big summer movie Monsters University, the prequel to Monsters Inc. that has our two heroes back in college and c--t punting everyone. Well, no, OK, they're not doing that. They're just doing nice Pixar things. Y'know. Like Pixar is always nice.

       

Frank Luntz's Secret Tape Reveals the Right-Wing Media's True Cruise Control

Republican message man Frank Luntz was secretly taped saying that right-wing radio hosts are hurting the GOP rebranding effort with their hostility to immigration reform. And, sure, it's kind of funny that one of the most important engines of the conservative movement — drive-time talk — has become so "problematic" for the GOP. But it's also amazing that Luntz expects talk radio hosts to pivot perfectly in sync with the Republican National Committee. We've gotten so used to the idea that conservative media parrot official Republican Party talking points that even Frank Luntz — king of the on-air focus group, prompter of Fox News teleprompters — is surprised when they fail to do so.

"They get great ratings, and they drive the message, and it's really problematic," Luntz told students at the University of Pennsylvania, one of whom recorded him with ah iPhone and gave it to Mother Jones. Luntz complains:

"Marco Rubio's getting his ass kicked. Who's my Rubio fan here? We talked about it. He's getting destroyed! By Mark Levin, by Rush Limbaugh, and a few others. He's trying to find a legitimate, long-term effective solution to immigration that isn't the traditional Republican approach, and talk radio is killing him."

Talk radio is not really killing Rubio. "What you are doing is admirable and noteworthy," Limbaugh said when Rubio came on his radio show in January. But Luntz is used to working with more cooperative media figures, like, say, those on Fox News. The Daily Show aired a brilliant segment on Luntz in February in which Jon Stewart dubbed him "Republican Batman." The show aired an interview on Fox and Friends in which Gretchen Carlson says, "You believe the error is 'smaller government.' You believe the adjustment should be 'more effective and efficient government.' Why are those words so important?" Luntz replies, "Because the American people don't care what the size of government is."

The most compelling moment was an oldie, from Fox in July 2009:

Luntz: You're calling it the public option, which is what the White House calls it -- are you sure it isn't the "government option"? …. If you call it the government option, the public is overwhelmingly against it... 

Sean Hannity: You know what? It's a great point, and from now on, I'm going to call it the government option.

Alas, Limbaugh, Levin, and the rest are not nearly as plaint as Sean Hannity. After all, on November 8, just days after Mitt Romney lost the presidential election with just 27 percent of the Latino vote, Hannity said, he'd "evolved" on immigration. In fact, he nearly perfectly anticipated the Senate's "gang of eight" immigration bill:

"It’s simple to me to fix it. I think you control the border first. You create a pathway for those people that are here. You don’t say you’ve got to go home."

By contrast, we can applaud Limbaugh for having a little bit of journalistic integrity.

 

       

Don't Believe the Summer Movie Trailers

At some point late last Tuesday, there was a collective sigh of relief among those who anticipate big summer movies based on their big summer trailers — which is to say, a lot of us, what with the parsing and hyping and revealing of movie previews these days. You see, Warner Bros. had released its rebooted trailer for its rebooted Superman franchise, and damn did Man of Steel suddenly look good. A lot of us had worried from the first round of trailers that director Zack Snyder was going to screw this one up, and of course he still might, but still: Here's a fresh reminder as we approach blockbuster season that previews aren't movies, and open minds make for better summers. Today's lesson? The Lone Ranger and The Great Gatsby might not suck either.

Let's take The Lone Ranger. Based on what we've seen from multiple trailers since Super Bowl Sunday, we've been down on on Gore Verbinski's $250 million adaptation of the classic TV characters, what with its seemingly endless train sequences and queasy racial politics. And a new trailer last week didn't do much to raise our hopes—you know, more trains, more Johnny Depp as Tonto in full stereotype mode. But coming out of CinemaCon last week, one exhibitor transformed from iffy to impressed based on, you know, actual footage from the movie. On Thursday, Drew Taylor of Indiewire's The Playlist gave us reason to hope following a special presentation of 20 minutes of footage. Prepare to get excited again: 

This looks like Verbinski at the top of his game – full of quirky tics and grand visual embroidery. And for those worried about the trailer's uneasy mix of humor and action, fear not - the two work beautifully here. The gags are funny without every being too much (when Dan asks Tonto what his crime is, he stoically answers: "Indian"). The audience was really loving it, too, and from what we understand from people who have seen it, is that it's just as much breathless fun as Verbinski and Bruckheimer's original "Pirates of the Caribbean" was. It's enough to put our fears to rest – "The Lone Ranger" seems like the real deal, and just as much of a potential heavy hitter as anyone wearing a cape or tights this summer.

So, apparently, The Lone Ranger is a movie that is as much about the chemistry between its two lead performers, Depp and Armie Hammer, as it is a freight train of visual wizardry. And, sure, we got some hints of that in last week's trailer, but it's more explicit than that. Because everything is more explicit when you give a movie 20 minutes instead of two. Just think about the possibilites when you've got two hours and some heavy air conditioning.

Because let's remember that movie trailers, even now that they're on a stage of their own, can be deceiving. They are made to get people in the theater, no matter what that takes. Consider the most recent trailer for The Bling Ring, which features Emma Watson predominantly. Then consider the reality:

I don't really 'star' in the Bling Ring. I am probably 3rd/4th of the lead characters. (In case media/marketing is a bit misleading.)

— Emma Watson (@EmWatson) March 9, 2013

Indeed, the Hollywood preview factory is an increasingly particular one—always has been. Matt Brubaker, an executive at the leading agency Trailer Park, told Hollywood.com that the "best scenes" often make the commercial cut "because our job is to get people interested in the movie, to go to the theater. Whatever the best combination of story, humor, graphics, music, or whatever that gets you to the theater, that's what we're going to do." And things have changed, Brubaker says: "Filmmakers are keenly aware of how trailers are scrutinized. The reactions to when a trailer launches — studios are very aware and reactive." And Brubaker should know, he and his team, for instance, worked on The Great Gatsby. 

Which brings us to the folks in West Egg. Gatsby is a film that has been hyped, then delayed, then hyped again this year with a wave of promotional material that has prompted a wave of emotions: It's F. Scott Fitzgerald, it's in 3D, its soundtrack is produced by Jay-Z, and Baz Luhrmann's last feature, Australia, flopped. And those trailers....so much green light, Baz. But that's the thing: the trailers aren't all Baz, and there is obviously a confidence lurking behind this film as it heads to theaters on May 10. That it's opening the Cannes film festival next month after its North American theatrical opening—that's a risk, but it also means that producers and the studio think Baz really has something. According to The Hollywood Reporter, "Warners seems genuinely convinced it has something special on its hands. Early tracking bodes well, and if the film fulfills its promise it will remind audiences just how unique Luhrmann is in today's film world."

At this point we basically know what we're getting with Gatsby, but the jury's still out as to whether it all fits together. And we're at peace with that. Now let's go to the movies. Summer is coming.