Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 156

The Ethics of Hodor

Season 6 spoilers ahead.

Years before Hodor inspired worldwide mourning among Game of Thrones fans, he inspired a medical-blog skirmish. In 2014, a few media outlets ran stories diagnosing the character—known for saying only “Hodor” while serving Bran Stark, a highborn child who can’t walk—as having expressive aphasia, a neurological condition restricting speech. Some aphasia experts pushed back, saying that while Hodor has often been described as “simple-minded” or “slow of wits,” aphasia only affects linguistic communication—not intelligence.

That a fictional stablehand could inspire doctorly debate highlights not only how seriously people take Game of Thrones, but how seriously the show and corresponding books take disability. George R.R. Martin’s cast is filled with what Tyrion Lannister affectionately terms “cripples, bastards, and broken things” who manage to wield power while facing stigma and physical challenges. Some characters are born different, but more are rendered so by a brutal world, like Bran, Jaime, and story’s various eunuchs and greyscale patients. Hodor’s backstory was left sketchy until Sunday’s episode revealed his condition to have resulted from Bran controlling his mind during time travel: In a vision of the past, viewers saw a boy named Wylis falling down as if in seizure and repeating “hold the door,” the orders he would receive in his dying moment decades later.

In the 2014 scholarly essay “A Song of Ice and Fire’s Ethics of Disability,” Lauryn S. Mayer of Washington and Jefferson College and Pascal J. Massie of Miami University of Ohio examined the disability themes in George R.R. Martin’s book series. They wrote that the saga seemed interested in “dismantling the clichés of disability, examining the costs of ableist ideologies, and uncovering the fear of mortality and vulnerability that compels people to build a wall separating themselves from the disabled.”

On Thursday, I spoke with Mayer, an associate professor of English who teaches about medieval and medieval-inspired literature, for her thoughts on Hodor’s demise and newly revealed history.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Spencer Kornhaber: What makes Game of Thrones interesting in its portrayal of disability?

Lauryn S. Mayer: Medieval and fantasy literature has been noted by a lot of scholars for providing a space to imagine something different: another world—utopian, dystopian—or a particular way of thinking, different social structures, those kinds of things. The thing that I found interesting with Martin was that he takes a world in which people are particularly vulnerable and he plays that up.

Look at Tolkien, for example. If you count up the battles, skirmishes, everything like that [in the Lord of the Rings series], the fact that out of the nine [Fellowship of the Ring members], eight of them survived and only one of them is missing a finger is statistically ludicrous. Martin is playing with the idea that because somebody is a hero or a beloved character they are going to live somehow. I used to call that the kids-at-the-end-of-Jurassic-Park syndrome: They should have been raptor chow, but we can’t have the kids getting killed.

By talking about disability as a very certain set of extreme conditions, we have a tendency of setting up these walls between them and us. But what Martin does is show how very, very fragile the boundaries between wholeness and bodily vulnerability are. Only in a moment you can go from being an “able” person to somebody who is “disabled.”

Hodor shows up in the books as somebody who cannot speak anything beyond what we thought was his name. But Martin is very careful to make sure that we know that Hodor can understand people, can follow complex instructions, and has absolutely appropriate emotional reactions to things. This is carried over to the show, too: The actor who plays Hodor spent a lot of time practicing how to say that one word in a way to connote different types of emotions. So it seemed when Pascal and I originally wrote the essay, we had was somebody who was functionally mute but had an active intelligence. What happens is that he is treated as simply a body to be ordered around.

“Martin shows how very, very fragile the boundaries between wholeness and bodily vulnerability are.”

Part of that obviously is class issues—that’s how you treat your servants. But also Martin is playing with the idea of “what do you do when you have someone who seems to have all the tropes of a developmentally disabled individual but he’s not [one]?” I thought it was interesting that Hodor keeps saying his name over and over again in a text that is trying to take the disabled out of stereotype and into individuality.

Right now with Hodor, I think it’s even sadder. It was made very clear that either Bran or the Three Eyed Raven are responsible for taking a seemingly bright and personable stableboy and turning him into somebody who either can constantly see his own future demise and is so traumatized by it that the only thing he can do is say “hold the door,” or somebody who has been stripped of agency to articulate any will of his own other than the purpose for which he has been used.

Kornhaber: There was ambiguity over his mental faculties, and this episode made it clearer that something really was deeply different in him.

Mayer: Yeah. It’s very interesting to see the fan reaction to this. He is being now either being retroactively rewritten as an automaton whose job was just to hold the door and who now is valorized because of this great sacrificial death—or somebody who is being painted as a Christlike figure who knows perfectly well what his own death is and how horrible it is.

Both of these things bother me a little bit because a character who had the potential to have agency was now turned into one of these other disability tropes: He was a heroic sacrificial figure, or the figure of lost purity and innocence. You see that over and over again in literature, like Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot, or Lenny in Of Mice and Men, or if you want to go into popular culture, Forrest Gump.

There’s something else: Bran, who of all people should have some empathy for Hodor, is kind of an abusive little shit. Because Martin makes it very clear in the books—and this is another way that Hodor has will and agency—Hodor does not want to be warged into at all. He fights him, but obviously he doesn’t have the mental ability that Bran does. And then he curls up like a beaten dog. Hodor could break Bran like a twig, but he doesn’t want to be violent; when Samwell gives him those dragonglass weapons, he doesn’t want to take them till he’s ordered to. And when you get to that scene where he snaps his chains and then snaps his tormenter in half, that’s not him, that’s Bran. Hodor is horrified by what’s happened. Bran’s always using an excuse: “I just want to be strong again,” “I won’t do this for too long”—that’s the logic of the abuser.

“Bran, who of all people should have some empathy for Hodor, is kind of an abusive little shit.”

Hodor’s supposed to be loyal anyways. You could just have Bran tell Hodor to hold the door and have him die sacrificially. But I think it’s very interesting that the show shows this early violation against a kid who could have grown up to be a perfectly functioning and very colorful adult.

Kornhaber: The point you made earlier about the show reminding people of their fragility—it seems like this revelation about Hodor’s past is another example of that. It wasn’t something he was born with.

Mayer: Yeah, and that’s the reason, I think, people react so viscerally to the show. Look at the reaction [videos] to any particular horrifying episode of Game of Thrones, like Shireen being burned to death or the Red Wedding. If you watch people’s body language, they are acting as if they themselves are being physically hurt, right? A lot of them will start curling into themselves. They’ll start touching parts of their bodies like you do when you’re injured. And if you look at the comments afterwards, you see the kind of thing where [it’s like] people dropped something on their foot. A lot of them are not even able to articulate complete sentences: “FUCK THIS FUCKING SHOW!” or “I can’t even, I can’t, I can’t.”

When I was driving back from Pittsburgh before I had this interview, I got cut off by a large truck. A three-second miscalculation, and you’d be having this conversation with someone else. And that [feeling], I think, is what Martin does. In terms of disability, it really reminds us of how profoundly vulnerable that we are—that the boundary between the abled and the disabled is so thin.

Kornhaber: And that’s, in the end, a good thing for attitudes toward people with disabilities?

Mayer: One of the things I like about Martin is that he doesn’t fall into these tropes of disability. Hodor is the closest— I’m kind of disappointed that he fell sort of into the sacrificial Christ trope. But think of the rest of the people who are disabled in the show. I think it’s a good thing that Bran is a profoundly complicated individual. He’s abusing Hodor but he’s not an evil character—he’s selfish and lacks empathy on occasion, just like everybody else. [By contrast] imagine what Dickens would have done with him: Tiny Tim.

“Can we only respect him after he dies in a suitably sacrificial way?”

Tyrion is a dwarf, but he’s not so much confined by dwarfishness as much as he is by his own internalization of ableist discourse. Now, again, this cuts across class and cuts across a whole lot of other issues, but I think that there is a huge step forward in the fact that you’ve got people in here who are disabled, who are complex, sometimes really annoying, sometimes heroic, sometimes selfish, sometimes unselfish. I think Martin is really trying to not put them into types or use them as some symbol for the suffering of humanity or something like that.

Kornhaber: In terms of real medieval history, how would someone like Hodor have been thought about and treated?

Mayer: Well, that’s a difficult, complex question. It would depend on a variety of things. Somebody like Hodor, who is of a serving class, who is immensely strong, who, let’s say, had some sort of tragic accident—he probably wouldn’t be treated too much differently.

He would be considered a useful body, probably tormented by some people, probably helped by others. The medieval church did stress that one was supposed to be Christlike in one’s actions, which meant one was supposed to be empathic and compassionate. There might be the kind of thing that surrounded the figure of the fool as someone who may have other wisdom or greater innocence—we get these narratives from places.

I’m leery about any sort of generalization turning medieval people into a homogenous mass. Class does have a huge influence. Courtly literature will usually show lower classes as being inherently less intelligent, less good looking, less able to do things. There’s the trope of the kid of the royal blood raised as a peasant but of course you know he’s of royal blood because he’s so much smarter or whatever. In a lot of cases, medieval courtly literature was self-serving because it was trying to take a class situation and make it an inherent set of qualities. So somebody who was born into a class to serve would probably have automatically been treated as if they were somewhat less mentally capable, which would have been encouraged by the fact that very few of them could read and write.

“Somebody born to serve would probably have automatically been treated as less mentally capable.”

Kornhaber: One part of the revelation in this last episode was that Hodor became this way though an act of magic. Was there a belief in medieval times that mystical forces were at play in disability?

Mayer: Disability could be seen in a variety of ways. If you’re disabled from birth, that might be because your mother had seen some sort of thing that caused an impression on the womb. If you saw a spider when you were pregnant, your kid might be born with extra limbs.

There was also the idea that the state of the body reflected the state of the soul. If you were suddenly disabled, it might be considered a punishment from God because of some sort of aspect of your living. Leprosy, for example, was seen in a lot of cases as a punishment for sexual excess. You lose control of your body parts because you’ve lost control of your body parts.

[Disability] also might be considered, though, as a privilege because you were living your penance on earth rather than going to purgatory. Going back to the idea of Christ suffering on the cross, it’s like, here’s your test.

Kornhaber: Can you think of any other historical, mythological, or literary figures that Martin might have been reaching for when coming up with Hodor?

Mayer: I think there’s a range of possibilities. Possibly St. Christopher, the person who was carrying Christ on his back. Martin could be [referencing] any one of the service martyrs who devoted their lives to something. Or think of the battle of Thermopylae, where you have 300 Spartans who are being hacked to pieces in order to hold that pass.  

Oh, you know what Martin might be thinking of? Princess Bride. Andre the Giant.

Kornhaber: Any other Hodor thoughts?

Mayer: This [Hodor twist] just happened this past Sunday, and already Hodor doorstops are being sold. It’s going to be interesting to see how the fans and the audience [talk about] Hodor now. Because even though Martin is very careful to say that Hodor understands what he’s doing, he’s always seen as the big lovable simpleton, and now, he’s being rewritten as a tragic hero. If you take a look at Imgur and various other [memes about Hodor] before this, really in a lot of cases it was mockery. The Hodor rap battle—“worst rap battle ever.” Or someone had Hodor’s chapter of George R.R. Martin’s book: “Hodor, Hodor, Hodor.” We’re talking about a character who’s obviously disabled, and he’s a punchline.

That’s what I’m worried about: Can we only respect him after he dies in a suitably sacrificial way? I’m not coming down on one side or another on this, because every time you talk about fan reactions you’re going to get a huge [range] all the way across the board. But it is an interesting thing to watch. Even some of the articles will say, “He turned from a punchline into a much heavier situation.” And I’m like, “Wait a minute, the guy’s mute and disabled and obviously there’s a mind there, and I think that’s tragic even before we realized what has happened.”

Alice Through the Looking Glass Is a $170 Million Shrug

Say this for the Alice film series: Despite colossal budgets, elaborate fantasy world-building, and prominent summer release dates, no one involved seems to have worried much about plot. In Tim Burton’s 2010 adaptation of Alice in Wonderland, the titular heroine (Mia Wasikowska) was tasked with helping the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp) remember how to do his favorite dance. In this year’s perplexing sequel Alice Through the Looking Glass, directed by James Bobin, Alice is summoned back to the CGI Wonderland to help with an even more pressing issue: The Hatter is in a bit of a funk, so maybe she can cheer him up.

Talk about nail-biting stakes. Alice Through the Looking Glass’s utter lack of a story reflects the larger senselessness of its existence: Though Burton’s 2010 film was an indisputable financial sensation for Disney, riding 3D ticket prices and Depp’s star-power to a billion-dollar worldwide gross, there’s been no detectable clamor for a sequel, probably because that film was an incomprehensible mess. Six years later, Alice’s return journey to Wonderland feels like a cynical cash-in from minute one, especially considering that its plot has nothing to do with Lewis Carroll’s novel outside of using its name and original characters. This time, Alice leaps through a mirror for no particular reason other than life in the real world has gotten a bit mundane. But if you care to dig deeper, the film seems to have some self awareness about its redundancy—not enough to recommend it, but enough to make it a bizarre curio rather than an utterly pointless franchise entry.

Bobin is, on the surface, an inspired choice for this sequel: An inventive television director, he made small-budget wonders out of the gently surreal musical comedy Flight of the Conchords on HBO, before helping to reboot The Muppets for the big screen. But he’s largely stuck having to ape Burton’s tiresome vision of Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland, which amounts to the most amped-up production design possible. Every green-screen location is laden with busy detail, every character caked in wacky makeup and embellished with CGI touches. Even Alice patrols around in a loud costume of clashing patterns and costumes, acquired in China on one of her naval voyages, since apparently she became a sea captain at the end of Alice in Wonderland (one of that film’s sillier plot developments).

There’s a laudable, if thuddingly obvious, note of female empowerment to Alice Through the Looking Glass—Bobin and the screenwriter Linda Woolverton smartly give Alice a lot more agency that she had in the original film, where she wandered blankly from set-piece to set-piece and smiled wanly at the antics of the Mad Hatter and all his friends. That film was an adaptation of both of Carroll’s Alice books, including Through the Looking Glass, though it took more direct inspiration from the 1951 animated Disney film.

For this film, Woolverton conjures a new plot from whole cloth: Alice is sick of the sexist skepticism her seafaring life faces in Victorian England, so she hops over to Wonderland to try and escape it, and quickly accepts the challenge of trying to cheer the Hatter up (he’s apparently feeling suddenly blue about the loss of his estranged family). Changing the minds of haughty 1860s high society seems so impossible that traveling back in time to reunite the Hatter with his father (Rhys Ifans) is a more plausible goal.

It’s a smartly cynical note to start a story with, but the film unfortunately has no follow-through, quickly descending into bland video-game plotting as Alice goes on her quest. She steals a steampunk time-travel device called the Chronosphere from the embodiment of Time itself (Sacha Baron Cohen) and starts zapping further and further into the past, trying to stop the Hatter’s family feud as well as reunite the film’s warring Red and White Queens (Helena Bonham Carter and Anne Hathaway respectively, giving about as much effort as they are contractually obligated to provide). Eventually—the film’s running time is a generously padded 113 minutes—she learns that you can’t change the past, no matter how hard you may try.

That’s all very well and good, but it’s also a maddeningly shruggy conclusion, so much so that I began to wonder if Bobin and Woolverton were having some sort of meta-textual fun at the audience’s expense. It helps that the most redeeming element of Alice Through the Looking Glass is its most prominent character: Cohen as the finicky, petty lord of time itself, a clockwork tyrant who consistently warns Alice that he cannot be outrun forever, despite her own fears of growing up and missing out on her lofty life goals.

If Bobin and Woolverton are trying to tell a tale of the immutability of aging and the disappointments of life, they’ve succeeded: Alice Through the Looking Glass took forever to reach screens, at considerable cost (a reported $170 million), and the efforts expended on it feel largely absurd. Perhaps the intention was to make a sequel so forgettable it made a grander point about its own silly existence. More likely, though, Alice Through the Looking Glass is just extra fodder for the growing trash-heap of weary franchises.

Aristotle's Tomb Found?

A Greek archaeologist announced Thursday he has located the tomb of Aristotle, the classical philosopher whose voluminous writings shaped the intellectual trajectory of Western civilization.

Konstantinos Sismanidis, the archaeologist who excavated the find, announced the discovery at a conference in Thessalonica. The site is located in Stagira, a village in Greek Macedonia where Aristotle was born.

The New York Times has more:

“We had found the tomb,” he said. “We’ve now also found the altar referred to in ancient texts, as well as the road leading to the tomb, which was very close to the city’s ancient marketplace within the city settlement.”

Although the evidence of whose tomb it was is circumstantial, several characteristics — its location and panoramic view; its positioning at the center of a square marble floor; and the time of its construction, estimated to be at the very beginning of the Hellenistic period, which started after the death of Aristotle’s most famous student, Alexander the Great, in 323 B.C. — “all lead to the conclusion that the remains of the arched structure are part of what was once the tomb-shrine of Aristotle,” Mr. Sismanidis said.

During his life, Aristotle wrote on subjects ranging from aesthetics to zoology, taught at Plato’s Academy, and tutored Alexander the Great, whose conquest of the Persian Empire in the fourth century B.C. led to the spread of Hellenistic culture—and Aristotelian thought—from the Nile to the Ganges.

Bill Bratton's Strange, Old-School Linkage of 'Thugs' and Rap

There are a few words that no public official should toss around lightly in 2016, and one of them is “thug.” Apparently no one told NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton. In the aftermath of a deadly shooting at Irving Plaza, a music venue in Manhattan, this week, New York’s top cop unloaded about “the crazy world of the so-called rap artists” during a radio interview:

Basically thugs that basically celebrate the violence that they live all their lives and unfortunately that violence often manifests itself during the performances and that’s exactly what happened last evening. The music, unfortunately, oftentimes celebrates gun violence, celebrates the degradation of women, celebrates the drug culture and it’s unfortunate that as they get fame and fortune, that some of them are just not able to get out of the life, if you will.

Bratton’s comments represent an interesting cultural moment, for several reasons. The reason that it’s unwise to talk about “thugs” is—as Megan Garber explored in a fascinating piece last spring—that the word is heavily coded racial language. You don’t get many instances of people referring to white hooligans and troublemakers as “thugs”; it’s a term generally reserved for black criminals, or those viewed as criminals, or even those who seem like entirely upstanding citizens, like Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman, who has only ever robbed wide receivers.

Related Story

The History of 'Thug'

This taboo is one reason it was notable when both Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and President Obama referred to rioters after Freddie Gray’s death as “thugs.” Both of them, prominent black politicians, knew exactly the racial valence of the word when they deployed it. That hardly shielded them from criticism—nor should it; political speech ought to be debated—but it was a conscious act. There are certain things that certain people can say, but others cannot. Bill Bratton, a white guy from Boston, should probably avoid “thug.”

One strange thing about Bratton’s comments is that it’s unclear who exactly fired the shots at the concert. Troy Ave, a Brooklyn rapper, was injured, and his bodyguard was killed. But the shooter or shooters don’t appear to have been any of the musicians on the bill Wednesday, although T.I., the night’s headliner, did time in federal prison on weapons charges. Nonetheless—as has been said countless times—it’s hardly as if hip-hop is alone in glorifying violence and drug culture, nor are concerts in other genres immune from violence. Put a lot of people in a crowded, hot space, and you’re going to get occasional fights.

Bratton mostly comes across as an old fogey—especially with the line about “so-called rap artists,” which harkens back to an age when hip-hop hadn’t attained the cultural currency and acceptance it does now. I was reminded of a passage in Marc Jacobson’s recent profile of the New York radio personality Charlamagne:

The subterranean scratchings of Kool Herc have morphed into a Pan-Zeitgeist, Pan-racial outlook that extends to big-time sports, reality shows, stand-up comedy, conspiracy theories, unending celebrity gossip, Twitter, and Instagram …. It has long since ceased to be possible for latter-day Tipper Gores to typecast the genre as hat-backward black street culture in which artists thought it was a sharp career move to name themselves “Murder.” Hip-hop is simply culture, in many ways—language, fashion, etc.—the culture, as mainstreamed as Elvis ever was.

The Irving Plaza shooting, and Bratton’s reaction to it, seem to both prove and disprove Jacobson’s argument: One of the opening acts actually calls himself “Uncle Murda”! And here is Bill Bratton, taking on the role of latter-day Tipper Gore! Yet the shooting is so baffling, so cartoonishly imitative of 1990s beef as to make the incident, and Bratton’s reaction to it, seem hopelessly anachronistic in an age of Lemonade and “Alright.”

One reason Bratton might seem like an old fogey is that he kind of is one. He also led the NYPD from 1994 to 1996, at a time when those cultural shifts hadn’t happened. His second stint as commissioner comes in a changed city, and after serving stints in Los Angeles and the private sector, he has tried a new approach since returning to 1 Police Plaza in 2014. Working alongside Mayor Bill de Blasio, he has labored to reform the police department, grappling with racial bias among cops and the malign effects of stop-and-frisk. That work has won him acclaim, even though he helped introduce many of the methods that led to the repressive system of random stops in the first place.

Now, however, de Blasio is reeling politically, facing low approval rates and questions about his administration. With the mayor weakened, Bratton seems to be reverting to some of his old ways. Although the city has moved to decriminalize marijuana, Conor Friedersdorf wrote on Monday about the commish’s confused—and confusing—recent stance on the links between pot and crime. Now comes Bratton’s rant about “thugs” and “so-called rap artists.” His new approach in New York has made him a national leader on police reform, in part simply because the NYPD’s size makes it an automatic model to other departments, even as he makes remarks like these. Bratton’s second stint as commissioner is shaping up to be an interesting case study in the capacities and limits of reinvention.

The Wave of Protests and Strikes in France

Tens of thousands of labor-union supporters took to the streets in cities across France Thursday to protest the government’s proposed reforms aimed at reducing the country’s high unemployment rate and boosting economic growth.

Protesters carried signs and chanted “all together!” and “strike!” in widespread demonstrations against President François Hollande’s new law, which would make labor laws more flexible in an attempt to curtail unemployment, which dipped below 10 percent this month for the first time in more than two years. Hollande’s government says the overhaul would lead to more hires. Union members oppose the law, saying it would weaken protections for workers.

The debate over the reforms has sparked many protests this month, some of which have turned violent. The Place de La Nation, a major square in Paris, was transformed Thursday into a scene of chaos as protesters clashed with police. In this video from someone present, one protester attempts to stop a moving police van:

Des manifestants essaient de ralentir les véhicules de la police, qui se rue sur eux... #manif26mai #OnArreteTout pic.twitter.com/tJJG65jw1V

— Vincent Boudghene (@VBoudghene) May 26, 2016

Police deployed tear gas against the crowds. Some demonstrators came prepared, wearing surgical masks over their noses and mouths. Others smashed windows of storefronts. In this video from France 24 reporter Claire Williams, some protesters throw homemade explosives:

Molotov cocktails at Nation #paris @FRANCE24 @F24videos @JDungelhoeff pic.twitter.com/M4A4w9bAHH

— Claire Williams (@clairewf24) May 26, 2016

Dispatches and videos from the protests assembled on Twitter under #manif26mai, which translates to “protest” and the date May 26. Police estimate between 18,000 and 19,000 people turned out in Paris, while the Force Ouvriere, one of the major unions in France, said 100,000 were present, according to France 24.

Earlier this month, Hollande used executive power to push the measure through the National Assembly without a vote. The Senate will consider it in mid-June. French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said the government could consider some “modifications” to the labor law, but said the core of the legislation would not change, The Washington Post reported Thursday. “There will be no retreat,” Valls said.

The backlash against the labor law spans the France’s energy, oil, and transportation sectors. Nearly 15 percent of the workforce of the country’s national electricity provider are on strike, protesting the same labor law, the AP reported Thursday. Workers at oil refineries and nuclear plants are also on strike, which has led to shortages at about 20 percent of gas stations in the country. Just two of the country’s eight oil refineries are working normally, France 24 reported Thursday. Port and dock workers, rail workers, airport technicians and engineers,  and air traffic controllers, have all staged strikes this week.

The Place de La Nation had returned to normal by day's end Thursday, according to reporters on the ground. But new waves of demonstrations are expected through next month as Hollande’s labor reforms move through parliament.

Convictions in the Ugandan World Cup Bombing Trial

A Ugandan high court judge found on Thursday seven men, including the accused mastermind, guilty of terrorism for the twin bombings that targeted crowds watching the 2010 soccer World Cup in Kampala, the country’s capital. The attacks killed 74 people and wounded 80 others.

In all 13 men had faced charges related to the attacks claimed by Al-Shabab; all were cleared of charges of belonging to a terrorist group because in 2010 Uganda didn’t recognize al-Shabab as one. Among those convicted was Isa Ahmed Luyima, a Ugandan, who prosecutors said was the mastermind of the attack on a rugby club and Ethiopian restaurant.

The BBC has a :

Seven people on trial in Uganda for the twin 2010 World Cup bombings have been found guilty of terrorism,76 counts of murder and attempted murder
Five people have been acquitted of those charges—and Dr Kalule Suleiman has also been acquitted of an extra charge of aiding and abetting terrorism
Another man, Muzafar Luyima, who was facing charges of an accessory to terrorism after the fact has also been acquitted.
In total there are seven guilty verdicts and six acquittals.

Thursday’s verdicts come after delays prolonged by accusations that security agents kidnapped and tortured some of the men on trial. The BBC reported the convictions are among the first of al-Shabab suspects outside Somalia, where the group operates.

Uganda is the largest contributor of troops to the African Union force that fights al-Shabab in Somalia.

The Humbling of Paul Ryan

The state-by-state fight for gay and transgender rights has reached the floor of the House of Representatives, and it is ruining Speaker Paul Ryan’s carefully-laid plans for reviving the congressional spending process.

Republicans and Democrats voted down an annual bill appropriating funds for energy and water programs on Thursday morning after Democrats succeeded in attaching an amendment to bar federal contractors from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. The provision drew bipartisan support only days after GOP leaders scrambled to defeat a similar amendment that Democrats tried to add to another appropriations bill—an embarrassing moment in which rank-and-file Republicans were cajoled into flipping their votes so the measure would fail. The attempt succeeded this time, but it became moot hours later when the underlying $37.4 billion measure went down in a landslide vote of 305-112, with majorities of both parties voting against it. The meltdown happened so quickly that it appeared to catch the House Appropriations Committee, which wrote the bill, off guard. The committee sent out a statement from Chairman Hal Rogers with a headline heralding its passage just minutes before it was voted down; it was quickly rescinded.

The defeat is less significant for this particular bill, or even the LBGT rights movement, than for what it says about Ryan’s push to return “regular order” to the appropriations process and reassert the congressional prerogative over federal spending. “Regular order” is insider lingo on Capitol Hill, but it refers to a bottom-up, committee-driven legislative process that gives more power to individual members and less to party leaders.

For more than a decade, Congress has tended to fund the federal government either through repeated stopgap measures or in one giant omnibus appropriations bill at the end of the year. Senior members usually negotiate both types of legislation in secret and then present it right before a deadline to rank-and-file members, telling them they have no choice but to pass it or shut down the government. Needless to say, this process rankles the rank-and-file, who chafe at how little say they actually have in perhaps Congress’s most important responsibility—the power of the purse.

The problem with regular order is that it generally doesn’t work as well in practice as it sounds in theory. For one, it’s messy. Ryan has promised to bring spending bills to the floor under what’s known as an “open rule,” which really means almost no rules at all. Members can demand votes on any amendment that relates to how the department in question spends money. And in an election year (or really any year), the minority party will always try to use this freedom to advance their causes and create political headaches for the majority it is trying to oust in the fall. Enter gay and transgender rights. What was once a wedge issue for conservatives has now become a weapon for Democrats, who are trying to exploit what they see as overreach by Republicans in states like North Carolina, where they have passed so-called bathroom bills to restrict transgender rights. The amendment from Representative Sean Patrick Maloney of New York, who is gay, passed late Wednesday with support from all 180 Democrats and 43 Republicans. After winning on the anti-discrimination measure, Maloney and all but six of his Democratic colleagues voted against the full energy bill, along with 130 Republicans. Conservatives opposed it either because the LGBT language was in there, or because the bill spent too much, or both.

“Democrats were not looking to advance an issue. They were looking to sabotage the appropriations process.”

“What we just learned today is that Democrats were not looking to advance an issue. They were looking to sabotage the appropriations process,” Ryan told reporters a few minutes after the bill failed. Still, he staunchly defended his commitment to “regular order,” reminding both the press and his own GOP members that this is exactly what it looked like: a more open process, “with fewer predetermined outcomes, and yes, more unpredictability.”

That was what Ryan had promised when he became speaker last fall. It is also what his predecessor, John Boehner, had promised when he took control of the House five years ago. But over time, the imperative to actually pass bills and demonstrate some semblance of governing ability overtook the desire to let 435 members have their say and allow the House “to work its will.” Boehner couldn’t strike that balance, and as even more time elapsed, the frustration of conservatives who felt that the leadership was constantly jamming them with unpleasant compromises bubbled up, and they sent the affable Ohioan back home to the golf course.

Not yet seven months on the job, Ryan already finds himself in a similar quandary. He’s got more political capital and more conservative support than Boehner did, but also arguably more problems. Ryan has so far failed to pass a budget for the first time in the GOP’s current six-year majority, and he was going to have difficulty passing spending bills even before Democrats started forcing debates on gay rights and the Confederate flag. (That’s not to mention the headline-grabbing tussle he’s been having with his party’s presumptive presidential nominee.) There was already little chance that the House, the Senate, and the Obama administration could agree on all 12 individual appropriations bill before lawmakers head off to campaign this summer. But Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell were hoping they could at least pass a few of the less controversial ones, like the energy and water bill, and make some progress.

Still, conservatives have opposed both the House budget resolution and the energy appropriations bill for spending too much money. “Republicans were right to oppose the bill,” Dan Holler, a spokesman for Heritage Action, said after the vote. “Americans expect their Republican leaders to govern as they campaigned—advancing opportunity and liberty while reining in government spending. Yet, so far this year the GOP leadership appears either unwilling or unable to stand up to a lame duck president on important issues facing the American people.”

That’s a slightly more polite version of the message Heritage and its conservative allies were sending Boehner in the years before they helped topple him. Ryan on Thursday pledged to continue the appropriations process, although he didn’t say whether Republican leaders would take steps to prevent Democrats from torpedoing another bill. “This work is just far too important for these dilatory tactics,” Ryan said. It seems like he now faces the same choice Boehner once did: He can have “regular order,” or he can succeed in passing at least a few more appropriations bills. But he may not be able to do both.

A Trumpist Workers' Party Manifesto

“You’re going to have a worker’s party. A party of people that haven’t had a real wage increase in 18 years, that are angry.”

That’s how Donald Trump described the Republican Party he imagines in five or 10 years, during an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek’s Joshua Green.

The phrase “workers’ party” is a striking one, since it conjures first and foremost the socialist parties of the 20th century. Does Comrade Trump mean to say that he intends to establish soviets and collective ownership? Of course not, although this sort of language—both the denotative reference to a “workers’ party” and the connotation of an empowered blue-collar class—go a long way to explaining why so many wealthy Republicans were slow to rally around Trump, or are still resisting. A party that has long prized lower taxes, a reduced social-safety net, and smaller government above all else is being asked to rally around a candidate willing to describe himself as leading a blue-collar workers’ movement.

Even so, the suggestion is intriguing: How much does Trumpism have in common with workers’ parties? On the big question—capitalism or collectivism?—Trump obviously stands opposed to the socialists. But move past that and there are some agreements on policy.

Domestically, for example, many of the U.S. parties that called themselves “workers’ parties” have pursued programs of strong social-safety nets; heavy infrastructure investment; protectionism for American workers; and minimum-wage laws. Moreover, they rail against a corrupt and oppressive elite class that pulls the strings.

All of this, of course, sounds familiar to anyone who’s been watching Trump. “The state or government is thus the political instrument through which the owning class exercises and maintains its power and suppresses the working class,” the Workers’ Party of the U.S. charged in 1935.

“They will do anything to maintain their power. They will do anything. They will say anything. They will spend whatever it takes because they know that if Donald Trump becomes the nominee and ultimately the president of the United States, the days of backroom deals are over. He will only be responsible to the American people,” Trump aide Corey Lewandowski says today. Trump’s talking point is dubious—he himself is an elite, with a long record of exploiting vulnerable workers—but its resonance is real.

Trump has waffled on whether he’d support a higher minimum wage, to the point where it’s impossible to tell what he’d really back (although with a Congress dominated by the Republican Party of today, rather than the one Trump envisions in a decade, any increase would likely be dead on arrival). But he’s argued strongly for infrastructure investment. “We've spent $4 trillion trying to topple various people,” Trump said in December. “If we could've spent that $4 trillion in the United States to fix our roads, our bridges and all of the other problems—our airports and all of the other problems we've had—we would've been a lot better off. I can tell you that right now.”

And he’s been a strong proponent of current social-insurance programs, perhaps the point that puts him most strongly at odds with the Republican Party as it exists now. “What I want to do, I think cutting Social Security is a big mistake for the Republican Party,” Trump told Green. “And I know it’s a big part of the budget. Cutting it the wrong way is a big mistake, and even cutting it [at all].”

While Trump doesn’t espouse the radical racial equality of American workers’ parties of the past, the way he speaks about black voters is similar. “The Negroes compose the most exploited and persecuted section of the population of this country,” argued the Workers Party of the U.S., prescribing better economic circumstances as a cure. Trump echoes this, from his two-dimensional view of minorities as essentially concerned about economic well-being and employment to his (now-)archaic use of a definite article:  “The African Americans want jobs. If you look at what's going on, they want jobs.”

Globally, Trumpism does not share the goal of international socialist revolution—but, once again, get past that and there are echoes. Above all, the two movements share a deep skepticism of American military involvement and entanglements overseas.

“The economy and politics of the United States depend more and more upon crises, wars and revolutions in all parts of the world,” the Workers Party of the U.S. contended. Today, Trump argues (likely implausibly, but so be it) that he would slash U.S. defense spending, even as he made the military stronger. While Trump’s claim that he opposed the Iraq war before it began has been debunked, his argument about the important of rebuilding infrastructure at home rather than rebuilding nations overseas is essentially anti-imperial. And Trump has expressed deep misgivings about American spending on military alliances like NATO or on behalf of allies, both of which would qualify as imperialist projects under the old rubric.

What else does Trump share with socialist movements of the early- to mid-20th century? While some, like the Socialist Party, demanded “absolute freedom of press,” others expressed skepticism of independent media, and socialist governments ran the press as a tool of party speech. Trump has tried to cut off unfriendly outlets from covering him, and repeatedly called for stricter libel laws as a muzzle on independent coverage. Meanwhile, Trump’s harsh attacks on rivals within the Republican Party (and even former rivals—on Wednesday, he mocked Rick Perry, who has fervently endorsed him) recall the fierce internecine factional battles of the socialist movement.

All this said, Trump’s opposition to collective ownership and global socialist revolution are significant deviations from what one expects from a true “workers’ party.” But his clever use of class grievance, decoupled from class revolution, as a tool of political gain is reminiscent of other political parties, particularly European “welfare chauvinism” movements. The connection between Trumpism and the Marine LePen-led National Front in France has been remarked upon before. Both are supported by swathes of blue-collar workers, many of whom live in rural areas. They are skeptical of foreigners and oppose immigration. They don’t like the nation being beholden to global obligations like the European Union. But they have no truck with small government, and no ideological obsession with reducing government “dependence.” Instead, they want to keep or strengthen the welfare state as it exists—simply making sure that only the right people are able to benefit from it.

One reason that these European parties have sometimes been regarded with suspicion is that continent’s troubled history of self-proclaimed workers’ parties that blend socialism and nationalism. In America, by contrast, such movements have been somewhat less common.

Nonetheless, there is one party that might fit some of these boxes: Identification as a workers’ party. Opposition to free trade. Anger at empowered elites. Against immigration. Focusing on an “America first” foreign policy. Driven, like Trumpism, by racial resentment, rather than aggressive racial equality. It’s called the Traditionalist Workers Party, and it’s relatively new. Trump might rather steer clear of the TWP, though—it’s been described as a hate or neo-Nazi group, and its invocation of “folk” certainly sets off alarm bells for many people. Perhaps not all, though. Trump has been rather coy about running white nationalists out of his camp before.

Heads Roll at Baylor University Over Sexual-Assault Reports

Updated on May 26 at 1:57 p.m. ET

Baylor University has demoted Ken Starr, its president, and fired Art Briles, the head football coach, over the handling of accusations of sexual assault on campus.

The university in Waco, Texas, said in a statement Thursday that Briles had been suspended and will ultimately be fired. Starr, the former independent counsel in the investigation into then-President Clinton, has been demoted; he will serve as Baylor’s chancellor and will remain a professor at the university’s law school, the statement said. Additionally, the statement said, Ian McCaw, the athletic director, has been sanctioned and placed on probation. Baylor named David Garland interim president.

At issue are complaints of sexual assaults that victims said the university had not taken seriously. An independent investigation of the allegations, conducted by Pepper Hamilton, the law firm, reported Thursday:

Based on a high-level audit of all reports of sexual harassment or violence for three academic years from 2012-2013 through 2014-2015, Pepper found that the University’s student conduct processes were wholly inadequate to consistently provide a prompt and equitable response under Title IX, that Baylor failed to consistently support complainants through the provision of interim measures, and that in some cases, the University failed to take action to identify and eliminate a potential hostile environment, prevent its recurrence, or address its effects for individual complainants or the broader campus community.

The allegations came to light after Sam Ukwuachu, a former football player at Baylor, was convicted in 2015 of raping a student. During his trial, it emerged Ukwuachu had been investigated, but not punished, by the university. Several similar reports have since emerged, including at least five women who said they were raped by Tevin Elliot, another former Baylor football player, who was sentenced in 2014 to 20 years in prison for rape.

The investigation by Pepper Hamilton found that two Baylor administrators, who were unnamed in the report, discouraged complainants from reporting or participating in student-conduct processes, “or that contributed to or accommodated a hostile environment.”

“In one instance,” the investigation found, “those actions constituted retaliation against a complainant for reporting sexual assault.”

The report singled out Baylor’s football program, saying the findings “reflect significant concerns about the tone and culture within” the program.

“Leadership challenges and communications issues hindered enforcement of rules and policies, and created a cultural perception that football was above the rules,” the report said.

Baylor failed to take appropriate action to respond to reports of sexual assault and dating violence reportedly committed by football players. The choices made by football staff and athletics leadership, in some instances, posed a risk to campus safety and the integrity of the University. In certain instances, including reports of a sexual assault by multiple football players, athletics and football personnel affirmatively chose not to report sexual violence and dating violence to an appropriate administrator outside of athletics. In those instances, football coaches or staff met directly with a complainant and/or a parent of a complainant and did not report the misconduct

“We were horrified by the extent of these acts of sexual violence on our campus. This investigation revealed the university’s mishandling of reports in what should have been a supportive, responsive and caring environment for students,” Richard Willis, chair of the Baylor Board of Regents, said in Thursday’s statement from the university. “The depth to which these acts occurred shocked and outraged us.”

Ron Murff, chair-elect of the Baylor Board of Regents, added: “We, as the governing board of this university, offer our apologies to the many who sought help from the university.  We are deeply sorry for the harm that survivors have endured.”

Connecticut's Death Penalty Stays Dead

The Connecticut Supreme Court reaffirmed Thursday its decision to abolish capital punishment last year, turning back a last-ditch effort by state prosecutors to revive the death penalty in the state.

In an unsigned one-page opinion in Connecticut v. Peeler, the court applied without fanfare its earlier ruling in Santiago v. Connecticut, which eliminated the state’s remaining death sentences last year. Five of the court’s seven justices concurred in Thursday’s order.

Connecticut took an unusual path to abolishing the death penalty. The state repealed its death-penalty statute in 2012, thereby eliminating it as an option in future trials. But legislators chose not to alter the sentences of 11 inmates already on death row, leaving the possibility that executions could still take place in the state some day.

In August 2015, the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled those inmates’ death sentences unconstitutional in a 4-3 decision in Santiago. The majority framed its reasoning around a broader attack on capital punishment’s flaws; the dissenters condemned the ruling as a reflection of the majority’s moral sentiment toward the death penalty.

Prosecutors asked the court to reverse that ruling in Peeler. Russell Peeler received two death sentences from a Bridgeport jury for murdering a mother and her 8-year-old son in 1999, but the case had little to do with his crime or conviction. Instead, as the Hartford Courant noted, prosecutors took aim at Santiago:

Prosecutors said in deciding the Santiago case, the court "did not confine its analysis" to the actual claim raised—whether enacting the 2012 law invalidated the death sentences of those sentenced before the law went into effect. The court made its ruling, prosecutors said, "for reasons having little or nothing to do with" enactment of the 2012 law and "erred in its ruling on lines of analysis and authorities the parties had not discussed."

Prosecutors also argued that the justices relied on "flawed historical analysis" to justify their "departure from well-established principles of law" and incorrectly determined that state residents prior to the 1818 constitution gave the high court the authority to act independently to invalidate a penalty.

At oral arguments in January, some of the justices shared their discomfort with reversing their own decision so rapidly. Justice Flemming Norcott Jr., who voted with the majority in Santiago, had also retired since the ruling and been replaced by Justice Richard Robertson.

“At a minimum, it looks awfully odd to have a case of this magnitude decided differently within months simply because the panel changes,” Justice Richard Palmer told the lawyers. “That's really what would be happening here."

Thursday’s decision reduced Peeler’s sentence to life without parole. Connecticut is one of 19 states to have abolished capital punishment. Thirty-one others retain death-penalty statutes, though only a handful of them carry out executions or regularly impose death sentences.