George Packer's Blog, page 195

The Unexpected Challenge: Roger Federer’s Wimbledon Quarterfinal Victory

Before Roger Federer played Marin Čilić in the Wimbledon quarterfinals, on Wednesday— before he pulled off one of the most remarkable performances in his remarkable career—it seemed as if the gods of tennis were protecting him in this tournament, as if they were taking care of one of their own. First, they gave him a draw to dream of—and then, by insuring the improbable upsets of his likely opponents, softened it even more. In the first round, the gods lined up Guido Pella, an Argentinian who has never won a match on grass. In the second round, they set up a cameo for Federer in the delightful tale of Marcus Willis, a country-club pro ranked seven hundred and seventy-second in the world. In the third round, they sent him another Brit, Daniel Evans, ranked ninety-first. In the fourth round, there was an American, Steve Johnson, who had just won his first grass-court title, in Nottingham, but who is best known for his success as a college player. While Novak Djokovic struggled in a rain-interrupted match on Court 1, against an inspired Sam Querrey, Federer cruised through his matches under the roof of Centre Court, playing men who were just happy to be there. When the sky cleared, Djokovic was gone, and Federer had an extra day of rest.

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Marcus Willis’s (Very) Brief Wimbledon Fairy Tale
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Bill Simmons Finally Looks Good on Television

Henry Kissinger’s Tactical-Nuclear Shadow

In the summer of 1957, Henry A. Kissinger, a Harvard faculty member, was featured in a front-page Times story that examined the idea that, with a new generation of smaller, more transportable atomic weapons, a “limited” or “little” nuclear war was not as outlandish as it sounded. Kissinger had just published a book called “Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy,” which he then adapted, in the form of an article, for the quarterly Foreign Affairs; a year later, the young Kissinger—he was thirty-four years old then—appeared on “The Mike Wallace Interview,” and his long march to fame and influence had begun.

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A Damning Reprieve For Hillary Clinton
Things Donald Trump Has Said About Hillary Clinton That Could Double As My Tinder Bio
Bill Clinton’s Bad Judgment

A Damning Reprieve For Hillary Clinton

Shortly after eleven on Tuesday morning, James Comey, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, announced that his agency wouldn’t recommend criminal charges be brought against Hillary Clinton or any of her staff for mishandling classified information when she was Secretary of State.

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Henry Kissinger’s Tactical-Nuclear Shadow
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Elizabeth II, the Brexit Queen

In October of 1940, when she was still in curls and called Lilibet within the family, Princess Elizabeth made her first national radio broadcast. It was designed to calm the fears of Britain’s children, as London was being pounded by German bombers for fifty-seven consecutive nights. She was fourteen. “We know, every one of us, that in the end all will be well,” she said, on the BBC’s “Children’s Hour.” Seventy-five years later, amid the increasingly chaotic aftermath of the Brexit vote, Queen Elizabeth II is trying to do it again.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

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Boris Johnson and the Crisis of British Leadership
An Independent London?
What’s Up with the U.K.? A Handy Lexicon of Exiting

Why Hasn’t Obama’s Clemency Initiative Helped More Nonviolent Drug Offenders?

On January 9th, Alton Mills was released from a federal prison in Mendota, California, after spending nearly half his life behind bars. In 1994, when Mills was twenty-five and living on the South Side of Chicago, he was convicted of conspiracy to sell crack cocaine and using a telephone to do so. Because Mills had been convicted twice before, of possession of less than five grams of crack cocaine, the federal judge on his case was compelled to hand down a sentence of life in prison without parole, under mandatory-minimum sentencing laws. At the time, the judge, Marvin Aspen, decried the sentence as “cruel and unusual.”

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The Vietnam War Is Still Killing People

How Will Bangladesh Respond to the ISIS-Inspired Attack in Dhaka?

On Friday evening, when gunmen burst into the Holey Artisan Bakery, in Dhaka, the restaurant was quiet. Few of its regular Muslim customers were dining out, having just broken their Ramadan fasts at home, so the tables were occupied largely by expatriates: a group of Italians out for dinner, another cluster of Japanese, Sri Lankans, and Indians. This was a crowd typical of Gulshan, a neighborhood of diplomats and corporate executives, which, with its tranquil streets and watercolor lake views, feels a long way from the traffic-choked bedlam elsewhere in Dhaka. Storming the Holey Artisan Bakery was, in other words, a result of diligent homework. It wasn’t until the next morning, ten hours later, that Bangladesh Army commandos broke the siege, killing six attackers and arresting a seventh. Most of the twenty slain victims were foreigners; one, a sophomore at Emory University, was an American of Bangladeshi origin. Thirteen people, patrons as well as staff, survived. Through the long, terrible night, one eyewitness said, the attackers tested the hostages, torturing or murdering them if they couldn’t recite verses from the Koran. “We will not kill Bengalis,” one of the gunmen said, according to the Times. “We will only kill foreigners.”

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

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Former Ambassador Robert Ford on the State Department Mutiny on Syria
Do F.B.I. Stings Help the Fight Against ISIS?

Facebook’s News Feed: Often Changed, Never Great

Facebook’s announcement this week that it would tweak its news feed felt all too familiar: Facebook makes changes, people howl, fortunes are lost, Facebook gets stronger. But then Facebook reconsiders and starts tweaking its feed again. Repeat. At different times, Facebook has prioritized inane apps, like SuperPoke; social games, like FarmVille; social news; or video sharing. The change boosts our addiction to the platform, and then Facebook, like a tyrannical boy king with a short attention span, tosses aside the toy and demands something shinier. This is, of course, Facebook’s prerogative. It owns the platform. However, every time Facebook’s news feed, introduced almost a decade ago, is manhandled, I am left wondering whether it has to change the feed with brute force because its algorithms are just too dumb to improve the service in a way that suits both Facebook—by making money and monopolizing our attention—and its 1.6 billion users.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

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The Week in Business: Silicon Valley vs. Regulation, Fed Politics, and More

The Volkswagen Settlement: How Bad Management Leads to Big Punishment

By many critical measures, the Justice Department’s announcement on Tuesday that Volkswagen had agreed to pay $14.7 billion to resolve claims related to its diesel-emissions scandal was startling. For one thing, it is the largest class-action settlement ever, billions more than the one Enron agreed to in 2008. It also far exceeds Toyota’s $1.1 billion outlay, in 2012, over flawed accelerators, and the two billion dollars that General Motors recently agreed to pay for faulty ignition switches.

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The Five Most Important Business Stories of 2015
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Donald Trump’s Case for Higher Prices

Welcome to the Week in Business, a look at some of the biggest stories in business and economics.

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Bill Clinton’s Bad Judgment

June should have been the month in which Hillary Clinton solidified her control over the Presidential race. She finally vanquished Bernie Sanders, who, if a few hundred Iowans had changed their minds and a few other things had broken his way, could have ended up as the Democratic nominee. As she turned her attention to Donald Trump, she seemed to settle into a five- to seven-point lead, while outspending him, twenty-six million dollars to nothing, in television advertising. Her massive financial advantage was matched by an enormous organizational advantage. Trump fired his campaign manager and is reportedly struggling to find prominent figures outside his immediate family who want to speak at his Convention, later this month. The two leading candidates to be his running mate are said to be Chris Christie and Newt Gingrich, who have abysmal approval ratings. In early June, Christie’s rating among registered voters in New Jersey hit a historic low of twenty-six per cent. The last time Gingrich was in the public spotlight and pollsters asked questions about him, in March of 2012, when he was ending his campaign to be the Republican Presidential nominee, his approval rating stood at twenty-four per cent. Meanwhile, Trump continues to alienate top Republicans, first with his racist comments about Judge Gonzalo Curiel and then with anti-free-trade speeches that were condemned by the Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers, two of the most important Republican-oriented interest groups.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
The Politics of the Benghazi Report
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Donald Trump’s Immigrant Mother