David Michael Newstead's Blog, page 102
May 1, 2017
April 23, 2017
April 18, 2017
From ABC: Mustaches trending in Turkish ruling party
By Suzan Fraser.
The prime minister has one. So does the culture minister. Even the previously clean-shaven ministers of economy and foreign affairs recently began sporting theirs.
Neatly-trimmed mustaches, similar to that worn by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, have become increasingly popular among government ministers from his Islamic-rooted Justice and Development Party, or AKP, ahead of a crucial referendum Sunday on expanding the president’s powers.
Some analysts say that’s no fluke in a country where facial hair has a history of political significance, and where ministers’ loyalty to Erdogan is being closely scrutinized following a failed coup attempt last year.
“These days, when Turkey is fighting terror organizations — and in the aftermath of the coup — the mustaches provide a strong and stern image,” said Mesut Sen, professor of Turkish studies at Istanbul’s Marmara University.
Historically, men in Turkey have worn mustaches not only to assert their manhood but express their political leanings. Traditionally, nationalists wear their mustaches long and downward-pointing — like the crescent moon on the Turkish flag — while leftists tend to grow theirs bushy and Stalin-esque.
Erdogan wears a bristly and tidily-trimmed moustache that is popular among conservative and religious Turks. Some religious men also grow beards.
A year ago, more than half of the Cabinet members were clean-shaven. Now only three of Turkey’s 27 ministers — including the only woman — don’t have facial hair.
The trend appears to have begun with a Cabinet reshuffle last year, triggering speculation that ministers were trying to please the powerful president by growing mustaches similar to his. Senior AKP officials continued to grow mustaches, sometimes coupled with beards, after the failed coup attempt in July.
One government minister, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity, said some ministers grew facial hair because Erdogan urged them to. He declined to give further details.
The trend is not limited to the Cabinet. The chief of Turkey’s intelligence agency, who was the source of controversy over his alleged failure to warn Erdogan about the coup attempt, first grew a mustache and then a full beard. Erdogan’s closest bodyguard, who used to be clean shaven, now sports a mustache, too.
April 12, 2017
Good Night and Good Luck
By David Michael Newstead.
Good Night and Good Luck is about 1950s America and the famous clash between pioneering journalist Edward R. Murrow and Senator Joseph McCarthy. Made during the Bush administration, the movie was always political and highlights journalism’s role in confronting abuses of power especially in a climate of fear and intimidation. Now, twelve years after it was made, Good Night and Good Luck is worth re-watching for several reasons. For one, good journalism is more important than ever and confronting abuses of power sustains our democracy. Yet, there’s another reason to watch the movie. Surprising as it is to realize, there’s a direct link tying our political past to the present: the disreputable lawyer Roy Cohn. Cohn was McCarthy’s top aide during the dark days we now call McCarthyism. Also involved in the infamous Rosenberg execution, Cohn would later in his career represent and mentor Donald Trump before being disbarred for unethical conduct. Having more than a few historical parallels, the film should be required viewing in the Trump era. The only thing that remains to be seen is if someone of Edward R. Murrow’s stature could even exist in our now fractured media landscape.
April 7, 2017
The End of Tsarist Russia
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By David Michael Newstead.
The End of Tsarist Russia: The March to World War I & Revolution by Dominic Lieven offers a critical reassessment of events a century ago. It’s a story of empire, geography, and long festering social problems that destroyed many lives and reshaped history. Below, I offer select excerpts from the book.
From Page 2
Contrary to the near-universal assumption in the English-speaking world, the war was first and foremost an eastern European conflict. Its immediate origins lay in the murder of the Austrian heir at Sarajevo in southeastern Europe. The assassination of Franz Ferdinand on June 28, 1914, led to a confrontation between Austria and Russia, eastern Europe’s two great empires… It is true that victory in World War I was achieved on the western front by the efforts of the French, British, and American armies. But the peace of 1918 was mostly lost in eastern Europe. The great irony of World War I was that a conflict which began more than anything else as a struggle between Germanic powers and Russia to dominate east-central Europe ended in the defeat of both sides… Worse still, the Versailles order was constructed on the basis on both Germany’s and Russia’s defeat and without concern for their interests or viewpoints.
From Page 61
Autocracy survived in part through tradition and inertia, in part through fear that liberalization would release class and national conflicts that would tear the country apart.
From Page 343 to 346
Russia’s World War I went roughly as Petr Durnovo, Russia’s most intelligent “reactionary” leader, had predicted in his February 1914 memorandum (Read Here). The Russian army was inferior to the German and was defeated in a number of battles, most notably at Tannenberg in 1914 and Gorlice-Tarnow in 1915. In a number of areas, German superiority in material was important: most notably in heavy artillery, airplanes, and communications technology. Deeper-rotted problems of Russian personnel mattered more. The relatively small number of professional officers and noncommissioned officers in comparison to Germany proved a great disadvantage. Russian armies also usually had less competent commanders and staffs than their German enemies. But the British and French armies were also on the whole inferior to the German until the latter was crippled by General Ludendorff’s spring offensive in 1918. On occasion, Russian armies did defeat the Germans. They were in general superior to the Austrians, whom they defeated heavily in 1914 and 1916. The Russian army also outperformed the British in the war against Turkey.
By the winter of 1916-17, the Russian army was tired and had suffered heavy casualties, including high levels of surrender and desertion. In a few units, there were signs that morale and discipline were slipping… In the Russian case, it was the rear, not the front, that collapsed first and undermined the war effort… As Durnovo had predicted, the railways became a major problem with very serious consequences for military movements, food supply, and industrial production. Neither the railway network nor the rolling stock was adequate for the colossal demands of war, but in addition industry was diverted overwhelmingly to military production, with repairs to locomotives, rolling stock, and railway lines suffering as a consequence. Inflation too its toll on morale and discipline among railway men, as it did across the entire workforce. Durnovo was once again right in predicting that Russia would face great difficulties in financing the war.
From Page 351
The end of tsarist Russia came in the course of a few days in late February and early March 1917. A dynasty that had ruled for three hundred years departed almost overnight and with a whimper rather than a bang, because very few Russians were willing to defend it.
From Page 365
For Russia as for Germany, 1914 was year zero. The catastrophe of World War I led directly to other, even more terrible disasters. From war sprang revolution, civil war, famine, and dictatorship. Hopes in the 1920s that the revolutionary regime might in time become more moderate were dashed in the 1930s as an even greater wave of famine, terror, and revolutionary development engulfed the Russian people.
[image error]April 1, 2017
What is Toxic Masculinity?
By David Michael Newstead.
It’s not especially complicated, I guess. Toxic Masculinity involves men harming others and often harming themselves. The most obvious examples are serious and widespread: sexual assault, harassment, suicide, and acts of violence. But more subtle examples are also pervasive in our society. These are habits we associate with being “manly” that are, in fact, detrimental to an individual. For men, that could mean what we eat, how much we drink, substance abuse, or other lifestyle choices that overtime can cause serious damage. For instance, I’ve had more than one friend admit without being asked that they didn’t believe they would live passed the age of 50, because of their unhealthy lifestyles. So if we associate manhood with stoicism and repressed emotions, to conform to this many men will basically drink themselves to death as a way to deal with their feelings. And that is an example of Toxic Masculinity.
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March 26, 2017
March 20, 2017
When Everything Changed
By David Michael Newstead.
When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present chronicles fifty years of social progress for women in the United States, measured across economics, politics, and American culture and is reinforced with personal stories from our recent past. In fact, it’s the personal stories that help connect us to those events, which may seem like ancient history for some people but are within the lifetimes of our parents and grandparents. A few excerpts stood out to me in particular and I share those below to illustrate the stark differences between the world of 1960 and the world of today.
In 1960 women accounted for 6 percent of American doctors, 3 percent of lawyers, and less than 1 percent of engineers. Although more than half a million women worked for the federal government, they made up 1.4 percent of the civil-service workers in the top four pay grades. Those who did break into the male-dominated professions were channeled into low-profile specialties related to their sex. Journalists were shuttled off to the women’s page, doctors to pediatric medicine, and lawyers to behind-the-scenes work such as real estate and insurance law.
Jo Freeman, who went to Berkeley in the early ‘60s, realized only later that while she had spent four years “in one of the largest institutions of higher education in the world – and one with a progressive reputation,” she had never once had a female professor. “I never even saw one. Worse yet, I didn’t notice.”
If all the working women were invisible, it was in part because of the jobs most of them were doing. They were office workers – receptionists or bookkeepers, often part-time. They stood behind cash registers in stores, cleaned offices or homes. If they were professionals, they held – with relatively few exceptions – low-paying positions that had long been defined as particularly suited to women, such as teacher, nurse, or librarian. The nation’s ability to direct most of its college-trained women into the single career of teaching was the foundation upon which the national public school system was built and a major reason American tax rates were kept low.
If a stewardess was still on the job after three years, one United executive said in 1963, “I’d know we were getting the wrong kind of girl. She’s not getting married.” Supervisors combed through wedding announcements looking for evidence of rule breaking. They discovered one stewardess was secretly married while the young woman was working with Georgia Panter on a cross-country flight. When the plane was making its stop in Denver, a supervisor met the flight. “He pulled that poor woman off,” Panter said, “and we never saw her again.”
Not long ago Linda McDaniel, a Kansas housewife, came across the deed to the house she and her husband had purchased when they were married in the 1960s. “It was made out to ‘John McDaniel and spouse.’ My name wasn’t even on it,” she said.
Men, in their capacity as breadwinners, were presumed to be the money managers on the home front as well as in business, and women were cut out of almost everything having to do with finances. Credit cards were issued in the husband’s name. Loans were granted based on the husband’s wage-earning ability, even if the wife had a job, under the theory that no matter what the woman said she planned to do, she would soon become pregnant and quit working. A rule of thumb that banks used when analyzing a couple’s ability to handle a mortgage or car loan was that the salary of the wife was irrelevant if she was 28 or under. Half of her income was taken into consideration if she was in her 30s. Her entire salary entered the calculations only if she had reached 40 or could prove she had been sterilized. Marjorie Wintjen, a 25-year-old Delaware woman, was told her husband’s vasectomy had no effect on the matter “because you can still get pregnant.” Even when a woman was living on her own and supporting herself, she had trouble convincing the financial establishment that she could be relied upon to pay her bills. The New York Times was still reporting horror stories in 1972, such as that of a suburban mother who was unable to rent an apartment until she got the lease cosigned by her husband – a patient in a mental hospital. A divorced woman, well-to-do and over forty, had to get her father to cosign her application for a new co-op. Divorced women had a particular problem getting credit, in part because of a widely held belief that a woman who could not keep her marriage together might not keep her money under control, either.
Many upscale bars refused to serve women, particularly if they were alone, under the theory that they must be prostitutes.
Other interesting topics covered in the book include the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, the Women’s Liberation movement, and the life of Jeannette Rankin. Likewise, the reader can observe changes overtime through the effects of Roe v. Wade, how divorce proceedings were conducted, and the growing education attainment as well as workforce participation by American women. Skip ahead to the present and women are 47 percent of the workforce, 55 percent of college students, and 15 percent of active-duty military personnel: all watershed developments from a historical standpoint. And while many of the excerpts above probably wouldn’t take place in 2017, it’s important not to downplay the challenges on the horizon. Today’s progress took decades. Confronting misogyny will take even longer. And the next fifty years of women’s history has yet to be written.
March 16, 2017
Social Media Propaganda
By David Michael Newstead.
Aldous Huxley once said that technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards. With that in mind, it occurred to me that these satirical propaganda posters about social media from a few years ago are surprisingly (and disturbingly) realistic depictions of life in 2017. Take a look and judge for yourself.
