Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 721
July 12, 2016
The West escalates with Russia: Make no mistake, a second Cold War is now official NATO policy
Barack Obama; Vladimir Putin (Credit: Reuters/Jonathan Ernst/Michael Klimentyev)
There have been 22 NATO summits since the first convened in Paris 59 years ago. If you study the chronology, they are more frequent during those times the alliance loses its declared purpose and has to find some new task — a new “threat” to justify the vast bureaucracy in Brussels, the comfortably seconded generals, the military exercises, the incessant production and reproduction of mass anxiety and, of course, the defense contracts that are NATO’s abiding raison d’être.
Hence, nearly back-to-back summits — eight in 10 years — from the late 1980s through the 1990s, when NATO spluttered to explain itself in the post–Soviet context. Hence, 12 summits in the new century’s 16 years as strategists flit from one “mission” to another, never persuasively, while adding a dozen members on the alliance’s eastern flank—all but one (Croatia) former members of the Warsaw Pact.
The NATO convention concluded last week was a standout — easily the most important of the post-Cold War era. We must not miss its meaning. NATO summits may not be your taste, and who can fault anyone for this? But Warsaw has everything to do with the life you will live in coming years. Think of it as “trending now” if you must — now, as in the next decade or two at a minimum.
Two reasons.
One, while talk of Cold War II has been common for several years, as of last week it is official policy in Washington and at NATO headquarters in Brussels. This is a grave, reckless step. In broad outline what just occurred is not unlike what Washington did in the late 1940s to initiate Cold War I. The consequences in that case cost millions of lives, trillions of dollars and endured for 42 years. We still wear the scars.
Two, President Obama’s foreign policy legacy is now complete in outline. We now know what he will hand his successor, and it is long on mess, short on success. Once again, an outgoing president surrenders ground by leaving unexplored nearly all opportunity for authentic progress toward sound, 21st century policies abroad. Once again, a new president must begin — at least on the foreign side—further back on history’s clock than the point from which his or her predecessor set out four or eight years earlier.
The disorder and dangers just baked into our cake are awful enough to contemplate but only part of the story. There is also the question of urgency. We do not have time for this, readers. There is too much to be done to let generals and profiteers, the one often blurring into the other, indulge in another global confrontation. Too many openings are lost, and this mistake is not free of cost—as Cold War I ought to have taught us.
National decline is not inevitable, I continue to insist, but it is made of wrong turns such as this. That, indeed, is among Cold War I’s greatest lessons: In what we take to be our moment of triumph we find defeat.
*
Numerous matters were settled in Warsaw. Cyberwar now falls under NATO’s purview; the alliance will support the European Union’s effort to police human trafficking across the Mediterranean. But other things matter more.
One, the U.S., Britain, Germany and Canada will each station a rotating battalion in a front-line state. These are respectively Poland, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia. Two, after many years of heated debate, nuclear weapons are to remain part of the NATO arsenal in Europe. Three, the alliance officially assumed command of an anti-missile defense system that, as of now, has components in Spain, Turkey and Romania.
There is no mistaking the magnitude of these decisions when taken together. I liken Warsaw last week to Washington in the spring of 1947, when Truman’s advisers and Senate allies determined it was time to sell the public a permanent wartime economy and a national security state. What followed was his “scare hell out of the American people” speech, so named by Arthur Vandenberg, a Republican senator from Michigan and one of Truman’s intimates. What followed that was $400 million in aid to the fascist Greek monarchy, and what followed that was the first Cold War.
Reality No. 1: The West is now to have troops closer to Russia than ever before in history. Reality No. 2: Russia has signaled no intention whatsoever of doing anything more than defending its borders, rock-candy mountains of unsupported nonsense in the press notwithstanding. Reality No. 3: The only reason these soldiers will rotate is because NATO agreed with Russia in 1997 not to station troops permanently east of Germany. These deployments are a disgraceful fiddle, thus. Reality No. 4: NATO officers continue to insist that missile defenses are intended to counter Iranian missiles. It now takes very big brass to trot this one out: Given last year’s nuclear accord, the standing explanation no longer passes even as a fig leaf.
“NATO poses no threat to any country,” Jens Stoltenberg, the alliance’s secretary-general, said as the summit concluded. “We do not want a new Cold War. We do not want a new arms race. And we do not seek confrontation.”
Think about this. Why would the inveterately hawkish Stoltenberg say such a thing? Nothing too complicated: The man doth protest too much is my simple read. All four of Stoltenberg’s staccato assertions are 180 degrees upside down: NATO is purposely provoking Moscow (so as to call Moscow provocative); it famously misses the Cold War’s clarity and is desperate to recreate it; ditto the profits deriving from an arms race, and confrontation is the very plot device driving NATO’s Cold War II narrative.
*
The Warsaw gathering completes a certain picture, in my read. It defines one-third of the policy framework President Obama will leave on the Oval Office desk when he closes the door for the last time next Jan. 20.
Across the Atlantic, two things to note. One, the West’s confrontation with Russia is now consolidated as policy and provisioned with sufficient funding and military hardware to carry it well into the future. Two, this posture continues to rip the fabric of trans-Atlantic relations. Obama was pitifully fervent in his desire to put Warsaw across as a display of unity. As with Stoltenberg’s remarks, just the opposite was the case.
“We don’t want a Cold War,” Frank–Walter Steinmeier, Germany’s thoughtful foreign minister, said at a press conference as the summit concluded. “Rather, we’re putting dialogue alongside our defense readiness.” Steinmeier spoke for many—the French, the Finns, the Italians among them. In consequence, the summit scheduled a NATO–Russia Council meeting that is to convene as early as this week.
The take-home from Warsaw: an escalating danger of war with Russia, discord among traditional allies and altogether greater American isolation.
Across the Pacific, China runs a close second to Russia’s Enemy No. 1 status. As alert readers will have noted, Defense Secretary Carter has been assiduously cultivating tensions with China over jurisdiction in the South China Sea since last spring. The Hague’s ruling Tuesday on a case brought by the Philippines three years ago — so far as I can make out at the urging of then-Secretary of State Clinton — further alienates Beijing but accomplishes nothing more.
Finally — the stool’s third leg — there is Obama’s effort to reduce America’s direct military exposure abroad, notably but not only in the Middle East, by the use of drones, air campaigns and proxies. His failing on this point is simple, as noted at length in a previous column: Obama has addressed the means by which policy is executed while leaving the ends of policy, America’s objectives, entirely unquestioned. At the very best this leaves us more or less where we started when Obama was elected.
In last week’s column I suggested that Barack Obama was in essence a captive of the cliques and bureaucracies that exercise power in all matters related to national security, foreign policy and the defense posture. Consider Warsaw in this context.
The NATO summit caps a very active few months for this administration, and the interim offers some support for the thesis. In my view, we have watched this year as the Pentagon, the C.I.A. and the rest of our sprawling national security apparatus put down markers such that the path open to Obama’s successor is clear.
What are we doing in the world? What are our intentions abroad? Whether he wanted to or not, Obama never asked these, the most essential questions. Whoever follows him need not bother: Answers will be waiting on the Oval Office desk.
July 11, 2016
With friends like these: More reasons why LGBT people should fear a Donald Trump presidency
Mike Pence, Donald Trump, Michele Bachmann (Credit: AP/Reuters/Michael Conroy/Scott Audette/Susan Walsh/Photo montage by Salon)
For someone who claims to be a “friend to the gays,” Donald Trump sure does like to hang around with homophobes.
Since the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, which claimed the lives of 49 people, Trump has been repeatedly trying to sell himself as an ally to the LGBT community—or at least better than Hillary Clinton on gay rights. “The LGBT community, the gay community, the lesbian community—they are so much in favor of what I’ve been saying over the last three or four days,” Trump famously claimed at a Houston rally in June. “Ask the gays what they think and what they do, in, not only Saudi Arabia, but many of these countries, and then you tell me: Who’s your friend, Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton?”
Trump, who has criticized the Clintons Foundation’s decision to accept donations from countries with a poor LGBT rights record (even while having business ties to many of the same nations), later reiterated the same point on Twitter. “Thank you to the LGBT community!” he wrote. “I will fight for you while Hillary brings in more people that will threaten your freedoms and beliefs.”
But while publicly courting the votes of LGBT Republicans like Caitlyn Jenner, who recently had a “supportive” call with the billionaire CEO, he has aligned himself with extreme anti-gay factions of the right wing in private. The businessman has been referred to as a “moderate” on the subject of gay rights, with even the New York Times crediting his “more accepting views” on the LGBT community, but if a politician is to be judged by the company he keeps, a Trump presidency stands to be the most brutal assault on the dignity of queer people since Reagan’s.
Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump have a great deal in common. They are two men who don’t fit the traditional image of what a president looks like. Reagan was a well-known actor before he was a politician, while Trump—the son of a businessman—was born into the world of finance, the embodiment of 1980s Wall Street excess (he may as well be ripped out of “Bonfire of the Vanities”). Before their campaigns proved popular with a great number of Americans, these men’s political ambitions were considered a joke: After all, who would ever vote for a celebrity for president?
But most importantly, Reagan was reportedly a moderate on gay rights in private. During his time as the governor of California, Reagan opposed a ban on LGBT people teaching in public schools. In 1984, the Reagan Administration was the first presidency to host a gay couple in the White House—when Ronald and Nancy Reagan’s interior decorator, Ted Graber, stayed over in the Reagans’ private quarters with his partner, Archie Case. “Indeed, all the available evidence suggests that Ronald Reagan is a closet tolerant,” concluded the Washington Post.
But if his opposition to gay rights was merely “for political purposes,” as the paper suggested, the end result was no different: Thousands of queer people died in the streets during the 1980s while the White House refused to acknowledge them. Ronald Reagan wouldn’t publicly say the word “AIDS” until 1985—four years after the New York Times first reported the outbreak of a “rare cancer seen in 41 homosexuals.” When the administration was first asked about the disease (referred to by reporter Lester Kinsolving as the “gay plague”) on Oct. 15, 1982, Reagan’s press secretary laughed at the question.
It makes sense that as someone who came up through the Hollywood system, Ronald Reagan would have colleagues and acquaintances who were gay, but Reagan’s private tolerance did not translate into public advocacy. 20,849 people died from AIDS during his four years of silence, including the another of the Reagans’ gay friends, closeted actor Rock Hudson.
If Reagan’s personal views on LGBT people were a product of the liberal culture of Hollywood, Trump’s are likely a result of his business background. “Trump has spent his adult life in the upper echelon of New York high society, slithering between the ritzy business world and the gilded social scene,” writes Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern. “He has undoubtedly interacted extensively with gay people and maybe even counts a few as friends. He is well-educated and not very religious. Donald Trump simply has no reason to be homophobic.”
Before running for president, Trump has supported legal recognition for same-sex domestic partners, amending the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to include LGBT people, and the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” His 2000 book, “The America We Deserve,” further hinted at the need for nondiscrimination protections in the workplace to protect LGBT employees.
“I want to do everything possible to see that regular Americans can enjoy the same opportunity for success and security that I have had,” he wrote. “That means the American Dream unencumbered by bureaucratic ineptitude, government regulation, confiscatory tax policies, racism, discrimination against women, or discrimination against people based on sexual orientation. We all must have equal access to the American Dream. It’s a dream we deserve and a dream worth fighting for.”
But since ramping up his ambitions for the presidency, Trump has repeatedly rolled back those views. Back in 2011, the CEO came out against same-sex unions in an interview with the Des Moines Register. “I’m not in favor of gay marriage,” he said. “They should not be able to marry. … I just don’t feel good about it.” He recently reiterated those views to Fox News’ Chris Wallace, promising that, if elected, he would appoint Supreme Court justices who would overturn the 2015 ruling on marriage equality. “I would be very strong on putting certain judges on the bench that maybe could change things,” he said.
To Republicans unconvinced by his change of his heart, Donald Trump offered the following words during a February sitdown with Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network: “Trust me.”
Trump, though, has had extraordinary difficulty getting many conservatives to do just that. Since launching his campaign last year, he has fought not only criticism of his stance on LGBT issues but also conspiracy theories that he’s a secret Democrat. Critics suggest that he’s a plant from the Clinton camp, sent on a mission to derail the GOP primaries. Former White House hopeful Jeb Bush added fuel to that fire when he tweeted last December: “Maybe Donald negotiated a deal with his buddy Hillary Clinton. Continuing this path will put her in the White House.”
Trump did not help his case when rumors most recently swirled that he was considering retired Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn for the vice presidential slot on his campaign ticket. Flynn is a registered Democrat.
But oddsmakers have their money on another contender, and it’s not Newt Gingrich. Reports suggest that Trump is close to tapping Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, with one-time Trump adviser Michael Caputo telling the Indianapolis Star last week that the choice is all but a done deal. “The Republican Party has a deep bench of qualified vice presidential candidates,” he said. “Some ring certain bells, and others ring other bells. I think Mike Pence rings the most bells of all.”
If Pence’s name sounds the alarm for LGBT people, it’s because Pence was behind the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the 2015 religious liberty laws that allowed businesses to discriminate against customers based on their gender identity or sexual orientation. That means, for example, that if a caterer wanted to deny its services to a same-sex couple’s wedding, he could legally do so under RFRA. (Remember the “homophobic pizzeria?”) After a corporate boycott that cost the state $60 million, the law was “fixed” just months after it was passed.
That bill proved a tipping point for anti-LGBT legislation. Around the time of its passage, 28 states introduced laws targeting queer people—including Georgia, Missouri, and Texas—and many of these pieces of legislation were markedly similar to the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Just a week after HB 2 was signed into law, Mississippi passed its own “religious liberty” bill, known as House Bill 1523. HB 1523 was recently struck down following a federal court ruling, but as of April, over 100 anti-LGBT bills were still under consideration by state legislatures.
Given a national platform, Pence could do immeasurable harm to queer and transgender people, but he is only one of many destructive forces with whom Trump has threatened to align himself.
In June, Trump announced the formation of his religious advisory board, which amounted to a Justice League of anti-gay hate. Appointees included Michelle Bachmann, James Dobson, Richard Land, Harry Jackson, Ronnie Floyd, James Robison, and Robert Jeffress. Bachmann, who ran for president in 2012, operates a clinic with her husband that practices gay conversion therapy, while Dobson is the head of Focus on the Family, the longtime anti-gay lobby group.
Other names may be less familiar to you, but they should be no less concerning. Land, president of Southern Evangelical Seminary, said that the “dirty little secret” of the gay community is that a “high percentage of adult male homosexuals in America were sexually molested when they were children.” Jackson, who serves as a Pentecostal bishop, has called homosexuality “walking pneumonia.” Floyd, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, has said that ministers should refuse to officiate same-sex weddings. Robison, a televangelist, called same-sex partnerships an “assault not only on truth, natural acts, and marriage, but an attack on the very possibility that God gave His creation a reliable standard to follow.”
Jeffress, though, has been particularly virulent in his condemnation of LGBT people. The evangelical pastor, who is the host of TV’s “Pathway to Victory,” has claimed that acceptance of homosexuality “will pave the way for that future world dictator, the Antichrist.” Jeffress has also called long-term gay relationships a “myth,” likened same-sex intercourse to pedophilia and beastiality, and erroneously claimed that 70 percent of gay men have AIDS.
If that’s not enough, he stole copies of LGBT-inclusive parenting books from the Wichita Falls, Texas, library in 1998, vowing to never give them back. And this is the guy who is not only a whisper away from the likely GOP presidential candidate but also posed for a cheerful photo of the two men flashing a thumbs up. (Trump even retweeted it.)
For Mr. Trump, who also has been holding behind closed doors meetings with noted anti-gay figures like Pat Robertson, E.W. Jackson and Tony Perkins, kowtowing to the interests of homophobic extremists is not merely lip service. The CEO’s policies on the gay community have notably shifted to the far right in recent months. After initially wagging his finger at HB 2, he now claims he supports the bill. Trump is also in favor of the “First Amendment Defense Act,” a bill that, according to the Human Rights Campaign, would “enable Kim Davis-style discrimination against LGBT people nationwide.”
Most powerfully, he pointed out on a “Face the Nation” appearance earlier in the year how easily an incoming president could reverse every single executive order made by the previous administration on the first day in office. For Trump, that could mean “un-signing,” as he says, an Obama executive order preventing the federal government from hiring contractors that discriminate against workers based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. That sounds very different than the man who once envisioned a country free of identity-based discrimination.
If voters back Trump in November, LGBT people won’t get the America we deserve, as Trump effusively promised in his 2000 manifesto. We will get the America of 35 years ago.
Solidarity with Black Lives Matter: Asian Americans speaking out against police brutality
(Credit: Reuters/Brian Webb)
In the wake of the recent police shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, Asian-American activists are lending their voices to fight anti-Black narratives and saying loudly that yes, #BlackLivesMatter.
He was a “Chinese” man. That’s how Philando Castile’s girlfriend Diamond Reynolds identified the officer involved on the graphic live-streamed Facebook video of his death. The press has since identified Jeronimo Yanez as Hispanic, but Asian-Americans activists were concerned that the media would turn this officer into another Peter Liang, the New York City police officer convicted (and, some defenders argued, scapegoated) for shooting and killing an unarmed Black man named Akai Gurley. The Asian-American community found itself fractured over the verdict. The fact that Liang will not serve prison time despite being found guilty of manslaughter shows that police officers enjoy different rules than civilians. It also reveals the ways in which race can be used as a diversion to keep well-intentioned individuals from clearly seeing the workings of white institutionalism that are steadily corroding human rights and personal freedoms.
Increasingly, Asian Americans refuse to be used as a wedge group simultaneously propping up racist institutional systems that too often target Black men as victims (read the storifyed tweets by Jeff Yang here). “It is too easy for us to be pitted against black and brown people as the Model Minority or even to just ignore current problems and be safe in the bubble of college-educated, suburban, professional, safe America,” notes blogger Grace Hwang Lynch, “not realizing what we are quietly sacrificing for this ‘comfort.’”
Crucially, the myth of the model minority obscures the struggles of working-class Asian Americans holding menial jobs who also face discrimination on socio-economic grounds. As blogger Jenn Fang writes, “Do we choose a society where the lives of Black and Brown people — including Black and Brown Asian Americans — has value? Or, do we continue to uphold a system that places no value in the lives of non-White people, including our own; and wherein only some can place their trust in our law enforcement?”
Alert to the reality that anti-Black narratives undermine solidarity among minority groups, young Asian Americans responded to the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile by putting together a crowdsourced open letter meant to explain #BlackLivesMatter to their traditionalist mothers, fathers, uncles, and aunties. Drafted by millennial Christina Xu, the letter has already been translated into dozens of languages including Punjabi, Benagli, and Urdu. The project, called “Letters for Black Lives,” went live this afternoon.
The fact that Jeronimo Yanez is not Chinese does not relieve Asian Americans of the moral and ethical responsibility of fighting for justice for Black lives, just as the fact that Yanez is Hispanic does not magically excuse white cops from being complicit in a system committed to preserving a racialized social hierarchy. Mere hours before Philando Castile died, Alton Sterling had been shot in the back by two white police officers, and 557 other individuals have been shot and killed by the police force this year. So far. Run by the Washington Post, the tally is live; the numbers rose as I watched. Numerically speaking, most of the victims (238) of police violence have been White, but Black Americans (123) and Natives are being disproportionately targeted at disproportionately high rates. Last year, the Washington Post’s analysis of police shootings in 2015 showed that black men were seven times more likely than white men to die by police gunfire while unarmed. Looking at data from 1980-2012, ProPublica found that young Black men were 21 times more likely to be shot by the police than their white counterparts.
To some, these same studies prove that Black men are forcing the police to shoot them at higher rates because they are prone to greater violence. It is here that stereotypes regarding “quiet” and “submissive” Asian Americans can help shift perceptions when police blame their victims.
In my various run-ins with law enforcement as an excitable preacher’s daughter, I have learned what not to do. Don’t move until the officers explicitly tell you to. Don’t protest. Don’t ask questions. Don’t claim you know your rights. Don’t try to be helpful by showing them documents they’ve demanded. (You have to wait for them to tell you to get them.) Use your words, but only to answer direct questions, preferably sticking to Yes or No. Don’t prattle on, because small talk makes cops think you’re nervous, and in cop-brain this means you’re hiding something. Try not to cry. It can be difficult when every action on their part is suffused with the assumption of your guilt, even if you’re just sitting in the park with a book, trying not to breathe more than your share of the free air. Race and gender may well account for the difference between getting singled out for harassment (small Asian woman), and being viewed as a threat to the social order (large Black man) that must be stopped by fatal means if necessary. However terrible it may feel, the first is a form of politically-sanctioned bullying. The latter is terrorism enacted against a specific community, whose abject dead bodies we now see practically every day on the news.
Over time, the asymmetrical imposition of state power on vulnerable bodies has imparted its lessons, and “good” Asian Americans are increasingly convinced that it’s impossible to be good enough to escape a hierarchical system that insists upon casting non-Whites as perpetually Other and alien. Real life means that we need police, and many officers are honorable people who do a tough and dangerous job. But respecting the work that individuals do doesn’t exempt the institution from criticism, and when power abets power, protecting wealth and property instead of serving the common cause of justice, you arrive quickly at a place where systemic abuse of the poor, the disenfranchised, and the powerless becomes the untenable new normal. Under the rubric of “public safety,” in too many sectors we’ve slowly allowed ourselves to become a police state where law enforcement is declaring itself immune from oversight, even as police interest groups actively undermine efforts to implement, as The Washington Post writes, “policy that would make it more difficult for police to kill people and get away with it.”
This is not only unhealthy for an ostensibly free and democratic society, it destroys all trust between law enforcement and their communities. That trust is the boundary between civilization and carnage. Asian Americans are a large, diverse, and increasingly politically conscious group. Standing in solidarity, this group is now saying in unison: Black Lives Matter.
Salon’s two cents: Why Gov. Mike Pence will be tapped as VP by Donald Trump
Donald Trump; Mike Pence (Credit: AP/Andrew Harnik/AJ Mast/Photo montage by Salon)
Mark it down — sometime this week Donald Trump will be announcing that Indiana Gov. Mike Pence will be his running mate.
Ever since Trump won the Indiana primary back in May — thus becoming the presumptive Republican nominee — Pence, the controversial and steadfastly conservative governor of the state, hasn’t made that much buzz in the VP rumor mill.
Now, a week ahead of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, multiple signs point to a Trump-Pence ticket, which as CNBC reporter John Hardwood points out, would continue a longstanding GOP tradition:
Trump-Pence would be 4th two-syllable ticket in modern party system. an all-GOP phenomenon: Ford-Dole '76, Bush-Quayle '88, Dole-Kemp '96
— John Harwood (@JohnJHarwood) July 11, 2016
But before we lay out the evidence for a Pence pick, let’s take a look at some of Trump’s other top prospects.
Trump has seen a number of potential running mates publicly back out of consideration. Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker, a onetime top prospect, dropped out after campaigning with Trump in North Carolina last week. Freshman Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst, meanwhile, told The Washington Post she’d rather focus on the Senate after meeting with Trump on July 4. But several others appear to still be openly campaigning for the position.
Chris Christie
Being saddled with scandal and awful polls numbers in his own state rules out the New Jersey governor.
Despite suffering humiliating rebukes from Trump and widespread backlash after endorsing the billionaire in his famously bizarre appearance at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in March, Chris Christie has remained loyal to Trump. Politico
Politico noted that “has become the presumptive Republican nominee’s chief apologist, bucking other Republicans by refusing to call his remarks about Judge Gonzalo Curiel racist.”
Trump said on Monday that Christie remains in his list of top five potential running mates, citing a need for a pick that has “great chemistry with me.” His executive experience in New Jersey, however, is unlikely to help with what Trump signaled is his No. 1 priority when considering his No. 2: experience with Congress. Additionally, Christie on the ticket could ironically give Clinton an edge in New Jersey; The “Bridgegate” governor’s approval in the state has plummeted to 26 percent. More from Politico:
Then there’s the upcoming trial of a former aide and former appointee charged with closing off access lanes to the busiest bridge in the country. It’s due to start in September, not only putting Christie’s biggest scandal back in the spotlight but also potentially churning up new and damaging revelations about the way the Christie administration operated — and all during the campaign homestretch.
Trump gets the umbrella; Christie gets the rain. https://t.co/jCUkDTLVzN pic.twitter.com/MFieMfv62K
— Jim Roberts (@nycjim) March 15, 2016
Newt Gingrich
Last week’s hot pick, Trump vowed that the former house speaker would be involved in his administration “in one form or another” at an Ohio rally Gingrich attended. But Gingrich’s stock dropped after Trump told the Washington Post Monday that “I don’t need two anti-establishment people” on the ticket.
Retired Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn
A Republican who’s pro-abortion rights on the ticket? There’s no way that’s happening in 2016.
“I have such great respect for the general, but believe it or not that will be one of my strong suits,” Trump told The Washington Post after Flynn appeared on ABC’s “This Week” and garbled his answer on abortion.
An outspoken critic of President Obama’s Middle East strategy, Flynn has shot to the top of the pack in recent days. It it appears, though Trump was quick to tamp down the speculation suggesting angry conservatives should deal with having a pro-choicer on the GOP ticket.
Despite Flynn scrambling to “clarify” his remarks to Fox News on Monday, Trump had already called the Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza to emphasize that he values the “political” in a vice presidential pick over military experience.
“I was against the war in Iraq from the start,” Trump has repeatedly — and dishonestly — claimed, suggesting he needs no assistance in with foreign policy decisions.
Which brings us to Pence.
Mike Pence
It has been breathlessly reported that there is a 95 percent chance that Trump will name Pence as his running mate. Granted, that astronomically high probability comes from an Indiana delegate to the Republican convention who told The Washington Times that the speaker of the Indiana House had sought counsel on running for governor, because he’d heard Pence was not seeking reelection.
James Bopp, who places Pence’s chances as nearly certain, may be on to something. Pence, who met with Trump last weekend, confirmed this morning that he will join Trump for a rally in the Hoosier State on Tuesday.
According to betting market PredictIT, Pence is the clear favorite for Trump, with a 55% chance. (Last week, markets had Gingrich in the No. 1 spot.) Although Pence told reporters that he hasn’t spoken to Trump directly since they met last week at one of Trump’s golf courses in New Jersey, spending related to his re-election campaign is suddenly on hold and his office has confirmed the red state governor is being vetted by the Trump campaign. Pence is in a tough re-election battle and faces a Friday deadline to appear on the state November ballot as either a gubernatorial or vice presidential candidate,
Pence is in a tough re-election battle and faces a Friday deadline to appear on the state November ballot as either a gubernatorial or vice presidential candidate, according to Fox News.
Pence, who has called himself “a Christian, a conservative, and a Republican, in that order,” is nationally most known for signing a controversial 2015 religious freedom bill, before quickly backtracking. But he brings to the Trump campaign both state and federal experience. Pence served in the House from 2001 to 2013, including a stint as chairman of the House Republican Conference.
A Pence pick helps Trump cement hesitant Ted Cruz voters, who aren’t necessarily the same as the #NeverTrump faction. Jeff Roe, Cruz’s campaign manager recently said that Pence, who originally offered Cruz his lukewarm endorsement in April, would be a “fabulous” choice:
He’d be a rudder on a somewhat erratic campaign and he would have the right balance of being a full-spectrum conservative, having executive experience and legislative experience. He’s one of the best choices I’ve heard mentioned.
Pence “has got a lot of support among senior aides,” former top Trump adviser Michael Caputo recently told Politico. “I think Mike Pence already voted with his feet by going to visit with Mr. Trump,” he said
Republican Rep. John Carter told The Hill he would be “dancing in the aisles” of Congress if Pence were Trump’s VP pick.
But, despite how happy Pence is likely to make conservatives, neither he nor any other VP will pull the spotlight away from the former reality TV star.
“History has said nobody ever helps,” Trump told the Post, citing Lyndon Johnson’s pick by John F. Kennedy as the last vice presidential selection that made a difference. “I’ve never seen anybody that’s helped.”
Sharing your Netflix, Amazon Prime or HBO Go password is now a federal crime
FILE - In this Friday, Jan. 17, 2014, file photo, a person displays Netflix on a tablet in North Andover, Mass. Amazon is taking on Netflix and Hulu with a stand-alone video streaming service. Starting the week of April 18, 2016, customers can pay $8.99 a month to watch Amazons Prime video streaming service. Previously, the only way to watch Prime videos was to pay $99 a year for Prime membership, which includes free two-day shipping on items sold by the site. The video-only option wont come with any free shipping perks. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola, File) (Credit: AP Photo/Elise Amendola)
Last week, a three-panel federal appeals court decided that sharing passwords to online streaming services like Amazon Prime, Netflix, or HBO Go is crime subject to prosecution under the United States Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
The decision came as a result of a case involving David Nosal, an employee at the headhunting firm of Korn/Ferry International who continued to access the company’s candidate database — Searcher — using the password of his former assistant.
According to Vice’s Jason Koebler, the prosecution’s case relied on a clause in the U.S. Computer Fraud and Abuse Act that stated that made it a criminal act to “knowingly and with intent to defraud access a protected computer without authorization.”
In his dissenting opinion, Judge Stephen Reinhardt noted that, when applied to streaming services, this would make millions of Americans “unwitting federal criminals,” since it is unclear who, exactly, is providing the “authorization” required by the statute.
“In the everyday situation that should concern us all,” Judge Reinhardt wrote, “a friend or colleague accessing an account with a shared password would most certainly believe — and with good reason — that his access had been ‘authorized’ by the account holder who shared his password with him.”
“Such a person,” he continued, “accessing an account with the express authorization of its holder, would believe that he was acting not just lawfully but ethically.”
As Variety’s Todd Spangler explained, however, neither Netflix nor HBO Go are likely to use the new interpretation of this clause to prosecute users who share their passwords.
“We love people sharing Netflix, whether they’re two people on a couch or ten people on a couch,” CEO Reed Hastings said in January. Moreover, Netflix’s interface allows account owners to create up to five profiles per account, meaning that it is designed to be shared, even if the terms of service indicate that the account owner “should not reveal their password to anyone.”
The young people will save us: My experience marching with Black Lives Matter in Chicago
Black Lives Matter Rally, Chicago IL, July 9, 2016. (Credit: Chauncey DeVega)
Democracy is messy.
Several months ago, I personally experienced the worst of democracy at Donald Trump’s “no-show” rally in Chicago, when the raw passion, racism, bigotry, and violence he encourages among his supporters almost caused a riot at the University of Illinois at Chicago Pavilion.
On Saturday, I experienced some of the best aspects of democracy as I marched in the streets of downtown Chicago with members of Black Lives Matter and their allies who were protesting police brutality against people of color.
Unlike the faux populism channeled by the proto-fascist Donald Trump, the march was inclusive: it included black, white, brown, straight, gay, old, young, poor, and working class people. There were lifelong and trained activists in the group, but the march also swept up casual observers who joined when asked, “Do black lives matter to you?”
The marchers chanted the names of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile while demanding that America’s police stop violating the human rights of black and brown people. They blocked major intersections, tried to outmaneuver the police, and conducted sit-ins and teach-ins to maintain their morale and to educate those bystanders who were willing to listen.
When citizens exercise their rights of free speech and assembly in such a manner they are confronting State power. This is a crucible that reveals fundamental questions about the nature of American society and politics.
There were black children and families marching together at an event which could have easily descended into violence and chaos if the Chicago police decided to unleash their clubs, tear gas, or use other more extreme measures.
Should children be involved in political protests? This is an old question that harkens back to the debates almost six decades ago between the noted political philosopher Hannah Arendt and Dr. Martin Luther King Junior.
Unlike Arendt, Dr. King understood that black children in America do not have the pleasure of racial innocence in America; they live in a society that views them as adults because of the color of their skin. The parents of black children know this. As such, they prepare their children for the world as it is while simultaneously offering hope about how the world can perhaps be improved in the future.
In the United States, black people, especially black youth and women, are stereotyped as undisciplined and lacking impulse control. This is especially true of the black “ghetto underclass”. The Black Lives Matter protesters in Chicago gutted those stereotypes, laid them bare, exposing them as lies. They were disciplined, coordinated, and knowledgeable about their rights as citizens.
And when there were moments of potential violence or unruly behavior by those black and brown young folks and others who are righteous in their anger about oppression and police thuggery, other marchers calmed them down. This is the self-regulating behavior and discipline that a legion of sociologists, social workers, and policy elites have argued for decades that “ghetto youth” are supposedly incapable of.
Political marches are a type of street theater that provides opportunities for social interactions (and confrontations) which may otherwise not occur.
On Saturday, I watched a college-aged white woman repeatedly ask other white folks to confront their white privilege and if they want to be complicit with the police killings of black men like Alton Sterling and Philando Castile.
Black young people asked black police officers, “How can you be part of an organization that is racist against people who look like you?” Latino youth asked the same questions of police whose uniforms displayed last names like “Martinez”, “Gutierrez”, or “Cantero”. The police stood mute. Several of them looked embarrassed.
A young black woman asked an African-American police supervisor, “Do you believe that black lives matter?” The officer resolutely replied that he protects all people, of every racial background, equally.
A high-school aged black girl asked a white police sergeant in his late fifties if he had “ever killed anyone” and “why do the police kill black people?” The two of them walked together for several blocks as the officer explained that he has never killed anyone, but he had actually saved four people’s lives during his twenty-five year career.
When repeatedly asked by the marchers, “If it is only a few cops that are ‘rotten apples’ then why not turn them in to protect your reputations?” the police looked extremely uncomfortable and disturbed. The fundamental truth of that statement seemed to have caused them to experience a moment of cognitive dissonance.
The racist slogan “All Lives Matter” made an appearance on several occasions during the long Saturday march as well. In the era of Black Lives Matter such language is omnipresent. But some white folks use this slogan unreflectively. To wit: I watched a white woman in her late thirties, a psychologist by training, dialogue with a group of young black men about “All Lives Matter” before realizing, that yes, if all lives do in fact matter, then she should join the protest march. “Black Lives Matter” had won a convert.
There were also moments of playfulness and humor between the police and protesters. A black man and a white cop engaged in a staring contest before they started laughing and talking to each other. A police officer and his friends flirted with a devastatingly beautiful young woman who was standing next to me. She maintained her poise and stood defiantly against them. They, futilely, continued to try to earn her good graces. Several women, who likely raided their mother’s (or grandmother’s) closet had flowers in their hair and wore clothes that would have not been out of place at Woodstock in 1969. The women petted and kissed the police horses that loomed over the crowd. The horses seemed to like the kind attention.
But as I watched those mostly positive and benign encounters between strangers, I never forgot that Chicago’s police are notoriously violent, unprofessional, and corrupt. They shot Laquan McDonald 16 times without just cause. An internal investigation described Chicago’s police department as having “no regard for the sanctity of life when it comes to people of color”. This is the type of tyrannical power that the Black Lives Matter movement and other groups are confronting.
I looked into the eyes of police officers who are not used to being defied. A few were too quick to grab their clubs in anticipation of bludgeoning an unfortunate protester. Some officers smiled derisively at marchers who asked them questions. A few cops told black and brown protesters to “go back to the ghetto”. These were bullies, who, for a moment, were neutered. They are very dangerous people whose behavior was restrained only by the ubiquity of the video cameras among the crowd.
The protest would eventually end, the police made some arrests, and the Black Lives Matter marchers and their allies dispersed. The police radios cried out with reports of shootings and guns from neighborhoods around the city. The cops would speed off into the night from the riches of downtown Chicago to the South and West sides of one of the most class and race segregated cities in the United States.
The recent days and months have been difficult for Americans. Last week a series of video-recorded killings of black men by white police sparked protests across the country. The week would climax with an attack by a lone gunman on a peaceful march in Dallas, Texas which left 5 police officers dead.
As embodied by Donald Trump, the 2016 Republican presidential race is an ugly reminder of how authoritarianism, fascism, racism, xenophobia, and bigotry are enduring forces in America. Moreover, the country’s political institutions are dysfunctional. They have been broken by extreme political polarization (caused by the Republican Party) and the corrupting power of money and private interests.
Despite what recent hyperbole-tinged news headlines would like to suggest, America in 2016 is not the America of the 1960s. There is no Vietnam War. Bobby, Malcolm, John, and Martin have not been assassinated in quick succession. Detroit, Chicago, and Watts are not under internal siege by urban rebellions. Yes, the United States and its people have recently suffered some wounds. But the country is not convulsing, the body politic tearing itself apart as it writhes in agony.
If what I saw and experienced firsthand on Saturday is any indication, it is America’s young people who may save us all…if we just give them a little help and also know when to get out of the way.
U.S.-backed Syrian rebels committing war crimes, torture, abductions; imposing harsh Sharia law: Report
Ahrar al-Sham fighters in Idlib city in northern Syria, March 20, 2015. (Credit: Reuters/Khalil Ashawi)
Syrian rebel groups backed by the U.S. and its allies “have committed serious violations of international humanitarian law, including abductions, torture and summary killings,” according to Amnesty International.
A report by the leading human rights organization details how extremist rebel groups have taken over large parts of major Syrian cities, in which they have created repressive theocratic regimes where critics are violently silenced and where religious and ethnic minority groups fear for their lives.
“‘Torture Was My Punishment’: Abductions, Torture and Summary Killings Under Armed Group Rule in Aleppo and Idleb, Syria” shows how the Syrian people have been caught between a rock and a hard place — with extremist rebels on one side and a brutal regime on the other.
The report focuses primarily on the governorates of Aleppo and Idlib, in the north of the country. Aleppo is Syria’s largest city, and the Aleppo governorate is the most populous.
Amnesty documented abuses committed by five armed groups that have controlled parts of Aleppo and Idlib since 2012. These rebels have been supported by Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar and the U.S.
In Aleppo, Amnesty investigated the actions of the Levant Front, the Nour al-Din al-Zenki Movement and Division 16, factions in the Aleppo Conquest rebel coalition.
In Idlib, it looked at the crimes of the rebel groups Jabhat al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham, both of which are extremist Islamist militias that are party of the Army of Conquest coalition.
Jabhat al-Nusra is Syria’s al-Qaeda affiliate. The U.S. officially considers it a terrorist group, although Western allies Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar have supported it.
Amnesty noted that al-Nusra “has a significant presence” throughout the Idlib governorate. Ahrar al-Sham is present in the major cities Idlib, Aleppo, Damascus and Hama.
Executions and strict Shari’a
Armed groups have repressed many Syrians who were themselves once supportive of the rebels.
“I was happy to be free from the Syrian government’s unjust rule but now the situation is worse,” a Syrian lawyer told Amnesty.
Rebel groups have established “courts” (the report uses the term in scare quotes) in Aleppo and Idlib based on strict interpretations of Shari’a (Islamic law).
Extremist Islamist groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham have harshly punished Syrians who disobey their theocratic laws, the report notes.
It cites numerous cases of summary killings carried out by Jabhat al-Nusra, the Levant Front and rebel “courts.” Some have been “execution-style killings in front of crowds.”
Jabhat al-Nusra has publicly executed civilian men it accused of homosexuality and civilian women it accused of adultery.
In Aleppo, the “Supreme Judicial Council” run by the Levant Front told Amnesty that the punishment for apostasy is execution. “Death sentences are carried out in the detention center according to Shari’a principles,” the deputy director said.
According to the Carnegie Endowment, most of the rebel groups in the Levant Front coalition likely receive support from the Military Operations Center, a Turkey-based rebel facility that the U.S. helps operate with its allies.
Most of the “courts” run by these rebel groups, Amnesty says, are based on the Unified Arab Code, a set of Shari’a-based legal codes that were endorsed by the Arab League between 1988 and 1996 but were never implemented anywhere.
This legal code demands harsh corporal punishments for hudud crimes (violations of Islamic law), including stoning, amputations and flogging.
“I publicly criticized Jabhat al-Nusra on Facebook accusing them of committing worse human rights abuses than those perpetrated by the government. The next morning, Jabhat al-Nusra forces took me from my home,” a Syrian lawyer told Amnesty.
An interrogator told him he was not a real lawyer because he did not know Islamic law. The Syrian rebel threatened him, telling him he had to give up his profession or his family wold never see me again. After 10 days of abduction, hearing men screaming from torture, the lawyer agreed.
“I left Syria as soon as I was released,” he added.
A female activist who had just been released from detention by the Syrian government told Amnesty she was subsequently arrested and interrogated by Ahrar al-Sham rebels for not wearing a veil.
“They forced me to wear a veil and cover my face. They brought a religious man who made me kneel to confess my wrongdoings. The interrogator repeatedly threatened to conduct a virginity test,” she recalled.
Torture
Amnesty documented cases of armed factions torturing journalists, activists and other civilians who do not share their ideologies.
“I heard and read about the government security forces’ torture techniques. I thought I would be safe from that now that I am living in an opposition-held area. I was wrong. I was subjected to the same torture techniques but at the hands of Jabhat al-Nusra,” explained a Syrian man who was abducted by the extremist rebel group.
Syrian lawyers who have spoken out against rebel groups’ use of torture have themselves been abducted and threatened.
In several of the cases of abduction, journalists, political activists and a humanitarian worker told Amnesty that they were tortured by either Jabhat al-Nusra or the Nour al-Din al-Zenki Movement. Some were violently forced to sign a statement of confession.
“The methods of torture described are disturbingly similar to some of the ones used by the Syrian government,” Amnesty wrote.
Numerous journalists and activists were kidnapped and tortured by al-Nusra for “promoting secular beliefs,” the rights group reported.
One journalist who works for an international media outlet was tortured by al-Nusra rebels for “offending the jihad and mujahidin [rebel fighters] and for working with a media channel that opposes al-Qa’ida.”
The release form given to the tortured journalist by his interrogator said that he had been “acquitted of the charges after pledging that he would only report on issues that support the Islamic faith.”
Another activist was told he was being tortured for being secular.
Even groups Syrian activists described as “moderate” have abducted and tortured Syrians. Activists told Amnesty the Levant Front, the Nour al-Din al-Zenki Movement and the 16th Division also tortured and mistreated detainees.
A humanitarian worker was abducted and tortured by the Nour al-Din al-Zenki Movement for complaining about the misuse of funds in a hospital in Aleppo.
The Nour al-Din al-Zenki Movement is a CIA-approved rebel group that has received TOW anti-tank missiles.
Amnesty said Syrian lawyers and activists told it of cases of abduction and torture carried out by other rebel groups in Aleppo and Idlib, but it was unable to independently verify these claims.
Targeting of minority groups
The Amnesty report also shows how rebel groups have targeted ethnic and religious minorities.
The rights organization documented cases in which Division 16, a Syrian rebel group that the U.S. government identifies as moderate, abducted Kurdish civilians.
In one case, an Arab man offered to drive his Kurdish neighbor to a dentist appointment in Aleppo. She was kidnapped at a checkpoint by the 16th Division. The Arab man was released, but she wasn’t. The woman’s son went looking for her, and he disappeared as well.
Other Kurdish civilians told Amnesty their family members were also abducted by Division 16. A Kurdish man who was released said he saw three missing Kurdish women working in the kitchen in a Division 16 detention center, but their families are too afraid to ask the rebel group for more information.
The 16th Division is backed by the U.S., and is part of a coalition that is fighting other U.S.-backed rebels.
Christian residents of the Aleppo and Idlib governorates have also been abducted and abused by Syrian rebels because of their religion, Amnesty said.
The CIA-approved Nour al-Din al-Zenki Movement has abducted Christians.
Ahrar al-Sham and Jabhat al-Nusra have destroyed churches. They have also confiscated the homes and stolen the belongings of Christian Syrians.
Ahrar al-Sham is supported by close Western allies Saudi Arabia and Turkey (the latter is also a member of NATO).
Some Syrian Christian families were told they must either convert or leave the Idlib governorate, Amnesty reported.
Abductions and repression of journalists
Amnesty documented dozens of cases of abduction carried out by armed opposition groups in the Aleppo and Idlib governorates between 2012 and 2016.
It even reported cases in which extremist rebel groups Ahrar al-Sham and Jabhat al-Nusra kidnapped children and placed them for long periods of time in solitary confinement, leading to hallucinations.
An activist who said he “celebrated the Syrian government’s defeat” told Amnesty that the rebel groups he now lives under “are in control of what we can and cannot say. You either agree with their social rules and policies or you disappear.”
Syrian “armed groups have carried out abductions and deprived persons of their liberty without any legal basis – even under the quasi-judicial system under which they are operating,” Amnesty wrote.
An activist in Idlib told Amnesty that, during a ceasefire, protesters tried to fill the streets, but were violently dispersed and arrested by rebels with the extremist group Jabhat al-Nusra.
Abducted victims have included human rights activists, journalists and lawyers.
“Jabhat al-Nusra was pressuring men to join the armed group. Even those who resisted were forced to join. My friends left for Turkey because they were afraid,” a Syrian man told Amnesty.
He went into hiding, but al-Nusra kidnapped his son. The man told the extremist group that he would join if it released his son. As soon as his child was free, the man fled with his family to Turkey.
Witnesses told Amnesty that extremist rebel groups have cracked down on behavior they deem “un-Islamic.”
In one anecdote, they recall how the extremist group twice attacked Radio Fresh, a radio station in the rebel town Kafranbel, arresting staff members “for playing music which it deemed to be socially unacceptable and offensive to Islam.” A witness said they had been playing revolutionary songs and the music of Fairuz, a popular Lebanese singer.
Another media activist was kidnapped by Ahrar al-Sham for criticizing the extremist rebel group on Facebook and accusing it of corruption. Amnesty says he is still detained.
Yet another media activist told Amnesty that he had been kidnapped by the “moderate” groups the Nour al-Din al-Zenki Movement and the Levant Front for criticizing “the unjust rule of some the armed groups [and issues] such as corruption” on Facebook. He said he heard people being tortured in other rooms while he was abducted.
Journalists also told Amnesty that newspapers and other media deemed “insulting to Islam and the mujahidin (jihadists)” have been banned and confiscated.
A journalist working at Enab Baladi recalled that, in 2015 alone, “we had to pull out dozens of our employees from Idleb and Aleppo because they were receiving threats of abductions and killings.”
Another journalist at Souriatna said that, after distributors and journalists were threatened by rebel groups, they stopped distributing the newspaper in Idlib and Aleppo for eight months.
Rebel groups have also abducted individuals, including children, accused of sympathizing with or providing information to the Syrian government.
International response
“The cases of abduction, torture and summary killings documented by Amnesty International offer a glimpse into the reality of life under armed opposition groups in Aleppo and Idleb governorates,” Amnesty wrote.
It added: “These abuses have taken place in a context in which armed opposition groups across Syria have committed war crimes by killing and injuring civilians through the indiscriminate use of weapons such as mortars, improvised explosive devices and suicide car bombs in attacks on residential areas under government control.”
Amnesty conducted this research between December 2015 and May 2016. Many of the witnesses it interviewed were living in exile in Turkey.
The human rights group contacted representatives of Syrian rebel groups, including the Aleppo Conquest coalition and Ahrar al-Sham, asking for responses to its findings. No armed opposition groups answered Amnesty’s questions about specific human rights abuses.
It condemned the impunity on all sides of the war in Syria.
“Justice for the hundreds of thousands of victims remains elusive as neither the Syrian government nor armed groups have been held accountable for their crimes,” the rights group wrote.
Amnesty accused the Syrian government of carrying out the majority of human rights violations. It also said Russia has committed violations that are likely war crimes in its bombing campaign.
While there has been a lot of attention in the Western media to crimes committed by the Syrian government and its allies, there has been much less attention to the crimes of Western-backed rebels.
Amnesty called on the International Syria Support Group — particularly the U.S., Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, the U.K. and France — to “immediately cease the transfer of arms, munitions and other military equipment, including logistical and financial support, to armed groups implicated in committing war crimes and other serious human rights abuses and violations of international humanitarian law.”
The rights group emphasized that Syrian rebel groups “and the international community, particularly those governments that support them militarily and financially, must address the abuses they are committing without delay.”
Sexism is literally ruining women’s sex lives
(Credit: gpointstudio via Shutterstock)
I have some bad news for women everywhere. Sexism is literally ruining our sex lives. According to a new study published in Archives of Sexual Behavior, women who perceive their partners as sexist and selfish are significantly less likely to orgasm during sex. Yikes.
For the study, researcher Emily Harris at Queensland’s School of Psychology collected data from heterosexual female participants from two studies. The first set of data came from a previous study that measured men’s and women’s sexual and social attitudes as well as sexual history, while the second study recruited participants from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk.
The first study helped define sexism using the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory to measure varying levels of hostile and benevolent sexism. Hostile sexism can be described as overt disdain for women, basically run-of-the-mill misogyny. Benevolent sexism is a bit more fluid, and therefore less easy to spot, let alone define. According to Harris and her research team:
“Benevolent sexism assumes female passivity and romanticizes the belief that women should be reliant on men. In this way, benevolent sexism is argued to be a form of legitimizing myth, whereby prejudicial attitudes toward women are justified through the guise of care and protection.”
This “guise of care and protection,” therefore, leads to a lack of women being taken care of in the bedroom.
The research found when a woman subscribes to benevolent sexism ideals while also being involved in a romantic relationship in which the man was dominant, the woman is more likely to believe her partner to be selfish when it comes to sex. This could be due to an ongoing perception that sex is a wifely duty — or transaction — rather than a pleasurable activity for each partner to enjoy.
Once the levels of sexism were assessed, the scientists measured how selfish the women believed their partners to be in bed. The participants were asked to rate statements such as “Men care more about ‘getting off’ than whether or not their partner has an orgasm” and “During sex men care more about their own pleasure” on a scale of “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree.” The women later answered questions about how frequently they orgasm and by what methods.
The researchers found a distinct link between a woman’s endorsement of benevolent sexism and fewer orgasms. The female orgasm can be an elusive thing due in large part to the mental and psychological factors that influence a woman’s ability to climax. If a woman believes sex is her duty, it’s unlikely her head space will focus on her orgasming, but rather fulfilling her duty as a wife so she can move on to the next task. Benevolent sexism isn’t a direct cause to fewer orgasms, but rather a contributing factor — one piece of a very complicated puzzle.
The second part of the study collected information to measure how willing participants were to seek pleasure and ask for what they want during sex, based on the hypotheses that women with sexist partners would be less likely to seek personal pleasure during sex — the whole “wifely duty” mentality.
Once again, endorsing benevolent sexism was linked to reduced orgasm frequency because of perceived levels of male selfishness, compounded by the female partner’s tendency to be less assertive, or more demure, when it comes to willingness to ask for pleasure in bed.
These findings are important and provocative in that they challenge ideological beliefs in terms of sexism for both men and women.
“The present study therefore furthers our understanding of how broad ideological factors such as benevolent sexism may (indirectly) impact women’s orgasm functioning,” write the authors in the study. The authors believe that relationships can suffer in other areas based on axioms of benevolent sexism such as husbands are entitled to sex from their wives, and it’s acceptable for a man to ask for pleasure but unacceptable for a woman to.
Other studies support this transactional approach to sex and relationships.
A 2015 study suggested that the frequency of exposure to benevolent sexism determined how college-aged women view relationships. Those who were more exposed to it were more likely to view relationships as tools or instruments to achievement than a source of romantic fulfillment or desire, and was also associated with reduced use of condoms.
Five years ago, a study in the Journal of Sex Research reported people with high levels of benevolent sexism were more likely to believe sex to be an exchange between husband and wife. In these relationships, sex is perceived as a man’s right or reward for protecting his wife and providing financially. Sadly, participants in this study who ranked high on the scale of benevolent sexism were less likely to consider forced marital sex as rape.
The current research suggests the need to evolve not only our behaviors, but also our beliefs when it comes to how we perceive traditional marital roles. For both men and women, levels of benevolent sexism have been found to greatly reduce the frequency of female orgasms — a big O-no.
Unlikely leaders: Why Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn keep confounding elite experts
Jeremy Corbyn; Bernie Sanders (Credit: AP/Kirsty Wigglesworth/Elaine Thompson)
Comparisons between Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn are nothing new. Both are idiosyncratic, outsider social democrats—“grumpy old socialists” some say — who’ve risen to prominence representing popular views abandoned by elites, particularly elites of the institutional center-left parties in each of their countries. Both were seen as fringe candidates when they first stepped forward last year and elites just can’t wait to re-marginalize them again — but that may not be so easy, both because of who they are and because of what they represent.
Comparisons first kicked into gear when Corbyn won election as Labour leader, naturally gaining Sanders’ congratulation, though naysayers were commonplace, even then. Then, when Sanders won the New Hampshire primary, comparisons intensified—their supporters, for one thing, were strikingly similar. There were dissenting voices, but the broad similarities were so striking that even Tony Blair couldn’t help but notice them, professing bafflement, leading Guardian commentator Deborah Orr to respond:
Tony Blair says he is “baffled” by the rise of Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders because of “the question of electability”. For him, these choices are simply not pragmatic. No matter what fine ideas candidates may espouse, for Blair the key matter is whether they can achieve power. Not that he thinks Corbyn and Sanders are exactly brimming with fine ideas: “Free tuition fees: well, that’s great,” he says. “But someone’s going to have pay for it.”
But the answer, of course, is obvious. Pragmatism itself doesn’t seem terribly pragmatic any longer. Pragmatism, as practised by Blair, ended in disaster, despite the supposed cleverness of its compromises.
The same could be said of Clintonian pragmatism as well. But Hillary Clinton has been pragmatic enough to move left in response to Sanders—a process that’s continued even after she was declared the presumptive nominee, and Sanders had supposedly squandered his chance to have any influence.
Corbyn, too, was supposedly washed up after the Brexit vote. He lost a no-confidence vote among Labour members of parliament, 172-40, and the only questions were how he would leave, and who would replace. Yet simultaneously, the leading candidate to replace him, Angela Eagle, was embarrassed when her local Labour Party opposed the no-confidence vote. More broadly, Labour membership surged massively by 100,000 in support of Corbyn, as he issued a defiant message, reaffirming his commitment to traditional Labour Party principles and the people who supported him, and the coup plotters admitted defeat:
One senior MP told The Telegraph: “It’s finished. He will win easily in a second contest if he is on the ballot, it’s everything we wanted to avoid.”
Democracy! It’s such a bother!
Here in America, elite commentators were puzzled, if not dismissive, when Sanders focused on fighting for the platform to reflect his goals. Who pays any attention to platforms, anyway? But Sanders saw elite contempt for the platform as yet another elite blind-spot, a weak-point to be turned to his advantage. Platforms are only irrelevant if there’s no one there to hold party leaders accountable. To make sure there is someone there, one has to wage a fight on their behalf—precisely what Sanders has done, sustaining his call for a political revolution. The results have been impressive, as Steve Bennen noted:
The document, which is available in its entirety, is surprising in its audacity on everything from free community college to expanding Social Security, overturning Citizens United to banning assault weapons, criminal justice reform to repealing the Hyde Amendment that prevents public funding of abortion.
There can be little doubt that many of these provisions and more – reforming the carried-interest loophole, postal banking, the industry ties of Federal Reserve board members – can be attributed directly to the Sanders campaign’s role in negotiating the terms of the platform. The senator and his team made a concerted effort to move the document to the left, and they achieved their goals in dramatic fashion.
Everyone expects Clinton’s campaign to move back toward the center—and Sanders lost some key votes after Bennen, most notably on trade. But the Sanders team has altered the dynamics—perhaps permanently. They have laid out markers—and gotten them accepted by the party — that will provide rallying points for moving left, not right, in future situations. And if that’s what’s already written in the platform, it will further encourage folks to continue thinking farther and farther outside the “pragmatic” box.
It’s not limited to the platform. Clinton herself recently announced a significant shift in her higher education policy, including “eliminating tuition at in-state public universities for families making under $125,000 by 2021.” As political scientist Corey Robin argued, though still imperfect (“ I think means-testing higher ed makes about as much sense as means-testing Social Security or elementary school”) it represents a significant advancement:
Way beyond anything between Clinton v. Sanders, this plan by Clinton is something that can, potentially, change the way people think about their taxes and what the state can do for them. It’s a step toward a political and ideological realignment.
But also, a potential change in way people think about their own power:
[I]t could help change our sense of where power lies. It could help more people see what the good activist and the smart organizer already sees: that if we could just possibly get our shit together, we might, sometimes, find power elsewhere. Not power in the abstract, but power to change the concrete terms and conditions of our daily lives.
This is precisely what Bernie Sanders means by a political revolution. And for all the shortcomings one still sees in Clinton’s plan, this significant shift towards his position validates him even more powerfully at this more fundamental level.
Yes, Sanders and Corbyn are unlikely leaders, precisely because the entire elite leadership structures have lost their way, leaving a void that only unlikely outsiders could fill. The elite dysfunction that gave rise to them isn’t going away, even if they could get rid of Sanders and Corbyn overnight. But the mass desire for a functioning democracy — one that actually meets people’s needs — isn’t going anywhere either. That’s the real significance of Sanders and Corbyn—they’ve helped rekindle that desire.
Does Cameron Crowe hate music bloggers?
Imogen Poots, Rainn Wilson and Peter Cambor in "Roadies" (Credit: Showtime/Neal Preston)
“Roadies,” Cameron Crowe’s Showtime series about the behind-the-scenes folks who make arena-rock shows happen, has gotten mixed reviews. But it still retains some lingering good will, in part for the warm feelings music fans have for their favorite bands, the sense that the crew behind the concerts are unsung heroes, and because Crowe has made some very good movies about music, including the wistful “Almost Famous.”
At the very least, he’s sincere (sometimes too much so), and so it’s absolutely no fun to gang up on him. And Rainn Wilson is one of the funniest actors of our time. There was a lot of reason to think that his appearance as an arrogant, sniveling blogger trying to take down the band these roadies support on the show’s third episode would have been the one to make clear the show’s potential and purpose. At the very least, it could have been good fun.
But somehow, the episode. “The Bryce Newman Letter,” is the show’s worst installment so far. And it suggests that after three episodes, the series can’t figure out what it wants to be or how to get there.
A number of other things happen in the episode, including an attempt by Kelly Ann (Imogen Poots) to become more likable, and a failed attempt by Bill (Luke Wilson) to make a strong connection with one of his girlfriends.
But the blogger character is the center of the episode, and it shows where “Roadies” is really getting lost. For what it’s worth, I’m only occasionally a critic, and I have no love for writers who thrill at savaging a band or film or whatever. But the episode’s portrayal of Bryce Newman is so wrong it makes me wonder if Crowe, who wrote and directed the episode, has lost his touch completely.
Even for television — which depends, of course, on heightened reality and some exaggeration to make characters stand out — Newman is a cartoon. Some of the characters in “Roadies” are a little flat, but this evil blogger seems to have arrived from another show altogether. If Rainn Wilson made a brief, wacky walk-on role to offer comic relief it would be one thing. But here, he’s a major character who drives just about all of the action, and he’s so unbelievably unlikable and unpleasant he would be out of place in just about anything. It’s just sort of goofy.
Also puzzling is the way the character fits into Crowe’s own background. Crowe started his career as a music journalist, and one of the best scenes in “Almost Famous” features Philip Seymour Hoffman portraying legendary rock critic Lester Bangs. The movie’s protagonist is a young journalist based on Crowe himself, who wrote for Rolling Stone for years. So it may be that Rainn Wilson’s Evil Blogger character is not the standard Critics Are Killjoys trope, but something newer: a dissing of the new wave of pseudo-critics who have come into the field in the days of the web, a kind of Boomer nostalgia for the days of print.
Even as a non-Boomer, I kinda like the sound of that. But if so, it makes even less sense: Whatever the many faults of the Internet, it has hardly monopolized critical opinion around one or two dominant figures. Sure, a lot of people read Pitchfork, but is there any writer there, or anywhere, who could shut down an arena-rock tour? Does any independent blogger stir fear in the hearts of a road crew? Unless it’s meant to be a joke, the premise is just bizarre.
The major off note is the way this evil blogger is treated: Invited to the show and then drugged, he’s dragged into a sexual encounter with a groupie and then, still stoned, humiliates himself onstage. By the end, he’s seen the light and loves the band. Variety’s Maureen Ryan describes the show as treating “the drugging and sexual assault of a human being as a funny prank. To make matters worse, it then depicts the character in question as grateful for the assault.”
Given that the one thing “Roadies” consistently does well is convey a decent and idealistic tone, why turn nasty like this? Even the dull corporate tool who arrives from management to lay off staff isn’t treated this way. The Rainn Wilson bit seems so out of character for Crowe; it’s as baffling as it is offensive.
And do you want to hear something strange? As disappointing as “Roadies” has been so far, and as awful as episode three is, I’m looking forward to the next one. I’m not sure how many of us are left, but I keep praying – for at least a little longer — that Crowe and company gets this right. When it comes to rock music, a lot of us still want to believe.
