The Romance of Oppression, the Real Kazakhs, and a History of Blue

On April 2, 2019 By admin

• Breaking News

The letters of Flann O’Brien: “The theme of this volume is money – how to get it and where it goes. There were all sorts of reasons O’Nolan needed cash: because on his father’s death, when he was 26, he became for some years the sole breadwinner for a family of 12 children; because he spent huge amounts on whiskey; because he married in 1948 and bought a house. The loss of his civil service job was a financial catastrophe that he attempted to mitigate by freelancing – writing columns, proofreading and reading manuscripts for publishers – and by selling his literary papers. Occasionally, in despair, he applied for low-grade administrative jobs. In May 1960 he told a prospective employer that ‘I am known to most people in Dublin who are concerned with publication and advertising work, and have been retained for advertising and “prestige” projects by Messers Guinness and the Hospitals Trust.’ It is tempting to argue that these job application letters are absent of personality because they are not personal. But they speak all too eloquently of the way O’Nolan thought about himself. He had no stable perspective on who he was or what he amounted to. He blithely assumed that he was sufficiently well known and admired as Myles na gCopaleen to run for the Senate (under his own name and without, apparently, bothering to canvas for votes) and yet applied in the same month for a pen-pushing job in Cork.”

The real Kazakhs: “Who are the real Kazakhs? Even by the end of Joanna Lillis’s wide-ranging survey of Central Asia’s wealthiest dictatorship, it’s hard to tell. The livestock-breeding culture of the Kazakh Khanate, a successor to the Mongol Golden Horde, was driven into the ground after its annexation by Russia in the mid-19th century as a result of successive waves of immigration and the Soviet policy of bringing its sprawling herds under state control.”

Remembering oppression fondly: “When I was a little girl, my country held its first democratic election after more than a decade of military rule. The bald, mustachioed general who had led Pakistan for my entire life had died in a plane crash a few months earlier. A woman, the daughter of a previously slain prime minister, led her party to an electoral majority, and on a pleasant December morning we watched her sworn into office. This, we were told, was history. This was democracy. This was the beginning of freedom. The people of my city, Karachi—particularly those who had voted for the new prime minister—decided to use their freedom right away. Large groups of them climbed onto motorbikes and into the backs of pickup trucks; they took over the city streets, waving flags and shooting firearms in the air. Everyone else, including my family, sat inside their houses, afraid. Within a few hours of the arrival of “freedom,” my father and grandfather and mother were nostalgic for the days of tyranny. Dictatorship, they decided, was safer and more orderly than the chaos of democracy. That sort of nostalgia is the subject of Dancing Bears, a new book by the Polish journalist Witold Szablowski.”

A history of blue: “French historian Michel Pastoureau, whose Blue: The History of a Color has just been released to English-speaking audiences, is one of our age’s great librarians of civilization. On its surface, Blue is a dull exercise in scholarly record keeping—but in fact, it is an exhilarating and richly informing book on how the European peoples from the Iron Age until today have decorated themselves and their cultural artefacts with the color blue.”

David Pryce-Jones on snobbery and royal biography: “Snobbery is pretty harmless, as much an entertainment as a vice. One side of me is quite prepared to believe that Kenneth was a snob, a complete snob, and nothing but a snob. He never mentions anyone lacking social significance, and his books praise obviously praiseworthy public figures such as Lord Curzon, King George V, and members of the Cecil family. Victor, the third Lord Rothschild, was a man just as distinguished as intimidating. Kenneth’s biography of him is a labor of love.”
Essay of the Day:

Alex W. Palmer writes about an investigation of a phone scam that led to an unexpected result:

“Brad Young, a lawyer at TripAdvisor, arrived at the company’s offices in Needham, Massachusetts, on October 12, 2015, to find an email from his boss, Seth Kalvert, the company’s general counsel. In itself that wasn’t strange. As a travel site built on crowdsourced wisdom, where hundreds of millions of ordinary people post reviews and rate businesses, TripAdvisor is susceptible to fakery meant to inflate the ranking of a so-so restaurant or stain the reputation of a storied hotel. Young oversaw a group responsible for fending off these efforts, so he frequently got questions from Kalvert about con artists, cunning new deceits, and other shady corners of the law.

“But this email was different. Kalvert’s wife had received a robocall offering an exclusive vacation deal as a reward for her loyal accumulation of ‘Trip­Advisor credits.’ That would have been nice if TripAdvisor credits were a thing, but they weren’t. The call was also odd because TripAdvisor didn’t engage in telemarketing, much less robocalling. Kalvert wanted Young to look into it.

“The anti-fraud team was, in Young’s words, ‘the company’s secret sauce,’ adept at tackling every deception the internet had to offer. But the hustle meant to entice Kalvert’s wife relied on old-school telephony. Cracking it would require an unusual set of skills. Luckily, Young knew just the person to turn to.

“Fred Garvin had joined TripAdvisor’s anti-fraud team eight years earlier. He’d been employed in a series of short-term jobs: mechanic, audio editor, anything that seemed interesting enough to hold his attention for a while. He was out of work when a friend saw an opening for a content moderator at TripAdvisor and urged Garvin to apply. He worked at home for a while, under the radar, but pretty soon managers started noticing his obsessive streak and a knack for what he called ‘research.’ As a kid growing up in a small New England town in the pre-internet era, he’d tracked down the addresses of celebrities so that he could request an autograph; he got a postcard signed by the B-52s and one from Mr. Bill, a famous Saturday Night Live character from the 1970s. (The name ‘Fred Garvin’ is another SNL reference, one of several professional aliases he adopted to protect his identity from the scammers and fraudsters he chases. It comes from an old sketch with Dan Aykroyd as Fred Garvin, male prostitute.) Garvin’s manager recommended him for a position with the anti-fraud team. ‘He’s the most cynical person I’ve ever met,’ she said. ‘He will question everything.’ He was a perfect fit.

“Young asked Garvin to look into the suspicious phone call. He said he figured it was probably the work of ‘some two-bit hustler’ and wouldn’t take long to sort out. Garvin, though, had only one phone call to go on, and a simple question: Who was on the other end of the line?”

Read the rest.

Photo: Nyköping Castle

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ProPublica Is Again Expanding Its Local Reporting Network. Apply for a Spot.

On April 2, 2019 By admin

• Breaking News

by ProPublica

ProPublica is once again expanding its Local Reporting Network, part of its growing effort to help local journalists pursue meaningful accountability stories in their communities.

We are now accepting applications for six more news organizations to do investigative projects as part of our network. The group will begin work on July 1 and continue for a year.

With support from a new grant, we will pay the salary (up to $75,000), plus an allowance for benefits, for full-time reporters. Applications are due April 26, and selected reporters will begin work on July 1. (We’re also posting jobs for a senior editor, production designer, news applications developer, engagement reporter and research fellow to work on our staff with these reporters.)

ProPublica’s first group of seven local reporters produced a strong body of work last year, exposing lapses in worker safety at nuclear facilities, failures in public housing, the devastating toll of post-traumatic stress disorder on first responders and stunning miscarriages of justice in Indiana, among others.

So far this year, we are working with 14 new projects — half involving state government, the rest on issues of local importance. This further expansion will bring the total of newsrooms and projects for 2019 to 20.

If your organization is selected, the reporter will continue to work in your newsroom, but they will receive extensive guidance and support from ProPublica. Their work will be published or broadcast by your newsroom and simultaneously by ProPublica.

National news organizations are not eligible to apply; all other newsrooms are, regardless of size or medium. It can be a small newspaper, website, radio or TV station, or anything else that reaches your community. We are not looking to fund day-to-day beat coverage, but instead to enable your organization to do ambitious accountability projects that would not otherwise be done.

Applications should be submitted by newsroom leaders for a particular project and a specific reporter. If you lead a newsroom and are interested in working with us, we’d like to hear from you about:

• An investigative project. The proposed coverage can take any number of forms: a few long stories, an ongoing series of shorter stories, text, radio, video or more. Please tell us why this coverage is important, any similar coverage that has been done before it, why this project has particular urgency now and a plan for executing the work. Please also explain why your community and your newsroom are the right places to tell this particular story.
• The reporter who you ideally envision spearheading the work, and the market salary you would need to pay them for the year. This could be someone already on staff or someone else — for example, a freelancer with whom you aspire to work. Please include a personal statement by the reporter explaining his or her interest, at least three clips of their prior best work and, of course, a resume.

The deadline for applications is April 26. Please submit your proposal using this form. If you have questions that aren’t answered here, email us at Local.Reporting@propublica.org. ProPublica reporters and editors are open to give you feedback on your idea before you apply. Entries will be judged principally by ProPublica editors. Winning proposals will be announced in June, to enable work to begin on July 1.

Here are a few questions and answers about what we’re looking for in a proposal.

Is this different from other groups in your Local Reporting Network?

Much like our original Local Reporting Network, this one is not topic-specific and is open to any local accountability ideas.

Will you also be seeking applications this fall for projects to begin in January?

Yes. Look for details this fall. If you want to be added to our list, sign up here.

What subjects are best suited to this program?

Our local reporting initiative has the same mission as that of ProPublica overall: to spur change through stories with moral force.

How detailed should we make our proposal if the deep reporting is ahead of us?

We know that the best stories take unanticipated turns. That said, there are several elements that can be included in a proposal. If you’re considering an idea relating to a trend, please check whether any data exists that might prove (or disprove) your story idea. It would also be helpful to provide some assessment of how your project will distinguish itself if it builds on previous coverage.

At ProPublica, we try to send reporters after stories that we feel would not be done if we did not exist. While we’ll give preference to ideas that break new ground, we could well underwrite reporting that significantly expands on a subject that has already been the focus of some reporting. We encourage you to propose reporting that time or resource constraints have prevented you from doing. That could be something about which you have already turned up enough information to know there’s a bigger story waiting to be done.

Will we still be in charge of our own reporter?

Yes. Your organization will designate your lead editor. They will work hand in hand with a ProPublica senior editor who will offer guidance on making the stories from each of our Local Reporting Network partners as powerful and well-executed as they can be. That ProPublica editor will also help assess whether there are ways that our expertise with data, research or engagement could be of use.

The key decisions about how the story will be reported and written will be made in collaboration between us and your newsroom. Since we plan to jointly publish stories that result from this collaboration, that will mean, as in all of our partnerships, producing work that meets the standards of both your organization and ProPublica.

This sounds tricky, and it can sometimes get complicated. But through literally hundreds of partnerships, we’ve found that when people are truly committed to collaborating, there’s always a way to make it work.

Can the reporter work on other stories while they’re doing their investigative project?

The goal of this initiative is to give your newsroom the resources and help to execute accountability stories that would not otherwise have been possible. We expect the reporter will be working on that full-time. Having said that, we understand that other, crucial stories may come up. If that happens, we are confident we can all settle on a plan that works for everyone.

If I’m a reporter, what happens if another job opportunity comes up?

This is a 12-month commitment, and by accepting this position, you are agreeing in good faith to stay for the duration. Obviously, we know family emergencies and other situations may come up, but you should expect to commit to working on this project for the entire year. If you have doubts, you may not want to apply.

How many stories are we expected to produce under this grant?

We’ve never found quotas particularly useful. Our reporters aim to produce a body of work each year that offers the possibility of prompting change. Sometimes, that has been a succession of stories building to a larger piece or pieces, as we did with the Red Cross. Sometimes, it’s a traditional multipart series or a single story, with appropriate follow-ups. Sometimes, it’s a group of deep-dive pieces on a related topic, such as fracking or drug company payments to doctors. The goal is impact, and there are many routes to achieving it.

What if we drill a dry hole?

This is always possible in investigative reporting, but our experience has shown it is unlikely. Send motivated reporters after a promising subject and they almost inevitably find intriguing material, including things they were not looking for when they began their research. Our plan is for our senior editor in charge of this project to be in regular touch with the newsrooms receiving the grants. If a story idea doesn’t work out, we will encourage the newsroom involved to come up with something else.

What kind of support can I expect from ProPublica?

In addition to editing help to conceptualize and write your stories, we will also have a data reporter, a researcher and an engagement reporter dedicated to helping our partner newsrooms. We stand ready to offer design help for the stories as well.

What happens if we do so well, there’s more than a year’s work?

We should all be so lucky! Our intention is to provide one year of support. If a newsroom taps into something that is among the most promising proposals for year two, it would get serious consideration.

What about other costs, such as travel or public records requests?

News organizations should expect to incur most of those costs, though ProPublica has set aside some funding to help offset those expenses. You should consult with us in advance about splitting costs.

We are based outside the United States. Can we apply?

At this time, the Local Reporting Network is only open to news organizations based in this country.

Can we run our idea by you before applying?

Yes. Operators are standing by. In all seriousness, we want to help you make your proposal the best it can be. ProPublica reporters and editors are willing to read a draft of your proposal and give you our thoughts.

God and U.S. Foreign Policy: an Analysis

On April 2, 2019 By admin

• Breaking News

Mr. Pompeo’s Unoriginal Assertion

Well, here we go again. God is back at work in support of the foreign policy of the United States. In fact, this time around, God has apparently gone so far as to rig the 2016 U.S. presidential election (and you thought it was the Russians!) in order to assure Donald Trump’s election. And why did the deity do so? To protect Israel from the bad guys in Teheran.

I know that many readers will find this scenario pretty far-fetched, but we do have it all on good authority—U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Pompeo’s revelation came in late March during an interview with the Christian Broadcast Network in Jerusalem. Asked if “it is possible God raised Donald Trump to be President in order to protect Israel from the Iranian menace,” Pompeo readily agreed. “As a Christian, I certainly believe that’s possible,” he said, and then transformed a possibility into a sure thing. He continued, “I am confident that the Lord is at work here when he sees the remarkable history of the faith in this place [Israel] and the work that our [U.S.] administration’s done to make sure that this democracy in the Middle East, that this Jewish state, remains.” Note the contradiction here—the bit about democracy and Jewish state. You can’t have a genuine democracy exclusively for one group (Jews) amidst a sea of others (Palestinians). However, if as Pompeo suggests, his God favors democracy and, one might logically assume, was the same God who brought down the white apartheid regime in South Africa, one might ask why should that God let Israel get away with what earned He, She, or Its wrath in apartheid South Africa? Could it be that Mr. Pompeo believes that a combination of Protestant fundamentalists and Zionists lobby in God’s realm just like they do in Congress, and that makes the difference? I bet that’s it.

God-Blessed Foreign Policy and Its Consequences

Historically, the Secretary of State’s faith, expressed in language that claims divine guidance for American foreign affairs, is commonplace. Nonetheless, one can ask, has this faith been justified? That is, has Mr. Pompeo’s Protestant fundamentalist God been the unerring and blessed guide He, She, or It is believed to be? Before we can answer that question, we have to establish the criteria upon which we can judge this. At this point I am taking things out of Mr. Pompeo’s hands and letting the reader know that I will simply judge the quality of God’s alleged guidance of U.S. foreign policy by the resulting body bag count.

Let’s begin at the beginning, when foreign policy was really just new world colonial expansion by a bunch of European adventurers. There is an excellent, though unattributed essaythat appears in Indian Country Today (10 September 2004) entitled “Manifest Destiny and American Indians.” It sums up the religious rationalizations that went along with the appropriation of Indian lands even before the founding of the U.S.: “The English Crown’s charters to Cabot, Gilbert and Raleigh [late 15th and 16th centuries] were nearly identical to the Pope’s Bulls [15th century] in commissioning expeditions to ‘heathen and barbarous lands.’ Pilgrim and Puritan [17th century] sermons were replete with references to God’s covenant with them, their divine mission, their ‘errand into the wilderness … and manifest destiny.’” That made the whole affair a religiously rationalized one. There is no accurate estimate of the death toll “God’s covenant” and “divine mission” helped bring about. However, it had to be in the millions.

This belief in a providential mission was picked up with enthusiasm by those who would lead the United States. Here is how Malcolm Magee, writing for the Oxford Research Encyclopedia, puts it: “The United States has been uniquely God-centered among Western nations, and that includes its foreign policy. From George Washington to the present, all presidents and policymakers have had to consider God in varying degrees either for their domestic audience or because they believed in a version of providential mission in the world. In time, the very idea of the United States became so entwined with the sense of the Divine that American civil religion dominated even the most secular acts of policymakers.”

There are some infamous examples of this “providential mission” guiding policy. For instance, in 1899 President William McKinley, a Methodist, allegedly stayed up all night praying to his God to tell him what to do with the Philippines, which had been captured by the U.S. during the Spanish-American War. It would seem that God told him “there was nothing left for us to do but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them, and by God’s grace do the very best we could by them, as our fellow-men for whom Christ also died.” A couple points here: first, most of the Filipinos were already Christians are by virtue of 350 years of Spanish imperial rule, and second, McKinley’s decision to follow his unerring and blessed divine guide and “do the very best we could” for the Filipinos cost the lives of 200,000 civilians, 20,000 native resistance fighters, and 4,200 American soldiers.

On 2 April 1917 President Woodrow Wilson addressed Congress seeking a declaration of war that would take the U.S. into World War I. He “closed with a statement reminiscent of the German Protestant reformer, Martin Luther’s closing lines at the Diet of Worms: ‘God helping her [the U.S.] she can do no other.’” Allegedly having no other choice but to follow divine guidance, 116,708 American soldiers proceeded to die on the battlefield.

At the end of World War II, Harry Truman was president. It was at this point that the U.S. was led down the path of assisting in the transformation of Palestine into Israel. Soon American leaders came to believe that a Protestant fundamentalist God demanded that American lives and treasure be used to support a Zionist ideology that was, in practice, ethnically cleansing Palestine of its native population. Pompeo fits right in here. To date, that divine guidance has rationalized United States aid to Israel to the tune of $130 billion and enough modern weaponry to help kill and maim tens of thousands of Palestinians, Syrians, Egyptians, Jordanians and Lebanese.

One could go on with this history, taking in the Cold War notion that the U.S. was a Christian nation at war with “Godless Communism.” That bit of good versus evil gave the world the (divinely inspired?) strategy of mutually assured destruction. And then there was George W. Bush, who claimed that God told him to invade Iraq, an alleged piece of advice that subsequently killed as many as 400,000 Iraqis.

Quite frankly, to judge from the behavior of those leaders who, historically and also contemporaneously, claim to act with divine guidance, one must conclude that either they have radically misinterpreted the message from beyond, or that their gods are debased by an endless bloodlust. It is, of course, also possible that there are no gods and these leaders have conveniently duped themselves with a belief that allows them to act as barbarians.

Finally, it should be noted that this is not solely a Mike Pompeo, Protestant God problem. Yes, we know, ethically, what it means to be a Christian as represented by Mike Pompeo It means, among other things, to glory in an alleged divinely sanctioned destruction of the Palestinian people. However, we also know what it means, ethically, to be a Jew as represented by Benjamin Netanyahu, and similarly, we know what it means, ethically, to be a Muslim as represented by Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman. If there were time and space we could observe what it ethically means to be a Buddhist as represented by the leadership of Sri Lanka and what it ethically means to be a Hindu according to the fundamentalist leadership of India. The problem addressed here is ubiquitous.

This is really a universal problem of delusion. Whether there is a God or gods or not, it is delusional to think that mass murder is a path to any sort of redemption. Of course, plenty of wholly secular leaders and governments have radically reduced the world’s population based on nothing other than their hatred, racism and paranoia—no gods needed. But here in the United States we do seem to need the alleged blessing of a God to do the mostly negative things that we do abroad. That means we will probably be indefinitely stuck with leaders who, despite appearing sane, claim insight to God’s will, and thereby the right to lead us down primrose paths to suffering and murder.