Women's March: A united message spanning generations

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January 22, 2017

«Stand united, we will never be divided,» was the message chanted by the crowd as people marched through central London.
Cheers erupted every few minutes as the crowd held up placards to the beat of drum and bass music from a portable sound system.
«Girls just wanna have fundamental rights», «Women won’t be trumped» and «Burn bras not bridges» were some of the messages directed at US President Donald Trump from the UK.
Women — and men — of all ages descended on the capital for the Women’s March in London on the first full day of his presidency.
There was a united message from the crowd, who came with glitter on their faces and even fancy dress to take part in the two-mile walk.
Many were parents who said they wanted to send out a message for the next generation that they have a voice and can stand up for the women’s rights they believe to be under threat from the new US administration.
Mum-of-one Danae Savvidou, 25, travelled alone from Gloucestershire to London to take part in the event for the sake of her 10-month-old daughter.
She said: «She was born during the presidency of a man who openly supported women’s rights and protected them.
«I feel like we’ve gone back 100 years and I feel sad for her generation.
«Donald Trump isn’t presidential material. He’s openly misogynistic and racist as well. I see America as a leader and partners in the Western world. He represents such a big nation.
«Our leaders over here are right wing as well. It’s not going the right way for me.
«Brexit is a concern. I hope we protect the rights the EU offers, such as employment rights and maternity. These issues need to be spoken about. When a nation is doing badly, women suffer.
«Personally I want my daughter to see what I’ve done today to show you can do things to change the world and she does have the power. »
It was a message which resonated with many other parents as they walked with their children in the fresh winter’s air along Piccadilly.
Nancy Pegg, 39, a mum-of-two from south-west London, came along with her daughter Sophie, nine, who carried a yellow banner emblazoned with the words «Yes to equality».
She said: «This is about equality for girls not in a fortunate position.
«Trump is a concern but empowering women is the main motivation. I think it’s important for my daughter to have a powerful voice and to know she can be a strong force.
«We live in a male-dominated world. I want to show her anything her brother can do, she can do too. There are no boundaries. »
Although the event was labelled a Women’s March, there were hundreds of men in the crowd showing their support.
Car horns beeped to galvanise the demonstrators who, in turn, greeted the drivers with cheers as the march progressed to its rally in Trafalgar Square.
The Raise Voices Choir motivated the protesters by singing «Don’t let Trump get his way» to their own version of «The Battle Hymn of the Republic».
Student Patrick Bone, from Shepherd’s Bush, London, attended because he felt «progress made in the last decades is in threat of being eroded».
He added: «Trump’s election signalled a rise of the populist right who look to blame economic problems on minorities or disenfranchised groups.
«His election was a catalyst for something that’s been coming a long time.
«This march is to show we will stand and be counted. This is only the beginning. The work begins today. »
Tom Amies, 33, a doctor from Middlesex, walked beside his wife Lydia, 34, as he carried their 11-month-old daughter Niamh in a baby carrier sling.
«This is for my daughter, he said.
«There has been a political slide to the right and a sense of misplaced trust. Trump wants to repeal Obamacare. It shows how good we have it with the NHS.
«There are going to be people there who have that healthcare for life-saving treatment and they will no longer be able to afford it. »
The demonstration brought representatives from all nationalities, including Americans who felt they needed to take a stand even though they were thousands of miles away from their country.
Retired banker Carol Moore, 68, originally from New York, came to represent the Democrats Abroad UK Women’s Caucus.
She said: «I’ve come because of the horror of seeing Donald Trump win. He is divisive and will hurt the middle classes by repealing the healthcare act.
«This march has taken on huge visibility here in the UK because the issues are global. Women’s pay was an issue when I worked in the City.
«There is still the issue of sexual violence and how it’s prosecuted and handled here.
«I hope this is a message to women to recognise they have a voice to fight issues here in the UK and around the world. »
Business development manager Anna McDermott, 29, originally from California, has been in the UK for 11 years.
She said: «As an American, I cannot accept what Donald Trump says and I can’t accept him as a president.
«I do hope this sends out a message. ‘Good morning. Welcome to day one of the resistance. This is the world shouting back’. »
As the crowd moved into Trafalgar Square, the noise quietened so demonstrators could listen to the speakers on the stage, who included TV presenter Sandi Toksvig and Labour MP Yvette Cooper.
However, the final address was given by 10-year-old Sumayah Siddiqi who read out a poem to the crowd which had a message of optimism with the words «I shall stand for love».

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Kolejny występ Linettego. Sampdoria przegrała i spadła w tabeli

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January 22, 2017

Linetty jest ważnym ogniwem w drużynie prowadzonej przez Marco Giampaoloniego. Szkoleniowiec stawia na piłkarza, dla którego niedzielny mecz był 19 w jego pierwszym sezonie we włoskiej ekstraklasie. Z kolei Bereszyński dopiero od niedawna jest graczem «Blucerchiati». Jak dotąd rozegrał jedno spotkanie przeciwko AS Romie w Pucharze Włoch (0:4). Duży ścisk w tabeli dodatkowo motywował piłkarzy do jak najlepszej gry. Ewentualne zwycięstwo mogło podciągnąć każdą z drużyn w górę tabeli. Dotyczyło to głównie ekipy gości, której ostatecznie nie udało się wykorzystać szansy na awans o kilka miejsc. w związku z utraconą przez nich bramką na początku drugiej połowy, boisko opuściło dwóch defensywnych pomocników, w tym Linetty. To nie przyniosło jednak żadnego rezultatu i Sampdoria musiała przełknąć gorycz porażki.
Atalanta — Sampdoria 1:0 (0:0) -> STRZELCY, SKŁADY, STATYSTYKI

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President Trump tweets on Women’s March protesters: “Why didn’t these people vote?”

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January 22, 2017

Last Updated Jan 22, 2017 4:47 AM EST
President Donald Trump, in between tweets about his “long standing ovations” at CIA headquarters and his inauguration’s television ratings, implied in a tweet early Sunday morning that the Women’s March protesters did not vote.
“Watched protests yesterday but was under the impression that we just had an election!” Mr. Trump wrote. “Why didn’t these people vote? Celebs hurt cause badly.”
Watched protests yesterday but was under the impression that we just had an election! Why didn’t these people vote? Celebs hurt cause badly.
However, shortly after posting that first tweet, he added that he respects Americans’ right to protest:
Peaceful protests are a hallmark of our democracy. Even if I don’t always agree, I recognize the rights of people to express their views.
The gender gap in the election was large: Mr. Trump beat Clinton by 53 percent to 41 percent among men, while Clinton won among women by 54 percent to 42 percent. The gender breakdown among white voters was different, however: Mr. Trump beat Clinton among white women 53 percent to 43 percent.
The Women’s March featured millions of protesters in cities across the country rallying against President Trump’s stated agenda, with the primary protest being a large rally in Washington, D. C. Many protesters wore pointy-eared “pussyhats,” carried signs protesting various aspects of the new administration’s plans, and chanted, “Welcome to your first day, we will never go away.”
Watch pop star Madonna rally protesters and sing at the Women’s March on Washington. Madonna said she had «thought an awful lot about blowing up…
It’s not clear which of the many celebrities to speak at the Women’s March President Trump was referring to in his tweet, but Madonna’s fiery, profanity-laced speech has since drawn the most attention online.
“I’m angry,” Madonna stated at one point, pointing to her chest. “Yes, I am outraged. Yes, I have thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House.”
In addition to tweeting about the Women’s March protesters, Mr. Trump also weighed in on his visit to CIA headquarters on Saturday afternoon.
During a visit to the CIA, President Trump vowed to intensify efforts to defeat ISIS. After denouncing an intelligence summary that contained uns…
While standing in front of the CIA’s memorial to fallen officers, the president tried to reassure the intelligence community he was still behind them after a series of disparaging remarks. He also talked about his anger with the media for its coverage of the crowd size at his inauguration.
Recently-departed CIA Director John Brennan issued a blistering statement about Mr. Trump’s appearance shortly afterwards, slamming what he described as the president’s self-aggrandizement in front of the memorial to our nation’s fallen intelligence officers.
The president, however, had a different take in a tweet on Sunday, focusing instead on the “long standing ovations” he received in Langley, Virginia, and calling the overall event a “WIN!”
Had a great meeting at CIA Headquarters yesterday, packed house, paid great respect to Wall, long standing ovations, amazing people. WIN!

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What democracy looks like: Women’s March on Washington

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January 22, 2017

Madonna’s mini-concert may have been a surprise. But so was the turnout for this event.
And they seemed to come from everywhere: Louisville, Hartford, Conn., Detroit, Northern California, Lake George, Colo. One man said, “I’m from Ohio, and I’m here because I have a lot of women in my life that I love.”
Demonstrators protest on the National Mall for the Women’s March on Washington, January 21, 2017. Hundreds of thousands of protesters spearheaded by women’s rights groups demonstrated across the U. S. and the world to send a defiant message to President Donald Trump.
And their reasons for being here had a common theme:
One woman said, “I’m here for women’s rights and because I have a daughter and I’m looking out for her future.”
Another said, “I want to show America that love still trumps hate.”
“It’s time to speak out on why we are all so, so alarmed by our new president,” said another.
And though this was not called an anti-Trump march, there was a point to the sea of pink hats.
“They’re called pussy hats,” said one woman.
“What do you think is the reason for them?” she was asked.
“It’s because of what Donald Trump said about grabbing women without their consent. Which is not OK.”
And up on the stage, were speakers like veteran women’s rights activist Gloria Steinem, an honorary March Co-Chair (“You look great! I wish you could see yourselves. It’s like an ocean”).
Steinem got right to the political point: “Trump and his handlers have found a fox for every chicken coup, and a Twitter finger must not become a trigger finger.”
The event was called in part because of concern among women about the possible erosion of rights they have spent generations working to achieve.
Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood, told the crowd, “One of us can be dismissed. Two of us can be ignored. But together, we’re a movement.”
The speeches went on for more than three hours, featuring everyone from California’s first minority woman Senator Kamal Harris (“There’s nothing more powerful and we cannot be dismissed. It’s going to get harder before it gets easier, and we will keep fighting no matter what because we have the power”), to wounded veteran, now U. S. Senator from Illinois, Tammy Duckworth (“I did not give up literally parts of my body so that we can give up our rights”), to event co-chair Linda Mansour (“I am unapologetically Muslim American. I am unapologetically Palestinian-American”), to six-year-old Sophie Cruz, the daughter of undocumented immigrants (“Let us fight with love, faith and courage so our families will not be destroyed”).
But it was not just in Washington. There were “sister marches” in scores of cities around the world, with speakers calling for mass movement that will protect women’s rights, and elect officials who will help.
In America’s capital and in cities across the globe, millions take to the streets in solidarity against the new Trump administration
But can one day of marches make a major difference?
“The marches of the sixties on civil rights led to the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act,” said University of Connecticut political science professor Paul Herrnson, who studies mass movements. “The marches and protests on Vietnam also had an impact. Lyndon Johnson decided not to seek his party’s presidential nomination for another term as a result of those marches.”
But Herrnson says there is another key ingredient: The follow-up.
“You know, American politics is really about sustained interest and sustained pressure. It’s about organizing. It’s about making sure that, over time, policymakers hear what you have to say and get the sense that you are determined.”
“I am woman — hear me roar!”
Speakers today vowed that this was only the beginning, and though it was the stars that stole much of the spotlight, like Alicia Keys (“This girl is on fire!”), it will be the rank-and-file who determine whether this is a one-day flash-in-the-pan … a day that included a chance for marchers to jeer at President Trump’s motorcade as it sped into the White House.
At the very least, for those who put their shoe leather and their hearts into the event, it will be a day that made history.
Protesters gather near the White House during the Women’s March on Washington, January 21, 2017.

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What does the end of the one-child policy mean for China's disabled population? The Women's March against Trump matters – but only if we keep fighting

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January 22, 2017

In a small shop hidden in the shadows of the gleaming, golden arches of the two-storey McDonald’s next door, Liu Wenzheng has been developing photographs since 1995. Business in his north Beijing neighbourhood is slow but steady. Every now and then, a Western couple will come in to have a photograph taken of their newly adopted Chinese child. The child is nearly always “imperfect” in some way, whether it’s something as minor as a cleft palate, or a more challenging disability.
“Westerners have higher morals. They will adopt disabled children,” Liu tells me over a glass of baijiu , the distilled Chinese rice spirit, at a nearby restaurant. His disappointment in his own people is personal: Liu has been disabled for all of his adult life, since a run-in with Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution left him so badly beaten that his left leg had to be amputated. He was 22 and had been arrested for reading banned American literature.
He spent six months in hospital. After being discharged with a rudimentary wooden limb, he returned to his old job on a Beijing factory floor. “I was tough and people were scared of me,” Liu says, his brusque manner and burly frame illustrating his point. “Not every disabled person would have been allowed back to work with a full salary, to stand there and not do much.” Throughout our conversation, he emphasises the rarity of his situation compared to that of other disabled people. He has worked all his life, is happily married and has an adult son. Most disabled people in China are not so lucky.
A few miles north of Liu’s shop, on the outskirts of an eerily quiet retail park, Alenah’s Home is a warm hub of activity. This private centre for disabled orphans has been looking after children since 2004. The children come from orphanages all around China, which don’t have the funds or the facilities to provide disabled care. Many children, such as Furui, a one-year-old who was abandoned after a premature delivery, arrive with muscular atrophy – a result of months of neglect.
Alenah’s Home is one of the few private centres of its kind in China that look after disabled orphans. They don’t receive any government funding. Chris Hu, a full-time volunteer, tells me that children who are abandoned in China are nearly always female, disabled or both. This is in part a result of China’s one-child policy, which made China’s disabled population fall to 6 per cent of the country as a whole (the global average is 15 per cent) and also produced a gender imbalance of 120 boys for every 100 girls.
China’s one-child policy was officially abolished in January 2016. But Hu agrees with experts who predict that this won’t necessarily redress demographic imbalances. Cultural prejudices against disabled people are hard to shake. Confucian ideology emphasises the idea of the body as a point along an ancestral continuum. Thus, any defect is attributed to a spiritual flaw in the family, even for disabilities, such as Liu’s, which are caused by injury. It is easy to dismiss this kind of abstraction as stereotyping, but when Yuan Xiaolu, a retired journalist who has been blind in one eye since birth, repeatedly tells me, “I don’t blame my mother,” it suggests a genuine anxiety about the perception of her family’s morals.
In wealthy cities, and especially in popular tourist areas, public facilities are becoming more accessible to disabled people. The Chinese government claimed to have invested 500 million yuan in the construction and renovation of 25,000 public toilets in 2015, most of them wheelchair-friendly. This follows changes in the law to encourage greater inclusivity: employers are required to reserve 1.5 per cent of jobs for people with disabilities, or pay a fee to the Disabled Persons’ Employment Security Fund, which is managed by the China Disabled Persons’ Federation (CDPF), a government body.
However, meaningful social change lags behind. Disabled children are more likely to be found – and often abandoned – in poorer rural areas, where women can’t afford abortions and facilities don’t exist to support disabled people. Liu describes the government’s measures as “barely a cup of water when you need the sea”, saying that most companies would rather pay the fine than employ a disabled person.
Even then, John Giszczak, a former China programmes manager for Save the Children, has said that the fees paid to the CDPF often end up being spent on overpriced “pseudoscientific ‘therapeutic’ equipment”.
The CDPF was founded in 1988 by Deng Pufang, the son of the then Chinese leader, Deng Xiaoping. Like Liu, Deng Pufang was paralysed – left paraplegic after an assault by Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution. Having such a high-profile disabled person in Chinese public life contributed to a more open attitude towards physical disabilities, but this didn’t necessarily spread to all aspects of life.
Similarly, when the Hubei-based farmer Yu Xiuhua, who has cerebral palsy, published her poem “Crossing Half of China to Sleep with You”, which went viral on Chinese social media, she illustrated that her situation was an exception to the opportunities for disabled people, rather than the norm. Like most disabled people in China, Yu was unable to finish school and has spoken about how she has felt “undermined. . [and] hated” by her body. Still, she insists, “My disability really has nothing to do with my poetry.”
“It’s not the government that’s the problem. It’s the people,” Liu says. China is often characterised as a country where the official Communist Party line is the only one that matters. But most Chinese people I speak to see their culture as running far deeper than political diktats. Policies may change behaviour or improve facilities for disabled people, but social rehabilitation seems a long way off.
Still, I suggest to Liu, he seems to have done quite well for himself. His family and his photography business aren’t the future he foresaw when he first became disabled. “Not really,” he says glumly. “Digital ruined everything.”
Arron Banks, UKIP-funder, Brexit cheerleader and Gibraltar-based insurance salesman, took time out from Trump’s inauguration to tweet me about my role in tomorrow’s Women’s March “ Conservative values are in the ascendancy worldwide. Thankfully your values are finished. . good ”.
Just what about the idea of women and men marching for human rights causes such ill will? The sense it is somehow cheeky to say we will champion equality whoever is in office in America – or around the world. After all, if progressives like me have lost the battle of ideas, what difference does it make whether we are marching, holding meetings or just moaning on the internet?
The only anti-democratic perspective is to argue that when someone has lost the argument they have to stop making one. When political parties lose elections they reflect, they listen, they learn – but if they stand for something, they don’t disband. The same is true, now, for the broader context. We should not dismiss the necessity to learn, to listen, to reflect on the rise of Trump – or indeed reflect on the rise of the right in the UK – but reject the idea that we have to take a vow of silence if we want to win power again.
To march is not to ignore the challenges progressives face. It is to start to ask what are we prepared to do about it.
Historically, conservatives have had no such qualms about regrouping and remaining steadfast in the confidence they have something worth saying. In contrast, the left has always been good at absolving itself of the need to renew.
We spend our time seeking the “ perfect ” candidates, the “ perfect ” policy, the “ perfect campaign ” , as a precondition for action. It justifies doing nothing – except sitting on the sidelines bemoaning the state of society.
We also seem to think that changing the world should be easier than reality suggests. The backlash we are now seeing against progressive policies was inevitable once we appeared to take these gains for granted – and became arrogant and exclusive about the inevitability of our worldview. Our values demand the rebalancing of power, whether economic, social or cultural, and that means challenging those who currently have it. We may believe that a more equal world is one in which more will thrive, but that doesn’t mean those with entrenched privilege will give up their favoured status without a fight – or that the public should express perpetual gratitude for our efforts via the ballot box either.
Amongst the conferences, tweets and general rumblings there seem three schools of thought about what to do next. The first is Marxist – as in Groucho – revisionism: to rise again we must water down our principles to accommodate where we believe the centre ground of politics to now be. Tone down our ideals in the hope that by such acquiescence we can eventually win back public support for our brand – if not our purpose. The very essence of a hollow victory.
The second is to stick to our guns and stick our heads in the sand, believing that eventually, when World War Three breaks out, the public will come grovelling back to us. To luxuriate in an unwillingness to see we are losing not just elected offices but the fight for our shared future.
But what if there really was a third way? It’s not going to be easy, and it requires more than a hashtag or funny t-shirt. It’s about picking ourselves up, dusting ourselves down and starting to renew our call to arms in a way that makes sense for the modern world.
For the avoidance of doubt, if we march tomorrow and then go home satisfied we have made our point then we may as well not have marched at all. But if we march and continue to organise out of the networks we make, well, then that’s worth a Saturday in the cold. After all, we won’t win the battle of ideas, if we don’t battle.
We do have to change the way we work. We do have to have the courage not to live in our echo chambers alone. To go with respect and humility to debate and discuss the future of our communities and of our country.
And we have to come together to show there is a willingness not to ask a few brave souls to do that on their own. Not just at election times, but every day and in every corner of Britain, no matter how difficult it may feel.
Saturday is one part of that process of finding others willing not just to walk a mile with a placard, but to put in the hard yards to win the argument again for progressive values and vision. Maybe no one will show up. Maybe not many will keep going. But whilst there are folk with faith in each other, and in that alternative future, they’ll find a friend in me ready to work with them and will them on – and then Mr Banks really should be worried.

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© Source: http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2017/01/what-does-end-one-child-policy-mean-chinas-disabled-population
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A nonprofit pub that's good for what ales you

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January 22, 2017

At first glance, the Oregon Public House looks like any other hipster pub in Portland. There are lovingly-crafted local beers … someone’s playing a ukulele. The only thing missing are the free-range chickens.
But take a closer look, and you’ll notice something unusual: a sign reading “nonprofit pub.”
“This is the most Portland thing I’ve ever heard,” laughed Burbank.
“Yeah, I know, right?” said Ryan Saari. “And it really feels a little like that. Like, ‘Oh, a nonprofit pub, oh, jeez. Oh, Portland, what are you gonna do next?’”
Yes, the Oregon Public House calls itself America’s first nonprofit pub. The idea came to founder Ryan Saari exactly how you’d think it would: “I was having a beer, I was drinking, sitting in the backyard with my buddy and I thought, ‘What about a pub?’ ‘Cause there’s nothing more Portland than nonprofits and breweries.”
He’s not kidding: Portland is home to more than 60 breweries, and nearly 7,000 non profits.
“And so the two coming together was just, like, totally harmonious,” Saari said.
“Our menu options are “eat, drink, give,” explained Saari. “So you place your order of food, you place your order of drink, and then you choose where you want your profits to go to from a list of charities.
“And so we are able to track where the money goes for each charity. And then at the end of the month, whatever we make, we donate it in the way of our customers’ choosing.”
Here’s how it works: Every six months, a new batch of charities goes on the menu. Over the last three years, the pub has donated more than $100,000 to dozens of good causes, from PTAs to urban farms, from homeless teens to cancer survivors.
Signs of charities benefiting from customers imbibing at the Oregon Public House in Portland.
Burbank asked, “Do you notice that certain charities kind of — for lack of a better word — perform better than others?”
“Oh, absolutely. Yeah, yeah.”
“I mean, I’m looking up there, and I notice for instance, one has a dog on it. That’s probably doing okay, right?”
“We’ve definitely found that different logos work better,” Saari said.
“My advice would be no matter what your charity is actually about, put a dog on there.”
“Put a dog on it, or a bird. It’s Portland!”
Even Saari has to admit the whole thing feels a little like something from the TV show “Portlandia.” But it can mean serious money for charities.
One of the current “charities on tap” is the Wayfinding Academy, a brand-new college.
“Starting a college from scratch is not a thing people do,” said Michelle Jones, who is drumming up donations for the school, table by table, pint by pint, without the advantage of a furry logo.
“Which is kind of appropriate because running a not-for-profit pub is also not a thing people do,” Burbank said.
“Right, which is why we’re good friends and perfect partners! When you’re one of the ‘charities on tap,’ for a month you pick a night of the week. And so a team of us, usually two or three or four of us, come and serve from 4:00 to 8:00. And tonight I’ll be one of those servers.”
And on this day, the personal touch seemed to be working. “I think it’s pretty cool,” said one customer, Margaret. “I mean. we walked in, they greeted us right away, told us all about it, ushered us to the bar to order something and pick our charity!”
“I think it’s comfortable, it’s a nice atmosphere, and I think it’s an awesome idea,” said another customer, Lisa.
So, which charity did Margaret pick? “We picked the … Wayfair?”
Wayfinding Academy!
And all those pints really add up…
“In the end,” said Jones, “the contribution we’ll get from the Oregon Public House will be essentially equivalent of one of our major donors for the year. It all depends a little bit —”
“On how much beer I drink tonight?” Burbank asked.
“I’m willing to do my part.”
“I appreciate that, Luke. Thanks!”
Believe it or not, there’s actually another nonprofit venture in Portland, called the Ex Novo Brewing Company. Joel Gregory started the brewery back in 2014.
Ex Novo hasn’t given away as much money as the Oregon Public House — yet. So far just about $10,000 or so. But because they’re selling cans and bottles all over the Pacific Northwest, and even exporting to Japan, Gregory believes they are set up to donate a half-million dollars by 2020. “That’s less than four years away.”
Correspondent Luke Burbank (right) with Joel Gregory, founder of the nonprofit Ex Novo Brewing Company in Portland.
“You seem like a nice guy and it’s good to help the world,” Burbank said. “But is some part of you, like, thinking, ‘Man, I could really use an extra half million-dollars’?”
“I guess. I mean, I’ve just always been wired, like, I just need enough. I don’t really care that much about being overly-wealthy. So that’s kind of why this thing is a nonprofit.”
Ryan Saari, of Oregon Public House, thinks this “ale-truism” idea could take off nationally. “I get phone calls, emails every week, probably every day from people around the country that are interested in this model in their city,” he said. “And they always say the same thing: ‘This would work great in northeast Albuquerque.’ ‘This would be amazing in south Toledo.’ And I really think that they’re probably right.”
Meaning even more Americans soon may have the chance to warm some hearts just by having a cold one.

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David Edelstein on the Oscar contenders

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January 22, 2017

With Oscar nominations set to be announced Tuesday, now is actually peak holiday-movie season!
And you don’t just get to see these movies — you can be part of the backlash against them! Or, the backlash against the backlash!

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Why is Alan Dein so good at getting his interview subjects to talk? Eighty pages in to Age of Anger, I still had no idea what it was about

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January 22, 2017

“I like to feel like I’m a conduit, an enabler – does that sound soppy?” After listening to a couple of episodes of his exceptional new series, Aftermath (23 January, 8pm), I wanted, not for the first time, to know what drives the oral historian Alan Dein to keep making the sorts of radio programmes that he has made for the past 20 years. These include the award-winning Lives in a Landscape and Don’t Hang Up – ostensibly uncomplicated exchanges with people going about their daily lives, sometimes revealing very little, sometimes more than you can bear. (Landmark radio initiatives such as The Listening Project owe a great deal to Dein.)
In Don’t Hang Up recently, a woman mentioned that her grandmother had flown herself across Africa in a biplane in the 1930s. Dein always seems to have the same sort of response to any such information: lightly intrigued sympathy, shot through with an implacability, like a ship’s figurehead battling into the elements.
In Aftermath , he explores what happens to a community after it has been at the centre of a nationally significant event: Hungerford; Hyde in Manchester, post-Shipman; Morecambe Bay. Some of the most memorable parts of the first programme involve Dein simply driving around the streets of Hungerford with a resident. As the car’s indicator softly clicks, the interviewee points out the plethora of yew trees in that pretty Berkshire town. A great place to make cricket bats, the man thinks out loud, as Dein unhurriedly steers the conversation back in the vague direction of the shootings.
Dein never seems to set traps for his interlocutors, never exhausts them. And yet unhealed wounds are frequently bled. Has he always been good at getting people to talk? He tells me that when his dad took him as a kid to watch Arsenal play in the 1970s, he found he was always more interested in the crowd than in the match, in “looking at faces and wondering about how they spoke to each other”. He says that one question guaranteed to get someone talking is, “Why do you live where you do?” All things will unfurl from this: personal circumstances, family history, work. Communicated in that quintessentially undramatic Dein way, like puddles gently drying in a courtyard.
Most books arrive on the market dragging a comet tail of context: the press release, the blurb on the back, the comparison with another book that sold well (sometimes this is baked into the title, as with a spate of novels in which grown women were recast as “girls”, variously gone, or on the train, or with dragon tattoos or pearl earrings). Before you even start reading, you know pretty much what you will get.
So I was particularly disconcerted to reach page 80 of Pankaj Mishra’s Age of Anger and realise that I didn’t really know what it was about. The prologue starts with a recap of the tyrannical career of the Italian poet Gabriele D’Annunzio, namechecks The Communist Manifesto , describes how Europeans were enthralled by Napoleon’s “quasi-autistic machismo”, links this to the “great euphoria” experienced in 1914, mentions that Eugene Onegin “wears a tony ‘Bolívar’ hat”, then dwells on Rimbaud’s belief that not washing made him a better writer, before returning to D’Annunzio to conclude that his life “crystallised many themes of our own global ferment as well as those of his spiritually agitated epoch”.
Psychologists have demonstrated that the maximum number of things that a human can hold in their brain is about seven. The prologue is titled “Forgotten Conjunctures”. I might know why they have been forgotten.
Two pages later, Mishra is at it again. How’s this for a paragraph?
After all, Maxim Gorky, the Bolshevik, Muhammad Iqbal, the poet-advocate of “pure” Islam, Martin Buber, the exponent of the “New Jew”, and Lu Xun, the campaigner for a “New Life” in China, as well as D’Annunzio, were all devotees of Nietzsche. Asian anti-imperialists and American robber barons borrowed equally eagerly from the 19th-century polymath Herbert Spencer, the first truly global thinker – who, after reading Darwin, coined the term “survival of the fittest”. Hitler revered Atatürk (literally “the father of the Turks”) as his guru; Lenin and Gramsci were keen on Taylorism, or “Americanism”; American New Dealers later borrowed from Mussolini’s “corporatism”.
This continues throughout. The dizzying whirl of names began to remind me of Wendy Cope’s “Waste Land Limericks”: “No water. Dry rocks and dry throats/Then thunder, a shower of quotes/From the Sanskrit and Dante./Da. Damyata. Shantih./I hope you’ll make sense of the notes.”
The trouble comes because Mishra has set himself an enormous subject: explaining why the modern world, from London to Mumbai and Mosul, is like it is. But the risk of writing about everything is that one can end up writing about nothing. (Hang on, I think I might be echoing someone here. Perhaps this prose style is contagious. As Nietzsche probably wrote.) Too often, the sheer mass of Mishra’s reading list obscures the narrative connective tissue that should make sense of his disparate examples.
By the halfway point, wondering if I was just too thick to understand it, I did something I don’t normally do and read some other reviews. One recorded approvingly that Mishra’s “vision is. . resistant to categorisation”. That feels like Reviewer Code to me.
His central thesis is that the current “age of anger” – demonstrated by the rise of Islamic State and right-wing nationalism across Europe and the US – is best understood by looking at the 18th century. Mishra invokes the concept of “ ressentiment ”, or projecting resentment on to an external enemy; and the emergence of the “clash of civilisations” narrative, once used to justify imperialism (“We’re bringing order to the natives”) and now used to turn Islamic extremism from a political challenge into an existential threat to the West.
It is on the latter subject that Mishra is most readable. He grew up in “semi-rural India” and now lives between London and Shimla; his prose hums with energy when he feels that he is writing against a dominant paradigm. His skirmish with Niall Ferguson over the latter’s Civilisation: the West and the Rest in the London Review of Books in 2011 was highly enjoyable, and there are echoes of that fire here. For centuries, the West has presumed to impose a narrative on the developing world. Some of its current anxiety and its flirtation with white nationalism springs from the other half of the globe talking back.
On the subject of half of us getting a raw deal, this is unequivocally a history of men. We read about Flaubert and Baudelaire “spinning dreams of virility”, Gorky’s attachment to the idea of a “New Man” and the cultural anxieties of (male) terrorists. Poor Madame de Staël sometimes seems like the only woman who ever wrote a book.
And yet, in a book devoted to unpicking hidden connections, the role of masculinity in rage and violence is merely noted again and again without being explored. “Many intelligent young men . were breaking their heads against the prison walls of their societies” in the 19th century, we learn. Might it not be interesting to ask whether their mothers, sisters and daughters were doing the same? And if not, why?
Mishra ends with the present, an atomised, alienated world of social media and Kim Kardashian. Isis, we are told, “offers a postmodern collage rather than a coherent doctrine”. That is also a good description of this book.

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Leader: Trump and an age of disorder The Women's March against Trump matters – but only if we keep fighting

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January 22, 2017

The US presidency has not always been held by men of distinction and honour, but Donald Trump is by some distance its least qualified occupant. The leader of the world’s sole superpower has no record of political or military service and is ignorant of foreign affairs. Throughout his campaign, he repeatedly showed himself to be a racist, a misogynist, a braggart and a narcissist.
The naive hope that Mr Trump’s victory would herald a great moderation was dispelled by his conduct during the transition. He compared his country’s intelligence services to those of Nazi Germany and repeatedly denied Russian interference in the election. He derided Nato as “obsolete” and predicted the demise of the European Union. He reaffirmed his commitment to dismantling Obamacare and to overturning Roe v Wade. He doled out jobs to white nationalists, protectionists and family members. He denounced US citizens for demonstrating against him. Asked whether he regretted any part of his vulgar campaign, he replied: “No, I won.”
Of all his predilections, Mr Trump’s affection for Vladimir Putin is perhaps the most troubling. When the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, warned that Russia was the “number one geopolitical foe” of the US, he was mocked by Barack Obama. Yet his remark proved prescient. Rather than regarding Mr Putin as a foe, however, Mr Trump fetes him as a friend. The Russian president aims to use the US president’s goodwill to secure the removal of American sanctions, recognition of Russia’s annexation of Crimea and respect for the murderous reign of the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad. He has a worryingly high chance of success.
Whether or not Mr Trump has personal motives for his fealty (as a lurid security dossier alleges), he and Mr Putin share a political outlook. Both men desire a world in which “strongmen” are free to abuse their citizens’ human rights without fear of external rebuke. Mr Trump’s refusal to commit to Nato’s principle of collective defence provides Mr Putin with every incentive to pursue his expansionist desires. The historic achievement of peace and stability in eastern Europe is in danger.
As he seeks reconciliation with Russia, Mr Trump is simultaneously pursuing conflict with China. He broke with precedent by speaking on the telephone with the Taiwanese president, Tsai Ing-wen, and used Twitter to berate the Chinese government. Rex Tillerson, Mr Trump’s secretary of state nominee, has threatened an American blockade of the South China Sea islands.
Mr Trump’s disregard for domestic and international norms represents an unprecedented challenge to established institutions. The US constitution, with its separation of powers, was designed to restrain autocrats such as the new president. Yet, in addition to the White House, the Republicans also control Congress and two-thirds of governorships and state houses. Mr Trump’s first Supreme Court appointment will ensure a conservative judicial majority. The decline of established print titles and the growth of “fake news” weaken another source of accountability.
In these circumstances, there is a heightened responsibility on the US’s allies to challenge, rather than to indulge, Mr Trump. Angela Merkel’s warning that co-operation was conditional on his respect for liberal and democratic values was a model of the former. Michael Gove’s obsequious interview with Mr Trump was a dismal example of the latter.
Theresa May has rightly rebuked the president for his treatment of women and has toughened Britain’s stance against Russian revanchism. Yet, although the UK must maintain working relations with the US, she should not allow the prospect of a future trade deal to skew her attitude towards Mr Trump. Any agreement is years away and the president’s protectionist proclivities could yet thwart British hopes of a beneficial outcome.
The diplomatic and political conventions embodied by the “special relationship” have endured for more than seven decades. However, Mr Trump’s election may necessitate their demise. It was the belief that the UK must stand “shoulder to shoulder” with the US that led Tony Blair into the ruinous Iraq War. In this new age of disorder, Western leaders must avoid being willing accomplices to Mr Trump’s agenda. Intense scepticism, rather than sycophancy, should define their response.
Arron Banks, UKIP-funder, Brexit cheerleader and Gibraltar-based insurance salesman, took time out from Trump’s inauguration to tweet me about my role in tomorrow’s Women’s March “ Conservative values are in the ascendancy worldwide. Thankfully your values are finished. . good ”.
Just what about the idea of women and men marching for human rights causes such ill will? The sense it is somehow cheeky to say we will champion equality whoever is in office in America – or around the world. After all, if progressives like me have lost the battle of ideas, what difference does it make whether we are marching, holding meetings or just moaning on the internet?
The only anti-democratic perspective is to argue that when someone has lost the argument they have to stop making one. When political parties lose elections they reflect, they listen, they learn – but if they stand for something, they don’t disband. The same is true, now, for the broader context. We should not dismiss the necessity to learn, to listen, to reflect on the rise of Trump – or indeed reflect on the rise of the right in the UK – but reject the idea that we have to take a vow of silence if we want to win power again.
To march is not to ignore the challenges progressives face. It is to start to ask what are we prepared to do about it.
Historically, conservatives have had no such qualms about regrouping and remaining steadfast in the confidence they have something worth saying. In contrast, the left has always been good at absolving itself of the need to renew.
We spend our time seeking the “ perfect ” candidates, the “ perfect ” policy, the “ perfect campaign ” , as a precondition for action. It justifies doing nothing – except sitting on the sidelines bemoaning the state of society.
We also seem to think that changing the world should be easier than reality suggests. The backlash we are now seeing against progressive policies was inevitable once we appeared to take these gains for granted – and became arrogant and exclusive about the inevitability of our worldview. Our values demand the rebalancing of power, whether economic, social or cultural, and that means challenging those who currently have it. We may believe that a more equal world is one in which more will thrive, but that doesn’t mean those with entrenched privilege will give up their favoured status without a fight – or that the public should express perpetual gratitude for our efforts via the ballot box either.
Amongst the conferences, tweets and general rumblings there seem three schools of thought about what to do next. The first is Marxist – as in Groucho – revisionism: to rise again we must water down our principles to accommodate where we believe the centre ground of politics to now be. Tone down our ideals in the hope that by such acquiescence we can eventually win back public support for our brand – if not our purpose. The very essence of a hollow victory.
The second is to stick to our guns and stick our heads in the sand, believing that eventually, when World War Three breaks out, the public will come grovelling back to us. To luxuriate in an unwillingness to see we are losing not just elected offices but the fight for our shared future.
But what if there really was a third way? It’s not going to be easy, and it requires more than a hashtag or funny t-shirt. It’s about picking ourselves up, dusting ourselves down and starting to renew our call to arms in a way that makes sense for the modern world.
For the avoidance of doubt, if we march tomorrow and then go home satisfied we have made our point then we may as well not have marched at all. But if we march and continue to organise out of the networks we make, well, then that’s worth a Saturday in the cold. After all, we won’t win the battle of ideas, if we don’t battle.
We do have to change the way we work. We do have to have the courage not to live in our echo chambers alone. To go with respect and humility to debate and discuss the future of our communities and of our country.
And we have to come together to show there is a willingness not to ask a few brave souls to do that on their own. Not just at election times, but every day and in every corner of Britain, no matter how difficult it may feel.
Saturday is one part of that process of finding others willing not just to walk a mile with a placard, but to put in the hard yards to win the argument again for progressive values and vision. Maybe no one will show up. Maybe not many will keep going. But whilst there are folk with faith in each other, and in that alternative future, they’ll find a friend in me ready to work with them and will them on – and then Mr Banks really should be worried.

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11 people killed in southern Georgia following severe weather

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January 22, 2017

Catherine Howden of the Georgia Emergency Management Agency said the deaths occurred in Cook, Brooks and Berrien counties in southern Georgia near the Georgia-Florida line.
Check out damage photos in south Georgia after severe weather killed 11 people and injured several more, MORE: https://t.co/yrhHQdmycD pic.twitter.com/dUx30v4BVM
She said the deaths were related to severe weather but could not specify whether tornadoes were the cause. Tornado warnings had been issued for parts of Georgia overnight.
Local officials are still assessing the area. No other information was immediately available.
The southeastern United States has been pounded by storms, high winds and unstable weather over the weekend. Four people died after a tornado with winds above 136 mph tore a 25-mile path across southern Mississippi before dawn Saturday.
Winter storms sweep across the country
The National Weather Service in Jacksonville, Florida, has issued a tornado warning for Echols, Clinch and Ware counties in southeastern Georgia. A severe thunderstorm warning was in effect for the Florida panhandle.