The Knot of the Universe

November 7, 2015, 4:57 am

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Hobbes’s ‘Leviathan,’ which presented human beings as material objects subject to the laws of mechanics, was a frontal assault on the idea of the immortal soul.

ENLARGE

Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s ‘Condemned Soul’ (1619), thought by some to be a self-portrait, at the Spanish Embassy in Rome. A pendant sculpture, ‘Blessed Soul’ (1619), stands nearby. PHOTO:BRIDGEMAN ART LIBRARY

By

RAYMOND TALLIS

Nov. 6, 2015 2:23 p.m. ET

Scientism, manifested most dismally in exaggerated claims about the capacity of neuroscience to explain (or explain away) human nature, is perhaps the most serious intellectual disease of our time. This is one of the many reasons why George Makari’s brilliant, compendious “Soul Machine: The Invention of the Modern Mind” is essential reading. The story he tells so engagingly is of a vast, polyphonic argument about what it is to be a human being. It involves some of post-Renaissance Europe’s most profound thinkers, as well as an extraordinary cast of charismatic figures, not a few of them charlatans and rogues. They were all driven by the ambition, as the author writes, “to close the gap between mind and body,” but attempts to do so “rested heavily on analogies and wishful thinking.” This sounds very much like the situation today.

Mr. Makari’s tale begins in the mid-17th century, when Thomas Aquinas’s synthesis of Aristotelian and Christian thought faced serious questions. At the heart of the Thomist vision was the human soul—“the knot of the universe,” as one medieval philosopher called it. Since it was the link between nature, man and God, the soul was, as Mr. Makari puts it, “the single most prized human attribute”; it provided believers “with universal dignity, repose before a bewildering, brutal world, and consolation in the face of death.” But religious beliefs that were centered on the soul and its salvation had licensed priestly corruption, widespread oppression and the endless bloodbath of confessional wars. Moreover, there was a rival world picture emerging from the scientific revolution—of the universe as matter in motion. This proved to have extraordinary explanatory power.

SOUL MACHINE

By George Makari
Norton, 656 pages, $39.95

Thomas Hobbes’s “Leviathan,” which presented human beings as material objects subject like other material objects to the laws of mechanics, was a frontal assault on the idea of the human soul. His contemporaries sought alternative ways of representing the soul, in a manner that was compatible with emerging science.Descartes led the charge with his dualistic notion of an unextended, eternal mind somehow connected to a machine-like body subject to mechanical laws.Spinoza collapsed the distinction between the body and mind, the natural and the supernatural, and nature and God, thereby earning the posthumous reputation of being both an atheist and a pantheist. 

The agenda for an argument spanning centuries had been set. Finding a place for the spirit in the flesh—and understanding how the one could interact with the other—presented insuperable difficulties: No one, Mr. Makari says, could seamlessly bridge atoms, body, mind, the universe, the sociopolitical world and the spiritual one. “The knot of the world,” he writes, had been “transformed from an all-purpose answer into a series of nearly impenetrable problems.” Ad hoc solutions, such as the proposal by the 17th-century Oxford physicianThomas Willis that animals had a material soul while only humans had a rational one, were a sign of desperation.

The terms of the debate were shifted decisively by the English philosopherJohn Locke. The eternal soul was pushed aside by the embodied “mind,” which had dominion over cognition, reflection, free will and personal identity. The mind, unlike the soul, was not fully formed at birth but a tabula rasa written on by experience and reflections upon experience. 

These metaphysical issues were not just a matter of theoretical interest, as Mr. Makari makes clear. What people were made of should determine the appropriate form of government. Hobbes’s vision of humanity as essentially amoral matter in motion underwrote his belief in the necessity for absolute power invested in a sovereign, to pre-empt a war of all against all. Locke’s opposing contributions to the birth of a tolerant liberalism were rooted in his sense of the contingency and fallibility of the human mind.

Locke was idolized by Voltaire and the philosophes, who embraced his heretical notion of “thinking matter.” The idea that all human knowledge and interior life could only be the result of external impressions, Mr. Makari writes, “supported a wide-ranging attack on religious fanaticism, magical claims, bigotry against other religions and morality predicated on the hereafter. If knowledge was always contingent, then there could be no incontestable basis for these things.” Unfortunately, this may have inspired the more radical, as well as the reformist, aspects of the French Revolution, when the Jacobins attempted to establish a political tabula rasa and “the libertarian and rational ideals of the Revolution came up against the brute logic of violence.”

The author is a superb raconteur, whether he is describing the battle for priority between “a provincial mad doctor” and “a gaggle of envious society physicians” around the bedside of the mad George III (his apparent cure in 1789 was the talk of Europe) or the rapid progression of the French Revolution into a sea of blood, where “high ideals . . . dreams of liberty, the rule of reason, equality, and fraternity, had come down to this: kill or be killed.” His gentle wit seasons his narrative, as when he notes that great debates “between Enlightenment French writers were arguments that, not infrequently, were staged after dessert” or that “evil and sin would be reframed as medical illnesses and statistical deviations.”

Mr. Makari helps us see how, as pictures of the mind became more materialistic, authority and expertise shifted from priests to the (scarcely disinterested) medical profession. The 18th century witnessed a generation of “médecins-philosophes engaged in critical dialogues on the mind.” Many made it a goal to develop “a model in which the realm of mind and meaning might be linked to the body, its passions, fevers, ills, and actions.” Mr. Makari, a professor of psychiatry, is particularly good on the impassioned arguments about the nature of mental illness and the appropriate approaches to treatment.

Physicians of many stripes—ranging from forerunners of neuroscience such as the neuroanatomist Thomas Willis to the charismatic, indeed mesmerizing, charlatan, Franz Anton Mesmer, the father of “animal magnetism”—constructed theories of mind that provided a rationale for their nostrums. “Irritability,” “sensibility,” “animal spirits” and other explanatory notions justified treatments that ranged from the brutal—emetics, ice baths, purgatives—to a kind of cognitive behavioral therapy that was supposed to appeal to the residuum of reason in the mind of the afflicted.

The progress of materialist medicine was challenged not by the failure of their treatments in practice but by new philosophical ideas, notably those originating from Immanuel Kant and his followers, who subjected the philosophes to crushing criticism. According to Kant’s alternative account of the mind, the timeless and spaceless realm of things-in-themselves may exist but is accessible to thought alone and divorced from the world as experienced through the senses. The thinking self replaced both the soul and Locke’s embodied mind. An idealist antidote to materialist talk of the “man-machine” was launched.

This might seem to have few practical therapeutic implications, but Mr. Makari notes that it led by an indirect route, which included a good deal of dissent from Kant, to a Nature Philosophy such as that propagated by the philosopher and disastrous amateur physician F.W.J. Schelling. The mind became Geist—the spirit, animating life, in which subject and object were united, offering, as Mr. Makari says, “a powerful counter to mechanistic thought.”

Materialism, however, maintained its domination in the first half of the 19th century, most notably in the guise of Franz Josef Gall’s phrenology, which was based on the idea that different parts of the brain corresponded to different mental faculties. Though the brain was the organ of the soul, Gall asserted (to ward off charges of materialism or atheism) that it had been sculpted by a Divine Hand. The division of the brain-mind into 27 separate regions—dismissed by some who pointed to the unity of the self—was hugely influential for a time.

And that is where, for the most part, Mr. Makari’s story ends, though he gives an excellent sketch of the 19th-century emergence of materialist theories of the mind that eschewed dualism and even vitalism in favor of a “biophysics” and a view of mental illness that saw it as derived from brain dysfunction. The mind was, as he says, “eclipsed”—by the brain.

Like the late, great chronicler of medical science Roy Porter, Mr. Makari highlights how the major thinkers arose from a wider conversation to which many relatively minor but nonetheless fascinating players made crucial contributions. While he acknowledges the extent to which ideas were in part a reflection of social forces, he does not succumb to the Foucauldian error of seeing ideas, and advances in knowledge, as mere expressions of social power.

Purveyors of the doctrine of l’homme machine are still among us, though today’s metaphorical machine of choice is the electronic computer running its mental software on neural hardware. Indeed, Mr. Makari’s observation that “the epistemological problems of creating an objective science of subjectivity could easily end in a hall of mirrors” applies directly to 21st-century “neurophilosophy.”

There can be no more important task in a secular age than trying to understand our own nature. “Soul Machine” should check any temptation toward the condescension of posterity. We are not much further on than we were 400 years ago, when the conversation Mr. Makari so brilliantly describes began.

—Mr. Tallis is the author, most recently, of “Black Mirror: Looking at Life Through Death.”

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Who makes better foreign policy: artists or scientists?

November 7, 2015, 5:29 am

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George Kennan, left, director of the State Department’s policy planning staff, had an artist’s approach to foreign policy, according to David Milne’s categories. (Associated Press)

By Rosa Brooks November 6 at 2:34 PM

Rosa Brooks is a professor at Georgetown Law School and a senior fellow at the New America Foundation.

There are books that are read and books that are admired, and they are not necessarily the same books. “Worldmaking,” by David Milne, seems destined to be more admired than read. Its subject alone tends to induce a respectful but glazed silence. If the topic is intellectually hefty, the book itself is heftier still (it weighs in at more than 500 pages of text), and the print is so small that readers over 40 would do well to keep their magnifying glasses handy.

This is a shame, since readers who can get past the book’s forbidding presentation will find much to enjoy. Milne, a historian at Britain’s University of East Anglia, offers up detailed and often surprisingly moving portraits of nine prominent American foreign policy thinkers, from Alfred Thayer Mahan and George Kennan to Henry Kissinger and, finally, Barack Obama. Each portrait is rich in detail, contextualizing its subject’s understanding of America’s role in the world and offering a glimpse into the debates and dilemmas that have troubled policymakers for a century or more.

We begin in 1949, in medias res, as Kennan, the State Department’s director of policy planning staff, and his deputy, Paul Nitze, struggle to develop a critical policy recommendation for President Harry Truman: In light of evidence that the Soviets had tested an atomic weapon late in 1949, should the United States push forward with its own efforts to develop a hydrogen bomb? Milne quotes Churchill’s observation that the hydrogen bomb, with its world-destroying potential, would be as far removed from the atom bomb as the atom bomb was “from the bow and arrow.”

For Kennan, deciding whether the United States should seek to develop fusion bombs could not be reduced to a mere question of strategy; it was a moral issue, freighted with near-theological significance. Ultimately, Kennan “crafted a seventy-nine-page paper, rich in history and philosophy,” counseling “against building this fearsome weapon.” Fusion weapons, he argued, could lead only to wars that no one could win: No nation could be trusted with a weapon so dangerous. He cited Shakespeare’s “Troilus and Cressida”:

HANDOUT IMAGE: "Worldmaking: The Art and Science of American Diplomacy" by David Milne (credit: FSG) 

And appetite, an universal wolf,

So doubly seconded with will and power,

Must make perforce an universal prey,

And last eat up himself.

The solution, to Kennan, lay in calling on all states to disavow fusion weapons and give control over nuclear research to an international organization.

Kennan’s protege Nitze saw things quite differently. Nitze had little use for philosophy or poetry; to him, the matter was simple. The Soviets surely would not stop at the atom bomb, so the United States couldn’t afford to stop there, either. The Cold War’s cold logic required an arms race; peace, precarious or not, could best be secured only through what later came to be called the doctrine of mutually assured destruction.

The face-off between Kennan and Nitze is compellingly described. Though Milne makes no secret of his own views (Kennan’s call for the United States to abandon H-bomb development was “well-intentioned but dangerous,” he writes), his sympathy for the cerebral and bookish Kennan is just as evident. A similar empathy characterizes his examination of the book’s other central characters, shining through even in the least likely of places. Readers inclined to dismiss Paul Wolfowitz as a neoconservative warmonger, for instance, may find themselves in grudging sympathy with the idealistic young scholar who marched for civil rights in the early 1960s, then “dropped his tenure-track job at Yale as if it were a paper route” when offered the opportunity to serve in the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.

Then there is Adm. Mahan, whose skepticism of America’s ability to impose its way of life on other nations is often missed by those who caricature him as a flag-waving advocate of American imperialism, and Obama, now lambasted on the right by critics who view him as passive and indecisive, even as critics on the left condemn his pitilessly lethal approach to counter-terrorism. Milne quotes a passage in Obama’s early memoir, “Dreams From My Father,” that seems, in hindsight, remarkably telling. As a college student poring over the classics of African American literature, he was dismayed: “In every page of every book, in Bigger Thomas and invisible men, I kept finding the same anguish, the same doubt; a self-contempt that neither irony nor intellect seemed able to deflect. . . . Only Malcolm X’s autobiography seemed to offer something different. His repeated acts of self-creation spoke to me; . . . his unadorned insistence on respect promised a new and uncompromising order, martial in its discipline, forged through sheer force of will.” 

It is when Milne turns to theory that “Worldmaking” falls somewhat flat. While rightly dismissive of the reductionist claim that foreign policy theorists are divided between realists and idealists, Milne uses his opening vignette — the standoff between Kennan and Nitze — to introduce his own alternative binary: “art versus science.”

The artists of American foreign policy, represented by Mahan, Kennan, Walter Lippmann, Kissinger and Obama, view the world with a sense of “tragedy and caution,” combined with a “reluctance . . . to depart from observed historical precedents.” They see abstract theorizing as foolhardy, and view intuition and humility as the sole touchstones in an uncertain, unpredictable world. Meanwhile, the scientists, typified by Woodrow Wilson, Charles Beard, Nitze and Wolfowitz, believe they can both discern and transcend the patterns of history. They see the world as malleable, capable of being remade through the joint application of American power and American moral rectitude.

But as Milne acknowledges, the art/science binary is as susceptible to criticism as the realist/idealist one. Kennan, for instance, is introduced in the first pages of “Worldmaking” as a man convinced that a U.S. decision to eschew the hydrogen bomb — on moral grounds — would persuade the Soviets to do likewise. Yet the conviction that an American moral vision could change the course of world history is, in Milne’s framework, surely the vision of a scientist, not an artist; it smacks of grand Wilsonian dreams, not the caution and attentiveness to precedent that Milne sees as characterizing artists. Milne acknowleges this but excuses Kennan’s deviation from his artist role by noting that “the fate of the world was deemed to be at stake.” For a book dedicated to the proposition that much about American foreign policy can be explained by the art/science binary, it seems rather odd to open with a vignette in which a leading figure plays a distinctly out-of-character role.

But Milne would prefer to have it both ways: “The individuals who populate this book exhibit these disciplinary tendencies to varying degrees,” he admits, and “this is no clear-cut binary.” Some, after all, “are partial to both artistry and scientism,” and the art/science binary is thus “intended as an illuminating background theme, not as a reductive master narrative.” That’s good, since if most of the individuals profiled turn out to fall less than neatly into one of his two categories, the art/science binary doesn’t tell much of a story. One might as well say that it’s all a matter of personality, or that U.S. foreign policy has been marked by a divide between the overly humble and the overly confident, or the pessimistic and the optimistic. Even after more than 500 pages, “Worldmaking” leaves the reader suspecting that almost any such binary might have been defended with equal success.

Many readers also will quibble with Milne’s choice of top foreign policy intellectuals. Not a single woman makes his list, for instance, and though he acknowledges that “gender discrimination . . . in foreign policymaking [and] academia” might have something to do with this, he can’t stop himself from adding that “the contributions made” by women such as Jeane Kirkpatrick, Madeleine Albright and Condoleezza Rice do not yet “compare, in terms of traction and longevity, to those made by Mahan, Kissinger, and Wolfowitz.” (Wolfowitz, in fact, is the subject of by far the longest chapter in “Worldmaking,” even longer than Wilson’s.) 

All the same, it’s a good book. Foreign policy aficionados will be tempted to buy it, place their pristine copy on a coffee table and speak of it in hushed, reverential tones. I suggest reading it instead.

WORLDMAKING

The Art and Science of American Diplomacy

By David Milne

Farrar Straus Giroux. 609 pp. $35

Hawaiian Natives Move One Step Closer to Declaring Sovereignty from U.S. Government: Note for a lecture, "E Pluribus Unum? What Keeps the United States United"

November 7, 2015, 6:29 am

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Carey Wedler, theantimedia.org

November 6, 2015  

(ANTIMEDIA)  Honolulu, HI — This week, Native Hawaiians initiated an historical election that may grant them sovereignty from the United States and the state of Hawaii, itself, after well over a century of colonial rule. More than 95,000 indigenous people will elect delegates to a constitutional convention, scheduled for this winter, when they will work to create a government that serves and represents Native Hawaiians — the only group of indigenous people in the United States currently restricted from forming their own government.

In the 19th century, European and American missionaries and traders began settling in Hawaii. They quickly formed a political movement and succeeded in transferring power from the king to his cabinet and the legislature. Though they drafted a new constitution limiting the king’s control, they also limited the voting rights of Asians and Native Hawaiians while granting that right to wealthy non-citizens. 

When the king died and his sister, Queen Liliuokalani, assumed the throne, she attempted to restore power to the monarchy and return voting rights to those who had been excluded by the white settlers. White businessmen disapproved of her intentions and formed the Committee of Safety, which sought to overthrow the Queen and have Hawaii annexed by the U.S. On January 16, 1893, backed by a  militia and 162 U.S. marines, the Committee achieved its goal. The Queen surrendered, and in 1898, Hawaii was annexed by the United States.

The federal government apologized for its colonization of the island and its natives in 1993, but that failed to improve conditions for many indigenous people. According to a government report, Native Hawaiians suffer higher rates of poverty and unemployment than the rest of the population and are underrepresented in business ownership and education. Further, Native Hawaiians “are the racial group with the highest proportion of risk factors leading to illness, disability, and premature death” — a problem compounded by a lack of access to healthcare.

These stark conditions, as well as the state’s imperial history, have led many Native Hawaiians to seek sovereignty from the United States government.

In 2011, Hawaii passed a law to recognize Native Hawaiians as the first people of Hawaii. That bill also established the Native Hawaiian Roll Commission to “assemble a list of qualified and interested Native Hawaiian voters” — a move that gave infrastructure to the current push for self-determination.

Last month, U.S. District Court Judge J. Michael Seabright ruled to allow the vote, which will not be administered by the state. The month-long election will select 40 delegates to attend a constitutional convention in February. Though delegates will not be elected to any public office, they will be instrumental in deciding how Native Hawaiians will rule themselves. At the eight-week convention scheduled for February, the elected delegates will decide whether or not they want to create a new Native Hawaiian government. If a Native government is formed, delegates will also decide whether to establish a “government-to-government” relationship with the U.S. or seek total independence.

One of the members of the commission, Native Hawaiian Robin Danner, expressed optimism for the new vote:

“For the first time in over a hundred years, there will be a definitive voice on Native Hawaiian issues,” she said. “A definitive and recognized government to speak for our culture, our people, our issues, instead of county or state government attempting to have a subcommittee within their agencies or structures to mouthpiece the value of native viewpoints, which has not worked well at all.” 

However, the process has not been without opposition. In August, two non-native Hawaiians (sponsored by Judicial Watch) sued to stop the vote, claiming it was racially discriminatory — and therefore unconstitutional — because only Native Hawaiians would be allowed to participate. Two Native Hawaiians also joined the suit to protest that their names were added to voter rolls without their consent. Then, two additional Native Hawaiians joined to voice general opposition to the proposed process of attaining self-determination.

Kellii Akina, one of the plaintiffs, said it was “wrong for the state government to use public resources in order to promote a racially discriminatory process.” She added, “What’s really at stake here is not only the constitution of the United States but also the aloha spirit.”

Nevertheless, the case resulted in Judge Seabright’s decision last month to allow the vote. Judicial Watch has since filed an injunction in an attempt to halt the election.

Criticism also came from an unlikely corner: Walter Ritte, a delegate candidate who dropped out of the race last Wednesday, expressed the concerns of many Natives that the government is too involved in the process. For example, though the election is administered privately, the Office of Hawaiian Affairs provided $2.6 million to fund it — evoking protests from plaintiffs in the August suit. Further, the Native Hawaiian Roll Commission, which has played an instrumental role in the push for the vote, is after all, a government entity.

Witte argued the proposed path to sovereignty would simply facilitate “continuation of the U.S. goal to illegally occupy the Hawaiian Islands.”

“If you’re going to plant a seed that is not pono [righteous],”  he said, “then you’re going to harvest something that is not pono.” He called the election “a fake pathway to nationhood and its disillusioned vision of sovereignty,” encouraging voters to remove themselves from the rolls.

Independent nonprofit Na’i Aupuni, which has campaigned in favor of the vote, quickly responded to Ritte’s criticisms that the proposed path to sovereignty was counterproductive:

“Na`i Aupuni encourages Native Hawaiians to voice their opinion on the Na`i Aupuni process because the voters and delegate candidates should hear all voices.

“However, the fact that some Native Hawaiians protest because they are concerned that their desired outcome will not be accepted emphasizes the need for a Native Hawaiian convention. Without a process to vote in leaders who can advocate among each other to find a consensus, the Native Hawaiian community will never proceed forward in unity,” a statement read.

As Danner, who works for the government-created commission, expressed, “Being native in the United States is like living a cycle of grief. Because being native in the United States is to have lost something powerful. First, you’re depressed. Then you’re angry. Then there is some acceptance and then you get to a point where you say, ‘What am I going to do about it?’ As a people I think we are at the stage where we are ready to do something about it.”

These divisions highlight a common conflict in American political life that echoes the “lesser of two evils” dilemma: should Hawaiians wait for a purer movement devoid of government influence to seek sovereignty, delaying the process and extending the suppression of their right to form a government? Or should they seize the state-sponsored opportunity they have been offered for the sake of expediency and resolution?

Assuming Judicial Watch’s appeal fails and the vote continues, it appears Hawaiians are one step closer to determining their fate — whether they like it or not.

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This article (Hawaii Moves One Step Closer to Declaring Sovereignty from U.S. Government) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Carey Wedler andtheAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, emailedits@theantimedia.org.

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November 7, 2015, 2:53 pm

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A prominent Russian millionaire and press minister under Vladimir Putin was found dead of an apparent heart attack in a Washington hotel, according to U.S. and…

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‘Star Wars’ and the Soviet Collapse

November 9, 2015, 4:42 am

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Reagan set aside the doctrine of mutually assured destruction, and set off an arms race.

Charles McCarry, Wall Street Journal 

Nov. 6, 2015 2:58 p.m. ET

51 COMMENTS

According to Oxford don Robert Service’s exhaustive study of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the decapitation of world communism, the architect of these events, Ronald Reagan, came to the presidency in 1981 with three objectives in mind: to restore the confidence of the American nation after the debacle of the Vietnam War; to re-establish the political, moral and military pre-eminence of the United States throughout the world; and to make a third world war impossible through the total elimination of nuclear weapons.

Reagan proposed to abandon the doctrine of mutually assured destruction that had deterred nuclear apocalypse since the Eisenhower presidency, while reconsidering the seminal U.S. Cold War policy of containment. His goal: “to reverse the expansion of Soviet influence around the world” by breaking the deeply—and as it turned out, fatally—troubled Soviet economy. The new administration, in the words of Mr. Service, would “increase the American military budget and put the USSR’s finances under the strain of an arms race.”

THE END OF THE COLD WAR

By Robert Service
PublicAffairs, 643 pages, $35

These were not modest goals, and few of Reagan’s detractors at home or abroad, including elements of his own party, believed that the lightly regarded new president was capable of conceiving them, let alone achieving them. Toward the beginning of “The End of the Cold War,” Mr. Service summarizes the thinking in the Kremlin: “Reagan seemed like an ignorant old fool whose simplistic militarism” might well bring about the holocaust he feared. 

Reagan, who himself “had an aversion to being thought . . . intellectual,” had assumed when he sought the presidency that the U.S. had a defensive capability in case of nuclear attack. He had, however, “learned to his horror that America could not prevent a nuclear ‘first strike.’ The Americans could only retaliate.”

“As President,” Reagan later wrote, “I carried no wallet, no money, no driver’s license, no keys in my pocket—only secret codes that were capable of bringing about the annihilation of much of the world as we know it.”​His Soviet counterpart did the same, and the survival of civilization depended on the restraint of those two men in a moment of crisis. If one of them failed the test, Reagan “foresaw total global darkness [and] felt in his bones that he had to try to​do​something—something drastic—to make such a conflict impossible.” 

But what, exactly? Physicist Edward Teller, Reagan noted in his diary, was “pushing the exciting idea that nuclear weapons can be used in connection with lasers . . . to intercept and destroy enemy missiles far above the earth.” In a speech on March 23, 1983, Reagan announced the development of Teller’s idea as the Strategic Defense Initiative, a defensive shield theoretically impenetrable to nuclear missiles that the United States would share with other countries, including the U.S.S.R. Nicknamed “Star Wars” by the media, the idea was derided by skeptics at home and abroad on grounds that no system that required flawless control of several hundred objects in outer space could be, as it needed to be, 100% effective. As a member of the Politburo noted, a shield that was 99% effective against a full-scale first strike would result in the death of some 20 million Americans.

The technology may have been so complex as to be unattainable, but politically the idea was simplicity itself. It touched a nerve in the Soviet leadership, which perceived it as a disguised offensive strategy: Make America invulnerable and the Americans could obliterate the Soviet Union at will. Soviet scientists were already contemplating a visionary system code-named “Dead Hand,” designed, like the fictional “Doomsday Machine” in the movie “Dr. Strangelove,” to automatically launch that country’s missiles in the event of a nuclear bomb exploding anywhere on Soviet territory.

In November 1983, in response to the earlier deployment in Warsaw Pact countries of Soviet SS-20 intermediate-range missiles targeted on Western Europe, the United States deployed, in Germany and elsewhere, intermediate-range Pershing II missiles capable of hitting Moscow. President Yuri Andropovand other Soviet leaders feared that the U.S. was planning to replace its intercontinental missiles with Pershings and cruise missiles that could strike targets within the U.S.S.R. quicker and from shorter range. “The slightest untoward accident,” Mr. Service writes, “could have induced Andropov to strike before the Americans struck.” The two sides were sparring in the dark: “Moscow and Washington were barely communicating with each other in 1983.” The danger subsided. Mutual paranoia did not.

Andropov and his successor, Konstantin Chernenko, the last of the geriatric Soviet leaders, died within a year of each other. In 1985 the Politburo named 55-year-old Mikhail Gorbachev, an agricultural specialist who had outgrown his specialty and risen rapidly, as the new general secretary of the Communist Party. He was determined to save the Soviet Union from its sclerosis by overseeing a top-to-bottom transformation of the manner in which the nation was managed and by opening to the world a totalitarian state that, throughout its existence, had been administered as a vast maximum-security prison.

In foreign affairs, as Mr. Service documents and as future events were to demonstrate, Mr. Gorbachev was at least as fixated as his predecessors had been on SDI and the hidden purposes of the implacably anti-communist president of the United States. The two men were true opposites. Reagan, despite his folksy on-camera persona, kept himself to himself. His “psychological distance” from others baffled even his closest advisers. Gorbachev, conversely, was the quintessential extrovert—an intellectual dynamo, brash, voluble, confrontational, impatient.

He was also on the point of desperation regarding the state of the Soviet economy. The world price of oil, Moscow’s principal export, was in free fall. The U.S.S.R.’s export revenue was not sufficient to support its crippling defense budget and pay for massive imports of food, while also subsidizing the even more troubled planned economies of restive client states in Eastern Europe. And it could never provide even a token proportion of the consumer goods that the Soviet people knew were routinely available in the West.

Mr. Gorbachev engaged Reagan, who smiled and kept him at arm’s length. The leitmotif of their negotiations at the wintry 1985 summit in Geneva, and of the entire superpower relationship, was the looming possibility of a functioning Star Wars program. Negotiating teams eventually achieved reductions in the numbers of nuclear missiles, including in due course the elimination of intermediate-range missiles. But the negotiations were haunted by SDI and came to an end at the 1986 Reykjavik summit, where the topics under discussion were the elimination of all ballistic missiles as well as all other nuclear weapons. Reagan famously walked out on a one-on-one negotiating session when Mr. Gorbachev attempted to make what turned out to be one last demand that the United States abandon SDI.

The denouement is well known and well told in pointillist detail in this slow-moving, admirably even-handed account, which offers a compendium of the expired secrets of the White House and Kremlin. In January 1989, George H.W. Bush succeeded Reagan as president. By then the price of oil had plummeted to around $10 a barrel, and the Soviet Union was essentially bankrupt. Mr. Gorbachev canvassed the world for a life-preserving loan of $15 billion annually. As a last resort, he called Mr. Bush and pleaded for help. Mr. Bush replied that “he had to assure Congress that any potential debtor was creditworthy—and he could not say this about the USSR.” On Nov. 9, the Berlin Wall was demolished by German demonstrators.

At home, Mr. Gorbachev’s support dwindled. “Communist party organizations were in chaos,” Mr. Service writes. “The ministries were incapable of imposing central power and the armed forces were demoralized. Even the KGB’s personnel no longer knew what they were supposed to be doing.” On June 17, 1991, KGB chairman Kryuchkov told the Supreme Soviet that “the USSR could cease to exist inside two or three months. He later claimed that one could hear a fly crossing the room.”

During the abortive two-day coup that August, Mr.​Gorbachev found himself placed under house arrest. On Aug. 24, Mr. Gorbachev resigned as general secretary of its communist party, and on Dec. 25 he resigned as president of the USSR. The end came on December 31: “America had prevailed,” Mr. Service writes, “the Soviet Union was no more.” In 1993, the Pentagon’s Strategic Defense Initiative Agency was dissolved.

Notwithstanding the impressive weight of Mr. Service’s evidence, some readers may feel that the key interpretive question—whether Ronald Reagan’s simple idea overcame Mikhail Gorbachev’s complex master design, or was the straw that broke the chimera’s back, or whether the U.S.S.R. destroyed itself from within—remains unanswered. At a minimum, the outcome marginalized the fear of a nuclear first strike by another superpower but was soon supplanted by the unsettling thought that a nuclear device might fall into the hands of the ultimate suicide bomber.

One man, one bomb, simplicity itself.

—Mr. McCarry’s new novel, “The Mulberry Bush,” has just been published.

Let the Past Collapse on Time

November 9, 2015, 5:11 am

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Vladimir Sorokin, New York Review of Books

MAY 8, 2014 ISSUE

In the course of three days in August 1991, during the failed putsch against Gorbachev, the decaying Soviet empire tottered and began to collapse. Some friends and I found ourselves on Lubianskaya Square, across from the headquarters of the fearsome, mighty KGB. A huge crowd was preparing to topple the symbol of that sinister institution—the statue of its founder, Dzerzhinsky, “Iron Felix” as his Bolshevik comrades-in-arms called him. A few daredevils had scaled the monument and wrapped cables around its neck, and a group was pulling on them to ever louder shouts and cries from the assembled throng.

Suddenly, a Yeltsin associate with a megaphone appeared out of the blue and directed everyone to hold off, because, he said, when the bronze statue fell, “its head might crash through the pavement and damage important underground communications.” The man said that a crane was already on its way to remove Dzerzhinsky from the pedestal without any damaging side effects. The revolutionary crowd waited for this crane a good two hours, keeping its spirits up with shouts of “Down with the KGB!”

Doubts about the success of the coming anti-Soviet revolution first stirred in me during those two hours. I tried to imagine the Parisian crowd, on May 16, 1871, waiting politely for an architect and workers to remove the Vendôme Column. And I laughed. The crane finally arrived; Dzerzhinsky was taken down, placed on a truck, and driven away. People ran alongside and spat on him. Since then he has been on view in the park of dismantled Soviet monuments next to the New Tretiakov Gallery. Not long ago, a member of the Duma presented a resolution to return the monument to its former location. Given events currently taking place in our country, it’s quite likely that this symbol of Bolshevik terror will return to Lubianskaya Square. 

The swift dismantling of remaining Soviet monuments recently in Ukraine caused me to remember the Dzerzhinsky episode. Dozens of statues of Lenin fell in Ukrainian cities; no one in the opposition asked people to treat them “in a civilized manner,” because in this case a “polite” dismantling could mean only one thing—conserving a potent symbol of Soviet power. “Dzhugashvili [Stalin] is there, preserved in a jar,” as the poet Joseph Brodsky wrote in 1968. This jar is the people’s memory, its collective unconscious.

In 2014, Lenins were felled in Ukraine and were allowed to collapse. No one tried to preserve them. This “Leninfall” took place during the brutal confrontation on Kiev’s Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square), when Viktor Yanukovych’s power also collapsed, demonstrating that a genuine anti-Soviet revolution had finally occurred in Ukraine. No real revolution has happened in Russia. Lenin, Stalin, and their bloody associates still repose on Red Square, and hundreds of statues still stand, not only on Russia’s squares and plazas, but in the minds of its citizens.

The fury of our politicians’ and bureaucrats’ response to the mass destruction of Soviet idols in Ukraine is revealing. You might think, why pity symbols of the past? But Russian bureaucrats understand that their beloved Homo sovieticus crumbled along with Lenin. “They are destroying monuments to Lenin because he personifies Russia!” one politician exclaimed. Yes: Soviet Russia and the USSR, the ruthless empire, built by Stalin, that enslaved whole peoples, created a devastating famine in Ukraine, and carried out purges and mass repressions. The recent Ukrainian revolution was indeed directed against the heirs of that empire—Putin and Yanukovych. It is telling that pro-Russian demonstrations in Crimea and eastern parts of Ukraine invariably took place next to statues of Lenin.

Unfortunately, what happened in recent weeks in Ukraine did not happen in Russia in 1991. Yeltsin’s revolution ended up being “velvet”: it did not bury the Soviet past and did not pass judgment on its crimes, as was the case in Germany after World War II. All those Party functionaries who became instant “democrats” simply shoved the Soviet corpse into a corner and covered it with sawdust. “It will rot on its own!” they said.

Alas, it didn’t. In recent opinion polls, almost half of those surveyed consider Stalin to have been a “good leader.” In the new interpretation of history, Stalin is seen as an “effective manager,” and the purges are characterized as a rotation of cadres necessary for the modernization of the USSR. The Soviet Union may have collapsed geographically and economically, but ideologically it survives in the hearts of millions of Homo sovieticus. The Soviet mentality turned out to be tenacious; it adapted to the wild capitalism of the 1990s and began to mutate in the post-Soviet state. That tenacity is what preserved a pyramidal system of power that goes back as far as Ivan the Terrible and was strengthened by Stalin.

Yeltsin, who was tired after climbing to the top of the pyramid, left the structure completely undisturbed, but brought an heir along with him: Putin, who immediately informed the population that he viewed the collapse of the USSR as a geopolitical catastrophe. He also quoted the conservative Alexander III, who believed that Russia had only two allies: the army and the navy. The machine of the Russian state moved backward, into the past, becoming more and more Soviet every year.

In my view, this fifteen-year journey back to the USSR under the leadership of a former KGB lieutenant colonel has shown the world the vicious nature and archaic underpinnings of the Russian state’s “vertical power” structure, more than any “great and terrible” Putin. With a monarchical structure such as this, the country automatically becomes hostage to the psychosomatic quirks of its leader. All of his fears, passions, weaknesses, and complexes become state policy. If he is paranoid, the whole country must fear enemies and spies; if he has insomnia, all the ministries must work at night; if he’s a teetotaler, everyone must stop drinking; if he’s a drunk—everyone should booze it up; if he doesn’t like America, which his belovedKGB fought against, the whole population must dislike the United States. A country such as this cannot have a predictable, stable future; gradual development is extraordinarily difficult.

Unpredictability has always been Russia’s calling card, but since the Ukrainian events, it has grown to unprecedented levels: no one knows what will happen to our country in a month, in a week, or the day after tomorrow. I think that even Putin doesn’t know; he is now hostage to his own strategy of playing “bad guy” to the West. The wheel of unpredictability has been spun; the rules of the game have been set. The trump card of Putin’s first decade was stability, which he used to destroy opposition and drive it underground. Now he’s playing the capricious, unpredictable Queen of Spades. This card will beat any ace.

The phrase “Russia in the Shadows,” as H.G. Wells titled his book on Bolshevik Russia, has been on the minds of many Russian citizens lately. One hears things like “The ground trembled beneath us!” all the time now. The huge iceberg Russia, frozen by the Putin regime, cracked after the events in Crimea; it has split from the European world, and sailed off into the unknown. No one knows what will happen to the country now, into which seas or swamps it will drift. At such times, it’s better to rely on intuition than common sense. My most perceptive compatriots feel that when Russia seized Crimea from Ukraine, it bit off more than it will be able to chew or digest. The state’s teeth are not what they were, and for that matter, its stomach doesn’t work as it once did.

If you compare the post-Soviet bear to the Soviet one, the only thing they have in common is the imperial roar. However, the post-Soviet bear is teeming with corrupt parasites that infected it during the 1990s, and have multiplied exponentially in the last decade. They are consuming the bear from within. Some might mistake their fevered movement under the bear’s hide for the working of powerful muscles. But in truth, it’s an illusion. There are no muscles, the bear’s teeth have worn down, and its brain is buffeted by the random firing of contradictory neurological impulses: “Get rich!” “Modernize!” “Steal!” “Pray!” “Build Great Mother Russia!” “Resurrect the USSR!” “Beware of the West!” “Invest in Western real estate!” “Keep your savings in dollars and euros!” “Vacation in Courchevel!” “Be patriotic!” “Search and destroy the enemies within!”

On the subject of enemies within… In his speech about the accession of Crimea to Russia, President Putin mentioned a “fifth column” and “national traitors” who are supposedly preventing Russia from moving victoriously forward. As many have already remarked, the expression “national traitor” comes from Mein Kampf. These words, spoken by the head of state, caused a great deal of alarm in many Russian citizens. The intelligentsia went into shock. The Russian intelligentsia, it should be said, is now especially alarmed. While the people shout “Crimea is ours!” at government demonstrations, our intelligentsia carries on its usual defeatist conversations:

“There will be purges, like in ’37…”

“He won’t stop at Ukraine…”

“Looks like it’s time to leave the country…”

“You just can’t watch TV anymore—all they show is propaganda…”

“The West will turn its back on us…”

“Russia will be a pariah…”

“It’s all making me really depressed…”

“Samizdat and the underground will be back again…”

I confess that conversations like these make me sicker than the annexation of Crimea. I want to say to my fellow intelligenty: “Friends, over the last fifteen years comrade Putin has become what he is now only because of our own weakness.”

Ukraine has taught Russia a lesson in loving freedom and refusing to tolerate a base, thieving regime. Ukraine found the strength to break away from the post-Soviet iceberg and sail toward Europe. Maidan—Independence Square—showed the world what a people can accomplish when it so desires. But when I watched the reports from Kiev, I could not imagine anything similar in today’s Moscow. It is difficult to imagine Muscovites fighting the OMON special forces day and night on Red Square and facing snipers’ bullets with wooden shields. For that to happen, something must change not only in the surrounding environment, but in people’s heads. Will it?

We shouldn’t have waited for the crane to arrive at Lubianskaya Square in August 1991. We should have toppled the iron idol even if its head did crash through the pavement and damage “important underground communications.”

We would live in a different country now.

How important it is, as it turns out, to let the past collapse at the right time…

—Translated from the Russian by Jamey Gambrell

Despair, American Style - Note for a lecture, "E Pluribus Unum? What Keeps the United States United"

November 9, 2015, 5:51 am

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NOV. 9, 2015
Paul Krugman, nytimes.com

image from

A couple of weeks ago President Obama mocked Republicans who are “down
on America,” and reinforced his message by doing a pretty good Grumpy Cat
impression. He had a point: With job growth at rates not seen since the 1990s,
with the percentage of Americans covered by health insurance hitting record
highs, the doom­-and­-gloom predictions of his political enemies look ever more
at odds with reality.

Yet there is a darkness spreading over part of our society. And we don’t
really understand why.

There has been a lot of comment, and rightly so, over a new paper by the
economists Angus Deaton (who just won a Nobel) and Anne Case, showing
that mortality among middle-­aged white Americans has been rising since
1999. This deterioration took place while death rates were falling steadily both
in other countries and among other groups in our own nation.

Even more striking are the proximate causes of rising mortality. Basically,
white Americans are, in increasing numbers, killing themselves, directly or
indirectly. Suicide is way up, and so are deaths from drug poisoning and the
chronic liver disease that excessive drinking can cause. We’ve seen this kind of
thing in other times and places – for example, in the plunging life expectancy
that afflicted Russia after the fall of Communism. But it’s a shock to see it,
even in an attenuated form, in America.

Yet the Deaton ­Case findings fit into a well-­established pattern. There
have been a number of studies showing that life expectancy for less-­educated
whites is falling across much of the nation. Rising suicides and overuse of
opioids are known problems. And while popular culture may focus more on
meth than on prescription painkillers or good old alcohol, it’s not really news
that there’s a drug problem in the heartland.

But what’s causing this epidemic of self-­destructive behavior?

If you believe the usual suspects on the right, it’s all the fault of liberals.
Generous social programs, they insist, have created a culture of dependency
and despair, while secular humanists have undermined traditional values. But
(surprise!) this view is very much at odds with the evidence.

For one thing, rising mortality is a uniquely American phenomenon – yet
America has both a much weaker welfare state and a much stronger role for
traditional religion and values than any other advanced country. Sweden gives
its poor far more aid than we do, and a majority of Swedish children are now
born out of wedlock, yet Sweden’s middle-­aged mortality rate is only half of
white America’s.

You see a somewhat similar pattern across regions within the United
States. Life expectancy is high and rising in the Northeast and California,
where social benefits are highest and traditional values weakest. Meanwhile,
low and stagnant or declining life expectancy is concentrated in the Bible Belt.
What about a materialist explanation? Is rising mortality a consequence
of rising inequality and the hollowing out of the middle class?

Well, it’s not that simple. We are, after all, talking about the consequences
of behavior, and culture clearly matters a great deal. Most notably, Hispanic
Americans are considerably poorer than whites, but have much lower
mortality. It’s probably worth noting, in this context, that international
comparisons consistently find that Latin Americans have higher subjective
well-­being than you would expect, given their incomes.

So what is going on? In a recent interview Mr. Deaton suggested that
middle­-aged whites have “lost the narrative of their lives.” That is, their
economic setbacks have hit hard because they expected better. Or to put it a
bit differently, we’re looking at people who were raised to believe in the
American Dream, and are coping badly with its failure to come true.

That sounds like a plausible hypothesis to me, but the truth is that we
don’t really know why despair appears to be spreading across Middle America.
But it clearly is, with troubling consequences for our society as a whole.
In particular, I know I’m not the only observer who sees a link between
the despair reflected in those mortality numbers and the volatility of right-wing
politics. Some people who feel left behind by the American story turn
self-­destructive; others turn on the elites they feel have betrayed them. No,
deporting immigrants and wearing baseball caps bearing slogans won’t solve
their problems, but neither will cutting taxes on capital gains. So you can
understand why some voters have rallied around politicians who at least seem
to feel their pain.

At this point you probably expect me to offer a solution. But while
universal health care, higher minimum wages, aid to education, and so on
would do a lot to help Americans in trouble, I’m not sure whether they’re
enough to cure existential despair.

***

A version of this op­ed appears in print on November 9, 2015, on page A23 of the New York edition
with the headline: Despair, American Style.

Michigan city elects first-ever Muslim majority city council: Note for a lecture, "E Pluribus Unum? What Keeps the United States United"

November 9, 2015, 9:03 am

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Cathaleen Chen, csmonitor.com; via KR on Facebook

The city of Hamtramck, Michigan has voted three Muslim city council candidates into office Tuesday, forming a Muslim majority local government. 

By Cathaleen Chen, Staff NOVEMBER 8, 2015

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The city of Hamtramck, an enclave of Detroit, made history this week when it became what is likely the first city in America to elect a Muslim-majority city council.

Historically Polish, the city of about 22,000 voted three Muslim Council candidates onto the six-member panel, one of whom was an incumbent Muslim council member not up for reelection this year. This means that the freshly formed council now has a two-thirds Muslim majority. The mayor, Karen Majewski, is Polish.

According to Bill Meyer, a Hamtramck community leader who isn’t Muslim, the incumbent Muslim councilmen have accomplished a lot for the city.

Recommended: Ramadan 101: Ten facts about the holy month of Ramadan

"[They’ve] helped bring stability, security and sobriety while lessening the amount of drugs and crime in the city,” he told the Detroit Free Press.

The election was also a landslide, he added. "The election was far from close, with the three Muslim winners each gaining over 1,000 votes, while the other three candidates garnered less than 700 votes each."

Many believe it’s the first time an American city has elected a Muslim majority city council, though the city itself has been under a similar spotlight before. In 2004, Hamtramck garnered heavy attention when the city council allowed a mosque to broadcast its call to prayer from loudspeakers. Opponents claimed it was an intrusion of Islam into their lives.

At that point, only one city council member was Muslim.  

But Hamtramck’s Muslim population has been steadily growing, thanks to heightened immigration. Today it is estimated that half of Hamtramck is Muslim. According to University of Michigan-Dearborn professor Sally Howell, Hamtramck might have become the first city to have a Muslim majority in 2013.

“The growth is taking place in these Muslim communities, and they are transforming the city scape,” Howell told Washington Post. “It’s become much more visible in the last 15 years.”

In the early 20th century, Polish immigrants flocked to Hamtramck because of a Dodge Brothers plant built in 1914. By the 1970s, Polish-Catholics made up 90 percent of the city. But Asian and Arab immigrants began to settle there as the Poles moved to the suburbs. Most of them come from Bangladesh and Yemen.

The latest US Census surveys found that Hamtramck is now 24 percent Arab, mostly Yemeni, 19 percent African American, 15 percent Bangladeshi, 12 percent Polish, and 6 percent Yugoslavian. Out of the four new Muslim council members, three are Bangladeshi and one is Yemeni.

Getting to a Muslim majority wasn’t easy. In the past, Muslim candidates have been harassed, accused of terrorism, and some Bangladeshi voters were asked to show proof of citizenship by poll workers.

One of the winners Tuesday is Saad Almasmari, a 28-year-old student who received the highest percentage of votes – 22 percent. He moved to the US in 2009 and two years later, he became a US citizen.

At the end of the day for Hamtramck, he said, it’s not about religious unity.

“Although we are Muslims, it doesn’t have anything to do with serving the community,” Almasmari said. “It’s not about religion. It’s not about Muslim unity. We are planning to work for everyone.”

---

How Corrupt Is Your State? Note for a lecture, "E Pluribus Unum? What Keeps the United States United"

November 9, 2015, 11:35 am

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—AJ Vicens and Center for Public Integrity, motherjones.com

The Michigan state capitol building. Michigan scored dead last on a new ranking of state anti-corruption measures. Courtney Sacco/Zuma

In Missouri, a lawmaker who pushed through a bill that prohibited cities from banning plastic bags in supermarkets also happened to be the director of the state's Grocer's Association. New Mexico lawmakers passed a resolution that exempted their emails from public scrutiny. The governors of Virginia and Oregon, and house or assembly speakers in Alabama, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and New York were charged or convicted of corruption. There may be lots of good government laws, but corruption, influence peddling, and lack of government accountability are in fact very difficult to prevent across all 50 states.

That's according to the State Integrity Investigation, a sweeping project released today by the nonprofit investigative reporting group the Center for Public Integrity. The Washington, DC-based Center worked with experienced journalists in every state (but not the District of Columbia) to assess state government rules and systems that were in place between January 2013 and March 2015. The journalists combed through records and laws, using 245 specific "indicators" that measured transparency and accountability, for example public access to information or state lobbying disclosure laws. Good government experts in each state, and later editors at Global Integrity, a government watchdog that tracks governmental accountability around the world, then reviewed the assessments for consistency and accuracy. Each state was assigned an overall letter grade, but also scores on 13 subcategories that include political finance, election oversight, lobbying, and ethics, among others.

"All together, the project presents a comprehensive look at transparency, accountability, and ethics in state government," CPI writes in its overview of the project. "It's not a pretty picture."

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That might be putting it mildly. C was the highest grade and Alaska earned it with a score of 76. Only two other states received grades higher than a D+, the report notes, and 11 states flunked (see all states and associated data here). Michigan was at the bottom of the class. Its score was 51, an F, mostly because of issues with ethics and access to public information.

Paula A. Franzese, an expert in state and local government ethics at Seton Hall University School of Law and former chairwoman of the New Jersey State Ethics Commission, told CPI that the project's findings are disappointing but not surprising because ethics oversight is not a priority for state legislatures. "It's not the sort of issue that commands voters," she said.

This is the second time that CPI and Global Integrity have teamed up to do the State Integrity Project; the first was in 2012. Since then, the grades of many states have gotten worse, but some of that decline is also due to changes inmethodology.

The entire project is worth your time, so please go read it, but here is some data on the overall grades each state received, plus a quick look at state scores in a few subcategories. (Click on each map to go to the data sources and other state-specific views).

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So you think you "must have" an advanced degree to join the U.S. Foreign Service? Read the below highlighted fine print.

November 11, 2015, 9:36 am

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Foreign Service Officer Qualifications - 13 DIMENSIONS 
from careers.state.gov; see also.

What qualities do we seek in FSO candidates? The successful candidate will demonstrate the following dimensions that reflect the skills, abilities, and personal qualities deemed essential to the work of the Foreign Service:

 • Composure. To stay calm, poised, and effective in stressful or difficult situations; to think on one's feet, adjusting quickly to changing situations; to maintain self-control.

• Cultural Adaptability. To work and communicate effectively and harmoniously with persons of other cultures, value systems, political beliefs, and economic circumstances; to recognize and respect differences in new and different cultural environments.

• Experience and Motivation. To demonstrate knowledge, skills or other attributes gained from previous experience of relevance to the Foreign Service; to articulate appropriate motivation for joining the Foreign Service.

 • Information Integration and Analysis. To absorb and retain complex information drawn from a variety of sources; to draw reasoned conclusions from analysis and synthesis of available information; to evaluate the importance, reliability, and usefulness of information; to remember details of a meeting or event without the benefit of notes.

 • Initiative and Leadership. To recognize and assume responsibility for work that needs to be done; to persist in the completion of a task; to influence significantly a group’s activity, direction, or opinion; to motivate others to participate in the activity one is leading.

 • Judgment. To discern what is appropriate, practical, and realistic in a given situation; to weigh relative merits of competing demands.

• Objectivity and Integrity. To be fair and honest; to avoid deceit, favoritism, and discrimination; to present issues frankly and fully, without injecting subjective bias; to work without letting personal bias prejudice actions.

 • Oral Communication. To speak fluently in a concise, grammatically correct, organized, precise, and persuasive manner; to convey nuances of meaning accurately; to use appropriate styles of communication to fit the audience and purpose.

• Planning and Organizing. To prioritize and order tasks effectively, to employ a systematic approach to achieving objectives, to make appropriate use of limited resources.

 • Quantitative Analysis. To identify, compile, analyze, and draw correct conclusions from pertinent data; to recognize patterns or trends in numerical data; to perform simple mathematical operations.

 • Resourcefulness. To formulate creative alternatives or solutions to resolve problems, to show flexibility in response to unanticipated circumstances.

• Working With Others. To interact in a constructive, cooperative, and harmonious manner; to work effectively as a team player; to establish positive relationships and gain the confidence of others; to use humor as appropriate.

 • Written Communication. To write concise, well organized, grammatically correct, effective and persuasive English in a limited amount of time.

Please note that we require no specific education level, academic major, or proficiency in a foreign language for appointment as a Foreign Service Officer. [JB highlight]

The West through the eyes of Russians

November 13, 2015, 8:51 am

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via AH on Facebook

Anti-Western rhetoric of Russian propaganda as a tool for preserving the regime and eroding the European identity of Russians

Author: Olga Irisova, intersectionproject.eu

6 November 2015

The demonized image of Europe and the West in general which dominates in the minds of Russians today has been wholly created by the Kremlin and its obedient media. The anti-Western campaign currently waged by pro-Kremlin media is by no means the first but it is characterized by its hitherto unprecedented scale and duration which is capable of effectively changing not only superficial judgements of Russians, as it was before, but of exerting a more profound and long-term impact on the average psychological profile and hence the future of Russian-Western relations.

Fomenting anti-Western hysteria

Contemporary Russia had experienced the first large-scale anti-Western campaign even before the process of propaganda institutionalization was launched. Against the backdrop of the bombing of Yugoslavia by NATO forces in 1999, most of the major Russian media outlets took an unwaveringly pro-Serbian stance, ignoring the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo and focusing on the need to support the Orthodox Slavic brothers – a relevant topic given recent events. As a result, the narrative of NATO bombing entirely blameless Serbia for the sake of geopolitical ambitions was firmly instilled in the minds of Russians. Amenable public opinion, prone to manipulation, was shaped in quite a predictable way and old phobias inherited by new Russia from the Soviet Union immediately surfaced, since no large-scale de-Sovietization has ever taken place. As a result, in 1999, half of the Russian respondents interviewed by the Public Opinion Foundation (FOM) stated that they believed that the USA was an external enemy of Russia and was capable of waging a war against it (nearly one third of Russians shared this view in 1997). In general, negative perceptions of the USA held by Russian citizens rose from 28% to 72%. However, soon, media – still independent of the direct dictate of the Kremlin at the time – switched from anti-Western rhetoric and the problems of Yugoslavia to the internal agenda: the second Chechen war which started on August 7, 1999, and a wave of terrorist attacks. Against this backdrop, Russians’ anti-Western phobias dissipated and did not leave a lasting effect on the way Russians fundamentally perceived the West and Western values.

Media resorted to using of the image ‘the West – the enemy’ in a fully-fledged and well-orchestrated manner again in 2003, when the operation in Iraq initiated by the USA and its allies, was presented as purposeful destruction of the existing international norms and as arrogation of the right to overthrow legitimate rulers by Washington. And, again, in 2008 when the Russo-Georgian Five Day War was interpreted through the prism of the confrontation with Washington which allegedly coordinated Saakashvili’s actions. However, these information campaigns were situational in nature and alluded mainly to the foreign policy of the USA without questioning Western values as such. The mechanism of ressentiment was undoubtedly set in motion but key assumptions about the preferability of life in a society tailored to Western norms remained unaffected. 

And this is precisely what sets the Kremlin’s current anti-Western propaganda campaign apart from previous waves. Whereas, previously, the policy of ‘exporting democracy’ by Washington was mainly lambasted, Western values as such have been discredited in recent years. Europe is portrayed as Washington’s vassal which is degrading because of its lack of traditional values and the ubiquity of homosexuality and pedophilia seen as a consequence of tolerance typical of European liberalism. Besides, propagandists increasingly resort to false arguments about the imminent disintegration of the USA, for example, presenting the marginal Texas secession movements as mainstream movements which enjoy the real support of citizens of the state. While the European Union, according to the official propaganda, will collapse under the burden of the current immigration crisis. By the way, over one third of Russians blame the USA for it, according to opinion polls conducted by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VCIOM).

It is not surprising that against the backdrop of the mass media campaign aimed at discrediting the West is effectively saying to its audience: ‘Yes, it is not a bed of roses here, but look at them. It is blood-and-thunder over there’, the attractiveness of the Western way of life diminishes significantly. As a result, we arrive at a situation when, in an attempt to distance itself from the negative characteristics attributed to Western society, the largest European nation in Europe denies its European identity. The most recent opinion poll by the Levada-Center shows that 53% of Russians do not consider themselves 'people of Western culture' whereas 45% have a negative attitude towards the Western way of life in general. In addition, negative mobilization resulted in the fact that 75% of respondents named major Western countries as ‘Russia’s enemies’ (compare this with the figures from 19 years ago when 70% regarded countries of the West to be models for the development of the country) whereas tension between Russia and the USA has reached its post-2001 peak (45%).

The Kremlin would have hardly managed to create such an effect without control over the media. But a logical question arises: Why is the current anti-Western campaign so exceptional in terms of its degree of fomenting negative sentiments and - unlike previous waves – why does it give priority to demonization of the system of values?

Putin’s popularity recipe

If one looks at a graph of Putin’s popularity, one can observe that the peak of his public support was achieved against the backdrop of ongoing anti-Western campaigns and references to the image of the threat hovering over the country: in late 1999 (the second Chechen war, terrorist attacks in Russia and the image of the West-the enemy formed against the backdrop of NATO operations in Yugoslavia); in late 2003 (fomenting of anti-American sentiments triggered by the onset of ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’); and in 2008 (even under the conditions of a tangible financial crisis, interpretation of the Russo-Georgian war through the prism of confrontation between Russia and the USA generated an upsurge in approval ratings which reached 88%). The fourth peak of exorbitant popularity of the Russian president has continued with minor fluctuations from 2014 until now. It is noteworthy that the current stage of social consolidation around Putin was preceded by an era of mass protests in 2011-2012, and as few as 29% of Russians were willing to vote for him in elections by January 2014, his credibility rating dropping to 61%. Given such a situation, only a time-honored method could help raise the ratings: forced consolidation around the leader thanks to a manufactured, artificial threat, namely Ukrainian ‘fascists’ conceived and managed surreptitiously at the hands of the West – and, in general, the West itself which is striving to destroy Russia. Negative mobilization has worked once again. Thus, we can see that Putin’s popularity recipe lies in a skillful play based on the mistrust of Russians for the West dating back to the Soviet days, fueling public ressentiment and conflicts Russia is involved in either directly or indirectly. And the fomenting of anti-Western hysteria is nothing more than a means of maintaining Putin's power.

However, unlike in previous years, the power elite currently has no other mechanisms of maintaining credibility left. Should the Kremlin diminish its pressure on media and reduce propaganda now, people will immediately redirect their nurtured aggression towards criticism of the deteriorating inner dimension of Putin’s policy: economic stagnation, rising prices and unemployment, degradation of public institutions etc. This would inevitably lead to gradual build-up of protest moods and would ultimately result in social upheaval. It turns out that the Kremlin has backed itself into a corner: unable to ensure economic growth, it will have to maintain the impression that Russia is under threat, drawing the country into new conflicts time and again, as we are now witnessing in Syria.

Attempts to preserve the regime can also be seen in the policy of ongoing propaganda aimed at discrediting Western values and the Western way of life. Whereas Russians dissatisfied with NATO policy used to note earlier that fundamental European values were nevertheless not alien to them, today, due to propaganda, the Russian-West conflict is perceived as a confrontation of the systems of values: traditional and conservative values versus tolerance-blemished European ones; spiritual Russian ones versus material European ones. This impels Russians to renounce their European identity and recognize the need to develop in an unbeknown ‘special way’. Besides, propaganda imposes certain semantic associations such as the tenet that ‘anti-governmental protests end in violent shifts in power, let alone the coup d’état which inevitably ends in anarchy and bloodshed, and the ubiquitous hand of the West is looming behind all of it’. Ultimately, the average Russian, with no access to alternative information, becomes disillusioned with the European developmental model as a desirable benchmark for Russia's future and begins to experience a subconscious fear of any signs of dissatisfaction with the regime, which minimizes the likelihood of an open expression of discontent and participation in protests.

In order to create the desired image of a divided Europe mired in problems, the Kremlin spares no media resources in promoting its picture of reality both domestically and internationally nor money for supporting European radicals. By financing extreme right-wing, pro-fascist and other marginal forces in Europe, the Kremlin has no hope of effectively destabilizing the situation in Europe, since, in its opinion, other external actors will cope with this task perfectly well. The ultimate goal of this policy is primarily addressed at the domestic consumer, since Putin-sponsored forces obediently broadcast all of the Russian propaganda myths to Russians, albeit via the mouths of Europeans in this instance. And, within Russia, their view is presented as the opinion of most Europeans. And hence, since everything is so bad there, it is better not to follow their lead.

Taking into account that, in order to ensure the loyalty of society, Putin has no other means left but to drag the country into conflicts and to further incite anti-Western hysteria, one can forget about any imminent policy shift.

What can Europe do?

Europe has to realize that, fundamentally, it is equally interested in a stable, democratic Russia just as Russia is interested in a strong Europe: Not a Russia with its current kleptocratic regime, but a Russia where, despite all the propaganda they are lambasted with, 46% still consider Western democracy indispensable to its development (10% - unconditionally and 36% - taking into account the specific characteristics of the country). Putin will leave sooner or later but the society he created is here to stay, and Europe will have to look for common ground to share with it. Hence, it is crucial today to expend every effort to ensure that Russia’s European identity does not erode so much so that it comes to assume an irreversible form. 

To this effect, it is crucial to create and maintain direct communication channels with Russian society – by supporting the remaining free Russian media outlets, by creating a platform for dialogue and establishing new Russian-language media in Europe which will be able to communicate the necessary message to the most active and well-educated segment of Russian society, so long as the Internet is not completely controlled by the Kremlin in Russia.

Aside from that, one should seriously consider the possibility of inviting Russia to enter into a dialogue about the formation of a common European space which, on the one hand, cannot be established under Putin due to the need to harmonize legislation and carry out reforms, but, on the other hand, will serve as a signal to Russians that, for them, the European future as such is not out of the question once and for all.

According to Vladislav Inozemtsev, a visa-free regime introduced for Russian citizens in the future could also become an immensely powerful blow to anti-Western rhetoric. Such a move could increase the flow of Russian tourists. And, as practice shows, Russians who have experience of travelling and knowledge of foreign languages, as a rule, tend to be more critical of Kremlin propaganda.

Europe has colossal potential to use soft power whereas Russia is predisposed to naturally absorb European norms. This, which is happening today, is an automatic, artificial deviation of Russia from its historically inculcated vector and yet, Russia is incapable of getting back on the right track unaided. 

- See more at: http://intersectionproject.eu/article/society/west-through-eyes-russians#sthash.hAMx7z8E.yIZtD2xx.dpuf

Article on the mot du jour -- "Narrative"

November 14, 2015, 10:03 am

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I am currently doing research -- in a still very preliminary fashion -- for an article on the origin and the current use of the beltway think-tank buzzword, "narrative."

My very tentative thoughts about this term is that it seems to be a convenient, meant-to-be persuasive replacement for "actually" telling the truth. In other words, it's not the "story" in itself, but how/why it's told, that really counts in "hardball" politics/foreign affairs.

If you have any thoughts about this linguistic/political phenomenon, I would much appreciate your sharing them at john.h30@gmailcom.

Best, john

BTW, The rampant use of this word is evident from a Google search:

	"narrative" Daily update ⋅ November 14, 2015
	NEWS
	Toronto Star Judge slams NY mayor over 'false narrative' in cop killer case Toronto Star NEW YORK—The Manhattan judge who sent a career criminal into drug treatment only to see him arrested a few months later on charges that he ... Flag as irrelevant
	A.V. Club Austin Justin Bieber's comeback narrative has a few plot holes A.V. Club Austin Milo Ventimiglia and Mandy Moore, celebrating the magical interconnection of "having a birthday" at different points in their lives. (Photo: Getty Images) ... Flag as irrelevant
	Forbes Tearing Down "The Wall": How Stanford Is Helping To Counter The Anti-Hispanic Business Narrative Forbes It's a typically weather-perfect Wednesday at the Stanford Business School campus, but the CEMEX auditorium is filling with lots on unfamiliar faces. Flag as irrelevant
	An excellent narrative history of Sicily Waterloo Record However, if you want a well-written narrative history of Sicily, this book is excellent. William Christian is a retired University of Guelph political science ... Flag as irrelevant
	The Star Narrative holds a lot of power The Star I am Daddy's little girl but theirs is a different narrative – in fact we ... Think about it, President Mwai Kibaki came in under thenarrative 'saviour Flag as irrelevant
	Africa Times Africa Rising: reviewing the narrative Africa Times But within a decade, the narrative about Africa changed. It changed from a region of unabated pestilence to a rising economic giant. The Economist ... Flag as irrelevant
	IBNLive Irresponsible statements changed Biharnarrative: Jaitley ChronicleOracle.com (blog) "It should not be interpreted as a mandate to obstruct parliament", Venkaiah Naidu told reporters in New DelhiFitch Ratings agency director, Thomas ... Flag as irrelevant
	Heart Narrative Verdict After Nightclub Deaths Heart A jury has concluded that repeated announcements from a DJ urging revellers to leave a nightclub contributed to the deaths of two students killed in a ... Flag as irrelevant
	Examiner.com A crowded narrative makes it difficult to 'Love the Coopers' Examiner.com My father used to sing this classic Christmas song – seemingly – every day between Thanksgiving and Christmas while we were growing up. True to ... Flag as irrelevant
	MovieMaker Magazine A Conversation with Convention: Rick Alverson's Entertainment Demands a Better Movie-Watcher MovieMaker Magazine Entertainment, Alverson's latest work after 2012's The Comedy, uses these misled expectations as the basis to create anarrative familiar on the ... Flag as irrelevant
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	WRTG 3020-582: Topics in Writing: Narrative and the Self 582 CU Continuing Education - University of Colorado Boulder WRTG 3020 Section 582; Class 36479 Topics in Writing: Narrative and the Self. WRTG 3020-582: Topics in Writing: Narrative and the Self 582.

Terrorism as propaganda

November 15, 2015, 9:52 am

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sourcewatch.org; article lists sources (not cited below)

image from

Terrorism and propaganda have each taken many forms throughout history, but terrorism as propaganda may have become one of the most destabilizing and dangerous phenomena afflicting 21st century society.

Military campaigns have often sought to inspire fear in enemy soldiers as part of the battle for "hearts and minds." Most military campaigns, however, use fear as a secondary tactic within a war whose ultimate objective is seizing or destroying the enemy's territory, weapons, material resources and physical ability to wage war. Terrorism, by contrast, is a tactic often employed by political actors that have no hope of physically vanquishing their enemy. Instead, its goal is to defeat the enemy psychologically through the systematic, calculated use of violence and threats of violence.

Terrorism originally refered to actions taken by governments, not sub-national actors. It refered to a government policy designed to instill massive fear in the populace through mass killings in order to maintain state power. The "reign of terror" launched by the Jacobin government during the French Revolution is the classic example of terrorism in it's original sense. As the term has evolved terrorism has come to be applied more to sub-national actors instead of states, an inversion of what it originally meant.

During the period from the 1870s into the 1920s, terrorism was sometimes associated with the political philosophy of anarchism, minority of whose followers carried out a number of assassination attempts on corporate and government leaders. The assasin of U.S. President William McKinley was alleged to be an anarchist, but his anarchism has been disputed. This strategy, reviled by Marxists, some anarchists, and other radicals, was described by it's supporters as "propaganda of the deed" (a term that PR industry founder Edward Bernays would later use in reference to what today's public relations practitioners call "publicity stunts"). The strategy is sometimes erroneously attributed to 19th century anarchist Mikhail Bakunin but, while he did use the term "propaganda by the deed," he did not use it in the sense of advocating the kind of actions carried out by the "propaganda by the deed" movement. The advocates of "propaganda of the deed" believed that the heroic, exemplary boldness of their actions would inspire the masses and make anarchist ideas famous. Unlike modern terrorists, however, they tended to target individuals whom they regarded as responsible for oppressing the masses, while avoiding violence against innocent bystanders. For example, Russian radicals intent on the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in the mid-19th century cancelled several actions out of concern that they might injure women, children or elderly persons. For this reason some do not consider these actions to be terrorist. Most anarchists argue that all states are terrorist organizations, which use violence (through police, militaries, prisons, etc.) on a systemic level to force the population into submission. "Deterr[e]nce" is just another form of terrorism.

During the twentieth century, terrorism gradually evolved, becoming more deadly and indiscriminate as its adherents sought to maximize the psychological impact of their actions. According to Jerrold Post, director of the Political Psychology Program at George Washington University, sophisticated terrorist groups actually have a vice president of media relations and give out handbooks dealing with how to attract maximum media attention. Speaking at the U.S. National Press Club on February 12, 2003, Post detailed a study showing that terrorist activities in Northern Ireland attacks tended to occur on Thursday afternoons between 5:00 and 6:00. "Post said the reason is the deadline for Friday papers, that traditionally carry supermarket coupons and sales ads, is 6:00 p.m.," explained O'Dwyer's PR Daily. "Any terrorist act committed before 5:00 p.m. would give journalists time to analyze the act and report it in context. After 5:00 p.m. all there's time to do is rip the current headline and put in the terrifying headline that the terrorists want to be seen, said Post."

Hafez Al Mirazi, bureau chief of the Al-Jazeera satellite TV network, agrees that terrorists exploit the media for maximum advantage. "If CNN or Fox or others are not going to have breaking news flashing on their screens if Palestinians are killed, but only if Israelis are killed, then [terrorists] will go out and kill an Israeli," Al Mirazi said, speaking at the same event as Post.

James E. Lukaszewski, a public relations counselor who has advised the U.S. military as well as major corporations, goes further, stating that "media coverage and terrorism are soul mates - virtually inseparable. They feed off each other. They together create a dance of death - the one for political or ideological motives, the other for commercial success." Terrorists need the media to gain attention for their cause, and the sensational nature of their crimes drives media coverage. "Terrorist activities are high profile, ratings-building events," Lukaszewski writes. "The news media need to prolong these stories because they build viewership and readership. ... The marriage between the terrorist and the media is inevitable. It's a grizzly, predictable, often necessary dance of death."

Back, back, back to Galicia (Still existing Beatles -- forget about the USSR) ... slightly edited Facebook entry

November 15, 2015, 11:32 am

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Video via LM by email; the below from [an edited/expanded] Facebook entry

Poland: "Girls from Lviv" | All media content | DW.COM | 11.11.2015

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Poland: "Girls from Lviv" | All media content | DW.COM | 11.11.2015

A TV series is currently breaking viewer records in Poland. "Girls from Lviv" tells…

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John Brown Back, back, back to Galicia (forget about back in the USSR) ... From Wiki: "In 1918, Western Galicia became a part of the restored Republic of Poland, which absorbed the Lemko-Rusyn Republic. The local Ukrainian population briefly declared the independence of Eastern Galicia as the 'West Ukrainian People's Republic'. During the Polish-Soviet War the Soviets tried to establish the puppet-state of the Galician SSR in East Galicia, the government of which after couple of months was liquidated.
The fate of Galicia was settled by the Peace of Riga on March 18, 1921, attributing Galicia to the Second Polish Republic. Although never accepted as legitimate by some Ukrainians, it was internationally recognized on May 15, 1923.[18]"

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Oh, flew in from Miami Beach B.O.A.C.

Didn't get to bed last night

On the way the paper bag was on my knee

Man I had a dreadful flight

I'm back in the U.S.S.R.

You don't know how lucky you are boy

Back in the U.S.S.R. (Yeah)

Been away so long I hardly knew the place

Gee it's good to be back home

Leave it till tomorrow to unpack my case

Honey disconnect the phone

I'm back in the U.S.S.R.

You don't know how lucky you are boy

Back in the U.S.

Back in the U.S.

Back in the U.S.S.R.

Well the Ukraine girls really knock me out

They leave the West behind

And Moscow girls make me sing and shout

That Georgia's always on my mind

Aw come on!

Ho yeah!

Ho yeah!

Ho ho yeah!

Yeah yeah!

Yeah I'm back in the U.S.S.R.

You don't know how lucky you are boys

Back in the U.S.S.R.

Well the Ukraine girls really knock me out

They leave the West behind

And Moscow girls make me sing and shout

That Georgia's always on my mind

Oh, show me around your snow-peaked mountains way down south

Take me to your daddy's farm

Let me hear your balalaika's ringing out

Come and keep your comrade warm

I'm back in the U.S.S.R.

Hey you don't know how lucky you are boys

Back in the U.S.S.R.

Oh let me tell you, honey

Hey, I'm back!

I'm back in the U.S.S.R.

Yes, I'm free!

Yeah, back in the U.S.S.R.

Notes for an Article, "The Obsession with 'Narrative'"

November 16, 2015, 7:10 am

≫ Next: Remembering Texas: Note for a lecture, "E Pluribus Unum? What Keeps the United States United"

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	"narrative" Daily update ⋅ November 16, 2015
	NEWS
	Salon WATCH: 'SNL' parodies Carson's narrative Washington Examiner Ben Carson was the butt of more than a few jokes this week on "Saturday Night Live" in a skit on the character "Young Ben Carson.""What are you ... Flag as irrelevant
	Small Business Trends Asia Can Create Its Own Narrative On Startups Forbes Startup mania has peaked. The conversation in Silicon Valley seems to be fixated on startup valuations. Funding rounds are announced publicly. Flag as irrelevant
	Economic Times (blog) Bihar polls: Why a new narrative may be mandatory for both PM Modi and BJP Economic Times (blog) It was an effective, catchy narrative built around Narendra Modi — one of change (corruption-free governance), of progress, of reform and aspiration ... Flag as irrelevant
	BDlive Narrative framing forces ICC to tackle Palestine case in a void BDlive LAST Thursday, the International Criminal Court (ICC) office of the prosecutor released its annual report on the nine situations under preliminary ... Flag as irrelevant
	KCTV Kansas City Chiefs aim to change season narrative with win over Denver KCTV Kansas City As far as regular season games go, Sunday's matchup between Denver and Kansas City might just be the biggest regular season game of Andy ... Flag as irrelevant
	USA TODAY Wolff: The media's campus narrative USA TODAY Among the silliest people many of us have ever known are our younger selves, perhaps most of all our politically absolute college selves. Who in ... Flag as irrelevant
	BDlive Up and under narrative beyond a rugby scapegoat BDlive Heyneke Meyer is the media face of South African rugby. He alone bears the brunt of scathing criticism, and as such is blamed for SA's rugby woes. Flag as irrelevant
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Send Feedback "narrative" Daily update ⋅ November 15, 2015 NEWS The Australian Financial Review Paris attacks increase pressure on US, defy the lone-wolf narrative The Australian Financial Review Iraqi security forces, backed by Sunni and Shiite volunteers, have been fighting against Islamic State group militants with air support from the US and ... Flag as irrelevant The Hindu An experiment in literary narrative The Hindu One such work that defies genre specifications, 'Pranayam: 1024 Kurukkuvazhikal' (Love:1024 shortcuts) – a multidisciplinary narrative jointly written ... An experiment in literary narrative | Kochi NYOOOZ -NYOOOZ Full Coverage Flag as irrelevant News24 Erase ANC's narrative of entitlement News24 The entitlement narrative to rule “until Jesus Christ comes again” is a common feature of the post-apartheid politics of the ANC, which Zuma has made ... Flag as irrelevant Rapid News Network Irresponsible statements changed Biharnarrative: Jaitley Rapid News Network In contrast, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, who led the anti-Modi alliance in Bihar, was able to trade on his record of turning around a state that was once ... Flag as irrelevant Patriot Post Rubio: Obama places legacy over fighting ISIS Washington Examiner So he's trying to do the bare minimum he can without losing the political narrative that he got us out of the Middle East and got us out of conflict. Flag as irrelevant Cyclingnews.com Lance Armstrong film - 'The Program' review Cyclingnews.com Audiences will be left wanting more explanation, others dumbfounded by the Armstrong narrative and apparent ease at which he and his fellow ... Flag as irrelevant The Guardian Nigeria (satire) (press release) (blog) Let APC Not Multiply PDP's Impunity The Guardian Nigeria (satire) (press release) (blog) I have a fervent prayer to render and I hope some people out there will join me. I'm saying; Oh Lord, let the sins of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) ... Flag as irrelevant Carlsbad Current-Argus Delving into Disney Carlsbad Current-Argus DeBlasis said she wasn't interested in doing a class just about Disney films, so she integrated the theme into a class offered every spring on narrative, ... Flag as irrelevant The Times of Israel (blog) Obama, say the words 'Radical Islamic terrorists' The Times of Israel (blog) After Paris, the free world's narrative has changed. At least, there is the possibility that the narrative has changed. We here in Israel have not had the ... Flag as irrelevant Youth Health Magzine Tactical Option Features Added To 'Homefront: The Revolution' PS4; More Updates Revealed Youth Health Magzine With the "Homefront: The Revolution" being in development for four years, Senior Narrative Designer, CJ Kershner told WWCFTech that the video ... Flag as irrelevant WEB Write an narrative essay Crai Valley Eco Lodges Write an narrative essay. Intermediate previous question papers 2011. Essay world. Bully essay. Social work thesis format. Introduction dissertation ... Flag as irrelevant

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Remembering Texas: Note for a lecture, "E Pluribus Unum? What Keeps the United States United"

November 16, 2015, 11:19 am

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Maria Lattouf Abou Atmi, Content coordinator, CPD Weekend, uscpublicdiplomacy.org

Nov 13, 2015

Anyone who has been keeping up with the news recently can tell you that Texas has a strange reputation in Norway. For the past fifty years or so, they've been using the expression “Det var helt Texas!” which translates into "That was totally Texas!" to refer to crazy and out of control things, such as a swordfish shooting out of a fjord.

In a different corner of Europe, it had another meaning altogether. The Texas Embassy Cantina stood near Trafalgar Square in London from 1995 to 2012. This Tex-Mex restaurant was the closest thing to an authentic Texan experience that London had to offer, with everything from Lone Star beer to chicken fried steak. Some people were disappointed by the food, but the Texas Embassy Cantina was far more than a mere kitchen; it was a destination spot for both London locals and visitors from Texas and beyond. It was a memorial to a time long since passed, a time when there was an actual Texas embassy -- just a stone’s throw from the cantina.

From 1836 to 1845, Texas was an independent republic. For nine brief years, it worked tirelessly on its public diplomacy, opening up embassies in Paris and London to improve global standing and recognition as an independent state, and to shore up global support in case Mexico should dare to declare war again. 

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Texas’ brief foray into independence is remembered by far more than plaques, however, and in a far more effective way: through the hearts and stomachs of the British people and the imaginations of Norway’s citizens.

France was the first to recognize the fledgling state's sovereignty, and ambassadors were exchanged in 1839, followed by the establishment of an embassy where the Hôtel de Vendôme currently stands. Although the embassy only stood for a year, a decorative plaque memorializing its existence remains on the hotel walls. 

The Texans weren't able to find digs quite as fancy in London, and had to share their building at No. 4 James Street with a wine store, a brothel, and a gambling den. Still, from 1842 to 1845, the second floor of the building belonged to the representatives of the Republic of Texas.

Once the Americans were able to bring the Lone Star State into the fold in 1845, the delegation was disbanded and the Texas representatives left town without paying a $160 bill at Berry Bros. and  Rudd, the legendary wine merchant next door to their London embassy.

In 1986, more than a century after those dastardly diplomats skipped town, 26 Texans dressed in buckskin showed up at the shop's door to hand over $160 in replica Republic of Texas bills. 

It is worth noting that Texans and Brits had been working on their own "special relationship" even before this debt was repaid. The Anglo-Texan Society was established in London in 1953 for "persons of either sex who have some definite connections with both Texas and Great Britain.” Graham Greene himself served as their first president. In 1963, the society put up a plaque on St. James Street to honor the place where the embassy once stood. Not to be outdone, Governor Rick Perry put up another marker on the site fifty years later on an economic tour of England.

Texas’ brief foray into independence is remembered by far more than plaques, however, and in a far more effective way: through the hearts and stomachs of the British people and the imaginations of Norway’s citizens. The Texas Embassy Cantina stood near the location of the embassy, and did its part for gastrodiplomacy while it lasted. The Norwegians have chosen to understand Texas as being larger than life, and inserted this meaning into everyday language.

Perhaps the lesson here is that it doesn’t really matter how you remember Texas, as long as you remember to remember Texas.

Photo by Texas State Library and Archives Commission/ CC by-SA 2.0

Posted by John Brown at 2:13 PM  

We Got Scammed by Government Contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan

November 16, 2015, 12:30 pm

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Tom Engelhardt, billmoyers.com

This post originally appeared at Tom Dispatch.

German and US Army soldiers rush with an injured German soldier to the German Army hospital in Kunduz, north of Kabul, Afghanistan. February 2011. (AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus)

Let’s begin with the $12 billion in shrink-wrapped $100 bills, Iraqi oil money held in the US. The Bush administration began flying it into Baghdad on C-130s soon after US troops entered that city in April 2003. Essentially dumped into the void that had once been the Iraqi state, at least $1.2 to $1.6 billion of it was stolen and ended up years later in a mysterious bunker in Lebanon. And that’s just what happened as the starting gun went off.

It’s never ended. In 2011, the final report of the congressionally mandated Commission on Wartime Contracting estimated that somewhere between $31 billion and $60 billion taxpayer dollars had been lost to fraud and waste in the American “reconstruction” of Iraq and Afghanistan. In Iraq, for instance, there was that $75 million police academy, initially hailed “as crucial to U.S. efforts to prepare Iraqis to take control of the country’s security.” It was, however, so poorly constructed that it proved a health hazard. In 2006, “feces and urine rained from the ceilings in [its] student barracks” and that was only the beginning of its problems.

When the bad press started, Parsons Corporation, the private contractor that built it, agreed to fix it for nothing more than the princely sum already paid. A year later, a New York Timesreporter visited and found that “the ceilings are still stained with excrement, parts of the structures are crumbling and sections of the buildings are unusable because the toilets are filthy and nonfunctioning.” This seems to have been par for the course. Typically enough, the Khan Bani Saad Correctional Facility, a $40 million prison Parsons also contracted to build, was never even finished.

And these were hardly isolated cases or problems specific to Iraq. Consider, for instance, those police stations in Afghanistan believed to be crucial to “standing up” a new security force in that country. Despite the money poured into them and endless cost overruns, many were either never completed or never built, leaving new Afghan police recruits camping out. And the police were hardly alone. Take the $3.4 million unfinished teacher-training center in Sheberghan, Afghanistan, that an Iraqi company was contracted to build (using, of course, American dollars) and from which it walked away, money in hand.

And why stick to buildings, when there were those Iraqi roads to nowhere paid for by American dollars? At least one of them did at least prove useful to insurgent groups moving their guerrillas around (like the $37 million bridge the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built between Afghanistan and Tajikistan that helped facilitate the region’s booming drug trade in opium and heroin). In Afghanistan, Highway 1 between the capital Kabul and the southern city of Kandahar, unofficially dubbed the “highway to nowhere,” was so poorly constructed that it began crumbling in its first Afghan winter.

And don’t think that this was an aberration. The US Agency for International Development (USAID) hired an American nonprofit, International Relief and Development (IRD), to oversee an ambitious road-building program meant to gain the support of rural villagers. Almost $300 million later, it could point to “less than 100 miles of gravel road completed.” Each mile of road had, by then, cost US taxpayers $2.8 million, instead of the expected $290,000, while a quarter of the road-building funds reportedly went directly to IRD for administrative and staff costs. Needless to say, as the road program failed, USAID hired IRD to oversee other non-transportation projects.

In these years, the cost of reconstruction never stopped growing. In 2011, McClatchy News reported that “US government funding for at least 15 large-scale programs and projects grew from just over $1 billion to nearly $3 billion despite the government’s questions about their effectiveness or cost.”

The Gas Station to Nowhere

So much construction and reconstruction — and so many failures. There was the chicken-processing plant built in Iraq for $2.58 million that, except in a few Potemkin-Village-like moments, never plucked a chicken and sent it to market. There was the sparkling new, 64,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art, $25 million headquarters for the US military in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, that doubled in cost as it was being built and that three generals tried to stop. They were overruled because Congress had already allotted the money for it, so why not spend it, even though it would never be used? And don’t forget the $20 million that went into constructing roads and utilities for the base that was to hold it, or the $8.4 billion that went into Afghan opium-poppy-suppression and anti-drug programs and resulted in… bumper poppy crops and record opium yields, or the aid funds that somehow made their way directly into the hands of the Taliban (reputedly its second-largest funding source after those poppies).

There were the billions of dollars in aid that no one could account for and a significant percentage of the 465,000 small arms (rifles, machine guns, grenade launchers and the like) that the US shipped to Afghanistan and simply lost track of. Most recently, there was the Task Force for Business Stability Operations, an $800-million Pentagon project to help jump-start the Afghan economy. It was shut down only six months ago and yet, in response to requests from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, the Pentagon swears that there are “no Defense Department personnel who can answer questions about” what the task force did with its money. As ProPublica’s Megan McCloskey writes, “The Pentagon’s claims are particularly surprising since Joseph Catalino, the former acting director of the task force who was with the program for two years, is still employed by the Pentagon as Senior Advisor for Special Operations and Combating Terrorism.”

Still, from that pile of unaccountable taxpayer dollars, one nearly $43 million chunk did prove traceable to a single project: the building of a compressed natural gas station. (The cost of constructing a similar gas station in neighboring Pakistan: $300,000.) Located in an area that seems to have had no infrastructure for delivering natural gas and no cars converted for the use of such fuel, it represented the only example on record in those years of a gas station to nowhere.

All of this just scratches the surface when it comes to the piles of money that were poured into an increasingly privatized version of the American way of war and, in the form of overcharges and abuses of every sort, often simply disappeared into the pockets of the warrior corporations that entered America’s war zones. In a sense, a surprising amount of the money that the Pentagon and US civilian agencies “invested” in Iraq and Afghanistan never leftthe United States, since it went directly into the coffers of those companies.

Clearly, Washington had gone to war like a drunk on a bender, while the domestic infrastructure began to fray. At $109 billion by 2014, the American reconstruction program in Afghanistan was already, in today’s dollars, larger than the Marshall Plan (which helped put all of devastated Western Europe back on its feet after World War II) and still the country was a shambles. In Iraq, a mere $60 billion was squandered on the failed rebuilding of the country. Keep in mind that none of this takes into account thestaggering billions spent by the Pentagon in both countries to build strings of bases, ranging in size from American towns (with all the amenities of home) to tiny outposts. There would be 505 of them in Iraq and at least 550 in Afghanistan. Most were, in the end, abandoned, dismantled or sometimes simply looted. And don’t forget the vast quantities of fuel imported into Afghanistan to run the US military machine in those years, some of which was siphoned off by American soldiers, to the tune of at least $15 million and sold to local Afghans on the sly.

In other words, in the post-9/11 years, “reconstruction” and “war” have really been euphemisms for what, in other countries, we would recognize as a massive system of corruption.

And let’s not forget another kind of “reconstruction” then underway. In both countries, the US was creating enormous militaries and police forces essentially from scratch to the tune of at least $25 billion in Iraq and $65 billion in Afghanistan. What’s striking about both of these security forces, once constructed, is how similar they turned out to be to those police academies, the unfinished schools and that natural gas station. It can’t be purely coincidental that both of the forces Americans proudly “stood up” have turned out to be the definition of corrupt: that is, they were filled not just with genuine recruits but with serried ranks of “ghost personnel.”

In June 2014, after whole divisions of the Iraqi army collapsedand fled before modest numbers of Islamic State militants, abandoning much of their weaponry and equipment, it became clear that they had been significantly smaller in reality than on paper. And no wonder, as that army had enlisted 50,000 “ghost soldiers” (who existed only on paper and whose salaries were lining the pockets of commanders and others). In Afghanistan, the US is still evidently helping to pay for similarly stunning numbers of phantom personnel, though no specific figures are available. (In 2009, an estimated more than 25 percent of the police force consisted of such ghosts.) As John Sopko, the US inspector general for Afghanistan, warned last June: “We are paying a lot of money for ghosts in Afghanistan… whether they are ghost teachers, ghost doctors or ghost policeman or ghost soldiers.”

And lest you imagine that the US military has learned its lesson, rest assured that it’s still quite capable of producing nonexistent proxy forces. Take the Pentagon-CIA program to train thousands of carefully vetted “moderate” Syrian rebels, equip them, arm them and put them in the field to fight the Islamic State. Congress ponied up $500 million for it, $384 million of which was spent before that project was shut down as an abject failure. By then, less than 200 American-backed rebels had been trained and even less put into the field in Syria — and they were almost instantlykidnapped or killed, or they simply handed over their equipment to the al-Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front. At one point, according to the congressional testimony of the top American commander in the Middle East, only four or five American-produced rebels were left “in the field.” The cost-per-rebel sent into Syria, by the way, is now estimated at approximately $2 million.

A final footnote: the general who oversaw this program is,according to The New York Times, still a “rising star” in the Pentagon and in line for a promotion.

Profli-gate

You’ve just revisited the privatized, twenty-first-century version of the American way of war, which proved to be a smorgasbord of scandal, mismanagement and corruption as far as the eye could see. In the tradition of Watergate, perhaps the whole system could be dubbed Profli-gate, since American war making across the Greater Middle East has represented perhaps the most profligate and least effective use of funds in the history of modern warfare. In fact, here’s a word not usually associated with the US military: the war system of this era seems to function remarkably like a monumental scam, a swindle, a fraud.

The evidence is in: the US military can win battles, but not a war, not even against minimally armed minority insurgencies; it can “stand up” foreign militaries, but only if they are filled with phantom feet and if the forces themselves are as hollow as tombs; it can pour funds into the reconstruction of countries, a process guaranteed to leave them more prostrate than before; it can bomb, missile and drone-kill significant numbers of terrorists and other enemies, even as their terror outfits and insurgent movements continue to grow stronger under the shadow of American air power. Fourteen years and five failed states later in the Greater Middle East, all of that seems irrefutable.

And here’s something else irrefutable: amid the defeats, corruption and disappointments, there lurks a kind of success. After all, every disaster in which the US military takes part only brings more bounty to the Pentagon. Domestically, every failure results in calls for yet more military interventions around the world. As a result, the military is so much bigger and better funded than it was on September 10, 2001. The commanders who led our forces into such failures have repeatedly been rewarded and much of the top brass, civilian and military, though they should have retired in shame, have taken ever more golden parachutes into the lucrative worlds of defense contractors, lobbyists and consultancies.

All of this couldn’t be more obvious, though it’s seldom said. In short, there turns out to be much good fortune in the disaster business, a fact which gives the whole process the look of a classic swindle in which the patsies lose their shirts but the scam artists make out like bandits.

Add in one more thing: these days, the only part of the state held in great esteem by conservatives and the present batch of Republican presidential candidates is the US military. All of them, with the exception of Rand Paul, swear that on entering the Oval Office they will let that military loose, sending in more troops, or special ops forces, or air power and funding the various services even more lavishly; all of this despite overwhelming evidence that the US military is incapable of spending a dollar responsibly or effectively monitoring what it’s done with the taxpayer funds in its possession. (If you don’t believe me, forget everything in this piece and just check out the finances of the most expensive weapons system in history, the F-35 Lightning II, which should really be redubbed the F-35 Overrun for its madly spiraling costs.)

But no matter. If a system works (particularly for those in it), why change it? And by the way, in case you’re looking for a genuine steal, I have a fabulous gas station in Afghanistan to sell you…

Tom Engelhardt is a co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of The United States of Fear as well as a history of the Cold War, The End of Victory Culture. He runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. His new book, Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World (Haymarket Books), has just been published.

Visit the 5 happiest states in America: Note for a lecture, "E Pluribus Unum? What Keeps the United States United"

November 16, 2015, 5:57 pm

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Elevate your mood and open your mind with a tour of the happiest states in the U.S.

Whether you’re sightseeing, enjoying a sunny beach or getting in touch with your adventurous side, one of the perks of traveling is the instant mood boost it provides. Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index recently released its ranking of the happiest states in 2014. If you’re looking to plan a trip that’s all smiles, consider checking out the top five states that made the list and all the activities they have to offer.

1. Alaska

Forget visions of endless ice and snow. Alaska made the top of the list in 2014 and a trip there promises unparalleled beauty and sights you won’t find anywhere else. If you want to maximize your sun exposure, visit between May and September, when the days are longest. However, if you’re willing to brave the darker days of winter, the Northern Lights are one of the most incredible natural phenomenon to visit. Alaska is also home to several national parks, including Denali and Kenai Fjords, which are home to North America’s highest peak and a fleet of glaciers respectively.

Check flights to Alaska

2.Hawaii

It’s not hard to imagine why the United States’ own little slice of paradise makes the top ten list.Who wouldn’t be happy sunning themselves on a Hawaiian beach? If you’re a surfer or looking to try out the sport, there are excellent surfing spots for any level of experience, particularly on the island of Oahu. There are also quirky ways to enjoy nature on the islands. On the island of Hawaii (often called the Big Island), you can visit the Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park and see an active volcano. Or, cool off and take a snorkeling trip off Molokini Crater, a small island off the coast of Maui.

Check flights to Hawaii

3. South Dakota

Nothing inspires a good mood quite like an endorphin rush, which is exactly what you will get during your trip to South Dakota. Be sure to pack your hiking boots, as many of the state’s most popular spots include walks or trails where you can enjoy breathtaking sights. Hike the Presidential Trail for a prime view of the iconic Mount Rushmore. If you’re looking to spend a night in the open air, Badlands National Park and Black Hills National Forest both offer campgrounds for those who can’t get enough of the natural beauty.

Check flights to South Dakota

4. Wyoming

Though all the states offer gorgeous national parks, Wyoming is home to what may be the most iconic one: Yellowstone. With an array of wildlife and opportunities to hike, bike, boat and more, a trip to Yellowstone is a must if you’re heading to Wyoming. Or, get your blood pumping in a different way and check out the rodeo. If you visit at the end July, you can see the Cheyenne Frontier Days Rodeo, a festival that celebrates not just the rodeo, but the traditions of the Old West with sites like an old frontier town and a saloon. In addition to the rodeo itself, there is also a carnival, musical performances, parades and more.

Check flights to Wyoming

5. Montana

If you don’t get to the Yellowstone in Wyoming, you can always visit it during your trip to Montana, which is also home to part of the park. However, Montana is better known for Glacier National Park, a beautiful destination along the Rocky Mountains. If you’re looking to learn more about the mountain range during your trip, be sure to plan a visit to the Museum of the Rockies, located in Bozeman. This is a perfect place to bring the whole family, as the museum brags one of the world’s largest collections of dinosaur fossils.

Teddy had it so right! Note for a lecture, "E Pluribus Unum? What Keeps te United States Unired"

November 16, 2015, 6:24 pm

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Anxiety, Nostalgia, and Mistrust: Findings from the 2015 American Values Survey - Note for a lecture, "E Pluribus Unum? What Keeps the United States United"

November 17, 2015, 11:13 am

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Findings from the 2015 American Values Survey.

▶ Read the full report here. ▶ Read the news release here. ▶ Read the topline questionnaire, including the survey methodology, here. ▶ Read the 2015 AVS Supplement, with updated candidate choice and favorability, here.

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Health Care, Terrorism, and Jobs Most Critical Issues

When asked what issues are most important to them personally, Americans are more likely to cite health care (63%), terrorism (62%), and jobs and unemployment (60%) than any other issue. A majority (53%) of Americans report that crime is a critical issue to them personally. Slightly fewer say the cost of education (49%), economic inequality (48%), and immigration (46%) are critical issues. Fewer Americans say that race relations (39%), climate change (34%), abortion (34%), religious liberty (31%), and same-sex marriage (25%) are critical issues.

Strong majorities of both Democrats and Republicans name health care (71% and 61%, respectively) and jobs and unemployment (66% and 59%, respectively) as critical issues. However, Democrats are more likely than Republicans to name the cost of education (62% vs. 33% respectively) and the growing gap between the rich and the poor (62% vs. 29%, respectively) as critical issues. Republicans are more likely than Democrats to name terrorism (79% vs. 53%, respectively) and immigration (59% vs. 43%, respectively) as critical issues.

However, even among Republicans, the importance of immigration varies. On no issue do the supporters of Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump differ more from those supporting other Republican candidates than on the issue of immigration. Nearly seven in ten (69%) Trump supporters say that immigration is a critical issue to them personally. In contrast, only half (50%) of those who support other Republican candidates say that the issue of immigration is critically important to them.

The Bush/Clinton Dynasty Dilemma

Although Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton each entered the 2016 campaign with considerable assets, their famous last names may not be among them. Most (54%) Americans say that electing another president from the “Bush” or “Clinton” family would be bad for the country, while 45% disagree. The dynasty dilemma is a bigger problem for Bush than for Clinton. More than six in ten (61%) Republicans—including 64% of likely Republican primary voters—and nearly seven in ten (69%) Tea Party members say that electing another Bush or Clinton would be bad for the country, compared to 42% of Democrats overall and 39% of likely Democratic primary voters.

The Declining Tea Party Movement

The proportion of Americans who identify with the Tea Party movement has declined by nearly half over the last five years, from 11% in 2010 to 6% today. Tea Party affiliation has also dropped among Republicans, from 22% in 2010 to 14% today. Favorable views of the Tea Party have dropped 10 percentage points over the last year, from 35% in 2014 to 25% today. A majority (57%) of Americans currently hold an unfavorable view of the group, up from 46% last year. The decline of Tea Party favorability is pronounced among Republicans (58% in 2014 vs. 45% today), independents (35% in 2014 vs. 27% today), and Democrats (18% in 2014 vs. 12% today).

Americans’ Gloomy Economic Outlook Persists

Americans continue to have a bleak outlook about the economy. More than seven in ten (72%) Americans believe that the country is still in a recession, while roughly one-quarter (27%) believe the economic recession is over. Americans’ views about the economic recession have remained steady over the last few years, with an identical percentage (72%) of Americans saying the country was still in a recession in 2014, and 76% saying the country was still in a recession in 2012.

Americans have become more pessimistic about the country’s future than they were just a few years earlier. Today, Americans are evenly divided over whether America’s best days are ahead of us (49%) or behind us (49%). In 2012, a majority (54%) of the public said that America’s best days were ahead, while fewer than four in ten (38%) said that they were behind. No group expresses greater pessimism about America’s future than members of the Tea Party. Only one-third (33%) of Tea Party members say that the country’s best days lie ahead, while about two-thirds (65%) say they are in the past.

Perceptions about America’s future vary by religious affiliation. Among religious groups, white evangelical Protestants and white mainline Protestants are markedly more pessimistic than other groups, with majorities believing that America’s best days are behind us (60% and 55%, respectively). By contrast, majorities of Americans who are affiliated with non-Christian religions (55%), Catholics (56%), black Protestants (57%), and religiously unaffiliated Americans (58%) all believe America’s best days are ahead of us.

Americans’ increasing pessimism about the direction of the country is reflected in their views about prevalent problems within their local communities. The number of Americans citing crime, racial tensions, and illegal immigration as major problems increased substantially between 2012 and 2015.

The number of Americans saying crime is a major problem in their community jumped 15 percentage points (up from 33% to 48%), while the number of Americans saying racial tensions are a major concern jumped 18 percentage points (from 17% to 35%).

The number of Americans saying illegal immigration is a major problem ticked up 8 percentage points (from 28% to 36%).

In order to provide an overall measure of Americans’ attitudes about the fairness of the economic system in the U.S., we created an Economic Inequity Index (EII). Americans are skewed toward the top end of the scale. Nearly half (48%) of Americans perceive a great amount of inequity in the economic system, scoring very high on the EII. About one in five (21%) see a high amount of economic inequity, 20% see a moderate amount of economic inequity, and 11% perceive the economic playing field to be basically level, scoring low on the EII.

Continued Strong Support for Minimum Wage and Workplace Policies

Nearly two-thirds (65%) of Americans believe that “one of the big problems in this country is that we don’t give everyone an equal chance in life,” while fewer than three in ten (28%) believe that “it is not really that big a problem if some people have more of a chance in life than others.” Concerns about the lack of equal opportunity have increased considerably since 2010, when 53% said that one of the big problems in the U.S. was the lack of equal opportunities for all.

More than three-quarters (76%) of Americans support raising the minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 per hour. Support has ticked up significantly since 2014, when 69% of Americans expressed support for raising the minimum wage to $10.10 per hour. Nearly six in ten (59%) Americans express support for raising the minimum wage even higher—to $15 an hour—but there is less agreement across political party lines for the larger wage hike. Roughly equal numbers of Democrats favor raising the minimum wage to either $10.10 or $15 (91% vs. 84%, respectively). In contrast, while six in ten (60%) Republicans support raising the minimum wage to $10.10, fewer than one-third (32%) say they favor raising it to $15 per hour.

Americans overwhelmingly support requiring companies to provide all full-time employees with paid sick days if they or an immediate family member gets sick (85%), and requiring companies to provide all full-time employees with paid leave for the birth or adoption of a child (82%).

Anxieties about Cultural Change

A majority (53%) of Americans say that American culture and way of life has mostly changed for the worse since the 1950s, compared to 46% who say it has changed for the better.

Six in ten (60%) black Americans and a majority (54%) of Hispanic Americans believe that American culture has mostly changed for the better since the 1950s. In contrast, only 42% of white Americans agree, and 57% say that the American way of life has mostly changed for the worse over the last sixty years.

While a majority of independents (56%), Republicans (67%), and members of the Tea Party (72%) say American culture and way of life has gotten worse since the 1950s, only 40% of Democrats agree.

Today, Americans are evenly divided as to whether immigrants strengthen the country because of their hard work and talents (47%) or whether they are a burden on the U.S. because they take jobs, housing, and health care (46%).

By a margin of approximately two-to-one, Democrats are more likely to say that immigrants strengthen the country than to say that immigrants are a burden to the country (63% vs. 32%, respectively).

By a similar margin, Republicans are more likely to say the opposite—that immigrants burden the country as opposed to strengthen it (66% vs. 26%, respectively). Views of Tea Party members do not differ significantly from Republicans overall.

Compared to a few years earlier, Americans report less tolerance when encountering immigrants who do not speak English. Nearly half (48%) of Americans agree that they are bothered when they come into contact with immigrants who speak little or no English, compared to 40% in 2012. More than six in ten (63%) white working-class Americans say they feel bothered when they come into contact with immigrants who do not speak English, compared to 43% of white college-educated Americans.

Americans’ perceptions of Islam have turned more negative over the past few years. Today, a majority (56%) of Americans agree that the values of Islam are at odds with American values and way of life, while roughly four in ten (41%) disagree. In 2011, Americans were divided in their views of Islam (47% agreed, 48% disagreed).

Little Confidence in Government, the Media, and Big Business

There is a wide disparity in public confidence in different major institutions in the country. While majorities of the public report having a great deal or some confidence in the police (75%), the criminal justice system (62%), and organized religion (55%), no more than half say they have a great deal or some confidence in the federal government (50%), news organizations (47%), and large business corporations (46%).

Few Americans say the government looks out for their interests. Only about four in ten (42%) Americans say the government looks out for the needs and interests of people like them either somewhat or very well. Notably, seniors (age 65 and older) are the only major demographic group in which a majority (55%) believe that the government looks out for their needs and interests at least somewhat well.

In order to provide an overall measure of Americans’ attitudes about confidence in major institutions in the U.S., we created an Institutional Mistrust Index (IMI). Americans are fairly evenly distributed across the scale. More than one-third of Americans express high levels of distrust of major institutions, scoring very high (12%) or high (23%) on the IMI. About three in ten (29%) fall into the moderate category, and more than one-third express significant trust in major institutions, scoring low (27%) or very low (9%) on the scale.

Disparate Perceptions of Discrimination and Racism

Muslims and gay and lesbian people top the list of groups who are perceived to be facing a lot of discrimination in the U.S. today, but many Americans also believe that racial and ethnic minorities face substantial discrimination.

Approximately seven in ten Americans say there is a lot of discrimination against Muslims (70%) and gay and lesbian people (68%) in the country today.

A majority of Americans say blacks (63%) and Hispanics (56%) face a lot of discrimination in the U.S.

Americans are more divided on how prevalent discrimination against women is in the United States—45% say there is a lot of discrimination against women in America today, while 53% say there is not.

Relatively few Americans believe that evangelical Christians (30%), Jews (30%), atheists (27%), whites (25%), or white men (22%) confront a great deal of discrimination in American society today.

More than four in ten (43%) Americans say that discrimination against whites has become as big a problem as discrimination against blacks and other minorities, while 55% disagree. Opinions about “reverse discrimination” have remained fairly constant over the past few years. Half (50%) of white Americans—including 60% of white working-class Americans—agree that discrimination against whites has become as big a problem today as discrimination against blacks and other minorities, while fewer than three in ten Hispanic (29%) and black Americans (25%) agree.

In order to provide an overall measure of Americans’ attitudes about race, we created a Racial Inequity Index (RII). Overall, more Americans score low than high on the scale. One-third of Americans score very high (10%), or high (23%) on the scale, indicating that they perceive systemic discrimination against racial minorities as having continued impact on inequality today. About one in five (21%) Americans fall into the moderate category, and nearly half of Americans score low (38%) or very low (8%) on the RII, believing that racial minorities today have equal opportunities as whites. Approximately three-quarters of Republicans (74%) and Tea Party members (75%) perceive few continued effects of racial discrimination today (low scores on the RII), compared to just 22% of Democrats.

Race and Fair Treatment by Police and the Criminal Justice System

A majority (53%) of the public say that recent killings of African American men by police are isolated incidents rather than part of a broader pattern of how police treat African Americans (44%). Views on police killings of African American men are highly stratified by race/ethnicity.

Approximately two-thirds (65%) of white Americans say recent killings of African American men by police are isolated incidents, while about four in ten (41%) Hispanic Americans and only 15% of black Americans say the same.

More than eight in ten (81%) black Americans say recent police killings of African American men are part of a broader pattern of how police treat African Americans.

Among religious groups, white Christians are more likely than other religious groups to say that recent killings of African American men by police are not connected.

More than seven in ten white evangelical Protestants (72%), white mainline Protestants (73%), and white Catholics (71%) believe that killings of African American men by police are isolated incidents.

By contrast, about six in ten Americans who are affiliated with non-Christian religions (62%) and religiously unaffiliated Americans (59%) believe that these killings are part of a broader pattern of how police treat minorities.

Among black Protestants, more than eight in ten (82%) believe they are part of a broader pattern.

Nearly six in ten (58%) Americans disagree that blacks and other minorities receive equal treatment as whites in the criminal justice system, up from 47% in 2013. More than eight in ten (85%) black Americans and two-thirds (67%) of Hispanic Americans disagree that non-whites receive equal treatment in the criminal justice system. White Americans overall are closely divided (52% disagree, 47% agree), but white college-educated Americans are significantly more likely than white working-class Americans to disagree that minorities receive equal treatment in the criminal justice system (64% vs. 47%, respectively).

Americans are also closely divided over whether there are racial disparities in death penalty sentencing. A majority (53%) of Americans agree that a black person is more likely than a white person to receive the death penalty for the same crime, while 45% of Americans disagree. American attitudes about the way that the death penalty is applied are virtually unchanged from 1999. More than eight in ten (82%) black Americans and roughly six in ten (59%) Hispanic Americans, compared to fewer than half (45%) of white Americans, believe that a black person is more likely than a white person to receive a death penalty sentence for the same crime.