The US gun lobby still has no reason to worry
Donald Trump concluded his speech to the nation after the Las Vegas atrocity by saying “even the most terrible despair can be illuminated by a single ray of hope.” However, “if your hope was that Washington would start to grapple with a response to the crisis of mass shootings, the President didn’t offer a single ray,” writes Ryan Lizza in The New Yorker.
There are three reasons why there will be no policy change even in the wake of one the deadliest mass shooting in America’s history, writes Steve Israel in The New York Times.
“First, just like everything else in Washington, the gun lobby has become more polarized. The National Rifle Association, once a supporter of sensible gun-safety measures, is now forced to oppose them because of competing organizations. More moderation means less market share.”
“Second, congressional redistricting has pulled Republicans so far to the right that anything less than total subservience to the gun lobby is viewed as supporting gun confiscation.”
“Third, the problem is you, the reader. You’ve become inoculated. You’ll read this essay and others like it, and turn the page or click another link…This horrific event will recede into our collective memory.”
“That’s what the gun lobbyists are counting on,” he concludes.
Putin’s war on the West
Russia is the No. 1 geopolitical threat to the West. And even if Europe and the United States haven’t woken up to it yet, Russia has effectively declared political war on the West.
The above was the conclusion of a high-level working group “of the smartest security minds from Europe and the U.S.” that POLITICO convened on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly.
“Putin is working to undermine Western institutions and sow dissent in Western societies, participants said. Those efforts are aimed less at picking specific election winners and losers than at making the West look weak and dysfunctional — and bolstering Russian power and legitimacy by comparison. For Putin to keep Russians under his autocratic thumb, he needs them to see that the freedoms of Berlin, London and Washington are nothing to be envied,” writes Maura Reynolds.
“Putin wants to make the world safe for Russian autocracy, and that means he has to discredit democracy in principle, which he’s trying to do, and weaken Western institutions, which he’s also trying to do,’’ said one participant.
Iran’s foreign minister calls out Trump’s ‘publicity stunts’
Believe it or not, Iran’s diplomatic conduct of late has been way more measured than that of the US. And the country’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif’s interview to Politico’s Susan Glasser is just the latest evidence of this.
Despite Trump’s repeated threats to blow up the Iran nuclear deal, it still has a “better than 50” percent chance of surviving the next year, Zarif said. And even though Zarif was stinging in his critique of Trump, “There was no Kim Jong Un-like retaliatory rhetoric, no ‘Death to America’-type rants so familiar from past Iranian leaders,” Glasser writes.
“At various points,” however, she writes, “he bemoaned the American president’s ‘posturing,’ called out his ‘alternative facts’ as ‘publicity stunts,’ lamented his ‘insulting’ words and his ‘disappointing’ position, worried about his ‘frightening’ showdown with North Korea, and agreed with those who argue that Trump’s overheated rhetoric has now made it easier rather than harder for Iran to command sympathy in the international arena.”
“Now, look at the message that you are sending to the world. It would make it tougher for anybody to believe and rely upon the United States—anybody, not just North Korea. You’ve seen U.S. allies saying that the United States is not a reliable partner,” Zarif said.
Spain’s embrace of authoritarian tactics
It’s perhaps nobody’s case that the violent response of the Spanish government to the referendum in Catalonia will actually quell the region’s separatist movement. What lay behind the government’s violent crackdown then was knowing the unnerving economic implications of a split, writes Jonah Shepp in the New York Magazine.
“Indeed, the economy is a major reason why many residents of Catalonia want out of Spain and why Madrid is desperate not to let it go: Catalonia has the highest GDP of any of Spain’s regions, accounting for nearly a fifth of the country’s economic output. It also pays about 20 percent of the country’s taxes, while receiving only 14 percent of national government expenditures. If Spain is struggling now, it will struggle much harder without Catalonia, whereas pro-independence Catalans believe they would be much better off if they didn’t have to send so much of their money to Madrid,” Shepp writes.
“Conditions of political and economic stagnation put Spain in an especially fragile state. When the stakes are so high, it’s easy to see how a cornered head of government might resort to authoritarian tactics to prevent his country from fracturing even further.”
New York’s discriminatory Police Department
Discrimination and prejudice ails the New York Police Department’s “wholly subjective and secret” promotion process, and forces black detectives to wait longer for promotions than similarly qualified white colleagues.
“Detectives are promoted at the discretion of supervisors, who pass recommendations up the chain of command, where names are culled. Decisions typically go unexplained,” says an editorial in The New York Times.
“After examining seven years of promotions, the Equal Employment Oppurtunity Commission found that black detectives on average served at the intelligence division’s lower rung two years longer than whites and that the difference could not be explained by experience or individual factors. The department argues with the numbers. To overcome the suit’s claim of discrimination — especially in the wake of the E.E.O.C. ruling — it will have to prove that its promotion decisions were unbiased and fair.”
“At the very least, the department has been put on notice that it needs to develop a transparent and objective system that minimizes caprice and lets officers know in advance what is expected of them, and when and why they have fallen short.”