Drunk Words & Sober Regrets
May 20, 2019
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“Every strike brings me closer to the next home run.” – Babe Ruth
“The score never interested me, only the game.” – Mae West
“If a man watches three football games in a row, he should be declared legally dead.”- Erma Bombeck
Drunk Words Are Sober Regrets: Austria’s far-right vice chancellor and leader of the Freedom Party, Heinz-Christian Strache, was secretly video-taped in July 2017 expressing shockingly corrupt views during hours of alcohol-fueled conversation with five people in a rented villa in Spain. The meeting included another Freedom Party official, Johann Gudenus, Gudenus’s wife, Strache, a woman who said she was the niece of a Russian oligarch, and an interpreter. On Saturday, less than 24 hours after the release of the video footage, Strache resigned his cabinet post and vowed to resign as leader of the Freedom Party. In his defiant resignation speech Strache blamed alcohol and a desire to impress an attractive hostess for what he claimed was typical “macho behavior.”
Excerpts from the video footage, published in two newspapers, relate the woman’s plan to invest a quarter-billion euros in Austria. Strache explores ways that could benefit his Freedom Party, which has attacked Austrian journalists and called for cutting public broadcast fees. Strache suggests the woman might take over a tabloid newspaper and begin giving his party favorable coverage prior to the election. He also discusses restructuring Austria’s public broadcaster, including possible privatization, saying: “We want to build a media landscape like Orban did.” Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orban turned his country’s public news media into a pro-government propaganda machine. Orban’s allies have bought up whole sectors of the private news industry. Strache tells the woman he has been to Russia many times and met with advisers of President Vladimir Putin to plan for “strategic collaboration.” In return for the woman helping his party in the 2017 election, Strache says he could take state road contracts away from Austria’s biggest construction company and give them to a company the woman would found.
Power to the People & Power to the 3.5%!: Research by Harvard political scientist Erica Chenoweth confirms that nonviolent protests are twice as likely to succeed as armed conflicts. Chenoweth studied hundreds of campaigns over the last century, and although the exact dynamics depend on many factors, the bottom line is it only takes around 3.5 percent of the population actively participating in nonviolent protests to accomplish serious political change. (BBC)
You Are What You Breathe, From Your Head To Your Feet: A comprehensive new global analysis by the World Health Organization demonstrates that air pollution is damaging every organ and virtually every cell in the human body. The harm is head-to-toe — from dementia, heart and lung disease, diabetes, liver and bladder cancer, brittle bones, damaged skin, fertility problems, to reduced intelligence. The review represents “very strong science” said WHO’s director of public and environmental health. “It adds to the very heavy evidence we have already. There are more than 70,000 scientific papers to demonstrate that air pollution is affecting our health.” Air pollution is a public health emergency, as more than 90 percent of the world’s population is breathing toxic outdoor air, and 8.8 million people are dying early. (Guardian)
Mo’ Modi, Hopefully Less Problems: India’s ginormous, 39 day long parliamentary election finally came to a close on Sunday. Results will be announced Thursday, but exit polls suggest Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party will return to power. Exit polls also predict Modi’s BJP party and its allies will win about 290 to 300 seats in the 545-seat lower house, which chooses the prime minister. (NYT)
Don’t Count Him Out, Just Count The Votes: Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison, an evangelical Christian who has professed admiration for President Trump, won re-election Saturday, stunning pollsters who had predicted his defeat for several months. Morrison championed working-class economic stability during his campaign, promising voters he would lower energy prices, and cut costs for first-time homeowners. Morrison’s victory is part of a populist trend which now stretches across the US, Brazil, Hungary and Italy. (NPR)
- One of U.K.’s Most Prolific Extremist Cells Is Regrouping (NYT, $)
- US pastor runs network giving 50,000 Ugandans bleach-based ‘miracle cure’: Revealed: group led by Robert Baldwin and part-funded by Sam Little claims toxic fluid will eradicate HIV/Aids and other diseases (Guardian)
- Venezuela’s Collapse Is the Worst Outside of War in Decades, Economists Say: Butchers have stopped selling meat cuts in favor of offal, fat shavings and cow hooves, the only animal protein many of their customers can afford. (NYT, $)
- Colombia Army’s New Kill Orders Send Chills Down Ranks (NYT, $)
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Et Tu, Michigan Republican Justin Amash? Et Tu?: Representative Justin Amash of Michigan has become the first and only House Republican to call for the impeachment of President Trump. Amash, a libertarian, was elected in the Tea Party wave of 2010 and is one of the founders of the Freedom Caucus, which has become a hard-right mouthpiece for Trump. Despite this, in a series of tweets Saturday Amash said special counsel Robert Mueller had, in his investigation of Russian election interference, identified “multiple examples of conduct satisfying all the elements of obstruction of justice, and undoubtedly any person who is not the president of the United States would be indicted based on such evidence.” He also said Attorney General William Barr “has deliberately misrepresented” Mueller’s work in presentations to the public and in congressional testimony. Noting that the vast majority of his colleagues had not read the report, Amash said elected officials should “uphold both the rules and spirit of our constitutional system even when to do so is personally inconvenient or yields a politically unfavorable outcome.” (Guardian)
- Acting secretary blocked Stephen Miller’s bid for another DHS shake-up (WaPo, $)
- No holds Barred: Trump and his troops push for imperial presidency: With his compliant attorney general, the man in the White House is taking aim at the constitutional balance of powers (Guardian)
- In Cities Where It Once Reigned, Heroin Is Disappearing (NYT, $)
- To Many Chinese, America Was Like ‘Heaven.’ Now They’re Not So Sure. (NYT, $)
Putting Healthy Gender Roles On The MAP: The Lutheran Settlement House in Philadelphia, PA launched the Masculinity Action Project (MAP), to bring together a group of 10-15 people for a free capacity building training program focused on promoting the expression of healthy masculinity on an individual and community level. Monthly meetings were planned from November 2018 to June 2019. The peer-led program looks at the links between gender norms and gender violence, and supports an environment in which everyone feels responsible for making communities safer. 31-year-old Sean Jin, who was raised to believe there are certain gender roles, said in college he began thinking a lot about what men are “supposed to” do and not do. He joined the group because men face real issues like a higher rate of suicide and much higher rates of incarceration than women. Men need alternative solutions to those offered by the misogynist incel, who believe men are oppressed and the solution is more control over women and violence toward minorities. Instead Jin and his friends are looking for the kind of answers “in which liberation for minorities and more freedom for women is actually empowering for men.” (NPR)
- What Is Pornography Doing to Our Sex Lives?: In the latest episode of Crazy/Genius, we wade into the debate over pornography to determine what, if anything, can be said about its effects on our relationships. (Atlantic)
- To Move Is to Thrive. It’s in Our Genes.: A need and desire to be in motion may have been bred into our DNA before we even became humans. (NYT, $) We simply are not designed to sit in the office all day: Is Conference Room Air Making You Dumber? A small body of evidence suggests that when it comes to decision making, indoor air may matter more than we have realized. (NYT, $)
- Why Walking is the Key to Being More Productive: The case for moving slow in an age of speed. (GQ) Our favorite types of meetings are walks and talks. It’s also a great way to one’s steps in each day.
- This AI-generated Joe Rogan fake has to be heard to be believed: The most realistic AI voice clone we’ve heard (The Verge)
- Facebook’s A.I. Whiz Now Faces the Task of Cleaning It Up. Sometimes That Brings Him to Tears.: Facebook has heralded artificial intelligence as a solution to its toxic content problems. Mike Schroepfer, its chief technology officer, says it won’t solve everything. (NYT, $)