If US news was reported in the way it reports foreign countries

[Hawaiian Punch]

If It Happened There: Courts Sanction Killings by U.S. Security Forces
By Joshua Keating

Protesters take to the streets.
Photo by STAN HONDA/AFP/Getty Images

The latest installment in a continuing series in which American events are described using the tropes and tone normally employed by the American media to describe events in other countries.


NEW YORK CITY, United States—The heavily armed security forces in this large and highly militarized country have long walked the streets with impunity, rarely if ever held accountable for violence committed against civilians. In recent weeks, however, several such incidents have ignited public anger and threatened to open new fault lines in a nation with a long and tragic history of sectarian violence.

Advertisement

In America’s largest city, the judicial branch declined to pursue chargesagainst a security officer who was videotaped in broad daylight choking a man to death. This came less than two weeks after courts in the nation’s often overlooked central region reached a similar decision in the shooting of an unarmed teenager. Both victims were members of the country’s largest minority group, and the killings have set off nationwide protests that have often escalated into clashes between dissidents and the security forces.

While lower than that of other countries in the Western Hemisphere, America’s violent crime rate is high by the standards of developed nations, a situation experts blame on a variety of factors, including skyrocketing income inequality and easy access to firearms. In response, the country’s recent ruling regimes have broadly expanded the policing and surveillance powers of the domestic security forces and instituted draconian sentences for even minor criminal offenses. As a result of this campaign, the world’s second-largest democracy has the highest percentage of its population behind bars—a virtual prison state of 2.3 million people housed in an archipelago of often poorly maintained facilities throughout the nation.

Information provided by human rights groups shows that the state’s crackdown has disproportionately targeted members of the country’s ethnic minority groups, who have been historically marginalized and subject to severe discrimination. The election of the country’s first minority president, it was once hoped, would help bring these disparities to an end, but experts say they have persisted and in some cases even worsened.

Domestic critics also say the state has grown increasingly intolerant of dissent. Security forces have been outfitted with the latest in military hardware, often battle-tested on the fields of the country’s multiple foreign wars. The use of tear gas and rubber bullets against domestic protesters is reminiscent of the state’s tactics during protests against the system of legally enforced apartheid, which was in place in the country’s southern region until the middle of the last century.

 

[Serious]

This has potential....

 

[88m3]

 

[CHL]

Rep'd, great idea by Slate

 

[CHL]

If It Happened There: Americans to Elect Legislature


WASHINGTON, United States—On Tuesday, voters in this country of 300 million, the world’s second-largest democracy and most populous Christian nation, will head to the polls for elections that will determine control of the upper house of the legislature and serve as a referendum on the country’s embattled ruling regime.

While international monitors expect a mostly free and fair contest, questions have been raised about why the equivalent of the GDP of Montenegro is being spent on a contest to determine the membership of a body expected to accomplish little over the next two years. Human rights observers have also noted a troubling rise in anti-immigrant rhetoric stoked by far-right nationalist candidates.

President Barack Obama’s ruling party will almost certainly lose seats, but whether or not the opposition is able to take over the upper house will be determined by closely fought races in the nation’s torrid southeastern swamps, central agricultural region, and even frigid Arctic villages thousands of miles from the capital.

There is no shortage of pressing issues, from a sluggish economic recovery to multiple foreign wars, facing this large and diverse society. Still, elections in this vast nation can often be characterized by idiosyncratic local rituals. In this campaign season, feats of strength involving dominating animals have been popular. One opposition candidate for national office has boasted of castrating pigs, another of wrestling alligators. While the country’s citizens have migrated en masse to large cities in search of greater economic opportunity, specialists in American folkways say people here still value these demonstrations of rural aptitude. Not to be outdone, government loyalists have boasted of their marksmanship and snowmobiling skills.

Appealing to nationalist sentiment, the opposition has accused the government of allowing too many immigrants to make their way across the country’s southern border, tying this issue to fears of deadly viruses and terrorism. There have also been disturbing unconfirmed reports of a “war on women” being waged by religious extremists in the country’s Western mountains.

In this deeply traditional society, where great import is accorded to family ties, powerful clans build patronage networks, and political office is often passed between relatives. Remarkably, one race pits the cousin of a former governor against the daughter of a former senator.

With control of the upper house coming down to just a few key races, the election has been bitter, combative, and expensive. In one coastal state, the ruling party and its supporters have spent more than $26 million attacking a single opposition candidate. Not surprisingly, the election has also become a contest for influence among America’s politically powerful oligarchs, who often seek to control elections by employing a complex form of legally sanctioned slush funds.

The vast fortunes spent and passions aroused are particularly noteworthy given that few expect the legislature to pass much in the way of meaningful legislation. America is still governed under an unwieldy 18th-century political model employed by few other functioning democracies. With the executive mansion and legislature controlled by two different parties, there’s little hope of large-scale reforms.

While 2014 has seen a rash of military coups and America boasts both a staggering level of income inequality and the world’s most heavily armed populace, political forecasters say a violent uprising is still unlikely. While few are satisfied with the political process as it exists, most Americans are either apathetic about the state of affairs or deeply invested in the current system. Most are already gearing up for the all-important presidential election coming in two years. Not surprisingly, many expect it to be another brutal contest between the country’s two top political dynasties.

 

[CHL]

If It Happened There: America Awaits Royal Baby

WASHINGTON, United States—Though free of monarchy for more than two centuries, Americans this week were strangely fascinated by the news that one of the country’s pre-eminent political families will be producing its next heir. The news has produced baby fever in the nation’s often sensationalist and highly partisan media and sparked a new round of discussion about the role of powerful clans in the nation’s public affairs.

The politics of the world’s second-largest democracy have long been dominated by a handful of influential families. In recent decades, it has often been a brutal contest of wills between two rival clans in particular.

For the past year, however, neither of the country’s most powerful dynasties has had a member serving in the executive mansion or the Cabinet—something that has not happened in 34 years. This week’s news comes at a time when speculation is high that the Clinton dynasty may be angling to take the reins of power once more.

More than two decades ago, the Clintons swept out of the country’s southern heartland—an economically depressed region with a bloody history—to storm the capital. They have dominated the national conversation ever since, as much for family patriarch Bill’s prodigious appetites and often controversial public statements as their fairly staid brand of center-left politics.

After Bill was forced by term limits to surrender power in 2000, his wife, Hillary, entered the national legislature and in 2008 followed in the footsteps of a number of the Western Hemisphere’s first ladies in recent years by running for the presidency herself.

She would have been the first female president of a country that, while highly Westernized in many respects, still has an overwhelmingly male-dominated political culture. In a shocking result, voters rejected the Clintons’ bid to return to the executive mansion and Hillary was forced to settle for a four-year tenure as foreign minister.

The couple’s daughter, Chelsea, grew up in the public eye, and the announcement of her pregnancy this week drew attention from the normally staid broadsheets read by the country’s elite as well the gossip-focused publications more popular with the general public here. The family’s political opponents, meanwhile, griped that the timing of the announcement was not coincidental.

For while the country’s next presidential election is more than two years away, speculation is already running high that Chelsea’s mother will be making another bid to return the family to power. (Unlike nearby Guatemala, America has no law barring spouses of ex-presidents from seeking office themselves.)

At the same time, Chelsea—a frequent presence on a pro-government broadcasting network—has recently suggested that she may have designs on public office herself at some point, raising the possibility that, like the Nehru-Gandhis of India or Aquinos of the Philippines before them, the Clintons could create a multiple-generation political dynasty. (Chelsea’s child will not be eligible to occupy the country’s highest office until the 2052 election.)

Meanwhile, the Clinton restoration may face a challenge from their longtime rivals the Bushes. Jeb, the younger brother of one former president and son of another, has lately been courting the support of the nation’s growing foreign-born population but is mistrusted by many in his party’s hardline nationalist wing.

The Bush family recently welcomed a new member as well, raising the possibility that the bitter feud that has dominated and at times crippled this economically struggling nation’s politics may last decades into the future.

 

[Captain]

If It Happened There: In Brutal Contest of Strength and Strategy, a Culture Is Revealed



EAST RUTHERFORD, United States—This Sunday, the eyes of millions of Americans will turn to a fetid marsh in the industrial hinterlands of New York City for the country’s most important sporting event—and some would say the key to understanding its proud but violent culture.


Despite decades of exposure to the outside world through trade and globalization, Americans have resisted adopting internationally popular sports like soccer, cricket, and kabaddi, preferring instead a complex, brutal, and highly mechanized form of rugby confusingly called football. (Except for in a couple of instances, feet do not touch the ball.)

The two finest teams from the nation’s 32 premier league squads meet each year in an event known as the Super Bowl. (There is in fact no bowl.) This year, the game pits a young upstart team from the Northwest Frontier Provinces against another from the mountainous interior region led by the aging scion of one of the sport’s most legendary families. The winner of the contest will claim the title of “world champion,” although very few people play the sport beyond the country’s national borders.

Although the rules are complex—this video offers a brief overview—in broad strokes the contest involves two large teams of large men wearing large amounts of protective padding attempting to move an oblong ball down a 91.44-meter field by either throwing it or running with it while their opponents attempt to knock them to the ground with maximum force.

While the competition can last for more than three hours, actual playing time is no more than about 11 minutes. The rest of the time is taken up by military-level strategizing, replays of the action, and providing medical attention to injured players. The game’s rules are so intricate that television networks employ teams of well-paid “analysts” to explain to viewers what happened in the play they just watched.

Despite its origins in the nation’s elite educational institutions, the game is today the nation’s most popular—and populist—form of entertainment. Players, mostly drawn from the nation’s rural areas and inner cities, are selected early in youth for their size, speed, and agility—sometimes as young as 8 or 9 years old—and work their way through youth leagues associated with secondary schools and universities. The vast majority of these players will never receive any compensation for playing, but a select few will become highly paid national heroes at the professional level.

The ethics of such an event can be hard for outsiders to understand. Fans, who regularly watch players being carted off the field with crippling injuries, are unbothered by reports of the game's lasting medical impact on its players. Nevertheless, fans and the national media can become extremely indignant if players are excessively boastful at the game’s conclusion.

Perhaps in homage to the country’s patriarchal culture, women are generally involved only as scantily clad dancers during breaks in the action. Minority rights groups have also criticized the owner and fans of one of the country’s most popular teams—the one representing the national capital, in fact—for referring to players using a racial nickname too offensive to be printed in this newspaper. Fans of the team, like those of Tottenham Hotspur, have defended the name, saying it is a term of affection.

But the spectacle of the Super Bowl—which can consume more electricity on its own than some small countries—involves more than just football. The nation’s largest corporations use the event to showcase their latest products in elaborately produced advertisements that some fans find as entertaining as the game itself. (American businesses, in defiance of normal economic logic, consider it worthwhile to spend $4 million on just 30 seconds of airtime during the event.) America’s premier recording artists are brought out to perform at the game’s midpoint. Millions of chickens are slaughtered to obtain only their wings—the traditional American delicacyconsumed by fans at home.

Foreign human rights NGOs have often found it difficult to reconcile their respect and appreciation for America’s rich cultural heritage with their shock at the violence, excess, and wastefulness of this event. But however problematic the international community may find the game, it is a rare unifying tradition that binds most segments of a society increasingly divided by class, culture, and geography.

Sublime work of art


www.truthcontest.com

 

[Regular_P]

*subs*

 

[OfTheCross]

I like it

 

[OfTheCross]

If It Happened There: Political Chaos as Regime Purges Powerful Security Chief
8.3k
866
57
By Joshua Keating

Former allies turned rivals.

Andrew Harrer-Pool/Getty Images

The latest installment of an occasional series in which American events are described using the tropes and tone normally employed by the American media to describe events in other countries.

JOSHUA KEATING
Joshua Keating is a staff writer at Slate focusing on international affairs.

WASHINGTON, United States—The surprise dismissal of a powerful security services chief Tuesday night is widely seen here as a part of strongman President Donald Trump’s efforts to sideline critics and consolidate power, raising concerns about the state of democracy and the rule of law in this fragile but strategically vital North American country.

James Comey was the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a vast domestic intelligence agency with extensive surveillance powers. For much of the 20th century, the agency operated with near impunity and little accountability. Even presidents feared its vast powers. In recent years, the democratically elected state has managed to rein in the bureau, but it can still play an influential role in the country’s political system, as shown by Comey during the United States’ most recent presidential election.

The director was once seen as an ally of the Trump regime. During the election, he released damaging information about a scandal involving Trump’s rival, center-left candidate Hillary Clinton, giving a crucial boost to Trump’s far-right, populist insurgency in the final weeks before the vote and potentially contributing to his victory.

But relations between Comey and the Trump regime had soured due to the bureau’s ongoing investigation of connections between several key members of the president’s inner circle and the government of Russia. Trump had come into power promising to normalize relations with America’s longtime foe, but revelations of communications between his advisers and Russia, as well as allegations that Russia sabotaged Clinton’s campaign, have raised questions of untoward influence. These concerns are not likely to be quelled by the fact that Russia’s foreign minister is visiting the U.S. capital Wednesday, the day after the firing.

The dismissal of Comey, carried out via a letter delivered by the president’s former personal bodyguard while the director was traveling outside the capital, has thrown the government into disarray. Opposition lawmakers, previously among Comey’s staunchest critics for his role in the email investigation, are attacking the purge as an unconstitutional power grab. Meanwhile members of the ruling party, traditionally deferential to the country’s security services, are defending the move as necessary to restore public confidence.

Some figures within the Trump regime have suggested, darkly, that there is a parallel “deep state”—a shadowy conspiracy comprised of members of the intelligence agencies, loyalists of the former regime, and media figures tied to the country’s elite coastal establishment—working to undermine Trump and his allies. Most international experts believe these fears are exaggerated, though they note that in byzantine hallways of power in the American capital, it can sometimes be difficult to disentangle conspiracy theories from reality.

Still rated “Free” by the nongovernmental monitoring organization Freedom House, the United States is fiercely proud of its democratic tradition and the independence of its judiciary. When Trump, an ultranationalist former oligarch who has in the past questioned the motives of judges who rule against him, took power in January, many experts feared his tenure could erode the influence and independence of America’s democratic institutions. So far, most of those fears have not come to pass, as some of Trump’s most controversial initiatives have been blocked by the judiciary and the legislature. But a key legislative victory early this month—rolling back most of the previous regime’s health care initiatives—as well as this latest purge have reignited concerns among opposition leaders that the country’s weakened institutions may not be enough to rein in Trump’s ambitions.

This latest move may spark more of the mass protests against the Trump government seen in the capital in recent months. International NGOs say they are monitoring the situation closely.

 

[JahFocus CS]

I love this shyt

 

[TELL ME YA CHEESIN FAM?]