Belarus Invites Observers To Monitor ‘Zapad 2017’ Exercises, But NATO Critical – RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty

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The Belarusian Defense Ministry has invited observers from several countries to the Zapad 2017 joint Belarusian-Russian military exercise that takes place September 14-20 in Belarus, but NATO has said such efforts "fall short."

"Observers from seven countries -- Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Sweden, and Norway -- have been invited to this event," the Belarusian Defense Ministry said in an August 22 statement.

Russia and Belarus say that Zapad 2017 is expected to involve some 12,700 soldiers.

The Belarusian statement said on August 22 that the invitation came as part of the 2011 Vienna Document, which sets thresholds for the number of troops allowed to take part in exercises before the opposing side is allowed to demand a mandatory inspection.

Exercises involving 13,000 or more troops are subject to mandatory inspections. In the case of exercises involving 9,000 or more soldiers, the other side must be notified.

Meanwhile, a NATO official told RFE/RL on August 22 that Belarus has invited military liaison missions to attend "distinguished visitors days" -- when foreign officials such as attaches can come and visit -- during the Zapad 2017 exercise, and that NATO will send two experts to attend.

However, the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because NATO officials are not allowed to speak on the record unless instructed to do so, said that the participation of NATO experts "is not the same as observation as set out in the Vienna Document."

"We regret that neither Russia nor Belarus have applied the Vienna Document transparency measures to Zapad, in line with the rules agreed by all OSCE states," the official said.

"The Vienna Document transparency measures are important because they prevent misperceptions and miscalculations.

"A Vienna Document observation has required elements to it -- briefings on the scenario and progress, opportunities to talk to individual soldiers about the exercise, and overflights of the exercise.

"Russia and Belarus are instead choosing a selective approach that falls short. Such avoidance of mandatory transparency raises questions," the official said.

Lithuania's Defense Minister Raimundas Karoblis warned in June that Moscow might use the maneuvers as cover for an aggressive troop buildup on NATO's eastern flank. Karoblis said his government estimated that 100,000 Russian troops would be involved in the exercises, rather than the official 12,700.

Formerly Soviet-ruled Baltic states worry that, after Ukraine, they may be next to face pressure from the Kremlin, which is why they are casting a wary eye on Zapad 2017 drills in Belarus, which borders Latvia, Lithuania and Poland.

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Belarus Invites Observers To Monitor 'Zapad 2017' Exercises, But NATO Critical - RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty

NATO and EU must intervene in Turkish-German crisis – Daily Sabah

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Some politicians in Germany are exerting all kinds of efforts to aggravate the ongoing crisis between Turkey and Germany. Almost every day, a senior minister or politician issues libelous remarks against President Recep Tayyip Erdoan. Likewise, German media outlets publish news reports and articles against Turkey that offend Turkish citizens.

Germany, which almost gave red carpet treatment to former General and current Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, who staged a coup in Egypt and executed dissidents and did not have any problems with other dictators who shed blood in their countries, is for some reason acting unusually in the context of Turkey, violating all kinds of diplomatic norms. Their much-praised crisis management has now become a foreign term in Germany.

Interestingly, current representatives of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), the party of the most successful politicians in terms of crisis management in the past, are the leading figures provoking the crisis. It must be explained to the SPD that they have already lost the election, and it is not possible to win with such an attitude.

An article recently penned by two federal ministers from the SPD and published in a German weekly says there is a need to mobilize NATO to take action for the resolution of the crisis. Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel and Justice Minister Heiko Maas used strong language in the article that should only be employed against an enemy. The two ministers claim that Erdoan aims to form a parallel community in Germany. But if they tried to understand Erdoan instead of disrespecting him on every occasion, they could see that Erdoan is also concerned about parallel formations in Germany.

There are some parallel formations in Germany. The outlawed PKK has taken root in Germany with some profound bonds. I wonder to what extent German intelligence and police observe PKK offshoots in Germany. They terrorize and racketeer mostly Kurds living in Germany, while provoking juveniles to terrorism.

Likewise, the Glenist Terror Group (FET) has such deep roots in Germany and Belgium that one has to be blind to overlook it.

If only Gabriel and Maas would also show the sensitivity they show to other issues to FET and the PKK. PKK or FET-owned TV stations have been brainwashing Turkish people for years.

Formerly, while leftists in Germany were accusing the state of condoning racists; they said the state was blind in the right eye.

And now, I guess we must say that one eye of the German state is closed so as to not see terrorist groups such as FET and the PKK.

However, the deepening crisis undermines the interests of both the EU and NATO.

Germany cannot have the luxury to undermine NATO's interests in the Mediterranean, Middle East, Balkans and the Caucasus only for the sake of messing with Erdoan on whom some German politicians personally waged war.

Those who almost declared Turkey an enemy must be reminded that Turkey is also a NATO member and as essential to it as Germany. Likewise, although Germany views the EU as a commodity made in Germany, particularly in the context of the crisis with Turkey, many EU countries are disturbed by the situation. They do not support Germany's demands for sanctions on Turkey.

As a result, it seems that Germany is not capable of resolving the crisis with Turkey constructively.

Turkey, which has the second-largest military in NATO and guards a critical region on behalf of NATO, cannot be declared an enemy just because a few German politicians wish it so.

Also, provoking Turkey against the EU will bring no benefit to the EU. NATO and the EU must intervene as mediators to avert greater losses.

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NATO and EU must intervene in Turkish-German crisis - Daily Sabah

Russia readies for huge military exercises as tensions with west simmer – The Guardian

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Vladimir Putin at a Russian Navy Day parade In St Petersburg in July. Photograph: Tass/Barcroft Images

Russia is preparing to mount what could be one of its biggest military exercises since the cold war, a display of power that will be watched warily by Nato against a backdrop of east-west tensions.

Western officials and analysts estimate up to 100,000 military personnel and logistical support could participate in the Zapad (West) 17 exercise, which will take place next month in Belarus, Kaliningrad and Russia itself. Moscow puts the number significantly lower.

The exercise, to be held from 14-20 September, comes against a backdrop of strained relations between Russia and the US. Congress recently imposed a fresh round of sanctions on Moscow in response to allegations of interference in the 2016 US election.

The first of the Russian troops are scheduled to arrive in Belarus in mid-August.

Moscow has portrayed Zapad 17 as a regular exercise, held every four years, planned long ago and not a reaction to the latest round of sanctions.

Nato headquarters in Brussels said it had no plans to respond to the manoeuvres by deploying more troops along the Russian border.

A Nato official said: Nato will closely monitor exercise Zapad 17 but we are not planning any large exercises during Zapad 17. Our exercises are planned long in advance and are not related to the Russian exercise.

The US vice-president, Mike Pence, discussed Zapad 17 during a visit to Estonia in July and raised the possibility of deploying the US Patriot missile defence system in the country. The US may deploy extra troops to eastern Europe during the course of the exercise and delay the planned rotation of others.

The commander of US Army Europe, Lt Gen Ben Hodges, told a press conference in Hungary in July: Everybody that lives close to the western military district is a little bit worried because they hear about the size of the exercise.

The Russian armed forces have undergone rapid modernisation over the last decade and Zapad offers them a chance to train en masse.

Moscow blames growing west-east tensions on the expansion of Nato eastwards and in recent years the deployment of more Nato forces in countries bordering Russia. Nato says the increased deployments are in response to the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2013.

Russia has not said how many troops will participate in Zapad 17 but the Russian ambassador to Nato, Aleksander Grushko, said it was not envisioned that any of the manoeuvres would involve more than 13,000 troops, the limit at which Russia under an international agreement would be obliged to allow military from other countries to observe the exercise.

Russia could, theoretically, divide the exercise into separate parts in order to keep below the 13,000 limit. Western analysts said the last Zapad exercise in 2013 involved an estimated 70,000 military and support personnel, even though Russia informed Nato in the run-up it would not exceed 13,000.

Igor Sutyagin, co-author of Russias New Ground Forces, to be officially published on 20 September, said: Unfortunately, you cant trust what the Russians say. He said: One hundred thousand is probably exaggerated but 18,000 is absolutely realistic.

He did not envisage an attack on the Baltic states, given they are members of Nato. Well, there are easier ways to commit suicide, he said. But Putin is a master at doing the unexpected, he said, and Russia could take action elsewhere, such as taking more land in Georgia.

In a joint paper published in May, Col Tomasz Kowalik, a former special assistant to the chairman of Natos military committee and a director at the Polish ministry of national defence, and Dominik Jankowski, a senior official at the Polish ministry of foreign affairs, wrote that Russia had ordered 4,000 railcars to transport its troops to Belarus and estimated that could amount to 30,000 military personnel.

Adding in troops already in place in Belarus and the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad as well as troops arriving by air, it might be the largest Russian exercise since 1991.

Nato said its biggest exercise this year, Trident Javelin 17, running from 8-17 November, would involve only 3,000 troops. Trident Javelin 17 is to prepare for next years bigger exercise, Trident Juncture 2018, which will involve an estimated 35,000 troops.

The Nato official added: We have increased our military presence in the eastern part of the alliance in response to Russias illegal annexation of Crimea and its military buildup in the region. We have four multinational Nato battle-groups in place in the Baltic states and Poland, a concrete reminder that an attack on one ally is an an attack on all. However, Natos force posture is not in reaction to Zapad 17.

During the cold war, Zapad was the biggest training exercise of the Soviet Union and involved an estimated 100,000 to 150,000 personnel. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, it was resurrected in 1999 and has been held every four years since.

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Russia readies for huge military exercises as tensions with west simmer - The Guardian

NATO chief welcomes Trump’s Afghanistan strategy – Pajhwok Afghan News (subscription) (blog)

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KABUL (Pajhwok): NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Tuesday welcomed US President Donald Trumps new conditions-based approach to Afghanistan, saying the alliance remained committed to the war-torn country.

NATO remains fully committed to Afghanistan and I am looking forward to discussing the way ahead with [US Defense] Secretary [James] Mattis and our allies and international partners, Stoltenberg said in a statement.

Trump announced Monday night the US would maintain its military presence in Afghanistan based on certain conditions being met, and did not specify a timeline for withdrawal. He also accused Pakistan of providing a safe haven to agents of chaos, violence and terror.

In a subtle nod to Trumps take on Pakistan, Stoltenberg said: We urge all countries in the region to do their utmost to shut down sanctuaries for extremist groups, support peace and reconciliation, and contribute to a stable and secure Afghanistan.

In a statement, UK Defense Secretary Michael Fallon said the USs commitment was very welcome, but did not announce any additional troop increase.

Our aim remains to ensure that Afghanistan never again becomes a safe haven for terrorists who would attack our own countries, Stoltenberg said.

He said NATO allies and partners had already committed to increasing military presence in Afghanistan and in recent weeks, more than 15 nations had pledged additional contributions to the Resolute Support Mission.

We place special emphasis on continuing the development of Afghan Special Forces, Air Forces and improving command and control.

The NATO chief said they encouraged all Afghans to work towards a negotiated political settlement and a sustainable peace.

In his prime-time address to the nation on Americas new policy toward South Asia, President Trump reached out to India for economic development of Afghanistan.

A hasty withdrawal would create a vacuum for terrorists, including ISIS and Al Qaida, would instantly fill just as happened before September 11, said the president.

Meanwhile, US Special Charg dAffaires in Kabul Ambassador Hugo Llorens said President Trump in his new strategy renewed commitment to success in Afghanistan and in the broader South Asia region.

He said the President was very clear about the United States continuing support for the national unity government and the Afghan people for their quest to achieve security, stability, prosperity, and peace.

At the core of this commitment, we will continue to support Afghan forces in defending their country while we also maintain pressure on the Taliban to join a peace process with the Afghan government to end the war in Afghanistan.

The ambassador said they would emphasize with all regional countries the importance of cooperation to reduce the threat of terrorism and nuclearized conflict.

Our strategy is based on conditions on the ground, and we will stand by Afghanistans side as long as it takes to get the job done. So just understand, the United States is not going anywhere.

We will continue to partner with the Government of National Unity and the Afghan people in our common fight against terrorists and those forces unwilling to reconcile.

The US envoy asked the Afghan government to redouble its reform efforts and deliver on vital promises such as holding parliamentary elections next year and presidential elections in 2019, rooting out corruption, and enacting the tough reforms necessary for meaningful private sector-led economic growth.

To maintain stability in the face of insurgent threats, he said, Afghanistans leaders must also increase outreach to all ethnic groups and seek greater diversity and inclusivity in the government.

Real challenges lay ahead, but I am confident Afghanistan can surmount them. As I have said previously on many occasions, we and our allies are firmly with you, and we are not going anywhere.

ma

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NATO chief welcomes Trump's Afghanistan strategy - Pajhwok Afghan News (subscription) (blog)

Can China Be Taken Seriously on its ‘Word’ to Negotiate Disputed Territory? – The Diplomat

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Beijing has a habit of signing, and then ignoring, guiding principles on maintaining the status quo in disputed areas.

As the world witnesses the growing threat of a nuclear war on the Korean peninsula, China, which many hope can influence North Korea, is engaged elsewhere in an escalating crisis. China has been embroiled in a border standoff since June 16 in the Doklam area of Bhutan. The conflict started when Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) engineers crossed into Bhutan on June 16, and began construction of a motorable road from Dokola to Jampheri, which houses a Bhutan army camp. In a press release issued by the Bhutan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the country asserted that such Chinese activities amounted to a direct violation of the agreements and affects the process of demarcating the boundary between our two countries. Bhutan hopes that the status quo in the Doklam area will be maintained as before 16 June 2017.

Significantly, China and Bhutan have no official diplomatic relations; yet both have held several rounds of talks on boundary demarcation and have pledged to resolve their border differences peacefully. In 1988, China and Bhutan signed an agreement on the Guiding Principles and in 1998 they signed an agreement on Maintenance of Peace and Tranquility in the Bhutan-China Border Areas. As per these agreements, both countries committed to resolve the border dispute peacefully through dialogue and consultation, and restrain from any activity that would threaten the peace. Both committed to uphold the status quo and not change either their borders or establish physical presence. In essence, both agreed to uphold their respective border positions established prior to March 1959.

China now asserts that the pledge for peaceful resolution of the boundary dispute with Bhutan is not valid for the Doklam area, as it has historically belonged to China. Chinas foreign Ministry spokesperson, Lu Kang asserted in a press conference in Beijing on June 28 that

Doklam has been a part of China since ancient times. It does not belong to Bhutan, still less India. That is an indisputable fact supported by historical and jurisprudential evidence, and the ground situation. It is utterly unjustifiable if the Indian side wants to make an issue of it. Chinas construction of road in Doklam is an act of sovereignty on its own territory. It is completely justified and lawful, and others have no right to interfere. I would like to stress once again that Bhutan is a world-recognized, independent sovereign state. We hope that all countries can respect Bhutans sovereignty. Although the boundary between China and Bhutan is yet to be demarcated, the two sides have been working on that through peaceful negotiation. Any third party must not and does not have the right to interfere, still less make irresponsible moves or remarks that violate the fact.

While most appear surprised at this sudden Chinese move into Bhutanese territory, an analysis of Chinas past behavior regarding negotiations on disputed territory reveals a clear systematic pattern of engagement.

In its active border and territorial disputes, be it with India over Arunachal Pradesh, or the South China Sea (SCS), or Bhutan, China has favored the signing of guiding principles or agreements to maintain peace and tranquility with the state it is in dispute with. Such a framework, by establishing clear guidelines constrains the negotiating power of the fellow signatory state, blindsiding it to Chinas future plans of sudden aggressive broadcasting of territorial claims.

For example, China and India signed a 2005 agreement on Political Parameters and Guiding Principles for the Settlement of the India-China Boundary Question. The agreements Article IX stated that [p]ending an ultimate settlement of the boundary question, the two sides should strictly respect and observe the line of actual control and work together to maintain peace and tranquillity in the border areas.

Yet, despite this agreement ,which establishes both China and Indias commitment to maintain the status quo and peace at the border, in 2006, the Chinese ambassador to India, Sun Yuxi stated categorically,In our position, the whole of the state of Arunachal Pradesh is Chinese territory. And Tawang is only one of the places in it. We are claiming all of that. That is our position.

This was followed by frequent PLA incursions into the Indian side of the LAC on several occasions, as well as an attempt to set up permanent camps and settlements. These intrusions have been augmented by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs publishing maps in Chinese passports depicting Arunachal Pradesh and other disputed areas like the South China Sea as Chinese sovereign territory.

A similar pattern of PLA incursions is registered in the China-Bhutan border despite the 1988 and 1998 agreement that commits each side to maintain the status quo pending final resolution. PLA soldiers came up to a Royal Bhutan Army (RBA) outpost at Lharigang in the Charithang valley in 2004 and 2009. Usually the pattern that is followed by China is to construct a version of territorial claim plausibly based on ancient Chinese history, followed by incursions and road building activities. These developments occur despite agreements signed by China to maintain status quo and its commitment to peaceful negotiations.

A similar pattern of Chinese behavior emerges with regard to the South China Sea (SCS) as well. Significantly, China and ASEAN agreed to a framework on a Code of Conduct (CoC) in the SCS in May. The draft CoC commits the parties to resolve the crisis peacefully and avoid placing offensive weapons in the seas islands. In 2002, a Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea was adopted by China and ASEAN. Interestingly, part of the declaration states:

The Parties undertake to exercise self-restraint in the conduct of activities that would complicate or escalate disputes and affect peace and stability including, among others, refraining from action of inhabiting on the presently uninhabited islands, reefs, shoals, cays, and other features and to handle their differences in a constructive manner.

Yet, China is using early presence and facts on the ground to alter territorial claims despite its adoption of the 2002 declaration and establish exclusion zones and zones of military coercion in the SCS. In January 2014, it was discovered that Chinese vessels were dredging white sand onto corals at seven points in the disputed Spratlys, namely; Fiery Cross Reef, Mischief Reef, Gaven Reef, Cuarteron Reef, Subi Reef, South Johnson Reef, and Hughes Reef. Once the artificial islands were built, China followed up with erecting buildings, harbors and airstrips, deploying radar and surveillance, as well as stationing its troops: all activities geared towards establishing ownership and sovereign control over disputed territory.

The Chinese claims SCS on the ground that Chinese ancient mariners discovered the Nansha Islands (now the South China Sea Islands) in the 2nd century B.C., renamed Changsha islandsduring the Tang and Song dynasties (618 A.D to 1279 A.D.). Quoting sources such as the Guangzhou Records by the Jin-dynastys Pei Yuan, China asserts that Chinese fishermen continuously traversed the South China Sea during the Ming and Qing dynasties (1368A.D-1911A.D).

China has strategically preferred to act in ways that go contrary to its signed commitments in the framework agreements. Its act of sending in PLA soldiers and engineers to build roads inside disputed territory in Bhutan, its intrusions across the LAC in India, its building of artificial islands in the SCS, registers a direct violation of its signed commitments in the framework agreements or in its adoption of the 2002 SCS declaration that records its commitment to maintain status quo.

The critical question that emerges is: why does China sign guiding principles and framework agreements with countries with which it has territorial disputes and then violates the commitment to the status quo enshrined therein? It may be an attempt to constrain the behavior of other states, while Beijing nevertheless intends to act contrary to the agreements signed, trotting out ancient history to blindside their counterparts across the undefined borders. The jury may still be out, but the pattern in these three cases reflects Chinas inability to meet its framework agreement commitments, thereby throwing in doubt its seriousness as a reliable negotiator.

Dr. Namrata Goswami is a MINERVA Grantee of the Minerva Initiative awarded by the Office of the U.S. Secretary of Defense. She is also a senior analyst for Wikistrat. She was formerly a research fellow at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, New Delhi and a senior fellow at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), Washington, D.C. Dr. Goswami is a recipient of the Fulbright-Nehru Senior Fellowship, 2012-2103. The views expressed here are solely her own.

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Can China Be Taken Seriously on its 'Word' to Negotiate Disputed Territory? - The Diplomat

Students return to school Monday – The Bandera Bulletin

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Schools have gotten spruced up. Teachers are in their last days of training. All thats left is for students to return, and that will take place on Monday, Aug. 28, when schools open in the Bandera, Medina and Utopia school districts.

While projections are difficult for school officials to make with enrollment still going on, there is an indication that student counts could increase in the countys public school systems this year.

The state Legislature did not drop any financial bombshells on schools like they have in the past, and a few leadership changes have been implemented, leading school officials to anticipate good things for this year.

I think were going to have a great year, said John Walts, who is in his 15thyear as superintendent at the Utopia Independent School District.

Kevin W. Newsom, who was hired in April as the new superintendent for the Medina Independent School District, said quality teachers were found to fill staff openings in the district, and everyone has been working hard to get ready for the new year.

If youre a parent here, you have to be excited about the excitement you see in our teachers, said Newsom.

A key staff change in the Medina district was the hiring of Janell Murff as the elementary principal in the district. Last year, the district had one principal overseeing both the elementary and secondary schools, but now, each school has its own principal.

A new principal also has been appointed for the Utopia schools after Ken Mueller, the principal for the last six years, retired. The new principal is Jessica Milam, who had been a counselor in the district.

Superintendent Walts said he expects four more students to enroll in Utopia classes by the time school starts, giving the district 230 students. That would be the largest student count Utopia had seen in many years.

In the Bandera Independent School District, which is the largest in the county with 2,223 students at the end of last year, four, elementary school positions were added for the upcoming year, and Bradley Kinney joined the district as a new assistant high school principal.

Enrollment in the district has grown slightly the last two years, but officials were not certain that growth would continue this year.

The Legislature has placed no new financial demands on the district this year, a spokeswoman for BISD said, so it will continue to take steps to assure that a 21stCentury education is provided all of its students, officials said.

That means that all academic standards are met in core areas while enrichment activities are added to boost regular programing and support services are brought in to narrow skill gaps that exist in schools.

Its efforts paid off last year when the Bandera district earned nine distinction designations for its performance on state assessments, and all of its campuses received a met standards classification from the state, officials said.

I am very proud of our students and staff for this wonderful accomplishment, said Superintendent Regina Howell.

None of the school districts expect that their tax rates will increase this year.

The Medina school district is proposing a $5.95 million bond issue this year that may cause rates to jump slightly in future years, however.

That district also is expanding the dual credit college courses it offers its high school students and hopes to improve the ways it prepares students for the standardized tests they take.

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Students return to school Monday - The Bandera Bulletin

milton-keynes-and-me-bbc4-documentary – Tooting Daily PRSS (blog)

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Catch the BBC4 documentary about growing up in Milton Keynes on BBC iPlayer

When a man is tired of Milton Keynes, he is tired of life these were the words of filmmaker Richard Macers father. A man who moved his family to Milton Keynes in 1978 and was one of the first pioneers to leave post-war London for the new utopia.

Richard Macers father, who grew up in Islington during a time when Islington was a slum, couldnt understand why anyone would choose London over Milton Keynes. But over the years, this utopia has been depicted as anything but a paradise by critics.

Its been mocked for its concrete cows, ridiculed for its grid system, and has consistently been labelled as soulless. But those who knock the city often forget that MK is one of the most ambitious experiments in social engineering of our lifetime. And that in itself is something worth celebrating. Especially for the MK50 this year.

Richard Macer, who turned 50 together with his home town, returned home to create a film to show Milton Keynes through the eyes of a boy who grew up there. The fantastic documentary, which aired on Wednesday 16th August, depicts feelings of nostalgia and shows the city to be green, safe and inclusive.

The BBC4 documentary takes viewers on a journey from the very beginnings of the town created in the late 60s, with ample outdoor and green space, and with a masterplan based on the concept that no building would be taller than the tallest tree. The film features Macers parents who still live there today as well as architects, artists and social workers who have all contributed their part to the growth and development of MK.

As Ben Lawrence wrote for The Telegraph, this documentary will make you love Britain's most maligned city.

Catch the documentary on BBC iPlayer now.

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Riley Park Club offers a baseball utopia that denies reality – Charleston Post Courier

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Sam and Joe were longtime friends and baseball fans. Soon after his 90th birthday, Sam dropped dead, leaving Joe alone with his box scores. One day, Joe looked up from the sports pages to see his old buddy Sam standing there. Sam! Joe said. Tell me: Is there baseball in heaven? Joe, in heaven, theres baseball like youve never seen: The field is sown with fairy dust, and the strike zone is marked in gold. Joe grinned. But theres more, Sam continued. Youre pitching next week.

People have been thinking about baseball and the hereafter for a very long time (or at least since my late grandfather picked up his favorite joke). But the connection is unavoidably explicit at Riley Park Club, the new wine-and-dine space at Joseph P. Riley Jr. Park. Regardless of what you believe happens after you expire, this upscale buffet venue comes pretty close to approximating it.

Perhaps your idea of the afterlife is a paradise where angels remember your drink order and the tiered cookie tray is never bare. As you see it, if you perform the right number of good deeds, youll be rewarded with an unobstructed view of a winning baseball team to the east, the sun setting majestically over a maze of marshland to the west and high-def flat screen TVs in between. Welcome to the Riley Park Club.

Or maybe you dont put any stock in a world to come, believing instead that death amounts to a kind of sensory deprivation chamber. According to your world view, once this stay on earth ends, you wont be able to feel sunlight on your skin; hear the crack of a baseball bat or taste a boiled peanut. Welcome to the Riley Park Club.

The RiverDogs and restaurant group partner The Indigo Road have done a bang-up job of creating a luxury experience along The Joes first base line. By definition, though, its an experience so removed from traditional game-going that its hard to say conclusively whether fans should seek out a Riley Park Club spot for post-season ball. (Barring a last-minute losing streak, the RiverDogs are set to host Game 1 of the South Atlantic League playoffs on Sept. 6.)

In other words, spectators who arent in the habit of buying 10 hot dogs and a few beers every time they go to the ballpark will probably have to calculate for themselves whether the clubs $105 entry fee is a good value.

For their money, ticket holders get a padded upper deck stadium seat as well as the run of a spacious lounge done up in polished executive style: The wood-floored room is furnished with leather club chairs and couches in manly brown tones. But to keep the space from feeling stuffy when its at capacity, meaning 300 people banking off the crudite tables and checking out the dessert selection, there are bands of floor-to-ceiling windows on either side.

A drinks rail is affixed to the window overlooking the field, and on the night I visited the air-conditioned club, thats where most of my fellow patrons congregated. As for the drinks, the three-figure ticket price only covers some of them: Club goers can have as much Woodbridge wine, Bud, Bud Light or Michelob Ultra as theyd like, but better wines and spirits are sold by the glass.

Up to a point, that makes sense: Charleston is home to plenty of practiced drinkers who could guzzle hundreds of dollars worth of liquor over the course of nine innings. But Woodbridge, which retails for about 16 cents an ounce, feels a little chintzy for the setting. And its a shame that there isnt at least one local beer on a free-flowing tap.

Still, thats about the only real error committed by the Riley Park Club, unless too-cool fries are scored as a significant problem. The front-of-house staffers, officially Indigo Road employees, are attentive and cheerful. And the food from Mercantile & Mash is mostly serviceable, albeit far more refined than the peanuts and crackerjack being foisted off on the peons down below.

In fact, the all-you-can-eat buffet would probably benefit from the addition of a few more finger foods, since a ballgame typically takes about three hours to resolve. Thats a whole lot of Dijon-crusted roast beef slices with rosemary jus.

Riley Park Club only provides plastic cutlery, which has the dual drawbacks of seeming cheap and accentuating the beefs toughness. Yet theres enough flavorful fat on the roast to keep eaters from cracking jokes about catchers mitts, along with a pair of standout sides. The corn in the almost all-corn succotash is crisp and sweet, while mashed potatoes bulked up with sour cream and cheese are rich and savory enough to nearly make up for the lack of nachos.

On Tuesdays and Fridays, when the roast beef is served, Riley Park Club also offers strangely gamy slabs of fried chicken, presented with waffles that respond well to honey butter and pecan syrup. Other menu items include blandish biscuits with thick cream gravy, and a supposedly chopped salad thats really just a pile of iceberg lettuce shreds, shredded cheddar cheese and carrot slices. Skip it for the far superior cucumber salad, featuring feta crumbles and red onions as points of interest.

Those meats and vegetables presumably add up to Southern Night, although its not promoted as such. Mondays and Thursdays are devoted to barbecue, with pork shoulder and brisket taking the place of fried chicken and roast beef. Wednesdays and Saturdays bring Caesar salad, pasta and burrata; dumplings and chicken teriyaki are served on Sundays.

Every night is burger and hot dog night: So long as the RiverDogs are playing at home, there are beefy kosher hot dogs, halved and tucked into ruddy buns. As big around as silver dollars, theyre better than the drastically undersalted burgers.

Then again, its possible the seasoning restraint was intentional, since mildness is something of a guiding principle at the Riley Park Club. Within the clubs sealed confines, there are no crowd sounds or pesky gnats. When the games announcer, whose broadcast is piped into the lounge, noted the humidity level stood at 74 percent, a surprised murmur went up from the protected fans.

No matter what transpires, it seems, everything is calm and timeless at the Riley Park Club. Is this heaven? No, its baseball.

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Riley Park Club offers a baseball utopia that denies reality - Charleston Post Courier

Jun Takahashi, the Sorcerer of Fashion – The New York Times – New York Times

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ON HIS UPPER ARMS, above the jagged tattoos, Takahashi has others. On one arm, in swirling English script, is the word chaos; on the other, the word balance. Thats hard to get, he says, looking down at each tattoo in turn. If some of Takahashis shows are reminiscent of McQueens, it seems important to remember that there is, by contrast, a whimsical and sometimes even seriously hopeful quality to his dark vision. In the groupings of his fall womens show, the lace-crowned choir, white-horned agitators and green-jacketed soldiers inspired awe. Then came the so-called new species, somewhere between insects and humans, clad in black and somewhat threatening. The view became momentarily ominous. And yet the shows subtitle was A new race living in Utopia. The impression was magical but the narrative open to interpretation: How were these mute creatures populating their world, exactly? The story was based on the idea that everyone has a right to live equally, Takahashi says. There is an aristocracy and a monarchy, but they are not in a position of dangerous authority at all.

We walk downstairs to look at the fall collection up close. Pink satin sleeves suggesting huge rose petals are draped across a hanger, next to a bustle made of ostrich feathers. There are diamant spiders, and gold bees with human faces. The monarchs ruby dress stands at the far end of the room, grand and embellished, like the ghost of Elizabeth I. One of the most arresting pieces, though, is a simple, pretty blue chiffon blouse hanging by itself on a rack. For all the artifice and fantasy that Takahashi conjures, he makes plenty of normal clothes as well, and theres a curious intimacy to the fact that alongside all the gestures of deliberate rebellion, he knows how to make something so breathtakingly lovely and as delicate as skin.

He shows me the original drawings for each item detailed designs that diverge not at all from their results. Each season, he is methodical: His sketchbooks begin with shoes, because they take the longest to make. The system was borne of necessity, not creativity. I dont want to begin with shoes, Takahashi says plaintively.

Next he pulls out a black jacket with an 80s-style peplum, and another with two kimono folds down its back.

What kind of insect has wings like that? I ask, as I stroke the strange pleated articulations across the black satin.

Maybe some cockroaches? he replies.

Its very Takahashi to identify the individual even in a fiction: Certain cockroaches may share these traits, but possibly not all.

AFTER SCHOOL in Kiryu, Takahashi went to Bunka Fashion College in Tokyo. Yohji Yamamoto had gone there in the late 60s, Tsumori Chisato in the mid-70s and Junya Watanabe in the early 80s. I had assumed there would be gorgeous, crazy, interesting people out there, he remembers. I thought there would be a lot of music lovers like me. But it was totally different. All the girls wore body-conscious dresses. It wasnt my style.

Instead, he ventured into the city, finding his place in nightclubs and the music scene, and in the theatricality of everyday life. Before hed even graduated, hed launched Undercover. It was a different trajectory from the one young fashion-school graduates typically took, in which you might get a job as an apprentice to a great Japanese designer and work for him or her for years until you struck out on your own. (Watanabe took this path in working for Kawakubo. So did Chisato, with Miyake.) Takahashi also broke with tradition aesthetically. This was 1990, the height of Japanese minimalism, an era defined by monotone, cerebral fashion, avant-garde ideas and the sculptural silhouettes of Yamamoto and Miyake. Takahashis work was, from the start, fresh, rough, singular.

Five years later, he met a fashion show producer named Yoshio Wakatsuki. They were introduced at a nightclub by a mutual friend 10 days before Takahashi was due to show Undercovers third collection. Wakatsuki was working for Rei Kawakubo, and had staged shows for Issey Miyake, but he understood that Takahashi was fundamentally against the system. The economic bubble had just burst in Japan. It was like a fall from paradise, Wakatsuki reflects. Into this territory walked a person he immediately recognized as a new kind of designer. He had a way, Wakatsuki says, of reading the era.

Undercovers early shows were run guerrilla-style, in warehouses and parking lots, with friends turning up to model, many of them drunk and argumentative. The press was relegated to the back row, while Takahashis cohort of fans sat in front, on the floor. Wakatsuki had never seen anything like it the setup or the clothes themselves. For instance, he says, some of the shoes were covered in dripping paint. Id seen something like that effect before, but the designer just coming up and dripping paint right then and there? Id never seen that. If he wanted something shorter, hed just cut it no hem. New knitwear would be delivered, and hed cut into the neckline and make holes. It was so shocking to me. I really felt the power of it.

Takahashi, Wakatsuki says, never trusted fashion people. It may be more accurate to consider Takahashi as less a fashion designer and more an artist, with an artists varied outlets and preoccupations. The fact that its possible to buy and wear the associated merchandise seems almost like a coincidence. For his spring 2009 collection, in lieu of a show, Takahashi made a photo-book that contained a sci-fi tale about a colony of furry cyclops dolls. (The dolls, which he made by sewing clumps of vintage teddy bears around table lamps, are in his office. In their christening gowns, they look like the love children of Miss Havisham and E.T.) He has used the basement of his office, where the pattern-cutters now work, as a music venue; Patti Smith once played there to an intimate crowd. He has designed a whole collection in tribute to the Surrealist Czech filmmaker Jan Svankmajer; for another he dressed his models in mens-style suits with ties, in homage to the 60s jazz pianist Bill Evans. In 1974, Evans recorded a live album with the saxophonist Stan Getz titled But Beautiful, a phrase that Takahashi has used in the names of several shows, including his most recent, which was entitled But Beautiful III, Utopie. You might say that his entire body of work was created to preface that phrase: daring, dark, comic, wild, (insert your preferred adjective), but beautiful.

One of Takahashis regular collaborators is Katsuya Kamo, who oversees all the hair, makeup and creature-like headgear for his shows. When I visit Kamo, there are layouts for his forthcoming book pasted all along one wall of his workshop: the pleated helmets made from industrial carpet he created for Junya Watanabe, the white paper roses he embedded in crowns for Chanel. But his most outrageous work by far is for Undercover: masks with feathered wings, mesh face-coverings that glow in the dark, white rabbit ears, dried hydrangeas, wild thorns that look like prehistoric fangs.

When I ask to see some of the finished pieces, Kamo rummages around in boxes that seem mainly to contain raw materials. (One is labeled insects; two others are labeled plants and human hair.) There is a crown of thorns, plants that look like antlers and a desiccated red parrot. Most of it has been scavenged from the local park, he explains. He also strikes deals with taxidermists.

The last time I sent an assistant there, they wouldnt give him a bag, Kamo recalls, sounding baffled. It was for a black crow, just dead. He had to bring it back trailing blood and he was wearing white. The crows feathers were used to make larger, human wings in an Undercover collection; they terrorized Takahashis staff because Kamo had left some flesh on them, and the smell became unbearable. It was quite smelly, Kamo admits. Then he adds: But beautiful.

ONE AFTERNOON, Takahashi sits at a long table while various items from one of his mens diffusion ranges, JohnUndercover, are presented to him for a styling check. There are mens shirts, made in calico, with fabric samples alongside them. Takahashi puts on a pair of glasses, and proceeds to line up different button options next to the samples. Where a pleat is missing beneath the yoke, he draws a sketch to correct it. When the shirts are done, there are screen-printed T-shirts, then jewelry pendant necklaces, hanging from black silk cords. Takahashi oversees everything: two womens wear shows a year, two mens wear collections, his Nike collection, three diffusion lines. His company is independently owned, and the responsibility clearly weighs on him.

Despite his workload, he is strict about his hours. He leaves the atelier every evening at 7 p.m. and has dinner with his children and wife, Rico, a former model. Takahashi takes weekends off, even right before a show. Its so ordinary! he says.

But Wakatsuki thinks family life is key to Takahashis success. I can give you some incredible information, he tells me. His parents go to Paris every season, and sit in the front row theyve never missed a show. His younger brother, who has taken over the family business in Kiryu, now comes to Undercover two days a week to help manage the business, a skill Takahashi confesses he lacks. His daughter has started modeling.

Wakatsuki recalls that Takahashi has occasionally been inspired by his kids toys. His fall 2003 collection, Paper Doll, featured knitwear with little white tabs attached to the clothes edges, as if they were cut out of a book. That black coat made from layered cutouts of felt skulls from his fall 2005 collection was influenced by a childs bulletin board with felt shapes you could stick to it. Takahashi himself thinks that he hasnt changed fundamentally though he adds that every day, I strongly feel that I should have more self-awareness as a father.

My first impression, when I saw the Tokyo Sex Pistols, was all about punk, Wakatsuki reflects of Takahashis rebellious early days. But since he met his wife and had children, Ive felt his creative power. Whats at the heart of him is still a punk attitude. Anti-establishment sentiment thats what he wants to show. But hes more dreamy, more playful, softer. Love, he says. That element is becoming stronger and stronger in him.

Clothing available at Dover Street Market New York, (646) 837-7750. Headpieces by Katsuya Kamo. Models: Kiko Mizuhara/Asia Cross, Rina Ota/Anore, Yuka Mannami/Donna Models, Thea Arvidsson/Donna Models, Anka Susicka/Donna Models. Hair and makeup by Kamo Head. Casting by Kaiju Inc. Production by HK Productions. Photo Assistant: Niels Alpert

A version of this article appears in print on August 20, 2017, on Page M2253 of T Magazine with the headline: Jun Takahashi, The Sorcerer of Fashion.

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Jun Takahashi, the Sorcerer of Fashion - The New York Times - New York Times

Utopia Coaches announces "out of the blue" bus service withdrawl … – The Press, York

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VILLAGERS between York, Selby and Tadcaster have been left stranded after a bus operator suddenly ceased trading with little notice to passengers.

Utopia Coaches, based in Sherburn-in-Elmet, took to social media site Twitter with a brief statement onyesterday evening stating services would not be running from today.

The sudden move left unaware commuters and passengers waiting at bus stopsthis morningas services failed to arrive in villages including Cawood, Naburn, Stillingfleet, Wistow, and Camblesforth.

It is also believed some of the companys drivers were also uninformed, and instead heard the news from the companys Twitter post.

The statement from Utopia, which operates the number 8 service between Selby and Drax, the 37 between Tadcaster and York, the 420 between Selby and York and the 422 between Pontefract and York, as well as a further four services in West Yorkshire, simply read: As from 00.01 hrs Wednesday 23rd August, Utopia Coaches will cease trading. No services will operate again from this time.

Utopia, which has been operating bus routes since 2007, ran contracts on behalf of North Yorkshire County Council covering school runs and local bus services, as well as its own commercial network.

The County Council said it was not made aware of the company going into liquidation until yesterday morning. In a statement it said: Several local transport providers have contacted the council to offer their assistance and we will work with them to try to fill the gaps.

Pupils entitled to free transport will not be disrupted and arrangements will be in place for the new school term.

The council advised passengers needing to get to urgent medical appointments or essential local amenities to contact Selby District Community Transport on 01757 708036, or Tadcaster Volunteer Cars & Services on 01937 835600.

County cllr Don Mackenzie, executive member for Passenger Transport, said: The withdrawal of these services by Utopia Coaches came out of the blue. We are working hard to determine the most appropriate course of action.

Updates will be posted on http://www.northyorks.gov.uk.

*Have you been affected by Utopia's sudden withdrawl of bus services? if so contact newsdesk@thepress.co.uk

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A big sporting tournament is also a festival. As much an English festival as Glastonbury, Wimbledon is also a pilgrimage site. Radiohead or Rafa play the main stage, but some duo youve never heard of called Isner-Mahut will do something so incredible on Court 18 that everyone will be trying to get in to see them. Their heroic exertions have since been memorialized with a plaque, and Court 18 is now a historic site for the tennis faithful even when nothing much is happening there.

As with pilgrimages and festivals, people are on their best behavior. Arriving at Southfields Tube station confusingly, a more convenient station than the various Wimbledons the mood is more buoyant, the level of civility higher than it was wherever your journey started. The spirit of the festival emanates from the grounds and into the surrounding neighborhood. Inside, its a temporary utopia. It might be difficult to get in, but once you are in, the atmosphere is inclusive. (Even the presence of that advertisement for the Jacobean tendencies of the French Open, the hated royal box, these days offers only symbolic resistance to the feeling of togetherness.)

Dressing up in costumes tends to be limited to campy re-creations of the Borg-McEnroe era (hair, headbands and skimpy shorts), but as with any self-respecting festival, there is a considerable degree of intoxication. Flushing Meadows has the reputation of being more raucous than SW19, but Wimbledon is in England, and we English pride ourselves on being able to chuck it down our necks with the best of them. Beer, Champagne, Pimms you sell it, well swill it. Its really striking how much boozing goes on. And yet the standard of behavior remains consistently high. Lest this sound sentimental, I should also point out that Wimbledon is the most heavily militarized of all the Slams. In the wake of terror attacks in the capital, visitors this year were treated to the not-necessarily-reassuring sight of officers patrolling with body armor and assault riffles, but a large number of stewards have always been soldiers and sailors. Unfailingly polite, courteous and helpful they may be but theyre still the military. So although there is no trouble and everyone happily buys into the social codes and etiquette of Wimbledon, its a useful reminder that Gramscis notion of hegemony assumes that consent is underwritten by the possibility of coercion and force. Mainly the soldiers and stewards help people find their seats and make sure no one is moving around or standing except during the end-changes. At an Andy Murray match, a woman seated near me unfurled a Scottish flag and was told that was not permitted. This came as a surprise but is, on reflection, an excellent prohibition. A shared love of national flag waving might form the basis for some kind of accord between North Korea and the United States; Centre Court is better off without it. Any deviations or transgressions are dealt with courteously and quickly. The nearest we came to a ruckus was when a highly regarded journalist stood up and tried to leave at the end of a game, but not during an end-change. A soldier told him to sit down. The journalist started running his mouth, swearing, whereupon the soldier shifted into a different register, making it clear that the request to sit down had become an order and that this order would be vigorously enforced. Having thoroughly enjoyed this altercation, I later asked the soldier how close the journalist had been to getting his ass kicked. Well, he said in a heavy, friendly Jamaican accent, if wed met outside, in civvy street. ...

Although Wimbledon is a festival, there is no music; players enter the court unannounced, without fanfare. Its the opposite of the year-ending A.T.P. Finals at the O2 arena in London, where the unfortunate paradigm is that of a nightclub flashing lights, blaring music. Players come from all over the world, obviously, but Wimbledon retains the feel of a local tournament where the standard of play happens to be exceptionally high and this is especially evident on the smaller courts.

Id had a great desire to experience the Wimbledon fortnight, in the flesh and in its entirety, ever since I was turned away at the gates in 1980. I had actually caught some of the same acts excuse me, the same players earlier in the year when the caravan passed through Indian Wells, Calif. So I knew whom to look out for, who was up and coming, even though I knew, also from Indian Wells, that its difficult to recall exactly whom you saw play the day after watching them. A tennis tournament is a narrative that is all the time consuming itself. Defined by elimination as well as survival by the end of the first round half the players are toast its as much a demonstration of instant amnesia as it is of memory.

The most-sought-after tickets are always for the semifinals or finals of a tournament, but the first rule of tennis narrative is that a great match can break out at any time, between any players, on any court. And thats not all. A match that looks certain to be over in the next 15 minutes can turn, in that quarter of an hour, into an epic whose end is nowhere in sight. Nothing is better, for a spectator, than to sense this happening, to feel a match gradually which in tennis can be an exact synonym of suddenly tightening its grip, becoming, for the uncertain extent of its duration, the center of the tournament. The question then becomes how to maximize the chances of your being there, of happening upon this happening.

By turning up, in my case, at Court 3 to watch Nick Kyrgios, whom I saw play at Indian Wells, whom I also missed at Indian Wells when he withdrew from his match against Roger Federer because of food poisoning. Their encounter a few weeks later in Miami was reportedly the best mens match of the year. So Kyrgios was one of the batch of young male players along with Alexander Zverev and Dominic Thiem with the potential to make it to the end of the tournament. As it turned out, Kyrgios didnt even make it to the end of the match. When they are not chasing something a ball, other runners all athletes move in such a way as to preserve as much energy as possible. Many of them move as though they are underwater; Kyrgios was moving as though on the ocean floor and not only between but during points. A big man in even bigger shorts, he looked severely hobbled, but because this hobbling seemed an extension of his normal lugubriousness, it seemed that he was hobbled not just by his wounded hip but by the hunched ontology of himself.

The trainer was called, and Kyrgios quit, establishing the keynote for this years tournament: players taking to the stage injured, unable to compete properly but fit enough to pick up their fee. There was talk of Murrays dodgy hip, of Novak Djokovics gammy elbow, his wonky shoulder, his interesting personal life, which, as John McEnroe later put it, was maybe going the way of Tiger Woodss. In addition to the tennis narrative, there are always these personal or extrasporting stories whose kinks and twists become entwined in the sporting narrative because of the effect they have on that mysterious spot, the athletes head.

But it wasnt Djokovic who retired the next day, it was his opponent, Martin Klizan, followed immediately by Federers ailing adversary, Alexandr Dolgopolov. Obliged to wear all white, a surprising number of male players were waving the white flag before they had even broken sweat. Routinely frustrated by our national railways and airline, the packed and good-natured Centre Court crowd let up a groan of epic disappointment as two players in a day called it a day in rapid succession. The umpire was quick to announce that there would be further play in the shape of Caroline Wozniacki against Timea Babos, and calm was restored before the attendant troops were called into action.

This flurry of towel-throwing-in introduces the corollary to a point made earlier: Just as you never know when a great match will break out, so too you never know when youre going to be sold a pup. Unless youre watching Bernard Tomic, in which case, he made clear after his first-round defeat by Mischa Zverev on Court 14, theres a good chance hell be going through the motions. Post-match news conferences are generally a bore. Tomics was sensational because he revealed what must be the unpalatable truth: that the tour can become a bit of a grind. I couldnt care less if I make a fourth-round U.S. Open or I lose first round, he yawned. To me, everything is the same. His existential indifference was as my pal, the veteran tennis writer Michael Mewshaw, said later like Meursaults at the opening of Camuss The Stranger: Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I dont know. ... That doesnt mean anything.

Here we were at a temple of tennis, and one of the gods we came to worship a minor and thoroughly unattractive deity, admittedly, but still a very tall one told us that he didnt believe. Or more accurately, that he didnt care about our faith, that he was getting paid whether we believed or not. I say we came to worship, and as with Christianity, that worship is predicated on suffering. Stan Wawrinka who also went out early, to Daniil Medvedev in the first round had previously talked about making his opponents suffer, and we need to believe that the riches and glory that go to the players are built on a willingness to be nailed to the cross of their highly remunerative vocation. Thats the contract or covenant.

Even Federer, who floats around the court as if he could run on water without making a splash, put in hard work during those long months in the Swiss wilderness of physical rehabilitation last year. Most of us are not particularly dedicated to living our lives. We dont even pursue affairs with any special single-mindedness; were just happy to have one if it comes along. So we like to see the single-minded dedication of elite athletes, the willingness to engage, if necessary, in a match lasting 11 hours (Isner-Mahut), even if the result of that victory is defeat by exhaustion in the next round. Never give up. Chase down every ball.

The scoring system of tennis actively promotes this dogged determination, and Rafael Nadal exemplified it as he tried to come back from two sets down against Gilles Mller on No.1 Court on the second Monday. Thats a busy day in any tournament, so if you have a ticket, youre confident of value for money, wherever youre seated. The situation is more complicated if, like me, you have a rover press pass, which enables you to get in everywhere but doesnt guarantee that you can get in anywhere. There is always the chance that in trying to maximize your experience of all potential matches, you can end up stranded between them. I saw Venus Williams beat Ana Konjuh and most of Murray against Benot Paire on Centre Court, watched Mller take the first two sets against Nadal on No.1 Court and then went back to Centre to make sure I got a seat for Grigor Dimitrov and Federer. I had already seen a lot of tennis both that day and the previous week but aesthetically this was likely to be the highlight of the entire tournament.

I have a simple rule of support in tennis: Always root for the player with a single-handed backhand. Thats why I somewhat lost interest in the womens game after the abdication of the great Justine Henin. Dimitrov and Federer are two of the most elegant single-handers. Except, of course, tennis is not a beauty contest. In this case, it wasnt even a contest, as Dimitrov, celebrated since winning Junior Wimbledon in 2008 as a king in waiting, was obliged to wait some more as he was swept aside. Nadal, meanwhile, had leveled things up, but Mller, instead of collapsing in the fifth set under the mental burden of a squandered two-set lead, was hanging on. They were both hanging on, on the brink of collapse and refusing to collapse and there were, as I discovered after scrambling back to No.1 Court, no empty seats. I couldnt get back in.

Missing one of the pivotal matches of the tournament, I was reduced to watching the drama unfold silently on a muted TV in the press office. The one advantage of this was the way close-ups revealed the expression of almost catatonic concentration on Mllers face, but I was otherwise in an awful predicament. I wanted the match to be over so that I wouldnt miss any more of it; I wanted it to continue so that I might have a chance of getting in and seeing it. The compromise was to dash over to Henman Hill and watch it on the big screen. On the way, I looked in at the journalists entrance at No.1 Court. Plenty of times in the course of the tournament I had hurried to a given court and arrived just after an end-change and waited as two of the longest games of the match got underway. On this occasion, though, they were midchange and, incredibly, one seat had suddenly become available. I was in, not just watching this epic struggle but part of it. Or was I? Having missed so much, was I still, in a sense, missing it even while I was seeing it? By missing the previous three hours, had I effectively missed almost the whole thing, like skipping 200 pages of a book even if this was a book of indeterminate length? I was still pondering this five chapters later when Nadal finally succumbed.

Which is not to say that he was quite finished. For we require still more of players, even after theyve given their all: They must lose graciously. Perhaps this isnt such an issue for audiences in America, but I have an English fondness for the stress placed upon being a good loser, the way that this assumes that defeat will be the ultimate outcome of all worldly endeavor. After shaking hands with Mller and the umpire, Nadal proceeded to do two things that went beyond gracious. In the other Slams, players walk off separately. At Wimbledon, it is not a rule it would count for nothing if it were but it is a convention, not always observed, that the players walk off together. And Nadal literally abided by this. He waited for Mller.

Its stirring to see the virile Italian Fabio Fognini, fist raised and clenched, after winning a decisive point. Only a minimal amount of photoshopping would be necessary to transform pictures of him so that hes standing triumphantly over a stricken foe at the Colosseum rather than Centre Court. The handshake at the end of the match breaks the spell induced by gladiatorial competition. Part of us wants athletes to be carried out on their shields, rather than with aching hips, but their leaving the court together expresses the return to communality, courtesy and civility rather than competition. Even more amazingly, Rafa stopped to sign autographs on the way out. And then he was gone.

We love the prospect of an upset. We love it in the making, as its happening and for a brief moment afterward. But then the hangover sets in. The people you wanted to see are nowhere to be seen. For the sake of a mad fling, youve thrown away the relationship that made life meaningful. You feel bereft. After Stan Wawrinka went out to Medvedev, you said to yourself, O.K., now Ill follow Medvedev instead of Stan. But then Medvedev went out in the next round and, far from being a gracious loser, turned out to be a complete jerk, throwing coins at the umpires chair. That only made him a bit of a jerk. What made him a complete jerk was claiming afterward that he just happened to deposit the coins there, as though guilty not of impugning the umpires integrity but of the lesser offense of fiduciary littering. So, as our favorites are vanquished, followed by their vanquishers, we hiccup our way through the tournament.

This years Wimbledon was like that in terms of the consequences, but without the passion that should accompany such mad and fatal crushes. Players werent knocked out; they just disappeared, fell by the wayside. Jo-Wilfried Tsonga lost cruelly to Sam Querrey after their long match was suspended because of bad light at 5-6 in the fifth. Play resumed the next day and lasted for precisely one game. I barely saw Tsonga, caught only a glimpse of Tsvetana Pironkova, did not see Jack Sock sock it to anyone before Sebastian Ofner offed him. The other side of the coin was that I completely avoided the robotic lumberers like John Isner, Milos Raonic and Marin Cilic. The test of a good tennis tournament, to render it in Hemingway-ese, is whom you can leave out.

No one would ever want to leave out Gal Monfils! A peculiarity of the draw meant that Murray met a succession of players who delight the crowd with an exhilarating, often suicidal addiction to trick shots. Murray was having to chase after so many drop shots always emitting that groan of surprised despair before he set off yet again to retrieve the unretrievable that it seemed there might be something self-sacrificing about his opponents way of proceeding. Each was destined to lose, but the cumulative strain put on Murrays iffy hip would soften him up for someone later in the tournament in this case Querrey, another big-serving bore. The dreadlocked Dustin Brown is the most extreme of the tricksters, the most fun and the most infuriating to watch, making opponents feel, as was said of the footballer George Best, as if they have twisted blood.

A few years ago Brown bamboozled Nadal right back to Mallorca, but in the long run turning tricks is a losing strategy because its no strategy at all. A Brown will eventually be beaten by a Raonic, whose ambition is to become a tennis algorithm in human form (with the attendant risk of making the sport unwatchably tedious). Monfils represents the middle ground: extravagant and efficient, with the ratio of showmanship to pragmatism in a state of constant and unstable flux. As the No.15 seed, he was expected to go into the second week, even if only briefly.

Ah, the second week. During the opening week of a tournament, the schedule is as crowded as a rush-hour subway. After the action-packed second Monday and Tuesday, things thin out drastically. The atmosphere, as a result, becomes slightly less festive, as attention gradually and inexorably shrinks to whats happening on the big stages. Theres a lot of doubles and mixed doubles, but the numerical shakedown in the singles is shocking.

The quality of matches is assumed to go up, while the quantity goes down precipitously. This year the quality went down in tandem. Both the mens and womens tournaments stumbled into a dying fall. Johanna Konta won an epic quarterfinal against Simona Halep, then wilted against Venus Williams, who in turn wilted against Garbie Muguruza. Djokovic retired hurt, nursing a bad elbow and feeling badly served by the way his quarterfinal match against Tomas Berdych had been held over after the Mller-Nadal marathon. Murrays hip looked to be on its last legs as he was ground into submission by Querrey. Federer, of course, was beautiful. It was wonderful to be there, to see him, but among the seasoned journalists, it was deemed to have been one of the worst Wimbledons in recent years, redeemed by gorgeous Roger winning more gorgeously than ever.

His opponent in the final, the ferociously lycanthropic Cilic, seemed troubled from head (sobbing like a baby midmatch) to toe (blister), and I suppose we must not hold it against him that in his post-match speech, he failed even to mention Federer, whom I have barely mentioned here on the grounds of all-consuming Shall I compare thee to a summers day? adoration. As matches, the mens and womens finals were almost nonevents, so this little narrative will conclude instead with Monfils and a match from the middle Saturday.

Court 12: Monfils versus Adrian Mannarino. I had taken against Mannarino even more vehemently than the coin-chucking Medvedev for the way he shoulder-barged a ball boy during a changeover in an earlier match. He complained that the authorities prioritized ball boys over players thereby negating the alternative defense that it had been an accident, not an incident. I had a really good seat that turned out to be a really bad seat: courtside, sun-side, getting a face full of Indian Wells-style heat, like Meursault on the beach in Algiers. After the second set I had to leave, fearing I was on the way to sunstroke. Or maybe it was just stroke-stroke: overexposure to tennis strokes, the cumulative effect of watching more live tennis in the course of six days than I had in the rest of my life.

Todays tennis players dont just crush the ball; they pulverize it, and I was feeling pulverized by watching them do it. But unlike Tomic the tank engine, I dug deep and came back, to a seat on the other side of the court, where the sun fried the back of my head. I was two rows from the front, right behind the court attendants. There were about eight of them, young men and women, students I guessed, whose job was to hold umbrellas over the players during changeovers and not a lot else. Other than that and apart from watching the match, it was hard to tell whether some of them were working or taking a break from working another court as they helped themselves to nice-looking sandwiches, strawberries and mints from the well-stocked coolers behind the players chairs.

I envied them so much. It reminded me of the summer of 1980, when, after leaving Oxford, I first lived in London. A friend from college had the same kind of job as these kids, went to Wimbledon every day and then came back to my flat just one stop away on the Tube and told me about the games she saw. Her job had been secured in advance, but like a day laborer in the Great Depression, I turned up at the Wimbledon gates on the first day, hoping that I might be hired on the optimistic basis that I was an Oxford graduate. I was turned away and, until this year, had been back to Wimbledon only once, for one day.

The court attendants were dressed in green polo shirts and shorts and made sure to apply sunscreen to their arms and legs, sharing everything and generally hanging out in the sun watching tennis. I wished I were one of them. It was a funny day. In the third set, I received a text saying that a bunch of friends, all in their 50s, were heading to a party a ravey-type thing in Braziers Park in Oxfordshire, where they would all be spending the weekend. Did I want to come? I couldnt because I was at Wimbledon, where Id wanted to be for nearly 40 years, and that night, if the tennis finished in time, I was going to a friends 50th-birthday party in East London. It turned out to be a terrific party, mainly because I was able to spend the night boasting about how Id been at Wimbledon all day, all week but all day and all evening, part of me was half-full of regret that I was missing the other party at Braziers Park. I was also missing my wife, who was on an Air New Zealand plane to Los Angeles (she booked that rather than British Airways because of the threat of strike action), and its possible that she was on one of the planes I could see lumbering through the crowded skies over SW19. This was all going through my head while Monfils and the ball-boy barger ran and belted the ball, but I felt a great sense of well-being. I had reached a point of equilibrium or weightlessness whereby all the contradictory impulses that make up my life were in a strange sort of harmony, so although I was wishing that I was going to Braziers Park and although I was missing my wife, I was entirely content, completely present in the moment, as present in the moment as the players have to be, always playing the ball not the point, concentrating on the point not the game, the game not the set, and the set not the match and so on. The balls were sun-yellow, and the grass was a jaded green where it had not been baked and rubbed to rutted dust. One moment Monfils and Mannarino were teasing the ball, the next they were belting it. Unsure whether it was coming or going, the ball settled for both. Outside the grounds were leafy trees and a lovely church steeple, or spire, if they are not one and the same. A Union Jack hung limply in a sky of melted blue. Brexit was a horrible reality. Every now and again came the roar from No.2 Court, where I had missed Tsonga. A court attendant took a nice-looking green apple, green as the remaining grass, from the cooler. I was tempted to ask if I could have one but thought better of it. Another member of the team leapt up to shut the drink-fridge door after Monfils failed to close it properly. I love being in a group, would love to have been part of this group, sitting in the sun, applying sun cream and having the time of my life, even though I was almost certainly at least as old as probably older than their parents.

Two sets all. The court attendants were a separate crew from the ball boys, but I wanted to suggest, partly as a joke, that out of solidarity they get Mannarino on his own and rough him up for deliberately shoulder-barging the ball boy, even if this might have seemed a bit Brexity, him being French. Certain rallies were punctuated by the automatic fire of cameras with heavy telephoto lenses. I was at Wimbledon. It was the summer of Brexit means Brexit and the Grenfell Tower fire. I was looking forward to seeing Christopher Nolans Dunkirk the moment it came out, on the biggest screen possible, but I was also fully engaged in the match without really following it, conscious of everything: the green trees, the courts, class, politeness, the way that Monfils, with his furrowed brow, looked older between points than he did while playing. I was 59 and felt almost delirious for a multitude of conflicting reasons, some heat-related, some derived from the fact that we are merely the stars tennis-balls, struck and banded whichever way please them, a line that sounds like Shakespeares but isnt, though it does make you wonder how long ago tennis was invented and whether branded might now be better than banded. There were amazing points and rallies. The ball was being hit with such power that it seemed impossible that it would land in the court or that anyone could get it back when it did, but both kept happening both both and neither. Wimbledon, clearly, was the single best thing about England apart from the beer I was looking forward to swilling, in quantity, at my friends 50th, unless there was Champagne, in which case Id be swilling a load of that. Sitting here on Court 12 was like watching a match at the vicarage, in the middle of a Texas heat wave. I felt like T.S. Eliot at Little Gidding or something. My seat was so good its possible I was too close to the court, to the action, to follow it properly. I was completely absorbed in the match but I kept thinking ahead to Dunkirk and back to that summer of 1980, when I came here and didnt get a job as steward or court attendant or whatever it was I was hoping for. Monfils was running and playing, hitting such magical shots that when he reached into his pocket for a ball you half expected him to pull out a white rabbit. He was also losing. He leaned on his racket, hand on one knee, looking sort of vanquished, as he had at Indian Wells, when he won against whoever it was in spite of having a terrible cold. This time around he was circling the drain, being forced toward it by his fellow Frenchman, the ball-boy barger, and eventually the inevitable occurred, and he lost. The Frenchmen shook hands and it was over, but the Union Jack still hung limply against the jet-blue sky and I slowly emerged from my trance, a tennis trance that was also some kind of England-my-England trance. Roger would be back on Centre Court again soon.

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Will Trump Be the Death of the Goldwater Rule? – The New Yorker

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At his rally in Phoenix on Tuesday night, Donald Trump remarked, of his decision to take on the Presidency, Most people think Im crazy to have done this. And I think theyre right.

A strange consensus does appear to be forming around Trumps mental state. Following Trumps unhinged Phoenix speech, James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, said on CNN, I really question his fitness to be in this office, describing the address as scary and disturbing and characterizing Trump as a complete intellectual, moral, and ethical void. Last week, following Trumps doubling-down on blaming many sides for white-supremacist violence in Charlottesville, Senator Bob Corker, a Republican of Tennessee, said that the President has not yet been able to demonstrate the stability, nor some of the competence, that he needs to lead the country. Last Friday, Representative Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat of California, introduced a resolution urging a medical and psychiatric evaluation of the President, pointing to an alarming pattern of behavior and speech causing concern that a mental disorder may have rendered him unfit and unable to fulfill his Constitutional duties. Lofgren asked, in a press release, Does the President suffer from early stage dementia? Has the stress of office aggravated a mental illness crippling impulse control? Has emotional disorder so impaired the President that he is unable to discharge his duties? Is the President mentally and emotionally stable?

The class of professionals best equipped to answer these questions has largely abstained from speaking publicly about the Presidents mental health. The principle known as the Goldwater rule prohibits psychiatrists from giving professional opinions about public figures without personally conducting an examination, as Jane Mayer wrote in this magazine in May . After losing the 1964 Presidential election, Senator Barry Goldwater successfully sued Fact magazine for defamation after it published a special issue in which psychiatrists declared him severely paranoid and unfit for the Presidency. For a public figure to prevail in a defamation suit, he must demonstrate that the defendant acted with actual malice; a key piece of evidence in the Goldwater case was Facts disregard of a letter from the American Psychiatric Association warning that any survey of psychiatrists who hadnt clinically examined Goldwater was invalid.

The Supreme Court denied Facts cert petition, which hoped to vindicate First Amendment rights to free speech and a free press. But Justice Hugo Black, joined by William O. Douglas, dissented, writing, The public has an unqualified right to have the character and fitness of anyone who aspires to the Presidency held up for the closest scrutiny. Extravagant, reckless statements and even claims which may not be true seem to me an inevitable and perhaps essential part of the process by which the voting public informs itself of the qualities of a man who would be President.

These statements, of course, resonate today. President Trump has unsuccessfully pursued many defamation lawsuits over the years, leading him to vow during the 2016 campaign to open up our libel laws so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money. (One of his most recent suits, dismissed in 2016, concerned a Univision executives social-media posting of side-by-side photos of Trump and Dylann Roof, the white supremacist who murdered nine black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015; Trump alleged that the posting falsely accused him of inciting similar acts.)

The left-leaning psychiatric community was shamed by the Fact episode for having confused political objection and medical judgment, and came under pressure from the American Medical Association, whose members had largely supported Goldwater over Lyndon Johnson. The A.P.A. adopted the Goldwater rule in 1973; Dr. Alan Stone, my colleague at Harvard Law School, was at the time the only member of the A.P.A.s board to oppose the rule, as a denial of free speech and of every psychiatrist's God-given right to make a fool of himself or herself. Stone, who has served on the A.P.A.s appeals board, told me that a few members over the years have been sanctioned or warned for Goldwater-rule violations, but that the A.P.A. eventually gave up enforcing it, because of the difficulty of providing due process to the accused.

The psychoanalyst Justin Frank, a clinical professor at George Washington University, simply resigned from the A.P.A. in 2003 before publishing his book Bush on the Couch. He went on to write Obama on the Couch, and is now at work on Trump on the Couch. Frank says that the Goldwater rule forces psychiatrists to neglect a duty to share their knowledge with fellow-citizens. I think its fear of being shunned by colleagues, he told me. Its not about ethics. Had he examined Trump, of course, he would be bound by confidentiality not to speak about him. But Frank believes that restraining psychiatrists from speaking about a President based on publicly available information is like telling economists not to speak about the economy, or keeping lawyers from commenting on legal cases in the public eye.

The A.P.A. reaffirmed and arguably expanded the Goldwater rule in March, stating that it applies not only to a diagnosis but also to an opinion about the affect, behavior, speech, or other presentation of an individual that draws on the skills, training, expertise, and/or knowledge inherent in the practice of psychiatry. The upshot is the attempted removal of more than thirty-seven thousand A.P.A. members from a key public conversation, during a moment when their knowledge and authority might aid the public in responsibly assessing the President. The other major mental-health professional organization, the American Psychological Association, with double the membership, also reconfirmed its version of the Goldwater rule. The much smaller American Psychoanalytic Association told its more than three thousand members last month to feel free to comment about political figuresa reprieve more symbolic than practical, since many members concurrently belong to the American Psychiatric Association.

Some assume that simply opting out of voluntary membership in a professional organization frees a person to speak. But versions of the Goldwater rule exist in state licensing-board standards for psychologists and physicians. Some states adopt wholesale the American Psychological Associations ethical principles as their standard of conduct for licensed psychologists, or have provisions warning that physicians can face disciplinary action for violating a professional medical associations code of ethics. Dr. Leonard Glass, who practices in one such state, Massachusetts, observed last month, in the Boston Globe , that even if nobody has actually lost his or her license for violating the Goldwater rule, it is not trivial to be reported to your licensing board for an ethics violation. This restraint on speech may violate the First Amendment, because, by speaking, practitioners stand to attract state censure, not just disapproval by private organizations. (Disclosure: As a lawyer, I have considered a potential lawsuit based on this First Amendment claim.) It is especially odd to see a muzzling of speech about political figures and elected officials when it is routine for mental-health experts in legal cases to offer opinions based on information from files, without an in-person examinationfor example, to help assess how dangerous a person is.

A congressional bill introduced in April proposes establishing a commission to oversee Presidential capacity, laying down a path that the Twenty-fifth Amendment allows for involuntary removal of a President. Section 4 of that Amendment provides that a congressionally appointed body can determine that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Psychiatrists participation in this constitutional process will depend on their appetite for professional opprobrium.

After Trumps fire and fury remarks about North Korea, earlier this month, Dr. Bandy Lee, a professor of psychiatry at Yale Medical School, sent her second letter about Trump to all members of Congress, warning that his severe emotional impediments pose a grave threat to international security. Four colleagues joined her this time, but, she told me, In the beginning, I was trying to write letters to Congress members and I couldnt get anyone to sign on, even though nobody disagreed. Her book, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, forthcoming in October, collects essays by more than a dozen mental-health experts and makes the case that the Trump Presidency is an emergency that not only allows but may even require psychiatrists to depart from the Goldwater rule. Seeking contributors, Dr. Lee was mindful that most colleagues would be nervous walking the tightrope, so she approached prominent writers who might have enough stature to withstand criticism, including Philip Zimbardo, Judith Herman, Robert Jay Lifton, and Gail Sheehy. (Next month, Dr. Lee will have a closed meeting with several as-yet-unnamed lawmakers to advise them on how Congress might convene mental-health professionals to review the Presidents state of mind.)

Many Presidents in our history appear to have served while managing various forms of mental illness, including depression, anxiety, social phobia, and bipolar disorder. President Ronald Reagans staff, for example, worried about signs of dementia. Concerned about Richard Nixons paranoia and heavy drinking in his last days in office, his Defense Secretary is claimed to have told the Joint Chiefs to disregard any White House military orders. But Trump is the only President to be the subject of sustained public discussion about his mental competence and fitness for office.

The Constitution contemplates, by virtue of the First Amendment, that we may freely raise concerns about elected officials, and also that in the extreme circumstance envisioned in the Twenty-fifth Amendment, medical professionals would be free to help us understand whether the President can fulfill his duties. If those who know most are the least free to speak, neither Amendment can function properly. The Goldwater rule was an overreaction to psychiatrists wielding their professional badge to do politics. Today, the profession risks protecting itself from the taint of politics by withholding expertise from a vital public debatea situation that seems no less irresponsible.

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Will Trump Be the Death of the Goldwater Rule? - The New Yorker

What Mental Health Experts Can Say About The Presidency – HuffPost

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Co-authored by Dee Mosbacher, M.D., Ph.D. and Nanette Gartrell, M.D.

Now that he has won the presidency, why wouldnt he just pivot and become more normal? Why would he say things in public that are destructive to him and the nation? Why stir things up unnecessarily? The chaos and incoherence are much worse than expected.

These are some of the questions and concerns that have been raised about President Trump by persons who are untrained in how mental impairment can manifest. Indeed, the vast array of healthy human behaviors makes it difficult for the ordinary person to detect disability other than in the most obvious cases. Further, the more impaired the individual, the more likely he or she is to deny pathological behavior and insist that it is by choice. In our culture, mental impairment, unlike other medical illnesses, still connotes a moral failureleading to its denial or use only in epithets. Yet it can afflict anyone, it is nonpartisan, and we can identify it through objective criteria.

The Goldwater rule, which specifies that psychiatrists cannot diagnose a public figure without a face-to-face evaluation, has contributed to the lack of discourse and education about Mr. Trump. An expansion of the rule by the American Psychiatric Association in March 2017 further compromised that possibility. Frequently overlooked is the fact that the Goldwater rule itself occurs under the ethical mandate to contribute to the betterment of public health, for which a professional may share with the public his or her expertise about psychiatric issues in general. As a result, mental health issues are continually marginalized, and misconceptions persist. It is commonly assumed, for example, that mental impairment will cancel out responsibility, when this occurs only rarely. Also, mental illness does not imply violence: most mentally ill individuals are not violent, and most violent individuals are not mentally ill. What is important, therefore, is not the diagnosis but the combination of particular symptoms and the context whether observed in a clinical setting or from afar when assessing dangerousness.

In the case of President Trump, it has been apparent for some time that his inability or unwillingness to distinguish fact from fiction, rageful responses to criticism, lack of impulse control, and wanton disregard for the rule of law indicate emotional impairment rather than deliberate choice. Such signs and symptoms may be tolerable in a variety of settings, but not when this individual has command of the nuclear arsenal. Fitness for duty evaluations are a common practice among forensic psychiatrists and other mental health professionals, who follow a standard assessment procedure while applying it to the duty in question. Although military personnel who are responsible for relaying nuclear orders must undergo rigorous mental health and medical evaluations that assess fitness for duty, no such requirement exists for their commander-in-chief.

At a time of increasing conflict abroad and worsening divisions at home, we believe it is time to remedy this situation. The 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which addresses presidential disability and succession, has never been invoked to evaluate whether a standing president is fit to serve. However, Congress has the ability to act within its provisions to create an independent, impartial panel of investigators to evaluate Mr. Trumps fitness to fulfill the duties of the presidency. Congress can pass legislation to ensure that future presidential and vice-presidential candidates are evaluated by this professional panel before the general election, and that the sitting president and vice-president are assessed on an annual basis.

Our specific recommendations are as follows:

Congress must act immediately. Congressional inaction has brought us to a crisis point: the nuclear arsenal rests in the hands of a president who shows symptoms of serious mental instability, with indications that they will likely escalate. This is an urgent matter of national and international security. We call on our elected officials to heed the warnings of thousands of mental health professionals who have requested an emergency evaluation of Mr. Trump. The world as we know it could cease to exist in a momentary, angry outburst.

Bandy X. Lee, M.D., M.Div., is a forensic psychiatrist on the faculty of Yale School of Medicine. In addition to her clinical work in correctional and public-sector settings, she served as Director of Research for the Center for the Study of Violence. She then co-founded Yales Violence and Health Study Group and leads an academic collaborators group for the World Health Organization. She has consulted with governments to set up violence prevention programs internationally and within the U.S., as well as helped to initiate reforms at New York Citys Rikers Island Correctional Center. She teaches at Yale Law School and Yale College. She published more than 100 peer-reviewed articles and chapters, edited eleven academic books, and authored a textbook on violence. Her latest publication will be a compendium of mental health expertise in the trade book, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump.

Dee Mosbacher, M.D., Ph.D., is a psychiatrist and Academy Award-nominated documentary filmmaker who was formerly on the faculty of University of California, San Francisco. As a public-sector psychiatrist, Dr. Mosbacher specialized in the treatment of patients with severe mental illness. She served as San Mateo Countys Medical Director for Mental Health and Senior Psychiatrist at San Franciscos Progress Foundation. The Diane (Dee) Mosbacher and Woman Vision Papers are archived at the Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College. Dr. Mosbachers films are also contained within the Smithsonian National Museum of American History collection.

Nanette Gartrell, MD, is a psychiatrist, researcher, and writer who was formerly on the faculties of Harvard Medical School and University of California, San Francisco. Her 47 years of scientific investigations have focused primarily on sexual minority parent families. In the 1980s and 90s, Dr. Gartrell was the principal investigator of groundbreaking investigations into sexual misconduct by physicians that led to a clean-up of professional ethics codes and the criminalization of boundary violations. The Nanette K. Gartrell Papers are archived at the Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College.

Drs. Gartrell and Mosbacher are authors of the chapter: Hes Got the World in His Hands and His Finger on the Trigger: The Twenty- Fifth Amendment Solution, in The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump.

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What Mental Health Experts Can Say About The Presidency - HuffPost

‘Ruiner’ is not just a cyberpunk ‘Hotline Miami’ – Engadget

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"At first [Ruiner] started off as a sort of cyberpunk Die Hard adventure, where you hacked your way up a building. Even at this point working on early ideas, we thought, 'Wow, this is like a party'", added Tomkowicz. "We then thought of taking the gameplay direction similar to Hotline and we were still looking for a graphics designer. We found Benedict Szneider and showed him some early graphical references. He simply told us: No. Let's do this in a different way," she added. That's how the Ruiner you see here started.

Tomkowicz jokes that for a lot of cyberpunk fans disagree that this can even be the right term. ("Not enough neon blue and pink!") This isn't cyberpunk, then, but it's certainly inspired by it. As you tear your way through corridors and rooms, the environments wouldn't look out of place in Ghost In The Shell or other near-future anime properties. There's some Matrix-esque touches here and there too, but also a lot of run-down dirtiness. Think Syndicate Wars, think the original Alien movie.

The team says it look a lot of inspiration from Japanese animation -- and that layer of misery and grit you'll see smeared across the screen was another part of that. "The game should feel like you're standing on the edge of a bridge, in the middle of the night," explains Tomkowicz, half smiling.

First impressions might suggest a whole lot of mindless slashing and shooting, screen after screen, but there's an elegance to the combat that's hinted at even during the introductory stages: You can pre-assign your "dash" locations to avoid fire, take out a few enemies and reach cover all in one tidy movement.

Not that I could manage that. Coupled with other augments (shields and furthers methods of destruction) and using both analog sticks to steer and shoot, there's a steep learning curve that kept getting me killed.

Yes, the game isn't easy, but I wouldn't call it unforgiving, either. If your anonymous dot matrix-headed protagonist falls, he's swiftly resurrected to a few screens earlier, and you're back in the thick of it. The addictiveness has its drawbacks though -- it's an exhausting game, and I needed a breather after my short demo at Gamescom. As for the team at Reikon, they're still readying the game for PC and console launch September 26th -- then there's DLC incoming and then? "We need to rest," says Tomkowicz.

Follow all the latest news live from Gamescom here!

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'Ruiner' is not just a cyberpunk 'Hotline Miami' - Engadget

Genetic Engineering Advantages & Disadvantages – Biology …

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During the latter stage stages of the 20th century, man harnessed the power of the atom, and not long after, soon realised the power of genes. Genetic engineering is going to become a very mainstream part of our lives sooner or later, because there are so many possibilities advantages (and disadvantages) involved. Here are just some of the advantages :

Of course there are two sides to the coin, here are some possible eventualities and disadvantages.

Genetic engineering may be one of the greatest breakthroughs in recent history alongside the discovery of the atom and space flight, however, with the above eventualities and facts above in hand, governments have produced legislation to control what sort of experiments are done involving genetic engineering. In the UK there are strict laws prohibiting any experiments involving the cloning of humans. However, over the years here are some of the experimental 'breakthroughs' made possible by genetic engineering.

Genetic engineering has been impossible until recent times due to the complex and microscopic nature of DNA and its component nucleotides. Through progressive studies, more and more in this area is being made possible, with the above examples only showing some of the potential that genetic engineering shows.

For us to understand chromosomes and DNA more clearly, they can be mapped for future reference. More simplistic organisms such as fruit fly (Drosophila) have been chromosome mapped due to their simplistic nature meaning they will require less genes to operate. At present, a task named the Human Genome Project is mapping the human genome, and should be completed in the next ten years.

The process of genetic engineering involves splicing an area of a chromosome, a gene, that controls a certain characteristic of the body. The enzyme endonuclease is used to split a DNA sequence and split the gene from the rest of the chromosome. For example, this gene may be programmed to produce an antiviral protein. This gene is removed and can be placed into another organism. For example, it can be placed into a bacteria, where it is sealed into the DNA chain using ligase. When the chromosome is once again sealed, the bacteria is now effectively re-programmed to replicate this new antiviral protein. The bacteria can continue to live a healthy life, though genetic engineering and human intervention has actively manipulated what the bacteria actually is. No doubt there are advantages and disadvantages, and this whole subject area will become more prominent over time.

The next page returns the more natural circumstances of genetic diversity.

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Genetic Engineering Advantages & Disadvantages - Biology ...

Alternative medicine: An opportunity for patients to be seen and heard – Rappahannock News

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I had to fight for my own health and fired many doctors

Conventional medicine refers to the health care system in which medical doctors, nurses, pharmacists, or therapists treat symptoms using drugs, radiation, or surgery. Alternative or complementary medicine, on the other hand, references medical treatments that are not considered orthodox by general medicine, such as herbalism, homeopathy, or acupuncture.

Complementary medicine techniques are the future of medicine at this point as more insurance companies are recognizing the values of preventative medicine, said Anne Williams, physical therapy specialist at Mountainside Physical Therapy and one of many local practitioners in a brisk, thriving alternative medicine community.

Williams believes the biggest problem with traditional medicine is that doctors are under so much stress to see so many patients that some they care for fail to receive the attention they need. This phenomenon may eventually cause a turn toward alternative medicine. Indeed, the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health estimates that around 38 percent of adults (4 in 10) use some form of alternative medicine.

You have to evaluate the whole person, and that doesnt get done in a regular medicine system, she continued. I always see my patients as an individual puzzle. I try to fix that puzzle.

At Mountainside, Williams makes it her mission to focus on total health and healing, focusing on only one patient per hour, and she espouses a variety of therapy techniques.

Williams practices manual physical therapy, a special type of physical therapy delivered with the hands not a device or machine, as is done in many physical therapy practices. Williams says this technique physically alters patients abilities to perform an exercise or stretch a specific body part. In addition, she often welcomes into her practice those who offer Pilates, dance, aquatics, animal-assisted healing, art healing or nutrition classes to her clients.

Molly Peterson of Heritage Hollow Farms turned to alternative practitioners and doctors outside of her insurance network in her own struggle for wellness.

I had to fight for my own health and fired many doctors, she said. I had to self-research and be fiercely determined to be heard. Most of my health need answers came from beyond traditional medicine and was all out of pocket.

Peterson, who has turned to doctors in Illinois and Arizona as well as local herbalists like Teresa Boardwine of Green Comfort School of Herbal Medicine, says that alternative medicine provides an opportunity for patients to be seen and heard, as well as giving them another route for healing when general medicine fails to provide the answers. At her first consultation with Boardwine, she spent nearly two and a half hours talking about her health history. Teresa knew that all of that matters, Peterson says. Im not saying that general practitioners dont care, because they do. But thinking beyond the norm when you only have seven and a half minutes [with a patient] is hard.

Boardwine, who has owned her business for around 23 years, says herbalism, the study or practice of the medicinal and therapeutic use of plants, is accessible, grounded in the wisdom of the ages, and that traditional medicine can leave one lacking in wellness. Most people in the world turn to whats outside their door first not pharmaceuticals.

Boardwine says clients seek her out for assistance with a variety of self-diagnosed issues, including menopausal balancing, nervous system issues, depression, anxiety, exhaustion, and autoimmune conditions.

Boardwine believes that the beauty of the Blue Ridge Mountains and the rural, agricultural lifestyle of Rappahannock County causes people to seek green ways of living and a holistic approach to healing. It has to be the willingness of an individual to go down that road [of herbalism], Boardwine explains. Clients seek me out because they want to not be overpowered by medication, and they want balance and nourishment.

Boardwine conducts both consultations with patients and hosts many different classes and programs to educate the community about the health benefits of herbs. Her students have included the likes of Colleen OBryant, who now sells her own herb-based products in Sperryvilles Wild Roots Apothecary, and Kathy Edwards, who focuses on naturopathic, or nutrition-based medicine, at her business located in Hearthstone School, Healing With Love and Nature.

Edwards first became interested in nutritional medicine after working at a health foods store and becoming certified by the American Naturopathic Medical Association. She, too, loves to help educate and empower people to take responsibility for their own health.

Holistic healing is not just about the physical. Its about body, mind, and spirit, Edwards explains.

In addition to helping her clients tailor their diets to their own particular medical needs, Edwards has also taught programs on raw food and practiced applied kinesiology, muscle response testing, and Reiki, an energy-based technique for stress reduction performed by laying the hands on or above the patient.

Edwards counsels her clients to eat organic: I always tell my clients to eat as close to nature as they can, she says.

Edwards also believes that people in Rappahannock may be more open to alternatives due to the environment surrounding the region. Its a very progressive area that is into gardening and health and is connected to nature. Its a wonderful community thats open to alternatives.

Cara Cutro, who owns Abracadabra Massage & Wellness in Sperryville, corroborated Edwards thoughts and lamented modern medicines disconnect with the spiritual part of each and every person. Clients come back to me because they get relaxed and connected to themselves [during their massage]. I would call that feeling of connection to life spirituality, and I bring that spirituality to clients through touch.

Teaching tarot card reading classes, specializing in energy healing, and administering massages that incorporate herbalism, Cutro says the concept of spirituality in medicine often gets a bad rap. However, she encourages her clients not to have contempt prior to investigation and to be open to alternative therapies that could bring them healing.

Cutro and many others are witness to the successes of alternative medicine: increased relaxation and self-knowledge of ones own health conditions. Moving forward, it may be a combination of both alternative and general medicine techniques that address the health needs of our community.

Do fight for your health. Do listen to your gut feelings. Do be OK with walking [away] from a doctor who doesnt hear you, see you, Peterson urges.

Williams hopes that all of us doctors, patients, and alternative practitioners and the like can capitalize upon Rappahannocks strong foundations in alternative medicine to fulfill her ultimate vision for the patient recovery process, prescribing: I dream of a community involved place where people could volunteer their time and efforts. Community involvement is important in the rehabilitative process, and people could benefit from rehabilitating others. There needs to be one central place where you can get your body cared for.

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Alternative medicine: An opportunity for patients to be seen and heard - Rappahannock News

Three arrested in Uttarakhand for withdrawing Rs 37 lakh by cloning ATM cards – The New Indian Express

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For representational purposes

DEHRADUN: The Special Task Force (STF) of the Uttarakhand police has arrested three persons for allegedly cloning ATM cards of many people and withdrawing Rs 37 lakh fraudulently from their accounts.

Rambir, Jagmohan and Sunil, who hail from Haryana, were arrested from Kolhapur in Maharashtra and brought here this evening on transit remand, STF SSP Ridhim Agarwal told reporters here.

They will be produced in a court tomorrow, she added.

Agarwal said the accused withdrew the money from the accounts of the people here last month by stealing their ATM pins and other data by fitting skimming devices and cameras at two ATMs and preparing over one hundred clones of the ATM cards.

They first did a recce of the unguarded ATMs in the city and then fitted two of them with the skimming devices and cameras to copy ATM cards of the people, she said.

The accused also jammed the keypads of all neighbouring ATMs using feviquick so that most people came to the ones fitted with the skimmer devices, the SSP said.

Agharwal said 97 cases of fraudulent withdrawals of Rs 37 lakh were registered at different police stations in the city.

A co-accused woman, Anil Kumari, had been arrested in connection with the fraud, earlier, she said.

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Three arrested in Uttarakhand for withdrawing Rs 37 lakh by cloning ATM cards - The New Indian Express

School of Mines hopes to launch first-ever space mining program – The Denver Post

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The Colorado School of Mines is no longer concerned with just earthly matters.

The world-renowned science and engineering institution in Golden is now eyeing asteroids, the moon, Mars and beyond to explore, extract, process and use the raw materials they provide to help sustain life in space.

Mines hopes to launch a first-of-its kind interdisciplinary graduate program in space resources in 2018, pending approval by school leaders. The first course, Space Resources Fundamentals, is being offered as a pilot program this fall.

Officials hope to follow with a new space systems engineering course, design project class and seminar series in the spring semester.

All of the classes will focus on preparing the next generation of scientists and engineers to responsibly extract natural resources offered in space, including water, gases, minerals and metals, to fuel space exploration, said Angel Abbud-Madrid, director of the Mines Center for Space Resources and research associate professor in mechanical engineering.

This living-off-the-land approach will save resources on Earth and make space exploration safer and more affordable, officials said.

At some point we will be able to refuel in space, so we can keep that space craft flying, Abbud-Madrid said. We can cut our dependency on Earth.

Graduates of the Mines program will work from Earth initially, analyzing materials pulled out by robots and designing systems to turn raw materials into usable fuel for space programs, Abbud-Madrid said.

There is nothing really radical about the approach taken by Mines, he said.

Its a lot like taking a cross-country trip, he said. You are not going to take all that fuel you will need to get to the West Coast, so you stop along the way to fuel up. Then when you get to your destination you get the fuel and food there, you dont call home and try and get it sent to you. Its the same idea.

As we spend months, even years, in space, we need to look at ways to cut our dependency on Earth, he said.

The program would not only look at the technical aspects of space extraction but also the economic, policy and legal aspects as well, Abbud-Madrid said.

Instructors would draw from a multidisciplinary group of experts in academia, space agencies and the private sector, school officials said. Students would likely come from those same discipines, Abbud-Madrid said.

Its only fitting that Mines would spearhead the program since the school has a world-renowned presence in remote sensing, geomechanics, mining, metallurgy, robotics, advanced manufacturing, electrochemistry, resource economics and solar and nuclear energy, Mines officials said.

No other institution has the specialized expertise related to resource extraction and utilization that we have at Mines, Kevin Moore, dean of the College of Engineering and Computational Sciences, said. It makes good sense for us to apply that expertise in this new area.

Backers of the program hope that post-baccalaureate certificates, masters degrees and doctoral degrees will be offered next fall.

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School of Mines hopes to launch first-ever space mining program - The Denver Post

libertarianism | politics | Britannica.com

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Libertarianism, political philosophy that takes individual liberty to be the primary political value. It may be understood as a form of liberalism, the political philosophy associated with the English philosophers John Locke and John Stuart Mill, the Scottish economist Adam Smith, and the American statesman Thomas Jefferson. Liberalism seeks to define and justify the legitimate powers of government in terms of certain natural or God-given individual rights. These rights include the rights to life, liberty, private property, freedom of speech and association, freedom of worship, government by consent, equality under the law, and moral autonomy (the pursuit of ones own conception of happiness, or the good life). The purpose of government, according to liberals, is to protect these and other individual rights, and in general liberals have contended that government power should be limited to that which is necessary to accomplish this task. Libertarians are classical liberals who strongly emphasize the individual right to liberty. They contend that the scope and powers of government should be constrained so as to allow each individual as much freedom of action as is consistent with a like freedom for everyone else. Thus, they believe that individuals should be free to behave and to dispose of their property as they see fit, provided that their actions do not infringe on the equal freedom of others.

Liberalism and libertarianism have deep roots in Western thought. A central feature of the religious and intellectual traditions of ancient Israel and ancient Greece was the idea of a higher moral law that applied universally and that constrained the powers of even kings and governments. Christian theologians, including Tertullian in the 2nd and 3rd centuries and St. Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century, stressed the moral worth of the individual and the division of the world into two realms, one of which was the province of God and thus beyond the power of the state to control.

Libertarianism also was influenced by debates within Scholasticism on slavery and private property. Scholastic thinkers such as Aquinas, Francisco de Vitoria, and Bartolom de Las Casas developed the concept of self-mastery (dominium)later called self-propriety, property in ones person, or self-ownershipand showed how it could be the foundation of a system of individual rights (see below Libertarian philosophy). In response to the growth of royal absolutism in early modern Europe, early libertarians, particularly those in the Netherlands and England, defended, developed, and radicalized existing notions of the rule of law, representative assemblies, and the rights of the people. In the mid-16th century, for example, the merchants of Antwerp successfully resisted the attempt by the Holy Roman emperor Charles V to introduce the Inquisition in their city, maintaining that it would contravene their traditional privileges and ruin their prosperity (and hence diminish the emperors tax income). Through the Petition of Right (1628) the English Parliament opposed efforts by King Charles I to impose taxes and compel loans from private citizens, to imprison subjects without due process of law, and to require subjects to quarter the kings soldiers (see petition of right). The first well-developed statement of libertarianism, An Agreement of the People (1647), was produced by the radical republican Leveler movement during the English Civil Wars (164251). Presented to Parliament in 1649, it included the ideas of self-ownership, private property, legal equality, religious toleration, and limited, representative government.

In the late 17th century, liberalism was given a sophisticated philosophical foundation in Lockes theories of natural rights, including the right to private property and to government by consent. In the 18th century, Smiths studies of the economic effects of free markets greatly advanced the liberal theory of spontaneous order, according to which some forms of order in society arise naturally and spontaneously, without central direction, from the independent activities of large numbers of individuals. The theory of spontaneous order is a central feature of libertarian social and economic thinking (see below Spontaneous order).

The American Revolution (177583) was a watershed for liberalism. In the Declaration of Independence (1776), Jefferson enunciated many liberal and libertarian ideas, including the belief in unalienable Rights to Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness and the belief in the right and duty of citizens to throw off such Government that violates these rights. Indeed, during and after the American Revolution, according to the American historian Bernard Bailyn, the major themes of eighteenth-century libertarianism were brought to realization in written constitutions, bills of rights, and limits on executive and legislative powers, especially the power to wage war. Such values have remained at the core of American political thought ever since.

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During the 19th century, governments based on traditional liberal principles emerged in England and the United States and to a smaller extent in continental Europe. The rise of liberalism resulted in rapid technological development and a general increase in living standards, though large segments of the population remained in poverty, especially in the slums of industrial cities.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many liberals began to worry that persistent inequalities of wealth and the tremendous pace of social change were undermining democracy and threatening other classical liberal values, such as the right to moral autonomy. Fearful of what they considered a new despotism of the wealthy, modern liberals advocated government regulation of markets and major industries, heavier taxation of the rich, the legalization of trade unions, and the introduction of various government-funded social services, such as mandatory accident insurance. Some have regarded the modern liberals embrace of increased government power as a repudiation of the classical liberal belief in limited government, but others have seen it as a reconsideration of the kinds of power required by government to protect the individual rights that liberals believe in.

The new liberalism was exemplified by the English philosophers L.T. Hobhouse and T.H. Green, who argued that democratic governments should aim to advance the general welfare by providing direct services and benefits to citizens. Meanwhile, however, classical liberals such as the English philosopher Herbert Spencer insisted that the welfare of the poor and the middle classes would be best served by free markets and minimal government. In the 20th century, so-called welfare state liberalism, or social democracy, emerged as the dominant form of liberalism, and the term liberalism itself underwent a significant change in definition in English-speaking countries. Particularly after World War II, most self-described liberals no longer supported completely free markets and minimal government, though they continued to champion other individual rights, such as the right to freedom of speech. As liberalism became increasingly associated with government intervention in the economy and social-welfare programs, some classical liberals abandoned the old term and began to call themselves libertarians.

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In response to the rise of totalitarian regimes in Russia, Italy, and Germany in the first half of the 20th century, some economists and political philosophers rediscovered aspects of the classical liberal tradition that were most distinctly individualist. In his seminal essay Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth (originally in German, 1920), the Austrian-American economist Ludwig von Mises challenged the basic tenets of socialism, arguing that a complex economy requires private property and freedom of exchange in order to solve problems of social and economic coordination. Von Misess work led to extensive studies of the processes by which the uncoordinated activities of numerous individuals can spontaneously generate complex forms of social order in societies where individual rights are well-defined and legally secure.

Classical liberalism rests on a presumption of libertythat is, on the presumption that the exercise of liberty does not require justification but that all restraints on liberty do. Libertarians have attempted to define the proper extent of individual liberty in terms of the notion of property in ones person, or self-ownership, which entails that each individual is entitled to exclusive control of his choices, his actions, and his body. Because no individual has the right to control the peaceful activities of other self-owning individualse.g., their religious practices, their occupations, or their pastimesno such power can be properly delegated to government. Legitimate governments are therefore severely limited in their authority.

According to the principle that libertarians call the nonaggression axiom, all acts of aggression against the rights of otherswhether committed by individuals or by governmentsare unjust. Indeed, libertarians believe that the primary purpose of government is to protect citizens from the illegitimate use of force. Accordingly, governments may not use force against their own citizens unless doing so is necessary to prevent the illegitimate use of force by one individual or group against another. This prohibition entails that governments may not engage in censorship, military conscription, price controls, confiscation of property, or any other type of intervention that curtails the voluntary and peaceful exercise of an individuals rights.

A fundamental characteristic of libertarian thinking is a deep skepticism of government power. Libertarianism and liberalism both arose in the West, where the division of power between spiritual and temporal rulers had been greater than in most other parts of the world. In the Old Testament (I Samuel 8: 1718), the Jews asked for a king, and God warned them that such a king would take the tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves; but the Lord will not answer you in that day. This admonition reminded Europeans for centuries of the predatory nature of states. The passage was cited by many liberals, including Thomas Paine and Lord Acton, who famously wrote that power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Libertarian skepticism was reinforced by events of the 20th century, when unrestrained government power led to world war, genocide, and massive human rights violations.

Libertarians embrace individualism insofar as they attach supreme value to the rights and freedoms of individuals. Although various theories regarding the origin and justification of individual rights have been proposede.g., that they are given to human beings by God, that they are implied by the very idea of a moral law, and that respecting them produces better consequencesall libertarians agree that individual rights are imprescriptiblei.e., that they are not granted (and thus cannot be legitimately taken away) by governments or by any other human agency. Another aspect of the individualism of libertarians is their belief that the individual, rather than the group or the state, is the basic unit in terms of which a legal order should be understood.

Libertarians hold that some forms of order in society arise naturally and spontaneously from the actions of thousands or millions of individuals. The notion of spontaneous order may seem counterintuitive: it is natural to assume that order exists only because it has been designed by someone (indeed, in the philosophy of religion, the apparent order of the natural universe was traditionally considered proof of the existence of an intelligent designeri.e., God). Libertarians, however, maintain that the most important aspects of human societysuch as language, law, customs, money, and marketsdevelop by themselves, without conscious direction.

An appreciation for spontaneous order can be found in the writings of the ancient Chinese philosopher Lao-tzu (fl. 6th century bc), who urged rulers to do nothing because without law or compulsion, men would dwell in harmony. A social science of spontaneous order arose in the 18th century in the work of the French physiocrats and in the writings of the Scottish philosopher David Hume. Both the physiocrats (the term physiocracy means the rule of nature) and Hume studied the natural order of economic and social life and concluded, contrary to the dominant theory of mercantilism, that the directing hand of the prince was not necessary to produce order and prosperity. Hume extended his analysis to the determination of interest rates and even to the emergence of the institutions of law and property. In A Treatise of Human Nature (173940), he argued that the rule concerning the stability of possession is a product of spontaneous ordering processes, because it arises gradually, and acquires force by a slow progression, and by our repeated experience of the inconveniences of transgressing it. He also compared the evolution of the institution of property to the evolution of languages and money.

Smith developed the concept of spontaneous order extensively in both The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776). He made the idea central to his discussion of social cooperation, arguing that the division of labour did not arise from human wisdom but was the necessary, though very slow and gradual, consequence of a certain propensity in human nature which has in view no such extensive utility: the propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another. In Common Sense (1776), Paine combined the theory of spontaneous order with a theory of justice based on natural rights, maintaining that the great part of that order which reigns among mankind is not the effect of government.

According to libertarians, free markets are among the most important (but not the only) examples of spontaneous order. They argue that individuals need to produce and trade in order to survive and flourish and that free markets are essential to the creation of wealth. Libertarians also maintain that self-help, mutual aid, charity, and economic growth do more to alleviate poverty than government social-welfare programs. Finally, they contend that, if the libertarian tradition often seems to stress private property and free markets at the expense of other principles, that is largely because these institutions were under attack for much of the 20th century by modern liberals, social democrats, fascists, and adherents of other leftist, nationalist, or socialist ideologies.

Libertarians consider the rule of law to be a crucial underpinning of a free society. In its simplest form, this principle means that individuals should be governed by generally applicable and publicly known laws and not by the arbitrary decisions of kings, presidents, or bureaucrats. Such laws should protect the freedom of all individuals to pursue happiness in their own ways and should not aim at any particular result or outcome.

Although most libertarians believe that some form of government is essential for protecting liberty, they also maintain that government is an inherently dangerous institution whose power must be strictly circumscribed. Thus, libertarians advocate limiting and dividing government power through a written constitution and a system of checks and balances. Indeed, libertarians often claim that the greater freedom and prosperity of European society (in comparison with other parts of the world) in the early modern era was the result of the fragmentation of power, both between church and state and among the continents many different kingdoms, principalities, and city-states. Some American libertarians, such as Lysander Spooner and Murray Rothbard, have opposed all forms of government. Rothbard called his doctrine anarcho-capitalism to distinguish it from the views of anarchists who oppose private property. Even those who describe themselves as anarchist libertarians, however, believe in a system of law and law enforcement to protect individual rights.

Much political analysis deals with conflict and conflict resolution. Libertarians hold that there is a natural harmony of interests among peaceful, productive individuals in a just society. Citing David Ricardos theory of comparative advantagewhich states that individuals in all countries benefit when each countrys citizens specialize in producing that which they can produce more efficiently than the citizens of other countrieslibertarians claim that, over time, all individuals prosper from the operation of a free market, and conflict is thus not a necessary or inevitable part of a social order. When governments begin to distribute rewards on the basis of political pressure, however, individuals and groups will engage in wasteful and even violent conflict to gain benefits at the expense of others. Thus, libertarians maintain that minimal government is a key to the minimization of social conflict.

In international affairs, libertarians emphasize the value of peace. That may seem unexceptional, since most (though not all) modern thinkers have claimed allegiance to peace as a value. Historically, however, many rulers have seen little benefit to peace and have embarked upon sometimes long and destructive wars. Libertarians contend that war is inherently calamitous, bringing widespread death and destruction, disrupting family and economic life, and placing more power in the hands of ruling classes. Defensive or retaliatory violence may be justified, but, according to libertarians, violence is not valuable in itself, nor does it produce any additional benefits beyond the defense of life and liberty.

Despite the historical growth in the scope and powers of government, particularly after World War II, in the early 21st century the political and economic systems of most Western countriesespecially the United Kingdom and the United Statescontinued to be based largely on classical liberal principles. Accordingly, libertarians in those countries tended to focus on smaller deviations from liberal principles, creating the perception among many that their views were radical or extreme. Explicitly libertarian political parties (such as the Libertarian Party in the United States and the Libertarianz Party in New Zealand), where they did exist, garnered little support, even among self-professed libertarians. Most politically active libertarians supported classical liberal parties (such as the Free Democratic Party in Germany or the Flemish Liberals and Democrats in Belgium) or conservative parties (such as the Republican Party in the United States or the Conservative Party in Great Britain); they also backed pressure groups advocating policies such as tax reduction, the privatization of education, and the decriminalization of drugs and other so-called victimless crimes. There were also small but vocal groups of libertarians in Scandinavia, Latin America, India, and China.

The publication in 1974 of Anarchy, State, and Utopia, a sophisticated defense of libertarian principles by the American philosopher Robert Nozick, marked the beginning of an intellectual revival of libertarianism. Libertarian ideas in economics became increasingly influential as libertarian economists were appointed to prominent advisory positions in conservative governments in the United Kingdom and the United States and as some libertarians, such as James M. Buchanan, Milton Friedman, F.A. Hayek, and Vernon L. Smith, were awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics. In 1982 the death of the libertarian novelist and social theorist Ayn Rand prompted a surge of popular interest in her work. Libertarian scholars, activists, and political leaders also played prominent roles in the worldwide campaign against apartheid and in the construction of democratic societies in eastern and central Europe following the collapse of communism there in 198991. In the early 21st century, libertarian ideas informed new research in diverse fields such as history, law, economic development, telecommunications, bioethics, globalization, and social theory.

A long-standing criticism of libertarianism is that it presupposes an unrealistic and undesirable conception of individual identity and of the conditions necessary for human flourishing. Opponents of libertarianism often refer to libertarian individualism as atomistic, arguing that it ignores the role of family, tribe, religious community, and state in forming individual identity and that such groups or institutions are the proper sources of legitimate authority. These critics contend that libertarian ideas of individuality are ahistorical, excessively abstract, and parasitic on unacknowledged forms of group identity and that libertarians ignore the obligations to community and government that accompany the benefits derived from these institutions. In the 19th century, Karl Marx decried liberal individualism, which he took to underlie civil (or bourgeois) society, as a decomposition of man that located mans essence no longer in community but in difference. More recently, the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor maintained that the libertarian emphasis on the rights of the individual wrongly implies the self-sufficiency of man alone.

Libertarians deny that their views imply anything like atomistic individualism. The recognition and protection of individuality and difference, they contend, does not necessarily entail denying the existence of community or the benefits of living together. Rather, it merely requires that the bonds of community not be imposed on people by force and that individuals (adults, at least) be free to sever their attachments to others and to form new ones with those who choose to associate with them. Community, libertarians believe, is best served by freedom of association, an observation made by the 19th-century French historian of American democracy Alexis de Tocqueville, among others. Thus, for libertarians the central philosophical issue is not individuality versus community but rather consent versus coercion.

Other critics, including some prominent conservatives, have insisted that libertarianism is an amoral philosophy of libertinism in which the law loses its character as a source of moral instruction. The American philosopher Russell Kirk, for example, argued that libertarians bear no authority, temporal or spiritual, and do not venerate ancient beliefs and customs, or the natural world, or [their] country, or the immortal spark in [their] fellow men. Libertarians respond that they do venerate the ancient traditions of liberty and justice. They favour restricting the function of the law to enforcing those traditions, not only because they believe that individuals should be permitted to take moral responsibility for their own choices but also because they believe that law becomes corrupted when it is used as a tool for making men moral. Furthermore, they argue, a degree of humility about the variety of human goals should not be confused with radical moral skepticism or ethical relativism.

Some criticisms of libertarianism concern the social and economic effects of free markets and the libertarian view that all forms of government intervention are unjustified. Critics have alleged, for example, that completely unregulated markets create poverty as well as wealth; that they create significant inequalities in the distribution of wealth and economic power, both within and between countries; that they encourage environmental pollution and the wasteful or destructive use of natural resources; that they are incapable of efficiently or fairly performing some necessary social services, such as health care, education, and policing; and that they tend toward monopoly, which increases inefficiency and compounds the problem of significant inequality of wealth. Libertarians have responded by questioning whether government regulation, which would replace one set of imperfect institutions (private businesses) with another (government agencies), would solve or only worsen these problems. In addition, several libertarian scholars have argued that some of these problems are not caused by free markets but rather result from the failures and inefficiencies of political and legal institutions. Thus, they argue that environmental pollution could be minimized in a free market if property rights were properly defined and secured.

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How Jeff Sessions and Donald Trump have restarted the war on drugs – The Guardian

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Shauna Barry-Scott remembers the moment she felt the American fever for mass incarceration break. It was an August morning in 2013, and she was in a federal prison in the mountains of West Virginia. She remembers crowding into the TV room with the other women in their khaki uniforms. Everyone who could get out of their work shifts was there, waiting. Good news was on the way, advocates had told them. Watch for it.

Some of her fellow inmates were cynical: it seemed like millions of rumors of reform had swept through the federal prison system to only then dissolve. Barry-Scott did not blame them, but she was more hopeful.

At age 41, she had been sentenced to 20 years in prison for possession with the intent to distribute 4.5 ounces of crack cocaine. Think of a 12oz can of Coke, cut that in a third, she explains. And thats what I got 20 years for. The sentence made no sense to her. Barry-Scotts son had been murdered in 1998, and the men charged with shooting him to death had to serve less time than she did six and seven years each, she says.

But the amount of drugs in her possession had triggered a mandatory minimum sentence, part of a now-infamous law passed in 1986 to impose punitive sentences for certain offenses amid a rising panic over drug abuse. In 1980, some 25,000 people were incarcerated in federal prisons. By 2013 after four decades of Americas war on drugs, there were 219,000. Yet this population was just a small fraction of the estimated 2.3 million Americans locked up not only in federal prisons, but also in state facilities and local jails.

Her story is one of many that show how mandatory minimums unleash draconian sentences on people caught selling small amounts of drugs.

For those with prior convictions, even relatively minor ones, mandatory minimum sentences can be doubled, adding decades of additional punishment. Third offenses for drug crimes can result in a mandatory minimum penalty of life imprisonment.

Barry-Scott had a prior conviction that had carried a penalty of only one years probation, she says. As a result, what would have been a 10-year sentence was automatically doubled to 20.

As she watched CNN that summer day, Barry-Scott scribbled down notes. Barack Obamas attorney general, Eric Holder, was pushing through a set of smart on crime reforms that included directing federal prosecutors to avoid triggering mandatory minimum sentences when dealing with lower-level, nonviolent drug offenders.

For many years research and advocacy groups had opposed mandatory minimum sentences as cripplingly expensive, marked by racial disparities and of dubious value for crime prevention. But the laws were still on the books and the federal prison population continued to grow.

Holder was announcing that federal prosecutors were being instructed to use minimum sentences in fewer, and more serious, cases. Central to this push for change, said Americas first black attorney general, was the evidence that Americas harsh drug enforcement had fallen more heavily on African Americans.

Watching the announcement of Holders reforms back then, Barry-Scott says, she could feel a palpable change in the energy around her.

Everything he said made sense, she says. She and the other women would spend hours discussing what they had heard. By the time we went to bed that night, everyone went to bed pretty happy.

Over the next three years, Americas federal prison population would shrink, representing the first downward trend in 33 years. Today, Barry-Scott herself is free, part of a group of more than 1,900 inmates granted clemency by Barack Obama in the largest application of presidential mercy in half a century.

But she is no longer so hopeful. Less than two years after her family drove into the West Virginia mountains and brought her home, Barry-Scott watched with anger and disbelief as Donald Trumps new attorney general, Jeff Sessions, tried to bring back the tough policies in effect during Americas war on drugs.

In May, Sessions reversed his predecessors initiative, claiming, without evidence, that Holders sentencing changes had led to Americas sudden 10.8% increase in murders in 2015.

Sessions, a former senator from Alabama known for his hardline views on crime and legal immigration, had been denied a federal judgeship in 1986 over alleged racist comments and attacks on the NAACP and the American Civil Liberties Union (he first admitted, and then disputed, calling these organizations un-American). Martin Luther Kings widow had written a letter opposing Sessions appointment, saying he had used the awesome power of his office to chill the free exercise of the vote by black citizens through politically-motivated voting fraud prosecutions.

Appointing Sessions as attorney general was like hosting a Confederate flag above the Department of Justice, says Eugene Jarecki, a filmmaker who directed The House I Live In, an award-winning 2012 documentary about mass incarceration.

What is so striking about the move by Sessions and the Trump administration is that it is at odds with much thinking across the globe about the war on drugs, including among leaders in Latin America. Ever since 2011 when Juan Manuel Santos, as the president of Colombia, declared that the war on drugs had failed, a growing international consensus has been forming on the need for a new conversation to discuss the violence, bloodshed and ruined lives that followed in the wake of the war on drugs whether in Colombia, Mexico or America.

The change in direction in the US has come at a time when America has been also seeing an increasing number of states liberalizing laws on the consumption and sale of marijuana. Into this evolving international and national context has stepped Sessions, with a very different approach.

The new attorney general and his initiatives represent a huge setback for advocates who have worked for decades to build bipartisan agreement that Americas war on drugs had been a failure and it was time to reverse the damage.

To see Sessions now, under President Trump, try to reverse the major progress that Eric Holder and President Obama had made, it is just sickening, Barry-Scott says. Everything in us is screaming, please dont do this.

When Richard Nixon declared a national war on drugs in 1971, he announced, Americas public enemy No 1 in the United States is drug abuse. In order to fight and defeat this enemy it is necessary to wage a new all-out offensive. This will be a worldwide offensive, he promised. If were going to have a successful offensive, he added, we need more money.

By 1986, the year Ronald Reagan warned against the new epidemic of smokable cocaine, otherwise known as crack, Len Bias, a young black basketball star who had just been picked to join the NBA ranks, died of an overdose. That year Congress passed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act, which established mandatory minimum sentences for crimes involving specific amounts of drugs. The law created a remarkable 100 to 1 disparity in the length of sentences for possession of of crack cocaine (then associated with low-income, often African American drug users) compared with those for possession of the same amount of powder cocaine, the choice of wealthier white drug users.

Before 1986, the average federal drug sentence for a black American was 11% longer than one for a white American. After 1986, the disparity spiked: the average length of a federal drug sentence for a black American became 49% higher than one for a white person.

The war on drugs has never been about the war on drugs; its always been about controlling and prosecuting and persecuting certain communities, says Michael Collins, the deputy director for national affairs at the Drug Policy Alliance in Washington. This is not a scientific judgment on drugs or what drugs do to you. This is about people governed by zealotry, he adds. The very foundation of the war on drugs is racism and xenophobia.

Americas drug war seems increasingly intended as a war on the poor, Baltimore journalist David Simon told the Guardian in 2013. It may have begun a long time ago as a war on dangerous drugs, but at some point it morphed, to the point where it was really about social control, added Simon, who is also known as the creator of The Wire.

As the US murder and violent crime rate spiked during the crack epidemic in the late 1980s, and political and media coverage about violence reached a high pitch, drug abuse briefly became Americas No 1 issue: the New York Times reported in 1989 that 64% of Americans named drugs as most important issue in the country, one of the highest single-issue priorities recorded in any national poll.

For decades, reciting law and order slogans has been the path of least resistance for politicians and the policymakers who sign such harsh legislation have not been held responsible for its consequences.

I am unaware of any legislator who has gotten into political trouble for codifying a simple-minded slogan or soundbite that pushes up the incarceration rate with no effect on crime, says Bobby Scott, an African American Democratic congressman from Virginia who has been fighting for a better approach to criminal justice since he was first elected in 1993. I am aware of many politicians who voted for intelligent, research-based initiatives that reduce crime and save money, and because theyre labeled soft on crime they get in political trouble.

In recent years, driven by the enormous price tag of mass incarceration for taxpayers, reforming Americas criminal justice system has become a bipartisan effort, with the Republican mega-donor Koch brothers and the advocacy group Right on Crime supporting the cause, and conservative states like Texas leading the way on reducing their prison populations.

Rick Perry, the former Texas governor who now serves as Trumps energy secretary, was one of the many Republicans who signed on to these reforms. After 40 years of the war on drugs, I cant change what happened in the past, he said at the World Economic Forum in 2014. What I can do as the governor of the second largest state in the nation is to implement policies that start us toward a decriminalization and keeps people from going to prison and destroying their lives, and thats what weve done.

In 2010, Congress acknowledged the troubling racial biases and revised the law, reducing the disparity in sentencing for crack offenses compared with those for powder cocaine from 100 to 1 to merely 18 to 1. Then-senator Sessions signed on to support the Fair Sentencing Act and had backed reducing this disparity for years. He conceded in 2009, I definitely believe that the current system is not fair and that we are not able to defend the sentences that are required to be imposed under the law today. But a former Obama staffer wrote that even as Sessions supported the law, he was holding back reform: while other Republicans supported reducing the disparity to 10 to 1, Sessions insisted on reducing it to 18 to 1.

He is an outlier in terms of how he thinks about drug policy even with the Republican party, Collins says. He was an outlier and a loner when it came to policy-making in the Senate. The problem we now face is this outlier is the most powerful law enforcement officer in the country.

You are never going to win the war on drugs. Drugs won, Koch Industries executive Mark Holden told reporters in Colorado in June, expressing frustration at Sessions return to war on drugs policies and rhetoric.

Illegal drug usage is at the same or higher levels now than it was when we started the war on drugs, Holden, who leads the Koch criminal justice reform efforts, told the Guardian. We need to go to a different approach.

Sessions rollback of Holders sentencing reforms has been hailed by some law enforcement groups, and the Justice Department has also defended Sessions changes by pointing to his backing from people actually on the front lines dealing with violent criminals on a daily basis.

Among Sessions supporters in law enforcement are the Fraternal Order of Police (the nations most prominent police union), the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, and the National Association of Assistant US Attorneys, which represents the frontline federal prosecutors whom Holder had tried to rein in.

Larry Leiser, the national associations president, says that many federal prosecutors believe that tough mandatory minimum sentences are a crucial tool in convincing lower-level drug defendants to cooperate with the government when its prosecuting the higher-ups involved with the criminal activity.

The tools we have [to tackle drugs and violence] are the tools that Congress has created for us, Leiser says. Were just trying to hold on to the ones weve got.

Some organizations and people like to make these drug traffickers the victims. What about the people whose lives they kill and the lives they destroy? Leiser asks. Weve lost our way on this issue; weve failed to focus on the victims.

One of Sessions suggestions, which he has made multiple times, is that the Obama administrations modest changes in federal sentencing policy were responsible for the nearly 11% increase in total murders the country saw in 2015.

Leiser and Patrick OCarroll, the executive director of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, both say they believe the Obama administrations modest criminal justice reforms are connected to 2015s increase in murders.

If you have less drugs in the marketplace, there are less people dying and fighting over the drugs, and youre going to have less murders, Leiser says.

Richard Rosenfeld, a leading criminologist who authored a Justice Department-funded study on the 2015 murder increase, says he knows of no research or data to support a link between federal sentencing changes and the uptick in murders. Because 2015s murder increase does not represent a clear-cut nationwide trend some big cities saw sharp spikes in the number of murders that year, others saw little or no change it seems unlikely that a federal policy change could explain it, he says.

The idea that resuming longer sentences would reduce violence is also not supported by evidence, Rosenfeld says: Returning to a period of lengthy mandatory sentences for drug offenders is not likely in my view to have much of an effect on street violence.

In fact, one of the most comprehensive surveys of research examining the effects of tough drug law enforcement found that the tactic sometimes backfired and led to more violence, rather than less.

By removing key players from the lucrative illegal drug market, drug law enforcement has the perverse effect of creating new financial opportunities for other individuals to fill this vacuum, the researchers wrote, and this competition to fill the openings in the drug market sometimes fuels drug-related violence, rather than making streets safer.

Exactly what effect Sessions reversals will have on Americas prison population remains to be seen. But data released last month by the US Sentencing Commission suggested that Holders smart on crime policies were having a real, if modest, impact.

The percentage of inmates subject to mandatory minimum sentences had decreased by five points since 2010. Most strikingly, gaps between black offenders and white offenders had narrowed. While black offenders were still the least likely to get relief from a mandatory minimum sentence, now only three points existed between the percentages of white and black offenders receiving relief. In 2010, the gap had been almost 12 percentage points.

Even after Holders changes, the number of prisoners serving mandatory minimum sentences still made up more than half of the total prison population.

But by the time the research was published suggesting that the smart on crime approach was working, Holders policy changes had already been revoked.

Since Trumps appointment of a new chief of staff, the presidents public feud with his attorney general has cooled off. Yet even if the president eventually fires Sessions, it seems most likely that his sharp changes in sentencing and criminal justice policy will survive without him, says Vanita Gupta, who led the Justice Departments civil rights division under Obama.

Hes already, in very short order, reversed all of those things, Gupta says. It would require somebody coming in to actively and affirmatively undo those policies, and they have a lot of support in the president and his administration, she adds. Its not that easy. I think its hard to bank on that.

The Trump administrations war on drugs, Jarecki says, is like its approach to so many issues: It is both destructive and vapid.

Were living in a time where speaking less bluntly about these monstrous public antagonists would be immoral, he says.

Whenever anyone says that theyre going to turn the clock back on the war on drugs, they are willingly putting the lives of hundreds of thousands of children, of innocent people, at risk, Jarecki says. The morality of it is all we should care about. Will the country actually unlearn the lessons that mass incarceration is hurtful?

Sessions endorsement of failed 1980s crime policy has not gone unopposed. Police chiefs in some of Americas biggest cities have publicly pushed back against the attorney generals claims about immigration, drugs and violence. Prominent conservatives in the Senate have publicly disagreed with his sentencing rollback and other criminal justice reversals.

The public and media response to the opioid and heroin epidemics, which are now devastating white communities, are very different from the reactions to the crack epidemic of the 1980s.

You notice nobodys talking about mandatory minimums, Scott, the Virginia congressman, says, because the mandatory minimums were so draconian that no one who represented an area where people were actually getting these kinds of sentences could possibly withstand the public revolt if they tried to respond to the opioid crisis with five-year mandatory minimums with possession of a weekends worth of pills.

For some black Americans, that change is both a sign of progress and another troubling mark of how deeply racism warps US politics.

It is hard to describe the bittersweet sting that many African-Americans feel witnessing this national embrace of addicts, law professor Ekow N Yankah wrote in an op-ed last year. It is heartening to see the eclipse of the generations-long failed war on drugs. But black Americans are also knowingly weary and embittered by the absence of such enlightened thinking when those in our own families were similarly wounded.

In Youngstown, Ohio, Barry-Scott, who has just turned 55, is applying for grants to support renewed after-school and summer programs in the same community center she attended as a child. She is on track to complete an expedited program that will allow her to finish her 10 years of supervised release early, and she continues working as a criminal justice reform advocate.

Whats most devastating about the renewed push for more incarceration, she says, is how much damage the war on drugs has already caused. Even with the blessing of the clemency she received and with her tremendous fortune to be returning home her family is still processing the toll of her sentence.

Barry-Scott left behind five of her children when she went to prison for a decade. My oldest daughter was left with the task of trying to raise the youngest ones, she says. Without her around, her husband had to work twice as hard to support the family. We are still feeling the impact of what that did to my kids, psychologically and emotionally, she adds. Its something we work on daily.

For some of the women in prison with her in West Virginia, the damage done by their being away from their families was even greater. Barry-Scott remembers one young woman who was up every morning, weeping on the phone. Then she learned that the young woman was a mother, and her daughter was describing being sexually abused in her moms absence. The child had been young, only about six years old. Youre telling me you couldnt let her do community service, pay a fine, do something other than take her away from her child? asks Barry-Scott.

How do you heal from that? Barry-Scott asks. Countless children were killed, harmed, lost to the system. How do we count that toll? Will we ever really know?

Read more from the original source:

How Jeff Sessions and Donald Trump have restarted the war on drugs - The Guardian