Monthly Archives: August 2017

ROBERT PATTINSON cut his teeth, as it were, on the "Twilight" series of vampire films. These days he's deep into a very different sort of role, and trading questions-and-answers with Michelle Miller:

If you had to fall in love with a vampire, you could do worse than the one played by Robert Pattinson, as Edward Cullen in the mega-hit "Twilight" series.

Pattinson fought, kissed, and glowered his way to superstardom. And like so many teen idols before him, he's been trying to shake that image ever since.

"It's not like, 'Oh, I'll come down from an ivory tower to be ' I mean, these movies are hard for me to get. Literally, I'm just as much trying to convince people, like, every single time. And it's not like I'm, like, Leo [diCaprio] or something!"

"So it's tough for you?" Miller asked.

"The only thing that being famous really helps in is getting financing if your movies make a lot of money," he said. "And, like, the movies I do are weird, and they don't make a lot of money a lot of the time!"

Perhaps that's why on a Thursday afternoon in August, Miller met up with the now-31-year-actor at, of all places, a jail in Queens, New York, where he went to do research for his new film, "Good Time." "I tried to get permission to stay overnight for a few days. But yeah, the prison's commissioner was saying it's too dangerous, even if you're in protective custody." he said.

Robert Pattinson with correspondent Michelle Miller.

CBS News

If he's all but unrecognizable in the role, that's by design.

"I think so much of life people are trying to put you in a box and define you all the time," he told Miller. "And it's just exciting to have a job where you're allowed to consistently break the walls of the box around you."

Robert Pattinson in the Safdie Brothers' "Good Time."

A24

That desire to break free is one reason he reached out to brothers Josh and Benny Safdie (directors of "Heaven Knows What"), hoping to work with them. "My initial thought was, 'He's not right for this other project we're trying to do," Josh told Miller.

Despite their initial misgivings, they discovered -- as millions of fans have there's just something about Pattinson. So they put their other projects on hold, and wrote this film especially for him.

"I was very aware of what Rob was doing with his career choices," said Josh Safdie. "I thought that his conviction, as an actor's purpose, wasn't a commercial one, in a weird way."

Benny Safdie said Pattinson was searching for something: "He was after a greater purpose."

When Miller sat down with Pattinson on the set of the film, he admitted he's still a little ambivalent about his success as an actor: "My main thing, which is what I've always had the fear of since I started acting, is that everyone's just going to see through it and just see, 'You're just some kid from London!'" he laughed. "So you always think, people are just going to see though whatever character you make."

Left: Robert Pattinson with Guy Pearce in "The Rover." Center: "The Childhood of a Leader." Right: "The Lost City of Z."

A24/IFC Films/Bleecker Street

Born in London, Robert Douglas Thomas Pattinson is the youngest of three children. His father, Richard, imported vintage cars. His mother, Clare, worked for a modeling agency.

He started acting by accident: "One of the plays one year, all the tall people left [the company], and I was the only one tall enough to, like, play this role! And then [I] ended up getting an agent from that. And it kind of spiraled."

"You were lucky," said Miller.

"Very, very, very lucky! And then you have to kind spend the rest of the your life sort of trying to come to terms with why you were lucky! But I still haven't really figured that out yet!"

"But you know what luck is -- when preparation meets opportunity."

"Yeah. I feel like I had it the other way 'round though! I had the opportunity and then kind of built up to, you know, just sort of worked for itafterthe opportunity."

Case in point: After his breakthrough role as the handsome yet doomed Cedric Diggory in 2005's "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire," Pattinson says he struggled to find work.

"I'd been living off Harry Potter money for ages," he said. "I'd blown all of that! And then I didn't realize you had to pay taxes at the time. So I was completely broke and then got a big tax bill. I loved my agent in America, and so I came over and tried to get a job."

The job he got in the "Twilight" series was the role of a lifetime. The result: fame, fortune, and the neverending glare of the spotlight.

His on-screen chemistry turned into an off-screen romance, and subsequent breakup, with co-star Kristen Stewart in 2013 -- every twist and turn played out in the tabloids. (Even the future president weighed in with, what else, a tweet.)

And that media attention hasn't let up on his latest relationship, with British pop star FKA Twigs (a.k.a. Tahliah Debrett Barnett) -- despite efforts to keep his personal life off-limits.

"I'm quite an open person," he said. "I don't want to be one of those people who's just like, 'Oh, no comment,' 'cause I just think you just look like an idiot if you're in it. But then the annoying thing happens as well, then you answer in these kind of vague ways which kind of create these weird conspiracy theorists."

"You think people put that much thought into it?" Miller asked.

"The average person would never be aware of it," Pattinson said. "But it's, like, literally, if you come into contact with me, you will touch this demon. I don't know how to deal with it. And so I thought in a way to kind of stop feeding it, you just try and say 'I don't wanna talk about it.' And also, it kind of makes you feel like that's the only way you can get some kind of strength."

It doesn't hurt that he took roles in a string of smaller independent films that offered a break from the blockbuster limelight. These days, Pattinson says he gets a kick out of just walking down the street without being mobbed by fans. "You realize what makes you comfortable or uncomfortable, and you just kind of stay out of the places that make you uncomfortable."

By all measures, Robert Pattinson -- a little older, a litter wiser -- is exactly where he wants to be:

"And if someone says, like, 'I like you 'cause you did this thing,' well, then it's like, 'Well, I wanna do the opposite thing.' I want to be able to have the freedom to do something else, mainly 'cause I feel like I don't fully know myself yet.

"And I so I don't want someone to say, 'Well, this is who you are. Well, if you don't know yourself, we'll tell you who you are.' Like, I want to kind of remain in that chaos a little bit."

To watch a trailer for "Good Time" click on the video player below.

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Robert Pattinson: Revelling in the freedom of chaos - CBS News

Scene from BBC 4s 2007 adaptation of Fanny Hill, a text allegedly dropped from Royal Holloways course. Photograph: BBC/Sally Head Productions

On Monday, Vogues website, unusually straying into academia, reported: Eyebrows were raised when the first erotic novel in the English language, Fanny Hill, was dropped from an 18th-century literature course for fear of offending students. This followed a headline in the Mail on Sunday: Erotic novel first banned 270 years ago for describing a young girls sexual exploits is censored AGAIN in case it upsets students. Both assertions were incorrect, neatly illustrating how freedom of speech so easily slides into the murky realms of Trumpian post-truth.

John Clelands Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, popularly known as Fanny Hill (a play on mons veneris the mount of Venus) was published in 1748. He began it as a young man working in the East India Company in Bombay in response to a challenge to write what became the first English pornographic novel without using coarse language. He completed it in his 30s, in debtors prison, writing to pay for his freedom. He returned to jail soon after, convicted on obscenity charges.

Fanny Hill became an underground hit for more than 200 years. Unlike previous continental pornography written in Latin or Greek, accessible only to the educated, the book was written in English at its most flowery and, frequently, comical best. Or, according to the moralists and critics, at its worst. They were not amused, for instance, by Fannys enthusiasm when confronted by a maypole and an engine of love assaults, or her evident enjoyment of both: What floods of bliss! What melting transports!

The alleged dropping of Fanny Hill from a university course, taught at Royal Holloway, University of London, appeared to hint at yet another example of the snowflake generation of students in action. They shy away from what displeases them; dictate content of courses; no-platform speakers (Germaine Greer and Peter Tatchell on grounds of transphobia) and establish safe spaces on campus so that unsettling debates that might trigger concern can be avoided. It results in what Judith Shapiro, the former president of New York Citys Barnard College, calls self-infantilism, ill-equipping students to see the world as others see it.

So has Fanny Hill been snowflaked? Professor Judith Hawley teaches the course but, as she explained in a Guardian article, Fanny Hill hadnt been dropped because it had never been included. What she had said as a participant in a fascinating Radio 4 investigation into the history of freedom of speech, broadcast during the previous week, had been misrepresented.

What she said is this: In the 1980s I protested against the opening of a sex shop in Cambridge and taught Fanny Hill. Nowadays, I am afraid of causing offence to my students, in that I can understand why a senior academic imposing a pornographic text on students would come across as objectionable but also that the students would slap me with a trigger warning, in a way that I now self-censor

Trigger warnings flag up references that might disturb. In the 1980s the issues raised by Fanny Hill, including desire, pornography and power, were important to discuss. Now, she explained, the student body is larger, more diverse, less privileged and more uncertain about the future, and the ubiquity of pornography has changed the terms of the debate.

Her words reveal the tricky area we have rightly entered, in which the long-held power of establishments which are affluent, academic, political, white and male are under challenge. The market too has played a role. Students are now not only learners but customers, paying up to 9,000 a year and, therefore, expecting to define what value for money means to them, the consumer. The ability to identify triggers, signalling material that might damage, may be a customer perk but it infects education with caution and self-censorship that undermines its very purpose. Students, ironically, as a result, are being short-changed.

In the 1980s, when Hawley was campaigning to stop the opening of a sex shop, sexism was rife, reflected in language that today is policed by a consensus on what is acceptable, backed by legislation. Political correctness helped to put the foot on the brakes but how far down should the foot go? In a poll by the National Union of Students last year, over 60% were in favour of no-platforming. But silencing voices has a price. How does society decide when the cost becomes unacceptable?

In the US, the right to freedom of speech is enshrined in the first amendment. As long ago as the 1990s, the law professor and anti-pornography campaigner Catharine MacKinnon warned, in Only Words, The law of equality and the law of freedom of speech are on a collision course ... Or, as she put it more succinctly, some people get a lot more speech than others.

In the 80s I protested against a sex shop in Cambridge and taught Fanny Hill. Now, Im afraid of offending my students.

How to decide who gets to talk about what and where and why is part of any dynamic democracy. But a guiding instinct should surely be that we learn from open and unafraid debate? A couple of years ago, students at New Yorks Columbia University supplied a flyer against homophobia for student rooms . It read: I want this space to be a safer space. One student. Adam Shapiro, objected. He told the New York Times If the point of a safe space is therapy for people who feel victimised by traumatisation, that sounds like a great mission. But he explained that both professors and students are increasingly loath to say anything that might hurt feelings: I dont see how you can have a therapeutic space thats also an intellectual space. The question is one of balance. So, back to Fanny Hill and Hawleys implied argument that, 30 years on, to teach it need no longer be a requirement. Fanny is a woman who admires other women. She has a sexual appetite that includes lesbianism (but, of course, as the book is a fantasy written by a man, the encounter is nothing in comparison to a store bag of natures pure sweets). At the end of the book, Fanny is neither fallen and destroyed, nor an outcast, but is married to the man who deflowered her, whom she loves and who is very rich. Fanny has it all.

She is thus, in some ways, a female pioneer. Arguably, far from being an oppressive text which might make students feel coerced, as Hawley asserts, it is surprisingly subversive of patriarchal politics. Smutty books have often become milestones in society. In 1960, for instance, the Obscene Publications Act saw Penguin Books in the dock. Mervyn Griffiths QC famously asked the jury about Lady Chatterleys Lover, Is it a book that you would even wish your wife or your servants to read? The answer was yes, and two million copies were sold in a year. They were bought, like Fanny Hill, by hoi polloi. The acquittal marked an important step for freedom of the written word and the end of what George Orwell called the striped-trousered ones who rule.

Other notable books Radclyffe Halls The Well of Loneliness, Erica Jongs Fear of Flying, Henry Millers Tropic of Cancer, Nabokovs Lolita might also run the risk of censorship by one group or another in todays delicate academic ecosystem. Whats unclear is who gets to have the louder voice and why. Out of university, in the real world, triggers arent available, nor is it possible to duck issues that hurt.

In the 60s, 70s and 80s, students were taught too often from curriculums that covered only half the story, omitting women, ethnic minorities and the working class. The clamour for change grew. But Orwells intellectual cowardice is an ongoing issueas we struggle to forge a different, more just balance of power and a new model of freedom of expression. Of course it isnt easy, but its worth the doing.

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Row over teaching Fanny Hill highlights threat to freedom of expression - The Guardian

Produced by Gail Abbott Zimmerman and Doug Longhini

[This story first aired on May 30, 2015. It was updated on Aug. 19, 2017]

For more than 18 years, "48 Hours" has investigated what many say is a case of injustice. That case began in the early morning hours of April 4, 1989, when a young woman called 911 saying she thought her boyfriend had been shot. The problem was she was three miles away from the crime scene and she had trouble telling police how to get there.

"Something was not right," said Mark Rixey, who at the time was a road patrol deputy for the Brevard County Sheriff's Office. "Why would somebody say there's something happening here and nothing's there?"

"All we had was that he had been shot and that he was in the orange groves. I sent a deputy to pick her up because we absolutely, would never have found her ... we'd have been there all night looking," Diane Clarke, who was a patrol sergeant in Brevard County, told "48 Hours" correspondent Erin Moriarty.

"She remained in the vehicle out here and refused to walk down there," said Rixey.

"'You don't wanna see him? You don't wanna know his condition?' ...there was something wrong with this," said Clarke.

The victim was 22-year-old Chip Flynn.

"It was a young white male ... laying on his side with his hands bound behind his back," said Rixey.

"He had a bullet wound, there was blood on the right side of his chest," Clarke explained. "We have a gun on the ground that we don't know who it belongs to."

Flynn was conscious when the deputies arrived. "Speaking very clearly ... he just said, "Get me outta here,'" said Rixey.

"'Who shot you?'" Clarke said of asking Flynn. "'Just take me home, God, get me out of here.'"

"'Could you at least tell us which way he went,'" Rixey asked Flynn.

"'Who did this to you?' He wouldn't tell us," Clarke continued.

"This is so not typical. It defies explanation," said Rixey.

Play Video

Mark Rixey, who was a deputy sheriff with the Brevard County Sheriff's Office, recalls the crime scene at a remote grove where shooting victim C...

Flynn died before the ambulance arrived.

The woman who called 911 was Flynn's former girlfriend, Kim Hallock. She said she and Flynn had been in his truck when a black man with a gun hijacked and drove them to that remote grove. She alone managed to get back into the truck and escape -- driving those three miles to Chip's friend's home.

"They needed someone to put that murder on and Crosley Green fit the bill," said private investigator Joe Moura.

"It's an example of race being a substitute for evidence," said attorney Keith Harrison.

"I didn't kill that young man," Crosley Green told Moriarty.

Today, 26 years after Green was sentenced to death for the murder of Flynn, there is new compelling evidence that the wrong person may have been sent to prison and the killer is still free.

"The first rule of homicide investigation is ... everybody who was at that scene is treated as a suspect until they're eliminated," said Rixey. "That's not the way this happened."

Washington D.C. attorneys Keith Harrison, Bob Rhoad and Jeane Thomas typically counsel an elite corporate clientele. But they are working for no pay at all to win freedom for 59-year old Crosley Green, incarcerated in Florida for almost 28 years.

"Crosley's case is special. Because it cries out for justice," Harrison told Erin Moriarty.

"You can't stop thinking about what happened to this individual, the injustice that occurred," said Rhoad.

"For me, I was offended. I was angry," said Thomas.

"The main focus of the case was that there was a black guy who had done something, the old, 'the black guy did it,'" said Harrison.

They accuse prosecutors of a rush to judgment in the murder of the young white man, Chip Flynn, found shot and dying in a remote Florida citrus grove in 1989. At the time, Chip had been living with his parents. They spoke with "48 Hours" in 1999.

"Rarely did you see him without a smile on his face, just rarely," his mother, Peggy Flynn" told "48 Hours."

The Flynns, now both deceased, told us they were shocked to learn that Chip had been with Kim Hallock that night. Kim was an ex-girlfriend and Chip was happily seeing someone else.

"That was all he talked about. He didn't mention Kim anymore or anything," Charles Flynn said of his son.

And Hallock's story -- that a man had robbed and hijacked them -- seemed strange. Police recorded her statement just hours after the shooting:

Detective: When was the first time you saw Chip yesterday?

Kim Hallock: About 10 at night. He came to my house.

Hallock said it began in the local baseball field, Holder Park. They were sitting in his truck when she first saw someone walk by.

"I told Chip there was a black guy on your side and he rolled up the window real quick," she told investigators in her statement.

Twenty minutes later, she says, Chip stepped out and she heard him say "hold on man."

"Chip had a gun in his glove box. I took the gun out of the glove box and stuck it under some jeans that were next to me," Hallock continued.

And then, she says she saw the man again:

Detective: Did you see that the black male was armed at that time?

Kim Hallock: Yes, I did.

She says the man tied Chip's hands with a shoelace. Then, he ordered her to hand over money from Chip's wallet. And then, with everyone in the truck, he drove them away -- steering, shifting gears and somehow holding a gun on them all at the same time.

Kim Hallock told police that when they got to the grove, the man yanked her out of the truck and then Chip--his hands still tied--somehow managed to get a hold of his gun hidden on the truck seat.

"Chip, his hands were behind his back, he leaned out of the truck and somehow shot at the guy and the guy stepped back. Chip jumped out of the truck, I jumped in the truck ... and I heard about five or six gunshots," she told investigators.

Play Video

The Brevard County Sheriff's Office interviewed Kim Hallock hours after she says she and ex-boyfriend Charles "Chip" Flynn were abducted from a l...

She said she then drove those three miles to Chip's friend's home to call for help.

"Wouldn't you stop at the first telephone that you came to, the first home that you came to, to call 911?" Rhoad asked.

Washington D.C. attorneys Bob Rhoad, Keith Harrison and Jeane Thomas are working to win freedom for Crosley Green.

"48 Hours"

Crosley Green's current attorneys say a lot of Kim Hallock's story simply doesn't make sense.

"It's bizarre -- to be charitable," said Thomas.

"Chip ... with the gun in his hands tied behind his back ... opens the door of the truck and propels himself out of the truck, shooting at the black guy," Harrison said of Hallock's story.

Still, police seemed to take Hallock at her word, even though parts of her story changed. And she couldn't describe the assailant very well.

"I really didn't get a real good look at him. I was really scared," she told detectives.

The details she did give didn't really match the man detectives had in mind: Crosley Green, a small-time drug dealer recently released from jail. But later that night, they showed Kim a photo lineup with six photos. Hallock chose photo No. 2 - Crosley Green.

"That's a target with a bull's-eye for Crosley Green. ...His picture is smaller and darker than the other pictures," Harrison said of the photo lineup. "Anybody involved in police investigation and prosecution knows this. ...the position that your eyes are normally drawn to are right in the middle."

"It's a black spot," Green said of the photo. "That's what you focus on, that black spot."

Crosley Green, better known as Papa, became the father figure for his large family after his parents died. He admits he was no angel, but he says he has never done anything violent. At the time Chip Flynn was killed, he says he was with friends around two miles away.

"I kidnapped no one. I killed no one. I did none a those things," Green told Moriarty.

"The task at hand was finding a black guy to pin this on. And unfortunately for Crosley ... that's where their attention focused," said Rhoad.

"So when a young white woman says, 'A black man did it,' nobody questioned it?" Moriarty asked Tim Curtis, a local body shop owner and friend of Chip's.

"I don't think nobody questioned that," he replied.

Curtis also knew the Green family and helped spread the word: Crosley Green did it.

"...there was a lot of racial words bein' used. 'We're gonna get him, we're gonna get him. We're gonna get him. We're gonna get him.' You know?" said Curtis.

Crosley Green was arrested and charged with kidnapping, robbery and murder. At trial, prosecutors pointed to what they said were the killer's shoeprints found in Holder Park.

Footprints found at the crimescene

Assistant State's Attorney Christopher White--now retired-- told jurors that a police dog got the scent of those prints and tracked that scent to the vicinity of a house where Crosley Green sometimes stayed.

"You've seen those shoe impressions. It wasn't just her and Chip out there," White told Moriarty. "The shoe impressions were followed ... from the site where the truck was parked ... supporting what Kim said about there being a third person there, a black male, who abducted them and did these things."

But White was never able to match those shoeprints to Crosley Green or anyone else. What's more, not a single fingerprint of Green's was found anywhere on the truck. And despite Kim Hallock's claim that Chip had fired his gun trying to save her, no gunshot residue was found on Chip's hands.

"She's saying he fired the gun, and there be no gunshot residue left on his fingers? Is that possible?" Moriarty asked Harrison.

"It's highly improbable," he replied.

Still, prosecutors found three witnesses with criminal pasts who claimed Crosley had actually confessed to them -- most damning, his own sister Sheila. Before the case went to the jury, Crosley Green was offered a deal: admit guilt and get no more than 22 years.

"So why didn't you take it?" Moriarty asked Green in 1999.

"I didn't kill that young man. I keep telling you I didn't kill this young man, so why should I take that plea bargain?" he replied.

It took the all-white jury just three hours to convict Crosley Green; the judge sentenced him death.

"What's it like being here on death row?" Moriarty asked Green.

"It's hell," he replied. "It's hell to me because I'm here for a crime I didn't commit."

"Don't kill this guy. He didn't do it. He's innocent," said Joe Moura, who was a"48 Hours" consultant.

Back in 1999, Crosley Green spoke about the obvious inconsistencies in the case against him.

Crosley Green during a 1999 interview with "48 Hours" correspondent Erin Moriarty.

"48 Hours"

Kim Hallock had told police her assailant had long hair that covered his ears.

"Was any of your hair over your ears?" Moriarty asked Green, whose hair was cut short and above his ears.

"They way I look now is the way I looked then," he replied.

When "48 Hours" first reported on the case, a team of private detectives from around the country who believed in Crosley Green's innocence were working pro bono to prove it.

"It's not every day do you see this kind of injustice," said Moura.

Moura found it difficult to believe that Crosley had confessed to three people.

"So Crosley ends up shooting somebody. And he decides he's gonna tell everybody in town, 'Guess what, it was me.' Not credible. It's not credible at all," he said.

So Moura tracked down those witnesses. Sheila Green told Moura that she had lied at trial. Even though she knew she could be dooming her brother, she said she had no choice.

Sheila Green talks with Erin Moriarty in 1999.

"Basically, they told me that this was my last chance to help myself, 'cause I was already convicted," she told Moriarty in 1999.

At the time she testified, Sheila was facing sentencing on drug charges herself.

"What did they say would happen if you didn't testify against your brother?" Moriarty asked Sheila.

"I would never see my kids again," she replied.

And when Moura found the other two witnesses, they told him similar stories.

"Every witness recanted their story," Moura explained. "And every one of them had reason to be afraid of the police. ...They were squeezed. ...And they were squeezed hard."

With Crosley Green's sister and his two friends recanting, the private detectives focused on crime scene evidence: notably, those shoeprints in Holder Park that prosecutors said corroborated Kim's story.

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Crosley Green's last chance for freedom - CBS News

The US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un have been involved in a potentially deadly war of words

IT IS an annual show of force and an intimidating illustration of the power of the partnership between South Korea and the US.

But what is the Ulchi-Freedom Guardian military drill, and why could it heighten tensions between North Korea and the world even more?

AP:Associated Press

The Ulchi-Freedom Guardian is a military drill which sees the US and South Korea join forces in a string of exercises.

The annual drill involves huge land, air and sea exercises, with tens of thousands of troops involved from both countries.

News.com reported that some of the drills are believed to have included simulated decapitation strikes that target North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and his top generals.

Washington and Seoul have said the joint exercises, which have taken place annually for more than 40 years, were a deterrent against North Koreas aggression.

The exercises, designed to improve South Koreas defence, are carried out to recognise the treaty between the Republic of Korea and the United States signed in 1953.

They are named after a famous Korean general, Munduk Ulchi, who lived in the early seventh century and was a successful army leader.

State-controlled Korean Central News Agency reported leader Kim Jong-un would watch a little more the foolish and stupid conduct of the Yankees before taking action.

But, the KCNA report also stated that Mr Kim could revive plans to attack the US if the military drill went ahead.

It said: The US should stop at once arrogant provocations against the DPRK [Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea] and unilateral demands and not provoke it any longer.

[Mr Kim] said that if the Yankees persist in their extremely dangerous, reckless actions on the Korean peninsula and in its vicinity, testing the self-restraint of the DPRK, the latter will make an important decision as it already declared, warning the US that it should think reasonably and judge properly not to suffer shame that it is hit by the DPRK again.

It added that the countrys Hwasong-12 mid-range ballistic missiles would be ready to launch into action anytime.

Butit was later reported Kim had put his plans to launch four Hwasong missiles towards Guam on ice so he could see what Donald Trumps next move would be.

AP:Associated Press

Donald Trump had promised fire and fury would hit North Korea if Kim Jong-un fired the missiles at the US territory of Guam.

Speaking to reporters at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, the US President said: North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States.

They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.

But a week later, Trump shared a Tweet, writing: Kim Jong Un of North Korea made a very wise and well reasoned decision.

The alternative would have been both catastrophic and unacceptable!

The drill is expected to last ten days, from August 21 to August 31, 2017.

It is generally held around this time of year, even using computer simulation exercises

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What are the US and South Korea Ulchi-Freedom Guardian 10-day military drills and when do they start? - The Sun

Managing just four hits and two walks at the plate, the Florence Freedom, presented by Titan Mechanical Solutions, were shut out by the Southern Illinois Miners, 2-0, on Saturday at Rent One Park.

Starters Steve Hagen (3-1) and Matt Parish (3-3) dueled throughout the evening, but the Miners (33-50) got the only run they would need on a solo home run from James Alfonso in the third inning, a towering shot that came at the end of an eight-pitch at-bat.

In the fifth, with runners on first and second and two out, Southern Illinois added a run on a RBI-single to left field by Ryan Lashley. Nolan Earley had advanced to second on the play, but as he rounded the base, left fielder Andrew Godbolds cutoff throw to third baseman Taylor Oldham went to second, where Fraga tagged out Earley to end the inning.

The Freedoms (54-30) best run-scoring opportunity came in the second inning, when Jordan Brower hit a one-out single up the middle and, after a lineout by Keivan Berges, took second on an infield single to third by Austin Wobrock. Lashley threw the ball errantly past first base on the play, allowing both runners to advance one base each. But Garrett Vail struck out to end a seven-pitch at-bat, and Florence would put just one more runner in scoring position against Parish through his six and two-thirds innings.

After Parish issued a two-out walk to Wobrock in the seventh, Kyle Grana entered in relief and induced a flyout to end the inning, then retired the side in order in the eighth.

Following seven strong innings by Hagen, who allowed just five hits, Jack Fowler pitched a perfect bottom of the eighth for the Freedom, keeping the deficit at two runs entering the ninth inning. With closer John Werner on the mound in the final frame, Collins Cuthrell drew a one-out walk and took second on a two-out wild pitch, but Berges struck out after battling for eight pitches, ending the game.

The Freedom will play for the series win in Sundays rubber game, with first pitch scheduled for 5:05 p.m. at Rent One Park. Braulio Torres-Perez (5-1) will start on the mound for Florence against Southern Illinois right-hander Zach Cooper (4-9).

The Florence Freedom are members of the independent Frontier League and play all home games at UC Health Stadium located at 7950 Freedom Way in Florence, KY.The Freedom can be found online at FlorenceFreedom.com, or by phone at 859-594-4487.

Florence Freedom

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Freedom shut out by Miners in pitcher's duel, look to rebound and take series today - User-generated content (press release) (registration)

Written by Suhas Palshikar | Published:August 21, 2017 12:10 am Take the case of the cow. Those from the Muslim community who earn their livelihood from the meat trade are targets of suspicion and mob attacks with impunity. We seem to ignore that a sacred animal for one community need not be made forcibly sacred for others too. Forced devotion is not freedom.

As India completes 70 years of its existence as a free nation-state, two contradictory tendencies mark its collective existence. One is the ambition to make India a global power. This search for power is based on a perception of national greatness as a society, as a culture, and increasingly, also, as a market. But at the same time, clouds of unfreedom hover over our existence as individuals, as consumers and as groups within the would-be great nation-state.

Take the case of the cow. Those from the Muslim community who earn their livelihood from the meat trade are targets of suspicion and mob attacks with impunity. We seem to ignore that a sacred animal for one community need not be made forcibly sacred for others too. Forced devotion is not freedom. But instead of attending to this issue head on, we tend to believe that, after all, this is a problem only about some Muslims, that there are good Muslims and bad Muslims, and that the problem would sort itself out by making all Muslims good Muslims.

So, the problem is not perceived as a problem about freedom, it is the Muslim problem. The implicit argument is that being a Hindu majority society, what some Hindus think to be part of Hinduism has to be acceptable as a norm for everyone. We also ignore the fact that trade and livelihood interests of sections of Dalits are also at stake or the fact that the cow might not be a sacred animal for many Dalits and Adivasis despite their formal adherence to, and inclusion in, the Hindu fold.

But let us leave the cow alone, and look elsewhere to see if there are signs of unfreedom. Take nationalism. Our newly enforced ideas of patriotism and nationalism imply that it is not enough for a citizen to be a law-abiding person, co-operative and compassionate towards other citizens, ready for occasional service to the collective cause and proud of the national community in an inarticulate and diffuse manner.

These are times to wear your nationalism on your sleeve. So, playing the anthem in cinema halls becomes a new test of nationalism; shouting Bharat Mata ki Jai becomes a new insurance for personal security from nationalist hoodlums, playing Vande Mataram becomes judicially ordained, and all this becomes enforceable by private armies of vigilantes. They have all the freedom. Citizens have only duties.

One might, however, say that they are neither Muslims nor do they mind exhibiting their national pride. Are they, therefore, free? Like the famous warning in First they came for the Jews and I was not a Jew., not being a Muslim, being a good Muslim, and/or being willing to adopt nationalist rituals might not ensure our freedom. While cow and nationalism have evoked more violent and more aggressive responses from monopolists of Indianness, lesser but equally worrying signals are emanating from everywhere spreading the shadows of unfreedom.

The censor board is an important flagbearer of this unfreedom. The argument is that what is not Indian culture, should not be allowed on the screen. And this argument believes that sexuality and sensuality are un-Indian. So, no artistic freedom or creative space. Culture trumps freedom. But of course, everyone is not a film producer or actor, so nothing much to worry the rest of us can still feel free and watch patriotic violence in movies screened on Independence Day.

There is a catch, though. Beyond politically more sensitive and publicised matters, our private persons and public lives and spaces are being gradually subjected to an unwritten censorship, as if Pahlaj Nihalani were writing the screenplays of our daily lives. Slowly, the ethic of vegetarianism is being extended to formal and semi-formal occasions. While official patronage to vegetarianism expands, the informal pressure against non-vegetarians is becoming palpable in many residential locations. Instances of powerful communities demanding a ban on the trade of meat for long durations are gaining acceptance.

The formal discourse on what constitutes a good Hindu is now dominated by the virtue of vegetarianism. So, just like Muslims, Hindus too have to carry a burden of being good Hindus.

And how can being a good citizen escape control on female bodies and on male-female relations? Violent protests have already taken place against women going to pubs. Implicit in such instances are small, disparate cultural norms that are emerging afresh to define what it means to be a good woman. Dress codes are becoming prevalent and glorified. The first target, of course, are women, but men are also not spared. While sexual violence against women is indeed a problem, we are ready with an effective solution segregation of the two sexes (indeed, in this scheme of things there can only be two sexes), and a strict monitoring of their possible interactions.

The Hindu religious motif is so strong in regulating male-female interaction that recently a circular was issued (subsequently withdrawn) by an officer of the government of Daman & Diu ordering all women employees to tie a rakhi to their male colleagues. This diktat ordained a particular relationship between men and women anything else is not Indian.

There are two critical aspects to this rejuvenated attack on our freedom. One is that we do not recognise the expanding realm of fear and unfreedom. Instead of thinking of issues of freedom as a matter of principle, we treat them as matters of prudence. So, we ignore what happens to Muslims, we ignore what happens to Dalits, the worries of film producers and distributors are far from our lives. The freedom of women does not matter to us. We are ready to ignore others loss of freedom without realising that the messengers of unfreedom are knocking at our own doors.

The other aspect is about agencies of unfreedom. The usual suspects in the business of unfreedom are state and religion. They are, of course, doing their best to live up to that reputation. But new social energies are involving themselves with the task of restricting the freedoms of individuals and groups. There are a legion of self-appointed vigilantes who would define the limits of our freedom. The state seems happily complicit in allowing them a free run.

But more fearsome is the invisible expansion of the realm of unfreedom. Not the state, not religion, nor even the vigilantes. It is simply a cultural norm and the fear of being singled out that reins in freedoms. As a society and as individuals, we are quick to succumb to this fear and to the temptation of being unfree.

The writer taught political science at Savitribai Phule University, Pune, and is chief editor of Studies in Indian Politics

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Where freedom has gone - The Indian Express

Since the violence in Charlottesville and the tragic loss of Heather Heyer, much blame has been placed on Donald Trump. His presidential campaign emboldened white nationalists. As president, he has done little to discourage hate speech, and by equating neo-Nazis, the KKK, and white supremacists with those who protested against them, he has justly earned condemnation. Yet this analysis is far too simple. Donald Trump did not create the hatred on display last week. It was there before him. In some respects he is the result of it, not the cause. Nor will it go away when he does.

Hatred in America is not limited to white nationalists. We see it in road rage, angry tweets, trolling attacks, parents who yell at children's sports coaches, abuse hurled at and by flight attendants, and the speech, ads, and actions of the political right - and left. It was, after all, an angry liberal who shot Rep. Steve Scalise.

Removing Confederate monuments and condemning the president - however attractive this seems - will only address symptoms. It will also create more protests, counter-protests, and hate. As Martin Luther King, Jr. said in his Letter from Birmingham Jail, we must dig deeper to avoid the "superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes."

Standing at her flower-strewn memorial, I kept asking where the anger came from that took Heather Heyer's life. I sense a partial answer in Escape from Freedom, written by social psychologist Erich Fromm in 1941 as fascism was tearing the planet apart. The modern world, Fromm argues, has freed the individual from most of the constraints of an overbearing social order. In Western democracies, at least, we can choose what we think, who we love, how we worship, what work we do, where and how we live, and how we express ourselves. Yet, paradoxically, Fromm concludes about man that: "Freedom, though it has brought him independence and rationality, has made him isolated, and thereby anxious and powerless." The social, cultural, religious, political, and economic institutions that previously gave him roots no longer do so.

Too many, as a result, are unmoored - ships free to travel but knowing neither the port they seek nor how to navigate their way. Such freedom can be psychologically terrifying. For Fromm, the healthy response is a life of meaning and purpose, an integration with the world through the love of others and ennobling work. Yet, when that seems unattainable, people seek their anchor in authoritarianism (submission to a leader who will define and structure their world) or destructiveness (obliteration of what or who they deem responsible for their anomie). Both were on display in Charlottesville, and can be found in many who seek a cause or politician that preaches strength and encourages submission to something greater and in the desire to tear down "the Establishment."

Reason, the legacy of the Enlightenment, for all its benefits sometimes exacerbates problems that plague the human condition. The lack of (or unsatisfying) jobs, inadequate income, broken families, damaged social institutions, an uncertain social safety net, inadequate education, urban crime, and rural poverty are among the ills that still devastate the lives of too many in America. Such conditions can become the parents of hate. Such problems, Fromm argues, can seem so complex as to defy solutions. Even facts - the building blocks of solutions - are now suspect, leaving only our emotions to guide us. As we saw in Charlottesville, that guidance is a faulty sextant in a cloudy sky. This does not, of course, excuse white nationalists or anyone else for hateful speech or acts, but it may help us understand what needs to be done to prevent them.

For too many in America, a life of meaning, connection, and purpose is, in the words of Langston Hughes, "a dream deferred." Millions of words have been written this past week and people have marched to deny hate the power it too often commands. But words and marches are not enough. We need actions - individual, social, and governmental - to help Americans realize the potential of their freedom to ennoble their own lives and the lives of others. We need policies and programs to strengthen our social institutions, especially in local communities, large and small. We need creativity and the commitment of resources to ensure free people can be productive people, can experience loving connections and meaningful work.

When we accomplish this, false leaders, fraudulent ideologies, and the destruction of others' lives will no longer serve as outlets. Just blaming Donald Trump will not get us there.

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The Perils of Freedom - and Hate in America - HuffPost