“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
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Katrina vanden Heuvel: John Kerry’s Next Challenge
Confronting the war party on Ukraine
The nuclear agreement with Iran provides ample proof of Secretary of State John F. Kerry’s remarkable commitment and skill in waging diplomacy. In an era when the Pentagon dominates our foreign policy and military options are too often trotted out as first responses, he has resuscitated the United States’ power to lead, pressure, and negotiate-a capacity too often denigrated as “soft power.”
No good deed goes unpunished. His reward for this is not only a pitched battle at home with hawks in both parties intent on torpedoing the Iran deal, but also what will be an even fiercer struggle with higher stakes: fending off those intent on escalating a face-off with Russia over Ukraine into a new Cold War. Once more, Kerry must preserve our real security interests from those recklessly brandishing America’s military prowess.
Michelle Goldberg: Why Planned Parenthood Shouldn’t Be on the Defensive
Fetal-tissue donation has helped produce treatments for Parkinson’s, cystic fibrosis, and diseases that affect infants.
Well, we knew this was coming. Today, the Center for Medical Progress, the anti-abortion group waging a guerrilla media war against Planned Parenthood, released its second undercover video. Once again, activists posing as representatives of Biomax, a fictitious biomedical procurement company, met with a senior Planned Parenthood official-in this case, Dr. Mary Gatter, medical director of the Pasadena affiliate and president of Planned Parenthood’s Medical Directors Council. Once again, the recording does not support the Center for Medical Progress’s central claim, which is that Planned Parenthood “sells” fetal body parts. Even in the heavily edited version of the recording that the Center for Medical Progress initially put out, Gatter repeatedly makes it clear that she’s not interested in profiting. “[W]e’re not in it for the money, and we don’t want to be in a position of being accused of selling tissue, and stuff like that,” she says. “On the other hand, there are costs associated with the use of our space, and that kind of stuff.” [..]
What’s needed is a forthright defense of fetal-tissue donation, which has been used to develop vaccines, to search for treatments for Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and cystic fibrosis, and, crucially, to protect infants. “Fetal tissue is often used in research on diseases and disorders that affect babies,” Danielle Paqette writes in The Washington Post. “Scientists use it to better understand fetal anatomy and how it may react to certain treatments. Liver is particularly helpful when assessing whether a medicine may be toxic.” Refusing to use fetal remains for research would do nothing to curb abortion. It would only make sure that nothing positive could come from abortions that will happen regardless.
More people should be out there saying that-not just Planned Parenthood, but researchers, patient advocates, and neonatologists. We should be having the same debate we had about stem cells. The anti-abortion movement can’t expose something that isn’t kept in the dark.
While most of the major players are making their lawyers happy by being purposefully vague in public, Ellen Pao’s resignation as CEO of Reddit has reignited the debate over how to handle the squirming underbelly of the internet. This underbelly consists mainly, but not exclusively, of angry white dudes who want to spew as much hate as possible at women, people of color, and LGBT people. While most of them hide behind the auspices of “free speech,” it’s increasingly clear that these trolls are motivated mainly by a deep desire to silence: to use harassment as a tool to run off anyone who values meaningful discourse or wants an environment that is inclusive to all sorts of people. This silencing campaign has harmed Pao and, as she fears, the “trolls are winning.”
While the new CEO of Reddit has promised to keep with Pao’s program to clean up Reddit and make it safe for non-toxic people to use, it immediately became clear that the white male-heavy leadership of Reddit has zero intention of actually doing anything about it. [..]
Businesses aren’t run by a bunch of computers making rational decisions based strictly on the bottom line or else this debate would have been settled, with the bigots and the haters banished from Reddit years ago. Instead, businesses are run by flawed, blinkered human beings who do foolish things like reflexively defend the “free speech” rights of a bunch of childish bigots over the free speech needs of a more diverse group of people.
Nor is the “free market” a solution that will weed out those making such poor decisions. On the contrary, as this debacle has shown, the “free market”-run by a bunch of white guys who don’t understand the toll of internet harassment on women and people of color-ran off a CEO who was taking steps to preserve Reddit’s business future by making it a more welcoming place to a variety of people. The only thing libertarianism is good at, it appears, is running protection for the bigots of the world, but it doesn’t do anything to improve freedom-or markets-for the rest of us.
Bryce Covert: Is There Room for Women Workers Under Capitalism?
A 1971 Nation article says no. The author is both very wrong, and very right.
Women and their role in the workplace are set to be a constant drumbeat in this presidential campaign. In Hillary Clinton’s first major policy speech on the economy, she called for the need to “break…down barriers so more Americans participate more fully in the workforce, especially women.” Leaving “talent on the sidelines,” and in particular female talent, she argued, is a drag on the economy. This represents, in Clinton’s parlance, “unused potential” in our capitalist society.
But feminists and capitalism sometimes have an uneasy relationship. In 1971, Betty MacMorran Gray wrote in the pages of this magazine that capitalism makes an odd bedfellow for those seeking women’s liberation. Under capitalism, she says, women will regularly get kicked out of the workforce as unnecessary, constituting an always-contingent pool of labor. “Capitalism, which rarely requires full employment, cannot use increasing numbers of women workers,” she wrote.
Laura Carasik: The World Bank has an accountability problem
Bank fails to protect critics but safeguards its impunity
In April members of impoverished fishing and farming communities near the Tata Mundra coal-fired power plant in Gujarat, India, filed a lawsuit in Washington, D.C., against the World Bank Group’s private lending arm, the International Financial Corp. (IFC), which funded the project, seeking remedies for harms to their environment, livelihood and health. The IFC is asking the district court to dismiss the suit, claiming absolute immunity for harms caused by the project, which would leave the plaintiffs without an effective avenue of redress. [..]
The World Bank’s resistance to accountability undercuts its anti-poverty mission. Its latest insistence on insulating itself from liability follows recent damning revelations about the organization’s failure to protect critics. On June 29 the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists published a leaked World Bank internal survey, which detailed a climate of intimidation at the bank, where nearly 60 percent of staffers said they could not report unethical behavior for fear of repercussions.
On June 22 Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a scathing report that denounced the bank for failing to ensure that critics of bank-funded projects can operate safely. HRW cited numerous examples of repression against human rights defenders, journalists and nongovernmental organizations in Cambodia, India, Uganda, Uzbekistan and other countries.
Michelle Chen: How Can Greece Break Out of the Austerity Trap?
Whether it leaves or stays under the yoke of the German-led technocracy, Athens will need to find an alternative path to recovery.
Greek banks have reopened this week, but Greece’s economy remains trapped in a tragic financial standoff-ironically, an economic war orchestrated by the monetary system originally designed to promote peaceful cooperation. So as the protests, financial panic, and political brinksmanship run their course, can anyone envision Greece actually rebuilding from this mess? Whether it leaves or stays under the yoke of the German-led technocracy, Athens will need to find an alternative path to recovery.
With Syriza’s current government in turmoil, there’s no clear Plan B. But one report by the progressive think tank Just Jobs Network (JJN), based in Washington and New Delhi, laid out some practical hypotheticals on what might happen in the event of stage-left Grexit or continued eurozone membership.
[..]
If they exit now from this financial “theater of the absurd,” maybe the Greeks will get the last laugh-cutting the troika loose, keeping their dignity intact, and watching the rest of the continent sink under the tragic weight of its delusions of grandeur.
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