“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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Peter van Buren: The Balance of Power in the Middle East Just Changed
U.S.-Iranian Relations Emerge from a 30-Year Cold War
Don’t sweat the details of the July nuclear accord between the United States and Iran. What matters is that the calculus of power in the Middle East just changed in significant ways. [..]
If we’re not all yet insta-experts on centrifuges and enrichment ratios, the media will ensure that in the next two months — during which Congress will debate and weigh approving the agreement — we’ll become so. Verification strategies will be debated. The Israelis will claim that the apocalypse is nigh. And everyone who is anyone will swear to the skies that the devil is in the details. On Sunday talk shows, war hawks will fuss endlessly about the nightmare to come, as well as the weak-kneedness of the president and his “delusional” secretary of state, John Kerry. (No one of note, however, will ask why the president’s past decisions to launch or continue wars in the Middle East were not greeted with at least the same sort of skepticism as his present efforts to forestall one.)
There are two crucial points to take away from all the angry chatter to come: first, none of this matters and second, the devil is not in the details, though he may indeed appear on those Sunday talk shows.
Zach Stafford: Police aren’t superheroes and black men aren’t villains. This isn’t a comic book
For decades it has been widely accepted to only frame police officers as people who save us, protect us and stop the ‘bad guys.’ They have been the superheroes of countless stories, always getting the bad guy – a bad guy who just so happens to always be black. While there is nothing wrong with a good superhero in any story, we shouldn’t assume that just because someone carries a gun and wears a uniform that they are always the hero and can do nothing wrong.
As more and more media reports are released showing us the ways in which police aren’t always the hero, like in the case of unarmed Walter Scott being shot and killed, that image is quickly being challenged.
And with it comes a possibility for mainstream America that we may have been rooting for the wrong person for some time now. But can we really be seen as at fault when the story is always told with such a positive spin for the cop – especially when they tell it?
I have been helping countries to overcome financial crises for 30 years, and have studied the economic crises of the twentieth century as background to my advisory work. In all crises, there is an inherent imbalance of power between creditor and debtor. Successful crisis management therefore depends on the creditor’s wisdom. In this regard, I strongly urge Germany to rethink its approach to Greece.
A financial crisis is caused by a country’s excessive indebtedness, which generally reflects a combination of mismanagement by the debtor country, over-optimism, corruption, and the poor judgment and weak incentives of creditor banks. Greece fits that bill. [..]
When a country’s prosperity depends on the continued inflow of capital, a sudden stop or reversal of financial flows triggers a sharp contraction. In Greece, the easy lending stopped with the 2008 global financial crisis. The economy shrunk by 18 percent from 2008 to 2011, and unemployment soared from 8 percent to 18 percent.
The most obvious cause was lower government spending, which reduced aggregate demand. Public-sector workers lost their jobs, and construction projects ground to a halt. As incomes declined, other domestic sectors collapsed.
Dave Zirin: Why Boston Was Compelled to Pull Their 2024 Olympic Bid
The crumbling of Boston’s 2024 Olympic bid is a victory for activists and a loss for the city’s most entrenched business interests.
“What we do matters.” “We are many, they are few.” “The squeaky wheel gets the grease.”
These phrases are what people trying to affect change often say quietly to avoid slouching into despair. Today, they are what crews of Bostonians are singing to one another over rowdy, joyous toasts, confident that their actions just beat back the most powerful plutocrats in town. Make no mistake about it: The 2024 Summer Olympics were on a runaway freight train toward Boston until serious groups of committed citizens got in the way. Local sports legends like Larry Bird and David Ortiz were part of the thirty person ceremonial board of directors preaching that the Olympics would be all financial boom and patriotic pageantry. The powerful-and less telegenic-brokers behind them had the money, the media, and the mayor. But they did not have the people and that made all the difference. [..]
This is an absolute victory for the people of Boston. It is particularly critical for those who would have been most likely to suffer under the weight of a massive police and military presence in the city. But it is also a very positive development for everyone who loves Olympic sports. The IOC is only going to change its methods of extortion when city after city across the globe say ‘hell no’ to their outlandish demands, always conjoined with the economic prerogatives of local business titans and the politicians they grease. Boston should be proud. They have now joined Kraków and Oslo among those who have sent the IOC packing. Now it’s the turn of Los Angeles, Toronto, Budapest, Hamburg, Paris, and Rome, all in the running for 2024, to add their names to this list. Thank you Boston for saving your city and rebuffing those who would ruthlessly exploit what we love about sports and remake our cities into unrecognizable dystopian theme parks.
Hassen Hussein: What exactly is Obama’s Africa legacy?
Washington’s engagement with the continent continues to prioritize security over human rights and economic partnership
President Barack Obama today concludes his triumphant fourth trip to Africa, which featured a return to Kenya and a controversial stopover in Ethiopia, the seat of the African Union. During the visit, he attended an entrepreneurial summit in Nairobi and held discussions with Kenyan, Ethiopian and other regional leaders on matters ranging from U.S.-Africa trade and investment and regional security to human rights.
Obama is the first sitting U.S. president to visit the two countries. And as the first African-American president, he is still a subject of pride to Africans and their vast diaspora. Yet the question must be asked: What exactly is Obama’s Africa legacy? What are the symbolism and substance of what is likely his final trip to Africa as president? Did the U.S. Africa policy evolve or regress during his administration? Although I would like to join those celebrating the homecoming of a local son, I am filled with melancholy and mixed emotions. Obama’s presidency has fallen short of our admittedly high expectations.
Joshua Kopstein: Don’t fear the drones, fear the cops
Civilian incidents shouldn’t overshadow dangers of letting police drones rule the skies
In the last few years, media reports on hobbyist drones have flown in a frightening and predictable pattern. Nearly every week, these small, camera-equipped, radio-controlled helicopters are framed as public hazards or futuristic tools for criminals – crashing on the White House lawn, attempting cross-border drug deliveries, flying too close to airplanes or attacking Enrique Iglesias on stage. Too often and much to their users’ dismay, they’re conflated with the military death machines (regrettably also called drones) that fire missiles at suspected terrorists and unsuspecting civilians overseas under dubious legal justifications. [..]
While these stories clearly resonate with members of the drone-fearing public, the hype and hysteria can overshadow the fact that drones, like all technologies, are imperfect tools: not good or evil or neutral, beholden to their users and hard coded with the biases of their creators. And if there’s a group of drone users that deserves scrutiny and fear, it’s not our next-door neighbors; it’s the police.
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