“Pondering 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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Trita Parsi: War with Iran is back on the table – thanks to Trump
On the two-year anniversary of the historic Iran nuclear deal, Washington is abuzz with renewed calls for confrontation with Tehran. President Donald Trump should roll back Iranian influence through pressure and sanctions, the argument goes. Some even suggest pressure can lead to regime change, failing to see the contradiction in warning about Iran’s rising influence while predicting Tehran’s downfall if only a few more sanctions are imposed.
This near-mythological potency of sanctions is rooted in Washington’s narrative on why the nuclear deal came to fruition in the first place: sanctions and pressure brought the Iranians to their knees, forcing them to negotiate their way out of their nuclear rabbit hole. [..]
But this narrative is simply false. It wasn’t sanctions that caused the negotiations to succeed and it wasn’t Iran that was close to collapsing right before the talks took off. As I reveal in Losing An Enemy – Obama, Iran and the Triumph of Diplomacy, a very different reality existed behind the scenes.
Russ Feingold: America steals votes from felons. Until it stops, our democracy will be weakened
In the middle of the hot summer, citizens will gather this week in Florida to champion a ballot initiative to end the state’s permanent felony disenfranchisement.
As we face the daily jaw-dropping revelations about the Trump campaign and administration’s actions, keeping our focus on restoring legitimacy to our elections and our democracy has never been more important, and ending the historic wrong of felony disenfranchisement absolutely must be part of our agenda.
It seems unlikely that the Trump-Pence “electoral integrity” commission will touch this important issue, and any commission that ignores it isn’t serious about the legitimacy of our elections.
Steven W. Thrasher: Justine Damond’s death is a tragedy – as every police killing in America is
We must not look at the shooting death of a white woman by a black male police officer (both who seem to have been immigrants) and think to ourselves that somehow this tragedy is worse than the thousands of police shootings the nation has had to confront since Eric Garner was killed three years ago this week and Michael Brown was killed three years ago next month.
Police killings are not unusual in the US. They happen almost every day – on average about three times a day. Instances of people calling 911 to ask for help, only to have the cops show up and shoot them instead, are also not unusual. Just ask Charleena Lyles. (Actually, you can’t … because police shot the pregnant woman dead when she called for help.)
And so the shooting death of Justine Damond is a tragedy, but it’s not more or less important than any of the other tragedies – even though it may evoke global sympathy in a way the killings of Jamar Clark and Philando Castile by police in Minneapolis did not.
Lindy west: ‘Doctor Who’ Breaks Its Alien Glass Ceiling
The announcement from the BBC that the next incarnation of the Doctor, title character of the generation-spanning science fiction TV series “Doctor Who,” will be played by a woman (Jodie Whittaker, star of “Broadchurch”), plunged the more cootie-phobic corners of the internet into a tempest this week.
“I always knew I wanted the 13th Doctor to be a woman,” Chris Chibnall, the show’s incoming head writer, said. “We’re thrilled to have secured our No. 1 choice. Her audition for the Doctor simply blew us all away.” The previous 12 Doctors — more than a half-century of them — have been played by men, all of them white.
In case you’re unfamiliar with the series, the Doctor is an alien from the planet Gallifrey who is hundreds of years old, has encyclopedic knowledge of the universe, can regenerate into a new body (any body) if wounded or killed, and travels through time fighting giant farting lizard babies, evil fire hydrants and occasionally Satan. A slightly different waist-hip ratio, one would think, shouldn’t stretch the imagination too far.
Nevertheless, the announcement has yielded a wave of spittle-flecked contempt from certain online communities.
Ross Barkan: The biggest threat to journalism isn’t Donald Trump. It’s declining revenues
Amid the litany of laments over how Donald Trump’s nearly-there or full-blown fascist White House is ending the free press as we know it, the Baltimore City Paper quietly announced this month it was going to shut down. Well, not so quietly if you live in the area and care about a paper with a 40-year legacy of investigative reporting and arts coverage. For the city of Baltimore, it’s a devastating loss.
And it’s a reminder of the existential reckoning journalism faces, one that is not orange-haired and shrill, whining “fake news” as often as it breathes. Financial woes pose a far greater threat to the news industry than anything Trump says or does. Journalism today is dying because no one has really figured out how to financially support it in a winner-take-all capitalist system.
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