October 2, 2013
Two more thoughts about gun control: one practical and immediate, the other more abstract and academic, though with a practical fork in its tail. The practical comes from a recent discussion with my father, about, of all things, shooting raccoons. The Gopnik family seat, such as it is, is nowhere near Manhattan, Upper West or East Side, but rather a farm in remote rural Ontario, where my parents live surrounded by crops, animals, and pests—and indeed by farmers who need and use rifles. When I was talking to my father there last weekend, we discussed a recent raccoon infestation, and how he had called on a neighbor with a rifle to hightail it over to shoot the five unfortunate masked marauders beneath the back porch. (My dad buried them afterward, further proof that English professors can be eminently practical people.) My dad is actually a pretty good shot, and could have done it himself—but he had not finished the paperwork for his gun.
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October 1, 2013
The U.S. markets had been closed for several hours when Congress, at midnight, let the government shut down, but, even so, they already reflected how things were going in Washington. Stocks were down, continuing a slow-motion slide that’s seen the S. & P. 500 drop on eight of the past nine days. It’s hardly been a momentous decline so far—the S. & P. has fallen about two and a half per cent from its all-time high, and is still up for the month—but it seems clear that markets are getting a little queasy about the shutdown.
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September 30, 2013
Listen to the podcast of “States of Health,” Atul Gawande’s Comment on Obamacare and obstructionism.
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Illustration by Tom Bachtell.
September 27, 2013
“Women are denied, they are neglected, even in the developed countries, where they are not given the opportunity to move forward and be what they want,” Malala Yousafzai, the brave sixteen-year-old whom the Taliban tried to assassinate, and almost did, said at the Clinton Global Initiative summit this week. “Even in America, even in America, people are waiting for a woman President.” At that, Yousafzai, a natural politician, smiled, paused, and adjusted her headscarf, giving the audience a chance to applaud and turn, with the camera, to the table where Hillary Clinton was beaming, a portrait of grateful yet contented acknowledgement.
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September 26, 2013
The geography of Congress’s so-called suicide caucus. Click to expand.
On August 21st, Congressman Mark Meadows sent a letter to John Boehner. Meadows is a former restaurant owner and Sunday-school Bible teacher from North Carolina. He’s been in Congress for eight months. Boehner, who has served in Congress for twenty-two years, is the Speaker of the House and second in the line of succession if anything happened to the President.
Meadows was not pleased with how Boehner and his fellow Republican leaders in the House were approaching the September fight over spending. The annual appropriations to fund the government were scheduled to run out on October 1st, and much of it would stop operating unless Congress passed a new law. Meadows wanted Boehner to use the threat of a government shutdown to defund Obamacare, a course Boehner had publicly ruled out.
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September 25, 2013
Just a few hours into the gruesome terrorist attack on Nairobi’s Westgate mall, on Saturday, the Shabaab, Somalia’s Al Qaeda wannabe affiliate, assumed credit, calling its kill-team’s targeting of dozens of innocent shoppers “an act of justice.” Sixty-seven people were killed, along with five attackers, before Kenyan forces mostly took control of the mall on Tuesday; some of the last shooters had been holed up in its supermarket. The Shabaab reminded “Kenya”—as if it were a single sentient being beholden to its rules—of prior warnings that it intended to carry out attacks in retaliation for the Kenyan Army’s presence in Somalia. It had specifically mentioned the Westgate mall, a popular hangout for affluent Kenyans and expatriate foreigners, as well.
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September 24, 2013
It’s hard to think of anyone more deserving of an American visa than Mohammad Janis Shinwari.
On April 28, 2008, a team of U.S. Army combat advisers left the small base they shared with Afghan troops in Ghazni Province and went out on a mission in Taliban country. Ghazni was then the most violent place in Afghanistan. First Lieutenant Matt Zeller was riding in the second of three vehicles. He had been in Afghanistan for ten days. Zeller’s team had been briefed upon arrival in Afghanistan by Major General Robert Cone, who was in charge of training the Afghan Army and police. “How many of you were in Iraq?” Cone had asked the new arrivals. “This isn’t Iraq. In Iraq, we do everything we must to win. Here, we do everything we can.”
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September 23, 2013
Listen to the podcast of “Negotiating Syria,” George Packer’s Comment on the U.N.’s report on chemical weapons in Syria.
You can also subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or XML.
Illustration by Tom Bachtell.
Read more of our coverage of the war in Syria.
September 20, 2013
The flight from Tehran to New York is long, but if hopes were jet engines Iran’s new President, Hassan Rouhani, would be here already. Rouhani, who took office just six weeks ago, is due on Sunday for a week of public appearances and diplomatic footwork, centering on his first appearance before the United Nations General Assembly. For those invested in Iran’s future, the moment is auspicious—and precarious. Rouhani has staked everything on resetting Iran’s foreign policy. That begins with restoring an aura of dignity to the office of the Iranian Presidency, and it ends, from the Iranian point of view, with a nuclear deal that preserves Iran’s core security interests as Rouhani perceives them but also ends its isolation and leaves Western powers with no further justification for crippling the country’s economy with sanctions.
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September 19, 2013
While the United States grapples with its most recent gun massacre, France is up in arms about a crime that would probably not even travel beyond a local newspaper in an American city. In Nice, a jeweller who was the victim of a robbery shot one of the two stickup men as he rode away on a motor scooter. The jeweller, whose gun was unlicensed, has been charged with voluntary homicide. The thieves, after all, were fleeing and no longer represented a threat to him, and so, according to French law, he is subject to a homicide charge. He was shot “like a pigeon,” the father of the deceased thief said, pointing out that his son was shot in the back. “What would he have lost if he had let them drive off?”
Many in France see the case differently: the victim, Anthony Asli, although only nineteen, had a record of fourteen previous crimes, most for juvenile offenses. He had recently been released from prison and was on parole. The Nice Jeweller, Stephan Turk, has suddenly become a national hero to many, reflecting a particular mood in the country.
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