#Mark Landler

[todayworldnews2k21]

Video: What Donald Trump’s Team Picks Say About His Foreign Policy

The world has changed since Donald J. Trump’s last term as president. Mark Landler, the London bureau chief of The New York Times, describes what Mr. Trump’s choices so far say about his foreign policy ambitions.

[antonio-velardo]

Antonio Velardo shares: Britain Is Lobbying U.S. Republicans on Ukraine. Here’s Why. by Mark Landler

By Mark Landler The U.K., often a wingman to the United States in defense, is pushing its ally to stand firm against President Vladimir V. Putin, amid fears that Russia poses an existential threat to Europe. Published: January 25, 2024 at 12:01AM from NYT World https://ift.tt/TFo9Ujg via IFTTT

[t-jfh]

May Pundak, whose father helped negotiate the Oslo Accords, is a human rights lawyer in Israel who hopes to help restart the peace process between Israelis and Palestinians. (Photo: Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times)

Ron Pundak, Ms. Pundak’s father and one of the architects of the 1993 Oslo Accords, speaking in 2014, the year he died.

(Photo: Gideon Markowicz / Agence France- Presse — Getty images)

Rana Salman, a Palestinian activist, has argued that Palestinians and Israelis must accept that they live side by side.

(Photo: Samar Hazboun for The New York Times Times)

Five Miles and a World Apart, Younger Activists Dream of a New Peace Process in the Middle East

A younger generation of Israeli and Palestinian peacemakers want to be part of the dialogue about the “day after” the war, when Israelis and Palestinians must grapple again with how to live side by side.

By Mark Landler

Reporting from Jerusalem and Bethlehem, West Bank

The New York Times - November 16, 2023

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President Biden at a news conference in California on Wednesday.

(Photo: Doug Mills/The New York Times)

Palestinians cooking over a fire in Khan Younis, Gaza, on Wednesday. President Biden said on Wednesday that the endpoint of the Israel-Hamas conflict had to be a Palestinian state.

(Photo: Yousef Masoud for The New York Times)

Israel-Hamas War

Biden Says Palestinian State Must Be Part of Peace Solution

U.S. President Joe Biden said on Wednesday that the endpoint of the Israel-Hamas conflict has to be a Palestinian state that is “real,” existing alongside an Israeli one.

He added that he and his aides have been negotiating with Arab nations on next steps, but did not give any details.

By Edward Wong

The New York Times - November 16, 2023

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COMMUNITY WARNING - GRAPHIC CONTENT: The following ABC News article, ‘As Israeli air strikes rain down on Gaza, paramedics like Yasser put themselves in danger to save lives’, contains graphic pictures and descriptions of war that some viewers may find distressing.

Yasser Abed is a paramedic in Gaza. (ABC News)

The faces that haunt Yasser

As he leaves the hospital to return to the bomb site, Yasser sheds a few tears. (ABC News)

'I stay for the children'

Yasser and his team know that their work puts them in great danger, but they continue to race to the scene of air strikes to save others. (ABC News)

A grandfather cradles his granddaughter after an air strike on the Deir el-Balah neighbourhood. (ABC News)

A man carries his injured friend out of the site of an air strike in Gaza. (ABC News)

As Israeli air strikes rain down on Gaza, paramedics like Yasser put themselves in danger to save lives

The United Nations says about 2,700 Gazans are reported missing in the war so far – likely to be buried or crushed underneath bombed buildings.

By Middle East correspondent Allyson Horn in Jerusalem and ABC staff in Gaza

ABC News - November 18, 2023

[fuojbe-beowgi]

"U.K. Voters Hand Sunak’s Party Two Defeats and a Win in By-elections" by Mark Landler and Stephen Castle via NYT World https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/20/world/europe/uk-elections-sunak-conservatives.html?partner=IFTTT

[remainnstobeseen]

Sunak Hopes to Move Past Brexit, at Long Last, With E.U. Deal

By Mark Landler In addition to removing an obstacle to London-Brussels relations, the Northern Ireland trade deal could remove Brexit from the center of British politics after seven divisive years. Published: February 28, 2023 at 05:00AM via NYT World https://ift.tt/NvKYhQe

[dailyvideovault]

New video posted on: https://dailyvideovault.com/trump-says-he-wont-bend-on-border-wall-funding-as-shutdown-continues/

Trump says he won't bend on border wall funding as shutdown continues

[deadpresidents]

The [2009 Copenhagen climate change] summit had developed into another grudge match between the developed and developing worlds. China, India, and Brazil were refusing to sign an agreement that would commit them to even incremental steps to curb emissions. Diplomats from 193 countries wandered the bright hallways of the Bella Center in a state of fretful energy.

With failure looming, [Secretary of State Hillary] Clinton telephoned [President] Obama and urged him to fly to Copenhagen to try to break the deadlock. His political advisers were opposed, not wanting to pull the boss away from a crowded domestic agenda for a diplomatic caper that looked as if it was going to end badly. Obama, though, had promised, like Clinton, to get serious about climate change. He trusted her diagnosis: that only the American President could broker a compromise. So on the evening of December 3, 2009, he ordered Air Force One fueled up for a flight to Denmark.

Twenty-four hours later, he was being briefed by an exasperated Clinton inside a small coffee bar in a shopping mall adjacent to the conference center that had been closed for the meeting. When it became clear that the Chinese delegation was trying to water down any agreement, holing up in a conference room with windows taped over to conceal their dealings from the Americans, Obama and Clinton decided to take matters into their own hands. They set off to confront the Chinese in person, fast-walking down a hallway and up a flight of stairs, panicked aides in chase, before they ran into a Chinese official in the doorway, waving his arms and shouting, “Not ready yet.”

Confusion swirled as Clinton and Obama tried to find out who was in the room with the Chinese. An advance person told them it was the Indians, the Brazilians, and the South Africans. Now Clinton was mad: The Indians had told American officials they had already left for the airport. A major developing country was lying to avoid dealing with the United States on climate change? She and Obama looked at each other in disbelief. “C’mon, let’s just do this,” he said to Clinton. She moved first, ducking under the outstretched arm of a Chinese security guard and barging into the room, which drew a collective gasp from the leaders huddled around a conference table. Obama was right behind her. “Hi, everybody!” he bellowed, like a dad coming home early to find his teenage kids throwing a keg party in the backyard. “Mr. Prime Minister, are you ready to see me now?” he said, turning to face the nonplussed Chinese premier, Wen Jiabao, who was anything but.

-- Mark Landler, Alter Egos: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and the Twilight Struggle Over American Power (BOOK | KINDLE).

This story about President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton teaming up like they were in a buddy-cop movie and crashing a meeting at the Copenhagen climate change summit is one of my favorite anecdotes from the Obama Administration.

[political-affairs]

Chinese President accompanies U.S. President to view an honour guard

Chinese President Xi Jinping (left) accompanies U.S. President Barack Obama to view an honour guard during a welcoming ceremony outside the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

[wazafam]

By BY MARK LANDLER from World in the New York Times-https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/01/world/europe/diana-statue-william-harry.html?partner=IFTTT The estranged brothers will put aside their differences for a ceremony at Kensington Palace in London on what would have been their mother’s 60th birthday. Unveiling of Diana Statue Reunites William and Harry, Briefly New York Times

[antonio-velardo]

Antonio Velardo shares: British foreign secretary pressures Netanyahu to open channels for more aid to Gaza. by Mark Landler

By Mark Landler Published: January 24, 2024 at 11:38AM from NYT World https://ift.tt/eSUKlLn via IFTTT

[t-jfh]

Displaced people from Gaza City relocating to the south of Gaza Strip on Wednesday. (Samar Abu Elouf for The New York Times)

Hussein al-Sheikh, center left, with US Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, center right, outside the Palestinian Authority headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah on Sunday. (Pool photo by Alaa Badarneh/EPA, via Shutterstock)

Palestinian Authority Open to Gaza Role if U.S. Backs 2-State Solution

The organization, which oversees the West Bank, says it will consider helping run Gaza after the war — if Washington pushes for the creation of a Palestinian state alongside the Israeli one.

By Mark Landler

Reporting from Ramallah, West Bank

The New York Times - November 9, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/09/world/middleeast/palestinian-authority-gaza.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

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[fuojbe-beowgi]

"A National Treasure, Tarnished: Can Britain Fix Its Health Service?" by Mark Landler via NYT World https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/16/world/europe/uk-nhs-crisis.html?partner=IFTTT

[outsidetheknow]

Harry and Meghan’s Hard Exit The couple’s wish to carve out more ‘progressive’ roles has led to the loss of perks, privileges and titles.. via NYT World

[javierpenadea]

"Vaccine mandates rekindle debate over civil liberties in Europe." by BY MARK LANDLER via NYT World https://ift.tt/3EZVsCh

[cinema-tv-etc]

‘The Crown’ Stokes an Uproar Over Fact vs. Entertainment

Dramatic liberties in the latest season of the Netflix series, covering the turbulent 1980s, are annoying Britons who wrote of that period, even among those who disparage the royals.

By Mark Landler Nov. 27, 2020 LONDON — On a Saturday night in July 1986, a band of bureaucrats in raincoats — one contingent from Buckingham Palace, the other from 10 Downing Street — converged on a newsstand in a train station to snap up The Sunday Times, fresh off the presses with a bombshell headline: “Queen dismayed by ‘uncaring’ Thatcher.”

It’s a dramatic flourish from the latest season of the “The Crown” — except, according to Andrew Neil, the paper’s editor at the time, it never happened. “Nonsense,” he said. “All first editions are delivered to both” the palace and the prime minister’s residence, making a late-night dash to buy the paper superfluous.

Mr. Neil, who published the famous scoop about tensions between Queen Elizabeth II and Margaret Thatcher, said the invented scene had allowed Peter Morgan, the creator of the hugely popular Netflix series about the British royal family, to depict 1980s London as a place of “squalor and vagabonds.”

Through four vivid seasons of “The Crown,” Mr. Morgan has never denied taking artistic license with the saga of the royals, playing out their private joys and sorrows against the pageant of 20th-century British history.

Yet “The Crown” is now colliding with the people who wrote the first draft of that history.

That has spun up a tempest in the British news media, even among those who ordinarily profess not to care much about the monarchy. Newspapers and television programs have been full of starchy commentary about how “The Crown” distorts history in its account of the turbulent decade in which Prince Charles married Lady Diana Spencer and Mrs. Thatcher wrought a free-market revolution in British society.

The objections range from the personal (the queen’s brittle, coldhearted treatment of her emotionally fragile daughter-in-law, which the critics claim is unfair) to the political (the show’s portrait of Thatcher-era Britain as a right-wing dystopia, in the grip of a zealous leader who dares to lecture her sovereign during their weekly audiences). Historians say that is utterly inconceivable.

“There has been such a reaction because Peter Morgan is now writing about events many of us lived through and some of us were at the center of,” said Mr. Neil, who edited The Sunday Times from 1983 to 1994.

Mr. Neil, who went on to be a broadcaster and publisher, is no reflexive defender of the royal family. Suspicious of Britain’s class system, he said he had sympathies for the republican movement in the 1980s. But he grew to admire how the queen modernized the monarchy after the upheaval of those years, and has been critical of renegade royals, like Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan.

The events involving Mr. Neil did happen: The queen became frustrated with Mrs. Thatcher when she refused to join the 48 other members of the British Commonwealth in backing sanctions against the apartheid regime in South Africa. This highly unusual clash spilled into public when The Sunday Times published its front-page report, attributed to palace officials, which said the royal family viewed Mrs. Thatcher as “uncaring, confrontational and socially divisive.”

But Mr. Neil disputed several elements of “The Crown’s” retelling, not least that Buckingham Palace made the queen’s press secretary, Michael Shea, the scapegoat for the incident. The show depicts his being fired for having leaked the story, even though it suggests that he did so at the queen’s behest. There is no evidence of this, Mr. Neil said, but it fits Mr. Morgan’s “left-wing agenda.”

“He gets to depict Thatcher as pretty much an ally of apartheid while the queen is the sort of person who junks loyal flunkies when things go wrong, even when they are just doing her bidding,” Mr. Neil said.

The brickbats are not just from the right.

Simon Jenkins, a columnist for the left-leaning Guardian, regards members of the royal family as artifacts of celebrity culture irrelevant to a country grappling with real-world challenges like Brexit. “They are practically defunct,” he said. “They are like anthropomorphized figures of a head of state.”

Yet he, too, is angered by how “The Crown” portrayed the events of the 1980s, when, as political editor of The Economist, he wrote about how Prince Charles had been drawn to the now-defunct Social Democratic Party. (He based the report on an off-the-record interview with the prince.) Mr. Jenkins said that because this season of “The Crown” deals with contemporary history and people who are still alive, its liberties with the facts are less a case of artistic license than an example of “fake news.”

“I find it offensive when people dump standards of veracity in relating contemporary history,” Mr. Jenkins said. “If I did that as a journalist, I’d be hauled up before the press council while these people get prizes.”

Like others, Mr. Jenkins pointed to an episode-by-episode analysis by Hugo Vickers, a royal historian, which found whoppers large and small in the series and has become Exhibit A for its prevarications.

Not everybody faults Mr. Morgan for filling in the missing pieces with conjured scenes, even if he jumbles the facts in the process. (Mrs. Thatcher’s son, Mark, was not lost in the desert during the Paris-Dakar auto rally just as his mother was preparing to go to war with Argentina over the Falkland Islands; hostilities broke out a few months after he was found.)

Charles Moore, a former editor of The Daily Telegraph who wrote a three-volume biography of Mrs. Thatcher, praised Gillian Anderson’s performance as the prime minister, putting it on a par with Meryl Streep’s Oscar-winning turn in the 2011 film “The Iron Lady.” Even a much-criticized episode in which a snobbish queen plays host to a fish-out-of-water prime minister and her husband, Denis, at Balmoral Castle in Scotland, struck him as having “the ring of truth,” despite some embellishments.

Charles Moore, a former editor of The Daily Telegraph who wrote a three-volume biography of Mrs. Thatcher, praised Gillian Anderson’s performance as the prime minister, putting it on a par with Meryl Streep’s Oscar-winning turn in the 2011 film “The Iron Lady.” Even a much-criticized episode in which a snobbish queen plays host to a fish-out-of-water prime minister and her husband, Denis, at Balmoral Castle in Scotland, struck him as having “the ring of truth,” despite some embellishments. 

“The Crown,” Mr. Moore said, is trying to have it both ways, selling itself to audiences as a true story while clearing out the extraneous debris of facts that would gum up its dramatic narrative. “There is this thing called the tyranny of fact,” he said. “But as we get to modern times, it gets harder to avoid.”

Mr. Morgan declined to respond to the criticisms, though he told The New York Times this month that he was mindful that this season would be held to closer scrutiny. The producers mined the copious news reports of the period, as well as biographies of Charles and Diana, which contained firsthand accounts of their misbegotten union.

What is depicted in the family’s private moments, however, is “an act of creative imagination,” Mr. Morgan has said.

Behind the frustration with “The Crown” is a recognition that, right or wrong, its version of the royal family is likely to serve as the go-to narrative for a generation of viewers, particularly young ones, who do not remember the 1980s, let alone the more distant events covered in earlier seasons.

“They’ll watch it and think this is the way it was,” said Dickie Arbiter, who served as a press secretary to the queen from 1988 to 2000. He took issue with parts of the plot, including a scene in which aides to Charles question Diana about whether she is mentally stable enough to travel alone to New York City.

“I was actually at that meeting,” Mr. Arbiter said. “No courtier would ever say that in a million years.”

The biggest problem, said Penny Junor, who has written biographies of Charles, Diana and Mrs. Thatcher, is that “The Crown” is a prodigiously effective piece of entertainment. That, she says, poses a particular threat to Charles, who arguably comes off worst in the series and who is likely to ascend the throne before memories of his grim, hunched portrayal have completely faded.

“It is wonderful television,” Ms. Junor said. “It is beautifully acted — the mannerisms are perfect. But it is fiction, and it is very destructive.”

Royal Skulduggery and Palace Intrigue

‘The Crown’ Has Had Its Scandals, but There’s Nothing Like DianaNov. 12, 2020

Companies Abandon Prince Andrew After Calamitous Epstein InterviewNov. 19, 2019

Prince Andrew’s Friendship With Epstein Joins a List of Royal ScandalsNov. 21, 2019

Harry and Meghan’s Hard ExitJan. 19, 2020

Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, Shares Her Miscarriage GriefNov. 25, 2020

Mark Landler is the London bureau chief. In 27 years at The Times, he has been bureau chief in Hong Kong and Frankfurt, White House correspondent, diplomatic correspondent, European economic correspondent, and a business reporter in New York.  @MarkLandler

A version of this article appears in print on Nov. 27, 2020, Section A, Page 12 of the New York edition with the headline: ‘Nonsense’: Witnesses to the Actual Events of ‘The Crown’ Have Some Criticisms.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/26/world/europe/Crown-Royals-Fact-Fiction.html