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96thdayofrage · 4 years ago

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Even beyond the subject matter—a long-unsolved lynching of a Black man in Georgia—Wesley Lowery’s recent story in GQ was jarring. The July feature has the hallmarks of classic true crime: the ambitious investigator, the zealous prosecutor, the family that would not let the case be forgotten. It’s a great story, squarely in the vein of other cold case classics, including Pamela Colloff’s “Unholy Act,” Matthew McGough’s “The Lazarus File,” and Robert Kolker’s “A Serial Killer in Common.” And yet it is, in one profound way, extremely unusual. Lowery, a Pulitzer Prize winner, is Black. And the true crime genre is very, very white.

True crime is, relatively speaking, small. None of the Big Five book publishers bothers with a dedicated imprint. But the genre wields outsize cultural sway far beyond publishing, especially since the success of 2014’s “Serial” podcast—about the highly contested homicide conviction of Adnan Syed in the 1999 murder of Hae Min Lee in Baltimore County, Maryland—and HBO’s “The Jinx,” the 2015 docuseries about real estate heir Robert Durst and several homicides he is suspected of having committed. (Durst will stand trial for the December 2000 homicide of Susan Berman next year.) So it matters a great deal that most true crime focuses on white police officers and detectives, white victims, and white prosecutors working to avenge them—aimed, said Lowery, “at a presumed white audience.” He believes, rightly, that this is effectively a judgment about what constitutes a sympathetic victim.

I called Lowery not long ago to talk about that whiteness, which swamps the genre across books, magazines, newspapers, and podcasts—and how the color barrier has influenced Americans’ impression of crime itself.

Lowery noted that Samuel Little, perhaps one of the most prolific murderers in American history—he credits himself with 93 victims —remains relatively unknown. Serial killer-related content is extraordinarily popular among Americans; is it not unreasonable, Lowery wonders, to credit this ignorance to Little’s alleged victims—disproportionately Black women? Little’s confessions have been met with skepticism from some in law enforcement and journalism. Lowery said Little remaining under the cultural radar “speaks to the extent to which the subjective decisions that are made about what to portray in true crime is a financial decision, made based on what is presumed a white audience will care about.”

It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, and has been for many years. The racial disparity is hard to quantify, but it’s surely been evident for the last two decades, before which true crime was regarded as trash. During each of those years, Mystery Writers of America bestowed its Edgar Awards. Among the categories: Best Fact Crime. Five or six books are nominated each year.

In the last 20 years, few nonwhite writers have been nominated in the category, and none have won. (In 2018, the organization rescinded an achievement award to disgraced Central Park Five prosecutor Linda Fairstein.)

Journalist Sarah Weinman’s latest anthology, “Unspeakable Acts: True Tales of Crime, Murder, Deceit, and Obsession”—in which I have story—features only one nonwhite writer and no Black writers. Weinman is aware that this absence reflects the genre itself. “When pain and trauma is grist for the entertainment mill, certain stories are, still, valued over others,” she wrote in a July essay for BuzzFeed News.

The implications of that value judgment are staggering. Think about what it means to have white writers tell the world about crime that, most often, affects Black people—or that white editors get to choose what crime is worth a book, a feature, a podcast. Think about how this skews some people’s perception of what even constitutes a crime.

It’s hard to overstate how inaccurate and damaging the results and perceptions created by so much whiteness has been. Generations of readers have been led to believe that murder victims most often are women killed by men and that Black serial murderers are rare. Neither assertion is true. According to the FBI, the majority of homicide victims are men killed by other men, and the race of serial murderers is commensurate with the racial makeup of the U.S. as a whole.

The fallout extends beyond misperception into policy, and it has for decades. For example, as Rachel Monroe detailed in her 2019 book “Savage Appetites,” the rise of the victims’ rights movement, led by the mother of Sharon Tate—a white actress whose murder at the hands of Manson Family members has been documented ad nauseam—led directly to the rights of defendants being restricted. The severity of punishment is rarely even questioned. “[True crime] frames the justice system as inherently just, and it frames long prison sentences as something to aspire toward,” says journalist Rachelle Hampton. “It very much sets up a neat line between us—people who are not incarcerated—and them, people who are incarcerated.”

To this day, reporters enable law enforcement to spread misleading statistics—to suggest, with scant evidence, that major cities, including New York, are suffering through an unprecedented rise in crime. That, too, is false.

“We end up misrepresenting what the world actually looks like,” says Lowery.

Or as Jean Murley, author of “The Rise of True Crime,” puts it: “Modern true crime is almost a fantasy genre.”

How did this happen? And what, if anything, can we do about it?

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xtruss · 3 years ago

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Lindsey Graham, Reverse Ferret: How John McCain's Spaniel Became Trump's Poodle

— Sidney Blumenthal

On Monday, the senator who praised Hillary and helped get the Steele dossier to the FBI will preside over a hearing for Amy Coney Barrett, a nominee to tilt the supreme court right for years to come. His is a quintessential Washington tale

Lindsey Graham, chairman of the Senate judiciary committee, listens during a hearing on Capitol Hill. Photograph: REX/Shutterstock

Sunday 11 October 2020

That Lindsey Graham would become Donald Trump’s poodle was not a tale (or tail) foretold. But it has landed him in the dogfight of his life for re-election to his Senate seat in South Carolina, challenged by a relentless and capable Democratic candidate, Jaime Harrison, who methodically chased Graham around the ring in their debate, repeatedly jabbing him as a hypocrite, until he struck him with a haymaker, ending the verbal fisticuffs with a TKO: “Be a man.”

Bruised and battered, Graham retreated to his corner, Sean Hannity’s show on Fox News, to beg: “I’m getting overwhelmed … help me, they’re killing me money-wise. Help me.”

Graham has climbed the greasy pole within the Senate, to a position that historically has been rewarded by his state with a lifetime tenure. He succeeded to the seat that Strom Thurmond held for 48 years before he died at 100. From Graham’s chairmanship of the Senate judiciary committee he has taken up the defense of Trump, to unmask the dastardly conspiracy of “Obamagate” and to handle the confirmation of a justice on the supreme court, to pack it with a conservative majority for a generation to come. But just at this consummate moment of his career, events have conspired to dissolve his facade and expose his flagrant hypocrisy. His presumed strength has turned into his vulnerability. Worse, in Washington, where the press has treated him for more than 20 years like the genial star of the comedy club, he has become an object of ridicule.

In British political discourse, a figure like Graham would be described with the seemingly enigmatic phrase of “reverse ferret”, applied to a politician who takes a dramatic and often contorted U-turn. According to the classic work Lying, by Sissela Bok, the word “hypocrisy” has its origins in Greek theater, as the slanted reply of an actor to the action on the stage. “Its present meaning is: the assumption of a false appearance of virtue or goodness, with dissimulation of real characters or inclinations.” The hypocrite deceives in order to be perceived as virtuous. His dishonesty is in the service of an image of honesty.

“Graham Has Always Been More Than Complicit with Liars Like Trump, Not Simply as an Enabler”

Unlike Trump, Graham is not a pathological liar, but his mendacity fits the category of “duping delight” as defined by Bok: “It evokes the excitement, allure, challenge that lying can involve.” For Graham, it’s the thrill of the illicit done in public, creating a suspension of disbelief, the skill of the actor. Graham has always been more than complicit with liars like Trump, not simply as an enabler. From the beginning, well before Trump, he has advanced his career through hypocrisy as his chief means of ambition, knowingly engaging in deceit, adopting a false attitude to win praise and applause as a truth-teller.

The political tasks Trump has delegated to Graham, intended as rescue operations at the close of the presidential campaign, have become showcases for how Graham’s hypocrisy threatens his political life. He squirms in the spotlight he has sought.

On 30 September, Graham called former FBI director James Comey before the judiciary committee as a witness, to somehow prove the “Obamagate” conspiracy theory. According to that inverted theory, the intelligence community’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election to assist Trump was really a plot against Trump. Graham sprayed out multiple falsehoods and distortions to create the impression of a vast conspiracy. One part had already been investigated by the intelligence community inspector general and almost all of it dismissed as untrue. Another piece of the theory, that Hillary Clinton’s campaign contrived the entire story about Trump and Russia to distract from her emails and somehow manipulated the intelligence community, had already been discredited as Russian disinformation.

Graham bore down on Comey, demanding answers about “Hillary Clinton’s approval of a plan concerning US presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russian hackers hampering US elections as a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server”. To which Comey replied, deadpan: “That doesn’t ring any bells with me.” Graham excitedly harassed him. “Let’s just end with this, you get this inquiry from the intelligence committee to look at the Clinton campaign basically trying to create a distraction, accusing Trump of being a Russian agent or a Russian stooge or whatever to distract from her email server problems …”

“I’m sorry, senator,” Comey replied. “Is there a question?”

Graham and Trump during a campaign rally at the North Charleston Coliseum, in February. Photograph: Al Drago/EPA

Graham’s nonsense was not particularly helpful in laying the publicity groundwork for the potential October surprise of a report from John Durham, the US attorney from Connecticut, named by the attorney general, William Barr, as a special prosecutor to investigate the alleged anti-Trump plot. To Trump’s fury, Barr leaked that the report would not be forthcoming before the election. The planned explosion was a fizzle. “Unless Bill Barr indicts these people for crimes,” Trump railed on 8 October, “the greatest political crime in the history of our country, then we’re going to get little satisfaction unless I win and we’ll just have to go, because I won’t forget it.” That revenge might encompass Lindsey Graham, too, for failing to execute the smear.

On the matter of how the FBI obtained the notorious dossier on Trump’s Russian connections, written by former MI6 officer Christopher Steele. Graham’s manufactured zealotry should have been more earnestly directed toward a cross-examination of himself. The facts are that in late 2016, after Trump’s election, John McCain, Graham’s mentor, disturbed at what he had heard about Trump’s Russian ties, sent an aide, David Kramer, a Russia expert, to London to retrieve the dossier from Steele. In March 2019, after McCain’s death, Trump trashed McCain, saying, “I’m not a fan” and explaining that McCain was the one who gave the dossier to the FBI for “very evil purposes”. But there was an additional subplot. McCain did not act alone.

He asked Graham what he should do with the damaging information. “And I told him,” Graham recounted to reporters, “the only thing I knew to do with it, it could be a bunch of garbage, it could be true, who knows? Turn it over to somebody whose job it is to find these things out, and John McCain acted appropriately.”

That bit of Graham’s own history was never mentioned at his own hearing. He seemed a caricature of the lyrics of Bob Dylan’s Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues:

“Well, I fin’ly started thinkin’ straight

When I run outa things to investigate

Couldn’t imagine doin’ anything else

So now I’m sittin’ home investigatin’ myself!

Hope I don’t find out anything.”

Graham’s risible hypocrisy on “Obamagate”, however, has been overshadowed by a more spectacular case. In 2016, Graham followed the lockstep order of Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate majority leader, to deny Barack Obama’s nominee to the supreme court, federal judge Merrick Garland, a hearing and committee vote, on the invented doctrine that a president should not be permitted to propose a justice in his last year in office.

“He’s a very nice man,” said Graham about Garland, “… very honest, very capable judge.” But, no dice.

Graham elevated McConnell’s raw cynicism into a constitutional principle. “I want you to use my words against me,” he said. “If there’s a Republican president in 2016 and a vacancy occurs in the last year of the first term, you can say Lindsey O Graham said, ‘Let’s let the next president, whoever it might be, make that nomination.’ And you could use my words against me, and you’d be absolutely right.”

In 2018, with Trump in office, Graham underscored his self-incriminating pledge. He chose his favored venue of the Atlantic festival, where his transfixing hayseed act has been a perennial marquee attraction.

“Now, I’ll tell you this,” he said, pointing his finger. “This may make you feel better, but I really don’t care. If an opening comes in the last year of President Trump’s term and the primary process has started, we’ll wait till the next election.”

“You’re on the record,” his interlocutor, Jeffrey Goldberg, editor of the Atlantic, reminded him.

“Hold the tape,” said Graham. Then, he blurted out a non-sequitur to suggest his next topic and broad expertise: “North Korea.” The audience burst into laughter. (Now, the Never Trumper Lincoln Project is running an ad featuring that tape in an endless feedback loop.)

“Graham’s Antic Hypocrisy Seems Confounding to Some Who Previously Admired Him When He Was a Camp Follower of McCain”

Graham’s antic hypocrisy seems confounding to some who previously admired him when he was a camp follower of McCain’s anti-Putin foreign policy. “Why?” beseeches Anne Applebaum, a former neoconservative turned Never Trumper, about Graham’s transmogrification into complicit Trump enabler, comparing his turn to collaborators with Nazi and communist regimes.

“In this negative sense, collaborator is closely related to another set of words: collusion, complicity, connivance. This negative meaning gained currency during the second world war, when it was widely used to describe Europeans who cooperated with Nazi occupiers. At base, the ugly meaning of collaborator carries an implication of treason: betrayal of one’s nation, of one’s ideology, of one’s morality, of one’s values.”

But Graham did not set out to become a collaborator and traitor when he announced his candidacy in June 2015 for the Republican nomination for president. He pledged he would restore Ronald Reagan’s cold war approach of “Peace Through Strength” and excoriated “Obama/Clinton policies” for weakness against our “enemies”. He was running as a kind of proxy for McCain. Like nearly everything else in his political career, his pose wound up becoming a setup for hypocrisy.

By the fall of 2015, Graham told every reporter whose ear he could bend that he would lay his life on the line to prevent “nutjob” and “jackass” Donald Trump from seizing the nomination. Graham’s campaign had failed to spark the slightest interest. His poll ratings could not break 1%. In the early debates he was demoted to what he called “the kids’ table”, excluded from the big boys’ main stage, and after registering invisibility in a qualifying poll was dropped even from there. Humiliated and broke, he desperately needed to sustain his status in the capital. But he still had access to the social network of Washington journalists, his base constituency, always available to be entertained with his private animadversions of other politicians.

Graham with Jim Gilmore, Rick Perry and Bobby Jindal at a ‘kids’ table’ debate in Cleveland in August 2015. Photograph: Brian Snyder/Reuters

Graham quickly found a relevant role that allowed him to hold the attention he craved: the anti-Trump whisperer. He had learned the lesson long ago when he gained entrée to the Washington press corps as an inside dopester to feed the inside dopesters. With his round boyish face, short height and restless gestures he developed a comedic routine in which he portrayed himself as an innocent who had just stepped out of a brothel to tell us with bug-eyed astonishment about the scenes of debauchery he had somehow stumbled across. To perfect his Huckleberry Finn imitation, one off-kilter wisecrack after another, he always finishes with a trademark darting look of complicit knowing and a smile to seal approval.

As reporters related, during Graham’s anti-Trump phase, his hilarious outtakes described Trump as the Beast threatening western civilization that he, Lindsey Graham, would single-handedly destroy, St George against the dragon. On and on he went, as usual, eliciting laughter, attention and nodding heads, though not votes.

Graham’s public denunciations of Trump went from grim to grimmer. “Go to hell,” he said in March 2016. “I think his campaign’s built on xenophobia, race-bating and religious bigotry.” He soon raised the stakes: “What I see is a demagogue, somebody that has solutions that will never work, that is playing on people’s prejudices and dark side of politics.” When Trump stated in April 2016 that he would deal with Putin as a reasonable partner, Graham was apoplectic. He called Trump’s statement “unnerving,” “pathetic” and “scary”. “Our enemies will enjoy this; our friends have got to be scared to death. It’s nonsensical, it makes no sense. He has no understanding of the world and the role we play.” In May, he tweeted: “If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed … and we will deserve it.” In June, after Trump had wrapped up the primaries, he said: “I would like to support our nominee, I just can’t.”

Graham’s close association with McCain was the critical event in his makeover. Graham was an air force lawyer who was never a top gun but McCain was the genuine article: a war hero, the preeminent voice of the Republican party for a hardline foreign policy, especially toward Putin’s Russia, and a presidential nominee.

Even before his tagging after McCain, Graham demonstrated a penchant for trailing strong men. In the House of Representatives, elected in the Republican wave of 1994, Graham first attached himself to Newt Gingrich, the radical reactionary speaker who early perfected the toxic politics of polarization. But Gingrich’s erratic character, a prefiguring of Trump, triggered an internal revolt. Graham was one of the rebels who conspired against Gingrich for the crime of being too moderate toward Bill Clinton. Toppling Gingrich, and doing the bidding of the ruthless and corrupt majority leader Tom DeLay, Graham advanced as a House manager in the impeachment, where he performed a histrionic role running up the scales to a high pitch.

“You know, where I come from, any man calling a woman at 2am is up to no good,” he said.

I encountered Graham in his impeachment phase when I was subpoenaed as a witness in the Senate trial. When I entered the Senate hearing room to be questioned, Graham shook my hand and said, “If there’s anyone here who wants to be here less than you, it’s me. That’s right, I’m, we’re, on the wrong side of history.” Graham’s shambolic performance irritated the Republican “judge”, Senator Arlen Spector, a former prosecutor, who repeatedly admonished him. Finally, Spector chided Graham: “We’re still looking for that laser.” Graham quickly ended and bounded over to me to shake hands and say: “Listen, when this is over, when you’re going to introduce a patients’ bill of rights, would you let me be the co-sponsor?” He shook the hand of my wife, Jackie, saying: “I’m sorry. I just don’t know what to say.”

Sometime later, I ran into a friend of Graham’s, Representative Mary Bono, Sonny’s widow, a Republican from California, who cheerfully told me: “Lindsey sure had a good time making fun of your name.” Was Graham an anti-Semite, as she implied? Of course not. He was play-acting, all just in “fun”.

Graham’s impeachment frolics, however, left a residue of a future hypocrisy. In 1999, he argued: “In every trial that there has ever been in the Senate regarding impeachment, witnesses were called.” But in the impeachment trial of Donald Trump, Graham was in the forefront insisting that witnesses, especially former national security adviser John Bolton, not be called. “If we seek witnesses, then we’re going to throw the country into chaos,” he said. Graham’s contradiction was symmetrical to his reverse ferret on supreme court appointments. The running thread of his consistency is his hypocrisy from one side of the Capitol to another.

Elected to the Senate in 2002, in his quest for a more serious persona, Graham fastened himself to McCain. “Lindsey for some reason had sort of a man-crush on John McCain,” said his friend, Senator Steve Largent, Republican of Oklahoma. One southern senator confided to me that he and a number of his colleagues had dubbed Graham “Little Brother”. Graham trotted after the larger than life McCain like a spaniel. In McCain’s presence, “Little Brother” tried to puff himself up as big, too. But the senator I spoke with dismissively waved him away as a chronic self-aggrandizer and hypocrite, and flicked away Graham’s foreign policy talk as aspirational clichés.

Hillary Clinton was then a senator from New York, and at her initiative and to his initial surprise she approached Graham, and they wound up co-sponsoring healthcare legislation for members of the national guard. She was another bigger and stronger figure. He had a kind of crush on her, too. In 2006, he wrote an article for Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People issue to praise her as a “smart, prepared, serious senator”, with whom he had found “common ground”.

Most importantly, Hillary was a friend of McCain, augmenting the looming shadow. Together they all traveled abroad on congressional trips, when Hillary and McCain famously closed down bars with shots of vodka. Graham, strictly the “Little Brother”, claimed he abjured the hard stuff. “I was drinking water, pretending it was vodka,” he said. “I had to go to the bathroom, before they stopped drinking.” But one of those present told me he would sometimes nurse a glass of white wine. His teetotaling was a little white lie – a sauvignon blanc lie.

“When Hillary Became Secretary of State, Graham Was Effusive in His Praise.”

When Hillary became secretary of state, Graham was effusive in his praise. In 2012, he stated she was “a good role model, one of the most effective secretary of states [sic], greatest ambassadors for the American people that I have known in my lifetime” and “extremely well-respected throughout the world, handles herself in a very classy way, and has a work ethic second to none”.

But, preparing for his campaign for the Republican nomination, Graham blamed her for the killing of the US ambassador to Libya in a terrorist attack at Benghazi. “Hillary Clinton got away with murder in my view,” he said.

Graham’s brief presidential campaign in 2016 was like the proverbial tree in the forest that no one heard fall. Getting out, his endorsement of Jeb Bush was weightless. After Bush disappeared, Graham moved down the food chain to endorse Ted Cruz. After Cruz washed out, he was left face-to-face with the Beast. Graham gave Hillary a shout-out. “Hillary,” he said, about Middle East policy, “If you get to be president, I’ll help you where I can.” Still the jokester, he wished above all to be seen as a wise man. He was positioning himself to be Hillary’s “Little Brother”. But after Trump won he would befriend the Beast. Graham decided he was not a dragon slayer, after all.

John McCain and Graham at Sather Air Base in Baghdad, March 2008. Photograph: Reuters

“Little Brother” justified his Trump whispering as a grown-up offering his wisdom to guide the naïve newcomer. But it was more than half an excuse for being in the room where it supposedly happens, except in Trump’s room nobody but Trump matters. Trump enabled Graham to think of himself as one of the grown-ups, huddling with the other adults in the room, cheek by jowl with John Kelly and James Mattis, while they enabled Trump. “I think Lindsey feels a little bit like the adult in the room, speaking with the president,” Steve Largent explained. “[T]here’s something about, I’m not going to say innocence, but the president’s affability as well as his naïveté that Lindsey is drawn to.”

Graham’s relationship with Trump flourished from the date McCain was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. Basking in Trump’s presence, Graham happily demeaned himself. Trump, he said, “beat me like a dog” in the 2016 primaries. Before a Republican gathering, he demanded unquestioning loyalty. “To every Republican, if you don’t stand behind this president, we’re not going to stand behind you,” he said. Graham argued that unstinting support for Trump extended beyond any policy issue but required embrace of Trump’s view of himself as a victim of his host of enemies. “It’s not just about a wall. It’s about him being treated different than any other president.”

“The Greatest Pressure on Graham Was That Trump Hated McCain.”

Graham confessed to Mark Leibovich of the New York Times it has all been just an act. “This,” he said, “is to try to be relevant.” How could anyone blame a self-professed hypocrite for his hypocrisy? But he and Trump were also secret sharers as entertainers, playing on hypocrisy. “The point with Trump is,” Graham said, “he’s in on the joke.” But there was something even more alluring. “I have never been called this much by a president in my life. It’s weird, and it’s flattering, and it creates some opportunity. It also creates some pressure.”

The greatest pressure on Graham was that Trump hated McCain. “He lost, so I never liked him as much after that, because I don’t like losers,” Trump said. He went on to denigrate McCain’s captivity as a prisoner of war and torture by the North Vietnamese: “He’s not a war hero. He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured.”

“I don’t like what he says about John McCain,” Graham shrugged. “But when we play golf, it’s fun.” He was moving on.

Graham has seemingly shed several skins, but that’s the illusion of the reflected light of the larger figures he has sought out. Contrary to those who measure his character only from his distance from McCain to Trump, he has evolved from hypocrisy to hypocrisy while remaining remarkably the same underlying person he was as an attention-seeking little boy. In 2015, he self-published a short memoir about his early life. He described spending much of his time in the bar his father owned, the Sanitary Café, trying to entertain the white working-class men who frequented it.

“But when the place started to fill in and liven up, I would get my act going,” he wrote. “I would strut around the place, sometimes dressed as a cowboy – hat, vest and plastic six shooters. I might get up on the bar and walk up and down it while talking to folks. When customers went to the restroom, I might steal their beer and chug it. I might smoke their cigarette, too, if they left it burning in the ashtray. Those were antics that earned me the nickname, ‘Stinkball’, which everyone in the bar except my parents called me.”

Graham’s autobiography movingly recounts the illnesses and deaths of his mother and father from cancer. He ends his book as a Republican candidate winning his seat in the South Carolina state legislature at the start of his political career. It makes him wish his parents could have seen his triumph.

Trump, Graham, North Carolina, March 2020. Photograph: Carlos Barría/Reuters

On 28 July 2017, John McCain, in his last act of bravery, strode to the well of the Senate and turned his thumb down to cast the deciding vote against the Republican bill to replace the Affordable Care Act. Graham voted the other way. He had crusaded for years to repeal Obamacare. Yet the ACA would have offered early detection and treatment of the kind of cancers that killed his parents. McCain died a year later.

Graham gave one of the eulogies at the memorial service at the National Cathedral. Trump did not attend. When McCain announced days before his death he was refusing further medical help, Trump alone among prominent officials in Washington had not sent well wishes. Out in the audience sat his daughter and son-in-law, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner. Graham had arranged to get them tickets to the funeral.

“Hold the tape. North Korea.” (Laughter)

— Sidney Blumenthal, former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth

— This article was amended on 12 October 2020. An earlier version misidentified the Atlantic Festival, where Graham made his remarks about a late-term supreme court confirmation, as the “Aspen Ideas Festival”.

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reporterbumble561 · 3 years ago

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Jdate Reddit

Back in the day, Farrah Abraham was a nice Christian high school girl from Council Bluffs, Iowa. Like any 16 year old, she had hopes and aspirations – her plan was to go into modeling after graduation. All those dreams came crashing down when she found herself pregnant. And it got even better when the baby’s father Derek Underwood died in a tragic car crash two months before she gave birth. So much drama right? Just perfect for the voyeuristic shlockmeisters at MTV Networks who found a perfect cast member for their new “Reality” show – 16 and Pregnant – which followed the stories of pregnant teenage girls in high school dealing with the hardships of teenage pregnancy. Duh. That appearance provided Farrah with her next gig, another MTV waste of life titled Teen Mom – which followed the lives of Farrah and three other girls from the first season of 16 and Pregnant as they navigated their first years of motherhood.

After spending so much time in the spotlight – Teen Mom regularly pulled upward of 3-5 million viewers an episode – Farrah’s life and career took a standard trajectory – She tried to pitch her own spin-off reality series to follow her journey after culinary school as an aspiring chef, but the show never really made it to production. Farrah also launched her own brand of pasta sauce called Mom & Me Premium Italian Hot Pepper Sauce, wrote a book My Teenage Dream Ended and released several music singles. etc. But I guess it still wasn’t enough. Still missing from her life was that special someone, a partner who could keep up with the successful single parent media machine that was Farrah. So what’s a girl to do? Go on JDate of course, where one can find successful single men of the mosaic persuasion known to take good care of their women. Her JDate profile read:

On JDate, however, the lowest monthly cost you can get is $29.99 ( if you subscribe for six full months with a single payment of $179.94). There is also an in-between, three-month subscription plan that comes at $44.99/month and is billed in a single payment of $134.97. Users can pay over mobile phones, PayPal, and of course, a credit card. Click/tap Yes to confirm. To unblock a member: Click/tap on your small Profile Photo at the top of the page, or the horizontal menu lines ( ☰) if using the app. Select Account Settings, and then Block List. Click/tap on the Display Name for the desired member. Click/tap Yes to confirm. If you’ve received inappropriate. Founded in 1997, Jdate is part of Spark Networks. According to the developers, it was the first dating site for single and unmarried Jews. Using it, people create families and seek serious relationships. This app has been the undisputed leader in the number of. JDate is available for smartphones thanks to a downloadable app that effectively scales down the interface for touchscreen, while also preserving all important features. Signing up with JDate is entirely cost-free, but in order to send messages a monthly, quarterly or semi-annual subscription to gold membership is a must.

I’m looking for a man to be my partner in crime, who is successful like me, and has style. If you can give a woman everything she deserves and you want the same in exchange, message me. You won’t regret it. I’m looking for a man that is top of the line; I guess I’m picky. I want a man who is happy, supportive, works hard, is successful, can stay in but can also go out, is active, outgoing, easygoing, likes children and dogs, can be serious, but knows when to have fun and is a romantic.

This was reported in September of 2011. By early December of that year, Farrah had snagged herself a handsome and well to do Jewish man 14 years her senior – 34 year old Marcel Kaminstein, a jewelry entrepreneur. Things were looking good, initial reports were rosy and Kaminstein was getting along well with Farrah’s daughter. So now we know the secret to success on JDate! Be an ambitious 20 year old hot single Mom willing to date an older man! Lack of Jewishness not a problem, fatties needn’t apply.

Sadly by New years, 2012 the relationship had gone south and Kaminstein and Abraham had called it quits – amicably. Now what!? There were a couple of options on the table – but none had the potential for fame that she enjoyed during Teen Mom. Until Farrah met another Jewish man, one James Deen, an adult video entertainer who had starred in over 1,300 porn flicks. Did she meet the HEEB 100 member on JDate? We don’t know. Did they really date or was he merely a hired gun for Farrah’s next publicity stunt? Well, that relationship did not last long either amid allegations that Deen mistreated Farrah and had a small wiener. Yes that relationship ended acrimoniously but not before Deen and Farrah filmed a sex tape. Farrah claimed she shot the professionally produced tape as a keepsake – like a wedding video – for her own use: “I wanted my own personal video made and photos taken for myself, when I am older I will have my best year to look back on. I’m happy to see my 21st year be done. I’ve learned a lot.”

Then Farrah claimed that the tape had been leaked and that she had no choice but to start shopping it around. She finally made a deal with adult film juggernaut Vivid Videos. The movie, “Farrah Superstar: Backdoor Teen Mom,” will be released in mid May and Farrah got nearly $1 million for the rights. Just to be clear, the “backdoor” reference does not refer to an actual door. And also the whole lost sex tape thing was a ruse. Deen’s mistreatment was merely him spilling the beans on the whole “story” because he claimed he cannot lie. The plan was always to release the sex tape as a play for further fame and fortune à la Kim Kardashian. Shocker. The sex tape can now be viewed all over the internet, just like the Kardashian tape.

And what have we learned from all of this boys and girls? If you can’t find ultimate happiness on JDate, like so many others before you, uhm, you can always release a sex tape. Also everything about this post is total and complete trash. I’m sorry. But that’s just life in the big city. Best of luck to Farrah and her daughter. As for James Deen, he is costarring with Lindsay Lohan in the upcoming film “The Canyons” directed by Paul Schrader and written by Brett Easton-Ellis.

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cutsliceddiced · 5 years ago

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New top story from Time: These Baltimore Residents Say Trump’s ‘Rodent’ Tweets Ring True. They Live in Homes Owned by Jared Kushner’s Family

BALTIMORE (AP) — Davon Jones doesn’t have to look far to see the irony in President Donald Trump’s tweets that Baltimore is a “rat and rodent infested mess.” His apartment owned by the president’s son-in-law has been invaded by mice since he moved in a year ago. “I don’t know how they come in,” Jones says. “Every time I catch them, they come right back.”

Jared Kushner’s family real estate firm owns thousands of apartments and townhomes in the Baltimore area, and some have been criticized for the same kind of disrepair and neglect that the president has accused local leaders of failing to address. Residents have complained about mold, bedbugs, leaks and, yes, mice — plenty of mice. And they say management appears in no hurry to fix the problems.

“They don’t care,” says Dezmond James, who says he has spotted as many as three mice a week since he moved in to the Commons at White Marsh in suburban Middle River four years ago.

Julio Cortez—APMice droppings are seen near a mouse trap and a glue trap in the kitchen of Davon Jones’ residence at the Commons at White Marsh apartments, Tuesday, July 30, 2019, in Baltimore. The apartment complex is owned by Jared Kushner, son-in-law of President Donald Trump, who days earlier vilified Congressman Elijah Cummings’ majority-black Baltimore district as a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess” where “no human being would want to live.”

James says he sees a massive contradiction in Trump’s much-publicized tweets laying the blame for Baltimore’s poverty, crime and rodent problems on frequent antagonist Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings. Trump, he said, should look more at what he — and specifically Kushner — could do about it. “His son-in-law owns all of this — then he can fix it. I’m pretty sure he has a lot of money,” says James, who is studying to be a medical assistant. “That’s kind of weird that you want to talk trash. … If you want to make improvements, you can make improvements.”

Conditions got so bad two years ago that the Baltimore County government issued a release showing the Kushner Cos. had violated housing codes more than 200 times in just 10 months and only moved to fix the problems after being threatened with fines. “I had black mold in my cabinets. I called them, I called them, I called them. And they never did anything,” says Simone Ryer who moved out Whispering Woods in Middle River two years ago. “That was more than enough for me to leave.”

In a statement, the Kushner Cos. said it was proud of its Baltimore-area apartments and has worked to maintain a “high quality residential experience for our tenants” by investing “substantial amounts” in upkeep.

A website for the Commons at White Marsh boasts of “amenities that amaze,” but many of the 181 comments posted by residents at the review site apartmentratings.com complain of rats, mold, bedbugs, roaches and leaks. The reviews say management is generally unresponsive.

A 2017 report by the New York Times and ProPublica about residents at Kushner-owned developments echoed many of those online complaints, with one woman saying she found a mouse on her 12-year-old child’s bed. The Kushner Cos. told the Times at the time that it is had spent $10 million on its properties, but their age means issues can still arise. A Baltimore Sun story the same year found the Kushner Cos. used the courts to arrest tenants late on rent more than any other landlord in the state.

And a lawsuit seeking class-action status for residents alleges Westminster Management, the Kushner subsidiary that oversees rental properties in Maryland and other states, often charges tenants illegal and excessive fees that keeps them in constant fear of eviction and guessing what they owe. Westminster has said it has broken no laws and denies the charges.

Jared Kushner took in $3.1 million from Westminster in the past two years, according to financial disclosure reports he filed with the federal government. He stepped down as CEO of parent company Kushner Cos. when he and his wife, Ivanka Trump, joined the White House as senior advisers to the president, but he still retains a financial interest and draws money from many of its operations.

Julio Cortez—APCarrie Newson watches television in the dining area inside her home at the Dutch Village apartments, Tuesday, July 30, 2019, in Baltimore. Newson has complained to management about mice and mold in her home but the issues have yet to be fixed. The apartment complex is owned by Jared Kushner, son-in-law of President Donald Trump.

At the Kushners’ Dutch Village community in Baltimore, Ronald Newson says his 86-year-old mother, Carrie, has been asking maintenance staff for nearly a year to patch a hole in her ceiling from a leak on the second floor, and that someone has to come to kill all the mice she’s been living with. As a stopgap measure, she jammed the leg of a chair against a hole in the corner of her living room, but they kept coming out anyway. They also come from behind her stove.

“It takes them a long time to get repairs done,” the son said. He suggested that Trump, instead of blaming Cummings for the city’s problems, should look to landlords like Kushner, too.

“He talks about everyone but his son-in-law.”

via https://cutslicedanddiced.wordpress.com/2018/01/24/how-to-prevent-food-from-going-to-waste

#Time #top stories #IFTTT #news

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plusorminuscongress · 5 years ago

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New story in Politics from Time: These Baltimore Residents Say Trump’s ‘Rodent’ Tweets Ring True. They Live in Homes Owned by Jared Kushner’s Family

“They don’t care,” says Dezmond James, who says he has spotted as many as three mice a week since he moved in to the Commons at White Marsh in suburban Middle River four years ago.

“It takes them a long time to get repairs done,” the son said. He suggested that Trump, instead of blaming Cummings for the city’s problems, should look to landlords like Kushner, too.

“He talks about everyone but his son-in-law.”

By REGINA GARCIA CANO and BERNARD CONDON on July 31, 2019 at 07:24AM

#Time #politics #PlusOrMinusCongress #±Congress #Indega±#IndegaPlusOrMinus #TimeMag #TimeMagazine

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caveartfair · 6 years ago

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At the Venice Biennale, Artists Create Their Own Truths in the Era of “Fake News”

Installation view of Cyprien Gaillard, L’Ange du foyer (Vierte Fassung), 2019, at the 58th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, “May You Live In Interesting Times,” 2019. © Cyprien Gaillard. Courtesy of Sprüth Magers.

All art is fake news: imaginative, subjective, and constructed. If artists use the real world as raw material, their creations are only inventive interpretations of experience. That’s a good thing, particularly if we’re looking for new perspectives or novel ways to consider the increasingly confusing information surrounding us. As curator Ralph Rugoff noted at Wednesday’s press preview for the 58th edition of the International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, we’re living in a world of polarized discourse and opposing parties that refer to different facts.

Rugoff titled his show (which extends across two venues: the Arsenale and the Giardini) “May You Live in Interesting Times” after a proverb of apocryphal origins. Warning against the rise of fascism in the late 1930s, British politician Sir Austen Chamberlain invoked the phrase, calling it a Chinese curse. Turns out, the Chinese never used it. In Rugoff’s show, the most exciting works revel in their own fictions—and ultimately expose contemporary truths.

Installation view of Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster and Joi Bittle, Cosmorama, 2019, at the 58th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, “May You Live In Interesting Times,” 2019. Photo © Andrea Rossetti. Courtesy of the artists; 303 Gallery, New York; Corvi-Mora, London; Esther Schipper, Berlin.

Kahlil Joseph’s contribution, BLKNWS (2018–present), most explicitly considers the media. Across two screens, the artist plays his own version of a newscast aimed at the black community. It features social-media snippets, talking heads, and banners that tell major and minor stories of contemporary life. I listened to a segment on Lil Miquela, the CGI character with a massive Instagram following. Curator Helen Molesworth and actress Amandla Stenberg serve as news anchors. If the pair aren’t exactly known as hard-hitting reporters, they’re much more fun to watch.

It’s not just the news networks that are subject to manipulation these days, but our photojournalism, too. Rosemarie Trockel’s grid of 22 digitally altered photographs appear, at first, to be among the show’s tamer works: austere, black-and-white, and very German. Look closer, though, and you’ll see a news photograph of a seahorse carrying a cotton swab; a long rod wrapped with massive chains emerging from a limousine window; and a man in a white button-down with a mask over his mouth and stains on his chest. Mystery, wry humor, and the uncanny pervade the series.

Installation view of Rosemarie Trockel, CLUSTER – One Eye Too Many, 2019, at the 58th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, “May You Live In Interesting Times,” 2019. Photo by Italo Rondinella. Courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia.

Rugoff argues that even the more formal works can embrace artifice. Carol Bove’s masterful sculptures are simple monochromatic shapes. Bather (2019) looks like a massive, light-pink twist of tubing. Yet each crease and bend in the material creates a dramatic interplay of light and shadow on the intricate surface. The fun, bubblegum hue belies the significant heft of the stainless steel beneath the paint. Bove’s title situates the work within a long tradition of Western art history, likening the structure to a monumental nude body. With a subtle but ingenious feminist touch, Bove reclaims the male gaze for her own abstract practice. If Bove’s work nudges at issues of gender, three photographers use their medium to generate entirely new selves. The idea of the doppelgänger, or a double, is particularly strong throughout these works.

At the Arsenale, Martine Gutierrez shows her “Body En Thrall” series, which presents her in a variety of poses that riff on fashion photo shoots. She emerges from a pool at a man’s feet, wears a bikini with melons filling her bra cups, and serves water by a poolside populated with mannequins. In her colorful “Demons” series at the Giardini, Gutierrez depicts herself as tzitzimimes, or Aztec deities. The artist styles herself under bold flowers, beadings, elaborate headpieces, and ornate jewelry. With a maximalist palette, she celebrates the queer, indigenous body and her own capacity for endless self-invention.

Martine Gutierrez, Body En Thrall, p120 from Indigenous Woman, 2018. © Martine Gutierrez. Courtesy of the artist and Ryan Lee Gallery, New York.

Martine Gutierrez, Demons, Chin ‘Demon of Lust,’ p93 from Indigneous Woman, 2018. © Martine Gutierrez. Courtesy of the artist and Ryan Lee Gallery, New York.

Zanele Muholi adopts a similar conceptual strategy, with an opposite aesthetic. She, too, takes myriad self-portraits in varying garb. Yet her black-and-white pictures favor stoicism over Gutierrez’s fun. Mari Katayama photographs herself surrounded by glittering clothing and her prosthetic limbs. Her three brightly painted legs recall Frida Kahlo’s gorgeously decorated corsets. Born with a congenital disorder, Katayama had to amputate her legs at nine years old. What others might assume is a setback or lack, Katayama turns into an opulent fairy tale. In one picture, she drapes herself with a shawl of beaded limbs as she sits on a floral patterned sofa. Staring with determination to the side of the frame, she exudes confidence and glamour. She’s clearly the author of her own story.

Many of the photographers in the show are more interested in fabulation than in their medium’s original, documentarian intents. In his 2017 series “Blackout,” Stan Douglas created an entire narrative about a New York City blackout that never actually happened. Solitaire (2017) is an overhead shot of a woman playing the eponymous card game in an elevator; Queue (2017) features a line of looters exiting a shop through a broken glass door. While Douglas’s blackout may be fake, the work approximates the realities of American urban living—namely, its simultaneous sense of isolation and camaraderie, and its tendency toward chaos and crime when public systems fail. Douglas has also created a new film, Doppelgänger (2019), which imagines a woman named Alice who submerges in a cold bath, doubles herself, and teleports one self onto an outer space mission.

Installation view of Zanele Muholi’s work at the 58th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, “May You Live In Interesting Times,” 2019. Photo by Italo Rondinella. Courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia.

Unlike Muholi, Katayama, Gutierrez, and Douglas’s character, not all artists want to double themselves. Danh Vo has painted over a series of mirrors throughout his installations in both the Arsenale and the Giardini, prohibiting self-reflections. A compelling, darkened room in the Giardini features these “paintings” alongside Yu Ji’s severed limb sculptures, made from cement. Cyprien Gaillard’s digital animation L’Ange du foyer (Vierte Fassung) (2019) plays in the center of the room. Sans screen, an angel-like figure merely projects into the shadow. Altogether, the artworks thematize presence and absence, materiality and immateriality, and what it means to have a “real” body or self. This room exemplifies one of Rugoff’s major strengths: making surprising connections between disparate artists, to moving effect.

Installation view of Danh Vo, All work 2019, at the 58th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, “May You Live In Interesting Times,” 2019. Photo by Andrea Avezzù. Courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia.

If these are all sophisticated ways for artists to dissimulate, Andreas Lolis takes an approach as old as ancient Greece. His trompe l’oeil sculptures resemble three trash bags, half a pizza box, and broken canvases. Lying just outside the entrance to the Giardini, they offer a cheeky beginning to the start of the show. It’s easy to overlook them: Their falseness asks us to consider the real difference between art and trash.

A full branch of Rugoff’s exhibition could be titled “Things That Look Like Other Things.” At the press preview, he noted a specific interest in work that falls “between our usual categories.” Michael Armitage’s paintings look like typical canvases, but are actually made on tree bark (Rugoff, helpfully, has mounted them on wood). While the artist takes inspiration from photojournalists covering the Kenyan election, his works are steeped in strangeness. They’re infused with ghostly outlined figures, a Fauvist palette, and human limbs that blend into the natural world: depictions of real conflict that merge into abstraction.

Installation view of Andrea Lolis, Untitled, 2018, at the 58th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, “May You Live In Interesting Times,” 2019. © Andrea Lolis. Courtesy of The Breeder, Athens.

Christine and Margaret Wertheim make intricately crafted faux–coral reefs from materials as diverse as beads, plastic bags, yarn, thread, magnets, sand, and biscuit tins. Dominique Gonzales-Foerster and Joi Bittle’s Cosmorama (2018) might be called an art installation, but it looks more like a diorama one would find at a natural history museum. The piece consists of a painted backdrop and a red-sand-and-rock ground intended to resemble Mars’s landscape—our future home, perhaps, given the very real threat of climate change. Anicka Yi’s colonies of bacteria and algae look—when encased in rectangular vitrines and hung from the ceiling with wire—like abstract paintings. Zhanna Kadyrova’s installation Market (2017–present) reveals itself to peddle only fake, mosaiced fruit (not for sale!).

Installation view of Margaret Wertheim and Christine Wertheim’s work at the 58th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, “May You Live In Interesting Times,” 2019. Photo by Italo Rondinella. Courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia.

Liu Wei’s lovely Microworld (2018) at the Arsenale features larger-than-life shapes. Silver spheres and curves, a pink ball, and a smooth turquoise plinth are situated behind glass, beneath a glowing white ceiling. It’s less sculptural than atmospheric, more photogenic than experiential: Take a picture, and the result will look like an abstract painting filled with light and shadow. At the Giardini, his Devourment (2019) is again composed of rounded sculptural elements—a teal mat, a silver globe, a curving wire—yet the piece is roped off. Liu restricts the audience’s perspective, prohibiting us from walking around the objects. In an art museum, artists have so little influence over how others view their work. Depending on your perspective, the artist offers either guidance or control.

Finally, two of the most spectacular pieces in the show look banal at first, but turn downright violent. At the Giardini, Sun Yuan & Peng Yu present a giant paintbrush that thrashes around a glass cage, splattering blood-hued paint on the walls, floor, and ceiling. At the Arsenale, they exhibit Dear (2015): a white silicon chair made to resemble Abraham Lincoln’s imperial Roman seat in his Washington, D.C., memorial. A black rubber hose uncoils from its center, noisily lashing out at intervals against the scratched-up glass barrier that contains it.

Installation views of Sun Yuan and Peng Yu, Can't Help Myself, 2016, at the 58th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, “May You Live In Interesting Times,” 2019. Photo by Francesco Gall. Courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia.

Installation views of Sun Yuan and Peng Yu, Dear 2015, at the 58th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, “May You Live In Interesting Times,” 2019. Photo by Italo Rondinellal. Courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia.

Rugoff only hints at how to interpret his exhibition and think about his overarching themes. At the press conference, he offered what he called “leitmotifs”—walls, doppelgängers, masks, mirror worlds, hidden identities, and science and technology. It was more important to choose good art and artists than to curate with didactic intent. He sought a plurality of voices, each with its own plurality. The “facts” of contemporary life seem far less important to Rugoff than do individual artists’ perspectives. It’s for the best—no news is good news, after all.

from Artsy News

#Artsy News

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ronnykblair · 5 years ago

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Real Estate Market Analysis: What It Is, and How to Use It

When I was researching topics to write about earlier this year, “real estate market analysis” came up repeatedly.

I went down the rabbit hole of repeatedly searching for this topic and quickly concluded that peoples’ ideas of “market analysis” are wildly different.

In real life, you could debate the exact meaning, especially if you consider companies and assets across all industries.

But if we limit the industry to commercial real estate and the purpose to financial modeling and valuation, then it’s easier to explain:

The Purpose(s) of Real Estate Market Analysis

The purpose of real estate market analysis is to generate reasonable assumptions for use in financial models and to ensure that the qualitative aspects of the market and property meet your requirements.

For example, if you are building a real estate pro-forma for a multifamily property acquisition, you’ll have to make assumptions for items such as:

Average Rents per Unit or Square Foot

Annual Growth in Rents

Occupancy Rate

Expenses and Net Operating Income (NOI) Margins

Required Capital Expenditures

The Going-In Cap Rate and Exit Cap Rate

You use market analysis to determine these numbers or to decide if someone else’s numbers are reasonable.

If rents for similar properties in the same area have been growing at 3% per year, on average, then it will be difficult to justify a 10% growth rate in your model.

But a 4-5% growth rate might be easier to justify, especially if something specific explains the difference – such as a renovation, population gains in the area despite a limited housing supply, or a company like Amazon moving in.

Nearly all real estate markets are cyclical, so you pay the most attention to the values of these items in the low points and high points of previous cycles.

This is especially true if you’re doing a credit analysis of a property deal – with limited upside, lenders focus on the numbers in the pessimistic scenarios and the chances of losing money if they transpire.

A few years ago, I helped a client win a job at a real estate credit fund, and then I interviewed him about the experience. Here’s a direct quote from him about market analysis:

“When we see the marketing documents for a new deal, we gloss over most of the ‘Market’ section except for the peak-to-trough rent, which we immediately plug into our models.”

How to Conduct Real Estate Market Analysis

In real life, you’ll do a combination of online research and offline work to analyze the market.

Major components of this analysis might include:

Comparable Property Sales – What have similar properties in the area sold for on a per-unit and per-square-foot basis in the past few years? What about the Cap Rates?

Comparable Properties – What are the average rents at similar nearby properties? What about the occupancy rates and concessions given to tenants?

Historical Rent, Expense, and Other Trends – How have rents changed over the past 5-10 years? What about expenses, such as property taxes and maintenance? How have Cap Rates changed over the past few cycles?

Lease Terms and Renewal Probabilities – What’s the average term of a lease? How many free months of rent do tenants receive? On average, what percentage of tenants renew their leases upon expiration?

Absorption Data – What is the total amount of space that becomes occupied in a given period, minus the amount that becomes vacant? How many new units, properties, or square feet are constructed each year, and how many are leased out?

Demographic Trends – Is the population in the area rising or falling? What’s the average family income, and what is the unemployment rate? Is the population relatively young, or is it aging rapidly?

In-Person Assessment of Property and Neighborhood – There are some things you can only figure out in-person.

Many online sources recommend using sites like Zillow to look up recent sales and new listings, and trying to find properties with “similar numbers of bedrooms and bathrooms.”

That might work for single-family homes (i.e., places that families purchase, live in, and do not rent out to others), but the process differs quite a bit for commercial real estate.

For example, you might pull information from paid databases like Real Capital Analytics, CoStar, or LoopNet, and you might look at market reports issued by the big commercial real estate brokerage firms, such as JLL and CBRE.

The paid databases help, but the free reports from brokerage firms contain a surprising amount of information.

To see for yourself, try Googling “CBRE market update multifamily [Major City Name]” and you’ll find PDFs with graphs, summaries, and a lot of data.

In-Person Assessments: Say, What?

With real estate market analysis, online research can only take you so far.

If your firm is serious about a deal, and it’s a significant transaction for them, you’ll almost certainly go for an in-person visit at some point.

In-person visits give you information that you’d never be able to find online.

For example, if the area has an epidemic of homeless people and trash on the street, you’ll quickly realize that by using your own eyes.

And if the area is diverse or not diverse in terms of ethnicity, income, and profession, you’ll learn that from an in-person visit.

You’ll also learn a lot about the property itself – everything from the “vibe” to the direction the windows face to the quality of the furnishings.

In-person visits can quickly reveal whether or not the sponsor is spinning a too-good-to-be-true story as well.

For example, many real estate investment groups plan to buy a property, improve it, and then raise rents from, say, $800 per unit to $1,000 per unit, arguing that $800 is well below market rates for the area.

If you look at online reports from the brokerage firms, you might initially agree with them: it seems like $1,000 is closer to the average rate.

But then you go in-person, and you quickly realize that average rents are lower in this one specific 10-block radius of the city because it has a crime problem.

Gang members live there, and local police tell you that this one part of town keeps them busy most of the time.

You wouldn’t necessarily reject the deal based on this finding, but you would become far more skeptical of the sponsor’s plan.

Real Estate Market Analysis: In Practice

Here’s an example of how you can find market information and use it to check your assumptions in a financial model for a real estate deal, taken from the office development case study in our Real Estate Financial Modeling Course.

This deal corresponds to 100 Bishopsgate, a 36-story office development in London.

Many assumptions go into this model, including the land price per square meter, the construction costs, the number of tenants and their lease types, the annual change in office rents in London, the annual rental escalations, and the expense growth rate.

Then there are also “concessions” for the tenants, such as a certain number of free months of rent, and tenant improvements, which give the tenants money to customize their space.

I found all the reports required for this real estate market analysis with simple Google searches for terms like “London office market rent trends” and “London office prime yield.”

You can get two of the reports, with the key sections highlighted, below:

JLL – London Market Rents and Prime Yield Data

Carter Jonas – London Market Data

Comparable Property Sales, Comparable Properties, and Rent, Expense, and Other Trends

We used the JLL report here to check/confirm potential trends for the change in rent and Cap Rates, called “Yields” here:

(Click to view larger version)

With the “Prime Rents” graph, it’s important to focus on the percentage change and, specifically, how much rents fell in the last recession.

The nominal rent figures have increased since then, so rents would not necessarily decline to £45 or £40 per square foot if another recession struck.

However, they could fall by the same percentage as they did in the last downturn (~25%).

That makes our assumed decline rates of 7%, 3%, and 1% in the Downside Case here a bit too optimistic.

Therefore, we might want to reconsider the Downside Case numbers for both Prime Yields and the Change in Prime Rents if we believe another 2009-style recession is plausible.

Moving on, we found information on current rents in the City of London from another source (the Carter Jonas report):

And then we found information on current expenses and rent-free periods in the same report:

(Click to view larger version)

There wasn’t much information on expense trends, but looking at past reports, expenses tended to move in the same direction as rents, but by lower percentages.

So, if rents increase by 6%, we might assume only a 3-4% expense increase.

We did not create explicit sections for Comparable Properties or Comparable Property Sales here because we relied on the market-wide data instead.

Also, since this is a new development, lists of individual properties are arguably less relevant than data for the entire region.

Lease Terms and Renewal Probabilities

Renewal probabilities are a big part of any office, industrial, or retail model because these properties tend to have fewer tenants with more customized leases.

It also takes significant time to find a new tenant if an existing one vacates, so lease expiration is a huge risk factor that you try to assess in any real estate market analysis.

Fortunately, other sources (MSCI) track the percentage of tenants that renew or vacate across these three property types in the U.K. – even going back ~20 years:

We’re assuming renewal probabilities of 40%, 50%, and 60% in the Downside, Base, and Upside cases here, which are probably too optimistic based on this data.

On the other hand, this data is for the U.K. as a whole, not just London – and, presumably, it’s easier to find tenants in the City of London than it is in Random-City-in-the-Middle-of-Nowhere.

This same document has information on the average lease terms and rent-free periods, but they confirm the numbers in the Carter Jonas report, so I’m not pasting them in again.

Absorption Data

A lower absorption rate means more “downtime” spent searching for new tenants, a lower renewal probability, and lower rents.

So, in theory, we should be able to reflect all of those in the assumptions for this model.

But we did not do that here because we could only find partial information on absorption in the JLL report.

They list the “take-up,” or the square feet of space leased out each year in different parts of London, but they don’t have information on the space that becomes vacant each year.

Also, it might be double-counting if we tried to increase or reduce the renewal probabilities and rents based on the absorption data when we’ve already made assumptions based on possible market cycles.

Demographic Trends

We did not look up or use demographic trends at all because this property development is in a prime area of a large financial center.

Information on the population, average income, and the unemployment rate would be more useful in a smaller city or town that’s dependent on a few key employers.

For example, Amazon, Microsoft, and Boeing account for a huge percentage of total employment in the Seattle region in the northwestern U.S.

At one point, Amazon alone occupied ~20% of all prime office space in the city.

If we were looking at a property there, we would pay more attention to these demographic trends and even points like company announcements and news.

In-Person and Qualitative Assessments

Finally, we did not complete any in-person visits or assessments here because this is a case study, and it’s very difficult to “show” that type of assessment in an online course.

For development deals, in-person visits may be a bit less useful unless you’re familiar with the construction process and what to look for.

For example, does construction activity seem lower or higher than expected, given the project’s time frame? Is one part of the building lagging? What are the workers saying?

You might try to answer those types of questions with an in-person visit, but you’d need to bring along someone who has experience with the construction process.

The Truth About Real Estate Market Analysis

In this case, the conclusions are simple: we’re probably too optimistic with most of our assumptions, ranging from rent and expenses to renewal probabilities to likely changes in average rents.

But that’s also because we’re looking at this from an equity perspective (think: real estate private equity), which means that we need some amount of optimism to “sell” the deal and get others to buy into it.

A lender analyzing this deal would use much lower numbers and find ways to justify below-market rates for many of these assumptions.

Market analysis is also one area where the on-the-job requirements differ significantly from the requirements in case studies and modeling tests.

In tests and case studies, you don’t need to do much more than what we did here: review the provided data and make sure your numbers aren’t too far off.

But in real life, you might go far beyond this with on-the-ground research, interviews, and more.

Different firms and groups have different standards for this process, so maybe it’s not so surprising that articles about “real estate market analysis” present wildly different views.

The post Real Estate Market Analysis: What It Is, and How to Use It appeared first on Mergers & Inquisitions.

from ronnykblair digest https://www.mergersandinquisitions.com/real-estate-market-analysis/

#ronnykblair digest

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the3211shift · 5 years ago

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Testimonial Speech

Dr. Beltran, Dr. Panopio. Dr. Gonzales, the rest of the faculty and staff, guests, doctors, Good evening!

For years, I have listened to senior testimonials and I have noticed a pattern. They usually prescribe tips on how to survive medical school and explain how they used these. Tonight, I decided to break that.

I’ve been trying to think of something clever and creative but, unfortunately, every time I try, I end up with a blank sheet of paper. Then, I realized that I cannot romanticize true strength. The experience of rising above adversities is never pretty. After all, Cinderella had all her clothes torn before she was glammed up in a ball gown.

And though I tried making a list of what to do, I know that at the end of the day, it really depends on grit and for me, theoretical guides don’t really work and do not fit everyone in this hall.

Let me get straight into it and start with 2 words: Depression and Anxiety.

As a Psych Major, I can tell you all the definitions, criteria, concepts, theories and examples that I have read in books.

But, personally, I can define those two words with my life.

I had this conversation with a friend years ago. He complained about the so-called millennial mentality of being entitled - of taking depression and anxiety too seriously. He complained that bullying should just be shrugged off. After all, these are just friendly jokes. You could imagine my reaction at that time. With a passive-aggressive tone, I explained that bullying, anxiety, and depression are not how he thought they were.

I understand that to a typical human being, these concepts are difficult to grasp, to explain and to describe. But tonight, I will try.

Remember I said initially that every time I try to write this speech, I stare at a blank sheet. I lied. I probably made more than 20 drafts writing this. Each one thrown in the trash bin or deleted. Because I realized that after all these years, I will always try to defend myself. As I stand here before all of you, I am still putting myself on trial.

What happened?

Early 2000s. It was when the hype for meteor garden and high school musical was at its peak. Mean girls was everyone’s inside joke. We all knew that Amanda Seyfried can put her entire fist in her mouth. Cliques were in. And like every teenager at that time, I was part of one. Though I had my constant peers, I still considered myself a floater - not boxing myself with a certain group. My interests were wide so I made friends in different school clubs, sections, and even batches. I would stay up late and hang out with friends – a very typical high school experience right?

So how does one change from being very sociable to one living with fear?

One day when I came to school, I found out that my friends were creating stories and spreading rumors about me. They stripped all the confidence and self-esteem that I had. They retold embarrassing stories. Made jokes of me in class. They turned all my reports, projects and successes a laughing matter. They made sure that all intrigues and problems that happened in school were all pointed towards me without me being part of those at all. And that’s how it all started.

So that every day became a struggle to go to school. So that I had to go to different classes because I would have anxiety attacks upon seeing my classroom. That every night, I was the plaintiff and the world was the judge in a trial of a crime I do not even know. School became a battleground where I was the only target and names, curses and spite were their bullets. And despite taking all these with a smile, they still took their knives and struck me with “maypag mamatay ka.”

They said, “sticks and stones may break my bones but words would never hurt me.” So these shouldn’t hurt, right?

Well, they don’t hurt. They strip you from who you are. Every day, I would wake up worrying. No. panicking about how my day would go. I have learned to swallow my words, contain my thoughts, close my eyes to everything because these may be used against me. I have learned to sit through unsettling and uncomfortable conversations because maybe if I left, they would talk. Maybe I become a conversation built on assumptions and rumors who are easily taken as facts by people who do not understand. I have forgotten how to say no and I have learned to apologize more. Every time. I’m sorry I did not finish on time. Sorry I cannot do it. I am not capable of doing it. Sorry I did not bring my car. Sorry I’m always saying sorry. Sorry I am not enough. Never enough. Words have distorted who I am- was, will ever be. A slave to my fears, of their unreachable approval. Your approval.

As part of my therapy, I asked them a few years back what the reason was, they simply laughed and said, “We were young. We did not know better.” I wish I could supply them with reasons to keep myself sane. That maybe there is something that I could have corrected. I could have apologized for it. But there wasn’t. And the funny thing is that they, my bullies, are still my friends. And this constant cycle of seeking their approval had never ceased from the high school me to the present me.

And I’m sure I’m not the only one who felt this way We’ve all learned to live in fear. To look down on ourselves. And maybe you are all there looking at me waiting for me to tell you the 3 best ways to avoid or rise above this. And I can honestly tell you, I don’t know too.

Exactly 3 years and 6 days ago, I mustered all my strength and decided to pop 60 pills to cure the cancer growing inside me. I listened to every name they called me, reread every letter and remembered every emotion these made me feel. But it was all for naught, emotions were things I could not recognize anymore. I no longer felt fear, anger, pity. That was when I realized that the most dangerous thing next to living in anxiety was apathy. My mind became automatic and started counting. 1. 2. 3.. 4… and with every pill I took, I said a prayer.

Whether It was luck or the lack of it, I am still here. Not braver, stronger or even weaker. But I am here. A witness. A testimony of what is real. That these things happen.

And maybe that’s what true strength is. To realize that we are not strong. To admit that we are vulnerable.

An author, David Foster Wallace, shared with a group of college graduates and told a story of two fishes swimming when they were stopped by a bigger fish asking, what is water. He later explained in his speech that most of us live not knowing what water is. Water is the reality around us. That we are not the main actors in this world. The person beside you has his or her own life. Her own problems and successes. None of it - greater or lesser than your own.

So, To the freshman who never had a passing grade The freshman who always stutters in every sgd To the second year who became dyslexic with generic names, genus, and species To the third year who is confused with the many ways to give birth To the third year who never had a shot in putting the IV cannula To the clerk who was yelled at for missing a progress note To the clerk who was humiliated for not knowing the correct dose To those whose ID numbers are on the last page To those who repeated 1, 2 3 years of med school To those who need pills to keep themselves sane

I want to tell you that it’s ok I want to tell you that whatever you are going through is real And I know that you don’t want attention, sympathy or pity You just want people to know and understand why you are who you are.

And to quote one of my favorite poems:

I want to tell you that if you can’t see anything beautiful about yourself Get a better mirror Look a little closer Stare a little longer Because there’s something inside you That made you keep trying

Despite everyone who told you to quit You built a cast around your broken heart And signed it yourself You signed it “They were wrong”

And if you don’t believe me remember that despite everything standing with all my doubts and fears I am still here

#for future reference

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ramrodd · 6 years ago

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Why did Pilate agree to have Jesus crucified?

COMMENTARY:

It’s useful to remember that you are getting four different Roman perspectives on the Passion of the Christ from inside the wall of the Jerusalem Praetorium, which is in diplomatic quarantine inside of Herod’s Jerusalem Palace. In addition, the Jews consider it unclean, generally, and at this time of the Passover, especially to be avoided. Herod, being a Sovereign and above the law of the Torah and Jewish secular courts, probably avoided visiting the Roman section and accepted their prescence in His presence as a price of doing business of being a king, but there were all sorts of hoops an embassy from any provence had to go through. Universally, this was true then and one of the reasons why Donald’s visit with QEII was tres de classe.

Thomas Jefferson refused to bow to any royalty, as an expression American exceptionalism. Jefferson was living on stolen valor at this particular moment because, like Trump and most of the crypto-Nazi assholes like John Bolton, Bill O’Reilly and Richard “Dick” Cheney, America’s favorite war criminal, Jefferson had other priorities than military service but loved to talk tough in a “Revolutionary Firebrand” kind of way.

It’s worth remembering that Jefferson was in a virtual exhile in Paris while the US Constitution was being hammered out. The soldiers that had actually fought the war didn’t want his dillitante ass in the room. Anything Jefferson wrote in the Federalist Papers was as close as he would get to the actual construction of the US Constitution. If you listen, you will tend to find that southern white politicians tend to revere Jefferson above all other of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence because Jefferson didn’t sell them a pig-in-a-poke with the iron-clad nature of the US Contitution established as settle law at Appomattox, which is why Newt Gingrich has based his career message on reversing the outcome of Appomattox.

But that’s another story. The point is, if you follow anything associated with the British Royal Family, now that Sally Hemings is established as a Lady of the Realm and Consort to a Crown Prince, you are familiar with diplomatic niceties. Kings had to talk to Kings and that, in the case of Rome, Pilate represented the Empire and had absolute right of access but it was in Rome’s interests to generally let the locals run the local economy, taxes defining the essential interest. In the economics of Jesus, the tax relationship of Rome to Palestine is a stark example of the Tory Socialism of Reaganomics as it defines the relationship of the GOP Deep State to the American middle class.

And this is my way of establishing the cultural context of the four different accounts of the moment Jesus is remanded by the Jewish powers that be in Jerusalem to the desk sergeant at the entrance to the Praetorium where somewhere between 800 and 2000 Roman soldiers were in the house to defend the house and as a quick reaction force to quell any insurgency that might bubble up with the general agitation of Passover, which was not unlike Spring Break at Daytona or the Vatican for the Pope’s Easter Mass.

This particular garrison was part of the Roman order of battle in Caesarea, which collected Morning Reports from 2 legions based in the region to police the trade routes crossing the African land bridge. As Newt Gingrich would observe, a “choke point”. And this battalion reflected the garrison nature of these two legions, which is to say, they were bloated by design with people. Like the modern Army division, the legion was the smallest unit that could be designed to operate independently. In this case, Caesarea was Roman seat of government, and these two heavy legions reflected the Roman intention to stay.

In comparison, Julius Caesar stripped out all tha ash and trash, cooks, clerks and jerks out of the legions he employed in his campaigns and just kept the lean and the mean. His manpower on the hoof was as small as 4000 lances, but they were the hard core of the hard corps. The legions in Palestine were more like Ringling Brothers circus on the march because they really didn’t have to march all that far most of the time.

And, at that moment, the balance of the two legions was deployed in a seige configuration around Jerusalem as crowd control. Eventually, at Passover in 70, this exact contigency would obtain, with Jerusalem swollen with useless mouths and three legions of seriously pissed off Romans behind a wall they erected to keep those useless mouths bottled up until the Romans could break in and slaughter everything th

That’s the frame of reference of whoever wrote the four versions of what went on inside this Latin speaking military community. If you have ever been in the Navy as a Marine or soldier on a ship that become home for a couple of months, you have a fair idea of the Roman military experience inside that Praetorium. If you have ever been on a Royal Carribean cruise ship with as a training workshop as a deliberate learning community, the boundaries that exist between you and the crew doesn’t exist inside the Praetorium or the Navy ship. There is a constant 360 degree awareness of Command, no matter how distant, in the Praetorium and the Navy ship you can’t capture as a civilian.

The Gospel of Mark is an intelligence report from the equivalent to the Command Sergeant Major and Chief of Staff to Pilate in Palesting to the intelligence headquarters in the Praetorian Guard in Rome and Mark 15 is almost entirely Roman content. Among other things, there isn’t much of the 1st Century, Second Temple Jewish theology N.T. Wright focuses on. My premise is that Cornelius, the centurion featured in Acts 10, is the author and that he wrote Mark immediately after his debriefing of Peter in that interview for immediate dispersal to Rome. The time-line of Mark is probably the literal sequence of events, with the various intelligence raw intelligence recorded and filed by a date-time method similar to the modern military filing system. The more you read about the Romans, the more they sound like the Old Guard at Ft. Myers going about their business.

So, that’s part of the answer to the question. The most popular current portrait of Pilate by everybody is that Pilate was a brutal monster based on the historical details and the various political and/or ideological purposes to characterize him in that manner.

The fact is, that portrait isn’t supported by the four gospel accounts, which isn’t particularly complimentary but mostly business like: as far as it goes, Pilate, from the perspective of the people around him (including his own contribution to the narratives, especially in John) is pretty standard issue Roman military governor and, based on his tenure at Palestine, a competent commander from Tiberius’s perspective.

The Gospel accounts occur in 33 CE. There is a debate between 30 and 33 in terms of the astronomy of the Passover. Gary Habermas uses 30, and I’m inclined to think it’s just a convenience for him than a conviction: the early chapters of Acts can seem a bit more likely in terms of the time spans 30 allows, while 33 compresses those developments into a time line that’s squishy, especially in terms of Paul’s transition from Saul in Araby. But Habermas’s own scholarship tends to support exactly the sort of explosive series of events between the Acension of Jesus and Chapter 10. It is really Luke’s Scientific Wild Ass Guess of what happened when. Paul is really in the wind until Barnabus begins to rehabilitate Paul’s role in the Jesus movement.

In addition, there is a blood moon lunar eclipse in 33 that is referernced in the Gospels, but, for me, the most imporant factor is that Tiberius discovered the Seganus plot in 31 and excutes what might have been a bottle neck in the intelligence coming out of Palestine about anything before 31.

We know from Tertullian’s Apology that Tiberius received an intelligence report about Jesus before 36 and proposed to the Senate to elevate Jesus to a legal deity status based on that intelligence report. The Senate rejected the proposal, but one of the things that resulted was the introduction of the category of “christians” nominated by the Roman soldiers on the ground in Palestine. This is to say that, sometime between 33 and 36, the year Tiberius died and Pilate was recalled probably because of a change of administration as opposed to dissatisfaction in his performance, the term “christian” enters the Roman idiom in Rome but it doesn’t show up in the actual Christian literature until it bubbles up in Antioch, a very cosmopolitan city similar to Tel Aviv: on the coast with considerable commerce and social intercourse with Rome.

For various reasons, the intelligence on Jesus’ resurrection would have been transmitted to Rome but it might not have been transmitted to Tiberius while Sejanus was running the Praetorian Guard, which he has extensively reforutmed and enhanced as Tiberius’ proxy in Rome. But, being dead in 33, he couldn’t interrupt the flow of intelligence, which is how the term “Christian” got to Antioch.

And the events in Palestine occur after the purge Tiberius implemented to scrub out Sejanus’ co-conspiritors. Roman politics was very much the blood politics of the American crime families of the Capone to Gotti era and Pilate was still running Palestine two years after the long knives.

I think Tiberius discovered that there was a great deal of social discontent and agitation throughout his Empire: in 40, after Tiberius had died, Philo of Alexandria conducted an embassy to Rome to present the Jewish side of the issue the Greeks had with the Jewish dispensation for worship.

I think that the initial intelligence report Tiberius received from Palestine about Jesus indicated that the residue of Jesus’ ministry, which had become super-charged by the resurrection not only among His followers, but by the Roman soldiers who were directly involved in the totally unexpected consequence of resurrection, had gone viral, number one: the story of Jesus would have gone through the Roman legions like grass through a goose. Soldiers are naturally superstitious, anyway, and here was some very big magic; and, number two, the social impact of Jesus on the social unrest in the Galilee was worth preserving as a national security issue. Which is why Tiberius took his proposal to the Senate.

But Tiberius was aware of this problem before Jesus was executed as a result of regaining control of his intelligence feed. Tiberius knew he had serious problems and the speculation in various commentaries is that he instructed Pilate to bend over backwards to accommodate the powers that be in Jerusalem. Pilate had blotted his copy book a couple of times dealing with Jewish impertinence and had to back down.

So, the short answer to the question is that Pilate didn’t agree to crucify Jesus: he was backed into a corner by orders from Rome to accomodate the Jews, the insistence of the Jews for Jesus’ crucifixion and the leverage the Jews had on his gonads, personally, as an individual.

It is also useful to remember that, not only are these largely Roman accounts of what happened inside the walls of the Praetorian, but they are recalled in the spiritual residue of the reality of the resurrection, itself. The Romans didn’t have any idea what they were dealing with: Cornelius had a relationship with the Capernaum synagogue and knew as much about Judaism as anyone in Pilate’s command and he, Cornelius, had the personal experience of petitioning Jesus, successfully, on behalf of one of his household, but it was a relationship conducted at the distance of his foreskin and a tourist’s understanding of the myteries and traditions of the Jewish cultural tapestry. He was the Roman expert on the Jews, but he had never been to a Seder and the whole Apocalypse context didn’t add up, before the fact, to somebody getting the crap kicked out of them, nailed to a tree, stabbed in the side and left for dead running for king of the world three days later.

Christianity exists because of the Roman soldiers who killed Him, fair and square, and then tried to understand what happened as a valuable military asset. One of my favorite moments in the Gospels is Mark 15:39

And when the centurion, which stood over against him, saw that he so cried out, and gave up the ghost, he said, Truly this man was the Son of God.

It is useful to recognize that much of what is said in the Bible is an interpolation of an emotional response to events in the manner of the Romantic Ideal expressed by Coleridge of moments of great emotion recalled in tranquility.

That’s the case of the centurion’s recorded thoughts, but his initial reponse, the one that his Pucker Factor expressed, was “Oops!”

In the profession of arms as practiced by the Romans at the time, where dying by the sword was the only compensation for fucking up in a military manner, killing God was somewhat fraught. The version we have of Pilate’s complicity in the crucifixion of Jesus could be purely CYA.

#transformingamericafirst

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alexanderrm · 1 year ago

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#god the british press is trash#trying to read about any criminal case you get articles like “DAMNING EVIDENCE REVEALED: THIS PAEDO FREAK LIKES PINEAPPLE ON PIZZA”#i mean reporting on major crime stories is generally trash#people have really terrible reasoning about what “normal” behavior is for suspects accused of murder#but the british press is especially bad

I decided to Google this myself, saw a BBC article as the first result and went “Aha, this will give me good balanced and nuanced coverage, unlike the tabloids” but even that is full of lines like “what have we learned about the woman who murdered and attempted to kill babies she was trusted to care for?”, with no “allegedly”

The Lucy Letby case is weird, because in other instances of medical providers committing murder (Barbara Salisbury, Colin Norris, Charles Cullen, Harold Shipman), both the evidence for murder and the likely motive have been much clearer, even accompanied by a confession. AFAICT the evidence against Letby is much more ambiguous, mostly circumstantial, and there's no motive whatsoever--though of course the British press is reporting on the most innocuous of details as though they are ironclad proof.

There are enough cases of people being prosecuted for the murder of children, involving dubious reasoning like "shaken baby syndrome," that have proven to be mostly searches for scapegoats, that it seems pretty dubious to me to send someone to prison for life without the possibility of parole without ironclad evidence for their guilt. And using the fact that someone has not exhibited remorse for the crime they maintain their innocence of, as a basis for handing down that sentence, seems especially perverse, considering, y'know, that would also be the behavior of someone who was not in fact guilty.

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96thdayofrage · 7 years ago

Link

“Kagame in fact triggered the massacres and has ever since blackmailed the rest of the world over its failure to stop them—even though he himself threatened to fire on UN troops if they intervened.”

April 6 was the 24th anniversary of the day that General Paul Kagame shattered a ceasefire agreement and resumed the 1990-1994 war in Rwanda by assassinating Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana and Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira. His troops, acting on his orders, fired a rocket at Habyarimana’s plane when it appeared overhead in Rwanda’s capital, Kigali, returning from Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The plane crashed into the presidential palace and the BBC reported heavy fighting at the crash site as the news spread. No one has ever been brought to trial for the crime, even though Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo became vast killing grounds in its aftermath.

The ninety days of chaos, war, and massacres that followed the assassinations came to be known simply as the Rwandan Genocide, even though its overarching context was Kagame’s final push to seize power in the war that began on October 1, 1990, when he and his army invaded Rwanda from Uganda.

Both assassinated presidents were of the Hutu ethnicity, and the Hutu population panicked, imagining their own doom; some began to slaughter their Tutsi neighbors in what turned into a bloodbath broadcast by global news networks. Much of the coverage depicted Hutu people as inherently bloodthirsty, subhuman, demonic killers—a cruel, racist stereotype that survives to this day.

At the same time, General Paul Kagame and his army launched a carefully planned military offensive—not to save Tutsis, but to seize power. In a 2011 interview, Colonel Luc Marchal, commander of the Belgian peacekeeping troops in UNAMIR, the UN Assistance Mission in Rwanda, told Jambo News : "On the military side, it is impossible to take advantage of an opportunity like the attack [on the presidents’ plane] to launch an offensive on three strategic axes. It takes months of preparation from a logistical point of view."

“Much of the coverage depicted Hutu people as inherently bloodthirsty, subhuman, demonic killers—a cruel, racist stereotype that survives to this day.”

Kagame and his so-called Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) claimed that his troops had not fired the rocket that took down the plane. They instead blamed it on Hutu hardliners and accused them of firing it so as to create an excuse for unleashing their genocidal madness on Tutsis—no matter how catastrophic it would be to themselves.

No members of the Hutu government or the Hutu population had anything to gain by assassinating the two presidents or otherwise disrupting the ceasefire, and they had everything to lose. All they needed to do was wait for elections scheduled in the Arusha Accords that had established the ceasefire; they would no doubt have won both the presidency and the majority in parliament.

Kagame and the RPF, however, had everything to gain. They could only hope to seize power by force, so they had to either resume the war or accept minority parliamentary status. When Colonel Luc Marchal appeared as a defense witness at the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda, he told the court: "From my experience, my conclusion is that the RPF had one goal—seizing power by force and keeping it to themselves."

This is an exchange between BBC HardTalk Host Stephen Sackur and President Paul Kagame in a 2006 interview:

Stephen Sackur: France’s leading antiterrorism judge wants you and some of your key aides to face trial; trial on the accusation that you ordered the shooting down of the plane which was being used by the serving Rwandan President on the 6th of April 1994. Are you ready to let justice take its course?

President Paul Kagame: I think there can’t be justice in that particular case for various reasons: First of all there is no basis whatsoever on which the people in Rwanda, leaders of Rwanda, people who fought to stop genocide, people who fought against the genocidal government and the forces to be tried; and moreover be tried by anybody from France, when France is seriously implicated in the genocide of Rwanda. And we are very sure that this judge is not acting in any way within a sound legal basis. This judge is more political than anything else.

Stephen Sackur: I suspected you would counter with charges against France…we will talk about those. I just want to remind you of something you said in a BBC interview in February 2004 when you said, “Anybody who wants to investigate me or try me, I have no problem with that.” So what’s changed?

President Paul Kagame: Yes, if anybody acting on a legal sound basis. That’s what I was talking about. You don’t just have anybody coming up with wild allegations and accusing me and accusing ...I am the president of Rwanda. I am a Rwandese. I had a right. I had the basis for getting involved in the armed struggle to liberate my country from Habyarimana, from the government he was leading. I had been a refugee in ... outside Rwanda for 30 years.

Stephen Sackur: But you didn’t have a right to shoot down his plane and to assassinate him.

President Paul Kagame: Well I had the right to fight for my rights!

Stephen Sackur: But do you believe you had a right to assassinate him?

President Paul Kagame: No [LAUGHING], but of course Habyarimana, having been on the other side that I was fighting, it was possible that he could easily die. Imagine if I had died myself in the same process? Would the same judge be asking about my death or who killed me? … I am saying [that] this was a situation where there was a war which was being fought. But this has nothing to do now with who actually killed Habyarimana yet. I am not even coming to that. I am only saying that it is even surprising that somebody involved in a war can die. Does that also mean that you simply bring up wild allegations against me without...

Stephen Sackur: Sorry to interrupt you…But you were involved in a peace negotiation with him at the time! The RPF was talking to him.

President Paul Kagame: Yes, and the genocide happened a while after that as well. We had a genocide …

Stephen Sackur: You call them wild allegations; but of course you know they are not wild allegations. You know that Judge Jean-Louis Bruguière has been working on that case for many many years. You also know that he is one of the most respected judges in all France. He has a track record of tracking down terrorists, bringing them to justice. He has been working on your case and he has, and I have it here, about 70 pages of documentary evidence pointing to your …

President Paul Kagame: No, no, no! It is 70 pages of trash, of nothing and I will show that. Look at the people he is talking about, that he talked to, that he got his testimonies from. Almost all of them are people who are indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. People who are in fact wanted by the tribunal but they can’t have access to them. They can’t get hold of them. Yet, the judge has access to them, because they enjoy protection in France.…

Stephen Sackur: Judge Bruguière comes up with this conclusion that “the final order to attack the presidential plane was given by Paul Kagame himself during a meeting held in Mulindi on March the 31st, 1994.”

President Paul Kagame: That represents absolutely nothing. First of all the judge wants to … bring out this incident as having been responsible for the genocide. But the judge, the French, people of the UN, everybody they know there were months of preparations for the genocide; they bought arms, they trained people, they got arms from France, money paid by the French government, to the government of Habyarimana to prepare for a genocide. This has nothing to do with the aircraft. Even if we are talking about the assassination of Habyarimana or bringing down the aircraft, it has nothing to do with that. It is absolutely nonsense, nonsense…

Stephen Sackur: Why not, why not bow to the wish of Judge Bruguière… and have your case tested at the International Tribunal on Rwanda?

President Paul Kagame: I can’t bow to the wishes of Judge Bruguière, with the French acting politically, with France having had a genocide in Rwanda, never! Just because he is coming from France.

“Acting politically” is Kagame’s term for differing with him. The general who became Rwanda’s president thrives on his self-righteous pronouncements about genocide, “the crime of crimes,” on the world stage. He is, according to his own absolute truth, Rwanda’s saviour. Anyone who dares to challenge his authority or his narrative within Rwanda gets killed, goes to prison, or goes into exile. Some are even killed in exile and others face extradition after anonymous witnesses accuse them of 1994 genocide crime many years later. Kagame’s abundantly evident sociopathology makes Bill Clinton and Tony Blair’s determination to heroize him all the more sinister.

Kagame says that no one should be surprised that Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana was assassinated, because there was a war going on—not only a war but a genocide. For the past 24 years, he and his propagandists, including Clinton and Blair, have managed to erase the ceasefire and the Arusha Accords from the story repeated by the corporate press, the UN, the Wikipedia, and the Samantha Power mob, which is forever eager to start another war “to stop the next Rwanda.”

“Anyone who dares to challenge his authority or his narrative within Rwanda gets killed, goes to prison, or goes into exile.”

Kagame seized power in Rwanda’s capital in July 1994 without, as he claims, “stopping genocide.” He in fact triggered the massacres and has ever since blackmailed the rest of the world over its failure to stop them—even though he himself threatened to fire on UN troops if they intervened. He changed Rwanda’s language of international business from French to English and became a key US and UK ally in the region. He and Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni then invaded the Democratic Republic of the Congo, toppled one Congolese president and assassinated another, plundered Congolese resources, and left millions dead, mostly of hunger and disease, often in camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs).

Bill Clinton presented Kagame with a 2009 Global Citizen Award at the Clinton Global Initiative, his annual poverty pimping extravaganza in New York City, and the US is now donor #1 to Rwanda, the UK donor #2.

#africa #international #political economy #us politics #war and empire

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