The Boat, The White Hat, The Survivors: Key Moments In Boston Marathon Trial
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BOSTON (AP) — The defendant's startling admission on Day One that he did it. Tearful testimony from survivors who lost limbs. The boat. The white hat. As the prosecution rests, here's a look at some of the most compelling moments in the government's case against Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev:
OPENING STATEMENTS Tsarnaev's lawyer, Judy Clarke, startled a packed courtroom when she bluntly admitted during opening statements, "It was him." In a strategy designed to save him from the death penalty, Clarke told the jury that Tsarnaev had fallen under the malevolent influence of his now-dead older brother, Tamerlan, who she said had become radicalized and drew his brother into his plan to bomb the marathon. But prosecutor William Weinreb said the two brothers were equal partners in a plan to "tear people apart and create a bloody spectacle" to retaliate against the U.S. for its wars in Muslim lands. The Tsarnaevs — ethnic Chechens — moved to the U.S. from Russia more than a decade before the bombings. ___ THE SURVIVORS People who lost limbs in the explosions delivered heart-wrenching testimony about the moments after the explosions. Rebekah Gregory said she looked down at her leg: "My bones were literally laying next to me on the sidewalk and blood was everywhere. ... At that point, I thought that was the day I would die."  Boston Marathon bombing victim, Rebekah Gregory, right, arrived at Moakley Federal Courthouse in Boston, where the second day in the trial of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev got underway on March 5, 2015. (Photo by Wendy Maeda/The Boston Globe via Getty Images) Bill Richard, the father of 8-year-old Martin Richard, who was killed in the second explosion, described making the agonizing decision to leave his mortally wounded son with his wife so he could get help for his 6-year-old daughter, whose leg had been blown off. "I saw a little boy who had his body severely damaged by an explosion, and I just knew from what I saw that there was no chance," Richard said. Jeff Bauman, who lost both legs in the attack, recalled locking eyes with Tamerlan Tsarnaev just before the first bomb exploded. "He was alone. He wasn't watching the race," Bauman said. Bauman, who gave the FBI a description of Tamerlan from his hospital bed, became a symbol of the attack when he was captured in an Associated Press photograph as he was wheeled away from the bombing scene, ashen-faced and holding onto his ravaged legs. ___ THE BOAT  Investigators work, on Saturday, April 20, 2013, near the location in Watertown, Mass., where police captured Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in a backyard boat after a wild car chase and gun battle earlier in the day left his older brother dead. (AP Photo/Katie Zezima) Jurors were taken to South Boston to see the boat Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was captured hiding in four days after the bombings. On the inside walls of the boat, Tsarnaev wrote and carved a note denouncing the U.S. for its actions in Muslim lands. "Stop killing our innocent people and we will stop," he wrote. Jurors also saw more than 100 bullet holes on the sides of the boat, which was fired at by police before Tsarnaev was captured. ___ THE WHITE HAT  This Monday, April 15, 2013 photo provided by Bob Leonard shows bombing suspects Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, center right in black hat, and his brother, Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, 19, center left in white hat, approximately 10-20 minutes before the blasts that struck the Boston Marathon. (AP Photo/Bob Leonard) An FBI agent showed jurors the white cap Tsarnaev wore during the attack. In video and still photos released by the FBI three days after the bombings, Tsarnaev was seen wearing a white cap backward. The FBI referred to him as "White Hat" until they learned his identity. ___ THE KILLING OF THE POLICE OFFICER Jurors heard the frantic radio call made by a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer who found fellow Officer Sean Collier mortally wounded in his cruiser. "Officer down! Officer down! ... Get on it!" the officer yelled. A medical examiner testified that Collier, 26, was shot three times in the head, including one shot between the eyes. Tsarnaev's lawyer said it was Tamerlan who shot Collier. An MIT graduate student who was riding his bike by the scene around the time of the shooting identified Dzhokhar as the man he saw leaning into Collier's cruiser.  A Ruger pistol, that was shown during the Dzhokhar Tsarnaev federal death penalty trial, is displayed at a conference room at the John Joseph Moakley United States Courthouse in Boston, Tuesday, March 17, 2015. Authorities say the P-95 Ruger was the gun used to kill MIT police officer Sean Collier. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa) ___ CARJACK VICTIM Dun Meng testified about a harrowing ride he had with the Tsarnaev brothers the night of April 18, 2013, hours after the FBI publicly released photos of the two men as suspects in the bombings. Meng said he pulled his car to the side of the road to respond to a text message when suddenly a man jumped in, pointed a gun at him and told him to drive. Meng said the man — Tamerlan Tsarnaev — told him he had committed the Boston Marathon bombings. Meng testified that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev later joined them in the car, took his bank card and withdrew $800 from an ATM in Watertown. Meng said he jumped from the car when the brothers stopped to get gas and ran across the street to another gas station. Jurors saw surveillance video of a terrified Meng begging the clerk to call police.  Dun Meng is seen here on a gas station's surveillance camera moments after escaping from Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who had carjacked his Mercedes SUV and stolen money from his bank account at an ATM in Cambridge, Massachusetts on April 18, 2013. ___ |
Healthy Living - Making/Taking the Time to Meditate
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 You've heard about all the benefits associated with mindfulness meditation. You want to be involved, establish a practice, and experience those benefits yourself: lowered stress and anxiety; improved emotional regulation; increases in the areas of attention span, focus, and executive functioning. These sound great, but when can you fit it in?Never. You don't "fit" mindfulness into your schedule. Rather, you make the time and take the time. You do this because you are just that important to yourself, and to those around you, that you make sure this is a daily practice. Still can't figure out when it would work for you? Try a few of these suggestions. Will mornings work for you? Sure, you say, except for the kids and carpooling. Or you just have to watch the morning news and complete the crossword puzzle. And, besides, you're always feeling like you're rushing because you're running late to get wherever you're supposed to be going. How could you meditate in the morning?
Does the night seem to be a better time for you to meditate?
And maybe, just maybe, you'll have found a few opportunities during the course of your busy day to notice the smells around you that you'd normally let pass by, the colors on the flowers you didn't even notice yesterday, or the texture of the steering wheel in your car. And that tinkling of the tags on that dog that passes by so often. Do those tags always make that sound? You'd never noticed before! And how lunch tasted today? Superb! Yes, during the day maybe you'll have stopped, every so often, just to take three deep breaths and focus on the beauty of the world around you. You'll do this because you've realized, finally, that you really are that important. To yourself. And to those around you. Yes, you will make sure this is a daily practice. May you find peace and goodness, always. Dr. Wolbe can be contacted via her website, Facebook, or LinkedIn. |
Healthy Living - How to Change the Habits of 107,000 People
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It was 1995, and Pieter Ernst was battling a serious problem.
Ernst was a physician with an interest in community-wide behavior change, and he was currently in Mozambique. For nearly 20 years, a brutal civil war had ravaged the population and landscape of the country. The war had ended three years earlier, but the entire health care system of the country had been crippled. Thousands of mothers and children were dying from preventable diseases. The biggest problem was the scale of the issue. Dr. Ernst needed to reach a population of 107,000 citizens with a staff of just 19 people. Ernst realized that it was impossible for his team to do it alone. Furthermore, he knew that if they were going to reduce the incidence of preventable disease for good, then significant behavior change would need to occur within the community. His team couldn't stay in Mozambique forever. These changes had to happen in the homes and minds of the community. Ernst came up with a plan. Changing the Habits of 107,000 People First, they found over 2,000 volunteers from the community. Then, each member of his 19-person staff was responsible for teaching groups of 10 to 15 volunteers from the surrounding community about the steps they could take to reduce the incidence of preventable diseases. Then, each volunteer would visit 10 to 15 households and share what they had learned. The volunteers repeated households every two weeks and continued to spread the ideas. But this was the part that made the plan brilliant: The support group for the volunteers was not the 19-person health care staff. It was the other 10 to 15 volunteers in their small group. Each group of volunteers talked among one another about what was working, what wasn't working, and how to get people on board with the changes in their community. What happened? Not only did they reach the massive population, they also got the changes to take hold. The number of underweight children was cut by half. The mortality rate of children under 5 dropped. Pneumonia treatment was six times better than before the project began. In a followup survey taken 20 months after the project had officially ended, the volunteer groups were still operating with 94 percent of the original volunteers and the health metrics continued to improve. [1: Ernst calls his community volunteer group method "Care Groups" and the system has been replicated effectively for public health projects in Mozambique multiple times, Cambodia, and a variety of other countries.] The changes had stuck. For good. The public health victory of Ernst's team is impressive, but this isn't just a feel-good story. There is a deeper lesson here that we can all apply to our own lives. Here's the deal. The Identity of the Group Most of our behaviors are driven by two things: our environment and our beliefs. And environment is perhaps the most powerful of those two because in many cases your environment can shape your beliefs. This is especially true when you consider your environment to include the people who surround you. I've written previously about identity-based habits -- the power that your beliefs have to create better habits that actually stick over the long-term. But it's not just your identity that impacts your beliefs. It's also the identity of the groups that you surround yourself with. Consider the community in Mozambique. In the beginning, the community had a certain identity. After the war, many basic public health approaches simply weren't part of daily life. But as the volunteers began expanding their reach, working with each other, and sharing news of what techniques were working, the community began to develop a new identity. New behaviors began to be seen as normal behaviors. And when a new behavior becomes the norm for any particular group, the change sticks for good. The lesson is simple: Doing something is much easier when it's the normal thing to do in your community. What Is the Identity of Your Group? Every group has an identity.
The question is, do the groups you belong to have the identity you want? There were only 2,300 volunteers in the Mozambique project, but 107,000 people began to take on new habits and behaviors when the identity of the group changed. This happens to all of us. We take on the behaviors of the groups in which we live and the communities to which we belong.
Lasting behavior change happens when it's part of the cultural norm. As Jim Rohn says, "You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with." |
This Croatian 'Sea Organ' Uses Wind And Waves To Create Enchanting Harmonies
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 If the sound of waves lapping gently onto the shore puts you in a trance, then it's time you listen to the Morske Orgulje -- or, the Sea Organ.The crooning structure in the video above is a 230-foot long instrument on the coast of Zadar, Croatia, that plays mesmerizing harmonies using the movements of the sea. The Sea Organ was conceived in 2005 by architect Nikola Bašić, after a new jetty was built to welcome cruise ships and their tourists to the charming port town. On its surface, the organ looks like large marble steps leading into the Adriatic Sea. Below, however, lies a series of narrow channels that connect to 35 organ pipes. Each set of steps holds five organ pipes each and is tuned to a different musical chord. As waves and wind push air through the channels, a song pours through the organ pipes and out onto the steps above. The sounds produced rely completely on the wave energy's random time and space distribution. Visitors say the sound is "hauntingly memorable" and "rather rhythmical and even hypnotizing." In 2006, the Sea Organ won the European Prize for Urban Public Space because it was a "perfect grandstand for watching the sunset over the sea and the outline of the [neighboring] island of Ugljan, while listening to the musical compositions played by the sea itself." Below, listen to the organ wail its harmony on an especially rough day by the sea. |
Myanmar Military Aided Massive Land Grab From Ethnic Minorities: Rights Group
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BANGKOK, March 26 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Businesses in Myanmar have colluded with military and government officials to seize vast tracts of farmland from ethnic minority villagers in the northeast, using much of the land for rubber plantations, a UK-based rights group said.
Over the past decade, 5.3 million acres (2.1 million hectares) has been leased to investors for commercial agriculture without the consent of landowners, and rubber plantations cover more than a quarter of this area, Global Witness said in a report released on Thursday. Global Witness's 18-month investigation focused on northeastern Shan state bordering China, and found that the area's regional military command collaborated with district government and private companies to confiscate land, the majority of seizures taking place in 2006.  "The army went in with company representatives to help them confiscate the land... land that farmers had used for generations," the group's land campaigner, Josie Cohen, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by telephone from Myanmar. Soldiers showed up in villages with no warning, once even moving into the village chief's house, and marked out the boundaries of the land they wanted with bamboo posts, forcing villagers to clear it, she said. The main beneficiary of the land seizures in the area Global Witness surveyed was private company Sein Wut Hmon, it said. The owner and director of the company denied all allegations made in the report against him and the company, the report said. An employee at Sein Wut Hmon, reached by telephone at the company's main office in Yangon, said the company's owner could not be reached for comment. Global Witness cross-checked government land allocation documents with field investigations and satellite information. It also interviewed 124 affected residents of 11 villages and more than 20 government officials, retired military officers, journalists and land activists.  The report said Sein Wut Hmon controls the largest amount of land of any rubber company in Shan state with a total of 4,608 acres (1,865 hectares) of plantations. None of the villagers whose land was seized had land titles, but despite having land tax receipts as proof of ownership, they were not paid for their land, the report said. "There was very little compensation - 98 percent of the people we interviewed hadn't received any compensation for the land," Cohen said. Three villages have sent the government letters of protest but have received no response, while in most cases villagers were scared to take action because of the army's firm control of the area, she said. The report said the main ethnic minority groups in communities affected by the company's rubber operations were Shan, Palaung and Kachin.  Land grabs are widespread in Myanmar, and some disputes over confiscated land turn violent. In November 2012, more than 70 people were injured when police raided a camp where people were protesting against the expansion of a copper mine in northern Myanmar. Villagers said the expansion involved the unlawful confiscation of thousands of acres of their land. Cohen said that as Myanmar drafts its new national land policy, Global Witness is lobbying to ensure it is "backward-looking," with a grievance mechanism and restitution for past land grabs. She also urged international investors buying rubber from Myanmar to "conduct stringent checks to ensure that the rubber they buy doesn't fuel corruption or drive human rights abuses." |
What We Know So Far About Germanwings Co-Pilot Andreas Lubitz
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 In the face of mounting evidence that Germanwings co-pilot Andreas Lubitz may have intentionally crashed Flight 9525 into the French Alps on Tuesday, every detail of the 27-year-old's life is being scrutinized. There's a lot of information being reported right now, but only some of it is official and only some of it appears to have immediate bearing on Tuesday's tragedy. In an effort to cut through the rampant speculation, here's a breakdown of all the information about Lubitz that has emerged so far:What We Officially Know * Lubitz appears to have programmed the plane's descent into the mountain. Swedish flight tracking service FlightRadar24 detected through satellite data that the plane's autopilot was manually switched to a cruising altitude of 100 feet, the lowest possible setting. The change happened after the pilot left the cockpit, Marseille prosecutor Brice Robin said Thursday. "The interpretation we can give at this time is that the co-pilot, through a deliberate act, refused to open the door of the cockpit to the commander, and activated the button that commands the loss of altitude," Robin said. * Lubitz locked the cockpit door and didn't respond to the pilot's calls to be let back in. The flight voice recorder captured the pilot repeatedly asking to be let back into the cockpit. "You can hear the commanding pilot ask for access to the cockpit several times," Robin said. "He identifies himself, but the co-pilot does not provide any answer." * On the cockpit voice recording, Lubitz can be heard breathing normally up until the moment of impact. This suggests that he was conscious and hadn't suffered a medical emergency, Robin said Thursday. * Lubitz took a break from his training six years ago, according to Germanwings CEO Carsten Spohr. Spohr said Thursday that German privacy regulations don't allow him to elaborate on the reasons for the interruption in Lubitz's training. * Lubitz passed all medical and training exams, Spohr said. * Several doctor's notes were found in Lubitz's apartment, including one that was torn up, suggesting that he was ill and he concealed this information from his employer. "The fact that [documents] were found, including sickness notes that were torn up, still valid, and that covered the day of the act, supports... the assumption that the deceased had concealed his condition from his employer and colleagues," Duesseldorf prosecutors said Friday. We don't know what kind of health issues Lubitz did or did not have, and doctor's notes are given in Germany for all kinds of illnesses, including minor ones, Reuters reports. * No suicide note was found in Lubitz's apartment. * Lubitz had visited Duesseldorf University Hospital twice in the past two months. The hospital denied reports that Lubitz was seeking treatment for depression. What's Been Reported Based On Anonymous Sources Close To The Investigation * Lubitz was reportedly seeking treatment for vision problems, and didn't tell his employer. That's what official sources with knowledge of the investigation told The New York Times. The Times also notes that "one person with knowledge of the investigation said the authorities had not ruled out the possibility that the vision problem could have been psychosomatic." * Numerous psychiatric medications were reportedly found in Lubitz's apartment. That's what an anonymous "high-level investigator" told the German newspaper Die Welt Am Sonntag. The investigator also said that Lubitz had seen several neurologists and psychologists. * Lubitz had a note from a psychiatrist excusing him from work during a period that included the day of the crash, an anonymous source close to the investigation told The Wall Street Journal. What's Been Widely Reported Yet May Or May Not Actually Be Meaningful * Lubitz was reportedly unhappy about his working conditions. German tabloid newspaper BILD spoke to a woman who says she once dated Lubitz. She says she met Lubitz while working as a stewardess on flights with him, and that he was upset about his working conditions. "We always talked a lot about work, and at that point he'd become another person, he'd get very worked up about our working conditions," she told BILD. "Too little money, anxiety about the contract, too much pressure." * He reportedly used to yell at his girlfriend, and once shut himself inside the bathroom during a fight. * He reportedly once told his girlfriend, "One day I'll do something that will change the whole system, and everyone will know my name and remember it." It's unclear from his ex-girlfriend's remarks to BILD whether Lubitz was talking about the airline system, or something broader. "I never knew what he meant by that, but now it takes on a new meaning," she said. * He piloted gliders at a flying club near the crash site when he was 14. Lubitz traveled to the French town of Sisteron, about 30 miles away from the crash site, regularly between 1996 and 2003, a member of the flying club told the French digital TV station Télé. |
Poland's Luckiest Generation
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Poland has not had a very easy history over the last couple hundred years. Divided into three parts at the end of the 18th century, it was swallowed up by three separate empires - Russian, Prussian, and Austrian. For the next 123 years, Poland didn't exist as a country. It won its independence in the chaotic aftermath of World War I, when all three of its imperial overlords collapsed. But the interwar period was one of continued conflict, economic dislocation, and political upheaval. In 1939, Nazi Germany invaded from one direction, the Soviet Union from the other, and the country was once again divided and disappeared. The end of World War II restored Poland to the map, but as a member of the Soviet bloc it never fully regained its independence.
Only in 1989 did Poland once again achieve its full sovereignty. Leszek Jazdzewski is a member of the Martial Law generation, born during the 1980s when Poland was reeling from the government crackdown in 1981 that ended the first legal incarnation of the Solidarity trade union movement. He considers himself very lucky - to have experienced just a small amount of the privations of the Communist period before growing up in a free, democratic Poland. He is now an editor of Liberte! -- a journal devoted to liberalism in Poland and beyond. And although he is fluent in English and pessimistic about the prospects for liberalism in Poland at the moment, he has made the decision to stay in the country, even as a couple million of his fellow citizens have left for greener pastures. "Generations of people fought in the opposition or in World War II or, before, for the independence of this Poland, and were forced to leave the country," he told me in an interview in Warsaw in August 2013. "If I would leave today, it would be almost a betrayal. My generation is the luckiest generation in the last 300 years. Of course I don't blame people who pursue an easier life, even if it's sometimes not so easy. But we are obliged, some of us at least, to try to make this county a better place, a place that people would like to return to." The challenge is enormous. "We must get our country from the periphery, where it's been since the 16th or 17th century, and back into the core," Jazdzewski told me. "We're in the EU so we're in some sense in the core, but it may not last forever. Because of our history there should be more Europhiles among Poles. We can't afford not to be engaged in Europe. The discussion of the future of Poland separate from the future of the whole continent is pointless. We cannot afford not to transform ourselves in a way so that Poland can be become a real actor and a real part of a united Europe. But we have a lot of homework to do. Because of the state institutions that haven't changed, we live in two worlds. The modern world of private initiatives, of companies and cafes, is not much different from New York. But the law in Poland, like the basic human right of habeas corpus, is abused. For example, you can be arrested for months without having a trial. The rights of immigrants are abused here as well. There are so many things to be done here." Above all, perhaps, Jazdzewski and Liberte! are devoted to reviving liberalism - in Poland and in the region. "We don't have a problem with democracy in the region," he concluded. "We have a problem with liberalism. Movements like Fidesz or PiS support democracy but without the liberal aspects. They seek support in democratic elections but want to dismantle the whole constitutional system of liberal democracy that was widely supported in this region in the 1990s, with the exception of Slovakia at certain moments. The support for political liberalism is declining almost everywhere. Here we are trying to call ourselves liberals without adding another adjective to it: social or conservative or neo. In Poland, conservative liberals also hijacked the concept so that you have to explain that you are not against women's rights or gay rights. That's not a good label to start with. It's better to use the terms 'freedom' or 'liberty,' which are supported by everyone." The Interview When did politics become important for you? Politics was very present in my home. People from the opposition movement in the 1970s, from "Ruch," were meeting at our house back in Lodz, where I'm from. My first conscious memory of great loss and tragedy was when Lech Walesa lost to Aleksander Kwasniewski in the presidential elections in 1995. Of course I didn't love Walesa. I understood his limitations as a president. But I really feared the post-Communists coming back to power. Of course, Kwasniewski really wasn't that bad. Perhaps he was much better than Walesa. But when you are 12 or 13, the world is quite simple. My feeling was probably shared by many at the time, even by publicists who were surprised at how quickly the Solidarity revolution lost the support of the people. And why do you think that happened? There's an easy answer, which perhaps you've heard: the transformation had its costs. People like Jeffrey Sachs thought that it was impossible to combine liberal democracy with a transition from socialism to capitalism. So, Solidarity had to pay the price. Still, Solidarity could have been in power much longer if it had not given the opportunity for the former Communists to return to power so soon. Moderate former members of the anti-Communist opposition decided to extend a hand towards the former Communists and not antagonize them. What they were afraid of was the revival of nationalism not the nomenklatura. This approach gave power to very strong anti-Communist movements. And we can see that even today with the Law and Justice Party (PiS). If Solidarity had punished Wojciech Jaruzelski and stripped the Left Alliance of everything they had from the Communist era, it would have been a popular move and it would have leveled the political playing field. Solidarity had no real political experience. The virtues of many opposition members were useless in a world where you had to not only fight the system but attract political support. Solidarity was a real social movement only for a brief time -- just a year and a half. This lack of experience was one of the reasons why, ironically, the Communists were much better prepared to operate in a democratic system. The professionalization of the Solidarity parties only happened in the 21st century with Civic Platform (PO) and PiS. It wasn't so much in their discussion of the issues that they became more professional but in their better marketing and their ability to stay on message. For a short time when I was 20-something, I was a member of the Democratic Party -- which had previously been the Freedom Union -- because I always supported this part of the political spectrum. I'm a liberal from very early on. I saw the great qualities of these people. I believed that you could do politics by convincing people that even though some things were bad for them they were good for the country. These politicians tried to avoid populism at all costs. It's a very old tradition here in Poland to fight for the cause of the whole nation, not to think of partisan politics and how to win against others at the cost of the common good, but there was no place for it any more in post-transformation Poland. How would you distinguish Liberte! from other publications? Some would say that it's an elitist or a niche publication. It's a quarterly in print, but we have quite an up-to-date portal with opinion and analysis. We also have an English version, which is mostly translations of what we think might be interesting for a wider audience. It's one of the few liberal intellectual journals. We write for major publications like Gazeta Wyborcza and Politika. We comment on current Polish politics, and we also think there is a need for a pro-European liberal voice in the mainstream public discourse. In Poland, as you know, there is no true liberal party at the moment. Liberalism attracts at least 15 percent of the population, but this group has no voice of their own. I'm curious how you define liberalism. One of the big divisions is between American-style liberalism and European classical liberalism. Do you think there is a specifically Polish style of liberalism or a Central European liberalism? In the general discourse, it became a negative label. It's perceived in light of all the costs of the transformation and also the crisis connected to the banking system. This label is very much different from what is liberal in the United States. Liberalism in Poland, and in the region in general, was defined in the 1990s as economic liberalism. Liberals like Bronislaw Geremek and Adam Michnik struggled to call themselves liberal, in part because they were coming out of a Left tradition. But I would also hesitate to call them social democrats. The people who are classical liberals here support the free market as well as an efficient state and socially liberal policies. But because of the very strong neo-liberal discourse in the beginning of the 1990s, people like Donald Tusk and Leszek Balcerowicz thought that the economy was so important that they didn't consider fighting for other aspects of classical liberalism. On the other hand, political liberalism has become part of the system in the whole EU. All the mainstream parties in the region in a way became liberal. We don't have a problem with democracy in the region. We have a problem with liberalism. Movements like Fidesz or PiS support democracy but without the liberal aspects. They seek support in democratic elections but want to dismantle the whole constitutional system of liberal democracy that was widely supported in this region in the 1990s, with the exception of Slovakia at certain moments. The support for political liberalism is declining almost everywhere. Here we are trying to call ourselves liberals without adding another adjective to it: social or conservative or neo. In Poland, conservative liberals also hijacked the concept so that you have to explain that you are not against women's rights or gay rights. That's not a good label to start with. It's better to use the terms "freedom" or "liberty," which are supported by everyone. We are also trying to diminish the influence of the Church in Poland. Poland is a very conservative country. We are definitely for secularism. And we are not for the unlimited free market deciding everything. Some things cannot be managed in a business way. How would you distinguish yourself from the Palikot party, which has its libertarian aspects? To read the rest of the interview, click here. |
Six Months After Student Massacre in Mexico, Global Outrage Fades, But Political Crisis Intensifies
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 MEXICO CITY - On Thursday afternoon, thousands gathered around the Angel of Independence on the main avenue of Mexico City to protest the disappearance of 43 students from a teacher's college in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero. Some protestors carried signs demanding the resignation of President Enrique Peña Nieto. Others distributed posters bearing the names and faces of each of the missing 43. Beginning their march toward the Zocalo, they chanted through bullhorns and loudspeakers: Ayotzi vive, la lucha sigue--Ayotzinapa lives, the fight continues. But that fight is changing rapidly. From the early protests back in November--when hundreds of thousands of people worldwide took to the streets to demand justice for the victims of Mexico's drug war--much of the idealism has faded. 42 of the 43 students remain missing, irregularities in the investigation remain, and the possibility of ousting Peña Nieto--one of the central demands of the protest movement--seems a distant dream. International outrage has slowed; even Mexico City's own Reforma newspaper pushed the story of Thursday's protest to Page 6. While the crisis following Ayotzinapa appeared ripe for radical change, much of the conversation in Mexico has turned toward the pragmatic: How should Mexico approach the midterm elections in June? How can Mexican voters send the loudest message? How can Mexico drain its politics of Narco influence? Back at the Mexico City protest, a number of protestors called for a boycott of the upcoming elections. "The political parties are not listening," blared the loudspeaker on top of a truck representing the Frente Popular Francisco Villa Independiente--a local housing rights organization--as it snaked down Avenida Reforma. "Cancel your votes. Do not support the corrupt politicians." The families of the Ayotzinapa victims, for their part, have submitted a formal letter to the National Electoral Institute demanding that the suspension of elections in Guerrero. Drug cartels have infiltrated Guerrero politics too deeply to hold legitimate elections, they hold. They propose devolving municipal power down to local town councils, appointing people of "high moral standards" to direct them. As one sign at Thursday's march read, "Peña Nieto: Guerrero demands justice, not elections." The conversation around the upcoming elections has highlighted a much broader political crisis in Mexico. To many voters, the PRI, the PAN, and the PRD--Mexico's three largest political parties--all appear equally tainted by the drug war. Even Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, one of Mexico's leading voices on the left and head of the new National Regeneration Movement, has been uncomfortably quiet, implicated in the rise of the Iguala mayor that is responsible for the disappearance of the 43 students. In the wake of Ayotzinapa, no major political voice has emerged to represent the citizens that are crying out for change. Moving toward June, then, it is entirely unclear if that change will come. The PRI, despite a near-record low approval rate of President Peña Nieto, still leads in the polls. The PRD may take a small hit in the elections, but overall, the June elections are set to reflect little of the mass, nationwide unrest provoked by the disappearance of the Ayotzinapa students six months ago. Many Mexican voters feel caught in a quandary. "Until we see the 43, we should not vote," says Laura Romero Juárez, a representative of the Front of Social Organizations in Defense of Azcapotzalco. "In picking the best of bad options, we still lose. They will still betray you." Others claim that, in boycotting the elections, voters only give way to the worst of bad options. It is the lack of electoral pushback, they argue, that is driving the PRI's projected success in June. Six months after Ayotzinapa, the haze of protest fever has cleared, and the long, difficult road to change has come into focus. The pragmatic questions Mexico must ask itself in order to arrive there are ugly. But--short of a revolution--this strategic approach is the only way for Mexico to generate change from below, giving voice at last to the many victims of its ongoing violence. |
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