Trump Should Demonstrate Concern for Palestinians to Improve Prospect of ‘Ultimate Deal’

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Trump Should Demonstrate Concern for Palestinians to Improve Prospect of ‘Ultimate Deal’ www.majalla.com

Editorial For the past two years, the Trump administration has been preparing its Middle East peace plan, which it hopes will pave the way for a lasting reconciliation between Israel and the Palestinians. Thus far, several of the Trump administration’s acts and policies have only alienated the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), for instance the decision to move the US embassy to Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and cutting aid to the UNRWA has only made the Palestinians hostile toward any prospective peace plan. In this week’s cover story by Dennis Ross, the writer addresses the major reservations the Palestinians will have toward the deal, as the administration is allegedly set to invite Arab leaders to Camp David to reveal the political component of the deal (something it has thus far denied). The writer further indicates that while Arab leaders might viabilities in the economic component of the deal, they will likely reject the political component if it contains plans which would be unacceptable to the Palestinians. The writer also gives various suggestions which could possible rekindle relations between the US and the PLO. Yasmine El Geressi also writes on the proposed plan, as she gives a brief history lesson on previous Middle East peace negotiations which took place in Camp David. She writes on the 1978 negotiations between Egypt’s Anwar Sadat and Israel’s Menachem Begin, which proved to be the most successful negotiation that took place at the venue. While the section on the Palestinian issue was ultimately abandoned, the negotiations ultimately resulted in the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, as the latter became the first Arab country to officially recognize the former. Then in 2000, then President Bill Clinton hosted a summit between Palestinian leaders and Israel, which was meant to produce a peace deal after the signing of the Oslo Peace Accords seven years prior. The negotiations did not materialize into anything substantial as both parties had demands that they deemed non-negotiable, moreover poor preparation from the Clinton administration did not help matters.

Safa Azeb interviews Nagwa Fouad, one of the most famous Egyptian belly dancers during the golden age of Egyptian cinema.

In this exclusive interview with Majalla, Foaud reveals her rise to fame, her past relationships and marriages, and how she’s spending her days after she retired from dancing. Fouad also speaks of Henry Kissinger’s alleged infatuation with her and why she rejected his marriage proposal.

We invite you to read these articles and more on our website eng. majalla.com. As always, we welcome and value our reader’s feedback and we invite you to take the opportunity to leave your comments on our website.

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Iran Turns Its Economic Hopes to China —

18 But Its Hopes May be Dashed

28 Breathing Life Into Eastern Ukraine

For Japanese Americans,‘The

44 Terror’ is Personal

54 Bad News

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Lessons from Camp David for Middle East Peace Today 3

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50 What to do When Reading Gets Harder

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IVehicles, turned into light streams by the long shutter speed, go on roads ahead of the Eid al-Adha, on August 2019 ,09 in Syrias northwestern Idlib province. Eid alAdha, also called as Feast of the Sacrifice, the second of two religious holidays celebrated by Muslims worldwide each year. People in Idlib continued preparations for the feast despite often being hit by attacks of Assad Regime and Russia. (Getty)

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louds reflect in the water of lake Walchensee near the village Walchensee in the Alp mountains, southern Germany, on August 2019 ,5. (Getty)

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eekly news arrived in the temporary Yemeni capital to ensure troops loyal to the Southern Transitional Council leave government institution, Al Arabiya reported, citing a Yemeni government source.

Yemeni presidential guard forces took over Al-Maasheeq palace after the STC withdraw following calls from the Arab Coalition, which includes Saudi Arabia and the UAE, the source said. The government has ruled out talks with the STC until it hands over the presidential guard all the positions it captured. The separatists and the government, who are meant to be on the same side in the fight against the Houthis, clashed for several days after tensions overspilled at a commander’s funeral. Saudi Arabia and the UAE on Monday urged forces in the city to observe a ceasefire.

US Applies to Seize Iranian Tanker Held in Gibraltar

The United States applied on Thursday to seize an Iranian tanker detained by Gibraltar, halting its expected release at the last minute and preventing a possible swap for a British-flagged tanker held

by Iran. The two seized tankers - an Iranian one in Gibraltar and a British one in Iran - have become pawns in the standoff between Iran and the West, with their fate tangled in the diplomatic differences between the EU’s big powers and the United States. The Iranian Grace 1 oil tanker was seized by Royal Marine commandos in a landing in darkness off the coast of the British overseas territory on July 4. Gibraltar said the

tanker was suspected of selling oil to Syria in breach of European Union sanctions. Two weeks later, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards seized the British-flagged Stena Impero in the Gulf on July 19. Gibraltar was due to release the Grace 1 on Thursday, but just hours before, the U.S. Department of Justice sought to seize it.

Saudi Aramco Ready for Record 2$tn IPO

Saudi-UAE Committee in Aden ‘to Oversee Separatists Withdrawal’

A Saudi-IUAE committee arrived in Aden on Thursday to oversee the withdrawal of southern separatist troops from positions they seized last week from the government. The delegation Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil group is ready to move ahead with a record 2$tn (1.7£tn) market float after revealing profits of 46.9$bn for the first half of this year, but a timing for the deal will be decided by its sole shareholder, the Saudi government, a senior executive said on Monday. “We will announce (the IPO) depending on their (the government’s) perception on what would be the optimum market condition,” Khalid alDabbagh, senior vice president of finance, strategy and development, told an earnings call. Saudi officials have said the government plans to list Aramco in 2021-2020, a deal seen as the centrepiece of the kingdom’s economic transformation drive to attract foreign investment and diversify away from oil.

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Disgraced Money Manager Jeffrey Epstein Dead in Apparent Suicide

Imran Khan Says Pakistan Will 'Teach India a Lesson'

Pakistan’s prime minister, Imran Khan, has threatened to “teach Delhi a lesson” and vowed to fight until the end against any Indian violations in disputed Kashmir. In some of his strongest words since Delhi revoked Indian-administered Kashmir’s special status last week, Khan said the army was preparing to respond to anticipated Indian aggression in Pakistan-administered Kashmir. “The Pakistani army has solid information that they [India] are planning to do something in Pakistani Kashmir, and they are ready and will give a solid response,” Khan said. Pakistan, which also claims Kashmir and has fought wars with India over the region, responded furiously to Delhi’s decision last week to revoke Indian-administered Kashmir’s special status. It compared the Indian government to Nazis and suggested they might carry out ethnic cleansing.

Clashes at Hong Kong Airport, Chinese Paramilitary Holds Drills Across Border

Police clashed with pro-democracy protesters at Hong Kong’s international airport after flights were

disrupted on Monday and Tuesday after thousands of protesters jammed its halls amid a deepening political crisis in the financial hub following weeks of mass demonstrations. Late on Wednesday night, police and protesters faced off again on the streets of the financial hub, with riot officers quickly firing tear gas. Hong Kong braced on Thursday for more mass demonstrations through the weekend, as

China again warned against foreign interference in the city’s escalating crisis and as mainland paramilitary forces conducted exercises just across the border. Western governments, including the United States, have stepped up calls for restraint, following the ugly and chaotic scenes at the city’s airport this week, which forced the cancellation of nearly 1,000 flights and saw protesters set upon two men they suspected of being government sympathisers.

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Disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein was found dead on Saturday after an apparent suicide in the New York jail cell where he was being held without bail on sex-trafficking charges, and a source said he was not on suicide watch at the time of his death. Epstein, 66, was found unresponsive in his cell in the Special Housing Unit of the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) and taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, which operates the lower Manhattan jail, said in a statement. It declined to comment further. The financier, who once counted Republican President Donald Trump and Democratic former President Bill Clinton as friends, was arrested on July 6 and pleaded not guilty to charges of sex trafficking involving dozens of underage girls as young as 14, from at least 2002 to 2005.

Labour Vows to Bring Down PM Johnson and Delay Brexit

Britain’s opposition Labour Party began its campaign to bring down Prime Minister Boris Johnson, urging lawmakers to back a no-confidence vote and unite behind a caretaker government led by Jeremy Corbyn to prevent a no-deal Brexit, Reuters reported. Johnson has promised to take Britain out of the European Union by Oct. 31, with or without a deal, setting the scene for a showdown in parliament where lawmakers are opposed to a divorce without a transition agreement, However, the scale of the challenge facing anti-Brexit forces was immediately made clear when the leader of pro-EU party the Liberal Democrats described the proposal as nonsense and Labour leader Corbyn as the wrong man for the job. In a letter to opposition party leaders and several senior rebel Conservatives, Corbyn said his “strictly time-limited temporary government” would delay Brexit and hold an election.

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Trump Should Demonstrate Concern for Palestinians to Improve Prospect of ‘Ultimate Deal’ Until now, the Administration Has Responded to Israeli Symbolic Needs but Ignored Symbolic Needs of Palestinians 10

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Until now, the Administration has responded to Israeli symbolic needs but ignored symbolic needs of Palestinians, not even being willing to support statehood as a way of making clear it recognizes Palestinian national identity.

Moreover, the context for the presentation of the plan is not particularly favorable. The Palestinians won’t come to Camp David and will reject the plan without reading it. The Saudis and Emirates are facing increasing threats from Iran at a time when the Administration seems to have no answer for those threats other than imposing more sanctions. And no doubt that the Iranians will seek to exploit Palestinian rejection of the plan to mobilize popular opinion against their leaderships.

White House US Senior Advisor Jared Kushner attends the conference on Peace and Security in the Middle East in Warsaw, on February 2019 ,14. (Getty)

by Dennis Ross After developing their peace plan for more than two and a half years, there are now reports that the Trump administration intends to present it in the near future.

Presumably, it will wait until after the Israeli election. But if the reports are to believed, and they seem to be growing out of Jared Kushner’s visit to the region, the plan is for President Trump to present the outlines of the plan at Camp David to a number of key Arab leaders.

At this point, those Arab leaders who are likely to be invited are probably more nervous than hopeful about what is in the proposed plan. Until now, the Egyptians, Jordanians, Saudis, and Emirates, have been told very little about the content of the political part of the plan.

They may believe that the economic part of the plan offers some genuine possibility, but also know that if the political part is not defensible, it is unlikely to ever materialize.

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Egypt and especially Jordan are not immune to similar concerns. And, all of them have reason to be concerned that the plan will not put them in a position to be responsive. Until now, the Administration has responded to Israeli symbolic needs but ignored symbolic needs of Palestinians, not even being willing to support statehood as a way of making clear it recognizes Palestinian national identity. Worse, the Administration has seemingly punished Palestinians by cutting assistance both to the Palestinian Authority, including to hospitals, as well as zeroing out its support for UNRWA and Palestinian refugees. Even if there was logic to end the funding of UNRWA, why not at least phase out support and at the same time take monies cut from UNRWA and fund schools, food aid, and workprograms in Gaza; that would have at least demonstrated a genuine desire to respond to real needs of Palestinians.

All this suggests that there is probably not a great deal of enthusiasm for the Camp David meeting among the likely Arab invitees. It would help if Arab leaders could see the plan in advance of the meeting and know that the Administration would take some of their comments on its content and the way certain issues are described or framed.

Of course, from their standpoint, it would be better

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if they knew that even if the plan had problematic parts, it would cross two essential thresholds needed to address Palestinian national aspirations: statehood and a capital for that state in a significant part of Arab East Jerusalem. If it fails to cross those thresholds, the best the Administration can probably hope for is silence from Arab leaders on the plan and calls for the Palestinians to engage the Administration to address their concerns. Even that may be a reach.

There is something else the Administration could do to improve the context and environment in which the plan is presented. Since the context is currently unfavorable in no small part because of Palestinian opposition, why not take a step that could demonstrate concern for Palestinians and that is practical. Why not in discussions with Arab leaders focus not just on the plan but on a stabilization package for Gaza and the West Bank. The risks of explosion in both are going up; while conditions in Gaza have improved slightly, with electricity up to 18-16 hours a day, getting it up to 24 hours a day, saving Gaza’s water supply, and ensuring sewage treatment remain basic needs. Funding the work program that UN peace process coordinator, Nicolai Mladenov has formulated would not transform Gaza but could create new baseline and a sense that life could get better—and that would put public pressures on Hamas to avoid another blow-up and not to add to the hardships of the Gazans. The needs in the West Bank are different but there is a financial crisis. True, it is caused by President Abbas refusing to accept the duties or taxes that Israel collects and transfers each month to the Palestinian Authority. Israel’s Knesset

It would help if Arab leaders could see the plan in advance of the meeting and know that the Administration would take some of their comments on its content and the way certain issues are described or framed.

passed a law in February that requires the government to withhold from the monthly transfers the amount of money that the PA gives to the families of those who are in Israeli jails for committing acts of terror or violence against Israelis.

The facts here are worth mentioning. The PA continues to provide the money to these families, giving them priority over other expenditures. Israel, in turn, is withholding about %6 or 11$ million a month from the 187$ million they typically transfer. Meaning that Abbas is turning down 176$ million a month that is still available—money which makes up more than 3/2 of the PA’s budget. The net result is a financial crisis in the West Bank and sooner or later something has to give—and a blow-up in the West Bank will not only further sour the environment in the region but the Iranians are sure to exploit it.

But there is a way out. Why not have the Administration

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In this June 2019 ,25, photo released by Bahrain News Agency, White House senior adviser Jared Kushner talks to the audience during the opening session of the «Peace to Prosperity» workshop in Manama, Bahrain.

(AP)

suggest to the key Arab players that they go to President Abbas and offer in private to make up the 11$ million a month that Israel is withholding in return for his taking the 176$ million a month that is available. The Arab leaders could say to Abbas that you are already defying the Israelis—take the money that is yours, recognizing that we can’t make up for that amount. They can offer to provide him some cover by publicly saying that they believe that Israel has no right to withhold Palestinian money; that they make up what the Israelis are withholding and they support Abbas’ responsible position of receiving the remaining Palestinian money to address the real needs of the people. (At this point, there is roughly 1$ billion sitting in banks waiting for the PA to take it— obviously monies that would make a huge difference for Palestinians.)

Producing something for the Palestinians, even indirectly, could build the Administration’s credibility at

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Producing something for the Palestinians, even indirectly, could build the Administration’s credibility at a time when it has little, while also having the virtue of preventing an explosion. a time when it has little, while also having the virtue of preventing an explosion. The Administration will still face an uphill battle in selling its plan. But should the Administration act to change the landscape, it might yet get a hearing on its plan—and that is the best it can hope for now.

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Lessons from Camp David for Middle East Peace Today The Mixed Legacies of the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Summits 14

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by Yasmine El-Geressi US President Donald Trump could lay out his vision for peace between Israel and the Palestinian Authority at a summit at his Camp David residence – home to the historic 1978 peace accords and the summit of 2000 - before the Israeli elections on 17 September. Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, reportedly invited leaders of designated Arab states during his trip to the Middle East earlier this month to finalise details of the proposed 50$ billion economic development plan for the Palestinians, Jordan, Egypt and Lebanon. According to reports, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was involved in planning the summit, but won’t attend in an effort to ease domestic pressures and make it easier for Arab leaders to go. Washington has denied that a summit is being planned, nonetheless, examining the legacy of the summits held at Camp David and what, if any, lessons can be learned could help advance the Israeli-Palestinian peace process today.

THE 1978 PEACE ACCORDS

U.S. President Bill Clinton walks with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak (L) and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat (R) July 2000 ,11 at Camp David during peace talks. (Getty)

In 1977, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat flew to Israel in a surprising move to show his willingness to negotiate for peace, becoming the first Arab head of state to visit the Jewish nation. A year later, US President Jimmy Carter invited Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to Camp David to help facilitate negotiations. The two leaders accepted. The peace talks held from September 1978 ,17–5 at the Maryland presidential retreat became a cornerstone of regional security and US strategy in the Middle East. The talks resulted in two agreements. The first was called A Framework for Peace in the Middle East.

It laid down principles for peace, expanding on resolution 242, set out what it hoped was a way of resolving what it called the "Palestinian problem", agreed that there should be a treaty between Egypt and Israel and called for other treaties between Israel and its neighbours.

The weakness of the first agreement was the section on the Palestinians. By the time he arrived at Camp David in September 1978, Carter had fully abandoned any pretense of support for Palestinian statehood. In his personal notes written before his first meetings with Sadat and Begin, the president admitted his plan was to get the parties to accept a “common definition of peace” that would ensure “no independent Palestinian State” and provide the participation of only “West Bank Arabs” in a future Palestinian government. “This formulation was a clear indication that officials from the PLO, who resided outside of the West Bank, would be excluded from any involvement,” wrote Craig Daigle, author of "The Limits of Détente: The United States, the Soviet Union, and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1973-1969." in the Washington Post.

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Clinton also made a mistake by shutting out other parties. “Instead of mobilising key Arab states to support its efforts, the US excluded them from our planning, largely because of Israel’s worry about leaks and pressure.”

The second accord was the framework for the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel. The negotiations resulted in a handshake between Sadat and Begin and led to Egypt becoming the first Arab state to recognise Israel, bringing an end to nearly thirty years of hostilities. It led to Egypt regaining the Sinai Peninsula in 1982 and secured the dismantling of Israeli settlements there. This marked the first time the Israelis had agreed to withdraw from Arab territory since the Six-Day war in 1967. Sadat and Begin shared the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize for their historic achievement and the treaty has defined the framework for subsequent peace treaties signed under US auspices.

While their relationship has often been chilly, it is warmer today—at least on the official level—than at any time since Anwar Sadat’s assassination in October 1981.

The second accord probably stands as the most successful negotiations in the whole peace process. Robert Satloff, Executive Director of The Washington Institute, wrote in The American Interest, that Camp David suggests that implementation can be achieved against considerable odds and in doing so galvanise radical strategic change in unpredictable directions.

“It is a measure of Camp David’s success that few now recall that Egypt was for decades Israel’s most militarily dangerous foe and the strategic linchpin of a pan-Arab order. Most policy analysts in the mid1960-s (and, most likely, in the mid1970-s) would have considered the idea of an enduring, decades-long Egyptian-Israeli security partnership to be outrageously implausible. Camp David shows that a seemingly unthinkable strategic reorientation of leading rivals is entirely possible, if not likely, and that once achieved can be normalized remarkably quickly,” he said.

But according to Saloff, what sets these negotiations apart from the peace process underway today is that in the current political environment that there is “no possible overlap between the most Israel will offer and the least the Palestinians will accept (and vise versa).”

Following an interview with Jared Kushner on the

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Middle East peace process, earlier this year at the Washington Institute’s annual conference Satloff wrote that “while the US should be prepared to offer its own ideas to help the parties close the gap in negotiations – as Jimmy Carter did as Jimmy Carter did at Camp David in 1979, after Menachem Begin, Anwar Sadat, and their teams had already spent 17 months in intensive bargaining - the chasm between Israelis and Palestinians today is so wide that no conceivable bridging formula exists.”

THE SUMMIT OF 2000 In July 2000, at the invitation of President Bill Clinton, Israeli and Palestinian leaders met at Camp David to negotiate final status issued for a hoped-for final peace agreement between the parties. The summit took place nearly seven years after the singing of the Oslo Accords, which were supposed to lead to a final deal within five years. For nearly two weeks Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat wrestled with the core issues of the conflict – territory, refugees, security, and, of course, Jerusalem – in front of the US President.

Although there was no agreement, the negotiations were the most comprehensive effort to resolve the conflict and were more detailed than ever.

Israel offered the Gaza Strip, a large part of the West Bank, plus extra land from the Negev desert, while keeping major settlement blocks and most of East Jerusalem. It

“While the US should be prepared to offer its own ideas to help the parties close the gap in negotiations – as Jimmy Carter did as Jimmy Carter did at Camp David in 1979 - the chasm between Israelis and Palestinians today is so wide that no conceivable bridging formula exists.” Robert Satloff

proposed Islamic guardianship of key sites in the Old City of Jerusalem and contributions to a fund for Palestinian refugees. The Palestinians wanted to start with a reversion to the lines of 1967, offered the Israelis rights over the Jewish quarter of the Old City and wanted recognition of the "right of return" of Palestinian refugees. In the end, the Camp David summit ended without an agreement and the failed talks were immediately followed by the eruption of unprecedented violence.

Non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution Shibley Telhami said in an article published by the Foreign Policy Research Institute, that part of the reason for the failings of Camp David in 2000 was Clinton’s view of Arab-Israeli peace as principally a humanitarian gesture – not as a vital American strategic interest. “His administration prepared poorly for the negotiations, with little inter-agency coordination, and made decisions at the end without much consideration for the broad strategic

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(L-R) Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, U.S. President Jimmy Carter, and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin join hands after the Camp David Accords September 1978 ,18 in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC. (Getty)

consequences. The issue became somewhat personal for Clinton, but there is no indication that it ranked highly as a strategic priority for the United States. Although that was not the principal reason for failure, it certainly was one that contributed to it,” he wrote.

These sentiments were echoed US policy advisers Robert Malley and Aaron David Miller. Drawing from inside experience on Middle East summitry, they wrote in Politico that one of the reasons that Clinton’s summit failed was that the advisers who accompanied him to Camp David were not on the same page in regards to the contours of an anticipated peace agreement, and therefore it was difficult for the US to thoroughly prepare for a summit or adhere to a consistent view.

They also wrote that one of the key lessons from the negotiations is to avoid a do-or-die mentality, “the kind Barak insisted on in 2000 when negotiating with Palestinians and persuaded us to carry out when Clinton

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met with then-President Hafez Assad of Syria earlier that year.”

“The Israeli prime minister swiftly quashed any talk of a series of meetings, arguing that only under the pressure of a decisive encounter would his Arab counterparts take the plunge. He got his way, but his way didn’t get him— or us—what he wanted. Even the prospect of failure, of a crisis in their relations with Washington, of forfeiting whatever economic or other incentives would accompany a deal proved insufficient to get either Arafat or Assad to agree to less than they were determined to achieve.”

In their telling, Clinton also made a mistake by shutting out other parties. “Instead of mobilising key Arab states to support its efforts, the US excluded them from our planning, largely because of Israel’s worry about leaks and pressure. Midway through Camp David, we needed them, their lack of information made it hard for them to help; their lack of involvement made them unwilling to try.”

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Iran Turns Its Economic Hopes to China — But Its Hopes May be Dashed Why Beijing Isn’t Tehran’s Savior

by Joseph Braude

show that even Beijing is cutting back on its Iranian imports.

The American sanctions campaign continues to have devastating effects on Iranian commerce. Europe and India are pivoting to alternate supplies of oil, and cutting their own exports to Iran. Tehran now pins its hopes on China not following suit — yet economic data for the last two months appears to

Europe, India Turn Away from Tehran Data published by Reuters Monday indicated that German exports to Iran have fallen by nearly half in the first six months of 2019, as European companies scale back business

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ties with Tehran to avoid being ensnared by reimposed American secondary sanctions. Sales to Iran plunged by 48 percent to 759$ million from January through June year-onyear, according to the Federal Statistics Office. Similarly, imports from Iran declined by 43 percent to nearly 110 million euros.

"The fact that trade between Iran and Germany has collapsed that massively is not a big surprise, unfortunately," according to the BGA trade association. "German companies are forced to choose between their market activities in Iran and the United States, so it's clear which market is preferred."

Adding to Tehran’s woes, India, Iran’s second largest oil customer, has responded to renewed American sanctions by ramping up purchases of U.S. and Venezuelan oil exports.

India, which imported a total of 27.2 million tons of crude oil 2018-2017, has historically relied on Iran for nearly 17 percent of that total.

Yet industry data indicates that India has significantly increased its purchases from the U.S., reaching a total of 184,000 bpd in the six months from November 2018 to May 2019, compared with approximately 40,000 bpd in the same period a year earlier.

China Scales Back on Iranian Oil Imports

China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi (R) meets Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing on May 2019 ,17. (Getty)

Oil experts remain divided on precisely how much Chinese imports of Iranian oil have dropped. According to three data firms which track oil tanker movements, China imported between 4.4 million and 11 million barrels of Iranian crude in July, or 360,000-142,000 bpd. The lower end of that range would mean China had slashed Iranian imports to roughly one-third of their year-earlier level, while the upper end of that range would indicate only a modest drop. It is worth noting that China recorded Iranian oil import levels of 208,205 bpd in June — down from 354,016 bpd in May — which were the lowest in nearly a decade and 60 percent below their year-ago level, according to data from the General Administration of Customs.

China had been buying an average of 690,000 bpd from Iran, before the U.S. under President Trump left the JCPOA and re-imposed sanctions on Iranian oil. The data for 2019 so far indicates that that average has declined to 437,000 BPD. On the other side of the ledger, China has sold around 4.5$ billion of goods to Iran in the first half of 2019, marking a 46 percent decline compared with the same period last year.

Despite the Trump administration’s declared aim of reducing Iranian oil exports to zero, a complete oil cutoff appears unlikely. According to one oil trader, if China had completely cut off oil purchases from Iran, the current oil price would be significantly higher: “If you take two to

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Despite the Trump administration’s declared aim of reducing Iranian oil exports to zero, a complete oil cutoff appears unlikely. According to one oil trader, if China had completely cut off oil purchases from Iran, the current oil price would be significantly higher. three million barrels a day off the market by sanctions on Venezuela and Iran, plus the OPEC cutbacks, you would have to see a higher price.”

It is equally unlikely, however, that China will act in total disregard of U.S. sanctions. Indeed, a recent Bank of America report noted that a Chinese decision to fully cast off sanctions and “reinitiate Iran crude purchases could send oil prices into a tailspin,” with prices potentially sinking to as low as 30$ a barrel.

Iran To China: Buy More Of Our Oil Reflecting the strain of sanctions as sales to the West decline, Iranian Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri was quoted by Iranian media as saying, “Even though we are aware that friendly countries such as China are facing some restrictions, we expect them to be more active in buying Iranian oil,” shortly after a meeting with Song Tao, Head of the International Liaison Department of the Communist Party of China, who had been visiting in Tehran this week.

Immediately after meeting the head of the International Liaison Department of the Communist Party of China, Song Tao, on July 30, Iranian MP Ali Larijani asserted, "Consultations between Iran, China, and cooperation of certain friendly countries can help counter the U.S. animosity and neutralize its consequences," but qualified that the "success of this plan is contingent upon practical steps."

This bid for Chinese economic aid follows in the footsteps of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's October ,17 2018 comments to a group of Iranian academics returning from various Western countries: "We should look to East, not West. Pinning our hope on the West or Europe would belittle us as we would beg them for favor and they would do nothing."

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Boris Johnson and the Politics of Neo-Poodleism Trump Won’t Rescue the British From Their Brexit Mess

by Jeremy Shapiro Boris Johnson, the United Kingdom’s scruffy, grandiloquent, and often bumbling new prime minister, has worked hard to fashion himself after Winston Churchill. In his speeches, Johnson often channels his “inner Churchill”

and waxes nostalgic for Britain’s glorious past. He even sees himself as waging a heroic struggle against a European super-state, as Churchill did as Britain’s wartime prime minister.

Johnson will surely invoke another Churchillian precedent

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Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson gestures as he meets with Estonian Prime Minister Juri Ratas at 10 Downing Street in central London on August 2019 ,6.

(Getty)

as he tries to steer his country away from the European Union and toward a closer bond with the United States.

Churchill coined the term “special relationship” to described London’s privileged ties with Washington, and with Brexit approaching, Johnson will be similarly keen to capitalize on access to Washington.

Johnson seems to benefit in this endeavor from his chemistry with U.S. President Donald Trump, who can clearly see that the new British leader is different than his predecessor. Where Theresa May was prim and proper, Johnson is outlandish and mop-topped. Where May was cautious and reserved, Johnson is bold and flamboyant.

Where May was a powerful woman, Johnson is most certainly a man. All this stands Johnson in good stead with Trump, who has rather ungrammatically praised him as “Britain Trump.”

For many commentators, Trump’s affinity for Johnson means the two have an opportunity to rekindle the moribund special relationship, which today mostly lives on as a polite talking point in U.S.-U.K. press conferences.

Yet, beyond the kind words, there is precious little evidence that Washington sees that relationship as special. There is even less reason to expect that the bromance between Johnson and Trump will turn things around.

Johnson’s predecessor found this out the hard way. When Trump took office in 2017, May probably believed that his support for Brexit would help her steer her country out of the European Union; Backing from the U.S. president could assure a nervous British population that, in leaving its European home, it would be welcomed back to a revitalized Anglosphere. But despite her efforts to ingratiate herself, Trump repeatedly humiliated May and undermined her position in British domestic politics.

Indeed, Trump has proved time and again that personal relationships or historic alliances count for little in policy terms. Just ask Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan, who has flattered Trump at every turn yet has won little more than a public questioning of the value of the U.S.-Japanese defense alliance. Or President Emmanuel Macron of France, whose initial bromance with Trump failed to inspire the U.S. president to stay in the Paris climate agreement or the Iran nuclear deal. Loyalty for Trump is a one-way street.

POODLES, OLD AND NEW A more apt term for Johnson’s transatlantic policy is neopoodleism. At the time of the 2003 Iraq war, critics often accused British Prime Minister Tony Blair of acting like George W. Bush’s poodle, following the U.S. president into a war out of blind loyalty. Blair, however, was also acting from genuine conviction, and in the process secured a strong U.S.-U.K. relationship.

The Trump-Johnson dynamic will be quite different. Neopoodleism will share with its predecessor the appearance

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Johnson will surely invoke another Churchillian precedent as he tries to steer his country away from the European Union and toward a closer bond with the United States. of British subservience. But it will require even greater obedience and will not be tempered by any sort of ideological conviction on the part of Boris Johnson. Worse, it is unlikely to result in closer U.S.-British relations in the long term.

Such a dynamic is not great for the United Kingdom, but Johnson’s hard-line Brexit policy has left him with few options. In the past, the United Kingdom sought to maintain good relations with both its European partners and the United States, in part to be able to maneuver between them. Previous British leaders marketed themselves as the go-betweens that could bring other European governments on board with U.S. policy, so long as Washington showed a little flexibility. This strategy preserved space for independent British policy even at the height of Blairite poodleism. Theresa May continued this policy, Brexit proceedings notwithstanding, and often sided with Europe in transatlantic disputes over issues such as the Iran nuclear deal or the decision to move the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.

Johnson’s negotiating stance on Brexit has essentially burned the United Kingdom’s final bridges with Europe.

His attempt to blackmail the EU with the threat of a nodeal exit has deeply soured both European officials and publics on the United Kingdom. A recent poll by the German state broadcaster ARD shows that only 37 percent of Germans consider the United Kingdom a trustworthy partner, down 17 points since February. A full 67 percent of Germans expect the relationship to deteriorate further under Johnson.

Without the Europeans to fall back on, Johnson will bring little to the negotiating table with the United States. Appeals to Trump on the basis on historic ties or shared values may make for nice press conferences, but they will have little impact on U.S. policy. As Lawrence Summers, the former U.S. treasury secretary, told the BBC earlier this week, “Britain has no leverage, Britain is desperate … it needs an agreement very soon. When you have a desperate partner, that’s when you strike the hardest bargain.” Johnson’s weak negotiating position means that he will have to settle for neo-poodleism with all its diplomatic, geopolitical, and economic consequences.

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Diplomatically, neo-poodleism will demand constant flattery both public and private. Trump’s defenestration via Twitter of Kim Darroch, the United Kingdom’s respected ambassador to Washington, for the sin of honesty in diplomatic cables sent a message: the United Kingdom is in no position to criticize the U.S. president.

Johnson’s decision, in defiance of the entire British diplomatic establishment, to abet this national humiliation and throw Darroch under the bus shows that he already understands how neo-poodlistic diplomacy works. Don’t expect Johnson’s government to uphold the May cabinet’s tradition of principled opposition to Trump’s periodic racism and xenophobia.

On security issues, the toll on British policy will be even greater. May’s most significant divergence from the U.S. policy was on the Iran nuclear deal. She refused to give up on the deal or to join the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran. Instead, she worked with her European partners to establish a new financial mechanism, Instex, to promote trade with Iran beyond the reach of U.S. secondary sanctions.

After Iran seized a British-flagged oil tanker, one of May’s last acts in office was to push for a naval force near the Arabian Gulf under European rather than U.S. leadership.

But since Johnson took office, the European-led initiative seems to have withered away. Instead, the United States asked the United Kingdom, France, and Germany to join its own operation. An isolated United Kingdom could not say no and joined the U.S.-led operation, even as its erstwhile European partners refused. Fairly soon, particularly with continued Iranian aggression against British interests, the United Kingdom’s support for the Iranian nuclear deal should similarly wither away.

Right now, Johnson’s priority is to complete the Brexit process by the deadline of October 31. He needs the United States and seems uninterested in the cost that the United Kingdom’s diplomatic isolation from its traditional European partners will entail.

But it is on the economic front that neo-poodleism will exact its greatest price on Boris Johnson’s government.

A central feature of Johnson’s “no-deal” bravado is the idea that, once the United Kingdom leaves the EU, a freetrade deal with the United States will make up for the loss of access to the European single market. Trump has encouraged this notion, making a commitment soon after Johnson took office to deliver “an ambitious free trade agreement” with negotiations starting “as soon as possible after the UK leaves the EU.” Unfortunately, a closer look at the United States Trade Representative’s official negotiating principles for a U.S.-British free trade pact reveals that it is very much an “America first” effort. Its clear intent is to gain U.S. access to the British agricultural and pharmaceutical markets without any reciprocal concessions. Woody Johnson, the U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom,

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(L-R)Former British Secretary for Foreign Affairs Boris Johnson, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, Former UK Prime Minister Theresa May, and US President Donald Trump arrive for a working dinner meeting at the NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) summit at the NATO headquarters, in Brussels, on May 2017 ,25. (Getty)

confirmed this impression earlier this year, saying London was trapped in a “museum of agriculture.”

To get a trade deal, the ambassador wrote, the United Kingdom would have to accept U.S. wares such as chlorinated chickens and genetically modified organisms. Whatever the scientific merits of those products, their introduction will not go down well in British domestic politics. Efforts to bring U.S. drug prices to the United Kingdom’s sacred National Health Service will fare even worse.

PITY THE POODLE Neo-poodleism will force politically difficult, even humiliating, compromises on the British government across the board. But those compromises seem far away.

Right now, Johnson’s priority is to complete the Brexit

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process by the deadline of October 31. He needs the United States and seems uninterested in the cost that the United Kingdom’s diplomatic isolation from its traditional European partners will entail.

In the longer term, however, neo-poodleism will create serious problems for U.S.-British relations. Already, 67 percent of the British public have a negative opinion of Trump. No other world leader scores worse—not even Russian President Vladimir Putin, who in 2018 ordered a chemical weapons attack on British soil. If the United Kingdom must fight in the United States’ war with Iran, accept low U.S. food-quality standards, and pay high U.S. drug prices, Trump’s unpopularity in the United Kingdom will reach new heights. At that point, the relationship will not feel very special.

This article was originally published on ForeignAffairs.com.

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Japan and South Korea Can’t Get Along Why America Needs to Help Its Allies Mend Fences

by Celeste L. Arrington and Andrew Yeo Since late last year, a conflict has been steadily building between two of the United States’ closest Asian allies. Last fall, the South Korean Supreme Court ruled in favor of a dozen plaintiffs seeking

compensation from Japanese firms that used forced Korean labor during World War II. Relations between the two countries have been deteriorating ever since. Japan is now poised to remove South Korea from its “white list” of trusted countries for

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trade in sensitive materials—a decision that would hurt both countries’ economies and disrupt global supply chains in the high-tech sector. South Korea, meanwhile, is threatening to withdraw from an intelligence-sharing agreement with Japan that facilitates security cooperation between these two key U.S. allies.

Seoul and Tokyo have quarreled in the past, but their current feud has serious implications for U.S. interests in Asia. Left unresolved, tension between Japan and South Korea could not only damage the global economy but undermine the Trump administration’s policies toward North Korea and the Indo-Pacific. And yet the White House has shown little interest in mediating the dispute.

Continued indifference would be a major mistake.

The United States’ strategy in Asia depends on trilateral cooperation with Japan and South Korea.

It should make resolving the conflict between its allies a priority.

President of South Korea Moon Jae-in (L) is welcomed by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (R) on the first day of the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan on June ,28 2019. (Getty)

Japan colonized Korea from 1910 to 1945. During World War II, Japan forced Koreans into labor and sexual slavery. South Korea perceives Japan as showing little contrition for these past abuses. Japan, meanwhile, is frustrated with a demand for apologies and reparations that it sees as insatiable.

questions. As a result, Tokyo urged Japanese firms to ignore the court rulings. Lawyers for the plaintiffs have since asked South Korean courts to seize the RELATIONSHIP ISSUES Japanese firms’ Korea-based assets. In January, a district court froze the assets of a Japanese Japan and South Korea might seem to be unlikely steelmaker, but these have yet to be sold off. antagonists. The countries are democratic and The legal dispute came just after South Korean developed neighbors with deep economic ties, President Moon Jae-in made a controversial common external threats, and close alliances with decision. Back in 2015, Japan and South Korea had the United States. But although Seoul and Tokyo established a joint foundation as part of a bilateral normalized relations in 1965, a stable partnership agreement on the issue of “comfort women”— has remained elusive on account of their dark South Korean women forced into sexual slavery by history. Japan colonized Korea from 1910 to 1945. the Japanese military during World War II. Japan During World War II, Japan forced Koreans into contributed 9$ million to the foundation, which was labor and sexual slavery. South Korea perceives supposed to pay compensation to surviving victims Japan as showing little contrition for these past and their families. But the agreement was unpopular abuses. Japan, meanwhile, is frustrated with a in South Korea and tainted by its association with demand for apologies and reparations that it sees Moon’s impeached predecessor, Park Geun-hye. as insatiable.

In November 2018, Moon announced his decision The current dispute began last fall. The South to shutter the foundation. The South Korean Korean Supreme Court upheld lower court rulings government reviewed but decided to retain the ordering Japanese firms to pay around 90,000$ comfort women agreement earlier in 2018, but by each in damages to a dozen people who claimed ignoring Japanese calls not to close the foundation they had endured forced labor. The court further it has undermined its credibility with Tokyo, which declared the entire colonial period “illegal.” The now fears that any bilateral agreement between the Japanese government rejected the rulings. In 1965, two will not be kept. the two countries had signed the Treaty on Basic Earlier this year, Japan threatened to respond by Relations Between Japan and South Korea and an curtailing visas for South Koreans and raising tariffs accompanying claims agreement. Under the treaty’s on South Korean imports. Then, in July, Japanese terms, Japan gave South Korea more than 500$ Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced his intention million in grants and loans, which in Japan’s view to restrict the export of three chemicals that South “completely and finally” resolved all compensation Korean companies need in order to produce

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semiconductors for screens and cell phones. Going a step further, he threatened to remove South Korea from its white list of countries that face minimum trade restrictions. Tokyo cited national security reasons for the move, but Seoul called it “economic retaliation” for its recent Supreme Court rulings, and on July 19, threatened to pull out of its intelligencesharing agreement with Japan. In addition, South Korea has vowed to seek out new export partners and reduce its dependence on Japan for high-tech components.

RED MEAT The diplomatic rift has inflamed public sentiment in both countries, making it difficult for either government to back down. Some two-thirds of South Koreans support the burgeoning movement to boycott Japanese products, exchanges, and tourism.

More than 80 percent distrust Abe. In Japan, one survey found that 71 percent of Japanese supported Abe’s export restrictions, while only 17 percent opposed them.

Japanese commentators have reported widespread “Korea fatigue”—a feeling that South Korean leaders keep dredging up the past for political gain.

Even before this summer’s dispute, one public opinion poll found that roughly half of Japanese respondents harbored negative views toward South Korea. Of that half, nearly 70 percent attributed their negative views to Seoul’s continued criticism of Japan over history.

In the past, the Japanese and South Korean business communities have helped defuse tensions over

The rift between Seoul and Tokyo cannot go unaddressed, however—not least because it undermines the United States’ ability to pursue a coherent strategy toward North Korea.

history or territory. But now South Korean business and political leaders are united in their opposition to Tokyo’s move, and Moon has counseled firms to prepare to do without Japanese components. Abe, meanwhile, has called for national unity in the face of potential economic fallout, such as losses for Japanese exporters. He may get it: Japanese firms fear that the South Korean Supreme Court has opened the floodgates for compensation claims. To date, more than 1,300 plaintiffs have filed nearly 20 lawsuits in South Korean courts against more than 70 Japanese firms, although some of these cases were filed before last fall.

WHAT'S NEXT FOR WASHINGTON? The Japanese–South Korean feud should concern

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Former South Korean "comfort woman" Lee Yong-soo (2nd L), who was forced to serve as a sex slave for Japanese troops during World War II, and mourners shout slogans during a funeral ceremony of her late colleague Kim Bokdong near the Japanese embassy in Seoul on February 2019 ,1. (Getty)

the United States. A trade war between the two countries could hurt the U.S. economy, given the importance of South Korean electronics manufacturers to the global supply chain. But the greater danger is that of normalizing the use of trade policy to resolve unconnected diplomatic disputes. Washington should denounce the export restrictions and boycotts and encourage both sides to compromise on the question of wartime compensation. Unfortunately, U.S. President Donald Trump’s own weaponization of trade policy gives him little credibility in this regard.

The rift between Seoul and Tokyo cannot go unaddressed, however—not least because it undermines the United States’ ability to pursue a coherent strategy toward North Korea. Any successful negotiation between Washington and

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Pyongyang will require Japan and South Korea to cooperate with the United States—and with each other—on issues such as enforcing sanctions against North Korea. Seoul’s threat to withdraw from its intelligence-sharing agreement with Tokyo is particularly troubling in this regard, as the loss of coordination among intelligence services in East Asia would make tracking shared threats, such as North Korean missile tests, very difficult for the United States.

Japan and South Korea are the strongest anchors of the U.S. alliance system in Asia. If they are unable to work together and present a united front against China and North Korea, Beijing will have a golden opportunity to increase its regional influence and Pyongyang may exploit divisions among U.S. partners. For this reason, resolving the dispute between the two countries should be a high priority for the Trump Administration in the pursuit of its broader strategy to “uphold stability and prosperity” and reinforce a “rules-based order” in the IndoPacific.

Yet so far the Trump administration has sent mixed signals about its intentions. Earlier this month, the U.S. ambassador in Seoul urged Japan and South Korea to resolve their differences among themselves. A few weeks later, Bolton and other senior officials flew out to Asia—but once there, they offered no indication of the U.S. position on the matter. Instead, Bolton discussed cooperating on security near Iran and the need for Tokyo and Seoul to contribute more to their alliances with the United States.

Ratcheting down tensions will take leadership and sustained effort from Seoul and Tokyo. But Washington can help, too. As it has done in the past, it should work behind the scenes and avoid publicly taking sides. Specifically, the United States should urge Seoul to agree to settle its compensation claims through neutral, third-party arbitration and advise Japan not to go forward with trade restrictions.

Trump has often expressed skepticism about U.S. alliances, but he should recognize that U.S. strategy in East Asia depends on continued Japanese– South Korean cooperation. To abdicate its role in preserving that cooperation would hurt the United States as much as its allies.

This article was originally published on ForeignAffairs.com.

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Breathing Life Into Eastern Ukraine How to Revive and Reintegrate the Region After the Russian Invasion

by Melinda Haring The Russians took and held Kramatorsk, a small city in eastern Ukraine, for about three months in 2014.

Since then, the only battles this town has seen have

taken place in the kitchen. Or several kitchens, to be exact. Last year, on the anniversary of Ukraine’s Independence Day, government officials sparred for the titles of “Best Plov,” “Best Borscht,” and “Best Goulash.” This year there will be no Independence

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Moscow-backed stooges occupy only part of the Donbas—swaths of the territory remain under Kiev’s control, though they have still not recovered from the Russian invasion.

St. Michaels GoldenDomed Monastery, Kiev, Ukraine. (Getty)

Day competition, since the organizer of the borscht battle was recently sacked.

Yevgen Vilinsky was the first deputy governor of the Donetsk Regional State Administration. The Ukrainian province, or oblast, he helped govern directly borders the breakaway region currently under Moscow’s control. The Donetsk area has been hard hit by war and division, and its citizens are not of one mind about their future. Vilinsky and his team had made significant progress helping the oblast rebound from the war. But when Ukraine’s new president, Volodymyr Zelensky, assumed office, he promptly began replacing everyone associated with the previous administration—including Vilinsky, who was fired on July 4.

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Russia occupies seven percent of Ukraine, including Crimea and a chunk of the region known as the Donbas on Ukraine’s eastern frontier. Even within this border zone, Moscow-backed stooges occupy only part of the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts—swaths of the Donbas remain under Ukrainian control. The fighting continues sporadically, and the Minsk agreements that were supposed to bring peace have failed. Many in Washington and Brussels still hesitate to use the term, but the occupied part of Ukraine has become an intractable pressure point that no one knows how to resolve.

Of the two provinces that make up the Donbas on the Ukrainian side of the cease-fire line, the Donetsk oblast surpasses the Luhansk oblast on virtually any index, including health, education, pensions, roads, government transparency, and income.

These differences owe something to economics and geography: the Luhansk oblast relies chiefly on agriculture, whereas heavy industry has always been centered in the Donetsk oblast. But leadership matters, too.

Vilinsky would be a rare bird in any country—he’s a civil engineer, lawyer, and consultant who thinks about how all the pieces fit together—and there’s no one else like him in the Donbas. Even though they are no longer in charge, Vilinsky and his team thought long and hard about how to bring people back to the Donetsk oblast and have spent time and energy looking for new ideas from the rest of Ukraine to introduce to the region. Ukraine’s coherence as a country and its capacity to one day reintegrate the occupied regions under Russian control depend on the ability of its eastern regions to rebound from their economic and political decline.

DEPOPULATION IN THE DONBAS Regions don’t just recover: energetic, enterprising people bring them back to life. Unfortunately, those

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very people were the first to flee when Russian forces marched into eastern Ukraine in March 2014. On July 2014 ,7, armed gunmen showed up in the middle of the night at Donetsk National University and started taking over dorms. Many faculty and students relocated to central Ukraine, leaving the Donbas without an intellectual ballast. The region’s recovery hinges on their return.

“Education is our number one problem,” Vilinsky said to me in June.

As Vilinsky and his party are well aware, starting a prestigious, Western-style university would bring thousands of people—including students, professors, and administrators—to the Donbas. And establishing a new university would not be as hard as it sounds.

The U.S. government used to do this work, and it did it well: American grants helped start the Kyiv School of Economics and the European Humanities University. The model could easily be applied to the Donbas.

While a university could help anchor the professional and intellectual classes in the Donbas, a permanent military base there would draw thousands more residents to the region, even as it would bolster Kiev’s control over its eastern flank. To absorb these new residents, the region would require additional housing—something the Donbas already needs.

More than 480,000 internally displaced persons live in the Donetsk oblast. Most still dwell in temporary housing, and many live on the Russian-controlled side. A large construction drive would benefit the region economically even as it addressed a longstanding housing shortage.

For Ukraine to succeed as an independent European nation free from Moscow’s machinations, a strong civic identity must take root.

Bridging the divide between Kievcontrolled eastern regions and the rest of the country is a key step.

A NEW SPIRIT The conflict with Russia has forged a new sense of Ukrainian identity, much to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s chagrin. But within Ukraine, regional differences still run deep. Life in the Donbas has long differed radically from life in the rest of Ukraine. In the industrial east, towns historically clustered around the factories, where almost everyone worked and socialized. The head of the factory played an outsize role in community affairs and was expected to care for people’s needs. Such a way of life fostered insularity and discouraged risktaking: in general, people did not talk to strangers.

Now the culture of the region is opening up. In Kostiantynivka, a town of 75,000 people in the Donetsk oblast, young people organize summer music concerts at a defunct glass factory. The performances can draw as many as 2,000 people. One of the organizers, Sofia Pilipenko, just landed a seat at one of the top universities in Kiev but wants to return to eastern Ukraine upon her graduation.

“Our region has a lot of potential,” she told me. “The main thing is to gather people around something important and change the town we live in.”

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Anti-government protesters guard the perimeter of Independence Square, known as Maidan, on February 2014 ,19 in Kiev, Ukraine. (Getty)

to open an outpost in eastern Ukraine. These types of initiatives break down stereotypes and foster a sense of national unity.

HAVE A LITTLE FAITH

In the central square of Kramatorsk, the city council just installed a fountain that draws dozens of people to linger and talk. Cars now stop before crosswalks; dry cleaners have sprung up in several neighborhoods; cafés dot the major streets. Even restaurants—once used almost exclusively for business negotiations— have extended their hours to accommodate families.

The Donbas is changing slowly, but it is changing.

Still, a sense of difference between east and west pervades Ukraine in both directions. For Ukraine to succeed as an independent European country free from Moscow’s machinations, a strong sense of civic identity must take root.

One way to bridge the divide is to invite young people from western and central Ukraine to live in the east for a year. In 2014, the Lviv Education Foundation made a brilliant but temporary start by bringing students from Ukrainian Catholic University to rebuild homes and have informal conversations with locals, often over bonfires. The Ukrainian Leadership Academy could continue this work by opening a campus in Kramatorsk or Slovyansk. The ULA is a yearlong residential program that prepares young people aged 16 to 18 for a life of service. With financing from Western donors, the ULA could build up its faculty

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The larger project in Ukraine is to increase levels of trust in a society where that precious commodity is in short supply. Ukraine’s citizens have the lowest levels of trust in their government worldwide, but people do have faith in their neighbors, volunteers, the church, and the armed forces. The problem is especially acute in the Donbas. Providing opportunities for people in eastern Ukraineto work together can help address the problem.

A community restaurant in Ivano-Frankivsk, a city of 230,000 in western Ukraine, could serve as a useful model for the Donbas. One hundred people invested 1,000$ each in a beautifully constructed brick restaurant called Urban Space 100. The restaurant hosts community events at which speakers address the most heated political issues of the day. Its investors are shareholders who meet regularly to decide on speakers and topics. In Ivano-Frankivsk, where a single political party dominates the landscape, Urban Space 100 has hosted hundreds of meetings.

To most western Europeans and North Americans, the benefits of neutral public space are self-evident.

There are community centers, churches, and civic clubs; people interact with strangers. In Ukraine, a communal gathering space where one’s physical safety is guaranteed is a novel concept. Creating more events venues after the Ivano-Frankivsk model would enable strangers to form bonds of trust by working together on civic programming.

It is all too easy to paint a grim picture of the Donbas. Elderly people wait in enormous queues for miniscule pensions, and internally displaced persons are crammed into inadequate apartments. Even so, signs of life and vibrancy mark all but the smallest villages. Small businesses are popping up in eastern Ukraine, but they need access to bigger markets, which requires better transport links to Kiev.

Reopening the Kramatorsk airport would connect not only these businesses but the whole region to the outside world. Such connections would greatly reduce the sense of isolation that now afflicts Ukrainian-controlled Donbas. The nearest airport, Kharkiv, is 194 kilometers away, and the airport in Mariupol remains closed because of its proximity to the frontline. Air links would allow businesspeople to more easily come and go. More important, an airport would enable ordinary Ukrainians to discover that the Donbas is not all that different after all.

This article was originally published on ForeignAffairs.com.

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Nagwa Fouad to Majalla: I did not know who Henry Kissinger was when he proposed to me. If circumstances had been different I would have married him

by Safa Azeb In an exclusive interview with Majalla, famous Egyptian belly dancer Nagwa Fouad gives us detailed stories on her career, relationships and life. For instance, she revealed that she did not know who Henry Kissinger was when he proposed to her, but she would have tied the knot with him had she not been married at the time. She also told us of her political views as she views the Sadat years as the best she has ever lived through and she is optimistic on what El Sisi can achieve in Egypt. Fouad also voiced her objection to the revealing clothing modern belly dancers wear, and she calls for intervention in such cases in order to maintain cultural values. Having lived a full life, Fouad’s only wish is to do the Hajj pilgrimage, something she said she would do once she has the finances needed. She is strongly considering resigning from the entertainment industry if she performs the holy pilgrimage, and has indicated that she would also commit to wearing the hijab.

Nagwa Fouad is among the most famous Egyptian belly dancers to ever grace the stage, and her fame

is not confined to the Arab region as she made notable performances in Europe and the United States. She started her career in the entertainment industry as an extra in Abd El Halim Hafiz’s films, but she soon had her first major role in the film “Malak w Shaytan” (Angel and Devil) where she starred alongside Rushdy Abaza. Nagwa Fouad was taught the ins and out of the industry from the biggest stars in Egypt at the time, among them was the composer Ahmed Fouad Hassan, the founder of al-Firqa al-Māsīya (The Masiya Band). Hassan would go on to become Fouad’s first husband.

Fouad starred in 160 films and she also produced a number of works such as “Had El Seif” (The Sword’s Edge), “El Bayda w El Hagar” (The Egg and the Stone), “Kashf El Mastoor” (Uncovering What’s Hidden), Hysteria and “Khaltat Fawyzia” (Fawyzia’s Recipee).

Many notable Egyptian and foreign politicians watched Fouad on stage, for instance both US President Richard Nixon and his Secretary of State Henry Kissinger saw one of her performances and it is said that the latter was so infatuated with her and even asked her to marry him. In this exclusive

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“My family in Alexandria received death threats because of my dancing performances. This is one of the reasons I got married to the composer Ahmed Fouad Hassan, as he could protect me from such threats.” father’s negligence; as such they demanded that she come back to Palestine so they could treat her.

Alas, she passed away when I was only 7 months old and I was told later in life that her pregnancy with me contributed to her deteriorating health and that doctors warned against it.

Q: Where is your family now? Are you still in contact with them?

A: I had two half-brothers from my father’s side, but they both passed away and I have half siblings from my mother’s side but I know nothing about them and am not in contact with them. My father’s job as a sailor meant that I did not have the opportunity to meet any extended family, but after my mother’s passing he married a kind Turkish lady who asked him to marry another woman who can give him a son, that way she would devote herself to raising me as her own daughter.

interview with Majalla, Fouad told us about her memories, both the happy and sad ones, and her anecdotes regarding her time in stardom.

Q: Do you really have Palestinian roots?

A: My Egyptian father worked in Yafa, Palestine where he met and married my Palestinian mother.

They then moved to Alexandria, Egypt and she got cancer shortly after my birth. At the time, cancer wasn’t a known disease and my mother’s family thought that she became ill due to my

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Q: Tell us about your start in the entertainment industry.

A: I was enamored by show business from the young age of 12, and by the time I was 14 I asked my stepmother to take me Cairo where I could have my big break. By that time, my dad wasn’t paying as much attention to me as he was focused on his sons which he got from his third wife.

When I first came to Cairo, I started working as a telephone operator for a man called Oraby, who worked as an agent for some of the biggest stars in Egypt. After noting my talent and desire to go into the industry, he decided to help me get jumpstart my career.

Q: Weren’t there multiple challenges at the time that came with working as a belly dancer?

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A: Yes there were. For example, my family in Alexandria received death threats. This is one of the reasons I got married to the composer Ahmed Fouad Hassan, as he could protect me from such threats. Another reason I married him was because I was still a minor at the time and I could not go perform in nightclubs and on stage, but marrying an important person in the industry helped me climb up the industry ladder. My stepmother did not approve of the marriage due to the age difference, but I was determined to wed him. I would later adopt his last name as turned from Awatef Mohamed Agamy to Nagwa Fouad.

Q: How did you get into acting?

A: My marriage to Ahmed Fouad Hassan was a turning point in my life as it helped expose me to the show business life in Cairo. Furthermore, I, like all other artists of my generation, went into the industry for the love of creativity and performance, as such my passion enabled me to become a big name in show business.

Q: Who helped turn you into a cinema star?

A: My talent was my greatest assistant, as well as my connections to major journalists at the time.

I was also friends with important members of intelligentsia whom I learned a lot from.

A: I am indeed the only dancer to dance in front of Abd El Halim Hafiz, and that was to the song “Qololo El Haqeeqa” (Tell Him the Truth) from the film “Share3 El Hob” (Love Street). I Q: You’re the only belly dancer who Abd El instantly agreed to become an extra in the film the Halim Hafiz sang to, how would you describe moment I found out I was going to dance for Abd your relationship with him? Also what’s the El Halim Hafiz and I even offered to work for free story behind that famous photo of you dancing (I remember they gave me 5 pounds for the part). and him drumming on a tambourine?

This part was a good luck charm, afterwards I starred in “Malak w Shaytan” (Devil and Angel) alongside Rushdy Abaza and his daughter Mariam Fakher El Din. Ez El Din Zo El Fakar directed the film, and he brought in Abd El Rahim El Razqany and the head of the head of the acting institute to help me prepare for the role. This dream team, which also had Ahmed Fouad Hassan, is what created the Nagwa Fouad that you know today. As for that photograph, all of us in the entertainment industry were like a big family and we would always get together during holidays such as

“I am the only dancer to dance in front of Abd El Halim Hafiz, and that was to the song “Qololo El Haqeeqa” (Tell Him the Truth) from the film “Share3 El Hob” (Love Street).”

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“My talent was my greatest assistant, as well as my connections to major journalists at the time.”

Shem El Nessim. It was during these holidays when Abd El Halim Hafiz would sit on the floor and play a tambourine, and I would subsequently dance to the beat of the drum and the claps of those around us.

Unfortunately, you can’t find this collective spirit in today’s stars, as most of them have superficial friendships made worse by the cacophony and abundance of smartphones.

had my own performing ensemble that enabled me to do out of the box performances, for example I once performed on a real life horse. Imagine the look on the faces of the audience when I a horse suddenly came on stage.

Q: Have you ever felt rivalry between other performers in the field?

A: Rivalry drives success, but said rivalry should not be destructive. Competition is what leads to development and creativity, and luckily unhealthy competition didn’t exist during my day.

Q: What about the rumor regarding the jealousy between you and fellow belly dancer Sohier Zaki?

A: As I have said in the past, this is just a rumor and nothing more! I even produced something for Q: Speaking of smartphones, are you active on her to work with me just to dispute the rumor. social media?

I produced a series of ensemble performances A: I spend very little time on social media, and called “Maqtebat Nagwa Fouad” (Nagwa Fouad’s only use during special occasions, or to contact Office), and I insisted that Zaki participate in it friends. I also use it when I want to post a photo and I made sure that the costume department or scene of my work, or when I congratulate make her the same outfits as mine and I also made someone or console someone. I rather dislike sure that she had the same number of scenes as such superficial methods of communication. me.

Q: What do you think distinguished you among Q: How has your performances led to your the myriad of dancers from your time period? connections to the crème de la crème of society?

A: The charisma I had and the sultry dance moves A: The reason why I was able to interact with I presented could really catch people’s eyes. I also the echelon of society was because I never hid

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anything from my personal life to the public eye. I never fought with any of my colleagues, and I never harmed anyone. I never did anything to alienate myself from people, and I was lucky enough to perform in the weddings of notable politicians and individuals in Egyptian and Arab society. I was invited to perform in the weddings of both Abd El Nasser and Sadat’s children, respectively. American Presidents Nixon and Carter and various European leaders also came to see my shows.

Q: Is it true that former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger proposed to you? If so, why did you reject his marriage proposal?

A: After one of my shows, someone from the delegation of the US State Department told me that Henry Kissinger was watching my performance and he wanted to speak with me. I did not know who Kissinger was so the delegate told me and then he took me by the hand to meet the Secretary of State. My husband at the time, Sami El Zoghbi, was with me when I met Kissinger and because I did not know a word of English all I could say A: Yes, I saw him in the audience of one of my to Kissinger was “welcome to my country” and performances and I noticed that a tall woman who looked like me was accompanying him. small phrases such as “bye-bye”.

Q: Did he ask you to marry him?

A: Yes, and that is what he wanted to talk to me about. But I politely declined as I was married to Sami El Zoghbi who had converted to Islam just to marry me.

Q: Did you two meet again after that?

“Ever since my last husband, Major General Mohammed Sibai, passed away I haven’t been thinking of marriage.”

Q: So he chose someone that reminded him of you?

A: Yes, I believe so.

Q: Was he really that infatuated with you?

A: It’s not my fault, everyone knows the kind of shows I performed and I was responsible enough to not start any inappropriate relationships with one of my audience members.

Q: Do you know that he wrote about you in one of his books?

A: Believe or not, I only found out about this when I was watching Amr El Liethy’s talk show “Wahed Men El Nas” (One of the People) and he talked about Kissinger’s book which had an entire chapter about me. If it weren’t for El Liethy I would have no knowledge of this.

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“I was invited to perform in the weddings of both Abd El Nasser and Sadat’s children, respectively.” to this day.

Q: If there weren’t any obstacles on your way, would you have agreed to marry Kissinger?

A: If I wasn’t married at the time and he was willing to convert to Islam, then I would have married him.

But, I doubt that he as major member of the US cabinet would have been willing to take such major steps for me.

Q: Why do belly dancers move from one marriage to the next?

A: I have never done that.

Q: How did you feel after finding out about that?

A: I was really happy knowing that I made my mark on this world as an Egyptian woman. I also found out that he was keen on knowing where my next performance was whenever he came to Egypt. Some of my friends also tell me that he still asks about me

Q: They say that you’ve been married 12 times?!

A: When did that happen? I was always travelling for work, so I wouldn’t have the time for all these marriages. I only married six times, and one of those was an unregistered marriage. My last marriage was to Major General Mohammed Sibai, and that was a registered marriage. My other previous include that to Ahmed Fouad Hassan and El Zoghby. I also had a brief marriage to the actor Ahmed Ramzi, we had both signed the marriage contract but I had to go the US straight afterwards to attend the opening ceremony of the TWA Flight Center. When I returned to Cairo, I found out he rekindled his relationship with his exwife and I ended our marriage on good terms and we remained good friends and colleagues.

Q: What do you look for in men you think about marrying?

A: Ever since my last husband, Major General Mohammed Sibai, passed away I haven’t been thinking of marriage. In this day and age, finding a husband is hard since life is getting more expensive and money is limited, furthermore men today only think about the romantic side of the relationship and they do not want to share any responsibility. Also at my age, I am focused on other priorities such as God’s love, charity work and taking care of my health and home.

Q: Have you seen the film “El Raqesa w El Seyesy”

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(The Dancer and the Politician)? If so, what did you think of it?

A: Of course I have seen the film and I absolutely adored Nabila Abeid’s performance as the dancer.

While it is true that Nelly was the best drama actress at the time, but I feel Abeid was best suited for the role as she is the best actress who could belly dance. Abied even told me that if she hadn’t married Atef Salem from a young age, she would have pursued a career in belly dancing.

since he fully embraced artistic creativity. I would like to emphasize that such artistry can return Q: Do you think the events depicted in the film are in this day and age, but the economic crunch related to those in your life? and revitalization has negatively impacted the A: No, I have always stayed away from politics. country’s entertainment industry.

The only politician I ever grew attached to was my late husband, Major General Mohamed Sibai Q: Describe how you felt during the Egyptian who was the Interior Minister’s aid.

Revolution.

Q: Why have you steered clear from politics? Did you have a bad experience in the political sphere?

A: I even though I’m “pretty knowledgeable” in politics, it’s not my field and I do not enjoy talking about it. Even though, I relish listening to Dr. Mostafa El Faqy’s political lectures, I do not think that an entertainer should go into politics because at that point he or she will have to quit the industry to serve his or her country to the fullest.

A: As my building is near the Maspero building, I saw the protests and clashes first hand. I would often severely cough from black smoke, and I would hear gunshots and see fires on a daily basis.

I was worried about the country, but thank God President El Sisi has reinstated security back in

Q: Which political era in Egypt did you enjoy the most?

A: The Sadat years are the nearest to my heart

“I am not afraid of death, but I am afraid of illnesses since I neither have children or people to care for me. I pray to God that I never get any debilitating illnesses.”

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the country.

Q: You said in the past that there is respectful belly dancing and inappropriate belly dancing is that true?

A: Of course there is respectful belly dancing.

Belly dancing today consists of scantily clad women, it’s all about eroticism. However, in the past belly dancing was an art form, and dancing ensemble performances looked like fine paintings.

“I even though I’m “pretty knowledgeable” in politics, it’s not my field and I do not enjoy talking about it.”

days of Ismail Yassin and Anwar Wagdy, but they Q: What do you think of current foreign belly were used as background dancers. For instance you would find them dancing behind Layla dancers?

A: They have been working in Egypt since the Murad during musical scenes in films. Foreign belly dancers are talented but they do not have the same spirit of Eastern belly dancers. Foreign belly dancers also dress in revealing costumes, which is why I she call for intervention in such cases in order to maintain cultural values.

Q: Do you have any regrets?

A: Perhaps the only regret I have is that I never got to experience motherhood and I had multiple abortions. However, when I think about my abortions I know I did the right thing since I wouldn’t want my children to feel neglected as I went about my busy life. I did, nonetheless, raise an orphan girl and made sure she continued her education. She is now a law graduate and is married with three children of her own. Even though she doesn’t visit me much, I don’t hold any grudges against her.

Q: There is a story of you wanting to marry the

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singer Emad Abd El Halim, do you feel sad that this never materialised?

A: This is one of my only regrets in life, it’s true that he asked for my hand in marriage but there were some aspects of his lifestyle that I did not like, additionally, I was eight years his senior. I deeply regretted not accepting his marriage proposal and punished myself for years afterwards.

rid of them. I disposed of all my dancing garments in 1997, and I gained peace of mind after making that decision. Sometimes I feel nostalgic when I listen to the music I danced to, but I know that my time is up and I am happy that I quit before hecklers would start mocking me on stage for my age.

Q: Tell us why you quit dancing, and did that mark your farewell from the entertainment industry?

A: I am semiretired from the industry, if an acting role comes my way I would accept it. As for my decision to quit dancing, it came to one day as I was praying on my prayer mat and I afterwards I told my servants to gather my costumes and get

“Belly dancing consists of scantily clad women, it’s all about eroticism. However, in the past belly dancing was an art form, and dancing ensemble performances looked like fine paintings.”

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Q: Tell us about the photo of you wearing the hijab, are you considering wearing it?

A: My friend took that photo after I finished praying the Maghreb prayer during the Ramadan before last. I was happy with peoples’ reaction to the photo and there is nothing I wish for more than to perform the Hajj.

“The Sadat years are the nearest to my heart since he fully embraced artistic creativity.”

Q: What prevents you from going on the Hajj pilgrimage?

A: Nothing is stopping me from the Hajj, but I don’t have anyone to go with me and I can’t go alone. Also I don’t have the funds to go on the pilgrimage, but I pray to God that he makes me live long enough to go on the Holy journey.

Q: What are you fears now?

A: I am not afraid of death, but I am afraid of illnesses since I neither have children or people to care for me. I pray to God that I never get any debilitating illnesses.

Q: You have had many experiences throughout your life, would you ever compile them in a memoir?

A: I will not write a memoir, my mother died when I was young and I have few memories of my early childhood. I cannot verify the memories of that period, as there are small details in which I am uncertain of.

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A Weekly Political News Magazine

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Issue 1761- August - 16/08/2019

Nadine Njeim: Beauty Queen Turned Screen Queen www.majalla.com

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For Japanese Americans, ‘The Terror’ is Personal The Retelling of a Dark Chapter in American History

by Jen Yamato George Takei sat in his trailer on the set of “The Terror” dressed in his character’s charcoal-blue yukata as we traded histories in bittersweet shorthand. For those whose families were among the 120,000 Japanese Americans incarcerated during World War II, one need only say the names of places to paint a picture.

“We went from Rohwer to Tule Lake,” said Takei, 82, who was a child when he and his family were imprisoned in concentration camps by the American government in 1942, more than two decades before he blazed a trail for Asians in Hollywood as “Star Trek” icon Hikaru Sulu. “There were no charges, no trial. We were rounded up.”

I know those names and others like them. They are etched in menace and melancholy in my mind. Topaz. Jerome. Heart Mountain. Tule Lake, where more than 18,000 were incarcerated during the war, was also a stop on the worst journey of my family’s lives.

I told Takei the places in my family’s history and he nodded. For years, younger Japanese Americans have been telling him where their relatives were sent, seeking to understand the burdens their loved ones carried.

He’s always shocked they don’t know more. The Japanese have a word for what got the older generations through the war: Gaman.

Persevere. Internment wasn’t something that was talked about.

Starting Aug. 12, Season 2 of AMC’s anthology “The Terror” —

set within a WWII-era Japanese American community plagued by horrors supernatural and human — will bring new attention to this underexamined chapter in American history.

“It’s sad and unfortunate but also not surprising that this country’s not very proud of (internment),” showrunner Alex Woo said of the -10episode season, titled “Infamy,” which marks the most significant on-screen attempt to account for and exorcise the demons of that past.

“In both (seasons), we’re using a horror vocabulary to put you in the skin of the people who experienced this historical event,” said Woo, who co-created the season with Max Borenstein. “You will feel the fear they feel. You will feel the terror they feel.”

The timing could not be more apt.

On this early May day, we are still months away from the protests at Ft. Sill, Okla., where Japanese American internment survivors decried the site’s reuse as housing for migrant children from the southern border. We have yet to endure the hate-fueled mass shootings in Gilroy and El Paso. And yet America’s family separation crisis has deepened since filming began in January, and U.S. policies and rhetoric targeting non-white and foreignborn people already alarmingly extend the nation’s racist history.

Takei feels the series’ urgency. He felt it a few years ago before the 2016 election, when he took his internment play “Allegiance” to Broadway.

“We were a threat to national security because of the way we looked,” Takei said of the racist hysteria that led to President

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George Takei of 'The Terror: Infamy' speaks onstage during the AMC Networks portion of the Summer 2019 TCA Press Tour on July ,25 2019 in Los Angeles, California. (Getty)

Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066, authorizing Japanese American incarceration. “We were potential spies, saboteurs, fifth columnists. That sweeping statement, again, I heard as a senior citizen on Broadway — being mouthed by Donald Trump.”

“It’s an American story that all Americans should know about, just like slavery, or what happened to the Native Americans,” Takei added. “And yet our history books have been very mute on the subject.”

Set in a vibrant Japanese American fishing village on Terminal Island near San Pedro, “The Terror” follows a group of Japanese immigrants and their U.S.-born children as a yurei, or spirit, haunts them in the days before Pearl Harbor through the end of the war.

Takei plays retired fishing captain Yamato-san, who is arrested with other community leaders and taken to a freezing prison camp in North Dakota.

Before he left to film a scene set during obon, a festivity honoring the ancestors, I showed Takei a photograph of another Yamato — my grandfather, whom authorities took from Tule Lake in the dead of night after he dissented against the controversial questionnaire that demanded military service and loyalty from internees. The rift the questionnaire caused was the crux of “Allegiance” and will be portrayed in “Infamy.”

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Set in a vibrant Japanese American fishing village on Terminal Island near San Pedro, “The Terror” follows a group of Japanese immigrants and their U.S.-born children as a yurei, or spirit, haunts them in the days before Pearl Harbor through the end of the war.

Takei asked with great interest if my grandfather was still around.

He’s not, I answered. “Oh,” he nodded quietly, with a bittersweet smile. “They’re all gone.”

I was a child when I first heard about the camps, via fragmented, painful memories seldom spoken aloud. When they were shared, it was in a matter-of-fact tone that shielded us from the full brunt of the trauma.

My grandmother described the day in 1942 when she and my grandfather arrived with my infant mother and what possessions they could carry to the Tanforan “assembly center,” one of several racetracks that housed Japanese Americans along the

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West Coast — where the whitewashing was so hastily painted on, the smell of manure oozed from the walls if you poked them.

Today, the racetrack is a shopping mall, but most people don’t know its history: Human beings in a horse stable. Eventually, both sides of my family were sent to a series of inland camps, where they’d spend the next three years incarcerated. It’s no wonder that, even long after the war, the details were difficult to relive.

I met background performer Pat Rose sitting in a tent filled with extras in midcentury western clothes, traditional Japanese kimono and period hair.

The third-generation Japanese Canadian described filming a large arrival scene at the Hastings Park racetrack at Vancouver’s Pacific National Exhibition. Now a popular amusement complex, during the war, Canadians of Japanese descent were interned at the site.

Rose’s relatives arrived there decades ago. She thought of them the whole time. “My grandfather owned a saw mill, and he owned a house and a car, and everything was taken away,” she said. “He told the family, ‘This is probably only going to be two or three months. Don’t worry. We’re coming back.’”

“I had tears in my eyes when I was going through the scene,” she added. “I never thought I would experience something like this.”

Because “Infamy” was intentionally cast with actors of Japanese heritage, personal ties weave through the series. Several of

Because “Infamy” was intentionally cast with actors of Japanese heritage, personal ties weave through the series. Several of the season’s directors, writers and crew members are also of Japanese descent, including Josef Kubota Wladyka, who directed the first two episodes.

the season’s directors, writers and crew members are also of Japanese descent, including Josef Kubota Wladyka, who directed the first two episodes.

Derek Mio stars as Chester Nakayama, a second-generation Nisei and aspiring photographer navigating racism, generational conflict and the appearance of a mysterious woman named Yuko (Kiki Sukezane). Meanwhile, elders begin to suspect an evil bakemono has followed them to America from the old country.

Chester’s father, Henry (Shingo Usami), has his own harrowing arc, drawn from experiences of first-generation Japanese immigrants, or Issei. It’s Chester’s mother, Asako, though, played by Naoko Mori, whose face haunts me: As the Nakayamas report to their assembly center, they learn that America sees them not just as the enemy but as less than human.

Cristina Rodlo plays Luz, a Mexican American student and Chester’s girlfriend, who chooses to join him in the camps.

Their cross-cultural relationship further underscores the season’s relevance, she said. “It’s the right moment to tell the story, with everything that’s happening in the world — especially in the U.S. We have to see how much we’re repeating the same thing over and over again.”

My father was born in Oakland and deemed an enemy alien at age 1. He can recall little of his time behind barbed wire but remembers dust storms so blinding that as a toddler he’d get lost finding his way back to his barracks. He can still taste the dirt and grit that burned his throat and crusted his eyes. He remembers the panic. He remembers how hard it was, years later, to talk to his parents about what they’d all lost.

I thought of my parents and grandparents and their friends, the last generation to live through internment, as I arrived at the fictional Colinas de Oro War Relocation Center, where much of “Infamy” takes place.

Birds circled in the sky above a line of tall pines. A sign warned “STOP … SENTRY ON DUTY” to people of Japanese ancestry.

Wooden guard towers loomed as I stepped past the barbed wire and into the past.

I could see why walking onto the set was overpowering for Takei.

“It is very, very real,” he told me. “The texture of the strips of wood that held the tar paper intact, the crawl space underneath the barrack. Our dog used to crawl under there. All those memories came back. The acting wasn’t acting.”

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In february 1942, the US government ordered internment of 110,000 Japanese Americans. (Getty)

my grandparents had to make their prison feel more like home.

Communal latrines without doors. Multiple families crammed into a tiny wooden shack. Armed guards in high towers, their guns pointed inward. Freedom on the other side of the barbed wire.

“I think horror puts you in the skin of the person experiencing the terror,” said Woo, whose team pored over historical accounts, photographs and testimonies. “Hopefully the viewer will feel and be able to empathize with the terror of the historical experience.”

Mio wore a heavy jacket over his period coat and slacks, as he perched in a tall folding chair in the grass while crew members prepped a farmhouse set for filming. Waiting to film a scene opposite Rodlo, Mio told me of his family ties — not only to internment but to the character he plays.

“This is a very special project for me personally,” he said with a sharp intake of breath. “Because my family is from Terminal Island.”

Mio’s great-grandfather immigrated to the coastal Japanese American enclave as a boy, barely speaking English. Eventually he opened his own cafe on Terminal Island, a cannery town dubbed Fish Harbor, and sent for a bride from his hometown of Wakayama, Japan, where many residents had roots. Then war broke out, and Terminal Islanders were given 48 hours to leave.

Mio’s family lost everything and were sent to Manzanar. When residents returned after the war, their homes and businesses had been razed. There was nothing left.

“Infamy” depicts the night when, at the start of the war, authorities raided Terminal Island and arrested its community leaders. “That actually happened to my family,” said Mio. “My great-grandfather was one of the first to get rounded up.”

Mio studied interviews recorded by original Terminal Islanders, including those of his own relatives. “In researching for this, it became more of a family research project,” he said. “I got to reconnect with my grandfather, who has since passed, and my great-grandparents who have passed.”

A fraction of the size of actual internment sites, Colinas de Oro was modeled after the Manzanar camp in Central California, said production designer Jonathan McKinstry, who also created the unforgiving Arctic setting of “The Terror” Season 1. After walking past a makeshift garden and an American flag gently rippling in the wind, I entered one of the barracks, still setdressed with sparse cots and bedsheets hung for privacy.

I’d only ever seen internment in black-and-white images. Here it came to life in unsettling color. Wandering past potted bonsai and handmade chimes hung from posts, I wondered what comforts

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“Hearing their firsthand accounts of when they first came in the middle of the night and hauled my great-grandfather away — my grandfather was pleading with them and crying, ‘No, take me instead … ’” Mio trailed off, blinking away tears. “We shot that, and it was very emotional.”

In another minute, he’d be called on to finish filming Chester’s journey. But as crew members bustled about, we sat there quietly, thinking of our families, their stories, the names of the places that marked their lives. A gentle wind rolled in across a neighboring field, and for a moment our loved ones sat beside us.

Originally published in the LA Times.

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Nadine Njeim: Beauty Queen Turned Screen Queen Majalla - London Nadine Njeim was born in Baalbek District, Lebanon, in 1984 to a Lebanese Christian father and a Tunisian Muslim mother. Her multifaith upbringing taught her tolerance and understanding from a young age. “I am saddened when I read posts attacking other religions,” she says, “I am lucky that I have been raised to accept others and to be introduced to both Christian and Islamic religions and respect them both.” Nadine grew up in the midst of the Lebanese civil war which she days brought her closer to her parents and five siblings.

in Thailand. Subsequently, she “felt the thirst to keep going, to stay in the spotlight”. While Nadine may have opted against a career in medicine and instead pursued a degree in business management, she names Mother Theresa as a role model, saying, “She is a symbol of unconditional love for people. She was there for everyone with no differentiation to race or culture.”

In 2009, she was encouraged by her friend the Lebanese writer Choukri Anis Fakhory to take up acting. She appeared on the series 'Khatwat Hob' and 'Rijél Hassém' in 2009, and won her first 'Golden Murex Award' in 2010 for her performance in ‘Khatwat Hob’. She later appeared on several other television series including 'Ajial', 'Abwab Ghaym' and 'Dhikra'.

Over recent years, Nadine has become an essential part of the competitive Ramadan show race, appearing in the popular shows created for postiftar viewing, such as Al Hayba, Nos Youm, Samra and Cello.

Since age 12, Nadine dreamt of taking in part in Miss Lebanon, while in parallel planning to study medicine to become a plastic surgeon, but her medical ambitions gave way to the lure of the more glamorous life of a model. At age 16, Nadine began modelling, and at age 20, her life trajectory changed for good when she won the coveted Miss Lebanon Crown in 2004. She then went on to represent The multi-talented star’s comments her country in Miss Universe 2005 on her traditionalist views on gender

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equality caused a stir when a view of her discussing gender equality during a television interview in 2012 resurfaced in 2016. Answering questions on gender equality, she said, "I want women to stay women.

If they equate me with a man, I’d feel like a man. I don’t want to. I want to stay a woman." Many interpreted her comments as against gender equality. In response to the backlash, Nadine said that her comments were deliberately taken out of context.

Earlier this year, Nadine spoke to 'Harper’s Bazaar Arabia', where she clarified her position, "I defend equity not equality", she said, adding that "I see women being way more important than demanding gender equality." She thinks that the blind claim of equality is unhealthy, and that "Women should aspire to equity".

Nadine married civil engineer Hady Asmar on June 2012 ,16 at a Domaine Du Comte in Daraaoun, Lebanon. The couple have two children, daughter Heaven and son Giovanni. She has volunteered as a first aid worker in the Lebanese Red Crescent organization for several years.

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What to do When Reading Gets Harder

Treating underlying conditions and using helpful strategies may be all it takes to get you back on track.

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Sometimes fuzzy thinking gets in the way of reading. This might happen because of a medication that makes it harder to concentrate; a lack of sleep; nutrient deficiency; or lifelong reading or learning disabilities, which can get worse as you age. you can't see up close, or maybe it's hard to read in a room that isn't well lighted.

Pain. "Osteoarthritis at the base of the thumb, wrist, or fingers is common with age and can affect your ability to hold a book," says Dr. Robert Shmerling, a rheumatologist at Harvardaffiliated Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

Pain or numbness in the extremities. This symptom, called neuropathy, can make it uncomfortable to hold reading material for extended periods.

Tremors. Shaky hands from Parkinson's disease or other conditions may keep you from holding a book still enough to read the words.

AGE-RELATED MENTAL CHANGES Man reading Kindle e-book reader at the beach, UK. (Getty)

by Harvard Health Letter Reading for pleasure is one of life's great gifts. It's an escape to another world or a path to increased knowledge. Plus, reading about a subject that's new to you challenges the brain, which may help create new brain cell connections. But many aspects of health can affect our ability to read in older age.

PHYSICAL CHANGES Chronic disease and age-related changes can have a big effect on your ability to read. Consider these factors: Poor vision. Maybe you have double vision or

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Changes in thinking skills can also affect your reading ability. Reading requires attention, shortterm memory, and recall, which decline a little as we age. "It's normal when you're older that your reading might be slower or that you have to occasionally read a sentence more than once to get its meaning. Your ability to read and retain information may take more effort," notes Dr. Joel Salinas, a neurologist at Harvard-affiliated -Massachusetts General Hospital.

Sometimes fuzzy thinking gets in the way of reading. This might happen because of a medication that makes it harder to concentrate; a lack of sleep; nutrient deficiency; or lifelong reading or learning disabilities, which can get worse as you age.

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Likewise, if you always had difficulty concentrating when you were younger (perhaps because of undiagnosed attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), your attention span may shrink further in older age.

"People often think that they wind up reading the same sentence over and over because of memory issues. But if your attention isn't focused on the sentence you're reading, you're not likely to register enough of the sentence to understand what your eyes just passed over," Dr. Salinas points out.

MILD COGNITIVE IMPAIRMENT Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) may also be behind reading skills decline. MCI can make it harder to understand or retain what you're reading.

MCI is a noticeable change in thinking and memory skills, but not enough that it becomes a huge barrier to your ability to take care of yourself and finish your daily tasks. You may miss some appointments, lose things often, have more difficulty recalling names or words you'd like to use, or have a harder time finding familiar places and keeping track of important dates.

If you find it's hard to flip pages, try an electronic reading device (like an iPad or Kindle). With an electronic device, the page stays steady, and it's just a tap to turn the page. For vision challenges, electronic reading devices and large-print books can help greatly.

WHEN TO SEEK HELP Talk to your doctor when you notice thinking skills issues that occur frequently. Start with your primary care doctor, who can perform a mini evaluation or send you to a neuropsychologist for a thorough evaluation. "Neuropsychologists can test for how fast you read, how much you understand, and what you recall from what you read," Dr. Salinas says.

When physical changes are the problem, treating the underlying condition can help you read better.

For instance, maybe you just need a new pair of

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Grandfather and grandson reading at lake.

(Getty)

reading glasses.

SIMPLE FIXES Sometimes all it takes to improve reading are a few strategies.

If you have pain or tremors, Dr. Shmerling recommends propping up a book on a pillow or book holder. If you find it's hard to flip pages, try an electronic reading device (like an iPad or Kindle). With an electronic device, the page stays steady, and it's just a tap to turn the page.

For vision challenges, electronic reading devices

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and large-print books can help greatly.

When attention is the challenge, Dr. Salinas suggests reading in a quiet space, reading out loud, mouthing the words as you read, listening to the audiobook recording while you read, or using a sheet of paper to reveal one line of text at a time so you don't skip ahead.

The important thing is to try.

"There are solutions that work for most obstacles to reading," says Dr. Shmerling, "and for most people, it's a great way to keep up with what's happening in the world and to keep the mind working."

B

ook Reviews

Bad News

Can Democracy Survive If the Media Fail?

By Jacob Weisberg On Press: The Liberal Values That Shaped the News. Matthew Pressman. Harvard University Press, 336 .2018pp. Breaking News: The Remaking of Journalism and Why It Matters Now. Alan Rusbridger. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 464 .2018pp.

Merchants of Truth: The Business of News and the Fight for Facts. Jill Abramson. Simon & Schuster, 544 .2019pp.

In 2004—an ordinary, healthy year for the newspaper business— The Washington Post earned 143$ million in profit. Five years later, in 2009, the paper lost 164$ million amid a shift from paid print to free digital consumption, the erosion of its classified and local advertising businesses, and the global financial crisis.

The collapse of its business model forced round after round of cutbacks, staff buyouts, and layoffs. That year, the Post shut all its domestic reporting bureaus outside the Washington area, including those in Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York.

The Post’s position was typical of the country’s healthiest papers.

That same year, The New York Times, facing possible bankruptcy, sold most of the new headquarters building into which it had just moved and arranged a 250$ million high-interest loan from

the Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim. Around the country, more vulnerable papers closed down or put themselves up for sale.

With few exceptions, the great family-owned franchises were being gobbled up by private equity firms with little sense of civic obligation and even less understanding of journalism.

In the years since, the profession of journalism has contracted and grown ever more precarious. Between 2008 and 2017, employment among newspaper journalists fell by nearly half.

In 2018, the Pew Research Center reported that the median annual income of newsroom employees with a college degree was around 51,000$—about 14 percent less than the median for all other college-educated workers. Twenty years ago, public relations specialists outnumbered journalists by a ratio of less than two to one. Today, the ratio is more than six to one. According to Fortune, the only professions losing jobs more rapidly than newspaper reporter are letter carrier, farmer, and meter reader.

Those who remain at media organizations feel themselves losing status and credibility. Last year, a Gallup–Knight Foundation survey found that 69 percent of Americans had lost trust in the news media over the previous decade. For Republicans, the figure was 94 percent. Journalists covering the big story in Washington

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recognize the importance of what they are doing. They are also under more or less constant assault from social media trolls, people who believe what they hear on Fox News, and the president of the United States. But I repeat myself.

Following Donald Trump’s election in 2016, a few news organizations with international reach—especially the Post and the Times—began exhibiting signs of a return to health. Outrageous abuse has provoked support. But local news seems unlikely to recover, and globally, there are few positive trends. In countries where a free press was just beginning to emerge, a cocktail of rising authoritarianism, audience cannibalization by social media, and financial weakness has thrown it into reverse. Independent journalism is viable in some places, but not overall. Everywhere, the same question about the future of news crops up: How can democratic societies get the journalism they need in order to function?

THE GOOD OLD DAYS

White House correspondent Dan Rather of CBS News asking Pres.

Richard M. Nixon a question at a press conference, June 1972 ,29.

(White House Photos)

A good way to start answering that question is to look at the period when the U.S. media business was at its healthiest. In On Press, the journalism historian Matthew Pressman examines The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times between 1960 and 1980. During this seeming golden age, the leading news organizations adjusted their fundamental relationship to government, shifting from a kind of elevated stenography to the critical journalism that has become the norm. This was the era of the Vietnam War, the Pentagon Papers, and All the President’s Men, when the image of the reporter as a truthseeking hero took hold and investigative reporting units proliferated at local newspapers and TV stations all over the country.

Pressman argues that American journalism reached this zenith in reaction to its fundamental failure during the Red Scare of the 1950s. During that time, conventions of objectivity led newspapers to amplify Senator Joseph McCarthy’s accusations and smears, lest they be seen as editorializing. The self-examination that followed McCarthy’s downfall—combined with the new competitive threat from television, the medium that had done the most to expose McCarthy—pushed newspapers away from just-the-facts recitations and toward providing more context, explanation, and interpretation.

Still, well into the 1960s, Pressman shows, news coverage tended to be bland and deferential to government. It was the U.S. government’s lies about Vietnam, as well as personal opposition to the war on the part of many journalists, that bred the adversarial style of contemporary political journalism. As Pressman writes, Vietnam “established a baseline level of antagonism between the press and the government.”

But journalistic distrust of authority boomeranged: the press soon found itself on the receiving end, losing the almost automatic trust it had enjoyed when its stance had been less challenging. The right criticized the mainstream press for adopting an oppositional relationship to established institutions. The left criticized the press because it had become an establishment institution. Vice President Spiro Agnew’s attack on the media’s left-wing bias presaged Trump’s. In terms that now seem rather mild, Agnew accused the press of departing from its obligation to simply report the facts and

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Every news organization must find its survivable niche, which is why the next generation of editors will have to be not only moral philosophers but also entrepreneurs. said that by doing so it was taking sides in political conflicts and exercising undue influence. Those who produced the nightly news that Americans relied on, Agnew charged in a speech in 1969, were “a tiny, enclosed fraternity of privileged men elected by no one” who “bask in their own provincialism, their own parochialism.”

EDITS AND ETHICS In retrospect, the 1980s and 1990s were a kind of fool’s paradise for American journalism. As the elite press corps became more professionalized, some critics wondered whether reporters were growing too prosperous and comfortable. By the early years of this century, however, the job of leading a major newsroom was becoming obviously more difficult. It no longer just meant standing up to angry officials from time to time—now, all politicians were perpetually unhappy with their coverage. Running a media organization had devolved into a constant struggle on all fronts: to reinvent a failing business model and husband shrinking resources while mollifying an insecure staff in an atmosphere of intense public scrutiny. The old deference and respect gave way to second-guessing of every decision. At the same time, the rise of digital and social media meant that leading news organization no longer had the same gatekeeping power. There were no longer any gates.

Two former newspaper editors, Alan Rusbridger and Jill Abramson, have written accounts of what it was like to run an important newspaper in this period of rising pressure and diminishing control.

Their approaches accord with the predominant journalistic styles of their two countries. Rusbridger served as editor of the British newspaper The Guardian from just before the dawn of digital media until just before the era of Brexit and Trump, and he has produced a memoir that recounts the changes he experienced in personal, anecdotal terms. Abramson, by contrast, has written a heavily reported, journalistic narrative about a transformational period in media that happened to include her tenure as executive editor of The New York Times, which lasted from 2011 until her unceremonious firing in 2014.

Rusbridger took the helm at The Guardian in 1995 and committed himself to embracing the Internet, even when it was less than clear what that would mean. Rather than focusing on the potential disruption to his business, he saw a journalistic opportunity. The Guardian, originally based in Manchester and barely in the top ten of British newspapers in terms of circulation, could now reach a

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ook Reviews

global audience. Because it was effectively a nonprofit organization endowed by the deep-pocketed Scott Trust, it could invest heavily in audience growth and public-service journalism. This gave Rusbridger license to launch reportorial crusades on issues as varied as climate change and corporate tax dodgers.

Not everyone in the British press had such a high-minded conception of their mission, and for decades, British news organizations had maintained something akin to a code of omerta around unethical reporting techniques. In 2009, The Guardian exposed the practice, common at newspapers published by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, of hacking the voicemails of unsuspecting people and harvesting their contents for publication. By revealing it, Rusbridger effectively tendered his resignation from the Fleet Street club. In the years that followed, as Rusbridger published WikiLeaks’ revelations about U.S. foreign policy and, later, information provided to The Guardian by the former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, Murdoch’s newspapers led the mob crying for censorship and punishment.

In deciding to publish material from WikiLeaks, Rusbridger dealt with a set of issues no editor had ever confronted in quite the same way. WikiLeaks’ founder, Julian Assange, was no Daniel Ellsberg: Assange was a radical seeking to fundamentally transform society through transparency, whereas Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times in 1971, was a member of the national security establishment—a hawk turned dove who had the more limited goal of hastening the end of the disastrous war in Vietnam. The potential harm contained in the raw files Assange had obtained went far beyond any imagined threat posed by the Pentagon Papers. “Once, to do journalism, all you needed was a knowledge of shorthand and to read a couple of books on law and local government,” Rusbridger writes. “Now the best journalists had to be moral philosophers and students of ethics.” He cannily shared his big Wiki¬Leaks scoop with The New York Times, ordinarily a competitor, in order to gain First Amendment protections. The great virtue of his book is the way he describes trying to make difficult

Running a media organization had devolved into a constant struggle on all fronts: to reinvent a failing business model and husband shrinking resources while mollifying an insecure staff in an atmosphere of intense public scrutiny.

choices in stressful situations. His thoughtful handling of these episodes makes him, in retrospect, the most important editor of the era.

As a business thinker, Rusbridger’s reputation is more questionable.

His approach, much derided during his tenure, was to assume that since there wasn’t any clear way to make a newspaper at once journalistically robust and financially profitable, the paper would just have to live with large losses. But in retrospect, his view has arguably been vindicated. Today, The Guardian is one of the most important news organizations in the world, in a way it never could have been had Rusbridger not embraced the Internet as he did. It has a larger global audience than any British news source besides MailOnline, the website of the Daily Mail, a celebrityfocused tabloid that helped drive the campaign for Brexit. And under Rusbridger’s successor, Katharine Viner, the newspaper has pared costs and encouraged digital readers to make donations; in 2018, The Guardian had a marginally profitable year. It is one of the few high-quality news organizations that now appears to be sustainable.

CHANGING TIMES Compared with Rusbridger, Abramson gave herself a more difficult assignment in going beyond her own former organization to write more broadly about the changing news business. Her journalistic model is The Powers That Be, David Halberstam’s long-winded 1979 book about the rise of modern media, which revolved around the stories of CBS, Time Inc., The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times. Abramson picks four other organizations to tell the tale of the business’ decline: the Post again, plus The New York Times and two digital insurgents, BuzzFeed and Vice. She acknowledges her partiality when it comes to her own experience at the Times, an institution she revered so much that she had a T tattooed on her back in the paper’s iconic gothic-style font. She remains aggrieved, however, at what she sees as the unfairness of her firing over management missteps that she partly acknowledges and partly disputes.

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difficult. Rusbridger was inspired by the new opportunities that the Internet brought to journalism, even when he didn’t fully understand them. Abramson focused on the risks and losses. She thought that software developers and data scientists were commercial infiltrators in the newsroom and grew increasingly frustrated over their incursions across the church-state boundary. When the company produced a selfcritical “innovation report,” in 2014, Abramson took it as a personal rebuke. It sealed her fate in an unexpected way. In answer to the report’s implicit criticism of her, she tried to recruit Janine Gibson, an editor from the more tech-forward Guardian, as a deputy, without mentioning her plan to her existing deputy, Baquet. This provoked the showdown that led to her firing.

A TOUGH BUSINESS

Abramson’s attempt to filter her own, still raw experience through the conventions of objective journalism gives her account a passiveaggressive quality, especially when it comes to her depictions of the former publisher of the Times, Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., and her successor as executive editor, Dean Baquet, whom she blames for engineering her downfall. But that part of the book is at least entertaining as media gossip. In contrast, Abramson herself seems bored by her own detailed chronicles of the other outlets, which might partly explain how she wound up plagiarizing a number of sources—an act she asserts was inadvertent and for which she has apologized—and making some sloppy factual errors that were discovered by readers and, in some cases, by the book’s subjects.

A greater fault with the book, however, is that Abramson never comes out and says one thing that she seems to think: that Vice is a poor excuse for a news organization, founded by greedy, dishonest people without the slightest comprehension of journalism. During the digital media bubble, Vice became the darling of middle-aged media executives, who invested in it based on the dubious thesis that foreign affairs could be made relevant to young people through video content that often focused on sex, drugs, and violence around the world. Vice has produced some worthwhile journalism, most of which resulted from a partnership with HBO that the cable network recently terminated. But in essence, Vice has been a swindle, and investors are starting to see the light: Disney, which sank 400$ million into Vice in 2015, has in the past year written down nearly all of its investment.

Abramson implicitly lumps together Vice and BuzzFeed. Alongside its frivolous lists and personality quizzes, however, BuzzFeed has done a great deal of high-quality journalism. And it showed genuine courage in early 2017, when it published the so-called Steele dossier, a document full of troubling but unverified allegations about Trump’s connections to Russia, compiled by a former British intelligence official.

In supporting BuzzFeed’s still controversial decision to publish the dossier, Abramson parts company with many of her peers. But in other respects, she remains a media conservative. She believes there is a correct way to practice journalism: the way that The New York Times did it before the Internet came along and ruined everything. Arguably, this reverence for tradition is what made her tenure at the paper so

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Given the continuing flux in media, editors are best advised not to get any employer’s logo tattooed on their bodies. BuzzFeed and Vice, which were both booming amid a digital news bubble when Abramson began writing her book several years ago, are now flagging. As Vice’s investors have sobered up, BuzzFeed has sought philanthropic investment and announced plans to cut 15 percent of its work force; meanwhile, one of the company’s founders and its CEO, Jonah Peretti, has proposed merging with a number of competing digital media outlets.

The Post and the Times, both in decline a few years ago, have returned to health, if not the stable profitability of previous decades. In 2013, Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos, purchased the Post, and in the years since, he has reversed the shrinkage of its journalistic footprint and now says that the paper is profitable again. The Times repaid Slim and has regained stability on the backs of more than four million subscribers.

Several other leading legacy publications, including The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and Mother Jones, appear to have moved from jeopardy to viability. Trump’s noxious verbal assaults on news organizations have had the perverse effect of making audiences more willing to pay for journalism, even as those comments have contributed to greater peril for journalists facing less constrained autocrats elsewhere.

It’s far too soon to say that the economic crisis of journalism has passed, let alone the crisis of truth. There still exists no replicable business model that works for local news, which has diminished the accountability of state and metropolitan government. What do seem to be working are a variety of nonprofit and hybrid models that fill specific gaps in coverage, including ProPublica (investigative reporting), the Marshall Project (criminal justice), and The Texas Tribune (state government and politics). What the most innovative journalistic organizations seem to have in common is some form of subsidy combined with an ability to think like for-profit businesses even if they really are not. Every news organization must find its survivable niche, which is why the next generation of editors will have to be not only moral philosophers but also entrepreneurs.

JACOB WEISBERG is CEO of Pushkin Industries, which produces podcasts. He teaches a course on the ethics of journalism at Yale University and is former Editor of Slate.

This article was originally published in Foreign Affairs

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