DL Open Thread: Friday, November 24, 2023
A four-day cease-fire between Israel and Hamas appeared to be taking effect on Friday, signaling the start of what could be the longest pause in fighting in the seven-week war and paving the way for an exchange of some Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners.
By the afternoon, there had been no reports of fighting for several hours, and dozens of trucks carrying humanitarian aid had entered Gaza from Egypt, a spokesman for the border crossing, Wael Abu Omar, said by phone. Israel said that eight aid trucks contained fuel and cooking gas, a small but significant amount for a territory that has all but run out of fuel.
Thirteen hostages were to be released on Friday, according to Qatari officials, and the Palestinian Authority’s Commission for Prisoners’ Affairs said 39 Palestinians jailed in Israel, including 24 women and 15 teenage males, would be freed. Israel has said that it would extend the cease-fire by a day for every 10 additional hostages released by Hamas.
Here’s hoping.
Why All These Lawsuits Against Celebrities For Sexual Abuse? I was wondering why we had so many this week. There’s an answer:
As its name indicates, New York’s Adult Survivors Act allows adults who survived sexual abuse in the state a one-year “lookback window” to file claims that would otherwise be too late to file due to statutes of limitations.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) signed the measure on May 24, 2022. It went into effect six months later and is set to expire Friday.
Already the law has been used to sue entertainers such as Russell Brand and Marilyn Manson and disgraced movie producer Harvey Weinstein. Writer E. Jean Carroll was awarded $5 million in damages earlier this year after she used the law to sue former President Donald Trump.
Recent days have seen lawsuits brought against rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs, who was accused by singer Cassie of rape and abuse over a span of more than a decade, a case that was then settled. A former “Cosby Show” stand-in added her name to the long list of Bill Cosby accusers for an alleged drugging incident from the 1980s.
The list goes on: A former fan accused actor Jaime Foxx of sexually assaulting her on a restaurant rooftop in 2015; a former model said that Guns N’ Roses frontman Axl Rose assaulted her in a hotel room in a “volatile rage” in 1989; another former model said photographer Terry Richardson assaulted her during a shoot in 2004; and a former employee alleged that famed music producer L.A. Reid sexually assaulted and harassed her in the mid-2000s.
Most of the complainants/victims were not celebrities:
According to the AP, most of the suits filed under the act related to alleged abuse in New York state prisons and local jails. One woman, Alexandria Johnson, said she was raped multiple times while incarcerated.
“For so long, I didn’t have a voice. And it didn’t matter, I thought. Like, who was I?” Johnson told the AP.
“There’s so many stories, so many, not just mine,” she added.
Pollster/PR Flak For the Authoritarians: How/why world’s largest PR firm shills for repressive governments. OK, we know the ‘why’, money. For the ‘how’:
Public trust in some of the world’s most repressive governments is soaring, according to Edelman, the world’s largest public relations firm, whose flagship “trust barometer” has created its reputation as an authority on global trust. For years, Edelman has reported that citizens of authoritarian countries, including Saudi Arabia, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates and China, tend to trust their governments more than people living in democracies do.
But Edelman has been less forthcoming about the fact that some of these same authoritarian governments have also been its clients. Edelman’s work for one such client – the government of the UAE – will be front and center when world leaders convene in Dubai later this month for the UN’s Cop28 climate summit.
Polling experts have found that public opinion surveys tend to overstate the favorability of authoritarian regimes because many respondents fear government reprisal. (Ya think?) That hasn’t stopped these same governments from exploiting Edelman’s findings to burnish their reputations and legitimize their holds on power.
Edelman’s trust barometer is “quoted everywhere as if this is some credible, objective research from a thinktank, whereas there is a fairly obvious commercial background, and it’s fairly obviously a sales tool,” said Alison Taylor, a professor at New York University’s business school. “At minimum, the firm should be disclosing these financial relationships as part of the study. But they’re not doing that.”
This is what Edelman is all about:
Benjamin Freeman of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft said: “Instead of Americans associating Saudi Arabia with 9/11 or with the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi, they want us thinking about golf. They want us thinking about the arts world. They want us thinking about Hollywood.
“Anything that they can do to pull the blinders over our eyes, they’re going to do it. And folks like Edelman, PR folks like that, they have no shortage of ideas for exactly how to get that done.”
RIP Charles Peters: One of the most influential journalists of our time. The Washington Monthly was a must for me:
What do you want to talk about?
Well, looks like the old trolley proposal for downtown is back again after 20 years. I like how they believe that corporations in Wilmington will voluntarily subsidize the fares. Funny how the only residential area served by the free trolley is largely white and affluent. Maybe if they ran lines up N . Market, out Maryland ave to Richardson Park, and up 4th street to elsmere i’d bite. This is just a carnival ride