#police pullback

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Wilfred Reilly and Robert Cherry

Published: Feb 14, 2023

The senseless murder of Tyre Nichols, by five black Memphis police officers, was an undisputed tragedy. But it’s important to judge it in context.

For many on the American political left, the explanation for what happened was simple: white supremacy. Despite the officers involved being black, this was still held up as evidence of the continued victimisation of black men by police officers who too often resort to violence whenever they interact with ‘people of colour’. Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, George Floyd and other BLM martyrs, of varying degrees of actual innocence, have been cited in support of these claims, and have been used to fuel the ‘Defund the Police’ narrative.

This take is wrong. We shouldn’t demonise policing and policemen simply because the annual number of problematic killings is above zero. According to the Washington Post’s excellent database, about 25 unarmed black Americans were killed by police gunfire annually from 2015 to 2018. The figure is only at 25 because of an atypical 37 killings in 2015. Over the past four years, in fact, the number of unarmed black Americans killed annually by police gunfire stands at 12. In contrast, far more police officers are shot and killed in the line of duty each year – 314 police officers were shot and 58 were killed in 2021 alone.

While the left highlights the fact that black Americans are killed by police at two-to-three times the rate that would be expected from their share of the population, it neglects to mention the most glaringly obvious reason for this. Black Americans are a far younger, more urban and more working-class population than are white Americans. Largely as a result of this, they are disproportionately perpetrators of violent crimes. They therefore come into contact with the law more often than other sections of US society. According to recent figures from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), black Americans are at least five times as likely as whites to commit murders and nearly three times as likely to commit violent crimes overall.

Moreover, the homicide problem in specifically black communities has grown significantly since the killing of George Floyd in 2020 – with the annual number of murders surging to over 20,000 and black-perpetrator homicides passing the 10,000 mark in both 2020 and 2021. There are now significantly more black (60 per cent) than ‘white and other’ (40 per cent) homicide victims annually, despite the fact that black Americans make up only 12 to 13 per cent of the US population. This entirely new level of blood-letting is the true crisis faced by black American citizens living in struggling neighbourhoods – not the phoney risk of ‘genocide’ at police hands, as BLM claims.

None of this excuses terrible police work, such as that which cost Tyre Nichols his life. However, as Bob Maranto and I have noted, perhaps the most serious problem with the BLM-inspired ‘defund the police’ narratives is that they utterly ignore potential changes to policing that might actually work. Over the past two decades, well-documented police-community coordination in major cities has been effective at reducing the number of black men killed by police, and even the share of black men engaged in violent behaviours.

Over the past decade, many police forces have begun to dramatically revamp their use of force and rethink citizen-interaction policies. Sometimes this has been prodded by federal intervention – particularly after the 2015 Department of Justice investigation into policing techniques in the troubled city of Ferguson, Missouri. As leading criminologists like David Kennedy and Thomas Abt have pointed out, police forces working with community groups have had success targeting a small number of the most ‘at risk’ men in high-crime neighbourhoods. The technique is simplicity itself: offer these potential offenders (and potential victims) strong positive incentives if they begin to turn their lives around, but harsh penalties if they do not.

Memorably, in the summer of 2020, the defunding movement proposed replacing police officers with social workers and community ‘violence disruptor’ groups. It was not entirely wrong about the role social workers can play as part of an anti-crime strategy. However, the activists failed to recognise that these groups cannot act independently of the police. Social workers, in particular, cannot effectively respond to serious situations of domestic or family violence alone – since most are young untrained women and these troubling cases often involve serious criminals armed with guns or knives. Independent ‘peace-makers’ are just tax-paying citizens – they have no access to the databases that police officers use to proactively interact with high-risk men, or any real ‘sticks’ to use to force compliance with the law. Social work and community activism can work only as an addition to better-funded and more proactive police departments, not as an alternative to them.

Other practical strategies for improving policing can work, too. As Maranto and I note, New York City – perhaps surprisingly one of the US’s very top police departments – simply fires all officers who pick up more than two or three verified citizen complaints, or demotes them to hated jobs, such as in the departmental motor pool. Maintaining a strong, well-funded Internal Affairs division, and even requiring officers to fill out an awkward 40-plus page report every time they unholster a firearm, have proven to be effective violence-reduction strategies as well. The prospect of bureaucratic tedium really can keep officers in check.

It is also clear what does not work to improve policing – the BLM-promoted strategy of reduced stop rates by lower-funded police departments. As Jason Johnson of the Law Enforcement Legal Defence Fund notes, when arrests recently plunged by 38 per cent in New York City, homicides rose 58 per cent – by more than 100. In Chicago, the equivalent figures were 53 per cent and 65 per cent. In Louisville, Kentucky, stops dropped by 35 per cent, arrests dropped by 42 per cent and murders rose 87 per cent. As Travis Campbell of the University of Massachusetts observes, the response of cities to major Black Lives Matter marches does appear to correlate with a slight decline in police shootings, but also with a remarkable surge of 1,000 to 6,000 more annual homicides nationally.

Given all this, what the horrific Tyre Nichols case reveals is not ‘black white supremacy’ but the flaws in the currently popular woke model of how to fix policing. Race doesn’t seem to have played a huge role in Nichols’ killing one way or another. More significant is the fact that the ‘hired from the hometown’ officers who allegedly beat Nichols to death were recruited under ‘dangerously lowered’ standards – two of those involved in Nichols’ death were sworn in back in August 2020, after Memphis Police Department had decided to attract more minorities by lowering education requirements. These lawmen were assigned to an almost irrationally aggressive anti-crime unit (called ‘SCORPION’), which was established precisely because crime had surged so much in Memphis – and everywhere else – following George Floyd’s killing and the Great Police Pullback. A decent man lost his life as a result.

We know what might save 10 or so ‘black lives’ every year from police shootings. And we know that these approaches might also protect a great many citizens from being knocked over the head with a brick by muggers. Yet too many on the left are happy to mouth inane ‘defund’ slogans and push dangerous policies. In doing so, they are harming the very people on whose behalf they claim to speak.

==

The uptick in violence and deaths as a result of police pullback is also known as the "Ferguson Effect," and has been studied.

"BLM" is a brand name, not a mission statement. They don't own concern for black people any more than Xianity owns morality.

BLM's aims are ideological (and financial), not social. Defending what they do - and maybe even more importantly, what they don't do - with "what, you don't think black lives matter?" is as asinine and dishonest as saying, "what, you don't want to make America great again?" or "but it's a religion of peace!" The Democratic People's Republic of North Korea is neither democratic nor for the people.

For the record, this is a bait-and-switch equivocaton and deception called the Motte and Bailey.

If black lives mattered to BLM, they'd be talking about things that matter to altering the trajectory of black lives that would benefit from those things: literacy and education, neighborhood crime (esp. black-on-black), young parenthood, fatherlessness, and vocational opportunities, especially those that aren't dependent on college.

[ The correct number is low double-digits. And below statistical expectations. ]

[redhairedlesbians]

get sober for me, i spend my days on my knees.

it is crashing ocean tides and the pullback of the shore before the tsunami.

before the storm hits everything is quiet on the beach. you have some life in your eyes again, you have a chip for three days. you tell me you can do it, and i believe you, over and over again.

you run over a stop sign while driving home drunk. my mother was in the car. the police look for you, some knock on our door. i pretend to look away.

the waves crash down with every sip you take. every cigarette you place between your lips and take a draw from. it’s an ache, a need and a replenishment.

you cut your arm so you can bandage yourself up. you love the feeling of the gauze so much that you will create wounds just to cover them up.

get sober for me, will you love me enough, does it even really matter? with every wave crash i am drowning. you pull me under, you drag me across beach and sand and it enters my pores every time i gasp for breath.

it is salt, it is sultan sea. it is a lost god and a lost cause. i am on my knees and i am praying. get sober for me.

[hondacivictrucknuts]

George Soros, in the course of defending his support for reform prosecutors, acknowledges the Ferguson effect:

Serious scholars researching causes behind the recent increase in crime have pointed to other factors: a disturbing rise in mental illness among young people due to the isolation imposed by Covid lockdowns, a pullback in policing in the wake of public criminal-justice reform protests, and increases in gun trafficking.

[italics mine]

The "Ferguson effect" was controversial for all sorts of reasons when Heather Mac Donald coined the term in 2016. Is it still? Or does everybody take it for granted now?

[sleepysera]

2.16.22 Headlines

WORLD NEWS

Brazil: Mudslides from torrential rains kill at least 44 (AP)

“The death toll from devastating mudslides and floods that swept through a mountainous region of Rio de Janeiro state has reached 44, local authorities said Wednesday. The city of Petropolis was slammed by a deluge on Tuesday, and Mayor Rubens Bomtempo said the number of dead could rise as searchers pick through the wreckage. Twenty-one people had been recovered alive.”

Ukraine: Unity as West sees no sign of Russian pullback (AP)

“Ukrainians defied pressure from Moscow with a national show of flag-waving unity Wednesday, while the West warned that it saw no sign of a promised pullback of Russian troops from Ukraine’s borders despite Kremlin declarations of a withdrawal. While a feared Russian invasion of Ukraine on Wednesday did not materialize, the United States and its allies maintain that the threat remains strong, with Europe’s security and economic stability in the balance.”

Australia: Swimmer dies in first fatal shark attack in Sydney since 1963 (BBC)

“A swimmer has been killed after sustaining catastrophic injuries in the first fatal shark attack in Sydney since 1963, Australian officials say. Emergency services were called to Little Bay beach near Malabar on Wednesday afternoon where human remains were found in the water, police say. Authorities in the New South Wales state have not named the victim, and an investigation is under way. Little Bay and several nearby beaches are now closed.”

US NEWS

Sandy Hook: Families settle for $73M with gun maker Remington (AP)

“The families of nine victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting announced Tuesday they have agreed to a $73 million settlement of a lawsuit against the maker of the rifle used to kill 20 first graders and six educators in 2012. The case was watched closely by gun control advocates, gun rights supporters and manufacturers, because of its potential to provide a roadmap for victims of other shootings to sue firearm makers.”

Abortion: GOP-controlled Arizona Senate passes 15-week abortion ban (AP)

“Republicans who control the Arizona Senate voted Tuesday to outlaw abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy, moving to put a new ban in place ahead of a highly anticipated U.S. Supreme Court decision that could bring seismic changes to abortion availability in the United States. The vote came over objections from minority Democrats who said the measure was unconstitutional under the landmark Roe v Wade and other Supreme Court decisions the high court could overturn.”

Education: San Francisco recalls 3 members of city’s school board (AP)

“San Francisco residents recalled three members of the city’s school board Tuesday for what critics called misplaced priorities and putting progressive politics over the needs of children during the pandemic. Voters overwhelmingly approved the recall in a special election, according to tallies by the San Francisco Department of Elections.”

[newstfionline]

Headlines

Discovery of 20 new moons puts Saturn ahead of Jupiter (AP) The solar system has a new winner in the moon department. Twenty new moons have been found around Saturn, giving the ringed planet a total of 82, scientists said Monday. That beats Jupiter and its 79 moons. If it’s any consolation to the Jupiter crowd, our solar system’s biggest planet--Jupiter--still has the biggest moon. Jupiter’s Ganymede is almost half the size of Earth. By contrast, Saturn’s 20 new moons are minuscule, each barely 3 miles (5 kilometers) in diameter.

UN Chief Says UN Facing Worst Cash Crisis in Nearly 10 Years (AP) Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned Tuesday that the United Nations is facing its “worst cash crisis” in nearly a decade because 64 of its 193 members have not paid their annual dues--including the United States, its largest contributor.

White House vows total halt to impeachment probe cooperation (AP) The White House declared Tuesday it will halt any and all cooperation with what it termed the “illegitimate” impeachment probe by House Democrats, sharpening the constitutional clash between President Donald Trump and Congress. “Given that your inquiry lacks any legitimate constitutional foundation, any pretense of fairness, or even the most elementary due process protections, the Executive Branch cannot be expected to participate in it,” White House Counsel Pat Cipollone wrote.

El Salvador Begins Mass Trial of Alleged MS-13 Gang Members (AP) El Salvador on Tuesday began a mass trial of over 400 alleged gang members, including 17 purported leaders of the feared transnational crime group Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13.

Venezuela designers turn to piracy after Adobe announces it will cut service (Reuters) Venezuelans desperately explored piracy workarounds on Tuesday to continue using Adobe programs after the software developer said it will cut access to its products for the country’s users, citing U.S. sanctions.

Protests paralyze Ecuador (Foreign Policy) For the fifth day, thousands of indigenous protesters in Ecuador blockaded roads and crowded the streets of the capital, Quito, on Monday, to demand that President Lenín Moreno revoke last week’s decree to end longtime fuel subsidies. The protests also disrupted three state-run oil fields. Since the unrest began, 477 people have been arrested. An indigenous organization, CONAIE, says the protesters refuse to back down until Moreno withdraws the fuel hike. The movement has significant precedent: Indigenous-led protests forced three presidents out of office before ex-President Rafael Correa took power in 2007.

A U.S. diplomat’s wife killed a British teen in a wrong-way collision, police say. She claimed immunity and fled the U.K. (Washington Post) An American woman, the wife of a U.S. diplomat, has fled the United Kingdom after killing a British teenager in a wrong-way collision, authorities revealed Saturday. The Aug. 27 wreck left 19-year-old Harry Dunn dead after the woman allegedly collided with Dunn’s motorcycle near the Royal Air Force Croughton station, which is operated by the U.S. Air Force. Offering his sympathies to the family for their “tragic loss,” British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Monday that he hoped the woman, who has been identified as 42-year-old Anne Sacoolas, would return to Britain to face justice.

Brexit update (Reuters) A Brexit deal is essentially impossible as German Chancellor Angela Merkel has told Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson that to do one, Northern Ireland must stay in the European Union’s customs union, a Downing Street source said. With just 23 days to go before the United Kingdom is due to leave the EU, the future of Brexit remains deeply uncertain.

Cyprus, Greece, Egypt call on Turkey to end ‘provocative’ actions (Reuters) Cyprus, Greece and Egypt called on Turkey on Tuesday to “end its provocative actions” in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea, including exploring for oil in Cyprus’ territorial waters, which they called “a breach of international law”.

Ahead of offensive, Turkey says it strikes Syria-Iraq border (Reuters) Turkey’s military struck the Syrian-Iraqi border to prevent Kurdish forces using the route to reinforce northeast Syria, as Ankara prepared to attack following a surprise U.S. troop pullback, Turkish officials told Reuters on Tuesday.

Lam says Chinese military could step in if uprising gets bad (AP) Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam warned Tuesday that the Chinese military could step in if an uprising for democratic reforms that has rocked the city for months “becomes so bad” but said the government still hopes to resolve the crisis itself. Lam urged foreign critics to accept that the four months of protests marked by escalating violence were no longer “a peaceful movement for democracy.” She said seeking Chinese intervention was provided for under Hong Kong’s constitution but that she cannot reveal under what circumstances she would do so.

Iraq reaches a breaking point (Foreign Policy) On Monday, Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi ordered the army out of the Sadr City district, where dozens of protesters were killed over the weekend amid the country’s ongoing violent unrest. The intensity of the demonstrations has surprised even some veteran protesters, as young demonstrators call for the government to be overthrown. A number of protesters even say they are ready for military rule.

The Zimbabwe doctors’ strike (Foreign Policy) Public doctors in Zimbabwe continued their month-long strike on Monday, defying a government order to return to work and rejecting a 60 percent pay increase. Under extreme inflation, the doctors say that is not enough and have demanded salaries pegged to the U.S. dollar. Already facing medicine shortages, Zimbabwe’s state hospitals are struggling amid the strike.

[drganja-news]

BALTIMORE — Marijuana is officially against the law in Maryland but Baltimore’s top prosecutor said on Tuesday that she would stop prosecuting marijuana possession cases within the city limits, regardless of quantity, and seek to vacate almost 5,000 convictions.

The announcement by Marilyn Mosby, the state’s attorney for Baltimore, follows a nationwide trend in which big city prosecutors are de-emphasizing marijuana prosecutions.

Baltimore has both the nation’s highest murder rate among big cities and one of the most broken relationships between its police and its citizenry. Its marijuana enforcement has been wildly disproportionate — more than 90 percent of the citations for low-level possession between 2015 and 2017 were issued to black residents, who make up about two-thirds of residents.

So for Ms. Mosby, declining to prosecute marijuana possession cases has everything to do with making the city safer.

“If you ask that mom whose son was killed where she would rather us spend our time and our attention — on solving that murder or prosecuting marijuana laws — it’s a no-brainer,” Ms. Mosby said in an interview in her office on Monday. “I don’t even think there’s a choice there.”

She also said that with a poor record of solving crime — only one in four homicides was solved last year — law enforcement needs to foster more good will. “How are we going to expect folks to want to cooperate with us,” she said, “when you’re stopping, you’re frisking, you’re arresting folks for marijuana possession?”

Ms. Mosby joins a flurry of prosecutors, including Kim Ogg in Houston, Rachael Rollins in Boston and Larry Krasner in Philadelphia, who have adopted similar policies that vary in the details such as weight limits and retroactivity.

Under Ms. Mosby’s new rules, people will not be prosecuted for possessing marijuana, regardless of quantity, and will not be charged with distribution or intent to distribute just because they have a large amount in the absence of other indicators of drug dealing such as scales and baggies.

Those charged with felony distribution for the first time will be automatically referred to a diversion program designed to help them enter the job market. Successful completion of the program can result in expungement of the case.

The new policy would not apply in cases where a defendant faces multiple charges, such as possession of both marijuana and a gun, Ms. Mosby said.

Some pullbacks from marijuana prosecution have been hailed by police departments, while others have met with resistance. Ms. Mosby briefed the interim police commissioner, Gary Tuggle, who told her that he would not instruct officers to stop arresting people caught with marijuana, she said. “He said he felt that marijuana drives violent crime, and I explained to him that is not the case,” Ms. Mosby said.

After her announcement, Commissioner Tuggle released a statement confirming that arrests will continue “unless and until the state legislature changes the applicable laws.” A spokesman for the mayor, Catherine Pugh, said that she supports the commissioner’s position.

Ms. Mosby said her office would also seek legislation that exists in other states: a statute that would make it less cumbersome for prosecutors to overturn a conviction when the circumstances warrant it. Because Maryland has no such statute, the process for vacating marijuana possession convictions is cumbersome, requiring a writ claiming that a fundamental error was made. Ms. Mosby said her office has data going back to 2011, accounting for nearly 5,000 cases, and has requested records going further back.

Ms. Mosby may not seem like the first choice to broker peace in Baltimore, where she has been called a divisive figure. She made national headlines in 2015 when she promised to prosecute six police officers in the death of Freddie Gray, who sustained fatal injuries while in police custody. Her announcement calmed the city.

She made headlines again in 2016 when, after a hung jury and three acquittals, she dropped the prosecution, dishing out blame for what she called the Police Department’s failure to conduct an unbiased investigation of Mr. Gray’s death.

She was faulted for being too progressive, and not progressive enough. The police chief called her incompetent and the Baltimore Sun admonished her to “play nice.” The death of Mr. Gray, coming less than four months into her tenure as a young, promising reformer, delayed her agenda, she said.

But when it came time for her re-election, it became clear that Ms. Mosby understood her base — communities that were simultaneously overpoliced for minor infractions, and underpoliced, with serious crimes going unsolved in their neighborhoods. In the primary, she defeated two opponents by a wide margin, and was unopposed in the general election.

She is now in a bit of a hurry. She did not hold her announcement, for example, for the arrival of Michael Harrison, the incoming police commissioner, who is supposed to start on Feb. 11. He will be the fifth chief since she became the state’s attorney.

And her arms-length relationship with the police, while unusual for a prosecutor, has seemed vindicated by scandals of epic proportions, most notably the shocking case of the elite Gun Trace Task Force, whose members robbed residents and planted evidence.

The department’s credibility is so tattered that in April, when the police commissioner himself testified to having found a loaded gun in a driver’s glove compartment, the jury acquitted the man.

A settlement with the Justice Department to correct systemic racial disparities and excessive use of force has proved to be, to put the best face on it, a slog. Last week, the judge on the case said the department seems to have a “culture of timidity” when it comes to confronting corruption.

[alwaysbewoke]

Three decades ago, schools across the country began bolstering discipline to deter juvenile crime. Zero-tolerance policies were introduced, school law enforcement budgets swelled and suspensions, expulsions and student arrests multiplied.

These punishments, though, are applied unequally. Across the country, hundreds of thousands of students of color, like Trah’Vaeziah, bear the brunt. Black students are almost four times as likely to receive an out-of-school suspension and twice as likelyto be arrested as their white peers, according to federal data. The pattern starts early: Even black preschool students are more than three times as likely as their white peers to be suspended from school.

Harsh discipline can backfire, especially when meted out arbitrarily. It may reinforce bad behavior, or encourage students to drop out, creating what sociologists call the “school-to-prison-pipeline.” A suspension increases the likelihood of dropping out by 77 percent, and the incarceration rate of high school dropouts is 63 times higher than that of college graduates, studies show.

“There’s no doubt that as we’ve escalated security and punishment strategies within schools over the past 25 years that this has had a disparate impact on youth of color,” said Aaron Kupchik, a sociology and criminal justice professor at the University of Delaware. “They are more likely to be seen as problematic, and to be policed and disciplined in schools even when they show similar behaviors as white students.”

Flooded with about 1,500 complaints related to racial discrimination in school discipline between 2011 and 2017, the Obama administration made the issue a priority. Relying on the doctrine of “disparate impact,” which emerged in the 1970s and holds that differential treatment by race amounts to discrimination whether or not there is overt or intentional bias, the Department of Education opened sweeping investigations into disciplinary disparities, from large school districts such as Minneapolis and Oakland to smaller ones like Bryan, Texas, where Trah’Vaeziah goes to school. It pushed investigators in its regional offices to broaden probes of individual incidents to look for systemic discrimination.

But under Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, the Trump administration is taking a more hands-off approach. DeVos has indicated that she may soon reverse Obama-era guidelines on disparate impact and school discipline, and her hires have signaled this policy shift. Kenneth Marcus, tapped to lead the civil rights office, has argued that disparate impact analysis has significant legal limitations. And Hans Bader, an attorney adviser at the department, has accused the Obama administration of using disparate impact to create “racial quotas.” DeVos is also decentralizing decision-making, giving regional offices more control over investigations.

Quietly, the pullback is already happening. In a June 2017 internal memo leaked to ProPublica, one of DeVos’ top officials ordered investigators to limit proactive civil rights probes rather than expanding them to identify systemic patterns, as the Obama administration had often done in school discipline cases.

Since then, the Education Department has closed at least 65 school discipline investigations opened under Obama, including the Bryan probe, without any mandated reforms, according to an analysis of federal data received by ProPublica through a records request. In at least 50 cases, the department attributed the shutdowns to “moot” allegations or insufficient evidence or details. That was its explanation for letting Bryan off the hook, even though federal investigators there had uncovered numerous examples of black students being punished more harshly than whites for the same offenses.

(via)

THIS IS WHITENESS!! THIS IS WHY BLACK PEOPLE MUST HOMESCHOOL THEIR KIDS!! 

[autodaemonium]

əleɪəylθəhŋfɪəənmrds

Pronounced: uhleiuhylthuhhngfiuhuhnmrds.

Pantheon of: humanness, east, visual property, elegance.

Entities

Aʊerəəəɒiissʌdtkfɒpəd

Pronounced: oweruhuhuhouiissudtkfoupuhd Visual Property: softness. Legends: in-fighting, film editing. Relations: ɪɑɪɪaɪtnəuəenrsdʒkfdrh (kapok).

Bipsondfɪpmghnælɪwəə

Pronounced: bipsondfipmghnaliwuhuh Visual Property: colorlessness. Legends: dichotomization, victory lap. Prophecies: michigan, trap block. Relations: tætɪəəɪɪfənsəɒðəədln (fluorapatite).

Dbldfpəæətʃðkəəəiədsn

Pronounced: dbldfpuhauhtshthkuhuhuhiuhdsn Visual Property: dullness. Legends: service, fault, bossism. Prophecies: hit. Relations: ɪnmbbssfunəzðenlgzwb (alkyd), ntəəudræmyðəwefəɑtʃkp (brotherhood).

Lnrɪrɪsʃrziznærɒəɪɪl

Pronounced: lnririsshrziznarouuhiil Visual Property: color property. Prophecies: faith healing, playing, commercialization, third-place finish, sailing. Relations: aʊerəəəɒiissʌdtkfɒpəd (seven-spot), bipsondfɪpmghnælɪwəə (raw material).

Ntəəudræmyðəwefəɑtʃkp

Pronounced: ntuhuhudramythuhwefuhahtshkp Visual Property: softness. Legends: verdict, military ceremony, antecedent, observed fire, heave. Prophecies: police action, ignition, dairying. Relations: bipsondfɪpmghnælɪwəə (euphorbium), lnrɪrɪsʃrziznærɒəɪɪl (arc tangent), aʊerəəəɒiissʌdtkfɒpəd (zeolite), ɪnmbbssfunəzðenlgzwb (barium dioxide).

Smmodləwɛtwrnəəʊəkhɪ

Pronounced: smmodluhwaytwrnuhuhoouhkhi Visual Property: colorlessness. Legends: robbery conviction, coloratura. Prophecies: escort, transurethral resection of the prostate, highway robbery, duel, pilgrimage.

Tætɪəəɪɪfənsəɒðəədln

Pronounced: tatiuhuhiifuhnsuhouthuhuhdln Visual Property: colorlessness. Legends: comparison, cranberry culture, lobbyism. Prophecies: administration, virginia reel, cumulative vote. Relations: ðkzɪʊutkrɛʃɪθpktirðr (spray paint), ntəəudræmyðəwefəɑtʃkp (charge).

Æhtkyæʊrkrrmtdpədpʃɪ

Pronounced: ahtkyowrkrrmtdpuhdpshi Visual Property: color. Legends: forensics, kick, concert. Relations: tætɪəəɪɪfənsəɒðəədln (scrap iron).

Ðkzɪʊutkrɛʃɪθpktirðr

Pronounced: thkziooutkrayshithpktirthr Visual Property: light. Legends: quarrel, position, pullback, rise. Prophecies: gravitational collapse. Relations: smmodləwɛtwrnəəʊəkhɪ (courbaril copal).

Ɪnmbbssfunəzðenlgzwb

Pronounced: inmbbssfunuhzthenlgzwb Visual Property: softness. Legends: stylization, back circle, affairs, infusion. Prophecies: fair hearing. Relations: bipsondfɪpmghnælɪwəə (highball).

Ɪɑɪɪaɪtnəuəenrsdʒkfdrh

Pronounced: iahiiaitnuhuuhenrsjkfdrh Visual Property: dullness. Legends: movement, battle damage, stop. Prophecies: clearing, apache dance, co-option.

[don-lichterman]

Pull Back Car, 12 Pack Assorted Mini Plastic Vehicle Set,Funcorn Toys Pull Back Truck and Car Toys for Boys Kids Toddler Party Favors,Die Cast Car Toy Play Set

Pull Back Car, 12 Pack Assorted Mini Plastic Vehicle Set,Funcorn Toys Pull Back Truck and Car Toys for Boys Kids Toddler Party Favors,Die Cast Car Toy Play Set

Price: (as of – Details) Car toy,measure approx 2.2 inch,12 piece with delicious gift packaging,including police car, taxi, fire truck, bread truck, gas truck,freight truck,fruit car and etc.Pull back vehicles,Easy to play, just pullback the cartoon car and release watch the car run across the room , increase fun when playing,suitable for kids to learn more about car and truck. It is the perfect…

[sekhar8100]

Pull Back Car, 12 Pack Assorted Mini Plastic Vehicle Set,Funcorn Toys Pull Back Truck and Car Toys for Boys Kids Toddler Party Favors,Die Cast Car Toy Play Set

Pull Back Car, 12 Pack Assorted Mini Plastic Vehicle Set,Funcorn Toys Pull Back Truck and Car Toys for Boys Kids Toddler Party Favors,Die Cast Car Toy Play Set

Price: (as of – Details) Car toy,measure approx 2.2 inch,12 piece with delicious gift packaging,including police car, taxi, fire truck, bread truck, gas truck,freight truck,fruit car and etc.Pull back vehicles,Easy to play, just pullback the cartoon car and release watch the car run across the room , increase fun when playing,suitable for kids to learn more about car and truck. It is the perfect…

[thenorthlines]

India, China to focus on pullback at Hot Springs and Depsang

India, China to focus on pullback at Hot Springs and Depsang

New Delhi, November 17 India and China will hold a virtual meeting of the Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination (WMCC) on Thursday, after the stalemate during the meeting of military commanders on October 10. The broad-based WMCC is led by the senior diplomat Naveen Srivastava and includes Army officials, the Indo Tibetan Border Police and the Ministries of Defence and Home. The…

[corporationsarepeople]

It was intuitive to her, how one thing led to another: closures of schools and rec centers and basketball courts to protests and looting to police pullbacks to violence, layers of cause and consequence. “Everything that’s happening is because of the last thing,” she said. “It’s all connected.”

[newstfionline]

Headlines

Airships bouncing back (Foreign Policy) Blimps dotted the skies in the early 20th century until a series of disastrous crashes hastened the transition to long-range aircraft. Now, safer technology under development in China and Britain may revive the market for airships, potentially transforming air transportation. But the U.S. national security community likely won’t forget the U.S. Army’s doomed blimp program, which Congress essentially cancelled in 2016 after one blimp broke free from its mooring in Maryland and floated into Pennsylvania, eventually landing in a field.

Trump still eyeing Greenland (Foreign Policy) Trump’s bid to buy Greenland from Denmark this summer failed, but his administration has a backup plan. The State Department plans to open a new consulate in Greenland next year, marking a new American diplomatic outpost in a region where both China and Russia have boosted their presence. Many in Denmark and Greenland welcome the move, but after Trump’s gambit to buy the island, some are uneasy about a U.S. consulate.

‘Everything is a mess’: Morales exit rocks Bolivia, splits region (Reuters) Looting and roadblocks convulsed Bolivia on Monday after President Evo Morales’ resignation ended 14 years of socialist rule and left a power vacuum his opponents scrambled to fill. Overnight, gangs roamed the highland capital and other cities, businesses were attacked and properties were set on fire. Schools and shops were largely closed, while public transport halted, roads were blocked, and rival political groups clashed on the streets.

Turkish Proxies Accused of Ethnic Cleansing (Foreign Policy) Displaced residents of northeastern Syria are blaming Turkey’s proxy army, which swept into the region on Oct. 9 as part of Ankara’s campaign against the Syrian Kurdish militia, for widespread abuses of civilians in what they say is a form of ethnic cleansing. The families that fled the offensive--more than 200,000 people, according to the United Nations--report that Turkey’s Syrian Arab proxies have devastated northeastern Syria, executing prisoners, carrying out brutal beatings, kidnapping their relatives, and looting their homes. These residents, who have fled to Raqqa and other parts of Syria, say the atrocities undermine Turkey’s argument that it is creating a “safe zone” for civilians.

A chilly reception for Erdogan? (Foreign Policy) Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan visits the White House on Wednesday, but he could face icy reception in Washington just weeks after Turkey launched an offensive in northern Syria. On Sunday, U.S. National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien said that the United States could impose sanctions on Turkey over its purchase of Russian missile defense systems--something that could come up between Erdogan and Trump.

Ukraine, rebels say pullback in the east is completed (AP) Ukrainian and rebel officials say that both sides have completed a pullback of troops and weapons from an area in eastern Ukraine embroiled in a separatist conflict that has killed more than 13,000 people

Head-On Collision of Bangladesh Trains Kills 16, Injures 40 (Reuters) Rescuers in Bangladesh were struggling on Tuesday to pull passengers from mangled wreckage after a head-on collision of two trains killed at least 16 people and injured more than 40, officials said.

Hong Kong police shoot two protesters (Foreign Policy) Two pro-democracy protesters were injured by live fire on Monday in Hong Kong after a confrontation with police, with both activists taken to the hospital. The city was already preparing for a general strike called after the death of another young protester who fell from a parking garage last weekend. The strike follows another weekend of violent anti-government demonstrations, and seven universities remain suspended across Hong Kong.

Hong Kong leader refuses to accept demands (Reuters) Hong Kong’s leader says her administration will “spare no effort” in bringing an end to anti-government protests that have wracked the city for more than five months. Lam said she did not want to go into details, but her comments are likely to fuel speculation that harsher legal and police measures may be in the works. Lam also said there would be no giving way to protesters’ demands for political concessions.

Fresh Unrest in Iraq Kills 4 Protesters, Wounds Dozens More (AP) A rights group in Iraq says four protesters have been killed and some 130 wounded in clashes between security forces and protesters in a southern city.

Israel Kills Islamic Jihad Commander in Gaza, Another Targeted in Damascus (Reuters) Israel killed a top commander from the Iranian-backed Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad in a rare targeted strike in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, while militants responded by firing rockets at Israeli cities, including Tel Aviv.

[orbemnews]

JPMorgan Shakes Up the Race to Succeed Jamie Dimon In a position to succeed? JPMorgan Chase announced a major management shuffle yesterday, renewing chatter about a hotly debated topic on Wall Street: Who will succeed Jamie Dimon as C.E.O.? The changes may also pave the way for a woman to lead the United States’ largest bank. Here’s the rundown: Marianne Lake, the bank’s head of consumer lending, and Jennifer Piepszak, its chief financial officer, will become joint heads of the consumer and community bank, effective immediately. Gordon Smith, who has run the bank’s consumer operation since 2012 and served as co-chief operating officer and co-president since 2018, said he would retire at the end of the year. Daniel Pinto will become JPMorgan’s sole president and C.O.O. (and remains the head of the corporate and investment bank), and Jeremy Barnum will succeed Lake as C.F.O. The moves solidify Lake and Piepszak as contenders for C.E.O. The executives, both 51, are now in charge of a business that takes in more than $50 billion per year in revenue. In a memo to staff, Dimon praised Lake and Piepszak as “superb executives who are both examples of our extremely talented and deep management bench.” Dimon, 65, took his role as the bank’s C.E.O. in late 2005, making him the longest-tenured big bank chief. “The board has said it would like Jamie to remain in his role for a significant number of years,” Joe Evangelisti, a JPMorgan spokesman, said in a statement. The new setup creates an unusual situation in which two executives competing for the top job share a leadership role. That may be tricky to navigate, management experts say, and whether it’s a good test of leadership skills is debatable. Co-management can be hard to pull off. In a 2012 paper, Ryan Krause of the Neeley School of Business at Texas Christian University examined how sharing power impacted the performance of public companies. Estimating the relative power of co-C.E.O.s using proxies such as tenure and stock ownership, he and his co-authors concluded that executives who had more equal levels of power performed worse than those with disproportionate power. “We interpret this as being evidence that, basically, having co-C.E.O.s really only works if they’re not really co-C.E.O.s,” Krause told DealBook. Co-leaders of a division, he said, may be more successful because they can more easily divide responsibilities instead of sharing authority. Such setups are not uncommon at JPMorgan. It could highlight the ability to work collaboratively, said Steve Odland, the head of the Conference Board and the former C.E.O. of Office Depot and AutoZone. “Whenever you’re in a C.E.O. successor position, it’s difficult because there are a lot of things that have to go right and you’re under the microscope,” Odland said. “But to do so with your competitor, and have to compete with your co-head, at the same time you’re making it work is especially stressful. Which is why it’s an interesting test, because the person who succeeds at this should be amply able to succeed in the C.E.O. role.” Is it a good idea? Dan Ciampa, an adviser to C.E.O.s and directors during leadership transitions, said that he wouldn’t recommend such a test (speaking generally, and not about JPMorgan specifically). “It may make sense to have co-division leaders or co-unit leaders and maybe even co-C.E.O.s,” he said. “But to use that as a way to determine who the next person should be to run the entire organization, to me it says that the board and the sitting C.E.O. and the head of H.R. have probably not done their homework.” Flashback: One sign of Dimon’s long tenure at JPMorgan is measured by a famous cover of Fortune magazine from Sept. 2008, featuring him and seven of his top lieutenants, headlined “The Survivors.” When Smith retires, Dimon will be the only person on the cover left at the bank. HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING AT&T investors sour on the WarnerMedia-Discovery deal. Shares in AT&T fell nearly 6 percent yesterday (and are down again premarket today), as shareholders reckoned with the possibility that the spinout of its media arm would expose issues at its core wireless business — and lead to a smaller dividend. Bank of America will raise its minimum wage to $25 an hour by 2025. The announcement cements the lender’s status as a leader on pay in the banking industry: In 2019, it was one of the first to guarantee a $20 hourly wage, a goal it achieved a year ahead of schedule. Amazon indefinitely bans the police from using its facial-recognition software. The company extended a moratorium imposed last year amid the nationwide protests over racial injustice and biased policing. Though critics have said that the technology leads to unfair treatment of African-Americans, Amazon has defended the product’s accuracy. More signs of life in retail. Target reported a 23 percent jump in sales for the first quarter from a year ago, as shoppers returned to stores. It joined Macy’s and Walmart in surpassing analysts’ estimates. Also, a reminder: Most pandemic restrictions in New York City end today. Today in Business Updated  May 18, 2021, 9:07 p.m. ET The criminal investigation into the Trump Organization widens. The office of New York’s attorney general, which has been running a civil inquiry into the Trump family company, joined the Manhattan attorney general’s criminal investigation into potential financial crimes, including tax and bank fraud. Bitcoin’s wild ride The largest cryptocurrency’s price is down sharply again today, leaving it 40 percent lower than its mid-April high. (Other cryptocurrencies — even Dogecoin! — are similarly suffering.) As usual, there are a few potential culprits: Chinese regulators issued a stern warning to financial institutions (again) not to accept cryptocurrency as payment. Elon Musk’s U-turn on Bitcoin is continuing to roil investors’ appetite for the currency. Some industry executives said such pullbacks were “normal” in crypto. That said … Bitcoin is still up more than 30 percent for the year, Ethereum nearly 300 percent and Dogecoin more than 8,000 percent. A lot of investors are feeling plenty flush, for now; more on that below. “There’s been such an erosion of trust, distrust for government, distrust for the virus, distrust for this party or that party. So when you tell the public what to do, there are people who say, ‘How can I trust the guy without the mask?’” — Dr. Howard Markel, a medical historian at the University of Michigan, on how the new mask guidelines from the C.D.C. have created a complicated vaccination honor code. The business case for better care policies JPMorgan Chase, McDonald’s, Spotify, Uber and almost 200 other businesses announced today that they have formed a coalition focused on “reimagining” the United States’ “caregiving infrastructure.” The coalition, called the Care Economy Business Council, is a strong signal that fixing the crumbling care systems for children and older people is essential to the economic recovery. The new group will pressure Congress to pass policies that enable workers — particularly women — to get back to work. Led by Time’s Up, the advocacy group formed by powerful women in Hollywood, the council is demanding federally funded family and medical leave, affordable child care and care for older relatives, and higher wages for caregiving workers. “What I’m seeing now that I have not seen in the many years I’ve been working on this constellation of issues is a realization by employers that they have a stake in this,” said Tina Tchen, the chief executive of Time’s Up. The pandemic laid bare the caregiving sector’s limits, particularly in child care. Many providers either shuttered or cut back on hours, leaving parents without a reliable and safe space for their children while they worked. That was a major reason that hundreds of thousands of women left the work force in the past year, bringing the female labor participation rate to the lowest level since the 1980s. For many executives, the crisis made clear that the entire system needed an overhaul, as companies scrambled to cobble together solutions such as flexible work hours and additional child care stipends. The issue is “bigger than something we can solve on our own,” said Christy Pambianchi, the chief human resources officer at Verizon, a member of the council. President Biden’s two-part infrastructure plan proposes pumping $425 billion into the child care industry and an additional $400 billion to expand in-home care for older adults and those with disabilities. The plan also offers businesses a tax credit for building child care centers in their workplaces. Philanthropies bank crypto windfalls Charities have an inherent interest in cryptocurrencies because, increasingly, their fates are intertwined. Nonprofits benefit from financial windfalls and recently people have been getting rich with crypto. “There’s no question” that the price of cryptocurrency is linked to the volume of giving, said Joe Huston, the managing director of Give Directly, a global aid group. Crypto is volatile, especially lately, but philanthropies have seen consistent growth in digital asset donations over time. Fidelity Charitable reported that crypto giving went from $13 million in 2018 to $28 million in 2020. Give Directly has seen a “big uptick,” Huston told DealBook. The Twitter founder Jack Dorsey gave the group $12.8 million, the co-founder of the Ethereum platform Vitalik Buterin donated $4.8 million and Elon Musk of Tesla gave “some.” The cryptocurrency exchange FTX donates one percent of its fees and encourages traders to channel returns to charity. But newfound riches donated in novel ways raise questions. Buterin recently gave $1.2 billion dollars to fund Covid relief efforts in India. The gift was in SHIB, a crypto token named after a Shiba Inu dog that’s a derivative of the onetime joke crypto Dogecoin. These tokens were sent unbidden to Buterin to bolster their value. His approach in giving them away was “impressively lightweight and fast,” Huston said, showing how frictionless crypto-based philanthropy can be. Previously, it was unimaginable to transfer such an enormous sum without an institutional intermediary. “There are a lot of young people with stupid amounts of money,” said Austin Detwiler, a consultant at American Philanthropic, a consulting firm. Fund-raisers should facilitate giving from this new generation, mindful that “it’s easy to start accepting crypto, but it’s volatile, so have a policy,” he said. THE SPEED READ Deals Robinhood plans to publicly disclose its I.P.O. filings as soon as next week. (Bloomberg) A firm founded by the son of China’s vice premier has reportedly become one of the country’s most aggressive investors in tech companies. (FT) Politics and policy How electric pickups — like the Ford F-150 that President Biden tested yesterday — are a key part of the White House’s infrastructure plans. (NYT) The Senate is considering a bill that would pour $120 billion into research in semiconductors and other technologies to counter China’s supply chain dominance. (NYT) Tech The e-commerce lender Klarna, one of Europe’s most valuable tech start-ups, said its decision on a London I.P.O. depends on Britain’s rolling out relaxed fintech rules. (Bloomberg) The Financial Conduct Authority, a British regulator, warned 300 fintech start-ups to stop misleading customers by comparing themselves to fully fledged banks. (FT) Best of the rest Demand for WeWork office space has now surpassed prepandemic levels, according to its chairman. (Bloomberg) Bill Gates has disclosed over $3 billion in stock transfers to Melinda French Gates since they announced their divorce. (WSJ) “Hertz, the Original Meme Stock, Rewards Its True Believers” (WSJ) We’d like your feedback! Please email thoughts and suggestions to dealbook@nytimes.com. Source link Orbem News #Dimon #Jamie #JPMorgan #Race #Shakes #succeed

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Why The Woman in the Window Fails to Channel Alfred Hitchcock

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This article contains The Woman in the Window spoilers.

Joe Wright’s The Woman in the Window is not shy about its Hitchcockian influence. It’s there in both subtle and overt ways from the very first scene. During one of the film’s opening shots, the camera pans around Amy Adams’ ridiculously spacious New York City brownstone and passes a television screen that is inexplicably playing the ending to Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954) in slow-motion, with Jimmy Stewart wrestling against the grip of an out-of-frame Raymond Burr.

With a very similar premise to Rear Window—a slightly deranged New Yorker pries into the hidden lives of her neighbors—The Woman in the Window freely owns up to its influences and aspirations. Sadly, Rear Window, this is not. Which may explain why 20th Century Studios (back when it was called 20th Century Fox) delayed the movie for reshoots, and then Disney ended up selling this otherwise incredibly polished and stylish thriller to the industry’s algorithm farm upstate: Netflix.

Admittedly, The Woman in the Window is not intended to be a direct remake of Rear Window or any other Hitchcock picture. The talent involved is too smart for that. Rather the film is taking a plethora of inspirations from various Hitch joints, and marrying that Master of Suspense ethos with a modern sensibility created by author A. J. Finn, who wrote the novel the film is based on. I have not read the book, but the bestseller clearly benefited from the boom of “grip lit” novels—thrillers often centered around the unreliable perspective of flawed female protagonists—in the 2010s.

So it is that The Woman in the Window’s Dr. Anna Fox (Adams) is an exceedingly troubled individual, suffering from a trauma we only learn late in the story was caused by the tragic death of her husband and child. Those deaths were in turn precipitated by Anna’s own infidelities, which left her distracted while driving on an icy road. Hence the audience is asked to question everything we see in The Woman in the Window, including whether Anna really met the woman she thinks is Jane Russell (Julianne Moore) and if Jane was then actually murdered across the street.

In essence, it’s the same setup of Rear Window where Anna thinks her neighbor (Gary Oldman in the newer movie’s case) murdered his wife, but the accusation is clouded in doubt for even the audience since Anna is such an unreliable narrator that for two-thirds of her movie, she convinces us that she’s going through a divorce instead of grief.

And yet, none of these added elements distract from the fact that this movie wants to be Hitchcock, or at least the heir to what many consider to be his masterpiece. It’s there every time Anna spies on her neighbors through the long lens of her old school camera, which unsubtly harkens back to Stewart’s Jeff doing the same in Rear Window. And it’s woven into the silver mane of hair on Oldman’s head, which intentionally echoes Burr’s sinister everyman who lives in the apartment across from Jeff’s.

Even the film’s opening shot more covertly recalls another Hitchcock classic starring James Stewart: Vertigo (1958). With its slowly spiraling image of snow drops drifting in a circle through the air—an image we later learn is the last thing Anna saw before her family died—we’re retroactively reminded of the spirals that consumed the mind of Stewart’s Scottie in that film. The zoom-in, pullback dolly shot Hitch also made famous in that movie of nerve-inducing stairwells is likewise visually referenced in The Woman in the Window, with the stairwell in Anna’s home recreating the same high anxiety composition as a set of stairs in one of Hitchcock’s earliest films, the silent British production, Blackmail (1929). I’m also fairly convinced that the shot of Adams opening her eye in the second image of The Woman in the Window is a visual recreation of Janet Leigh’s frozen death stare in Psycho (1960).

Right down to its plot about wives causing a case of mistaken identities, the Hitchcockian overtones are heavy in The Woman in the Window. So why doesn’t it work?

For all of Hitchcock’s innovative understanding of the filmmaking craft, and panache for droll showmanship as the “Master of Suspense,” his own passions and fixations (particularly at their most perverse) colored his work with an eerie madness. Or at least the best ones. Sure, he is one of the first directors to make himself a household name via attention-grabbing cameos and almost car dealership-like theatrics in the rollout of new movies’ marketing. And when Tippi Hedren asked him why her character in The Birds (1963) would open a door if there are menacing noises on the other side, he replied, “Because I said so.”

But then, despite its popularity, The Birds is hardly one of Hitchcock’s best films. And the hypnotic effect he created with the better ones often spoke to something truer, and frankly uglier, than the glossy veneer of his star-studded casts. Ironically, this is probably truest about the two Hitch films Woman in the Window most desperately emulates: Rear Window and Vertigo.

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In both films, one could sense the devious pleasure Hitchcock took in casting Jimmy Stewart—the all-American face of Frank Capra classics like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) and It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)—as his on screen avatar.

In the case of Rear Window, Stewart still plays an ostensibly heroic individual. Jeff is a man’s man and a photojournalist who goes into warzones, vacations on safaris, and breaks his leg while covering a high performance car race from a dangerous vantage point. But there is something more unsettling beneath all that machismo which is what won the attention of a much younger high society girl, Lisa (Grace Kelly).

There’s a gnawing suspicion about the awfulness of his fellow man, and a peculiar desire to revel in it. When Jeff can’t do that from behind enemy lines, he’ll settle for studying it in his own backyard—it’s a view he shares with a slew of neighbors overlooking a lower Manhattan courtyard. He doesn’t start spying on them though because he heard a scream and fears for a woman he just met. He does it out of boredom while his leg is bandaged up. Well that, plus a perverse curiosity, be it in the form of lust for the dancer across the way, Miss Torso, or a voyeuristic fascination with the despair of a woman he nicknames Miss Lonelyhearts. That he discovers a man murdered his wife is entirely happenstance.

Only after he seduces Lisa into sharing his obsessions—to the point where she’ll break into the neighbor’s home—does he realize she’s the perfect girl for him. And after she’s been fully indoctrinated, she shares his “ghoulish” disappointment (her word) when they’re falsely made to believe for a moment that Lars Thorwald’s wife is alive and out of town. That of course turns out to be a misdirection. Lars (Burr) is having an affair and has his mistress pose as his dead wife for a train ride.

Mistaken identity becomes even more pivotal in Vertigo, Hitch’s most revealing cinematic manifesto for how he sees himself. In that film, Stewart appears again but as someone who is hardly depicted as an alpha male. The only hero in this story dies at the beginning when Stewart’s Scottie is so crippled by terror that he cannot save himself as he dangles from a rooftop. The police partner who comes back for him to lift him up ends up taking the literal fall.

Afterward, Scottie (like Anna Fox) is seen as damaged goods by himself and everyone who knows him. Particularly in the 1950s, being diagnosed as suffering from acrophobia or any form of mental illness was treated as an inherent form of weakness and a deficiency of character. An onscreen judge spells this out after Scottie again appears to let his vertigo ruin him, causing him to fail to save the woman he thinks is Madeleine Elster (Kim Novak). He can’t find the wherewithal to follow her up a bellow tower, and is then treated to the horror of seeing a woman fall to her death outside.

Of course the twist of the movie is that Novak is not playing Madeleine; she’s Judy Barton, the woman whom Madeleine’s husband Gavin (Tom Helmore) has hired to impersonate his wife and seduce Scottie before running up a high stairwell. At the top, Gavin waited to throw his actual wife to her doom. Unfortunately for Judy, Scottie’s broken mind wouldn’t stop looking for her until one day he found the woman he thought he loved still walking the streets of San Francisco.

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The Woman in the Window blends these narrative elements. Once again, a protagonist with a phobia (agoraphobia here) mistakes a blonde woman—Julianne Moore’s Katie—for another character’s wife. When Jennifer Jason Leigh barges into Anna’s brownstone, it’s meant to be as bewildering as when Scottie sees Novak still walking around, now as a brunette, in Vertigo. Of course Woman in the Window plays with the convention by making it the biological mother of Oldman and Leigh’s adopted son whom is murdered, as opposed to the actual wife. Indeed, Moore’s Katie just enjoys playing into Anna’s misconception that she’s the wife of Oldman’s Alistair Russell.

But these reliances on miscommunication and unreliable narrators aren’t really in service of anything other than the twist. The thrill, such as it is, amounts to little more than Anna’s epiphany of staring into a photograph and realizing thanks to a reflection that a blonde woman played by Moore really was inside her home. The rug is then even further pulled when it’s revealed that (SURPRISE!) it wasn’t Alistair who murdered Katie, but Katie’s actual biological son, Ethan (Fred Hechinger).

However, the twist is as empty as Anna’s painfully quiet home. It’s intended to be a “gotcha” reveal, but it never really gets under the skin.

By contrast, the idea that Madeleine is really Judy in Vertigo is a gateway to explore Hitchcock’s vices: blondes and the desire to control them. It’s why Stewart’s Scottie becomes as manipulative as an auteur with a fetish, and as possessive of his new paramour as the filmmaker who’s still trying to replace his greatest leading lady collaborator after she’s retired from acting to be the Princess of Monaco. Scottie maniacally remaking Judy into Madeleine, and Jimmy Stewart remaking Kim Novak into Grace Kelly, is some bizarre but intoxicating allegory about Hitchcock and his own self-image of his obsession.

Notably, Vertigo wasn’t a hit in 1958. In fact, it flopped at the box office and was only reevaluated as a masterpiece in the 1980s, after Hitch’s death. It was too weird and, intentionally or not, introspective for the ‘50s. And personally, I still prefer Rear Window for better balancing the director’s eccentricities with his commercial instincts to make a top notch thriller which can be revealing about the darker side of human nature yet still remain addictively entertaining and playful.

Woman in the Window attempts to wear the style of both, but has no controlling idea to add to those affectations other than a subversion of their twists: it’s the son who murders the other woman instead of the husband who kills the wife. The meaninglessness of this mangled reversal is why it feels so cheap when the movie devolves into a slasher flick, with Ethan chasing Anna to the rooftop as if he were attempting to star in “Scream 5” instead of “Rear Window 2.”The Woman in the Window is a loving impersonation of Hitch, but be it a thriller or a comedy, an impersonation is never going to carry a movie.

The post Why The Woman in the Window Fails to Channel Alfred Hitchcock appeared first on Den of Geek.

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New Post has been published on https://freenews.today/2021/04/21/opinion-biden-indicts-the-minneapolis-police/

Opinion | Biden Indicts the Minneapolis Police

Minneapolis police officers stand in line as they are confronted by protesters in Minneapolis on April 11.

Photo: kerem yucel/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Derek Chauvin

awaits his murder sentence at a Minnesota Correctional Facility, yet the federal government spared hardly a moment before shifting its scrutiny toward his former colleagues. A new Justice Department probe of the Minneapolis Police Department is targeting the city’s officers in an effort to prove the Democratic narrative of “systemic” police racism.

Attorney General

Merrick Garland

on Wednesday announced a pattern-or-practice investigation of Minneapolis police. Federal investigators in coming months will examine the department’s record and policing methods. If they find behavior they dislike, they have the power to force reform of the department through a consent decree. Mr. Garland referred to the process as a matter of straightforward oversight, saying “good officers welcome accountability.”

Yet Minneapolis police are right to suspect that Washington is probing them with a foregone conclusion. In his address after Mr. Chauvin’s conviction Tuesday, President

Biden

said his Administration’s next step would be “confronting head-on systemic racism and the racial disparities that exist in policing.” The man who drafted the 1994 crime bill that led to the arrest of countless black drug users is now claiming racism is endemic among American police.

Last May then-Attorney General

William Barr

launched a federal civil-rights probe into the death of

George Floyd

in police custody, and that investigation continues. But Democrats are now expanding the charge of wrongdoing to the entire department, seeking proof that Mr. Chauvin’s actions represent the culture of policing today. No matter that the Minneapolis police chief since 2017, Medaria Arradondo, testified for the prosecution in the Chauvin trial and has pushed to reform certain police practices like choke holds.

The weight of suspicion on police under pattern-or-practice investigations often leads officers under scrutiny to pull back on protecting public safety. A June 2020 study by economists

Tanaya Devi

and

Roland Fryer

found that federal probes after “viral incidents” similar to the Floyd killing decreased police actions by almost 90% in Chicago and 54% in Riverside, Calif. The authors estimate that such pullbacks led to nearly 900 excess homicides and 34,000 felonies across five cities in the two years after each Justice investigation began.

The burden on police doesn’t end when the probe does. The consent decrees that often follow pattern-or-practice investigations usually require departments to pay for external monitors and new training regimens, for whatever period a federal judge certifies. The evidence that this improves police practices is scant, but we know they increase crime.

The impact on Minneapolis could be particularly grave, as the city has experienced a sustained crime spike since the Floyd killing and ensuing riots. Violent crime increased by 21% in 2020 compared with the previous year.

Disorder in the streets has led residents to rethink the antipolice fervor of last summer. The Minneapolis City Council voted to disband its police department last June, but it later opted to retain officers after residents spoke up in months of public hearings. Minneapolis police were deployed in force before the announcement of the Chauvin verdict Tuesday, in case of riots after an acquittal.

The new Justice Department investigation resumes a trend begun during the Obama Administration, which launched 23 pattern-or-practice probes of local police. The probe may win Messrs. Biden and Garland plaudits from the political left that is pushing an antipolice narrative. But residents of Minneapolis could pay the price in more crime as police stand down from protecting the public.

Wonder Land: When public officials desert any standards for public or personal behavior, expect violence. Image: Michael Reynolds/Shutterstock

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Appeared in the April 22, 2021, print edition.

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