Newsweek 7/31-8/7/2020

1971 Pakistan’s civil war left “a quarter of a million Bengalis dead, and another 6 million or more driven into desperate exile,” according to Newsweek, and “the realities of geopolitics have confronted the U.S. with the thankless task of choosing between strategic and humanitarian considerations.” The U.S. sided with China for a united Pakistan, but within months, an independent Bangladesh emerged victorious, led by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman as its first prime minister. Rahman was assassinated by military officials in 1975, and one of his killers was arrested and executed in Bangladesh earlier this year. 1982 “America’s infrastructure is heading towards collapse,” said Newsweek—“most acute[ly] in older industrial cities, but clogged highways and strained water systems also threaten to strangle booming Sun Belt towns.” Estimates say that the U.S. must invest $4.5 trillion in…

IT IS UNDERSTANDABLE IF AMERICANS FEEL LIKE they have a bad case of whiplash given the Supreme Court’s recent rulings on a string of culture war cases. In June, the conservative-dominated court ruled in favor of LGBTQ rights, and two weeks later it struck down a restrictive abortion law. Progressives heralded the rulings, and social conservatives were disoriented, not knowing what to make of the court that Donald Trump had promised to deliver to them. In July, however, the two sides switched places. In a string of three cases, the court has most recently announced that parents can use state money to send their kids to religious schools, that religious employers can be exempted from employment-discrimination claims, and that employers can deny contraceptive coverage to their employees for religious or…

INSIDE THE TENT THE AIR WAS close and electrifying. Hosni Mubarak had just resigned, ending an era in Egypt that had seemed as permanent and unassailable as the water flowing forever along the banks of the Nile. The regime’s collapse, seen from the streets that night in 2011, was spectacular. Next to me in the tent filled with men, a young Egyptian boy captured my attention, constantly interjecting as I sat interviewing his father. He was anxious for me to meet his mother. As soon as our 60 Minutes cameras stopped rolling, he pushed into my hand a folded Egyptian banknote—a relic of the regime—that he told me to keep so I would remember this moment when Egypt changed. Then he took my hand and led me from the tent, excited. I…

ONSCREEN, ONE OF US PORTRAYED a prisoner. In real life, one of us was actually a prisoner. In the dictionary, “justice” is defined as just behavior or treatment: a concern for peace and genuine respect for people. “And genuine respect for people” sends ripples through our conscience. The very notion of a for-profit prison is inherently against such a thing. As Black men, we both have experienced the impact of the country’s prison-industrial complex in some way, shape or form. It is a corrupt system that profits from pain and imprisonment. For private prison companies to make money, they need commodities of value, and the commodities they are trading are human beings. The allowance of prisons to become privatized businesses is the downside of capitalism run amuck. Using human beings as commodities to…

“The science should not stand in the way of this.”—WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY KAYLEIGH MCENANY ON SCHOOL REOPENINGS“I’M INCREDIBLY GRATEFUL TO BE ALIVE AND THAT I’M EXPECTED TO MAKE A FULL RECOVERY.”—HIP-HOP ARTIST MEGAN THEE STALLION ANNOUNCING THAT SHE IS RECOVERING FROM GUNSHOT WOUNDS“Showing up for work as a centrist at an American newspaper should not require bravery.”—FORMER NY TIMES OPINION WRITER BARI WEISS, RESIGNATION LETTER“The moment we’re living through right now asks all of us to do more. It’s a moment when your voices and your action have never been more urgently needed.”—MEGHAN MARKLE, SPEAKING AT THE 2020 GIRL UP LEADERSHIP SUMMIT“I FEEL FINE… I WAS PRETTY SHOCKED THAT I WAS THE FIRST GOVERNOR TO GET IT.”—Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt on testing positive for COVID-19“We just felt that there…

WHY WOULD SOMEBODY 37 YEARS OLD, with no diplomatic experience, take on the job of making peace in the Mideast? “My father-in-law asked me to do it,” Jared Kushner says. Never mind that Henry Kissinger, James Baker and Bill Clinton, among others, had failed to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. President Donald Trump told Kushner to get it done, so that’s what Kushner set out to do. He spoke to experts and negotiators from previous administrations. One was Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. When Kushner told him what he was up to, a dumbfounded Miller spoke for sons-in-law everywhere: “Wow, I wish my father-in-law had the kind of faith in me that yours has in you!” When the history of Donald Trump’s tumultuous time in…