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Andrew Proctor Proctor is the executive director of Literary Arts, which is an adviser to the Portland Monuments Project and recipient of an Andrew J. Mellon Foundation grant to facilitate public engagement. He lives in Portland. Portland has begun to reckon with our public monuments, and the story that they tell. The toppling of statues during the city’s racial justice protests four years ago has prompted an overdue discussion about our community’s values and the omissions in our founding myths. For us to move forward, the story of our city must change to address the painful chapters of our history , – chapters that include colonization, exclusionary laws and government-sponsored displacement of communities of color – , as well as the celebratory ones. But as we consider Portland’s narrative, let’s not forget our rich tradition of arts and culture. Despite our identity as a city of creativity and the pride we feel for our local arts scene, we have only a handful of permanent public reminders of the vital contributions artists have made. Even as a “book town,” Portland has few monuments to our writers beyond the sculpture garden in honor of Beverly Cleary at Grant Park. The city should look to rectify this oversight and can start by memorializing one of Portland’s most groundbreaking authors, Ursula K. Le Guin. With works published in over 40 languages, Le Guin – arguably Oregon’s most famous writer – has made a significant contribution to global culture and been recognized with dozens of awards. Le Guin, who died in 2018, pioneered a new genre of literature t hat tackled social questions in fantastical settings, creating realms like Earthsea, a multicultural archipelago where naming things was magic. She broke away from the perspective of heroic men and invented Gethen, a planet where gender is fluid, not fixed. She brought to life what seemed like utopias–then revealed their deeply rooted flaws. And she did so with her feet firmly planted in Portland—a flawed city that is now searching for a way forward. Le Guin moved to Portland in 1959. In a 2016 profile in the New Yorker she recalls flying up from Berkeley with a child on her lap and pregnant with her second. “The plane came in low up the Willamette Valley and circled the city, and I was in tears, it was so beautiful. I thought, My God, I’m going to live there.” In Portland, she found a place that protected and nurtured her, far from the literary establishment in New York who did not understand her work and would take 50 years to catch up to the significance of her vision. She imagined dozens of societies and ways of living. She wrote with great insight, compassion, moral complexity, tenderness and clear-eyed honesty about most of the social and ethical dilemmas now facing us: social destabilization via technology, political polarization, environmental degradation and migration, political violence and more. Le Guin was active in many causes, from the welfare of artists to questions of feminism, and she advocated for marginalized communities. Why is it suitable to honor authors at a time when we are drafting a new civic story? As Le Guin said in Arwen Curry’s 2018 documentary, “Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin:” “Imaginative fiction trains people to be aware that there are other ways to do things and other ways to be. That there is not just one civilization, and it is good, and it is the way we have to be.” Public memorials to writers and artists inspire us to dream, think and change. That’s important at any time, but particularly right now as Portland rebuilds and reinvents itself. As artistic expressions of our values, they have the potential to change the narrative about a place, inspiring not just adults, but young people growing up with these landmarks in their city. My organization, Literary Arts, is doing its part to uphold Le Guin’s legacy by converting the home where she lived and wrote into a residency program . Writers from all over the country – and the world – will be invited to live and write in the house for short periods of time and engage with the community. Le Guin’s legacy of creativity and community service will live on. But this is a relatively private expression, and the city should put forward its own public complement to fully recognize one of Oregon’s greatest artists. Monuments do not have to be statues on top of a plinth. I think it’s safe to say Le Guin would not approve of one if it were erected in her honor. Rather, why not center on Le Guin’s wild imagination, like the Beverly Cleary monument, which features the beloved characters from her books? What if we put a 25-foot dragon at the Leif Erikson entrance of Forest Park, or wrapped it around a column of Pioneer Courthouse Square, watching protectively over Portland’s civic “living room?” Such a monument would not reduce her complex legacy to a statue that freezes Le Guin in time, limiting how we remember her contribution, but rather put her imagination in an evolving dialogue with our citizens. It was the honor of my professional life to know and work with Le Guin though her engagement with Literary Arts. I know firsthand the value she placed on the inclusivity of the arts and the power of the imagination. Through her radical creativity, she processed our country’s injustices by putting them into novels where her characters could seek justice and restore balance. Writing empowered her, and she believed it could empower others. When Le Guin accepted the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters in 2014, she said, “Hard times are coming, when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope. We’ll need writers who can remember freedom — poets, visionaries — realists of a larger reality.” Those writers have always lived among us, telling our stories, carrying and communicating our values. Portland’s history and present is full of important storytellers. We should build beautiful and arresting public reminders of their accomplishments, not to memorialize the past, but inspire us all to imagine a better future.Colorado's Travis Hunter to enter draft, vows to be full-time CB and WR in NFL
Few tech-industry traditions are as time-honored as vaporware : stuff that gets publicly demoed well before it’s ready to ship. In some cases, the companies in question are just slower to finish their work than they’d expected. Other times, they’re strategically drumming up enthusiasm for something new and shiny to distract customers from competitive offerings. Either way, any gratification involved is delayed, assuming the product ever ships at all—which is not a given . The high-stakes intensity of the current battle of the tech giants for AI supremacy has led to countless launches that remain vaporous for at least a while, a dynamic I wrote about back in May . So it’s no shock that two new Google creations, Project Astra and Project Mariner, aren’t shipping products. For now, Google DeepMind , the company’s AI research arm, is only making them available to a small pool of hand-selected “trusted testers.” In fact, the “Project” in their names indicates that they’re showcases for work in progress rather than actual products. And yet, dismissing them as mere vaporware feels unfair. Google is being quite clear about its goals for Astra and Mariner—which is to get a better feel for how people might use new forms of AI before springing them on millions or billions of unprepared humans. Particularly given some of the travails the company has had with AI features that were seemingly undertested before release, it’s the responsible thing to do. Both projects fall into general AI categories also being ardently pursued by other companies. Astra, which Google first demoed at its I/O developer conference in May, is the company’s vision of a next-generation AI assistant—not an inflexible and limited piece of software like Google Assistant , or a text-centric chatbot like the Gemini app , but a helper that listens, speaks, and sees your world. It’s roughly akin to the version of ChatGPT Advanced Voice Mode that OpenAI unveiled in May—though that product’s camera-enabled features are still vaporware as I write this. (Maybe that will change before OpenAI’s current 12-day advent calendar of “Shipmas” announcements is over.) Project Mariner, meanwhile, is a Chrome extension that can use websites for you, typing and clicking on its own to accomplish tasks you’d otherwise perform yourself. It’s in the same conceptual zip code as Anthropic’s “Computer Use” feature, which debuted as part of its Claude large language model in October and lets that chatbot control apps. Both are steps toward one of the tech industry’s biggest current obsessions: agentic AI that can work more independently on your behalf. What Google learns from Astra and Mariner could matter as much to the quality of the experiences it builds as to the raw capabilities of its Gemini large language model—yet another sign that the AI rubber has hit the road. “Academic benchmarks are important, but nowadays, when we say something is best in class, what we mean is, do the users find it best in class?” says Google DeepMind CTO Koray Kavukcuoglu. “The model’s capability has to be merged with the way the application works and is useful. That’s a change for all the researchers.” That basic reality was reflected in the demos I saw during a recent visit to Google. Running on an Android phone and utilizing its camera, Astra recognized images of paintings, such as Edvard Munch’s The Scream , and answered questions such as, “If I like this, what other artists might I like?” It also scanned the spines and covers of books in a scientific library to help pick among them and read, and summarized two pages of information in a travel book. What it had to say seemed roughly comparable in intelligence to what you might coax out of the Gemini chatbot in a text-based conversation, and wasn’t always dazzling when judged purely by the information it conveyed. For instance, when I pointed the phone at a shelf of books about hearing and asked Astra to recommend a good introduction to the psychology of hearing, it picked one titled . . . Introduction to the Psychology of Hearing . Shown six bottles of wine and asked which one went best with beef Bourguignon, it rhapsodized about a pinot noir—“a superb pairing!” Even I, a guy who knows nothing about wine, could have figured that out on my own. Still, Astra’s spoken interface and ability to see the world around it made for a far richer experience than typing prompts into a chatbot. (It might get even richer if Astra eventually runs on AR glasses as well as phones, a scenario Google is working on .) At one point, after the app misunderstood the question about beef Bourguignon—it thought it involved coq au vin—it not only apologized, but did so with an embarrassed half laugh. Maybe that falls well short of OpenAI’s quest to turn the movie Her into everyday life , but it’s an example of simulated humanity we never got from Google Assistant or Siri. Among the goals of Astra’s controlled testing is to give Google DeepMind’s safety team the opportunity to chime in on exactly how much personality the software should exhibit. “We think a lot about anthropomorphism—what is and isn’t appropriate—because we are not trying to build someone to replace the humans in someone’s life,” says Google DeepMind senior director of responsibility Helen King. Along with that, the team is also assessing such obvious issues as the privacy concerns raised by an AI assistant that sees what you see and has a superhuman photographic memory. For now, Google DeepMind has decided that Astra should only remember the most recent 10 minutes of video it’s captured. Project Mariner is in an even earlier stage of exploration. In one of the demos I saw, it read a salmon teriyaki recipe in a Google Doc and then complied with the request of director of product management Jaclyn Konzelmann to go off to Safeway’s site, find the necessary vegetables, and place them in a shopping cart. It took several minutes to perform this task and painstakingly explained what it was doing in a pane next to the browser window. For now, Mariner can’t see the shopping process through to actually placing an order, which—considering scenarios like AI getting confused and accidentally buying 10,000 onions, or maybe even doing so on purpose—is probably just as well. The point of Mariner’s cautious approach, Konzelmann told me, is to err on the side of transparency and avoid potential problems: “We just think it’s really important at this stage of where this research prototype is to keep the human front and center and able to control what’s happening.” Of course, tech enthusiasts might think it’s kind of cool to have AI help with tasks such as veggie shopping even if it doesn’t save any time. Indeed, King told me that Google’s trusted testers skew more toward AI expertise than the general population, so the company can learn only so much from them. “At the moment, they’ve mostly been those who are familiar [with AI] because we’re in such early stages,” she says. “But as we expand, it’s really important for us to have that mix of civil society and academia—the experts in that as well, and the broader public. Because we want our tools to be able to be used by everyone, not just those who already have that AI literacy.” Everyone I spoke with during my Google visit emphasized that Astra and Mariner will evolve further as the company learns how outsiders use them. “The whole team is configured in such a way that we can do this kind of exploration quite fast, and that’s the journey we’ve been on,” says Kavukcuoglu. The proof of their value will be in the AI features Google eventually ships. But they do seem promising as a way to make some initial headway. READ/LISTEN/WATCH/TRY The news, as picked by your friends. A decade ago, I wrote about Nuzzel , a wonderful app that curated new articles on the web using a strikingly simple yet effective algorithm: It showed you ones that had been shared by people you followed on Twitter. After being acquired by a company that was itself acquired by Twitter, Nuzzel shut down. But a new service called Sill feels like Nuzzel reborn, except that it uses the people you follow on Bluesky and/or Mastodon to find its news. It, too, is wonderful, and yet another good reason to use these social networks . Apple being born. Last week, I recommended The Verge’ s list of the best tech books of all time—but said most of my favorites weren’t on it. So from time to time, at least, I’ll share some of them here. There have been more books about Apple than any other tech company, yet the very first one— Michael Moritz’s The Little Kingdom: The Private Story of Apple Computer —remains one of the best. It’s a fun, funny, intimate look at the company and founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, which was published in 1984, before the Apple story got so sprawling that it tended to overwhelm many of the authors who tried to tell it. Moritz, then a Time reporter, went on to become a famed venture capitalist but revisited his book in 2009 in a new edition called Return to the Little Kingdom . Sadly, it seems to have fallen out of print again, even as an e-book, but both the original and updated versions are available at the Internet Archive. You’ve been reading Plugged In, Fast Company ’s weekly tech newsletter from me, global technology editor Harry McCracken. If a friend or colleague forwarded this edition to you—or if you’re reading it on FastCompany.com—you can check out previous issues and sign up to get it yourself every Wednesday morning. I love hearing from you: Ping me at hmccracken@fastcompany.com with your feedback and ideas for future newsletters. I’m also happy to hear from you on Bluesky , Mastodon , or Threads . More top tech stories from ‘Fast Company’ In defense of being ‘extremely online.’ The creator economy by the numbers Richard Florida maintains that in a time filled with loneliness, isolation, and alienation, the digital creator economy provides hundreds of millions of people with a source of meaning, purpose, community, and much-needed income. Read More → Why olive oil girl is TikTok’s main character TikTok user Megan Chacalos recalled a high school mishap involving an olive oil hair mask. What happened from there, you couldn’t make this up. Read More → How Big Tech labor organizers aim to unite for Trump 2.0 Supercharged during the first Trump administration, tech-worker activism faces new challenges and motivations as the 47th president heads to Washington. Read More → Reddit rolls out its own AI-powered search tool after cracking down on AI companies Reddit’s RDDT stock jumped 4% by mid-afternoon on Monday in response to the new AI search tool. Read More → Amtrak’s sleek new high-speed electric trains are coming next spring Taking the train from D.C. to Boston is about to get nicer—and a little faster. Read More → 4 browser-boosting ChatGPT Chrome extensions Save time and work more efficiently with these AI-powered extensions for web searching, writing, summarizing, and beyond. Read More → The extended deadline for Fast Company’s World Changing Ideas Awards is this Friday, December 13, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply today.
UN General Assembly calls for 'unconditional' Gaza ceasefireBy Conor Ryan The Bruins decided to fire Jim Montgomery last week after Boston opened the year with a lackluster 8-9-3 record. It didn’t take very long for Montgomery to land on his feet, with the 2022-23 Jack Adams Award winner signing a five-year contract with the St. Louis Blues on Sunday — just five days after Boston handed him a pink slip. It was a drastic shift for the Blues, who elevated interim head coach Drew Bannister to a full-time role last offseason via a two-year extension. But once Montgomery hit the open market last week, it didn’t take long for Blues GM Doug Armstrong to strike. “When I woke up Wednesday morning, there was no inclination to make a coaching change,” Armstrong told reporters on Sunday , adding: “This decision, I would say, almost 100% on having someone of Jim’s caliber become available when I didn’t know that was going to happen.” Boston’s decision to move on from Montgomery after just two full seasons might have come as a surprise. But longtime NHL insider Elliotte Friedman wasn’t shocked to see Montgomery land in St. Louis in short order. “This was always the plan,” Friedman said of Montgomery joining the Blues on his “32 Thoughts” podcast on Monday. “If it didn’t work out in Boston, this was always going to be the outcome. As a matter of fact, within an hour of the announcement being made, I got calls from two different people who said to me, ‘You have no guts.’ And ‘guts’ was not the phrase they used. ... And I was like, why? “And they said, ‘Because you danced around it when you wrote about it last week ... but you knew this guy was going to St .Louis, and you didn’t come right out and say it.’ And I said, ‘You’re right. I did lack the guts to come right out and say it.’” Montgomery already has plenty of history with both the Blues and Armstrong. After getting fired as Stars head coach in December 2019 for unprofessional conduct, Montgomery re-entered the coaching ranks when he joined the Blues as an assistant coach for two seasons (2020-22) before getting hired by Boston. Add in the fact that Montgomery opened his NHL career with the Blues and his family still has an offseason home in St. Louis, and Armstrong’s interest shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. But was that interest something that was already present before Montgomery officially hit the hot seat this fall? As Friedman noted, the timing of the Blues’ decision to retain Bannister via a new extension came shortly after Montgomery and the Bruins avoided blowing another 3-1 series lead in the playoffs — this time to the Maple Leafs. “I think let’s just go back to this. Drew Banister got the coaching job last year on an interim basis,” Friedman said. “When Craig Berube was fired, [Banninster] did not get the official job until May 7, which was just after the Boston Bruins played Game 1 of the second round last year against the Florida Panthers. “And especially now, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out what was going on. Doug Armstrong was waiting to see if there was any chance that if the Boston Bruins lost in the first round to the Toronto Maple Leafs — would Jim Montgomery become available? The answer? They won. They hung on. They won that series, and now Montgomery is not available.” While the Bruins’ poor start did prompt Don Sweeney and Boston’s top brass to move on from Montgomery, Friedman noted that there might have also been some hesitancy on the part of Montgomery to commit long-term to Boston. Sweeney acknowledged last week that Boston remained in contract talks with Montgomery, with Friedman writing on Sportsnet Thursday that “people who believe [Montgomery] was unsure about Boston even before they were unsure about him.” Friedman elaborated more on that sentiment Monday, noting that Montgomery might have had some reservations about Boston’s augmented roster and their shift in play style to a heavier, no-frills brand of hockey. “Doug Armstrong did a five-year deal,” Friedman said. “I don’t believe the Bruins offered five years. Someone will tell me if I’m wrong, but what I’ve heard is that the Bruins offered Montgomery three years. But like we said on Friday’s pod, I think this was bigger than simply the negotiations and the offer. “I think it was about philosophy. I think it was about approach. I don’t think the coach and the front office in Boston were on the same page, and I just think everybody realized that was not a long-term match.” For now, it looks as though all parties have benefited from the split between the Bruins and Montgomery. Joe Sacco has stabilized Boston’s play — at least for two games — while Montgomery is now coaching a team he clearly had an affinity for. Still, the short turnaround of Montgomery’s reunion with St. Louis is interesting to note after a disappointing end to his tenure in Boston. “I think everybody knew that the Blues had one eye on Montgomery, and Montgomery had one eye on the Blues,” Friedman added. “And I would think that the Bruins knew that this was possible all along, that Montgomery realized that this other situation was there. “And if he wasn’t happy with the way that the Bruin situation was working out, he could potentially go there. And that’s exactly the way it unfolded. I don’t think this is a surprise to anybody.” Conor Ryan Conor Ryan is a staff writer covering the Bruins, Celtics, Patriots, and Red Sox for Boston.com, a role he has held since 2023. Sign up for Bruins updates🏒 Get breaking news and analysis delivered to your inbox during hockey season. Be civil. Be kind.
The week after adjusting their roster to protect prospects and define their depth, the Cardinals continued that annual addition of minor league deals to fill organizational openings with the signing of a rival's former top prospect. The Cardinals formally announced a minor league agreement with infielder Jose Barrero on Monday afternoon, a week or so after reaching a deal with the shortstop who was Cincinnati's No. 1 prospect entering the 2022 season. He was their opening day shortstop in 2023. Viewed as a slick fielder, Barrero's offense hasn't kept pace, and the Reds moved him off the roster when peers surpassed him. Barrero, now 26, played 139 games for the Reds in the majors and has a .186/.242/.255 slash line through four different seasons. In 2023, he began the year as the Reds' starting shortstop, and through 46 games that year, he had his best stretch of production, with a .218 average, a .295 on-base percentage and a .619 on-base plus slugging percentage (OPS) through 149 plate appearances. In around 600 innings at shortstop from 2022-23 in the majors, Barrero registered a minus-7 defensive runs saved, per FanGraphs. A native of Havana, Cuba, Barrero was one of the Reds' high-dollar signings from the international free-agent marketplace within the past decade. They outbid other teams with a $5 million offer, and within a few years, Barrero stood out within Cincinnati's organization for his potential. He represented the Reds in the 2021 Futures Game. Baseball America ranked him the No. 33rd prospect in all of the minors entering the 2022 season, and BA also had him No. 1 within the Reds organization. That put him ahead of No. 2 Hunter Greene, No. 3 Nick Lodolo and No. 4 Elly De La Cruz. In a projection of the Reds' 2025 lineup, Baseball America had Barrero at shortstop and electrifying talent De La Cruz at third base. This past March, the Reds placed Barrero on waivers, and the Rangers picked him up. He played 49 games at Class AAA Round Rock and hit .188/.277/.345 for a .622 OPS. His season was abbreviated by an injury that ultimately put him on the 60-day injured list. He did not play after an on-field collision, and journalist Francys Romero reported that Barrero had to have his spleen removed as a result of the collision. This month, Barrero had the right to choose minor league free agency and did. Now healthy, Barrero has been playing in the Dominican Republic's winter league. For Estrellas and its manager Fernando Tatis Sr., Barrero hit .238 with a .360 on-base percentage and a .492 slugging percentage through his first 21 games and 71 plate appearances. So far this offseason, the Cardinals have acquired depth at two spots they and many other clubs usually go shopping for this time of year: pitching and middle infield. The Cardinals claimed right-hander Roddery Munoz off waivers from Miami, and they signed right-hander Michael Gomez to a minor league deal. Gomez and Barrero both received invites to major league spring training as part of their new contracts. Minor league deals mean the player is not on the 40-player roster. This past week, the Cardinals did not present a contract to right-hander Adam Kloffenstein, allowing him to become a free agent. The Cardinals presented contracts to every other member of the 40-player roster who was not already signed for the 2025 season. They have two openings on the 40-player roster. The Cardinals opted to keep infielder Jose Fermin as depth at multiple positions, and Barrero adds a challenger for that same role with the possibility of backing up at shortstop. Barrero also gives the Cardinals a shortstop at Class AAA Memphis as prospect Thomas Saggese makes his bid for the big league club. With the exception of the Los Angeles Angels and their beat-the-rush signings of a few free agents, the hot stove has yet to warm this winter. A lot of attention has been on the courtship of Juan Soto. Throughout Major League Baseball, the expectation is that activity will accelerate into a flurry around the annual winter meetings, which are set to start Dec. 9 in Dallas. Cardinals president of baseball operations John Mozeliak told the Post-Dispatch recently that the "pace" of his conversations with other teams and free agents are pointing toward activity at the winter meetings.LSU quarterback Garrett Nussmeier announced Wednesday that he would return to the Tigers for his senior season. "I'm fully committed to bringing this university a championship," Nussmeier said in a video posted to social media . "My teammates, coaches, and the fans will get the absolute best out of me every single day until we complete that goal." Editor's Picks Bowl season preview: Storylines to know and players to watch from each matchup Kiper's new 2025 Big Board: Ranking the top 25 NFL draft prospects, plus position reports After backing up Heisman Trophy winner Jayden Daniels in 2022 and 2023, Nussmeier took over as the Tigers' starting quarterback this season and threw for 3,739 yards with 26 touchdowns and 11 interceptions. Nussmeier, the son of Philadelphia Eagles quarterbacks coach Doug Nussmeier, is ESPN NFL draft analyst Mel Kiper Jr.'s No. 7-ranked draft-eligible quarterback and was a potential first-round pick. LSU went 8-4 during the regular season and will play Baylor in the Texas Bowl on New Year's Eve.Pride, bragging rights and more than $115M at stake when final college playoff rankings come out
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WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump said Wednesday that he has chosen Keith Kellogg, a highly decorated retired three-star general, to serve as his special envoy for Ukraine and Russia. Kellogg, who is one of the architects of a staunchly conservative policy book that lays out an “America First” national security agenda for the incoming administration, will come into the role as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine enters its third year in February. Javascript is required for you to be able to read premium content. Please enable it in your browser settings. Get any of our free email newsletters — news headlines, obituaries, sports, and more.The Mumbai police are contemplating to challenge the bail granted to Bhavesh Bhinde, 50, the director of Ego Media Pvt Ltd, in connection with the Ghatkopar hoarding collapse case. Bhinde was granted bail a month ago after he appealed that the May 13 incident in which 17 people were killed was “an act of god” and that he had no role to play in it, rather becoming a victim of “political vendetta”. Sources in the police said that a proposal to challenge the bail was sent to the law and judiciary department, which is expected to take a call in the next five days. Once approved, they will approach the Bombay high court. In his bail plea, Bhinde said he joined the advertising firm on December 21, 2023, by which time the said hoarding was already erected and advertisements were being displayed thereon. He said, as a result, no fault, liability can be ascribed to him as he merely took over the management of the company from the date mentioned. Further, he claimed that the hoarding collapsed not due to improper, faulty construction, but because of “force majeure” (act of god). Besides, it was argued that BMC had no jurisdiction over the land and the hoarding was constructed after obtaining permission from the Commissioner of Police (Railways). He had also cited Justice (retd) AV Nirgude, who opined that the land bearing survey would be classified as a land belonging to the railways, and that the BMC has no power to either regulate any advertisements or charge license fee on it.
The UN General Assembly on Wednesday overwhelmingly adopted a resolution calling for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire in Gaza, a symbolic gesture rejected by the United States and Israel. The resolution -- adopted by a vote of 158-9, with 13 abstentions -- urges "an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire," and "the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages" -- wording similar to a text vetoed by Washington in the Security Council last month. At that time, Washington used its veto power on the Council -- as it has before -- to protect its ally Israel, which has been at war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip since the Palestinian militant group's October 7, 2023 attack. It has insisted on the idea of making a ceasefire conditional on the release of all hostages in Gaza, saying otherwise that Hamas has no incentive to free those in captivity. Deputy US Ambassador Robert Wood repeated that position Wednesday, saying it would be "shameful and wrong" to adopt the text. Ahead of the vote, Israel's UN envoy Danny Danon said: "The resolutions before the assembly today are beyond logic. (...) The vote today is not a vote for compassion. It is a vote for complicity." The General Assembly often finds itself taking up measures that cannot get through the Security Council, which has been largely paralyzed on hot-button issues such as Gaza and Ukraine due to internal politics, and this time is no different. The resolution, which is non-binding, demands "immediate access" to widespread humanitarian aid for the citizens of Gaza, especially in the besieged north of the territory. Dozens of representatives of UN member states addressed the Assembly before the vote to offer their support to the Palestinians. "Gaza doesn't exist anymore. It is destroyed," said Slovenia's UN envoy Samuel Zbogar. "History is the harshest critic of inaction." That criticism was echoed by Algeria's deputy UN ambassador Nacim Gaouaoui, who said: "The price of silence and failure in the face of the Palestinian tragedy is a very heavy price, and it will be heavier tomorrow." Hamas's October 2023 attack on southern Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,208 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures. That count includes hostages who died or were killed while being held in Gaza. Militants abducted 251 hostages, 96 of whom remain in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead. Israel's retaliatory offensive in Gaza has killed at least 44,805 people, a majority of them civilians, according to data from the Hamas-run health ministry that is considered reliable by the United Nations. "Gaza today is the bleeding heart of Palestine," Palestinian UN Ambassador Riyad Mansour said last week during the first day of debate in the Assembly's special session on the issue. "The images of our children burning in tents, with no food in their bellies and no hopes and no horizon for the future, and after having endured pain and loss for more than a year, should haunt the conscience of the world and prompt action to end this nightmare," he said, calling for an end to the "impunity." After Wednesday's vote, he said "we will keep knocking on the doors of the Security Council and the General Assembly until we see an immediate and unconditional ceasefire put in place." The Gaza resolution calls on UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to present "proposals on how the United Nations could help to advance accountability" by using existing mechanisms or creating new ones based on past experience. The Assembly, for example, created an international mechanism to gather evidence of crimes committed in Syria starting from the outbreak of civil war in 2011. A second resolution calling on Israel to respect the mandate of the UN agency supporting Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) and allow it to continue its operations was passed Wednesday by a vote of 159-9 with 11 abstentions. Israel has voted to ban the organization starting January 28, after accusing some UNRWA employees of taking part in Hamas's devastating attack. abd/sst/jgc/nro/des
Stephen Lewis After the election, a headline above a political commentary column in The New York Times caught my attention. Not for politics, but for one word. That headline said, “Voters to Elites: Do You See Me Now?” The word that interests me is “elites,” the plural of “elite” as a noun when applied to a class of people. So, let’s take a closer look because something a little odd seems to be happening. As an adjective, “elite” refers to the best of something, and that comes, not surprisingly from its source in French. Not surprising because so much of English does track back to the French who conquered England in 1066 and ruled that country for an extended period during which that language mixed with our original Germanic roots. OK. So, the word is a French derivative, meaning to select something, or more clearly to select the best of something. The meaning persists in the word as an adjective describing somebody, someplace, or something. An elite football quarterback is one considered to be the best at that position. And so forth. In this regard, the word’s connotative value is clearly positive. Whatever is being called “elite” is being singled out as among the best of other similar things. But as in the headline that prompted this column, the clarity of the word as a noun becomes less clear. Let’s begin with the denotive level of meaning at which a word points to a group. This is perhaps the most basic level of communication. When English speakers hear the word “table,” they can picture an object with a flat top, supported by legs or some sort of column, that serves the purpose of being a place onto which things can be put. That’s a lot of words for a simple concept, I know, but it is central to what I’m talking about. If we can all agree what the denotative meaning of “table’ is, it seems to me we cannot say the same thing about the denotative value of “elites” in the headline. What we can surmise from the rest of the headline is that the word “elites” references the losers of the election. As a matter of political science, one can argue that to explain the results of an election involving millions of voters spread over our huge country is at the very least, a tad over simplistic. Or even to lay the blame for defeat on a group, or subgroup of the electorate is a serious stretch. Moving to the connotative level of meaning, that which describes the positive, neutral, or negative attitude toward what is being denoted, things get interesting in another way. Simply put, “elite” as an adjective describing a noun, or as a noun itself, has a strongly positive connotative value. I will pause to admit that when we add an “ism’ to the word to create “elitism,” we are talking about something different because that word suggests snobbishness and is negative connotatively. We’re closing toward my point, which is to notice how a word that carries a strongly positive connotative value is turned on its head when it is applied to voters. It seems that the negative vibe of “elitism’ has shifted onto the figurative backs of the losers in the election. They lost not because they are elite in some other way in their lives but because as a class of voters they exhibit elitist disdain for the non-elite. And that is what the headline with which I began indicates. The losers did not have the wrong policy prescriptions, but because they are seen as thinking that as elites their views should prevail. And thus were rejected.
