2018
April
24
Tuesday

Monitor Daily Podcast

April 24, 2018
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A Toronto police officer did not shoot the man suspected of killing 10 people Monday by driving a van down a crowded city sidewalk.

Why is this newsworthy? The perception of US and Canadian police behavior is that when confronted with a gun – or what looks like a gun – they respond with lethal force.

A bystander video captures the arrest of Canadian Alek Minassian, who is pointing an object at the police officer.

“Kill me!” the man says.

“No, get down!” replies Constable Ken Lam.

“I have a gun in my pocket,” Mr. Minassian says.

“I don’t care. Get down,” the cop says repeatedly, closing the distance until he complies.

If Constable Lam had shot the suspect, few would have criticized him. In fact, Michael Lyman, a law professor at Columbia College in Missouri, told the BBC that the officer may have had a “duty” to use lethal force.

But most – including the Toronto police chief – consider Lam’s restraint and poise as exemplary, and it should be the norm. “You know that police are specifically not supposed to act as judge, jury and executioner, right? We need to normalize non-violent police intervention,” tweeted Canadian Nora Loreto.

Indeed, when reason and wisdom prevail over fear and base instinct, justice is truly served.

Now to our five selected stories, including a closer look at relationship-building between nations, a test of US Constitutional legal boundaries, and how one man taught a nation to appreciate its natural wonders.


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Today’s stories

And why we wrote them

Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
French President Emmanuel Macron and President Trump shared a laugh during their meeting in the Oval Office following the official White House arrival ceremony in Washington on April 24.

The French president has built a personal relationship with the US president based on displays of strength and respect. A key question: Can that relationship produce tangible gains for the people of each nation?

Could the US president pardon himself – or a close friend and business partner? Perhaps, say some scholars. It may be constitutionally legal, but does that make it ethically or politically advisable?

Briefing

A farm-bill flap over the terms, and reach, of food assistance

A historically high number of Americans rely on federal food assistance. Supporters say food stamps offer compassion to the most needy. Critics say that with the US unemployment rate at its lowest level in 18 years, a higher form of compassion is a job.

SOURCE:

American Farm Bureau Federation, US Department of Agriculture, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Congressional Budget Office

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Jacob Turcotte/Staff
Ali Hashisho/Reuters
Russian military vehicles travel through eastern Ghouta near Damascus, Syria, April 23.

Russia and Israel have long had a close, pragmatic relationship, built partly on a shared effort of fighting Islamic terrorists. But here we look at how Russia’s role in Syria may now be testing the durability of that relationship.

Difference-maker

What’s a biodiversity hero? In Thailand, it’s someone who’s created a new eco-ethic among tens of thousands of Thais, teaching them to use a wide-angle lens in appreciating the country’s native species.


The Monitor's View

AP Photo
People celebrate the April 23 resignation of Armenian Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan after massive anti-government protests.

In many countries of the former Soviet empire, people still live in fear of their regimes. In Armenia, a landlocked nation of nearly 3 million deemed “partly free” by Freedom House, that was certainly the case until this week.

Protesters could easily be killed, as they were in 2008. Two-thirds of people would not report a corrupt act if they witnessed one, according to a poll. Moscow keeps 3,000 troops in Armenia, whose oligarchs resemble those in Russia. And a quarter of the population has emigrated in the past quarter century under the dominant rule of the Republican Party of Armenia and its business cronies.

But on April 23, after 11 days of nonviolent protests in major cities, Armenians threw off their fears and began to “live in the truth,” as Vaclav Havel, the late Czech dissident, advised those living under the sham appearances of authoritarianism. They withdrew their consent to the effective one-party system and forced longtime ruler Serzh Sargsyan to step down after a blatant attempt to stay in power.

The size of the protests, which were largely leaderless and spontaneous, was so overwhelming that Mr. Sargsyan did not merely resign. He seemed contrite over his deceitful attempts to extend his tenure. “I was wrong,” he said in a statement, even admitting that the main opposition figure, Nikol Pashinyan, was right about the need for him to leave.

In recent decades, nonviolent civil resistance movements have reshaped much of the former Soviet empire, from Poland to Ukraine, as well as countries from Tunisia to the Philippines. Long-submissive people suddenly decided to no longer live a lie and instead chose to deny the legitimacy of repressive rulers. Armenia’s “velvet revolution” is particularly timely. In recent years, democracy in the former communist states of Europe has been in decline, according to Freedom House.

Armenians are a highly educated people. Yet nearly one-third live in poverty. In a global index on corruption, the country ranks among the worst. They have seen how Russian President Vladimir Putin has clung to power since 1999 by a mix of political tricks and repression. The protesters in Armenia said they did not want Sargsyan to “pull a Putin.”

Sargsyan is gone, but for now his party remains in power. The force of the mental shift away from fear by Armenians, however, has removed the pillars from under the regime. After rising up to live in truth, they may not be denied freedom.


A Christian Science Perspective

About this feature

Each weekday, the Monitor includes one clearly labeled religious article offering spiritual insight on contemporary issues, including the news. The publication – in its various forms – is produced for anyone who cares about the progress of the human endeavor around the world and seeks news reported with compassion, intelligence, and an essentially constructive lens. For many, that caring has religious roots. For many, it does not. The Monitor has always embraced both audiences. The Monitor is owned by a church – The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston – whose founder was concerned with both the state of the world and the quality of available news.

Today’s column explores how inspiration, joy, and healing break through the storms of fear and self-doubt.


A message of love

Michel Euler/AP
Visitors walk within a projection of Austrian painter Friedensreich Hundertwasser's art at the Atelier des Lumières gallery in Paris April 24. The digital gallery exhibits art as an immersive experience in which visitors can go 'inside' paintings in a warehouse setting.
( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Jacob Turcotte. )

A look ahead

Thanks for joining us. Come back tomorrow: We’re working on a story about the US Supreme Court’s view of the third Trump travel ban, and how it could tweak the balance of power between the executive and judicial branches.

More issues

2018
April
24
Tuesday

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