2018
December
11
Tuesday

Monitor Daily Podcast

December 11, 2018
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The events of 1968 left influences that still linger 50 years later. This week comes a reminder that those legacies include a breaking of barriers in technology and exploration.

Humans circled the moon for the first time in December of that year. That journey and the “Earthrise” photo that resulted will be highlighted at an event tonight in Washington, with one of the original Apollo astronauts involved. You can view it online here.

This week also marks the 50th anniversary of something less known outside tech circles. In California, a Stanford-linked technologist named Douglas Engelbart made a presentation that’s now called the “mother of all demos.” The demonstration featured the first functioning computer mouse, and much more. Videoconferencing. Screen-sharing. Hyperlinks. A graphical interface with the machine. Plans for far-flung networks. Mr. Engelbart didn’t invent all this alone, but basically a straight line runs from his demo to today’s smartphones and internet.

Yet the footage also looks archaic – a reminder of how breakthroughs begin with ideas, dreams, and baby steps. And often with moral purpose. Engelbart’s vision wasn’t just about cool technology as an end in itself. As early as his service in World War II and his marriage proposal in 1950, Engelbart was nurturing a life goal: to help the world become more connected, to advance human progress and the solving of big problems.

Now it’s on to our five stories for today.


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Today’s stories

And why we wrote them

Oded Balilty/Reuters
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chaired a weekly cabinet meeting at his office in Jerusalem Dec. 9. For the past two years Mr. Netanyahu has been the focus of investigations. Yet with legal pressures mounting, the political tactician shows no signs of stepping down.

Corruption allegations against Benjamin Netanyahu raise basic questions: To what extent may an elected leader maneuver to stay in power, and at what cost to democratic institutions?

US withdrawal from its role as multilateral leader in global affairs is apparent at the COP24 climate summit. But local leaders and career officials are showing that there's more than one way to participate.

Perception Gaps

Comparing what’s ‘known’ to what’s true

Understanding war and those who fight it

The imagery of warfare can come to our TVs and computer screens more easily than ever. That can inform, but it can also distort the public view of what war is like, and how much of it is happening.

SOURCE:

Uppsala Conflict Data Program & Peace Research Institute Oslo

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Jacob Turcotte/Staff

More attention is being given to the idea that juvenile offenders can make radical changes. As a result, measures aimed at rehabilitation are spreading across the United States.

Renee Hickman
Art historian and activist Ievgeniia Moliar stands in front of a mosaic she helped save at the Politekhnichnyi Instytut metro station in Kiev, Ukraine. Rather than destroying the mosaic, authorities simply removed the hammer from the original hammer and sickle design.

Eager to erase its communist past, Ukraine recently launched a campaign to destroy Soviet-era symbols. But efforts to preserve these works point to the value of art as an important relic of history. 


The Monitor's View

AP
An art installation depicting migrants is pictured during the UN Migration Conference in Marrakech Morocco.

 With one in every 30 people in the world now migrants, it was inevitable that the United Nations would try to coordinate the immigration policies of nations that send, receive, or block migrants. After 18 months of talks, this first attempt at a global approach wrapped up Monday in Morocco with an agreement. About 85 percent of UN members signed the nonbinding “Global Compact for Migration,” one that calls for “safe, orderly, and regular” migration.

In the end, the debate itself proved more valuable than the 23 legal and humanitarian aspirations expressed in the 34-page document. The discussion helped nations look inward, compare themselves with others, and perhaps notice how their domestic divisions influence their migration practices or their standing in the world.

Some were at ease in signing the pact. As British Home Secretary Sajid Javid (himself an immigrant and a Conservative) put it in a recent speech, “It is when we’re comfortable in our own security, identity, and values that we are also comfortable being open with others, whether at home or abroad.”

In many countries, the intense international focus on migration and the decision on whether to sign the pact proved disruptive.

It caused Belgium’s government to nearly collapse. It forced the Slovak foreign minister to tender his resignation. It helped trigger protests in Italy. With nine countries in Europe opting out of the pact, the European Union is now even more divided on how to stem the flow of migrants from Africa and the Middle East. In the United States, the pact was dismissed from the start by President Trump and drew little attention because of a more-divisive debate over the caravan of Central Americans and whether to build a wall on the US-Mexican border.

The mixed result in support of the pact is reflected in a Pew poll last spring of 27 countries that have more than half of the world’s international migrants. The sentiment against migration is strong. A median of 45 percent favored fewer or no immigrants while 36 percent say they want about the same number. Just 14 percent wanted more immigrants.

Of the estimated 258 million migrants worldwide, an unprecedented 68.5 million have been forced from their home. About 15 percent of the world’s adults say they would like to move to another country, according to a Gallup poll. The exodus from Venezuela, where some 3 million have fled so far, is one of the largest migrations. The number of Venezuelan migrants and refugees could reach 6 million to 8 million over the next year, according to the Brookings Institution.

As a global phenomenon, migration can destabilize communities as well as local politics. Yet it can also force nations to define their idea of home, or the values and protections that reflect a country. In Britain, for example, the decision to leave the EU and opt out of the free movement of EU citizens has opened “the need and the opportunity to define our country once more,” says the country's home secretary.

The UN pact itself may be forgotten but the exercise in birthing it was necessary and perhaps long-lasting. Migration is more global. Yet more countries find they must size up their identity as well as the size of their welcome mat to the world. The affections at home will be reflected in affections abroad.


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.

Pausing to affirm and feel that God is limitless Love, not vengeful and punishing, is dynamic prayer that transforms and heals.


A message of love

Evan Vucci/AP
In a testy Oval Office exchange Dec. 11, President Trump and top Democrats sparred over issues in what NPR called ‘an extraordinary show before the cameras and the press.’ On the issue of a government shutdown if funding for a border wall is not forthcoming, Mr. Trump said: ‘I will take the mantle. And I will shut it down for border security.’ From left: House minority leader Nancy Pelosi, Vice President Mike Pence, Trump, and Senate minority leader Charles Schumer.
( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Karen Norris and Jacob Turcotte. )

A look ahead

Thanks for joining us today. Come back tomorrow, when our education writer will revisit her childhood school district to ask, How do cities that successfully desegregated schools handle a reversal back into segregation? 

More issues

2018
December
11
Tuesday

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