2019
September
26
Thursday

Monitor Daily Podcast

September 26, 2019
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Mark Sappenfield
Senior global correspondent

Today’s five hand-picked stories look at the “fog” of impeachment in the United States, how the Taliban see peace, new models of change emerging in Mexico’s feminist protests, a quirky portrait of China in Africa, and goodness on the silver screen.

First, an intriguing lesson from history.

For its first 222 years, America had one impeachment proceeding. Now, it is facing the prospect of a second in 21 years. Yet that first impeachment of President Andrew Johnson in 1868 is instructive.

The 1868 impeachment fight, the Smithsonian writes, “was a fight over the future direction of the United States; a fight with implications that reverberate to this day. Johnson’s real crime in the eyes of opponents was that he had used the power of the presidency to prevent Congress from giving aid to the four million African-Americans freed after the Civil War.”

In other words, that impeachment was less about the actual charges and more the product of a deep national divide in which the House and the president were on opposite and apparently irreconcilable sides – a political echo of the Civil War itself.

Tellingly, the American impeachment that never happened – the resignation of President Richard Nixon – also came at a time of tremendous national upheaval, in the echo of the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement.

The facts of the current case will come to light in due course, and the concern is not just on the Democratic side. But amid a time of partisanship unprecedented in modern history, the past offers insights, too.


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Today’s stories

And why we wrote them

Whose interpretations will hold sway in the Trump impeachment inquiry? Getting anyone to change positions either way will be difficult amid thickets of allegations and counter-allegations.

One ingredient of a successful negotiation is the integrity of the negotiators. Another is their ability to deliver. This inside look at how the Taliban are talking about peace offers clues about both.

Alfredo Sosa/Staff
On the anniversary of two deadly earthquakes, women marched in Mexico City Sept. 19, 2019, to protest decades of increasing violence against women. In August, two alleged rapes of teen girls by police spurred demonstrators to march in the capital.

Righteous anger can be seen as ennobling and effective – or the opposite. As Mexico City’s feminists protest gender-based violence, they’re also provoking a debate about how to push for change.

A letter from

Air Force One
Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
Han Shiqin, who is from China, works in a wholesale shoe store in Kampala, Uganda, as a security guard stands behind her, on Aug. 15, 2019. She has lived here with her husband for about two months.

The story of China’s impact in Africa isn’t told just in billions of dollars and thousands of acres. It’s at hotel front desks, shoe shops, and the people living at the crossroads of two different worlds.

On Film

Can goodness ever shine as brightly as badness in movies? Our critic shares several films he used as a life raft in a sea of dark offerings at the Toronto International Film Festival.


The Monitor's View

For the past week, tens of thousands of young people in Indonesia have protested in cities across the world’s fourth most populous country. Their main aim: to block an attempt by lawmakers to weaken the independent Corruption Eradication Commission, or KPK as it is known. The investigative agency is the most trusted state entity for its success in achieving the convictions of hundreds of corrupt officials since 2002. Many current legislators are the targets of the KPK’s probes.

These student demonstrations are the largest since 1998, when similar protests felled a dictator in the Southeast Asian nation and restored democracy. Their sheer size, along with the fact that thousands of the protesters are in high school, is a hint that people in one of the most corrupt nations may finally be unlearning a deeply rooted culture of bribery. Many young Indonesians have taken part in educational programs from the KPK that teach honesty and integrity. One example: A popular book for preteens is called “Aku Anak Jujur,” or “I Am an Honest Child.”

Anti-corruption scholars have long studied how countries can “unlearn” corrupt practices passed down over generations. Indonesia, a country of nearly 270 million people, has the advantage of being close to Singapore and Hong Kong, two places where officials have changed public attitudes within a generation to expect clean governance.

The focus of the protests is President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, a popular leader who has the power to overturn the new law that would neuter the KPK’s effectiveness. He came into office in 2014 and was reelected last April on the promise of a “mental revolution,” which includes changing attitudes about corruption. He supports the new measure yet claims he can also protect the KPK. Experts on Indonesia are puzzled over his motives.

A recent survey found bribery accounted for 10% of Indonesia’s production costs. Corruption also explains the lax regulation of new palm-oil plantations. Much of Indonesia is currently covered with a smoky haze from the burning of forests to plant new palm trees.

Early in its work, the KPK discovered many Indonesians had no knowledge of the word “integrity” or its meaning. If the protests are any clue, that may be changing. Indonesia might someday be a model of how to unlearn corrupt ways.


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.

When opinions clash, it can be hard to see past what we perceive as another’s faults. When a woman found herself in that very situation with a colleague, the idea that God loves all His children totally changed the way she saw this person, opening the way for friendship.


A message of love

Michael Sohn/AP
German Chancellor Angela Merkel (left) signs a rubber duck version of herself for Agriculture Minister Julia Kloeckner, (right), during a meeting of the German parliament at the Reichstag building in Berlin Sept. 26, 2019.
( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Jacob Turcotte and Karen Norris. )

A look ahead

Thank you for joining us today. We hope you’ll come back tomorrow when correspondent Fred Weir looks at how the fight over a former factory points to glimmers of a new and different Russia.

More issues

2019
September
26
Thursday

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