2019
December
18
Wednesday

Monitor Daily Podcast

December 18, 2019
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Mark Sappenfield
Senior global correspondent

Your five hand-picked stories today include: how history might view impeachment, the prospect of a change to India’s founding ideal, a dilemma cities face in preparing for a cyberattack, an undertold story of injustice in South Africa, and our favorite fiction of 2019.   

With an impeachment vote today and a presidential debate tomorrow, now might seem like a good time to brush up on your understanding of the vision of America’s founders. And on a quiet corner of the internet, that is exactly what a few thousand Iranians are doing. Yes, Iranians.

That’s the work of Houshang Nourmohammadi, who was brought to my attention by a Monitor reader. It was only a few years after he came to Oklahoma from Iran, at first working a night shift washing dishes at Denny’s, that he concluded that the United States was a model for Iran – and the world, really.

Namely, it showed how diverse groups could find unity. In the Federalist Papers, he saw a young nation struggling with the centrifugal forces of slavery, economy, and religion, yet finding more power in what bound it. So now, he translates the Federalist Papers into Farsi and holds live web sessions to discuss their universal importance. He has only 2,800 followers so far, but signing up for this kind of group is dangerous in Iran, and Mr. Nourmohammadi just started a few months ago.

“The U.S. is a miniature of the world we’re going to live in,” he says. “If people can set aside their differences for a greater reason, that’s a great story.”


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Today’s stories

And why we wrote them

Tom Brenner/Reuters
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is followed by members of the news media inside Statuary Hall prior to votes in the U.S. House of Representatives on two articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump on Capitol Hill in Washington, Dec.18, 2019.
Anupam Nath/AP
Protesters shout slogans against the Citizenship Amendment Act in Gauhati, India, Dec. 17, 2019. Student protests that turned into violent clashes with police galvanized opposition nationwide to a new law that provides a path to citizenship for non-Muslim immigrants.

Difference-maker

Ryan Lenora Brown/The Christian Science Monitor
Activist Pinky Mashiane talks to domestic workers in Benoni, a suburb of Johannesburg, about their rights as workers, including the minimum wage, working hours, and sick leave.
Karen Norris/Staff

Books


The Monitor's View

Mark Humphrey/AP/file
The Russian team marches behind the national flag at the opening ceremony of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. New sanctions for doping will prevent Russian teams from hoisting their flag or wearing national uniforms.

A Christian Science Perspective

About this feature

A message of love

Hannibal Hanschke/Reuters
German Family Minister Franziska Giffey helps to give food to needy people at the Bahnhofsmission ("railway mission"), a Christian charity, at the Zoo Garden railway station in Berlin, Germany, Dec. 18, 2019.
( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Karen Norris. )

A look ahead

Thank you for spending time with the Monitor today. Please come back tomorrow when our Henry Gass looks at how President Trump is reshaping the American judiciary.

More issues

2019
December
18
Wednesday
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