Posted: 26 Mar 2017 01:44 PM PDT
NEW YORK — Should the “Fearless Girl” stand up to Wall Street’s charging bull forever? That’s the question New York City officials are facing after a statue of a ponytailed girl in a windblown dress went up in front of the bronze bull early this month and immediately became a tourist draw and internet sensation. What was intended as a temporary display to encourage corporations to put more women on their boards is now getting a second look in light of its popularity, which has spawned an online petition seeking to keep it. But does keeping the girl past her scheduled April 2 deadline forever alter the meaning of the bull? After all, the 11-foot-tall, 7,100-pound bull has been hugely popular in its own right; it was placed in a lower Manhattan traffic median in the wake of the 1987 stock market crash as a symbol of Americans’ financial resilience and can-do spirit. Some fans of the bronze girl already see the bull much differently. “The bull represents men and power,” says Cristina Pogorevici, 18, a student from Bucharest, Romania, who visited the statues this past week. “So she is a message of women’s power and things that are changing in the world right now.” Holli Sargeant, 20, a visitor from Queensland, Australia, says the 4-foot-tall, 250-pound bronze girl “is standing up against something and we see her as powerful image. She represents all the young women in the world that want to make a difference.” Such shifting perceptions of the bull — from American hero to villain of sorts — outrage bull sculptor Arturo De Modica, who wants the girl gone. He dismissed Kristen Visbal’s statue as nothing more than an “an advertising trick,” noting the bronze was a marketing effort on the eve of the March 8 International Women’s Day by Boston-based State Street Global Advisors and its New York advertising firm, McCann. As for his bull, “I put it there for art,” the Italian-born sculptor told MarketWatch, which first reported his anger. “My bull is a symbol for America. My bull is a symbol of prosperity and for strength.” The girl’s sculptor has no hostile feelings toward the bull. “I love Charging Bull!” Visbal told The Associated Press on Sunday, speaking from her home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. “But women are here, and we’re here to stay.” She was commissioned to create a 36-inch-tall girl with hands on hips and chin up. “Then we thought, this is a really big bull and we should increase the height to 50 inches,” she said. “But I made sure to keep her features soft; she’s not defiant, she’s brave, proud and strong, not belligerent.” The sculptor based her work on two Delaware children — a friend’s daughter she said had “great style and a great stance, and I told her to pretend she was facing a bull.” The second was a “beautiful Latina girl, so everyone could relate to the Fearless Girl.” Visbal, who was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, while her American father was in the foreign service, is to be honored Monday along with State Street on the steps of New York’s City Hall by a group of prominent bipartisan women who are asking that the statue be made permanent. A spokesman for New York City, which controls public art in the area, did not say when a decision would be made. Mayor Bill de Blasio has said only that he would try to prolong the girl’s presence. David Levi Strauss of Manhattan’s School of Visual Arts, known for his writings about the impact of art on society and politics, says he is excited by the dynamics the girl statue has brought to the space and agrees the overall meaning has shifted. “The girl has changed the meaning of the bull forever,” he says. “With public art like this, you never know what’s going to happen; it’s a Rorschach test onto which people are projecting their own opinions and feelings.” A similar point-counterpoint was played out at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, erected in 1982 in Washington, with three soldiers in bronze added two years later, seemingly interacting with the stark marble wall bearing the names of the dead. The result prompted debate; some said the soldiers infused life onto the wall, while protesters blasted the statue as a tasteless intrusion. When it comes to the girl facing the bull, Strauss said, “the bull’s stature diminishes. She’s the individual standing up to the beast of power. … She’s frozen in a sort of dream of winning, and that’s what appeals to people. She’s irresistible.” |
Tuesday, March 28, 2017
‘Fearless Girl’ of Wall Street Faces Uncertain Future - TIME Business
Syrians in Turkey - New York Times
Syrians in Turkey: The Human Smuggler and the Young Refugee
By
PATRICK KINGSLEY
MARCH 24, 2017
After earning $800,000 in 2015 by sneaking migrants out of Turkey, a smuggler says he has left the guilt and complications of his business behind — mostly. And a Syrian refugee boy, homeless and out of school, must keep roaming the country to find farm work and help his family survive. This is the third part in the State of Emergency series, in which our correspondent takes us behind the scenes of today’s Turkey, a nation in crisis.
Abu Mohammed is bored. He estimates that two years ago he earned more than $800,000 from smuggling thousands of migrants into Greece from Turkey. He rented an office in Aksaray, an area of Istanbul popular with Syrians, to serve as his headquarters. At one point, he had more than 80,000 missed calls from prospective customers.
Today, his phone doesn’t ring so often. He no longer rents the office. Occasionally he gazes at it from the street below.
Migration between Turkey and Greece has fallen by more than 95 percent since the peak of the refugee crisis in late 2015. And with it, Abu Mohammed’s business has collapsed.
Since early 2016, Balkan countries have made it harder for people to migrate through Europe, lowering the demand for Abu Mohammed’s services. Turkey has also made it harder for smugglers to work, detaining men like Abu Mohammed for several weeks last year. For this article, he agreed to talk only if his face was obscured in photographs and he was identified by his nickname alone.
I have interviewed more than a dozen smugglers on three continents. Like most of them, Abu Mohammed is more complex than journalists and politicians usually suggest in their portrayal of the human-smuggling industry.
He grew up in Syria, and became a surgeon’s assistant — someone who once saved lives instead of, as some say, endangering them. He turned to smuggling only once he had fled to Turkey, after he himself almost drowned trying to reach Europe as a passenger. Later, his own passengers were not simply his customers: They included relatives, and even his young son. Sending them to sea, he says, was stressful and sometimes frightening.
It was also shameful, he says. Though he acknowledges a quiet pride in his role in such an extraordinary flow of people, which was “not an ordinary thing,” it’s now not something he wants to be associated with. “It’s a dirty business,” he says. “It’s hard to find someone who’s honest in this work.”
Like many smugglers, Abu Mohammed saw himself as the one honest broker among a crowd of liars — acknowledging the wider moral problems within his industry, but skirting his own personal agency. Today, he says he avoids the places where he used to close his deals.
We stroll through Aksaray, Istanbul’s main smuggling hub, and Abu Mohammed points out cafes where he no longer meets clients. Shops that no longer sell life jackets. A small park where refugees no longer sleep rough.
Life is slower for Abu Mohammed now, but it is less stressful. He says he does not miss the late-night calls from panicked customers, who sometimes phoned him from the sea itself. In fact, it is Abu Mohammed who now badgers his onetime clients. Of the roughly $800,000 he said he earned in 2015, around a quarter has yet to be paid by refugees who promised to pay once they reached Europe.
Still, he has made enough to change jobs for the third time in his life. Now he plans to use his profits to buy a cafe. He has started scouting potential places.
But does a smuggler ever really leave smuggling? A few days after we met, Turkish politicians threatened to encourage a new wave of migrants to reach Europe — and I wondered if Abu Mohammed thought he might soon be back in business.
If Turkey can “at least turn a blind eye to those who are trying to get smuggled,” he replied, “we will take care of the rest.” He giggled as he said it.
Kamal Shoumali contributed reporting.
By
PATRICK KINGSLEY
MARCH 24, 2017
After earning $800,000 in 2015 by sneaking migrants out of Turkey, a smuggler says he has left the guilt and complications of his business behind — mostly. And a Syrian refugee boy, homeless and out of school, must keep roaming the country to find farm work and help his family survive. This is the third part in the State of Emergency series, in which our correspondent takes us behind the scenes of today’s Turkey, a nation in crisis.
Abu Mohammed is bored. He estimates that two years ago he earned more than $800,000 from smuggling thousands of migrants into Greece from Turkey. He rented an office in Aksaray, an area of Istanbul popular with Syrians, to serve as his headquarters. At one point, he had more than 80,000 missed calls from prospective customers.
Today, his phone doesn’t ring so often. He no longer rents the office. Occasionally he gazes at it from the street below.
Migration between Turkey and Greece has fallen by more than 95 percent since the peak of the refugee crisis in late 2015. And with it, Abu Mohammed’s business has collapsed.
Since early 2016, Balkan countries have made it harder for people to migrate through Europe, lowering the demand for Abu Mohammed’s services. Turkey has also made it harder for smugglers to work, detaining men like Abu Mohammed for several weeks last year. For this article, he agreed to talk only if his face was obscured in photographs and he was identified by his nickname alone.
I have interviewed more than a dozen smugglers on three continents. Like most of them, Abu Mohammed is more complex than journalists and politicians usually suggest in their portrayal of the human-smuggling industry.
He grew up in Syria, and became a surgeon’s assistant — someone who once saved lives instead of, as some say, endangering them. He turned to smuggling only once he had fled to Turkey, after he himself almost drowned trying to reach Europe as a passenger. Later, his own passengers were not simply his customers: They included relatives, and even his young son. Sending them to sea, he says, was stressful and sometimes frightening.
It was also shameful, he says. Though he acknowledges a quiet pride in his role in such an extraordinary flow of people, which was “not an ordinary thing,” it’s now not something he wants to be associated with. “It’s a dirty business,” he says. “It’s hard to find someone who’s honest in this work.”
Like many smugglers, Abu Mohammed saw himself as the one honest broker among a crowd of liars — acknowledging the wider moral problems within his industry, but skirting his own personal agency. Today, he says he avoids the places where he used to close his deals.
We stroll through Aksaray, Istanbul’s main smuggling hub, and Abu Mohammed points out cafes where he no longer meets clients. Shops that no longer sell life jackets. A small park where refugees no longer sleep rough.
Life is slower for Abu Mohammed now, but it is less stressful. He says he does not miss the late-night calls from panicked customers, who sometimes phoned him from the sea itself. In fact, it is Abu Mohammed who now badgers his onetime clients. Of the roughly $800,000 he said he earned in 2015, around a quarter has yet to be paid by refugees who promised to pay once they reached Europe.
Still, he has made enough to change jobs for the third time in his life. Now he plans to use his profits to buy a cafe. He has started scouting potential places.
But does a smuggler ever really leave smuggling? A few days after we met, Turkish politicians threatened to encourage a new wave of migrants to reach Europe — and I wondered if Abu Mohammed thought he might soon be back in business.
If Turkey can “at least turn a blind eye to those who are trying to get smuggled,” he replied, “we will take care of the rest.” He giggled as he said it.
Kamal Shoumali contributed reporting.
Donald Trump's team 'wiping their electronic devices' in case they have to give evidence - Independent
Donald Trump's team 'wiping their electronic devices' in case they have to give evidence
Allegations come just weeks after government lawyers ordered president’s aides to preserve materials that could be connected to Russian interference in 2016 election
* Lucy Pasha-Robinson
White House officials and members of Donald Trump’s transition team are reportedly “purging” their electronic devices to avoid being compromised by subpoenas, it has been claimed.
The accusation comes just weeks after government lawyers ordered the President’s aides to preserve any materials that could be connected to Russian interference in the 2016 election.
One legal expert told MSNBC - the channel that first reported the allegations based on testimony from an inside source - there could be “legal ramifications” for staff who destroyed crucial evidence relating to ongoing investigations.
The Trump administration is currently under FBI investigation for possible collusion between Russian operatives and presidential aides.
The House Intelligence Committee is also investigating alleged ties between the Trump campaign and Russia based on a series of allegations that pre-date the election, including Mr Trump publicly urging Russia to hack Democratic rival Hillary Clinton's emails.
Mr Trump’s former election campaign manager Paul Manafort, who was accused of once working to further the interests of Russian President Vladimir Putin, is now a leading focus of the investigation by American intelligence.
Mr Manafort volunteered to testify as part of the investigation and he is expected to be interviewed by the House Intelligence Committee, the panel’s chairman has said.
It came as a former National Security Agency (NSA) analystwarned the President could be forced to leave office over the investigations.
John Schindler, a security expert and former counterintelligence officer, said that if the US President was to face an indictment over allegations his campaign team colluded with Russia to disrupt the presidential election, it could put an end to his presidency.
Speaking to CBC radio, Mr Schindler said: "If, not just people around him, but the president himself is facing possible indictment down the road, that could be a game changer. He could be removed from office for that, whether he wants to be or not."
Allegations come just weeks after government lawyers ordered president’s aides to preserve materials that could be connected to Russian interference in 2016 election
* Lucy Pasha-Robinson
White House officials and members of Donald Trump’s transition team are reportedly “purging” their electronic devices to avoid being compromised by subpoenas, it has been claimed.
The accusation comes just weeks after government lawyers ordered the President’s aides to preserve any materials that could be connected to Russian interference in the 2016 election.
One legal expert told MSNBC - the channel that first reported the allegations based on testimony from an inside source - there could be “legal ramifications” for staff who destroyed crucial evidence relating to ongoing investigations.
The Trump administration is currently under FBI investigation for possible collusion between Russian operatives and presidential aides.
The House Intelligence Committee is also investigating alleged ties between the Trump campaign and Russia based on a series of allegations that pre-date the election, including Mr Trump publicly urging Russia to hack Democratic rival Hillary Clinton's emails.
Mr Trump’s former election campaign manager Paul Manafort, who was accused of once working to further the interests of Russian President Vladimir Putin, is now a leading focus of the investigation by American intelligence.
Mr Manafort volunteered to testify as part of the investigation and he is expected to be interviewed by the House Intelligence Committee, the panel’s chairman has said.
It came as a former National Security Agency (NSA) analystwarned the President could be forced to leave office over the investigations.
John Schindler, a security expert and former counterintelligence officer, said that if the US President was to face an indictment over allegations his campaign team colluded with Russia to disrupt the presidential election, it could put an end to his presidency.
Speaking to CBC radio, Mr Schindler said: "If, not just people around him, but the president himself is facing possible indictment down the road, that could be a game changer. He could be removed from office for that, whether he wants to be or not."
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