RSN: The Story Sheldon Adelson Didn't Want You to Read, The US Uses More Electricity on Christmas Lights Than These Entire Countries Do All Year

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Michael Winship | The Christmas Day That Peace Broke Out 
 
Michael Winship, Moyers & Company 
Winship writes: "You would scarcely know it here in the United States, but since last year, the British, French, Germans and others of our western allies have been commemorating the 100th anniversary of World War I, a conflict of extreme foolishness and colossal consequences, like almost every other." 
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As once again politicians seek to unleash the dogs of war, a one-man play recalls the brief holiday truce that marked the first year of World War I.

ast Friday night, I went to a small off-Broadway theater to see an engaging, poignant one-man show about the Christmas Truce of 1914. The title was Our Friends, the Enemy, written and performed by a young British actor named Alex Gwyther.

I felt bad for him; the theater was only about a third full that evening, probably because of the approaching holiday, but perhaps also because we Americans simply are too often indifferent to a century-old fight that scorched the European continent.

You would scarcely know it here in the United States, but since last year, the British, French, Germans and others of our western allies have been commemorating the 100th anniversary of World War I, a conflict of extreme foolishness and colossal consequences, like almost every other.

Maybe our interest in this centennial has seemed lacking so far because we didn’t enter The Great War until 1917. Or maybe it’s because others’ losses were so much more devastating than our own – we lost more than 53,000 lives but half of all Frenchmen who were between the ages of 20 and 32 died, and more than 35 percent of German men ages 19 to 22.

Some 723,000 British were killed, more than would die during World War II. No wonder, as Benjamin Schwarz wrote in The Atlantic back in 1999, “The war is Britain’s national trauma, and British and Commonwealth historians compulsively revisit it in the way that American historians revisit the Civil War.”

So I felt bad for the actor and sad that more people weren’t in the theater to hear an important story ingrained in British memory so profoundly that last Christmas a UK supermarket chain even used a highly romanticized version of the events as the basis of a wildly popular and sentimental TV commercial.

In December 1914, World War I had been raging in Europe for some five months; British, French and Belgian troops fighting against Germany and Austria. Along the western front, trench warfare rapidly became the norm, soldiers on both sides deeply dug in, stuck in mud, filth and pestilence with a no-man’s land sometimes just a few dozen yards wide running between the lines. This stalemate was steadily punctuated with rifle and cannon fire, death and anguished cries from the wounded.

On December 7 that year, Pope Benedict XV called for a Christmas Eve truce, “that the guns may fall silent at least upon the night the angels sang.” His plea was rejected.

Few if any of the foot soldiers may have known about that papal imploration, but many of them took it upon themselves to make their own peace, however brief. On Christmas Eve, German troops along the line raised across the trench tops small Christmas trees lit by candles. The two sides sang carols to one another, their voices drifting warily across no man’s land.

With daylight on Christmas morning, on each side, men cautiously peered from their trenches and a few ventured out to shake hands with their foes and exchange holiday greetings, followed by more and more. Artillery fire stopped.

James Boyce, the soldier played by Alex Gwyther in Our Friends, the Enemy, tells the tale:

“Grey and khaki begin to blend into one. Order of military rank and the barriers of language vanish, as they shake hands and introduce themselves in a mix of broken English and silent gestures. They offer small gifts of friendship — drinks, cigarettes, buttons, badges, sketches they’ve drawn and in the warm absurdity of their Christmas morning, some exchange addresses to meet up after the war.”

There are stories of impromptu soccer games or simple kick rounds with an actual ball or something vaguely spherical improvised from tin cans or straw-stuffed sandbags — nothing as organized as the match that supermarket ad suggests. More organized were burial details that the momentary peace allowed to retrieve the dead. “We worked with the enemy,” the character James Boyce recalls, “collecting the men whom we had killed together and attempted to clean up the mess of this war… It slowly dawned on us all – war was still upon us. A strange orange slithered over the dead, and two armies placed their heads in their hands.”

That Christmas of 1914, the peace lasted in some places longer than others; and in still others it never happened at all. Afterwards, word came from on high that such behavior — insubordination! — would never again be permitted. One German infantryman in the trenches also thought it was a disgrace. “Such a thing should not happen in wartime,” he declared. His name was Adolf Hitler.

In Our Friends, the Enemy, James Boyce recalls, “Tucked away from the war in a quiet corner of France, sheltered by trees and covered in frost, thick twigs tied together to form small crucifixes lunge out from the fluffy snow. A worn helmet rests under each cross.

“An old tree, built with a thick body stands over the small cemetery, its long branches watching over the small bumps in the snow. In its trunk, words have been carved using the bayonet of a rifle:

“‘Death unites us all, and we all rest on the same side.'”

They called it “the war to end all wars.” Pause for sardonic laughter, fast forward to today. Once again, politicians and others run around ferociously beating the war drums, pandering to our fears and baser instincts. In the end, while there are really very few differences among us, there will always be those who seek to turn those small differences into monsters. Do not let that happen.

We all rest on the same side. See you next year.

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/318-66/34251-the-christmas-day-that-peace-broke-out

A Holiday Recipe for Economic Equality - In Just 7 Simple Steps! 
Leo Gerard, In These Times 
Gerard writes: "In keeping with the figgy-pudding and potato latke traditions of the holidays, here's a recipe for delivering joy to workers so that they can spread holiday merriment." 
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Justice Department Shuts Down Federal Asset Forfeiture Program 
Christopher Ingraham, The Washington Post 
Ingraham writes: "The Department of Justice announced this week that it's suspending a controversial program that allows local police departments to keep a large portion of assets seized from citizens under federal law and funnel it into their own coffers." 
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Review: Michael Moore's 'Where to Invade Next' 
Godfrey Cheshire, RogerEbert.com 
Cheshire writes: "Michael Moore's surprising and extraordinarily winning 'Where to Invade Next' will almost surely cast his detractors at Fox News and similar sinkholes into consternation. They get lots of mileage out of painting Moore as a far-left provocateur who's all about 'running America down.' But his new film is all about building America up, in some amazingly novel and thought-provoking ways." 
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The Story Sheldon Adelson Didn't Want You to Read 
Judd Legum, ThinkProgress 
Legum writes: "The unpublished story of Hengel's departure also put it in the context of the Review-Journal's other recent reporting. Most notably, the paper reported that, about a month prior to the sale to Adelson, three reporters were abruptly ordered to drop everything and monitor three county judges." 
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Sheldon Adelson. (photo: AP)

wo weeks ago, conservative billionaire Sheldon Adelson and his family purchased the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Nevada’s largest paper. On Tuesday, its editor-in-chief of five years, Mike Hengel, resigned.

If you are a subscriber to the Review-Journal, you would have read a grand total of 79 words on Wednesday about Hengel’s departure. According to the story, which did not have a byline, the decision was “mutual” and “he did not believe he was forced out.”

That wasn’t, however, the original story that was written by a Review-Journal reporter and approved by its editors. The actual story of Hengel’s departure was killed by the paper’s management team who now answers to Adelson, according to a source in the Review-Journal newsroom who spoke to ThinkProgress on the condition of anonymity, fearing retribution from the new ownership.

According to the source, the unpublished story revealed that Hengel was “offered” a buyout — but only after a public confrontation with Jason Taylor, the newspaper’s publisher, in a December 11 staff meeting.

At that meeting, Hengel confronted Taylor about why he personally removed quotes in the middle of the night from a different story about sale of the newspaper. The quotes Taylor cut were from Hengel himself, raising concerns about the new ownership, whose identity was being kept secret. Taylor did not consult Hengel before removing the quotes, the newsroom source said. Rather, Taylor contacted lower-level editors and ordered the cuts.

Taylor made it clear that, in his capacity representing the paper’s management, he would continue to personally review any stories about the sale of the paper to Adelson.

“He didn’t make any secret about him treating stories about the Review-Journal differently than other stories. He didn’t disguise that fact. He said: ‘I’m going to read and have final approval on stories that are about us.’ He thought that was reasonable,” the source, who attended the meeting, said.

Prior to the sale to Adelson, Taylor was not involved in reviewing or editing stories, the source said.

After the contentious meeting was the first time management approached Hengel about a buyout, the source added.

Hengel told the L.A. Times that “he first learned of his acceptance of the buyout” when someone read him an editorial by the Adelson family published Tuesday night that mentioned he had agreed to leave.

That article claimed the buyout offer was made by the “prior owners,” which was not true, according to a Review-Journal reporter who tweeted some details about Hengel’s departure. The prior owners offered some employees buyouts, but Hengel was not eligible.

The unpublished story of Hengel’s departure also put it in the context of the Review-Journal’s other recent reporting. Most notably, the paper reported that, about a month prior to the sale to Adelson, three reporters were abruptly ordered to drop everything and monitor three county judges. The assignment included monitoring the activities of a judge, Elizabeth Gonzalez, currently overseeing a wrongful termination lawsuit against Adelson and his casino company, Las Vegas Sands Corp. The reporters ended up writing 15,000 words about the judges, but none of it was ever published in the Review-Journal. But some of the information about Gonzalez ended up in an obscure Connecticut paper, the New Britain Herald, which is also tied to Adelson.

The publisher of the New Britain Herald, Michael Schroeder, also manages News + Media Capital Group LLC, the company the Adelsons’ created three months ago to purchase the Review-Herald. The controversial article, which includes a 10 paragraph section criticizing Elizabeth Gonzalez, contains passages that appear to be plagiarized.

The article was written by a reporter named Edward Clarkin. No one can find him. Editors at the New Britain Herald “can’t shed light on Clarkin’s identity, or how the business-court story came to be, or why the New Britain Herald was so interested in Judge Elizabeth Gonzalez.” Clarkin’s name, however, has an unusual connection to Michael Schroeder.

Adelson is one of the biggest Republican donors in the United States, spending over $100 million to influence the 2012 election. He is being heavily courted by the current field of Republican candidates.

So without an editor — or full control over editorial content — how does the staff of the Review-Journal forge ahead?

According to our source, it won’t be easy. “There so many questions about everything that it’s hard to know what to believe. It’s hard to know who is telling the truth, if anyone.”

ADDITIONAL GRAPHICS ON LINK:

http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/34247-the-story-sheldon-adelson-didnt-want-you-to-read

US Plans Raids to Deport Families Who Surged Across Border 
Jerry Markon and David Nakamura, The Washington Post 
Excerpt: "The Department of Homeland Security has begun preparing for a series of raids that would target for deportation hundreds of families who have flocked to the United States since the start of last year, according to people familiar with the operation." 
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The US Uses More Electricity on Christmas Lights Than These Entire Countries Do All Year 
Elliot Hannon, Slate 
Excerpt: "US uses more energy on Xmas lights than Ethiopia does for whole economy. Maybe we shouldn't lecture them on dams?" 
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