Editorial Roundup: Excerpts from recent editorials

Excerpts from recent editorials in the United States and abroad:

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Aug. 9

The Japan News on a recent U.S. military aircraft crash in Australia:

Another serious accident has occurred involving a U.S. Osprey military transport aircraft. The U.S. military should take the situation seriously to heart, promptly determine the cause of the accident and disclose pertinent information.

The Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft belonging to the U.S. Marine Corps' Futenma Air Station crashed in waters off eastern Australia during a drill, an incident that killed three personnel. The Osprey in question is said to have fallen into the sea after accidentally striking the deck of a transport landing ship on which it was attempting to land.

The latest accident did not involve ordinary citizens. However, it was preceded by an accident that left an Osprey aircraft wrecked in waters off Nago, Okinawa Prefecture, in December last year.

The Defense Ministry asked the U.S. military to voluntarily refrain from flying Ospreys in Japan. However, U.S. forces are regrettably continuing Osprey flights, saying the safety of such operations has been confirmed.

First, the U.S. military has a responsibility to offer even more detailed explanations about their grounds for confirming the "safety" of Osprey flights. Was the accident caused by just pilot error or did any problem arise from the aircraft itself? The U.S. military should do its utmost to fully investigate the cause of the accident and implement severe measures to prevent a repeat.

The Okinawa prefectural government has lodged a protest with U.S. forces and others, saying the latest accident was "unbearable and unpardonable for residents in the prefecture." Okinawa Prefecture is a strategic foothold for U.S. forces operating in the Asia-Pacific region. If U.S. forces further exacerbate the feelings of local residents, it would affect their stable station in the prefecture.

Ensure future operations

Osprey planes have been flying over all parts of the nation for training and other purposes. There have also been more and more takeoffs and landings by Osprey aircraft at bases such as U.S. Yokota Air Base and Iwakuni Air Station.

As of September last year, the rate of serious accidents involving the same model of U.S. military aircraft stood at 2.62 per 100,000 flight hours - nearly equal to the average for all U.S. Marine Corps planes. However, it is true there has been a sequence of Osprey accidents thereafter, which has spread anxiety among local communities hosting the aircraft. The U.S. military needs to exercise caution in responding to the situation.

It is important to ensure there is no hindrance to the operation of high-performance Osprey planes from now on. The Osprey plane is designed to combine the functionality of a helicopter, which can take off and land vertically, along with that of a fixed-wing aircraft that can fly at high speeds. The aircraft boasts of being a great improvement from conventional transport helicopters regarding its maximum speed, radius of action and freight-carrying capacity.

In situations such as an emergency on the Korean Peninsula, Osprey planes would make it possible to effectively transport troops, thereby contributing to Japan's security.

Osprey aircraft also played a helpful role in transporting relief supplies and conducting other activities in large-scale disasters such as a major typhoon that hit the Philippines and a big earthquake that affected Nepal, as well as the Kumamoto Earthquake, which struck in April last year.

The Ground Self-Defense Force has decided to introduce 17 Osprey planes as part of its efforts to defend the Nansei Islands, with the GSDF facilitating a plan to procure the aircraft. Securing the safety of Osprey planes is a task that also involves Japan.

Osprey planes are expected to be deployed in Saga Prefecture. Although the prefectural governor indicated a positive stance on accepting them in July, there are strong objections to the plan among people associated with the local fishing industry. To gain the understanding of the local communities to be affected, the Defense Ministry needs to offer even more careful, thorough explanations.

Online: http://the-japan-news.com/

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Aug. 9

The Star-Ledger of Newark, New Jersey on sleep disorders among truckers and train drivers:

Shortly after taking office, President Trump signed an executive order creating task forces in every agency to eliminate "burdensome" regulations.

"Every regulation should have to pass a simple test," he said. "Does it make life better or safer for American workers or consumers?"

Keep that standard in mind as you consider his gutting of federal protections for our clean drinking water, attempt to eliminate the agency charged with preventing chemical accidents, and now, killing of a "burdensome" rule that truckers and train drivers be tested for a dangerous sleep disorder.

Sleep apnea can cause spontaneous nodding-off, even at the wheel. The symptoms are similar to narcolepsy.

In light of horrific accidents like the one in Hoboken last year - in which a train slammed into the end of a track barrier too fast, killing a woman and injuring dozens more, and its engineer was later found to have this undiagnosed disorder - the Obama administration thought it would be a good idea to test drivers of large machinery for it.

After all, it wasn't the first such tragedy. The man at the controls of a Metro-North commuter train in New York that crashed at high speed in 2013, killing four, was also later diagnosed with sleep apnea. In fact, sleep apnea was the probable cause of 10 highway and rail accidents the National Transportation Safety Board investigated over the past 17 years, and is an issue in a number of ongoing investigations.

Metro-North in the New York City suburbs, which now does testing, found that 11.6 percent of its engineers have sleep apnea.

Federal regulators were approaching the final stages of imposing mandatory testing. But now the Trump administration has killed that effort. Testing will remain optional. So rest easy, commuters.

Trump is also backing off another federal effort to require speed limiters in the trucking industry. Why?

Because he says regulations are bad for business and hiring. But think about his alternative: To save the hassle of screening drivers for sleep apnea or limiting the ability of truckers to speed, we are all going to pay the vastly larger price - in lives and twisted metal - of the ensuing accidents.

Perhaps it's no surprise that many of the members of Trump's task forces dismantling these regulations have deep ties to industry. Others, his administration refuses to even name. Democratic lawmakers sent a letter to the White House on Monday, demanding that it release the names of its rule-busters and their potential conflicts of interest.

So far, 85 are known, including 34 with potential conflicts, according to an investigation by the New York Times and ProPublica. At least two may profit if certain regulations are dismantled, and at least four were registered to lobby the agencies they now work for.

Yet we're supposed to trust that they have our best interests at heart - that Trump, and not the consumer and health advocacy groups pushing for these government regulations, is making our lives "better" and "safer."

Online: http://www.nj.com/

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Aug. 8

The Washington Post on the Trump administration and climate change:

Over the next week or so, the Trump administration must decide whether to approve or suppress a major federal climate change report. Though scientists have signed off on its findings, including that the average U.S. temperature has spiked in the past several decades and that humans have almost certainly played a predominant role, President Trump and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt have indicated they simply do not believe the experts.

Even as the federal climate assessment has been under review, the warnings have grown starker.

A paper published last week in Nature Climate Change offered a harrowing view. International negotiators committed in Paris to keeping global temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius, the point past which experts warn warming could be very dangerous. Analysts from the University of Washington and the University of California at Santa Barbara found that there is only a 5 percent chance the world will achieve that goal.

Instead of predicting how technology or policy might change, the researchers looked at how nations have done until now and inferred from those trends what will happen in the future. As economies expand, they emit more planet-warming carbon dioxide into the air. Fortunately, over time economies also produce more efficiently, using less fuel and therefore emitting less carbon dioxide for every widget assembled or mile driven. By projecting population growth, economic expansion and carbon efficiency into the future, the analysts came up with a rough guide to where the global temperature will be at the end of the century.

They found that there is a 90 percent chance the world will warm between 2 degrees and 4.9 degrees Celsius, with a median of 3.2 degrees. Though this avoids the most alarming scenarios scientists have previously considered, it also excludes the least concerning, finding virtually no chance the Earth will keep warming below the desirable level of 1.5 degrees Celsius.

How does this translate into the real world? Some other new research provides answers. Experts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles found that at 4.5 degrees of temperature rise by 2100, highly populated and impoverished swaths of South Asia would experience heat waves so extreme that human beings would not be able to survive without protection. At 2.25 degrees of warming, heat-wave temperatures in the region would be dangerous but not as deadly. Another new analysis from European Union researchers warned that deaths due to extreme weather across Europe could increase from about 3,000 per year to 152,000 annually if the Earth warmed 3 degrees by century's end.

Each of these studies comes with caveats. For example, much of the risk would be averted with a strong global commitment to cutting carbon dioxide emissions, particularly if green technology became significantly cheaper, making it easier to decarbonize than in the past. Yet even if the breakthroughs do not come, or do not come fast enough, the latest research suggests it is neither unrealistic nor pointless to aim for the low end of the range of possible climate outcomes, even over 2 degrees, to at least limit the damage to the planet's habitability. That path, however, requires leaders to admit there is a problem.

Online: https://www.washingtonpost.com/

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Aug. 5

The New York Times on solitary confinement:

The Justice Department took a farsighted step last year when it banned the use of solitary confinement for young people in federal prisons. The decision - based on research showing that isolation promotes mental illness and self-harm - followed the widely publicized suicide of Kalief Browder, a young man who had been unjustly accused of a minor crime and sent to New York's infamous Rikers Island jail complex, where he spent two traumatic years in solitary confinement.

The Justice Department ban has pushed several states to place new limits on their use of punitive isolation for young people. Federal courts have also started to weigh in, pressing states and counties to roll back extreme isolation measures.

Taken together, these developments show that the country's attitudes are evolving and that the goal of abolishing punitive isolation for juveniles is now a realistic one.

That the country still has a long way to go is documented in a new report from the Juvenile Law Center, a legal advocacy organization in Philadelphia. Among other things, the report shows that solitary confinement for children is still common, even in states that are trying to eliminate it, because policies governing isolation are riddled with loopholes.

In a national survey conducted by the law center, two-thirds of public defenders reported that their juvenile clients had spent time in solitary confinement - ranging from just a few hours to seven months - as a form of punishment, to protect them from other inmates or for administrative reasons.

The defenders reported that their clients were routinely deprived of basic necessities like mattresses, sheets, showers, eating utensils and mental health treatment. Personal belongings like pens, computers or radios are typically prohibited, leaving the young people to pace the confines of a barren cell with only their thoughts for company.

The barbaric conditions of solitary may cause or worsen depression, paranoia and outbursts of anger that often result in even more time in isolation. The report also notes that more than half of suicides in juvenile justice facilities take place when the young person is alone.

The federal courts are increasingly taking issue with this brand of barbarism. Last month, for example, a federal judge in Madison, Wis., required the state to scale back punitive solitary confinement to seven days - from the earlier maximum of 60 - and to also cut back on the use of pepper spray, handcuffs and shackles.

A federal judge in Tennessee issued a similar injunction - aimed at Rutherford County - in March. This summer, the New York Civil Liberties Union and a public defenders group in Syracuse settled a class-action lawsuit with the Onondaga County jail, which agreed to stop putting 16- and 17-year-olds into solitary confinement.

And late last month, Legal Services of Central New York, a public defenders group, sued officials at the Broome County jail for what it described as "dehumanizing" abuses connected to solitary confinement. According to the complaint, juveniles taken to the solitary unit are strip-searched, allowed one hour of exercise per day and permitted showers only every other day. Court documents further assert that children, many of whom suffer from mental disabilities, are regularly held in tiny cells for 23 hours a day, for weeks or even months on end.

Furthermore, the suit says, "Juveniles who reach their breaking point and want to kill themselves are stripped naked and put in a 'suicide cell.'"

The New York State Department of Corrections has already agreed to stop using solitary confinement against juveniles in state prisons. Having concluded that the practice is counterproductive and inhumane, state officials must now prevail on the county officials to take the same approach.

Online: https://www.nytimes.com/

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Aug. 9

The Dallas Morning News on how issues in are Mexico affecting the United States:

What happens in Mexico doesn't stay in Mexico.

Our southern neighbor is wrestling with an alarming surge in cartel violence, a U.S. security crackdown on its northern border and a glut of migrant refugees slipping through its back door. All of which affects us directly or indirectly.

The situation demands our attention and a redoubling of efforts to create sound, effective policy.

Simply put, an unstable and unsafe Mexico isn't good for Texas. Our economies are too entwined. Mexico is our No. 1 trade partner by far. It's also not good for American industries that depend on lucrative trade deals and cheaper labor supplied by immigrants chasing the American dream. And it's not good for American communities struggling with the consequences of illicit drugs flowing into cities, suburbs and rural hamlets.

Let's start with the uptick in homicides. There's no way to romanticize the resurgence in cartel conflicts that are turning once-tranquil towns in Mexico into killing fields.

The Mexican government's war on drugs and cartels isn't working. Mexico is on pace for its deadliest year with 12,155 murders recorded from January through June.

Last month, the Mexican military got into a shootout with a heavily armed gang in Mexico City, killing eight. That put a fine point on what the government is up against: Four-fifths of Mexico's 32 states are showing spikes in homicides compared to last year.

The New York Times offered a glimpse of the toll being exacted by shining a light on Tecomán, a small farming town best known as the lime capital of the world. Now, the coastal Colima city has morphed into "the deadliest municipality in Mexico."

None of this is happening in a vacuum. It's unfolding in a nation that has become the de facto hub of illicit drug trafficking and human smuggling running from Central and South America to the U.S. The insatiable demand for illicit drugs in the U.S. is fueling these fierce turf battles.

But in many ways, this is a tale of two Mexicos: There's the Mexico that's a reliable trade partner, boasting one of the most robust economies in the world and a popular playground for tourists undaunted by violence that generally spares them.

Then there's the Mexico that's being decimated by a rapacious underground economy driven by warring cartels. That economy, too, has a direct pipeline to ours.

We can help Mexico by embracing sensible policies and programs to wean our drug-addicted communities and dry up demand.

We can help our neighbor with its other problems, too, by stepping up our immigration game. A crackdown on illegal immigrants coming across our southern border has created a bottleneck on Mexico's side. And it has further exposed migrants to cartels eager to exploit their desperation by charging huge sums to smuggle them at great risk into the U.S.

We renew our call for smart immigration reforms that are more humane and practical.

We also must note the dire problem Mexico is facing on its southern border, where refugees are sneaking in from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, hoping to find their way to the U.S. This is a humanitarian crisis that we can't ignore. It's also a lurking homeland security issue that necessitates the U.S. and Mexico tackling it together.

Clearly, as the rise in deadly shootings point up, Mexico is hurting in a bad way. But given the strong cultural and economic ties that bind us, so are we.

The question now is, "What are we going to do about it?"

Online: https://www.dallasnews.com/

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Aug. 4

Los Angeles Times on HBO announcing "Confederate," a new series:

Controversial television shows and movies often stir an outcry from viewers, but rarely do they draw a backlash before the script is penned and the first frame of film is shot. Yet a mere press release from HBO two weeks ago announcing a new series by the writers and creators of its blockbuster "Game of Thrones" was enough to trigger a fierce blowback that continues to this day.

"Confederate" dares to imagine an alternate reality in which slavery remains legal in the South. In the series, which is set in the present day, the South has seceded from the Union and become a separate nation from the northern states, where slavery is outlawed.

The show has not even been written - and probably won't appear on a TV screen for two more years - but it has already fueled outrage that's stretched from opinion pages to Twitter, with critics deriding it as "slavery fan fiction" by two white male writers. April Reign, the creator of the memorable #OscarsSoWhite meme, launched a protest campaign on Twitter during last Sunday's episode of "Game of Thrones" with her new hashtag, #NoConfederate. She is calling for people to tweet again during the next episode.

So, now we are pre-protesting things we expect to offend us? That, in and of itself, is offensive. This backlash over something that not one person has seen (because there is nothing yet to see) is misplaced, misguided and, ultimately, corrosive to the artistic freedom and diversity that most of us - including, we would think, the "Confederate" critics - want to flourish in Hollywood.

There's no question that HBO and the "Confederate" creators, David Benioff and D.B Weiss, are venturing into dangerous territory, mined with emotion. Slavery, as some pundits and poets have said, is this country's original sin - one from which the nation has never earned full absolution. The onscreen efforts to capture just the historical truth of slavery have yielded mixed results, from the caricatures of "Gone With the Wind" to the brutal realism of "12 Years a Slave."

"Confederate" will rewrite history freely, casting slavery as a modern-day institution. According to HBO's press release, the series will follow characters on both sides of "the Mason-Dixon Demilitarized Zone," including freedom fighters, slave hunters, politicians and the executives of a slave-holding conglomerate. (With some luck, it will also follow the lives of the slaves.) Benioff and Weiss will be joined on staff by married TV writer-producers Malcolm and Nichelle Tramble Spellman, who are black. All four will be executive producers.

That offers little comfort to social critics skeptical that Benioff and Weiss, who were criticized for setting the soon-ending "Game of Thrones" series in an all-white world (except for the seasons that featured black slaves), will deftly portray a modern-day society that embraces slavery. They also worry that "Confederate" is being unleashed at a volatile political moment, when white racists seem to believe themselves empowered by President Trump's election to say and do whatever they want.

Wrong creators, wrong time? Maybe. But it's no more acceptable for people to urge HBO to reverse course and kill "Confederate" because its creators are white with no substantial track record of penning black characters than it would have been for people to urge Disney's Touchstone Pictures, preemptively, not to back a movie Spike Lee planned to make about Italian Americans in the Bronx traumatized by the "Son of Sam" murders.

The point is that we don't know how the writers will portray this world, and we don't know what feelings the show will stir up. But frankly, the litmus test for a TV show should not be whether it will appeal to deranged white supremacists.

According to the producers, this will not be some antebellum pot-boiler. Nor does it sound like it will be "152 Years a Slave." At its best, it could be a provocative TV show that spurs conversation about our history, our culture and our struggles today with ingrained racial bias. Or it could be a ridiculous flop that people won't watch.

There might not even be all this outcry if Hollywood didn't have a long history of keeping people of color out of the industry, both in front of and behind the camera. If dozens of shows starring nonwhite actors were on screen today telling a diverse slate of stories, a series like "Confederate" might not have engendered the alarm that it has on pre-arrival.

But Hollywood's sorry track record does not make this protest of "Confederate" any less troubling. It's unfair and smacks of censorship to call for the cancellation of a show that hasn't even been filmed. Let's see it before we decide whether to denounce it.

Online: http://www.latimes.com/