“I assume the mandate of the people for Catalonia to become an independent state in the shape of a republic,” Mr. Puigdemont said, before adding, seconds later, that he and his government would “ask Parliament to suspend the effects of the declaration of independence so that in the coming weeks we can undertake a dialogue.”Momentum for independence has been lost. Support on the street will evaporate. Madrid will not likely make the same mistake twice and crack down hard again.
Yes, Puigdemont was working with a fractious coalition. But in the end I would guess that it was the corporations moving their headquarters out of Catalonia that caused right-wing pro-independence lawmakers to think twice. Chalk up another win for neoliberalism.
Talk about an about-face. NFL owners who linked arms in solidarity with players on the field three weekends ago are now backing Trump's call to punish players who take a knee or protest in any fashion during the national anthem. Ken Belson summarizes in "Goodell and N.F.L. Owners Break From Players on Anthem Kneeling Fight":
By appearances anyway, the N.F.L. was one big family two weeks ago. After President Trump urged owners to fire players who did not stand for the national anthem, everyone from Commissioner Roger Goodell to the 32 team owners to the players and coaches locked arms, in many cases literally, in defiance and unity.
That unanimity has all but vanished. As the president continues to harangue the league over the anthem, and a number of fans across the country express displeasure with the handful of players who continue to kneel during the anthem, a growing pool of owners is trying to defuse the politically charged issue, even if it means confronting the players the owners previously sympathized with.
One of the most powerful owners in the league is now speaking openly about benching players who do not stand for the anthem, and Goodell, who said previously that players had a right to voice their opinions, is siding with the owners opposed to letting the players demonstrate. The owners plan to meet next week to establish what to do about the anthem gestures.
“Like many of our fans, we believe that everyone should stand for the national anthem,” Goodell said in a letter sent to owners on Tuesday.
He added that the league cared about the issues the players are trying to highlight, including social injustice and police brutality toward African-Americans. But he said that “the controversy over the anthem is a barrier to having honest conversations and making real progress on the underlying issues.” [!]The owners' and the League's about-face is overtly political and has very little to do with money. Trends adversely impacting viewership don't have anything to do with patriotism. Broadcast television is dying. The NFL has been the beating heart of broadcast television for a long time. It is no wonder that its ratings are in decline.
There was a little retrospective piece last week, part of regular series that The New York Times runs on page two of its front page, about Truman calling on Americans to ration their consumption of meat and eggs to help fight hunger in war-ravaged Europe. It was noteworthy because it was the first televised presidential address. The year was 1944, and, according to Times, there were 10,000 sets in the United States.
Six years later at the outbreak of the Korean War there were 10 million black-&-white TV sets.
In 1968, at the time of the Tet Offensive, there were 100 million TV sets in the U.S., many of which were color.
A half-century later we are undergoing a huge shift in the electronic age as the internet withers broadcast television. This represents a body blow to the prevailing political order because control switches that exist for broadcast television don't exist on the internet.
What we are experiencing is an attempt to apply the same switches on the internet that exist in the legacy media.
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