power

Mason Marchment scored two power-play goals, Kirill Marchenko had one, and the Columbus Blue Jackets beat the Kings 3-1 on Monday night.

Jet Greaves made 23 saves and Damon Severson had two assists as Columbus snapped a four-game road losing streak.

Andrei Kuzmenko scored and Anton Forsberg made 27 saves as the Kings were held to fewer than three goals for the sixth straight game.

Columbus was without defenseman Zach Werenski, who is day to day with a lower body injury sustained blocking a shot against the Ducks on Saturday. Werenski leads the Blue Jackets in goals, assists and points, and his 14 goals are tied with Washington’s Jakob Chychrun for most in the NHL by a defenseman.

However, newcomer Marchment made up for it, scoring twice in the first period, giving him three goals in two games since being acquired from Seattle on Friday. He opened the scoring 4:07 into the game with a wrist shot off Forsberg’s blocker, before making it 2-0 with 23.5 seconds remaining in the first period when Boone Jenner’s shot took a double deflection and went in off Marchment’s shoulder.

Kuzmenko got the Kings on the scoreboard with 1:19 remaining in the second, but Marchenko added a third power-play tally for the Blue Jackets with 5:46 remaining in the third. The three goals with the man-advantage were a season high, and it was the third time the Blue Jackets had multiple power-play goals.

The Kings were playing for the first time since trading third-line center Phillip Danault to Montreal on Friday, but newly promoted bottom six centers Alex Turcotte and Samuel Helenius struggled to make a consistent impact with frequent penalties creating a choppy game flow.

Up next for the Kings: vs. Seattle at Crypto.com Arena on Tuesday.

Alfred Hitchcock never won an Oscar for directing. Neither did Stanley Kubrick nor Robert Altman nor Sidney Lumet nor Federico Fellini nor Orson Welles.

It’s a group almost as distinguished as the list of winners.

But we’re likely going to cross one name off that ignominious list this year — Paul Thomas Anderson.

I’m Glenn Whipp, columnist for the Los Angeles Times and host of The Envelope newsletter. I already gave away who’s on top of our Oscar power rankings for director. How does the rest of the list shake out? Let’s take a look.

1. Paul Thomas Anderson, ‘One Battle After Another’

Anderson has three Oscar nominations for directing — “There Will Be Blood,” “Phantom Thread” and “Licorice Pizza.” That feels light. He has 11 Oscar nominations in all, including five as a writer and three as a producer. He has never won. That feels wrong. So with “One Battle After Another,” he checks off both of the main boxes that Oscar winners often possess — he directed the year’s best movie and he’s well overdue for an honor. Like Sean Baker for “Anora” last year, Anderson likely will come home with an armful of Oscars, as he also produced and wrote the movie.

2. Jafar Panahi, ‘It Was Just an Accident’

Panahi has never been nominated for an Oscar, though his films have won the top prizes at the Venice Film Festival (“The Circle”), the Berlin Film Festival (“Taxi”) and, this year, the Cannes Film Festival (“It Was Just an Accident”). That movie’s withering takedown of the cruelty and corruption of authoritarianism packs a punch; it’s also unexpectedly funny in its clear-eyed social critique. Panahi has been imprisoned by the Iranian government many times for speaking out and was recently again sentenced, in absentia, to a year in prison on charges of “propaganda activities against the system.” Like we needed another reason to celebrate the man and his work.

3. Ryan Coogler, ‘Sinners’

(Eli Ade / Warner Bros. Pictures)

Coogler has two Oscar nominations, but they aren’t what you might expect. He was nominated for producing “Judas and the Black Messiah,” the thrilling 2021 historical drama looking at the politics of race. And he earned a songwriting nod for the Rihanna ballad “Lift Me Up” from “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.” Coogler should have landed an adapted screenplay nomination for the first “Black Panther” movie, a more inventive, world-building work than the umpteenth remake of “A Star Is Born.” But that’s the past. Coogler, like Anderson, figures to be feted in multiple categories at the upcoming Oscars and may well bring home the prize for original screenplay.

4. Chloé Zhao, ‘Hamnet’

(Agata Grzybowska / Focus Features)

Zhao owns two Oscars for directing and producing “Nomadland,” the empathetic and searching portrait of America that felt like a balm when it premiered during the pandemic. After an ill-fitting detour into the Marvel Cinematic Universe with “Eternals,” Zhao came all the way back with “Hamnet,” a deeply felt look at love, loss and the cathartic power of art. Even those who find it overwrought laud the movie’s climactic sequence, a performance of “Hamlet” at the Globe Theatre. I’d argue the ending works so well because of the care Zhao took earlier in establishing the wonder and joy of the family’s life. “Hamnet,” to my damp eyes, is her best film.

5. Joachim Trier, ‘Sentimental Value’

(Lewis Joly / Invision / AP)

From here, you could shuffle the five through eight slots and make a good case for any of these directors landing the fifth slot in the field. Trier has much to recommend his subtle interweaving of past and present, hope and hurt in “Sentimental Value.” He received a screenplay nomination for his last movie, “The Worst Person in the World,” also starring Renate Reinsve. The directors branch boasts a strong contingent of voters from all over the world, a group that could easily nominate the filmmakers behind two of the year’s most celebrated international feature contenders. Plus, “Sentimental Value’s” salty view of Hollywood is bound to appeal to this bunch.

6. Guillermo del Toro, ‘Frankenstein’

The affable, movie-loving Del Toro has won many fans inside and outside the industry over the years, along with Oscars for directing and producing the 2017 best picture winner “The Shape of Water” and for “Pinocchio,” the enchanting 2022 movie that snagged animated feature. “Frankenstein” is far from his best work, but it probably has enough admirers to land a best picture nomination and mentions in several other categories. Director, though? If Del Toro didn’t make the cut for “Nightmare Alley,” he’s probably a near-miss for this one too.

7. Josh Safdie, ‘Marty Supreme’

(Atsushi Nishijima / A24)

It’s “Marty Supreme” week! The movie finally arrives on Christmas and, over the holidays, we’ll begin to have the sorts of conversations that will shed some light on the movie and its Oscar chances beyond the certain nominations for best picture and lead actor Timothée Chalamet. Is the title character, a single-minded ping-pong player oblivious to anything but his own advancement, a jerk? Or is he just like any other man in his 20s? Is the film’s last shot a sign of growth or a man contemplating his own death sentence? We’ll have time to discuss and, yes, revel in the unhinged chaos Safdie unleashes here.

8. Clint Bentley, ‘Train Dreams’

(Daniel Schaefer / BBP Train Dreams)

And finally, we arrive at the man behind “Train Dreams,” a contemplative film about an ordinary man puzzling through loss, guilt, the mundane and the magnificent. It’s the anti-”Marty Supreme” — quiet, painterly, a tad slow, sure, but hypnotic in the way it evokes a bygone America. Just the second movie Bentley has directed, following the little-seen 2021 drama “Jockey,” it has built a devoted following since landing on Netflix last month.

Dec. 21 (UPI) — Power has been largely restored after a widespread and unexplained blackout left swaths of San Francisco without electricity on Saturday, just days before Christmas.

Pacific Gas and Electric said in a statement Saturday afternoon that the blackout was affecting about 130,000 businesses and homes. At the time, the company said it had “stabilized the grid” and did not expect the blackout to further spread.

Late Saturday night, the company said crews restored about 95,000 customers. Of the 35,000 customers still without power Saturday night, another 10,000 have since had their service restored.

“We apologize for the delay in getting your power back on,” Pacific Gas and Electric said in a notice on its outage map around 3:45 p.m. local time Saturday. “Unforeseen issues can cause unexpected delays for our crews.”

Mayor Daniel Lurie said on social media that Muni lines — the diverse network of public transportation including buses, light rail, and historic street cars and cable cars — was affected by the blackout. The outage also affected city street lights, he said.

Because of that, Lurie said the city would increase its police presence overnight. The San Francisco Police Department later posted on social media that officers would be working to keep the city safe.

Meanwhile, emergency management officials urged residents to “stay home if you can, avoid all unnecessary travel, and check on neighbors safely.”

The Bay Area Rapid Transit system also said that it had closed its Powell Street and Civic Center stations downtown, which have since reopened.

The cause of the outage was not immediately clear but a spokesman for the San Francisco Fire Department told The New York Times that a fire at a large Pacific Gas and Electric substation in the South Market neighborhood contributed to the blackout.

This year, in the US-China trade war and the grand military parade, China demonstrated economic and military strength that forced the United States to back down. However, Beijing merely displayed its power; various parties discovered that this giant does not know how to wield it.

The US paused its economic attacks on China, but the Dutch government directly “took control of” a Chinese-owned company in the Netherlands—Nexperia—through public authority. The EU expanded anti-dumping measures against China, with France as the main driver behind anti-China economic policies.

The US publicly acknowledged that China’s rising military power in the Western Pacific can no longer be suppressed and adjusted its global strategy to focus on the Western Hemisphere. Yet Japan shifted the Taiwan issue from strategic ambiguity to strategic clarity, adopting a more confrontational posture and challenging China’s bottom line. Regional countries, in various ways, have called for “peace” in the Taiwan Strait—support that amounts to nothing less than opposing China’s unification and indirectly endorsing Japan’s position. Meanwhile, the Philippines, mired in internal chaos, continued to provoke China in the South China Sea.

Since China has the capability to confront the US, it should have the ability to punish Europe, Japan, and the Philippines for their unfriendliness toward China. But Beijing did not do so. When facing challenges from these parties, it only issued symbolic verbal protests or took measures that failed to eradicate the problems—putting on a full defensive posture but lacking concrete and effective actions. As a result, events often started with thunderous noise but ended with little rain, fizzling out in the end.

From Beijing’s appeasement toward Europe, Japan, and the Philippines, all parties have reason to believe that China is a giant that doesn’t know how to use its own power. This presents a strategic opportunity for the weak to overcome the strong—especially now, as the US contracts its global strategy and distances itself from its allies. Maximizing benefits from China’s side is the rational choice.

For example, with Japan: Beijing responded to Tokyo’s intervention in the Taiwan issue with high-intensity verbal criticism, but its actions were inconsistent with its words. Although it revisited the “enemy state clauses” at the UN, raised the postwar Ryukyu sovereignty issue, and even conducted joint military exercises with Russia 600 kilometers from Tokyo, these actions were far less intense than the rhetoric. Even the verbal criticism cooled down after a month.

The US maintained a low profile on the China-Japan dispute, adopted a cool attitude toward Tokyo, and even indirectly expressed condemnation—likely the main reason Beijing de-escalated. This shows that China’s original intent in handling the incident was to force the US to “decouple” from Japan on the Taiwan issue and isolate Tokyo, which maintains close ties with Taipei.

Influenced by official attitudes, the Chinese people once again mistook official rhetoric for commitments, believing Beijing would go to war if necessary to eradicate Japan’s interference in internal affairs. After all, unresolved deep-seated hatred—akin to a sea of blood—remains between China and Japan. Moreover, this year marks the 80th anniversary of China’s victory in the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, with various events held throughout the year to engrave in memory the national humiliation of Japan’s invasion of China.

But after Trump indirectly criticized Japan for provoking unnecessary disputes, Beijing seemed satisfied and stepped down gracefully. Although the dispute has not ended and continues to develop, like its handling of Philippine provocations, China has placed disputes with neighbors into long-term games, effectively shelving the issues—and causing the Chinese people renewed frustration.

After this three-way interaction, the asymmetry between Beijing’s words and actions has likely become deeply ingrained. In the future, it will be much harder for Beijing to mobilize the 1.4 billion people’s shared enmity.

The key point: In this dispute, who—China, Japan, or the US—gained the greatest substantive strategic benefits? So far, it’s hard to say who won the first round. China appeared to come out looking the best, preserving the most face, yet Japan also gained, and the US obtained leverage for future talks with China.

In the first round of this dispute, China strategically established the legitimacy of denying Japan’s intervention in the Taiwan issue, narrowing Tokyo’s diplomatic space for anti-China actions via Taiwan. Japan’s right wing advanced toward national normalization, hollowing out its peace constitution to cope with US strategic contraction; additionally, the Liberal Democratic Party regained public support. The US demonstrated its influence in East Asia—even after “withdrawing” its military to the second island chain—and raised its bargaining chips at the US-China negotiation table.

However, from a medium- to long-term perspective, Japan gains nothing worth the loss: the Ryukyu Islands will become a burden rather than an outer defense wall. The two major powers, China and the US, will orderly redraw their spheres of influence in East Asia; the US will gain a dignified pretext for abandoning Taiwan, while China will recover Taiwan at a lower cost.

Conversely, beyond the asymmetry between words and actions, there is also asymmetry between actions and strength. Beijing’s greatest loss is that the international community—especially its neighbors and Europe—has seen through China’s essence of appearing fierce but being timid inwardly. They have once again discovered that antagonizing China brings no adverse consequences; on the contrary, it can yield unexpected benefits—provided they give China the face it needs to achieve strategic gains.

For example, Vietnam: After the China-Japan dispute cooled, a Vietnamese warship transited the Taiwan Strait under the pretext of freedom of navigation without prior notification to China, signaling it is not a vassal of Beijing and aligning with Washington’s position.

Vietnam is a major beneficiary of the US-China confrontation, with massive Chinese goods rerouted through Vietnam to the US; transit trade has skyrocketed its economic growth. Thus, it firmly believes maximizing benefits lies in a neutral stance between China and the US. However, from a supply chain perspective, China is the supplier and the US the customer—the latter slightly more important. Factoring in China-Vietnam South China Sea disputes and China’s habitual concessions versus the lethal US carrot-and-stick approach, Vietnam naturally leans more pro-US.

Additionally, during the China-Japan dispute, Singapore’s prime minister publicly sympathized with Japan, while Thailand and Vietnam jointly called for peace in the Taiwan Strait—showing Southeast Asian nations, like Japan, hope to maintain the peaceful status quo in the Taiwan Strait and oppose military conflict in the region, which is equivalent to opposing China’s recovery of Taiwan. Of course, Northeast Asia’s South Korea holds the same view; some countries publicly state it due to internal and US factors, while others choose silence.

China’s neighboring countries all see the fact that the Philippines’ intense anti-China stance has gone unpunished. Despite deep internal political turmoil, Manila can still spare efforts to provoke China in the South China Sea—clearly a profitable path. Neighbors conclude: If China can concede on core interests, what can’t it concede?

On the other side of the globe, Europe has noticed this phenomenon too. The Dutch government rashly took over a Chinese enterprise, severely damaging China’s interests and prestige; Beijing’s response started strong but ended weakly—mainly to avoid impacting China-EU trade, even amid decoupling risks everywhere. No wonder Britain subsequently sanctioned two Chinese companies on suspicion of cyberattacks, unafraid of angering Beijing just before Prime Minister Starmer’s planned January visit to China.

In short, whether on the regional Taiwan issue or extraterritorial China-EU economic issues, China faces a broken windows effect. Although from a grand strategic view, all related events remain controllable for Beijing, appeasement only invites more trouble. It’s not impossible that China will eventually be unable to suppress public indignation and be forced to suddenly take tough measures—like at the end of the pandemic, when people took to the streets and Beijing immediately lifted lockdowns, rendering all prior lockdown justifications untenable overnight.

Indeed, China currently appears as a giant that doesn’t know how to use its power. But when a rabbit is cornered, it bites. When Beijing is forced to align actions with strength, the intensity will be astonishing; then, China will want more than just face.

There’s a saying: Attack is the best defense. But with its long history, this nation views offense and defense more comprehensively. The Chinese believe that when weak, attack is the best defense; when holding an advantage, defense is the best attack. As long as the opponent’s offense can be controlled within acceptable limits, persistent defense inflicts less damage than the opponent’s self-exhaustion in stamina. Conversely, when at a disadvantage, a full assault is needed to reverse it.

In other words, China doesn’t fail to know how to use power; it deems using power uneconomical. This explains why the West walks a path of decline while China continues rising—the latter accumulates power, and the former overdraws it.

President Trump is shrewd and pragmatic; he knows cornering China awakens the giant, so he eased US-China relations. But simultaneously, the US doesn’t mind—and even quietly encourages—its allies to provoke China, while positioning itself as a mediator to benefit. This is a reasonable tactic and the most effective offensive against China.

Xi Jinping once said China has great patience—implying that if patience is exhausted, the world will see a completely different China, one that uses power without regard for cost.

A ceasefire deal appears distant as energy facilities are hit in Ukraine and Russia says a drone has killed two people.

Russian attacks have left thousands without power in Ukraine, while a drone attack killed two people in Russia, as United States-led peace talks on ending the war, deep in its fourth year, press on.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Saturday that Russian night-time attacks damaged more than a dozen civilian facilities, disrupting power in seven regions.

“It is important that everyone now sees what Russia is doing… for this is clearly not about ending the war,” Zelenskyy said on social media. “They still aim to destroy our state and inflict maximum pain on our people.”

Kyiv and its Western allies have repeatedly said Russia is trying to cripple the Ukrainian power grid and deny civilians access to heat, light and running water for a fourth consecutive winter, in what Ukrainian officials call “weaponising” the cold.

Russian attacks left parts of the Kherson region, including the regional capital, Kherson, without power, according to regional head Oleksandr Prokudin.

Drone on Russia’s Saratov region

Russian authorities in the southwestern Saratov region, home to an important Russian army base, said a drone killed two people and damaged a residential building. Several windows were also blown out at a kindergarten and clinic.

Russia’s Ministry of Defence said it had shot down 41 Ukrainian drones over Russian territory overnight.

The latest round of attacks came after Kremlin adviser Yury Ushakov said on Friday that Russian police and National Guard will stay on in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas, which comprises the fiercely contested Donetsk and Luhansk regions, and oversee the industry-rich region, even if a peace settlement ends Russia’s nearly four-year war in Ukraine.

Ukraine has rejected Moscow’s demands to maintain its presence in Donbas post-war as US-led negotiations drag on.

Germany is set to host Zelenskyy on Monday for talks as peace efforts gain momentum and European leaders seek to steer negotiations. US negotiators have for months tried to navigate the demands of each side as US President Donald Trump presses for a swift end to Russia’s war.

The search for possible compromises has run into a major obstacle over who keeps Ukrainian territory currently occupied by Russian forces. Ukraine, the US and European powers are also still trying to outline the contours of security guarantees for Kyiv that could be accepted by Moscow.

In the absence of a breakthrough in negotiations to end the conflict, hostilities recently intensified in the Black Sea, with Russian forces attacking two Ukrainian ports and damaging three Turkish-owned vessels, including a ship carrying food supplies.

An attack on the city of Odesa on Friday caused grain silos to catch fire at the port, according to Ukrainian deputy prime minister and reconstruction minister, Oleksii Kuleba. Posting video footage on social media of firefighters tackling a blaze on board what he described as a “civilian vessel” in Chornomorsk, Zelenskyy said the Russian attacks “had no … military purpose whatsoever”.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday warned that the Black Sea should not turn into an “area of confrontation”.

“Everyone needs safe navigation in the Black Sea,” Erdogan said, calling for a “limited ceasefire” in attacks on ports and energy facilities. Turkiye controls the Bosphorus Strait, a key passage for transporting Ukrainian grain and Russian oil towards the Mediterranean.

Tourism has been said to be The Gambia lifeline. The Smiling Coast has been receiving thousands of visitors who come to the region due to its warm reception and lively culture. Tourism has been touted as one of the greatest success stories in the country with almost a fifth of the national GDP and with thousands of employees in the formal and informal sectors. But it is a silent fact, seldom admitted, that beneath the smiling faces and the colorful postcards there is a lot more to be lost than gained by the Gambia in its tourism business. Tourism appears as a treasure of the state, however, to a great extent it turned out to be a trap in the economy.

The Gambia imported into its own country has followed an economic paradigm of liberalism, despite the fact that it idealizes open markets, deregulation, and foreign investment as the fastest way to development. The premise was straightforward, with opening up the tourism industry to foreigners, the nation would acquire employment, expertise, competition and eventually general prosperity. The tourism situation in Gambia today however tells a different story. It is not romantic, empowering or lucrative as many make it out to be. Interdependence has not brought about mutual prosperity; it has brought dependence.

 A report released by UNCTAD (2022), the Gambia is losing up to 70 percent of its tourism income to foreign owned hotels, offshore booking systems, imported goods, airlines and repatriation of earnings. Most of the payments that are made by many tourists are made in Europe prior to getting on the plane. The government of Gambians has lost most of the potential earnings by the time they find themselves in Banjul.

This trend in the economy is not solely possible. It is indicative of a world dynamic as such as defined by dependency theorist Andre Gunder Frank (1966) who opined that developing countries tend to provide labour, culture, and even resources, as wealth and power is drained to more dominant players in the global arena.

Control of tourism in Gambia by the foreigners is not merely a matter of cash but a question of power. Major tour operators, international booking networks and foreign hotel chains are often in charge of the decisions of marketing, pricing, target groups and national branding. The industry involves local stakeholders, such as guesthouse owners, tour guides, craft sellers, musicians, farmers, taxi drivers, etc., who are not architects of the industry.

According to Robert Gilpin, a political economist (1987) cautioned that the global marketplace does not operate in terms of morality and fairness but on the basis of power, interests and strategic advantage. The adoption of liberal optimism in Gambia presupposed that the openness would bring about prosperity by default. But openness lacks strategy, and interdependence has no bargaining power; it is easy to exploit such weaklings. Well-intended policies without strategic protection are now yielding their results on the Gambia.

This does not imply that The Gambia should isolate and give up tourism. Tourism is one of the most feasible pillars of development of the country with limited natural resources, small domestic market, small industrial capacity and its geographical location. The problem of the model is not its structure, but its structure. The problem is not the existence of the foreigners but the lack of Gambians in the core of the industry. The issue is with ownership and control, unequal distribution of ownership, control and value.

Here the contemporary mercantilistic approach applies. Global engagement is not rejected in mercantilism but there must be strategic engagement.  It does not see national wealth as the by-product of open markets, but a resource that has to be maintained and nurtured. A state that is mercantilist does not just watch over markets, it controls them. This is not to shut the borders but to make sure that national interests take precedence, relationships have to be founded on equal footing and economy has to feed its own citizens before it feeds others.

According to Peter Evans (1995), a political economist, refers to this as embedded autonomy a model, in which the state is strong, capable and visionary, but is also tightly related to society and local industries.

Three strategic pillars on which a mercantilist turn in Gambian tourism must be based are:

The ownership of the Gambians should be central and not peripheral.

The government assistance should be in form of available financing, taxation reforms, tourism incubators, land protection policies, investment literacy and procurement reforms which will favor Gambian owned hotels, lodges, transport organizations, tour agencies and tourism academies. No country can establish long term prosperity based on leased platforms.

Tourism has to be associated with agriculture, manufacturing, and creative industries.

Importation of food, drinks, furniture, art, souvenirs, and building materials has been a significant missed opportunity to most tourist hotels. The hospitality industry should be provided by Gambian farmers, carpenters, craft makers, tailors, artists, and designers. Once tourism sustains other industries, the money circulates and multiplies and is retained in the country.

The Gambia has to regain its tourism identity and branding.

It is now being promoted as a cheap winter resort to the rest of the world instead of a cultural giant. The Gambian culture, heritage, and values should become the driving force of the new tourism narrative, developed by Gambians themselves.

Critics tend to believe that The Gambia is too small to make bargaining power. However, size is not as important as strategy in international politics. Through ECOWAS and the African Union, small states are able to form regional blocs and speak with one voice.

The current trends in the world are not towards economic liberalism blindly. Even countries that were once the proponents of open markets are currently reshoring their industries, subsidizing, and empowering national value chains.

To say the U.S. Senate has grown dysfunctional is like suggesting water is wet or the nighttime sky is dark.

The institution that fancies itself “the world’s greatest deliberative body” is supposed to serve as a cooling saucer that tempers the more hotheaded House, applying weight and wisdom as it addresses the Great Issues of Our Time. Instead, it’s devolved into an unsightly mess of gridlock and partisan hackery.

Part of that is owing to the filibuster, one of the Senate’s most distinctive features, which over roughly the last decade has been abused and misused to a point it’s become, in the words of congressional scholar Norman J. Ornstein, a singular “weapon of mass obstruction.”

Democrat Jeff Merkley, the junior U.S. senator from Oregon, has spent years on a mostly one-man crusade aimed at reforming the filibuster and restoring a bit of sunlight and self-discipline to the chamber.

In 2022, Merkley and his allies came within two votes of modifying the filibuster for voting rights legislation. He continues scouring for support for a broader overhaul.

“This is essential for people to see what their representatives are debating and then have the opportunity to weigh in,” said Merkley, speaking from the Capitol after a vote on the Senate floor.

“Without the public being able to see the obstruction,” he said, “they [can’t] really respond to it.”

What follows is a discussion of congressional process, but before your eyes glaze over, you should understand that process is what determines the way many things are accomplished — or not — in Washington, D.C.

The filibuster, which has changed over time, involves how long senators are allowed to speak on the Senate floor. Unlike the House, which has rules limiting debate, the Senate has no restrictions, unless a vote is taken to specifically end discussion and bring a matter to resolution. More on that in a moment.

In the broadest sense, the filibuster is a way to protect the interests of a minority of senators, as well as their constituents, by allowing a small but determined number of lawmakers — or even a lone member — to prevent a vote by commanding the floor and talking nonstop.

Perhaps the most famous, and certainly the most romanticized, version of a filibuster took place in the film “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” The fictitious Sen. Jefferson Smith, played by James Stewart, talks to the point of exhausted collapse as a way of garnering national notice and exposing political corruption.

The filibustering James Stewart received an Oscar nomination for lead actor for his portrayal of Sen. Jefferson Smith in the 1939 classic “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.”

(From the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences)

In the Frank Capra classic, the good guy wins. (It’s Hollywood, after all.) In real life, the filibuster has often been used for less noble purpose, most notably the decades-long thwarting of civil rights legislation.

A filibuster used to be a rare thing, its power holstered for all but the most important issues. But in recent years that’s changed, drastically. The filibuster — or, rather, the threat of a filibuster — has become almost routine.

In part, that’s because of how easy it’s become to gum up the Senate.

Members no longer need to hold the floor and talk nonstop, testing not just the power of their argument but their physical mettle and bladder control. These days it’s enough for a lawmaker to simply state their intention to filibuster. Typically, legislation is then laid aside as the Senate moves on to other business.

That pain-free approach has changed the very nature of the filibuster, Ornstein said, and transformed how the Senate operates, much to its detriment.

The burden is “supposed to be on the minority to really put itself … on the line to generate a larger debate” — a la the fictive Jefferson Smith — “and hope during the course of it that they can turn opinions around,” said Ornstein, an emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. “What’s happened is the burden has shifted to the majority [to break a filibuster], which is a bastardization of what the filibuster is supposed to be about.”

It takes 60 votes to end a filibuster, by invoking cloture, to use Senate terminology. That means the passage of legislation now effectively requires a supermajority of the 100-member Senate. (There are workarounds, which, for instance, allowed President Trump’s massive tax-and-spending bill to pass on a 51-50 vote, with Vice President JD Vance casting the tie-breaker.)

The filibuster gives outsized power to the minority.

To offer but two examples, there is strong public support for universal background checks for gun buyers and greater transparency in campaign finance. Both issues have majority backing in the Senate. No matter. Legislation to achieve each has repeatedly been filibustered to death.

That’s where Merkley would step in.

He would not eliminate the filibuster, a prerogative jealously guarded by members of both parties. (In a rare show of independence, Republican senators rejected President Trump’s call to scrap the filibuster to end the recent government shutdown.)

Rather, Merkley would eliminate what’s come to be called “the silent filibuster” and force lawmakers to actually take the floor and publicly press their case until they prevail, give up or physically give out. “My reform is based on the premise that the minority should have a voice,” he said, “but not a veto.”

Forcing senators to stand and deliver would make it more difficult to filibuster, ending its promiscuous overuse, Merkley suggested, and — ideally— engaging the public in a way privately messaging fellow senators — I dissent! — does not.

“Because it’s so visible publicly,” Merkley said, “the American citizens get to weigh in, and there’s consequences. They may frame you as a hero for your obstruction, or a bum, and that has a reflection in the next election.”

The power to repair itself rests entirely within the Senate, where lawmakers set their own rules and can change them as they see fit. (Nice work, if you can get it.)

The filibuster has been tweaked before. In 1917, senators adopted the rule allowing cloture if a two-thirds majority voted to end debate. In 1975, the Senate reduced that number to three-fifths of the Senate, or 60 members.

More recently, Democrats changed the rules to prevent filibustering most presidential nominations. Republicans extended that to include Supreme Court nominees.

Reforming the filibuster is hardly a cure-all. The Senate has debased itself by ceding much of its authority and becoming little more than an arm of the Trump White House. Fixing that requires more than a procedural overhaul.

But forcing lawmakers to stand their ground, argue their case and seek to rally voters instead of lifting a pinkie and grinding the Senate to a halt? That’s something worth talking about.

The catastrophic violence in Gaza has unfolded within an international system that was never designed to restrain the geopolitical ambitions of powerful states. Understanding why the United Nations has proved so limited in responding to what many regard as a genocidal assault requires returning to the foundations of the post–World War II order and examining how its structure has long enabled impunity rather than accountability.

After World War II, the architecture for a new international order based on respect for the UN Charter and international law was agreed upon as the normative foundation of a peaceful future. Above all, it was intended to prevent a third world war. These commitments emerged from the carnage of global conflict, the debasement of human dignity through the Nazi Holocaust, and public anxieties about nuclear weaponry.

Yet, the political imperative to accommodate the victorious states compromised these arrangements from the outset. Tensions over priorities for world order were papered over by granting the Security Council exclusive decisional authority and further limiting UN autonomy. Five states were made permanent members, each with veto power: the United States, the Soviet Union, France, the United Kingdom, and China.

In practice, this left global security largely in the hands of these states, preserving their dominance. It meant removing the strategic interests of geopolitical actors from any obligatory respect for legal constraints, with a corresponding weakening of UN capability. The Soviet Union had some justification for defending itself against a West-dominated voting majority, yet it too used the veto pragmatically and displayed a dismissive approach to international law and human rights, as did the three liberal democracies.

In 1945, these governments were understood as simply retaining the traditional freedoms of manoeuvre exercised by the so-called Great Powers. The UK and France, leading NATO members in a Euro-American alliance, interpreted the future through the lens of an emerging rivalry with the Soviet Union. China, meanwhile, was preoccupied with a civil war that continued until 1949.

Three aspects of this post-war arrangement shape our present understanding.

First, the historical aspect: Learning from the failures of the League of Nations, where the absence of influential states undermined the organisation’s relevance to questions of war and peace. In 1945, it was deemed better to acknowledge power differentials within the UN than to construct a global body based on democratic equality among sovereign states or population size.

Second, the ideological aspect: Political leaders of the more affluent and powerful states placed far greater trust in hard-power militarism than in soft-power legalism. Even nuclear weaponry was absorbed into the logic of deterrence rather than compliance with Article VI of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which required good-faith pursuit of disarmament. International law was set aside whenever it conflicted with geopolitical interests.

Third, the economistic aspect: The profitability of arms races and wars reinforced a pre–World War II pattern of lawless global politics, sustained by an alliance of geopolitical realism, corporate media, and private-sector militarism.

Why the UN could not protect Gaza

Against this background, it is unsurprising that the UN performed in a disappointing manner during the two-plus years of genocidal assault on Gaza.

In many respects, the UN did what it was designed to do in the turmoil after October 7, and only fundamental reforms driven by the Global South and transnational civil society can alter this structural limitation. What makes these events so disturbing is the extremes of Israeli disregard for international law, the Charter, and even basic morality.

At the same time, the UN did act more constructively than is often acknowledged in exposing Israel’s flagrant violations of international law and human rights. Yet, it fell short of what was legally possible, particularly when the General Assembly failed to explore its potential self-empowerment through the Uniting for Peace resolution or the Responsibility to Protect norm.

Among the UN’s strongest contributions were the near-unanimous judicial outcomes at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on genocide and occupation. On genocide, the ICJ granted South Africa’s request for provisional measures concerning genocidal violence and the obstruction of humanitarian aid in Gaza. A final decision is expected after further arguments in 2026.

On occupation, responding to a General Assembly request for clarification, the Court issued a historic advisory opinion on July 19, 2024, finding Israel in severe violation of its duties under international humanitarian law in administering Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem. It ordered Israel’s withdrawal within a year. The General Assembly affirmed the opinion by a large majority.

Israel responded by repudiating or ignoring the Court’s authority, backed by the US government’s extraordinary claim that recourse to the ICJ lacked legal merit.

The UN also provided far more reliable coverage of the Gaza genocide than was available in corporate media, which tended to amplify Israeli rationalisations and suppress Palestinian perspectives. For those seeking a credible analysis of genocide allegations, the Human Rights Council offered the most convincing counter to pro-Israeli distortions. A Moon Will Arise from this Darkness: Reports on Genocide in Palestine, containing the publicly submitted reports of the special rapporteur, Francesca Albanese, documents and strongly supports the genocide findings.

A further unheralded contribution came from UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, whose services were essential to a civilian population facing acute insecurity, devastation, starvation, disease, and cruel combat tactics. Some 281 staff members were killed while providing shelter, education, healthcare, and psychological support to beleaguered Palestinians during the course of Israel’s actions over the past two years.

UNRWA, instead of receiving deserved praise, was irresponsibly condemned by Israel and accused, without credible evidence, of allowing staff participation in the October 7 attack. Liberal democracies compounded this by cutting funding, while Israel barred international staff from entering Gaza. Nevertheless, UNRWA has sought to continue its relief work to the best of its ability and with great courage.

In light of these institutional shortcomings and partial successes, the implications for global governance become even more stark, setting the stage for a broader assessment of legitimacy and accountability.

The moral and political costs of UN paralysis

The foregoing needs to be read in light of the continuing Palestinian ordeal, which persists despite numerous Israeli violations, resulting in more than 350 Palestinian deaths since the ceasefire was agreed upon on October 10, 2025.

International law seems to have no direct impact on the behaviour of the main governmental actors, but it does influence perceptions of legitimacy. In this sense, the ICJ outcomes and the reports of the special rapporteur that take the international law dimensions seriously have the indirect effect of legitimising various forms of civil society activism in support of true and just peace, which presupposes the realisation of Palestinian basic rights – above all, the inalienable right of self-determination.

The exclusion of Palestinian participation in the US-imposed Trump Plan for shaping Gaza’s political future is a sign that liberal democracies stubbornly adhere to their unsupportable positions of complicity with Israel.

Finally, the unanimous adoption of Security Council Resolution 2803 in unacceptably endorsing the Trump Plan aligns the UN fully with the US and Israel, a demoralising evasion and repudiation of its own truth-telling procedures. It also establishes a most unfortunate precedent for the enforcement of international law and the accountability of perpetrators of international crimes.

In doing so, it deepens the crisis of confidence in global governance and underscores the urgent need for meaningful UN reform if genuine peace and justice are ever to be realised.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.