Let Them Eat Wall-Nuts

“We're going to get paid for it one way or the other,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said on ABC's This Week (April 23^rd). "I know there's $4 billion a year in excess payments, according to the Department of the Treasury's own inspector general several years ago, that are going to payments to people — tax credits that they shouldn't get… Now, these are mostly Mexicans… And those kind of things add up — $4 billion a year for 10 years is $40 billion. There are a lot of ways we can find money to help pay for [Trump’s border wall].” That would include subsidized “free lunches” for kids, most of whom are U.S. citizens even if a few of them are of Mexican descent. It’s just one of the budget cuts presented in Trump’s budget ask to the Congress.

Yup, cutting the federal school lunch program seems like a terrific way to help fund a $20 billion plus hard, steel and concrete wall that will disrupt normal migration patterns for tons of species, allow drug dealers (who can always get drugs into the U.S.) an excuse to raise prices and to deter illegal border crossings that have hit their lowest rates in years. We couldn’t get that secure border with the kind of sophisticated electronic tracking systems that somehow seem to work elsewhere? Think the Great Wall of China worked? Really? When the Ming Empire collapsed, and Beijing was run by a crazy warlord, the Manchurians simply opened the gates, road in and took over. It was 1645 and the Qing Dynasty lasted until the 20^th century!

 Meanwhile, back in the U.S. of A.: Folks are heading back to Mexico in droves. That trend started during the late Obama years and accelerated under the Trump administration. But those damned lunch-consuming leaches! Yup. It’s clearly the fault of these children for picking parents who cannot afford to feed them enough. Bad children! Bad!

It’s all about Mexicans, right? Not exactly. “The number of unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. has stabilized in recent years after decades of rapid growth. But the origin countries of unauthorized immigrants have shifted, with the number from Mexico declining since 2009 and the number from elsewhere rising, according to the latest Pew Research Center estimates.

“There were 11.1 million unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. in 2014, a total unchanged from 2009 and accounting for 3.5% of the nation’s population. The number of unauthorized immigrants peaked in 2007 at 12.2 million, when this group was 4% of the U.S. population. [The numbers have fallen further in 2016-17]…. The U.S. civilian workforce included 8 million unauthorized immigrants in 2014, accounting for 5% of those who were working or were unemployed and looking for work...

“Mexicans made up 52% of all unauthorized immigrants in 2014, though their numbers had been declining in recent years. There were 5.8 million Mexican unauthorized immigrants living in the U.S. that year, down from 6.4 million in 2009... About two-thirds (66%) of adults in 2014 had been in the U.S. at least that long, compared with 41% in 2005. A declining share of unauthorized immigrants have lived in the U.S. for less than five years – 14% of adults in 2014, compared with 31% in 2005.” Pew Research Report, November 3, 2016.

Long before immigration from south of our border grew to present levels, there were school lunch programs. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s own website: “The National School Lunch Program is a federally assisted meal program operating in public and nonprofit private schools and residential child care institutions. It provides nutritionally balanced, low-cost or free lunches to children each school day. The program was established under the National School Lunch Act, signed by President Harry Truman in 1946.” We just fed poor kids back then. Not Mexicans or Salvadorans. Poor kids. White poor kids. Black poor kids. Native American poor kids. Asian-American poor kids. You know… Poor kids. Guess we still do… for the time being.

But for those opposed to the school lunch program, where special interests vie to keep unhealthy snacks and soda pop on those menus to benefit corporate America (maybe that’s where we can save a few bucks), here’s a perspective from an actual Virginia taxpayer complaint: “School lunch is a waste of money. Kids will probably throw most of their food away, and I'm not having my tax dollars pay for that just so a couple freeloaders can get fat on my dime!" And many school districts have simply refused to participate in that school lunch program… ever.  

Did I mention that in addition to millions of Americans of Hispanic descent who are U.S. citizens, most of those undocumented types pay billions and billions of dollars a year in taxes? Hmmmm… But President Trump said… stuff like his inauguration crowds were the biggest in history. And global climate change is a hoax. Hmmmm. But lunch subsidies?

Yup, that’s a really good place to get money for a wall we don’t want, don’t need, doesn’t accomplish its purpose, knowing that Mexico will never pay for. Maybe that’s why Donald Trump pushed back his wall-building plans to 2018 in the latest fight to keep the government funded.

I’m Peter Dekom, and since the majority of Congress and most Americans believe that a “Mexico-isn’t-paying-for-it” steel and concrete wall is an out-to-lunch policy, maybe the Donald will finally get it… yeah, right?!

Tip of the Iceberg

“Eighty-five percent of all icebergs found in the North Atlantic come from the ice fjords on Greenland's west coast, and the ice shelf in Ilulissat is the most likely birthplace of the Titanic iceberg.

“The iceberg that sank Titanic would have started life as a snowflake 15,000 years earlier. Snow that falls at the centre of the Greenland ice sheet is at first fluffy and not particularly dense, but it compacts with depth to become a third of its original size. Tens of metres below the surface it becomes so dense it turns to solid glacial ice.” BBC.co.uk.

On April 14, 1912, at 11:40 p.m., as the spring melt loosed the annual bevy of icebergs into the North Atlantic, the Titanic slammed a mass of solid ice where the visible part of the iceberg – that above the waterline – was anywhere between 50 to 100 feet high and 200 to 400 feet long. The rest, as we say, is history.

Back then and until recently, the number of such North Atlantic icebergs generally numbered about 80 every spring. However, as satellite maps confirm, looking at melting glaciers and cracking ice from both poles, that reality is changing fast… perhaps to a point where there will continue to be so many new icebergs for the foreseeable future… until this phenomenon stops someday because there is no more ice to melt. The number of spring icebergs in the North Atlantic has moved rapidly up to well over 400 such lurking dangers today. While modern ships are generally equipped with much more sophisticated sonar and radar, the North Atlantic is more treacherous than ever now. And remember, not all ships are moving… sometimes it is the iceberg that is the mover.

“‘I’ve never seen anything like it in my decade of experience,’ said U.S. Coast Guard Cmdr. Gabrielle McGrath, commander of the USCG's International Ice Patrol, in a recent interview. McGrath says that recent storms have led to a larger and earlier spring breakup: IIP's satellite observations recently identified 455 icebergs in one week, five times the average in years past… 

“Offshore activity has also been affected. On March 29, the oil firm Husky Energy reported a close encounter between an iceberg and the SeaRose FPSO [a maritime acronym for commercial vessels meaning “Floating Production Storage & Off-loading”], which is permanently anchored at Husky's White Rose field about 200 nm off Newfoundland. [In this case, the iceberg headed for the stationary oil vessel.] The 30-foot-tall berg came to within about 200 yards of the vessel. Husky said that it had been monitoring the iceberg's approach, and that the berg changed course towards the SeaRose. As a precautionary measure, the FPSO operator depressurized the production wells, flushed flowlines with water and mustered the crew in preparation for a potential disconnect from the subsea production system. [read: red alert!] The iceberg passed by without further incident. 

“The bergs are a hazard for merchant mariners, but for tour boat operators they are good for business. Newfoundland tour company manager David Boyd recently told the Telegram that the flood of icebergs so early in the season will be a boost to the region's economy. ‘It's amazing news. Every day people are emailing me asking when to come visit,’ he said. ‘I hope to be at it all summer. It would be monumental for tourism.’” Maritime-Executive.com, April 5^th. Great, we can shift from ships carrying goods or serving as stationary platforms for oil drilling/delivery operations to tourism!

“An unusually large number of icebergs have drifted into the shipping lanes of the North Atlantic in recent weeks, forcing vessels to detour well to the south to avoid danger.” MyInforms.com, April 6^th. While the risks of a massive collision are not insubstantial, as such large commercial vessels are forced to reroute, they burn up both additional time (and time is money) and massive amounts of diesel fuel in the process, a waste any way you look at it. And burning more diesel fuel only makes the greenhouse gas issue that much worse. Every day, we learn a little bit more about the harm we are inflicting upon ourselves and our planet as we seem unable, and under the Trump administration, unwilling, to take sufficient measures to stem the cumulative damage of burning fossil fuels.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I do not join the others who are overjoyed at the official U.S. government policy to deny global climate change.

Uniformity

What do you call a group of well-armed men, dressed in ordinary super-casual clothes (but almost always jeans, often with bullet-proof vests), each sporting a tattoo that identifies them as part of this highly-aggressive group, that lie in wait, pouncing on passersby they feel worthy of jumping? In Baltimore, they’re called “cops.” Not undercover cops. Not detectives. Not serving warrants. They’re plainclothes cops. Think of them as beat cops sometimes operating in groups, not wearing uniforms to make the “pounce” easier, pretty much allowed to set their own agenda, their own rules, in the streets. But these non-uniformed street cops have not been relegated to Baltimore alone. Think Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Houston, Chicago, Miami, New York, etc., etc. even though some of these cities have stopped the use of such non-uniformed street cops.

They often set their own hours, come and go according the schedules they set for themselves, take lunch and other breaks at their leisure, and feel empowered “to do what needs to be done to clean up the scum they have been directed to remove.” Gangs mostly, but drug dealers and street crime in general. Not surprisingly, while they have been more effective in stopping crime than uniformed officers, these are the cops who are the most likely to go rogue, the ones who have sparked some pretty serious investigations from the U.S. Department of Justice for a litany of pretty serious abuses, including unwarranted shootings and more than a few rather dramatically illegal acts, ranging from dealing drugs to selling confiscated arms that should have remained in the evidence locker.

And with U.S. Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, pretty much telling his Justice Department officers, charged with monitoring miscreant police departments across the country based on court orders, to stand down, absent local police departments turning on these “irregular” cops, we can expect this rogue element to continue unchecked. For those living in the inner city where such “knockers” or “jump-out boys” (the Baltimore moniker), the fear of random searches and possible miscued shootings is a part of daily life. Without federal intervention, this often lawless police operation would have continued unchecked in too many cities.

The resulting embarrassment of non-uniformed cops going rogue has provoked federal investigations and prosecutions that have resulted in changes at the local level. “[In March, after] seven members of a gun task force were indicted on federal charges of stealing drugs, guns and money [including one] accused of moonlighting as a heroin dealer… the Baltimore police commissioner, Kevin Davis, abruptly disbanded plainclothes teams…

“‘I don’t want the jeans, I don’t want the T-shirts,’ Commissioner Davis said in an interview, recounting his fury as he read the F.B.I. indictment. ‘I want your brass badge attached to your chest. I want the patches on your shoulder. I want you to look like a cop, because I can’t ask you to act like a cop unless you look like one.’

“The commissioner’s action, in a city at the center of a national debate over police practices, has prompted some soul-searching over plainclothes squads, forcing chiefs who are grappling with rising gun violence to weigh building trust against reining in elite units that can operate in dangerous environments.

“The uniform is a signal to the public, and to the officer who wears one, that the police represent law and order. But in big-city departments, many officers do not wear uniforms, according to Maria Haberfeld, an expert in police training at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan. Shedding them — what the police call getting ‘out of the bag’ — is a sign of status.” New York Times, April 14^th.

With A.G. Jeff Sessions arguing that inner city neighborhoods will become safer to the extent that federal oversight of local cops is minimized, those living in those inner cities are watching a revival of hopelessness and increasing friction between the cops and the citizens who live there. To them, making America “Great Again” means returning to the days when “Negroes knew their place” and white officers maintained that status quo. But we don’t live in the 1950s anymore. Justice is for everyone… at least in theory.

“Baltimore is not the first city to wrestle with high-profile cases involving plainclothes police officers. In New York in 2014, plainclothes officers were responsible for the death of Eric Garner, whose last words — ‘I can’t breathe’ — became a national rallying cry for police reform. In Palm Beach County, Fla., last year, a plainclothes officer driving an unmarked car was charged with manslaughter and attempted murder after he pulled up alongside a man whose car had broken down and, without identifying himself as an officer, shouted commands and then fired his weapon.

“In Miami, an elite street-crime unit was disbanded in 1997 after 11 officers were charged in a federal conspiracy to plant guns on suspects. In Los Angeles, the sheriff’s department decided to fire seven deputies in 2013, after The Los Angeles Times exposed a secretive jump-out squad whose members celebrated shootings and branded themselves with matching tattoos.

“But for ambitious officers, the squads have an enduring allure. ‘They’re given all the toys: the computers, the money, the guns and dress how you feel, do what you want to do,’ said Sgt. Louis Hopson, a 36-year veteran of the Baltimore Police Department and the board chairman of a group that represents black officers. ‘Come to work when you want to come to work, treat people however you want to treat them. It’s very seductive to a young mind.’” NY Times. At the core of American democracy is the belief of equal justice for all, a tenet which is in dire need of protection and implementation.

I’m Peter Dekom, and without continuing federal oversight of local cops, how many inner city minorities will face beatings and wrongful shootings… and how many angry citizens will take to the streets knowing that legal recourse to the feds is no longer available to them?

Evangelicals Who Actually Believe the Bible

It’s no secret that Donald Trump’s base has a massive component of white, traditional evangelical Christians, a constituency without whom he could not remotely have won the presidential election. The majority in Congress, most in state legislatures and state governors’ mansions also owe their political victories to this constituency.

It is also no secret that a majority of this base, including evangelical ministers willing to risk their tax exempt status by so-proselytizing from the pulpit, have joined in the anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, anti-safety-net-for-the-poor rhetoric that has been the core of Donald Trump’s platform throughout his campaign and the basis for most of his early legislative proposals and executive orders. Most of his base has reveled in the personal insults Trump hurls against anyone who remotely opposes him or his views and accepted as truth his myriad unsubstantiated deflections and accusations, ranging from Russian involvement in the election to his denied sexual proclivities even in the face of recorded evidence to the contrary.

Bottom line, there are just too many self-labeled evangelical “Christians” who seem to have edited from their bibles tolerance, kindness, support for the disadvantaged, neighborly love and neither sitting in judgment nor casting the first stone. They are, as I have said on many occasions, “menu Christians,” hypocrites who actually believe that they are practicing Christians even as they patently reject some of the bible’s key mandates.

But before we write off evangelicals or Christian traditionalists in general, it is essential to know that there is an equally growing force of such deeply religious Christians who stand, with those of many faiths, aghast at what they are seeing the new Trump administration saying and doing, people who are very skeptical that Donald Trump ever embraced a true conversion to Christianity. They represent what Christianity is really about.

Most recently I was gratified to see a piece, written by Christian blogger Marvin Thompson, in the April 3^rd The Christian Post, an article that seemed like a call-to-action to true Christians, evangelical and otherwise, to stand against Trump and enforce those religious principles that so many “menu Christians” (my words) have chosen to ignore, to me, the essence of Christianity. Here is what Mr. Thompson wrote:

“The LA Times Editorial on April 2, 2017, described Trump and his tactics during the presidential primaries and election as ‘…a narcissist and a demagogue who used fear and dishonesty to appeal to the worst in American voters.’ This is not merely the judgement of a disappointed liberal media unable to come to terms with a devastating election loss, and is now inveighing against the President with unwarranted charges and innuendos. If the Church, and especially evangelical churches, take that view and ignore the many conservative voices, including many within the evangelical community and other Christians not self-identified as evangelicals, then our problems run much deeper that we think.

“No, the LA Times’ conclusion is a commentary on the degradation of evangelical morality. Notice, the worst in American voters. Now, pause and let that sink in.

“Do you get it? Do you see the gravity of the situation for a community that professes to stand on the infallible truth of the Gospel and on immutable biblical principles? No? Then consider that it is the evangelical vote that carried Trump through the primaries and over the top in the election. Do you see it now?

“Not yet? Then consider, further, what we know about Trump, about his lack of a moral compass and his unabashed embrace of it; his disrespect of others, be they male or female or disabled; his willful mendacity; his contempt for God, despite what Paula White, Dobson, et al claim about his so-called conversion (where is the evidence, as evangelicals like to ask?); his catalyzing effect on the worst racist elements of society; his promotion of hatred and violence; his utter lack of empathy for the poor and less fortunate. Nothing has changed since his election as President. Except, he now has the power to propagate his warped morality. This power was given to him by the evangelicals. Does that make it any clearer?

“Unfortunately, there seems to be more attempts to justify voting for Trump by pointing back to the (false) choices presented in the election than to address the real moral problem facing the Church. It is either that evangelicals have exalted as moral acceptable the worst in American voters, or they cannot see the consequences of their actions, which calls into question their understanding of scripture. That is the root of the problem, isn’t it? Biblical illiteracy.

“The charitable path to take in critiquing the state of evangelical morality at the present time is to ascribe it to a lack of knowledge. They lack a knowledge of God; knowledge of what is required for Christians; knowledge of the value of maintaining godly integrity in a morally corrupt society, and just like elections have consequences, there are consequences for evangelicals’ lack of knowledge.

“Hosea 4:6 says, ‘My people will be destroyed, because they have no knowledge. You have refused to learn, so I will refuse to let you be priests to me. You have forgotten the teachings of your God, so I will forget your children’ (NCV).

“Is that a justified charge against evangelicals? Yes. They once demanded an impeccable moral character for their leaders. Now they say it does not matter. They once demanded moral purity, now they say it is more important to have someone in power who may lend support to their various causes. They say that a godly conscience is not as important as love of country. How is it possible for a person who knows the scriptures and the God it reveals, to espouse those views? Bad company corrupts good character (Corinthians 15:33).

“This blog has warned before that evangelicals now own the outcome of what they proudly (but so wrongly) declare to be God’s answer to prayer.

“What happened is more analogous to Jehoshaphat’s ill-advised alliance with Joram in 2 Kings 3, than to God approvingly granting their request. Jehoshaphat ignored the implicit warning of Elisha to Joram in v. 13: ‘Why do you want to involve me? Go to the prophets of your father and the prophets of your mother.’ Nevertheless, he prophesied a victory. But what seemed like victory because of answered prayers, for the Lord did a miraculous thing by defeating the enemy (vv. 16-25), turned to humiliation in the end. ‘The fury against Israel was great; they withdrew and returned to their own land.’ (v. 26). So even in what seemed like victory was the greater loss of respect and influence.

“The only thing that can come from an alliance of good with evil (for evangelicals incredibly claim that it is morally acceptable to choose one evil over another!) is the dissolution of the good.

“Again, the worst in American voters speaks of those who empowered Trump. What made evangelicals bypass candidates with obvious biblical principles and more godly character for a man so devoid of those virtues? Alas, he appealed to their core values of character and morality. That is an indictment on evangelicals because their overt support validates and elevates his crassness and gutter character. The problem for evangelicals and the Church is convincing the world of sinners, skeptics, and cynics that there remains any abiding morality.” Wow!

I’m Peter Dekom, I am humbled by Mr. Thompson’s words and grateful to hear a biblical interpretation that is consistent with the Christian teachings I learned as a boy.

Foreigners and the Olympics

Let’s face it, hosting summer or winter Olympics is hideously expensive. Sure, the impacted communities generate massive additional revenues to local businesses; local infrastructure and hospitality capacity often get a boost, and more than a few new competitive venues get added. Television monies are pretty good as well. But having all those new buildings is not always good. For nations that truly do not need these additional competitive sites – like the above abandoned beach volleyball stadium from the 2004 summer Olympics in Athens, Greece, noting that even some of China’s recent Olympic venues are in a state of decay – much of this construction is simply a waste. The recent competition in Brazil saw a nation caught with cash shortages and unexpected delays resulting in a not-quite-finished set of competitive stadia and supporting structures. Overages have become quite the norm, it seems.

“Sports-related costs for the Summer Games since 1960 is on average USD 5.2 billion and for the Winter Games USD 3.1 billion. This does not include wider infrastructure costs like roads, urban rail, and airports, which often cost as much or more than the sports-related costs. The most expensive Summer Games are London 2012 at USD 15 billion and the most expensive Winter Games are Sochi 2014 at USD 21.9 billion, again including only sports-related costs. Costs per athlete is on average USD 0.6 million for the Summer Games and USD 1.3 million for the Winter Games. For London 2012, cost per athlete was USD 1.4 million; for Sochi 2014, USD 7.9 million.

“Budget overruns are common for the Games. Average overrun for Games since 1960 is 156% in real terms, which means that actual costs turned out to be on average 2.56 times higher than the budget that was estimated at the time of winning the bid to host the Games. Montreal 1976 had the highest cost overrun for Summer Games, and for any Games, at 720%; Lake Placid 1980 had the highest cost overrun for Winter Games, at 324%. London 2012 had a cost overrun of 76%, Sochi 2014 of 289%.” Wikipedia. Whew! Which means that economic realities have become vastly more important in determining where the Olympics can be played.

For richer communities, which already have a number of available sports facilities and stadia, the burden is obviously more tolerable. We are increasingly watching smaller, less affluent nations, back out of what were initial efforts to garner the international prestige associated with hosting an Olympic competition, particularly the ability to showcase national cultural excellence to the world. Beijing and London took advantage of this opportunity in 2008 and 2012 respectively, presenting some of the most opulent opening and closing ceremonies the world had ever seen. On the other hand in 2016, Rio de Janeiro may have created some negative perceptions as it didn’t quite live up to expectations.

But as bidding for the 2024 summer Olympics opened up, the countries/cities willing to bear the expected financial burden dwindled rapidly. “With Budapest pulling out of the competition in February, citing disapproval from Hungarian citizens, only Los Angeles and Paris are left in the running.” Mary Pilon writing for The New Yorker, April 17^th.

There is probably nothing more open, friendly and international that an Olympics. But with terrorism threats, the additional cost for needed security and the escalating trend towards limiting people entering countries where that threat is perceived as particularly high, isn’t strange that the two countries left in the bidding process – France and the United States – have become two of the most recently openly hostile countries to foreign travelers crossing their borders?

“There’s a certain irony to this endgame: the two remaining host countries have a President, in one case, and a strong Presidential candidate, in the other, who for many symbolize the opposite of global friendship. Donald Trump made the notions of ‘America First’ and closing the borders themes of his Inauguration address. Marine Le Pen, the leader of the National Front, has opposed her country’s membership in the European Union. (The French Presidential election begins on April 23rd.) Like Trump, Le Pen has expressed a desire to curb immigration and return her country to its nationalist roots. Both use pugnacious language that’s far from the flowery, idealistic prose favored by the Olympic movement.

“That these countries are the last ones standing is not surprising given the lack of competition. So anemic is the host-city bidding process that leaders of the International Olympic Committee met last month, in South Korea, to establish a panel to examine rewriting the Olympic charter and award a 2024-2028 double bid to Los Angeles and Paris, partially, people familiar with the process said, to spare the I.O.C. the humiliation of another lackluster round of bidding. Only two cities stepped up to host the 2022 Winter Games—Beijing and Almaty, Kazakhstan. (Snowless Beijing won, and will spend nearly ninety million dollars on ‘water-diversion schemes,’ according to the Economist.)…

“The stakes for the U.S. winning and staging a successful Olympic Games feel particularly high. Americans have not hosted the Olympics since 2002, when the Winter Games were held in Salt Lake City. (The last American Summer Olympics was held in Atlanta, in 1996.) A bid to host the 2016 Summer Games in Chicago suffered a humiliating defeat. U.S. Olympic officials have recently been successful inrepairing relationships with I.O.C. members, largely due to a new agreement regarding revenue sharing for broadcast rights.

“But Trump’s policies have created new tension: Will the already staggering logistics of bringing some eleven thousand athletes from more than two hundred countries to American soil be complicated by Trump’s (still unenforceable) executive order barring citizens from some Muslim-majority countries? The I.O.C.’s host-city contract requires all athletes be allowed in the country for the duration of the Games, regardless of what host leaders may think.

“Trying to understand the psyche of I.O.C. voters is akin to getting inside a papal conclave: there are no exit polls or public discussions, and voting takes place behind closed doors. Much of the electorate is made up of European men, with a few sheikhs and royal-family members—an élite set that is far less likely to be interested in the implications of Trump’s Presidency than many of the citizens he governs. It’s also possible that Trump may not be in office by the time the Games are set to be hosted.

“In a February radio interview with Westwood One, Trump endorsed the L.A. Olympic Games. (It probably doesn’t hurt that golf, a Trump pastime and area of investment, entered the Olympic program in Rio, last year.) ‘I would love to see the Olympics go to Los Angeles,’ Trump said. ‘I think that it’ll be terrific. The United States committee’s members have asked me to speak up about it, and I have, and I think I’ve helped them, and let’s see what happens. But I’d be very happy and honored if they would choose Los Angeles, and we’d stand behind it.’ (Meanwhile, organizers of the Paris bid have hedged their bets and befriended all the candidates leading in the polls.).” Pilon in The New Yorker.

In the end, global politics, escalating conflicts and hard economic realities are rewriting the face of world competitive events. And where nations are building walls and limiting the ability to cross their borders, can such countries even think about getting into bidding for such international competitions? As increasing numbers Western powers retreat from open movement of immigrants, pose questions of religiously-mandated apparel, raise potential trade barriers and pull back from globalization, are we witnessing a complete shift in how and where international events can take place in the foreseeable future? Is this a part of the decline of the West and the rise of the East?

I’m Peter Dekom, and as the world changes, as populism replaces democracy, even our ability to host and play competitive sports becomes materially altered.