In Iraq, pope calls for forgiveness
Francis tells faithful battered by atrocities to rebuild, not give up
The head of the Roman Catholic Church urged Iraq’s Christians on Sunday to forgive injustices against them by Muslim extremists and to rebuild as he visited wrecked churches and met cheering crowds in the community’s historic heartland, which was nearly erased by ISIS.
QARAQOSH, Iraq — Pope Francis urged Iraq’s Christians on Sunday to forgive the injustices against them by Muslim extremists and to rebuild as he visited the wrecked shells of churches and met ecstatic crowds in the community’s historic heartland, which was nearly erased by the Islamic State group’s horrific reign.
“Fraternity is more durable than fratricide, hope is more powerful than hatred, peace more powerful than war,” the pontiff said during prayers for the dead in the city of Mosul, with the call for tolerance that has been the central message of his four-day visit to Iraq.
At each stop in northern Iraq, the remnants of its Christian population turned out, jubilant, ululating and decked out in colorful dress. Heavy security prevented Francis from plunging into the crowd as he would normally. Nonetheless, they simply seemed overjoyed that he had come and that they had not been forgotten.
It was a sign of the desperation for support among an ancient community uncertain whether it can hold on. The traditionally Christian towns dotting the Nineveh Plains of the north emptied out in 2014 as Christians — as well as many
Muslims — fled the Islamic State group’s onslaught. Only a few have returned to their homes since the defeat of IS in Iraq was declared four years ago, and the rest remain scattered elsewhere in Iraq or abroad.
Bells rang out for the pope’s arrival in the town of Qaraqosh.
“The road to a full recovery may still be long, but I ask you, please, not to grow discouraged,”
Francis told a packed Church of the Immaculate Conception. “What is needed is the ability to forgive, but also the courage not to give up.”
The Qaraqosh church has been extensively renovated after being vandalized by IS militants during their takeover of the town, making it a symbol of recovery efforts.
Iraq’s Christian population,
which has existed here since the time of Christ, has dwindled from around 1.5 million before the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that plunged the country into chaos to just a few hundred thousand today.
Francis’ visit, on its last day Sunday, aimed to encourage them to stay, rebuild and restore what he called Iraq’s “intricately designed carpet” of faiths and ethnic groups.
Dressed in white, Francis took to a red carpeted stage in Mosul on his first stop of the day, surrounded by the gray hollowed-out shells of four churches — Syriac Catholic, Armenian Orthodox, Syriac Orthodox and Chaldean — nearly destroyed in the war to oust IS fighters from the city.
It was a scene that would have been unimaginable years earlier.
Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, was at the heart of the Islamic State’s so-called caliphate and witnessed the worst of the group’s rule inflicted on Muslims, Christians and others, including beheadings and mass killings.
He deviated from his prepared speech to emphasize the plight of Iraq’s Yazidi minority, which was subjected to mass killings, abductions and sexual slavery at the hands of IS.
“How cruel it is that this country, the cradle of civilization, should have been afflicted by so barbarous a blow,” Francis said, “with ancient places of worship destroyed and many thousands of people — Muslims, Christians, Yazidis — who were cruelly annihilated by terrorism and others forcibly displaced or killed.”
IS inflicted atrocities against all communities, including Muslims, during its three-year rule across much of northern and western Iraq. But the Christian minority was hit especially hard. The militants forced them to choose among conversion, death or the payment of a special tax for non-Muslims. Thousands fled.
Throughout his four-day visit,
Francis has delivered a message of interreligious tolerance to Muslim leaders, including in a historic meeting Saturday with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.
But Christians say it will take real changes on the ground for them to be able to return and stay, saying they face discrimination and intimidation from Shiite militias on top of the economic hardships suffered by all Iraqis.
Qaraqosh resident Martin Auffee, 27, said he was overjoyed by the pope’s visit and appreciated that he showed he was with Christians as he urged them to endure. But he said many of the young in his area have grown weary of lack of opportunity.
“We don’t know for how long they can cling onto hope and continue to stay in Iraq because there’s a lot of pain, unemployment and uncertainty,” he said.
At Qaraqosh, Francis urged its residents to continue to dream — and forgive. “Forgiveness is necessary to remain in love, to remain Christian,” he said.
Francis wrapped up the day with a Mass at the stadium in Irbil. Few in the crowd, estimated at 100,000, wore masks, as was the case during all of Francis’ visits Sunday in northern Iraq.
Public health experts had expressed concerns ahead of the trip that large gatherings could serve as superspreader events for the coronavirus in a country suffering from a worsening outbreak. The pope and members of his delegation have been vaccinated, but most Iraqis have not.
MINNEAPOLIS — A Minneapolis police officer was swiftly fired and charged with murder after bystander video showed him pressing his knee into George Floyd’s neck, ignoring the Black man’s cries that he couldn’t breathe.
But even with that powerful footage, legal experts say the case isn’t a slam dunk.
Jury selection begins Monday in Derek Chauvin’s trial, which is expected to come down to two key questions: Did Chauvin’s actions cause Floyd’s death, and were his actions reasonable?
“It’s hard not to watch the video and conclude that the prosecutors will not have any trouble with this case,” said Susan Gaertner, the former head prosecutor in neighboring Ramsey County. “But it’s not that simple.”
Floyd was declared dead May 25 after Chauvin, who is white, pressed his knee against Floyd’s neck for about nine minutes, holding his position even after Floyd went limp as he was handcuffed and lying on his stomach. Floyd’s death sparked sometimes violent protests in the U.S. and led to a nationwide reckoning on race.
Chauvin is charged with second-degree unintentional murder and second-degree manslaughter, and a panel of appeals court judges ruled Friday that the judge must consider reinstating a third-degree murder charge that he dismissed last fall. Three other officers, all of whom also were fired, face trial in August on charges of aiding and abetting the second-degree murder and
manslaughter counts.
The second-degree murder charge requires prosecutors to prove Chauvin caused Floyd’s death while committing or trying to commit a felony — in this case, third-degree assault. The manslaughter charge requires proof that Chauvin caused Floyd’s death through negligence that created an unreasonable risk, and consciously took the chance of causing severe injury or death.
Exactly how Floyd died is shaping up as a major flashpoint of the trial.
Chauvin’s attorney, Eric Nelson,
argues in court documents that Floyd likely died from fentanyl he consumed, or a combination of fentanyl, methamphetamine and underlying health conditions — not as a result of Chauvin’s knee on his neck.
But Hennepin County Judge Peter Cahill wrote last fall that for the second-degree murder charge, prosecutors don’t have to prove that Chauvin was the sole cause of Floyd’s death, only that his conduct was a “substantial causal factor.”
Still, defense attorneys who aren’t connected to the case say all
Nelson has to do is raise reasonable doubt in a single juror’s mind.
“Although he had him pinned under his knee and he’s yelling ‘I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe!’ there’s an argument that (Chauvin) wasn’t exerting pressure and his inability to breathe was due to the drugs in his system or something to that effect, or his anxiety,” said F. Clayton Tyler, a prominent local defense attorney.
Criminal defense attorney Mike Brandt and Tyler said Chauvin will likely have to take the stand to explain why he felt he had to hold Floyd down for so long. Brandt
said he’ll likely say he followed his training, and that it was necessary because his experience with other suspects under the influence of drugs shows that things can suddenly become erratic and dangerous.
Prosecutors, however, have submitted a list of previous instances in which Chauvin used chokeholds or similar restraints on the job. Cahill ruled they can admit only one as evidence: a 2017 arrest in which Chauvin restrained a female by placing his knee on her neck while she was prone on the ground.
Cahill also ruled that prosecutors can tell jurors about a 2015 incident in which Chauvin saw other officers place a suicidal, intoxicated male in a side-recovery position after using a stun gun on him. Cahill said prosecutors can introduce that if they can show Chauvin was present when a medical professional said that the male could have died if officers had prolonged the detention.
Brandt said telling the jury about those events will allow prosecutors to show that Chauvin knew the proper way to restrain someone and provide relief, and that he had done it wrong before.
Brandt said the third-degree murder charge could be easier for prosecutors to prove if it’s reinstated because they wouldn’t have to show Chauvin intended to commit assault. Instead, they must prove his actions caused Floyd’s death, and that they were reckless and without regard for human life.
The second-degree manslaughter count alleges Chauvin took a risk that a reasonable person would have known could cause death. To defend against that, Brandt said, Chauvin could argue that he had used the same hold in the past and didn’t think it would cause a problem.
However, Brandt said “the whole case” against Chauvin is the video capturing the amount of time he restrained Floyd.
“You hear on the video the passersby, the onlookers saying, ‘Dude, he can’t breathe. Let him up. What are you doing? You are killing him,’ ” Brandt said. “I mean, it’s almost like they are giving a playby-play.”
Tyler said if he were a prosecutor, he’d use a still shot of Chauvin’s expressionless face from that video and keep it in view for the jury.
“You want to show indifference? Just look at him,” Tyler said.
In the wee hours of the morning on Feb. 15, my house — like many others across the state of Texas — lost power during a winter storm. For the next 48 hours, we wore layers of clothing and huddled under blankets as temperatures indoors dropped to about 40 degrees. Even after the power came on, water supplies were low, and the city of Austin was under a boil-water order.
This cold snap and series of storms were by far the worst I have encountered in the 23 years I have lived in Austin, but longtime Texans do remember other bad winter storms over the years. They are not utterly unprecedented.
So why was Texas so poorly prepared for a week of snow and freezing temperatures?
A lot of it has to do with how people make decisions about unlikely events. People generally have difficulty with understanding very small probabilities — and, importantly, how those small probabilities affect large populations.
Small probabilities
One key observation psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky incorporated in their influential Prospect Theory is that people have difficulty with small probabilities. Whenever an event is unlikely, people tend to treat it as if it will not happen.
In addition, people are not that sensitive to differences among unlikely events, so something that will happen 1 in 10,000 times is not treated that much differently than something that will happen 1 in 10,000,000 times.
That means most people assume that unlikely events are not going to happen to them. And, of course, most of the time they’re right. So, people are generally rewarded for ignoring unlikely events, because they haven’t spent any time or energy to avoid something that probably wasn’t going to happen anyhow.
To compound matters, preventive maintenance creates a second problem psychologically, because if you successfully avoid a bad outcome because of what you did do, you are unaware that your actions averted disaster.
When you get a flu shot and you don’t get the flu, for example, it is hard to credit the flu shot with preventing you from getting sick.
Put these together, and you can see how companies would avoid preventive maintenance for unlikely outcomes, such as winterizing Texas power plants for extremely cold weather. In most years, expenditures on low-probability events do not pay off.
Small probabilities and large numbers
Probabilities themselves are a marvelous invention, because they allow people to compare outcomes despite differences in the size of populations.
If you wanted to determine whether the flu is more common in Texas or in Delaware, for example, you might just look at the total number of flu cases. BecauseTexas and Delaware are vastly different in size, it is better to use a percentage or probability so you don’t have to worry about the difference in the number of people and can just compare the rate of illness in each state.
However, because we get used to looking at percentages and probabilities, we often forget about these population sizes. That is a problem, because an outcome that is rare for an individual can still be common across a large population of people. A disease that affects
1 in 10,000 people will still affect 100 people in a population of 1,000,000. One hundred people is a lot of people.
A similar thing happens when you look at the cost of a rare outcome. Early estimates of the damage from the 2021 winter storm in Texas suggest that it could cost $19 billion or more. The decision to engage in preventive maintenance requires thinking not just about the cost of doing that maintenance at the time, but also what will be saved over the long term by avoiding problems that will be costly when they do occur.
What to do?
As individuals, it’s important to actually do the math when it comes to low probabilities. Yyour gut reaction is not going to give you good information to decide whether to get a vaccine, change your diet for long-term health or buy insurance. Instead, you need to calculate the costs of actions now, the probability of bad outcomes and the costs of those outcomes when they occur. Even though we like to feel comfortable with the choices we make, we need to listen to the numbers when it comes to low-probability events.
When thinking more broadly about society and companies, government also has a role to play. The free hand of the market is good at finding opportunities that pay off now. Companies invest large sums of money to serve large numbers of customers quickly and efficiently.
Where companies tend not to invest is in small numbers of customers (for instance, developing rural infrastructure) and in low-probability events (such as treating rare diseases or preventive maintenance for unlikely outcomes). When devastating outcomes occur, the government often has to step in to cover many costs.
While many individuals and companies bristle at government regulation, enforcing the purchase of insurance for unlikely events and requiring preventive maintenance are ways to both cover the costs of bad outcomes when they occur and also minimize the chances that bad things will happen.
We can’t afford to just think about these unlikely events in the aftermath of a major disaster. We have to live life routinely knowing that unlikely things can happen. The better prepared we are for bad outcomes, the less likely it is that they will have significant consequences when they occur.