Vox Sentences: Who — if anyone — killed Dag Hammarskjöld?

1. "The Americans shot down the UN plane."

Did Dag Hammarskjöld die in a plane accident — or a deliberate attack? (MPI / Getty Images)

• UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has appointed a three-member panel to investigate the 1961 death of his predecessor, Dag Hammarskjöld.

  [UN]

• Hammarskjöld, a Swedish diplomat by background, perished when his plane crashed in what is now Zambia; he was in the region to negotiate a cease-fire between the Congo and rebels in its southern Katanga province.

  [BBC / Stephanie Hegarty]

• British colonial authorities in Zambia (then Northern Rhodesia) concluded in 1962 that the crash was due to pilot error, but many observers have argued the plane was shot down.

  [The Guardian / Julian Borger]

• Two American intelligence officers have claimed to have heard evidence that the plane was brought down; one claimed "he heard an accented voice on a different frequency saying, 'The Americans shot down the UN plane.'"

  [NYT / Alan Cowell]

• A UN official in the Congo at the time claimed to have seen "a round hole in Hammarskjöld's forehead" when he saw the body in the morgue; he claims this could have been a bullet hole.

  [BBC / Stephanie Hegarty]

• But these claims boil down to just that: claims. No one has enough evidence to create a full picture of what happened.

• The British academic Susan Williams has done perhaps the most comprehensive dive into the evidence to date, concluding that the crash was "almost certainly the result of a sinister intervention."

  [Amazon / Susan Williams]

• A lot of people had reason to want Hammarskjöld dead: "Hammarskjöld sent UN forces to prop up [Congolese] Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba … In so doing, the UN found itself in an undeclared war against the white settler administration in neighbouring Central African Federation and the French, British, South African and US governments, who regarded Lumumba as a Soviet sympathiser and dangerous maverick."

  [Spectator / Michela Wrong]

• Lumumba was murdered in 1961, before Hammarskjöld; Belgium, which had just recently relinquished Congo, has apologized and admitted that "some members of the government … bear an irrefutable part of the responsibility for the events that led to Patrice Lumumba's death."

  [NYT]

• The CIA has often been implicated in Lumumba's killing; the Church Committee, which investigated intelligence abuses post-Watergate, concluded that the agency tried to kill him but wasn't part of the plot that actually succeeded.

  [The Guardian / Martin Kettle]

• The new UN report on Hammarskjöld will be submitted by the end of June.

  [UN]

2. Two states! We don't want two states.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gives a speech in front of thousands at a pro-government rally in support of right-wing parties in Rabin Square on March 15, 2015 in Tel Aviv, Israel. (Ilia Yefimovich/Getty Images)

• The day before elections in Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed opposition to the establishment of a Palestinian state.

  [Vox / Zack Beauchamp]

• The exact quote: "Anyone who is going to establish a Palestinian state today and evacuate lands, is giving attack grounds to the radical Islam against the state of Israel."

  [NYT / Jodi Rudoren]

• There was no ambiguity in the comments, NYT reports: "Asked if he meant that a Palestinian state would not be established if he were to continue as Israel’s prime minister, Mr. Netanyahu replied: 'Correct.'"

• The comments are a reversal even compared with a week ago; while Netanyahu's party, Likud, issued a statement on Saturday, March 7, suggesting he opposed a Palestinian state, he denied saying any such thing at the time.

  [Vox / Max Fisher]

• Netanyahu delivered a now-famous speech in 2009 at Bar-Ilan University reversing his longstanding opposition to a Palestinian state, and saying he'd accept one so long as it was demilitarized.

  [NYT / Isabel Kershner]

• But many across the Israeli political spectrum have doubted the sincerity of those comments, a view that Netanyahu's latest comments reinforce.

  [New Yorker / David Remnick]

• To understand where Netanyahu's coming from, you need to know a thing or two about Revisionist Zionism, the movement that helped form his views on Palestinians and the peace process.

  [Vox / Zack Beauchamp]

• Netanyahu's main challenger, the Labor Party's leader Isaac Herzog, has said he'd try to "reignite" negotiations with the Palestinians by enlisting Egypt and Jordan as partners in the process.

  [Washington Post / William Booth and Ruth Eglash]

• Herzog has also declared that "in any future agreement, settlement blocs will stay under Israeli sovereignty"; it's unclear if Palestinians would ever be prepared to accept a deal that gives away that much.

  [Washington Post / William Booth and Ruth Eglash]

3. Ain't no fight like a fiscal policy fight

Senate Budget Committee chair Mike Enzi (R-WY), pictured here without a care in the world. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

• Senate Republicans are abandoning the specific reforms to Medicare and Medicaid included in Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-WI) budgets.

  [The Hill / Alexander Bolton]

• Instead, their budget will simply set goals for reducing Medicare and Medicaid spending without specifying how it'll happen.

  [Vox / Sarah Kliff]

• Ryan's plan would more or less privatize Medicare by giving seniors subsidies to buy private insurance rather than providing coverage directly.

  [Washington Post / Ezra Klein]

• That's provoked a number of attacks from Democrats, including from President Obama, claiming that Ryan would "end Medicare as we know it."

  [NY Mag / Jonathan Chait]

• That Democratic attack was judged a lie by PolitiFact, but that's a bit misleading; it's less a factual question than a philosophical one.

  [Slate / Matthew Yglesias]

• Including the Medicare specifics in the GOP budget was unusual; congressional budget committees don't have jurisdiction over specific Medicare reforms, which are the province of the House Ways and Means and Senate Finance committees.

  [The Hill / Alexander Bolton]

• The budget will also seek to "block grant" Medicaid and food stamps, cutting them substantially in the process.

  [Vox / Ezra Klein]

• Another intra-GOP budget fight is brewing over defense spending, and whether Republicans' budgets should respect the low spending caps currently in effect there.

  [NYT / Jonathan Weisman]

4. Misc.

• Celebrate Einstein's birthday (which was this past Saturday) by reading his classic piece on why he was a socialist.

  [Monthly Review / Albert Einstein]

• One easy way to make Congress less dependent on lobbyists: hire more Hill staffers, and pay them more.

  [Washington Monthly / Lee Drutman and Steven Teles]

• Because drivers can see them, walk signs that include second countdowns appear to increase car accidents.

  [Now I Know / Dan Lewis]

• Don't pee on walls outside in Hamburg, Germany. It will end poorly for you.

  [Washington Post / Rick Noack]

• Carbon dioxide emissions from the energy sector didn't grow in 2014, making it the first time in 40 years that emissions haven't grown when there hasn't been an economic downturn. Can it last?

  [Vox / Brad Plumer]

5. Verbatim

• "I love Obama. He called our house before. He knows that."

  [Kanye West via NY Mag / E. Alex Jung]

• "One ad arriving in January in the inboxes of Huckabee supporters, who signed up for his political commentaries at MikeHuckabee.com, claims there is a miracle cure for cancer hidden in the Bible."

  [NYT / Trip Gabriel]

• "You want to tell everybody: 'Look what's happening to the kids in the lower parts of our society. And think how that is damaging our country’s future.'"

  [Robert Putnam to Vox / Danielle Kurtzleben]

• "The world is on fire, yes. Your world is on fire. But you know what? Your mommy's here, and everyone's here to make sure that the world you grow up in is even better."

  [Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) to a human child via Bloomberg / Dave Weigel]

• "CRAIGSLIST DATING. Go use literally any other dating service. Go find romance literally anywhere else. Go meet someone on a Wikipedia talk page."

  [SB Nation / Jon Bois]

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