Vox Sentences: "150 years after the end of the Civil War, the time has come"

Nikki Haley does the right thing

From left: Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC), Gov. Nikki Haley (R-SC), Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), Rep. and former Gov. Mark Sanford (R-SC), and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC). (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

• South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, a Republican, has called for the removal of the Confederate flag from the grounds of the State House in Columbia.

  [Vox / Libby Nelson]

• In a press conference, she stated, "Today, we are here in a moment of unity in our state, without ill will, to say it is time to move the flag from the Capitol grounds. 150 years after the end of the Civil War, the time has come."

  [NPR / Bill Chappell]

• Haley had defended the flag's presence as recently as last October, claiming, "I can honestly say I have not had one conversation with a single CEO about the Confederate flag … We really kind of fixed all that when you elected the first Indian-American female governor."

  [Talking Points Memo / Caitlin MacNeal]

• She was joined at the event by both of the state's Republican US senators — Tim Scott (the state's first and only black senator) and Lindsey Graham — as well as former Republican governor and now-Congressman Mark Sanford and Rep. Jim Clyburn, the third-ranking Democrat in the US House and the state's most notable Democratic black politician.

  [NYT / Frances Robles and Richard Pérez-Peña]

• The flag came under renewed attack last week following the shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, that killed nine.

  [Vox / Timothy B. Lee and German Lopez]

• The flag continued to fly on the statehouse grounds after the shooting, even though the American and South Carolina flags on the actual statehouse building were flown at half-mast.

  [Vox / Zack Beauchamp]

• In one Facebook photo, the suspected shooter, Dylann Roof, was pictured proudly posing in front of a car with Confederate flag plates.

  [Mother Jones / Tim Murphy]

• The flag has always been about white supremacy; as early as 1863, the editor of the Southern Literary Messenger wrote that the flag's Southern cross pointed to "the destiny of the Southern master and his African slave": the Confederacy's hoped-for expansion of slavery into Latin America.

  [Vox / Libby Nelson]

• In South Carolina the white supremacist terrorist group the Carolina Rifle Club adopted the flag as its symbol in 1869. White people in South Carolina have been killing in the flag's name for 146 years.

  [Google Books / John M. Coski]

• The flag first went up at the statehouse in 1962 and was meant to signal opposition to desegregation and the civil rights movement.

  [Washington Post / Justin Wm. Moyer]

• Jeb Bush and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, announced and likely GOP presidential candidates, respectively, praised Haley's decision after previously waffling.

  [CNN / Jeremy Diamond and Dana Bash]

• Senator and presidential candidate Graham, despite joining Haley at the event, had last week defended the flag, calling it "part of who we are" and saying that flying it outside the statehouse "works here."

  [CNN / Alisyn Camerota]

• Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI), another leading GOP contender, had evaded the flag question last week before praising Haley's decision on Twitter.

  [Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel / Craig Gilbert]

• Be sure to read Libby Nelson's full Confederate flag explainer here.

  [Vox / Libby Nelson]

"Impunity prevails across the board"

An Israeli soldier pauses while working on a tank on the morning of July 28, 2014, near Kafar Azza, Israel. (Andrew Burton/Getty Images)

• A UN report on the war in Gaza last summer found evidence of war crimes perpetrated by both Hamas and the Israeli military.

  [NYT / Jodi Rudoren]

• The report, from a commission appointed by the UN Human Rights Council, found that 1,462 Palestinian civilians were killed by the Israeli Defense Forces during the conflict, compared with only six Israeli civilians killed by Hamas rocket and mortar attacks.

  [Haaretz / Barak Ravid]

• The report concluded that Israel's forces may have committed war crimes by engaing in indiscriminate attacks on residential building, medical facilities, and infrastructure, while Hamas's rocket and mortar attacks were primarily intended to "spread terror" in "violation of international humanitarian law."

  [WSJ / Joe Lauria]

• You can read the full report here.

  [Office of the High Comisssioner for Human Rights]

• Israel condemned the report as "biased" and had refused to cooperate with the investigation.

  [NYT / Jodi Rudoren]

• Hamas also rejected the report's conclusions.

  [The Guardian / Peter Beaumont]

• Not familiar with the conflict? See Zack Beauchamp's explainer here.

  [Vox / Zack Beauchamp]

Greece: not quite totally screwed

Greece! Europe! Together! (Milos Bicanski/Getty Images)

• Greece presented a new debt proposal to its European creditors, including its first major concessions in months.

  [FT / Peter Spiegel, Anne-Sylvaine Chassany, and Claire Jones ]

• The plan doesn't cut pension benefits significantly, but it includes new taxes and payments that would raise substanial revenue, largely through increasing employer contributions to pensions.

  [FT / Peter Spiegel]

• Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the head of the group of European finance ministers that has been key to negotiations with Greece, called the plan a "basis to really restart the talks."

  [NYT / James Kanter]

• A deal is likely needed before next Tuesday, when Greece owes a €1.6 billion ($1.82 billion) payment to the IMF that will be hard to pay without bailout money.

  [The Guardian / Larry Elliott, Ian Traynor, Helena Smith, and Phillip Inman]

• Not familiar with the Greek debt crisis? See Matthew Yglesias's explainer here.

  [Vox / Matthew Yglesias]

Misc.

• In January 2014, Mexico adopted a 1 peso per liter tax on sugary sodas. By December, sales were down 12 percent.

  [NPR / Eliza Barclay]

• Ben Bernanke brings up the best reason for replacing Andrew Jackson, not Alexander Hamilton, with a woman: Jackson was an avowed enemy of all sensible central banking policy.

  [Brookings Institution / Ben Bernanke]

• You might not have heard of the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal campaign, but it's helped retire more than a third of the country's coal plants since 2010.

  [Politico / Michael Grunwald]

• Sanctions have constrained building construction in Iran in recent years — and the country's architects have risen to the challenge.

  [Architizer / Derek Bangle]

Verbatim

• "Vibes, Singh says, are what her customers are paying for. You don’t get good vibes at a shelter, where an air of desperation prevails."

  [Washington Post / Maura Judkis]

• "One billionaire hedge fund manager got into a long argument with [Scott] Walker over same-sex marriage and then pulled his support because of it, according to a Republican familiar with the meeting."

  [Washington Post / Jenna Johnson, Matea Gold, and Philip Rucker]

• "The thing about wearing a Tibetan robe on an airplane is that you can use it for like six different things."

  [John Mayer to GQ / Will Welch]

• "On 'Hannibal,' corpses are fungible art supplies, like clay or oil paint, in sequences in which bodies are stitched into frescoes or twisted into grotesque displays. Skin is stretched into wings, corpses are bent into apiaries, belladonna is planted in heart cavities."

  [New Yorker / Emily Nussbaum]

Song of the day

• New Bomb Turks, "Born Toulouse-Lautrec"

  [YouTube]

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