Forget Washington. Facebook’s Problems Abroad Are Far More Disturbing.

In Myanmar, doctored photos and unfounded rumors about Rohingya Muslims, a religious minority, have gone viral on Facebook. Credit David Hogsholt for The New York Times        

By KEVIN ROOSE OCT. 29, 2017

For months, Facebook’s headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., has been in crisis mode, furiously attempting to contain the damage stemming from its role in last year’s presidential campaign. The company has mounted an all-out defense campaign ahead of this week’s congressional hearings on election interference in 2016, hiring three outside communications firms, taking out full-page newspaper ads, and mobilizing top executives, including Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, to beat back accusations that it failed to prevent Russia from manipulating the outcome of the election.

No other predicament in Facebook’s 13-year history has generated this kind of four-alarm response. But while the focus on Russia is understandable, Facebook has been much less vocal about the abuse of its services in other parts of the world, where the stakes can be much higher than an election.

This past week, my colleagues at The Times reported on the ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims, an ethnic minority in Myanmar that has been subjected to brutal violence and mass displacement. Violence against the Rohingya has been fueled, in part, by misinformation and anti-Rohingya propaganda spread on Facebook, which is used as a primary news source by many people in the country. Doctored photos and unfounded rumors have gone viral on Facebook, including many shared by official government and military accounts.

The information war in Myanmar illuminates a growing problem for Facebook. The company successfully connected the world to a constellation of real-time communication and broadcasting tools, then largely left it to deal with the consequences.

“In a lot of these countries, Facebook is the de facto public square,” said Cynthia Wong, a senior internet researcher for Human Rights Watch. “Because of that, it raises really strong questions about Facebook needing to take on more responsibility for the harms their platform has contributed to.”

In Myanmar, the rise in anti-Rohingya sentiment coincided with a huge boom in social media use that was partly attributable to Facebook itself. In 2016, the company partnered with MPT, the state-run telecom company, to give subscribers access to its Free Basics program. Free Basics includes a limited suite of internet services, including Facebook, that can be used without counting toward a cellphone data plan. As a result, the number of Facebook users in Myanmar has skyrocketed to more than 30 million today from 2 million in 2014.

The number of internet users in Myanmar has skyrocketed, in large part thanks to Facebook’s efforts. Credit Mathieu Willcocks for The New York Times        

“We work hard to educate people about our services, highlight tools to help them protect their accounts and promote digital literacy,” said Debbie Frost, a Facebook spokeswoman. “To be more effective in these efforts, we are working with civil society, safety partners, and governments — an approach we have found to be particularly important and effective in countries where people are rapidly coming online and experiencing the internet for the first time through a mobile phone.”

In India, where internet use has also surged in recent years, WhatsApp, the popular Facebook-owned messaging app, has been inundated with rumors, hoaxes and false stories. In May, the Jharkhand region in Eastern India was destabilized by a viral WhatsApp message that falsely claimed that gangs in the area were abducting children. The message incited widespread panic and led to a rash of retaliatory lynchings, in which at least seven people were beaten to death. A local filmmaker, Vinay Purty, told the Hindustan Times that many of the local villagers simply believed the abduction myth was real, since it came from WhatsApp.

“Everything shared on the phone is regarded as true,” Mr. Purty said.

In a statement, WhatsApp said, “WhatsApp has made communications cheaper, easier and more reliable for millions of Indians — with all the benefits that brings. Though we understand that some people, sadly, have used WhatsApp to intimidate others and spread misinformation. It’s why we encourage people to report problematic messages to WhatsApp so that we can take action.”

Facebook is not directly responsible for violent conflict, of course, and viral misinformation is hardly unique to its services. Before social media, there were email hoaxes and urban legends passed from person to person. But the speed of Facebook’s growth in the developing world has made it an especially potent force among first-time internet users, who may not be appropriately skeptical of what they see online.



The company has made many attempts to educate users about the dangers of misinformation. In India and Malaysia, it has taken out newspaper ads with tips for spotting false news. In Myanmar, it has partnered with local organizations to distribute printed copies of its community standards, as well as created educational materials to teach citizens about proper online behavior.

But these efforts, as well-intentioned as they may be, have not stopped the violence, and Facebook does not appear to have made them a top priority. The company has no office in Myanmar, and neither Mr. Zuckerberg nor Ms. Sandberg has made any public statements about the Rohingya crisis.

Correcting misinformation is a thorny philosophical problem for Facebook, which imagines itself as a neutral platform that avoids making editorial decisions. Facebook’s community standards prohibit hate speech and threats, but many harmful viral posts — such as a WhatsApp thread in Southern India that spread false rumors about a government immunization campaign — are neither hateful nor directly threatening, and they wouldn’t be prohibited under Facebook’s community standards as long as they came from authentic accounts. Fighting misinformation is especially difficult on WhatsApp, an app for private messaging, since there is no public information trail to fact-check.

Facebook has argued that the benefits of providing internet access to international users will ultimately outweigh the costs. Adam Mosseri, a Facebook vice president who oversees the News Feed, told a journalism gathering this month, “In the end, I don’t think we as a human race will regret the internet.” Mr. Zuckerberg echoed that sentiment in a 2013 manifesto titled “Is Connectivity a Human Right?,” in which he said that bringing the world’s population online would be “one of the most important things we all do in our lifetimes.”

That optimism may be cold comfort to people in places like South Sudan. Despite being one of the poorest and least-wired countries in the world, with only around 20 percent of its citizens connected to the internet, the African nation has become a hotbed of social media misinformation. As BuzzFeed News has reported, political operatives inside and outside the country have used Facebook posts to spread rumors and incite anger between rival factions, fostering violence that threatens to escalate into a civil war. A United Nations report last year determined that in South Sudan, “social media has been used by partisans on all sides, including some senior government officials, to exaggerate incidents, spread falsehoods and veiled threats, or post outright messages of incitement.”

These are incredibly complex issues, and it may be impossible for Facebook — which is, remember, a technology company, not a global peacekeeping force — to solve them overnight. But as the company’s response to the Russia crisis has proved, it’s capable of acting swiftly and powerfully when it feels its interests are threatened.

Information wars in emerging markets may not represent as big a threat to Facebook’s business as angry lawmakers in Washington. But people are dying, and communities are tearing themselves apart with the tools Facebook has built. That should qualify as an even greater emergency in Menlo Park.

Correction: October 31, 2017

An article on Monday about abuses of Facebook’s services in various countries rendered incorrectly the name of a government-run telecom company in Myanmar. It is MPT, not MTP.

Uber: We don’t have to pay drivers based on rider fares

Contracts allow rider fares to be higher than what is known and paid to drivers.

DAVID KRAVETS - 9/18/2017, 4:30 PM

Uber is fighting a proposed class-action lawsuit that says it secretly over charges riders and under pays drivers. In its defense, the ride-hailing service claims that nobody is being defrauded in its "upfront" rider fare pricing model.

The fares charged to riders don't have to match up with the fares paid to drivers, Uber said, because that's what a driver's "agreement" allows.

"Plaintiff's allegations are premised on the notion that, once Uber implemented Upfront Pricing for riders, it was required under the terms of the Agreement to change how the Fare was calculated for Drivers," Uber said (PDF) in a recent court filing seeking to have the class-action tossed. "This conclusion rests on a misinterpretation of the Agreement."

The suit claims that, when a rider uses Uber's app to hail a ride, the fare the app immediately shows the passenger is based on a slower and longer route compared to the one displayed to the driver. The rider pays the higher fee, and the driver's commission is paid from the cheaper, faster route, according to the lawsuit.

Uber claims the disparity between rider and driver fares "was hardly a secret."

"Drivers," Uber told a federal judge, "could have simply asked a User how much he or she paid for the trip to learn of any discrepancy."

A contract is a contract

Uber doesn't consider its drivers employees, and it doesn't call their pay "commissions." Instead, it allows drivers to keep the fare presented to them in the Uber driver app, even if the fare is different from what the rider was charged. The driver then pays Uber a "service fee"—a percentage of the fare earned by the driver.

The San Francisco-based ride-hailing service also claims that it took "significant risk" under this "upfront" fare pricing model, which began last year.

Plaintiff further alleges that, after Upfront Pricing began, Drivers continued to earn based on the trip’s distance and the amount of time it actually took to complete the trip. Plaintiff claims the Upfront Price is often higher than the Fare, which is the basis of what is remitted to him. He neglects to mention, however, the significant risk placed on Uber, not Drivers, by Upfront Pricing: the User’s Upfront Price may just as easily disadvantage Uber, for example, where an actual trip takes longer than expected, yet the Driver’s earnings calculation remains constant.

What's more, a rider might also pay Uber more than what the driver's fare is based on because a driver's contract allows Uber to "adjust" the fare known and paid to the driver, according to Uber's legal filing.

"The Agreement allows Uber to adjust the Fare under various circumstances. For example, Uber is permitted to make changes to the Fare Calculation based on local market factors," Uber said in its federal court response. "Likewise, Uber may adjust the Fare based on other factors such as inefficient routes, technical errors, or customer complaints."

And here's the kicker:

Drivers disclaim any right to receive amounts over and above the Fare produced by the Fare Calculation.

The suit, which seeks class-action status, demands back pay and legal fees. It wants a Los Angeles federal judge to halt the alleged "unlawful, deceptive, fraudulent, and unfair business practices."

A hearing is set for December 1.

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DAVID KRAVETS The senior editor for Ars Technica. Founder of TYDN fake news site. Technologist. Political scientist. Humorist. Dad of two boys. Been doing journalism for so long I remember manual typewriters with real paper. EMAIL david.kravets@arstechnica.com // TWITTER @dmkravets

Fake News: What Laws Are Designed to Protect

by Jane Haskins, Esq. Freelance writer

Just a few years ago, “fake news" was something you'd find in supermarket tabloids.

Now, though, the line between “fake news" and “real news" can seem awfully blurry. “Fake news" has been blamed for everything from swaying the U.S. presidential election to prompting a man to open fire at a Washington, DC pizza parlor.

What's Fake and What's Real?

A “real news" outlet, such as a major newspaper or television network, might make mistakes, but it doesn't distribute false information on purpose. Reporters and editors who report real news have a code of ethics that includes using reputable sources, checking facts, and getting comments from people on both sides of an issue.

Fake news outlets, on the other hand, are designed to deceive. They might have URLs that sound like legitimate news organizations, and they might even copy other news sites' design. They may invent “news" stories or republish stories from other internet sources without checking to see if they are true. Their purpose is usually to get “clicks" and generate ad revenue or to promote their owners' political viewpoint.

Some “fake news" is published on satire sites that are usually clearly labeled as satire. However, when people share articles without reading beyond the headline, a story that was supposed to be a parody can end up being taken as the truth.

Can't the Legal System Punish Fake News?

The First Amendment protects Americans' rights to freely exchange ideas—even false or controversial ones. If the government passed laws outlawing fake news, that would be censorship that would also have a chilling effect on real news that people disagree with.

The main legal recourse against fake news is a defamation lawsuit. You can sue someone for defamation if they published a false fact about you and you suffered some sort of damage as a result—such as a lost job, a decline in revenue, or a tarnished reputation. If you are an ordinary, private person, you also must show that the news outlet was negligent (or careless).

But most fake news relates to public figures, who can only win a defamation lawsuit by showing that the news outlet acted with “actual malice." This means that the author must have known the story was false or must have had a “reckless disregard" for whether it was true or not. It's usually a difficult standard to meet, but defamation suits may become more common as concern about fake news grows.

For example, Chobani yogurt recently filed a defamation suit against conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and his site, Infowars, over a video and tweet headlined “Idaho Yogurt Maker Caught Importing Migrant Rapists." Jones' tweet led to a boycott of the popular yogurt brand.

Defamation liability isn't limited to the person who first published a fake story—it extends to anyone who republishes it on a website or blog. Melania Trump, for example, recently settled defamation lawsuits against a Maryland blogger, who published an article in August 2016, and the online Daily Mail that published a similar false article later that month.

How to Spot Fake News and Stop it from Spreading

Fake news can be hard to identify, with some fake news sites looking and sounding almost exactly like well-known media outlets. Here are some tips for figuring out what's fake and what's real:

• Read beyond the headline. The article may be labeled as a parody or it may just sound too outlandish to be true.
• Check the story out on Snopes.com, which has been researching rumors and false stories for two decades. For political news, try FactCheck.org.
• See if the story comes from one of these fake news websites identified by PolitiFact.com as part of a collaborative effort with Facebook.
• Fact check the story yourself. Do an online search to confirm the main facts in the story, click on any links provided, and read the sources. Also look for any reports identifying the site as a fake news site, and/or look up the author's bio online.

In the end, the law can't protect you from fake news. Get your news from sources that you know are reputable, do your research, and read beyond the headlines. And, if you find out an article is fake, don't share it. That's the surest way to stop a false story from spreading.

Fake News 101? Lawmakers want California schools to teach students how to evaluate what they read on the web

By Melanie Mason - Los Angeles Times (01/11/2017)

Politicians and members of the media are increasingly bemoaning the rise of "fake news," though rarely is there agreement on how to define it. But can this new phenomenon be legislated away?

Two separate bills introduced by Democratic lawmakers Wednesday aim to do just that by offering proposals that would help teach Californians to think more critically about the news they read online.

Assemblyman Jimmy Gomez (D-Los Angeles) has introduced a measure that would require the state to develop curriculum standards that incorporate "civic online reasoning" to teach students how to evaluate news they read on the Internet.

"Recently, we have seen the corrupting effects of a deliberate propaganda campaign driven by fake news," Gomez said in a statement. "When fake news is repeated, it becomes difficult for the public to discern what's real. These attempts to mislead readers pose a direct threat to our democracy."

Gomez said his bill, AB 155, would prepare California students to differentiate "between news intended to inform and fake news intended to mislead."

In a similar measure, SB 135 by state Sen. Bill Dodd (D-Napa), the state education board would be tasked with creating a framework for a "media literacy" curriculum.

“The rise of fake and misleading news is deeply concerning. Even more concerning is the lack of education provided to ensure people can distinguish what is fact and what’s not,” Dodd said in a statement.

The fake news phenomenon burst into public consciousness at the close of the 2016 election, when analysts found that factually inaccurate news stories found surprisingly large audiences online.

But defining "fake news" has increasingly become a thorny exercise, as partisans have used the phrase to disparage news stories they dislike.

Both President Obama and President-elect Donald Trump have referenced the fake news phenomenon. Obama, in remarks after the election, forcefully lamented the "age of misinformation [that is] packaged very well, and it looks the same when you see it on a Facebook page or you turn on your television."

On Wednesday, Trump dismissed news coverage of a report detailing unverified allegations of his supposed ties to Russia as "fake news," and singled out the outlets BuzzFeed and CNN as purveyors of false information.

Op-Ed Google and Facebook aren't fighting fake news with the right weapons

The Google logo as seen on March 23, 2010. (Virginia Mayo / Associated Press)

By Matthew A. Baum and David Lazer (05/08/2017) - Los Angeles Times

We know a lot about fake news. It’s an old problem. Academics have been studying it — and how to combat it — for decades. In 1925, Harper’s Magazine published “Fake News and the Public,” calling its spread via new communication technologies “a source of unprecedented danger.”

That danger has only increased. Some of the most shared “news stories” from the 2016 U.S. election — such as Hillary Clinton selling weapons to Islamic State or the pope endorsing Donald Trump for president — were simply made up.

Unfortunately — as a conference we recently convened at Harvard revealed — the solutions Google, Facebook and other tech giants and media companies are pursuing aren’t in many instances the ones social scientists and computer scientists are convinced will work.

We know, for example, that the more you’re exposed to things that aren’t true, the more likely you are to eventually accept them as true. As recent studies led by psychologist Gordon Pennycook, political scientist Adam Berinsky and others have shown, over time people tend to forget where or how they found out about a news story. When they encounter it again, it is familiar from the prior exposure, and so they are more likely to accept it as true. It doesn’t matter if from the start it was labeled as fake news or unreliable — repetition is what counts.

Reducing acceptance of fake news thus means making it less familiar. Editors, producers, distributors and aggregators need to stop repeating these stories, especially in their headlines. For example, a fact-check story about “birtherism” should lead by debunking the myth, not restating it. This flies in the face of a lot of traditional journalistic practice.

The online Washington Post regularly features “Fact Checker” headlines consisting of claims to be evaluated, with a “Pinocchio Test” appearing at the end of the accompanying story. The problem is that readers are more likely to notice and remember the claim than the conclusion.

Another thing we know is that shocking claims stick in your memory. A long-standing body of research shows that people are more likely to attend to and later recall a sensational or negative headline, even if a fact checker flags it as suspect. Fake news stories nearly always feature alarming claims designed to grab the attention of Web surfers. Fact checkers can’t compete — especially if their findings are writ small.

To persuade people that fake news is fake, the messenger is as important as the message. When it comes to correcting falsehoods, a fellow partisan is often more persuasive than a neutral third party. For instance, Trump is arguably the individual most closely associated with birtherism. But in September 2016, Trump publicly announced that Obama was a native-born American, “period.” Polling a few days later showed an 18-percentage point drop among registered Republicans in acceptance of the birther myth. Countless debunking stories by fact checkers had far less impact.

The Internet platforms have perhaps the most important role in the fight against fake news. They need to move suspect news stories farther down the lists of items returned through search engines or social media feeds. The key to evaluating credibility, and story placement, is to focus not on individual items but on the cumulative stream of content from a given website. Evaluating individual stories is simply too slow to reliably stem their spread.

Google recently announced some promising steps in this direction. It was responding to criticism that its search algorithm had elevated to front-page status some stories featuring Holocaust denial and false information about the 2016 election. But more remains to be done. Holocaust denial is, after all, low-hanging fruit, relatively easily flagged. Yet even here Google’s initial efforts produced at best mixed results, initially shifting the denial site downward, then ceasing to work reliably, before ultimately eliminating the site from search results.

The platforms must also wrestle more seriously with how to evade manipulation. Recent research led by computer scientist Filippo Menczer highlights the synchronized push of fake news by millions of bots on social media and has developed new ways of detecting them. In a white paper released last month, Facebook claims that its top priority is making sure accounts are owned by real people. Yet its visible efforts to date to purge fake accounts — most notably 30,000 in France ahead of that nation’s presidential election — seem small relative to the scale of the problem. By its own estimates, Facebook may have as many as 138 million duplicate or false accounts.

Finally, the public must hold Facebook, Google and other platforms to account for their choices. It is almost impossible to assess how real or effective their anti-fake news efforts are because the platforms control the data necessary for such evaluations. Independent researchers must have access to these data in a way that protects user privacy but helps us all figure out what is or is not working in the fight against misinformation.

For all the talk about fake news, the truth is that we know a lot about why people read, believe, and share things that aren’t true. Now we just need the big technology platforms and media companies to take the truth to heart.

The key to evaluating credibility, and story placement, is to focus not on individual items but on the cumulative stream of content from a given website.

Matthew A. Baum is the Marvin Kalb professor of global communication and professor of public policy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. David Lazer is a distinguished professor in political science and computer and information science at Northeastern University and visiting scholar at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard.

What Happens to Creativity as We Age?

Marion Fayolle        

The author concludes, "Teenagers may no longer care all that much about how the physical world works. But they care a lot about exploring all the ways that the social world can be organized. And that may help each new generation change the world." Without right or wrong, how do we understand the author's deduction?

When you age, you have gotten more social knowledge. The knowledge may be true or false. And for a long time, it becomes as your prejudice over something. When you face a new problem, you adults will use the knowledge to deal with it before you consider other solutions, and even you don't care if there is another solution. Specially, intolerants with bigotry deal with the problems immediately without thinking. So, to become an adult with right thoughts, need to verify what you hear when you are at adolescence or older, and avoid a prejudice over anything and anyone. Without a prejudice, you still have an ability to create and change the world.

However, nowadays it seems truth, fake, right and wrong are difficult to divide, so it is a great challenge for the new generation.

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Gray Matter
By ALISON GOPNIK and TOM GRIFFITHS AUG. 19, 2017

One day not long ago, Augie, a 4-year-old Gopnik grandchild, heard his grandfather wistfully say, “I wish I could be a kid again.” After a thoughtful pause, Augie came up with a suggestion: Grandpa should try not eating any vegetables. The logic was ingenious: Eating vegetables turns children into big strong adults, so not eating vegetables should reverse the process.

No grown-up would ever come up with that idea. But anyone with a 4-year-old can tell similar stories. Young children’s creativity seems to outstrip that of even the most imaginative adults.

How does the ability to come up with unusual ideas change as we grow older? Does it begin to flag in adolescence? Before then? To investigate these questions, we and our colleagues recently conducted several experiments, which we relate in a new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

We began with a group of participants of various ages: 4- and 5-year-old preschoolers; 6- to 11-year-olds; 12- to 14-year-old teenagers; and adults. We presented them with a scenario involving a physical machine that lit up when you put some combinations of blocks on it, but not others. Either of two hypotheses could explain how the machine worked. It could work in a usual and obvious way: Some individual blocks would make it light up, and the other blocks were irrelevant. Or it could work in a more unusual way: It would take a combination of different blocks to make the machine light up.

We presented the participants with another scenario as well, also with two possible explanations. This scenario was social: We told a story about Sally, who approached a skateboard, and Josie, who avoided a scooter. How come? The usual explanation was that something about Sally’s and Josie’s individual traits made them act as they did — maybe Sally was braver than Josie. A more unusual, though equally valid, explanation was that something about the situation was important — maybe the skateboard was safer than the scooter.

Presented with these two scenarios, most adults did indeed explain the events by talking about a single block, or about Sally’s traits — they gave the obvious explanation.

Then we added a twist. Another group of participants saw the same scenarios, but this time they saw an additional set of facts that made the unusual explanation more likely than the more obvious one. Would the participants go with the obvious explanation, or try something new?

When it came to explaining the physical machine, the pattern was straightforward. The preschoolers were most likely to come up with the creative, unusual explanation. The school-age children were somewhat less creative. And there was a dramatic drop at adolescence. Both the teenagers and the adults were the most likely to stick with the obvious explanation even when it didn’t fit the data.

But there was a different pattern when it came to the social problems. Once again the preschoolers were more likely to give the creative explanation than were the 6-year-olds or adults. Now, however, the teenagers were the most creative group of all. They were more likely to choose the unusual explanation than were either the 6-year-olds or the adults.

Why does creativity generally tend to decline as we age? One reason may be that as we grow older, we know more. That’s mostly an advantage, of course. But it also may lead us to ignore evidence that contradicts what we already think. We become too set in our ways to change.

Relatedly, the explanation may have to do with a tension between two kinds of thinking: what computer scientists call exploration and exploitation. When we face a new problem, we adults usually exploit the knowledge about the world we have acquired so far. We try to quickly find a pretty good solution that is close to the solutions we already have. On the other hand, exploration — trying something new — may lead us to a more unusual idea, a less obvious solution, a new piece of knowledge. But it may also mean that we waste time considering crazy possibilities that will never work, something both preschoolers and teenagers have been known to do.

This idea suggests a solution to the evolutionary paradox that is human childhood and adolescence. We humans have an exceptionally long childhood and prolonged adolescence. Why make human children so helpless for so long, and make human adults invest so much time and effort into caring for them?

The answer: Childhood and adolescence may, at least in part, be designed to resolve the tension between exploration and exploitation. Those periods of our life give us time to explore before we have to face the stern and earnest realities of grown-up life. Teenagers may no longer care all that much about how the physical world works. But they care a lot about exploring all the ways that the social world can be organized. And that may help each new generation change the world.

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Alison Gopnik and Tom Griffiths are professors of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of “The Gardener and the Carpenter.” He is an author, with Brian Christian, of “Algorithms to Live By.”

Is America Headed for a New Kind of Civil War?

The recent unrest in Charlottesville, Virginia, after a white-supremacist rally has stoked some Americans’ fears of a new civil war.Photograph by Glenna Gordon for The New Yorker

By Robin Wright 5:16 P.M. - The New Yorker

A day after the brawling and racist brutality and deaths in Virginia, Governor Terry McAuliffe asked, “How did we get to this place?” The more relevant question after Charlottesville—and other deadly episodes in Ferguson, Charleston, Dallas, Saint Paul, Baltimore, Baton Rouge, and Alexandria—is where the United States is headed. How fragile is the union, our republic, and a country that has long been considered the world’s most stable democracy? The dangers are now bigger than the collective episodes of violence. “The radical right was more successful in entering the political mainstream last year than in half a century,” the Southern Poverty Law Center reported in February. The organization documents more than nine hundred active (and growing) hate groups in the United States.

America’s stability is increasingly an undercurrent in political discourse. Earlier this year, I began a conversation with Keith Mines about America’s turmoil. Mines has spent his career—in the U.S. Army Special Forces, the United Nations, and now the State Department—navigating civil wars in other countries, including Afghanistan, Colombia, El Salvador, Iraq, Somalia, and Sudan. He returned to Washington after sixteen years to find conditions that he had seen nurture conflict abroad now visible at home. It haunts him. In March, Mines was one of several national-security experts whom Foreign Policy asked to evaluate the risks of a second civil war—with percentages. Mines concluded that the United States faces a sixty-per-cent chance of civil war over the next ten to fifteen years. Other experts’ predictions ranged from five per cent to ninety-five per cent. The sobering consensus was thirty-five per cent. And that was five months before Charlottesville.

“We keep saying, ‘It can’t happen here,’ but then, holy smokes, it can,” Mines told me after we talked, on Sunday, about Charlottesville. The pattern of civil strife has evolved worldwide over the past sixty years. Today, few civil wars involve pitched battles from trenches along neat geographic front lines. Many are low-intensity conflicts with episodic violence in constantly moving locales. Mines’s definition of a civil war is large-scale violence that includes a rejection of traditional political authority and requires the National Guard to deal with it. On Saturday, McAuliffe put the National Guard on alert and declared a state of emergency.

Based on his experience in civil wars on three continents, Mines cited five conditions that support his prediction: entrenched national polarization, with no obvious meeting place for resolution; increasingly divisive press coverage and information flows; weakened institutions, notably Congress and the judiciary; a sellout or abandonment of responsibility by political leadership; and the legitimization of violence as the “in” way to either conduct discourse or solve disputes.

President Trump “modeled violence as a way to advance politically and validated bullying during and after the campaign,” Mines wrote in Foreign Policy. “Judging from recent events the left is now fully on board with this,” he continued, citing anarchists in anti-globalization riots as one of several flashpoints. “It is like 1859, everyone is mad about something and everyone has a gun.”

To test Mines’s conjecture, I reached out to five prominent Civil War historians this weekend. “When you look at the map of red and blue states and overlap on top of it the map of the Civil War—and who was allied with who in the Civil War—not much has changed,” Judith Giesberg, the editor of the Journal of the Civil War Era and a historian at Villanova University, told me. “We never agreed on the outcome of the Civil War and the direction the country should go in. The postwar amendments were highly contentious—especially the Fourteenth Amendment, which provides equal protection under the law—and they still are today. What does it mean to deliver voting rights to people of color? We still don’t know.”

She added, “Does that make us vulnerable to a repeat of the past? I don’t see a repeat of those specific circumstances. But that doesn’t mean we are not entering something similar in the way of a culture war. We are vulnerable to racism, tribalism, and conflicting visions of the way forward for our nation.”

Anxiety over deepening schisms and new conflict has an outlet in popular culture: in April, Amazon selected the dystopian novel “American War”—which centers on a second U.S. civil war—as one of its best books of the month. In a review in the Washington Post, Ron Charles wrote, “Across these scarred pages rages the clash that many of us are anxiously speculating about in the Trump era: a nation riven by irreconcilable ideologies, alienated by entrenched suspicions . . . both poignant and horrifying.” The Times book reviewer noted, “It’s a work of fiction. For the time being, anyway.” The book’s author, Omar El Akkad, was born in Egypt and covered the war in Afghanistan, the Arab Spring, and the Ferguson protest as a journalist for Canada’s Globe and Mail.

Before Charlottesville, David Blight, a Yale historian, was already planning a conference in November on “American Disunion, Then and Now.” “Parallels and analogies are always risky, but we do have weakened institutions and not just polarized parties but parties that are risking disintegration, which is what happened in the eighteen-fifties,” he told me. “Slavery tore apart, over fifteen years, both major political parties. It destroyed the Whig Party, which was replaced by the Republican Party, and divided the Democratic Party into northern and southern parts.”

“So,” he said, “watch the parties” as an indicator of America’s health.

In the eighteen-fifties, Blight told me, Americans were not good at foreseeing or absorbing the “shock of events,” including the Fugitive Slave Act, the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision, the John Brown raid, and even the Mexican-American War. “No one predicted them. They forced people to reposition themselves,” Blight said. “We’re going through one of those repositionings now. Trump’s election is one of them, and we’re still trying to figure it out. But it’s not new. It dates to Obama’s election. We thought that would lead culture in the other direction, but it didn’t,” he said. “There was a tremendous resistance from the right, then these episodes of police violence, and all these things [from the past] exploded again. It’s not only a racial polarization but a seizure about identity.”

Generally, Blight added, “We know we are at risk of civil war, or something like it, when an election, an enactment, an event, an action by government or people in high places, becomes utterly unacceptable to a party, a large group, a significant constituency.” The nation witnessed tectonic shifts on the eve of the Civil War, and during the civil-rights era, the unrest of the late nineteen-sixties and the Vietnam War, he said. “It did not happen with Bush v. Gore, in 2000, but perhaps we were close. It is not inconceivable that it could happen now.”

In a reversal of public opinion from the nineteen-sixties, Blight said, the weakening of political institutions today has led Americans to shift their views on which institutions are credible. “Who do we put our faith in today? Maybe, ironically, the F.B.I.,” he said. “With all these military men in the Trump Administration, that’s where we’re putting our hope for the use of reason. It’s not the President. It’s not Congress, which is utterly dysfunctional and run by men who spent decades dividing us in order to keep control, and not even the Supreme Court, because it’s been so politicized.”

In the wake of Charlottesville, the chorus of condemnation from politicians across the political spectrum has been encouraging, but it is not necessarily reassuring or an indicator about the future, Gregory Downs, a historian at the University of California at Davis, told me. During the Civil War, even southern politicians who denounced or were wary of secession for years—including Jefferson Davis—ended up as leaders of the Confederacy. “If the source of conflict is deeply embedded in cultural or social forces, then politicians are not inherently able to restrain them with calls for reasons,” Downs said. He called the noxious white supremacists and neo-Nazis the “messengers,” rather than the “architects,” of the republic’s potential collapse. But, he warned, “We take our stability for granted.”

He dug out for me a quote from the journalist Murat Halstead’s book, “The War Claims of the South,” published in 1867. “The lesson of the war that should never depart from us,” Halstead wrote, “is that the American people have no exemption from the ordinary fate of humankind. If we sin, we must suffer for our sins, like the Empires that are tottering and the Nations that have perished.”

Eric Foner, the Columbia University historian, won the Pulitzer Prize, in 2011, for his book “The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery.” Like the other scholars I spoke to, Foner is skeptical that any future conflict will resemble America’s last civil war. “Obviously, we have some pretty deep divisions along multiple lines—racial, ideological, rural versus urban,” he told me. “Whether they will lead to civil war, I doubt. We have strong gravitational forces that counteract what we’re seeing today.” He pointed out that “the spark in Charlottesville—taking down the status of Robert E. Lee—doesn’t have to do with civil war. People are not debating the Civil War. They’re debating American society and race today.”

Charlottesville was not the first protest by the so-called alt-right, nor will it be the last. Nine more rallies are planned for next weekend and others in September.

Robin Wright is a contributing writer for newyorker.com, and has written for the magazine since 1988. She is the author of“Rock the Casbah: Rage and Rebellion Across the Islamic World.”

Full Executive Order Text: Trump’s Action Limiting Refugees Into the U.S.

President Trump, at the Pentagon on Friday, signed an executive order titled “Protecting the Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States.”

STEPHEN CROWLEY / THE NEW YORK TIMES - JANUARY 27, 2017

President Trump signed an executive order on Friday titled “Protecting the Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States.” Following is the language of that order, as supplied by the White House.

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and laws of the United States of America, including the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), 8 U.S.C. 1101 et seq., and section 301 of title 3, United States Code, and to protect the American people from terrorist attacks by foreign nationals admitted to the United States, it is hereby ordered as follows:

Section 1. Purpose. The visa-issuance process plays a crucial role in detecting individuals with terrorist ties and stopping them from entering the United States. Perhaps in no instance was that more apparent than the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, when State Department policy prevented consular officers from properly scrutinizing the visa applications of several of the 19 foreign nationals who went on to murder nearly 3,000 Americans. And while the visa-issuance process was reviewed and amended after the September 11 attacks to better detect would-be terrorists from receiving visas, these measures did not stop attacks by foreign nationals who were admitted to the United States.

Numerous foreign-born individuals have been convicted or implicated in terrorism-related crimes since September 11, 2001, including foreign nationals who entered the United States after receiving visitor, student, or employment visas, or who entered through the United States refugee resettlement program. Deteriorating conditions in certain countries due to war, strife, disaster, and civil unrest increase the likelihood that terrorists will use any means possible to enter the United States. The United States must be vigilant during the visa-issuance process to ensure that those approved for admission do not intend to harm Americans and that they have no ties to terrorism.

In order to protect Americans, the United States must ensure that those admitted to this country do not bear hostile attitudes toward it and its founding principles. The United States cannot, and should not, admit those who do not support the Constitution, or those who would place violent ideologies over American law. In addition, the United States should not admit those who engage in acts of bigotry or hatred (including “honor” killings, other forms of violence against women, or the persecution of those who practice religions different from their own) or those who would oppress Americans of any race, gender, or sexual orientation.

Sec. 2. Policy. It is the policy of the United States to protect its citizens from foreign nationals who intend to commit terrorist attacks in the United States; and to prevent the admission of foreign nationals who intend to exploit United States immigration laws for malevolent purposes.

Sec. 3. Suspension of Issuance of Visas and Other Immigration Benefits to Nationals of Countries of Particular Concern. (a) The Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Director of National Intelligence, shall immediately conduct a review to determine the information needed from any country to adjudicate any visa, admission, or other benefit under the INA (adjudications) in order to determine that the individual seeking the benefit is who the individual claims to be and is not a security or public-safety threat.

(b) The Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Director of National Intelligence, shall submit to the President a report on the results of the review described in subsection (a) of this section, including the Secretary of Homeland Security’s determination of the information needed for adjudications and a list of countries that do not provide adequate information, within 30 days of the date of this order. The Secretary of Homeland Security shall provide a copy of the report to the Secretary of State and the Director of National Intelligence.

(c) To temporarily reduce investigative burdens on relevant agencies during the review period described in subsection (a) of this section, to ensure the proper review and maximum utilization of available resources for the screening of foreign nationals, and to ensure that adequate standards are established to prevent infiltration by foreign terrorists or criminals, pursuant to section 212(f) of the INA, 8 U.S.C. 1182(f), I hereby proclaim that the immigrant and nonimmigrant entry into the United States of aliens from countries referred to in section 217(a)(12) of the INA, 8 U.S.C. 1187(a)(12), would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, and I hereby suspend entry into the United States, as immigrants and nonimmigrants, of such persons for 90 days from the date of this order (excluding those foreign nationals traveling on diplomatic visas, North Atlantic Treaty Organization visas, C-2 visas for travel to the United Nations, and G-1, G-2, G-3, and G-4 visas).

(d) Immediately upon receipt of the report described in subsection (b) of this section regarding the information needed for adjudications, the Secretary of State shall request all foreign governments that do not supply such information to start providing such information regarding their nationals within 60 days of notification.

(e) After the 60-day period described in subsection (d) of this section expires, the Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with the Secretary of State, shall submit to the President a list of countries recommended for inclusion on a Presidential proclamation that would prohibit the entry of foreign nationals (excluding those foreign nationals traveling on diplomatic visas, North Atlantic Treaty Organization visas, C-2 visas for travel to the United Nations, and G-1, G-2, G-3, and G-4 visas) from countries that do not provide the information requested pursuant to subsection (d) of this section until compliance occurs.

(f) At any point after submitting the list described in subsection (e) of this section, the Secretary of State or the Secretary of Homeland Security may submit to the President the names of any additional countries recommended for similar treatment.

(g) Notwithstanding a suspension pursuant to subsection (c) of this section or pursuant to a Presidential proclamation described in subsection (e) of this section, the Secretaries of State and Homeland Security may, on a case-by-case basis, and when in the national interest, issue visas or other immigration benefits to nationals of countries for which visas and benefits are otherwise blocked.

(h) The Secretaries of State and Homeland Security shall submit to the President a joint report on the progress in implementing this orderwithin 30 days of the date of this order, a second report within 60 daysof the date of this order, a third report within 90 days of the date of this order, and a fourth report within 120 days of the date of this order.

Sec. 4. Implementing Uniform Screening Standards for All Immigration Programs. (a) The Secretary of State, the Secretary of Homeland Security, the Director of National Intelligence, and the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation shall implement a program, as part of the adjudication process for immigration benefits, to identify individuals seeking to enter the United States on a fraudulent basis with the intent to cause harm, or who are at risk of causing harm subsequent to their admission. This program will include the development of a uniform screening standard and procedure, such as in-person interviews; a database of identity documents proffered by applicants to ensure that duplicate documents are not used by multiple applicants; amended application forms that include questions aimed at identifying fraudulent answers and malicious intent; a mechanism to ensure that the applicant is who the applicant claims to be; a process to evaluate the applicant’s likelihood of becoming a positively contributing member of society and the applicant’s ability to make contributions to the national interest; and a mechanism to assess whether or not the applicant has the intent to commit criminal or terrorist acts after entering the United States.

(b) The Secretary of Homeland Security, in conjunction with the Secretary of State, the Director of National Intelligence, and the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, shall submit to the President an initial report on the progress of this directive within 60 days of the date of this order, a second report within 100 days of the date of this order, and a third report within 200 days of the date of this order.

Sec. 5. Realignment of the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program for Fiscal Year 2017. (a) The Secretary of State shall suspend the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) for 120 days. During the 120-day period, the Secretary of State, in conjunction with the Secretary of Homeland Security and in consultation with the Director of National Intelligence, shall review the USRAP application and adjudication process to determine what additional procedures should be taken to ensure that those approved for refugee admission do not pose a threat to the security and welfare of the United States, and shall implement such additional procedures. Refugee applicants who are already in the USRAP process may be admitted upon the initiation and completion of these revised procedures. Upon the date that is 120 days after the date of this order, the Secretary of State shall resume USRAP admissions only for nationals of countries for which the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and the Director of National Intelligence have jointly determined that such additional procedures are adequate to ensure the security and welfare of the United States.

(b) Upon the resumption of USRAP admissions, the Secretary of State, in consultation with the Secretary of Homeland Security, is further directed to make changes, to the extent permitted by law, to prioritize refugee claims made by individuals on the basis of religious-based persecution, provided that the religion of the individual is a minority religion in the individual’s country of nationality. Where necessary and appropriate, the Secretaries of State and Homeland Security shall recommend legislation to the President that would assist with such prioritization.

(c) Pursuant to section 212(f) of the INA, 8 U.S.C. 1182(f), I hereby proclaim that the entry of nationals of Syria as refugees is detrimental to the interests of the United States and thus suspend any such entry until such time as I have determined that sufficient changes have been made to the USRAP to ensure that admission of Syrian refugees is consistent with the national interest.

(d) Pursuant to section 212(f) of the INA, 8 U.S.C. 1182(f), I hereby proclaim that the entry of more than 50,000 refugees in fiscal year 2017 would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, and thus suspend any such entry until such time as I determine that additional admissions would be in the national interest.

(e) Notwithstanding the temporary suspension imposed pursuant to subsection (a) of this section, the Secretaries of State and Homeland Security may jointly determine to admit individuals to the United States as refugees on a case-by-case basis, in their discretion, but only so long as they determine that the admission of such individuals as refugees is in the national interest — including when the person is a religious minority in his country of nationality facing religious persecution, when admitting the person would enable the United States to conform its conduct to a preexisting international agreement, or when the person is already in transit and denying admission would cause undue hardship — and it would not pose a risk to the security or welfare of the United States.

(f) The Secretary of State shall submit to the President an initial report on the progress of the directive in subsection (b) of this section regarding prioritization of claims made by individuals on the basis of religious-based persecution within 100 days of the date of this order and shall submit a second report within 200 days of the date of this order.

(g) It is the policy of the executive branch that, to the extent permitted by law and as practicable, State and local jurisdictions be granted a role in the process of determining the placement or settlement in their jurisdictions of aliens eligible to be admitted to the United States as refugees. To that end, the Secretary of Homeland Security shall examine existing law to determine the extent to which, consistent with applicable law, State and local jurisdictions may have greater involvement in the process of determining the placement or resettlement of refugees in their jurisdictions, and shall devise a proposal to lawfully promote such involvement.

Sec. 6. Rescission of Exercise of Authority Relating to the Terrorism Grounds of Inadmissibility. The Secretaries of State and Homeland Security shall, in consultation with the Attorney General, consider rescinding the exercises of authority in section 212 of the INA, 8 U.S.C. 1182, relating to the terrorism grounds of inadmissibility, as well as any related implementing memoranda.

Sec. 7. Expedited Completion of the Biometric Entry-Exit Tracking System. (a) The Secretary of Homeland Security shall expedite the completion and implementation of a biometric entry-exit tracking system for all travelers to the United States, as recommended by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States.

(b) The Secretary of Homeland Security shall submit to the President periodic reports on the progress of the directive contained in subsection (a) of this section. The initial report shall be submitted within 100 days of the date of this order, a second report shall be submitted within 200 days of the date of this order, and a third report shall be submitted within 365 days of the date of this order. Further, the Secretary shall submit a report every 180 days thereafter until the system is fully deployed and operational.

Sec. 8. Visa Interview Security. (a) The Secretary of State shall immediately suspend the Visa Interview Waiver Program and ensure compliance with section 222 of the INA, 8 U.S.C. 1222, which requires that all individuals seeking a nonimmigrant visa undergo an in-person interview, subject to specific statutory exceptions.

(b) To the extent permitted by law and subject to the availability of appropriations, the Secretary of State shall immediately expand the Consular Fellows Program, including by substantially increasing the number of Fellows, lengthening or making permanent the period of service, and making language training at the Foreign Service Institute available to Fellows for assignment to posts outside of their area of core linguistic ability, to ensure that non-immigrant visa-interview wait times are not unduly affected.

Sec. 9. Visa Validity Reciprocity. The Secretary of State shall review all nonimmigrant visa reciprocity agreements to ensure that they are, with respect to each visa classification, truly reciprocal insofar as practicable with respect to validity period and fees, as required by sections 221(c) and 281 of the INA, 8 U.S.C. 1201(c) and 1351, and other treatment. If a country does not treat United States nationals seeking nonimmigrant visas in a reciprocal manner, the Secretary of State shall adjust the visa validity period, fee schedule, or other treatment to match the treatment of United States nationals by the foreign country, to the extent practicable.

Sec. 10. Transparency and Data Collection. (a) To be more transparent with the American people, and to more effectively implement policies and practices that serve the national interest, the Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with the Attorney General, shall, consistent with applicable law and national security, collect and make publicly available within 180 days, and every 180 days thereafter:

(i) information regarding the number of foreign nationals in the United States who have been charged with terrorism-related offenses while in the United States; convicted of terrorism-related offenses while in the United States; or removed from the United States based on terrorism-related activity, affiliation, or material support to a terrorism-related organization, or any other national security reasons since the date of this order or the last reporting period, whichever is later;

(ii) information regarding the number of foreign nationals in the United States who have been radicalized after entry into the United States and engaged in terrorism-related acts, or who have provided material support to terrorism-related organizations in countries that pose a threat to the United States, since the date of this order or the last reporting period, whichever is later; and

(iii) information regarding the number and types of acts of gender-based violence against women, including honor killings, in the United States by foreign nationals, since the date of this order or the last reporting period, whichever is later; and

(iv) any other information relevant to public safety and security as determined by the Secretary of Homeland Security and the Attorney General, including information on the immigration status of foreign nationals charged with major offenses.

(b) The Secretary of State shall, within one year of the date of this order, provide a report on the estimated long-term costs of the USRAP at the Federal, State, and local levels.

Sec. 11. General Provisions. (a) Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect:

(i) the authority granted by law to an executive department or agency, or the head thereof; or

(ii) the functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.

(b) This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.

(c) This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.

Trump has stacked the deck against himself

President-eect Donald Trump. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

By Michael Gerson Opinion writer January 12 at 7:50 PM

On the first day of his presidency, Donald Trump will face a serious governing challenge of his own creation.

He has promised a tax cut that will, by one estimate, reduce federal revenue by $7 trillion over 10 years. He has promised an infrastructureinitiative that may cost an additional trillion. He has promised to rebuild the military. He has effectively promised not to make changes in Social Security and Medicare. And he has promised to move swiftly toward a balanced federal budget.

Taken together, these things can’t be taken together. Trump has made a series of pledges that can’t be reconciled. If he knew this during the campaign, he is cynical. If he is only finding out now, he is benighted. In either case, something has to give.

Congress and the country normally get a first glimpse of presidential priorities in the administration’s initial budget — hashed out internally, translated into legislative-speak by experts and published in a hefty book.

It makes for stupefying reading. It is a useful document nonetheless. The budget book throws an ocean of campaign pledges against the rocky shore of fiscal reality. Proposals and pledges must be forced into a pie chart. Anyone’s gain, it turns out, is someone’s loss.

The first time is the hardest. It is the equivalent of a final exam on the first day of class.

But not really on the first day. Under the law, Trump has until Feb. 6 to submit a budget to Congress. He can ask for an extension but not an exemption.

A new president’s first speech to a joint session of Congress is less a State of the Union address than a statement of budget priorities. And if the president’s party controls both houses of Congress (as Barack Obama’s did at the start of his presidency), many of the proposals we hear on that night will become laws. Rather than being dead on arrival, the Trump budget will be alive and taking a Zumba class.

Finishing the budget will require a series of major decisions, beginning with what “replace” means in the “repeal and replace” of the Affordable Care Act. Anything involving a sufficient, refundable tax credit to buy private insurance (a feature of many Republican plans) is not cheap. The primary goal of most Republican health-care policy wonks is not to save money. It is to retain the gains of Obamacare — including insurance coverage for an additional 20 million people — without overregulating the health-care sector and destabilizing insurance markets. And to make the purchase of health insurance by younger people attractive rather than compulsory.

[Why did Obama dawdle on Russia’s hacking?]

Members of Congress looking for leadership from the new administration have (at least) two problems.

First, the congealing organizational chart of the Trump administration is flat and (so far) dysfunctional. A number of people have been given the highest level of White House jobs without a clear indication of who is in charge. By some accounts, Trump likes this sort of management chaos around him. But it is not conducive to policy creation.

Some senior Trump advisers have gone public to influence the policy process — or perhaps to create the impression that a process actually exists. Kellyanne Conway, for example, recently said, “We don’t want anyone who currently has insurance to not have insurance.” That type of assurance is difficult to make, because Trumpcare doesn’t seem to exist.

Second, Trump himself is unfocused and erratic. He is dismissively impatient with policy meetings. He wants others to sweat the details, allowing him to focus on bigger things. Such as Meryl Streep’s Golden Globe remarks. This looks less like delegation than a vacuum. How do you build a decision-making structure around a vacuum, without inviting a constant, bitter staff struggle to fill it? Is incoming chief of staff Reince Priebus capable of taking control of access to Trump and building an orderly policy process?

To some extent, every presidential transition is chaotic. But not every incoming administration fires its initial transition team after winning and essentially starts over. Or has a president-elect who seems to view public policy as a distraction from his social media calling. It is not too late for a structure to emerge that is capable of making sound decisions and choices. But it would take a president-elect who wants it to happen.

You need go back to school to relearn English

By Lennox Morrison (BBC) - 16 December 2016

With non-native English speakers outnumbering native speakers, it’s up to Anglophones to learn how to speak their language within a global community.

Until seven years ago, Chicago-born Ben Barron had worked only with fellow Americans. But when he took a job with Zurich Insurance Company, an international company headquartered in Switzerland, Barron found that his new colleagues across Europe, who used English as a shared language, had difficulty understanding him.

“Fortunately I was surrounded by people who would stop and say things like, ‘So what do you mean by that?’ and make me clarify,” he recalls. “So I started to become aware of some of my own verbal communication habits that might lead to misunderstandings.”

After taking an in-company e-learning course to help native English speakers communicate better with non-native speakers, Barron slowed down his pace of speaking and edited his “American speak” to avoid jargon and idioms that don’t translate globally.

“That e-learning exposed me to the thought that maybe people could not process my verbal information as quickly as I thought they were,” says Barron, who is now the company’s senior learning and development consultant for international operations, in Schaumberg, Illinois.

“Another takeaway was avoiding the use of sayings,” he says. “For example, a saying like ‘That dog don’t hunt’ which means ‘That’s probably not that good of an idea’. That’s a very southern American saying that people didn’t understand.”

He also filtered out references to baseball and football and changed his writing style. Instead of contractions like ‘can’t’, ‘don’t’ and ‘doesn’t’, he writes the phrases out in full.

Barron is one of a small but growing number of native English speakers recalibrating how he uses his mother tongue.

Learning global English can help you communicate with colleagues (Credit: Getty Images)

Turning the tables

With non-native English speakers now vastly outnumbering native speakers, it’s up to the latter to be more adaptable, says Neil Shaw, intercultural fluency lead at the British Council, the UK’s international educational and cultural body. About 1.75 billion people worldwide speak English at a useful level, and by 2020 it’s expected to be two billion, according to the British Council.

In the Council’s new intercultural fluency courses launched in September, native English speakers in countries from Singapore to South Africa have been prompted to rethink how they communicate. “It’s a bit of a revelation to many of them that their English isn’t as clear and effective as they think it is,” Shaw says.

Increasingly, English is being used as a lingua franca. “It’s not an exotic thing anymore to be working in a global, virtual team,” says Robert Gibson, an intercultural consultant based in Munich, Germany. “It’s everyday life for many people and it’s quite stressful and difficult.”

During his presidency, George W. Bush was known for garbling his English (Credit: Alamy)

It can be a culture shock for native speakers to encounter new varieties of English.

“The English language is changing quite radically,” says Gibson. “The trend is not to have one or two clear standard Englishes like American English and British English, but to have a lot of different types of English.”

Chinese English, known as chinglish, and German English, called denglish, are examples, he says. “English is also developing within organisations. In companies, they have their own style of English which is not necessarily understood by native speakers. We are getting away from saying that there is a standard English you need to conform to [towards] saying that there are different standards of English for different situations.”

A native-speaker disadvantage

Mother-tongue English may not even be an advantage anymore, says Dr Dominic Watt, sociolinguistics expert at the University of York in the UK.

“It’s not necessarily in your interests to be a native speaker of English because you haven’t had to go through the same learning process that the non-natives have. So they’re all on the same page and it’s the native speakers who are the odd ones out,” Watt says.

At the European Parliament, for instance, non-native speakers complain to the Anglophones, “Can’t you just speak English like the rest of us do!”, says Watt. “The power balance has shifted a bit by sheer virtue of numbers.”

Gradually, native speakers are realising that something is going wrong with the way they’re communicating, says Cathy Wellings, director of the London School of International Communication in the UK.

Are your colloquial quirks confusing your colleagues? You'd be surprised (Credit: iStock)

“People are presenting to a non-native speaker audience and they realise that it isn’t going across as well as at home, or they’re great negotiators at home but they don’t end up winning the deals when they take it overseas,” she says.

Monolingual English speakers have no insight into the challenges faced by non-native speakers. “One of the things I always reinforce with native speakers is that the cognitive load of operating in another language is high, it’s tough and tiring, so if we native speakers can help them out it’s going to make it easier,” Wellings adds.

When it comes to English grammar, learners often outshine native speakers. “In written business communication courses with mixed groups, the Brits can be quite sheepish that they don’t know the grammar that non-native speakers do,” she says.

Slow down and shut up

The most useful change native speakers can make is to slow down their speech, says Bob Dignen, director and owner of UK-based York Associates, the international communications training provider that created Zurich Insurance’s e-learning course, English for the Native Speaker.

Native speakers on average speak 250 words per minute, while the average intermediate non-native speaker is comfortable with around 150 words per minute, Dignen explains. “To speak at a slower speed is a behavioural competence that can take six to 12 months to master. Actors learn these skills — to control speech, increase the length of pause,” says Dignen. “You can kind of train by just recording yourself on a mobile phone as you speak to somebody and then play that back and try to control your speech until you’re speaking at 150 words per minute.”

Spanish King Felipe VI listens to a translation at the UN (Credit: Alamy)

Articulation is also important, he says. “Instead of ‘I will’ we tend to say ‘I’ll’ and then in fast speech we don’t even say that we say ‘ull’. Begin to non-contract and say ‘I will’ and ‘I am’ rather than ‘I’ll’ and ‘I’m’ and you can make yourself more intelligible.”

Monolinguals tend to use a communication style that leads “unwittingly to the marginalisation of the non-native speaker in conversation,” he says. “It leads to dominance in terms of talking time with the monolingual speaking more than the non-native speaker.”

“Shutting up and asking more questions is what I counsel native speakers to do. It makes a huge, huge difference.”

It’s a bit of a revelation to many of them that their English isn’t as clear and effective as they think it is

The trend is not to have one or two clear standard Englishes like American English and British English, but to have a lot of different types of English

It’s the native speakers who are the odd ones out

Native speakers on average speak 250 words per minute, while the average intermediate non-native speaker is comfortable with around 150 words per minute,