Gretchen Carlson filed suit against Roger Ailes last summer — and started an avalanche.
Less than 10 months later, two of the most powerful men in media, Roger Ailes and Bill O’Reilly, have been knocked off lofty perches at Fox News.
And the world is suddenly a different place for women who’ve experienced sexual harassment in their workplaces.
.. Ailes vehemently denied the charges, but Carlson, who reportedly had tape-recorded evidence on her side, eventually got a $20 million settlement and a public apology.
.. “Gretchen started the public avalanche, and Megyn continued it internally,” Maynard said.
.. “We found out, in all of this, that if you speak up, there will be action, and that there’s strength in numbers,” longtime media executive Vivian Schiller said Wednesday.
That’s especially true, of course, when one of those employees is a major star.
.. Of course, plenty of women have complained in the past, in companies and organizations, to no avail. Some have been retaliated against. Others ignored, mocked or silenced.
.. Next step, she said: Women should demand that Congress pass the Fairness in Arbitration Act to stop silencing victims of discrimination, harassment and retaliation.
Syrian Foreign Minister Denies Using Chemical Weapons
Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem on Thursday denied his government used chemical weapons on a rebel-held town in the Idlib province.
“I stress to you once again: the Syrian army has not, did not, and will not use this kind of weapons – not just against our own people, but even against the terrorists that are targeting our civilians indiscriminately,” Muallem said at a press conference in Damascus, as reported by Al-Jazeera.
Muallem went on to give the same account of the incident that Russia has insisted upon, claiming that Syrian warplanes “attacked an arms depot belonging to al-Nusra Front,” which is al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria... The Foreign Minister claimed the Nusra Front, ISIS, and other organizations “continue to store chemical weapons in urban and residential areas.”
The Grim Logic Behind Syria’s Chemical Weapons Attack
For years, at least since it began shelling neighborhoods with artillery in 2012, then bombing them from helicopters and later from jets, the Syrian government has adopted a policy of seeking total victory by making life as miserable as possible for anyone living in areas outside its control.
.. Government forces have been herding defeated opponents from across the country into Idlib Province, where the chemical attack occurred. Starved and bombed out of their enclaves, they are bused under lopsided surrender deals to the province, where Qaeda-linked groups maintain a presence the Syrian military uses as an excuse to bomb without regard for the safety of civilians.
.. such extreme tactics aimed to demonstrate the government’s impunity and to demoralize its foes.
.. “Militarily, there is no need,” said Bente Scheller, the Middle East director of the Berlin-based Heinrich Böll Foundation. “But it spreads the message: You are at our mercy. Don’t ask for international law. You see, it doesn’t protect even a child.”
.. Syria’s foreign minister challenged accounts by witnesses, experts and world leaders that his government was involved. “I stress to you once again: The Syrian Army has not, did not and will not use this kind of weapons — not just against our own people, but even against the terrorists that attack our civilians with their mortar rounds,” the minister, Walid al-Moallem, said in Damascus.
.. But the denial, as well as a Russian assertion that a bomb hit a chemical weapons depot controlled by the rebels, seemed perfunctory, almost without regard to the facts
.. recent statements by American officials that it was time to accept the “political reality” of Mr. Assad’s grip on power.
By showing it puts no limits on the tactics it uses, Mr. Yazigi wrote, “the regime shows to the world the West’s impotence and weakness.”
.. After Mr. Trump came into office, proclaiming a wish to work with Russia and maybe even Mr. Assad against the Islamic State, expectations grew that the international community would accept relegitimizing Mr. Assad. And last week came the statements from Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson and the ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki R. Haley, indicating effectively that Washington could accept Mr. Assad remaining in power.
.. On Monday, Western officials were gathering in Brussels to weigh billions of dollars in reconstruction aid to the Assad government
Trump Digs In on Wiretap, No Matter Who Says Differently
The former president denied it. So did the former national intelligence director. The F.B.I. director has said privately that it is false. The speaker of the House and the chairmen of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees — all three Republican — see no indications that it happened.
But President Trump insists he is right. No matter how many officials, even in his own party, dismiss his unsubstantiated claim that President Barack Obama secretly tapped his phones last year, the White House made clear on Thursday that it would stand by the assertion.
.. Much like his longstanding assertion that Mr. Obama was not born in the United States, Mr. Trump dismisses contrary information with undiminished surety.
.. One report that Mr. Spicer read contended that Mr. Obama used Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters, the signals agency known as GCHQ, to spy on Mr. Trump. In effect, the White House was embracing a claim that the United States’ closest ally collaborated with a president against a presidential candidate.
.. Mr. Trump and Mr. Spicer have both noted that in two Twitter posts the president used quotation marks around the phrases “wires tapped” or “wire tapping,” which they said indicated that they were not meant to be taken literally.
“That really covers surveillance and many other things,” Mr. Trump told Tucker Carlson in an interview on Wednesday night on Fox News. “Nobody ever talks about the fact that it was in quotes, but that’s a very important thing.”
.. Mr. Trump also suggested that he had secret evidence no one else had seen. He told Mr. Carlson that he “will be submitting things before the committee very soon
.. Mr. Trump was already angry that two courts had blocked his temporary travel ban even though he had been assured by his staff that his latest one would pass judicial muster.