ANONYMOUS - OUR VOICE

The White Lotus is as clueless about Native Hawaiians as its characters

<div><img class="ff-og-image-inserted" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/W5-QSoJfo_NWgtKJFeIaOOqKCL0=/0x218:1920x1223/fit-in/1200x630/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22778566/brittany_o_grady_kekoa_kekumano.jpg" /></div>
Spoilers follow for the first installment of The White Lotus.
As someone born and raised in Hawaii, there are certain Native Hawaiian folk songs that feel capable of time travel. Vivid melodies that transport me to my father’s white truck as he drives me home from volleyball practice, sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic, his jeans streaked with dry cement. Or waiting backstage to dance at keiki hula competitions, the air humming with tuberose and hibiscus.
Chief among those songs is “Hawai’i Aloha.” Familiar to anyone who’s grown up in Hawaii, the revered Native Hawaiian anthem is sung en masse, our hands interlaced, at the end of concerts and formal gatherings. ʻOli ē! ʻOli ē! A declaration of what it means to be local.
An a cappella version sung by The Rose Ensemble closes the second episode of <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/22608476/old-shyamalan-white-lotus-hbo-mike-white-beach-hawaii-covid-climate">The White Lotus</a>, HBO’s dark ensemble comedy about rich American tourists vacationing at a luxury resort in Hawaii. The limited six-episode series has been critically acclaimed for poking fun at the excesses of the ultrawealthy, its humor gorging on sarcasm and wit.
So when “Hawai’i Aloha” is used to score a poignant montage right before the credits, it felt like the show’s rare attempt at sincerity: The resort manager, a recovering addict played by Murray Bartlett, has a relapse, while a hapless teen (Fred Hechinger) vacationing at the resort witnesses a whale breaching the water, and something in him blooms. E Hawaiʻi e kuʻu one hānau e, the song starts, or “O Hawaiʻi, O sands of my birth.” My reaction was visceral: a gut punch of nostalgia, followed by excitement that a show set in Hawaii was showcasing Hawaiian music.
But by the second verse, I started to squirm. It was an unsettling feeling that followed me throughout the series, whenever I heard “Aloha ‘Oe,” or Kapona Beamer’s “Hukia Mai A,” or “‘Ohi’a Hua Palaku” by The Sunday Manoa. These songs were employed as counterpoints to composer Cristobal Tapia de Veer’s percussive theme song and score, which brilliantly illuminates the social tensions simmering throughout the show. (He’s described his whirring instrumental compositions as “<a href="https://www.vulture.com/article/the-white-lotus-score-theme-composer-interview.html">Hawaiian Hitchcock</a>.”) By contrast, soothing Hawaiian folk songs are employed intermittently as release valves, a way of conjuring the notion of an idyllic Hawaii. But having grown up here, hearing those songs in this context embodied a different sort of tension for me: how Hawaii is often both revered and erased when interpreted through a foreign lens.
Part of my confusion was not always understanding the show’s intentions; in a series that’s purportedly satirizing white privilege, was using Hawaiian music to soundtrack the spiritual epiphanies of entitled tourists meant to be ironic? Or was it intended as a meta-commentary on the continent’s consumption of native land, culture, and people? Is the show that self-aware? If not (and if you have to ask, the answer is probably no), The White Lotus has a different set of problems to contend with, using Hawaiian folk music the way it uses its few Native Hawaiian characters: as hollow plot devices in service of illuminating the inner lives of the series’s mostly white protagonists.
There are two local characters used to bookend the show. The first is a timid White Lotus trainee named Lani (Jolene Purdy), who goes into labor in the middle of her first shift; she doesn’t want to leave work because she needs the money. After giving birth in the hotel manager’s office, she disappears, but the disruption accomplishes a crucial plot point — sending her boss (Bartlett) into a drug-fueled bender. The second is a hunky bellhop and luau performer named Kai (Kekoa Kekumano), who starts a fling with a guest named Paula (Brittany O’Grady). Their relationship is an opportunity for the show to explore issues of Hawaii’s colonization, which it does but only tepidly, via one stilted conversation that feels ham-fisted next to the rest of the show’s dialogue.
Kai and Paula’s chat happens on the beach at dusk, their faces blanketed in shadows, just after the pair have emerged, passionately, from the ocean. We’re four episodes in, but it’s the first time we really hear Kai speak, and he’s feeling nostalgic. He tells Paula about his childhood spent picking seashells, feeding pigs, and pulling taro — a Hawaiian 101 pastiche so basic, I half expected him to break into a spontaneous fire dance. Paula giggles: “You’re just so real.”
Somehow, the conversation pivots to a vague CliffsNotes synopsis of how Hawaiian land was stolen. Kai uses Hawaiian words like lo’i and konohiki, as if Paula knows what they mean. King Kamehameha is mentioned, stripped of any context. Kai is a clumsy and lazy symbol of colonialism in a moment that could have taken greater care to humanize what it means to be Native Hawaiian living in modern Hawaii.
Elsewhere, locals appear as exotic fodder and naive natives to further white characters’ enlightenment. Take one unbelievable scene where Hechinger’s character, Quinn, a 16-year-old gamer who’s developing a spiritual relationship with nature, watches a group of locals paddling in their canoe. “Aloha ’Oe,” the popular Hawaiian anthem written by Queen Liliʻuokalani, soundtracks his awe.
The next day, Quinn approaches the five paddlers who — as welcoming natives stereotypically do — invite him into the canoe. “Man, you one slow haole,” teases one in his pidgin accent, just so you know he’s really local, as Quinn struggles to board. I don’t know if the show realizes it, but the scene — mimicking every corny cinematic depiction of Hawaii, from North Shore to 50 First Dates — is one of The White Lotus’s best claims to satire.
Compared with the tourists, whose lives we follow with intense scrutiny, locals in The White Lotus are reduced to bit parts. This disparity mirrors the current realities faced by Hawaii residents, many of whom feel they are being treated secondary to the needs of visitors. In July, a drought on Maui led to water shortages for upcountry Maui residents, whom county officials threatened with a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/08/03/maui-hawaii-water-shortage/">$500 fine</a> for using water for nonessential activities, like watering their lawns; meanwhile, water usage at resorts and hotels remained unchecked.
Since opening back up to tourism, Covid-19 cases throughout Hawaii have skyrocketed. A month ago, the state was averaging 50 new cases per day, but with tourists visiting at pre-pandemic numbers, that number has <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html">jumped to 541</a>. Hotels are <a href="https://www.civilbeat.org/2021/08/__trashed-23/">once again at capacity</a>, leaving local Covid patients without rooms in which to quarantine.
It’s not that The White Lotus isn’t hilariously successful at illustrating the evils of white privilege and consumption. When O’Grady’s character expresses disgust at having to watch native Hawaiian dancers perform on land that was stolen from them, she’s met with a rich, white shrug. “Obviously, imperialism was bad,” responds Steve Zahn’s character, a sad-sack dad, over dinner. “But it’s humanity. Welcome to history. Welcome to America.” By scraping at imperialism, The White Lotus mimes a moral center but never engages the topic beyond mere gesture. How could it, when the locals and Kānaka Maoli are depicted in only a single dimension?
Showrunner Mike White is certainly aware of the complicated social dynamics at play in a place like Hawaii. After making Enlightened, the cult-favorite HBO show featuring Laura Dern, he bought a house in Hanalei, Kauai. As he recently told <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-interview/mike-white-on-money-status-and-appearing-on-survivor">the New Yorker</a>:
<blockquote>
Mark Zuckerberg has a place there. And I’d be, like, Ugh, those guys. They own the world! And then I was, like, I am that guy. The people who live there [in Hanalei] and have lived there their whole lives, they’re all being displaced. And it’s a small enough place that you can kind of hold it all in your head in a way that you can’t in a place like L.A. It’s a complex place, and I didn’t feel like I could tell the story of the native Hawaiians and their struggles to fight some of their battles, but I felt like I could kind of come at it from the way I experienced it.
</blockquote>
That experience — an esteemed, white Hollywood showrunner living part time in Hawaii — feels indicative of The White Lotus’s point of view. It’s good to know your limits, but how successful can a piece of satire be if it replicates the very power structures it purports to satirize? There isn’t a shortage of prestige television shows that take privilege as its muse. But imagine if more took seriously those who bear the brunt of that privilege.
Mitchell Kuga is a freelance writer living in Honolulu.
 
 
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/first-person/22621960/white-lotus-native-hawaiians-hbo">https://www.vox.com/first-person/22621960/white-lotus-native-hawaiians-hbo</a>

vox The White Lotus is as clueless about Native Hawaiians as its characters

Spoilers follow for the first installment of The White Lotus. As someone born and raised in Hawaii, there are certain Native Hawaiian folk...

Taliban Want Peaceful Transfer Of Power In Afghanistan In "Next Few Days"

<div class="ins_instory_dv">
<div class="ins_instory_dv_cont"><img alt="Taliban Want Peaceful Transfer Of Power In Afghanistan In 'Next Few Days'" src="https://c.ndtvimg.com/2021-08/lr8c9mbo_taliban-2-afp_625x300_14_August_21.jpg" title="Taliban Want Peaceful Transfer Of Power In Afghanistan In 'Next Few Days'" /></div>
Spokesperson Suhail Shaheen said Taliban will seek a "new chapter" of tolerance.
</div>
The Taliban want to take control of Afghanistan "in the next few days", a spokesman for the group told the BBC Sunday, as their fighters encircled the capital.
"In next few days, we want a peaceful transfer," Suhail Shaheen, based in Qatar as part of the group's negotiating team, told the BBC.
Suhail Shaheen laid out the policies of the Taliban ahead of an expected power transfer that would re-install the hardline Islamic group two decades after US-led forces toppled them in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks.
"We want an inclusive Islamic government... that means all Afghans will be part of that government," Suhail Shaheen said.
"We will see that in the future as the peaceful transfer is taking place."
He also said foreign embassies and workers would not be targeted by the group's fighters and they should remain in the country.
"There will be no risk to diplomats, NGOs, to anyone. All should continue their work as they were continuing in the past. They won't harm them, they should remain."
Rebuffing fears the country would be plunged back to the dark days of the group's ultra-conservative version of Islamic law, Suhail Shaheen said the Taliban will instead seek a "new chapter" of tolerance.
"We want to work with any Afghan, we want to open a new chapter of peace, tolerance, peaceful coexistence and national unity for the country and for the people of Afghanistan," he said.
But many officials, soldiers and police have surrendered or abandoned their posts, fearing reprisals against anyone suspected of working with the Western-backed government or Western forces.
Suhail Shaheen said that would not happen. "We reassure that there is no revenge on anyone. Any case will be investigated."
The Doha-based spokesman said the group would also review its relationship with the United States.
"Our relationship was in the past," he said. "In future, if it will touch our agenda no more, it will be a new chapter of cooperation."
 
 
source <a href="https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/taliban-want-peaceful-transfer-of-power-in-afghanistan-in-next-few-days-2511025">https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/taliban-want-peaceful-transfer-of-power-in-afghanistan-in-next-few-days-2511025</a>

news world Taliban Want Peaceful Transfer Of Power In Afghanistan In "Next Few Days"

Spokesperson Suhail Shaheen said Taliban will seek a "new chapter" of tolerance. The Taliban want to take control of Afghanist...

Emergency United Nations Meeting On Afghanistan Planned, Says Russia

<div class="ins_instory_dv">
<div class="ins_instory_dv_cont"><img alt="Emergency United Nations Meeting On Afghanistan Planned, Says Russia" src="https://c.ndtvimg.com/2021-08/8s9lu1n_taliban-afp_625x300_15_August_21.jpg" title="Emergency United Nations Meeting On Afghanistan Planned, Says Russia" /></div>
The Taliban is on the brink of a complete military takeover of Afghanistan.
</div>
Moscow:
Russia is working with other countries to hold an emergency UN Security Council meeting on Afghanistan as the Taliban completes its military takeover of the country, foreign ministry official Zamir Kabulov told Russian news agencies.
"We are working on this," Mr Kabulov said, adding that the meeting will take place.
Russia is one of five permanent members of the UN Security Council, along with the United States, Britain, France, and China.
Mr Kabulov also said Moscow does not plan to evacuate its embassy in Kabul, saying the Taliban had offered Russia and other countries -- which he did not name -- security assurances for their missions in Afghanistan.
Leonid Slutsky, foreign affairs chief in the lower house of the Russian parliament, said the situation in Afghanistan required the "immediate intervention" of the UN Security Council.
"It is important to prevent a new humanitarian catastrophe," he said, according to the RIA Novosti news agency.
The US and other countries rushed to evacuate their citizens from the capital as Taliban fighters stood on the outskirts of Kabul on Sunday.
The Taliban is on the brink of a complete military takeover of Afghanistan. The group's spokesman said the fighters had been ordered not to enter the city.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
 
 
source <a href="https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/emergency-united-nations-meeting-on-afghanistan-planned-says-russia-2511000">https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/emergency-united-nations-meeting-on-afghanistan-planned-says-russia-2511000</a>

news world Emergency United Nations Meeting On Afghanistan Planned, Says Russia

The Taliban is on the brink of a complete military takeover of Afghanistan. Moscow: Russia is working with other countries to hold an e...

Russian President Vladimir Putin Greets India On 75th Independence Day

<div class="ins_instory_dv">
<div class="ins_instory_dv_cont"><img alt="Russian President Vladimir Putin Greets India On 75th Independence Day" src="https://c.ndtvimg.com/2021-06/k0tmcma_russian-president-vladimir-putin650_625x300_16_June_21.jpg" title="Russian President Vladimir Putin Greets India On 75th Independence Day" /></div>
Russian President Vladimir Putin extended warm greetings on 75th Independence Day. (File)
</div>
Moscow:
Russian President Vladimir Putin extended his warm greetings to Indian President Ram Nath Kovind and Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the occasion of the 75th Independence Day, stating that further enhancement of Russian-Indian ties was in the interests of both nations.
"Kindly accept cordial congratulations on #Independence Day. The success achieved by #India in economic, social, other spheres is widely acknowledged. India rightfully enjoys high prestige in the global arena, plays important role in solving topical issues of the international agenda," Putin said in his congratulatory message on Sunday.
"We appreciate Russia-India relations of privileged strategic partnership. I''m convinced, further enhancement of the whole range of constructive ties entirely meets interests of our peoples and goes within course of strengthening stability and security on regional and global level," he added.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi hoisted the national flag and delivered the customary address to the nation from the ramparts of the Red Fort in New Delhi today.
Greetings have poured from all across the world wishing India on its 75th Independence Day.
Earlier, US President Joe Biden extended wishes to India saying that New Delhi and Washington must show the world that the "two great and diverse democracies" can deliver for people everywhere.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
 
 
source <a href="https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/russian-president-vladimir-putin-greets-india-on-75th-independence-day-2510924">https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/russian-president-vladimir-putin-greets-india-on-75th-independence-day-2510924</a>

news world Russian President Vladimir Putin Greets India On 75th Independence Day

Russian President Vladimir Putin extended warm greetings on 75th Independence Day. (File) Moscow: Russian President Vladimir Putin exte...

Taliban Enter Kabul, President Ashraf Ghani To Step Down, Say Reports

<div><img class="ff-og-image-inserted" src="https://c.ndtvimg.com/2021-08/et069smg_taliban-afp_625x300_15_August_21.jpg" /></div>
<div class="ins_instory_dv">
Taliban have captured several cities and provincial capitals in Afghanistan.
</div>
Kabul:
Taliban terrorists entered Afghanistan's capital Kabul today as the United States evacuated diplomats from its embassy by helicopter and a government minister said power would be handed over to an interim administration. A senior interior ministry official told Reuters the Taliban rebels were coming "from all sides" into the capital but gave no further details. There were no reports of fighting.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a statement that the group was in talks with the government for a peaceful surrender of Kabul.
"Taliban fighters are to be on standby on all entrances of Kabul until a peaceful and satisfactory transfer of power is agreed," the statement said. The entry into the capital caps a lightning advance by Taliban who were ousted from Kabul 20 years ago by the United States after the September 11 attacks
The collapse of the Afghan government defence has stunned diplomats -- just last week, a US intelligence estimate said Kabul could hold out for at least three months.
There was no immediate word on the situation from President Ashraf Ghani, who said on Saturday he was in urgent consultations with local leaders and international partners on the situation. Reports said he was going to step down and make way for a Taliban commander to take over.
Power would be handed over to a transitional administration, the government's acting interior minister, Abdul Sattar Mirzakawal, said in a tweet on the Tolo news channel. "There won't be an attack on the city, it is agreed that there will be a peaceful handover," he said without elaborating.
The head of the Taliban's political bureau, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, is heading to Kabul from Doha, a Taliban source in the Qatari capital said. A tweet from the Afghan presidential palace account said firing had been heard at a number of points around Kabul but that security forces, in coordination with international partners, had control of the city. Many of Kabul's streets were choked by cars and people either trying to rush home or reach the airport, residents said. "Some people have left their keys in the car and have started walking to the airport," one resident told Reuters by phone.
Another said: "People are all going home in fear of fighting." Afghans have fled the provinces to enter Kabul in recent days, fearing a return to hardline Islamist rule.
Early on Sunday, refugees from Taliban-controlled provinces were seen unloading belongings from taxis and families stood outside embassy gates, while the city's downtown was packed with people stocking up on supplies.
CHOPPERS AT EMBASSY
US officials said diplomats were being ferried by helicopters to the airport from its embassy in the fortified Wazir Akbar Khan district. More American troops were being sent to help in the evacuations after the Taliban's surge brought the Islamist group to Kabul in a matter of days. "Core" US team members were working from the Kabul airport, a US official said, while a NATO official said several EU staff had moved to a safer, undisclosed location in the capital. Earlier on Sunday, the terrorists captured the eastern city of Jalalabad without a fight, giving them control of one of the main highways into landlocked Afghanistan.
They also took over the nearby Torkham border post with Pakistan, leaving Kabul airport the only way out of Afghanistan that is still in government hands. "There are no clashes taking place right now in Jalalabad because the governor has surrendered to the Taliban," a Jalalabad-based Afghan official told Reuters. "Allowing passage to the Taliban was the only way to save civilian lives."
After U.S.-led forces withdrew the bulk of the their remaining troops in the last month, the Taliban campaign accelerated as the Afghan military's defences appeared to collapse
President Joe Biden on Saturday authorised the deployment of 5,000 US troops to help evacuate citizens and ensure an "orderly and safe" drawdown of military personnel.
A US defence official said that included 1,000 newly approved troops from the 82nd Airborne Division.
POPULARLY ACCEPTED
In a statement late on Saturday, the Taliban said its rapid gains showed it was popularly accepted by the Afghan people and reassured both Afghans and foreigners that they would be safe.The Islamic Emirate, as the Taliban calls itself, "will, as always, protect their life, property and honour, and create a peaceful and secure environment for its beloved nation," it said, adding that diplomats and aid workers would also face no problems. Mr Biden said his administration had told Taliban officials in talks in Qatar that any action that put US personnel at risk "will be met with a swift and strong US military response." He has faced rising domestic criticism as the Taliban have taken city after city far more quickly than predicted. The US president has stuck to a plan, initiated by his Republican predecessor, Donald Trump, to end the US military mission in Afghanistan by August 31. Mr Biden said it is up to the Afghan military to hold its own territory.
"An endless American presence in the middle of another country's civil conflict was not acceptable to me," Mr Biden said on Saturday. Qatar, which has been hosting so-far inconclusive peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban, said it had urged the terrorists to cease fire.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
 
 
source <a href="https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/taliban-enter-afghan-capital-kabul-news-agency-afp-2510885">https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/taliban-enter-afghan-capital-kabul-news-agency-afp-2510885</a>

news world Taliban Enter Kabul, President Ashraf Ghani To Step Down, Say Reports

Taliban have captured several cities and provincial capitals in Afghanistan. Kabul: Taliban terrorists entered Afghanistan's capita...

At Least 20 Dead, Dozens Injured In Lebanon Fuel Tanker Explosion

<div class="ins_instory_dv">
<div class="ins_instory_dv_cont"><img alt="At Least 20 Dead, Dozens Injured In Lebanon Fuel Tanker Explosion" src="https://c.ndtvimg.com/2021-08/oe8plk08_lebanon-fuel-tanker-explosion650_625x300_15_August_21.jpg" title="At Least 20 Dead, Dozens Injured In Lebanon Fuel Tanker Explosion" /></div>
Videos on social media purportedly from the blast showed a large fire consuming metal scraps.
</div>
Beirut:
At least 20 people were killed and nearly 80 others wounded when a fuel tanker exploded in Lebanon's northern region of Akkar, the Red Cross and state media said on Sunday.
The tragedy heaped new misery on a country already suffering from an economic crisis and severe fuel shortages that have crippled hospitals and caused long power cuts.
"Our teams have transported 20 dead bodies ... from the fuel tanker explosion in #AKKAR to hospitals in the area," the Lebanese Red Cross said on Twitter.
It added that 79 other people were injured.
The official National News Agency said that a container of fuel that the army had confiscated had exploded.
It said the explosion took place following scuffles between "residents that gathered around the container to fill up gasoline" overnight.
The agency added that the army had left the area before the fight and the explosion.
Yassine Metlej, an employee at an Akkar hospital, said that the facility had received at least seven corpses and dozens of burn victims.
"The corpses are so charred that we can't identify them," he told AFP.
"Some have lost their faces, others their arms."
He said the hospital had to turn away most of the wounded because it is unable to treat severe burns.
Videos on social media purportedly from the blast showed a large fire consuming metal scraps.
AFP could not independently verify the authenticity of the footage.
'Burns'
An employee at another hospital who asked to be identified only as Mohammad said more than 30 wounded people had come to the facility.
"They all have burns," he said, adding that many were turned away because the hospital is not equipped to treat such cases.
Others found care more than 25 kilometres (16 miles) away at the Al-Salam hospital in the northern city of Tripoli, the only facility in the region able to handle burn patients.
Lebanon, hit by a financial crisis branded by the World Bank as one of the planet's worst since the 1850s, has been grappling with soaring poverty, a plummeting currency and dire fuel shortages.
The Lebanese army on Saturday said it seized thousands of litres of gasoline and diesel that distributors were stockpiling at stations across the country.
Fuel shortages have left many with just two hours of electricity a day, while several hospitals have recently warned they may have to close due to power outages.
Political crisis
The Akkar explosion comes less than two weeks after Lebanon marked the first anniversary of a blast at the Beirut port last summer that killed more than 200 people.
On August 4, 2020, a haphazardly stored stock of ammonium nitrate fertiliser exploded and left swathes of the capital looking like a war zone.
It was one of history's largest non-nuclear explosions.
In the year since, no officials have been held to account for that blast.
Former prime minister Saad Hariri drew a link between the Akkar and Beirut explosions in a statement shared on Twitter.
"The Akkar massacre is not different from the port massacre," he said.
"If this was a country that respects its people, its officials would resign, from the president to the very last person responsible for this neglect."
Despite the economic crisis, political wrangling has delayed the formation of a new government after the last cabinet resigned in the wake of the port blast.
International donors have pledged hundreds of millions of dollars in humanitarian aid to Lebanon.
But the money is conditional on the formation of a new government prepared to spearhead reforms, and on the resumption of talks with the International Monetary Fund.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
 
 
source <a href="https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/at-least-20-dead-dozens-injured-in-lebanon-fuel-tanker-explosion-2510783">https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/at-least-20-dead-dozens-injured-in-lebanon-fuel-tanker-explosion-2510783</a>

news world At Least 20 Dead, Dozens Injured In Lebanon Fuel Tanker Explosion

Videos on social media purportedly from the blast showed a large fire consuming metal scraps. Beirut: At least 20 people were killed an...