++Why it’s so appealing to use pop psychology terms — and when to stop. +
++In the therapy room, licensed marriage and family therapist Moe Ari Brown has recently been in the business of definitions. A client might say “I have the worst relationship with my mother. She’s a total narcissist,” to which Brown would invite the client to elaborate on what the term “narcissist” means to them. Usually, the client describes a person who may be selfish or self-involved, but not someone who demonstrates the clinical definition of narcissistic personality disorder, marked by “a pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and lack of empathy,” according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Brown then emphasizes the differences between a difficult family member and using a mental health diagnosis in order to judge someone, encouraging the client to instead use more specific language to describe the relationship. +
++“Narcissist” is just one term clients are using colloquially with friends and therapists. Mental health professionals recoil at the incorrect usage of “trauma,” “gaslighting,” “boundaries,” “trigger” — and even manufactured labels, like “mother wound,” says Jacquelyn Tenaglia, a licensed mental health counselor. (“It’s referring to trauma from one’s mother, is my understanding,” she says. “Pop psychology sometimes lacks a clear definition.”) +
++Terms ordinarily confined to psychological settings have increasingly made their way into the mainstream. As more people sought out mental health treatment, especially during the height of the pandemic, and more therapists shared psychological concepts on social media, a greater portion of society writ large was introduced to therapy vernacular. Dubbed therapy-speak, the phenomenon has introduced new vocabulary to the masses, but many definitions have become muddled in the process. While these terms can prove validating for people who can now put a name to an experience, therapy-speak can eliminate all nuance from a conversation. In calling your mother a narcissist when she isn’t, for example, you might be inadvertently dismissing other important aspects of your relationship that don’t clearly map to that definition. As a result, your relationship may be at a standstill, with neither party knowing how to make progress to mend it. +
++Life is not as straightforward as therapy-speak purports. “There are gradations of the human experience,” says therapist Israa Nasir, and therapy-speak terms are often the most extreme ways of describing those experiences. A friend can be selfish and not a narcissist. You can feel stressed without experiencing trauma. A partner can lie without gaslighting. Instead, mental health professionals urge, you should embrace nuance and avoid pathologizing normal — albeit annoying or painful — behavior. +
++Why therapy-speak is so alluring +
++The prevalence of therapy terms has been a net positive in the normalization of mental health, Nasir says. As more mental health vocabulary became mainstream, people were able to name their experiences in concrete terms. However, the context of the vernacular has shifted. Like most terms that hit the cultural zeitgeist, the definitions of therapy-speak words morph as they’re passed through the lexicon. +
++Through an extended game of telephone, the word “trauma,” for example, has practically shifted from “an emotional response to a terrible event like an accident, rape, or natural disaster” to an umbrella term for all things upsetting, according to Tenaglia. In reality, traumatic events are often severe, like abuse or mass shootings. People encounter stressful situations regularly — and those experiences shouldn’t be discounted — but there are other ways to describe a tense relationship with the in-laws instead of the word “trauma.” “I’ve given the example of arriving late to a job interview and feeling flustered because there was traffic,” Tenaglia says. “That is a stress response. It’s one that would affect you at a physiological level. But it’s not a trauma response unless you were having nightmares from it, flashbacks. So there is a difference there. We can have just normal bodily responses without it being considered trauma.” +
++Therapy-speak works as a shortcut for a word that can have a kaleidoscope of meanings, says Carolina Bandinelli, an associate professor in media and creative industries at the University of Warwick. However, tagging people as “toxic,” for instance, is not productive, she says, because there is no dialogue, no interrogation of what “toxic” means or how it presents in a person or situation. Beyond the initial naming and identification of a person or experience, it’s crucial to consider your motivations in utilizing that label. +
++Armed with a new vocabulary, people become attached to terms that encapsulate certain events and people, to varying degrees, in order to bolster an argument or justify an experience. Having common language to describe a difficult situation can help people more effectively communicate their concerns and garner support, but these terms can just as easily be weaponized. Did you accuse your partner of gaslighting because they manipulated facts, leading you to question your reality, or because you wanted to get the last word? “There’s the people who are weaponizing these terms within personal relationships,” Nasir says, “not necessarily always maliciously, but as a way to ‘win’ the argument, as a way to make their point.” +
++Consider your intention when using therapy-speak +
++In order to course-correct when it comes to therapy-speak, therapists say we need to reflect on our past uses of these terms. Think about a recent time you used therapy-speak. What was your intention? What message did you want to convey? Why are you drawn to intense emotional descriptors? Often, people use a word like “trauma” when they are having a stress response, Tenaglia says. Or “gaslighting” is used to describe a disagreement, Nasir says. Venture beyond the emotional shorthand these words provide to uncover the true source of your discomfort. “Being able to identify an emotion is a really important part of us being able to regulate it,” Nasir says. “There’s a difference between someone making a mistake and somebody intentionally doing wrong.” +
++Interrogate the behaviors you are inclined to deem “toxic” or “narcissistic,” Bandinelli says, to explain why you used that phrase and why you might use it again in the future. “Why am I saying that this is toxic?” she says. “Is it because it hurts me? And what kind of hurt is it?” Again, it’s possible to accept that a person inflicted emotional pain without pathologizing their actions. +
++If you’ve ever labeled another person with therapy-speak, think about whether you’ve ever acted in a similar way, Bandinelli says. Is canceling plans at the last minute boundary-setting when you do it but narcissistic when done by someone else? +
++Perhaps you are accustomed to receiving validation when describing disagreements or stressors in an extreme way, Tenaglia says. “If so, what does that say about our support system,” she says, “and our needs?” You may find therapy a more constructive place to seek emotional aid. +
++Use more words, not fewer, to describe a situation +
++While therapy-speak isn’t inherently bad, Tenaglia says, the vernacular is misused. We should take care to learn what certain words mean and utilize specific language for when these phrases don’t accurately apply. For example, “trauma bonding” does not mean bonding over a shared difficult experience; it is when a person who was abused feels an emotional connection to their abuser. +
++Instead of defaulting to therapy-speak, Brown suggests using more words to describe your experience. “A lot of times we’re using terms to summarize what we need to in order to have a global understanding of something,” he says, “so we’ll say gaslighting because we think everybody will get what that means.” In reality, your perception of gaslighting might differ from another’s. When clients use therapy-speak, Brown asks them to describe the event in detail. Instead of one or two words, explain the situation and how you feel in a few sentences. “If you’re wanting to call someone a narcissist,” Brown says, “what is it that I mean? I’m meaning that I experienced them as self-important and not really taking the time to notice other people’s needs. It’s okay to say that because that really clearly expresses what you’re thinking.” +
++Save therapy-speak for therapy +
++Therapy-speak is best reserved for the context of therapy where a professional can correct misinterpretations and ask for elaboration. Overuse of these terms can blunt their significance and minimize the experience of someone who has actually dealt with a person with narcissistic personality disorder, for example. For this reason, Brown suggests limiting your use of popular mental health terms outside of a counseling setting. “Most people are not experiencing gaslighting day-to-day, unless they’re in a relationship where that really is happening,” he says. “Again, therapy is a good context to really explore what’s happening there.” +
++Identify your emotions, take the space to adequately describe them, and validate your experience. What you’re feeling is real; it just might not necessarily be trauma. +
++A few hundred thousand dollars can buy citizenship in some very pretty places. +
++After the nadir of Covid travel restrictions, summer travel season is in full swing. Air travel is projected to exceed pre-pandemic levels, according to the Transportation Security Administration. People are dusting off their passports, or waiting weeks to get them renewed, and applying for the visas they need for their destinations. International vacations take planning, even more so now. While the world has mostly opened back up since lockdowns, most nations have strict limits on how long noncitizens can visit. +
++How easily you can move around the world, and how long you get to stay in your tropical destination of choice, depends entirely on your passport. That’s a more fraught geopolitical issue than you might realize — and citizens of rich Western nations usually come out on top. +
++The ultrarich are collecting not one, but sometimes two or three passports and multiple citizenships, and all the privileges they confer. These passports, often issued by nations particularly welcoming of cash, can be a kind of collector’s item, a status symbol luxury good to show off at bougie soirees. It also cracks open the door to a possible escape, should things go south for the holder in their personal life or in their country of origin. +
++All it requires is money — anywhere from $100,000 on the low end to more than $1 million on the high end, invested in property or a public good — plus background checks and a short wait for approval. Called “golden” passports, they don’t even actually require the wealthy to reside in the places where they hold citizenship. +
++Ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt applied for Cyprus’s citizenship-by-investment program a few years ago, allowing him to travel to the European Union amid Covid lockdowns. Harlan Crow, the billionaire GOP donor with a habit of showering Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas with expensive, undisclosed gifts, procured citizenship to the Caribbean island of Saint Kitts and Nevis in 2012. A heap of Russian oligarchs have purchased passports, often to Cyprus, though many have been revoked since the outbreak of the Ukraine-Russia war. Applicants invest money in the nation’s real estate industry, or a government program, philanthropy, or some other sector, in exchange for the government’s consideration of whether their significant contribution to the nation’s economy merits citizenship, not to mention a new passport. +
++Sometimes, wealthy people of some renown don’t even have to apply through a formal program: Snapchat founder Evan Spiegel gained French citizenship in 2018 for an exceptional contribution to the nation (it’s unclear what exactly that contribution was). Venture capitalist Peter Thiel was granted New Zealand citizenship in 2011 under similar “exceptional circumstances,” because of “his skills as an entrepreneur and his philanthropy,” according to government documents. Citizenship granted to individuals for extraordinary achievement or contribution to a country, or to a specific field, is doled out at the government’s discretion — a nation can give citizenship to anyone it wants, after all — but they are often handed out to celebrities or professional athletes. Established citizenship-by-investment programs, on the other hand, lay out a clear blueprint for how to become a citizen of a nation despite having no prior ties. +
++“The gold standard is to try to have unfettered access to the EU and Schengen countries,” says Michael Kosnitzky, a family office attorney at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman who has helped many of his high-net-worth clients obtain second, and even third, citizenships. +
++To the wealthy, that unfettered access is well worth the money. They don’t have to plan their escapes; golden passports allow them to jet around the world at the drop of a hat, and to be treated as citizens, not just visitors. Some might want unrestricted entry into a country because they intend to live there, or have family there. For others, there’s another kind of freedom — an escape route from criminal allegations and prosecution. Citizenship by investment offers the wealthy a wide range of movement — and potential legal protections — that the rest of us don’t have. For nations that are developing or rebounding from Covid, such programs are an easy way to boost government coffers. +
++How it works +
++About 22 countries have a legal provision in place that would allow citizenship by investment, according to Kristin Surak, a political sociologist at the London School of Economics, whose forthcoming book The Golden Passport: Global Mobility for Millionaires covers eight years’ worth of research across more than a dozen countries. “Even Russia has one,” says Surak. +
++The basic idea is that a person who makes a significant investment in a nation can earn the privilege of citizenship, and pay-to-play citizenship is a game that a growing number of wealthy Americans are getting in on. The US has no policy limiting dual citizenships — as long as the other country allows it, an American can theoretically hold as many passports as they want. +
++Within the countries willing to offer dual citizenship by investment, just a handful dominate the market, often the programs that would grant freer movement around Europe. Malta, a picturesque archipelago off the coast of Italy, has long been the crowd favorite, but it’s one of the most expensive, requiring investments, charitable donations, and property purchases totaling well over 1 million euros. Cyprus was also once high on the list, but its citizenship-by-investment program was shut down after an Al Jazeera investigation revealed that it had given passports to criminals. +
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++“I still like Malta, but there are other countries now — Slovenia, Slovakia, Hungary, and my personal favorite, Austria,” said Kosnitzky. Unlike many similar programs, Austria’s doesn’t specify an amount of investment; applicants simply can make significant contributions to charity or research and obtain citizenship. +
++Turkey is hot right now; its CBI program grew due to increasing unrest in the Middle East and Russia. “It’s only $250,000,” says Surak. “Turkey is still naturalizing Russians, so now there’s huge Russian demand.” +
++These unusual pathways to citizenship are fairly recent, popping up in the 2000s, according to Surak. Often, golden passports are a family affair that includes spouses and children. Annually, says Surak, about 50,000 people (including family members of applicants) are approved for citizenship through investment programs. (A similar phenomenon, known as “golden visas,” allows people long-term residency by investment but not citizenship.) +
++One of the hallmarks of an attractive citizenship-by-investment program is that it requires little to no physical presence. Good CBI programs are also fairly speedy — getting a Maltese passport can take 12 to 18 months, which is practically a blink of an eye, considering the typical protracted process of naturalization. The US naturalization process takes 18 to 24 months, but the prerequisite is permanent residency for five years. +
++Some of the modern “passports for sale” programs were established decades ago — Saint Kitts started its program in 1984, says Surak, right after independence from Britain. In the aftermath of decolonization, these small nations were often cash-strapped. “Some of them have populations of 100,000,” Surak says. “It’s really hard to run a full country of 100,000 people, especially when you have to import everything and you don’t have a lot of natural resources.” The early programs were less stable than the CBI schemes seen today; governments could simply cancel the passports they had given out. From the mid-2000s onward, according to Surak, private firms began pitching governments to create more permanent, stable programs that ensured not just passports but citizenship. +
++For some nations, money from citizenship investments make up a hefty bulk of their economy: In the lush Caribbean nation of Saint Kitts, Surak’s research has found, CBI makes up over 40 percent of its GDP. Covid, which hit the tourism industry hard, has only exacerbated these nations’ pursuit of investment. +
++Once a person becomes a citizen, it’s hard to get kicked out, Surak says. That’s why golden passports are attractive for rich people who are looking for possible exits in case their current homes become politically unstable (or unfriendly toward the rich), or if they fear that legal action might be taken against them. An extra citizenship can be a layer of protection. It’s also why some critics, including the European Commission, have been vehemently opposed to golden passports. Critics argue that the risk of providing a place of escape, a hidey hole, to criminals is just too high. +
++Why rich people — and, increasingly, rich Americans — want more passports +
++Maybe the question of why golden passports are alluring to the wealthy (and to everyone else) is a no-brainer — it provides greater mobility. Beneath this broad umbrella there are distinct motivations at play, complicating the debate around whether citizenship should be “for sale.” +
++For some clients, Kosnitzky said, the decision to obtain another passport is informed by a history of family members who were victims of pogroms and genocide. “They want to have flexibility, to not be limited by a US passport,” says Kosnitzky, if they someday face a repressive government. +
++“They may want to expatriate at some point in the future,” says Kosnitzky, “or they want to maintain flexibility for future generations to do so.” Some may want to expatriate, pay a US exit tax, and then be able to pay a much lower income tax rate in another country where they are a resident, or potentially avoid US estate taxes. +
++Others may want to avoid “a further demonization of the ultra-wealthy,” Kosnitzky continues. For example: wealth taxes, which have increasing bipartisan support in the US. +
++A lot of the growing American interest in multiple citizenships is “just paranoia,” says Surak. “It’s just hedging against hedging against hedging.” +
++But even without political or financial motives, second citizenships are attractive. US passport holders can travel to 185 countries visa-free, according to Henley & Partners’ current passport ranking. That’s nothing to sniff at, but a Singaporean citizen can enter 194 nations without needing a visa. +
++Malta’s program has a higher minimum investment amount than others because it unlocks most of Europe. Without an EU passport, Americans are limited to 90-day visits to the EU over a six-month period. The pandemic lockdowns only heightened the value of multiple passports among those who can afford it; a US passport is powerful, but not powerful enough to evade Covid travel restrictions. +
++Tarnished gold? +
++The European Commission is stridently opposed to such programs, arguing that they are a security risk to the EU because they allow in anyone with enough money, even if they have no “genuine link” to EU nations. Last March, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the commission urged European nations to stop selling citizenship to investors, particularly to Russian applicants. In September 2022, it referred Malta to the EU’s Court of Justice under the argument that its program was not compatible with member states’ principle of “sincere cooperation.” A judgment has not been made, but the EU’s calls are being heard. Bulgaria ended its investor citizenship program last spring; earlier this year, Ireland and Portugal announced they would be scrapping their popular golden visa programs. +
++Other nations have also expressed concerns over investor passports and visas. “In the US, Canada [and] Australia, the key concerns are tax evasion, corruption, avoidance of extradition, and security matters,” Jelena Džankić, a professor at the European University Institute and an expert in citizenship and migration, told Vox in an email. “In the EU, we can see these concerns, too, and on top of them — money laundering and undue political influence.” +
++There’s a seedy underbelly to the enterprise; Kosnitzky notes that wealthy Americans who pursue Caribbean passports, for example, may be doing so because they fear their US passports could be revoked — whether it’s because they owe a serious amount in taxes or are guilty of a crime. +
++A 2020 leak of government documents also revealed that top Cypriot politicians had helped criminals, including people convicted of fraud and money laundering, buy citizenship to the island nation. The leak led to the shuttering of Cyprus’s CBI program. In 2018, journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia was killed while investigating possible corruption in Malta’s golden passport program. Prime Minister Joseph Muscat stepped down in the fallout of her death. Beyond allegations that some of these programs allow criminals and corrupt individuals to obtain the rights and privileges of citizenship, the sale of passports and visas can have other undesirable consequences: In Portugal, golden visas contributed to the unaffordable rise of real estate prices. +
++Now the industry is moving toward the Middle East, Džankić says. “Egypt has had this scheme since 2020, but recently relaxed the conditions for obtaining citizenship; Jordan has been running a CBI since 2018. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain all run recent residency-by-investment schemes,” she says. +
++Surak acknowledges that golden passports are a highly politicized issue — but contends that many of the smallest nations offering citizenship by investment are doing so because they really need the money. +
++The very fact that being a rich citizen of a certain country means someone can have far greater freedom of movement than a poorer citizen of another nation is because our geopolitical environment has advantaged mostly wealthy white nations. In other words, says Surak, “Check your passport privilege.” +
++
++Inflation in Europe and the United Kingdom is prompting a wave of labor action across the continent. +
++In April, Germany’s Berlin Brandenburg Airport canceled all departing flights because of a work stoppage among security workers. At the end of May, rail workers in the United Kingdom launched the first of three strikes to protest wages, forcing cuts in train service. France’s union for air traffic controllers went on strike in June, joining months of nationwide action against the country’s proposed retirement age increase. +
++This is only a sliver of the strike action across Europe and the United Kingdom in recent months, and of the walkouts expected across the continent. Many of these stoppages are happening in the transport and travel sectors — pilots and baggage handlers and train and public transit workers. That’s also why they’re getting a lot of attention: because these actions are disrupting some of those great post-pandemic Eurotrips this summer. +
++But these strikes are bigger than whether your flight to Malaga takes off as scheduled. Stubborn inflation in Europe and the United Kingdom is squeezing workforces, and those workers are demanding better wages and improved working conditions. This movement is not limited to transport-related unions. Frustrations are being felt across sectors, as evidenced by the strikes led by doctors and nurses and teachers in the United Kingdom. +
++“Workers still feel that they are losing out, because if inflation is higher than your wage increase, then you have a wage cut,” said Ronald Erne, professor of European integration and employment relations at the University College Dublin School of Business. “And so the strikes that we have across Europe, most of them are about renewal of wage agreements, of collective bargaining agreements.” +
++Last summer also saw strikes and stoppages, and some European countries tend to see these kinds of walkouts more frequently. Plus, workers around the world, and across industries, are making demands for better wages and employment terms amid inflation and shifting economies; after all, screenwriters in the US have been striking for more than a month, and a potentially massive UPS strike also looms. +
++This may not exactly be a historic summer of discontent, but some places are seeing a notable increase in labor action relative to recent years, as in the United Kingdom. Still, these stoppages are meaningful, a political expression of the frustration around current economic conditions. +
++And that expression is difficult to ignore, whether you’re planning a European getaway or not. +
++Just how widespread are these disruptions? +
++These work stoppages across Europe and the UK are happening in waves. Workers are going on strike for a few days, or one day, or even an afternoon. They are designed to be disruptive — flights canceled when pilots strike, medical appointments canceled when doctors in the UK walk out — and gain a lot of publicity. +
++This also minimizes the financial fallout for union workers, who might not get paid if they’re on prolonged strike. It may also help keep public opinion on their side, at least a little bit. In the UK, for example, public opinion largely supports strikes by doctors and nurses and other public sector workers, but that may shift if, rather than a few days of disruption, appointments got canceled for weeks and weeks. +
++A lot of these walkouts are voted on and announced far enough in advance to give people a chance to plan. As Euronews has reported, more strikes are expected in June and July, so travelers can prepare for, say, Swedish airport security strikes in July, and rolling public transit strikes in Italy. +
++And, again, these strikes are visible because the ones staging them are workers who are highly unionized but also have a lot of structural power in the economy — the ones who do the everyday life things people depend on: transportation, sanitation, mail delivery, health care. The strikes are in some ways a not-so-subtle reminder to employers and governments about how vital these jobs are to the economy writ large. The message: pay us fairly, or keep feeling the pain. +
++Inflation is stubbornly high in the EU and especially the UK, and workers don’t believe their wages are keeping up +
++The aftermath of the pandemic and the shocks of the Ukraine war have contributed to inflation around the world, including the EU and the UK. Many European economies, in particular, relied on cheap Russian gas, and Russia’s invasion prompted an energy crisis, forcing industries and households to prepare for shortages and higher prices for oil and gas and most everything else that requires energy inputs. +
++Some of those pressures have eased, but not entirely. In Europe, core inflation is at about 6 percent, declining but still high. And pockets of really high inflation remain, as with food staples; Europe’s food prices are about 12.5 percent higher this May than last year. +
++In the United Kingdom, inflation is stuck at about 8.7 percent, though it’s down from a peak last fall. Like the EU and the rest of the world, the UK is dealing with the post-Covid hangover and the disruptions from the Ukraine war, but unlike the EU and the rest of the world, it is dealing with some of the likely aftershocks of Brexit, and the economic and trade readjustments that came with it. (US inflation rose at a 4 percent rate in May, the lowest in two years, by way of comparison.) +
++Taken together, the economic picture is a tough one, especially for workers who see rising costs outpacing their wages, who see prices for basic goods taking a bigger chunk out of their paychecks. And that’s a huge reason for recent strikes. +
++“One major trigger for that has been the sudden increase in the inflation rate,” said Alex Bryson, a professor of quantitative social science at University College London Social Research Institute, referring to the United Kingdom. “Those public sector workers are facing an ever-increasing rate of decline in their real earnings unless they can claw some of it back.” +
++In the United Kingdom, workers have gone on strike across sectors, including junior doctors and nurses for Britain’s National Health Service. High inflation in the past year has really cut into workers’ real wages. The junior doctors, for example, want a commensurate pay increase — and protections against future pay declines. That, along with strikes in other sectors, has prompted some of the most intense labor activity in the UK since the Great Recession — although it doesn’t quite compare to some past labor unrest, as with the miners’ strikes in the mid-1980s. +
++Europe is also seeing its share of strikes, and that labor unrest across the continent also has slightly different triggers, some tied to national policies — like, again, those pension protest in France — and specific conditions or demands. But the problem of inflation is percolating around all these movements. This unrest is perhaps “reflecting the unwinding of a period of wage stagnation, where workers are now facing slightly increasing inflation and therefore deciding to try and dig their heels in if and where they can to try and stop further erosion in terms of conditions,” Bryson said. +
++What’s next for these strikes? +
++The cost-of-living crisis that’s creating this labor unrest is unlikely to completely dissipate this season, which means the continent will likely see more stoppages and strikes in the coming months. +
++The harder question to answer is how these movements are benefiting workers. “In Europe,” Erne said, “you need less to strike, you need less to get employers to make a compromise.” +
++Of course, that applies in different ways on the national level. France went ahead with its pension reform, after all, although strikes have always been kind of a thing in France. In Germany, aviation security workers who disrupted thousands of flights this spring reached a deal on pay, but German rail workers rejected a deal from the national rail provider in May. Pilots are on intermittent strikes over pay with the Spanish airline Air Europa. Italy’s public transit workers have planned localized strikes throughout the country. But Sweden’s rail workers called off a strike in May after last-minute negotiations. +
++The UK is a bit more of a complicated picture, in part because it is a bit less labor-friendly than many EU countries. Right now, the government is debating anti-strike laws, which would set minimum service requirements and which critics say undermine the rights of workers. Still, there’s been some successes — workers at Heathrow Airport postponed a strike after positive negotiations. The government proposed a deal for NHS nurses, though some unions rejected it — and it’s unclear right now if there will be enough support for continued collective action. Of course, for nurses and doctors and other public sector workers whose pay is set by the government, these negotiations are a bit more complicated. But those hurdles, in some ways, are why these groups keep pushing. +
++“I think they are in it for the long haul, because they think if they don’t get a decent settlement now, they’ll have lost their chance,” Bryson said. “There is something of a brinksmanship thing going on here. The question is who is going to blink first.” +
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