Your task is to extract the thesis of an opinionated news article by selecting some of its text segments. The thesis is a summarization of what the author wants to persuade the reader of. Your answer should consist of segments of the given text. Note that you are not allowed to combine different sentences.

[EX Q]: Obama should show black lives matter by hosting relatives of those killed by cops at his State of the Union. Tuesday at President Obama's penultimate State of the Union address , when Obama points for effect at someone sitting with the First Lady as her guest , every single guest around her should be a family member of someone killed by a police officer . I want to see Michelle Obama sandwiched between Erica Garner - whose father, Eric Garner, was killed by an NYPD officer using an illegal chokehold- and Tamir Rice's 14-year-old sister , who was tackled and shackled by police when trying to help her dying 12-year-old brother . I want to see Leslie McSpadden, Michael Brown's mother there tonight, and a relative of Tasha Thomas, John Crawford's now-deceased girlfriend , who was interrogated by the same police department who'd just killed the father of her children for shopping at Wal Mart . Let America look upon the elder Michael Brown, Kadiatou Diallo (Amadou Diallo's mother), Constance Malcolm (Ramarley Graham's mother), Sylvia Palmer (Akai Gurley's mother) or any of the thousands of relatives of the 1,100 or so Americans killed by police in 2014 . This of course will never happen , but it's what I want . President Obama should use the political theatre of his "Skutniks"- the humans used to give a face to presidential pet problems since Ronald Reagan invited Lenny Skutnik to the State of the Union in 1982 - to focus American's attention squarely on the loss of human life when cops kill black civilians . If President Obama wants us to believe that he thinks black life matters , it's not enough for him to form a task force on 21 century policing : task forces and commissions are where serious reforms go to be forgotten . One police shooting victim's family member up in his box with a nice cop like Richmond, California Police Chief Chris Magnus(who famously held up a #BlackLivesMatters sign) is not enough . We don't need a black kid-white cop hug moment . When the President paired up a black victim of racism with kindly white folks at his "beer summit" in 2009 it was a disaster - at best a distraction, and at worst a prevarication that racism is anecdotal and not systematic . If President Obama is serious about showing black and brown life matters in this country - he's made some progress showing this overseas by winding down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, though not so much by employing drone warfare in Pakistan - he needs to go big at the State of the Union . He's taken on black lives falling victim to gun violence at his annual address before by inviting the parents of Hidaya Pendleton, a black Chicago teenager who was killed in 2013 shortly after performing at Obama's second inaugural . But as Commander in Chief, with all those black folks at his side, Obama could challenge the mortal violence the state itself wages against its citizens through the local police and say to them: Enough . Ronald Reagan, whom Barack Obama uses as an example for how to sell himself as president, used Lenny Skutnik as an example of how"we saw again the spirit of American heroism at its finest," after Skutnik jumped into icy water of the Potomac River to help the drowning after a plane crash . But are not the kin of those killed by police violence also displaying "American heroism at its finest" in helping those who can't breathe? It is women like Tawanda Jones who are creating a more perfect union when she boldly speaks out about her brother being killed by police - even when dissent is under attack and Fox News broadcasts lies about her . When Erica Garner visits the site where two NYPD cops were killed to offer her condolences, she is saving the union . Every time a woman like Michael Brown's mother calls for non-violence - when she could instead, understandably, lash out with a fraction of the hatred which killed her son- she is keeping the nation from ripping itself apart and acting with the kind of American heroism that presidents should applaud loudly and publicly . Skutnik helped save one woman . The black women who bury their sons and husbands and seek to change the systems that caused their deaths may save countless of lives - and maybe even the soul of the nation . The Black Lives Matters movement is a testament that, once again, black Americans are being called upon to force all Americans to examine our addiction to the violence and militarism that oppresses everyone in different ways . Our first black president, riding an 18 month approval rating high, could choose to do some of that himself tonight, by acknowledging those left behind when black lives are ended by the state and who still choose to use their grief to effect positive change .
[EX A]: President Obama should use the political theatre of his "Skutniks"- the humans used to give a face to presidential pet problems since Ronald Reagan invited Lenny Skutnik to the State of the Union in 1982 - to focus American's attention squarely on the loss of human life President Obama is serious about showing black and brown life matters in this country

[EX Q]: The Charlie Hebdo cartoonists were smarter theologians than the jihadis. Rather disturbingly, one word seems to connect the activity of the Paris terrorists and that of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists: iconoclasm . I say disturbingly, because pointing out some common ground may be seen as blurring the crucial distinction between murderous bastards and innocent satirists . Nonetheless ,  it strikes me as fascinating that the cartoonists were profoundly iconoclastic in their constant ridiculing of religion (all religions, it must be noted) - yet it is precisely this same ancient tradition of iconoclasm that inspires Jews and Muslims to resist representational art and, in its most twisted pathological form, to attack the offices of a Paris magazine and slaughter those whose only weapon was the pen . So what's the connection? In one sense an iconoclast is someone who refuses the established view of things , who kicks out against cherished beliefs and institutions . Which sounds pretty much like Charlie Hebdo . But the word iconoclast also describes those religious people who refuse and smash representational images, especially of the divine . The second of the Ten Commandments prohibits graven images  - which is why there are no pictures of God in Judaism or Islam . And theologically speaking, the reason they are deeply suspicious of divine representation is because they fear that such representations of God might get confused for the real thing . The danger, they believe, is that we might end up overinvesting in a bad copy, something that looks a lot like what we might think of as god , but which, in reality, is just a human projection . So much better then to smash all representations of the divine . And yet this, of course, is exactly what Charlie Hebdo was doing . In the bluntest, rudest, most scatological and offensive of terms, Charlie Hebdo has been insisting that the images people worship are just human creations - bad and dangerous human creations . And in taking the piss out of such images, they actually exist in a tradition of religious iconoclasts going back as far as Abraham taking a hammer to his father's statues . Both are attacks on representations of the divine . Which is why the terrorists, as well as being murderers, are theologically mistaken in thinking Charlie Hebdo is the enemy . For if God is fundamentally unrepresentable, then any representation of God is necessarily less than God and thus deserves to be fully and fearlessly attacked . And what better way of doing this than through satire, like scribbling a little moustache on a grand statue of God . It's only some Christians that might demur from this logic . For the Christian story (ie Christmas) tells of God coming into the world as a human being . And in doing this the divine takes on a representational form . Jesus, says St Paul, is the image of the invisible God . Without this the whole western tradition of Catholic religious art and eastern tradition of icons is utterly inconceivable . So I can see how some Christians might find disrespectful images of God a la Charlie Hebdo insulting . After all ,  they believe it's possible for images genuinely to capture something of God . But if images can't capture God- and that's the Jewish/Islamic position- then bring on the cartoonists . They should be encouraged to do their worst and disrupt our confidence that what we think of as God bears any resemblance to anything legitimately God-like . They are like Moses bringing down the golden calf . It is the ancient job of the iconoclast . But ,  of course, these terrorists weren't really interested in theology . They thought that Charlie Hebdo's cartoonists were insulting their human tribe, a tribe they called fellow Muslims . And maybe they were . But whatever else was happening, it was the atheist cartoonists who were performing the religious function and the apparently believing Muslims who had forgotten their deepest religious insights . For any representation of the divine that leads people to murder each other deserves the maximum possible disrespect . @giles_fraser .
[EX A]: whatever else was happening, it was the atheist cartoonists who were performing the religious function and the apparently believing Muslims who had forgotten their deepest religious insights

[EX Q]: NATO's nuclear relapse. Moscow's latest tests of intercontinental missiles and its parading of nuclear capable strategic bombers have rightly prompted international concern . In December 2014, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov implied that Russia might be moving nuclear weapons to Crimea . From violations of airspace to near mid-air collisions, the number of incidents between Russia and NATO has soared dramatically , increasing the danger of an unintended escalation . Yet ,  it is rarely mentioned that NATO, too, is back in the game of nuclear deterrence . Washington has recently sent its nuclear capable B-2 and B-52 to Europe for training missions with its NATO partners . It also continues to test intercontinental ballistic missiles . Most problematically, the western military alliance is currently modernising the air-launched nuclear gravity bombs that fall under NATO's nuclear sharing initiative . It is a warm afternoon and thick clouds hang over the houses and farmyards of Buchel, a small village in western Germany and home to 20 of NATO's remaining thermonuclear bombs on European soil . Or so we can only speculate, for the exact location of these approximately 180 air-launched B61 weapons is of course secret . The local baker smiles uneasily when I ask her about the base and is quick to assure me that there is nothing to see . After a 20-minute walk through muddy fields, I can glimpse a large barbed wire fence on the horizon and what seems to be a succession of bunkeresque fortifications . A biting smell of kerosene creeps up my nose . A sign warns me that soldiers may make use of their weapons if I enter . As I walk back across the fields, I frighten a herd of deer that scramble into the bushes . Suddenly, a jet plane soars into the sky with a deafening thunder . In the event of a nuclear war, it would most likely be heading East from here . Designed in the 1960s for use by high-speed aircraft, the thermonuclear B61 is a versatile weapon that comes both as an intermediate range strategic and a short-range tactical weapon with a wide variety of yields . A relic of the early Cold War, it is not just a US but a "NATO weapon" in that its stationing and delivery also involves non-nuclear member states, such as Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey . Tactical nukes are particularly problematic because their short range provides the missing link between a localised conventional war and a highly improbable global exchange of strategic nuclear missiles between Moscow and Washington . Tactical nuclear weapons are no status quo weapons . Their battlefield purpose increases the chance of a nuclear escalation , which is why the superpowers removed most of them from Central Europe in the late 1980s and early 1990s . If everything goes to plan , the controversial B61 weapons will be modernised by around 2020 . This "life extension programme" is not simply an initiative to replace rusty old nukes with shiny new ones, but an attempt to increase their accuracy, to replace free fall with precision guided bombs . Ultimately, this will transform the B61 into a new kind of weapon and undermine any pretence that the West is still in the game of denuclearisation . Interestingly, plans to modernise the B61 were initiated in April 2010, only shortly after NATO decided to scrap its nuclear missile shield in Eastern Europe and in the same month that the two largest nuclear powers signed a new Strategic Arms Reductions Treaty . How does NATO explain this nuclear relapse precisely at a time when the alliance had just "reset" its relations with Russia? And what role does the B61 play in the Ukrainian proxy war? Jamie Shea is famous in Brussels for his rhetorical skill, expressive body language and London twang . "He could sell you a landmine if he wanted to", an activist once told me about the man who spun NATO's war against Serbia to a lethargic European public 15 years ago . The alliance's Deputy Assistant Secretary General has come to University College London to talk to students about the Ukrainian crisis and Europe's new security architecture . Charming his audience with jokes and anecdotes , Shea tells the story of an underfunded alliance that urgently needs to up its military game if it wants to stand up to Putin's Russia . He is excited about NATO's new "very high readiness joint task force" and about new and larger planned NATO manoeuvrrs in Eastern Europe . One topic he has precious little to say about is the alliance's nuclear policy . When I prompt him , Shea explains that while the life extension programme was originally meant to provide NATO with a bargaining chip for future nuclear disarmament talks with the Kremlin, Russia's involvement in Eastern Ukraine fundamentally altered the strategic context, rendering the B61 "once again a part of NATO's deterrence posture" . "I'm not nostalgic for the Cold War", he laughs,"but you have to prepare for Cold War mark two even if you don't want it" . In this, Shea is on the same page as US Secretary of State John Kerry who recently claimed that the crisis in Ukraine was calling NATO"back to the role that this alliance was originally created to perform" . Why this relapse to what Shea calls"the nuclear game"? The first part of the answer lies in NATO's recent failures . Clearly, the stand off with Russia is a welcome distraction from its fiasco in Afghanistan and the alliance's lack of a purpose in the absence of Milosevic or Gaddafi . Yet ,  there is more to this than just an identity crisis . NATO, as Trine Flockhardt so aptly puts it, is something of a "nuclear addict" - it hangs on to its nuclear weapons despite frequently declaring its desire to abandon them . Both US President Obama and NATO's new General Secretary Stoltenberg are known advocates of nuclear disarmament - but in 2014 their alliance is stepping up its nuclear deterrence and the US administration is pouring $1trn into the future of its nuclear weapons systems . There are obvious pressures behind this nuclear habit, from the nuclear arms industry via hawkish politicians and generals to certain Eastern European NATO members - but the real issue is a lack of public scrutiny . In the UK, the debate about nuclear weapons tends to concentrate on Britain's nuclear submarines and what would happen to them if Scotland declared independence . The US is currently preoccupied with the safety of its nuclear silos . These issues are of course important , but they should not cause us to overlook NATO's nuclear relapse . People like Shea publicly admit their relief that the public has kept so quiet about nuclear weapons since the end of the Cold War . Indeed ,  governments remember all too well their predecessors' struggles with the peace and anti-nuclear movement of the 1980s . This is why today's NATO does"not want to wake up a sleeping dog", he explains . In 2014, the spotlight briefly returned to that one-time symbol of division in Europe, the Berlin wall . Even Mikhail Gorbachev attended the festivities on November 9, a spectacle of lights, balloons and emotions . Twenty-five years after its fall, the Berlin wall is one of the world's most heavily memorialised sites, a tourist attraction like few other 20th century structures . But while the wall remains the symbol of the Cold War in schoolbooks, op-eds and emotive speeches , it is also a highly problematic one . Rather than representing the threat of mutual nuclear annihilation, it always stood for a much simpler lesson - that of the West's moral victory over the "prison" of real existing socialism . If we want to understand the Cold War in all its self-destructiveness , we need to look elsewhere . A visitor to villages that lie near nuclear weapons storage sites in Europe might be surprised to be greeted by American flags in shop windows and front gardens . This form of identification with US nuclear weapons is puzzling given that these sites would be primary targets in the event of a nuclear war with Moscow . The West is currently too preoccupied with Russia's new nuclear militarism to notice the way that its own military alliance functions as an agent of regional insecurity . Lest we forget , NATO never abandoned its "first use" doctrine . It does not rule out the possibility of being first to go nuclear in an armed conflict with another nuclear power . Some will argue that "now is not the time" to start a public debate on NATO's tactical nukes , but even these critics would have to concede that the modernisation of the B61 further compromises the West's position in the 2015 revision of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty . If a new arms race is to be prevented in its infancy , the sleeping dog might have to learn to bark and bite again .
[EX A]:
Moscow's latest tests of intercontinental missiles and its parading of nuclear capable strategic bombers have rightly prompted international concern