OPINION | Who are the rights enshrined in the Constitution for? – News24

We may have one of the great constitutions in the world, but it means nothing if social justice still has to be attained, writes Somila Dondashe.

The preamble of the Constitution asserts that the people of South Africa recognises the injustices of the past and are therefore committed to the attainment of social justice forallwho live in it.

For all.

The South African Constitution has been hailed as a progressive document. In a society that threatens to be quite conservative, our Constitution stands valiantly. Bold in its inclusiveness, it is coloured in liberal ideas and cloaked in transformation.

Praise for the Constitution extends beyond our borders. Harvard scholar, Cass Sustein, called it the most admirable Constitution in the history of the world, and a US Supreme Court Justice hailed it as a "great piece of work that embraces basic human rights".

The presumption would then be that South Africans are reaping the social justice promised by this supreme law, but unfortunately for the majority of black people - this praised progression is a myth. Despite all the rights that stand attractive on paper, a simple look into the world's most unequal country informs even the biggest optimist that this document, alone, is simply unable to translate into the attainment of social justice.

Fetishisation of rights

The deification of the Constitution has led to what legal scholars such as Tshepo Madlingozi call a fetishisation of rights.

This glorification makes state actors act oblivious to the fact that the struggles that confront most black people today are still the same ones that they faced pre-1994. If one were to put aside the promises that exist on paper and look only at lived realities - it would be clear that black people still carry the burden of normalised social injustices.Umhlaba usabolile.

The prevalence of illegal evictions is one of these normalised social injustices. On the 1 July 2020, a video of a naked Bulelani Qolani being violently evicted from his home circulated the internet. The video shows the City of Cape Town's Law Enforcement dragging the 28-year-old man, who is naked and in full public view.

The City of Cape Town continues to conduct these illegal evictions despite the Disaster Management Act's prohibition of evictions during lockdown.

Apartheid's spatial planning and racist land and property laws have left many black people displaced and dispossessed. These laws entrenched socio-economic inequality through the common law. Legislation favoured property rights, thus private landowners could vindicate these rights through eviction processes without consideration of the occupiers' circumstances. Spatial planning meant that majority black people were deprived from formal access to land and housing and were relegated to the homelands.

Because of a host of legislation such as theNatives Land Act 27 of1913,Group Areas Act 41 of 1950and thePrevention of Illegal Squatting Act52of 1951; the majority of black people still find themselves on the periphery of human rights.

The residue from racialised land and property laws has left an unshakeable stench which has resulted in the right to housing being one of the most litigated rights. Today most black people still find themselves in undesirable living conditions, waiting for the longstanding promise of service delivery.

Disparities

The disparities between people's lived realities and the Constitution's promise of human rights are inescapable.

Section 26(1) provides that everyone has a right to have access to adequate housing and that the State must take reasonable legislative and other measures within its available resources to achieve the progressive realisation of the right.

This momentous right is a preventative measure against the system of laws that sought to ostracise black people from their own country.

Section 26(2) indicates that the State must take reasonable legislative and other measures within its available resources to progressively realise this right.

All arbitrary evictions are prohibited by section 26(3) and no one may be evicted or have their home demolished without a court order made after considering all the relevant circumstances.The Prevention of Illegal Eviction from and Unlawful Occupation of Land Act(PIE) was enacted to give effect to section 26(3). PIE protects against the eviction of unlawful occupiers living on both privately and publicly owned land.

Despite these rights and an array of case law in support, poverty continues to be criminalised in South Africa as communities and individuals are frequently and violently evicted from places they call home.

The right to housing is an all-encompassing right.

As perGovernment of the Republic of South Africa v Grootboom, housing is about more than bricks and mortar. The right is informed and informs other rights such as dignity, privacy, safety and security and water. More than half of South Africa's population lives in poverty and it is probable that the housing crisis is at the heart of this destitution.

The rights exist and the legal jurisprudence is rich, but it often fails to translate into people's lived experiences.

In an article by Tshepo Madlingozi titledSocial Justice in a Time of Neo-Apartheid Constitutionalism: Critiquing the Anti-Black Economy of Recognition, Incorporation and Distribution,he eloquently states that poor black people fall on the other side of the promise of a new South Africa. Informed by a report by Abahlali Basemjondolo, Madlingozi refers to South Africans who have been excluded from the miracle of the transition as "The Forgotten". The Forgotten are excluded from reaping the benefits of basic human rights despite the legal jurisprudence which continues to develop in their name.

Grootboomjudgment

My first introduction to the Constitution and Constitutional law was in second year in my Public Policy and Administration class when a student was explaining the separation of powers doctrine and used theGrootboomjudgment as an example of a case where the Court reminds the government of its obligation to provide adequate housing, as per section 26 of the Constitution.

The case concerns Irene Grootboom who brought the application on behalf of 510 children and 390 adults who were rendered homeless when they were evicted from their informal homes situated on private land. The application was for an order which required government to provide the respondents with adequate basic shelter or housing until they obtained permanent accommodation.

True to the circuitous nature of the legal system; Grootboom died eight years after the judgment, still waiting for reasonable accommodation from the State. Today the judgment remains a powerful precedent for communities under threat of eviction as it implores government to be consistent with its constitutional obligations to provide adequate housing. However, the case's namesake died without attaining that socio-economic right. The case is an example of how the legal jurisprudence is enriched in the name of The Forgotten - who unfortunately never see beyond their deplorable living conditions.

The developing legal jurisprudence often conceals the fact that black South Africans are still confronted with the same issues which trammelled them during the merciless years of apartheid. Black people still bear the brunt of normalised social injustices and the promise of the Constitution is frequently offered as a panacea. It has been 26 years since apartheid property and land laws were abolished but the stain of displacement still lingers. Black people still exist on the periphery of belonging.

A day after Qolani's eviction video circulated, he shared the following words with a journalist regarding the matter:basihlisile isidima sam.

The have disregarded my dignity. Lowered it.

These fervent words lament the history of dispossession suffered by black people at the hands of a merciless State. It all comes down to the fight for dignity and

a fight for the attainment of social justice forallwho live in it.

- Somila is a postgraduate LLB student who has a blog where she writes on socio-economic issues.

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OPINION | Who are the rights enshrined in the Constitution for? - News24

Seth Rogen: ‘I was fed a huge amount of lies about Israel’ – The Guardian

Seth Rogen has said he was fed a huge amount of lies about Israel as a young Jewish person, stoking controversy around the countrys sometimes fraught relationship with many North American Jews.

The Canadian-US actor, who attended Jewish camp and whose parents met on a kibbutz in Israel, said the fact that the Jewish state was created on land where Palestinians were living had always been omitted.

[As] a Jewish person I was fed a huge amount of lies about Israel my entire life, Rogen told the comedian and actor Marc Maron in an episode of Marons WTF podcast.

They never tell you that, Oh, by the way, there were people there. They make it seem like it was just like sitting there, like the fucking doors open.

More than 700,000 Palestinians were driven out of their homes or fled fighting in the 1948 war that led to Israels creation. Today, those families and their descendants make up around 5.6 million refugees.

Rogen and Maron, who is also Jewish, were speaking to promote Rogens new comedy, An American Pickle, which tells the story of a Jewish immigrant from the 1920s who falls into a vat of brine and wakes up in modern-day Brooklyn.

The pair talked and joked at length about Israel and also spoke about antisemitism, which Rogen said remains pervasive and prevalent.

I remember my dad frankly telling me, People hate Jews. Just be aware of that. They just do. And its honestly something that I am so glad was instilled in me from a young age. Because if it wasnt, I would constantly be shocked at how much motherfuckers hate Jews.

Zionists have pointed to the Holocaust and centuries of bloody antisemitism as evidence that Jews will never be safe without a state. Rogen, however, argued, you dont keep something youre trying to preserve all in one place.

Asked if he would ever go to live in Israel, Rogen said no. Maron replied: Im the same way, and were gonna piss off a bunch of Jews.

Lahav Harkov, a senior contributing editor to the Jerusalem Post newspaper, criticised Rogens comments on Twitter, saying they were made from a position of really, really great privilege and ignorance - if he cant understand why Israel makes sense to millions of Jews around the world.

Among Zionists, there is anxiety that North American Jews, who could possibly outnumber Israeli Jews, are becoming less supportive of the Jewish state, even as surveys often show the opposite.

The debate has frequently reignited after high-profile figures, often Jewish, express views that are highly critical of Israel.

Most recently, Peter Beinart, a prominent Jewish American political commentator, was both derided and lauded for commentaries in which he questioned whether he could remain both a liberal and also support the Jewish state while millions of Palestinians continued to be denied basic rights.

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Seth Rogen: 'I was fed a huge amount of lies about Israel' - The Guardian

Japan looks forward to developing new systems to head off missile threats in enemy territory – Economic Times

Tokyo [Japan]: As North Korea and China develop new weapons that are harder to intercept through traditional methods, Japan is now looking forward developing new systems to head off missile threats in enemy territory.

Nikkei Asian Review reported that the draft recommendation approved by a team in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) does not specifically mention striking enemy bases -- a topic that has been debated since June, when plans to deploy the Aegis Ashore land-based missile shield were suspended -- but implicitly encourages Japan to develop such capabilities.

The proposal stressed the need for "integrated air and missile defense" capabilities to protect Japan as a whole at the same time as the current Aegis-equipped ships are unable to do so.

Nikkei Asian Review reported that the lawmakers urge continuing the "sword and shield" dynamic of the US-Japan alliance while creating a stronger overall deterrent against threats. They also called to improve Japan's intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities.

The proposal will reportedly be submitted this month to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's government, thus, accelerating the National Security Council talks on several issues, including alternatives to Aegis Ashore and also whether to acquire enemy base strike capabilities. The officials will set a policy direction by September.

While adhering to its war-renouncing constitution, Japan seems to be now considering strikes on enemy bases in response to an imminent threat if no other options are available.

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Japan looks forward to developing new systems to head off missile threats in enemy territory - Economic Times

Tanzania’s Benjamin Mkapa: the peace maker, true East African and Pan-Africanist – The Conversation CA

The former Tanzanian president Benjamin William Mkapa, who died on July 24, was the countrys third president. He was in office from 1995 to 2005.

Born in 1938 in Masasi south-eastern Tanzania, Mkapa was a staunch supporter of the Tanzania African National Union, which won independence from Britain in 1961 under Mwalimu Julius Nyerere. His star rose steadily under Nyereres long reign from 1961 to 1985 as leader of the renamed party, Chama Cha Mapinduzi.

In addition to being editor of the party newspaper and establishing the national news agency Shihata, he served as the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Information and Culture and Science, Technology and Education.

Mkapa was thus an experienced communicator, politician and administrator when he entered the presidency.

Mkapas presidency is particularly significant since it represents the first phase of Tanzanian multi-party democracy. It was Nyerere who in 1991 opened debate on a multi-party democratic system for Tanzania. He saw it coming in the wake of developments in neighbouring Kenya, where multi-party democracy was promoted at an early stage by church leaders, civil society and the population at large.

His reported response in Kiswahili loosely translates to,

When you see your neighbour being shaved, youre best advised to wetyour beard otherwise you will have a rough shave.

Nyerere was a firm supporter of Mkapa and was instrumental in Mkapas party nomination to stand for the first multi-party election in 1995.

Mkapas government initially faced a gloomy economic position. This was partly based on global economic stagnation. It was also partly due to the previous governments lack of economic and institutional discipline. His predecessor Ali Hassan Mwinyi (1985-1995) had lost the trust of the international financial institutions which provided substantial assistance and loans.

The first main challenge for Mkapa was to enhance the discipline in state finances and stabilise the economy. The second was restoring confidence among donors by pursuing western-backed neo-liberal market policies. Having agreed to implement proposals endorsed by donors, Mkapa quickly won international trust.

The resumption of external development assistance was not enough to immediately spur the economy. During the 1990s the average annual real per capita GDP shrank slightly.

But during his second term it grew markedly. The main drivers included gold and gemstones, tourism and construction.

Mkapa also oversaw a period in which poverty levels declined, however slightly. Hunger statistics from 2005 showed that rural people were worse off than those of the urban population. His attention to rural areas, so important for Nyerere, grew only towards the end of his presidency.

However, instead of strengthening village and women land rights which the land laws of 1999 tried to do, he went for a top-down formalisation of individual land rights championed by the Peruvian economist deSoto.

Mkapa came to see property and business formalisation as a major priority of his government well aligned to international financiers who supported his government handsomely.

These transitions were unable, for the time being, to challenge village and smallholder production and land management systems. But they did create an opening for future administrations to attract foreign investors pushing large scale mechanised agriculture which demand land (mostly village) but provide limited employment.

Coupled with a decline in manufacturing, a rapidly growing rural population was left with limited exit options.

Thus, at the end of Mkapas term the challenge of a structural transformation of the economy that could redistribute growth and create sustainable production systems that could absorb labour and importantly rural youth, remained unresolved.

At an early stage, Mkapa sought to enhance the legitimacy of his government both domestically and externally by fighting corruption. His anti-corruption strategy laid out by the Warioba Report started in 1996.

But his crusade didnt result in significant change. Petty corruption linked to foreign business and investment appeared to decline. But graft linked to household service delivery such as health and water did not. In fact, the evidence is that corruption showed an increase during his second presidential term and beyond.

One area where Mkapas term saw important institutional, policy and legal development was the forestry sector. This is saw 8 000 registered villages and community groups managing 70-80 % of the national land on behalf of the state.Policies such as this opened a space for rural and village involvement.

Thus people could use existing institutions from below for the purpose of managing community and joint forest management for villagers own benefits. In a significant way, this was Mkapa trying to instil a democratic and participatory spirit in Tanzania.

After his presidency Mkapa was much sought after for his spirit of cooperation, participation and peace. He became an important mediator in conflicts across Africa and including the Kenyan post-election conflict in 2007 and the 2011 referendum in South-Sudan.

The graduate of Makerere and Columbia is rightly hailed by Kenyan and others as a peace maker and true East African and Pan Africanist.

For his people in south eastern and coastal Tanzania he will most certainly be remembered as the president who made real their desire for better transport, communication and cooperation in their part of the country. In 2003 the construction of the long awaited bridge the Mkapa Bridge - across the Rufiji river was finalised.

For Tanzanians maybe as a whole he will also be remembered as a president who continued and secured the path of peace and cooperation between and for his peoples. He was 81.

Kjell Havnevik and Aida Isinika jointly edited Tanzania in transition - from Nyerere to Mkapa. Published in 2010 by the Nordic Africa Institute, Uppsala and Mkuki na Nyota, Dar es Salaam.

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Tanzania's Benjamin Mkapa: the peace maker, true East African and Pan-Africanist - The Conversation CA

Missoula and Western Montana speaks up: Letters to the editor for the week of Jul. 31, 2020 – The Missoulian

As a state legislator, I prioritize economic opportunity for all Montanans and their families.

Key to this goal is equal access to public education and healthcare.

Recognizing that Montanans are assets who will build their own capacity and create upward mobility for the next generation, we must support policies that allow for homeownership, fair taxation, and a college education.

World War II Veterans were welcomed home with the G.I. bill supporting their education and home ownership. Now with COVID-19, there has never been a more important time to support policies that build the middle class and not lose sight of the American dream for all people.

We will get through the crisis of COVID-19 by listening to the leaders who are innovative, forward thinking and tapped into the latest research and science. Right now, scientists around the world are developing more than 155 COVID vaccines, and 23 are in human trials. Meanwhile, wholesale distributors and pharmacies are working around the clock to ensure they can reach every part of our state, building a web of providers able to span the nation, coast-to-coast.

Mike Cooney and Steve Bullock have had their shoulders to the plow responding to COVID-19 to protect the health and lives of Montanans. They never stop working. They put people before politics.

We need strong, experienced leaders like Steve Bullock and Mike Cooney looking out for us at this critical time and into the future. Please vote for Mike Cooney for Governor and Steve Bullock for U.S. Senator.

Representative Mary Caferro HD 81,

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Missoula and Western Montana speaks up: Letters to the editor for the week of Jul. 31, 2020 - The Missoulian

What my Nextdoor neighbors don’t get about the word ‘plantation’ – CNN

But as we know, history doesn't stay in one place. My new neighborhood, and playground, is built on a former cotton plantation.

Any other summer, this University of Florida college town would be buzzing with talk of whether the Gators will win the Southeastern Conference title. But with the revival of the Black Lives Matter movement, I can't ignore that the name of my predominantly White neighborhood invokes a dark history.

A word like "plantation" may seem minor in scope compared to other iterations of America's racist past and present, but what it represents is larger than the 10 letters that evoke slavery at worst and exclusivity at best.

What I deemed a welcoming community when I moved into it (despite its name), feels uncomfortably different to me after someone from my HOA posted on Nextdoor (which groups members into virtual neighborhoods based on their real addresses) about removing "plantation" from Haile Plantation as a consideration toward residents and visitors who are Black, indigenous and people of color (BIPOC).

The responses poured in. While the original post had more than 225 replies from Haile Plantation residents and those in nearby communities, subsequent posts regarding the name change added hundreds more.

"If you don't like [plantation], leave!" and many variations of "This is ridiculous to even be a conversation. The Instantly Offended crowd need to stop," were common sentiments from those content with the current name. As I wrote this, the very unofficial Nextdoor poll showed that a majority who voted want to keep "plantation" in the name.

One Black woman, who doesn't live in Haile Plantation, but is part of my Nextdoor neighborhood remarked on the original post: "Ask someone that's Black if it's offensive and then comment. If you aren't willing to do that, you are the problem and there is nothing me or the post can help you with. My 11-year-old Black son will not be playing outside or jogging through any neighborhood named a plantation, some people care about this and others have openly stated on this post they don't. And this is the America we live in."

What does this tell me? More White people who want to be allies need to speak up.

Retaining "plantation" on land that actually was a plantation 166 years ago is giving tribute to the Haile family lifestyle.

A startling number of responses quip with out-of-touch comments like, "As far as I know there are no slaves here anymore and the Union won" and "It bothers me that people are bothered by the name....can we somehow get rid of these people????? I was just fine with everything, I was at peace, and now some people want to make it ugly and unpeaceful. ...where there was no ugly before!"

One commenter mockingly suggested renaming Haile Plantation to Haile Revisionist, echoing other replies stating that changing the name changes history. While I admit that without the "plantation" in Haile Plantation, I may have overlooked its history when I moved here, I can understand that not everyone wants a reminder of slavery every time they drive home.

Claiming it's only a name doesn't mean that this name isn't toxic to someone else. And to think that Black Americans are going to forget the history of slavery without the word "plantation" stamped on it is downright ignorant.

This Nextdoor blowup suggests that the outrage has little or nothing to do with the name itself. It's really about an unwillingness to look through a different lens. The true litmus test for the folks who don't see an issue with retaining the word "plantation" is to flip the matter to something that affects their heritage.

Would a Jewish family feel comfortable settling in Hitler Homes? Would Russians sign up to live in Communist Commons? Would die-hard Gators fans consider a home in Seminoles' Village? Are these examples unrealistic and extreme? Yes. But that's the point.

It is easy to see that denying service to a person of color is racist, that eyeing a Black shopper with skepticism is racist, but glossing over words that seem innocuous but can feel like a splinter that nags every time you turn into a neighborhood or send your kid outside to play is also racist.

Words are triggers and "plantation" is pretty much synonymous with the antebellum South and its slavery roots. The woman who first posted about changing the Haile Plantation name on Nextdoor is not alone in her endeavor.

With all the social media attention on Nextdoor, my HOA formed an exploratory committee of volunteers to feel out whether its 1,500-plus residents care enough about the "plantation" dispute to put it to a vote, or if it's a fleeting issue soon to be forgotten. At any rate, between tallying surveys and other HOA bureaucracies, the Haile Plantation name change question isn't likely to be answered any time soon.

It's easy to ask of someone like me: Well, if you don't like it, why are you living there? Yes, I could move to another neighborhood, but I also want to make this neighborhood, and neighborhoods like it, live up to their promise of true community.

We cannot move forward and teach our kids about diversity and inclusion if we are pushed out by bullies who say things like, "Deal with it or move up North where all the riots are." I am staying. It's time to make a monumental change and remove "plantations" from our neighborhoods.

Real change doesn't happen in a vacuum. Neighbors across all communities must keep this conversation alive -- at book clubs and bars, on Facebook and on FaceTime.

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What my Nextdoor neighbors don't get about the word 'plantation' - CNN

Trump and Barr Dominate The Streets of Ignorance – High Plains Reader

by Charlie Barber | .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) | Last Word | August 2nd, 2020

optimism (assumed) we were living in a new world order and a new economy that would growbringing a prosperity of which every new increment would be unprecedentedThe developed nations had given to the free market the status of a god, and were sacrificing to it their farmers, farmlands and rural communities, their forests, wetlands, and prairies, their ecosystems and watersheds. They had accepted universal pollution and global warming as normal costs of doing business. Wendell Berry, In the Presence of Fear, II, IV

WhatHanna Arendt meant by totalitarianism was not an all-powerful state, but the erasure of the difference between private and public lifeDuring the campaign of 2016, we took a step toward totalitarianism without even noticing by accepting as normal the violation of electronic privacyRather than reporting the violation of basic rights, our media generally preferred to mindlessly indulge the inherently salacious interest we have in other peoples affairsWe can try to solve this problemcollectively, by supporting, for example, organizations that are concerned with human rights.- from Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, #14

It is impossible to over estimate the consequences of American ignorance on world affairs. - Salman Rushdie to Edward Said, 1986

The countries that top the rankings of COVID-19 deaths globally are not the poorest, the richest or even the most densely populated. But they do have one thing in common: They are led by populist, mold breaking leadersthe disruptive policies of populists (Trump in U.S.; Boris Johnson, U.K.; Bolsonaro, Brazil; Modi, India; Obrador, Mexico) fare poorly (in the pandemic) compared to liberal democratic models in countries like Germany, France and Iceland in Europe, or South Korea and Japan in AsiaPopulist politics makes it very difficult to implement rational policies that really resolve the issue or at least manage the crisis more effectively. - John Daniszewski, AP/Bismarck Tribune, July 24, 2020

Realists(fail) to appreciate the power of illusion in human affairs especially when it acquires the force of myth. R.G.L. Waite, The Psychopathic God: Adolf Hitler

A fail safe system (like The Department of Homeland Security)(can) destroy all others.- (Amended) Murphy

Unlike Facebook, (Tik Tok) collects little data about users, and its quick exit from Hong Kong shows that it is not ready to be a tool of Chinas government.Tik Tok became a global phenomenon because it is less filled with hate and disinformation, and genuinely funnier than most other platforms. Tae Kim, Bloomberg.com; The Week

Mike Pompeo wants to know: Who is Chinas Stephen Miller for the Uighurs?His boss needs tips.- Kim Dog Un

Who are the Nazis in your neighborhood? - Dirty Bird - Big Birds undercover, feathered fiend

In the nut house that is the White House, the liar tweets tonight, about injuries his fragile ego suffers from ungrateful citizens, who prefer his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, by double- digit margins in States Republicans thought they owned.His populist, anti-establishment mantras, mixed with unprecedented incompetence, have produced chaos in a people who voted in 2016 for better, not worse.Trumps nod to centuries old racism produced overwhelming white support for Black Lives Matter.His nod to millennia of misogyny has produced the spectacular takedown of neanderthal Congressman Ted Yoho (R-FL), and his fellow Republican sexists, by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), on behalf of all women, and the rising number of men who dare to think of women as equal in every way.

Trump is also stung by the reality of Covid-19 and the hilarity of TikTok, an Al Jazeera for teenagers, punking him over poor crowds in Tulsa, OK.So he pitches Dr. Fauci on masks, distancing, and hygiene, while the latter is honored by Major League Baseball, far better funded for Covid at their own expense, than Trump has supported the country with Federal funds.

Meanwhile, Trumps Gangsta AG, Bill Barr, grim guru Stephen Miller of Concentration Camps For Kids of Color fame, and temporary, national cops, plot frantic strategies.Their mission?Turn walls of moms and big city Mayors Trump has refused to aid in the pandemic, into terrorist leaders among the minds of his dim bulb followers in the boondocks. He also announces a surge in Federal police, threatening to impose Vladimir Putins methods of governance on the United States Constitution and the vast majority of American people, who still believe that their local sovereignty matters, like black lives, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

I live in those boondocks, and most people here dont bother themselves with Trumps nonsense, except if they, alas, tune in to FOX News, or worse.A few enthusiasts were visible at a Trump Table in Mandan last week, festooned with Trump flags, one of a Rambo-like Trump, brandishing a lethal big ass weapon. What was more disturbing was to hear from my friend, Real Live Lena, who saw a car marked Federal Police parked and pointed at one of Bismarcks busiest roads.I rushed home to ask my KGB canine friend Lena and her colleagues whether Trump was planning to dominate the mean streets of Bismarck and Mandan, ND.

High Plains Reader:No car marked Federal Police has ever been spotted out here before.Whats going on?The Trump/Rambo table in Mandan is only a block away from a statue of Teddy Roosevelt.Surely they are not insane enough to think we care to tear that thing down.

Lena:Theyre insane enough to tear gas a wall of moms, the Portland, OR, Mayor, and beat up on a peacefully assembling, Navy Veteran.Welcome to Orwells Third World borderlands!

Portlands Dads, as a legion of leaf blowers, may be enough for Trump to declare martial law.

Rasputin:Nah.Its just the Traveling Trump Show, spreading terror for the hell of it on the road to their next episode of the Donalds Reality TV version of Strongman Democracy. Putin:Actually, its policy, not insanity.Its not the first time government agents initiated violence and then blamed their targets. Trumps feeble memory is being coached by Vlad Putin on those secret phone calls, after all. Trumps Badass Barrister is his enforcer.Barrs tardy, artful dodging before the House on July 28, was not from respect for Congress, but to give Trumps DOJ time to provoke violence that could help his Law n Order Shtick for the Fall election.Its what dictators and their henchmen do all the time. Donald gets that part.

Schickelgruber:Barrs postponed House appearance also gave time for willing executioners like (Congressman) Jim Jordan (R-OH) to put together creative, Agitprop film clips for an anti Joe Biden campaign ad, masquerading as evidence of how much trouble there was in River City (ie. Portland).The 7 minutes+ duration was painfully close to the elapsed time of George Floyds murder in Minneapolis by the kind of cops not needed at any level of law enforcement.

Chicago Dog:As the Jacksonville, FL fiasco shows, Trump and the RNC cant organize a piece of crap, but Bill Barr is another matter.Hes almost as good a liar as (former White House Press Secretary) Sarah Huckabee Sanders.Trump?Not so much. His M/O is: Bluff and fake being in charge. Good for campaign rallies, but not for running a government.Covid-19 shows that.

Headless Horseman:Thats why conservative, Federalist principles at State and Local levels are utilized by liberal Democratic Mayors and Governors, and any Republicans, not terrorized by Trump populist, Know Nothing, Republican Party manifestos of arbitrary federal government.

Kim Dog Un:And while it makes sense from a Cold War perspective for Sec. of State Mike Pompeo to close down the Chinese Consulate in Houston, before they pirate vaccine information like they have done with so much U.S. intellectual property, it might not benefit the U.S. or the world that much, if a successful vaccine is developed here during Trumps gangster Presidency.

Corporal Kangaroo:Barrs competence is more dangerous than Trumps malevolence, especially if added to Trumps penchant for bullying and blackmail.It might be a bad scene.

Seor Perro:Trump blackmailed Puerto Rico over hurricane relief, because he doesnt like Puerto Ricans in general.He blackmails Blue State Governors over PPE, specifically, because he doesnt like Democrats.He blackmails Mayors, especially those of color, who stand up for their cities.Hell hoard a vaccine from the rest of you, for his people, for sure.

Alter Goat:With pandemic, economic crisis, and new Cold Wars, Americans face a dictatorial President and enslaved Republican Party: unleashing racism and misogyny in harrowing waves.But democracy is pushing back; with women and people of color, all over your Federal system, backed by critical masses of white folks, fed up with old divisive ways.If you stick, youll win!

Mr. Swamp Fox:Things must be bad for his boss, if AG/Advance Man Bill Barr is showing his cards this early in the Presidential cycle, when folks are switching their TVs to Major League Baseball, the NBA, and the WNBA, and fretting over school cancellations amid the Covid crisis.

Prudence Possum:The rising policy swamp engulfing the White House is yielding some interesting talk.I overheard Barr chewing out Trumps terrible temps, for unsubtle application of Trumps wish to dominate streets of blue America: Acting DHS Secretary, Chad Wolf, and Deputy DHS Secretary and Acting Director of Citizenship and Immigration Services (aka. Department of concentration camps/borderland storm troopers) Ken Cuccinelli.

B-6th power:Whats the matter with you?Our job is to give Trump illusions of power in what we do, but (House Speaker) Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) owns the Budget. Tear gassing Mayors?

Ken (Front Man) Cuccinelliortlands Ted Wheeler is not a Republican Mayor. Bullying of Democrats and liberals is popular with Trumps base, who like bloodshed if its not their own.

B-6th power: What base?Remaining simpletons in Red areas of the country, trying to kill themselves off?Is Covid-19 not real enough for you?Trumps ratings on the pandemic are worse than a pedophile Priests on child-care.Millennials, and their moms in cities, suburbs, and even the boondocks, dont fall for what worked under Nixon, Reagan and the Bushes. You dont have to clean up your act, but you do have to be kinder, gentler thugs, like Kelly Ann Conway.

Chad (Wolf Man) Wolf:Kelly Ann cant get her husband (Lincoln Projects George Conway) locked up anymore than I can keep my neighbors from outing me as one of your human rights deniers and a blight on their real estate values.And you couldnt keep Michael Cohen in the slammer.So much for intimidation -- Who are you to talk?

B-6th power:At least I made the effort.Unfortunately, my Ukraine/Benghazi ploy to slander Joe Biden hit a snag.(Majority Leader) Moscow Mitch had many nasty tools in his dirty Senate pet tricks box, but he had to pick a wedge like (Senator) Ron Johnson (R-WI) to run the show.

KFC & Wolf Man:A wedge?

B-6th power:The simplest tool in the world.All this lying is not going well, I must admit.

KFC & Wolf Man:It used to be so easy, to lie and cheat like hell.When did Americans wake up; demand a show and tell.Who did this to us Bill?Why cant we bluff as old?We cant admit were wrong, or were left in the cold.

B-6th power:Look in the mirror, morons! And see what Trump hath wrought.He always uses weakness; its we who have been bought.If I really had an answer, Id give it to you now; But those who have been plowing, are soon to feel the plow.

Prudence Possum:If that bunch were not so evil, it might be possible to sympathize with their unenviable position; caught between a madman President, and a mad-as-hell electorate. The only thing I would bet on would be that Bill Barr is frantically maneuvering to save himself, and the devil take the hindmost, although he may keep up his Trump defender persona to the end.

Ms. Recovering Republican Lap Dog:A revolution of family values is taking place all over America, as a result of the challenges of the Covid virus.Whether on zoom, or in quiet conclaves without electronic access, families are spending more time discovering each other in myriad ways.Homeless folks, Black Lives Matter demonstrators, white folks who never before had to line up for food banks, are discovering a family of mankind in their misery, but also in their daunting, courageous, daily struggles to maintain themselves.American politics is being reshaped as a result, inexorably challenging some of our age-old undemocratic demons.

Omar Khayyam:There is plenty of frustration among the hardest hit, and even some violence not initiated by the Trump White House for the TV cameras.But the silent majority this time is not listening to Trumps Richard Nixon/George Wallace redux law and order demagogy.They are listening, instead, to the measured wisdom of the late John Lewis and C.T. Vivian, echoed in the themes of Reverends William Barber and Al Sharpton, to make good trouble and practice, as well as preach non-violence.National polls reflect this in every corner of the land.

Seor Perro:Appearances of former Vice President, Joe Biden with former President Barack Obama are heartening: a return to responsible government in 2021, but with officials who reflect America in its myriad colors and genders, in a renewed resolve for a more perfect union.

Chicago Dog:One defeats power plays as lies: the big lie (Hitler); multiple untruths (McCarthy) or serial lying (Trump) with power plays of truth (Dr. Fauci; Governors Hogan [R-MD] and Whitmer [D-MI]), and constant vigilance, prior to, during, and after each and every election.

Prudence Possum:The bad guys know this.Bill Barr has done a great job of destroying U.S. Criminal Justice at the top, but he hasnt cracked the Judiciary, or lower Federal, State and Local authorities, who loathe Barrs imposition of fascist principles of justice.His acolytes, KFC, Wolf Man and other Trump terrorists are themselves terrified.Republicans are doomed unless they shut down the election process in all 50 States, but they havent a clue about how to pull it off, short of all out war on the American people.My alligator friends found their lament

Lullaby of TrumplandThe Terrified TempsTheyre on the road again to see if theyCan terrorize the people to give in;And hand our Donald Trump his biggest winAgainst the libs and laws that block his sway.

We know his bluff is called in all the portsOur phony circus tries to land a punchFor Putins way governance and launchA world made safe for tyrannies of sorts.

Our boys are up against democracyDeployed by young and old, and White and Black;Brown, Yellow, Red and female, we must say;In numbers and sophisticated gleeAt our discomfort, and our blatant lackOf courage, brains, or plans to win the day!

Link:

Trump and Barr Dominate The Streets of Ignorance - High Plains Reader

Canadian woman dying of cancer will be able to reunite with American fianc – CBC.ca

American Charles Emch and his Canadian partner Danielle Larocquewho's dying of cancer were separated by border restrictions due to COVID-19, but about nine hours after CBC News reported their story, they saythey'll soon be reunited.

Larocque, 67, has terminal uterine cancer and has been told she has less than a year to live.Her one wish was to reunite with her Americanfianc before it wastoo late."I really, really miss him," said Larocque, who lives in Ottawa.

The couple doesn't have the typical required documentation to prove their common-law status that wouldallowEmch, who is 81 and livesin Pompano Beach, Fla.,to come to Canada.So Larocque's family compiled evidence of the couple's relationship, including photos, a shared phone bill and a written history of their time together since 2015.

On Monday, Emch showed up at the border with the documents, which includedhis quarantine plan and Larocque's medical records.

He said it was enough to convince a border office to allow him to enter Canada.

"I was elated," he said. "We have hopes that we are going to be able to spend some quality time together."

Emch will see Larocque in two weeks after he finishes his two-week quarantine at an Airbnb rental.

"It was a total roll of the dice," said TaraVidosa, Larocque's daughter."I really think [Emch] just got, like,a very down to earth, compassionate agent.

"Perhaps the agent saw the [CBC News]article this morning," she added.

The couple had beenkept apart because of border restrictions implemented to help stop the spread of COVID-19.

Canada has banned foreigners from entering the country for non-essential travel. On top of that, the U.S. land border is closed to Canadian visitors. Canadians can still fly to the U.S., but Larocque is unable to flydue to her ill health.

The couple had daily Facetime calls, but wanted to be together in person.

"It's important that I come now," said Emch, "because of how fragile her life is."

The federal government recently revised its rules to allow foreigners to visit immediate family in Canada, including spouses and common-law partners.

But Larocque and Emch didn't believethey fit the criteria.

To qualify as common-law, couples must have lived together for at least one year and havedocumentationto prove it, such as a lease or mortgage agreement that shows a shared address.

Larocque and Emch saidthey'vebeen together for five years, but have split their time between each of their own homes in Ottawa and Pompano Beach,so they don't have paperwork showing a shared residence.

The couple did get engaged by phone earlier this month, but they can't get married until they're reunited.

Heartbroken and outraged by her mother's situation, Vidosaearlier this month contactedLarocque'sMP, Liberal Marie-FranceLalonde, requesting a special exemption forEmchto enter Canada.

Lalonde told CBC News last week that she was trying to help the couple.

"Unfortunately, this couple does not exactly fit the definition of ... common-law," she said. "I really would like to find a solution and I believe our government will try to find a solution."

But a spokesperson for Public Safety Minister Bill Blair gave no indication that the government wasworking on a solution.

"Our hearts are with Ms. Larocque during this unimaginably difficult time," said the spokesperson in an email to CBC News last week. The email went on to explain that Canada's stringent travel restrictions are necessary "to keep Canadians safe."

Vidosa isthrilled that Emch will soon be reunited with her mother, but says her work isn't done. That's because she wants the federal government to revise its rules so that more families separated by theclosed Canadianbordercan be reunited.

"It's absolutely heartbreaking what's happening, so we're going tokeep fighting the good fight."

Watch | Son and mother kept apart by U.S.-Canada border restrictions:

The grassroots group Advocacy for Family Reunification at the Canadian Border which includes hundreds of separated family members has been lobbying the government since June to expand its immediate family exemptions to include all committed partners and adult children. Currently, only dependent children qualify.

"Even as an adult child, if I was living in the states, I couldn't come see my mom in her last days," said Vidosa. "I would flip."

Earlier this month,CBC News reportedthe plight of AmericanTimothy Martin House who lives in New York City. As an adult child, he can't cross the border to visit his sick, 85-year-old mother in Toronto.

"You should be by your mother's side at this stage, and I can't get over there," said Martin, 61.

The Public Health Agency of Canada told CBC News it's currently reviewing its definition of immediate family, while still keeping in mind the risks posed by international travel during the pandemic.

See the rest here:

Canadian woman dying of cancer will be able to reunite with American fianc - CBC.ca

Campaign Beat: Money, Mobs And Corruption – MTPR

Campaign Beat: Money, Mobs And Corruption

Montana's U.S. House race looks to be tight and maybe getting tighter. New ads in the Senate race allege corruption and kowtowing to the "liberal mob." And the candidates in that race agree to three debates this fall.

Listen now on Campaign Beat with Sally Mauk, Rob Saldin and Holly Michels.

Sally Mauk Rob, in the U.S. House race Democrat Kathleen Williams continues to outraise her Republican opponent Matt Rosendale, but The Cook Political Report continues to see the races "leaning Republican." And in part, that's because no Democrat has won that seat since 1994. So it's still, I think, Rob, seen as an uphill battle for Williams.

Rob Saldin Yeah, I agree, Sally. You know, both of them are doing well in terms of fundraising, and in fact, they're both among the handful of top-funded candidates in the country, which to me is a clear indication that both the Republicans and Democrats see this one as a competitive election.

Williams is actually doing a little better than Rosendale, but, you know, he's going to have plenty to do what he wants to in the campaign. There was also one poll out this month that showed it all tied up.

But, yeah, my own sense, though, is that Rosendale has to be a slight favorite in this one. All things being equal, Republicans have a significant built-in advantage in Montana.

And plus, Rosendale's been around longer, so he's already been elected statewide as auditor. He ran that high-profile Senate campaign against Jon Tester two years ago. And he's almost, because of all that, certainly got higher name ID than Williams, who I think remains a little bit undefined for a lot of voters. And additionally, one of Williams' strengths as a candidate two years ago was her retail campaigning, and of course, that's not possible this time.

But yet, you know, all that said, the broader backdrop for this election is about as good as it can get for Democrats, and it's not easy to see how things are going to improve all that much for Republicans between now and November, between the pandemic and the economy and President Trump's continued struggles.

And Rosendale, of course, has some weaknesses as a candidate. He sometimes comes off as a bit awkward, and on the issues, he sometimes comes off as pretty strident as an ideologue.

Mauk Rosendale continues to oppose the Affordable Care Act, Rob, and that now provides health insurance for tens of thousands of Montanans.

And that might have been a popular stance for Republicans at one time, but is it now, in the middle of a pandemic to be opposed to something that's providing health insurance for thousands of Montanans?

Saldin Well, yeah, exactly, Sally. I mean, his opposition to the Affordable Care Act, that's actually been one of his most identifiable positions, I'd say. And during his time as state auditor, which is the office tasked with regulating the insurance industry and protecting consumers, he's been right in the middle of it.

He's been a strong opponent of the Affordable Care Act, and as we talked about a couple weeks ago with regard to that Senate campaign, that position just isn't popular with the public anymore like it was a few cycles ago in the aftermath of Obamacare actually being passed. And, now on top of it, we're now in the middle of a pandemic and the various anxieties that that provokes. So this does have a potential, I think, to be a real weakness for Rosendale, and it's certainly one that the Democrats have identified and are trying to exploit.

Mauk Holly, the National Republican Senatorial Committee has a new ad out basically accusing Gov. Steve Bullock of corruption, and the ad accuses Bullock of steering millions of dollars worth of state contracts to a firm that was founded by Bullock's brother. Here's the ad:

Ad "We all know about Steve Bullock' government-run health care plan that will close rural hospitals and raise taxes, but there's more: Bullock has been accused of steering state grants to his brother's firm."

"It turns out a company founded by Bullock's brother received more than $14 million from state agencies."

"Steve Bullock: Steering hospitals away from Montana, and business to his own family. Think about that."

Mauk The ad, Holly, leaves out some important details, and the president of the firm referenced in the ad has demanded that it be taken off the air because, in his opinion, it is so erroneous.

Holly Michels Yeah. Right after this ad started airing - it's Pioneer Technical Services in Butte, which isn't directly named in the ad - but they sent a letter to TV stations around the state who are running it, asking them to take it down.

The letter said that Bullock's brother Bill resigned as CEO from Pioneer in 2004, and has sold his interest in the company to the employees by 2009, which is three years before Bullock was first elected to the governor's office.

I reached out to NRSC, and they said they stand behind the ad. They pointed to these corporate filings that show that Bullock's brother is still chairman of the board at Pioneer.

But Pioneer sent another letter to TV stations again on July 27, again saying the ad was false, misleading and defamatory. They say that Bullock's brother became chair of the board in 2017, and the next year he got a stipend of just $1,500. And they say that aside from this stipend, the governor's brother doesn't make any money from the company and has no financial stake in it. NRSC's trying to say as chairman of the board, he still has direction over it and would have interest in the company doing well.

I did reach out to TV stations that are running the ad. One replied that they got the letter from Pioneer, talked to their lawyers and decided to keep the ad on the air.

I think it's interesting. We did see an iteration of this ad in 2012, when Bullock was a first-time governor candidate, and it was pulled by NBC Montana over claims about money going to Pioneer. At that time, they pulled the ad saying that as attorney general, Bullock had no oversight over the grants the ad talks about.

I think it's unclear at this point. I think next steps, if ads I haven't heard from any other stations that they would take down the ads. Pioneer did warn that they would consider a lawsuit over defamation, so that might be the next step that we see if nothing else changes and this ad keeps airing.

Mauk The thing about ads that sling mud is that sometimes the mud sticks, no matter what the facts are. And, of course, that's the point.

Also this week, Holly, the Bullock campaign fired a young staffer for some offensive tweets he had posted some years ago.

Michels Yeah, this was Evan McCullers, who was a junior staffer who worked on communications for the campaign.

These tweets - in them, he made statements that made light of sexual assault. Some language is homophobic. There were statements that were derogatory toward black people and women. And he was fired just a couple hours after these tweets were surfaced online.

It looks like McCullers was a teenager at the time that these tweets were written, and he released a statement through the campaign after he was let go apologizing for them and saying that he's evolved since making them. But the campaign, you know, they also issued a statement saying the tweets are inappropriate, and once they learned about them, they did let McCullers go.

Mauk Well, Rob, again in the Senate race, Sen. Steve Daines has a new ad featuring Wibaux Sheriff Shane Harrington. Here's that ad:

Ad "These liberal attacks on law enforcement are a real threat to public safety, but Steve Bullock refuses to stand up for law and order."

"Bullock's campaign is being bankrolled by the liberal mob. That's why Bullock's been silent while left-wing radicals try to defund our police, erase our history and turn America into a socialist country."

"Steve Bullock doesn't share our Montana values: He's with the liberal mob."

"I'm Steve Daines and I approve this message."

Mauk And whew, Rob, this ad has all the catch phrases: socialism, liberal mob and left-wing radicals.

Saldin Right? Yeah, it's a real doozy. I'm a little skeptical, though, that this one is going to stick because it just seems a little over the top. You know, maybe this is the kind of thing that would work on a candidate that no one has heard of, but Bullock is well-known after his now nearly two terms as governor, one term as attorney general, the state's top law enforcement position. So this ad, which features all these images of just full-fledged rioting, it just doesn't seem consistent with what we know of Bullock. It just strains credulity a bit too much, it seems to me.

It also strikes me as unintentionally funny in its assertion that we should be scandalized by Bullock's silence in the face of the far left's excesses, right? Not the Democratic Party's left flank, mind you, but the violent rioters depicted in this ad. It's just a bit ironic, because Sen. Daines has - for nearly four years now - maintained his own silence in the face of routine outrages from President Trump. To my knowledge, he's never leveled any direct criticism of the president. And unlike the so-called liberal mob that this ad is trying to connect to Bullock, Daines is undeniably linked to Trump, right? They have this close personal relationship, Trump is a leader of Daines' party. So it's a little amusing to me to see the Daines campaign condemning someone for cowardly silence.

Mauk Holly, it looks like there will be three debates between Gov. Bullock and Sen. Daines this fall.

Michels Yeah, we saw this week the Bullock campaign agreed to three of the four debates that Daines had proposed. He came out less than 24 hours after the June primary, calling for Bullock to agree to participate in these four debates.

There'll be a Montana Broadcasters Association debate coming up Aug. 8, which is pretty soon here, a Montana PBS debate Sept. 28 and a Montana Television Network debate Oct. 10.

I think Daines' campaign was critical for Bullock's camp not expecting a Montana Chamber of Commerce debate.

I do think debates are going to be pretty important this year, with the coronavirus and campaigns limited from hosting in-person events like they would in a normal year. This gives voters a chance to see the candidates at their, you know, on TV at home, and sort of see how they interact together, so I think those will hopefully be pretty heavily watched this year.

Mauk Holly, there's been yet another campaign finance complaint filed in the governor's race, and this time it's by the Montana Democratic Party against Republican Greg Gianforte.

Michels Yeah. What this complaint is saying is that Gianforte coordinated with a political action committee to work around campaign contribution limits that a governor's campaign has.

It's referencing an invitation to a campaign event where Gianforte told people if they'd already maxed out giving to his campaign, they could give to this political action group.

It's going to be up to the commissioner of political practices to determine if that counts as illegal coordination, but I think the point of these complaints...

I don't think individual people and voters really track them much or watch what happens with them. It feels like, to me, sometimes this process is more about getting coverage of a candidate being accused of wrongdoing than the actual complaint itself.

There are, of course, genuine findings of candidates breaking ethics laws. We saw Lt. Gov. Mike Cooney get dinged with the maximum fine for participating in a campaign call from his official office. But we also saw, right after that and while the complaint was still filed and pending, a lot of attack ads about that.

I think, you know, looking at so far this year, just looking at campaign finance complaints: There's been 11 that are still pending, 19 already resolved, so it gives you an idea of the magnitude of how many we've seen.

It's also interesting to look at who's bringing these complaints. They're most often brought by political opponents, or political parties or figures adjacent to them. It's not members of the public really using this process to ask questions about things they think that might not be compliant with the law.

So you see a lot of coverage. I'm not sure if voters are really tracking the granular details of each individual complaint and the findings, but more seeing it when they pop up in campaign advertising.

Mauk Rob, here we are, just three months out from the election, and we're in the middle of a raging pandemic and fire season is just beginning. I wonder if voters are so overwhelmed, they just want 2020 and the election to be over.

Saldin Maybe, Sally, but it's a little hard to escape.

I actually think there is a higher level of engagement than normal - and part of that may have to do with people having more time on their hands - but we're also just living through such a crazy and incredibly politicized time right now, it's hard to get away from the politics.

And that's clearly immersed itself in the pandemic, and debates over masks and opening schools and everything else: it's all politicized. With that heightened level of engagement and awareness, though, I also get the sense that we're looking at an electorate in which there are just fewer undecided voters than normal.

So my sense is people are pretty dug in, even if they are paying more attention, or are just forced into not finding a place to get away from the politics of everything right now.

Mauk We're going to keep following it all from a safe distance, of course, and Holly and Rob, stay cool and I'll talk to you next week.

Campaign Beat is a weekly political analysis program produced by Montana Public Radio. Campaign Beat features University of Montana political science professor and Mansfield Center fellow Rob Saldin, and Lee Newspapers Capitol Reporter Holly Michels and host Sally Mauk.

What are "Montana Values"?

Every campaign season, we hear a lot about Montana Values. Things like liberty, opportunity, and love of public land. Ideas that supposedly define Montanans. But when elections come around, that language seems to do just as much to drive people apart.

For our elections coverage, our news team wants to know what values matter to you, and how candidates are talking about them in the run up to November. What do you think of when you hear Montana Values - and why?

Call us at 406-640-8933 and leave a message to share your thoughts.

Continued here:

Campaign Beat: Money, Mobs And Corruption - MTPR

Chris Trotter argues Richard Prebble made Act competitive electorally by turning it into a right-wing populist party, and asks whether David Seymour…

By Chris Trotter*

It wasn't that Act was short of talent or money, it had plenty of both, but it was definitely short of something. That much was plain in the weeks and months that followed the partys launch in 1994.

The partys two leading campaigners, Sir Roger Douglas and Derek Quigley, toured the country tirelessly. Still enhaloed by the success of his 1984-1990 policy revolution, Douglas easily persuaded employers to give the duo access to their workforces. Hundreds, and quite possibly thousands, of working-class men and women thought it advisable (in this post- Employment Contracts Act world) to listen politely as Douglas and Quigley delivered their classical-liberal pitch. With equal docility they accepted the glossy pamphlets paid for by Acts bankroller, the multi-millionaire Craig Heatley.

And yet, in spite of Douglass confident predictions of Act rapidly attracting major-party levels of voter support, its poll ratings hovered stubbornly just below or fractionally above 1%. Classical-Liberal economics and politics does have an audience in New Zealand, but it is very, very small. Too small to provide Act with the 5%of the Party Vote required to make it into Parliament without the turbo-charger of an electorate seat however acquired.

Clearly, the something Act was lacking needed to be identified and supplied as a matter of urgency or the Herculean efforts of Douglas and Quigley, and the $1 million dollars spent by Heatley, would all have been for nought.

Enter Richard Prebble.

Douglas and Quigley had given it their best shot, but by March 1996 it was clear their ammunition was too lightly packed. If the revolution unleashed by Douglas (ably assisted by Prebble) in 1984 was to be protected and extended, then Acts cartridges would require a considerably heavier charge.

Nobody possesses a better understanding of the explosive material required to propel the Right into political contention than Prebble. His gut-level feel for the anxieties and prejudices of working-class and middle-class New Zealand voters had served the Labour Party well. Not that the partys activists were ever very comfortable with the ingredients of Prebbles political sausages. They looked at the Auckland Central MPs bull-necked enforcer, Gene Leckie, and shuddered. The Labour Left was equally perturbed by the sudden influx of voluble right-wingers organised by Prebble and his fellow Backbone Club members (many of whom went on to join Act) as Rogernomics tore the Labour Party apart.

Prebble understood what so many well-meaning Labourites refused to accept: that in Labours broad church there were deep reservoirs of racism, sexism, homophobia and full-throated red-neck authoritarianism. The trick, as Prebble knew, was to keep these people voting Labour while simultaneously hiding them from public view. He also knew (as Quigley, perhaps, did not) just how many more of these folk lurked within the ranks of the National Party. Perhaps only the kiwi-gothic novelist, Ronald Hugh Morrieson, understood more about the darkness which enshrouds the heart of rural and provincial New Zealand. (In the years that followed his takeover of the Act leadership, Prebble would discover how many dark impulses also lurked in the heart of Remuera!)

In March of 1996, with the first MMP election just months away, Prebble gently moved aside Acts classical-liberal trappings and steered it towards an unabashed courtship of the angry Right. In this regard, his party was not competing directly with either National or Labour, but with NZ First and the Christian Coalition. And precisely because Prebble was the principal wooer, Acts blandishments were clear and unequivocal (unlike NZ Firsts) and unencumbered by religious dogma (unlike the Christian Coalitions). When the votes were counted on Election Night, Prebbles right-wing populist Act had received 6.1%of the Party Vote roughly six times the level of public support which Douglass and Quigleys classical-liberal Act had attracted.

In the general election of 2002, Prebble topped-out Acts support at 7.14%of the Party Vote (9 List MPs). A contemporary outburst from Prebble, directed against Helen Clarks stated intention to increase the number of refugees admitted to New Zealand, reveals how wholeheartedly Act had embraced the right-wing populist agenda:

There are millions of refugees around the world and instead of taking those who have most difficulty settling in New Zealand e.g. those from desert cultures we should look sympathetically at refugees who would have no difficulty integrating into New Zealand society. For example, white farmers being driven off their land in Zimbabwe are real refugees and theyd make good citizens but theyd never be selected by this politically correct government. These Zimbabwean farmers are homeless because theyre not politically fashionable.

Prebbles sudden exit from the leadership of Act in 2004 (never satisfactorily explained) heralded the slow and seemingly irreversible decline of the partys electoral fortunes. The more distance Acts new leader, Rodney Hide, attempted to put between himself and the partys right-wing populist legacy the harder it became to sustain its electoral support. In the absence of Nationals strategic electoral support in the Auckland seat of Epsom, Acts determination to return to the classical-liberal principles of its founders would, almost certainly, have led to its demise.

How, then, to explain the steady rise in Acts support since 2019? Receiving just 0.5%of the Party Vote in 2017, it has surged to 5%in the latest Colmar Brunton poll. Polite commentators point to the current Act leaders, David Seymours, statesmanlike shepherding of his End of Life Choice bill through the House of Representatives. Others cite his sterling defence of the principle of Free Speech. Sadly, this will not do. The steady rise in Acts popularity stems not from these classical-liberal stances (which barely nudged the pollsters dials) but from its unwavering defence of New Zealands gun culture in the aftermath of the Christchurch Mosque Massacres.

The signal that went out into all the dark corners of rural and provincial New Zealand could hardly have been clearer or stronger. Deliberately, or as the result of the most unfortunate political happenstance, Act had turned to the same kinds of voters Prebble had courted in 1996. While the rest of New Zealand and all the parliamentary parties, except his own, were uniting behind the call for comprehensive gun control, Seymour allowed himself to be turned into the poster-boy for the very worst sort of American-inspired political paranoia.

Its a package-deal, of course, this far-right, conspiratorial, evidence-averse, Rapture-anticipating, 5G-fearing and Covid-19-denying rag-bag of political craziness. Buy into the gun-owners rights narrative and you risk getting all the others thrown in for free. Seymour should thank his lucky stars that his party has, too date, only had to suffer an influx of gun-owners rights enthusiasts. (Their spokesperson, Nicole McKee, is No. 3 on Acts Party List.) For the moment, at least, all the other conspiracists have rallied around the Advance New Zealand banner raised by Jami-Lee Ross and Billy Te Kahika (BTK).

Its easy to laugh, but the astonishing numbers turning out to BTKs rallies and the sudden surge in Acts poll numbers point to a reservoir of popular anger and alienation that only remains hidden from Middle New Zealand because it so seldom finds any person or party with the ability and/or inclination to make its feelings known.Richard Prebble, who grew up in the bosom of a mass political party, has always known such people existed and where to find them. With their votes he turned Act into a genuine electoral force. The fervent response to BTKs populist conspiracy theories proves theyre still out there in their thousands.

The question is: If this is the something that Act is short of, then, surely, it is something Act should do without?

*Chris Trotter has been writing and commenting professionally about New Zealand politics for more than 30 years. He writes a weekly column for interest.co.nz. His work may also be found athttp://bowalleyroad.blogspot.com.

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Chris Trotter argues Richard Prebble made Act competitive electorally by turning it into a right-wing populist party, and asks whether David Seymour...

Why Ramachandra Guha And Other Usual Suspects Are Coveted By Even Private Liberal Varsities – Swarajya

Roughly two years after modern historian Ramachandra Guha batted for KREA University to be given the tag of institution of eminence, he has been appointed distinguished professor of history at the same university. The university has said that Dr Guha will teach classes, interact with students, work with colleagues on curricular development, and help build the vision of KREA.

In a rant against Jio University being given the institute of eminence tag, Guha wrote in the Hindustan Times in July 2018: Even if, for arguments sake, the jury decided to favour one so-called greenfield project, why Jio Institute over the other contenders? Were the more impressive credentials of KREA considered and carefully scrutinised?

Guha went on: Why, for example, had the jury not selected the new KREA University, which is in a more advanced stage of preparation? With a campus rapidly being developed outside Chennai, KREA has a governing council which includes Anand Mahindra, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Anu Aga and N Vaghul. KREAs Academic Council is chaired by Raghuram Rajan; its other members include the gifted historian Srinath Raghavan, the brilliant classical musician T M Krishna, and the great mathematician Manjul Bhargava.

This is not to suggest any quid-pro-quo or even hint at Guhas unsuitability for the job at KREA he has the credentials but we need to make an entirely different point: Guha represents the outer limits of acceptability for the Left-wing cancel culture of mainstream Indian social sciences academia.

He is also seen to be a necessary ingredient in less-Left wing wannabe universities that want to prove intellectual heft. Another intellectual in the same mould as Guha is Pratap Bhanu Mehta, who functioned as Vice-Chancellor of Ashoka University, which is moving away from its initial liberal character to more Left-wing politics, as faculty hiring trends show.

The problem for institutions like Ashoka University or KREA, which claim to want a liberal campus culture, is simple: they are not bold enough to hire true academics from the Right, someone like Belgian Koenraad Elst or Michel Danino today, or a dogged expert of the Rig Veda like Shrikant Talageri, or a mediaeval historian like Meenakshi Jain. This is why they settle for someone like Guha, who occasionally berates the Left, as a good enough stand-in for the Right.

Guha, on the contrary, is a closet admirer of the Left. Thus, while mildly critiquing the Left for putting up pictures of two Germans from the 19th century and two Russians from the 20th) at their political events (a reference to Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin), he still thinks they are great human beings leading lives which are the simplest of any political party leaders in the country, and for investing in healthcare and education whenever they ruled any state.

Kerala may fit this bill, for reasons that have less to do with Leftist rule in the state than decisions made when Travancore was a princely state with enlightened rulers, but for a historian to believe that West Bengal and Tripura are some kind of leaders in education and health is bizarre. Also, the description of Leftist leaders as people living the simplest of lives fits the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) even better.

For his part, Guha refuses to engage with true Right-wing intellectuals. In his book on Makers of Modern India, he engages with the RSSs second Sarsanghchalak M S Golwalkar, but not V D Savarkar, the ideologue of Hindutva.

He prefers to believe that the Right-wing today has no intellectuals, when the question to ask is why? Is it because of the cancel culture of the Left, and the state-organised looting of all Hindu institutions (from temples to charitable trusts) in the name of secularism? If there are no good Right wing intellectuals, isnt it the job of liberal universities to develop them?

Balancing the Left-Right composition in new universities means picking centrists who are more opposed to the Right than the mindless Left. This is not just cancel culture but self-cancel culture, where promoters of new universities lose the plot without the Left firing the first shot. Guha, with his international linkages, is preferred because he can earn brownie points in Left-Liberal and Hinduphobic Western academia even for private liberal universities.

Unlike the US, where the Lefts cancel culture of denying space for non-Left-liberal voices in academia is of more recent origin, in India cancel culture came in as early as the mid-1960s, when Indira Gandhi handed over the culture and education portfolios to the Left.

This ensured two things: most universities, already biased towards the Left, became an in-bred crowd of people spouting similar ideologies. This is being said not only by the Right, but fellow travellers from the Centre and Left spaces, including Guha himself (read here, here). Secondly, this in-breeding has damaged the Left as much as stunted the Right. Shorn of any intellectual challenge, Left intellectualism has withered on the vine.

After more than half a century of dominating campuses, the Left cannot produce any legitimate scholarship that is genuinely India-centric or non-Hinduphobic. Most of its academic work is about sticking an Indian label on Marxist theory, with no original contributions or local insights to boot.

This is why the Left cannot produce any new intellectuals beyond the usual suspects, Romila Thapar and Irfan Habib, and even these intellectuals are busy defending their shop-soiled theories (Aryan invasion, class conflict and sub-alternism), even though no sub-altern has been allowed to wield any bit of academic power in the universities they dominate.

The Left denied caste till it became important to reinvent it to attack the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the RSS as Brahminical. Ironically, almost all Left intellectuals and political leaders have Brahminical or upper caste roots.

Having mortgaged true intellectualism to Western liberals and Marx, the Left has produced true excellence on two fronts: it has been great in producing pamphleteers and propagandists. Thus, some of them could even fib in court about the non-existence of a temple below the Babri structure.

In fact, both the Allahabad High Court judgement in the Ram Janmabhoomi case, and the five-judge Supreme Court bench that finally decided to hand over the disputed land to the Hindus, rubbished the Lefts claims to writing objective history. When presented with the Left historians grandly titled Babri Mosque or Rams Birthplace? Historians Report to the Nation, the bench said that at best this could only be considered an opinion.

Only two of the historians who compiled the report had even visited Ayodhya before presenting the report, and even they had little knowledge of the puranas or the Hindu side of the argument, which had indirect information on the temple that existed before the mosque built over its ruins.

The reason why Pratap Bhanu Mehta at Ashoka University and Guha at KREA sound like exceptional choices is simple: the Left no longer has intellectual credibility, and the genuine Right is denied space for fear of offending the politically influential Left propagandists.

In the US, where culture has been moulded by evangelical Christianity, robber-baron entrepreneurship, free speech rules and widespread gun ownership, money flows both to Left and Right institutions. Many post-graduate institutions are run by churches, and many liberal institutions are funded by big corporations. Cancel culture cannot last as there are enough sources of funding for non-Left institutions.

In India, there is almost no funding for the Right because business needs Left support in order to survive in a hitherto crony capitalist culture. Even with a BJP government in power, business people worry about what may happen to them if the Congress returns to power, or the Left becomes an influential player in a future government (as in UPA-1 or United Front in 1996-98).

Giving money to the Left ensures that your company is protected from political attacks in future; giving money to the Right will get you no accolades, for the Right is anyway inclined to support a market economy and businesses.

Guha and Mehta are beneficiaries of this fear culture, where Liberal means largely Left in the Indian context, and Right means Right-hating opinion-makers like the duo. Academic institutions are still to free themselves from this self-imposed tyranny and diffidence.

Read more from the original source:

Why Ramachandra Guha And Other Usual Suspects Are Coveted By Even Private Liberal Varsities - Swarajya

Letters to the editor, July 31, 2020 – Idaho Press-Tribune

Education

Not everyone has the easiest time in school. I know I didnt. My mental health was something I struggled with coming up in the one brick-and-mortar school in my small town. It was difficult to succeed in the school district. Fortunately, I found a solution with online school.

I can now say that Ive grown so much from my transition from a brick-and-mortar school to online learning at Idaho Technical Charter Academy, as I look to complete my senior year of college at Trinity University in San Antonio, TX

I didnt have what one would call a normal life. For starters, my home environment wasnt great and my struggles with mental health made it difficult to take full advantage of everything that online school has to offer. My school provided me with an incredibly strong support system in the form of its teaching staff. I became very close with one of my English teachers who is part of the reason I even got into Trinity. I now study English there and Im really involved in advocacy and inclusion on campus.

With COVID-19, many families are concerned about returning to in-person learning but also hesitate to go fully online. I can assure you that with the right tools and guidance, online school works. It drove me to establish myself as a truly self-driven and self-directed person, and I appreciate that it could act as that buffer for my mental health. Lets make sure that every family has the ability to choose the school that meets their needs.

Brianna Duncan, Meridian

Lands

The consequences of swapping McCall land to Trident Holdings LLC will outlive sweet-talking Alec Williams. Its easy to imagine the owners of the contemplated private acre lots backing up to public land enjoying access to the public land and denying it to the public, as often happens. An easement on private property is only a right to sue for access, not access. Who wins that suit, the deep-pocketed, politically-connected rich guy or the public? If Tridents plans are so benign and financially beneficial, why doesnt the Land Board do them? And endowment lands arent public lands but Tridents would be? Huh?

James Runsvold, Caldwell

Kool-Aid

Sorry Mr. Cannamela, youve been drinking the same $17 Billion Dollars worth of Kool-Aid over the past 20 yrs that the majority of Governors, Congressmen and Native Americans have on how to renew the Salmon/Steelhead runs in the PNW. Imagine $17 Billion and still no solution; typical government scenario in wasteful spending. Well, I have a solution that is backed by Good Science. Contact Mr. Ron Harriman at ronharriman@q.com for the details and I would invite our Governor to do the same. Mr. Harriman has the solutions without losing any of our Hydro Power and it wont cost another $17 Billion of taxpayers money to do it. Will it be easy? No, but the plan will solve the problem.

Chuck Stadick, Caldwell

Grow a heart

An Idaho Press story over the weekend helped me understand why so many Idahoans do not wear masks or take protective measures urgently recommended by the governor and, most recently, the president.

While discussing the death of a St. Lukes nurse, Representative Tammy Nichols told the Idaho Press that information about the virus coming from government and medical scientists was without consensus. This suggests that, for many, science which seems unequivocal can be disregarded if, for example, medical advice changes about the importance of masks. She then implied a distinction should be made between those who died from the disease from those who died with it, as if Covid death numbers are also without consensus. Finally, Nichols said she did not want someone else to be held responsible to keep me safe.

It is obvious and undeniably we are responsible for ourselves. But have we no responsibility to protect others, which is the purpose of wearing a mask? What happened to Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself or the Golden Rule?

The same weekend brought a call from my brother saying his dear wife had just been diagnosed with Covid and taken to a hospital. Apparently, three workers at a facility where she was in medical rehabilitation had brought the infection to her.

Should she die, it would be from three workers failing to wear masks or engaging in risky behavior or because testing, tracing or protective equipment was unavailable. Isnt the point to protect everyone possible, not statistical consensus? And, as with Samantha Hickey, the St. Lukes nurse who died, we will not care if Covid is only the immediate but not the sole reason we lost her. Please, Representative Nichols and likeminded Idahoans, grow a heart.

Jerry Brady, Boise

Baseball

It is good to see that major league baseball is now being played. It would be nice if the Idaho Press printed the box scores in a larger font so that we can read them, otherwise why print them at all. Please do what you can to present a sports page that is readable to all readers. Im sure you can spare a bit of additional space in the daily paper.

Craig Lochner, Boise

Subscriber no more

Please add my name the expanding list of readers dropping off your subscriber list due to your obvious tilt to the left. I was sold on the Idaho Press as it was presented to be an alternative to the liberal Statesman, but the July 28 article titled Black kids die more often after surgery, new research shows pushed off the ledge. How can an article stating that out of 173,000 operations 23 black youngsters died within 30 days of surgery compared with 13 whites be declared striking without any additional info such as the admitted slightly more heart and digestive problems among black children. How many of those surgeries were the result of domestic or gang violence for instance? When looking at the odds of dying after 173,000 surgeries (about 0.01%, it compares to the odds of dying after being struck by lightening. If you want to print something truly striking, why not print the odds of dying as a black child due to a gunshot in Chicago.

Michael Piechowski, Boise

Dictatorial

The Barr Hearing once again gave insight to what a Democratic Party governance would be. Dictatorial, lacking any fairness or truth, unprofessional. Once more we see that Democratic control of the House of Representatives proves to be out of control. If you do not see anything wrong with their actions you could go to Venezuela and enjoy that type of government right now. The governance we see in the House of Representative is the best reason I have seen to vote for Trump for President.

Richard Wasson, Meridian

Why?

Is anyone else concerned with the larger companies eateries. I chose to stay local because the local companies seem to have figured out the way to be safe. The larger companies choose to have their employees use gloves! They will put them on and wear them for long periods of time in between touching menus, money and delivering your food! The gloves only protect those who are wearing them- not us. They are spreading any bacteria, virus, e coli etc from pone patron to the next. WHY??? How often are they washing their hands, one of the #1 ways to prevent spreading anything.

Cheri Beauvais, Nampa

Liability

A recent article in the Newspaper written by Betsy Russell covered legal liability issues regarding school closures, and reopening risks for school districts, teachers and administrators.

The article vividly reminded me of one of the 8 primary reasons for moving OUT of California 20 years ago. While on the board of directors of a California company that was growing rapidly, but still not profitable, we cratered when 4 different investment bankers promising funding did not deliver.

Soon thereafter, the buzzards (lawyers) starting circling, and first sued the company but nothing there, then sued the management team and nothing there, and finally sued the board of directors. The board spent 3 years fighting the lawsuits, spent a fortune, and won all suits. But no compensation for our legal expenses was paid.

The United States is one of 2 countries in the world where the loser in a lawsuit does NOT have to pay all lawyer fees, which puts US companies at a real disadvantage to competing companies around the world which do not have all those ambulance chasing lawyers; there is no opportunity for them.

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Realizing that the California legislature was primarily lawyers, but the Idaho legislature was comprised of business people, teachers, farmers, etc. helped push us here. Unfortunately, California lawyers can sue anywhere, and this is probably a problem for the school districts today.

Finally, look at the mess California is in now---Dirty and financially broke cities, people camping in tents along the ocean beaches, no funds for clean up, declining quality of schooling, etc. And today Californians are moving quickly to Idaho, but thankfully, those moving are financially sound. Lets keep Idaho sound!

Chas Bonner, Eagle

Shameful

I cried watching destruction of our U.S, cities during the Barr hearings, then laughed when the dems showed their videos & denied knowing about the damage of our cities. Shameful!

I wear a mask, but what good is it when hundreds or thousands of protestors are out in many states. No masks, no social distance, then return to their state. Why should we tax payers pay for special guard just for political people ( left or right) who do not stand up for & insist on law & order with the protestors?

Why cant teachers have private session with the students assigned to her or no pay or give the designated money for each student to hire their own tutor? I worry about pay to play, as the 85 year old mother of six children, that I raised on my own when their father left us, I was not able to spend a penny for sports. One of my sons received a football scholarship. We better all pray if police are abolished or defunded to the point of being worthless or no one is willing to join because of no support. 3 of my sons served in the military, one retired military is now state police. Have we no appreciation for all these young peoples sacrifices?

As for BLM. They should have to take some of the responsibility for much of the destruction of our country. all known members & others who have encouraged all this damage ( federal & private) They should not only serve time, but be sued for all the cost involved. Along with many people I agree Trump is never or seldom politically correct in speeches & tweets. Never was a politician. I guess thats why he was elected.

Thanks for the opportunity to unload!

Pat Cone, Eagle

Whats right

Paulette is right on in her assessment of Risch. He is a puppet of Trump. No backbone to stand up for what is right.

Ed Crateau, Meridian

Thank you

I want to thank Americas Frontline Doctors and President Trump for taking the message to the public that outpatient treatments for COVID-19 exist. People need to know that they can ask for treatment and get help from their own physician.

I have been a pharmacist since 1981 and I am astounded at the attacks on hydroxychloroquine. The Frontline Doctors are brave to stand up against almost entirely negative coverage in the news media.

I also want to say that hydroxychloroquine is not the only useful drug in the early treatment of COVID-19 infections. People who should not take it because of possible adverse effects or are frightened of using it can use other medications that also reduce the chance of serious illness due to COVID-19.

In my opinion this is a battle for lives, and I applaud anyone who dares to stand against the most shameful episode of medical disinformation that I have seen in my career.

Brent Cornell, Boise

Link:

Letters to the editor, July 31, 2020 - Idaho Press-Tribune

Comments of the Week: Right-Wing UWS? ‘Homeless Hotels,’ Mopeds Cancelled – westsiderag.com

Posted on August 1, 2020 at 10:25 am by Carol Tannenhauser

A word of explanation: some comments below and posted on WSR exceed the 100-word limit we ourselves set. If a lengthy comment offers new information or perspective, or raises provocative questions, we will sometimes let it through. This is not an invitation to extend the length of your comments! Most long ones will be cut. The Editors.

re: Sean Hannity Says Upper West Sides Homeless Hotels Are Part of a New York City Nightmare

Bruce E. Bernsteinsays:Are UWS residents really as right wing as the comments imply? I know very few people like this in real life. There are some but they are few and far between.

UWSHebrewsays:I know those guys and others, like ex-servicemen and ex-NYPD detectives who live right here, and buy bagels every weekend, same as you. More of us right-wingers in your midst than you could know

re: Some Homeless Residents Coming to UWS Hotel Are Being Transferred From Another Hotel Where it Didnt Work Out And Drug Use Continued

Katesays:I love this neighborhood, but reading this piece makes me want to move further uptown. That people who are comfortable and privileged can so proactively want to withhold a basic human right like shelter from a group of human beings is appalling. Housing the homeless in hotels has long been done all over the city, but this NIMBY stuff terrifies me. New Yorkers have proven during COVID that we might be one of the only true societies left in the U.S.; when crisis hit, we leaned into the very meaning of community. While Im a young single woman always highly mindful of safety, the extent of any perceived risk is so much less than the extent of established need of those who have less than I do, and who did not have the advantages I had purely out of luck.

Peter says:Yes, we all live here. Under a social contract. The social contract that governs how we spend our citys resources, i.e., tax dollars, time and effort. The same contract that forces us to have community board hearings to determine whether the addition of a 22 ft coffee table to a sidewalk cafe is appropriate or unnecessarily infringing on someones rights or safety. Or commit vast city resources to establish that a new building can be 14 stories but not 15. Or conduct a myriad of surveys and assessments and public hearings to determine the impact of adding a science wing to a museum.

The same social contract under which matters that may reasonably be expected to affect the quality, safety of life here should be debated, given due consideration, and those most likely to be impacted should be able to voice their opinions. Not swept under the rug by unknown and unaccountable city bureaucrats on a Friday-for-Monday basis. Vulnerable population? Vulnerable to what? The covid-19 that the City claims to have under complete control? What was the spread and impact on these men at the peak of the crisis? How did they protect them then? Why now, at its supposed nadir?

re: Revel To Shut Down Until Further Notice After Second Rider Dies

Shara Feinstein says:You dont see this problem with Vespa and Motorcycle drivers because they invest in owning them and wear helmets and drive safety. It is a shame because having more transportation options would have been great. No helmets, no masks, no responsibility means we all lose out.

chuck D says:This is why we cant have nice things.

re: Photos: Upper West Siders Commune With Turtles, Cats And Each Other

Fred Kepler says:Beautiful photos. Even behind the masks, I could sense the smiles!

Read the original post:

Comments of the Week: Right-Wing UWS? 'Homeless Hotels,' Mopeds Cancelled - westsiderag.com

Peter Beinart and the Palestinian Right of Return Mondoweiss – Mondoweiss

Peter Beinart has made lots of noise in the past three weeks in his turning away from the two-state solution for Palestine-Israel, towards advocating for a single bi-national state. His advocacy has been a crisis for liberal-Zionists, of whom Beinart was a leading voice, and whose mantra in the past generation has been the two-state separation; and his advocacy has garnered charges of utopian nonsense, from a former ambassador, and of his being a Nazi, from Alan Dershowitz.

But reaching beyond the noise, there is a single crucial point that has always divided Zionists and Palestinians, even within the talk of a two-state solution: refugees. The issue of Palestinian refugee return is one single issue that like no other unites Palestinians, cutting to the heart of their continued dispossession. Its denial is also an essentially Zionist issue, as Israeli historian Benny Morris has noted:

Transfer was inevitable and inbuilt in Zionism because it sought to transform a land which was Arab into a Jewish state and a Jewish state could not have arisen without a major displacement of Arab population.

This is not just a historical matter. As former Israeli PM Ehud Barak noted in his dissent to Bill Clintons Parameters of 2000, no Israeli prime minister will accept even one refugee on the basis of the [Palestinian] right of return. Former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni negotiating under Ehud Olmert in 2008? Not a single refugee.

In short, the two-state solution was, as far as Israel was concerned, a means of consolidating the ethnic cleansing and ensuring a Jewish majority for a Jewish and democratic state. The whole point of it was demography. And just as allegiance to the two-state rhetoric has been a kind of litmus test for Zionists, entailing support for the Jewish State, the issue of accepting Palestinian refugee return is a real litmus test for seeing whether one is, after all, a Zionist.

And Peter Beinart is still clinging to Zionism in some way, with a certain romanticism of a cultural, or religious, connection, which he now says doesnt have to mean a Jewish state, but rather a general notion of a Jewish homeland, in what he now advocates should be a bi-national one state.

So what about those refugees then?

Beinart has been somewhat shy and hesitant in relating to this issue in his over 7000-word essay Yavne: A Jewish Case for Equality in Israel-Palestine, published in Jewish Currents on July 7th. It appears over half-way down the piece, and Beinart cites some quotes on it, mostly in the context of something that needs to be compromised, reduced or trimmed. Here are the passages:

Scholars have imagined various ways to adapt these models to Israel-Palestine while tackling thorny questions of national rights, immigration, and military powers. Some involve federalism, a central government thatas in Belgium or Canadahands power down to local bodies, through which Jews and Palestinians manage their own affairs. Others involve confederalism, a Jewish state and a Palestinian state that each hand power up to a supranational authority that might look something like the European Union. A Land for All, a group that promotes confederalism, has proposed that Palestinian refugees could return to Israel yet be citizens of Palestine, while Jewish settlers could stay in Palestine and remain citizens of Israel. Alternatively, the famed Palestinian scholar Edward Said suggested in 1999 that in one state, [t]he Law of Return for Jews and the right of return for Palestinian refugees [would] have to be considered and trimmed together.

Trimming the Law of Return need not prevent Israel-Palestine from being a Jewish home. Whats crucial, if it is to remain a refuge for Jews, is not that a Jew from New York can land in Tel Aviv and become a citizen on day one. Its that the state enshrine in its constitution the obligation to be a haven for any Jewand yes, any Palestinianin distress.

It is a pretty dry approach, and Beinart does not seem to feel a need to insert much of his own feelings about it, as to why the Palestinian refugee return in itself is important, nor its backing in international law. He could surely take an example from Yousef Munayyer, who wrote:

The right of return is backed by international law and it is a human right. The right of return is enshrined in the UN Declaration of Human Rights, a declaration that all UN members, including Israel, agree to uphold. It is further enshrined, among other places, in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discriminationtwo treaties to which Israel is also a state party. For Palestinians, it is also a sacred right.

Beinart was actually more morally assertive in a podcast with Americans for Peace Now after his piece appeared (July 11th), even if the issue came towards the end of the hour (from minute 47, in the context of a confederation):

I dont think that at this point that a solution, a two-state solution that does not allow for Palestinians to have the right of refugee return, is likely to ultimately be a morally acceptable

Hadar Susskind asked, Refugee return to where?

Beinart:

Well I think ultimately the right of a refugee return, not just to the West Bank but also to Israel proper. Now, one of the ways Land for All thinks about that, is through a notion of those Palestinians refugees remaining, being citizens of a Palestinian state based in West Bank and Gaza, even as they live in Israel proper, right? While Israeli settlers stay in the West Bank and retain their Israeli citizenship. Right, so this is where a confederation model could work. But I do think that the way a two-state solution has been conceived by some people, which is essentially to say, virtually no right of refugee Palestinian return to areas inside Israel proper I have come to the view that I think that would be unlikely to be that effective of a solution. And I also think that we have to really have a conversation about the morality of telling we are a people who for 2000 years have prayed every morning since the creation of modern liturgy, for a return to this land how do we tell people who grew up in a place, that they dont have the right to return to that place? So I think that one of the reasons that I would favor a confederation model over a two-state model, if I had to choose between the two at this point, is that I think it creates more opportunity for meeting peoples legitimate rights to have the option of returning. That does not mean going to someones house and kicking them out of their home. And I dont think its the way most Palestinians I know think about it. But it means maybe compensation and it means having the right to return to the city where you were born. I mean again, one of the things that comes across to anyone who spends time with Palestinian writing and learns from the Palestinian experience, is the enormous power and the importance for people of being able to go back to places that were precious to them. And one of the things that I find appealing about the confederation model, even if one doesnt go fully towards the one-state model, is it provides some way of realizing that. And I am saddened that in our Jewish discourse, that we are people who take so much pride in our ability to remember, to not forget, and to hold sacred memory and to try to fulfil it, are so dismissive of that when it comes to Palestinians.

Well, that is really a bit better. Lets look at that last bit, about remembering, in terms of Israels Law of Return for Jews. The return is mythical. Really, its about biblical myth from times literally immemorial. And thats supposed to somehow trump the actual right of return of Palestinians in times still in actual living memory.

When Beinart talks about how a two-state solution has been conceived by some people, with virtually no right of refugee Palestinian return to areas inside Israel proper its really not just some people. This position is one that cuts across the whole Zionist political spectrum.

Zionists have regularly derided Palestinians who long for this return. The liberal hero Amos Oz has also done so he told a Palestinian refugee from Lifta that the latter is ill, suffering from Reconstritis:

You are ill, I told the man. And I also diagnosed the illness You are ill with Reconstritis. You are seeking in space, what you have lost in time. If you miss Lifta so much, write a book. Make a film. Write a play. Write up a research. Seek what you have lost in time, not in space You miss your childhood? Thats OK, but if you start behaving like a 5-year old child [Oz is literally shouting here] because of your childhood longings, you need to be hospitalized!

But Oz himself was not ill with Reconstritis, by his own diagnosis. He wrote books, but he wrote them in Israel. Because for Zionists, it is not a dream anymore, and if we caused your nightmare by ethnically cleansing you, well, thats just tough write a book.

This position has been widely accepted as being morally legitimate by Israel supporters. It has been understood as a necessary evil, like Tom Cottons necessary evil of slavery in the US. Even if not explicitly stated (or not as explicitly as Barak and Livni), it was a Zionist assumption, the gains of ethnic cleansing must not be compromised.

Its interesting to see how Beinarts current positions on the binational state, are ones that he himself had deemed utopian back in 2015. Notice this, from a debate he had with Yousef Munayyer:

Im simply arguing that when people reject two states in favor of one binational state, which is the main proposed alternative, I wonder where exactly do they see the appetite for this binationalism on either side. Binational states are exceedingly hard to keep together. Binationalism barely works in Belgium. The Czechs and Slovaks couldnt make it work, Scotland is seriously considering seceding from the U.K, as is Catalonia from Spain, and these are all far, far more placid environments than the land between the river and the sea. What would we call this Israeli Palestinian binational state? In post-apartheid South Africa the answer was obvious, because whites and blacks both considered themselves citizens of South Africa. In Israel and Palestine by contrast, this imagined binational state, we have no name because no national identity undergirds it. Lets imagine that someone did create Israstine. What is its army going to look like? It would be an Army operating under conditions of unbelievable stress. [Beinart relates situations in which the army would be torn apart by tensions due to orders to evict or not evict Jewish or Palestinian residents.] This is not progressivism; its the great temptation of progressives, utopianism.

But now that utopianism (which is what his critics now chide him for) has become a viable, necessary vision for Beinart. Which is to say, that if you will it, it is no dream as Zionist founder Herzl said. And the Zionists could dream it, right? Call it Reconstritis or whatever, but they certainly dreamt it, and boy, did they make it happen.

So why, now that we see that the DNA of Zionism for all practical purposes is settler-colonialism and Apartheid, why cant we dream of a better future, one of equality and freedom? Is that so sick?

Peter Beinart has opened up the one-state discussion in Zionist circles, and those who could not dismiss him out of hand, sought to engage with him in serious conversation. That conversation leads inevitably to critical issues of righting injustices done to Palestinians, since it gives up to a large degree the assumption of Jewish supremacy and opens up for considerations of real equality. And that conversation definitely needs to be had.

Original post:

Peter Beinart and the Palestinian Right of Return Mondoweiss - Mondoweiss

How Does the National Education Policy Accelerate the Privatisation of Higher Education? – Economic and Political Weekly

The Draft National Education Policy (DNEP) 2019 continues to be in line with the neo-liberal, anti-democratic, and centralising tendencies that have been prevailing in higher education since the early 1990s.[1] These tendencies are pronounced in the latest DNEP with the incorporation of the elements of revivalism, communalism, and social insensitivity. While advocating for a multidisciplinary liberal education to meet the demands of the job market and the challenges of the 21st century, the DNEP insidiously overlooks the importance of upholding the Constitution, secularism, equality, social justice, and plurality that our social fabric demands. The absence of such inclusivity in the policy speaks much louder than its divisive overtones.

On the state of higher education, the document begins on a concerned note about what it calls the Fragmentation of Higher Education System (MHRD 2019: 203). The reason for this fragmentation is identified as the presence of over 800 universities and 40,000 colleges spread across the country. In effect, the sociocultural diversity, decentralised autonomy of the universities, and the reach and scope of affiliated colleges that have been catering to the needs of students in urban and rural areas are negated in a single stroke withthe label of fragmentation. The new policy proposes to overcome this throughthe establishment of higher educational institutions (HEIs) of a much broader scope and size, which indicates a move towards a monolithic and homogenised educational regime.

With its oft-repeated references to Indianness, the policy draft makes a case for homogenisation. It promises special funding for the study of Indian art, culture, and literature. The draft policy states,

All undergraduate programmes will also emphasise music, visual arts, performing arts, and sports. This shall include Indias deep traditions in the arts, music and sports, including the numerous remarkable local regional traditions. Yoga shall form an integral part of such efforts as well. Institutions will be encouraged and funded to offer full-fledged programmes and courses in these areas (MHRD 2019: 230).

The use of the term Indian in relation to art, culture, and literature is problematic. India is not a monolithic structure. Diversity and plurality are our hallmarks. The dangers of revivalism are inherent in the call to study Indian culture. There is a possibility that the majoritarian culture would emerge as the Indian culture at the cost of other cultures getting a raw deal. Fears abound that the plurality in the art and the way of life couldbe wiped out in this impending homogenisation. The policy makes it clear that adherence to this distorted view of Indianness is compulsory, or at least institutions are lured with the promise of funds.

Another important recommendation of the DNEP is to make students job-ready, and make the education system the hub of the next industrial revolution. It adds,

By focusing on such broad based, flexible, individualised, innovative, and multidisciplinary learning, higher education must aim to prepare its students not just for their first jobs- but also for their second, third and all future jobs over their lifetimes. In particular, the higher education system must aim to form the hub for the next industrial revolution. (MHRD 2019: 203)

The above quote says a lot more than what it does not spellout explicitly. It indirectly points to the fact that government-sector jobs and the security they provide would become a matter of a bygone era. The capitalist dictum of hire and fire at will would soon become a norm in the job market, and the new crop of job seekers have to grapple with this new reality.

The imagination that the education system should emerge as the hub of the next industrial revolution is worrisome because one fails to understand if the role of education is only about industrial prosperity. This is an attack on the fundamental premise of education thatgoes beyondthe "mass-production"of outstanding employees, citizens, and communitiesto make students socially conscious. It does not factor in the realities of our society that include providing basic education to every section of the population. Access, equity, and inclusiveness are the primary needs of our society. Even today, a substantial number of students in higher education are from first-generation-educatedfamilies.The educational goals set out by the DNEP only cater to the privileged lot who have had access to education overgenerations. Although the hyped internationalism and world-class education are desirable, it is essential and urgent to ensure that education reaches all, to pave way for a better life. But, such concerns are not adequately addressed in the current policy draft.

On the other hand, the policy perceives that there is a lack of novel initiatives from the teaching community to improve educational standardsbecause it isnot satisfied with theselection, tenure, promotion, salary increases and other recognition and vertical mobility (MHRD 2019:204).Still, the policycontinues with the unscientific Performance Based Appraisal System (PBAS), initiated under the 2010 Career Advancement Scheme (CAS) of the University Grants Commission (UGC). The academic performance indicators (API) for career advancements, which were discontinued after the release of UGC 2018 regulations, have not been reinstituted (University Grants Commission 2018). It is anti-academic to connect academic innovation, brilliance, and performance to material rewards.

The policy draft is critical of the current regulatory bodies, and accuses them of promoting mediocrity and corruption. It states, private Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) have not been treated on an equal footing with public institutions [] this approach has discouraged public-spirited philanthropic HEIs (MHRD 2019: 206). The use of the term public-spirited philanthropic HEIs to refer to private investments seem ironic in an age when education has been commoditised, and is part of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS).

The DNEP calls for a thorough revamp of the current structure of higher education, favouring the establishment of large multidisciplinary universities. Accordingly, an educational institute in the country has to fall under one of these three types: research universities (type 1), teaching universities (Type 2), and colleges (type 3).

Both type 1 and 2 institutions have been planned as mega HEIs with 5,00025,000 or more students. These HEIs demand huge resources in terms of land, infrastructure, and all other basic amenities. The proposal to have at least one HEI in every district in the country is not feasible as per the current education system followed by the states. There is no clarity on the modalities, funding, and theoperationality of these HEIs.The idea of liberal and multidisciplinary education envisaged through such HEIs would be limiting in its reach to all sections of the society. It is evident that such centres of learning demand huge investments to procure land and infrastructure, and to administer. The move is directly aimed at increasing privatisation in the education sector. Only large-scale investors have the ability to set up such huge multidisciplinary institutes. This paradigm shift that the policy boasts of is nothing but a direct transfer of power to multinational corporations or big private investors. Meanwhile, that the policy draft makes only a single statement in passing about public education clearly underlines the governments vision for education.

While proposing to revamphigher education, it fails to clarify onthe practicality of such plans. No details are provided about the funding and implementation. The mandates it puts forward make it difficult for the colleges across the country to sustain their efforts to provide access to the regional multitudes. Colleges that do not meet these standards would be shut down, which is tantamount to the denial of opportunities for rural and semi-urban populations.

The suggestion that all institutions need to have student enrolments in the thousands, if not tens of thousands, for optimal use of infrastructure and resources"(MHRD 2019: 212) reveals the overarching design of the policy. There is a negation of the local, the little narratives, and the possibilities for knowledge production and implementation at different levels. The differentiation of HEIs as research and teaching universities is also irrational. HEIsas the centres of learning and knowledge productioncannot be viewed separately.

According to the policy, colleges categorised under type 3 educational institutionsneed to have more than 2,000 students. Colleges that do not meet the criteria, whether government, aided, or self-financed, would be converted to autonomous institutions by 2032 or would be merged with the university they are affiliated. The gradual, yet complete distancing from public education in favour of autonomy would pose a threat to many who do not possess the means for private education.

Granting autonomy to HEIs also has the potential to disturb the current recruitment process that factors in qualification, reservation, and other aspects of the applicants, and undermines natural justice. It could also pave the way for corruption in the form of favouritism, political lobbying, among others.

One of the most problematic parts of the policy is theproposed establishment ofRashtriya Shiksha Aayog, an apex body with the prime minister as its head to oversee the education sector in the country. Knowledge systems should be kept out of the intervention of political office, but the policy goes against this established principle. This is a threat to the education sector and constitutional values as ruling parties would find ways to further their agenda through curricula.

The proposed establishment of the National Research Foundation (NRF) is also restrictive in nature, and is against the assertion of the multidisciplinary approach referred to in the policy multiple times. The NRF is stated to act as a liaison among researchers, ministries of the government, and industry, in order to ensure that the most relevant and societally useful research reaches people (MHRD 2019: 209). As a free space for knowledge formation and dissemination, research need not have an overtly measurable or tangible output. In varied streams of arts and humanities, research leads to the creation of social knowledge and historical awareness about formations of power, culture, and knowledge. This results in the creation of a sociocultural sensitivity, and provides an opportunity to uphold constitutional values. However, as per the policy, the mandate for research is to [create] beneficial linkages among government, industry, and researchers (MHRD 2019: 279), which is an attempt to quantify research for its commoditised capital use-value.

Additionally, the NRF would be vested with powers to identify areas of research that are of special importance to the country, and prioritise funding to them (MHRD 2019: 270). This would certainly become a matter of concern as it would allow officials to act as per their prejudices and toe the line of the ruling dispensation to significantly undermine the research space.

In the section on teacher education, the policy calls for teachers to be "grounded in Indian values, ethos, knowledge, and traditions" (MHRD 2019: 283). The intention behind such a statement is suspect. However, nowhere in the document is it mentioned that a teacher should be socially sensitive, critique knowledge and power formation, and uphold constitutional values.

On the other hand, the policystates that substandard and dysfunctional teacher education institutes (TEIs) that do not meet the basic educational criteria would be shut down. However, the policy does not list out the requisite criteria, except a directive to TEIs to become multidisciplinary. From the policy, it emerges that the multidisciplinary approach is the only possibility by which good teacher education can be imparted.

Originally posted here:

How Does the National Education Policy Accelerate the Privatisation of Higher Education? - Economic and Political Weekly

Bill Talks with Heather Cox Richardson About ‘How the South Won the Civil War’ – BillMoyers.com

The Battle of Bull Run, Battle of Bull Run, Va. July 21st 1861, Currier and Ives. (Library of Congress)

ANNOUNCER: Welcome to Moyers on Democracy. If you want to understand this moment in American politics, heres a suggestion for you: Its the must-read book of the year HOW THE SOUTH WON THE CIVIL WAR, by the historian Heather Cox Richardson. Yes, the Civil War brought an end to the slave order of the South and the rule of the plantation oligarchs who embodied white supremacy. But the Northern victory was short-lived. Slave states soon stripped Black people of their hard-won rights, white supremacy not only rose again to rule the South but spread West across the Mississippi to create new hierarchies of inequality. Thats the story Heather Cox Richardson tells in HOW THE SOUTH WON THE CIVIL WAR, with echoes resounding every day in the current wild and fierce campaign for the presidency. Here to talk with her about Americas ongoing battle between oligarchy and democracy is Bill Moyers.

Photo courtesy of Heather Cox Richardson

BILL MOYERS: Heather Cox Richardson, thank you for joining me.

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: Oh, its a pleasure to be here.

BILL MOYERS: Will you take us on that long but vivid arc of how we got from Abraham Lincoln, describing the end of the Civil War as a new birth of freedom, to Donald Trump describing America as a land of carnage, a nightmare. From Lincoln to Donald Trump in 2016, what happened?

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: If you think about the Civil War as a war between two different ideologies, two different concepts of what America is supposed to be, is it supposed to be a place where a few wealthy men direct the labor and the lives of the people below them, the women and people of color below them, the way the Confederacy argued? Is that America? Or is America what Lincoln and his ilk in the Republican Party in the North defined the democracy as during the Civil War? Is it a place where all men are equal before the law and should have equal access to resources? And of course, I use the word man there, but thats because thats the language that Lincoln used. But the principle is expandable of course. It looked by 1865 as if that latter ideology, that of the Republicans and that of the idea of equality had triumphed. And certainly, the Republicans and Northerners who had fought for the United States government in that war believed that they had redefined America to mean equality before the law. They really believed that was the case. And that they had defeated what they called the slave power, the oligarchs who had gone ahead and taken over the system in the 1850s. After the Civil War, Easterners moved West across the Mississippi in really large numbers after 1865.

April 2020, Oxford University Press, 272 pgs.

BILL MOYERS: White Southerners went too, of course, and you argue they saw the West as the final frontier ruled by elites, just as elites, with violence and intimidation, had ruled in the old South.

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: And in that West, they discover a land that is already susceptible to the idea of racial and gendered hierarchies, because it has its own history of them. And its a place out there where the new American system happens to be a really fertile ground for the Confederate ideology to rise again. And thats exactly what happens with the extractive industries in the West that encouraged the heavily capitalized cattle markets, for example, or mining industries, or later oil, or even agribusiness. You have in the West a development of an economy and, later on, a society that looks very much like the pre-Civil War South. And over the course of the late 19th century, that becomes part of the American mythology, with the idea that you have the cowboy in the West who really stands against what Southerners and Northern Democrats believe is happening in Eastern society, that a newly active government is using its powers to protect African Americans and this is a redistribution of wealth from taxpayers to populations that are simply looking for a government handout. Thats language that rises in 1871, and that is still obviously important in our political discourse. But in contrast to that, in the West, you get the rise of the image of the American cowboy, which is really our image of Reconstruction. In a weird way, people think of Reconstruction, obviously, they think of formerly enslaved people. But the image that has obtained in our textbooks and in our popular culture is the American cowboy, who is beginning to dominate American popular culture by 1866. And that cowboy a single man, because women are in the cowboy image only as wives and mothers, or as women above the saloons in their striped stockings serving liquor and other things is a male image of single white men. Although, again, historically a third of cowboys were people of color. Its a single white man working hard on their own, who dont want anything from the government. Again, historically inaccurate. The government puts more energy into the American plains than it does any other region of the country. But

BILL MOYERS: And also on land that had been taken from Mexico after the Mexican-American War, and on land that had been stolen from the Native Americans after genocide. I mean, its this whole notion of, Im free to roam the land and become a self-made hero, which was the cowboys image to those of us growing up in the 30s and 40s, was really a bastard idea.

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: And part of that bastard idea, though, was so interesting. Because it is, in part, the Indian Wars of the Civil War and immediate post-war years that helped to both create the image of the cowboy, but also reinforce the idea that a few white men belong above subordinate groups like the Indigenous people, like Mexicans or Mexican Americans. Like Chinese Americans, like Fiji islanders, about whom they care very much in the late 19th century. And that racial hierarchy and gendered hierarchy really gets tied into the image of the American cowboy. And popularized with this backlash against activism in the East, trying to help African Americans adjust to the new free labor economy. But that image becomes enormously important after 1880. Because in 1880, the South goes solidly Democratic. And, of course, in retrospect, we now know its going to stay Democratic for a very, very long time, indeed. But they dont know that at the time. But what Republicans do note is that they must pick up Western votes if theyre going to continue to dominate the White House and the Senate. After 1888, when we get the installment of Benjamin Harrison in the White House, he loses the popular vote by about 100,000 votes. But hes installed thanks to the Electoral College. The Republicans under Harrison between 1889 and 1890, they let in six new states in 12 months. That was the largest acquisition of new states in American history since the original 13 and its never been matched again. They let in North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Washington, and then Idaho and Wyoming to go ahead and make sure that they would continue to control the Senate, and the Electoral College. And theyre not hiding this. They actually go onto their media which is their equivalent of the Fox News channel at the time and say, by letting in these states, were going to hold onto the Senate for all time and were going to make sure we hold onto the White House for all time. But what that does is it begins to shift the idea of that human freedom. All of a sudden, the Republican Party, which has tried to continue to argue that it is standing in favor of equality, although thats negotiable. After 1888 and the admission of those new states, the Republican Partys got to start adopting that racially charged language in order to get the West on board. And that begins the change in American history that leads to a later union between the West and the South around this idea that really white men ought to be in charge. Its not just a Southern thing. Its a Western thing as well. And they make up a voting bloc in Congress that manages to change a lot of the legislation of the 20th century.

BILL MOYERS: You write about how the massacre of Native Americans at Wounded Knee in 1890, in South Dakota, was an atrocity brought on by politics. And that it played into the use of politics to reimpose inequality, and the use of force for malicious purposes.

Wounded Knee (LOC)

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: It did. What happens is that with the admission of these new states in 1889 and 1890, the Republicans believe that they are going to do very well in the midterm election of 1890. And the big thing on the table in America in 1890 is the tariff high walls around the American economy that protect businesses inside America, they protect them to the degree that because they face no foreign competition, different groups can collude with each other to raise prices. So in 1860, the Republicans insist that an economic downturn thats been happening is only because those tariffs arent high enough. What happens in the election of 1890 is the Republicans think theyre going to win and they lose dramatically. It turns out when these ballots are counted, a Republican Senate or a Democratic Senate hangs on the seat of South Dakota, on one Senate seat. And that Senate seat has pretty clearly been corrupted. Theres a huge fight, then, in the legislature of who actually won. So there the situation sits.

BILL MOYERS: Sits there, for sure, with President Benjamin Harris needing to shore up his support in the Dakotas. So, he sends corrupt cronies out to replace experienced Indian agents and dispatches one-third of the federal Army as well.

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: And with that movement of the Army into South Dakota in the largest mobilization of the US Army since the Civil War, Lakota are trying to negotiate with the Army that increasingly wants to bring them into the reservation, to the agencies to make sure that theyre under control. And over the course of the next few months, that situation escalates until a Lakota leader, Sitting Bull, is killed in December of 1890. And then in terror after that, a group of Miniconjou Lakota move across the state. They actually find the Army, the Army doesnt find them. And in the process of corralling them and disarming them later on that month, the soldiers start to fire. And about 250 Lakota are massacred. So, it was a massacre that was really directly attributable to whether or not the Republican Party could control the US Senate in order to protect its tariffs that promoted big business, and protected a few oligarchs.

BILL MOYERS: When Americans moved to the wide-open spaces of the West after the Civil War, they kept alive the same vision of the world that had inspired Confederates. What was their argument?

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: They certainly were not arguing at the time for a renewal of hostilities. But they did believe that America was one in which a few good hard-working white men should dominate women and people of color. And I think thats written all over the West, although we dont like to see that because we love our cowboys. But inherent in Western society, Western politics, Western economy and the Western society after the Civil War was the idea that a few wealthy men should control the industries. Or at least, did control the extractive industries of mining and cattle, and agribusiness and oil. And they should also control politics. And that the legal system should defend their interests while the workers should work for the people in charge. You know, these wealthy cattlemen, for example, were somehow the salt of the earth, hardworking little guys. That image was really in contrast to what was going on, which was the creation of a society that looked, in many ways, like the society of the pre-Civil War South. And by the late 19th and early 20th century, the rise of industrialists in the North who took a lot of their power and their ideological power from the cowboy imagery and from the support that they received in the American West. And to some degree, from Southern leaders as well.

BILL MOYERS: So, the pre-Civil War South was an oligarchy.

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: Yes. I was very careful with that word. Because there are obviously a lot of words we could use for a system in which a few people take over. But the way that I was using it was with the idea that an oligarchy was a small group, usually of men in that case, who controlled the money in society and therefore came to control the political system, and also the social system.

BILL MOYERS: In order to use government policies to shore up white supremacy and prevent racial equality, right?

HEATHER RICHARDSON: And I think the echoes from that to the present are pretty clear, when you have again a small group of Americans now who define themselves that way, I think. One of the things that I found interesting is with the rise of this small elite group of large planters in the 1850s, the ways in which they came to monopolize popular culture and popular literature so that they simply didnt say, Well, were hard workers and weve been lucky. But they came to believe that they deserved what they had gotten. And that they were somehow better than everybody else. And you can see that through the pulpits, ministers starting to talk about how blessed they were to have these men in their congregations. You can see it through literature, the rise of novels that talk about people who own large numbers of other people as somehow paternalistic patriarchs. And you can see it through the construction of the other, the people who are enslaved, as being somehow almost sub-human. And thats a very deliberate construction in the 1850s. And I would argue, you can see something very similar in America in the 2000 aughts.

BILL MOYERS: In what sense?

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: The emphasis in popular culture on how the people who were at the top really belong there. That they somehow are the best people. That they know more than the rest of us. That if you have a billion dollars, you must somehow be really much more special than those of us who dont have a billion dollars. And I think that really shows in the way that President Trump talks about the people around him. He would appoint only the best people, who by definition, knew more than the experts did. And you look at the position that Jared Kushner has in this administration. I mean, hes a young man with really very little training in anything and hes supposed to be solving the Middle East crisis and handling coronavirus? And I dont even know what his portfolio looks like at this point. But I think thats a reflection that looks very much like that of elite Southerners in the 1850s when they simply thought by virtue of who they were, they could make things work better than anybody else could.

BILL MOYERS: And you write that as this Old South ideology moved West it influenced popular culture, especially in upholding white supremacy. There were Western movies like the classic STAGECOACH, remember? A Confederate soldier joins with the US Cavalry to defeat the savage Apache. And novels such as LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE and GONE WITH THE WIND celebrating the union of Western and Confederate ideology.

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: Yes. And isnt it fascinatingif you think about, again, Laura Ingalls Wilders a great example. People tend to dismiss her because they see it as a childrens book. And yet, its been enormously influential, enormously influential. And she writes about a world in which Pa takes care of the women folk and dominates the native populations around him. And certainly there are passages in that book that are extraordinarily racist, not only toward Indigenous people, but toward African Americans as well. Its gotten her in trouble lately. But the theme throughout that book is of individualism. Pa is doing it on his own. Pa is not doing it on his own. The reality of her life was that Pa was managing to keep the family together based on the fact his daughters and his wife worked because Pa could never manage to make ends meet. And theyre living in places that are habitable for white settlers like themselves only because of the protection of the US government. And, you know, even scenes like when when Mary goes to college. And remember, they scrimp and save for years for Mary to go to college. And the implication in that book is that they are sending Mary to college. No. Theyre raising money for her train fare and her clothing. Her room and board is being paid for by the state of South Dakota. South Dakota actually, weirdly enough, had the highest rate of literacy in the country in that era. But you dont see that in those books. Because again, you have this wedding, if you will, of individualism to racism and this concept of women being taken care of by their men. Its a very popular trope in American history. But it doesnt reflect reality.

BILL MOYERS: So, when a group of slave holders embraced the idea that they and they alone should control Americas economic and political system, the Americans fought back, won the Civil War, and rededicated the country to equality. But when it happened a second time, when very rich men of property mobilized to take over America again, they largely succeeded by convincing voters that equality for people of color and women and minorities destroyed the liberty of white men. Thats almost the drum beat in the background of American politics today.

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: One of the things about that ideology that a few wealthy men should rule, its not new to America. Its been around for a very long time. And whats really radical is the idea that in fact, all of us should have the right to self-government. And the fact that were still fighting about it in America today suggests to me that those two fundamentally different concepts of the role of the American government at least are still absolutely the question of what America really is about. For all the frightening things that are happening in America right now, its also exciting to get to redefend the concept of human self-determination, which is really what weve been doing all along on this continent.

BILL MOYERS: But as you write, the ideology of the Old South and its new Western allies found a powerful reactionary force to reimagine it. Lets go to the very opening scene of your book. Its July, 1964. The Cow Palace outside San Francisco, packed with cheering Republicans whove just nominated Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona as their candidate for the presidency. They came roaring to their feet when he declares, quote

BARRY GOLDWATER: I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice in no virtue.

BILL MOYERS: 56 years later, that scene still plays out in my head. Explain why you chose that moment to begin a story that spans America from the Civil War to now.

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: Barry Goldwater at that point was known sort of as a cowboy character. And that moment when the state of South Carolina, the state that was responsible for taking the Confederacy out of the Union. When those delegates stand up, they were the ones to put Barry Goldwater over the top, as their delegate yelled when he announced the delegations votes, its that moment when you recognize that there is a new force in American politics. And its the force of reaction against the liberal consensus that was widely shared by Democrats and Republicans both, that in fact, the government should be of the people, by the people and for the people. And thats the moment when you had that reactionary voice saying, No, thats not what America should look like. And its that theory that in fact a few people should run the system and make decisions for the rest of us that has taken over America since 64. It came across as a racial argument. But of course, his skin was in the game for the end of business regulation.

BILL MOYERS: Regulation, right.

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: Thats what he really cared about. Its interesting the degree to which they harnessed the tradition of American racism and sexism as well, to their project of destroying business regulation.

BILL MOYERS: Goldwaters big bone was government, but that was all mixed up with opposing Civil Rights and keeping segregation, discrimination. This fear of government that Goldwater was stoking at that moment was the same fear that Southern demagogues had stoked to keep Blacks in their place, it was government that was at stake here. It was what you can do with government.

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: Well, and I think you just hit the nail on the head there with the idea that all of this is about the proper use of government. Is the idea of the United States government to protect property, so that people can accumulate more and more of it, and thereby get the power and the education and the connections to go ahead and direct society in a way thats good for all us, which is their theory. Or is the role of government, in fact, to protect equality before the law, and to make sure that all men, in fact, and all, you know, all people are created equal and have equal access to resources and to opportunity? And those two questions are really the central questions of America.

BILL MOYERS: Ronald Reagan gave the conservative movement its present-day mantra

RONALD REAGAN: The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, Im from the government and Im here to help.

BILL MOYERS: Now just imagine using that mantra today when the pandemic is rampant. And somebody knocks on your door and says, My name is Fauci, and Im here to help you. And they say, But youre from the government. We dont want you.

October 1, 2013, Updated August 14, 2014

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: I love the way you put it earlier when you said, This is all a question of what the government should do. Coming out of World War II, we had a real resurgence of the idea that the government really had a responsibility to promote equality before the law, and to guarantee equal access to resources. And that was a principle that was shared across America, I think, from Republicans and Democrats both. I mean, obviously you saw it with Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the New Deal. But you also saw it with Truman, of course. And then you also saw it Eisenhower and Eisenhowers Middle Way. And the idea was that this American democracy stood against the fascism that had drawn us into World War II. And that FDR was so articulate about fighting back against. You know, when he talks about Italy again and again, FDR talks about how, you know, American democracys messy, for sure, but look, Mussolini was supposed to make the trains run on time and instead, his people are dying and theyre starving to death. And we, us messy members of a democracy, are the ones feeding them. And he says this again and again. And coming out of that war, I think Americans really stood for that. But even before that, theres certainly a group of reactionaries who look at the New Deal and at the Middle Way and they say, We dont believe that the government should interfere in our businesses. We should have the liberty, the freedom to run our businesses as we see fit. And they, in fact, really believe that the New Deal is going to be erased. They really thought it was a temporary measure, and that Americans would turn against that. But, of course, Americans loved the New Deal. It had gotten us out of out of the Depression and it had won World War II. So they didnt have any intention of walking away from that.

BY Harvey J. Kaye | April 27, 2015

BILL MOYERS: But Goldwater and Reagan were riding away from it. And both, as you know, loved casting themselves as cowboys, white hats and all. They wrapped themselves in the mythology of the cowboy as hero; a lone white man carving a new world for white people from a hostile environment. So how did we get from Barry Goldwater in 1964, Richard Nixon, a Californian in 1968, invoking the Southern strategy of stirring up the resentments and fears and hatreds of white Southerners. And Ronald Reagan who opened his campaign in 1980 in Neshoba County, Mississippi, just a few miles from where three Civil Rights volunteers had been murdered. And then George W. Bush buying a Stetson and a Texas ranch to prove he was a Westerner. Finally, to Donald Trump, the rich guy from Queens, not a part of the Southern culture or complex, who used the same racial fears, the same threats and promises that had been used in 64, 68, and 80.

George W. Bush Library

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: Well, finally by 1951, you have that famous book by William F. Buckley Jr. called GOD AND MAN AT YALE in which he says, Listen, we got a problem. If we keep on trying to argue against the New Deal on the merits, we keep losing. So, we should stop trying to argue it on the merits. Because when we talked about what was best for most people, people voted for the New Deal. So, he suggests that we needed to start from a baseline, saying that the government should only protect what he calls free enterprise. That is, there shouldnt be regulation. And it should protect Christianity. You could wiggle around the edges. But you needed to have those two things. Well, that doesnt really get much traction. And, of course, William F. Buckley Jr. is the son of an oil man. And he is bankrolled by some pretty serious money there. Its a vision of a very few wealthy men. And it really doesnt get traction until after the Brown vs. Board of Education decision of 1954, when a unanimous Supreme Court, where this chief justice is a Republican and a former governor of California

BILL MOYERS: Youre talking about Earl Warren.

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: Yes. He says the government needs to stand behind the desegregation of public schools. And with that, a door is open to resurrect the idea of the Reconstruction years. That any kind of government action in trying to level the playing field for African Americans in American society is a redistribution of wealth. And in 1955, we get the formation of NATIONAL REVIEW, of course, with the hiring of James Kirkpatrick, whos a Southern editor. Who hammers again and again and again on the idea that in fact, if you let government be an active government, to go ahead and intervene in things like regulating the economy, or in this case, promoting desegregation, what you are going to get is an attack on liberty, by which they mean tax dollars, your, in coded words, White tax dollars are going to go to African Americans. Who, in their eyes, had not earned that sort of entree into public schools. Which is gonna cost tax dollars among other things there were needed to be troops to have that happen. Well, that idea, that somehow an activist government, a New Deal government, an Eisenhower government was a redistribution of wealth from hard working white people to first African Americans, and then that group of other is going to be expanded to eventually include, in the 1970s, feminist women. But that argument is really established in the 1950s. And the people who adhere to it initially are not traditional Republicans. And theyre certainly not Democrats. They self-identify as a group called movement conservatives. And they are not true conservatives. They are radical extremists. And they know it. They, a few group of capital C conservatives, are going to stand against capital L liberals. By which they mean virtually everybody else in America, Republicans and Democrats both. Because they make no distinction between the liberal consensus of FDR and Eisenhower and Chinese communism. To them, those are the same kind of redistributions of wealth. So that movement conservative argument that gets its roots in the 1950s and then is picked up by Nixon I think he gets backed into a full-hearted embrace of movement conservatism because of the problems hes facing in 1970, with the Vietnam War and Kent State. But by Reagan, you have Reagan fully defending that vision. And you remember, Reagans initial ideas of cutting taxes were not popular. And it was not clear that that was actually going to happen. He has to put George H. W. Bush into his administration as vice president. And he had called that system voodoo economics. But its really after hes shot that he manages to get the popular momentum in Congress to pass his first tax cut. And then he tries to cement the ability to hold those tax cuts through including Evangelicals into the political system on the Republican side, beginning really dramatically in 1986. But, also, by packing the court. So, you can see from there on, this vision snowballing. And then in the 1990s, of course, you get Newt Gingrich becoming the Speaker of the House, and really deliberately purging the Republican Party of traditional Republicans, those he calls, RINOs, or Republicans in Name Only. By the time you get to Trump, that language is there. That whole set up is there. But Trump himself is an interesting character. Because if you remember, he was the most moderate of the Republican candidates when he was running. So he had the racism and the sexism down. But a lot of people who might have liked or might even have not liked the racism and the sexism loved the idea he was gonna make taxes fairer. He was gonna create a better health care system. He was gonna make wealthier people pay more. He was gonna promote infrastructure. All those things that went by the board. Hes put movement conservatism on steroids. And his platform in 2016 was stunning. It was William F. Buckley Jr.s wish list, or Goldwaters wish list. And a narrative that, by the way, has taken off, and been extraordinarily strong since the rise of Reagan.

He was elected in 1980. And you have that cowboy individualism gone wild with the STAR WARS series, which is the movie of 1977. That imagery, that one guy is going to do it on his own without the help of the government is a lovely image. Its a mythological image. Its one that Americans love, but its not reality. In fact, that image has enabled oligarchs like those really taking the reins of power under Ronald Reagan, to skew our laws in such a way that wealth has moved upward, opportunity has been taken away from the vast majority of us. The lives of most Americans, a majority of Americans, has gotten significantly worse, not better. And now under Donald Trump with the coronavirus, but also with the extraordinary dis-junction in the economy. Now, of course, were looking at the recession because of the coronavirus. But even before that, with the booming stock market, and the reality that most Americans didnt have $400 in the bank to meet an emergency. I think people are really coming to realize there is this extraordinary gap between that image and reality. And beginning more to want to root their politics in reality, both to fight the coronavirus and to fight the economic recession. But also to give credit to the essential workers of color, and to the women who are keeping this country running. I thought it was really interesting that one of the tropes from American individualism is, of course, that moms are home, right? Taking care of the kids. Over the weekend in Portland, moms went out and made a wall, a wall of moms to stand between the protesters and the federal troops.

BILL MOYERS: You say that the movement of women into politics rejects the construction of a society in which a few elite white men control the destinies of the rest of the country. And you find hope in that. But I wrote after your last sentence, Yes, but white oligarchs and their mercenaries still have the power.

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: Yes, they do. And I often dont sleep at night. But people ask me what gets me up every morning, and why do I continue to be optimistic. And I am because I believe in American democracy. I believe in the concept of human self-determination with almost a religious faith. And if I lose that faith, I feel like I will have broken that faith not only with the people around me today, but with all those people who came before us, and fought in wars, and who gave up their time and their money and their energy and did everything that they could to make sure that American democracy would survive. So, were in a very frightening time. But there are a lot of us, I think, who believe in this great American experiment, and will give it our all to make sure it doesnt end on our watch.

BILL MOYERS: Heather Cox Richardson, thank you so much for sharing your time and your thoughts, and for all the work that has inspired so many of us.

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: Yes. Well, thank you very much.

ANNOUNCER: Thanks for listening to Moyers on Democracy. Read an excerpt from HOW THE SOUTH WON THE CIVIL WAR, a must-read book for understanding how we got to this moment. And, be sure to check out Bills podcast with Heather Cox Richardson, exploring how her daily LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN found a large and loyal following on Facebook and our website.Youll find all this and more at Billmoyers.com.

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Bill Talks with Heather Cox Richardson About 'How the South Won the Civil War' - BillMoyers.com

Global Nanotechnology in Medical Market 2020 Comprehensive analysis with Top Trends, Size, Share, Future Growth Opportunities & Forecast by 2027…

This latest report studies Nanotechnology in Medical Market globally, particularly in North America, Europe(Germany, UK, France, Italy, Spain, Russia, Poland), China, Japan, Southeast Asia (Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam) the Middle East and Africa(Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Egypt, South Africa, Nigeria), India, South America(Brazil, Mexico, Colombia), with revenue, import, and export, production, consumption in these regions, from 2015 to 2019, and forecast 2020 to 2027. Global Nanotechnology in Medical market 2020 research report is replete with precise analysis from radical studies, specifically on queries that approach market size, trends, share, forecast, outlook, production, and futuristic developments trends and present and future market status.

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Global Nanotechnology in Medical Market 2020 Comprehensive analysis with Top Trends, Size, Share, Future Growth Opportunities & Forecast by 2027...

Pandemic Legacy, the Board-Game Series for the Age of the Coronavirus – The New Yorker

In a list of retail shortages from early March, plague historians will include toilet paper, baking yeast, and, at some stores, every kind of meat except shrimp and ribs. They should also mention a coperative board game called Pandemic. In 2004, not long after the SARS virus wound a deadly path through China, Singapore, and Canada, Matt Leacock, then a designer at Yahoo, started working on the game during his off hours. Pandemic came out four years later, and made its way from classrooms to medical schoolsit was a staple of the short-lived gift shop at the Centers for Disease Control and Preventioneventually jostling for shelf space among Hasbro stalwarts like Monopoly and Clue in Walmarts across the country. A favorite among doctors battling the coronavirus, Pandemic has grown from curiosity to cathartic release, offering, in miniature, a finite version of our stricken world.

In the past decade, board games have exploded in popularity and variety, and thousands of new games come out every year. Crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter have encouraged the emergence of a lucrative publishing system: veteran designers like Eric M. Lang, who crafts games set in ancient Egypt and feudal Japan, have been able to raise millions of dollars before theyve even finished making their promised sets. Across North America, board game cafs and bars have popped up, from Game Knight Lounge, in Portland, Oregon, to the Uncommons, in Manhattan, to capitalize on a new generations interest.

Modern board-games fans, bored with Life and Scrabble, pursue novelty, drawn by themes that reflect their esoteric interests. In Terraforming Mars, which was released in 2016, players control corporations and institutions, vying to erect domed cities and fill the dusty ocean beds of Mars with fish and water. Its ranked the fourth-best game of all time on the Web site BoardGameGeek. Humbler conceits have proven just as popular. Elizabeth Hargraves Wingspan, about nurturing birds in a nature preserve, relies on data from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. The game has sold out every one of its print runs since it came out last year; Hargraves next project, set to appear in August, revolves around migrating monarch butterflies.

Pandemic resembles the Parker Brothers classic Risktheres a world map and continents associated with different colorsbut the goal is reversed. Instead of seeking world domination, as you raise and spread armies against your friends, you must work with other players to stop the march of multiple diseases that threaten to devastate the Earth. Each player controls a character who is uniquely suited to the games tasks. The dispatcher can shuttle another character between continents. The medic can treat more cases of a disease than his colleagues. The scientist can find a cure a little quicker. Players take in the totality of the board and advise one another, wincing together when the results are grim, cheering together when they eradicate a disease. Leacock began devising Pandemic after the bad blood resulting from a particularly acrimonious board-game experiencehis wife was among the unhappy playersspilled into real life. Enter the attractive spell cast by coperative game play: the people around you remain your friends; your enemy is the unfolding of events on the board.

Coperative board games have been gaining popularity, and, in the decade since Pandemic was released, new versions of the game, like novel strains of the flu, have cropped up every year or so. Sometimes the changes are mostly cosmetic: the tenth-anniversary edition comes in a handsome blue case meant to resemble a first-aid kit. Recently, Pandemics publisher, Z-Man Games, announced that Leacock would collaborate once again with Rob Daviau, a veteran Hasbro game designer, to create the third and final installment to their more complex Pandemic Legacy saga, which was begun in 2015.

In a legacy-style game, every time you play, the board might be permanently altered, leaving behind traces of previous decisions and their consequences. Daviau has said that the idea occurred to him while he was tinkering with a new version of Clue. He wondered why Mr. Boddy, apparently untraumatized, kept inviting the same murderous guests to his manor, over and over. What would it be like if the ghost of games past could haunt the present? In an ordinary round of Pandemic, when disease overwhelms a city, an outbreak occurs, and the infection spreads to other states or countries. In the first season of Pandemic Legacy, each game takes place in a given month of a single year. A city pummelled by infection begins to destabilize, and distress simmers among its people. Characters can be scarred and perish. Further outbreaks blossom into riots. Buildings descend into a heap of ashes. As the infected become increasingly restive, you have the option to lob grenades at them. When the players begin the game again, weeks have passed, and they must confront the same web of cities, now wrecked by disease and unrest. Half a decade after the release of Pandemic Legacy: Season 1, the series has revealed itself to be an uncanny fit for the age of COVID-19.

It starts simply. A virus tougher than the rest, the unfortunately prophetic Season 1 teaser reads. But as January turns to February, things take a turn for the worse. This is no ordinary virus. What results is a year that will never be forgotten. The story is also more than a sum of the players past missteps and misfortunes. As the game progresses, a stack of cards directs players to specific panels attached to a set of top secret dossiers, along with cardboard containers that conceal game pieces. (Designers appreciate the delight players take in handling thick tokens and small cubes; Pandemics ninety-six disease cubes, in four colors, mix a satisfying object with a stressful conceit, and more game pieces lie hidden in cardboard containers, like chocolates in an advent calendar.)

The first thing you learn in this meticulous unboxing is that one of the four diseases has mutated into an untreatable form that scientists call C0dA. The name seems to reflect the way in which the game unfolds. As you play, the story develops and new characters emerge: a quarantine specialist in a leather jacket shields the populace from new infections; an operations expert with a walkie-talkie and a hard hat quickly erects research stations. The world changes and yet you return again and again to the beginning of the game. C0dA, incurable, still looms.

Many of the top-secret panels hide stickers to fill in blank spaces in the rule book, leading to moreand more complexdecisions. A minute to learn... a lifetime to master, the motto of the black-and-white-disk-flipping game Othello, is not always taken to heart by game designers. Like vintage-car collectors marvelling at shifters and carburetors, indie-board-game enthusiasts revel in elaborate systems of dos and donts. But such structures often overwhelm casual players. Gloomhaven, a fantasy-themed role-playing gameDungeons & Dragons, without the improvised storytellingis the highest-rated game of all time on BoardGameGeek; its also discouragingly complex for the uninitiated. In this respect, Pandemic Legacy performs a magic trick: as part of the story, the player must earn the rules, tying each new dictum to the suspense of the narrative. You learn about how to deploy roadblocks only after you absorb the fact that C0dA outbreaks might necessitate the drastic step of blockading a city rife with infection. The rules dont just constrict the worldthey construct it, too.

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Pandemic Legacy, the Board-Game Series for the Age of the Coronavirus - The New Yorker

Mars: Oodles of facts, figures and fun questions about the Red Planet – BBC Focus Magazine

Our nearest planetary neighbour has been inspiring astronomers, stargazers and those trying to understand night sky for thousands of years, but we are forever learning more about the Red Planet. Who knows, one day we might discover even more by living on it.

Here are the Mars facts, figures and info you need to get to know the fourth planet from the Sun.

Mars as seen from Mariner 7 NASA/JPL

That depends on when you travel and how you plan on getting there. As the distance between Earth and Mars is constantly changing, so too does the amount of time it takes to get there. The quickest journey to the Red Planet by a spacecraft was Mariner 7s 1969 flyby, which took 128 days to arrive.

Due to their elliptical orbits, the distance between Mars and Earth is always changing as they spin around the Sun. At their closest approach, Mars is only 54.6 million kilometres (33.9 million miles) away. At their furthest, there are some 400 million km (250 million miles) between them.

Read more about human missions to Mars:

NASA/JPL-Caltech/GSFC/Univ. of Arizona

Mars has two moons; Phobos and Deimos. Phobos is the larger of the two but it is still tiny, with a radius of around 11km. Both moons were named after the Greek gods (and twin sons of the god Mars) of fear and terror respectively. They were discovered in 1877 by American astronomer Asaph Hall.

Mars and Earth have very similar lengths of day. One day on Mars, known as a sol, lasts 24 hours, 39 minutes, and 35.244 Earth seconds.

In 1960, the Soviet Union was the first country to attempt a flyby of Mars with 1M (known in the West as Marsnik) but the mission was unsuccessful. The USA was the first nation to reach Mars successfully when Mariner 4 made a flyby of the Red Planet in July 1965.

NASAs Curiosity rover scoops up some Martian soil (left), and the scoop carrying soil NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Alas, there have been no reported sightings of little green men (yet), but what has been discovered on the planets surface is evidence of persistent liquid water, microbe-supporting chemistry, organic molecules, active methane and rocks. Lots of rocks.

As Mars is smaller than Earth, the effect of gravity is much weaker. Thats great news if you want to lose weight quickly, because if you weighed 75kg on Earth, that would drop to just over 28kg on Mars. The formula is Weight on Mars = (Weight on Earth/Earths gravity (9.81m/s2)) * Martian gravity (3.711m/s2).

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Getty

Asteroids. Many, many asteroids. The majority of the Solar Systems known asteroids lie between Mars and Jupiter, with between 1.1 and 1.9 million of them larger than a kilometre in diameter. There are millions more smaller ones, but are so spread out the distance between them is in the millions of kilometres.

Martian dust storm NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Despite its thin atmosphere, Mars is still capable of clouds and weather. In fact, when it comes to wind, Mars has the biggest dust storms in the whole of the Solar System. If you want to know the weather right now, NASAs InSight rover is acting as an on-location weather reporter.

Valerio Pellegrini

Mars is currently home to 16 robots, with more planned in the near future. Only two are currently operational, NASAs Curiosity rover and InSight lander, and four either crash-landed on the surface or broke up on entry. To date, Mars is the only known planet in the Universe to be entirely inhabited by robots.

Internally, Mars is made up of a dense iron, nickel and sulphur core, and this is surrounded by a softer silicon and oxygen mantle. The planets 50km-thick crust consists mainly of iron, magnesium, aluminium, calcium and potassium.

Observed structure of the Milky Ways spiral arms NASA/JPL-Caltech/ESO/R. Hurtderivative work: Cmglee/Public domain

Mars can be found in space, but if you want to be more specific its the fourth planet from the Sun in our Solar System, which itself is in the Orion-Cygnus Arm of the Milky Way. If youre into astronomical co-ordinates, it currently resides at RA 0h 58m 6s | Dec +2 10 32.

Strata at Base of Mount Sharp NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

The red colour of Mars comes from the high level of iron oxide in its regolith (surface material). However, why there is so much oxidised iron on a planet with virtually no oxygen in the atmosphere is still a mystery.

Mars is not the sort of place you want to go on a summer holiday. After a months-long journey, you will be welcomed by a maximum temperature of around 20C on the equator in summer. Down at the poles, Mars can get as cold as -125C. The average temperature for the Red Planet is -63C.

Earth is roughly two times bigger than Mars NASA/JPL

The diameter of Mars is 6,790km (4,220 miles), making it roughly half the size of Earth and twice as big as the Moon. This makes it the second-smallest planet in the Solar System.

Although Earth is twice as big a Mars, it is around ten times heavier! So, well let you work out the mass of our home planet knowing that the red one pushes the scales at 6.42 x 1023 kilograms.

Mars is as old as the rest of the Solar System, making it a sprightly 4.6 billion years old.

Mars takes 687 Earth days to orbit the Sun, which means it travels at a brisk 24km/s over its 9.55 AU journey (1 AU is about 150 million km, roughly the distance between the Earth and the Sun).

Mars was once a warm, wet planet thanks to an atmosphere as thick as Earths, but those days are long gone. Now its a dusty old place due to atmospheric erosion, caused by a process known as sputtering. This happens when ions carried by solar wind knock atoms out of the atmosphere and into space.

The various sources of carbon dioxide on Mars and their estimated contribution to Martian atmospheric pressure NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Terraforming means changing a planets surface and atmosphere to be more like Earths and therefore a suitable place to live. However, for it to work we need carbon dioxide, and Mars just doesnt have enough going spare. So until we sort that out, the answer is somewhere between a very, very long time to never.

Mars has what is known as an eccentric orbit, which means its not perfectly circular around the Sun. That means the distance between the two is always changing, but at their closest it is 206 million km, while its furthest is 249 million km. This averages out to around 229 million km.

Galileo Galilei Getty Images

Mars is visible in the night sky with the naked eye, so its impossible to say exactly when anybody first saw it. There are reports of it being sighted by the ancient Egyptians two millennia BCE. However, the first to spot it through a telescope was Galileo Galilei in 1610.

A Viking Orbiter/Lander spacecraft photographed this view of Olympus Mons, the largest volcano in the Solar System Getty Images

Mars is a rocky planet, covered in impact craters, mountains, volcanoes and deep canyons stretching thousands of miles. Olympus Mons is the tallest mountain in the Solar System, stretching 21,229m above the surface of the planet. That towers more than 12km above Mount Everest.

Mars, the Roman god of War Hulton Archive/Getty Images

The planet Mars was named after the Roman god of War. He was second only to the king of gods, Jupiter, and was a pretty bloodthirsty chap. That might go some way to explaining why the Red Planet was named after him. The animals most associated with him were the wolf and the woodpecker.

A Mars 2 Lander model at the Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics in Russia NASA

The USSR was the first country to place a human-made object on the planets surface. The first attempt, Mars 2, crash-landed in November 1971, but less than a week later Mars 3 landed and remained operational for 14.5 seconds.

One of the first pictures taken by the camera on the Mars Pathfinder lander shortly after its touchdown in 1997 NASA/JPL

Weirdly, the colour of the sky on Mars is the opposite to Earth, being blue towards sunset and sunrise and reddish-pink during the day. This unusual daytime colour is caused by the vast amounts of dust containing Magnetite, an iron ore, suspended in the atmosphere.

Curiosity made these tracks (but killed no cats in the process) NASA/JPL-Caltech

Because Curiosity killed the cat. Its a joke, obvs If you need a little more explanation, NASAs Mars Curiosity Rover landed on the Red Planet in 2012, presumably on top of any Martian felines. As of publication, there have been no reported sightings of cats on Mars and this band has a solid alibi.

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Mars: Oodles of facts, figures and fun questions about the Red Planet - BBC Focus Magazine

Ex-Lake Ridge star Jasmine Moore talks progress, motivation a year before track & field starts at Tokyo – The Dallas Morning News

If not for the coronavirus pandemic, track and field events at the 2020 Olympics wouldve started Friday.

Former Mansfield Lake Ridge star Jasmine Moore had aspirations to compete in Tokyo.

Building on a dazzling high school tenure, when she won nine career state championships, set national records and earned international recognition, Moore shined during her freshman 2019-20 season at Georgia.

Her season-best mark of 21 feet, 2.75 inches in long jump ranked fifth in the nation during the indoor season and was the eighth longest in Georgia history. Moores season-best triple jump -- 45 feet, 7.25 inches -- led all NCAA competitors and ranked No. 2 all-time at Georgia.

Moore won the triple jump and finished second in the long jump at the SEC Championships en route to becoming the SEC Womens Indoor Freshman Field Athlete of the Year. She qualified for the NCAA indoor championships in both events before that competition and outdoor season were canceled amid the pandemic.

Moore, 19, adding more than nine inches to her triple jump distance less than a year after establishing a national high school record (44 feet, 10 inches) in her final UIL meet showcased the progress she hoped would help her clinch a berth to the Olympics this summer.

Because of the postponement, Olympic track and field events are now scheduled to start a year from Thursday -- July 30, 2021. In a recent interview with The Dallas Morning News, Moore reflected on her adjustment to college, her training amid the pandemic and her hopes for the upcoming year.

Her answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Looking back on your last year, how was your adjustment at Georgia as a freshman?

Moore: At first, the adjustment was kind of hard, being away from my parents and by myself and meeting so many new people. As far as training, it was a lot harder, and I wasnt used to having every day as a competition, and it was really intense. I would say the first three months I definitely struggled. After Thanksgiving break was when I started to get more into my groove.

What was especially challenging?

Moore: As far as training, my food. Obviously at home with your parents, my mom always cooked. Being at school, it was tough because you dont always have time to go to the dining hall and maybe they dont have the best options for you. I tried to balance cooking and fueling my body with appropriate stuff so I could have good performances and not slack. It shows a lot more in college at practice.

School was just a lot harder, too. In high school, you didnt have to study as much for tests or you didnt have as much homework, but in college, thats not going to fly. And Im really close with my parents, so not being with them and seeing them a lot, I was definitely homesick freshman year a lot.

What helped you improve in track to make such big strides in one year?

Moore: I still struggle with confidence a little bit, but basically everybody in the NCAA, Ive either competed against them in high school or international competition, so Ive been in the same boat before. Everyones in school. Everyone has practice. Everyones tired, so I had to stop feeling bad for myself, and that was when I was like, OK, obviously, I was a top recruit coming out of high school, so the expectations for you are pretty high and your expectations for yourself are pretty high, so just lets do it.

Around the same time NCAA canceled the rest of track and field season was when officials made the decision to postpone the Olympics. What was your reaction to that?

Moore: Honestly, as soon as we got sent home from Georgia and we really couldnt go back to school, I was happy they postponed just because it was so hard to practice at home due to all the circumstances with the closed gyms and not being able to do exactly everything how your coach has you at school.

Everything is so structured. Everything is so organized, and going from that to home and trying to practice and have the same intensity, it just wasnt there for me, so I was hoping that it would happen. Im kind of young in my event, so this is great that I have another year to work harder and develop more as an athlete.

What are the benefits of an extra year for you?

Moore: Definitely just to get my technique down a little bit more. Like I said, I am still pretty young in my event, so that will be beneficial to get stronger. Freshman year, I was all over the place because everything was so new that I was driving myself a little crazy. I dont think my practices were as great as they couldve been, so itll be nice now since Im able to get a hold of everything and its not so new anymore.

What does training for you look like during the pandemic?

Moore: Im actually in Georgia right now because my lease started for my house, so Im like, If Im paying, I might as well live here. Our tracks open, but were not able to train with our coaches and our team right now, so that part kind of sucks. My coach said whenever school starts back, well be able to. There will be a lot of new rules as far as being able to train when it comes to the virus and everything like that. Things will be looking a little bit different, but Im sure that well still be able to still get the work in that we need to, especially coming up on an Olympic year.

How do you push yourself every day to stay on top of that with no formal coaching?

Moore: I have more discipline here. I know Im in Georgia to go to school and go to practice, versus when Im at home, its easier to get distracted. I have to stay accountable for myself. The good thing is all the girls who I live with, theyre on the track team as well, so were able to do our workouts, and my trainers sent me exercises on my phone, so I do rehab with videos.

Do you let yourself think about what this summer mightve looked like in a normal, alternate universe?

Moore: We still had all of our events on our family calendar. It was like, Oh, supposed to be in Austin right now for NCAA championships, supposed to be in Oregon for Olympic Trials. That parts been kind of sad because I do think about what it couldve been. Either this couldve been a really good moment for me if I made the Olympic team, or else Id be really sad if I didnt. I dont want to have the disappointment, so thats why Im trying my best to stay on top of everything right now.

Find more high school sports stories from The Dallas Morning News here.

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Ex-Lake Ridge star Jasmine Moore talks progress, motivation a year before track & field starts at Tokyo - The Dallas Morning News