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Perceived Weakness In ABB Robotics And Discrete Automation – Seeking Alpha

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Introduction

In February of this year, ABB (ABB) management laid out their strategy for the Robotics and Discrete Automation (RA) business during an Investor Day presentation. Despite an expectation that RA results will "...decline by more than 30 percent year-on-year" in Q2 FY '20 due to economic effects from the Coronavirus, RA is still poised to benefit from secular industrial trends, including requirements around increased productive capacity, greater manufacturing flexibility, and an ability to produce short runs of highly customized products. These trends underpin managements estimate of a $75B addressable market growing at a 6% CAGR.

I am long ABB; but I perceive certain challenges with the companys plan for the segment. While these challenges do not (presently) change my long-term bet on ABB as a whole, I think that there is a better-than-average chance that management will miss the mid-term profitability targets set for the business. As I outline my concerns in this analysis, referencing the presentation and supplemental materials, I would point out that I present certain summarizations and inferences that are not stated directly; and thus they represent my interpretations of the data as presented.

It may not seem reasonable to evaluate a plan that was offered when the effects of the current pandemic were less understood than they are now. Yet, I would suggest the core elements of the strategy are likely unchanged in the face of COVID-19 and thus the analysis is still relevant.

In my view, ABB has attached 3 key goals to their RA business strategy:

1. Mid-term improvement of operating EBITA margin in the range of 13% - 17%: over the last 3 fiscal periods, operating EBITA margin for the unit has steadily declined, with performance of 16.0%, 14.6%, and 11.9% for FY 17, FY 18, and FY 19 respectively; and as a (somewhat imperfect) point of comparison, competitor FANUC (OTCPK:FANUY) realized operating margins of 28.5%, 31.6%, and 25.7% over its analogous fiscal periods.

2. Return to consistent revenue growth: segment revenue was down (8%) year-over-year in FY 19 at $3.3B, dragged by ...[challenges in] weak consumer demand for traditional automotive vehicles, a subdued consumer electronics market, and a tough machine builders market

3. Lessened reliance on the automotive sector: while ABB notes 60% of RA unit revenues today come from other industry segments, the business still remains highly sensitive to the automotive sector.

Distilling ABBs data, management basically positions 5 tactics to achieve its objectives. I offer my explanation of each as follows:

1. Leveraging existing expertise in new segments: While ABB has its roots firmly planted in industrial solutions, the RA business is increasingly looking toward consumer segments for growth and diversification. Such service robots, which find applications in a wide swath of industries including retail, restaurant, and healthcare are expected to see significant growth in coming years, with industry revenues growing at a 20% CAGR by ABBs estimate. Management seeks $1B in sales from Consumer Segments & Service Robotics (CSSR) by 2030 by roughly doubling the $250M of CSSR revenues today by 2025, and again by 2030.

2. Accelerating in existing segments: The automotive sector has been and still is the bread-and-butter of industrial robotics players, including RA. It is only logical to continue to seek growth opportunities within that industry, even as the overall RA business seeks a more varied sales structure to temper the effects when downturns in the sector occur. Management suggests it can grow automotive-related revenues at a 5% CAGR, against an overall industry CAGR of 3%, by capturing greater share of the fast-growing electric vehicle ("EV") manufacturing market and pushing into higher-value areas of the traditional market. The latter high-value areas include final assembly applications and robot cell solutions.

3. Driving new automation solutions: The current RA business emerged in FY 18 from ABBs Next Level restructuring strategy as one of four global P&L units, with a focus on discrete manufacturing. The carve-out of the unit, previously attached to ABBs Motion business, was bolstered by the companys acquisition of Bernecker + Rainer Industrie-Elektronik GmbH (B&R) in FY 17. ABB management sought B&Rs factory automation technologies to establish a competitive advantage with solutions composed of robotics and automation technologies. With software playing an increasingly larger role in automation, ABB has been quite vocal over the last few years stating their intent to be a leading player as manufacturers digitize their operations. Indeed, ABBs software application portfolio may offer both significant differentiation and a source of high-margin solutions. Management notes that the factory automation business has been growing at an 11% CAGR.

4. Continue to lead in key geographies: ABB management claims #1 status in both China and India.

5. Execution: ABB has been working to streamline its organizational structure for some time now, simplifying itself around 4 business units (inclusive of RA). ABB Groups restructuring efforts, meant to drive expense reductions across all business segments, were instantiated under the ABB-OS program. RA management is seeking intra-segment improvements in cost-control, quality, and sales execution to help it reach the profitability corridor mentioned earlier:

Figure 1: ABB RA Path to Margin Corridor

Source: ABB RA Investor Day Presentation FY20

Management notes a historical 11% sales CAGR for the overall RA business. It might be possible to carry this rate forward if factory automation roughly comprising 25% of total revenues today can maintain/grow its historical growth rate and if the balance of the business centered on robotics can continue pushing into higher growth areas, such as CSSR and EVs. Working off that top-line growth projection, the following table offers a set of operating EBITA forecasts:

Figure 2: ABB RA Operating EBITA Forecasts

Source: Yves Sukhu

Notes:

While I opted to show what operating EBITA numbers would look like if constant margin rates at the low, mid, and high points of management's range were carried through for the entire forecast period, we might expect a progressive improvement in operating EBITA margin as shown in the last row. For perspective, the progressive forecast would throw off a cumulative $4.4B in operating EBITA by FY '25, with ABB Group reporting approximately $3.9B in operating EBITA across all 4 P&L units in FY' 19:

Figure 3: ABB Business Segment Data

Source: Yves Sukhu

Investors might note in Figure 3 above that despite being the smallest of ABBs 4 P&L units by revenue, RA generated the highest revenue/employee in FY 19.

ABBs plan for RA is in a word sensible. As suggested in the Introduction, one would not necessarily expect the plans core elements to change in spite of the pandemic. But this would mean, of course, any weaknesses in the core remain; some of which may, in fact, be exacerbated under current conditions. I think that is indeed the case; and I suspect RA's historical sales growth rate, as well as management target corridor for profitability, will both be challenged.

Examining the strategy for RA, I basically question the units ability to:

1. Successful long-term development of RAs software portfolio, to establish and maintain significant competitive differentiation, may prove difficult and expensive. ABB is an engineering company, not a software company. Yet, industrial digitization means it has had no choice other than to push into software technologies, sometimes acquiring software assets to fill gaps in its offerings, as with B&R. ABB Ability, a portfolio of a couple hundred digital offerings positioned horizontally across all 4 ABB business segments, was touted in the Annual Report FY 17 as ...supporting [the companys] position as a leader in the Fourth Industrial Revolution...[with] an annual market opportunity of up to $20 billion. But bear in mind, ABB is hardly alone in its push toward digitization, and similar initiatives by other industrial players have struggled. In regard to the latter, I wrote a Seeking Alpha article in 2017 about General Electrics (GE) Digital business segment which was soaked in wildly bullish management forecasts, including the following:

[GE] noted in its FY 2015 Annual Report that GE can become a top 10 software company by 2020...

Suffice it to say, GE Digital is not a top 10 software company today. Developing a large software-centric business within an engineering-centric organization is no easy feat, and in a 100+ year-old company like ABB it is likely to be constrained by organizational and cultural idiosyncrasies. One possible approach to combat such constraints is to push development into each business unit; and indeed, this is the case with RA and its portfolio of simulation, factory automation, and other software technologies. It is questionable, however, if RAs historical R&D spend of ~5% of sales is sufficient given the companys software ambitions:

Figure 4: ABB RA R&D Investment FY 17 FY 19

Source: ABB RA Investor Day Presentation FY20

Consider that Microsoft (MSFT), an organization largely focused on software-centric research, spent more than 13% of sales in FY 19 on R&D. ABB RA, on the other hand, must spread its (much lower by percentage) R&D spend among research initiatives in software, robotic hardware, interface systems, automation technologies, and many other areas related to its product stack. One could easily imagine the segments software efforts being starved of the resources it needs to grow and thrive. Obviously, any significant increase in R&D to bolster software offerings is going to drag on already depressed margins. But, the alternative scenario could lead to a software portfolio that is non-competitive and perhaps offering limited marketplace differentiation.

2. ABB RA could struggle with its move into consumer segments. Since the 1970s, ABB RA now sits atop more than 400,000 robot installations throughout the world. But these are in large part manufacturing-centric applications and there is no guarantee that the companys success in industrial solutions will translate equally in the consumer space. Certainly, it is understandable why management is eager to target CSSR with the International Federation of Robotics 2018 Service Robots report estimating the cumulative sales volume for professional service robots at $46B for 2019 through 2021. Yet, that same report identified more than 700 service robot companies throughout the world, suggesting a fragmented and competitive market that is increasingly competitive given its position as a favorable and ...primary field for [robotics] start-ups. Thus, despite $250M in estimated CSSR revenue today, mainly in consumer goods and logistics applications, ABB RA might still be considered an emerging and unproven player. Although, to the companys credit, they appear to be picking their battles. For example, the companys acquisition of intrion in FY 18 further positioned RA to capitalize on the fast-growing logistics sub-segment of service robotics, which accounted for ...36 percent of the total sales (in value) of professional service robots [in FY 18]. Nonetheless, the number of market participants and lower barrier-to-entry for the CSSR space implies that ABB is likely to face pricing and margin pressure against a potential glut of competitive offerings. With a relatively small foot-hold today, it remains to be seen if the company can penetrate the CSSR market at scale.

3. Contrasting trends makes forecasting against the automotive sector a bit difficult. Softness was present in the automotive industry well before the appearance of COVID-19, as ABB itself noted in its Annual Report FY 19 that its sales result for RA was impacted by ...weakness in automotive-related sectors and weak book-and-bill business. Beyond ABB, a CNBC report noted that as consumers spent a record $462B on new cars in 2019, manufacturers produced fewer vehicles while the average price per vehicle increased. And in 2018, car sales were down 3% globally which included a 6% decline in China, the first such decline in 28 years. The causes behind the pre-pandemic slowdown were multi-faceted, but largely due to economic slowdowns in key markets including China, India, and Europe. Economic headwinds, worsened by Coronavirus, have devastated car manufacturers in 2020, and that trend may continue into 2021 with some manufacturers suggesting a shift to less expensive, less feature-rich vehicles is necessary. Obviously, none of the foregoing bodes well for industrial robotics. At the same time, however, the electric vehicle market, inclusive of associated infrastructure, continues to grow in markets around the world, off-setting downtrends in the traditional market. That would bolster the case for ABB managements forecast in its strategy presentation to increase the proportion of EV market revenues, growing at a robust 18% CAGR:

Figure 5: ABB EV Market Revenue CAGR Forecast

Source: ABB RA Investor Day Presentation FY20

So, there is bad news along with good news. And its not clear particularly in the darkness of the pandemic to see how these contrasting trends will add up. Accordingly, as ABB RA and all the industrial robotics providers remain sensitive to the automotive sector, sales and profit forecasts for these businesses are likely to be unreliable at best.

4. RA management should (of course) drive on-going improvements in execution, but investors should be somewhat wary before placing too much faith in such initiatives. ABB management routinely pushes improvements in execution as a strategic driver in all 4 of its P&L units. They particularly stress such initiatives as key to margin growth, as in Figure 2. Arguably, the "cost measures", "quality and execution", "mix & value" and "volume" drivers in Figure 2 are all execution-related with the latter two having a direct correlation to sales execution. Indeed, RA management has increased its spend nearly 14% between FY '17 and FY '19 to improve its sales operation, and plans to make further investments moving forward:

Figure 6: ABB RA Sales Operation Initiatives

Source: ABB RA Investor Day Presentation FY20

Certainly, these investments are necessary, particularly as RA's product stack has become more comprehensive and complex, as with the B&R acquisition. However, drawing upon my own experience selling enterprise software, sales improvement initiatives (unfortunately) have a tendency to fail to deliver a commensurate return relative to the corresponding investment. Far too often, companies mask problems with their product portfolio, suggesting instead that better execution is the recipe for higher sales volumes. That is to say, more simply, good products will sell in a given market, but companies rarely admit to a lousy product stack. I am not saying this is necessarily the situation at ABB. But, having seen the same "story" repeated elsewhere within ABB, one does wonder how reliable these investments will be in terms of driving material improvements in the business. Would RA be better off allocating less toward sales and more toward R&D? Time will tell.

Of the points above, it seems (particularly to me) that ABB RA needs to substantially increase its allocation toward R&D. But, in context of my other arguments, it is not clear that the unit will see sufficient growth to throw off enough cash such that R&D spend can be increased while maintaining, or, more necessarily, growing margins. COVID-19 notwithstanding, I think RA would struggle to maintain its historical sales CAGR and may have been challenged even reaching the low-end operating EBITA margin target. Coronavirus just makes the situation worse with management noting that Q1 FY '20 results "[reflected] continued deterioration in the automotive and related industries plus weakening in general industries...[and further] margin contraction." My take: expect a rocky road ahead.

As I mentioned in the Introduction, I have not changed my long position in ABB as a result of this analysis. As investors should know, the stock which closed at $24.00 as I wrote this report is up over 25% over the last 12 months.

In terms of what lies ahead for RA and the industry as a whole, I think it is fair to say that no one really knows. I would say, however, I dont think RA is a lost cause. I may have, for example, exaggerated the impact of the challenges discussed in the previous section. And some of the secular trends driving robotics - namely reducing the need for human labor - may, in fact, increase in intensity due to the current situation such that an explosion in the use of industrial robotics may be "just around the corner". Paradoxically then, COVID-19 may create massive tailwinds for the business.

Still, investors may wish to explore positions in other robotics players as something of a hedge against fundamental weakness in RA.

Perhaps the CEO of ABB competitor Teradynes (TER) said it best in a recent Barron's article, noting ...we believe the opportunities for automation will accelerate post pandemic as businesses see the resilience benefit of a more automated workflow.

Disclosure: I am/we are long ABB. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

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Perceived Weakness In ABB Robotics And Discrete Automation - Seeking Alpha

Industrial Automation and Control Systems Market Global Briefing, Growth Analysis And Opportunities Outlook 2020 To 2026 – 3rd Watch News

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Global Industrial Automation and Control Systems Market Size, Status and Forecast 2020-2026 report is based on comprehensive analysis conducted by experienced and professional experts. The report mentions, factors that are influencing growth such as drivers, restrains of the market. The report offers in-depth analysis of trends and opportunities in the Industrial Automation and Control Systems Market. The report offers figurative estimations and predicts future for upcoming years on the basis of the recent developments and historic data. For the gathering information and estimating revenue for all segments, researchers have used top-down and bottom-up approach. On the basis of data collected from primary and secondary research and trusted data sources the report offers future predictions of revenue and market share.

The Leading Market Players Covered in this Report are : ABB,Emerson Electric,Honeywell International,Kawasaki Heavy Industries,Mitsubishi Electric Corporation,OMRON Corporation,Rockwell Automation,Schneider Electric,Siemens .

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Impact of Covid-19 in Industrial Automation and Control Systems Market:The utility-owned segment is mainly being driven by increasing financial incentives and regulatory supports from the governments globally. The current utility-owned Industrial Automation and Control Systems are affected primarily by the COVID-19 pandemic. Most of the projects in China, the US, Germany, and South Korea are delayed, and the companies are facing short-term operational issues due to supply chain constraints and lack of site access due to the COVID-19 outbreak. Asia-Pacific is anticipated to get highly affected by the spread of the COVID-19 due to the effect of the pandemic in China, Japan, and India. China is the epic center of this lethal disease. China is a major country in terms of the chemical industry.

Key Businesses Segmentation of Industrial Automation and Control Systems MarketOn the basis on the end users/applications,this report focuses on the status and outlook for major applications/end users, sales volume, Industrial Automation and Control Systems market share and growth rate of Industrial Automation and Control Systems foreach application, including-

On the basis of product,this report displays the sales volume, revenue (Million USD), product price, Industrial Automation and Control Systems market share and growth rate ofeach type, primarily split into-

Industrial Automation and Control Systems Market Regional Analysis Includes: Asia-Pacific(Vietnam, China, Malaysia, Japan, Philippines, Korea, Thailand, India, Indonesia, and Australia) Europe(Turkey, Germany, Russia UK, Italy, France, etc.) North America(the United States, Mexico, and Canada.) South America(Brazil etc.) The Middle East and Africa(GCC Countries and Egypt.)

Key Highlights of the Table of Contents:Industrial Automation and Control Systems Market Study Coverage:It includes key market segments, key manufacturers covered, the scope of products offered in the years considered, global Industrial Automation and Control Systems market and study objectives. Additionally, it touches the segmentation study provided in the report on the basis of the type of product and applications.Industrial Automation and Control Systems Market Executive summary:This section emphasizes the key studies, market growth rate, competitive landscape, market drivers, trends, and issues in addition to the macroscopic indicators.Industrial Automation and Control Systems Market Production by Region:The report delivers data related to import and export, revenue, production, and key players of all regional markets studied are covered in this section.Industrial Automation and Control Systems Market Profile of Manufacturers:Analysis of each market player profiled is detailed in this section. This segment also provides SWOT analysis, products, production, value, capacity, and other vital factors of the individual player.

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Key Questions Answered: To gain insightful analyses of the Industrial Automation and Control Systems market and have a comprehensive understanding of the global market and its commercial landscape. Assess the production processes, major issues, and solutions to mitigate the development risk. To understand the most affecting driving and restraining forces in the market and its impact on the global Industrial Automation and Control Systems market. Learn about the Industrial Automation and Control Systems market strategies that are being adopted by leading respective organizations. To understand the future outlook and prospects for the market. Besides the standard structure reports, we also provide custom research according to specific requirements.

For More Information Kindly Contact: ResearchMozMr. Rohit Bhisey,90 State Street,Albany NY,United States 12207Tel: +1-518-621-2074USA-Canada Toll Free: 866-997-4948Email: [emailprotected]Media Release @ https://www.researchmoz.us/pressreleaseFollow me on Blogger: https://trendingrelease.blogspot.com/

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Industrial Automation and Control Systems Market Global Briefing, Growth Analysis And Opportunities Outlook 2020 To 2026 - 3rd Watch News

Industrial Automation Food Safety and Inspection Market Analysis by Key Players, Type, Applications and Forecasts to 2020-2025 – 3rd Watch News

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The research report on the market for industrial automation of food safety and inspection offers a complete study on market share, size, growth aspects and main players.In addition, the report contains brief information on the regional competitive landscape, market trends and drivers, opportunities and challenges, distributors, sales channels, risks and barriers to entry, as well as analysis of Porters five forces.In addition, the main objective of this report is to provide a detailed analysis of how aspects of the market can potentially influence the future of the food safety and inspection industrial automation market.

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In addition, this report also contains a price, income, market share and the production of service providers is also mentioned with precise data.In addition, the global report on food safety and inspection in the industrial automation sector focuses mainly on current developments, new possibilities, advances and dead traps.In addition, the report on the market for food safety and inspection in industrial automation offers a full analysis of the current situation and possibilities for advancement of the market for food safety and inspection in industrial automation around the world.This report analyzes important key elements such as production, capacity, income, price,

In addition, the report on food safety and inspection in the industrial automation sector offers a detailed analysis of the competitive landscape in terms of regions and the main service providers are also highlighted as well as the attributes of the overview of the market, business strategies, finance, product developments as well as market portfolio of industrial safety automation and food inspection.Likewise, this report includes important data on market segmentation by type, application and regional landscape.The report on the market for food automation and safety in industrial automation also provides a brief analysis of the market opportunities and challenges facing the main service.This report is specially designed to know the precise information on the market and the state of the market

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The key players covered in this study

AdvantechDatalogicInspection SystemsMETTLER TOLEDO Teledyne Technologies Thermo Fisher Scientific

Market segment by type, the product can be divided into

Hardware Peripherals Software System

Browse the full report @https://www.orbisresearch.com/reports/index/global-industrial-automation-food-safety-and-inspection- market -size-status-and-prevision-2018-2025

Market segment by application, divided into

Food FactoryBeverage FactoryDining roomOther

Market segment by region / country, this report covers

United StatesEuropeChinaJapanSoutheast AsiaIndiaCentral and South America

The objectives of the study in this report are:

Analyze the global status of industrial food safety and inspection automation, future forecasts, growth opportunities, the key market and the main players.Present the development of industrial safety automation and food inspection in the United States, Europe and China.

Establish a strategic profile of the main players and analyze in depth their development plan and strategies.Define, describe and forecast the market by product type, market and key regions.

In this study, the years considered to estimate the size of the industrial food safety and inspection market are as follows:

Historical year: 2013-2017Base year: 2017Estimated year: 2018Forecast year 2018 to 2025

Main points of the table of contents:

Chapter One: Report OverviewChapter Two: Trends in Global GrowthChapter Three: Market Share of Major PlayersChapter Four: Distribution by Type and ApplicationChapter Five: United StatesChapter Six: EuropeChapter Seven: ChinaChapter Eight: JapanChapter Nine: Southeast AsiaChapter Ten: IndiaChapter Eleven: Central and South AmericaChapter Twelve: Profiles of International PlayersChapter Thirteen: Market Forecast 2018-2025Chapter Fourteen: Analyst Views / FindingsChapter Fifteen: Annex

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Orbis Research (orbisresearch.com) is a one-off help for all your market research needs.We have an extensive database of reports from major publishers and authors around the world.We specialize in delivering personalized reports to our customers requirements.We have complete information about our publishers and are therefore sure of the accuracy of the industries and verticals of their specialization.This helps our customers to map their needs and we produce the perfect market research required for our customers.

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Industrial Automation Food Safety and Inspection Market Analysis by Key Players, Type, Applications and Forecasts to 2020-2025 - 3rd Watch News

Over 30% of indigenous workers at "high risk" of losing jobs to automation | Venture – Daily Hive

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Indigenous workers across a variety of industries may be at higher risk than their counterparts for having those positions eliminated by automation.

According to a report released by the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business, approximately 250,000 jobs held by Indigenous workers are at high risk ofautomation over 33 industries.

Using wage data, the council says the top five industries alonerepresent 131,000 positions held by Indigenous people and accounts for approximately $2.43 billion of Indigenous revenue. The CCAB says thatIndigenous peoplegenerate a combined household income of approximately $30 billion a year. Were these positions to be eliminated entirely, it would represent an8.1% loss to overall income.

The five industries where all workers face the most risk from automation are accommodation and food services; retail trade; construction; transportation and warehousing; and management, administrative, and other support roles.

Location plays a significant role when it comes to risk as well. Indigenous workers in Prince Edward Island, British Columbia, and New Brunswick have the highest proportion of Indigenous workers currently employed in roles with a high risk of automation. WhileIndigenous workers in Nunavut, British Columbia, Prince Edward Island, the Northwest Territories, Ontario, and Alberta are more at risk than their non-Indigenous counterparts.

Ultimately, the CCAB felt more research is needed and recommends an in-depth analysis of Indigenous workers distribution in each industry to identify where they would be at increased risk from being phased out, aninvestigation into the social impact of job automation, estimating the cost of retraining workers, and estimating productivity gains made from automation.

It is vitally important to understand what changes are coming to better prepare Indigenous business owners, workers, and policy-makers in this space for the risks and opportunities that come with automation for the Indigenous economy, the report reads.

The CCAB says that the same study could be used to inform new paths for education and skills development across Indigenous communities and assist workers with filling documented skills gaps and reduce the increased risk of job loss faced by these workers. Noting that Indigenous students have a higher than average completion rate for college and trades training.

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Over 30% of indigenous workers at "high risk" of losing jobs to automation | Venture - Daily Hive

Recruitment automation, the new tools in hiring – Free Malaysia Today

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The old system of vetting paper rsums and meeting candidates in person is still largely adopted by recruiters. (Rawpixel pic)

For too many years, recruiting and hiring have followed the same tedious process: source candidates, review rsums, screen candidates on the phone, conduct in-person interviews and then, hopefully, hire the best person.

Hiring has not seen huge shifts in the process as with other industries despite an overwhelming number of new technologies becoming available.

But change is here. More people are working remotely, collaborating with multiple companies simultaneously in the gig economy and starting companies themselves. Fewer people work for one company under one roof for decades as they used to.

Expectations for hiring have also changed. Candidates do not want to submit rsums and cover letters, wait for weeks to hear back and then go through a series of face-to-face interviews.

In the race for talent, hiring teams must be nimble, responsive and put the candidate experience front and centre.

Automated recruiting tools now make it possible for employers and candidates to interact in a way that is much smoother and faster, while still maintaining a human touch.

What recruiting automation is

Recruiting automation uses the same recruiting process: a hiring team posts an opening, looks for referrals and attracts a pool of top candidates.

Different automated recruiting tools can then be used at different stages of the process to:

Instead of going through the painstaking process of screening individual rsums, emailing a pool of candidates and manually processing each individual through the hiring process, automated tools offer a faster way to provide a great candidate experience.

How AI is used in recruiting automation

Recruiting is now the biggest artificial intelligence market in human resources, with AI-based sourcing, assessment, screening, interviewing and candidate experience management now available, said Josh Bersin in HR Technology 2020: Disruption ahead.

There is a common misconception that AI and recruiting automation are the same things. In fact, there are some key differences with implications for how recruiters use and understand each of these tools.

Using AI in the hiring process

Automation is basically making a hardware or software that is capable of doing things automatically, without human intervention. AI, however, is a science, and engineering of making intelligent machines, writes one expert.

AI is all about trying to make machines or software mimic and, eventually, supersede human behaviour and intelligence.

When a recruiter uses an automated tool, they set up the platform to follow certain rules.

For instance, an applicant tracking system (ATS) may send a candidate a reminder 24 hours in advance of their video interview.

A job posting automation may take down the listing after a certain number of days or a certain number of applications have been received.

These automated tools decrease the amount of manual labour involved with hiring the best candidates.

AI technology, on the other hand, can overcome the intrinsic bias found in human behaviour.

For instance, when recruiters use AI to screen candidates in rather than out, hiring becomes more democratic and merit-based, instead of about who an applicant knows.

Companies that switched to one AI tool saw a 62% increase in women candidates. Nepotism and selective hiring practices get eliminated when an AI tool is correctly utilised.

This article first appeared in Vervoe. At Vervoe, their mission is to fundamentally transform the hiring process from mediocracy to meritocracy.

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Recruitment automation, the new tools in hiring - Free Malaysia Today

Here are the three missions to Mars that are happening this month – CTV News

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TORONTO -- While this summer may be a more subdued one for Earthlings, itll be a different story elsewhere in our solar system.

The population of Mars is on the verge of tripling as three new Mars missions from three different countries are set to launch within the next month, with two new rovers coming to the planet.

Curiosity is about to get some company.

Although Mars has been an object of fascination for years for humans millions of kilometres away on Earth, it is still a planet of vast mystery, and has been only marginally explored.

The Curiosity Rover, a NASA project, has called Mars home since 2012. Over the last few months, scientists have been commanding Curiosity from the comfort of their sofas at home instead of their offices at NASA.

The rover has been alone on the planet ever since Opportunity which was sent to Mars with the Spirit rover in 2003 stopped responding in 2018 following a massive dust storm that swept over the rovers location on Mars. Opportunitys mission was officially deemed complete in 2019 after months of NASA attempting to reconnect and revive the rover.

On July 30, NASA is sending Curiosity a new friend: their fifth Mars rover since the start of the program, called Perseverance.

Perseverances main mission is to look for signs of past life on Mars by studying the geology and taking rock and soil samples to be analyzed on Earth later. Previous explorations including work done by Opportunity have shown evidence that there was once water on Mars surface.

As water is one of the main building blocks of life as we know it, further evidence that Mars didnt always used to be a dry, rocky wasteland could open up our understanding of how life could exist outside of our planet.

NASA has been sending rockets and landing craft to Mars for decades. But Americas martian monopoly is being challenged by China and the United Arab Emirates this summer, with both aiming to join the outer space elite.

Like the Americans, China is landing a rover on Mars this summer, called Tianwen-1, according to a press release from the China National Space Administration.

Although not many details of the mission have been released, the rover is set to launch sometime in July, and is Chinas first Mars exploration mission.

The United Arab Emirates are not landing a rover on the planet, but are instead launching a mission to orbit Mars and observe from space.

The Hope Probe will circle the planet for two years studying weather and atmosphere, and will be the first of the three missions to launch this summer: a countdown on the UAE Space Agency website shows that the mission is launching next week, on July 15.

The mission is aiming to understand the climate dynamics of Mars, the structure of Mars atmosphere and why hydrogen and oxygen are escaping from the upper atmosphere into space.

So why are so many missions to Mars launching in the same month?

Because there is a unique window of opportunity right now. This is when Earth and Mars are closest together something that only happens every two years.

Although these three missions are being operated by different countries, and have different goals, they all serve as important stepping stones towards the ultimate quest: achieving a human expedition to Mars by the end of the century.

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Here are the three missions to Mars that are happening this month - CTV News

Dozens of Jewish graves and tombstones desecrated in the Jewish cemetery in Worms, one of the oldest in Europe – European Jewish Press

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Dozens of Jewish graves and tombstones were shattered and desecrated by unknown individuals in the Jewish cemetery in Worms considered as one of the oldest in Europe.

The Jewish community of Worms was established by the early eleventh century and the oldest tombstone still legible dates from 1058/59.

One of the famous residents of Worms was Rashi, amedieval Frenchrabbiand author of a comprehensive commentary on theTalmudandcommentary on theTanakh.

Thousands of Jewish worshipers visit the Jewish cemetery every year.

Among the desecrated tombs was also the tomb of the Maharam of Rothenburg who served as one of the chief Ashkenazi rabbis in the Middle Ages (1220-1293) and was known for his pioneering leadership and position against domestic violence towards women which was not a given in society at that time.

Rabbi Joseph Havlin, from Chabad in the city of Frankfurt, near Worms, expressed shock at the desecration of the cemetery, noting: We are witnessing, and not for the first time, desecration of German cemeteries alongside a disturbing rise in anti-Semitism in the entire public sphere. We call on the German government to declare an uncompromising fight against anti-Semitism to ensure that such acts do not are no longer repeated.

In a reaction to the desecration, Rabbi Menachem Margolin, Chairman of the European Jewish Association and the Rabbinical Center of Europe, condemned the ongoing rise of anti-Semitism across the continent.

There is no doubt that the Corona crisis has brought with it a sharp rise in antisemitic discourse on the Internet, and now that most of the closures have been lifted, we unfortunately see how the toxic discourse on social media is turning into real attacks on Jewish institutions and symbols.

He added: We expect the German government to act swiftly not only to renovate the cemetery but to formally declare the acceptance of the comprehensive program to combat anti-Semitism that that we have initiated and prepared. These measures include a substantial changes to the curriculum in the education system.

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Dozens of Jewish graves and tombstones desecrated in the Jewish cemetery in Worms, one of the oldest in Europe - European Jewish Press

No One Will Change Your Life Like a Teacher – Algemeiner

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A Torah scroll. Photo: RabbiSacks.org.

There are moments when Divine Providence touches you on the shoulder and makes you see a certain truth with blazing clarity. Let me share with you such a moment that happened to me this morning.

For technical reasons, I have to write my essays for the Covenant & Conversation series many weeks in advance. I had come to Matot-Masei, and had decided to write about the cities of refuge, but I wasnt sure which aspect to focus on. Suddenly, overwhelmingly, I felt an instinct to write about one very unusual law.

The cities were set aside for the protection of those found guilty of manslaughter that is, of killing someone accidentally without malice aforethought. Because of the then universal practice of blood vengeance, that protection was necessary.

The purpose of the cities was to make sure that someone judged innocent of murder was safe from being killed. As Shoftim puts it: And he shall flee to one of these cities and live (Deut. 19:5). This apparently simple concept was given a remarkable interpretation by the Talmud:

The Sages taught: If a student was exiled, his teacher was exiled with him, as it is said: (And he shall flee to one of these cities) and live, meaning do the things for him that will enable him to live.

As Rambam explains: Life without study is like death for scholars who seek wisdom. In Judaism, study is life itself, and study without a teacher is impossible. Teachers give us more than knowledge; they give us life. Note that this is not an aggadic passage a moralizing text not meant to be taken literally. It is a halachic ruling, codified as such. Teachers are like parents only more so. Parents give us physical life; teachers give us spiritual life. Physical life is mortal, transient. Spiritual life is eternal. Therefore, we owe our teacher our life in its deepest sense.

I had just written the text above when the phone rang. It was my brother in Jerusalem to tell me that my teacher, Rabbi Nachum Eliezer Rabinovitch, zecher tzaddik livracha, had just died. Only rarely in this world of concealment do we feel the touch of Providence, but this was unmistakable. For me, and I suspect everyone who had the privilege of studying with him, he was the greatest teacher of our generation.

He was a master posek, as those who have read his Responsa will know. He knew the entire rabbinic literature, Bavli, Yerushalmi, Midrash Halachah, and Aggadah, Biblical commentaries, philosophy, codes, and responsa. His creativity, halachic and aggadic, knew no bounds. He was a master of almost every secular discipline, especially the sciences. He had been a professor of mathematics at the University of Toronto and had written a book about probability and statistical inference. His supreme passion was the Rambam in all his guises, particularly the Mishneh Torah, to which he devoted some 50 years of his life to writing the multi-volume commentary Yad Peshutah.

By the time I came to study with the Rav, I had already studied at Cambridge and Oxford with some of the greatest intellects of the time, among them Sir Roger Scruton and Sir Bernard Williams. Rabbi Rabinovitch was more demanding than either of them. Only when I became his student did I learn the true meaning of intellectual rigour, shetihyu amelim ba-Torah, laboring in the Torah. To survive his scrutiny, you had to do three things: first to read everything ever written on the subject; second to analyze it with complete lucidity, searching for omek ha-peshat, the deep plain sense; and third, to think independently and critically. I remember writing an essay for him in which I quoted one of the most famous of 19th century Talmudic scholars. He read what I had written, then turned to me and said, But you didnt criticize what he wrote! He thought that in this case the scholar had not given the correct interpretation, and I should have seen and said this. For him, intellectual honesty and independence of mind were inseparable from the quest for truth which is what Talmud Torah must always be.

Some of the most important lessons I learned from him were almost accidental. I remember on one occasion his car was being serviced, so I had the privilege of driving him home. It was a hot day, and at a busy junction in Hampstead, my car broke down and would not start up again. Unfazed, Rabbi Rabinovitch said to me, Lets use the time to learn Torah. He then proceeded to give me a shiur on Rambams Hilchot Shemittah ve-Yovel. Around us, cars were hooting their horns. We were holding up traffic and a considerable queue had developed. The Rav remained completely calm, came to the end of his exposition, turned to me and said, Now turn the key. I turned the key, the car started, and we went on our way.

On another occasion, I told him about my problem getting to sleep. I had become an insomniac. He said to me, enthusiastically, Could you teach me how to do that? He quoted the Rambam who ruled that one acquires most of ones wisdom at night, based on the Talmudic statement that the night was created for study.

He and the late Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein ztl were the Gedolei ha-Dor, the leaders and role models of their generation. They were very different: one scientific, the other artistic; one direct, the other oblique; one bold, the other cautious; but they were giants, intellectually, morally, and spiritually. Happy the generation that is blessed by people like these.

It is hard to convey what having a teacher like Rabbi Rabinovitch meant. He knew, for example, that I had to learn fast because I was coming to the rabbinate late, after a career in academic philosophy. What he did was very bold. He explained to me that the fastest and best way of learning anything is to teach it. So the day I entered Jews College as a student, I also entered it as a lecturer. How many people would have had that idea and taken that risk?

He also understood how lonely it could be if you lived by the principles of intellectual integrity and independence. Early on, he said to me, Dont be surprised if only six people in the world understand what you are trying to do. When I asked him whether I should accept the position of Chief Rabbi, he said, in his laconic way: Why not? After all, maybe you can teach some Torah.

He himself, in his early thirties, had been offered the job of Chief Rabbi of Johannesburg, but turned it down on the grounds that he refused to live in an apartheid state. He told me how he was visited in Toronto by Rabbi Louis Rabinowitz who had held the Johannesburg position until then. Looking at the Ravs modest home and thinking of his more palatial accommodation in South Africa, he said, You turned down that for this? But the Rav would never compromise his integrity and never cared for material things.

In the end, he found great happiness in the 37 years he served as head of Yeshivat Birkat Moshe in Maale Adumim. The yeshiva had been founded six years earlier by Rabbi Haim Sabato and Yitzhak Sheilat. It is said that when Rabbi Sabato heard the Rav give a shiur, he immediately asked him to become the Rosh Yeshiva. It is hard to describe the pride with which he spoke to me about his students, all of whom served in the Israel Defense Forces. Likewise it is hard to describe the awe in which his students held him. Not everyone in the Jewish world knew his greatness, but everyone who studied with him did.

I believe that Judaism made an extraordinarily wise decision when it made teachers its heroes, and lifelong education its passion. We dont worship power or wealth. These things have their place, but not at the top of the hierarchy of values. Power forces us. Wealth induces us. But teachers develop us. They open us to the wisdom of the ages, helping us to see the world more clearly, think more deeply, argue more cogently, and decide more wisely.

Let the reverence for your teacher be like the reverence for Heaven, said the Sages. In other words: if you want to come close to Heaven, dont search for kings, priests, saints, or even prophets. They may be great, but a fine teacher helps you to become great, and that is a different thing altogether. I was blessed by having one of the greatest teachers of our generation. The best advice I can give anyone is: find a teacher, then make yourself a disciple.

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks is the former chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth. The author of over 30 books, he can be followed on social media @RabbiSacks or at http://www.RabbiSacks.org.

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No One Will Change Your Life Like a Teacher - Algemeiner

11 Thoughts and Sayings of Rav Simcha Zissel Ziv Broide the Alter of Kelm – Yeshiva World News

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By Rabbi Yair Hoffman for 5tjt.com

For the Refuah Shleima of Reb Shalom Ben Miriam Rivkah

Perhaps no other Torah personality has had such a dichotomy in terms of impact and obscurity. Rav Simcha Zissel Ziv Broide of Kelm (1824-1898), was the Rebbe of the Alter of Slabodka, the Alter of Novardik, Rav Yechezkel Levenstein, Rav Reuvain Dov Dessler, and Rav Yeruchem Levovitz. Essentially, every Yeshiva in Europe, America and Ashkenazic Eretz Yisroel was either started or greatly influenced by the Alter of Kelms Talmidim.

And yet, so few people are aware of the details of his life and of the Yeshiva in Kelm.

Rav Simcha Zissel was born in Kelm. His mother was a descendent of the Chachom Tzvi. After he married, he moved to Kovno and studied under Rav Yisroel Salanter in the Nevyozei Kloiz, along with Rav Yitzchok Blahzer and Rav Naftoli Amsterdam.

Rav Yisroel directed Rav Simcha Zissel to travel to Zhagory to strengthen Mussar there and then to Moscow, where he lived for two years. He moved to St. Petersburg after that for a year and was offered the Rabanus of that city the largest city in Russia. He declined it and suggest that they engage Rav Yitzchok Blahzer instead which they did.

In 1864 he decided to open the Kelm Talmud Torah in order to help further spread Rav Yisroel Salanters ideals. In order to both counter the advances of haskallah as well as create a cadre of Talmidei Chachomim who could lift the banner of Torah Jewry in the Pale of Settlement, he included limudei chol in the curriculum. Due to problems with government authorities, Rav Simcha Zissel relocated the Yeshiva in Grobin in approximately 1877.

In 1881, Rav Simcha Zissel returned to Kelm and left his son, Reb Nochum Zev in charge in Grobin. Talmidim came to study under him in Kelm, while he still ran things from afar at Grobin. It was difficult for him to do, on account of illness. He posed the question to his Rebbe, Rav Yisroel Salanter, as to whether he should close it. He was told not do so. Failing health, however, forced him to do so by 1886.

Many of Rav Simcha Zissels talmidim moved to Eretz Yisroel in 1892 and opened a Beis HaMussar in Yerushalayim under the direction of Rav Simcha Zissel.

The Alter of Kelm was niftar on the 8th of Av 26 July 1898. At his levaya, Rav Eliezer Gordon ztl, the Rosh yeshiva of Telze, said that he knew every word of rashi and tosfos by heart in more than half of shas and new every siman and sif in Shulchan Aruch by heart. He further commented, Aside from his complete gadlus in Torah, I never heard a single word from him that was not Torah or yiras shamayim.

In his Tnuas HaMussar, Rav Dov Katz delineates three yesodos of learning that the Alter of Kelm taught.

After Rav Simcha Zissel passed away in 1898, the Talmud Torah in Kelm was led by his younger brother, Reb Aryeh Leib Broide (?-1928). The mishpacha began moving to Eretz Yisroel, but Rav Tzvi Hirsch Broida, Rav Simcha Zissels son in law, stayed on to lead the yeshiva until he passed away in 1913. Rav Nachum Zev Ziv (1857-1916) took over until his own passing in 1916. Rav Reuvain Dov Dessler took over from 1916 until 1935. After his passing, Rav Doniel Moshovitz took over for the next six years.

Rav Nosson Tzvi Wachtfogel, a talmid of Kelm under Rav Doniel Moshovitz hyd once said, Whenever my Rebbe, Rav Doniel Movshovitz ztl, discussed the Alter of Kelm, he would entirely be mevatel his own deah, and would instead toil diligently to understand what the Alter meant. When someone asked him why he paid so much effort to do so, he responded:

The Alter of Kelm did not open an eyelid or move his little finger without a reason and without preparation. Everything was calculated, befitting the level of previous doros. So how can we possibly imagine that we are capable of understanding such a giant who didnt even move his little finger without first thinking about?

Rav Doniel remained the Rosh Yeshiva and continued teaching Torah until the Nazis yemach shmam murdered everyone in Kelm in July of 1941, including the Rosh Yeshiva and his talmidim.

The glory of Kelm was no more.

The following 11 items are some of the Alter of Klems thoughts and sayings:

The author can be reached at [emailprotected]

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11 Thoughts and Sayings of Rav Simcha Zissel Ziv Broide the Alter of Kelm - Yeshiva World News

Peter Beinart’s one state solution sounds so perfect it’s practically utopian – Haaretz

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Rabbi Yochanan Ben Zakkai, the last president of the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem before the Roman legions destroyed theTemple and uprooted the Jews from their capital, was a complex man. He was a trader, a scholar, a polemicist and a judge. According to the Talmud,he made one of the most crucial interventions in Jewish history when,on the eve ofitsdestruction,he realizedJerusalem was lost.

He evaded the zealots who were determined to fight to the death and sweet-talked the Roman commander,soon-to-be Emperor Vespasian,into allowing him and a small group of rabbis and students to relocate tothe coastal town of Yavne.

Rabbi Yochanan wasabove alla pragmatist. Bereft uponhissons death, he was consoled by the thought the boy had been on loan to him from God,and nowreturned to his rightful owner. He wasnt sure he had made the right decisionto leave the Holy City,and accounts of his deathvoice his fears he might goto hell for giving up on Jerusalem.

He was also a messianist. His dying words were that he must prepare himself for the arrival of Hezekiah, the last king of the house of David, the precursor of the Messiah,who wouldaccompany him to the next world.

Rabbi Yochanan had ensured thattheSanhedrins authority and center of Torah scholarship would not be lost in the great destruction. But he never meant for Yavne to be an alternative to Jerusalem and itsTemple. Just a temporary respite on the long path back home.

In his essay "Yavne: A Jewish Case for Equality in Israel-Palestine," published this week in Jewish Currents, AmericanJewishacademic and journalistPeter Beinart portrays Rabbi Yochanans decision differently. Beinart writes that Rabbi Yochanan "imagined an alternative" Judaism, "a new form of worship, based on prayer and study."

Im an agnostic Jew who doesnt mindhow other Jews choose to define their own Jewish identity or worship, if thats what they want to do(though it intrigues me greatly). And while Beinarts depiction of Rabbi Yochanan has no basisin the Talmudic texts, Im fine with that as well. Theyre apocryphal anyway,and we can all play fast and loose with the Talmud.

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But it is highly instructive that Beinart chooses to see Rabbi Yochanan as a utopian,rather than a pragmatist. Because it perfectly mirrors the conclusions he reaches in the essay.

I agree with three of Beinarts main conclusions. The most important of them is that one binational state between the Mediterranean and the Jordan with equal rights for Jews and Palestinians would be a just way to end the fundamentally unjust situation, whereby millions of Palestinians do not have national or civil rights.

As Beinart points out, as long as such a binational state could remaina haven for Jews suffering persecution anywhere in the world, it would still fulfill the raison detre of the Jewish state. Unlike most of Beinarts critics, who are confident such a state would be a recipe for chaos and bloodshed, I can imagine the overwhelming majoritiesof both nations coming to terms withthe hyphenated "Israel-Palestine" and realizing it was the best possible outcome. Hell,Idlove to live in such a state-if it were indeed peaceful.

The only problem is, I cant vote for a statelike that. Not one party in Israel, no,not even the Joint List, is proposing it. And neither could the Palestinians, back when they had elections, vote for it. It simply wasnt on offer.

I agree as well with Beinart,that a large proportion of Israelis, and Israel-supporting Jews in the Diaspora, have projected a Nazi mentality on to all the Palestinians. While antisemitism is all too prevalent among Palestinians, they are not planning a genocide of Jews. To believe that is the case, as Beinart points out, opens up the way to awful atrocities. And though I dont quite share his predictions that an ethnic cleansing of Palestinians is all but inevitable, itscertainlya possible outcome which hes right to warn us of.

And Beinart is right in his historical analysis that there werepast leaders (including prominent mainstream figures)who believed that Zionismdidntnecessarily have to mean a full sovereign state for Jews only,and that it could be part of a wider federation including other nations.

But this is also where his argument becomes fatally flawed.

Beinart derives inspiration from these early Zionists,because he wants to believe in a more perfect Zionism, one that can be morally justified by 21st century progressive values as well. But thats not what Zionism was about. Not because Zionism isnt morally justifiable(it was)but because Zionism wasnt about morals. There wereZionist ideologues and thinkers, but Zionism wasnt an ideology. It wasnt a vision of a better world.

Zionism was a plan to solve the acute problem of Jewish persecution, primarily in Eastern Europe, but gradually in any place where Jews faced antisemitic violence and discrimination. (Im using the past tense here because I dont believe Zionism actually exists after 1948, when the program was successfully fulfilled). It didnt have to be moral, by the standards of its day or our day. It had to be pragmatic.It had to work because millions of Jewish lives were at stake.

The different strands of Zionism and the evolution of its mainstream leadership in the half a century between the first Zionist Congress of 1897 and the foundation of Israel didnt reflectchanging moralsensibilities- they were a response to changing regional andglobal circumstances.

Political Zionisms founder, Thedor Herzl, envisaged the Jewish state existing as a semi-autonomous district of the Ottoman Empire. Because that was the most pragmaticwayof achieving it in his lifetime(he died in 1904).His heir as Zionist leader, Chaim Weizmann, believed for decades thatthe Jewish statewould be a protectorate of the British Empire.

David Ben-Gurion had the foresight to realize that the British would be no different than the Ottomans in lacking both the desire and then the power togivethe Jews a homeland (the British were trying to get out of their promise in the Balfour Declaration practically from the moment the inkfromArthur Balfours signature dried).

Ben-Gurion managed to convince the initially reluctant leadership of American Zionists at the Biltmore Conference in 1942 of the case for full statehood, or as they called it there a "Jewish commonwealth." By that point, after the United States had joinedWWII, it finally seemed that after the war there would be both an opportunity to achieve an independent state and the necessity to have one so that the Holocaust survivors could be resettled.

Five and a half years later, when the United Nations voted for the partition plan,Ben-Gurion was vindicated. There were those who argued thatthe allocation of56 percent of the territory was unjust to the Arabsofmandatory Palestine, who were two-thirds of the population. And the RevisionistZionists argued that it was a historical sinthatthe Jews were not getting all their historical homeland.

Neither argument budged Ben-Gurion,because he knew Zionism was a pragmatic plan and the best way of realizing it was to go with whateverwas possible.

Ben-Gurion was right. All the countless arguments since 1948 on "Zionism: Right or wrong?" are sterile hypothetical thought exercises. Zionism worked for those for whom it was intended to work. Israel as a reality is not going away. Reality doesnt care whether you think Zionism is inherently racist or that anti-Zionism is antisemitism.

As many others have done before him, Beinart makes a strong case for why the two-state solution has failed. He neednt have bothered. The problem isnt with the two states, but with the solution.

Most Israelis are in principle in favor of the two-state solution. Sadly, there just arent enough of them who feel the need for a solution. The status quo isnt a problem for most Israelis. On the day they will feel that need, they will make a pragmatic choice, for two-states, a confederacy, a binational state, whatever they feel works in their interest. It simply isnt about morals.

It isnt my place to speak for the Palestinians, but they will make their choice according to how they see their own interests as well. Beinart in his essay extensively quotes Palestinians who support a binational state. On Twitter he listed even more Palestinian writers he read for research. With the exception of one single Palestinian Israeli academic, they are all Palestinian Americans.

Not that that invalidates them in any way, but the fact remains that while the binational state is popular in the relatively small community of Palestinian American academics and activists, it remains the minority view among the three much larger Palestinian communities right here West Bankers, Gazans and Arab Israelis.It seems that its not only American Jews and Israelis who have different values and perspectives. American-Palestinians and their siblings back in Palestine have them as well.

Ninety percent of Arab-Israelis voted in April for the Joint List which is emphatically in favor of two states. Beinart blithely dismisses them saying that "the Joint Lists vision of equality inside the Green Line can be extended." They actually claim to have very strong reasons fornotsupporting a binational state. Perhaps he believes that Ayman Odeh and Ahmed Tibi dont really mean what they say. Either way Beinart doesnt care to engage with them - and that is his essays biggest giveaway.

Not one line in the lengthy essay is dedicated to giving readers any idea of how the overwhelming majority of both Israelis and Palestinians actually living in his future binational state of "Israel-Palestine" will be convinced that it can work.

I believe it can, theoretically, though it would probably still need a two-state period in the interim. Beinart doesnt have to persuade me. But about everyone else around here - he doesnt seem to care one way or the other. I suspect that he hopes that a wave of BDS or a President Ocasio-Cortez will one day force Israelis and Palestinians to accept his vision.

Beinart isnt talking to anyone who will actuallylive in "Israel-Palestine." Hes having an internal conversation with a handful of Palestinian American academics and, with their blessing, has created a utopian half-Jewish state which can serve as safe space for a section of young American Jews, the readership of Jewish Currents, who are trying to reconcile their Jewish identity, their inherent affinity with Israel and their progressive values, in a period of ideological and racial turmoil in the U.S.

He is Yochanan Ben Beinart, and his utopian Yavne doesnt exist on the shores of the Mediterranean. It has, instead been transplanted 6000 miles away, to a faculty lounge on an American campus.

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Peter Beinart's one state solution sounds so perfect it's practically utopian - Haaretz

Fact-checking the weeks lies, misinformation – Pocono Record

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The swab used to diagnose COVID-19 goes so far back into the nose that it can be uncomfortable, but it doesn't touch the area known as the blood-brain barrier.

A roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these are legitimate, even though they were shared widely on social media. The Associated Press checked them out. Here are the facts:

Claim: The nasal swab test commonly used for to diagnose COVID-19 involves obtaining a sample from a protective layer of cells known as the blood-brain barrier, which can result in inflammation of the brain.

The facts: The swab used to diagnose COVID-19 goes so far back into the nose that it can be uncomfortable, even causing some people's eyes to water. But it doesn't touch the area known as the blood-brain barrier, where blood vessels and the brain exchange important nutrients, despite social media posts that claim it does. This week, Facebook posts viewed more than a million times shared a diagram of the nasopharyngeal swab test next to an anatomical picture of the brain, suggesting the swab disrupts the blood-brain barrier. "The blood-brain barrier is exactly where the swab has to be placed," the image read, with a raised eyebrow emoji. "Coincidence??? I don't think so." However, Morgan Katz, M.D., an assistant professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University, said these posts fundamentally misunderstand what's happening when the test is conducted. The swab "would have to go through layers of muscle and fascia, as well as the base of the skull, which is a thick bone, in order to get anywhere near the blood-brain barrier, and I would say that it is not possible," Katz told the Associated Press. Instead of the brain, the test collects a sample from the nasopharynx, an area between the back of the nose and the back of the throat where respiratory viruses often live. "That's just a place where we expect to see the highest yield of respiratory viruses," she said.

Claim: Wearing a face mask for extended periods of time can cause pleurisy, an inflammation of the lining around the lung.

The facts: Multiple experts told the Associated Press there is no medical evidence that wearing a face mask could lead to this condition, despite Facebook posts claiming it could. "Be careful healthy people, shared from a friend," read one Facebook post, which described a story of a healthy 19-year-old frontline grocery store worker who started feeling sick and was diagnosed with pleurisy. "They basically tell her.. It's because she's been wearing a mask for over 8 hours a day 5-6 days a week. Breathing in her own bacteria. Carbon dioxide.. Caused an infection." Another Facebook post featured a diagram of a lung with an inflamed lining. "Result of wearing mask for 8 hours a day," the caption read. "Why are they not reporting the number of people being hospitalized for this?? YOU NEED FRESH AIR." But doctors who study the respiratory system say a face mask doesn't pose this risk. "There is absolutely no truth in that claim," said Humberto Choi, a pulmonologist at Cleveland Clinic, in an email. "There are thousands of health care workers wearing face masks everyday including masks that are much tighter than simple surgical masks. Nobody is getting pleurisy because of that." "I don't see a medically plausible mechanism for mask wearing to cause pleurisy," said Albert Rizzo, chief medical officer at the American Lung Association. Claims that mask-wearing leads to harmful conditions, including bacterial and fungal infections, pneumonia, hypercapnia and other ailments are also false, according to AP reporting.

Claim: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent out COVID-19 tests "seeded" with the virus.

The facts: Social media users shared an illustration of a COVID-19 nasal swab test where a 6-inch-long swab is placed into the cavity between the nose and mouth with false information that the CDC sent out tests that contained the live virus. The post asserts that COVID-19 tests are tainted and could expose people to the virus. According to one Instagram post that shared the illustration with false information: "COVID-19 test has the virus ... the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent states tainted lab tests in early February that were themselves seeded with the virus, federal officials have confirmed." The Instagram caption further states: "... if one person in the family could have gotten tested with one of those tainted 'Planted' COVID-19 tests that would potentially expose the entire family to the virus" In February, the CDC distributed a batch of faulty COVID-19 test kits to laboratories, but the kit did not contain the live virus. The contaminated tests were not sent out to patients. The CDC produced two types of test kits in January. There was no evidence that the first batch had any issues. The second type of test kit, which was developed to be manufactured by the CDC, was contaminated. The Department of Health & Human Services published an investigation of the failed rollout on June 19. The report states: "After receiving these tests from CDC in early February, public health laboratories attempted to validate the test kits before using them on real specimens. They could not validate the test a negative control gave a positive result and thus, the test kits were not used and no patient received an inaccurate test result." According to the review, "One of the three reagents in this initial batch of manufactured test kits was likely contaminated. These tests are so sensitive that this contamination could have been caused by a single person walking through an area with positive control material and then later entering an area where tests reagents were being manipulated," the report states. Positive control material is the synthetic, non-infectious part of the virus. Yvonne Maldonado, M.D., professor of pediatric infectious diseases and of health research and policy at Stanford University School of Medicine, told the AP this is not the live virus. The false post implies that nasal swab tests are tainted with the virus. "We only use sterile swabs," Maldonado explained. "That's actually the problem with getting the swab is that we have to make sure that they've been sterilized. We can't just take Q-tips from a box."

Claim: "Teachers are the number one occupation of the antifa terrorist organization according to the FBI."

The facts: False. There is no evidence that teachers make up an outsized portion of antifa, a shorthand term for "anti-fascists." The FBI told the Associated Press it "has not made any such statements about the occupations of people who are attracted to particular ideologies." This false claim has gone viral online recently, both as part of longer blog posts promoting conspiracy theories around COVID-19 and the death of George Floyd, and independently on Facebook and Twitter. On Facebook alone, posts connecting teachers with antifa have been viewed more than a million times in the past week. But the posts don't reflect the way the FBI actually investigates criminal activity or people who identify as antifa, which has become an umbrella term for left-leaning militant groups that oppose neo-Nazis and white supremacists at demonstrations. While FBI director Christopher Wray recently told Fox News the agency is investigating various "violent anarchist extremists, some of whom self-identify or otherwise link to the antifa movement," the agency does not initiate investigations solely based on an individual's identity. "Our focus is not on membership in particular groups but on individuals who commit violence and criminal activity that constitutes a federal crime or poses a threat to national security," the FBI told the AP in a statement. Accordingly, the FBI said it has not made any statements about the occupations of people who are drawn to particular ideologies, such as anti-fascism. Though President Donald Trump has tweeted that the United States will designate antifa as a terrorist organization, it does not qualify for inclusion on the State Department's foreign terror organizations list because antifa is a domestic movement.

Claim: Anthony Fauci, M.D., is married to Ghislaine Maxwell's sister.

The facts: Fauci is married to Christine Grady, chief of the bioethics department at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center. Fauci's role as the nation's top infectious disease expert has made him a target of false information. Social media users are now attempting to link Fauci to conspiracy theories tied to Jeffrey Epstein, the financier who died in jail after being charged with sex trafficking underage girls. Posts online say that Fauci's wife is related to Ghislaine Maxwell, a British socialite who was arrested last week and charged with helping recruit girls for Epstein. Maxwell is one of seven siblings, including twin sisters Christine and Isabel. Their father Robert Maxwell was a billionaire publishing magnate whose nude body was recovered from waters off the Canary Islands in November 1991. He had disappeared from his yacht named Lady Ghislaine. The Associated Press reported at the time that Robert Maxwell had four daughters and three sons. Two of Maxwell's children died: Michael, who died in 1968 at age 21, and Karine, who died in 1957 at age 3, of leukemia. His daughter Christine is not Christine Grady. The National Institutes of Health interviewed Grady in 1997 about her life where she said she grew up in New Jersey as one of five children. "But when I was fairly young, I thought I wanted to be a nurse, and my mother encouraged it the most, even though she was not one herself. She thought nursing was a noble profession and a good thing for me to do. So she encouraged that," Grady says in the oral history interview. Grady served on the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues from 2010 to 2017 and received a Bachelor of Science degree in nursing and biology as well as a doctorate in philosophy from Georgetown University. Former GOP candidate DeAnna Lorraine tweeted the photo of Fauci and Grady Sunday, saying Grady was Maxwell's sister. Lorraine later corrected the tweet. "Looks like the connection may not be accurate w Fauci' wife/Maxwell. When ppl sent me this I researched it & it checked out at first, I'm sorry for getting excited about the connection & jumping gun," she later tweeted. Posts making the false claim online shared a 2016 photo, which can be found in the Getty Images archive, of Fauci with Grady at the White House state dinner held by then-President Barack Obama for the prime minister of Italy, Matteo Renzi. "No coincidences," one post with 1,429 likes on Instagram said sharing the photo of the two.

Claim: The dress Melania Trump wore during Fourth of July celebrations featured drawings by various victims of child sex trafficking.

The facts: The sketches on the dress were made by art students in a class, not by victims of sex trafficking. On July 3, during a visit to Mount Rushmore to commemorate the Fourth of July, First Lady Melania Trump wore a white dress with black lines, black shoes and a black belt. Social media users criticized both the appearance and the price of the garment, which cost $3,840. Others claimed the dress featured drawings from sex trafficking victims. "The media mocked First Lady Melania's dress," read one Facebook post with more than 8 million views. "They said it looked like childish scribbles. Little did they know, they were the drawings of several young victims of sex trafficking who tried to explain their pain through pictures." But posts like this are not correct the dress actually shows sketches of "dancing girls" made by design students from the British art school Central Saint Martins. The students worked with Julie Verhoeven, a fashion illustrator, during a class at the Alexander McQueen flagship store in London. In early May, Paper magazine published a story explaining that the sketches of dancers were first made on sheets. "Afterwards, Creative Director Sarah Burton enlisted the entire McQueen staff to hand-embroider and stitch over the sketches of a single ivory linen dress," the story reads.

Claim: Kansas City Chiefs CEO and owner Clark Hunt told NFL players, coaches and staff that they are all "simply paid performers on a stage" and he will "immediately fire" anyone who does not stand, with their hand over their heart, during the playing of the national anthem.

The facts: Hunt did not hold such a meeting, although he has publicly expressed support for Chiefs players standing during the national anthem. Facebook users for years have circulated a false letter that claims to reveal the Kansas City Chiefs owner called a dramatic meeting to tell NFL players they need to stand during the anthem or face immediate dismissal from the team. The hoax is gaining traction, again, on Facebook before the football season resumes and after NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell apologized last month for the way the league has handled peaceful protests over racial injustice. They included players taking a knee in 2016 during the national anthem an effort led by former 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick. Goodell made the comments this year, the day after Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes urged the league to condemn racism. The letter first began circulating on Facebook in 2016, as debate over football players' decision to kneel during the anthem raged. At the time, Hunt told the Kansas City Star the posts were a hoax. "I have heard about it," Hunt told the Kansas City Star in 2016. "It was an Internet hoax." Brad Gee, the director of football communications for the Kansas City Chiefs, also confirmed to the Associated Press that the contents of the viral letter are inaccurate. Hunt has publicly stated in years past that he prefers players to stand during the national anthem but several Chiefs players have sat or taken a knee during the national anthem, without being fired, including star tight end Travis Kelce. In 2017, after Trump called on NFL owners to fire players who didn't stand during the national anthem, Hunt responded with a formal statement, saying he believes in "honoring the American flag" but encouraged everyone to "work together to solve these difficult issues."

This is part of the Associated Press' ongoing effort to fact-check misinformation that is shared widely online, including work with Facebook to identify and reduce the circulation of false stories on the platform. Find all AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck.

Original post:

Fact-checking the weeks lies, misinformation - Pocono Record

Letter to the Editor: There are aspects of life weighted against Blacks – Delaware State News – Delaware State News

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Kudos go out to Francis A. Bethel III for his intelligent rendering of the facts (America is wide-awake, July 8) giving a wake-up call to Hylton Phillips-Pages misperceptions (Wake up, America, July 6) of antifa and Black Lives Matter protesters.

Antifa, as Mr. Bethel pointed out, are political protest groups organized to fight, most often peacefully, against fascist authoritarian rulers and extreme right-wing ideology groups. They believe in the ideal goal of what the United States and its leaders elected to political office were supposed to legislate: freedom, equality and justice for all. Similarly, the Black Lives Matter movement has been seeking respect and equal opportunity to level the playing field.

My experience with injustice toward African Americans was observed after working in the field as a social worker/juvenile probation officer. Most of my one-parent clients in South Philly lived bunched together in the ghetto in single homes or in the high-rises and received welfare if the father was not an income-earner present in the home. This policy was as bad as separating children from their parents seeking asylum at the border. Big grocery stores in the ghetto and access to doctors and medical care were all too often nonexistent. These deficiencies often led to poor nutrition, obesity and high rates of diabetes. My clients, predictably, due to these poor environmental and family deficiencies, were extremely lacking in motivation in school. Looking back, it is evident to me that many were clinically depressed and lacking in hope for a better future.

Why? Children ideally need both of their parents and/or positive role models for their social and emotional well-being during developmental stages. In their absence, the alternative was joining a gang and looking up to the gang leader or leaders to gain a sense of belonging and an income selling drugs. Why not join a gang and sell drugs to earn an income, since the fact was that African Americans were barred from obtaining a job in the construction trades or other profitable jobs they found themselves being on the low end of the totem pole for? Enacting the three strikes and you are out law to combat crime was heavily weighted against African Americans, who found themselves sentenced behind bars for an exceedingly long time. It was what it was then, and it is what it often is now: Unjust!

In closing, the pendulum of justice and equality has not swung in the direction the Constitution and Declaration of Independence was designed for it to do. Wake up, America is what we truly need to do to gain a mature perspective of what has gone on before and what we need to do now. Ridding ourselves of prejudice and unjust discrimination toward our fellow human beings on planet Earth, who were, unfortunately, born on the wrong side of the street, can begin to pave the way to create a more just world for ourselves and future generations.

Bill ClemensMagnolia

The Opinion page is populated with letters from you, our readers. The Delaware State News was founded on and still is dedicated to the basic principle of civilly and respectfully sharing ideas to create a better community for us all. To submit a letter to the editor, visit the Submit a Letter page.

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Investigating the funding mechanisms behind ANTIFA – Port Lavaca Wave

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Dear Attorney General Barr,

June 16, 2020

I write to thank you for the Department of Justices (DOJ) dedication to investigating ANTIFA, your work to declare ANTIFA a terrorist group, and for your efforts to ensure that proper actions will be taken against the violent agitators who have abused federal law. Additionally, I want to commend you for using the Joint Terrorism Task Force network to identify the organizers of the recent destructive protests. However, I also write to urge you to investigate the funding mechanisms behind ANTIFA and other associated groups, which have threatened the wellbeing of our society.

As you may know, ANTIFA groups have had a long history of violent protests, under which they have caused direct harm to anyone critical of their beliefs. For example, last summer, a photojournalist, who was a harsh critic of ANTIFA groups, was beaten by an ANTIFA mob on a public street. The photojournalist posed no physical threat to the group and was simply capturing footage during a Portland ANTIFA demonstration against right-wing groups.

Furthermore, ANTIFA groups executed in violent attacks at the University of California, Berkeley, in response to a planned speech on campus by a right-wing commentator. During these riots, masked ANTIFA protestors hurled fireworks, rocks, and alcoholic beverages at law enforcement officials and caused nearly $100,000 worth of damage to the campus.

More recently, in 2019, during an ANTIFA protest outside the Tacoma Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington, an armed 68-year-old man attacked a police officer. The armed man placed his arms around the officer in an attempt to choke him, so that another protester would be freed. Later, police found explosives and weapons in his bag.

The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees the right to speak freely and to petition the government through peaceful gatherings and protests. However, the ANTIFA protests directly undermine these freedoms, as they use terror and violence to silence the voices of opposition groups and to suppress their ability to assemble. This group continued to utilize these methods over the past week, which led to inflictions of brutal injuries on law enforcement officials and civilians and severe damages to infrastructure, small businesses, and historical sites. These attacks by radical, left-wing protesters are the antithesis to the safe and effective manner in

which our founding fathers intended First Amendment rights to be utilized, as they only create a further divide and exacerbate inequality in vulnerable populations.

ANTIFA groups who use violence as a tool to advocate for their beliefs and their radical-leftist agenda can carry out these vicious and well-organized attacks due to their ability to

obtain adequate funding. In an effort to subdue these attacks, I urge you to investigate the funding mechanisms behind these volatile groups bringing such reprehensible and destructive behavior amongst our society. Going forward, we must hold ANTIFAs financial supporters accountable, guarantee that taxpayer dollars are not wasted on the prevention of these violent attacks and ensure that future demonstrations work to honor our First Amendment freedom to peacefully protest.

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NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what didn’t happen this week – Alton Telegraph

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NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what didn't happen this week

A roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these are legit, even though they were shared widely on social media. The Associated Press checked them out. Here are the facts:

___

CLAIM: The nasal swab test commonly used for to diagnose COVID-19 involves obtaining a sample from a protective layer of cells known as the blood-brain barrier, which can result in inflammation of the brain.

THE FACTS: The swab used to diagnose COVID-19 goes so far back into the nose that it can be uncomfortable, even causing some peoples eyes to water. But it doesn't touch the area known as the blood-brain barrier, where blood vessels and the brain exchange important nutrients, despite social media posts that claim it does. This week, Facebook posts viewed more than a million times shared a diagram of the nasopharyngeal swab test next to an anatomical picture of the brain, suggesting the swab disrupts the blood-brain barrier. The blood-brain barrier is exactly where the swab has to be placed, the image read, with a raised eyebrow emoji. Coincidence??? I dont think so. However, Dr. Morgan Katz, an assistant professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University, said these posts fundamentally misunderstand whats happening when the test is conducted. The swab would have to go through layers of muscle and fascia, as well as the base of the skull, which is a thick bone, in order to get anywhere near the blood-brain barrier, and I would say that it is not possible, Katz told The Associated Press. Instead of the brain, the test collects a sample from the nasopharynx, an area between the back of the nose and the back of the throat where respiratory viruses often live. Thats just a place where we expect to see the highest yield of respiratory viruses, she said.

___

CLAIM: Wearing a face mask for extended periods of time can cause pleurisy, an inflammation of the lining around the lung.

THE FACTS: Multiple experts told The Associated Press there is no medical evidence that wearing a face mask could lead to this condition, despite Facebook posts claiming it could. Be careful healthy people, shared from a friend, read one Facebook post, which described a story of a healthy 19-year-old frontline grocery store worker who started feeling sick and was diagnosed with pleurisy. They basically tell her.. Its because shes been wearing a mask for over 8 hours a day 5-6 days a week. Breathing in her own bacteria. Carbon dioxide.. Caused an infection. Another Facebook post featured a diagram of a lung with an inflamed lining. Result of wearing mask for 8 hours a day, the caption read. Why are they not reporting the number of people being hospitalized for this?? YOU NEED FRESH AIR. But doctors who study the respiratory system say a face mask doesnt pose this risk. There is absolutely no truth in that claim, said Humberto Choi, a pulmonologist at Cleveland Clinic, in an email. There are thousands of health care workers wearing face masks everyday including masks that are much tighter than simple surgical masks. Nobody is getting pleurisy because of that. I dont see a medically plausible mechanism for mask wearing to cause pleurisy, said Albert Rizzo, chief medical officer at the American Lung Association. Claims that mask-wearing leads to harmful conditions, including bacterial and fungal infections, pneumonia, hypercapnia and other ailments are also false, according to AP reporting.

___

CLAIM: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent out COVID-19 tests seeded with the virus.

THE FACTS: Social media users shared an illustration of a COVID-19 nasal swab test where a six inch long swab is placed into the cavity between the nose and mouth with false information that the CDC sent out tests that contained the live virus. The post asserts that COVID-19 tests are tainted and could expose people to the virus. According to one Instagram post that shared the illustration with false information: COVID-19 test has the virus ... the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent states tainted lab tests in early February that were themselves seeded with the virus, federal officials have confirmed. The Instagram caption further states: ... if one person in the family could have gotten tested with one of those tainted Planted COVID-19 tests that would potentially expose the entire family to the virus In February, the CDC distributed a batch of faulty COVID-19 test kits to laboratories, but the kit did not contain the live virus. The contaminated tests were not sent out to patients. The CDC produced two types of test kits in January. There was no evidence that the first batch had any issues. The second type of test kit, which was developed to be manufactured by the CDC, was contaminated. The Department of Health & Human Services published an investigation of the failed rollout on June 19. The report states: After receiving these tests from CDC in early February, public health laboratories attempted to validate the test kits before using them on real specimens. They could not validate the test a negative control gave a positive result and thus, the test kits were not used and no patient received an inaccurate test result. According to the review, One of the three reagents in this initial batch of manufactured test kits was likely contaminated. These tests are so sensitive that this contamination could have been caused by a single person walking through an area with positive control material and then later entering an area where tests reagents were being manipulated, the report states. Positive control material is the synthetic, non-infectious part of the virus. Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, professor of pediatric infectious diseases and of health research and policy at Stanford University School of Medicine, told the AP that this is not the live virus. The false post implies that nasal swab tests are tainted with the virus. We only use sterile swabs, Maldonado explained. Thats actually the problem with getting the swab is that we have to make sure that theyve been sterilized. We cant just take Q-tips from a box.

___

CLAIM: Teachers are the number one occupation of the antifa terrorist organization according to the FBI.

THE FACTS: False. There is no evidence that teachers make up an outsized portion of antifa, a shorthand term for anti-fascists. The FBI told The Associated Press it has not made any such statements about the occupations of people who are attracted to particular ideologies. This false claim has gone viral online recently, both as part of longer blog posts promoting conspiracy theories around COVID-19 and the death of George Floyd, and independently on Facebook and Twitter. On Facebook alone, posts connecting teachers with antifa have been viewed more than a million times in the past week. But the posts dont reflect the way the FBI actually investigates criminal activity or people who identify as antifa, which has become an umbrella term for left-leaning militant groups that oppose neo-Nazis and white supremacists at demonstrations. While FBI director Christopher Wray recently told Fox News the agency is investigating various violent anarchist extremists, some of whom self-identify or otherwise link to the antifa movement, the agency does not initiate investigations solely based on an individuals identity. Our focus is not on membership in particular groups but on individuals who commit violence and criminal activity that constitutes a federal crime or poses a threat to national security, the FBI told the AP in a statement. Accordingly, the FBI said it has not made any statements about the occupations of people who are drawn to particular ideologies, such as anti-fascism. Though President Donald Trump has tweeted that the United States will designate antifa as a terrorist organization, it does not qualify for inclusion on the State Department's foreign terror organizations list because antifa is a domestic movement.

___

CLAIM: Dr. Anthony Fauci is married to Ghislaine Maxwells sister.

THE FACTS: Fauci is married to Christine Grady, chief of the bioethics department at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center. Dr. Faucis role as the nations top infectious disease expert has made him a target of false information. Social media users are now attempting to link Fauci to conspiracy theories tied to Jeffrey Epstein, the financier who died in jail after being charged with sex trafficking underage girls. Posts online say that Faucis wife is related to Ghislaine Maxwell, a British socialite who was arrested last week and charged with helping recruit girls for Epstein. Maxwell is one of seven siblings, including twin sisters Christine and Isabel. Their father Robert Maxwell was a billionaire publishing magnate whose nude body was recovered from waters off the Canary Islands in November 1991. He had disappeared from his yacht named Lady Ghislaine. The Associated Press reported at the time that Robert Maxwell had four daughters and three sons. Two of Maxwells children died: Michael, who died in 1968 at age 21, and Karine, who died in 1957 at age 3, of leukemia. His daughter Christine is not Christine Grady. The National Institutes of Health interviewed Grady in 1997 about her life where she said she grew up in New Jersey as one of five children. But when I was fairly young, I thought I wanted to be a nurse, and my mother encouraged it the most, even though she was not one herself. She thought nursing was a noble profession and a good thing for me to do. So she encouraged that, Grady says in the oral history interview. Grady served on the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues from 2010 to 2017 and received a Bachelor of Science degree in nursing and biology as well as a doctorate in philosophy from Georgetown University. Former GOP candidate DeAnna Lorraine tweeted the photo of Fauci and Grady Sunday, saying Grady was Maxwells sister. Lorraine later corrected the tweet. Looks like the connection may not be accurate w Fauci wife/Maxwell. When ppl sent me this I researched it & it checked out at first, Im sorry for getting excited about the connection & jumping gun, she later tweeted. Posts making the false claim online shared a 2016 photo, which can be found in the Getty Images archive, of Fauci with Grady at the White House state dinner held by then-President Barack Obama for the prime minister of Italy, Matteo Renzi. No coincidences, one post with 1,429 likes on Instagram said sharing the photo of the two.

___

CLAIM: The dress Melania Trump wore during Fourth of July celebrations featured drawings by various victims of child sex trafficking.

THE FACTS: The sketches on the dress were made by art students in a class, not by victims of sex trafficking. On July 3, during a visit to Mount Rushmore to commemorate the Fourth of July, First Lady Melania Trump wore a white dress with black lines, black shoes and a black belt. Social media users criticized both the appearance and the price of the garment, which cost $3,840. Others claimed the dress featured drawings from sex trafficking victims. The media mocked First Lady Melanias dress, read one Facebook post with more than 8 million views. They said it looked like childish scribbles. Little did they know, they were the drawings of several young victims of sex trafficking who tried to explain their pain through pictures. But posts like this are not correct the dress actually shows sketches of dancing girls made by design students from the British art school Central Saint Martins. The students worked with Julie Verhoeven, a fashion illustrator, during a class at the Alexander McQueen flagship store in London. In early May, Paper magazine published a story explaining that the sketches of dancers were first made on sheets. Afterwards, Creative Director Sarah Burton enlisted the entire McQueen staff to hand-embroider and stitch over the sketches of a single ivory linen dress, the story reads.

___ Reporter Abril Mulato contributed to this item from Mexico City.

___

CLAIM: Kansas City Chiefs CEO and owner Clark Hunt told NFL players, coaches and staff that they are all simply paid performers on a stage and he will immediately fire anyone who does not stand, with their hand over their heart, during the playing of the national anthem.

THE FACTS: Hunt did not hold such a meeting, although he has publicly expressed support for Chiefs players standing during the national anthem. Facebook users for years have circulated a false letter that claims to reveal the Kansas City Chiefs owner called a dramatic meeting to tell NFL players they need to stand during the anthem or face immediate dismissal from the team. The hoax is gaining traction, again, on Facebook before the football season resumes and after NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell apologized last month for the way the league has handled peaceful protests over racial injustice. They included players taking a knee in 2016 during the national anthem an effort led by former 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick. Goodell made the comments this year, the day after Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes urged the league to condemn racism. The letter first began circulating on Facebook in 2016, as debate over football players decision to kneel during the anthem raged. At the time, Hunt told the Kansas City Star the posts were a hoax. I have heard about it, Hunt told the Kansas City Star in 2016. It was an Internet hoax. Brad Gee, the director of football communications for the Kansas City Chiefs, also confirmed to The Associated Press that the contents of the viral letter are inaccurate. Hunt has publicly stated in years past that he prefers players to stand during the national anthem but several Chiefs players have sat or taken a knee during the national anthem, without being fired, including star tight end Travis Kelce. In 2017, after President Donald Trump called on NFL owners to fire players who didnt stand during the national anthem, Hunt responded with a formal statement, saying he believes in honoring the American flag but encouraged everyone to work together to solve these difficult issues.

___

This is part of The Associated Press ongoing effort to fact-check misinformation that is shared widely online, including work with Facebook to identify and reduce the circulation of false stories on the platform.

___

Find all AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck

___

Follow @APFactCheck on Twitter: https://twitter.com/APFactCheck

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NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what didn't happen this week - Alton Telegraph

Readers Write: Fact checking the fact checker – Blog – The Island Now

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In defense of Joan Swirsky and response to your 7/7/20 editorial I submit the following information:

A Brief History of Antifa: Part I

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16149/antifa-history-part-2https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16181/black-lives-matterhttps://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/about/https://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/walter-e-williams/walter-williams-worst-enemy-black-peopleMalcolm X said: The worst enemy that the Negro have is this white man that runs around here drooling at the mouth professing to love Negros and calling himself a liberal, and it is following these white liberals that has perpetuated problems that Negros have.

If the Negro wasnt taken, tricked or deceived by the white liberal, then Negros would get together and solve our own problems. I only cite these things to show you that in America, the history of the white liberal has been nothing but a series of trickery designed to make Negros think that the white liberal was going to solve our problems. Our problems will never be solved by the white man.In conclusion, I offer the following quote to all self-hating, guilt-ridden Marxists, Leftists and Progressives and their supporters in the media and academia, The Truth! You cant handle the Truth! Colonel Nathan R. Jessep from A Few Good Men.Walter J. JaworskiNew Hyde Park

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Young conservative women who went viral for standing up to liberal mob say they’ve received death threats – Fox News

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Savanah Hernandez, who was targeted by Black Lives Matterprotesters when she showed up to a rally with a sign that readPolice Lives Matter, told The Ingraham Angle on Monday that she was viciously attacked and has gotten deaththreats from people on the left because theydont like her message.

On Monday, Hernandez tweeted a picture of herself at the rally in Texas and wrote, I get a lot of hate for the sign, but imagine being the person whose actually in the uniform. Thank you to the police who care about keeping our communities safe. #PoliceLivesMatter.

I waswatching so many videos onTwitter of police officers, especially black police officerswhove been the subject of so much racism because of the radical left and everything that has been going on andit really enraged me so I wantedto go stand up with a Police Lives Matter sign, Hernandez explained.

She noted that on the other side of the sign she wrote the name of retired St. Louispolicecaptain David Dorn, who was shot and killed by a looter during protests over the death of George Floyd.

I went and I stood there, I didnt chant, I didnt go infiltratetheir rally at all, Hernandez said. I stood on a busy street cornerand I held up my sign because Iwanted police in my city to know thatthey were supported and I was immediately attacked.

She said thatone BLM supporter actually supported myFirst Amendment right, which is not something that we typically see, so I wasvery appreciative of that.

DAVID DORN SHOOTING: ARREST, MURDER CHARGE ANNOUNCED IN KILLING OF RETIRED ST. LOUIS POLICE CAPTAIN

But its ridiculous that I cant go stand up with a sign onmy own street, in my own citywithout being attacked, viciously attacked, severaltimes, Hernandez continued.

She noted that since the rally she has received death threats from people on the left, which she said only emboldens me more tostand up for our police whoprotect our communitiesevery single day.

Host Laura Ingraham asked Hernandez whatis her message to young womenwho are conservative like her and are tiredof being pushed around.

I am not a spectacular humanbeing, Im a regular girl If I can stand up and makebig waves with a $5 poster boardand a message, then anybody can, she said in response. So stand up. Nows the timeto do it.

An incoming college freshman who claimed Marquette University threatened to rescind her admission because of videos she posted on TikTok that were supportive of President Trumpalso appeared on The Ingraham Angle on Monday night.

Samantha Pfefferle said she has also received death threats after she posted the videos and added that other students were among those harassing her online, according to Heavy.com.

Ingraham asked Pfefferle, After what you have beenthrough, do you have secondthoughts about going toMarquette at this point or no?

I really, really, really wantto go, Pfefferle said in response.

She said she plans on attending in the fall adding that me and my parents are stillscared for my safety goingthere because of all the threats thatI have been getting including,Dont worry, you will be deadsoon.

So its kind of scary to step oncampus and Im nervous, she continued.But Im ready to rallyconservatives and stand up forwhat I believe in.

In a statement sent to Fox News, the university disputed the claim that Pfefferles enrollment was in jeopardy.

Concerns about this new student that were brought to the universitys attention are not based on political affiliation, but on alleged use of discriminatory language, the statement said. In this case, there were also concerns for the incoming students safety, which were investigated by the Marquette University Police Department and discussed with the incoming student.

The university also said that Pfefferles admission has not been rescinded nor did the university threaten to rescind the admission.

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Ingraham asked Pfefferle if that is true or false.

When we went on the first call, theydid say that I was not astudent, Pfefferle said in response.

Ingraham then pointed out that she is not a student now.

They told me I wasnta student and that I would hearback in a couple days, Pfefferle responded. It took them a week and a half.

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Opposition demand answers and action for students following Liberal WE apologies – CTV News

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OTTAWA -- Federal opposition parties are continuing to demand answers from the federal government, and are calling for a quick solution to revive or rework the now-halted $900 million student summer grant program.

The program was initially awarded to WE Charity, prompting a series of headlines calling into question Prime Minister Justin Trudeaus ethics and the potential conflict of interest he and his finance minister may have put themselves in by not recusing themselves from the decision making table on the deal, given their close family connections to the organization.

On Monday both Trudeau and minister Bill Morneau apologized for their part in the controversy and vowed to recuse themselves from any WE Charity discussions in the future, though the federal ethics commissioner is still looking into the matter, and various House of Commons committees plan to continue to hear testimony and seek evidence that could further shed light on how this sole-sourced contract came about.

The government insists it was the public service that suggested WE Charity was the best, and only organization to administer the program, though now government departments and agencies are being looked at as alternatives to execute the program that was created to offer students grants for summer volunteer work related to COVID-19.

While the government has vowed to rework the program as quickly as possible, after WE Charity handed back over the program to the government along with the funding, thousands of students are left in limbo without summer jobs and, for now, no chance for volunteer grants to help cover costs like fall tuition.

This has prompted the Green Party to suggest shifting the funds to the Canada Summer Jobs program instead, a pre-existing program that connects young people to temporary job opportunities in their communities. That program was deemed oversubscribed this summer and the government has already put additional funding into it.

There are thousands of Canadian students who need jobs and thousands of Canadian charities and nonprofits which are dealing with a decline in revenue and an increase in demand in services that could benefit from students working with them. Organizations that applied through WE should be allowed to move their application to Canada Summer Jobs, Green Party parliamentary leader Elizabeth May said in a statement.

The grant to post-secondary students and recent graduates was designed to provide one-time payments of up to $5,000 for volunteering in pandemic-related programs, depending on the number of hours worked. For every 100 hours spent, a student would receive $1,000.

The whole premise of the Canada Student Service Grant was problematic, said Green Party MP and employment critic Paul Manly in the same statement, noting that the amount being offered for the volunteer work was less than the minimum wage in any province.

Students would not gain any EI eligible hours or have this de facto employment recognized next spring if there is another wave of the pandemic and a need for further financial relief programs, he said.

Diversity, Inclusion and Youth Minister Bardish Chagger said on CTV News Channel on Monday that the government will not be able to deliver the program to the same extent as was originally planned when WE Charity was involved.

"There was thousands of opportunities that were posted Right now we are looking to get the program out the door once again, looking at what needs to be done us to be able to deliver this program," she said.

Brandon Amyot was one of the students who was banking on volunteering through the program to help pay down their student debt. While the government says volunteer hours through to the end of October will count, by then many students will be back in class and preparing for the first round of midterms.

Amyot said WE Charitys involvement and the inference that students would only volunteer if paid was also a concern. It leaves me questioning how I am supposed to get through school, Amyot said. It weakens my trust in institutions in general when these sort of avoidable things happen.

Other students have opted to bypass the federal process altogether and set up their own volunteer positions, hoping that the federal government will still compensate them for those hours once the programs problems are sorted.

In a press conference on Parliament Hill on Tuesday, Bloc Quebecois Leader Yves-Francois Blanchet doubled down on his call for Trudeau to temporarily step aside and let Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland take the reigns of Canadas COVID-19 response as the ethics probe into his potential conflict of interest is concluded.

I believe that now his attention is much more on his personal situation than about helping and taking care of Canadians and Quebecers. That by itself is a good reason for him to step aside, he said.

Though, given the ongoing health and economic crisis, Blanchet said now is not the time for an election so the Bloc Quebecois is not looking to bring down the minority Liberal government.

He wants to see Trudeau testify at the House of Commons Finance Committee, where one probe of the controversy is already underway. Speaking in French, however, he rejected the Conservative calls for an RCMP investigation, saying that its wrong for the Tories to think they can order a police investigation as if it was placing an order for a pizza.

With a report from CTV News Molly Thomas

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Opposition demand answers and action for students following Liberal WE apologies - CTV News

Enlightenment liberalism is losing ground in the debate about race – The Economist

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Jul 9th 2020

LIBERALISMthe Enlightenment philosophy, not the American leftstarts with the assertion that all human beings have equal moral worth. From that stem equal rights for all. Libertarians see those principles as paramount. For left-leaning liberals, equal moral worth also brings an entitlement to the resources necessary for an individual to flourish.

Yet when it comes to race many liberals have failed to live up to their own values. We hold these truths to be self-evident, wrote Thomas Jefferson in Americas Declaration of Independence in 1776, that all men are created equal. More than a decade later the Founding Fathers would write into the countrys constitution that a slave was in fact to be considered three-fifths of a person. In Europe many liberals opposed slavery but supported despotic imperial rule overseas. Perhaps liberal theory and liberal history are ships passing in the night, speculated Uday Singh Mehta of the City University of New York in 1999.

What lies behind this failure? That question is especially important today. Norms are shifting fast. The global protests that sprang up after the killing of George Floyd denounced racism throughout society. Companies, often pressed by their own employees, are in a panic about their lack of diversity, particularly at the top. Television stations and the press are rewriting the rules about how news should be covered and by whom. There is a fight over statuary and heritage, just as there is over people forced out of their jobs or publicly shamed for words or deeds deemed racist.

It is a defining moment. At Mr Floyds funeral, the Rev Al Sharpton declared: Its time to stand up in Georges name and say, Get your knee off our necks. At Mount Rushmore on July 3rd, President Donald Trump condemned a new far-left fascism. To understand all this, it is worth going back to the battle of ideas. In one corner is liberalism, with its tarnished record, and in the other the anti-liberal theories emerging from the campus to challenge it.

During the past two centuries life in the broadest terms has been transformed. Life expectancy, material wealth, poverty, literacy, civil rights and the rule of law have changed beyond recognition. Though that is not all thanks to Enlightenment liberals, obviously, liberalism has prospered as Marxism and fascism have failed.

But its poor record on race, especially with regard to African-Americans, stands out. Income, wealth, education and incarceration remain correlated with ethnicity to a staggering degree. True, great steps have been taken against overt racial animus. But the lack of progress means liberals must have either tried and failed to create a society in which people of all races can flourish, or failed to try at all.

Americas founding depended on two racist endeavours. One was slavery, which lasted for almost 250 years and was followed by nearly a century of institutionalised white supremacy. Of the seven most important Founding Fathers, only John Adams and Alexander Hamilton did not at some point own slaves. Nine early American presidents were slaveholders. And although slavery is a near-universal feature of pre-Enlightenment societies, the Atlantic slave trade is notable for having been tied to notions of racial superiority.

The other was imperialism, when British colonialists violently displaced existing people. Many 18th-century European liberals criticised the search for empire. Adam Smith viewed colonies as expensive failures of monopoly and mercantilism that benefited neither side, calling Britains East India Company plunderers. Edmund Burke (a liberal in the broadest sense) decried the outrageous injustices in British colonies, including systematick iniquity and oppression in India, which resulted from power that was unaccountable to those over whom it was exercised.

But, argues Jennifer Pitts of the University of Chicago in her book A Turn to Empire, in the 19th century the most famous European liberals gravitated towards imperial liberalism. The shift was grounded in the growing triumphalism of France and Britain, which saw themselves as qualified by virtue of their economic and technological success to disseminate universal moral and cultural values. John Stuart Mill abhorred slavery, writing during the American civil war in 1863 that I cannot look forward with satisfaction to any settlement but complete emancipation. But of empire he wrote that Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians, provided the end be their improvement, and the means justified by actually effecting that end. (Mill worked for the East India Company for 35 years.) Alexis de Tocqueville championed the French empire, in particular the violent conquest and settlement of Algeria.

A belief in the basic similarity of human beings, and of their march towards progress, led these thinkers to the belief that it was possible to accelerate development at the barrel of a gun. Even at the time, this paternalism should have been tempered by scepticism about whether it can be just for one people to impose government on another. Although Mill criticised the British empires atrocities, he did not see them, as Burke had, as the inevitable consequence of an unaccountable regime.

The turn in liberal thought was reflected in the pages of The Economist. From its founding in 1843 the newspaper opposed slavery, and early in its existence it criticised imperialism. But we later backed the Second Opium War against China, the brutal suppression of the 1857 Indian mutiny and even the invasion of Mexico by France in 1861. We wrote that Indians were helpless...to restrain their own superstitions and their own passions. Walter Bagehot, editor from 1861 to 1877, wrote that the British were the most enterprising, the most successful, and in most respects the best, colonists on the face of the earth. Although the newspaper never ceased to oppose slavery, it claimed, bizarrely, that abolition would be more likely were the Confederacy to win Americas civil war. It was not until the early 20th century that The Economist regained some of its scepticism regarding empire, as liberalism at home evolved into a force for social reform.

In America the big liberal shift took place in the mid-1960s. To deal with the legacy of slavery, liberals began to concede that you need to treat the descendants of slaves as members of a group, not only as individuals. Sandra Day OConnor, the first woman to serve on the Supreme Court, argued that affirmative action, though a breach of liberal individualism that must eventually be dispensed with, had to stay until there was reasonable equality of opportunity between groups.

Plenty of thinkers grappled with affirmative action, including Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a politician, sociologist and diplomat, and Ronald Dworkin, a philosopher and jurist. However, the most famous left-liberal work of the 20th century, written in 1971, was notably silent on race. The key idea of John Rawlss A Theory of Justice is the veil of ignorance, behind which people are supposed to think about the design of a fair society without knowing their own talents, class, sex or indeed race. Detached from such arbitrary factors people would discover principles of justice. But what is the point, modern critics ask, of working out what a perfectly just society looks like without considering how the actual world is ravaged by injustice?

Liberalism as it is theorised abstracts away from social oppression, writes Charles Mills, also of the City University of New York. The Cambridge Companion to Rawls, a roughly 600-page book published in 2002, has no chapter, section or subsection dealing with race. The central debates in the field as presented, writes Mr Mills, exclude any reference to the modern global history of racism versus anti-racism.

As the gains of the civil-rights era failed to translate into sustained progress for African-Americans, dissatisfaction with liberalism set in. One of the first to respond was Derrick Bell, a legal scholar working at Harvard in the 1970s. Critical race theory, which fused French post-modernism with the insights of African-Americans like Frederick Douglass, an abolitionist and former slave, and W.E.B. Du Bois, a sociologist, then emerged.

Critical race theory first focused on the material conditions of black Americans and on developing tools to help them win a fair hearing in the courtroom. One is intersectionality, set out in a defining paper in 1991 by Kimberl Crenshaw, another legal scholar and civil-rights campaigner. A black woman could lose a case of discrimination against an employer who could show that he did not discriminate against black men or white women, she explains. The liberal, supposedly universalist, legal system failed to grasp the unique intersection of being both a woman and black.

In the three decades since that paper was written, critical race theory has flourished, spreading to education, political science, gender studies, history and beyond. HR departments use its terminology. Allusions to white privilege and unconscious bias are commonplace. Over 1,000 CEOs, including those of firms such as JPMorgan Chase, Pfizer and Walmart, have joined an anti-racism coalition and promised that their staff will undertake unconscious-bias training (the evidence on its efficacy is limited). Critical race theory informs the claim that the aim of journalism is not objectivity but moral clarity.

Yet as critical race theory has grown, a focus on discourse and power has tended to supersede the practicalities. That has made it illiberal, even revolutionary.

The philosophical mechanics that bolt together critical race theory can be obscure. But the approach is elegantly engineered into bestselling books such as How To Be An Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi and White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo.

One thing that the popular synthesis preserves is its contempt for the liberal view of how to bring about social and moral progress. To understand why, you need to start with how ordinary words take on extraordinary meanings. Racism is not bigotry based on the colour of your skin. Races, Mr Kendi writes, are fundamentally power identities and racism is the social and institutional system that sustains whites as the most powerful group. That is why white supremacy alludes not to skinheads and the Ku Klux Klan, but, as Ms DiAngelo explains, the centrality and superiority of whites in society.

Some acts also have an unfamiliar significance. Talking to someone becomes a question of power. The identity of the speaker matters because speech is not neutral. It is either bad (ie, asserting white supremacy, and thus shoring up todays racist institutions), or it is good (ie, offering solidarity to victims of oppression or subverting white power). The techniques of subversion, called criticism, unpack speech to reveal how it is problematicthat is, the ways in which it is racist.

Speech is unfamiliar in another way, too. When you say something, what counts is not what you mean but how you are heard. A privileged person sees the world from their own viewpoint alone. Whites cannot fully understand the harm they cause. By contrast, the standpoint of someone who is oppressed gives them insight into both their own plight and the oppressors world-view, too. To say that whiteness is a standpoint, Ms DiAngelo writes, is to say that a significant aspect of white identity is to see oneself as an individual, outside or innocent of racejust human.

Black people can also find themselves in the wrong. What if two black people hear a white person differently and disagree over whether he was racist? Critical race theorists might point out that there are many sorts of oppression. In 1990 Angela Harris, a legal scholar, complained that feminism treated black and white women as if their experience were the same. By being straight and male, say, the listener belongs to groups that are dominant along some axis other than race. The way out of oppression is through the recognition and empowerment of these group identities, not their neglect. Or one of them may have failed to grasp the underlying truth of how racism is perpetuated by society. If so, that person needs to be educated out of their ignorance. The heartbeat of racism is denial, Mr Kendi writes, the heartbeat of anti-racism is confession.

These ideas have revolutionary implications. One result of seeing racism embedded all around you is a tendency towards a pessimistic attitude to progress. Bell concluded that reform happens only when it suits powerful white interests. In 1991 he wrote: Even those Herculean efforts we hail as successful will produce no more than temporary peaks of progress, short-lived victories that slide into irrelevance as practical patterns adapt in ways that maintain white dominance.

The second implication is that well-meaning white people are often enemies. Colour-blind whites deny societys structural racism. Ms DiAngelo complains that White peoples moral objection to racism increases their resistance to acknowledging their complicity in it. IntegrationistsMr Kendis term for those who want black culture and society to integrate with whiterob black people of the identity they need to fight racism. He accuses them of lynching black cultures.

Where does this leave liberalism? Cynical Theories, a forthcoming book by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay, two writers, argues that the two systems of thought are incompatible. One reason is that the constellation of postmodern thinking dealing with race, gender, sexuality and disability, which they call Theory, disempowers the individual in favour of group identities, claiming that these alignments are necessary to end oppression. Another is Theorists belief that power is what forces out entrenched interests. But this carries the risk that the weak will not prevail, or that if they do, one dominant group will be replaced by another. By contrast, liberals rely on evidence, argument and the rule of law to arm the weak against the strong. A third reason is that Theory stalls liberal progress. Without the machinery of individual equality fired up by continual debate, the engine will not work.

But what will? The appeal of critical race theoryor at least its manifestation in popular writingis partly that it confidently prescribes what should be done to fight injustice. It provides a degree of absolution for those who want to help. White people may never be able to rid themselves of their racism, but they can dedicate themselves to the cause of anti-racism.

Liberals have no such simple prescription. They have always struggled with the idea of power as a lens through which to view the world, notes Michael Freeden of Oxford University. They often deny that groups (rather than individuals) can be legitimate political entities. And so liberal responses to critical race theory can seem like conservative apathy, or even denial.

Tommie Shelby of Harvard University, who sees himself as both a critical race theorist and a liberal, argues that scepticism regarding liberalisms power to redress racial inequality is rooted in the mistaken idea that liberalism isnt compatible with an egalitarian commitment to economic justice. Mr Shelby has argued that the Rawlsian principle of fair equality of opportunity can mean taking great strides towards a racially just society. That includes not just making sure that formal procedures, such as hiring practices, are non-discriminatory. It also includes ensuring that people of equal talent who make comparable efforts end up with similar life prospects, eventually eradicating the legacy of past racial injustices.

This would be a huge programme that might involve curbing housing segregation, making schooling more equal and giving tax credits (see Briefing). That is not enough for Mr Mills, another liberal and critical race theorist. He wants liberal thinkers to produce theories of rectificatory justicesay, a version of the veil of ignorance behind which people are aware of discrimination and the legacy of racial hierarchy. Liberals might then be more willing to tolerate compensation for past violations. They might also demand a reckoning with their past failures.

The problem is thorniest for libertarians who resist redistributive egalitarian schemes, regardless of the intention behind them. But even some of the most committed, such as Robert Nozick, concede that their elevation of property rights makes sense only if the initial conditions under which property was acquired were just. Countries in which the legacy of racial oppression lives on in the distribution of wealth patently fail to meet that test. Putting right that failure, Mr Mills says, should be supported in principle by liberals across the spectrum.

Plenty of people are trying to work out what that entails, but the practicalities are formidable. Having failed adequately to grapple with racial issues, liberals find themselves in a political moment that demands an agenda which is both practically and politically feasible. The risk is that they do not find one.

This article appeared in the International section of the print edition under the headline "In the balance"

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Enlightenment liberalism is losing ground in the debate about race - The Economist

Another liberal Zionist group faces insurgency a call to cut ties to Israel – Mondoweiss

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The crisis of Zionism inside the Jewish community continues to crumble and rumble.

A couple weeks ago we reported that more than 1000 alumni of J Streets youth branch, J Street U, signed a letter to the liberal Zionist group saying its approach of urging Israel to end the occupation had failed and J Street should call for reductions in U.S. aid if Israel goes through with annexation.

J Street rejected the advice. We believe that Israel should continue to receive from the United States the full amount of security assistance outlined in the MOU: $3.8 billion per year. Though J Street calls for restricting that aid to certain purposes.

Well, heres another group of liberal Zionist alums in an uprising. More than 500 members and alumni of a Labor Zionist group famous for socialist kibbutzim the Habonim Dror movement havesigned aletterthat is in some ways anti-Zionist. It calls on the organization to answer Israeli annexation by cutting off much of its relationship to Israel: stop sending North American youth to programs in Israel and encouraging Jews to move to Israel.

The signers say they are being true to their liberal, or socialist, Zionist values, but in effect theyre advocating for a break from the Zionist core mission of sending Jews to live in Israel. They also call for boycotting Israeli emissaries who come to work with Habonim here who are from occupied territories, including East Jerusalem.

And once again, this liberal Zionist parent organization which is affiliated with the peace group Ameinu, an ally of J Street is being stiffnecked about its alumnis demand.

First, here is the letter, now signed by 548 current members and alumni of Habonim Dror North America (HDNA), calling for real action in support of liberation and safety for all Palestinians and Israelis.

We believe that HDNA must act now to ensure that we are no longer complicit in supporting the Israeli government and instead are working actively against its plan to go through with formal annexation. Thus, we are endorsing the following shifts in the movement:

1. Habonim Dror North America will immediately relocate or suspend all programming within Israel.

2. Habonim Dror North America will no longer actively encourage members to make aliyah [Jewish immigration], as aliyah made in the current political climate implicitly legitimizes the Israeli governments ongoing efforts to marginalize Palestinian rights and their freedom to self-determination.

The third step the alumni call for is barring or discouraging Israeli members of the movement from participation in North American Habonim activities until there are no longer members of Dror Israel who live or work over the green line/in settlements (including all suburban settlements around Jerusalem).

These demands are dividing the organization. The leadership, rightly perceives the letter as a direct blow to its mission: In short, this document calls for Habonim Dror to cease to exist as a progressive Zionist youth movement, leadership said in a June statement.

In a subsequent email, the chair of the Habonim Dror Foundation said the organization should not separate from Israel, no, we should further that engagement.

With our voice, we urge the leaders and members of Habonim Dror to further their engagement with Israel, and to continue to focus educational and political work in opposition to unilateral annexation in any form, and to issues of peace and social justice here and in Israel.

We urge leaders and members of Habonim Dror to join with and strengthen our allies in Israel who are on the front lines in the fight for peace and justice and not to apply litmus-tests from the comfort of the diaspora to those who stand in coalition with us.

Notice the old blackmail: The comfort of the diaspora. Youre not sending your kids to serve in the Israeli occupation forces, so who are you to judge? This is the core principle of the Israel lobby. And back on the home front, it should be noted that Habonim leadership has voiced support for the Black Lives Matter movement.

Other liberal Zionists are also responding defensively to the insurgency. Heres J.J. Goldberg, who first reported the Habonim scandal on his Facebook page, working the comfort-of-the-diaspora theme:

Its basically an exercise in self-expression. Nobody in Israel will notice or take it seriously. Theyll be called a handful of spoiled American kids who wont suffer the consequences anyway At the same time, it will reduce whatever political impact or credibility Habo has left within the presumed target audience. Politics isnt supposed to be about self-expression. Its supposed to be about changing things, figuring out how to get from A to B.

The answer to Goldberg is, self-expression is an important function in a liberal democracy; and its obvious why he pooh-poohs the letter, more than 500 angry alumni are yet another surge in the Zionist defection we are witnessing today. I suspect that many of these liberal Zionist groups are not at all democratic in their decisionmaking, that leadership makes all the important decisions and the self-expressions and their outlook is quite conservative. But they are losing traction. Liberal Zionism is now under siege.

The famous lines from Hemingways first novel are, How did you go bankrupt? Gradually then suddenly. We seem to be in the sudden phase of Zionist bankruptcy in American Jewish life.

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Another liberal Zionist group faces insurgency a call to cut ties to Israel - Mondoweiss

Democrats pressed to include court reforms in 2020 platform – Midland Daily News

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Mark Sherman, Associated Press

Democrats pressed to include court reforms in 2020 platform

WASHINGTON (AP) Liberal interest groups are intensifying pressure on Democrats to take aggressive measures to reshape the Supreme Court, arguing the party should include such measures in its policy platform at next months convention.

Twenty-two Democratic-aligned groups signed a letter sent this week to the party's platform committee, saying Democratic electoral victories by themselves won't be enough.

The activists have already faced disappointment this year. Presidential candidates who embraced sweeping court reforms, such as former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg dropped their campaigns. The presumptive nominee, Joe Biden, has not gone as far, but he has pledged to nominate a Black woman to the high court.

But the liberal groups are pointing to a string of recent victories by progressive candidates at the congressional level as fresh proof that the party base wants the court to change to weaken the power of conservatives.

Failing to include any provision on Court reform in the Party platform would send Republicans the message that they can continue to break the rules to hijack our courts because Democrats will do nothing to reverse their illegitimate gains, the letter said.

The effort is picking up steam even as liberals won some surprising victories, including on immigration, abortion and LGBTQ rights, from a court with five Republican-appointed, conservative justices.

In New Yorks Democratic congressional primary last month, Mondaire Jones and Jamaal Bowman, who both favor court expansion, won their partys nominations for seats in and near New York City. Our democracy is under assault, and the Supreme Court has dealt many of the sharpest blows. If Democrats want to do something about that, expanding the Court is our only option, Jones wrote on Facebook in April.

While they won't have a say on the court, their victories are helping build interest in an area in which Republicans have long found it easier to motivate their most ardent supporters, said Brian Fallon, executive director of Demand Justice, the group leading the call for court reform in the Democratic platform. There are some signs this election cycle that there is heightened awareness on the left of the threat posed by the sheer number of conservative nominees Trump has installed, Fallon said.

Biden has made court appointments a leading issue in his campaign with his pledge to put the first Black woman on the court and has suggested vetting is already underway to consider candidates if hes elected.

President Donald Trump similarly energized conservatives in 2016 by releasing a list of potential nominees to the high court. Trump has appointed 200 federal judges, including Justice Neil Gorsuch and Justice Brett Kavanaugh. The task has been made easier by changes in Senate rules, first adopted when Democrats held a majority, that eliminated the procedural rule that required 60 votes to confirm executive branch and judicial nominees.

The liberal groups say doing nothing is not an option, complaining Republicans have made illegitimate gains" in the federal judiciary, embodied most vividly by GOP resistance to filling a Supreme Court seat in 2016 when President Barack Obama was in office, then quickly confirming Gorsuch after Trump won the presidency.

The court's size can be changed by legislation. The number of high court seats varied during its first 80 years from a low of six at the time the Constitution took effect in 1789 to a high of 10 during the Civil War. The current tally of nine justices was set in an 1869 law.

Congress might also act to impose term limits, but any change is likely to draw a legal challenge because the only limit set by the Constitution is that federal judges shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour. They can be impeached, but otherwise decide for themselves when to hang up their robes.

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Democrats pressed to include court reforms in 2020 platform - Midland Daily News