As we look forward to a new year of celebrating women and their compelling stories, we also take stock of the year gone by and celebrate women who have made an impact in different fields.

Women in sports brought home accolades and medals showing us than an uneven playing field did not deter them from doing their best for their country.

Women in science made interesting discoveries while those in the armed forces showcased many firsts. Indian politics saw 78 women MPs this year, the largest ever, a sign that they are breaking the mould and not afraid of entering a murky world.

Many women made headlines this year and HerStory presents the 30 top women newsmakers of 2019:

L-R: Dutee Chand, Mary Kom, Ritu Karidhal, Muthayya Vanitha and Hima Das

Dutee Chand made headlines both on and off the field, in the process becoming the first Indian athlete to reveal a same-sex relationship. She was also named in the TIME 100 NEXT, which spotlights 100 rising stars shaping the future in various fields.

Her on-track achievements include becoming the first Indian to win a gold in the women's 100m at the World University Games. She also won the 100m gold at the Asian Championships, breaking her personal best and national record. At the 59th National Open Athletics Championship, she won a double gold at the 100m and 200m dash events. This record-breaker is now focusing on qualifying for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.

In a career spanning almost two decades, theres been no shortage of accolades for the feisty Mary Kom. The boxing legend continues to create history and is now looking to conquer new boundaries by changing to a new weight category.

She became the first boxer in the history of the AIBA World Championships to win eight medals at the world meet. At this year's championship, she won bronze in the 51kg category. She has six gold medals from her previous attempts. The 36-year-old also won gold medals at the India Open in Guwahati and the Presidents Cup in Indonesia.

The World Olympians Association granted her the use of post-nominal letters OLY, which signifies a sports person's ongoing role in society as an Olympian, living and promoting Olympic values.

As Project Director of the Chandrayaan-2 mission, Ritu Karidhal was feted for role in helming one of Indias most ambitious lunar projects.

Ritu joined ISRO in 2007 and was also the Deputy Operations Director to Indias Mars orbiter mission, Mangalyaan. An aerospace engineer, she was born and raised in Lucknow in a middle-class family. She has a BSc. in physics from the University of Lucknow and ME degree in aerospace engineering from the Indian Institute of Science.

In 2007, she also received the ISRO Young Scientist Award from APJ Abdul Kalam, then President of India.

Muthayya Vanitha is the Project Director of Chandrayaan-2. She is the first woman to hold this position. She has led projects on satellites at ISRO. She hails from Chennai and is an electronics system engineer from the College of Engineering, Guindy.

In 2006, she received the Best Woman Scientist Award. Previously she has also managed data operations for remote sensing satellites.

This track superstar has been the most impressive performer of the year among Indian sportspersons. From her gold-winning spree in Europe to her charitable efforts, this 19-year-old has proved her mettle on and off the track. In July this year, Hima won five gold medals at various events in Poland and the Czech Republic.

She successfully returned to the 400m track at Nove Mesto, Czech Republic, after not being able to complete in the category at the Asian Athletics Championship. She also achieved her season's best timing of 52.09 seconds in the 400m to finish her European tournaments.

The Dhing Express from Assam donated half her salary for flood relief in the state. She made it to the Forbes India 30 Under 30 list. She has also been appointed as the countrys first youth ambassador to Unicef India this year.

PV Sindhu

P V Sindhu, the star of Indian badminton, celebrated another year of conquering new feats. She became the first Indian to win gold at the World Championships, another impressive record in her career. She was also named in the Forbes list of Highest Paid Female Athletes in the World. Sindhu is Indias highest paid female athlete and ranks 13th in the world for her earnings this year.

Sindhu is one of Indias strongest and bankable contenders for gold in the upcoming Tokyo Olympics after her silver in Rio. We are all expecting a smashing comeback.

Gagandeep Kang made news this year as the first Indian woman to be elected to the Fellow of Royal Society. She is currently the executive director of the Translational Health Science and Technology Institute, Faridabad.

She has a bachelors in medicine, bachelor of surgery (MBBS) and a MD in microbiology. She also holds a PhD and has worked at Christian Medical College, Vellore, in Tamil Nadu.

Described as vaccine godmother by some media houses, she has worked extensively in the field of rotavirus epidemiology in India.With over 300 published scientific research papers, she is also the recipient of multiple awards such as Infosys Prize in Life Sciences in 2016 and Dr SC Parija Oration Award, Indian Academy of Tropical Parasitology, in 2015.

In January 2020, biologist Chandrima Shaha will earn the distinction of becoming the first woman president of the Indian National Science Academy (INSA) in 85 years of its existence. This is a fillip for women in science, especially those who aspire to become leaders.

Chandrima specialises in cell biology and has received multiple awards for her work and contribution to the field. She has also authored multiple research papers.

Interestingly, she is also the first female cricket commentator of All India Radio and was also vice-captain of West Bengals first womens cricket team.

Aarohi Pandit created news this year by becoming the first woman pilot to cross both the Atlantic Ocean and Pacific Ocean in a Light Sports Aircraft (LSA). With this, she also became the first woman pilot to cross the Atlantic Ocean solo.

The 23-year-old from Mumbai has been flying around the globe as part of the WE! Women Empower Expedition.

Indo-American economist Gita Gopinath is the first woman to be appointed the Chief Economist of the International Monetary Fund. She is the second Indian to take up the position after former RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan.

Gita is the John Zwaanstra Professor of International Studies and Economics at Harvard University. Previously, she was co-editor of American Review and has also served on the Federal Reserve Advisory council. Her research centres on international finance and macroeconomics.

L-R: Shafali Verma, Remya Haridas, Deepika Padukone, Priyanka Chopra and Kiran Mazumdar Shaw

Shafali Verma has emerged as the new wonder kid of Indian womens cricket. The 15-year-old is known for her power-hitting prowess and was picked in the Indian squad as a replacement for outgoing captain Mithali Raj.

With big boots to fill, this Rohtak-born batting sensation took on international pacers with ease. She became the youngest Indian cricketer to score a half century in an international match when she smashed 73 off 49 balls in the first T20 International against West Indies. She broke a 30-year-old record previously set by her idol Sachin Tendulkar. She also became the second youngest cricketer to ever do so.

Her inclusion in the team came on the back of her run-amassing domestic season. In her third season with Haryana, she accumulated 1,923 runs, including six hundreds and three half-centuries. Mithali Raj and England batswoman Danielle Wyatt have praised the cricketer, with the latter calling her "a superstar in the making".

Remya Haridas is the only woman MP from Kerala in the 17th Lok Sabha. She won the Lok Sabha elections from Alathur, and is the daughter of a daily wager. She is only the second Dalit woman MP from Kerala, 48 years after Bhargavi Thankappan of the CPI won an election in 1971.

Actor Deepika Padukone continues to advocate for mental health awareness through her Live Love Laugh Foundation. She also became an investor this year by investing inyogurt brand Epigamia and electric vehicle mobility startup Blu Smart.

Former Miss World, actor, and producer Priyanka Chopra made multiple investments this year. She invested in the dating and social networking app, Bumble, which was founded in 2011 by Whitney Wolfe Herd. She also invested in Holberton School, a US-based project alternative to college for software engineers.

As a Unicef Ambassador, Priyanka travelled to Jordan to meet child refugees and has been vocal about their rehabilitation. She was also featured in the worlds most admired women list released by YouGov this year.

Chairperson and Managing Director of Biocon, Kiran Mazumdar Shaw continues to inspire women in India and abroad. This year, Biocon celebrates 40 years and Kiran believes this has been possible only due to innovation and perseverance. She is a recipient of Padma Shri, Padma Vibhushan, and multiple other awards.

This year, she was also conferred with an Honorary Doctorate from Deakin University, Australia, for her pioneering entrepreneurial role in the field of biotechnology and for her sustained significant contribution to industry-academia collaboration between Australia and India.

Hailed as the Greta Thunberg of India, 11-year-old Ridhima Pandey is one of the 16 children who sued five nations believed to cause the most pollution (Argentina, Brazil, France, Germany, and Turkey). The movement led by Swedish environmentalist Greta Thunberg made the world sit up and take note of the alarming climate change issue.

In 2017, Ridhima had sued the Indian government for failing to implement environmental laws. Her fight for the future of children makes her one of the most important voices we need to pay attention to in the coming years.

At the age of 47, mother of two teenagers Bhavana Tokekar proved age is just a number by winning four gold medals at the Open Asian Powerlifting Championships organised by the World Powerlifting Congress (WPC) in Chelyabinsk, Russia.

She participated in the 'Under 67.5 Masters 2' category (45-50 age group). Bhavana started her fitness journey in 2011, to combat the side effects of a medicine she was prescribed. She first took to cycling, and eventually shifted to a gym in 2012. Married to a pilot in the Indian Air Force, Bhavana was motivated by IAF bodybuilders to try weightlifting.

She is also a long-distance runner (8-10km) and has taken part in a few marathon events. The gold medallist regularly posts videos of weight-training on Instagram.

At the age of 25, Chandrani Murmu made history by becoming the youngest-ever Lok Sabha MP. An engineering graduate from Odisha, she joined politics encouraged by her uncle, Harmohan, a social worker to fight the Lok Sabha election.

She won from Keonjhar and is working on empowerment of women and youth, improving access to education, and generating employment opportunities.

Sister of actor Alia Bhatt and daughter of filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt and actor Soni Razdan, Shaheen Bhatt released her book Ive Never Been (Un)Happier where she describes in detail her struggle with depression. The book is an emotional account of living with depression in privileged circumstances.

The book has opened up conversations on mental health and reiterates the need for constant and consistent awareness.

Nivruti Rai, Intel

Nivruti Rai combines tech and leadership seamlessly and has been at the helm of Intel as Country Head Intel India and VP, Data Center Group at Intel Corporation. With Intels design and engineering centre being launched in Hyderabad recently, Nivruti has been expanding Intels footprint in India.

An ardent supporter of innovation and new technology, Nivruti also champions women's issues and is a role model and mentor for many women.

Earlier this year, she was featured on the cover of Forbes India and hailed as one of the most powerful women in business in 2019.

Forty-one-year-old Wing Commander Anjali Singh became the first woman to be appointed as a military diplomat in Indian missions abroad.Wing Commander Anjali Sharma hails from Bihar and in 2001 became a commissioned officer in the Air Force and in 17 years of service has trained on MiG29 fighter aircrafts.

The IAF officer was appointed as Deputy Air Attache at the Indian embassy in Moscow. Anjalis role is to assist in cooperation, training, and procurement in the field of defence between Russia and India.

The breakout star of Indian shooting, Elavenil Valarivan has made a strong start in her debut season at the senior level. Transitioning from the junior level, the 20-year-old won two gold medals at the ISSF World Cup, one at the Rio de Janeiro meet and one at the China meet. Her maiden senior ISSF World Cup gold in the 10m Air Rifle in Rio de Janeiro made her the third Indian shooter to win in the category.

This protge of Olympic medallist Gagan Narang is surely giving other Indian team veterans tough competition. Even though India has secured its quota for shooting for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, Elavenil hopes to get a wildcard entry to the Tokyo Olympics.

L-R: Wing Commander Anjali Singh, Elavenil Valarivan, Payal Jangid, Swara Bhasker and Minty Agarwal

Seventeen-year-old Payal Jangid became the first Indian to win the Goalkeepers Global Changemarkers Award by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The awards ceremony was held in New York.

Payal hails from Rajasthan and has been working towards abolition of child marriage in her village, Hinsla. Thanks to her efforts, her village is a child-friendly village (Bal Mitra Gram).

Actor Swara Bhasker continues to make news for taking up issues that matter, and also battling the troll army that constantly attacks her on social media.

Whether its the JNU fee hike, womens issues, or her on-screen appearances, Swara Bhasker comes across as outspoken, both online and offline.

IAF Squadron Leader Minty Agarwal is a Fight Controller with the Indian Air Force. She is the first woman to receive the Yudh Seva Medal. Awarded the medal by President of India, Ram Nath Kovind, she was part of the team that guided Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman during the Balakot airstrike in 2019 by IAF.

Paralympic silver medallist Deepa Malik was in 2019 conferred the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award, the highest sporting honour in the country. The 47-year-old paraplegic (paralysed from the chest down) became the first Indian woman para-athlete and the oldest to receive the honour.

She holds a Paralympic silver Para Asian Games medal among a total of 23 international medals and 57 national medals (51 of them are gold).

Apart from para-sports, she is also involved in adventure sports. She created four Limca World Adventure records when she swam against the current in river Yamuna. She has also taken part in the Himalayan race and the Desert Storm, two of the most treacherous routes where she biked 1,700 km in sub-zero temperatures in a span of eight days at an altitude of 18,000 feet.

The Kung Fu nuns of the Drukpa lineage train other women in self-defence. They use their spirituality to champion for gender equality, physical fitness, environmentally-friendly living, and respect for all living beings.

Many of these nuns are from the Himalayas, Ladakh, and train at the Druk Amitabha Mountain Nunnery in Nepal. Their common aim is to help others, and make a difference in the world around them. Apart from training girls in self-defence, they participate in a number of social and humanitarian activities.

This year, the Kung Fu nuns were presented with Asia Societys Gamechanger Award on October 24 for the transformative impact they are making in Asia through their diverse efforts.

In 2016, Samyuktha Vijayan underwent gender affirmative surgery in Seattle and was welcomed with open arms at her then workplace, Amazon. She quit her job to move to India to help and support the LGBTQIA+ community with her boutique startup, TouteStudio.

This year, she joined food delivery aggregator Swiggy as its first transgender employee, taking up the position of Principal Programme Manager. She is instrumental for optimising and improving the spaces of transportation and delivery at Swiggy.

Shilpa Shetty, who has previously invested in Mamaearth, a mother and child care products startup, launched her own app this year. A labour of love, the app is called the Shilpa Shetty app and provides diet plans, yoga routines, post-pregnancy weight loss options, and other similar health workouts.

Naaz Joshi was crowned Miss World Diversity for the third consecutive year. The pageant was held in August in Mauritius with 14 countries participating in the event.

Abandoned by her family as a child, she has overcome many hardships in her journey. She has undergone surgeries for gender change, embraced motherhood, and continues to model for brands. Despite her success, she still struggles to find a 9-5 well-paying job, and has to resort to sex work to support herself and her daughter.

(Edited by Rekha Balakrishnan)

(Image credits: Sasha R)

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[Year in Review 2019] From Priyanka Chopra and Mary Kom to Dutee Chand and Ritu Karidhal: the top 30 women new - YourStory

University of Denver law professor Csar Cuauhtmoc Garca Hernndez wants to introduce you to Diego Rivera Osorio. To Gerardo Armijo and Kamyar Samimi. And to hundreds of thousands of others born on the south side of happenstance.

Theyre all real-life characters human beings with families, virtues, flaws and complicated contexts in Garca Hernndezs recently released Migrating to Prison: Americas Obsession With Locking up Immigrants(The New Press, 2019). Part dispassionate review of history and policy and part impassioned argument for demolishing immigration prisons, the book aims to reframe the national discourse about migration and incarceration.

My goal, Garca Hernndez says, is to inject into public conversations the simple question of whether we ought to lock up migrants.

Migrants like little Diego. A Honduran by birth, he had, by the time he was 3, spent 650 days in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility for children, also known as a baby jail.

Migrants like Armijo, a permanent resident who grew up near Garca Hernndezs hometown on the U.S.-Mexico border. Armijo served his country in Iraq, where he suffered injuries from an explosion. After returning to Texas, the traumatized Purple Heart recipient sought solace in illegal drugs. A subsequent arrest for possession sent him on an unceremonious trip to an ICE detention center.

And migrants like Samimi, who became a permanent resident in 1976. Nearly three decades later, he was convicted of cocaine possession and sentenced to community service. A dozen years after that, his debt to society long since paid, Samimi was arrested by ICE and incarcerated at a privately owned detention center in Aurora, Colorado. According to an internal review spurred by a congressmans inquiry, he died there of a heart attack, a victim of substandard medical care.

These stories testify to the human side of Garca Hernndezs legal specialty, the intersection between criminal law and immigration law. That territory is explored in his highly regarded first book,Crimmigration Law (American Bar Association, 2015) and at crimmigration.com, a blog he publishes to track emerging developments. The blog has become essential reading for students, faculty and practicing lawyers focused on the legal plight of immigrants.

Migrating to Prison, meanwhile, takes Garca Hernndezs work beyond a constituency of scholars to an audience of everyday citizens. In recent weeks alone, he has shared its findings and arguments at a TEDxMileHigh event and, via an op-ed, with readers of the New York Times.

A lot of people have an intuitive sense that there is something happening in our name that is problematic, he says of his fellow U.S. citizens. But they dont have the understanding of our past, and [they dont have] the language with which to grapple with the reality of immigration law enforcement right now. What Im trying to do is give people the language and give people some of the historical context.

Just what is happening in our name?

On any given day in the United States, Garca Hernndez explains, a mind-boggling number of people are awaiting due process in the nations growing number of immigration prisons, many of whose premises are demarcated by barbed wire. Some prisons are operated by private companies, others by public agencies. Regardless, most of the facilities not to mention the bureaucracies tasked with conducting hearings and processing paperwork are overwhelmed by the sheer number of detainees.

And just how bad is the incarceration rate?

We have upwards of half a million people who are locked up every single year while the government decides whether theyre going to be allowed to stay in the United States, Garca Hernndez says, comparing that to 1970, when the U.S. saw only 575 people charged with an immigration crime.

To build his case for abolishing immigration prisons, Garca Hernndez turns a critical eye to the nations history, beginning with the Naturalization Act of 1790 and ending with todays predicament. He finds precedent for abolition in the mid-20th century, when the nations chief executive, lawmakers and federal judges all but jettisoned the countrys detention policies. And as Migrating to Prison makes clear, the country did not descend into chaos.

The book also chronicles the nations retreat from those policies. In outlining that evolution, Garca Hernndez expresses frustration not just with the countrys current president, but with his predecessor as well. Under the latter, he reminds readers, the Department of Homeland Security locked up an unprecedented number of migrants, and President Trump has done his best to exceed that. But it was the Obama record that spurred Garca Hernndez to write Migrating to Prison.

I realized I wanted to tell this specific story in the late years of the Obama administration, because it was being overlooked. Everything that was happening at that moment in the nations history, the fact that there were hundreds of thousands of people losing their liberty simply because they came to the United States under the wrong circumstances, was something that was unknown to people. I couldnt get people to hear that, he recalls.

Perhaps now they are ready to hear. As he tours the country promoting Migrating to Prison, Garca Hernndez is banking on the notion that readers and citizens, armed with facts and insight into the human cost of current practices, can still be persuaded.

I do have this lingering hope that we as a nation can take a different path, Garca Hernndez says. [That hope] is informed by our past. Its informed by the fact that at one point in our past, during the Eisenhower administration, a Republican president decided this isnt the right way of doing things and decided we should shut down the facilities we had at the time. And we did. Its a reminder to me that these are not things that come to us from on high. They come to us from the democratic process, messy as it is. And the democratic process still responds to the will of the people, the political community that is the United States.

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In His New Book, DU Law Professor Makes the Case for Abolishing Immigration Prisons - University of Denver

Editorials and articles have been written on the proposed merger of BSNL and MTNL. Permanent employees of the two telecommunication companies are planning to opt for lucrative voluntary retirement schemes and a generous package also awaits the senior employees. But what about the thousands of contract labourers, contractual and temporary workers who have served the two organisations for several years for far less wages and without any substantial social security benefits? It is not an exaggeration to say that these workers constituted the rudimentary service pool of these organisations. But now, after doing unpaid work for many months, many of the desperate employees are committing suicide.

The BSNL-MTNL case is not an aberration. There are thousands of employees in the informal sector, a majority of them engaged through contractors, working in precarious service conditions. But, who will rehabilitate these victims of an emerging market economy where most graduates are not employable due to skill deficiency and there is an acute shortage of job opportunities?

The Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act, 1970 and the Inter State Migrant Workmen (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 1979 have been in place for long; but non-compliance is the order of the day. Similarly, manual scavengers, most of them employed as contract labourers, are still forced to do cleaning jobs under the most inhumane conditions, despite this barbaric practice having been outlawed through successive pieces of legislation. The Supreme Court, in judgment after judgment, has ruled that contract workers should be paid the same wages as permanent employees for similar jobs, but these orders seem to exist only to be taught in law classes, not for compliance by employers.

Similarly, Unorganised Workers Social Security Act, 2008, has largely been a cosmetic exercise. The second National Commission on Labour, in the year 2002, had strongly recommended abolition of the exploitative contract labour system in course of time and, in the meantime, suggested implementation of a comprehensive social security scheme. It had very rightly recommended that after two years of working for an organisation, a contract worker should be treated as a permanent worker. However, the apex court in SAIL vs. National Union of Water front Workers and others (2001) overruled some of its earlier judgments and decided that the law does not provide for automatic absorption of contract labourers upon its abolition and that the principal employer has no liability to regularise them.

It is true that our labour laws are stringent and protective, but this statement applies only to the fortunate permanent employees, who constitute roughly 10% of the total workforce. Hire and fire is the rule for the contract labourers. Laissez faire is in full bloom. Paradoxically, a rigid labour law system has also contributed to greater contractualisation of the workforce. And, engaged in substantial numbers as contract labourers are people from vulnerable caste groups. The Contract Labour Act, 1970, is applicable only to organisations and contractors who are employing 20 or more workers. Hence, the number of such workers could be much more than what the numbers suggest.

In the liberalised Indian economy of the 21st century, such labourers are treated as sacrificial goats. Pay Commissions are always very gracious to upgrade the salary structure of permanent employees on a periodical basis, but the genuine needs of contract workers are repeatedly ignored by the state. Unless our policymakers ensure strong enforcement of policies linked to such workers, suicides, as in the BSNL-MTNL case, will continue. Parliament has already enacted the Code on Wages, 2019. Indeed, we do need reform in our labour laws to enhance globalisation. But, at the same time, we also need a comprehensive umbrella of social security for these foot soldiers of growth and development.

Alok Ray is a Kolkata-based lawyer and labour law expert

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The neglected foot soldiers of a liberalised economy - The Hindu

Dr Heather Cateau, senior lecturer and dean, Faculty of Humanities and Education, The UWI St Augustine, delivers greetings. -

Seventy-five years ago, a brilliant, young academic at Oxford University, Eric Williams, published Capitalism and Slavery, connecting the economic aspects between the abolition of the slave trade and West Indian slavery.

Recently, the Caricom Reparations Commission (CRC), in collaboration with The UWI Centre for Reparation Research and the Faculty of Humanities and Education at the St Augustine Campus hosted an international symposium December 13-14 to examine the impact of Dr Eric Williams and his work on the contemporary Caribbean and wider world. This Caribbean perspective joined similar commemorative activities taking place all over the world, including Africa, Britain, and the United States, said a media release.

UWI St Augustine Pro Vice-Chancellor and Principal Professor Brian Copeland noted that Williams has been an integral part of the history of the campus from inception, He served as the first and only Pro-Chancellor of the UWI and was instrumental, as were other prime ministers at the time, in setting the current framework for The UWI while being a strong advocate for the State playing a significant role in supporting the UWI.

Programme manager, culture and community development at the Caricom Secretariat, Dr Hilary Brown, speaking at the opening of the symposium. -

He expressed his appreciation for the symposium which brought together scholars, intellectuals, corporate interest groups, artists, and activists. It provides us with an opportunity to discuss his legacy with the next generation of Caribbean leaders and intellectuals. This body of work is certainly culturally important not just to Caribbean students, but is part of the knowledge base of civilisation as we know it, said Copeland.

When Capitalism and Slavery was first published, its groundbreaking work ignited scholarly debate and became the foundation for studies of imperialism and economic development, the release said.

Keynote speaker Professor Verene Shepherd, director of The UWI Centre for Reparation Research, explained that using the evidence from Capitalism and Slavery as the foundational text and adding other books on similar themes published since, along with Archival Records to which Dr Williams may have access or perhaps never thought of using, the governments of Caricom, through the CRC, have articulated the justification for the reparation demand.

Keynote speaker at Capitalism and Slavery symposium, Professor Verene Shepherd, director of The Centre for Reparations Research. -

The CRC stresses that the regions indigenous and African descendant communities who are the victims of crimes against humanity in the forms of genocide, enslavement, human trafficking, deceptive Asian indentureship and racial apartheid have a legal right to reparatory justice, and that those who committed these crimes, and who have been enriched by the proceeds of these crimes, have a reparatory case to answer, Shepherd said.

Also attending the symposium was Erica Williams-Connell, daughter of Eric Williams, who spearheaded the establishment of the Eric Williams Memorial Collection at the St Augustine Campus. Students from secondary schools also attended the event,

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UWI examines legacy of Williams' Capitalism and Slavery - Trinidad News

UNITED KINGDOM

But looming large for higher education and research is the continuing uncertainty, which the election will not resolve no matter who wins, over the future of the UKs participation in Horizon Europe, the EUs flagship research programme, and Erasmus+, its student and staff study and exchange programme, after Brexit, or over whether Brexit will happen at all.

Labour argues that under the Conservatives universities are treated as private businesses, left at the mercy of market forces, while top salaries soar and students pay more for less.

Tuition fees have trebled and maintenance grants have been scrapped, leaving the poorest graduates with an average debt of 57,000 [US$74,800], Labour's manifesto says. Therefore, the party is promising to end the failed free-market experiment in higher education, abolish tuition fees and bring back maintenance grants.

The policy would only apply to universities in England, as education is devolved to the administrations of the countries that make up the UK.

However, Natalie Perera, executive director and head of research at the Education Policy Institute (EPI), launching an analysis of the parties manifestos last week, said abolishing tuition fees would do very little to improve overall attainment or narrow the disadvantage gap. The 7 billion spent on abolishing fees could be much better spent addressing socio-economic disadvantage earlier on in a pupils life.

The political parties entered the last week of campaigning with a Conservative majority seen as the most likely outcome by voters in opinion polls, but many voters were undecided and a strong push for tactical voting by supporters of Remaining in the EU meant a hung parliament could not be ruled out as an outcome.

Conservative leader and Prime Minister Boris Johnson has promised with seemingly every soundbite to Get Brexit Done by 31 January, but in reality could only get his withdrawal agreement passed by that date and then would have to start negotiations over the future relationship with the EU.

He has also promised to finish the latter by the end of 2020 a deadline which EU leaders say is totally unrealistic or leave without a deal. Therefore, the chances of a no-deal Brexit remain quite high and the future of the UKs role in EU research programmes and Erasmus+ remains in doubt.

If, on the other hand, Labour won an unlikely majority or, more possible, was able to form a minority government, it would enter talks to secure a more favourable deal than Johnsons, based on having a customs union, close alignment with the single market and continued participation in EU agencies and funding programmes including in scientific research.

It would then put this deal to a Peoples Vote with Remaining in the EU as the other option on the ballot paper.

Labours pledges on higher education cover ensuring adequate funding for teaching and research, widening access and ending the casualisation of staff.

The EPI report points out, however, that proposals to abolish fees are hugely costly and result in the burden being shifted from graduates towards taxpayers, making the system less progressive.

It says abolition of fees favours high-earning graduates by reducing their lifetime repayments substantially, while low and middle earners would see little benefit as most do not currently fully repay their student loans.

There is also little evidence that abolishing fees would encourage more school leavers from disadvantaged backgrounds to access higher education, as the chief barrier they face is lower attainment in secondary school, it says.

Postponed decision

The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats have put off a decision about higher education funding until they have looked at the recommendations of the recent Augar review of student finance and funding, which would leave tuition fees at the current 9,250 (US$12,100) a year level for the time being, although the Liberal Democrats will be looking at how they can make the finance system more progressive, possibly by replacing it with a graduate tax.

According to the EPI, the current funding system creates perverse incentives for universities to provide certain courses.

With nearly all universities charging the top level of fees for most or all of their subjects, the cheapest-to-teach have expanded far more rapidly than the most expensive subjects, the EPI report says.

It argues that this is contributing to a mismatch between employers demand for skills and those acquired by workers one of the highest mismatches in the OECD, with around 40% of UK workers over- or under-qualified for their job because current higher education and further education policies are distorting provision, particularly as too little funding is going into further education.

The Conservatives have promised to look at the interest rates on student loan repayments with a view to reducing student debt and to tackle the problem of grade inflation and low-quality courses.

Fast-track entry for top talent

The Conservatives have also promised to introduce a points-based system of immigration under which they would fast track entry for the small number of best technology and science graduates from the top universities in the world and those who win top scientific prizes; and implement the proposed two-year post-study work visa for international students.

In research, they pledge to increase spending to 2.4% of GDP, the OECD average, but dont put a date on the target, a promise matched by Labour. The Liberal Democrats pledge to meet the same target by 2027.

The Tory manifesto says: Once we have got Brexit done, we will turn our attention to the great challenges of the future such as clean energy and advanced energy storage; a cure for dementia; and solving antibiotic resistance. To do this we will make an unprecedented investment in science so we can strengthen research and build the foundations for the new industries of tomorrow.

They say they will continue to collaborate internationally and with the EU on scientific research, including Horizon, although that has yet to be agreed with the EU.

There will also be a 3 billion National Skills Fund created over five years to provide matching funds for individuals and small and medium-sized enterprises for high quality education and training.

Disappointing choice on offer

The EPI said the party policies on post-18 education were few in number and particularly disappointing. While Labours most expensive policy, scrapping tuition fees, would cost 7 billion and may not improve participation, or the access of vulnerable groups, the Conservatives one concrete measure of reducing interest rates on student loans would disproportionately benefit higher earners.

None of the parties live up to the breadth and scale of Universities UKs demands in its own manifesto for higher education and research.

It calls for improved equality of access and opportunity, including more flexibility regarding learning and gaining credits over time; a civic university fund to improve cultural life in the surrounding community and work with left-behind groups and disadvantaged school pupils and the reintroduction of maintenance grants for disadvantaged students.

It also calls for increased funding for research, rising to 2.4% of GDP by 2027 and increasing the number of scientists and researchers by 260,000 by the same date; better conditions for attracting and retaining talent; support for a doubling of the share of students who study abroad to 13% including a national scholarship offer for European students; a 20 million investment into a campaign to promote the UK as study destination to EU students and implementing the two-year post-study work visa for international graduates.

It demands that the government secure associated country status for Horizon Europe and make sure that there is no decline in the total funding available for big international projects of the sort that Horizon 2020 has provided.

It calls for the creation of a UK Shared Prosperity Fund to replace European Structural and Investment Funds.

And it seeks an immigration system that facilitates and promotes academic collaboration and exchange among students, researchers and scientists and the securing of ongoing full UK participation in the next Erasmus+ programme.

If the UK leaves the EU without a deal, Universities UK says, the government should immediately reconsider the three-year limit to the European Temporary Leave to Remain scheme and guarantee EU students entering under this scheme that they will be able to stay for the duration of their course and graduate.

It also demands that under a no-deal Brexit the government create fully funded domestic replacements to the parts of Horizon 2020 not open to third countries, such as the European Research Council, and it demands an ambitious and fully funded replacement to Erasmus+.

The Universities UK manifesto says: For Global Britain to be more than a slogan, we need to reinforce this key advantage. In an ever-more connected world, we need to make sure that as we leave the EU our ties across borders are strengthened, not loosened and that academic cooperation, collaboration and exchange between the UK and our EU partners endures and grows.

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Election won't settle issue of EU programme participation - University World News

In the spring of 1990, when Barbara Hernndez was 16, her boyfriend, then 20, came up with a plan, according to court documents: She would bring a man to an abandoned house on the pretense of prostitution, and her boyfriend would rob him.

Hernndez had met her boyfriend, James Hyde, when she was in junior high school. Over the course of their relationship, she said Hyde coerced her into sex work, routinely beat her, and repeatedly raped her, according to court documents.

When she brought 28-year-old James Cotaling to the house in Pontiac, Michigan, where she and Hyde had been staying, Hyde stabbed him about two dozen times. Hyde and Hernndez were both convicted of murder and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.

In 2012, in Miller v. Alabama, the Supreme Court decided that mandatory life without the possibility of parole sentences for juveniles, like the one Hernndez received, were unconstitutional. In 2016, in Montgomery v. Louisiana, it ruled that the decision applied retroactively. Hernndez was one of about 2,000 people nationally who would be eligible for a new sentence.

But some prosecutors appear to be resisting the Courts decision. So far, Oakland County Prosecutor Jessica Cooper has requested that the courts reimpose life without the possibility of parole in 43 out of 48 of the countys juvenile lifer cases, according to an investigation by the Detroit Free Press. By asking for life without the possibility of parole in the majority of cases, youth advocates say Cooper has repeatedly ignored her obligations under Miller and Montgomery.

At the request of Coopers office, a circuit court judge sentenced Hernndez, now 45, to life without the possibility of parole on Aug. 8.

Not only are these policies and practices that shes pursuing inhumane and cruel, but they also dont follow what is in our view clear Supreme Court guidance, said Udi Ofer, director of the ACLUs Campaign for Smart Justice. And that is, a sentence of life without parole for a crime committed by a child should be reserved for only the rarest of the rare circumstances.

Cooper did not respond to The Appeals requests for comment, although she has previously spoken publicly about juvenile life without the possibility of parole. We are talking about victims who were stabbed, drowned, bludgeoned and decapitated, Cooper told Bridge, a local news outlet, in 2016. Many of these crimes were totally random. They walked up to a car and decided to shoot in it. On and on and on and on. We are really talking about awful cases.

The United States remains the only country that sentences children to life without the possibility of parole, say advocates. The Supreme Court has not yet found juvenile life without the possibility of parole unconstitutional, although 22 states and Washington, D.C. have banned the practice. Rather, the justices ruled that courts must attempt to distinguish between, the juvenile offender whose crime reflects unfortunate yet transient immaturity, and the rare juvenile offender whose crime reflects irreparable corruption.

In August, prosecutor Tricia Dare invoked this language when she asked Judge Nanci Grant to sentence Hernndez to life without the possibility of parole. The crime, Dare said, was not an act involving transient immaturity, according to a transcript of the proceeding.

Hernndezs supporters contest the prosecutors view and the judges ruling, pointing to her traumatic childhood, as well as Hydes alleged abuse. According to court filings, a 1991 psychological report said Hernndez stayed with Hyde because she was afraid of him and had no place to go. In a psychiatric report detailed in the filings, Hernndez was described as essentially a slave to Hyde.

I didnt want him to kill me and now I wish that he did, said Hernndez, according to the 1991 psychiatric report. Id be dead somewhere and I would be free from him. He wouldnt hurt me no more. I didnt want that man to die (crying).

Hyde did not respond to a request for comment.

Hyde and Hernndez were tried together, but with separate juries. Detective Ralph Monday testified that Hernndez may have held down the victim, a statement he has since disavowed. According to his investigation, only Hyde attacked the victim, Monday wrote in an affidavit.

Barbara Hernndez, right, in an undated photo. Courtesy of Deborah LaBelle's office

My memory right now is that she had no role in even touching the guy, Monday told the Associated Press in 2013. Why I testified to that, who knows? he said.

Even before she met Hyde, Hernndez had been sexually and physically abused, according to court documents. Starting when she was 4 years old, her biological father molested her. The abuse stopped in 1982 when she was 8 and he was arrested for raping her mentally disabled aunt. Shortly thereafter, her mothers boyfriend moved in, and he raped Hernndez from the ages of about 9 to 12 years old, according to a mitigation report.

Hernndez and her siblings were often beaten, neglected, and without food, according to court documents. When she met Hyde, she and her family were living in a trailer without electricity, water, heat, or a toilet, according to the mitigation report. After school, Hyde took her to his home where she would shower, according to the report.

This was a travesty, her attorney Deborah LaBelle told The Appeal of Hernndezs sentence. She is like a Miller poster child. Last month, her attorneys filed an appeal with the Michigan Court of Appeals.

During her incarceration, her supporters note, Hernndez earned her GED and took college courses. Since 2011, she has worked as a tutor and mentor at the Womens Huron Valley Correctional Facility, according to the Department of Corrections.

I would be more than happy to have her as a neighbor myself, Pamela Odum, who retired from the Department of Corrections, told Judge Grants court. Rehabilitation comes from within. You have to want it and Ive watched her grab it with both hands.

On the whole, Michigans prosecutors have taken a slower and more punitive approach than most other states, advocates say. In Michigan, as of July 1, 55 percent of the states juvenile lifersjust under 200were awaiting resentencing, according to the Detroit Free Press. In Pennsylvania, however, 221 juvenile lifers have already been released, according to the Department of Corrections. Sixty-seven remain to be resentenced.

Peoples lives, their fate is determined more based on where they live than their crime, said Jody Lavy, executive director of the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth, which advocates for the abolition of juvenile life without the possibility of parole. Michigan has steadily been an outlier.

In Michigan, even in cases where a prosecutor has sought life without the possibility of parole, judges have chosen to impose a term of years. As of July 1, 86 juvenile lifers had been released, according to the Detroit Free Press. One of those was Sheldry Topp, who left prison this year at the age of 74. Coopers office had asked the court to sentence him to life without the possibility of parole.

In 1962, Topp was convicted of a murder he committed when he was 17. As a child, his father frequently beat him with an extension cord, according to his attorneys sentencing memorandum. On one occasion, a sibling recalled, his father hit Topp with a baseball bat after he swung and missed the ball, according to the memo. Beginning at the age of 12, he was placed in three mental institutions. As a teenager, he was subjected to electric shock therapy 20 times, according to the memo.

There is variability from state to state, as well as from county to county, said Lavy. The top prosecutor in Ingham County, Michigan, Carol Siemon, told The Appeal in an email, We have not and will never seek JLWOP [juvenile life without the possibility of parole] under my administration.

The countys two juvenile lifers were resentenced to a term of years, with Siemons support; one was released and the other is up for parole in 2021, according to the prosecutors office.

I believe that each defendant should be afforded an opportunity to change and be rehabilitated, Siemon wrote to The Appeal. It may never happen, but I believe everyone should be provided that possibility and incentive.

In next years Democratic primary, Cooper, who has been in office since 2009, will face a challenger, former family court judge and prosecutor Karen McDonald. McDonald told The Appeal that she was not sure if she supported a ban on life without the possibility of parole for juveniles. When asked if her office would ever seek the sentence for youth, she said, I wouldnt say never. I agree with the Supreme Courts decision that it should be an extremely rare case.

However, McDonald said, she disagrees with Coopers approach to these cases, in particular her handling of Hernndezs case. If elected, she told The Appeal, she plans to advocate for Hernndez to be resentenced.

She should be released, McDonald said of Hernndez. Its not keeping the community safe to keep Barbara Hernndez in prison.

The Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth is a sponsor of Elizabeth Weill-Greenbergs documentary play on young people sentenced to life in prison.

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The Supreme Court Ruled That Sentences Like Hers Are Unconstitutional. Prosecutors Are Fighting To Keep Her Incarcerated. - The Appeal

As Britain faces a crucial general election, its second in two years, one of its most venerable institutions has been busy demolishing whats left of its reputation. The BBC has long been admired internationally for its well-resourced drama and documentary programs, and respected for the professionalism of its journalism. But its hollowing out by a series of neoliberal governments looks to have finally caught up with the once august institution. Whatever the merits of the BBCs educational and cultural output a large proportion of which anyway come from private companies its political journalism, which is at the heart of its public service remit, has failed in the most important test it faces.

For those of us familiar with the politics of the BBC, it has all been fairly predictable, even if still a little depressing, and sometimes even shocking, to watch. Lets start with the prime minister. As a number of critics have noted, the public persona of Boris was partly honed on the BBC in a series of appearances on its tired satirical show, Have I Got News for You, and the institution has since proved for the most part either unable or unwilling to puncture the performance and hold the politician to account.

Like his friend Donald Trump, Johnson has displayed remarkable arrogance and dishonesty. But while the US president is a crass bully, Johnson disguises his narcissism and ambition with a practiced self-depreciation and convivial manner that allows him to be both evasive and domineering with journalists. A revealing moment came last year shortly after his resignation as foreign secretary. Upon returning to the backbenches, the Old Etonian quickly secured the highest private income of any MP: among his various side hustles was a return to the Telegraph as a weekly columnist, for which the Conservative-supporting newspaper paid him almost 23,000 a month (which he failed to disclose to the appropriate authorities).

In one of his first articles in that post, Johnson described Muslim women who wear the burka as look[ing] like letter boxes. The calculated racism was widely condemned, including by the Muslim Council of Britain and by the then-chair of the Conservative Muslim Forum, Mohammed Amin. At the height of the short-lived controversy, the media gathered outside Johnsons home. When the future prime minister finally emerged, he approached them with no comment, but armed with plenty of boisterous charm and a tray full of mugs of tea. It was enough to disarm the group of reporters who laughed along with Boris. The BBC later posted a clip of the encounter on its YouTube channel.

Johnson, of course, emerged politically unscathed, as he has from every outrage. When he was elected Conservative leader earlier this year, Mohammed Amin resigned in protest,charging that Johnson was morally unfit to be prime minister and does not care whether what he is saying is true or false.

Part of the reason these traits have helped rather than hindered Johnsons rise is that his vices are shared by institutions at the heart of British politics. Not just the Conservative Party itself which has conducted what is likely the most dishonest campaign in British political history but also the countrys utterly unscrupulous right-wing press, which has polluted and corrupted British public life for decades, but which BBCs managers and senior journalists still treat as if they were vital components of democratic life.

Many journalists do find Johnson objectionable, and one reporter who stands out in particular is Peter Oborne, a conservative critic of political spin in the Blair era who resigned from the Telegraph over its dropping of an investigation into a major advertiser, HSBC. Early on in the election campaign, Oborne raised concerns that the British media as a whole were not holding Johnson or his ministers to account, and were too often relaying unsubstantiated claims from anonymous government sources. Not only did Oborne point in particular to the role of the BBCs most senior political reporter, Laura Kuenssberg, he also revealed that senior BBC executives had told him they thought it would be wrong to expose lies told by Johnson, since it might undermine trust in politics. The BBCs director of editorial policy and standards responded with a statement insisting that its journalists would challenge all lies, disinformation, or untruths, but stressing that the BBC would never label a prime minister a liar. This, he said, was a judgment for the public to make.

In fact, one of the first significant challenges to the prime ministers dishonesty on the BBC was to come from the public rather than its journalists. As part of a series of broadcast events, the BBC hosted a special edition of its weekly TV show Question Time, in which party leaders were in turn questioned by a selected studio audience. It was an unusually engaging program, during which all the leaders faced sustained and challenging questions, suggesting perhaps the potential of a more participatory public media. During the discussion, one member of the audience asked the prime minister: How important is it for someone in your position of power to always tell the truth? Sections of the audience burst into laughter and applauded, while Johnson twice replied that he thought it was absolutely vital.

When the clip of the exchange later appeared on BBC news bulletins, the audiences reaction had been cut out, with the footage skipping to Johnsons second reply made after the laughter had subsided. When this was brought to the attention of the BBCs editor of live political programs, Rob Burley, on social media, he dismissed the criticism, noting simply that the original program had been broadcast on the BBC. The following day, after facing sustained criticism, the BBC put out a statement acknowledging that the audience laughter had indeed been edited out, and conceding that this had been a mistake on our part.

Following that unfortunate error, the BBC had a lot to prove in its next showcase piece of political television: The Andrew Neil Interviews, a series of broadcasts in which each of the major party leaders faces a grueling half-an-hour, one-to-one interrogation with the BBCs toughest political journalist.

Andrew Neil comes from the hard right of British politics, having made his name as editor of Rupert Murdochs Sunday Times. He has fronted a number of prestigious BBC political programs over the years and, in addition to receiving over 200,000 a year from the corporation, also chairs the company that owns the Spectator, an influential conservative magazine formerly edited by Boris Johnson. Naturally, Neil is particularly hostile to the Left, but he has a reputation as a formidable interviewer for any politician to face.

The first to go head-to-head with Neil was the Scottish National Party leader Nicola Sturgeon, who faced fierce questioning over her partys policies on the EU and her record on health policy. Sturgeon is an adept politician, but it was generally agreed that it was a difficult and likely damaging half-hour. Next was Jeremy Corbyn, and ahead of the interview being aired, rumors circulated that it was, as the journalistic clich has it, a car crash. Though there was arguably some hyperbole from the right on this, it was indeed an uncomfortable half an hour for Labour. Neil was typically belligerent, focusing on the issue of antisemitism, which was once again dominating the news agenda following an intervention by Britains chief rabbi, as well as fiscal policy, which is said to be core to Neils own right-wing politics. Is there no limit to what can go on the Corbyn credit card? he asked derisively.

The wider media response focused on Corbyns supposed refusal to apologize for antisemitism (which he has done many times) and on Labours plans to abolish a 250 tax break for married couples. On the latter, the BBC joined the right-wing press in running a plainly misleading headline: Corbyn admits lower earners face tax hike under Labour, which was later amended to read: Corbyn concedes lower earners could pay more tax. The BBCs Rob Burley once again took to Twitter after the interview was aired to notealmost a clean sweep of the front pages in the morning. Still in a celebratory mood the next day, he reported that three million people had watched the program.

The Neil interview was damaging for Labour, but it was probably unavoidable, and quite proper given that all leaders would face the same level of scrutiny. Or so it seemed. A few days after it was broadcast, the BBC announced the dates of scheduled interviews with the Liberal Democrat leader Jo Swinson and the Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage. But there was no mention of the prime minister. In a follow-up tweet, the BBC press team stated that discussions with Johnsons team were ongoing and that the BBC hadnt yet been able to fix a date.

Labour supporters were incredulous, and it was subsequently reported that the party had been told by the BBC that interviews with all the other party leaders had been agreed (this is denied by Rob Burley). It soon became clear that the Conservatives had no intention of Johnson being interrogated by Andrew Neil, and instead offered to put the prime minister forward for The Andrew Marr Show, widely perceived to be a softer option. The BBC declined, publicly calling on Johnson to sit down with Neil, as the other leaders had, or had agreed to do. Meanwhile, BBC Politics put out a video of the prime minister eating a scone and commenting in his usual jocular manner about the technicalities of applying jam and cream.

Remarkably, the BBCs neglect of its public service obligations did not end there. Following a terrorist attack in London which the Conservatives shamelessly sought to politicize contrary to the explicit wishes of one of the victims family it agreed to have Johnson on The Andrew Marr Show after all. It cited the public interest to justify the U-turn while emphasizing that it would continue to urge Boris Johnson to take part in the prime-time Andrew Neil interview as other leaders have done. There were then regular reports that negotiations over the Neil interview were ongoing, but Neil himself subsequently confirmed that this was another lie. There were no negotiations.

Facing an unprecedented deluge of criticism, the BBCs Fran Unsworth wrote a piece for the Guardian affirming the BBCs commitment to political impartiality. She was, she said, as disappointed as our audiences that the prime minister, unlike all his fellow leaders, has not yet confirmed a date, explaining that the logistics of pinning down party leaders is complex.

The complacency of the apologia is quite something. The BBCs failure to secure an interview with the prime minister ahead of broadcasting politically damaging interviews with opposition leaders is a major political scandal, not a slightly unfortunate mishap. But what is more, the whole sorry episode is revealing of a systematic failing at the BBC. Here is a state broadcaster subjecting the opposition to relentless and damaging political interrogation, while seeming unable or unwilling to do the same when it comes to the government.

In her Guardian piece, Fran Unsworth argues that the BBCs critics are seizing on a couple of editorial mistakes as evidence of an editorial agenda that favors the Conservative Party, while ignoring hundreds of hours of impartial political journalism. She then goes a step further, dismissing all accusations of bias as conspiracy theory:

We are a large organization that employs thousands of independently minded journalists. Our editors employ their judgments on their own programs for their own audiences. These arent the ideal conditions for a conspiracy.

Nick Robinson, the BBCs former political editor who now presents BBC Radio 4s flagship political program, Today, shared Unsworths article on Twitter, remarking that the conspiracy theories are absurd if you give them more than a moments thought.

Where to start with this? As I recently wrote for the Guardian which I assume Unsworth will have read no one serious is suggesting that presenters and reporters take instructions from the government, or that there has been an edict from the BBC hierarchy instructing staff to undermine the Labour Party. But like any organization, the BBC has a working culture based around policies, conventions, and incentives that influences how the people who work there behave, and who is appointed or promoted to key roles. This is how all institutions work. We neednt detain ourselves explaining basic sociology to Unsworth and Robinson, however, since neither seems to see any issue with the claim that the BBC has generally upheld due impartiality across its programming, something which itself could be dismissed as a conspiracy theory on these same terms. How could a large organization employing thousands of independently minded journalists possibly ensure conformity to a shared set of editorial values and policies?

We all say silly things to try and win arguments, so lets put the obtuse remarks about conspiracy to one side and proceed on the assumption that the BBC, for all its complexity (everything involving human beings is complex), possesses a certain structure, culture, and set of policies which for better or worse give rise to certain regular patterns of reporting. In this, it is just like any other media organization, every one of which seems mysteriously to exhibit distinct reporting styles and political orientations despite being staffed with independently minded journalists.

The day before Unsworths Guardian article was published, the Media Reform Coalition an organization of which I am vice chair published an analysis of the BBCs election reporting undertaken by Justin Schlosberg, of Birkbeck College, University of London. It noted a number of areas where the BBC has failed in its impartiality obligations during this election campaign.

Schlosbergs report found that, in terms of access to broadcast media, the two main parties are broadly even, but as Unsworth notes, BBC impartiality does not rely on a stopwatch. The prominence given to different policy issues and stories tells a different story. Brexit and the economy, the two policy issues pushed by the Tories are the most prevalent in television news, ahead of health and the environment, which are key issues for Labour. This is despite the environment and the economy being of equal concern to voters, and health being considered much more important, according to polling.

Schlosberg also notes the strikingly different responses of television news to very similar stories about the Conservatives and Labour. One very revealing example is the response to the manifestos. The Institute for Fiscal Studies, a respected think tank given enormous prominence in the British media, produced a critical response to both parties manifestos, yet its response to Labours was covered fifteen times in the two days following its manifesto launch, compared to just once in the two days following the launch of the Tory manifesto. There were similar imbalances in television coverage of allegations of racism in both parties. Schlosberg writes:

During the first two weeks of the campaign, there were almost identical pairs of stories involving two Conservative candidates and two Labour candidates who were suspended or forced to resign over alleged antisemitic comments made on social media. We examined a sample of online coverage that included all national newspapers and broadcasters, as well as all scheduled TV bulletins and news programs on BBC One, BBC Two, ITV, Channel 4, and Sky. Surprisingly, there were a virtually equal number of headlines focused on the Labour candidates versus the Conservatives (fourteen and fifteen, respectively). But on television, the Labour candidates were three times more likely to be mentioned. And when the chief rabbi intervened by accusing Labour of harboring rampant antisemitism, it was a lead story across television news, far eclipsing a statement made on the same day by the Muslim Council of Britain, which was a scathing attack on Islamophobia in the Tory Party.

None of these findings are surprising. Previous work by Cardiff University academics noted that the BBC gave greater prominence to policy issues pushed by the Conservative Party than Labour in the 2015 election which was before the leftward shift of the party under Corbyn and earlier work led by Schlosberg has identified serious failings in the BBCs reporting on Labour since then.

During the so-called coup against Corbyn by the Parliamentary Labour Party following the 2016 EU referendum, the BBC gave critics of the Labour leader twice as much airtime as supporters an imbalance not evident on ITV News (the BBCs main commercial rival) and the issues mobilized by Corbyns critics were given much greater prominence. That research also noted the pejorative language BBC reporters used to describe Corbyn, his team, and his supporters. Research on the BBCs reporting of Labour antisemitism, meanwhile, not only revealed an overwhelming source of imbalance, but also found that the number of inaccurate and misleading statements in BBC TV News was as high as in the Sun newspaper, and far exceeded the number on ITV or Sky, the BBCs two main commercial rival.

All this research should be considered in the context of a broader body of scholarly work on the BBCs reporting, the findings of which are fairly consistent. Like other large media organizations, its routine news reporting is strongly shaped by governments and corporate interests, while its political output is overwhelmingly shaped by political elites, along with an associated clique of newspaper columnists, consultants, and pundits from think tanks (many with opaque funding). Its economics and business reporting has reflected a narrow range of elite opinion that has favored the Conservative Party and the interests they represent, and there is, moreover, some good evidence that in the years leading up to this election it has drifted further right.

I rather tire of having to review the academic evidence on the BBCs reporting, because it is always ignored by the BBCs senior journalists and executives, who seem blithely indifferent to criticism, no matter how reasoned and considered, unless it comes from the right. Rather than offering serious engagement with evidence, they prefer to issue banal and sentimental statements about the BBCs values and public purpose.

There are a number of reasons the BBC feels so secure in ignoring academic evidence. One is that ultimately it is much more concerned about criticisms that come from powerful people and institutions than from academics and left-wing activists. Another reason though is that it can point to surveys that suggest continued public trust in its reporting.

It would be complacent, however, to imagine that such data adequately captures peoples experiences or perspectives on an organization like the BBC. I was reminded of this when an interviewer from Ipsos MORI knocked on my door one afternoon in May. As a sociologist I was rather pleased to be on the receiving end of some research, and so happily agreed to answer some questions. I was then somewhat taken aback when it gradually became clear that this was a survey to assess public attitudes to the BBC. My responses to the set questions in the survey cited in the BBCs latest annual report made me appear highly supportive and trusting of the BBC. Suffice to say, this doesnt fully reflect my views on the organization.

I think it is likely there has been a shift that has been underway in public attitudes to the BBC, even before this election. Britains communications regulator Ofcom recently published a review of the BBCs news and current affairs programming, which included a report detailing workshops and in-depth interviews conducted by the accountancy firm PwC. Participants raised concerns over the impartiality of BBCs reporting on several areas including Brexit, Corbyn, and the Israel-Palestine conflict. Black British and British Muslim groups both expressed concerns about the lack of diversity at the BBC and its representation of ethnic minorities, while the latter group said they thought BBC journalism was risk averse because of its dependence on the government for funding. According to PwC, others also said they thought the BBC was less critical compared with other outlets for the same reason. One working-class respondent remarked: I trust them to give the facts, but Im less trusting that they are not biased toward the government.

Whats interesting is the extent to which these views in contrast to much of our public debates around the BBC tally with the scholarly research. Tom Burns, the sociologist who conducted the first major study of the BBC, described it as a quasi-governmental organization that has had to speak in ways acceptable, ultimately, to the political establishment. This is still the case today. The license fee which is the BBCs major source of funding is often said to offer a unique form of political independence, the argument being that the BBCs revenue comes not from general taxation, as with other state broadcasters, but directly from its audience, whom it seeks to represent. The license fee system does have the advantage that all the BBCs domestic audience is in economic terms equally important, in contrast to market-based funding systems where there are systemic pressures to target particular demographics. But it certainly does not afford the political independence that the BBCs uncritical supporters like to imagine.

What matters is not who pays, but who controls the money; and it is governments not audiences who have set the rate of the license fee. This has meant that the BBCs funding has always been highly politicized. Most recently, the Conservative Chancellor George Osborne who, almost in a parody of the incestuousness of Britains elite, was subsequently appointed editor of Londons only daily newspaper negotiated a secret deal with the BBCs director general, Lord Hall, severely cutting the corporations funding. This prompted a former chair, Christopher Bland, to warn that the BBC was drawing closer to becoming an arm of government. Sir Christopher was right to be concerned. But in reality, the BBC has always been close to being an arm of government, perpetually kept in a grey area somewhere between genuine independence and direct political control.

In recent decades, even the highly circumscribed independence that the BBC enjoyed in its Golden Age has been steadily eroded. The changes the BBC underwent in the wake of Thatcherism are a major focus of my book, The BBC: Myth of a Public Service, and so I wont recount them in much detail here, but the net effect was, in essence, a form of elite capture. Over the course of several decades, the BBC was radically restructured along neoliberal lines, with its news journalism brought much more under centralized editorial control and its program-making integrated into the market and its reporting restructured around the new economic orthodoxies.

The effect was a serious undermining of the organizations public service ethos, and the creation of a highly affluent and politicized strata of executives and senior editors, who today define the tone and content of the BBCs output.

The last charter renewal process, which took the broadcaster into its ninetieth year, only worsened matters. It introduced a change to the BBCs governance whereby government appointees are now involved in day-to-day management.

More significant though, and largely ignored in liberal commentary, was the return to the radical neoliberal managerialism of the 1990s. The BBCs current director general, Tony Hall, a key player in that early period of reform, promised the Conservatives a competition revolution at the BBC, opening up all BBC program-making to private sector competition, with a few exceptions, notably news.

The vision shared by the Conservative government and the BBCs managerial elite is of a BBC that acts as a quasi-official news service, a source of revenue and resources for private profit, as well as a prestigious British brand and distribution system that can give UK-based media companies a competitive edge in the international market. The result has been a broadcaster that remains publicly owned, and which on paper remains committed to a distinct set of public service values, but which, as we have seen in this election, is plainly not fit for purpose.

Given the BBCs record, many on the Left now hope for the abolition of the BBC. I find this to be completely understandable under the circumstances, though I consider it to be a disastrously shortsighted ambition. The problems with the BBC are severe and they are deep-seated, but they could be addressed in a way that preserves some of the positive elements of the public service tradition, allowing a modern public digital media to be built around the existing public infrastructure and resources.

Last year, a working group of the Media Reform Coalition I chaired developed a set of proposals for the radical reform of the BBC, arguing that it should become a modern, democratized public platform and network, fully representative of its audiences and completely independent of government and the market. A radically reformed BBC would have to be barely recognizable compared with its current incarnation, and we should be in no doubt that any such change would be strongly resisted by the BBC executive class.

My sense is that ultimately they much prefer the current situation where the BBCs public reputation can be managed or rather mismanaged through private negotiations in the corridors of power, where the threats to its independence are at least manageable and familiar, than the prospect of radical change and democratic accountability. Perhaps the greater barrier to effective reform, though, is that so many people on the Left will now regard the BBCs journalism as having been so obsequious in its treatment of an unscrupulous ruling party, and so negligent of its public service duties, that they see little much of worth to defend or to salvage.

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The Last Days of the BBC? - Jacobin magazine

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Parisian transport has been largely paralyzed since Thursday, December 5. To protest against Emmanuel Macrons proposed pension reform, RATP unions have called for a renewable strike that will run parallel with the SNCF strike. The objective: to maintain the special pension system for RATP employees. Heres an overview of what theyre actually fighting for.

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The special pension system concerns only the RATP employees in Paris and larger region employed by its EPIC (an acronym for public establishment of an industrial and commercial nature). The other employees are on private-law employment contracts and do not benefit from the employment guarantee. The staff working for RATPs subsidiaries that operate transport elsewhere in France or abroad do not benefit either.

The agents benefiting from the special pension system represent 90% of Epics staff, or 41,000 out of 45,000 people. Thus, within the RATP, there are two pension plans in place. In the same job role, there may be people in the general pension system with the determined age of retirement from the general pension system and the methods of calculating the pension from the general pension system, and other people under the special pension status, explains a source who knows the company well.

Together, the guarantee of employment and this special pension system make up the two original features of RATP statut (status), which can help explain the staffs uneasiness. It has a symbolic importance, its almost identity-based, the source points out. Unlike the SNCF, work hours and payment are not part of the RATPstatut. All these elements are negotiated by collective agreement, as in any other company. The announced abolition of the special regime is all the more troubling to the workers as it comes at a time when the companys monopoly on public transport is expected to end, starting in 2025 for buses, 2029 for trams and 2039 for the RER and metro, which will force the company to adapt to be competitive.

What does this special pension system include? First, early retirement for its beneficiaries. The age of eligibility depends on the staff category in thestatut to which the person belongs.

For bus, metro and RER drivers and those with very similar working conditions, the theoretical age of departure was 50 years old in 2017, an age that is gradually being raised at the rate of an additional four months per year until January 2022 when the age of retirement is 52 (its 50 years and 8 months in 2019).

The maintainers (mechanics for the buses, metros, trams, signaling systems, etc.) can retire at 55 years of age, an age that will rise to 57 in 2022, using the same process of adding four months per year. Together, these two categories cover 31,000 people.

Sedentary employees and members of the support functions (administrative and support) staff can retire at the age of 60. They will have to wait until 62 years in 2022, which will be in alignment with Frances general pension system.

But this does not mean that the employees actually retire at these ages of pension eligibility. Workers are subject to a reduction in pension if they retire too early, without having contributed enough years. In actuality, the average age of retirement is almost three years higher in each category. Employees must wait a certain number of years after the theoretical retirement age to leave without a reduction in their pension. Today, this period is three-and-a-half years and will gradually increase to five years by early 2022. Eventually, drivers, for example, will have to wait until 57 (52 plus five years) to retire without a reduction in pension payout and maintenance workers will have to wait until 62. (In 2019, RATP employees had to work just as many quarters as a private sector employee, i.e. 167 quarters, to receive a pension without reductions. However, the alignment is more theoretical because of the existence of the five year waiting period after the age of eligibility which allows people to retire without any deductions to their pension.)

However, the majority of employees do not retire with a full pension at full rate. This means that these employees believe that they have a sufficient enough pension to leave beforehand despite the reduction.

With the reform proposed in July by Haut-commissaire aux Retraites (high commissioner of pensions) Jean-Paul Delevoye, the age of retirement eligibility would be raised by four months per year, starting with those born in 1968 or later, for people who retire at a 57. Ultimately, the effective retirement age for a no-reduction retirement would be increased to the age of 64.

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The method of calculating the pension for RATP workers is also interesting. The pension of staff under the statut is based on ones salary during the last six months in the civil service, unlike a pension in the private sector which is based on the best 25 years of ones salary. The transition to calculating pension over the entire career period is therefore likely to reduce the pension of staff, especially since they benefit from higher-income careers. What worries employees today is the impact of the reform project on their pension level, underlines our source, who is familiar with the social climate in the company.

How much does this special pension system cost the population? Each year, pensions paid amount to about 1.2 billion. On the other hand, contributions from employees and employers reach 500 million, meeting the same level of contributing effort as the private sector. Theres a 700 million hole left, but of this amount, 350 million euros can be explained by the companys demographic structure. The net cost for the population of the special RATP systems exemption conditions, paid for by the State budget, therefore amounts to 350 million.

Its a burden that the company would not be able to assume on its own, because it only produces between 200 and 240 million operating profit per year, according to a close source. One of the challenges of the reform process is therefore to find out whether or not the State will continue to assume its budget-balancing subsidy for a transitional period, while the demographic compensation is assumed by the pension system.

The Court of Auditors had mentioned the figure of 3,705 for new retirees in 2017, but this figure is disputed. It corresponds to the average gross amount that a RATP employee who retired in 2017 can earn after a full career without any deduction (this number includes all categories of staff). The alternative figure is 2,856 euros proof that staff prefer to retire early and accept the reduction. As for the average pension of all RATP pensioners, including those who retired a long time ago, it amounts to 2,357 euros, all categories of staff combined. The replacement rate, or the amount a retiree can expect to receive monthly, is around 74% of their salary during their last 6 months.

To better justify the strike, the RATP unions advertised the reduction in pension that a worker could expect after a lifelong career using the proposed universal pension system. According to the calculations of several of the unions, the reform would automatically lead to a reduction in pensions, of around 500 euros per month for a mechanic, for example. But most agents already employed by the RATP when the new system comes into force will be entitled to a full carryover of their pension plan acquired under the old system at that time. Its therefore difficult to estimate the impact on their pensions, since the exact terms of this changeover, in particular, have not yet been defined. Nonetheless, its difficult to reassure workers in this time of change.

This article was first published on Le Point.

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Pension Plans and Retirement: What Are the Real Advantages of RATP Workers? - Frenchly

Commentary:Elections can be said to hold up a mirror to a society, Zoltan Hajnal writes in the introduction to his new book. The decisions made privately on ballots reflect who we are and provide indications of whether the nation is what it aspires to be.

Voter choice is a key metric informing Dangerously Divided, Hajnals look at the influence of race and class divisions in American politics from the voting booth to government.

Reading the book, I wondered whether voter behavior reflects who we are so much as how we think. Our view of ourselves and our country, as reflected in elections, may be distorted.

From a wide-ranging study of election data, Hajnal finds that voters are divided by race more than socioeconomic class, and that the racial divide is getting worse in a nation that is 60 percent white yet elects white people to approximately 90 percent of its elected offices.

Race is shown to be determinative as to which candidates win elections, which voters win at the polls, and who is on the losing end of policy.

While other dichotomies and tensions exist, race overwhelms them alland to degrees previously unreported. Hajnal also reports that people of color consistently lose more often, and his analysis of subsequent policies shows they are paying for it when it comes to governance.

Arguably, we are now more divided by race than at any other time in modern American history, Hajnal writes. Ironically, as the nation has become more diverse, it has become more divided by the diversity.

With white people on track to become a minority group while retaining so much power and privilege in society, the widening racial divide looms large and is restructuring American politics to a surprising extent.

Class and race are not mutually exclusive analyses, however, and they are not in competition. They overlap in significant ways and in service to prevailing relationships of power.

The implication of Hajnals research is that race whatever that really is matters more to voters than their class position, but does this render class irrelevant?

Michael Zweig, author of The Working Class Majority, defined classes as groups of people connected to one another, and made different from one another, by the ways they interact when producing goods and services.

Class analysis is essentially about power, including the shared interests among those who work and among those profiting from others work, as well as the larger structures of corporate power and concentrated wealth.

Racial division has a social function. White supremacy served as justification for settler colonialism, slavery and for the Jim Crow system of racial segregation that followed the formal abolition of human bondage.

Hajnal includes the modern history of how our two dominant parties honed their messages and strategies about race and immigration, but it is also necessary to acknowledge the class interests defended by Republicans and Democrats alike. Many laws and policies that distribute wealth upward in society are the products of bipartisan consensus.

A substantial chunk of the book argues that where Democrats hold majorities, legislatures spend more on health, education and other areas to heal gaps in the well-being of non-whites.

All well and good, but voters need to know, and analysts need to point out that those gaps exist within a political context.

It is hard to scrutinize bipartisan class politics if we are trained not to observe them. The same must be said of the inherent tensions between capitalism and democracy.

Dangerously divided: How race and class shape winning and losing in American politics, by Zoltan L. Hajnal. Cambridge University Press, 370 pages, $27.95 (softcover).

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Race And Class In American Politics - KRWG

A few years ago, my wifes uncle died. A quiet, unassuming man, Uncle Tony lived alone in a house in our village, making do on a tiny pension that barely allowed him to turn on the heating a few hours a day in winter.

In every sense of the word, Uncle Tony was poor: his shirts were frayed at the collar and his meals consisted of baked beans on toast or cut-price, past-their-sell-by-date bargains from the discount aisle of Tesco. Except, when he died, those to whom he had left his sole asset the house he had lived in all his adult life discovered that, property prices being what they were in our area, his net estate was worth an amazing 750,000.

To be sure, his inheritors were required to pay a whopping 170,000 in inheritance tax. Plus, the number of those who shared out what was left was not insignificant. Even so, each of them received a lot more money than most could realistically hope to earn in several years of wage slavery.

Excessive taxation?

Tax or no tax, being left a shedload of money for doing nothing more onerous than taking Uncle Tony out for a pie and a pint once a month, or having him round for a Christmas dinner, would strike most of us as an excellent deal. Not for the Institute of Economic Affairs, apparently. In October this year, their director general, Mark Littlewood, wrote a piece in The Times newspaper about the pernicious effect of excessive taxation, not least that of IHT.

Littlewood cited the supposedly authoritative findings of a right-wing sorry, libertarian US thinktank heavily funded by the Koch brothers, which suggest that the UK is ranked a disappointing 25th out of 36 countries by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development for its international tax competitiveness. He then proposed the abolition of IHT, or raising its threshold even further.

How would this be paid for? Ever the egalitarian, Littlewood suggested it could be done by stripping away certain schemes that tend to benefit the more affluent. As an example, he told his readers: There is very little to justify the tax-free lump sum people can withdraw from their pension pot. Putting an end to that carve-out could, for example, go alongside reducing or eliminating IHT.

Lets look at this in more detail. According to HM Revenue and Customs own figures, the number of UK deaths resulting in an IHT charge during 2016-17 (the last available figures) was just over 28,000. Thats about 4.5 per cent of all UK deaths that year.

Around 5.4bn was raised in IHT in 2018-19 (those deaths have a long tail), with net estates valued at 1m or more accounting for a whopping 72 per cent of the total amount raised. The number of those 1m-plus estates represented 3 per cent of all estates requiring a grant of representation, which you apply for when you may be required to fill out an IHT form. A mere 8,820 estates made up 23 per cent of all gross assets before tax.

In effect, what Littlewood and the IEA are suggesting is that tax rules that raise a not insignificant slice of cash to pay for wider social needs such as roads, schools and hospitals, while still leaving the overwhelming majority of it in the hands of inheritors who have done nothing to earn it, be scrapped to benefit a few thousand people every year. And the people who would pay for it immediately would be the middle classes, for whom accessing some or all of their 25 per cent tax-free lump sum at retirement was always seen as a bonus for saving into a pension during their thrifty working lives.

They are being joined by millions of working-class savers who, as a result of auto-enrolment, have just started squirreling money into workplace defined contribution schemes and may wish to access some of that cash when they retire.

Never mind that the IEA is effectively asking the government to do away with one of the most powerful incentives for people to save for their retirement. Or that, for increasing numbers, that lump sum is probably one of the few occasions when retirees can afford some small luxury or pay off their last few debts when they stop work.

Change on the radar

None of this may matter if not for two interlinked factors. The first is the possibility that the Conservatives will win the general election. More concerning is the fact that the current chancellor, Sajid Javid, told the most recent Conservative Party conference: I shouldnt say too much now but I understand the arguments against that [IHT] tax.Sensible changes have already been made but its something thats on my mind.

In other words, this idea is definitely on the radar of someone with the capacity to make the change happen.

If this were to come about, it would benefit the few at the expense of the many. I cant imagine many financial advisers, even those who instinctively back the Tories in any election contest, supporting something as retrograde as this.

Nic Cicutti can be contacted atnic@inspiredmoney.co.uk

Follow him on Twitter @niccicutti

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Nic Cicutti: Why IHT needs to stay right where it is - Money Marketing

On Monday, December 2, the Area Council held its monthly meeting. As a followup to our September Monthly Meeting, at which we convened an Expert Panel, we invited as our Guest Speaker, Dr. Richard C. Honour, who presented and discussed the various health and environmental issues related to the proposed continuation and expansion of the Cedar Hills Landfill. Also invited was Rick Hess from the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency to speak of Landfill air monitoring. The King County Comprehensive Plan also was discussed.

Puget Sound Clean Air Agency (PSCAA)

Rick Hess, PSCAA Inspection Manager described the PSCAA as a special-purpose four-county regional agency established under the Washington Clean Air Act in 1967. In a brochure made available, it described the Agencys vision as: everyone, everywhere to breathe clean, healthy air all the time regardless of whom they are or where they live. In addition to reducing air pollution overall, we also focus on equity, so nobody is more at risk because of where they live or their socioeconomic status. No community in our region should bear disproportionate burdens and exposure from air pollution. To be relevant and serve all people in our four counties, we reach out and listen to community concerns and make room to work with issues new to us. Our commitment to equity and environmental justice means taking the time to build and invest in relationships with a range of constituents, from partner institutions to academic and grassroots organizations.

Mr. Hess described air inspections at the Cedar Hills Landfill, which is a Title 5 facility under Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) guidelines as established under the Federal Clean Air Act. The Act requires major sources of air pollutants to obtain and operate in compliance with a Title 5 Operating Permit. Being a delegated program by EPA, PSCAA ensures the conditions of such permits are followed.

During inspections, PSCAA visually inspects the landfill gas collection system and incineration equipment to ensure its being maintained in good working order and constructed and operated as approved. For example, the gas flares when landfill gas is not directed to the on-site Energy-to-Waste facility must operate at 98% destruction efficiency. Ongoing monitoring for Methane emissions on the surface of the landfill is another requirement. In addition, PSCAA reviews temperature logs, gas concentration logs, and air monitoring reports, as well as assures correct test methods are used. Other requirements include reviewing maintenance records, operation and maintenance plans and their complaint monitoring and response program.

Mr. Hess explained how the Cedar Hills Landfill also must self-monitor for compliance, which includes monitoring and measuring emissions. Under Title 5, deviations of permit requirements must be reported to the PSCAA. Air Permits issued for new and modified sources of emissions at the landfill requires use of best available control technology. PSCAA ensures permit requirements are met with monetary penalties leveled for non-compliance. There are Federal rules that also must be met that address hazardous air pollutants.

PSCAA acts as Federal representatives for the EPA to ensure Federal rules are met and as State representatives for the Department of Ecology to ensure State rules are met.

Citizen complaints can be filed with the PSCAA (see: https://www.pscleanair.gov/262/File-a- Complaint).

Cedar Hills Landfill Proposed Expansion

Dr. Richard C. Honour is a founder and principal of Save Our Soil (https://saveoursoil.us) and The Precautionary Group (TPG), which are environmental organizations dedicated to ending land disposal of toxic sewage sludge. Dr. Honour has a BS in Biology from San Diego State University and a PhD in Plant Pathology/Soil Microbiology from UC-Riverside.

Dr. Honour discussed his work, which emphasizes sampling, analysis, and documenting adverse environmental impacts of Land-Disposed Toxic Sewage Sludge in western Washington, as well central Washington agricultural regions. His focus has been on the presence, concentration, and impacts of many toxic chemicals, including PFAs, Dioxins/Furans, PCBs, Polybrominated Diphenyl Ether

(PBDE) Flame Retardants, as well as several toxic Metals.

Dr. Honour also has investigated volatile toxic gasses generated and released into the environment by the Land-Disposal of Toxic Sewage Sludges. These volatile gasses contribute directly to air pollution, including the emission of identified Greenhouse Gasses (GHGs).

Land-Disposed Toxic Sewage Sludge is proving to be a major contributing source of toxic volatile GHG chemicals, i.e., toxic volatile chemicals of the Toxic Sewage Sludge Volatilome. His test results reveal high levels of carcinogenic and neurotoxic volatile chemicals in Land-Disposed Sludges. Dr. Honour seeks the abolition of land-disposed toxic waste, such as non-recyclable plastics; toxic sewage sludges; municipal solid waste; and industrial waste.

Solutions presented by Dr. Honour include both green-waste solutions and thermal decomposition of solid wastes by clean and green Waste-to Energy (WTE) solutions. He provided examples from Spokane where they prioritized the waste stream cycle: 1. reduce, 2. recycle, 3. WTE, 4. Landfill (restricted to drywall glass and other non-hazardous or less hazardous waste). Spokane reduced its waste products, generated energy from landfills, and created byproducts such as valuable ashall through the thermal decomposition of solid wastes. Such thermal decomposition facilities use extremely high heat to break down substances to their basic chemical compositions.

Unfortunately, much of what we recycle really isnt recyclable anymore due to reduced markets and mixed products that arent just paper or just plastic. Dr. Honour also stated that the problem is growing, since 62% of Americas GDP is consumptionwhich increases our waste streams. This percentage keeps increasing (i.e., grows faster than the GDP).

Dr. Honour also emphasized the externalities associated with decision making. Concluding that it is less costly to fix pollution today than to pay for the future Public Health consequences, but these latter costs are seldom considered when making discussions, especially on landfilling and toxic sewage sludge. He stated the savings in health care costs alone would pay for it all.

He also discussed King Countys actions or inactions in this area. Currently, King County toxic sludge (Persistent Organic Pollutants; Chemical of Emerging Concerns; Persistent, Bioaccumulative Toxics) from our municipal sewage plants is trucked to Eastern Washington6,800 double dump trucks (170,000 tons) per year. However, King County and the State do not test for the most critical pollutants. Dr. Honour indicated they need to test for Dioxins/Furans, PCBs, PDBEs, and PFAs, plus a large percentage of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) which contribute to GHG emissions. Concerned members of the Public can contact the Area Council at: info@gmvuac.org to connect with the Environment Committee on these issues.

King County Comprehensive Plan (KCCP)

The Area Council discussed submitting two Docket Item (D.I.) Requests to amend the KC Code.

The first D.I. Request would ensure that any site-specific rezones not be reviewed during any KCCP update, but rather go through a Type 4 permit review process before a Hearing Examiner, along with a Public Hearing, for a recommendation to the King County Council regarding any changes to the KCCP and zoning.

The second D.I. Request calls for the King County Council to prepare and publish written responses to Public Comments on KCCP updates, as does the King County Executive already does.

The Area Council voted to approve both D.I. Requests and submit them to KCCP Manager, Ivan Miller. For more information please see the Area Councils KCCP web pages: http://gmvuac.org/hot- off-the-presses/ and http://gmvuac.org/kc-comprehensive-plan/.

Upcoming Area Council Meetings

All regular monthly meetings are held on the first Monday of the month, from 7 9:30 PM, at the Maple Valley Fire Station located at the SE corner of SE 231st St & SR-169 intersection (directly across from the Police Precinct). All members of the Public are welcome. Each meeting begins with an open Public Comment period. Guest Speakers for upcoming 2020 monthly meetings are being planned.

Your Area Council serves as an all-volunteer, locally elected advisory body to King County on behalf of all rural unincorporated area residents living in the Tahoma School District. Please see the Area Councils web site: http://www.gmvuac.org.

Area Council Vision Statement: Our communitys Rural Character will be supported by facilitating strong local ties and communication between the public, organizations, and government; promoting locally owned businesses and supporting quality education; protecting the environment, and maintainng landowners rights and responsibilities; promoting controlled and well-planned growth with appropriate infrastructure; ensuring proper representation for rural interests and needs; and supporting the health and safety and the privacy of our vibrant community.

The sixteen-seat Area Council currently has several open seats. If you have an interest in joining please send us an e-mail at: info@gmvuac.org or attend one of our monthly meetings and express such interest for consideration by the Area Council.

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Health Issues of Proposed Cedar Hills Landfill Expansion - Voice of the Valley

Fees. Ill be blunt; Ive been nervous about approaching this topic. The most significant shift in this area the abolition of mandatory fee scales happened eight years before I was born. Fees are also an emotive topic, shrouded in the touchiness that always accompanies discussions of money in our culture.

A couple of brief caveats. I have a limited word count so this is not an exhaustive examination. I also cant touch on architects wages. Though theyre inextricably tied to fees I just dont have space to consider this properly. Caveats firmly in place, let me get on with it!

Fees are now a bit of an enigma. Rumours swirl and some publications and agencies have attempted to publish fee surveys. However, information is patchy, and surveys are usually from a small, self-selecting sample and therefore of limited value statistically speaking. One friend told me of an unethical but practical part III tutor who, as he saw it, had found a way to overcome this problem. He admitted to his students that he had little interest in teaching them he had mainly taken the job to harvest their PEDRs and case studies for fee information.

This lack of guidance is a fairly recent development. In the early days of the RIBA a focus on the client being able to select on ability, rather than cost, was seen as key in professionalising the architect. Therefore, the RIBA set mandatory fee scales, based on a percentage of construction cost. Clients could select on talent, and architects didnt have to concern themselves with what to charge for their services. This may have been an oversimplification in terms of fee calculation, but projects at the time rarely approached the level of either complexity or duplication that they do now.

The Restrictive Trade Practices Act of 1956 made collective restrictive practices in the supply of goods illegal. This was shortly followed by the Monopolies and Mergers Act of 1963 which extended this principle to the supply of services. A Monopolies Commission Report from 1970 began to erode the legality of mandatory professional fee scales, suggesting the introduction of price competition is likely to be the most effective single stimulant to greater efficiency and to innovation and variety of service and price. Under pressure from government mandatory RIBA fee scales became recommended in 1982.

RIBA fee scales exist in a mythical world one where the architect was god on site

Considering these policies to be successful, the government of the early 1990s built further on this principle by introducing compulsory competitive fee tendering for public-sector projects. Many private-sector projects followed suit, and in 1992 recommended RIBA fee scales became indicative.

These indicative charts were finally abolished in 2009 with the RIBA stating at the time: The RIBA practice committee felt that the application of percentages based upon fee survey data was an increasingly outdated method of calculating fees, and potentially harmful in the current economic climate. The RIBA now points to its publications A Clients Guide to Engaging an Architect (2013) and Good Practice Guide: Fee Management (2009) for guidance on fee calculation.

The government intended that the abolition of fee scales would lead to a more innovative, competitive marketplace. Thirty-seven years on, few would argue that the marketplace for architectural services is competitive, though some have suggested that there has been a race to the bottom on fees, leading to lower standards. While this argument may carry some truth, I think it oversimplifies the issue.

I spoke with Helen Logan, a partner at Allies & Morrison, who described the difficulties she sees in drawing too neatly a comparison between then and now. She acknowledged that fees as a percentage of construction cost are often half what they might have been in the last recommended scales (1992). But she also said the construction landscape has changed. Fees are not always a percentage now they may be on a per unit or time charge basis. Some practices are even beginning to tie their fee to the commercial success of the project.

Additionally, efficiencies in the way we practice have shifted the time and resources required for architectural work. Drawing by hand was the norm in 1992; CAD, and now BIM, has increased the ability for straightforward duplication of, for example, flat layouts, and increased the efficiency of coordination within large teams or between disciplines. Large and complex projects can now be carried out with more accuracy and speed than when everything was drawn with a Rotring pen on trace.

Nevertheless, Logan cautioned that many of the productivity improvements that have come about in her working life are difficult to easily quantify or communicate to clients when demonstrating value or negotiating fees. Since 1992 the regulatory environment has dramatically shifted: Part M has doubled in size; Part L is notably more challenging; there has been a new Planning Act; CDM legislation has come into force; as have new parts of the Building Regulations, for security and high-speed broadband; not to mention the de-facto legislation emerging through the Ojeu process to name but a few.

Architects must now grapple with considerably more information and coordinate ever more complex technical detail. Very little of this is readily apparent from a surface glance. It has, however, resulted in better, safer, healthier buildings that, broadly, cause less damage to the environment and the workforce that created them, not to mention dramatically increasing the social value of modern construction projects.

For me, RIBA fee scales exist in a mythical world one where the architect was god on site, projects were smaller, and where architects didnt advertise but sat behind their brass plaques waiting for work to knock on the door.

This picture bears almost no resemblance to the profession I joined two years ago. Fee scales abolition undoubtedly made life harder for some architects, especially those who are not so keen on the business side of practice life.

But it is short sighted, I think, to suggest that the progress both social and technological made in the last 30-odd years is entirely unrelated to a more competitive market place for fees.

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We need to talk about money | Opinion - Building Design

In June 1982, Pope John Paul II broke with over three decades of Vatican policy when he emphatically stated in front of the United Nations General Assembly that nuclear deterrence could be judged as a morally acceptable step on the way toward a progressive disarmament. This statement stood in marked contrast to his predecessors, who rejected peace based on the threat of mutual annihilation. Since the beginning of the nuclear age, the Vatican has placed nuclear issues at the top of its foreign policy agenda. Though the Cold War superpowers were very concerned with the Vaticans position on nuclear arms, it has, nevertheless, received little scholarly attention in historical analyses of the arms race. For example, when President Ronald Reagan decided to pursue his Strategic Defense Initiative a controversial missile defense system to render nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete, he actively sought the popes support. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union lobbied, unsuccessfully, to get John Paul II to publicly condemn the program. In the 1980s, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in Vatican City became a forum for scientists from both sides of the Iron Curtain to exchange ideas on nuclear issues.

In the post-Cold War era, the Vatican remains very active in its effort to influence the international dialogue on nuclear weapons. Pope Francis has made nuclear arms control a primary objective of his foreign policy. He has changed course from John Paul IIs position on deterrence and stated that not only the use, but also the possession of nuclear weapons is immoral. In addition to advocating comprehensive arms reduction agreements, Pope Francis is committed to raising awareness about the potentially destabilizing effects of artificial intelligence on the future of warfare, including nuclear stability. The pope no longer has a large military at his disposal, nor significant economic resources. The Vatican does, however, have diplomatic relations with 183 countries in addition to its international moral authority. From the Cold War to the present time the Vatican has been a significant but understudied player in international deliberations on nuclear weapons and disarmament.

The Vatican Enters the Nuclear Age

Throughout the Cold War, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences served as the main forum for the Vaticans scientific and moral debates regarding nuclear weapons. It has served to inform the nuclear diplomacy of the Vatican from the dawn of the nuclear age until the present time. Pius XI founded the modern academy in 1936, but it can trace its lineage back to the 16th century and even had Galileo as one of its members. Pius XI wanted to establish a forum for dialogue between faith and science in the modern age, and appointed over eighty academicians from many different countries. Notably, since its founding, members of the academy do not have to be Catholic or have any religious affiliation. The academy has had more than forty Nobel laureates Max Planck, Werner Heisenberg, and Niels Bohr were just three of the many prominent 20th century scientists who were elected members of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. Pius XI believed that the search for truth was the primary objective of the academy. This goal would have significant political repercussions when the academy began examining the morality of nuclear weapons in the coming decades.

In March 1939, Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli was elected by his peers to become the Supreme Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church. He chose Pius XII as his regnal name. Like his predecessor and mentor Pius XI, he was a seasoned papal diplomat and intimately understood the political landscape of Europe. He was profoundly anti-communist and believed that cooperation with and accommodation of the Soviet regime was not only inadvisable, but indeed also impossible. He remained in Rome during World War II and witnessed first-hand the devastation wrought by allied strategic bombing. What he is perhaps least recognized for is his intense interest in the scientific and technological changes taking place in the 1930s and 1940s.

Pius XII was especially concerned with developments in atomic research during this period. He had extensive contact with German physicist Max Planck about the potential consequences of nuclear power for warfare. In 1941, the pope told a gathering of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences that in the hands of man, science can become a double-edged weapon capable both of curing and killing. At the urging of Planck, in 1943 the pope said that scientists were informing him that nuclear technology could create an amount of energy that could take the place of all the largest electrical power plants in the world. He warned, however, that such technology should only be used for peaceful purposes because otherwise the consequences would be catastrophic for the whole planet. The pope became distraught when he learned that the United States used atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He described nuclear weapons as the most terrible weapon that the human mind has ever conceived.

Pius XII did, however, maintain that the use of force could be justified in a modern context. In 1953 he said, It is certain that even in the present-day circumstances war cannot be considered illicit for a nation to efficiently defend itself and to achieve victory when it is attacked unjustly and all efforts to avoid it have proved futile.He did declare, nevertheless, that nuclear weapons could not be employed within the boundaries outlined by St. Augustines writings on just war theory this body of work guided the Vaticans position on war.

In the 5th century, St. Augustine claimed that defense could be a necessity when justified by a legitimate authority and that the wise man will wage just wars. Nine hundred years after St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas expanded on the formers writings about conflict and stated that war must occur for a good and just purpose, that war must be waged by a properly instituted authority (e.g. a state), and that peace must be the central motive. Pius XII specifically identified Aquinass condition of peace as a central motive as a primary problem with the use of nuclear weapons. He stated that when the harm wrought by war is not comparable to that caused by tolerating injustice, we may be obliged to suffer injustice. For the pope, because nuclear weapons would likely kill so many non-combatants, they could never be employed within the just war theory framework outlined by Augustine and Aquinas.

Pius XII used scientific arguments against the testing and deployment of nuclear weapons. More specifically, he focused on the potential effects of nuclear fallout as a compelling reason why nuclear weapons should never be used. He used his Christmas message in 1955 to articulate the harmful effects of nuclear testing and the use of atomic weapons, saying, a nuclear explosion releases an enormous amount of energy in an extremely short period; it consists of radiations of an electromagnetic nature of very high density launched at speeds close to that of light wreaking havoc. Thus, he emphasized the use of science in addition to moral imperative as a rhetorical weapon in his passionate arguments against the possession and use of atomic weapons.

In October 1958, Pius XII died and was succeeded by John XXIII, who was also a seasoned papal diplomat. Like his predecessor, he was very concerned with the threat of nuclear war. A little over one year after the Cuban Missile Crisis, on April 11, 1963 he issued his encyclical Pacem in Terris (Peace on Earth). In it, he acknowledged that nuclear weapons could indeed act as a deterrent but he also stated that the very testing of nuclear devices for war purposes can lead to serious danger He also rejected the idea of peace based upon mutually assured destruction, observing that, lasting peace among nations cannot consist in the possession of an equal supply of armaments, but only in mutual trust. In addition, he expressed grave concerns about the economic costs of the nuclear arms race.

John XXIII emphatically rejected the idea that nuclear weapons could be justified on moral grounds when he said in this age which boasts of its atomic power, it no longer makes sense to maintain that war is a fit instrument with which to repair the violation of justice. He did, however, break with Pius XIIs vocal anti-communism. He wanted to lower the overall tension between east and west. So, while he maintained that nuclear weapons were not acceptable, he did reduce the Vaticans direct moral and political pressure placed on the communist world in particular.

In 1963, John XXIII died and was succeeded by Paul VI, who carried on his predecessors legacy on nuclear weapons. He stated that peace created by nuclear deterrence was a tragic illusion. Most significantly, he instituted the Vaticans policy of Ostpolitik (Eastern Politics) aimed at rapprochement with the Soviet Union. He believed that the USSR could last indefinitely and that it was better to seek a peaceful accommodation than to maintain a policy of hostility and isolation. This policy represented a complete departure from Pius XIIs vocal anti-communism. In 1978, Paul VI passed away and was replaced by John Paul I. His papacy lasted for only 33 days, and thus he did not make any significant foreign policy changes. His successor would, however, lead the Vatican in a completely new direction and change the course of the Cold War in the process.

A New Pope Accepts Deterrence

When Cardinal Karol Wojtyla became Pope John Paul II in 1978, he was the first non-Italian pope in over 400 years. The election of a Polish pope during this tense period in the Cold War immediately drew the attention of the Soviets. The KGB and its Polish sister service had been closely following the career of the man who would be John Paul II for many years. After he became pope, the Kremlin was intensely concerned with his diplomatic agenda. According to Vatican scholar George Weigel, John Paul II rejected Ostpolitik and he pursued a strategy of resistance through moral revolution. In 1981, he visited Hiroshima and Nagasaki and spoke about how the arms race was getting out of control and placing the future of humanity in jeopardy. In June 1982, he stated in front of the United Nations General Assembly that nuclear deterrence could indeed be judged as a moral intermediate step toward disarmament. He continued, nevertheless, to encourage world leaders to push for arms reduction.

When Reagan became president in 1981, he very much saw John Paul IIs position on communism and nuclear weapons as in line with his own. He abhorred nuclear weapons and wanted to find a way out of the arms race. During his presidency, questions about the morality of nuclear strategy became a central point of concern. Adm. James Watkins, Reagans Chief of Naval Operations, was a devout Catholic and stated openly in 1983 that mutually assured destruction was not a morally sound long-term strategy. In 1983, the Reagan administration was deeply disturbed by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops report on nuclear weapons that also questioned the morality of mutually assured destruction. In light of the significant doubts about the morality of American national strategy, Reagan sought the popes support for his plan to change the nature of the American-Soviet arms competition.

In March 1983, Reagan announced his intention to create a capability that would render nuclear weapons obsolete and move the world out from under the threat of mutually assured destruction, a vision that ultimately became the Strategic Defense Initiative. Reagan sought out the Vaticans support for this program. A declassified Central Intelligence Agency memorandum details a January 1986 trip of a Strategic Defense Initiative briefing team to the Vatican. Members of this group provided senior Vatican officials and scientists from the Vatican observatory a briefing on the program. Multiple high-ranking clerics informed the U.S. ambassador to the Vatican that it would be impossible for them to support a military program, which potentially takes food from the mouths of the poor.

While Pope John Paul II did not overtly support missile defense, he refused to criticize it either. Many Pontifical Academy of Sciences members believed that the program could have negative repercussions for the arms race. The pope was very concerned about the implications of emerging technologies for superpower relations. In the early and mid-1980s, the academy hosted conferences on nuclear security issues that drew distinguished scientists such as American physicist and national security expert Richard Garwin and Soviet physicist Evgeny Velikhov. In 1985, the academy began compiling a report on the implications of the Strategic Defense Initiative for strategic stability. When the Reagan administration discovered this, it began lobbying the Vatican not to publish the report. At the same time, the Soviet foreign minister flew to Vatican City and tried to convince the pope to publicly criticize the program. John Paul II, however, in no way wanted to appear to be supporting a Soviet cause. In the end, the pope ensured that the report was never published. While both superpowers were in a race over strategic technology, they were also competing for the support of the Supreme Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church.

Vatican Nuclear Diplomacy after the Cold War

On April 19, 2005 German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger succeeded John Paul II and became Pope Benedict XVI. He was the first post-Cold War pontiff. Even though the Cold War was officially over, he remained intimately concerned with nuclear proliferation and its effects on the developing world in particular. Benedict XVI was especially worried about how expenditure on armaments served to perpetuate domestic and local inequalities and he emphasized the urgent need to both revitalize non-proliferation efforts and move to decommission existing nuclear weapons. In his first World Day of Peace Message in 2006 he declared that, in a nuclear war there would be no victors, only victims. He thus built upon the arguments of his predecessors and also emphasized the socio-economic consequences of a strategy based on nuclear deterrence. His successor would, however, go even further in his advocacy for abolishing nuclear arms.

In February 2013, Benedict XVI became the first pope since the 15th century to resign the papal office. He was succeeded by Argentine Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who took Francis as his regnal name. Since the beginning of his papacy, Francis has made the elimination of nuclear weapons a top priority of his foreign policy. In 2015, he said in front of the United Nations General Assembly that we must therefore commit ourselves to a world without nuclear weapons. He condemned even the possession of nuclear weapons as immoral with his statement that the threat of their use as well as their very possession is to be firmly condemned. He broke, therefore, completely with John Paul IIs position that nuclear deterrence could be considered a moral intermediate step towards disarmament. Pope Francis has also put his words into action. In July 2017, the Vatican voted in favor of a treaty that prohibits the development, testing, production, manufacture, otherwise acquisition, possession or stockpiling [of] nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.

The current pope is also very concerned about the potentially negative implications of emerging technologies that could affect nuclear command and control. He has placed a spotlight on artificial intelligence and is worried about its likely influence on the future of warfare. In May 2019, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences hosted a conference on artificial intelligence that specifically considered its possible consequences for military operations. The implications of artificial intelligence for nuclear stability looms very large in the minds of many academy scientists who directly advise the pontiff on scientific and technological matters.

While the Vatican has placed great emphasis on working towards a world without nuclear weapons, has it had an impact? During the Cold War, Reagan certainly believed that the popes moral authority added significant momentum to the arms control negotiations taking place in the 1980s. In 2015, Rose Gottemoeller, President Obamas senior arms control official in the State Department, stated, I think there is a huge moral impact of the Vatican on issues that relate to nuclear weapons deterrence and the disarmament agenda overall and that you cant just wave a magic wand and make nuclear weapons go away. It takes hard work and it takes a lot of very practical steps, but we can get there. Obama was receptive to the popes message on nuclear weapons and sought to work with him towards the elimination of nuclear weapons, though no significant strides were made as a result of Washingtons and the Vaticans shared vision.

Events of the past 75 years strongly suggest that the Vatican is unlikely to make any significant headway with its nuclear diplomacy without support from the United States. The present popes declaration that even the possession of nuclear weapons is immoral will likely alienate the nuclear powers and actually impede the Vaticans objectives in the realm of nuclear diplomacy. John Paul II, by contrast, had a realist perspective on the international system, which enabled him to formulate policies that gave the Vatican a greater voice in international affairs. The alignment of Vatican and American policy on arms control began to unravel, however, in the post-Cold War era.

The Limits of Moral Authority

In the 1940s the Vatican recognized that nuclear weapons would fundamentally change the nature of the international system. Since that time, each pope has consistently lobbied against their use. The Cold War environment created a willingness among popes, John Paul II in particular, to accept nuclear deterrence. In the post-Cold War period, the Vatican has passionately condemned nuclear deterrence and made the abolition of nuclear weapons a primary foreign policy objective. World leaders recognize that the pope is the head of an institution with over one billion members. He has diplomatic relations with over 180 countries, including Russia and Iran, and has been recognized by both Moscow and Tehran as having significant influence in international relations. The United States and the Soviet Union both lobbying the Vatican to support their respective positions on the Strategic Defense Initiative strongly suggests that the moral authority of the pope is not an insignificant consideration in international affairs.

The nuclear age does, however, demonstrate that the moral authority of the papacy has significant limits. The Vatican recognizes that it cannot achieve its objective of nuclear disarmament without the agreement of all the nuclear powers, which is an outcome that is unlikely in the near future. For the past seven decades, the Vatican has persistently engaged with world leaders on shaping norms surrounding the possession and use of nuclear arms. Its policy of political non-alignment and its intellectual arguments based in the just war tradition have solidified its place among the prominent voices shaping the dialogue on nuclear issues. The reality is that hard power still supersedes the moral influence of the oldest institution in the world and moral arguments have not solved the security dilemma facing the nuclear powers.

Nevertheless, the Vatican has grown accustomed to confronting substantial political challenges over the last two millennia, so the pope is willing to wait patiently.

Aaron Bateman is pursuing a Ph.D. in the history of science and technology at Johns Hopkins University. Previously, he served as a U.S. Air Force intelligence officer. He has published on a wide variety of subjects including technology and international affairs, diplomacy, and Cold War history.

Image: Ronald Reagan Presidential Library

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The Vatican's Nuclear Diplomacy from the Cold War to the Present - War on the Rocks

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The most persistent narrative of the 2020 race for the Democratic nomination is that it amounts to a battle between leftists (Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren) and centrists (Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, and now Michael Bloomberg) over who is best suited to take on and take down President Trump.

But what if there are no true centrists in the 2020 race at all?

Oh sure, there are plenty of candidates who portray themselves as centrists and other candidates, like Sanders and Warren, who delight in skewering these less left-leaning options for ideological heresy. But do the three Bs Biden, Buttigieg, and Bloomberg really speak for "the center" of the Democratic Party or the broader American electorate?

We have reason to doubt it. What they speak for is the center of public opinion in elite circles, where there is a broad consensus in favor of cultural liberalism and the primary point of disagreement is over economic policy. Should policymakers defer to markets, fiddle at the margins with tax rates, and work to soften the churning of capitalism but ultimately favor the encouragement of growth over fighting inequality? Or should they intervene more drastically in the economy by imposing sharply higher taxes, proposing sweeping regulations, and launching ambitious new social programs that might even include the nationalization of whole industries? That is the primary political dispute among Democratic elites, with the latter defining the left and the former supposedly defining the center.

This may have been how the center was understood in the country at large during the 1980s and '90s, in the immediate aftermath of the Reagan revolution. But that was also a time when Democrats were far more moderate on social issues than they are today. There were plenty of pro-life Democrats in the '80s, and Bill Clinton won two presidential elections while pledging to make abortion rare in addition to safe and legal. Both Clinton and Barack Obama (in the latter's first presidential campaign) opposed same-sex marriage. And until just a few years ago, most Democrats with national ambitions staked out positions on immigration far to the right of just about every candidate currently running for president.

To be a left-wing Democrat today is to combine maximally leftward positions on both social and economic policy, while to be a so-called centrist Democrat (at least in the eyes of the party's establishment, donor class, and activist base) is to combine precisely the same stances on social issues with somewhat less left-leaning positions on economic policy.

But why should that be considered the centrist option? What if the true electoral center of the country in our populist age is found somewhere else in the ideological overlap between the economic left and social and cultural right?

As I argued in a series of columns last March, there is survey research to suggest that this is in fact the case. The Voter Study Group's June 2017 report on the 2016 election includes data showing that there are large numbers of voters who fall into an underserved ideological space that combines support for economically and socially populist views. These are people who would be powerfully drawn to a candidate who combined the economic message of Sanders or Warren with the sociocultural outlook of a Republican. (At times during his 2016 presidential campaign and in some of his speeches since, Trump has talked like a right-wing socialist who aims to transform the GOP into a "worker's party." But he has governed mostly like a plutocrat out to enrich himself and his wealthy friends.)

This doesn't mean that Democrats can or should stake out an absolutist opposition to abortion, same-sex marriage, and immigration. But it probably does mean that they would be well-advised to return to (and update) the general cultural outlook of the Clinton administration while combining it with a more left-wing economic agenda. In the present context, that would translate into a refusal to push the left's side of the culture war any further, and a willingness to pull back from some of the Democratic Party's more extreme stances on immigration in recent months and years.

Imagine a Sanders who defined himself as an economic nationalist promising to expand access to health care and college for American citizens instead of favoring the abolition of ICE and the decriminalization of border crossings. Imagine a Warren who spoke about her respect for religious freedom and the moral convictions of pro-life voters with half the passion that she reserves for the topic of economic injustice.

I'm hardly the only pundit to suggest that Democrats could scramble the Electoral College in all kinds of favorable ways by making an effort to place themselves smack dab in the middle of this alternative ideological center. Indeed, The New York Times's Ross Douthat recently went so far as to argue that Sanders is already close enough to staking out that territory that a social conservative like himself finds something reassuring about voting for him on the grounds that Sanders is "the liberal most likely to spend all his time trying to tax the rich and leave cultural conservatives alone."

I wouldn't go that far myself. A Democrat wouldn't need, and shouldn't try, to mimic Trump's distinctive brand of xenophobic nastiness. But to reap electoral benefits, a Democratic nominee would need to show some sign of backing off from the most extreme ambitions of the cultural left. Other than displaying a good, old-fashioned socialist disinterest in non-material issues, Sanders has given no such sign, and neither has Warren. On the contrary, they've done everything possible at every point in the race to placate the very-online activists who play such an outsized role in Democratic politics these days.

And that is the main reason why such a shift toward the true American center is unlikely to happen anytime soon because it would mean picking a fight with electorally marginal but interpersonally significant left-wing activists on Twitter and other social media platforms. Whether it's in the newsrooms of mainstream media outlets or in the campaign headquarters of first-tier presidential candidates, young staffers tend to take their cues from the online activists, and the people ostensibly in charge take their cues from the young staffers.

As long as that dynamic persists, so will the Democratic denial about the true center of American politics.

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Where are the real 2020 centrists? - The Week

Kenya has enjoyed a good relationship with its neighbour Ethiopia for decades. Though divided by artificial boundaries, their people have shared dreams and aspirations, says Ethiopian Ambassador Meles Alem.

In an interview with the Star, the envoy said this relationship is not just for neighbours but of close families and siblings just living in two countries. He said as the leaders of the two countries work to enhance and integrate the bilateral relations, the people-to-people relations founded by the founding fathers has remained critical. Kenya has stood with Ethiopia in all her struggles.

"Our diplomatic ties are punctuated by our consistent relationship, which is undaunted. Ethiopia and Kenya have not been in any form of conflict and that is the relationship that has kept us strong, he said.

Alem said the abolition of visas for the past 55 years has also enhanced deep ties. This, he said, has allowed Ethiopians easy access to Kenya and vice versa.

We also enjoy excellent political relations. It is evident that President Uhuru Kenyatta has visited Ethiopia more than any other country in his state visits. This can only be attributed to the strong ties, he said.

The ambassador said infrastructure connectivity like electricity and the Lapsset project are game-changers that have provided equal opportunity for trade and investment.

It is true that trade favours Kenya, but it should be noted that Ethiopia provides a conducive environment for Kenyans. It is a big market with over 100 million people, he said.

Kenya has a vibrant private enterprise that has made its way to Ethiopia. Though we might be having small issues to do with security, the environment remains dependable and safe.

Alem said though Ethiopia has a big trainable youth population, his government is working to put measures in place for economic reforms that would attract more foreign investors.

In Kenya, we have Ethiopian investors who have taken over the hotel industry. Others are doing well in transport and real estate, among others, he said.

Continued here:

Why Uhuru visits Ethiopia more than any other country - The Star, Kenya

Major General Antonio Parlade, Jr., Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) Deputy Chief-of-Staff for Civil-Military Operations (PNA File photo)

MANILA -- Further proof of communist rebels' duplicity and deceit is further gleaned from the family of a ranking New People's Army (NPA) leader, killed in a clash with government troops in Antipolo City, Rizal, which cannot recover his body and give it a decent burial as he is known by another name in the rebel movement, a ranking official of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF ELCAC) said Monday.

Major General Antonio Parlade, Jr., who is also Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) Deputy Chief-of-Staff for Civil-Military Operations, was referring to the case of Armando Lazarte alias "Pat Romano" who was killed last week.

Lazarte is the secretary of the communist rebels' Southern Tagalog Regional Party Committee's Sub-Regional Military Area 4A.

"Days after Armando Lazarte alias Pat 'Romano', secretary of Sub-Regional Military Area 4A was killed in a raid in Antipolo City, his body still cannot be retrieved by the family. It is because he is known by another name in a classic duality of the CPP(Communist Party of the Philippines)-NPA," Parlade said in a statement to the PNA Monday.

Lazarte is also known as "Ermin Bellen" in Pampanga where he lived with his family and is known to be a kind individual working for a non-government organization (NGO), he added.

Unknown to many, Lazarte is also the leader of one of the NPA's violent group responsible for many atrocities in the Southern Tagalog area.

"Little did people know that he was the head of a dangerous and violent terrorist group of the NPA who was responsible in the ambush of police forces in Rizal and Laguna, the burning of equipment in Calabarzon, and the death of young child recruits and students from UP Los Banos, PUP (Polytechnic University of the Philippines) and other schools. Among them was John Carlo Capistrano Alberto and Josephine Lapira," he said.

Even Lazarte's family, he added, was unaware of his connections with the CPP-NPA and it took the announcement of one member of Karapatan-Southern Tagalog to make the connection.

"But Bellen's family did not know that the Lazarte alias 'Pat Romano' who was reported killed was the same guy they know in Pampanga until Casey Ann Cruz of Karapatan - Southern Tagalog informed family members that Bellen was killed in that encounter. Recovered at the scene were several subversive documents, Kamatayan (Makabayan) bloc paraphernalia, bomb-making materials and manuals, other NPA paraphernalia, as well as uniforms and flags used by underground mass organizations like Kabataang Makabayan and its chapters in UP," Parlade said.

Because of the NPA leader's multiple identities due to the communist movement's duplicitous character, he said Lazarte's family will have a hard time claiming his body for a decent burial.

"His multiple identities were further complicated by Karapatan's intervention to make a situation out of it," he said.

He also scored Karapatan as it has consistently proven that they are not dissenters but a legal front whose purpose is to bail out captured CPP-NPA personalities and claim bodies of slain NPA fighters and supporters.

Karapatan's actions, he said, are consistent with the CPP-NPA doctrine calling for the strengthening of all organizations allied to it .

"This is consistent with the 'Limang Taong Programa ng Partido (2017-2021)'. This is why the document says 'kailangan palakasin ang mga progresibong kaalyado..upang makasuporta ang mga 'HAYAG sa mga LUBOG'. It is talking about Karapatan and the NUPL(National Union of Peoples Lawyers), who are now complaining of being vilified in Leyte. In truth the CPP document is very clear about their role in the armed revolution," he added.

He said the NTF ELCAC has already communicated with the family of the slain NPA leader in Albay and assured them that the body will be released for the proper burial rites.

"The CPP already stole one of our family members from us for a very long time. Now that he is dead, we request Karapatan to please leave us alone so we can give Erwin the proper burial. We do not want CPP rites for him," Parlade quoted one of Lazarte's brother as saying.

He also slammed Karapatan for maintaining alleged government human rights violation records abroad even while it goes about with its grisly work of accounting for the dead rebels in the Philippines.

"So tell us Cristina Palabay, Secretary General of Katapatan? Are these one of the reasons why you are getting international recognition for your works? Accounting for your dead NPAs while making sure that government human rights statistics are maintained abroad? Meantime, you also make sure that the case of child warrior Litboy Binogcasan, who was recently killed in Butuan City does not reach your European donors?" he said.

The death of Lazarte and recently captured of CPP-NPA Central Committee member Jaime Padilla are among the reasons why communist rebels are worried about the continued existence of the NTF ELCAC, he added.

"This is also why Renato Reyes of Bayan Muna has been very vocal in calling for the abolition of the NTF ELCAC. These are just few of the many reasons why the CPP-NPA is just too happy to hear about another round of peace talks with this administration," he added.

"The CPP wants to see light at the end of their dark tunnel. Incidentally it is an upcoming train from the NTF ELCAC and they are not happy with it," Parlade said.

The CPP-NPA has been listed as a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the Philippines. (PNA)

Continue reading here:

Reds duplicity prevents kin from reclaiming body of slain rebel - pna.gov.ph

by Brian Hioe:EnglishPhoto Credit: TIWA/Facebook

MIGRANT WORKERS rallied last Sunday outside representative offices in Taipei, calling for an abolition to the current broker system and the institution of direct hiring practices.

While migrant worker groups have been calling for an abolition of the broker system for years, the demonstration Sunday was notable as a coordinated action between migrant workers from Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam. Migrant workers staged separate protests outside the Indonesia Economic and Trade Office, the Manila Cultural and Economic Office, and the Vietnam Economic and Cultural Office, all of which are located in Taipei.

Migrant worker groups see the current broker system, in which broker agencies arrange for migrant workers transportation to and employment in Taiwan as exploitative. Broker agencies often impose exorbitant work placement fees on migrant workers. Migrant workers are charged fees between 20,000 NT and 100,000 NT in order to secure employment and there oftentimes is no consistency in how migrant workers are charged fees. Migrant workers that come at different times may be charged different fees for a similar work placement. The fees imposed on migrant workers differ based on what profession they work in, as well as what country they come from.

Migrant workers unable to pay such fees are usually referred to loan agencies by broker agencies. Late payments can result in penalties based on a promissory note, with loan agencies sometimes not having to explain how penalties were calculated. Broker agencies sometimes also charge migrant workers for board and lodging, forcing migrants to pay them for something that is actually provided by their employer.

Migrant workers already work long hours for low pay, regardless of whether they work as caregivers, domestic workers, factory workers, or as inshore or offshore fishermen, these being the four major categories of migrant workers in Taiwan.

Migrant workers are not subject to the provisions of the Labor Standards Act, meaning that migrant workers are sometimes paid less than minimum wagesometimes less than 18,000 NT a month. Migrant workers are usually given very few days off, if any at all, regardless of whether they work in Taiwanese households, in factories, or on fishing vessels, and they are often expected to work around the clock.

As such, having to pay expensive work placement fees or to pay back loans taken out in order to pay work placements simply proves another way of forcing migrant workers into conditions resembling indentured servitude more than anything else.

Past demonstrations by migrant worker groups have involved protests outside the Taiwanese Ministry of Labor, alongside Taiwanese workers on International Workers Day, and outside representative offices in Taipei. In these past demonstrations, migrant worker groups of differing nationalities have worked together to collaborate on joint actions, along with their Taiwanese counterparts. However, it is an unusual protest to see coordinated protests taking place outside of three representative offices in Taiwan, whether regarding migrant issues or other issues.

Migrant workers groups have in past years called for direct government-to-government hiring, which is referred to in shorthand as a G-to-G system to replace the current broker system. At the same time, the Taiwanese government has been reluctant to abolish the broker system. In past years, the Tsai administration has claimed that the broker system exists because of a market need for such a mechanism. In reality, broker agencies are only allowed to continue to exist because of the close ties that broker agencies enjoy with the statedespite flagrant violations of the law. The Taiwanese government also claims that the current broker system is simply more convenient for employers, who prefer to go through such a system, despite that it could easily set up its own mechanisms to addressing the issue.

Indeed, efforts by migrant worker groups and migrant worker advocacy groups to push with reform have encountered obstacles. Apart from the fact that government-organized forums on the issue of broker agencies have proved more performative than anything else, a draft bill that sought to extend the amount of time that foreign caregivers are allowed to work in Taiwan did not clear the Social Welfare and Environmental Hygiene Committee of the Legislative Yuan after disagreements between DPP and KMT lawmakers. One generally expects that it will continue to be an uphill struggle to push for the abolition of the broker system in Taiwan.

The rest is here:

Migrant Workers Rally to Call for an End to the Broker System - New Bloom

Editors note: Phillip E. Johnson, Berkeley law professor and author ofDarwin on Trialand other books, died on November 2.Reproduced below, his Foreword to John Wests collection, The Magicians Twin: C.S. Lewis on Science, Scientism, and Society, was among his last writings.

C.S. Lewiss many admirers will be eager to read this collection of articles, collected and edited by Discovery Institutes John West, concerning Lewiss views of science, which he respected, and scientism, against which he warned. The book contains a timely and well-reasoned chapter about Lewis and intelligent design, which seems to have replaced creationism as the alternative most feared and reviled by Darwinists. Another chapter describes the subtle interconnection between That Hideous Strength (my favorite Lewis novel) and his much admired philosophical work, The Abolition of Man.

As West notes in Chapter 1, C.S. Lewis remarked that [t]he serious magical endeavour and the serious scientific endeavour are twins an image that gives this book its title. Lewis meant that modern science and magic have a common starting point in history, arising from efforts to understand and manipulate nature, and they have retained important and perhaps unexpected similarities down to the present. His point makes me think of what scientific studies of identical twins, separated at birth and raised apart, have shown. Such studies consistently demonstrate that, aside from physical resemblance, when the twins first meet each other decades later, they display striking similarities in matters so unexpected and detailed that they seem eerie. It is as if the studies were aimed at proving that, despite all we have learned about the stars since 1600, astrology may nonetheless still have an impressive power of prediction.

Of course, the twin studies support genetics, not astrology, but what they teach us about identical twins raised apart makes it unsurprising that the scientific culture of the 19th and early 20th century produced three great wizards Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud whose concepts were so spellbinding that they set the intellectual agenda for the entire 20th century. In many ways, they still hold us in their grasp.

I would add to the list of scientific magicians the DNA is everything biologists, including the brilliant popularizer Richard Dawkins and the physicalist neuroscientists who assure us that our thoughts and decisions (including the conclusions of neuroscientists?) are no more than the effects of electro-chemical events in the brain. These have sought to make science indistinguishable from scientism, and thus have inadvertently alerted us to the continuing importance of C.S. Lewiss exposure of the irrationality of scientism.

Overall, this collection charms the reader, not because Lewis has necessarily said the final word on every subject covered, but because his perceptive words illuminate every subject and inspire discussion in which participants can employ their own intellects to move ever closer to the truth.

Photo: The Searcher, statue of C.S. Lewis, Belfast, Ireland, by Paul Bowman via Flickr (cropped).

Read more:

Science, Scientism, and Magic - Discovery Institute

When my new role as professor of the history of slavery at the University of Bristol was announced, some peoples reaction was, about time. The role, in which I will research the universitys ties with enslavement, will bring together various existing scholarships, and is part of a debate that has been taking place for decades.

But in further exploring the past of the institution within the broader history of the city, I hope to help the public as well as the university to better understand its place, role and responsibilities towards Bristols inhabitants. My research should have a significant impact on the way educational and cultural institutions remember the past, and how they support social equality now.

Universities such as Georgetown, Yale and Harvard in the US, and Glasgow, Oxford and Cambridge in the UK, are already looking at how they benefited from the labour of enslaved people. It is crucial, however, that the University of Bristols approach is different, because the history of the city is so different.

Academic research into Bristols involvement in enslavement started nearly four decades ago. It has taken a long time for those findings to reach a broader audience, but now, thanks to a growing demand for more inclusive narratives of the past that reflect the diversity of the nation, they will. Students and activists, within and outside these universities, have played a huge role in persuading institutions to look at stories of subjugation of human beings in their histories.

These debates are linked to broader, important discussions about colonialism and the legacies of the past. I often hear that slavery and colonialism led to vibrant, culturally diverse societies. It is certainly not what colonisers and slave traders were hoping to achieve when they funded vessels to sail the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean, though diversity has indeed been one result. Our celebrated, culturally diverse societies are, however, rigged with racism, social inequalities and discrimination.

Protest about those legacies and the representation of that past have increased in recent years. We have seen demonstrations about the Confederate flag in the US, and the Rhodes Must Fall movement, both in South Africa and Oxford. Embedded in the history of enslavement are economic, social, cultural, political and ideological ideas that shape the way we represent the past. Countries, cities and communities all reshape their own urban and rural landscapes in different ways to tell their stories and showcase their histories and identities.

These campaigns have challenged the way we memorialise a past that is the source of intergenerational trauma what the scholar Marianne Hirsch called post-memory.

The important question now is: what should societies, cities and institutions do to address the impact of slavery a history that has led to such trauma and division? These questions are part of Bristols broader response to its past, and the answer, as I see it, involves a conversation about reparations or reparative justice.

My plan in Bristol is to start by looking at donors who funded the university. The university was created in 1909, long after the abolition of the slave trade (1807) and the abolition of slavery (1833). The University College was set up in 1876, and from the very beginning it received the support of an educator called John Percival, who sought financial support among his circle.

Lewis Fry, a businessman from a prominent anti-slavery family, got on board in 1906. Two years later, donations were made by the Wills family, who made their fortune in various trading ventures, including tobacco produced by enslaved people in North America. Soon after that, the Merchant Venturers College agreed to fund the new engineering faculty. The Merchant Venturers was a guild whose members traded extensively in what was called the African trade. That trade funded slave voyages, bought and sold African captives, invested in plantations and so on.

I suspect there are a number of small businesses and individuals who also gave a helping hand through various donations. I want to find out who they were and how much they donated. If possible, I want to know where that money went and what other investments were made with those funds.

This is about the university but also about the city as a whole, and it will be very important to share my research every step of the way with various communities. The African Caribbean community is central, and I will talk to them about what is learned as we go along, working together to see how we can use the findings to teach that history at various levels. We must also look at the contribution of people of African descent. Their ancestors labours produced wealth that enriched the city, including the university.

I want to be part of this new episode in the history of the city for several reasons. I have been working on the history of Bristol for nearly two decades, and I have made comparative studies between Bristol and other European cities. I have looked at questions of memory, memorialisation and colonial legacies on both sides of the Atlantic. Bristol has gone through incredible changes since the 1990s. It is important that we continue to challenge urban representations of the past, and reinvent the way we look at the memory of enslavement, for example through guerrilla arts and graffiti.

The passion that African-Caribbean communities have put into telling their stories for decades is impressive. From the work done by the Malcolm X Elders, the Kuumba Project, and the Black South West Network to Michael Jenkins work in film revealing the untold stories of Bristolians, Michele Curtiss celebratory Seven Saints of St Pauls murals and the poignant art installation, CARGO, by Lawrence Hoo, Bristolians have found wonderful ways to tell the stories of changes within the city.

These stories need to be embedded in the timeline of the history of the city. It is happening now and it says something profound about where the city is heading. We are working towards social justice. We must also use the narratives, methods and material of that community and other community groups to rethink the way we teach history. The Centre for Black Humanities at the University of Bristol, the first of its kind in the south-west, is the ideal place to bring this work together.

The centre is one of many reasons I wanted to work on this project. The other important reason is the University of Bristols commitment to relocalising teaching and learning to a campus that will be located close to underprivileged communities. This is an opportunity that will allow those communities better access to higher education.

There will be challenges, but those are part of the healing process. A citys memory is truly collective when each community has found ways to acknowledge the past and address the social inequalities created by it. What is happening now in Bristol is truly inspirational. Its history in the making.

Olivette Otele is a professor of the history of slavery at the University of Bristol

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We need to talk about slaverys impact on all of us - The Guardian

The Gabelli Presidential Scholars Program hosted a panel discussion regarding wrongful convictions and the means of which victims of the legal system can be freed on Oct. 29. The discussion ranged from issues of racial disparity to flaws in the criminal justice system.

Panelists included Rahsaan D. Hall, director of racial justice at the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts; Charlotte Whitmore, professor at Boston College Law; and Stephanie Hartung, professor of law and social justice at Northeastern University. The discussion was moderated by Sharon Beekman, also a professor at BC Law.

Whitmore and Beekman co-direct the BC Innocence Program, in which BC Law students research cases of prisoners who maintain their influence and represent them throughout the process.

At the beginning of the presentation, the audience received slips of paper in a variety of shapes.

Those with certain shapes or colors stood as representations of those affected by wrongful convictions, demonstrating how the statistics were disproportionate in terms of race.

Beekman opened with additional statistics on wrongful convictions: Since 1989, 2,507 people have been exonerated after serving times, and of the 367 exonerated cases, DNA identified the 162 guilty assailants who went on to commit 152 additional crimes including 35 murders.

Wrongful convictions are a problem for everyone, Beekman said. What if that happened to you or someone you love? In Massachusetts, most of the people who are wrongly convicted are locked up in their teens and are locked up for at least a decade.

Witmore began talking about her personal experience helping those who have been wrongly convicted and how their stories are often overlooked. She emphasized the importance of listening to the stories of those who have been betrayed by the system and how wrongful convictions are less rare than people believe.

Witmore told the story of her work with a man named Christopher Omar Martinez, who took his first steps of freedom ealier this year after serving almost 20 years in prison for a murder he did not commit. Martinez was 19 years old and had not had any previous experience with the legal system before he was arrested, and after a seven hour interrogation, signed a confession in English even though his fluent language was Spanish.

Based on that confession alone he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison, Witmor said. There were a number of issues that came out about that case, obviously one that stood out was his false confession, but one statistic that really stood out to me when I was doing this work was that 25 percent of DNA exonerations [come after] false confessions.

Hartung then discussed her work with New England Innocence Project, an organization that focuses to correct wrongful convictions and lobby for legislative solutions to prevent wrongful convictions from happening in the future.

She also spoke about the flawed perception that racial injustice is something that New England and Massachusetts arebimmune from given their progressive voting habits, which Hall agreed with.

[This is the idea] that because we were one of the first abolitonist states and we were one of the first state to have same-sex marriage, we dont have these other issues, Hall said. But when you look at issues like wrongful convictions and when you look at the gross racial disparities in the system, its very evident that we have these problems.

Hall focused on the racial disparities evident in the legal system and American society as a whole, and he added that fixing systemic racism will take more than legislation. He expressed personal support for the abolition of prisons and advocated replacing the current system based on punishment for crimes committed to one that focuses on rehabilitation.

Lets cast a vision of the world that we want to live in that does not require us to have safety through putting people in cages, Hall said. Especially when you think about the deplorable conditions that exist where people are living. The system is too big, the system is insensitive, unempathetic, and it is racist. Wrongful convictions are the fruit of all of those.

Photo by Jess Rivilis / Heights Staff

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Panelists Share Stories of Wrongful Conviction The Heights - The Heights