Eliminating the Black-White Wealth Gap Is a Generational Challenge

Introduction and summary

The importance of household wealth has become abundantly clear during the COVID-19 pandemic. Wealth is the difference between what families ownfor instance, their savings and checking accounts, retirement savings, houses, and carsand what they owe on credit cards, student loans, and mortgages, among other debt.

Yet wealth is vastly unequally distributed across the United States. Black households have a fraction of the wealth of white households, leaving them in a much more precarious financial situation when a crisis strikes and with fewer economic opportunities. Wealth allows households to weather a financial emergency such as a layoff or a family members illness. The pandemic brought multiple such emergencies to American families across all demographics. However, the lack of financial security combined with disproportionate exposure to the deadly coronavirus has had especially disastrous results for the Black community.

Wealth also provides families the means to invest in their childrens education, to start a business, relocate for new and better opportunities, buy a house, and have greater participation in the democratic process. Many households in Black communities cannot afford to pay for reliable internet or electronic devices to facilitate remote learning.1 White workers have been more likely to work remotely during the pandemic and have resources to devote to their childrens remote learning environment, while Black workers are more likely to still be going to work in person. The pandemic has created the perfect storm of factors that will drive wealth for African Americans and white households even further apart.

Wealth is not only a question of financial savings; it provides access to the political process and, therefore, exerts political influence. Households with wealth have a measure of economic security and can donate time and money, thereby influencing the political process and the policies that are important to their communities. Yet, Congress has not devoted enough attention to both the physical and economic harm the coronavirus crisis has wrought on African American communities.

The persistent Black-white wealth gap is not an accident but rather the result of centuries of federal and state policies that have systematically facilitated the deprivation of Black Americans. From the brutal exploitation of Africans during slavery, to systematic oppression in the Jim Crow South, to todays institutionalized racismapparent in disparate access to and outcomes in education, health care, jobs, housing, and criminal justicegovernment policy has created or maintained hurdles for African Americans who attempt to build, maintain, and pass on wealth.

In 2019, the Center for American Progress invited a number of leading national experts on racism and wealth to join the National Advisory Council on Eliminating the Black-White Wealth Gap2 to make eradicating this racial disparity a pressing policy goal for the next presidential administration and to identify steps necessary to accomplish it. This group engaged in a yearlong discussion guided by the following principles:

The importance of addressing the Black-white wealth gap

In 2019, the median wealth (without defined-benefit pensions) of Black households in the United States was $24,100, compared with $189,100 for white households. Therefore, the typical Black household had 12.7 percent of the wealth of the typical white household, and they owned $165,000 less in wealth. The average gap is somewhat smaller in relative terms but much larger in dollar terms. The average Black household had $142,330 in 2019 compared with $980,549 for the average white household. This means that, on average, Black households had 14.5 percent of the wealth of white households, with an absolute dollar gap of $838,220.

The massive Black-white wealth disparity is nothing new in this country. It has persisted for centuries and has been apparent in consistent, nationally representative data for at least three decades. The gap between Black and white households appears to have widened again in the latter part of 2020 as the pandemic and deep recession took hold, especially hurting Black Americans. Black households needed to rely more on their savings to cover both health care emergencies and the economic fallout from layoffs than white households. Just a few months into the pandemic, average wealth for Black households was growing more slowly than that of white householdsa reversal of the pre-pandemic trend.

Low wealth among many Black Americans left them especially vulnerable to the myriad risks of the coronavirus crisis. Black workers were more likely to lose their jobs even as they faced greater health care risks. They worked in jobs with greater exposure to the coronavirus and lived in communities with weaker health care infrastructures. As risks and costs soared, they quickly experienced more material hardship. Hunger, the threat of eviction or foreclosure, and an inability to pay bills were more prevalent among Black households than among white ones. More than two-thirds68.1 percentof Black families with incomes from $35,000 to $100,000 who had lost work during the pandemic indicated that they could not afford all of the food they needed, faced eviction or foreclosure, or had difficulty paying all of their bills from August 2020 to December 2020.3 These situations applied to 49.3 percent of white households in this income category. All types of families have suffered during the recession, but Black families have struggled more because they have fewer savings to fall back on.

Black households face systematic obstacles in building wealth

The persistent Black-white wealth gap is the result of a discriminatory economic system that keeps Black households from achieving the American dream.4 This system has always made it difficult for Black households to acquire and keep capital, and this lack of capital has created a persistently large racial wealth disparity, as African Americans have had less wealth to pass on to the next generation than white households. There are several other obstacles to building wealth:

The unjust obstacles to building wealth for Black households have existed for centuries, and the iterative nature of wealth begetting more wealth means that without public interventions, it will be virtually impossible for Black Americans to catch up to their white counterparts. White families are better situated to pass on wealth from one generation to the next. White households first benefited from the dehumanizing system of slaverydirectly, in this case, as a white slaveholding plantation classbut also from the discriminatory institutions that emerged and persisted after the Civil War. White households have been able to build wealth for themselves and their descendants, while whatever wealth Black families could amass was regularly stripped away. Private businesses and governments institutionalized racism and discrimination. They also encouraged and sanctioned violence targeting Black lives and property. The destruction of Black Wall Street in the Greenwood neighborhood of Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1921 serves as one of many horrid and systematic examples.6

Following centuries of oppression of Black households, white households are much more likely to receive an inheritance from their parents and grandparents, and their inheritances are much larger than those of Black households.7 Moreover, white households have access to larger and wealthier social networks that they can tap into for job and career opportunities for them and their children. Addressing the persistent Black-white wealth gap means countering the centuries-old institutions that have kept Black households from building and growing wealth at the same rate as is the case for white households.

Novel policy proposals that can help shrink the Black-white wealth gap

The National Advisory Council on Eliminating the Black-White Wealth Gap developed a range of novel policy proposals throughout 2020 that followed the aforementioned principles. These policies are especially targeted toward Black Americans, building and expanding on several existing proposals that could reduce the wealth disparity between Black and white households by helping Black Americans gain more wealth.

Derived from a CAP issue brief published in November 2020, this proposal recommends that the executive branch explicitly prioritize eliminating the Black-white wealth gap, as it is the result of the collective and compounding impact of centuries of oppression. Now there must be a full-scale, intentional, and strategic plan that reaches across the entire federal government and puts in place actual infrastructure to tackle racial inequality. The issue brief provides the Biden administration with a menu of options, many of which have been adopted already.9 They include creating a White House Racial Equity Office; appointing a senior adviser to the president on racial equity; directing the Office of Management and Budget to conduct racial equity assessments on policy measures; adding more principal function to the National Economic Council focused on eliminating the racial wealth disparity; establishing an interagency task force that would provide steps each agency could take toward increasing wealth for Black communities and communities of color; and encouraging agencies to prioritize addressing racial wealth inequality. This menu of options is intended to provide mechanisms by which the federal governmentincluding the White House and federal agencieswould hold itself accountable to the goal of centering race and equity in policymaking.

Black workers and their families have a rare source of opportunity and security in public sector jobs. Government jobs alone cannot solve structural racism, but public sector jobs offer Black workers a greater measure of economic security than they can often find in private sector employment. Secure employment with predictable wages and benefits, a stable working environment, and stronger protections for workers in the public sector has been a significant source of security for Black workers. That also means that slowing growth in government employmentespecially in the wake of the Great Recession of 2007 to 2009represents a disproportionate shrinking of economic opportunities for African American workers.

Amid the fallout from the pandemic, state and local governments have made deep cuts to public sector jobs. Black workers have seen economic gains thanks to their hard work in the public sector. These income and wealth gains are now at risk again. In September 2020, 211,000 fewer Black workers had a job in the public sector than was the case in September 2019.11

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the federal government can ensure that state and local governments are receiving the funding they needfor instance, with the passage of the American Rescue Plan. Now, these additional funds need to lead states and local governments to bring back jobs in an equitable manner; otherwise, they would risk endangering the financial security of millions of middle-class Black households, threatening to make the wealth gap even harder to solve and undermining one of the only means of substantially reducing racism and racial wealth disparities.

Many households lack access to mainstream banking institutions, which contributes to households being either unbanked or underbanked. This is especially acute for communities of color. Policymakers will need to make long-term structural changes to achieve more equitable outcomes for Black households as the country considers the necessary next steps to rebuild its economy and society after the pandemic and the ensuing economic crisis. Postal banking should be a core part of the U.S. Postal Services mission to deliver services to almost every community in the country. The federal government could provide vital access to financial services by broadening the mandate of the Postal Service to offer postal bankingsuch as a stable bank account for those who are underbanked or unbanked, small loans, and check-cashing serviceswhich could reduce the wealth-stripping effect that exclusionary and predatory financial institutions can cause. Such a system could also serve as a public distribution method for federal and state benefits such as the economic impact payments in the CARES Act or the quarterly or monthly distribution of the earned income tax credit and the child tax credit. Postal banking would overcome a structural barrier for African Americans in the U.S. financial system and would reduce the damage done to many Black households and communities that regularly face predatory lenders and lose large shares of their wealth.

African Americans own fewer than 2 percent of small businesses with any employees, but they make up 13 percent of the U.S. population. In comparison, white households own 82 percent of small employer firms, even though they account for only 60 percent of the U.S. population.

Wide and persistent inequities in wealth and access to capital cause these disparities in small business ownership. The federal government can play an important role in creating a more equitable business environment, even though in the past, it has often perpetuated rather than mitigated these inequities. The Biden administration could help cut small business disparities if it decided to overhaul a long-neglected agency that is part of the U.S. Department of Commercethe Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA). A reenvisioned MBDA could then take the following steps:

Black researchers, inventors, and entrepreneurs face large hurdles in receiving federal research and development (R&D) funds in the current design and application of such funds. The Biden administration and Congress can lower racial gaps in R&D funding and offer a pathway for R&D dollars that both dedicate funding to Black-led research and establish an innovation dividend.

The proposal, developed in a previous CAP report, envisions additional financial support for R&D by Black inventors and entrepreneurs:

The proposal further envisions the creation of an innovation dividend. The federal government would have to spend $125 billion annually in new R&D, which is higher than the current low of about $100 billion per year. Underlying this calculation is the assumption that the federal governments annual R&D spending will grow with gross domestic product, based on the Congressional Budget Offices (CBO) long-term economic projections. Each new and successful investment is assumed to last for 20 years. This is equal to the usual patent protection length. The calculation further assumes that all investments create an average noninflation-adjusted rate of return of about 3 percent. This is close to the long-term, risk-free rate of return assumed by the CBO but well below historical averages. The federal government can receive the extra value of these investments. Private companies profits then only come from private sector investments. The federal government can pay out these funds as innovation dividendstypically in the form of targeted cash paymentsto Black Americans, who have been left out of innovation funding for decades.

Even with innovative policy solutions, the Black-white wealth gap will persist

The data for the past three decades show large and persistent disparities in wealth, assets, and debt between Black and white households. Wealth is the difference between what households owntheir assetsand what they owetheir debt. For most households, assets are larger than debt, meaning they own at least some wealth. Assets include peoples houses, their retirement accounts, their checking and savings accounts, and their cars, for example. The expected future income from an employers pension is a somewhat unique asset. On the one hand, it provides households with a secure stream of income in the future; on the other hand, it is not an asset that households can borrow against or pass on to their heirs. The table below shows wealth inequality between Black and white households both with and without defined-benefit pension wealth.

The data highlight several key points. First, Black households have a fraction of the wealth of white households. For instance, the median wealth of Black households with defined-benefit pensions was $40,400 in 201915.5 percent of the $258,900 in median wealth for white families. (see the downloadable table)15 The smallest relative gap that can be found between Black household wealth and white household wealth exists for average wealth that includes defined-benefit pensions as part of household wealth. Using this measure, Black households wealth amounts to 22.5 percent of white households wealth. (see Figure 1) In comparison, the largest gap that can be found between Black and white household wealth is median wealth without defined-benefit pensions included. Using this measure, Black households own 12.7 percent of the wealth of the median white household. No matter which wealth measure is used, Black households have far less wealth than white ones.

Figure 1

Second, defined-benefit pensions have a slightly equalizing effect. The Black-white wealth gap shrinks somewhat when the imputed value of defined-benefit pensions is counted as an asset. This equalizing effect is larger for average wealth than for median wealth. For example, average Black household wealth increases from 14.5 percent of average white household wealth without defined-benefit pensions to 22.5 percent with defined-benefit pensions; the Black-white wealth gap shrinks by 8 percentage points. At the median, the effect is only a 1.8 percentage-point decrease. That is, the effect of a little more wealth equality thanks to defined-benefit pensions matters mainly for higher-income earners with stable jobs. Since such opportunities are often rare for Black workers in the private sector, the effect is much smaller at the median.

A key point, which is not shown in Figure 3 but is apparent in the same data, is that Black workers have more access to stable jobs with good benefitsincluding defined-benefit pensionsin the public sector than in the private sector. As a result, wealth inequality among public sector workers is much smaller than among private sector workers.16 This effect becomes even larger when comparing public sector workers in unionized jobs with their private sector counterparts who are not covered by a collective bargaining agreement.17 Access to stable, well-paying jobs with decent benefits is rarer for Black workers than for white ones. Such accesswhich is more common in the public sector than in the private sectorcan help shrink but not eliminate the Black-white wealth gap in large part because of the value of a defined-benefit pension.

Third, there is no long-term trend toward a smaller Black-white wealth gap. In fact, the relative difference between Black households wealth and that of white households was generally smaller from 1992 to 2007 than in the years after the Great Recession. For instance, the median wealth with defined-benefit pensions of Black households amounted to 20.1 percent of white households in 1998 and 19.8 percent in 2004. Since the Great Recession, this ratio of Black households median wealth to white households median wealth reached its highest point of 15.5 percent in 2019. Black households wealth has always been far below that of white households in the past three decades.

Fourth, the wealth gap persists even when the data account for income differences. Black households have much lower wealth-to-income ratios than white households do. For example, the median wealth-to-income ratio that includes the imputed wealth of defined-benefit pensions has rarely exceeded 100 percent for Black households. (see the downloadable table)18 However, it has never fallen below 300 percent for white households, and it stood at 395.5 percent in 2019. That is, the large Black-white wealth gap does not follow from lower incomes among Black households.

In the same vein, the data show large Black-white wealth gaps among separate subpopulations. (see Table 1) The table breaks the data down by education, family status, age, and income in addition to race. In all groups, white households have vastly more wealth than Black households. The overall Black-white wealth gap is then not a result of differences in these characteristics. For example, white households with high school degrees have $151,651 more in wealth on average than Black households with a college degree. In fact, white households without a high school degree have similar wealth levels as Black households with college degrees$230,165 compared with $270,288. Other research at the more regionally granular level has regularly found that white households without a high school degree have, on average, more wealth than Black households with a college degree.19 Put differently, Black Americans gaining more education does not close the Black-white wealth gap. The data indicate similar conclusions about income levels and marital status.20 Black Americans clearly encounter massive and systematic obstacles that make it impossible to catch up to their white counterparts.

Table 1

The data in Table 1 on wealth by age in fact suggest that these obstacles are cumulative. The Black-white wealth gap tends to be larger for older groups of households than for younger ones. Data for married couples broken down by cohorts show that the Black-white wealth gap widens as people get older.21 Black Americans encounter systematic obstacles and systemic racism when trying to save for their future, while white households receive additional help from their familiesfor example, in the form of more frequent and larger inheritancescausing the Black-white wealth gap to grow over peoples lifetime.22

Fifth, Black households wealth declined more after the Great Recession than was the case for white households. And white households wealth grew faster in the immediate aftermath of that financial and economic crisis than was the case for Black households wealth. Regardless of the measure of wealthmedian or mean, with or without defined-benefit pensionsthe gap between Black households and white households wealth was larger in 2019 than in 2004 and 2007, before the Great Recession started.

Additional Federal Reserve data suggest that the recession of 2020 could show a similar pattern of a widening Black-white wealth gap during a recession. Figure 2 shows the average wealth with defined-benefit pensions for Black and white households.23 The Black-white wealth gap widened over the course of the recession through September 2020. The average wealth of Black households was $241,951, which was 0.7 percent below the $243,764 recorded at the end of 2019, before the recession started. In contrast, average white household wealth was 3.3 percent higher with $1.17 million in September 2020 compared with $1.13 million at the end of 2019. Black households wealth recovered more slowly than that of white households, widening the wealth disparity continuously throughout the recession.

Figure 2

Several reasons account for this widening disparity between Black and white wealth during recessions. First, on average, Black workers always have worse labor market experiences than white workers. (see Figure 3) They suffer from higher unemployment, longer spells of unemployment, earlier layoffs in a recession, later rehiring in a recovery, more job instability, and lower wages.24 Less access to good, stable jobs means that African Americans have fewer opportunities to save money as well as more need to rely on their savings because they face more labor market risks.

Figure 3

Second, Black households are less likely to own stocks than white households, often because they face more economic risks such as higher chances of layoffs and medical emergencies than white households.25 They also have less access to retirement benefits through their employers, which is one key pathway for more saving and stock market investments for American families.26 African Americans then see fewer wealth gains from a booming stock market, as typically happens starting from the later stages of a recession.

Even worse, the combination of higher unemployment during the recession and fewer stock market investments to begin with means that Black households have fewer opportunities to take advantage of low stock prices in the middle of a recession than white households.27 Black households have less money to invest at a time when the opportunities to invest in the stock market are best because of low stock prices. White households, on the other hand, are more likely to still have a job with higher incomes and more access to stock market investments through employer-sponsored retirement accounts. They can take advantage of low stock prices in the depths of a recession and thus see higher rates of return on their wealth.

Third, Black households are less likely to own their own houses than white households.28 Housing prices have largely stayed strong and even increased in this recession. Black households see fewer gains from such price increases than white households. Worse, even when Black households own their homes, they see smaller price gains than white homeowners do. Their home values increase at a lesser rate because of housing and mortgage market discrimination, fewer public services, and less access to good jobs in predominantly African American communities.29 In essence, wealth leads to more wealth, and this pattern becomes readily apparent in a recession.

As discussed above, the differences in Black-white wealth overall and in rates of return stem from massive gaps in assetsnot from more debt among African Americans. On the contrary, Black households typically have less debt than white households do, often because they are shut out of formal credit channels due to financial market discrimination.30 Black households instead owe a lot of so-called consumer credit such as car and student loans as well as credit cards. Yet they are less likely to have a mortgage due to greater loan denial rates and less access to down payment help from family. The heavy reliance on consumer debt means that the amount of consumer loans to consumer durablesa measure of how much families need to use debt for ongoing expensesis higher for African Americans than for any other racial or ethnic group. Black households essentially use consumer debt to cover part of their expenses, while white households go deeper into mortgage debt to invest in an asset that appreciates.31 African Americans then owe more costly and risky debt such as car loans and credit card debt and thus often pay more for their debt than white households do, but the amount of debt that Black households owe is smaller in absolute terms and relative to income than is the case for white households.32 High-cost and high-risk debt is a key aspect of wealth stripping in the African American community, but it is not the overarching contributor to the Black-white wealth gap. A systematic lack of access to opportunities for owning and maintaining assets is the primary cause.

Conclusion

The work of the National Advisory Council on Eliminating the Black-White Wealth Gap shows two important things. First, it is possible to develop and enact in short order a number of policies that could have a meaningful long-term effect on reducing the Black-white wealth gap. Second, a smallerbut still substantialBlack-white wealth gap would persist, even if policymakers enacted all policies mentioned in this report in addition to several large-scale proposals proposed by CAP and others. Eliminating the disparities between Black and white wealth is a generational undertaking, but it is one that this country can and must tackle.

The proposals summarized in this report show that it is possible to enact novel policies to shrink the Black-white wealth gap. These proposals expand the portfolio of possible new measures to address this massive inequality. Other policies that can also shrink this wealth disparity include so-called baby bondsannual payments to children under the age of 18 that are tied to parents income or wealth.33 They also include debt-free college education, universal retirement accounts,34 full enforcement of civil rights legislation in housing markets, and strict regulation and enforcement of financial market regulation in all credit and asset markets.35

A key difference between the novel proposals laid out in this report and already-proposed policies is that the new approaches focus solely or primarily on lifting up wealth for African Americans, while other proposals largely favor Black households but also provide help to white families in building wealth. That is, these new proposals could have a substantial effect on shrinking the Black-white wealth gap.

But a substantial Black-white wealth gap will remainat least between average wealth for Black families and average wealth for white familieseven if all of these proposals were immediately enacted. Broad measures that benefit both Black and white households have a diffuse effect on the Black-white wealth gap at the average, although they can substantially shrink this wealth disparity at the median.36 At the same time, targeted proposals laid out in this report will take time to have a meaningful effect. Moreover, the sum of these proposals does not fully erase the massive intergenerational advantage that white households have in building wealth.

These intergenerational wealth transfers come in the form of gifts and inheritances as well as access to social networks. For the years 2010 to 2019, white households in which the heads of household were between the ages of 55 and 64 years old had received gifts and inheritances equal to $101,354 (in 2019 dollars). In comparison, Black households had received $12,623 at that time. Furthermore, older white households expected to get an additional $75,214 as gifts and inheritances, while Black households expected $2,941. This represents a total gap of $161,004 in received and expected gifts and inheritances and does not count additional intergenerational wealth transfers such as nepotism and access to social networks.37

In this regard, it is important to note that experts, researchers, and policymakers are considering the rationale, design, and effects of reparations to Black households to address the lasting economic impacts of slavery. One legislative vehicle currently pending in Congress to study and put forward a plan for implementation of reparations is H.R. 40.38 Originally introduced by the late Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) every year between 1989 and 2017, and subsequently introduced by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), H.R. 40 would create a commission to study and submit to Congress a report on reparations for the government-sanctioned institution of slavery and ensuing discrimination against freed slaves and their descendants. Notably, this bill only proposes a study and recommendations; passage of the bill would not necessarily lead to reparations. Unless legislation to study reparations passes, the executive branch should engage with cultural and historical resourcessuch as the National Archives and Records Administration, the Smithsonian Institution, and the National Park Serviceto promote historical education for the public to increase awareness of the myriad underlying causes that have contributed to the massive and persistent Black-white wealth gap.

Moreover, public and private policies need to be regularly revisited and revamped to eliminate racial biases that systematically disadvantage Black households. Without large, long-term investments in addressing the Black-white wealth gap, massive differences in economic security and opportunity will not only continue to persist but may widen for generations.

About the authors

Christian E. Weller, Ph.D., is a senior fellow at the Center and a professor of public policy at the McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston.

Lily Roberts is the managing director for Economic Policy at the Center for American Progress.

Acknowledgments

The Center for American Progress would like to thank the members of the National Advisory Council on Eliminating the Black-White Wealth Gap for all of their time, hard work, inspiration, and thought leadership. We are especially grateful to co-chairs Darrick Hamilton and Kilolo Kijakazi for sharing their critical insights, deep expertise, and long-standing commitment to racial justice. This project would not have been possible without the vision and untiring commitment to racial equity from Danyelle Solomon, former vice president for Race and Ethnicity at the Center for American Progress. To learn more about the council, read: CAP Announces Formation of the National Advisory Council on Eliminating the Black-White Wealth Gap.

Appendix

Kilolo Kijakazi, institute fellow, Urban Institute; co-chair

Darrick Hamilton, executive director, Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, The Ohio State University; co-chair

Mehrsa Baradaran, professor of law, University of California, Irvine

Lisa D. Cook, associate professor of economics and international relations, Michigan State University

Henry Louis Skip Gates, Alphonse Fletcher Jr. University professor and director, Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, Harvard University

Ibram X. Kendi, professor of history and international relations and founding director, Antiracist Research and Policy Center, American University

Trevon Logan, professor of economics andassociate dean, College of Arts and Sciences, The Ohio State University

Anne Price, president, Insight Center

Richard Rothstein, distinguished fellow, Economic Policy Institute; senior fellow, emeritus, Thurgood Marshall Institute of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and of the Haas Institute at the University of California, Berkeley

Rhonda Sharpe, founder and president, Womens Institute for Science, Equity, and Race (WISER)

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Eliminating the Black-White Wealth Gap Is a Generational Challenge

Cruel oppression of those who speak against the Chinese Government – Sanatan Prabhat –

(Retd) Brigadier Hemant Mahajan

India must expose Chinas atrocities to the whole world The United Nations has released a report on the violation of human rights in Chinas Xinjiang Province; it says that the Uyghur Muslims are being severely persecuted. The report was released on 31st August at a Conference in Geneva before the end of Michelle Bachelets 4-year term as the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. China, on the other hand, has denied allegations of human rights violations in the Province. In the article here, (Retd) Brigadier Mahajan has exposed the horrifying reality of how the Chinese Government is not only harassing the Uyghur Muslims, but also the Tibetans and Mongolians.

The world should raise the issue of atrocities against the Chinese citizens with the United Nations Human Rights Commission. This will help reduce their abuse.

India should also raise this issue from time to time on various platforms of the United Nations. Only then can the human rights of the Chinese can be protected and supported. India needs to tighten its belt to bring the tyrannical face of cunning and powerful China in front of the world and destroy it.

A report of a Human Rights Organisation in Spain has stated that people who oppose the Government in China or the Chinese Communist Party are severely harassed and persecuted. They are subjected to various tortures such as electric shocks, imprisonment, no trials in the Courts. In reality, there is nothing surprising in this report because this has been true for long. For example, the population of Tibet is 50-60 lakh. Tibetans have no spiritual or religious freedom. They cannot write or speak what they want to, and are subjected to a great deal of torture. It is said that the worlds largest surveillance system has been installed in Tibet. Through this, movement of citizens are monitored and they are kept away from their religion and culture. Due to this problem, 100 to 150 Tibetan youth commit self-immolation every year.

An estimated 20 million Uyghur Muslims live in Chinas Xinjiang Province, which faces a very serious situation. It is said that more than 20-25 lakh Muslims in the Xinjiang Province have been imprisoned by China. These prisons have been given a flowery name Re-education Camps by China. Those who follow Islam are subjected to severe crackdowns and sent to other parts of China to work as labourers.China has a third province Inner Mongolia. The Mongolians here cannot follow their religion, customs and traditions. Education in the Mongolian language has been discontinued. Instead, Mongolians are being taught Chinese, which is called Han Chinese. Similar harassment is also practiced in Hong Kong. People working or speaking against mainland China through social media are persecuted too.

The Chinese nationals living abroad who speak against China are also arrested. They are then abducted and tortured. A large number of Han Chinese are being settled in Tibet, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, etc. to reduce the population of minorities living there. It is known that Chinas Han Chinese are the main population comprising 90%, while the remaining 10% are minorities. This minority population is kept out of governance, and all Government Undertakings are in the hands of the Han Chinese. Not only this, natural resources such as oil, gas and minerals in areas where the minority lives are also controlled by the Government. Minorities are deprived of natural resources in their own areas.

It is said that the biggest enemy of the Chinese are the Communist Party of China and its current Supreme leader and President Xi Jinping. You may remember that a few years ago, the people of China had revolted against their Government. Thousands of Han Chinese were killed by the Peoples Liberation Army and the Chinese Communist Party, when tanks were run over them. Similar atrocities are being committed on others. Even private establishments are not spared from this. In China, anyone who protests and tries to speak out is harassed in various ways.

Most importantly, Chinas expenditure on internal security is more than three times than that on its external security. China does not fear India, the US, Japan and South Asian countries as much as it fears its own citizens. In contrast, Indias defence budget is four times more than the budget of its Ministry of Home Affairs, meaning, on its internal security. India has to spend more money to defend itself against China and Pakistan. India spends relatively less on controlling its domestic population.

Chinas citizens are its own enemies. Not only this, during the Coronavirus infection, China had completely closed down its important cities. This greatly affected their financial condition. Worse still, the Chinese were barricaded in their own homes. (In India, only those places were closed where the Coronavirus infection was found.) In the near future, the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party will be held. Xi Jinping wants to make himself Chinas President for life. Therefore, those who rise against him in the coming period will be oppressed and tortured more.

(Retd) Brigadier Hemant Mahajan, Pune.

India needs to tighten its belt to bring the tyrannical face of cunning China in front of the world and destroy it !

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Cruel oppression of those who speak against the Chinese Government - Sanatan Prabhat -

Teachers and Other Unionists Are Joining Iran’s Gender Justice Uprising – In These Times

The world is currently witnessing an uprising in Iran, in the face of great state brutality, for liberation from gender, social and economic oppression. This nationwide revolt, the latest in aseries of popular uprisings, was sparked by the brutal killing two weeks ago of ayoung Kurdish-Iranian woman, Mahsa Zhina Amini, in custody of the states Guidance Patrol, or morality police, for so-called improper hijab (headscarf and coverings legally mandated in Iran forwomen).

Protesters have called for an end to the dictatorship, that the policing of womens bodies be stopped, that hijab be optional according to each individuals personal choice, an end to discrimination against Kurdish people and other ethnic minorities in Iran, and an end to economic injustice. Women and young people are at the forefront of these protests and students at numerous universities have boycotted classes. At least 83 protesters have been killed by security forces. What we are witnessing in Iran is afeminist revolt that has sparked alarger anti-governmentuprising.

The current uprising also helps illustrate the centrality of gender justice to working-class struggle. Last week, Kurdish shopkeepers launched ageneral strike across Iranian Kurdistan in protest of Zhinas killing, and some workers and labor unionists across the country are taking action to support the uprising as well. In astatement this week, the Council of Contract Oil Workers said they support the popular struggles against organized and daily violence against women and against poverty and threatened to withhold their labor if the state does not end its arrests, massacring of people, repression, and harassment and harm of women because ofhijab.

On September 25, the Coordination Council of teachers unions in Iran threw its weight behind the uprising and launched atwo-day strike. The teachers, who have been engaged in a wave of strikes and protests since last December, wrote that the uprising shows Iran is still alive and active, and does not bow down in the face of oppression. The Council condemned the use of schools in the country as militarized bases to suppress protesters. They called on all working and retired teachersas well as retirees in government, army, and social service sectors, workers unions, athletes and artiststo stand alongside the rights-seeking people of Iran. Acoalition of women teachers on strike released their own statement declaring our solidarity with other justice-seeking people and protesters to this crime for which there is no accountability and never willbe.

While on strike this week, teachers urged Irans broader labor movement to escalate the current uprising against the Iranian state to help secure gender justice, democratic freedoms and economic equality. As 60 percent of teachers in Iran are women, they have an important role to play in the current uprising. The leadership of the teachers unions is overwhelmingly male, but women teachers have increasingly formed core cadre in the recent strikes and protests. Many women leaders in the teachers movement have made demands in recent months that are key for the success of the current popular struggle, and show the intersection of working-class and genderstruggles.

For example, these mostly rank-and-file leaders have demanded the transformation of educational content and textbooks to foreground gender equality. They have demanded the building of more schools in rural areas, noting that girls are less likely than boys to be sent to schools outside their village. They have demanded free education for all and an end to the privatization of Irans public education system, as alarge majority of Irans public schools now collect fees from students. They have demanded adignified wage above the poverty line for all teachers, and equal pay for men and women. They have joined countless freedom-seeking people in Iran in demanding the release of all political prisoners, whether labor, student, or womens rights organizers. They have demanded sex education around issues of healthcare and sexual harassment, as well as contraception, which is significant given Irans 2021 population law which imposed increased restrictions on abortions and banned the distribution of free contraceptives by the healthcare system. They have demanded expanded maternity leave and daycare centers at the workplace. And they have demanded that school administrations stop harassing them for improper hijab. These calls from asegment of working-class Iranian women form an integral part of the broader Iranian feminist movement which has been thrust onto the global stage in recentweeks.

In many ways, the slogan of Woman, Life, Freedom that has swept the countrys streets in recent days goes hand in hand with the slogan of Bread, Work, Freedom, which emerged during previous nationwide uprisings in Iran against austerity and the high cost of living, both in late 2017 as well as in November 2019 when agas price increase quickly led to anti-government protests. In November 2017, weeks before the uprising that year, five women workers in the militant Haft Tappeh Sugarcane Workers Union blocked off aroad in protest of low and delayed wages, the privatization of their company and the hiring of workers on exploitative temporary contracts. Actions like these show the importance of leadership by women workers. These workers are part of alarger Iranian working class that has taken part in an uptick in strikes and labor militancy in recent years, from sectors as diverse as petrochemicals, trucking, and heavy equipment. These actions have come as aresult of domestic and international crises in global capitalism, and the greed of both domestic and foreignelites.

The uprising in Iran must also be seen in an international context, as part of alarger global movement for gender equality across the world among women and trans, queer, and non-binary people who are facing different, yet interrelated types of attacks. Solidarity protests in countries such as Chile, Lebanon and Turkey have amplified the uprising in Iran and lent protestersmorale.

Within this context, we have the opportunity to connect the fight in Iran to the current fight in the United States for reproductive justice. Some of the same U.S. political leaders, like Mike Pompeo and Donald Trump, who helped lead the crusade against Roe v. Wade and abortion rights have claimed to support womens rights in Iran. But you cannot set back gender equality in one country and support it in another. And while U.S. politicians harm the cause of gender equality in the United States, they have also played arole in harming Iranian women. Both Democratic and Republican political leaders have imposed sanctions on Iran which have not weakened the oppressive Iranian regime or economic elite, who grow richer and more oligarchic in spite of sanctions. Rather, sanctions have exacerbated Iranians economic hardships, including straining Iranian womens access to reproductive healthcare. U.S .foreign intervention has aterrible track record, including the 1953 CIA-led overthrow of the only secular democratic government Iran has ever had in its modern history. Today, rather than the hollow support of the United States and other Western governments, the protests of thousands of everyday people in countries across the world are amplifying Irans uprising for gender justice, forging connections between movements to lend them meaningful strength andlongevity.

In March 1979, tens of thousands of women marched in Tehran against the then-new law of compulsory hijab, among other laws which attacked womens rights instituted by the new Islamic Republic which came to power after the Iranian Revolution that year. They believed, as todays protesters do, that hijab should not be weaponized as atool of repression by the state but should rather be apersonal decision for women according to their beliefs. Those women revolutionaries chanted We did not carry out the revolution in order to go backwards. They wanted the world to remember that women helped power the 1979 revolution against the U.S.-backed dictatorship of the Shahand for social and economic justice. Yet the replacement of the Shahs regime with anew oppressive dictatorship, the Islamic Republic, meant that the struggle for freedom was derailed and wouldcontinue.

The protesters taking the streets today are risking their lives to make sure that it does. As striking women teachers said this week, The rulers should fear the day we have nothing to lose but our lives, and that day has come, and until our pupils and imprisoned students and teachers are free we will not be in theclassroom.

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Teachers and Other Unionists Are Joining Iran's Gender Justice Uprising - In These Times

Hill TV Segment on Rashida Tlaib and Israel Is Censored – The Intercept

The decision of whether to post the segment was kicked from Rising producers to The Hills Editor-in-Chief Bob Cusack. In a call with Halper on Wednesday, he framed Halpers segment as similar to an op-ed submission, telling her that The Hill accepts some submissions and rejects other submissions, and that this right extends to Hill TV journalism as well.

Producers told Halper that perhaps a standard segment would work, but when Halper proposed to a Nexstar executive that she use her next appearance for such a segment, she was told her services would no longer be needed.

We wanted to let you know that we will not be needing you to appear on Rising tomorrow am, the executive told Halper Wednesday in an email she provided to The Intercept. Please feel free to submit any unpaid invoices for your work on Rising. We wish you all the best.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib has been condemned by some over comments she made about Israel. Heres CNNs Jake Tapper reporting on what the Michigan Democrat said and the response it prompted.

Im not a Jewish colleague of Tlaib, but I am a Jew and I am outraged. Not by Tlaib, but by the attacks on Tlaib. Rashida Tlaib is saying that Israel is an apartheid state and that people who claim to have progressive values cannot support an apartheid state. No matter how loose a definition of progressive we use, it certainly excludes supporting a racist apartheid system.

Whats outrageous is that Tlaib would be pilloried over her comments. Whats outrageous is that the Anti-Defamation Leagues Jonathan Greenblatt would claim that Israel is not an apartheid government. Whats outrageous is that Jake Tapper would accept Greenblatts judgment as the truth and not propaganda that needed to be pushed back against.

I understand that Greenblatt and perhaps Tapper feel like Israel is not an apartheid state but unfortunately for them, apartheid isnt about your feelings. Its about facts.

So lets look at the facts on the ground.

First of all, what is apartheid?

Apartheid is an Afrikaans word that means apartness. It was the official policy in South Africa from 1948 and 1994, allowing white South Africans, in the minority, to rule over and discriminate against the vast majority of Black South Africans.

But apartheid doesnt just apply to South Africa. In 1973, the U.N. defined the crime of apartheid as including similar policies and practices of racial segregation and discrimination as practiced in Southern Africa, as well as any inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them. In 1998, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court defined apartheid as inhumane acts of a character that are committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.

These inhuman acts include, among others infliction upon the members of a racial group or groups of serious bodily or mental harm, by the infringement of their freedom or dignity, or by subjecting them to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment; By arbitrary arrest and illegal imprisonment of the members of a racial group or groups. Any legislative measures and other measures calculated to prevent a racial group or groups from participation in the political, social, economic and cultural life of the country and the deliberate creation of conditions preventing the full development of such a group or groups, in particular by denying to members of a racial group or groups basic human rights and freedoms, including the right to leave and to return to their country, the right to a nationality, the right to freedom of movement and residence, the right to freedom of opinion and expression, and the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association. Any measures including legislative measures, designed to divide the population along racial lines by the creation of separate reserves and ghettos for the members of a racial group or groups, the prohibition of mixed marriages among members of various racial groups, the expropriation of landed property belonging to a racial group or groups or to members thereof.

Israels own laws certainly fit this definition of apartheid.

Look at the Law of Return of 1950 and tell me its not apartheid. The law allows any Jew, which means anyone with one Jewish grandparent, the right to move to Israel and automatically become citizens of Israel. It gives their spouses that right too, even if theyre not Jewish. Palestinians, of course, lack that right.

Lest you had any doubts about that, the Israeli Citizenship Law of 1952 deprived Palestinian refugees and their descendants of legal status, the right to return and all other rights in their homeland. It also defined Palestinians present in Israel as Israeli citizens without a nationality and group rights.

These laws together obviously fit into the International Criminal Courts apartheid criteria: The Israeli laws prohibit members of a racial group the right to leave and to return to their country, the right to a nationality, the right to freedom of movement and residence.

The Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law of 2003, which was reauthorized in March of this year, makes people who live in the West Bank and Gaza Strip ineligible for the automatic granting of Israeli citizenship and residency permits that are usually available through marriage to an Israeli citizen. Not only can non-Israeli Jews not get Israeli citizenship through their Israeli spouses, but in some cases they cant live with them in Israel.

More recently, the controversial Nation State Law established that The fulfillment of the right of national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people. It also stipulated,The state views Jewish settlement as a national value and will labor to encourage and promote its establishment and development. It cancels the status of Arabic as an official language, and omits all mention of Israel as a democracy, the equality of its citizens, and the existence of the Palestinian population.

This legal obliteration of Palestinians clearly fulfills the U.N.s definition of apartheid, dividing the population along racial lines by the creation of separate reserves and ghettos for the members of a racial group or groups.

These are just some of the reasons that human rights organizations havedeclared Israel an apartheid state. Of course it should come as no surprise that Palestinian human rights organizations have been calling Israels government an apartheid one for decades. Al Haq, Al Mezans Center for Human Rights, Adalah: the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, and Addameer: Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association have documented Israeli apartheid.

More recently, organizations like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have also conceded that Israel enacts apartheid policies.

Israels own human rights organization BTselem has declared, The Israeli regime enacts an apartheid regime. BTselem reached the conclusion that the bar for defining the Israeli regime as an apartheid regime has been met after considering the accumulation of policies and laws that Israel devised to entrench its control over Palestinians. BTselem divides the way Israeli apartheid works into four areas:

Land Israel works to Judaize the entire area, treating land as a resource chiefly meant to benefit the Jewish population. Since 1948, Israel has taken over 90% of the land within the Green Line and built hundreds of communities for the Jewish population. Since 1967, Israel has also enacted this policy in the West Bank, building more than 280 settlements for some 600,000 Jewish Israeli citizens. Israel has not built a single community for the Palestinian population in the entire area stretching from the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River (with the exception of several communities built to concentrate the Bedouin population after dispossessing them of most of their property rights).

Citizenship Jews living anywhere in the world, their children and grandchildren and their spouses are entitled to Israeli citizenship. In contrast, Palestinians cannot immigrate to Israeli-controlled areas, even if they, their parents or their grandparents were born and lived there. Israel makes it difficult for Palestinians who live in one of the units it controls to obtain status in another, and has enacted legislation that prohibits granting Palestinians who marry Israelis status within the Green Line.

Freedom of movement Israeli citizens enjoy freedom of movement in the entire area controlled by Israel (with the exception of the Gaza Strip) and may enter and leave the country freely. Palestinian subjects, on the other hand, require a special Israeli-issued permit to travel between the units (and sometimes inside them), and exit abroad also requires Israeli approval.

Political participation Palestinian citizens of Israel may vote and run for office, but leading politicians consistently undermine the legitimacy of Palestinian political representatives. The roughly five million Palestinians who live in the Occupied Territories, including East Jerusalem, cannot participate in the political system that governs their lives and determines their future. They are denied other political rights as well, including freedom of speech and association.

Israeli officials and politicians, too, have described their own country as an apartheid state.

Former attorney general Michael Ben-Yair wrote in 2002, we established an apartheid regime in the occupied territories immediately following their capture. That oppressive regime exists to this day.

Zehava Galon, former chair of Israels Meretz party, said in 2006, Israel was relegated to the level of an apartheid state.

In 2007, Israels former education minister Shulamit Aloni wrote, the state of Israel practices its own, quite violent, form of apartheid with the native Palestinian population.

In 2008, former environment minister Yossi Sarid said, what acts like apartheid, is run like apartheid and harasses like apartheid, is not a duck it is apartheid.

Even Israels prime ministers have used the A word. In a recently published 1976 interview, assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin said,if we dont want to get to apartheid I dont think its possible to contain over the long term, a million and a half [more] Arabs inside a Jewish state.

In 2007 yet another prime minister, Ehud Olmert,warned, If the day comes when the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights, then, as soon as that happens, the State of Israel is finished. Well, Israel isnt finished, but they do face a South African-style struggle.

Prime Minister Ehud Baraksaid in 2010, As long as in this territory west of the Jordan river there is only one political entity called Israel it is going to be either non-Jewish, or non-democratic. If this bloc of millions of Palestinians cannot vote, that will be an apartheid state.

Surely South African leaders who suffered, struggled, and finally destroyed apartheid in their nation understood what apartheid is. And the great South African leaders Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu saw Israel policies as apartheid. In 1997 Mandela said, The U.N. took a strong stand against apartheid; and over the years, an international consensus was built, which helped to bring an end to this iniquitous system. But we know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.

In 2013, Desmond Tutu recalled being struck by the similarities between what he experienced in apartheid South Africa and what he observed in Israel.

To my friends in the Democratic Party who want to support Israeland who who want be progressives, it is important to listen to what international law, Israeli politicians and South Africans leaders and apartheid survivors say about the apartheid system in Israel. But we would all do well to look at what South Africa did with its apartheid system. Simply put, it left apartheid behind.

So the question we should be asking ourselves as progressives and Americans and some of us as Jews is not how to excoriate Rashida Tlaib for pointing out the obvious, or how to turn all criticisms of Israel as challenges to Israels right to exist or as expressions of anti-Semitism. Rather, the question to ask is how an apartheid-free Israel would look.

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Hill TV Segment on Rashida Tlaib and Israel Is Censored - The Intercept

These are the voices of resistance: interviews from Iran, female-nonbinary radio takeover – CDM Create Digital Music – Create Digital Music

As people take to the streets of Iran and Kurdistan shouting Women, Life, Freedom!, Iranian music artists are raising their voices, too. With a two-day takeover of Radio Alhara by Iranian female and non-binary artists, artists inside the country speak to us about this moment and its connection to a long history of resistance.

Were indebted to some of these very artists for their musical inspiration. Theyve been leaders in where electronic music and performance can go, as with all genres; theyve been resonant spirits in sound. Now, I think we owe it to them to listen to their full experience and try to understand and share their fight for freedom.

Palestinian/international Radio Alhara hosts a takeover of its Sonic Liberation Front today and tomorrow, Thursday Friday September 29-30, entirely featuring female and non-binary artists from Iran and the Iranian diaspora. This itself is significant, as the Iranian government places numerous restrictions on music specifically for women. (See the interviews below.)

The first thing to do, then, is to tune in this radio stream and spread it to as many folks as you can (for the Americas, youll start early in the morning but still go through the full day). Music here covers the full gamut of sonic idioms experimental, electronic, jazz, classical, electro-pop, and eclectic.

Heres what organizers say about the message and participants:

In Solidarity with Iran and Kurdistan

Taking Over Radio Stations Around the Globe

Thursday 29th & Friday 30th of September

1:30pm to 3:30am (Tehran) | 12pm to 2am (Bethlehem) | 10am to 12am (London)

All Iranian Female/Non-binary Line Up

Aida | Aida Arko | Aida Shirazi | Anahita Shamsaei | AZADI.mp3 | Elnaz Seyedi | Eye-Duh | Foori | Gisou Golshani | Golbon Moltaji | Golnar Shahyar | Guess Lou | KUCHULU | LAFAWNDAH | Mariam Rezaei | Meshcut | Mona Matbou Riahi | Nazanin Noori | Nesa Azadikhah | Rojin Sharafi | Roody | Rosha | ROW [92] | Sahar Homami | Sanaz | Shabnam Parvaresh | SHEIVA | Xeen

Sonic Liberation Front: In Solidarity with Iran, will take over Radio AlHara on Thursday 29th and Friday 30th of September with an all-Iranian female/non-binary lineup.

Iranian and Kurdish history in the past hundred years is a story of resistance against violence and oppression. Most recently, on 16 September, the death of a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, Mahsa (Jina) Amini, ignited a nationwide uprising in Iran. Mahsa/Jina Amini was detained and beaten up by the morality police for wearing her hijab in an inappropriate way and died in custody. Since then Kurds and Iranians, particularly women, have been on the streets shouting Women, Life, Freedom demanding a free country, a fair government and the abolition of compulsory hijab. The Iranian government is violently attacking and arresting the protesters and has shut down the internet to limit communications.

Years and years of gender and ethnic minority oppression, the massive expansion of the lower class and the shattering of any hope for reform have caused the protest to grow bigger and bigger day by day.

We are standing by the people of Iran and Kurdistan who are risking their lives for freedom. In a climate where the Iranian regime is spreading fear to prevent Iranian and Kurdish people from raising their voice, we want to thank all of the artists who have responded to this invite and offered their mixes and, more importantly, their names in the name of freedom. These are the voices the Islamic Republic wishes to silence. These are the voices that used to be sung in private and are now shouting together in a fog of tear gas, in the middle of fire. These are the voices that lead Iran to freedom. #womenlifefreedom

#MahsaAmini #Jinaamini #FreedomIran #IranProtest

Listen live:

radioalhara.net

SLF takeover organizer/curator and artist Pouya Ehsaei sends this statement and speaks to us from the UK.

Artists ROODY and GUESS LOU speak to us from inside Iran hugely grateful to them for doing so, especially as that impacts their safety and has to occur through the Internet shutdowns they describe. (Text communication remains important.)

Rojin Sharafi, whose work you may have seen here before, takes time out of their European tour to answer questions in collaboration with friend and researcher Niloufar Nematollahi.

Images here are from the current protests (anonymous photographers).

Music canhelp you connect with your society by engaging with what you want to change.

CDM: Can you tell us a bit about the artists involved and the impetus for this broadcast?

Pouya Ehsaei: As part of the Iranian regimes strategy to shut down the movement, they are putting lots of their resources into identifying the activists and the leaders of the movement in and out of Iran. They are filmingand photographing the protesters on the streets of Iran and after identifyingthe protesters, arrest them in their houses or in somewhere in their neighborhood. Two days ago, they arrested one of my friends Sarah, a sculptor and a chef, at her house after searching and confiscatingher belonging. Outside Iran, they do a similar thing: they film the protestors in order to identify them and arrest them when they are returning to Iran. In my opinion, this is mostly trickery; they want us to fear being present, and they want us to prevent ourselves to take action against them. This is a strategy theyve been using for many years. It had worked for a while, but the new generation does not fear since they have nothing to lose.

In this situation, the act of putting forward ones name attached to a campaign that has big exposure like SLF in Solidarity with Iran is a radical action itself, and I appreciate the courage and dedication of all the artists who participated in this action.

When we see Internet shutdown what does that mean in practical terms? I see lots of circulating calls for Tor servers, stuff like this, but presumably, that doesnt help if Internet infrastructure is slowed down or ceases to work at all, right? How are you managing communication?

Roody: It practically means they are about to shoot people and use violence. The purpose of these shutdowns is not just to hinder mobilization or to block the sharing of videos showing police brutality.

It may not seem like an act of violence, but when nobody is able to document brutality, it is able to flourish. Communication by phone is impossible these days; most people meet in the streets. We couldnt even call each other sometimes.

Guess Lou: Well, Internet shutdown practically means this phrase appears under your internet connection: no Internet access. And no means no. No communication. And this happens every time people are in the streets to protest. Other times of year, big social media and many websites are filtered. It means you need a VPN for communication. You learn to manage these things by living in this country. It takes your time and your money to be online with the rest of the world. It means you are always slower than your friends in other countries.

I know this is really difficult in some ways for diaspora Iranians or anyone outside the country; how are you staying connected? What can we do to support you specifically in terms of working with you in the countries we share?

Rojin Sharafi / Niloufar Nematollahi: I think what independent media can do in these times is to reflect marginalized Iranian voices and open their platforms for discussions about the multi-layered oppression and struggles that remain partly unrecognized in the Global North.

Being confronted with oppressive narratives in media is very tiring. Media narratives pushing women* into inferior positions serve the same political ends as the policies that dictate Iranian women* what to wear and what not to wear. We are protesting against any kind of politics that demands us what to say or what to wear.

You raise questions of both gender and minority oppression and anti-reform, and classist policies these are issues that go beyond just musical ones. But what does this mean to music or musicians, and what can music do thats meaningful?

Roody: Music canhelp you connect with your society by engaging with what you want to change.

All protest songsact as tools to educate the listener to promote an ideology, encourage activism,and galvanize that movement by drawing people together and inspiringthem to take action or reflect.

This movement started asa result of decades of oppression against women in Iran. The ongoing protests mark a watershed moment for Iran and possibly the Middle East as a whole a womens revolution that spans class and ethnic divides and hopes to tear down patriarchy manifested in its most violent form.

Rojin Sharafi / Niloufar Nematollahi: I would like to highlight the importance of actions like this radio takeover. This radio show is not a means to prove our power to western media entities. Instead, we use sound as a means to bring together Iranian female and non-binary artists from inside as well outside Iran. Its a a collection of sounds, either gathered or created carefully by people who have been directly affected by the structural and direct violence of the Iranian state. People who have chosen to document their lives, thoughts, feelings and politics through sound.

This radio takeover overcomes the distance between different Iranians fighting for the same cause in and outside Iran; it overcomes the distances imposed on us due to politics. It is a means to create a record, an archive of the music and sounds that are shaping a revolution an alternative sonic approach that attempts to engage with the difficult task of pinpointing protest, rage, and political change as it unfolds in front of our eyes.

This radio takeover overcomes the distance between different Iranians fighting for the same cause in and outside Iran; it overcomes the distances imposed on us due to politics. It is a means to create a record, an archive of the music and sounds that are shaping a revolution an alternative sonic approach that attempts to engage with the difficult task of pinpointing protest, rage, and political change as it unfolds in front of our eyes.

The current uprising is unparalleled on multiple fronts. It has galvanized allclassesandsocial groups, with protests erupting in mostcitiesacross Iran although this has come at the bitter price ofdozens killedandthousands arrested.

Guess Lou: It doesnt matter what your job is in a repressive regime; if you are in the minority they dont let you into the game. The only meaningful thing to do in this situation is to resist. The regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran hates music and instruments. And yet I see that we have wonderful musicians both in the country and outside. It means at first we are facing suppression of music and then suppressing minorities. As long as you make music or sing or even listen to music, youre resisting and it is a meaningful action.

How can you best describe what this movement is about what it means to chant Women, Life, Freedom especially in terms of how it might have been misunderstood if people dont look past the headlines?

Guess Lou: In a repressive system, any new and different idea will be eliminated in the name of being foreign (and foreign means enemy in this system). This elimination will take the meaning of freedom from society. And the flow of life will turn into discouragement. Woman is the symbol of life because she can give birth. Iranian people are thirsty for freedom that has been taken from them for years. And they understand very well that the freedom of all depends on the freedom of women.

For those now in the country, whats the sense of where things are at? There must be some fears of greater repression of this movement; how do you respond to that? What can you tell us about the current situation on the ground, especially as we may not get a clear picture from only news and social media?

Guess Lou: I cannot describe to you all that is happening, but I need to mention something to you. This is not a new movement that suddenly happened a week ago. We have been fighting for years. Greater repression? In the fall of 2020, they killed 1,500 people in less than a week. They are pointing guns at people in the streets that should be used in a war against a foreign enemy who wants to attack the countrys territory. It is for this reason that the courage of Iranian women is talked about today. Men and women take to the streets to protest knowing that they may not return home. You may have heard our voice recently, so I feel the need to reiterate that this is not a newly formed movement. This is the voice of the Iranian people after years of struggle for freedom.

Roody: People in Iran have seen the worst; they dont want to stop. I dont want to stop. Every single one of us hopes for freedom. Ha I personally am not afraid of greater repression. I have seen Aban. xxxx

Especially in the west, there can be uncertainty about how to become involved or to be an ally. What would you ask musical audiences to do what sort of action can make a difference?

Roody: The only thing we need from them is to be our voice, spread the news, and represent our voice through your country for your people and government.

Guess Lou: Do not be indifferent to what is happening in Iran, Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Turkey, Lebanon, Palestine. Our freedom is tied together. I dont know what the best course of action is, but I know that those who care about freedom will find it well.

Do not be indifferent to what is happening in Iran, Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Turkey, Lebanon, Palestine. Our freedom is tied together.

What is the connection to the Kurdish community; whats your sense of their role in expressing this protest, following Mahsa Aminis death?

Roody: Mahsa Amini was Kurdish and Kurdish people are about 10% of the countrys population about 10 million people, living primarily in Irans northwest. And they have been oppressed by the Iranian nation-state, both under the monarchy and under the Islamic Republic today. Their language, which is distinct, is restricted. Their culture is restricted. They make up almost half of the political prisoners in the country despite being a small portion of the population. Their dissidents arent safe even when theyve fled. Iran has assassinated Kurdish leaders. And Kurdish provinces are among the poorest in the country due to economic exploitation by the state, which drives many who live there into deadly jobs like unregulated cross-border trade.

Notably, this is not the first time that Iranian women have courageously resisted these discriminatory practices.

Guess Lou: Let me tell you one thing clearly. It doesnt matter what ethnicity it is. If this happened to any girl of any ethnicity, the result would be the same as what you saw. Because we received this message that we are all Mahsa.

GUESS.LOU works across media not only music but also words and publishing, as seen here:

Listen live now:

radioalhara.net

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These are the voices of resistance: interviews from Iran, female-nonbinary radio takeover - CDM Create Digital Music - Create Digital Music

Oppression of minorities has caused the split of Zimbabwe into two states – Bulawayo24 News

President of MLO, Cde Paul Siwela

Contrary to the lies by the Emmerson Mnangagwa that his administration respects the rights of the minorities, Matabele genocide, tribal oppression, segregation, gross human rights abuse, political persecution death threats against tMatabeles who dare speak against their plight in Zimbabwe and farm grabs has forced Matabeles to call for the breakaway of Matabeleland to form the Republic of Matabeleland.

The white minority could only submit and watch helplessly in 2000 when their properties that included farms and companies where grabbed by Zanupf leaders and war veterans. The bulk of the white people were also dispersed into exile. These are other events that demonstrate the gross abuse of minorities rights in Zimbabwe.

To this effect the Zimbabwe government through former President Mugabe and incumbent President Mr Emmerson Mnangagwa has been served with a Notice of Demand For The Restoration of Matabeleland State by Matabeleland Liberation Organisation through our President Cde Paul Siwela.

Right now as we speak the President of Zimbabwe Mr Mnangagwa, knows pretty well that his government is operating on borrowed time in Matabeleland after receiving the Notice. He is aware that Zimbabwe has technically split into two states, the Republic of Matabeleland and Zimbabwe pending the official announcement of Matabeleland breakaway.

Matabeleland genocide wherein The Zimbabwe National Army 5th Brigade, deployed by the Zimbabwe government, slaughtered more than 40 000 innocent Matabele civilians including women and children, raped more than 100 000 Matabele women, burnt down more than 100 000 Matabele homes, maimed more than 300 000 Matabeles and displaced more than 1 million Matabeles into South Africa and Botswana, remains unresolved.

The perpetrators of Matabele genocide like the current President of Zimbabwe Emmerson Mnangagwa, 1st Vice President of Zimbabwe, Constantino Chiwenga and many others in government and different sectors were rewarded with higher positions and hailed as heroes in Zimbabwe. The government of perpetrators will never solve a case of genocide which they committed. Matabeles and other minorities lives are not safe in Zimbabwe. The very government that is supposed to protect being the dangerous and number one killer of Matabeles.

Those Matabeles who dare speak against it are threatened with death or persecuted politically. We all know about President Mnangagwa's chilling threat that he will "shorten" the lives of any Matabele who speak openly about the right of Matabeleland self determination.

In 2011 the President of MLO, Cde Paul Siwela was arrested and charged with treason for publicly calling for the restoration of Matabeleland state. The government of Zimbabwe, feeling exposed and fearing the split, sent state agents on a mission to assassinate Cde Paul Siwela. Fortunately Cde Paul Siwela was tipped and he escaped to exile. After him, many Matabele youth have been in and out of Zimbabwe prisons for advocating for the independence of Matabeleland.

There is no unity in Zimbabwe but tribal oppression disguised as unity. There is no devolution in Zimbabwe but empty words written in the Zimbabwe constitution to prevent the right of Matabeleland to breakaway from Zimbabwe to restore the statehood of Matabeleland.

Zimbabwe will never know peace as long as Matabeleland is still part of Zimbabwe. Matabeleland will remain a thorn in the flesh of the Zimbabwe President Mnangagwa and future leaders as long as Matabeles are denied the right to self determination.

Give us Matabeleland or death!

Israel DubeMLO Secretary for Information and Public Affairs

All articles and letters published on Bulawayo24 have been independently written by members of Bulawayo24's community. The views of users published on Bulawayo24 are therefore their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Bulawayo24. Bulawayo24 editors also reserve the right to edit or delete any and all comments received.

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Oppression of minorities has caused the split of Zimbabwe into two states - Bulawayo24 News

Confronting Bolsonaro and the Far Right Requires Working Class Independence – Left Voice

On Sunday, Brazilians will go to the polls in the first round of elections that will be watched around the world. Incumbent president Jair Bolsonaro has seen his support plummet amid a devastating coronavirus pandemic, rising inflation and food costs, increasing poverty and severe deforestation in the Amazon. His most recognized challenger is the former president and Workers Party leader, Luis Ignacio Lula da Silva. Amid the many crises facing the Bolsonaro government, various representatives of the Brazilian capitalist class have gone over to the Lula campaign. Among them are many leaders of the impeachment process (in reality, an institutional coup) against Dilma Rouseff, Lulas successor. The largest party to the left of the Workers Party, the Party of Socialism and Liberty (PSOL), has also decided not to run its own presidential candidate and will instead support Lula in the first round. This despite Lulas promise to maintain all the privatizations and labor reforms enacted under Bolsonaro. Yet there does exist an electoral force which maintains class independence and calls for the revocation of all Bolsonaros measures, the Socialist Revolutionary Pole (PSR). Left Voice spoke with Marcello Pablito and Mara Machado, two members of the Revolutionary Workers Movement (MRT) party who are running for seats in the national legislature on the PSR slate.

Left Voice: How do you characterize the national situation in the midst of this years elections?

Marcello Pablito: This years elections in Brazil will take place in a deeply polarized political scenario. On one side is the current president Jair Bolsonaro, a representative of the Brazilian extreme right wing that detests women, Black people, and the LGBTQ community. On the other side is Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the former president and leader of the Workers Party (or PT). Lula was prevented from running in the previous elections due to a highly anti-democratic Supreme Court ruling. In these elections, Lula, who is currently ahead in the polls, is running on a ticket with Geraldo Alckmin, a representative of Brazilian neoliberalism. Its important to note that Bolsonaro came to power after the institutional coup of 2016, spearheaded by Congress and the judiciary. After approving measures such as a labor reform, welfare reform and the unrestricted outsourcing law, the same sectors that were in favor of the completely authoritarian measures that brought Bolsonaro to power are now standing against him and demogocially calling for defense of democracy. They are united with Bolsonaro, however, in their defense of all the ultraliberal and anti-worker economic measures of recent years.

Mara Machado: Bolsonaros government was not only responsible for more than 700,000 deaths in Brazil during the pandemic but also brought more hunger, unemployment, and misery to a country that has been battered by economic crisis since 2013. The pandemic worsened all social indicators for the poor, who also faced countless economic austerity measures by the coup government of Michel Temer beginning in 2016 and later the government of Bolsonaro. The global inflationary crisis and the rise in food prices with the war in Ukraine is severely impacting Brazil and creating an unstable economic picture. This has a direct impact on the Brazilian elections. Despite a partial recovery in GDP, the structural crisis remains and is being felt by millions of people who work in precarious jobs and are hit by rising cost of food. It is telling that Brazil is facing its lowest meat consumption since 1994, with 33 million people suffering from hunger and 120 million people in a situation of food insecurity in the country that produces the most food in the world.

Lula, meanwhile, promises to return the country to the economic bonanza of the 2000s. Its a total illusion in the face of the current economic projections. The scenario is vastly different from the period in which Lula first assumed office. Two decades ago, the price of raw materials was high and there was an inflow of dollars into the country, due to both the growth of the Chinese economy which has since slowed considerably and is now growing at its lowest level in 30 years and investments from Western capital. Lula already warns that if he wins the elections he will not be able to perform miracles, a euphemism for continuing many of the same economic policies enacted since the 2016 coup, like the labor reform and social security reform, an agenda he shares with the liberal Right.

Left Voice: Why did MRT decide to launch candidacies this year? How would you define the MRTs main ideas and proposals?

Mara Machado: We decided to present candidacies to put forward a left-wing perspective across the country. We have been in the front lines of the struggle against the institutional coup, while always organizing independently of the Workers Party. Our candidates are running on the ticket of the Socialist Revolutionary Pole, composed of several organizations of the Brazilian left like the PSTU, the CST and other left-wing activists. Weve come together in these elections, alongside other left-wing allies and intellectuals, to advance our revolutionary and class independent positions.

Marcello Pablito: Both Mara and I are running in the state of So Paulo but in other states we are putting forward the same proposals. Our comrades Flvia Valle in Minas Gerais, Carolina Cacau in Rio de Janeiro and Valria Muller in Rio Grande do Sul, along with others, are standing as candidates in order to amplify the fight against Bolsonaro and the Right, and fight back against the labor reforms, privatizations, and other attacks on workers. As part of the Socialist Revolutionary Pole, which brings together various socialist organizations that defend class independence, we are calling for a vote for Vera Lucia of the PSTU for President and indigenous activist Raquel Trememb for Vice President. We draw inspiration from the Workers Left Unity Front (known as the FIT-U) in Argentina, which won seats in Congress for our comrades Nicolas Del Cao, Myriam Bregman and Alejandro Vilca from our sister organization, the Socialist Workers Party (PTS). Like the FIT-U, we believe that the capitalists must pay for this crisis and we will use our candidacies to build the strength of the workers movement and the youth. In this sense, our intervention in these elections is a preparation for the clashes that will inevitably arise in the next period, one in which Lula and Alckmin will likely govern but the extreme right will persist, despite the election results.

Mara Machado: We have defined some aspects of a program that we think is necessary to confront the current situation, one in which the Brazilian working class (particularly Black people, women, LGBTQ people, and immigrants) is suffering enormously. More than 33 million people are going hungry, millions are unemployed or hold precarious jobs, and young people see less and less of a future for themselves. Our program demands the revoking of all the counter-reforms that have occurred since the institutional coup, including the labor reform, the social security reform, and the spending cap on health and education. We say enough of corporations and banks profiting while working people suffer. Our program demands the non-payment of the fraudulent international debt, which bleeds our health and education budgets dry to increase the profits of foreign capitalists. We demand a radical agrarian reform that challenges the power of agribusiness and attacks the problem of hunger at its root. We fight for a radical urban reform that addresses the problem of housing costs and real estate speculation. We call for an end to precarious jobs, Uberization, and outsourcing and we demand the regularization of all workers, including gig workers, with full rights and benefits. This program can only be carried out through an independent political organization of the working class, based in the workplaces, schools and universities. That is why we continue to demand that the union federations, the National Union of Students, and youth organizations to break the paralysis and confront Bolsonaro and the Right. The strategy of waiting and channeling our into elections alone will continue to strengthen the far Right in the country. The Right will win in the streets unless we challenge them.

Left Voice: Why is it important to launch candidates independent of the PT and its coalitions?

Mara Machado: Many workers and young people have a completely legitimate hatred of Bolsonaro and the extreme right and want to defeat this government and its attacks. However, it is impossible to seriously confront Bolsonaroby by forming alliances with sectors of the right wing like former So Paolo governor Geraldo Alckmin (now running on a ticket with Lula) or former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso or institutions like the Supreme Court. These were precisely the figures and institutions who paved the way for Bolsonaro to come to power and are in favor of all his neoliberal attacks. To seriously confront the extreme right we need a class-independent program that unites workers against big business and the banks.

Just look at who Lulas supporters are. Besides having Alckmin as his vice-president, who is a symbol of the neoliberal right-wing that repressed the teachers, subway workers, and university workers when he was governor, Lula has supporters like Fernando Henrique Cardoso who applied the austerity measures dictated by Washington in the 1990s and repressed the historic 1995 oil workers strike. Lula is also supported by Henrique Meirelles, a former representative of international finance capital. Meirelles served as Finance Minister under the coup leader Michel Temer, and said recently that his support for the Lula-Alckmin ticket is conditional on their government maintaining the labor reforms in place. Lula has also received public support from various leaders of the Operation Carwash campaign and the institutional coup against former President Dilma Rousseff.

The victory of the Lula-Alckmin ticket in these elections will not be the end of Bolsonaros legacy or the authoritarian political regime. On the contrary, the reactionary opposition will retain at least 30-35 percent support throughout the country, and the military and the judiciary will continue to play key roles in Brazilian politics. It is enough to mention that the Armed Forces was recently given the right to evaluate the election results, an extremely anti-democratic interference in the political process. The extreme right will only be defeated through strikes and mass mobilizations, as our historical tradition demonstrates. The integralismo movement in Brazil, for example, was only defeated with a strong workers united front, with the Trotskyists organizing and uniting other forces of the Left in the famous battle of Praa da S in 1934.

Left Voice: What role do social movements, such as the black, indigenous, student, and LGBTQ movements play in defeating not only Bolsonaro but the far right in general?

Marcello Pablito: The misogynistic and homophobic rhetoric of Bolsonaro and the extreme Right serves to further subordinate oppressed people and to deepen the attacks against the entire working class, the womens movement, the Black liberation movement, LGBTQ liberation movement and the youth. This rhetoric also appeals to his social base, which includes most reactionary sectors of society: agri-business, the military, and the evangelicals. It was not by chance that the symbol of Bolsonaros rise was the stabbing death of the Black capoeira master Moa do Katend. More recently a Black woman who worked as a domestic employee was burned to death cooking with alcohol because she did not have money to buy gas for her home.

It is a government that fuels hatred against immigrants and humiliates Venezuelans who leave their country and try to survive in Brazil. A symbol of the the hatred of this extreme right wing was the murder of Moise Kabagambe, a Congolese immigrant beaten by his boss when he went to collect his unpaid wages. The far Right also directs its attacks against women who have been mobilizing for the right to an abortion. This in addition to the barbaric murders of indigenous people, residents of the quilombos [communities of the descendents of escaped slaves Ed.] and activists for indigenous rights like Bruno Arajo Pereira and Don Phillips, who were killed after denouncing the brutal violence carried out by mining interests against native peoples.

Left Voice: What are the next steps after October? What is necessary to organize the youth and the working class in the next period?

Mara Machado: The elections are an important moment in our struggle. They are a moment in which its possible to debate and to put forward political proposals with many more people than we can on a daily basis. Thats why we understand the elections as a space that we need to be in to strengthen the struggles of the working class, the poor, the youth, and all those who want to confront and defeat the extreme Right. But we must also prepare ourselves for the likely attempts at austerity that will come from a Lula and Alckmin government. Recently in Chile, we saw more proof of how class conciliation only strengthens the right wing. A strategy of conciliation, represented by Lula and Alckmin, is not an alternative and will not confront the structural problems of the country. In fact, Lula has already said that he will not revoke the reforms that occurred during the Temer and Bolsonaro governments and rejected the possibility of reversing privatizations. Only through struggle and organization will we be able to secure our democratic rights and take on the structural problems of Brazilian capitalism.

Left Voice: Here in the United States, the DSA, Jacobin and other sections of the Left have defended Lulas candidacy against Bolsonaro as an important step in defeating the extreme right. What is your opinion?

Mara Machado: As we said, at the moment, various sectors of the Brazilian political regime are trying to re-channel all the dissatisfaction with Bolsonaro toward a path of class conciliation and to neutralize any force to the left of the PT. It is regrettable that an important part of the Brazilian Left has completely dissolved itself in coalitions based on class conciliation. In Brazil, a large part of the PSOL, which since its foundation has molded itself on broad parties like Syriza in Greece or Podemos in Spain, has been programmatically and politically dissolved in the coalition of Lula and Geraldo Alckmin. As if this were not enough, the majority of the PSOL leadership has plunged the party into a dead end, forming a federation with the Rede Sustentabilidade [the Sustainability Network party Ed.], Marina Silvas bourgeois party, which receives funding from the bank Ita and is a fierce opponent of abortion rights. This turn to the right of the PSOL leadership led to the defection of major parliamentary figures from the party to the PT or the PSB (like the PSOLs former leader Marcelo Freixo, whos now in the same party as Alckmin), but also splits to the left, like an important group of activists and intellectuals. The PSOL has always been a party removed from class struggle, without a vision of the working class as the revolutionary subject, and with a broad party conception that blurs the lines between reform and revolution. The crisis of the New Anticapitalist Party in France, despite its differences with the PSOL, sheds light on the failure of the broad party conception. The crisis of the PSOL is an important aspect of the electoral scenario, and an opportunity for the revolutionary left to make strategic conclusions that can reshape the Brazilian left.

Left Voice: Finally, what would you say to American workers and youth, who have been awakening to political and union activity in recent years?

Marcello Pablito: Here in Brazil, we followed with great enthusiasm the struggles against racism and in defense of abortion rights in the United States. These mobilizations taking place in the heart of world capitalism for us here were extremely inspiring. But we know that for revolts to turn into revolutions and to defeat the most powerful bourgeoisie in the world, it is fundamental to have a revolutionary strategy and program that, even in adverse conditions, prepares the conditions to win and build a new future. We consider it very promising that opportunities are opening up with a new wave of unionization fights in the United States and that these struggles connect capitalist exploitation to racist and patriarchal oppression. These open up space for the emergence of a new workers force in the heart of imperialism, which by taking political power into its hands, could open a new chapter in history, one free from all exploitation and oppression.

Translated by Paul Ginest

Excerpt from:

Confronting Bolsonaro and the Far Right Requires Working Class Independence - Left Voice

Mamakwa: ‘We cannot have reconciliation without truth’ – DrydenNow.com

Sol Mamakwa is urging Canadians and northwestern Ontario residents to stand together and reflect on the tragic history of the countrys Indian residential school system today.

Mamakwa Kiiwetinoongs MPP, the NDPs critic for Indigenous and Treaty Relations and the partys Deputy Leader says reconciliation cannot take place without knowing the full truth of what happened to the thousands of students who never returned home.

Some praise the government of Canada and the Catholic Church for publicly admitting the truth of Indian residential schools. But admitting to wrongdoing in the face of undeniable evidence is not reconciliation. Performative acts of apology are not reconciliation, says Mamakwa.

Mamakwa notes the Catholic Church continues to withhold certain residential school records which would help identify children in unmarked graves, and the federal government continues to withhold oppressive practices towards Indigenous communities.

Mamakwas message comes from a video message and statement ahead of the second annual National Day of Truth and Reconciliation in Canada.

As the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation is upon us, we must reflect deeply on why this day is important, and how it brings us together. We must acknowledge that our history together since contact has not always been good, and that its long shadow is felt in our present. And so, the present dictates that we must come together in a good way, in the spirit of truth and reconciliation.Reconciliation can be an act of performance, or it can be the product of reflecting on the past, healing and making right. We cannot have reconciliation without truth. For many years, Indian Residential School survivors spoke of their firsthand experience of the abuse inflicted upon them, where many children were killed and buried in unmarked graves. The reality is that most Canadians did not accept this as truth, and it wasnt until our childrens remains were unearthed by the hundreds, and then thousands, that the truth could not be ignored.As we journey together on this land we now call Canada, we must never forget the former students the survivors of the Indian Residential Schools system. While we engage in actions, events and conversations centred on reconciliation, we must never leave anyone behind. There are survivors who still carry the unforgettable scars, burdens, and the unforgiving trauma from their lived experiences.I cannot overstate the impact colonial oppression continues to have even today the intergenerational and transgenerational effects of trauma on Indigenous Peoples and nations is real, and still far too visible. On this day, lets think of all those who continue to suffer from the lasting effects of the legacy. Reach out to them, and re-assure them that they have not been forgotten.We need to understand the past in order to build a better present, and stronger future, together. On the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, I encourage people to participate in public events of mourning, reflection and education. And I continue to ask the government of Ontario to recognize Sept. 30 as a statutory day off so everyone is able to observe this solemn occasion.As Canadians and Ontarians, we all play a role in reconciliation. If we can approach people with understanding rather than judgement, break down the structures of oppression, and heal together, reconciliation is possible.

Canada passed legislation last year to make September 30 a federal statutory holiday, one of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of 2015s Calls to Action, after the discovery of the 215 unmarked bodies in Tkemlps te Secwpemc First Nation.

The story made headlines around the world forcing Canadians to finally face the horrors of our former residential school system.

For over 100 years, over 150,000 Indigenous youth were forcibly taken from their families to be assimilated into residential schools and settler culture, which included giving youth new names, haircuts and identification numbers.

The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation says over 70 Indigenous youth in the Kenora area died while attending two local residential schools.

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Mamakwa: 'We cannot have reconciliation without truth' - DrydenNow.com

The Politicization of the Department of Justice – The Epoch Times

The following is adapted from a speech delivered on Sept. 16, 2022, in Washington, D.C., at Hillsdale Colleges Constitution Day Celebration.

The seal of the U.S. Department of Justice reads, Qui Pro Domina Justitia SequiturWho prosecutes for Lady Justice. Depictions of Lady Justice are as familiar as they are instructive: she stands blindfolded while holding the scales of justice, representing her unyielding devotion to equal justice under the law. Contrary to this ideal, the DOJ today appears to be increasingly motivated by partisanship. Compounding the problem, it has access to the powers of the modern surveillance state. As someone passionate about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, I believe there is no higher priority than addressing this danger.

The tragic events of 9/11 marked a turning point in our nations recent civil rights history. First the terrorists attacked usand then, in the name of national security, we began to attack ourselves. It has become almost clich to say that we live in a surveillance state, but we do. Ever since Congress, on a fully bipartisan basis, enacted the Patriot Act six weeks after the attacks on 9/11, the ever-present eye of the government has been searching for new and creative ways to spy on American citizens. The government has the technology to monitor all of our electronic devices, listen to our phone calls, and read our emails and text messagesall under the auspices of national security.

This special law designed for an emergency has become a permanent addition to the governments investigatory toolbox. The unfortunate reality is that the bulk of the actions taken by law enforcement under the Patriot Act have almost nothing to do with combating terrorism. Once-rare applications for surveillance warrants to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court have multiplied many times in relative peacetime. Most of the spying conducted under the Patriot Act is for run-of-the-mill crimes that weve long expected law enforcement to address without special surveillance authority.

Now, it is bad enough to have a politically-neutral surveillance state controlled by the national security crowd and their DOJ cousins. But take that panopticon and put it in the hands of an executive branch willing to weaponize its reams of information against its perceived political enemies, and weve got a frightening problem on our hands.

Laws such as the Patriot Act were designed to fight the unique problem of terrorism. But they quickly morphed into a mechanism by which the government keeps constant tabs on law-abiding Americans and threatens to disrupt their lives if they dare act contrary to those in power. And its within this world of omnipotent oversight and control that the U.S. Department of Justice now operates. They have all the tools of the surveillance state at their disposal, and the only thing standing in their way is an independent judiciary willing to enforce our constitutional rights. But we all saw how easy it is to spy on Americanswith virtually no judicial oversightfrom the disgraceful episodes of broad surveillance applications, on flimsy and sometimes falsified pretexts, against citizens such as Carter Page.

* * *

Let me discuss three recent examples that illustrate the threats we face from a politicized DOJ: the DOJ raid on Project Veritas journalists, the DOJ raid on Mar-a-Lago, and the DOJs efforts to undermine election integrity and chill free speech.

In July 2021, Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a memo forbidding federal prosecutors from seizing journalists records. He did this with much fanfare, hauteur, and virtue signaling. But even as Mr. Garland was decrying the seizure of journalists records as a wrong his department would not let happen, the DOJ was in the midst of a year-long campaign of spying on Project Veritasa campaign that involved no fewer than 19 clandestine subpoenas, orders, and warrants obtained from nine magistrate judges. The secrecy of this spying campaign was maintained through the use of wide-ranging gag orders, including at least two that were obtained without notice to the judge overseeing the Project Veritas case. Through this spying campaign, we now know that the DOJ obtained approximately 200,000 Project Veritas emails from Microsoft and countless text messages (and heaven knows what else) from Apple, Google, Uber, and other still unknown companies.

Only six months after Mr. Garlands memo was issued, the DOJ raided the homes of three Project Veritas journalists, seizing 47 electronic devices. And how did the world learn about this? Conveniently, someone leaked information about the raids toThe New York Timeswhich Project Veritas happens to be suing. Indeed,The New York Timescalled Project Veritas for comment as the raids were still in progress.

What was the pretext for the raids? In the fall of 2020, confidential sources had approached Project Veritas journalists with a diary and other materials supposedly belonging to Ashley Biden, the Presidents daughter. The sources said that the materials had been in their possession prior to contacting Project Veritas. The Project Veritas journalists proceeded to investigate whether the materials were authentic and whether the allegations they contained against Joe Biden were true. Ultimately, Project Veritas decided it could not sufficiently verify the allegations and that it would not publish the diarys contents. It then turned the items over to local law enforcement in Florida.

The DOJ claims that Ashley Bidens belongings were stolen. Project Veritas was told they werent, but even this is legally irrelevant. In the 2001 caseBartnicki v. Vopper, the U.S. Supreme Court held unequivocally that as long as journalists did not commit an alleged theft themselves, they were entitled to receive, investigate, and publish (or not publish) supposedly stolen materials. In the more recent caseDNC v. Russian Federation, a federal court made it clear that the reporter could even ask for the stolen materials. This is not a crimeits called journalism.

Compare the DOJs treatment of Project Veritas to the DOJs inaction earlier this year when aPoliticoreporter was given a U.S. Supreme Court draft opinion overturningRoe v. Wade. ThePoliticoreporter behaved precisely with this purloined document as the Project Veritas reporters had behaved with the diary, except that thePoliticoreporter did decide to publish the draft opinion. The different reactions on the part of the DOJ seemed to hinge entirely on whose ox was being gored.

But to repeat, the Garland Justice Department was rifling through the emails and phone messages of Project Veritas journalists before Project Veritas even knew of Ashley Bidens diary. These documents contain donor information, source communicationsincluding communications from whistleblowers within the federal governmentand attorney-client communications. In its actions, the DOJ was not only ignoring court decisions and its own policies, it was violating the Privacy Protection Act, the common law Reporters Privilege, and the First and Fourth Amendments to the Constitution.

The Project Veritas matter is ongoing. Thanks to the DOJs leaks toThe New York Times, which themselves violate federal law, Judge Analisa Torres overruled the DOJs objections and ordered the appointment of a special master to review the seized materials for various privileges. Its a hollow victory, because Project Veritas has to pay tens of thousands of dollars for the privilege, so to speak, of being able to protect its own privileged documents.

Although I have represented and continue to represent President Trump in several matters, I do not represent him on the matter of the DOJs raid on his Florida home, Mar-a-Lago. But that raid is significant and worth some attention.

Consider first the raids timing. President Bidens approval ratings have been abysmal, and it is a mid-term election year.Bloombergreports that the DOJ will likely delay charging Trump with anything arising from the raid on his home until after the mid-terms. The effect of this is to create a cloud of perceived guilt running up to Nov. 8, and use that as a political tool to smear pro-Trump voters and candidates. The DOJ hides behind its longstanding policy of not taking politically portentous actions close to an electionbut how could the raid itself be construed as anything but such a portentous action?

President Trump and his lawyers were engaged in a cooperative dialogue with both the DOJ and National Archives representatives on the issue of storing and archiving confidential documents. He went as far as to invite the DOJ to survey the documents he had on his property, and the DOJ seemed to have expressed little urgency in pursuing the matter.

This latest episode of G-men gone wild is not all that different from the FBI strategy before and after Trumps election in 2016, when the FBI was weaponized to investigate claims of Russian collusion that ultimately proved to have been made up by Democrat operatives. But more importantly, the raid raises serious constitutional objections.

The Fourth Amendment provides that the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

The American Founders were intensely concerned about government intrusion. Breaking into the homes of political opponents and depriving them of their possessions was common practice under the rule of the British king in colonial America. The use of general warrants and writs of assistance by the Crown was the ultimate interference with the colonists right to political and personal autonomy. Such invasions were so pervasive, and so universally despised, that the Founders saw fit to ensure that the Constitution expressly forbids such practices.

For over 180 years after the Founding, the Supreme Court applied the Fourth Amendments protections largely to places and things. Unsurprisingly, this meant that dwellings were given a heightened sense of protection against government intrusion. The Supreme Court has reiterated, in the 1980 casePayton v. New York, that the physical entry of the home is the chief evil against which the wording of the Fourth Amendment is directed.

In addition towhereandwhatreceives Fourth Amendment protection is the question ofhowthe government can conduct searches and seizures without offending the Constitution. Searches are only permitted if they are reasonable, and a search is generally considered reasonable only when the government first obtains a properly issued warrant. Properly issued means the warrant must describe with specificity the places to be searched and the things to be seized, must be supported by probable cause, and must be issued by a neutral and detached magistrate. Taken together, this is colloquially known as the warrant requirementand it is central to any honest analysis of the Mar-a-Lago raid.

At its core, the problem with the FBIs search of President Trumps home is its inconsistency with the letter and the spirit of the Fourth Amendment. The shroud of secrecy surrounding the probable-cause affidavit used by the FBI to obtain the warrant prevents the public from judging whether the government had a valid reason for this unprecedented search. Even more, the list of places to be searched and things to be seized contained in the warrant application comprised a blanket sweep of the former presidents entire private residence and offices, targeting any evidence supporting a potential violation of a handful of federal statutes that are the usual suspects when it comes to politicized prosecutions.

While this alone doesnt make the warrant defective, the Justice Departments just trust us approach to support the raid makes it nearly impossible to determine the legitimacy of the governments unprecedented actions. This leaves us no choice but to speculate. And based on the information publicly available, the DOJs actions have all the trappings and appearances of a vindictive and politically-motivated fishing expedition.

As in the Project Veritas case, the judge in the Mar-a-Lago case has issued an order appointing a special master. In doing so, the judge pointedly observed that some of the resultant delay the government complains of is caused by the governments cutting corners, suggesting implicitly that the government abused the warrant process.

As has been widely reported, the DOJ is currently issuing subpoenas to individuals who have dared to question the 2020 election results. This is occurring against the backdrop of President Bidens vendetta against what he calls ultra MAGA Republicans. This is the type of behavior youd expect in a third-world dictatorship.

Included in the DOJs crosshairs are those who participated in the political process as alternate electors; those in Congress who voted against certifying the election results; those who organized or peacefully attended a permitted rally on the Ellipse in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021, even if they had nothing to do with the activities at the Capitol on that day; and those who have raised funds from donors with a promise to investigate and challenge election fraud.

All of these activities have long historical precedents in our country and are protected by the First Amendment. Indeed, it was Democrats who challenged the presidential election results in 2000, 2004, and 2016. Lets review the evidence.

In 2000, 15 House Democrats objected to counting Floridas electoral votes. Several members of Congress called the 2000 election fraudulent, and Texas Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson vowed that there would be no peace because of the allegedly stolen election.

In 2004, Democrats in Congress forced a vote to recess the joint session of Congress counting electoral votes in order to debate perceived election irregularities in Ohio. Thirty-one House Democrats voted to reject Ohios electoral votes and were applauded for doing so by Illinois Senator Dick Durbin, among others.

In 2016, several Democrats objected to the certification of Trump electors based on overwhelming evidence of Russian interference in the election. Maryland Representative Jamie Raskin objected to ten of Floridas electors based on a Florida statute that prohibits state legislators from being electors. Texas Representative Sheila Jackson Lee proclaimed, If in that voting, you have glaring matters that speak to the failure of the electoral system, then it should be challenged.

No DOJ action was taken in any of these previous years. What has changed, if not the politicization of the Justice Department?

Elections are the engine of our republic. They ensure the peaceful transfer of power and are the primary method for the people to influence their government. And our Constitutions elections clauseArticle I, Section 4, Clause 1gives states the primary duty of regulating the time, places, and manner of elections for federal office. The DOJs role is very limited in this regard. It has the power to administer the Voting Rights Act, a power that was once necessary to push back on Jim Crow laws. But the era of Jim Crow is long gone, and it shouldnt be up to a politicized DOJ to dictate what election integrity looks like.

The 2020 election was rampant with reports of irregularities. Some of these reports were more accurate than others. But states were right to take appropriate steps to increase the security of their elections in the wake of such reports. And yet, from its first days, the Biden administration has been bent on waging an intimidation campaign against states attempting to bolster election integrity.

Consider Georgia. The midnight ballot dump that pushed Biden ahead of Trump had all the appearances of manipulative ballot stuffing. That was followed by days of uncertainty about who won. Reports soon surfaced of massive ballot harvestingillegal in Georgiaas well as deeply concerning evidence that Mark Zuckerberg-funded nonprofits had placed personnel in election operations in blue counties with the effect of decreasing signature-matching efforts.

Given the backdrop in which the 2020 election took placewith new and expansive vote-by-mail proceduresits not surprising that alarms went off and that many citizens questioned the final vote tally. So rather than allow this scenario to repeat itself in future elections, Georgias legislature took action, enacting a package of election-reform legislation designed to bolster ballot security.

President Biden denounced these reformswhich, as many commentators noted, made voting easier than in Bidens home state of Delawareas Jim Crow 2.0. The DOJ sued Georgia to block the new law and issued two new guidance documents intended to put states including Georgia on notice of potential violations of federal election laws. It has used similar tactics in Arizona and Texas.

* * *

It is not just political activists who are subject to DOJ intimidation. Attorney General Garland recently issued a guidance document prohibiting DOJ employees from speaking directly to members of Congress. This was plainly in response to at least 14 FBI whistleblowers reaching out to members of Congressincluding Ohio Representative Jim Jordan and Iowa Senator Chuck Grassleyabout misconduct within the DOJ. Garlands action was highly improper, but it pales in comparison to the intimidation of concerned parents at local school board meetings.

On Oct. 4, 2021, Garland issued a memorandum directing the FBI to address threats at local school board meetings. This was in response to a request from the National School Boards Association that the DOJ leverage the Patriot Act and other counterterrorism tools to investigate moms and dads who were voicing their displeasure with school policies at local school board meetings.

Despite Garlands sworn testimony denying the use of counterterrorism tools to investigate concerned parents, whistleblower evidence tells a different story.

On Oct. 20, 2021, Carlton Peeples, the Deputy Assistant Director for the FBIs Criminal Investigation Division, sent an email directing FBI personnel to use the tag EDUOFFICIALS for all school board-related investigations. Whistleblowers say that the FBI opened investigations into parents in every region of the country. These included an investigation of a right-wing mom based on her participation in a Moms for Liberty group and personal ownership of a gun. Another investigation was opened when a dad was deemed to fit the profile of an insurrectionist after complaining about school mask mandates.

It is time to wake up to the danger.

On Nov. 11, 1762, King Georges men had a warrant when they stormed and raided the home of pamphleteer John Entick. They broke open locked doors, boxes, chests, and drawers and seized his private papers and booksall because the Crown suspected Entick of fomenting political opposition against the King. If the FBIs raid on Project Veritas journalists homes or President Trumps home at Mar-a-Lago teaches us anything, its that the political oppression of the eighteenth century remains a threat today. But today, in addition to brute force, our government has the power of the modern surveillance state.

As a graduate of the University of Virginia Law School, I would be remiss in speaking about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights without quoting Thomas Jefferson, who wrote: the most sacred of the duties of a government [is] to do equal and impartial justice to all its citizens. We must find a way to return our Department of Justice to that central principle of American constitutionalism, as it carries out its duties in the name of Lady Liberty.

Reprinted by permission from Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

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Harmeet K. Dhillon is a nationally recognized lawyer focusing on commercial litigation, employment law, First Amendment rights, and election law matters. She is the Vice President of the Republican National Lawyers Association.

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The Politicization of the Department of Justice - The Epoch Times

Nitish government has failed to provide justice to the downtrodden, oppressed and downtrodden in Bihar: Anil Kumar Latest Bihar News| Current News of…

Nitish government has failed to provide justice to the downtrodden, oppressed and downtrodden in Bihar: Anil Kumar Latest Bihar News| Current News of Bihar

Patna, 29 September 2022: A one-day dharna has been organized in Patna today under the leadership of the National President of the Democratic Development Party, Mr. On this occasion, Anil Kumar, while describing the Mahagathbandhan government of Bihar as anti-Dalit-Adivasi, said that incidents like murder/rape/torture and night trial on students fake Ambedkar Kalyan hostel on Dalit Dalit students of Patna-6 make it to think, Dont Dalits have the right and right to live in Bihar? Nitish Kumar should tell this. He accused the Nitish government of failing to provide justice to the downtrodden, downtrodden and downtrodden.

He said that after the formation of the Mahagathbandhan government, there are constant attacks on the Dalit exploited deprived in the state. Murders are happening. Justice is not getting. Today, the Democratic Development Party has staged a sit-in against this. The government of Mahagathbandhan has failed to follow the constitution of Baba Saheb. Atrocities and oppression are happening on Dalits every day. Work is being done to suppress them. Sometimes by entering the house and sometimes entering the hostel, students are being fired upon. They are being killed. Dalit girls are being raped. And justice is not being served.

Anil Kumar said that this government is useless. Dont Dalits and downtrodden have the right to live in Bihar? Have we lost this right? Nitish government will have to answer that. Why did the Mahagathbandhan government become a mute spectator and unable to deliver justice? People of this society are also being harassed here, lawsuits are also taking place. Where do we go for justice? What does Nitish ji want with the oppressed, downtrodden and dalits. He had announced that if Dalits are killed, they will give jobs. Where are you giving jobs? Tell this. Hundreds of Dalits were killed after your announcement, how many have you given employment? Your announcement has become a minister.

During the dharna, he demanded from the government to give Rs 25 lakhs to the families of those belonging to the Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes who have been murdered. Apart from this, the culprits should be punished with security and fair investigation of case number 338/22 and 339/2022 in Sultanganj police station. Kumar Mandal and Principal General Secretary, Shri Amar Azad Paswan, President of the Overpopulated Cell, Rajkamal ji, State Secretary Sudhir Rajak etc. leaders joined and in one voice demanded the government to stop the oppression of Dalits.

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Arab Intellectuals Accuse Al-Jazeera Of Ignoring Protests In Iran, Abandoning Protesters And Promoting Iranian Government Narrative – Middle East…

After the death of 22-year-old Iranian woman Mahsa "Zhina" Amini, on September 16, 2022, after Iran's morality police beat her because she was not wearing a head covering correctly, Iranian protestors took to the streets throughout the country. Footage showing thousands of protestors clashing with security forces have quickly made it to social media platforms under multiple hashtags. As the protests expanded and gained momentum, Arab intellectuals on social media expressed their disappointment in coverage of the protest by the Qatar-based and funded TV channel Al-Jazeera, which they accused of ignoring the protests, abandoning the protesters, and focusing on promoting the Iranian government's official narrative.

On September 20, Abd Al-Hadi Al-Shihri, a Saudi Twitter user with over 26,000 followers, tweeted under the hashtags "Iran rebelling" and "Mehsa Amini" saying: "Where is the Al-Jazeera channel on the protests that are taking place in Iran against the mullahs? Al-Jazeera and its anchors cover everything whether significant or not that take place in the Arab countries.[1]

On September 21, Nawwaf Al-Sulaiman, the programs manager at Safa TV tweeted: "I reviewed Al-Jazeera Breaking news account for an entire day and I did not find a single news item about the protests in Iran. What if these protests were in an Arabic country? Al-Jazeera would have published multiple breaking news [bulletins], relying on 'close and familiar sources' and 'exclusive reports.'"[2]

Analyzing Al-Jazeera's editorial policy regarding Iran, Syrian opposition writer Dr. Mahmoud Al-Shami, who has over 11,000 Twitter followers, commented on Al-Jazeera's breaking news headline quoting the Iranian president, saying: "The unprecedented oppressive sanctions against Iran are imposed on the Iranian people who yearn for freedom." Al-Shami wrote: "Al-Jazeera reports on everything regarding Iran except the protests and the crackdown by the mullahs' regime in Iran. This is not fair. You used to be described as the number one Arabic channel and you used to be highly credible but now your credibility has been lowered."[3]

Kuwaiti writer Ghazi Al-Nazel tweeted on September 22, asking: "Where is Al-Jazeera, which has always claimed to be the voice of nations, on what is taking place in Iran? Where is it today on the uprising in Iran? I think Iran is a red line for this channel if the issue is related to the mullahs' regime."[4]

While Al-Jazeera did not respond to the massive criticism it has received online, at least one of its anchors accused the UAE of playing a role in igniting the protest in Iran. On September 23, veteran Al-Jazeera anchor Jamal Rayyan tweeted: "There are a million exclamation marks regarding the role of the UAE in the protests that are taking place in Iran after it publicly normalized its relations with Israel and the moving of the Mossad office from Tel Aviv to Dubai."[5]

Rayyan defended the Iranian regime in a September 23 tweet, saying: "Despite being an enemy, [the Iranian regime] is a stabilizing element in the region and in the Gulf. Those who wish to see the West going to war against Iran while incited by Israel are delusional."[6] Furthermore, Rayyan described the protests in Iran as "fabricated" and "encouraged" by Israel. After taking down the initial tweet due to criticism, he wrote on September 25, "I did not know that I was an influencer until I was criticized by Israel's ministry of foreign affairs which sympathizes with the death of an Iranian woman and does not sympathize with the death of Shireen Abu Akleh. This proves the assumption that the protest in Iran is fabricated and Israel is the one encouraging it."[7]

Omani Twitter user Sultan_mq, who has over 11,000 followers, responded to Rayyan's tweet and accused Al-Jazeera of "promoting the narrative that the protests in Iran are a U.S. and Israeli conspiracy. Despite the fact that they are the leading supporter of revolutions in the region but when one took place in Iran, they opposed it and warned against it."[8]

In another tweet in response to Rayyan's tweet, Yemeni Twitter user and consultant at Al-Ghad Al-Moshriq TV channel accused Rayyan of trying to cover up the scandal that his channel ignored the protests in Iran. He then wrote: "Al-Jazeera has remained silent regarding a complete popular revolution in Iran."[9]

Comparing Al-Jazeera coverage of the Iran protests to its coverage of the protests of the Arab Spring in 2011, Yemeni journalist and researcher Nabeel Al-Soufi wrote: "Al-Jazeera heated up the people's sentiments in 2011 and today, it does not see what is happening in Iran and does not hear its people."[10]

Ghassan, a Saudi Twitter user with over 63,000 followers, tweeted: "In the past 24 hours, Al-Jazeera account on Twitter published only one report about the protests in Iran and it followed the narrative of the terrorist Revolutionary Guards of Iran (IRGC) that the protest is a conspiracy. Al-Jazeera cares only about Arab revolutions and cares less about the revolution against the turbans of terror in Iran."[11]

Fathy Abou Hatab, former general manager of the Egyptian daily Almasry Alyoum, published a series of tweets noting that he had monitored Al-Jazeera's website and noted that the protests news was ranked third on September 25. He later acknowledged that news about the protests have moved up compared to the previous day, however, he noted that "Al-Jazeera focuses on reflecting the official position of the government more than the position of the protesters. Al-Jazeera did not treat the protests in Iran with the same enthusiasm that it had with the Arab Spring protests."[12]

Syrian Twitter user Abu Omar Al-Shami attributed Al-Jazeera's soft coverage to Qatar's relation with the Iranian regime. He wrote: "The silence of Al-Jazeera channel regarding the events in Iran reveals the nature of the relationship between Qatar and the filthy mullahs' regime."[13]

Accusing Al-Jazeera of applying double standards in its coverage to the revolution in Iran compared to its coverage of events in Arab countries, Emirati imam and preacher Ahmed Mousa wrote: "A few months ago, a gas cylinder blew up in a kitchen in Abu Dhabi and Al-Jazeera reported about it to insinuate to people about a supposed lack of security. Today, in Iran there are dead and wounded people and there is blood, but Al-Jazeera remains silent and has gone deaf. This is how we learn that this channel specializes in sowing discord and in only attacking our countries"[14]

Some intellectuals went as far as accusing Al-Jazeera of focusing on igniting the Hindu-Muslim issue and on inciting Muslims against India in order to divert attention from the protests in Iran. Iraqi writer Sufian Samarrai tweeted on September 25: "Al-Jazeera is playing a dirty game to move Muslims feelings and divert attention from what is taking place in Iran, which includes oppression, killings, and dragging by the Khamenei gangs who pretend to be Muslims. It attempts to ignite the strife between Hindus and Muslims and mobilize Muslims in the streets against India instead of focusing on the shaking Safavid entity."[15]

[1] Twitter.com/Alshehri_dr1/status/1572360274824560641, September 20, 2022.

[2] Twitter.com/NawafSTV/status/1572503984992301057, September 21, 2022.

[3] Twitter.com/M_Shadi3/status/1572594133050560513, September 21, 2022.

[4] Twitter.com/bo_bder20/status/1572833936937476096, September 22, 2022.

[5] Twitter.com/jamalrayyan/status/1573448691071045671, September 23, 2022.

[6] Twitter.com/jamalrayyan/status/1573441817512939520, September 23, 2022.

[7] Twitter.com/jamalrayyan/status/1574064341871169544, September 25, 2022.

[8] Twitter.com/sultan_mq7/status/1573674781223927809, September 24, 2022.

[9] Twitter.com/anwaraltamimi71/status/1574021536683593729, September 26, 2022.

[10] Twitter.com/Nalsoufi16/status/1573553349273817089, September 24, 2022.

[11] Twitter.com/gassan_z/status/1574109843560038403, September 25, 2022.

[12] Twitter.com/fmhatab/status/1574015922502877184, September 25, 2022.

[13] Twitter.com/aboomer399/status/1573673714671132675, September 24, 2022.

[14] Twitter.com/AhmedMousa_1/status/1573422980234895378, September 23, 2022

[15] Twitter.com/SufianSamarrai/status/1574079719812775938, September 25, 2022.

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PBS Spurious Narrative Of America And The Holocaust – Countercurrents.org

Introduction to a Spurious Narrative

Excessive attention to the 80 year old World War II Holocaust prompts questions: Why have constant reminders of the World War II Holocaust failed to halt contemporary holocausts; has the attention distracted from careful watching of ongoing genocides, and has it enabled Israels destruction of the Palestinian community? Public Broadcastings documentary, The U.S. and the Holocaust, adds to the controversy presenting a spurious narrative that insults the dedication of the American people in freeing the world of German, Italian, and Japanese oppression, which saved hundreds of millions of people who would have suffered if that oppression continued.

Added to the controversy are the obvious questions: Why now, what is the need for telling present day Americans that their long gone ancestors of the greatest generation may have faulted by not fully assisting a portion of the hundreds of millions around the world who needed help in escaping Japanese and Nazi oppression? Why has PBS resurrected the past rather than more meaningfully examined Americas role in destruction of contemporary ethnicities?

Disclaimer: I grew up during World War II in a large Jewish neighborhood in the Bronx, New York. We had close family in Warsaw, Poland and Paris, France. Several of them died during the Holocaust and others suffered greatly during the wartime years. Our familys wartime history appears in the book, After they Were Gone, available on Amazon. From knowledge and experience, the PBS documentary is a spurious narrative of Americas relation to the Holocaust, misleading in its delivery, meaningless in its thrust, and generates suspicion as to the reasons for its presentation.

The documentary stumbles from the title: The U.S. and the Holocaust. A preferred title could be: The U.S. and the World War II Refugee Crisis, which the documentary does explore. The stumble becomes a complete failure in the opening introduction, with solemn voices expressing opinions that intend to shape the viewers mind before seeing the documentary, subtly accusing American officials of complicity in carrying out the Holocaust and assigning to Americans a share in the guilt. We hear from Deborah Lipstadt:

How serious is Americas commitment to looking at the dark marks in its past? Where did we go wrong? How can we not go wrong the next time? Episode of America and the Holocaust is not one that we dance about.

The voice of a refugee follows this specious diatribe:

How did America treat its refugees? Those refugees who lost their lives because the Golden Door was not wide open.

The succeeding discourse to the opinionated and solemn voices creates an America haunted by bigots, xenophobia, eugenic theorists, and white nationalists, engaged in halting immigration from undesirable sources and reshaping immigration in the 1921 and 1924 immigration bills. These bills eventually established quotas, which are presented as a calculated deterrent to Jewish refugee entry into the United States after the Nazis gained control of Germany.

The commentator stresses that Eastern Europe was most affected by quotas, and it was no accident that these countries had Europes largest Jewish population, suggesting that the framers of the immigration bills had Jews in mind when preparing the quotas, and insinuating a direct link between the quota system and the Holocaust. More precisely, the nations that had lower quotas Eastern Europe, Italy, Spain, and even France were all predominantly Catholic nations and their state religion would have been a more likely cause for lower quotas.

Restrictions on immigration had a pernicious factor and xenophobia did not entirely guide the European quotas. The 1920 era immigration laws, which replaced a haphazard immigration policy with a firm reference to laws, eventually culminated in the National Origins Formula. Based on the1920 Censusof the U.S. population, a census that included all of the immigrants, from the mass emigration during the last decade of the nineteenth century and first part of the twentieth century, the formula aimed to preserve the existing ethnic proportions of the population as calculated according to data from the 1920 census of the population. It took effect on July 1, 1929, before the start of the Great Depression and years before the rise of Nazi Germany.

In the National Origins Formula , Episcopalian United Kingdom, whose predecessors constituted almost the entire Thirteen Colonies, had the largest annual quota (65,721); Lutheran Germany, which had a small but sizeable Jewish population, had the second largest (25,957); and Catholic Irish Free State, whose previous emigres were treated as unwanted and second class citizens in the United States, had the third largest quota (17,853). Cultured and educated France, which enabled the Revolutionary War to succeed, was allowed only 3,086 emigrants to the U.S. The xenophobia arrangement of the immigration laws affected the Chinese; entirely excluded, they could not escape the violence and oppression from the Japanese invasion.

Continuing to voice opinions from individuals, such as Madison Grant, who had racial issues with immigrants, the documentary equated distinct voices with mainstream Americans. Popularity of eugenics among a few pseudo scientists and social practitioners enabled the documentary to link an esoteric lobby in America and a set of sterilization laws passed by some state legislatures to the Nazi promotion of racial purity. The documentary informs us that Americans, most of whom never heard the word eugenics or knew its meaning, embraced the new pseudo-science. Eugenics was used to sterilize the wrong people, snuff them out, and that was the eugenics the Nazis would pick up on. We are told that Hitler, when in prison, was pleased with America for its restrictive laws (Was a reporter in the prison with him?) and they mirrored Hitlers own beliefs. Yes, Hitler coordinated Mein Kamp with Americas racial attitudes and doctrines.

Gathering steam by having the damned few serve as damnation of America, the documentary turned its attention to the America Firsters, a group of distinguished Americans who encouraged neutrality. Industrialist Henry Ford, social activist, Father Coughlin, and aviation hero, Charles Lindbergh, also assigned Jewish financiers as culprits in the push to war. Producer Lynn Novick, in an interview with CBS News, claimed that when Lindbergh spoke, Americans listened. If so, why did Americans overwhelmingly vote for the internationalist Franklin Delano Roosevelt in four elections and relegate Charles Lindbergh to obscurity? Even if anyone listened to the rabble rousers, how did their rhetoric and American obedience translate into affecting the Holocaust? Nowhere does the documentary show any attachment between the America Firsters, who finished last, and the World War II Holocaust, which occurred after the U.S. entered the war. Why even mention their presence? What is the reason for insertion of this detail into the documentary?

America, as a racist and predatory country that had enslaved people, stolen lands, fought innumerable wars, and committed genocide of the Native American tribes, does not need an attachment to the World War II Holocaust to survey and criticize its past. The Holocaust only shackles proper analysis and discussion of shameful aspects of Americas history. Nor does the Holocaust need an attachment to America to reveal its horror and alert the world to its significance.

This article argues that the documentary is different than titled: America and the Holocaust. It is another documentary on the Holocaust with a twist uses spurious information to link the American people and their administration to the catastrophe and for a reason to pursue a hidden agenda. A one-sided video presentation adds nothing to the already available knowledge, serves as a manipulation, and corrupts public understanding.

This has been only an introduction to the detachment from reality of the controversial documentary, America and the Holocaust. A more complete examination of the program and statements made by its producers Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, and Sarah Botstein demonstrates the documentary is misleading, serves no purpose, and has a hidden agenda.

Debate of Americas Role in Persecution of German Jews and in the Holocaust

PBS producers, in interviews with CBS News, explained the documentary. (https://www.cbsnews.com/video/how-america-failed-european-jews-during-the-holocaust/#x). Producer Lynn Novick states that, Instead of opening doors (to Jewish refugees), we shut them. History and statistics do not validate this remark.

The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum at https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/german-jewish-refugees-1933-1939 describes the emigration of Jews from Nazi Germany.

In January 1933, there were some 523,000 Jews in Germany, By September 1939, approximately 282,000 Jews had left Germany and 117,000 from annexed Austria. Of these, some 95,000 emigrated to the United StatesAt the end of 1939, about 202,000 Jews remained in Germany and 57,000 in annexed Austria, many of them elderly. By October 1941, when Jewish emigration was officially forbidden, the number of Jews in Germany had declined to 163,000, most elderly.

Although some German Jews died from Nazi violence before U.S. entry into World War II, about seventy percent of German Jews were able to emigrate, with the largest number coming to the United States, ten percent, either survived the war in Germany or died from natural causes, and twenty percent were deported and died in the later Holocaust.

The Yivo Institute report JEWISH MIGRATION FOR THE PAST HUNDRED YEARS, JACOB LESTCHINSKY, 1994, estimates 150,773 Jews immigrated to the United States between 1936 and 1943. U.S. immigration records have 251,124 European immigrants entering the United States during that period.

Although Jews were only a few percent of the European population, during the latter years of the Great Depression, when economic difficulties created a barrier to immigration and a mass of the European population sought asylum from Fascist and Communist oppression, the U.S. opened its doors to 150,000 plus Jews. This number was 60 percent of the immigration to the United States during that time, not two or three percent, but 60 percent, several magnitudes more than any other ethnicity that entered Americas shores.

Assuredly, not all doors were open, but does the preceding information appear as, Instead of opening doors (to Jewish refugees), we shut them. The documentary fails to examine the reasons why more could not be done for the refugees and why German quotas were not immediately filled.

From the New York Times, March 31, 1933.

The Nationalist Socialists took advantage of the anti-German boycott and used it as a reason to promote the boycott of Jewish establishments.

The U.S. State Department did what all government foreign affairs agencies do make believe they listen to constituents and try to avoid trouble with other governments.

(4)A portion of those with frozen assets managed to emigrate, 60,000 going to Palestine as parties to the Haavarah (transfer agreement). Signed on August 25, 1933, by the Zionist Federation of Germany, the Anglo-Palestine Bank (under the directive of the Jewish Agency) and economic authorities of Nazi Germany, the agreement allowed Jews to sell their assets in Germany in payment for German manufactured goods to be exported to Zionist companies in Mandatory Palestine. Upon arrival, these Jews received a partial return, in monetary terms, of their assets.

An article, The Transfer Agreement and the Boycott Movement: A Jewish Dilemma on the Eve of the Holocaust, Yfaat Weiss at https://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%203231.pdf, substantiates the argument that the freezing of Jewish assets played a role in undoing the economic boycott against Germany. The article states, Correspondence between Heinrich Wolff, the German consul in Palestine, and the German Foreign Ministry shows that shattering the boycott was a key motive for the German authorities in concluding the Transfer Agreement.

(5) The Roosevelt administration could not immediately overcome previous President Herbert Hoovers instructions for the State Department to block immigrants who might not be able to support themselves. Due to this directive, bureaucratic consular officials often denied visas to people considered likely to become a public charge. FDRs 1936 re-election landslide permitted officials to modify immigration policy. From Time Magazine, The Troubling History of How Americas Public Charge Immigration Rule Blocked Jews Fleeing Nazi Germany, by Richard Breitman, October 29, 2019

After making it known that some consuls had been too strict in their use of the public charge, in January 1937, George Messersmith, now promoted to assistant Secretary of State, wrote a new visa instruction to consuls in Europe, telling them they should not reject applicants based on the mere possibility that they might become public charges. The result was a sudden increase in immigration from Germany, to about 50% of the quota. By the middle of 1938 the monthly quotas were filled.

(6) Because of the Great Depression, immigration was not encouraged and quotas in all major countries were hardly filled. In 1930, at the start of the Great Depression and before visa requirements became more severe, 23,445 Irish immigrants entered the United States. In 1935, only 453 immigrants came from an Ireland that had a quota allowance of 17,853, continually had citizens eager to migrate to the United States, and had relatives willing and able to receive them.

(7) The rarely mentioned flip side to immigration restriction is that during the Depression 1930s the U.S. exercised deportations that it euphemistically labelled repatriation drives. Former California state senator Joseph Dunn determined that local governments and officials deported up to 1.8 million people to Mexico and estimates about 60 percent of these people were citizens, many of them born in the U.S. to first-generation immigrants.

(8) Although severe persecution of citizens occurred in the Soviet Union throughout the 1930s, Ukraine in the early 1930s, Spain in the late 1930s, and China, due to Japanese aggression during the 1930s, the U.S. government did little to assist any of these persecuted peoples to escape their tormentors. By concentrating on a persecution, to which the U.S. authorities eventually responded, and by ignoring other persecutions, to which the U.S. authorities never responded, did PBS show a racial bias?

(9) When the persecution of German Jews intensified, showed signs it was there to stay, and the seriousness of the situation faced by the German Jews became realized, the U.S. government rectified its approach and did much to enable Jews to leave Germany and find a new home.

In spring 1941, Nazi Germany prevented emigration from its country and from its occupied nations. Escape doors were locked, and America could no longer play a vital role in enabling refugees to leave Europe. After December 7, 1941 and a declaration of war with Germany, U.S. authorities had no means to acquire first-hand information on the impending doom of European Jewry. The U.S. administration juggled rumors, sketchy information, and considerations of what to and how to do it until the Holocaust, which intensified in mid-1942, became completely known.

Spurious Statements During War Years

The programs producers, supposedly objective observers, answered CBS staged questions with spurious answers: Cant blame lack of action on lack of information. Everything was known mass deportations, mass killings, all this was known. Great coverage in newspapers.

Reports, statistics, and information demonstrate there was no lack of action before U.S. entry into the war on December 7, 1941, after which actions became difficult. Articles mentioning unconfirmed atrocities appeared sporadically and mainly in inner pages. Spoken and printed words could not convey the force of the tragedy. Unlike today, when global events are televised, rapidly communicated, easily shared, mass produced by a multitude of sources, repeated daily, and locked for posterity in Internet databases, knowledge of global events in the World War II years was limited, disseminated by the printed word, spoken word, and a 15 minute movietone newsreel for weekly movie goers. Having lived during the war period, I can testify that, if the event did not directly involve the person and was not accompanied by proven images, the written and spoken words did not sufficiently register. Americans read, pondered, and moved on to the stories that most interested them battles in the Pacific, movements in the Atlantic, what was happening to their children fighting on two fronts. Even if the public knew, what could the public do? What would John Doe, sitting in his living room in Houston, Texas, do after he read an article on a terrible tragedy to people in a German concentration camp?

Famines, during which millions of people died in China, India, and Ukraine occurred during 1927-1943, and few people knew or paid attention to them. By not having the media abundance and multitude of expressions available today, the public could not contextualize the Holocaust and the Holocaust could not gain attention from the public and government officials. Without first hand evidence, officials refused to believe that the Germans, considered one of the worlds most intellectual and civilized people, would perpetrate the crimes attributed to them. The Holocaust in American Life, Peter Novick, Houghton Mifflin claims that William L. Shirer, author of the Berlin Diary, who during the war was a European correspondent for CBS, reported that it was only at the end of 1945 that he learned for sure about the Holocaust; the news burst upon him like a thunderbolt. The mindset of today cannot judge the mindset of those fatal years.

Eduard Schulte, a prominent German industrialist, revealed to American officials the depths of the World War II Holocaust.

An Anti-Nazi and informant to Polish and Swiss intelligence, Schulte, during a July 29, 1942 trip to Switzerland, presented to Swiss Jewish investment banker, Isidor Koppelmann, his discovered revelation of Nazi Germanys plans to exterminate European Jews. Eventually, Gerhart Riegner, the World Jewish Congress representative in Geneva, received the information. After being frustrated by American officials in Switzerland, Gerhart Riegner managed to pass the information to the State Department, which deliberated until the report could be confirmed.

After confirmation of the Riegner report, Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles authorized Rabbi Stephen S. Wise of the American Jewish Congress to release the information to the press. Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, followed with his own telegram to Americas ambassador in the United Kingdom.

Washington,December 11, 1942midnight.

The Department accepts the proposal of the British Government for the issuance of a joint declaration in regard to the reported determination of the German Government to exterminate the Jewish people of Europe.

The documentary examines a few, very few, possible avenues that the U.S. administration could have used to assist Jewish refugees in Europe, but were supposedly thwarted by the U.S. administration. All of them seemed credible; deeper analysis exposes their failures.

PBS accuses the State Department of purposeful neglect for denying a June 23, 1943 request from Gerhart Riegner, the Swiss-based representative of the World Jewish Congress. Riegner asked for a special license from the Treasury Department foreign funds division, headed by John Pehle, in order to send money to help Jews in enemy territory. State Department staff said they were concerned that the funds might fall into Nazi hands. An incomplete story.

The State Department proceeded slowly in approving the funds and eventually approved them at the end of the year. Governments, during that era, did not easily give money to people who have their own humanitarian organization; they sponsored organizations for well-defined and well organized tasks. One commentator created doubts about the episode by stating that the money could be used to forge passports and bribe custom officials. How could Jews in Poland reach a neutral country (what neutral country?) and apply for entrance? Is it credible that the State Department would be party to bribing customs officials in a neutral country?

Contacting the Nazi government and offering to bring out the stricken Jews is lightly touched upon. Having the United States engage in dialogue with the enemy Nazi State, trust it, permit it to dictate, and trade material resources for humans does not seem plausible. How in war ravaged Poland, with Russian troops close to the Polish border, could any transfer be organized? Why would Germany, which was using the Jews for slave labor to help its war effort, release them?

The documentary mentioned that bombing the concentration camps and the rail lines that delivered the victims to them had been a widely discussed method for freeing the Jews from their oppression another wild scheme.

If the military was convinced that bombing camps and rail lines to them were effective means to liberate the camps, then they would have bombed the prisoner of war camps. Bombings did not have the precision they have today; hitting within 10 miles of the target was more the norm. In this case, hitting the target meant the prisoners would have died earlier either from the bombs, shot while fleeing, rounded up and shot, or more likely dead from starvation. No food was available for those already emaciated and unable to walk distances.

The U.S. could not adequately respond to the certification of the dimensions of the Holocaust until the beginning of 1943, at the same time its army took the offensive and the Russian military gained the initiative. As the military approached the killing fields, and, as the documentary notes, the U.S., in January 1944, created the War Refugee Board, part spy agency, part humanitarian agency, and part rescue agency. The War Refugee Board staff estimates they saved tens of thousands of lives, mainly toward the end of the war in Hungary, and assisted in rehabilitating the lives of many more. When the U.S. ascertained the appropriate time to act, the appropriate place to act, and the appropriate way to act, the Roosevelt administration acted. For some it was too little and too late, but those who make that charge are yet to prove that much could have been done to free the Jews imprisoned in slave labor camps in the middle of occupied Germany territory.

The PBS documentary naively informs us of what we already know that America is not entirely altruistic, that it invited immigrants when needed as cheap labor to work the mines and factories and build an industrialized country, that nations operate in self-interest for their own citizens and are cautious in reaching out to help others. The producers showed no understanding of a crucial element in the belief mechanism that differentiates the early 20th century public with the contemporary public belief is reinforced and confirmed when you or someone you know are there or able to observe videos, films, or a series of photographs that complement the written or spoken word.

After six hours, the documentary emerges as another documentary on the World War II Holocaust, containing a calculated intent of using spurious information to link the American people and their administration to the catastrophe. Why was this necessary? What was the reason? Did the PBS producers pursue a hidden agenda?

The Hidden Agenda

After being left numb by the PBS 3-part and six hour series, America and the Holocaust, questions emerge: Why now, what is the need for telling present day Americans that their long gone ancestors of the greatest generation may have faulted by not fully assisting a part of the hundreds of millions around the world who needed help in escaping Japanese and Nazi oppression? Why has PBS resurrected the past and dwelled on what might have been, rather than what can be, and more meaningfully examined Americas role in destruction of contemporary ethnicities?

If the purpose of the documentary was to alert Americans to be more vigilant in their duty to assist oppressed peoples in escaping from genocidal actions, why reference a decades old tragedy that involved a long past generation and, in which, nothing can now be done? Why not discuss contemporary genocides for a contemporary audience, with those involved with the tragedies?

We have the 1975-1979 Cambodian genocide, in which the U.S. replacement of Cambodian leader Prince Norodom Sihanouk by Marshall Lon Nol, played an indirect role. This audacious coup invigorated support for the Khmer Rouge, who gained power and proceeded to annihilate an approximate 1.7 million people of Cambodia society.

In the 1994 Rwandan genocide, where 800,000 people are reported to have died, the U.S. did nothing but make a few movies, decades after the happening.

On March 21, 2022, six years after the genocide started and had already been completed, the U.S. Secretary of State confirmed that members of the Myanmar military committed genocide and crimes against humanity against Rohingya people. The State Department also noted that this was the eighth genocide after World War II. What did the U.S. do to stop the genocide? Nothing. How many Rohingya refugees have been admitted to the United States? Maybe, a few thousand.

The United States has played a direct role, economically, militarily and politically in supporting Israels calculated destruction of the Palestinian people. By any definition, Israels expulsion of about one million Palestinians (same number as listed by the U.S. State Department in its declaration of the Royhinga genocide), seizing and stealing of Palestinian lands, daily killings and incarcerations of Palestinians, severe restrictions on their movements, confining them to a limited and narrow territory, constantly harassing them by destroying their agriculture and limiting their water supplies, and, most importantly, denying them self- identity that derives from being part of a state that protects its citizens, is genocide.

Nationality and religion enhance identity and are an answer to ontological security. The latter two words are more than an esoteric expression. They define what the Palestinians lack and most need. The absence of ontological security has accelerated deterioration of the Palestinian community, a process deliberately engineered by Israel in its severe repression.

In the documentary, Deborah Lipstadt says, If the time to stop a Holocaust is before it happens, then it means you have to lay on the table the ingredients that go into it. Maybe these ingredients dont add up to it But if youre seeing people assembling, in the kitchen, the same ingredients, youve got to say, you cannot wait until the meal is prepared.

Well, Ms. Lipstadt, do what you say, dont wait, inform the authorities in the government you now inhabit to get on the ball and thwart the intended genocide of the Palestinian people.

If the documentary does not fulfill its purpose when it could fulfill a purpose, what is the purpose of the documentary? Note that, All Burns films are released with teaching guides and are intended for use in the classroom, but getting The U.S. and the Holocaust into schools was of particular importance to the filmmakers because they saw an opportunity to fit it into the dozens of statewide Holocaust education mandates that have been passed. Put it all together and we have the obvious: The documentary has an agenda, which is to have the present and future generations of Americans believe they have committed a grave commission against the Jewish people and owe the Zionists and Israel continuous support in their destruction of the Palestinians, today, tomorrow, and forever.

Ken Burns has been quoted, This is his most important documentary. If that is his belief, then previous documentaries can be categorized as trivial and unimportant. This documentary insults the memory of those who died in the World War II Holocaust, encourages hatred of Americans, and reinforces a claim that Jews have excessive control of the U.S. media. While pretending it values lives, the documentary, surreptitiously, contributes to the destruction of others. PBS should begin an introspection of its operation is it a public broadcaster with allegiance to its public or does it serve as a public relations servant for a foreign government?

Dan Liebermanedits Alternative Insight, a commentary on foreign policy, economics, and politics. He is author of the non-fiction books A Third Party Can Succeed in America, Not until They Were Gone, Think Tanks of DC, The Artistry of a Dog, and a novel: The Victory (under a pen name, David L. McWellan).

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PBS Spurious Narrative Of America And The Holocaust - Countercurrents.org

Government Oppression in George Orwells 1984 – SchoolWorkHelper

The novel Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell is an American classic which explores the human mind when it comes to power, corruption, control, and the ultimate utopian society. Orwell indirectly proposes that power given to the government will ultimately become corrupt and they will attempt to force all to conform to their one set standard.

He also sets forth the idea that the corrupted government will attempt to destroy any and all mental and physical opposition to their beliefs, thus eliminating any opportunity for achieving an utopian society.

The novel shows how the government attempts to control the minds and bodies of its citizens, such as Winston Smith who does not subscribe to their beliefs, through a variety of methods. The first obvious example arises with the large posters with the caption Big Brother is Watching You (page 5).

These are the first pieces of evidence that the government is watching over its people. Shortly afterward we learn of the Thought Police, who snoop in on conversations, always watching your every move, controlling the minds and thoughts of the people. (page 6).

To the corrupted government, physical control is not good enough, however. The only way to completely eliminate physical opposition is to first eliminate any mental opposition.

The government is trying to control our minds, as it says thought crime does not entail death; thoughtcrime is death. (page 27). Later in the novel, the government tries even more drastic methods of control.

Big Brothers predictions in the Times are changed. The government is lying about production figures (pages 35-37). Even later in the novel, Symes name was left out on the Chess Committee list. He then essentially vanishes as though he had never truly existed (page 122).

Though the methods and activities of the government seem rather extreme in Orwells novel, they may not be entirely too false. Nineteen Eighty-Four is to the disorders of the twentieth century what Leviathan was to those of the seventeenth. (Crick, 1980).

In the novel, Winston Smith talks about the people not being human. He says that the only thing that can keep you human is to not allow the government to get inside you. (page 137). Corruption is not the only issue that Orwell presents, both directly and indirectly. He warns that absolute power in the hands of any government can lead to the deprival of basic freedoms and liberties for the people.

Though he uses the Soviet Union as the basis of the novels example, he sets the story in England to show that any absolute power, whether in a Communist state or a Democratic one, can result in an autocratic and overbearing rule.

When the government lies become truths, and nobody will oppose them, anything can simply become a fact. Through the control of the mind and body the government attempts, any hopes of achieving an utopian society are dashed. The peoples minds are essentially not theirs anymore.

The government tells them how to think. Conformity and this unilateral thinking throughout the entire population can have disastrous results. Orwell also tells us it has become a world of monstrous machines and terrifying weapons. Warriors fighting, triumphing, persecuting 3 million people all with the same face. (page 64).

George Orwell was born in India and brought up with the British upper class beliefs of superiority over the lower castes and in general class pride. A theme very prevalent in his novels, Nineteen Eighty-Four certainly no exception, is this separation in the classes.

The masses are disregarded by the Party. This is a theme which is fundamental to the novel, but not demonstrated as fully as the devastation of language and the elimination of the past. (Kazin, 1984). Kazin also states in his essay that:

Orwell thought the problem of domination by class or caste or race or political machine more atrocious than ever. It demands solution. Because he was from the upper middle class and knew from his own prejudices just how unreal the lower classes can be to upper-class radicals, a central theme in all his work is the separateness and loneliness of the upper-class observer, like his beloved Swift among the oppressed Irish. (Kazin, 1984).

This feeling of superiority somewhat provokes and leads to the aforementioned corruption of absolute power. As the saying goes, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

It is not even so much that the rulers want to become corrupt, but they cannot grasp the idea of an absolute rule.

They, as Kazin stated, cannot comprehend the differentiation within the system, and thus become corrupt.

This ultimately prevents achieving an utopian society where the upper class people want to oppress and the lower class want to rebel.

Orwell had strong anti-totalitarianism points of view and greatly satires Socialism, even though he still insisted he was a Socialist in its pure form, in this novel, and in Animal Farm. Many consider that Nineteen Eighty-Four is actually an extension of Animal Farm. In Animal Farm, Orwell

left out one element which occurs in all his other works of fiction, the individual rebel caught up in the machinery of the caste system. Not until Nineteen Eighty-Four did he elaborate on the rebels role in an Animal Farm carried to its monstrously logical conclusion. (Woodcock, 1966).

The two books primary connection is through the use of the totalitarian society and the rebel, and as stated some believe Nineteen Eighty-Four to simply be an extension of Animal Farm. Nineteen Eighty-Four, however, brings everything to an even more extreme but even scarier is the fact that is more realistic, such as in a Nazi Germany environment.

Nineteen Eighty-Four is considered to have great pessimistic undertones, Orwells prophecy if you will. It is also not known whether it was intended as a last words, though it was his final work, as he collapsed and was bed-ridden for two years before he died.

He did marry several months before his death saying it gave him a new reason to live. Orwells creation of Winston Smith shows a character who is:

in the struggle against the system, occasionally against himself, but rarely against other people. One thinks of Orwells having thrown his characters into a circular machine and then noting their struggle against the machine, their attempts to escape it or compromise themselves with it. (Karl, 1972).

Orwell writes more about the struggle as a piece of advice than anything else. This novel was widely considered prophetic, a warning of what could be to come if we did not take care.

Orwells method was to introduce the questions, not propose solutions. Most likely he did not have the solution, but it was his solution to help bring about the awareness of the existing problem.

The corrupt government is trying to control the minds of their subjects, which in turn translates to control of their body. Orwell warns that absolute power in the hands of any government can deprive people of all basic freedoms.

There are similar references in another of Orwells novels, Animal Farm, supporting the ideas of corruption and an unattainable utopian society which were presented here in Nineteen Eighty-Four. With this novel, Orwell also introduced the genre of the dystopic novel into the world of literature.

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Government Oppression in George Orwells 1984 - SchoolWorkHelper

In war on disinformation, a dubious crusader joins the fight the government – New Jersey Monitor

In the early days of the pandemic, when conspiracy theorists were ranting about things like the government injecting trackable microchips into people via vaccine, New Jersey launched a disinformation portal to counter the craziness.

In the two years since, theportal run by the states Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness has put out warnings on everything fromdeepfake technologyto the war inUkraineto, most recently,monkeypox. Just a handful of other states, including Colorado, California, and Connecticut, have launched state-run websites intended to dispel disinformation on elections, COVID-19, and other issues.

But is government one of the mostdistrustedentities around the best resource for debunking disinformation?

One expert says no. Britt Paris, assistant professor of library and information science at Rutgers University, said such state-run disinformation portals are unusual for a reason.

In many cases, people are right to mistrust state governments, given their history of oppression through policy, corruption, and cover-ups for corporate malfeasance, Paris said. You need only think about state-sanctioned police brutality and the release of toxins into predominantly minoritized and disenfranchised communities, both here in New Jersey and across the country.

She added: Because of this history, state-based initiatives are seen as questionable, regardless of where one falls on the ideological spectrum, and are easy targets for sowing distrust around their goals, even if they offer reputable information.

That happened last spring, when a federal disinformation-busting initiative by the Department of Homeland Security fell victim to public mistrust and ended just a month after it started.

In New Jersey, Thomas Hauck acknowledged the hurdle the government faces in gaining the publics trust. Hauck, a retired FBI agent and U.S. Marine, last month took over New Jerseys Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness intelligence and operations division, where the disinformation portal is based.

But New Jerseys portal is just one piece of the puzzle in the battle for truth, Hauck said. Providing accurate information will help build public trust, he added.

The reality is theres no one platform or agency that has the manpower or the means to track and dispel the amount of disinformation being circulated, Hauck said. We are making an effort to get reliable information into the hands of citizens.

Eventually the public will see that the information thats been coming out of his office is accurate, he added.

The portal, which offers users achecklistto determine if something is disinformation, has logged nearly 300,000 visitors since it launched in March 2020, Hauck said.

With so much misinformation, Hauck said his office weighs several factors when picking what to post on the portal.

They highlight trends that have the potential to incite panic and create distrust between the government and the people, as well as disinformation trends that have the potential to increase polarization, influence government actions or law enforcement responses, and exhaust resources and bring about undue harm.

Monkeypox disinformation the offices most recent alert falls under several of those categories, especially because it could derail efforts to stop its spread, he added.

The portal warns readers about viral videos and homophobic claims on social media that contain misinformation and contribute to the stigma around monkeypox. Such disinformation could discourage infected people from getting treatment, hampering efforts to curb the outbreak, statements on the portal say.

Paris agreed public health misinformation is important for states to address.But political and economic concerns undergird a lot of the distrust in governments, including public health matters, Paris said.

For example, information and health care systems have become so corporatized that the public has become suspicious of their messaging, she said.

And, she added, most topics are injected with ideological conflict these days, even and especially when it makes no sense.

Thats why the state might be better served by enlisting locally situated, trusted sources of information like community-based media and podcasts, churches, universities, and social organizations in disinformation missions, Paris said.

States also could reinvest in public libraries, public schools, and public media instead of top-down disinformation portals, she added.

There is no one-size-fits-all, magic-bullet approach, she said. But paying attention to who people trust is key.

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In war on disinformation, a dubious crusader joins the fight the government - New Jersey Monitor

Your policies were made only for our oppression: A nomads letter to free and just India – Scroll.in

Dear India,

We, members of the 191 Denotified Tribal communities, got independence only on August 31, 1952 five years after your Independence. From 1871, we had been categorised as being members of criminal tribes by the colonial government, stigmatised as being hereditary criminals. Though this was repealed 70 years ago, repressive customs die hard. We still have to give periodic hajiri (attendance) to the village landlord and local police station. On being found absent, we face punishment and exploitation.

Since Independence, many of us have been living in reformatory settlements created by the government. But we are nature lovers. Our occupations hunting and animal rearing are dependent on the forest but we were forced to settle in open prisons with many restrictions. Dear country, your policies are not made for our upliftment. They were made only for our oppression and pushed us into marginalisation.

Oh my dear India, over the decades, we craftsmen, pastoralists, snake-charmers, hunters, entertainers have been prohibited from practicing our traditional skills. We left our homes only to work as garbage collectors in your cities and labourers in your fields. But we have no use for your agricultural policies, for policies that allow our women to be sexually exploited by landlords and our men to be treated as petty wage labourers.

Oh my dear country, are your educational policies inclusive? We members of the Denotified Tribes have our own languages and cultures. Yet, 75 years after your independence, our linguistic and cultural values and resources are not included in school textbooks. We face exclusion when you enforce upper caste languages that you define as state languages.

Despite your strong affirmative action policies, still we face discrimination. Teachers do not allow us to sit on the front benches: you make arrangements for us to sit separately from upper-caste children. Oh my dear country, are you really liberal, democratic and progressive?

Oh my dear country, the bricks of your legislative assemblies, courts, government buildings and monuments have been made by our hands. The wood for your chairs and tables comes from our jungles. The Constitution was designed by our own Babasaheb Ambedkar. We want our voices to be echoed and amplified by our own leaders.

We will organise ourselves and fight for representation and we will win. Because Babasaheb Ambedkar gave us hope and showed us the path to winning our rights.

Yours lovingly,

Amol Shingade

Amol Shingade, an alumnus of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, is a fellow at Teach for India.

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Your policies were made only for our oppression: A nomads letter to free and just India - Scroll.in

Boston Liberation Center celebrates a year of organizing… – Liberation

Over 100 people gathered at the Boston Liberation Center on Aug. 21 to celebrate the organizing centers first anniversary. The Boston Liberation Center is a working class community center located at 194 Blue Hill Avenue in the heart of Roxbury, a historically Black neighborhood and one of the oldest neighborhoods in Boston.

The anniversary event drew attendees from throughout the Greater Boston area and from out of state for a day of cultural performances, political programming, local food, and to build relationships with their neighbors. The Boston branch of the Party for Socialism and Liberation anchors the BLC, and organized the celebration.

Since its grand opening in August 2021, the working class community center has been home to regular political and educational events, community discussions, a library, film screenings, tenant and labor organizing, and shares the space with other local organizations such as Jericho Movement Boston and the Black Mens Collective.

Labor organizers say, When we fight, we learn!

Inside the center, local organizers reflected on the successes and challenges of struggles the Boston Liberation Center and its volunteers have been involved with.

Recent Malden High School graduate Armani Dure first connected with the BLC during the Malden communitys fight against the mass firing of 105 teachers in June. Dure organized a student walkout and picketed a school board meeting with peers, teachers, and community members, supported by volunteers from the BLC.

Speaking about his experience organizing his classmates, Dure said, Everyday people can be moved to action through conversation and a little bit of pushing.

Other community speakers included Northeastern University dining hall workers and airport workers represented by Unite Here Local 26, and members of the MIT Graduate Student Union.

Commemorating Black August

Black August is honored every year to commemorate the fallen freedom fighters of the Black Liberation Movement, to call for the release of political prisoners in the United States, to condemn the oppressive conditions of U.S. prisons and to emphasize the continued importance of the Black Liberation struggle.

In commemoration, artists and organizers Joseph Jabir Pope and Al performed a song that was Popes anthem during his 37 years of wrongful imprisonment at Norfolk Correctional Facility. Pope is founder and president of a group of formerly incarcerated people called Ex-Offenders Unite. He spoke about his experience in prison and the importance of continuing the fight against the U.S. carceral system:

It falls on us to shine a constant light on what theyre doing in prisons. If we dont, theyll continue to get away with it.

A place to gather for art and culture

Many of the days activities happened not only inside the center but in the vacant city lot next door. BLC volunteers have been taking care of the lot since 2019, and earlier this summer collected over 200 letters of support from the local community. They submitted the letters with a bid for ownership of the lot to the city.

Attendees were invited to help paint a community mural, dubbing the lot The Harriet Tubman Freedom Park. The park is named in honor of the struggle for the Harriet Tubman House in the South End, which was demolished in 2020 to make way for luxury condos.

In the Park, Afro-Latino multidisciplinary artist, actor, and scholar, Jorge Arce, gave a history of African instruments from across the diaspora before inviting audience members to make music with him.

The Boston Dabke Troupe taught some basic steps and brought the crowd together for a community dance. The troupe performs the traditional Palestinian dance the Dabke at protests and events around the city.

Women report back from Cuba and Venezuela

The anniversary celebration closed out with a panel of women organizers from the Party for Socialism and Liberation and the BLC reporting back from their recent trips to Cuba and Venezuela.

All three panelists denounced the mass media and U.S. governments lies about these socialist countries and gave on-the-ground insight into the numerous successes of both, especially in regards to womens liberation. In both countries, women are active and respected leaders in the continued fight for socialism, taking up jobs as doctors, community representatives, government advisors and other roles that have long been male-dominated in the United States.

PSL organizer Rachel Domond recently visited Venezuela as part of the Alexandra Kollontai International Feminist Brigade. As a woman in the United States, seeing Venezuelan women taking their lives into their own hands and building their own society is such a critical lesson to bring back.

Happy first birthday and many more to the Boston Liberation Center!

After a successful anniversary celebration, organizers with the Boston Liberation Center remarked that the work was only beginning.

Down the street, Tenants at 225 Blue Hill Ave continue to fight for better living conditions with support from BLC volunteers. Union workers with Local 26 and the Malden Teachers Association are entering struggles for new contracts. BLC volunteers will continue to keep the Harriet Tubman Freedom Park clean and usable for the Roxbury community while they wait to hear news on their bid from the city.

As the event came to a close, PSL organizer Kim Barzola reminded the crowd of their collective power and duty to continue the work.

Each generation needs to find their own way to make these struggles their own, she said. Not just demanding an end to the capitalist system that undergirds all this oppression, but actively fighting to build a real socialist alternative here in the belly of the beast. The people united will never be defeated!

Contact the Boston Liberation Center:

Phone:(617) 858-1522Email:[emailprotected]Address:194 Blue Hill Ave, Roxbury MA 02119Walk-In Hours:Tues. 4-8 p.m., Wed. 4-8 p.m., Fri: 1-6 p.m. and Sat. 10 a.m.-4 p.m.Facebook:facebook.com/thebostonliberationcenterInstagram:@BostonLiberationCenter

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Boston Liberation Center celebrates a year of organizing... - Liberation

American rebellion: the lockdown protests that paved the way for the Capitol riots – The Guardian US

It started in Michigan. On 15 April 2020, thousands of vehicles convoyed to Lansing and clogged the streets surrounding the state capitol for a protest that had been advertised as Operation Gridlock. Drivers leaned on their horns, men with guns got out and walked. Signs warned of revolt. Someone waved an upside-down American flag. Already nine months before 6 January, seven months before the election, six weeks before a national uprising for police accountability and racial justice there were a lot of them, and they were angry.

Gretchen Whitmer, Michigans Democratic governor, had recently extended a stay-at-home order and imposed additional restrictions on commerce and recreation, obliging a long list of businesses to close. Around 30,000 Michiganders had tested positive for Covid-19 the third-highest rate in the country, after New York and California and almost 2,000 had died. Most of the cases, however, were concentrated in Detroit, and the predominantly rural residents at Operation Gridlock resented the blanket lockdown.

On 30 April, with Whitmer holding firm as deaths continued to rise, they returned to Lansing. This time, more were armed and fewer stayed in their cars. Michigan is an open-carry state, and no law prohibited licensed owners from bringing loaded weapons inside the capitol. Men with assault rifles filled the rotunda and approached the barred doors of the legislature, squaring off against police. Others accessed the gallery that overlooked the senate. Dayna Polehanki, a Democrat from southern Michigan, tweeted a picture of a heavyset man with a mohawk and a long gun in a scabbard on his back. Directly above me, men with rifles yelling at us, she wrote.

The next day, a security guard in Flint [a town about 50 miles north-east of Lansing] turned away an unmasked customer from a Family Dollar. The customer returned with her husband, who shot the guard in the head. Later that week, a clerk in a Dollar Tree outside Detroit asked a man to don a mask. The man replied, Ill use this, grabbed the clerks sleeve, and wiped his nose with it.

By then, the movement that had begun with Operation Gridlock had spread to more than 30 states. In Kentucky, the governor was hanged in effigy outside the capitol; in North Carolina, a protester hauled a rocket launcher through downtown Raleigh; in California, a journalist covering an anti-lockdown demonstration was held at knifepoint; ahead of a rally in Salt Lake City, a man wrote on Facebook: Bring your guns, the civil war starts Saturday The time is now.

I was living in Paris in 2020, where, since late March, we had been permitted to go outside for a maximum of one hour per day, and to stray no farther than a kilometre from our homes. Most businesses were closed (except those essential to the life of the nation, such as bakeries and wine and cigarette shops). Few complained. Id been a foreign correspondent for nearly a decade and during that time had not spent more than a few consecutive months in the US. The images of men in desert camo, flak jackets and ammo vests, carrying military-style carbines through American cities, portrayed a country I no longer recognised. One viral photograph struck me as particularly exotic. It showed a man with a shaved head and a blond beard, mid-scream, his gaping mouth inches away from two officers gazing stonily past him, in the capitol in Lansing. What accounted for such exquisite rage? And why was it so widely shared?

In early May, I took an almost-empty flight to New York, then a slightly fuller one to Michigan. My first stop was Owosso, a small town on the banks of the Shiawassee River, in the bucolic middle of the state. I arrived at Karl Mankes barbershop a little before 9am. The neon Open sign was dark; a crowd loitered in the parking lot. Spring had not yet made it to Owosso, and people sat in their trucks with the heaters running. Some, dressed in fatigues and packing sidearms, belonged to the Michigan Home Guard, a civilian militia.

A week before, Manke, who was 77, had reopened his business in defiance of Governor Whitmers prohibition on personal care services. That Friday, Michigans attorney general, Dana Nessel, had declared the barbershop an imminent danger to public health and dispatched state troopers to serve Manke with a cease-and-desist order. Over the weekend, Home Guardsmen had warned that they would not allow Manke to be arrested. Now it was Monday, and the folks in the parking lot had come to see whether Manke would show up.

Hes a national hero, Michelle Gregoire, a 29-year-old school bus driver, mother of three, and Home Guard member, told me. She was 5ft 4in but hard to miss. Wearing a light fleece jacket emblazoned with Donald Trumps name, she waved a Gadsden flag at the passing traffic. Car after car honked in support. Michelle had driven 90 miles, from her house in Battle Creek, to stand with her comrades. Shed been at Lansings capitol on 30 April, and did not regret what happened there. When I mentioned that officials were considering banning guns inside the statehouse, she laughed: If they go through with that, theyre not gonna like the next rally.

Manke appeared at 9.30am, to cheers and applause. He had a white goatee and wore a blue satin smock, black-rimmed glasses, and a rubber bracelet with the words When in Doubt, Pray. He climbed the steps to the front door stiffly, his posture hunched. When the Open sign flickered on, people crowded inside. Manke had been cutting hair in town for half a century and at his current location since the 1980s. The phone was rotary, the clock analogue. An out-of-service gumball machine stood beside a row of chairs. Black-and-white photographs of Owosso occupied cluttered shelves alongside old radios and bric-a-brac. Also on display were flashy paperback copies of the 10 novels that Manke had written. Unintended Consequences featured an anti-abortion activist who stands on his convictions; Gone to Pot offered readers a daring view into the underbelly of the 60s and 70s.

As Manke fastened a cape around the first customers neck, a man in foul-weather gear picked out a book and deposited a wad of bills in a wicker basket on the counter. My father was a barber, he told Manke. He believed in everything you believe in. Freedom. Were the last holdout in the world. Manke nodded. We did this in 1776, and were doing it again now.

Like the redbrick buildings and decorative parapets of Owossos historic downtown, there was something out of time about Manke. During several days that I would spend at the barbershop, Id hear him offer countless customers and journalists subtle variations of the same stump speech. Hed lived under 14 presidents, survived the polio epidemic, and never witnessed such government oppression. Governor Whitmer was not his mother. Hed close his business when they dragged him out in handcuffs, or when he died, or when Jesus came whichever happens first. Youre getting a scoop, he assured me when I introduced myself. American rebellion.

Customers continued to arrive, and the phone did not stop ringing. Some people had travelled hundreds of miles. They left cards, bumper stickers, leaflets, brochures. A local TV crew squeezed into the shop, struggling to social-distance in the crush of waiting men, recording Manke with a boom mic as he sculpted yet another high-and-tight. Around noon, [rightwing political commentator and radio host] Glenn Beck called, live on air. Its hardly my country any more, in so many different ways, Manke told him. You remind me of my father, Beck responded, with a wistful sigh.

Manke seemed to remind everybody of something or someone that no longer existed. Hence the people with guns outside, ready to do violence on those who threatened what he represented. You could not have engineered a more quintessential paragon of that mythical era when America was great. One day at the barbershop, I was approached by a man clad from head to toe in hunting gear, missing several teeth. He hadnt realised I was press. Manke had first come to the attention of the attorney general, the man informed me, because of a reporter from Detroit. He held out his arms to indicate the womans girth. A big Black bitch.

In the 1950s, when Manke was in high school, Owosso was a sundown town: African Americans were not welcome. Like much of rural Michigan, it remained almost exclusively white. Detroit, an hour and a half to the south, was 80% Black. Because politics broke down along similar lines less-populated counties voted Republican; urban centres, Democrat partisan rancour in the state could often look like racial animus. While conservatives tended to ridicule any such interpretation as liberal cant, the pandemic had created two new discrepancies that were hard to ignore. The first was that Covid-19 disproportionately affected Black communities, in Michigan as well as nationwide. The second was that the people mobilising against containment measures were overwhelmingly white.

On 30 April, the state representative Sarah Anthony had watched from her office across the street as anti-lockdown protesters filled the capitol lawn. Anthony had been born and raised in Lansing. In 2012, at the age of 29, shed become the youngest Black woman in America to serve as a county commissioner. Six years later, a landslide victory made her the first Black woman to represent Lansing in the state legislature. As Anthony walked from her office to the capitol, she had to navigate a heavily armed white mob. She noticed a Confederate flag.

A man waved a fishing rod with a naked Barbie doll brown-haired, like Governor Whitmer dangling from a mini noose. Men screamed insults. A sign declared: tyrants get the rope. Anthony was in Lansings House of Representatives when the mob entered the building. It just felt like, if they had come through that door, I wouldve been the first to go down, she recalled. We were in the rotunda, where she had insisted on giving me a tour. Her eyes brightened above her mask as she pointed out the starspeckled oculus in the apex of the dome 160ft above us. Its designed to inspire, Anthony explained. Her reverence for the building had made 30 April that much more unsettling. A sanctum had been violated its meaning changed.

The structure was an equally potent symbol for the people whose cries shed heard on the other side of the door, however. On the eve of the rally, Michelle Gregoire, the school bus driver and Home Guard member, had visited the capitol. Wearing a neon safety vest scrawled with Covid-1984, she and two friends filming on their phones had climbed a marble staircase to the gallery in the House of Representatives. A sergeant at arms informed them that the legislature was not in session, the chamber closed. This is our house, responded one of them, striding past him and sitting on a bench. The chief sergeant at arms, David Dickson, arrived and grabbed the woman by her arm, attempting to remove her.

You are not allowed to touch me! the woman howled. Dickson turned his attention to Michelle. When she also resisted, he dragged her into the hallway, through a pair of swinging doors. Stay out, he told her. That night, the women posted their footage on Facebook, with the caption: We are living in NAZI Germany!!! Many of the protesters at the capitol the next day had watched the clips, including the man with the shaved head and blond beard in the viral photograph. He was not accosting the two officers in the image, it turns out he was shouting at Dickson, who stood behind them, outside the pictures frame. You gonna throw me around like you did that girl? the man was shouting. Other protesters called Dickson and his colleagues traitors and filthy rats.

I left several messages for Dickson at his office, but he never called me back. Eventually, I returned to the capitol and found him standing guard outside the legislature. His hair was starting to grey, and beneath his blazer his collared shirt strained a little at the midriff. In 1974, Dickson had become the first Black deputy in Eaton County. Hed gone on to serve for 25 years as an officer in Lansing. After some polite conversation, I asked whether he thought that any of the visceral acrimony directed at him on 30 April might have been connected to his skin colour and to that of the white women hed ejected the day before. Dickson frowned. I dont play the race card, he said. Given his deprecating tone, I wondered if hed been dodging my calls out of concern that I would raise this question. It was a question you could not really help raising in Michigan. To what extent was the exquisite rage behind the anti-lockdown fervour white rage? Dickson had no interest in discussing it. Of his encounter with Michelle, he told me: I didnt sleep for weeks. You dont feel good about those kinds of things.

For others, the answer to the question was self-evident. After 30 April, Sarah Anthony acquired a bulletproof vest. Though she was an optimist by nature, her outlook had dimmed. People are angry about being unemployed, about having to close their businesses I get that, she said. But there are elements, extremists, who are using this as an opportunity to ignite hate. Hate toward our governor, hate toward government, and also hate toward Black and brown people. These conditions are creating a perfect storm.

The 30 April protest had been organised by a few men on Facebook calling themselves the American Patriot Council. Two and a half weeks later, they held a second demonstration, in Grand Rapids, at a plaza known as Rosa Parks Circle. This time, there were no Confederate flags.

On the periphery, dozens of armed white men in tactical apparel surveilled the plaza. A few held flags with the Roman numeral III a reference to the dubious contention that only 3% of colonists fought the British, and a generic emblem signifying readiness to do the same against the US government. (Americans who displayed the symbol and embraced the mentality that it represented often identified as Three Percenters.) Some were Home Guard. Others belonged to the Michigan Liberty Militia, including the heavyset man with the mohawk whose picture Dayna Polehanki had tweeted from the senate floor. He wore a sleeveless shirt and a black vest laden with ammunition. A laminated badge read Security. His habit of pressing a small gadget embedded in his ear with his index and middle fingers felt like an imitation of something he had seen onscreen. He appeared to be having an excellent time.

A general atmosphere of cheerful make-believe was accentuated by the presence and intense engagement of actual children. One of them, materialising suddenly, interrupted my conversation with a Home Guardsman: Excuse me, what kinds of guns are those?

We looked down to find a 10-year-old boy with a businesslike expression.

This is an AK-47, the Home Guardsman told him.

With a flashlight or a suppressor?

Thats a suppressor. This is a flashlight with a green dot.

What pistol is that?

That is a Glock. A 9mm.

The boy seemed underwhelmed.

Ive heard a lot of people say that, he said.

Before you ever pick up a gun, you have to have your 100 hours of safety classes, right? admonished the Home Guardsman, bristling a little.

I already have them.

The keynote speaker was Dar Leaf, a sheriff from nearby Barry County who had refused to enforce Governor Whitmers executive orders. Diminutive, plump and bespectacled, with a startling falsetto and an unruly mop of bright yellow hair, Leaf cut an unlikely figure in his uniform, the baggy brown trousers of which bunched around his ankles. Nevertheless, he promptly captivated his audience by inviting it to imagine an alternate version of the past one in which Alabama officers, upholding the constitution, had not arrested Rosa Parks. To facilitate the thought experiment, Leaf channelled a hypothetical deputy boarding the bus on which Parks in the real world was detained. Hey, Ms Parks, said the sheriff, playing the part. Im gonna make sure nobody bothers you, and you can sit wherever you want. The crowd cheered. Thank you! a white man cried out.

In Alabama, during the 60s, sheriffs and deputies were often more ruthless than their municipal counterparts toward Black citizens. The sheriff Jim Clark led a horseback assault against peaceful marchers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, in Selma, and habitually terrorised African Americans with a cattle prod that he wore on his belt. Dar Leaf, though, saw himself as heir to a different legacy. According to him, the weaponisation of law enforcement to suppress Black activism arose from the same infidelity to American principles of individual freedom that in our time defined the political left. I got news for you, Leaf said. Rosa Parks was a rebel.

And then, for those minds not yet wrapped around what he was telling them: Owosso has their little version of Rosa Parks, dont they? Karl Manke! The equivalence was all the more incredible given that Leaf belonged to the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, or CSPOA. The notion of the constitutional sheriff had been first promulgated by William Potter Gale, a Christian Identity minister from California. Christian Identity theology held that Europeans were the true descendants of the lost tribes of Israel; that Jews were the diabolic progeny of Eve and the serpent; and that all non-whites were subhuman mud people. In the 70s, Gale developed a movement of rural resistance to federal authority that expanded the model of white vigilantism in the south to a national scale, adding to the fear of Black integration the spectre of governmental infiltration by communists and Jews. He called his organisation Posse Comitatus, which is Latin for power of the county, and it recognised elected sheriffs as the only legal law enforcement in America. Posse Comitatus groups across the country were instructed to convene Christian common-law grand juries, indict public officials who violated the constitution, and hang them by the neck.

Gales guidance on what offences merited such punishment was straightforward: any enforcement of federal tax regulations or of the Civil Rights Act. The CSPOA argued that county sheriffs retained supreme authority within their jurisdictions to interpret the law, and that their primary responsibility was to defend their constituents from state and federal overreach. In Grand Rapids, Sheriff Dar Leaf told the anti-lockdowners, Were looking at common-law grand juries. Id like to see some indictments come out of that. At the end of his speech, he called the Michigan Liberty Militia on to the stage. This is our last home defence right here, he said. Glancing at the heavyset man with the mohawk, Leaf added: These guys have better equipment than I do. Im lucky they got my back.

Later, while reviewing my videos from Rosa Parks Circle, I noticed a woman with a toothbrush moustache painted on her upper lip. Looking closer, I saw that she also wore a wig. It was brunette and wavy, intended to resemble Governor Whitmers hair. The woman wasnt doing Hitler, in other words: she was doing Whitmer doing Hitler. She would probably have said that she was doing Whitler. While comparing pandemic measures to the atrocities of the Third Reich might have constituted its own kind of antisemitism, it also suggested how desperate many anti-lockdowners understood the situation to be. Nazis were a frequent topic of conversation in the barbershop which, for Karl Mankes supporters, represented a bulwark against the kind of creeping authoritarianism that had gradually engulfed Germany in the 1930s.

Manke himself had a lot to say on the subject. His great-grandfather had immigrated from Germany, and Manke had grown up attending a Lutheran church with services in German. He often cited the victims of the Holocaust as a cautionary tale. They would trade their liberty for security, he told a customer one afternoon. Because the Nazis said to them: Get in these cattle cars, and were gonna take you to a nice, safe place. Just get in. I would rather die than have the government tell me what to do, the man in the chair responded. In mid-May, when Attorney General Nessel suspended his business licence, Manke exclaimed: Its tyrannical! Im not getting in the cattle car!

But the longer I stayed in Michigan, the clearer it became that many anti-lockdowners sincerely placed mask mandates and concentration camps on the same continuum. This has nothing to do with the virus, a 68-year-old retiree told me outside the barbershop. They want to take power away from the people, and they want to control us. Were never gonna get our freedoms back from this if we dont stop it now. Given the stakes, violence was inevitable. Were a trigger pull away, he said. Youre gonna see it. Were getting to the point where people have had enough. We had to raise our voices to hear each other over a Christian family loudly singing hymns. But I had the sense that the retiree would have been yelling anyway. You got storm troopers coming in here! he shouted, referencing the officers whod served Manke with a cease-and-desist order. They werent cops, they were storm troopers! They deserve to wear the Nazi emblem on their sleeves.

When I went back inside, the phone was ringing. An anonymous caller wanted Manke to know that the national guard was on its way. We need more people, a customer in a pressed shirt announced. Id met him earlier. A self-described citizen scientist, hed given me a flier explaining that masks prevented the body from detoxifying and therefore did more harm than good. If we get more people, we can stand them off, he told Manke. I would hope its a rumour, Manke said. Whatever it is, we could use more people. Well, if they come with a tank

Like Tiananmen Square! the citizen scientist agreed. He lapsed into pensive silence, as if calculating how many people it would take to stand off a tank. Finally, a solution occurred to him: The sheriff can stop them. The sheriff has the power to stop the National Guard, the federal government, everybody.

Someone looked up the number. Reaching a voice mail, the citizen scientist left a message: Attention, sheriff. We need you over here at the barbershop. Please come here immediately to attend to a situation. We need your help here to defend our constitutional rights. Please hurry up.

After a while, it became apparent that neither the sheriff nor the national guard was coming. I went back outside. The family had stopped singing and was now reciting scripture. Psalm 2: Why do the nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain? The patriarch was joined by his son, daughter, and one-year-old grandson. If theres children, they wont shoot tear gas, he said. Thats my hope, anyway if were here, they back off. Who backs off? I asked. The Nazis.

This is an edited extract from The Storm Is Here by Luke Mogelson, published by Quercus on 13 September (14.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply

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American rebellion: the lockdown protests that paved the way for the Capitol riots - The Guardian US

There are 100 times more migrants crossing the Channel than in 2018 so why wont government accept its a… – The Sun

WHEN is a crisis not a crisis? When it involves migrants illegally crossing the English Channel, apparently.

It is now four years since our then Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, declared the boatloads of illegal migrants crossing the channel to be a major incident.

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That year in 2018 from January to November at least 250 migrants were found crossing the Channel illegally. In the December, the situation was so serious that Javid cut short his holidays to do the usual political trick of looking at the water and getting photographed doing so. Which doesnt always solve the problem.

Well, fast forward to today and 250 people is now not even an average days crossing.

In 2022 so far, that figure is already a lot higher.

How much higher? Twice as high? Ten times? No, the figures for 2022 already are at least 100 times higher than that major incident figure from 2018.

As The Sun reported last week, the figures for 2022 to date are over 25,000.

In a single day last week, a record 1,300 people crossed the Channel illegally.

And I would say that is a crisis, wouldnt you? When the figures are 100 times that of a major incident? Yet there seems to be no sense in Westminster of this, and even less of a desire to do anything about it.

In part this is because of the lies about what is actually going on.

Various campaigning groups and left-wing politicians like to pretend that the people arriving are all fleeing the most miserable circumstances.

Their lives may well be worse than those of many people who are living in the UK legally. But they are not fleeing a war zone. They are fleeing France. It may be France is not the most hospitable country for migrants, but nor is it a hellhole.

By the international conventions that are in place, the migrants should have absolutely no business crossing the Channel. They are meant to claim asylum in the first safe country they reach in Europe, where their claim is then meant to be processed.

In reality, none of this happens. The European migrant system is so broken that people who come into Europe illegally are not processed and are then allowed to go anywhere in the continent including heading to northern France and trying to get a boat across to Britain.

The Europeans tolerate this because they are experts at pushing problems away. The Greeks push the problems on to the rest of Europe. So do the Italians.

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And while their streets are testament to the fact that hundreds of thousands of people have settled in these countries illegally, for these countries the more people keep moving north the better.

Yet it is a lie to pretend that Britain is the only safe haven for these people. In order to get here the migrants must have gone through at least two perfectly safe countries.

Another lie that the Left tells about this crisis is that all of the arrivals are asylum seekers. In fact, as I have found on my own travels across the migrant camps on the continent, the vast majority of people are in fact economic migrants.

When the open-borders people even nod to this they tend to then say that economic deprivation is just as terrible as war. If that is the case then we better get ready. Because it means almost everyone in Africa, the Middle East and the Far East should have the right to illegally enter the UK.

But worst is the way in which the whole line between legal and illegal migration is made a mockery.

Those who tolerate the Channel crossings end up presenting the difference between these two things as being of little account. OK, some people come to the country legally, but others come by paying smuggling gangs and arriving by boat. Why should we be so obsessed about the difference?

Because the difference is the law. What is happening on the Kent coastline is law-breaking on an unbelievable scale.

Would we tolerate the line being broken on the law when it comes to other crimes? Burglary, rape, arson or murder for instance? Would we agree that there are times when it is justified and times when it is not? Of course not. Because that is why we have laws. To make it clear that there are some things that our country will not tolerate.

When it comes to borders, however, it seems that mass law breaking is allowed. And not just allowed, but encouraged.

Our border force and others actually meet the migrants at sea to help them to Britain more safely. Our agencies at home put the migrants up at hotels and make sure they have everything they need.

Yet while nobody should be treated inhumanely, nor should people be rewarded for breaking the law. If you dont respect the law then why should the country show such respect to you?

Since the major incident of 2018 we have had pronouncements, tough talk and thwarted policies. But one fact cannot be ignored.

That under this government things have got so much worse. I do not doubt that a Labour government would encourage a worse situation still.

But the blame now is on this government. Remember Take Back Control? It is high time this government did.

I FEEL sorry for Prince Harry. He really turned his life around a few years ago.

After some wasted years in nightclubs, he got it together, joined the Army, served in Afghanistan and was admired by the public.

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He would have had a great life and been a great asset to the Royal Family and this country.

Now he is in exile in California, giving the odd interview, dissing his family and otherwise doing what exactly?

In a new interview, his wife Meghan has revealed that Harry spends most of his time doing DIY around the house, helping neighbours with their sprinkler systems and fixing pipes in the couples LA mansion.

Thats quite a fall-off from Prince to DIY man.

Nothing wrong with DIY, of course. We all have to do it sometimes.

Perhaps Harry is one of those husbands who just really loves a spot of DIY.

But I cant help thinking that a day will come when he is going to regret his move.

FORMER US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has warned America is now at increased risk of a 9/11-style attack since leaving Afghanistan last year.

The botched withdrawal handed the country back to the Taliban after 20 years.

Meanwhile, supporters of extreme cleric Muqtada al-Sadr have been storming Iraqs parliament building.

Al-Sadr was an enemy of Britain and America after the 2003 war.Are there any lessons to learn from this?

Yes to be limited in our ambitions on the world stage. Strike hard and take out enemies where we can.

But whatever its dreams, America clearly does not want to govern these countries, stay in them, or run an empire.

If you dont want to do the long haul, better to have limited aims. Mission creep is real.

POP star Lizzo accepted an MTV VMA award the other night.

On stage, the Good As Hell singer seemed to want to make herself the centre not just of attention, but of American democracy.

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Thanking fans for their backing, she said that voting means everything. It means everything to making a change in this country.I assume she was aware fans were voting on the award of Music video for good, not for President of the United States. She went on to call on fans to vote to make changes to laws that are oppressing us.

Strange. Lizzo does not come across as oppressed.

In fact, she comes across as very entitled.

Such as with her strutting acceptance speech, which peaked with her screaming out, Bitch, Im winning.

On social media, Lizzo can often be seen getting out of chauffeur-driven cars and swanning around on private jets.

If that is oppression, then a lot of us would like a piece of it.

THE scenes from the end of the Reading Festival were an embarrassment.

Tents set on fire, rubbish everywhere, people fleeing the site in a bid to get to safety.

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Why do these big music festivals so often descend into orgies of violence and mass littering?

On the Reading Festivals website, the organisers boast they are committed to making sure the event has a good impact on the environment, not least to preserve the live music experience for generations to come.

Tell you what, try to preserve the live music experience for this generation first, and dont organise events that leave parkland looking like a wasteland.

Excerpt from:

There are 100 times more migrants crossing the Channel than in 2018 so why wont government accept its a... - The Sun

10 new albums that express anger at the world – Green Left

Do you think there's no good protest music these days? So did I, until I started looking for it. The truth is, it's always been out there, but it's sometimes a bit difficult to find. Every month, I search it out, listen to it all, then round up the best of it that relates to that month's political news. Here's the round-up for August 2022.

Years ago, as a new immigrant to Australia, I watched a movie about Aboriginal massacres. The film,The Tracker, was powerful. But it was the soundtrack by Archie Roach that really hit me. In 2009, while in Adelaide to start an outback tour of Aboriginal communities, I caught Roach performing with his wife, Ruby Hunter, at an Indigenous music festival. She died just weeks later, at 54. This album of their live performances was released on August 1 this year, two days after Roach's death at 66. On it, he describes getting into an altercation with police because they wanted to fingerprint his 11-year-old son, who they'd arrested. The arrest depressed his son, so Roach wrote the song "Life Is Worth Living" for him. On August 15, an activist faced court for protesting against the jailing of Indigenous children as young as 10 at Darwin's Don Dale Youth Detention Centre. Many attempt suicide. LISTEN>>>

On August 19, Grammy-nominated blues singer Shemekia Copeland released her new album, which addresses the terror that non-white kids face. On "The Talk" she describes the discussion all African-American parents must have with their children to try to keep them safe. "I held my breath as you took your first steps," she sings. "I was proud as a mamma can get. Now it's been years you've grown tall, but I'm still worried you're gonna fall. Got to have The Talk." Such a talk could not save Black nurse Breonna Taylor, shot to death by police in her flat. On August 4, after years of protests, four officers were charged with her death. The new album Songs Of Slavery And Emancipationrecalls the roots of such oppression, as does the new album by chart-topping folk rocker Ben Harper. And on August 5, Welsh ragga-rockers Dub War's comeback album addressed the racist cop killing of George Floyd. LISTEN>>>

Floyd's death and the protests it sparked worldwide also inspired the new album by British political stadium rockers Muse, released on August 26. Discussing its song "Liberation", singer Matt Bellamy said: "[It's] leaning towards what I felt seeing the Black Lives Matter protests. I'm not gonna try to claim to have any understanding of what that culture's been through or anything, but 'intend to erase your place in history' was that feeling of anger... that emotion that you feel in the moment of revolution, where you just want to tear it down." The record, hailed as "the band's most politically on-point album to date", closes with the urgent anthem "We Are Fucking Fucked". "We're at death's door," Bellamy seethes. "Another world war. Wildfires and earthquakes I foresaw. A life in crisis, a deadly virus. Tsunamis of hate are gonna find us. We are fucking fucked." LISTEN>>>

Echoing that sentiment was a study published on August 16that said a nuclear war could wipe out 5 billion people. It came as Democratic US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi taunted nuclear-armed China by visiting Taiwan, sparking military drills by Beijing. US President Joe Biden distanced himself from Pelosi's grandstanding, as it made Biden's unhinged Republican predecessor, Donald Trump, look relatively sane. Meanwhile, Biden continued to taunt nuclear-armed Russia by funnelling arms to Ukraine as its Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant came under fire. Damning such recklessness is the new EP from Belarusian band Hnida, who have moved to Poland due to the repression in their country and the war in Ukraine. On the EP's closing track, "Nuclear Horizon", they sing: "The nuclear horizon will light up the road to nowhere." All proceeds from the record will be donated to help political prisoners in Belarus. LISTEN>>>

On August 5, Russian former political prisoners Pussy Riot released their long-awaited debut album, which rails against the patriarchy spreading war and oppression worldwide. "I love matriarchy," explained singer Nadya Tolokonnikova. "And I think now is the best time to bring it on. Our rights are being attacked, and that's just not cute." Noting how Russian President Vladimir Putin's jailing of the band only increased their popularity, she said: "I think it's a good lesson to every dictator who wants to silence activists and artists. If you put them in jail, often they will get out even stronger, and they will have a bigger platform, more influence. That's what happened with us. We ended up in jail, being a small movement. We had perhaps just a few dozens of members, and then got out of jail to hundreds and thousands of people identifying themselves as Pussy Riot." LISTEN>>>

On August 19, it was reported that the early release of Bali bomber Umar Patek was being discussed. The news sparked outrage in Australia, since the 2002 Islamist terror attack killed 88 Australians. The context is that the West has been raining terror on Muslims for centuries, from the Crusades to wars in Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Palestine and Afghanistan. But that does not excuse the Bali attack, as Balinese rockers Navicula pointed out in a new podcast series discussing their 25 years of music activism. The band say their song "Aku Bukan Mesin (I Am Not a Machine)", recorded in response to the Bali bombing, was "just the pure reaction as a human being, as a Balinese ... thinking about the people who have losing their heart, losing their entity as a human to do such a cruel, unimaginable action. It just destroys everything. The effect of the destruction is affecting everybody." LISTEN>>>

Meanwhile, Australian bosses continued to destroy Australians' lives as they used the excuse of inflation to cut wages, despite reporting record profits. Announcing a cash net profit after tax of $9.6 billion on August 10, Commonwealth Bank CEO Matt Comyn took a 35% pay rise, but opposed wage rises for his staff as "inflationary". On August 17, public servants rallying in Western Australia begged the government for fair pay, saying: "Were asking for the bare bloody minimum." Summing up the anger is the new album from Aussie punks The Chats, released two days later. On "Paid Late" they seethe: "Starin' at the ATM. It says insufficient funds. That's just not good enough. 'Cause right now I wanna get drunk." And on "The Price Of Smokes", they spit: "The price of smokes is going up again. I could already barely afford my rent. Those bastards in parliament ought to be hung by their necks." LISTEN>>>

On August 24, "those bastards in parliament", the supposedly climate-friendly new Labor government, released 10 new sites for oil and gas exploration. The same day, it was reported that "China's fragile economy" was "being hammered by the driest riverbeds since 1865" as droughts spread worldwide. A week earlier, Australian resources company Santos announced it was drilling for oil in Alaska, just days after it was reported Antarctica was losing ice even faster than first thought. That news came on August 11, the same day that it was reported that no rainwater that falls anywhere on Earth is now safe to drink. Answering back is the new album from Australian hardcore band In Hearts Wake, which soundtracks their new documentary about the climate crisis, their bid to make touring environmentally-friendly, and their recording of the "first carbon offset album" to hit the top five in Australia. LISTEN>>>

Also despairing at Australia's environmental vandalism are Indigenous surf rockers King Stingray, who released their debut album on August 5. The Arnhem Land band were nominated for the Environmental Music Prize for its lead single, "Hey Wanhaka". It carries an ancient songline about the celebration of nature and Yolngu way of life. We dont own Mother Earth, the Earth owns us," said singer Yirrnga Yunupingu, whose uncle led legendary Indigenous rock band Yothu Yindi. Guitarist Roy Kellaway, whose father was also in Yothu Yindi, said: Yolngu people are perhaps the original conservationists of Earth. Theyve been looking after country since the beginning. So theres a lot that Westerners and other people, I reckon, have to learn from Yolngu people Like what Yirrnga was saying: without the environment, we dont exist. I dont understand how humans have lost sight of that. LISTEN>>>

Want to get this column every month? Just email matwardmusic@gmail.com and I'll add you to my monthly email that includes a link to this column here atGreen Left.Yes, I want to read this column every month.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Mat Ward has been writing forGreen Leftsince 2009. He also wrotethebookReal Talk: Aboriginal Rappers Talk About Their Music And Countryandmakespolitical music. This year,Mat Ward released his new album based on protest chants,Why I Protest. Stream ordownload it free for a limited time.

Stream our new"Best protest songs of 2022" playliston Spotify.This replacestheprevious"Political albums" playlist, that was getting too bigat more than 700 albums.

Read aboutmore political albums.

StreamGreen Left TV's political music playlist.

Themulti-award-winning journalist John Pilgersays: "There are few other newspapers radical or any other kind that draw together news and analysis that is as well informed, credible, and non-sectarian asGreen Left. Its work has influenced mine and has been a beacon to those who believe the press ought to be an agent of the people."

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10 new albums that express anger at the world - Green Left

Fighting spirit of the peasantry – Telangana Today

Published: Published Date - 11:52 PM, Mon - 29 August 22

Hyderabad: Telangana armed struggle is an important topic that candidates should focus on. This article is in continuation to the last article focusing on Telangana armed struggle, which is one of the important topics in preparation for the State government recruitment examinations.

Komaraiahs martyrdom sparked off the conflagration and thus marked the beginning of the Telangana Peasant Armed Struggle. Then Communists claimed that by the end of July 1946 militant actions against landlords, Deshmukhs, and village officials spread to some 300 to 400 villages in Nalgonda, Warangal, and Khammam districts. At the same time, the Communist Party of India launched a massive propaganda campaign by raising the demands of Telangana peasantry and exposed the oppression and brutalities.

Akunur was a historic village in Jangaon taluq, which exhibited the fighting spirit of the peasantry (rich and poor) to defy and fight against the food grain levy policy of the government. The atrocities on the people of Akunur exposed the oppressive policies of food grain levy of the Nizams government. Similarly, the peasants of Machireddypalli in Bidar taluk raised against the highhanded behaviour of the government servants. By 1946, the Communists perfectly organised themselves from the district committee to the village cells in Nalgonda district to carry on their programme with a large number of party workers and sympathisers.

The Communists had gained much influence in the Taluks of Suryapet, Bhongir, Jangaon, Huzurnagar and Nalgonda. Thirty-five villages in Suryapet, 23 in Bhongir, 22 in Jangaon, 20 in Huzurnagar and 14 in Nalgonda came to be dominated by the Communists. Jatoth Thanu of Padamati Thanda in Dharmapuram village of Janagam Taluq in the estates of Puskuru Maktadars was the fourth son of Hamu and Mangli. He was a courageous young man and escaped from the repression of local doras, Razakars and police several times. The family fought against the Visnuru deshmukh, Razakars and police several times to protect their lands.

The Hyderabad State Congress began to mobilise people in favour of the struggle for the freedom of the Nizams State. It began to pressurise the Nizam of Hyderabad to join the Indian dominion in the event of the British granting Independence to India. But Nizam announced his desire not to join either the Indian union or Pakistan, and declared his Independence on August 27, 1947. People of all sections were deeply disappointed by the decision of Nizam, while all political parties supported the merger of the State of Hyderabad to the Indian Union, the Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen was opposed to this move.

The Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen developed a cadre of volunteers who were called Razakars and these Razakars began to rouse the feelings of Muslims against Hindus. The growing militancy and power of the Majlis Ittehad ul-Muslimeen was evident in the activities of the Razakars, a paramilitary voluntary force organized by Kasim Razvi, the leader of the Ittehad. As the peasant movement spread in rural Telangana, the Nizam government sent batches of Razakars. Sometimes with or without the police or Army in order to deal with the revolutionaries and protect the frontiers as well as the distressed landlords and officials.

To be continued

Prof. Adapa SatyanarayanaRetired Professor

Department of History, Osmania University

Ph. 9573405551

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Fighting spirit of the peasantry - Telangana Today