Progressive policies and positions are supposed to be rooted in reality and hard evidence. But that's not always the case when it comes to the culture wars that have such an enormous impact on our politics especially not since the unexpected evangelical embrace of Donald Trump in 2016, culminating in the "pro-life" death cult of anti-vaccine, COVID-denying religious leaders. If this development perplexed many on the left, it wasless surprising to a small group of researchers who have been studying the hardcore anti-democratic theology known as dominionism that lies behind the contemporary Christian right, and its far-reaching influence over the last several decades.

One leading figure within that small group, Rachel Tabachnick, was featured in a recent webinar hosted by the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (archived on YouTube here), as part of its Religion and Repro Learning Series program, overseen by the Rev. Dr. Cari Jackson. Tabachnick's writing on dominionism can be found at Talk2Action and Political Research Associates, and she's been interviewed by Terry Gross on Fresh Air.

Her presentation sheds important light on at least three things: First of all, the vigilante element of the Texas anti-abortion law SB 8. Second, the larger pattern of disrupting or undermining governance, including the "constitutional sheriffs" movement, the installation of overtly partisan election officials and the red-state revolt against national COVID public health policies. While Donald Trump has exploited that pattern ruthlessly, he did not create it. And third, the seemingly baffling fact that an anti-democratic minority feels entitled to accuse its opponents including democratically elected officials of "tyranny."

Some dominionist ideas such as the biblical penalty of death by stoning are so extreme they can easily be dismissed as fringe, others have been foundational to the modern religious right, and still more have become increasingly influential in recent years. Those latter two categories are what we need to understand most, say both Tabachnick and Jackson.

"One of the things that struck me, as a relative newcomer," said Jackson, a former Congregationalist minister, "was that there was not sufficient understanding about the theological frames used by many individuals who are opposed to abortion." She continued, "I'm a strategist in a lot of ways, and one important strategy, I believe, must be to understand what the teachings and the theological frames are" on the other side. Which links directly to the question of what progressive activists need to do differently in this changed environment.

This failure to understand the nature of dominionism has hampered activists, not just in the realm of reproductive justice, but across an entire spectrum of political issues, both cultural and economic. Jackson discussed her own background, raised within a conservative Christian worldview.

"I was taught a very individualistic approach," she said, "taught that we shouldn't pay taxes, because doing so enabled people who were not working, and enables people whose lifestyle we don't agree with." There's nothing new about such views, but dominionism provides believers with an even stronger foundation for them.

Jackson describes her current understanding of religious faith as highly intersectional: "We believe that to understand the attacks on abortion also invites us or even requires us to look at attacks on voting, to look at attacks on immigrants, attacks on prison reform, attacks on equal pay and on and on," she said. "It's all of the same cloth: They are all attacks on humans flourishing. That's my language. The God of my understanding wants all of us to flourish in who we are."

The language of dominionism is strikingly different, to put it mildly. In her webinar, Tabachnick played a clip of one of the movement's leading figures, C. Peter Wagner, providing a definition:

Dominion has to do with control. Dominion has to do with rulership. Dominion has to do with authority and subduing. And it relates to society in other words what is talked about, what the values are in heaven [that] need to be made manifest here on earth. Dominion means being the head and not the tail. Dominion means ruling as kings. It says in Revelation chapter 1:6 that "he has made us kings and priests," and check the rest of that verse, it says "for dominion." So we are kings for dominion.

Later she provided a definition from Frederick Clarkson, author of the 1997 book, "Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy":

Dominionism is the theocratic idea that regardless of theological view, means, or timetable, Christians are called by God to exercise dominion over every aspect of society by taking control of political and cultural institutions.

Wagner, who died in 2016, is known as the founding father of the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), one of the two main branches of dominionism, which grew out of the Pentecostal and charismatic traditions within evangelical Christianity. Dominionists in the other branch, known as "Christian reconstructionism," come out of conservative Calvinism, with a focus on bringing government and society under biblical law. They tend to be more circumspect, often obfuscating their true intentions and avoiding the word "theocracy" in favor of "theonomy," for example. But not Wagner, as can be seen in the title of his 2011 book, "Dominion!: Your Role in Bringing Heaven to Earth." The NAR talks constantly about taking dominion over the "seven mountains" of society: education, religion, family, business, government, arts and the media.

But it's the other branch, the Christian reconstructionists, who have excelled at strategic organizing and providing blueprints across different right-wing constituencies for almost 50 years. They are the ones Tabachnick focused most of her presentation on, specifically two key figures: Rousas John Rushdoony, the movement's master theologian, and his son-in-law Gary North, a prolific strategist, propagandist and networker who was once a staffer for Rep. Ron Paul, the libertarian hero.

Christian reconstructionism, Tabachnick explained, is "about bringing government in all areas of life under biblical law, a continuation of the Mosaic law in the Old Testament, with some exceptions." This dispensation would include, "according to Gary North, public execution of women who have abortions and those who advise them to have an abortion."

In a recent private presentation, Frederick Clarkson asked a rhetorical question: "People have long said that there should be Christian government, but if you had one, what would it look like? What would it do? Rushdoony was the first to create a systematic theology of what Christian governance should be like, based on the Ten Commandments, and all of the judicial applications he could find in the Old Testament including about 35 capital offenses."

But the "Handmaid's Tale"-style extremism of dominionists' ultimate vision shouldn't really be our focus, Tabachnick told Salon. "Nobody cares about the theocratic, draconian future envisioned by reconstructionists because they don't believe it will happen," she said.

What'shappening right now, however, is that this ideology has had tremendous impact on more immediate politics. "Christian reconstructionism is the merger of a distinct brand of Calvinism with Austrian School economics," Tabachnicksaid. "In other words, it's an interpretation of the Bible grounded in property rights." The results have been far-reaching:

For more than 40 years, its prolific writers have provided the foundations and strategic blueprints for the attacks on liberation theology and the social gospel, as well as many other streams of Christianity which do not share the Reconstructionists' belief in unfettered capitalism as ordained by God and its fierce anti-statism.

The larger religious right's attack on public education, the social safety net and most government functions are largely grounded in the writings, strategies and tactics formulated by reconstructionist writers. Reconstructionism is not the only (and certainly not the first) source of interposition and nullification in this country. However, much of what is currently being taught today about using interposition to undermine the legitimacy of government is sourced in reconstructionism.

This idea of "interposition" comes through what's known as the doctrine of the "lesser magistrate," which we'll return to below. But its significance especially in the post-2020 Republican Party has only recently become apparent. Reconstructionism's initial appeal was more immediately, as Tabachnick explained in the seminar:

What Rushdoony provided is a package that included attacking what these fundamentalists hated and feared most in society, often expressed in terms of "This is communist. This is socialist." But Rushdoony provided a way to sacralize these ideas, and at the same time not just tear down the old order, but provide a blueprint for the new order.

Everyone didn't have to agree on the blueprint, she said: "Rushdoony's ideas went out in bits and pieces. The Christian right leaders took what they wanted and discarded what they didn't."

"Christian reconstructionism, as articulated by Rushdoony, provided a standard by which everyone else had to measure themselves," Clarkson told Salon. "Not everyone on the Christian right agreed with Rushdoony and his fellow Reconstructionist thinkers on, for example, the contemporary application of capital crimes listed in the Old Testament. And followers were often at pains to distinguish themselves."

Clarkson cites the case of conservative Presbyterian theologian Francis Schaeffer, who disagreed with Rushdoony on the applicability of biblical law, but became a driving force behind the anti-abortion activist movement Operation Rescue. That "militant Schaefferism," Clarkson said, "led activists to think: What's next, beyond political protest and stopping abortion? This is where the conversation has been in the Christian right for decades."

The doctrine of the "lesser magistrate," mentioned above, first emerged into public discourse out of Operation Rescue. But it did so as part of a larger, more complicated story.

There's a long history of right-wing opposition to federal authority, particularly grounded in the 19th-century defense of slaveryand continuing in the defense of Jim Crow segregation. In his famous "I Have a Dream" speech, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke specifically of the governor of Alabama "having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification."

As detailed by Randall Balmer in "Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the Religious Right," the religious right wasn't initially fueled by opposition to the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, but by opposition to a lesser-known decision in 1971, Green v. Connally, which threatened the tax-exempt status of racially discriminatory institutions, most famously the evangelical stronghold Bob Jones University.

Anti-abortion activists have long sought not just to bury that past but to stand it on its head, somehow equating Roe v. Wade with the notorious Dred Scott decision of 1857 and claiming the moral heritage of abolitionism.

"Throughout these movements there is also an attempt to turn the tables on the claims of racism," Tabachnick said in her webinar. "This is one of the roles that anti-abortion activism as abolition plays. Also, there's a promotion of narratives that provide a different history and legal justifications for interposition, nullification and even secession. One of the things that Christian reconstructionism has added to this dialogue is the concept of the lower magistrate."

As Tabachnick explains it, the "lesser magistrate" is a heroic figure who "resists the tyranny of a higher authority" defining "tyranny" in biblical terms, potentially including any number of popular or common-sense laws or policies. This notion first gained salience in the anti-abortion context in the 1980s and '90s, as Tabachnick went on to explain.

"Many violent anti-abortionists have justified their actions in reconstructionist teachings," she said. "One of these was Paul Hill, who studied under one of the major reconstructionist leaders and corresponded with others." Hill went on to murder Dr. John Britton, a physician who performed abortions, as well as Britton's personal bodyguard, in 1994. Hill was executed in 2003, but the reconstructionist movement sought to cast him out well before that.

"Gary North responded, after the murders had taken place, in a book called 'Lone Gunners for Jesus,'" Tabachnick said. His message to Hill was, "You're going to burn in hell, you've been excommunicated. This was because Paul Hill stepped outside the bounds of the guidelines set by the movement."

To explain this, she quoted a passage from another book by North that offered qualified support for Operation Rescue: "We need a statement that under no circumstances will Operation Rescue or any of its official representatives call for armed resistance to civil authority without public support from a lesser magistrate."

"On the basis of their belief of what the law or the word of God is, they are allowed on the advice, on the interposition, of a lesser magistrate to commit acts of violence," Tabachnick continued. North was seeking to control or curb anti-abortion terrorism, but without rejecting it in principle. Murdering abortion providers or even murdering women seeking abortions could be morally justified, with the blessing of a lesser magistrate.

This is relevant to SB 8 in Texas in at least two ways. That bill bans abortions after six weeksandis enforced not by state officials, but by deputizing private individuals to sue anyone who performs the procedure or "aids and abets" it. First of all, giving private individuals these vigilante-style rights seems a lot like making them into "lesser magistrates," however narrowly constrained.

Second, the Supreme Court's refusal to stay the law which clearly violates the Constitution and existing precedent, as Justice Sonia Sotomayor argued in her dissent can be seen as an example of the doctrine in action. In more normal circumstances, the court would have stayed the law pending consideration on the merits, even if a majority of justices intended to overturn precedent. That's how common law has worked for centuries.

But biblical law isn't common law, especially as reconstructionists understand it. Under the doctrine of the "lesser magistrate," Roe is not precedent but an instance of tyranny and the justices have a duty to God to resist it. Of course, not even Amy Coney Barrett or Clarence Thomas has said anything like that, but it's entirely consistent with their behavior as well as with their silence, since openly making such an argument would clarify just how radicalized they have become. But adherents of the doctrine of the lesser magistrate must surely appreciate the drift in direction.

Nor is the doctrine limited to abortion cases, as already noted. Matthew Trewhella is a pastor who was a prominent leader of violence-prone wing of the anti-abortion movement in 1990s, and author of the 2013 book, "The Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrates," which greatly heightened its visibility.

"Trewhella is now all over radio and the internet," Tabachnick said in her webinar, "claiming to meet with state legislators and attorney generals at the moment, with the cause of fighting the 'tyranny of mask mandates' and vaccination for COVID. So you can see how this is a concept that is not just limited to abortion. It is a concept that can be used in resistance of government authority all over the country in all different kinds of ways FEMA, EPA, Bureau of Land Management and so forth."

Trewhella isn't breaking new ground here. Clarkson's 1997 book "Eternal Hostility" describes him making similar arguments in a speech to an anti-tax group in Wisconsin. He was just one figure among many spreading the seeds of reconstructionist resistance to federal authority among militia members, "freemen" and anti-abortion activists at the time.

"This movement believes that rights come from God and not from any government," Tabachnick told Salon. "Therefore, any 'rights' that conflict with their interpretation of God's law are not actually rights. They are 'humanist' or a product of man's laws and not God's laws. This theme of 'human rights' versus inalienable rights from God has been at the center of the Christian Reconstructionist movement since its beginnings."

She pointed to "What's Wrong With Human Rights," an excerpt from a book of the same name by the Rev. T. Robert Ingram published in "The Theology of Christian Resistance," a collection edited by North. Ingram sweeps aside the Bill of Rights as "a statement of sovereign powers of states withheld from the federal authority of the Union," and turns instead to the Virginia Declaration of Rights, authored by George Mason in 1776.

The first section of the Virginia Declaration, beginning "That all Men are by Nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent Rights," is dismissed by Ingram for omitting any mention of God, as an "error of unbelief which falsifies all the rest that is said about human life." The second, beginning "That all power is vested in, and consequently derived from the People; that Magistrates are their Trustees and Servants, and at all Times amenable to them," he dismisses as well: "The meaning could not be more clear, nor more opposite Biblical thought. The ruling proposition of Scripture and Christian doctrine is that 'power belongeth unto God.'" In short, there are no human rights.

The connection to the doctrine of the lesser magistrate is clear: Power comes from God, not the people. Whatever the people want is irrelevant. Whatever laws they may pass are irrelevant, too, if they go against God. "Tyranny" is whatever the Christian reconstructionist decides he doesn't like.

Elsewhere, Ingram denigrates freedom of speech and the press:

Freedom of speech and freedom of press are, in fact, applied seriously only to giving government protection to instigators of riot and rebellion, as well as those who would undermine human order by more subtle attacks on morals and customs.

As for the right to dissent, he calls it "not a lawful claim to own or to do something, which is the true right," but "a turning upside down of right and wrong, calling good evil and evil good." Similarly, there is no scriptural right to "resist authority," only that granted by thefalse doctrine of "human rights."

Ingram's interpretation of the Civil War is that "Yankee radicals inflamed the Northern peoples to mount the Civil War in the name of a 'human right' to be free ... if they did not destroy the whole Southern Order, they did at least dismantle its vast and efficient plantation economy." The civil rights movement, unsurprisingly, is understood as a defiance of "Tradition, law, and custom, which preserved public peace and order in the bi-racial state of the union, both North and South," and became "the target of the right to resist in the 60's, the supposed human rights justifying the violent means."

Tabachnick didn't dig into this text in her webinar, but it serves toillustrateher central principle: "This attack on the very concept of 'human rights' can be found throughout today's religious right."

Jackson told Salon that the most important part of Tabachnick's presentation came "when she talked about humanism and the humanistic frame, from the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Those who are within the dominionist camp see that as contrary to God. I read those same documents and I say, this is pointing us toward the direction that God wants for us. They look at it and see that as counter to God, because humanism from their perspective is something very contrary to God."

If we take such arguments seriously, then we understand why for dominionists there is nothing wrong with breaking any law at all, so long as "God wills it" and you have the blessing of a so-called lesser magistrate. This is the reconstructionist argument supporting a whole range of chaotic right-wing activity today, including baseless claims that the 2020 election was a fraud. After all, the fundamental reconstructionist argument is that all such democratic government is illegitimate.

"The goal of reconstructionism is to tear down the existing order and reconstruct a new society based on biblical law," Tabachnick said. "Even if we assume that this vision of a theocratic America will never come to fruition, it's important to recognize the movement's impact on the ideas, strategies and tactics of the larger religious right and its role in sacralizing the actions of other anti-statist fellow travelers.

"As I wrote almost a decade ago, the theocratic libertarianism of Christian reconstructionism has been surprisingly seductive to Tea Partiers and young libertarians many of whom may not realize what is supposed to happen after the government is stripped of its regulatory powers."

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How extremist Christian theology is driving the right-wing assault on democracy - Salon

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THIRUVANANTHAPURAM : Blessing women unable to conceive, mischiefs of kuttichathan or sale of lucky charms on the promise of bringing good fortune. These and more will become punishable offences in the state under the proposed anti-black magic law The Kerala Prevention and Eradication of Inhuman Evil Practice, Sorcery and Black Magic Bill, 2019.

Mooted by the Law Reforms Commission, the proposed legislation has stringent provisions to combat superstitions and evil practices while creating awareness among people. What this means is godmen and exorcists will find going tough in Kerala.

The bill has a detailed schedule listing various offences. They include black magic, sorcery, exorcism by violent means, bounty hunting and cheating people in the name of supernatural powers and sacrifice of animals. Godmen can also be booked for subjecting women to inhuman and humiliating practices such as parading them naked or engaging in sexual activity to bless women who are unable to conceive. Sale of lucky charms like lamps and conches on the promise that they would bring good fortune will also become punishable.

Other practices against women that the draft proposes to criminalise are forced isolation, prohibition of entry into the village or facilitating segregation of menstruating or post-partum women. Certain superstitious practices with religious colour, such as piercing of cheek with iron rods or arrows, are also banned. Pelting of stones at houses or pollution of food or water, under the guise of mischiefs of kuttichathan, will also attract punishment.

Govt will take a final call on draft bill

The minimum punishment for various offences is one-year imprisonment and Rs 5,000 fine. This may go up to seven years in jail and Rs 50,000 fine depending on the severity of the crime. The bill spares certain practices associated with religions. Also, performing religious rituals at homes, temples, mosques or other religious places, which do not cause physical harm to any person, are excluded.

The government will take a final call on the draft bill. It can amend the list of offences by addition or deletion. The bill upholds the spirit of Article 51A (h) of the Constitution that encourages the citizen to develop scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and reform. Due emphasis is given to awareness programmes, said Law Reforms Commission vicechairman K Sasidharan Nair.

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Kerala: Proposed anti-black magic law to make going tough for godmen, sorcerers - The New Indian Express

In a way the exchange was pure Abba: easygoing, but undergirded by serious concerns. Another chance for debate came up when the two men were discussing their Abbatars. Andersson remarked that Ulvaeus had requested a change to his digital alter egos hair because there is only so much 1979 realness anybody can take. When I remarked that it was a great way to rewrite a little bit of history while still being faithful to its spirit, Ulvaeus replied, with a slight smile, Yes, its such an interesting existential question. (Ulvaeus, known in Sweden for his commitment to atheism and humanism, enjoys such questions, later asking, So, do you think the American constitution is strong enough to withstand another Republican president?)

The Andersson-Ulvaeus songwriting bond has withstood intraband divorces and the pressure brought on by critical scorn. (For those who have forgotten: Andersson used to be married to Lyngstad, Ulvaeus to Faltskog.) They have been writing together nonstop since meeting in 1966, and their post-Abba collaborations include songs for Anderssons band as well as the musicals Chess and Kristina from Duvemla, an epic about 19th-century Swedish immigrants to America that includes the rare showstopper about lice.

While the division of labor used to be fluid in the 1970s, it is now much more clear-cut: Andersson comes up with melodies and records demos in his Skeppsholmen lair then sends them to Ulvaeus, who writes the lyrics. Asked how elaborate those demos are, Andersson volunteered to play Dont Shut Me Down, and walked over to his computer. Then he couldnt find it among his dozens of files, searching Tina Charles since the Abba song has a slinky vibe like one of the British singers hits.

He eventually unearthed not the demo but the finished backing track, and cranked it up on the immaculate sound system, providing a great example of how crucial Faltskog and Lyngstads voices are to Abbas sonic tapestry.

All the various successful groups since the 70s have had more than one singer, Andersson said, mentioning Eagles and Fleetwood Mac, alongside Abba. You hear Frida sing one song and then you hear Agnetha sing its like two bands. The dynamics are helped immensely by the fact that there are two. And then when they sing together

Their harmonies on the Voyage album bear the unmistakable Abba stamp, even if the register is a bit lower than it used to be. Age alone does not account for the difference: We used to sort of force them to go as high as they could on most of the songs because it gives energy, Andersson said.

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After 40 Years, Abba Takes a Chance With Its Legacy - The New York Times

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Even in film circles, John Farrow is pretty much unknown in Australia. But almost 60 years after his death, the product of Marrickville in Sydneys inner west remains easily the countrys most prolific filmmaker in Hollywood.

He directed almost 50 movies, produced six and wrote more than 25 screenplays winning an Oscar before dying from a heart attack in 1963.

Dynamic, driven and prone to telling spectacularly tall stories about his life, Farrow is part of a famous Hollywood family.

Driven, dynamic and enigmatic: Hollywood director John Farrow who grew up in Marrickville and went to sea at 15.Credit:Ronin

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When he married actress Maureen OSullivan, who played Jane to Johnny Weissmullers Tarzan, they had seven children including actress Mia Farrow and author Prudence Bruns, who inspired John Lennon to write Dear Prudence. Their grandson is famed investigative journalist Ronan Farrow.

Outside movies, Farrow wrote eight books, including a collection of poetry and a history of the Popes. He became a Commander in the Canadian Navy during World War II. He won an OBE and a Papal knighthood. And, despite being a staunch Catholic, he was a Hollywood playboy whose romancing of a series of Hollywood actresses apparently continued through two marriages.

When Australia won its first Oscar for Ken G. Halls documentary Kokoda Front Line in 1943, Farrow collected it.

The fact that someone so accomplished is so little known in this country fascinated filmmakers Claude Gonzalez and Frans Vandenburg when they discovered a shared affection for Farrows critically acclaimed film noir The Big Clock (1948).

Director John Farrow (left) with John Wayne and Lana Turner on the set of The Sea Chase. Credit:Ronin

Now, after more than a decade of detective work and interviews, they reveal his brilliantly colourful life in the documentary John Farrow Hollywoods Man In The Shadows that is screening at the Sydney Film Festival.

Wed always loved 40s cinema, Gonzalez says. We loved The Big Clock and got into a discussion about how good and vibrant a work it was, then we found that there was really nothing written about Farrow.

Vandenburg adds that they were fascinated to discover he was Australian and that he had made so many Hollywood movies.

John Farrow, Maureen OSullivan and their seven children.Credit:Ronin

As well as directing movies starring Boris Karloff, Lucille Ball, Robert Mitchum, Lana Turner, Bette Davis and John Wayne, Farrow won an Oscar for co-writing the comedy Around The World In 80 Days (1956) after an earlier nomination for directing the war drama Wake Island (1942).

His best-known movies also include Five Came Back (1939), Two Years Before The Mast (1946), Night Has A Thousand Eyes (1948), Alias Nick Beal (1949), Where Danger Lives (1950), Hondo (1953), The Sea Chase (1955) and John Paul Jones (1959).

Farrow was a stylish director who told engaging stories with a constantly moving camera.Credit:Getty

Gonzalez describes him as a stylish director who told engaging stories with a constantly moving camera.

Hes always creating a wonderful pace and energy to his filmmaking, he says. You can also see a humanism that is very much part of his style. He always cares about not just the hero but the secondary and the third person in the story ... the unheard voice of a female protagonist or the underdog.

The documentary shows that Farrows father worked for a tailor and his mother was a dressmaker until her death aged just 26, when he was three, in what was then called Callan Park Hospital for the Insane. While not diagnosed at that time , it is now thought she had post-natal depression.

While Farrow later claimed to have studied at Newington College, near his home, he really went to the more humble Newtown Boys.

According to a relative living in Engadine in the southern suburbs, 88-year-old Jim Farrow, the family talk was that John was a rascal and a scallywag as a child.

While Farrow later claimed to have studied at Newington College, near his home, he really went to the more humble Newtown Boys.

He used to walk around with a white coat on and a stethoscope pretending he was a doctor, he says. We knew he used to exaggerate stories and that carried on after he left Australia.

While the retired hospital courier never met his first cousin twice removed, his family research was invaluable for the documentary.

Can you imagine making, on average, 15 films per decade?: Frans Vandenburg (left) and Claude Gonzalez, who directed the documentary John Farrow - Hollywoods Man In The Shadows.

Aged 15, Farrow borrowed money from his aunt and left Sydney as a crew member on the RMS Makura in 1919. The destination was Vancouver via Fiji and Hawaii.

He later claimed to have fought in revolutions in Nicaragua and Mexico before arriving in the US in 1923, though the documentary-makers believe that was a colourful fabrication. Just like his claims to be related to Englands kings, to have written an English-French-Tahitian dictionary and to have studied at Winchester College in England and the US Naval Academy.

He just ran away to sea, had these adventures, began writing and jumped ship in San Francisco, Vandenburg says. Thats how he arrived in America: as an illegal alien.

Around a year after landing, Farrow married the daughter of a mining magnate, Felice Lewin, and they had a daughter. There is a tall story behind that marriage as well.

A report with the headline Divoce looms for Cinderella Boy about two different sides of John Farrow inThe Oakland Tribune in 1927.Credit:Ronin

In 1927, The Oakland Tribune carried a story headlined Divorce looms for Cinderella Boy that reported Jack Farrow had been living a lie when he won over Lewin.

Working as a Coast Guard seaman swabbing the decks during the day, he had been wearing a monocle and spats, claiming to be a British Lord known as the Honorable John Neville Burg-Apton Villiers Farrow, to mix with appreciative debs and dowagers at night. She wanted a divorce on the grounds of cruelty.

Working as a Coast Guard seaman swabbing the decks during the day, he had been wearing a monocle and claiming to be a British Lord at night.

Arriving in Los Angeles that same year, Farrow started to gain recognition as a poet and short story writer. He worked as a script consultant and caption writer on silent seafaring movies then graduated to writing dialogue when talkies began.

David Niven in Around The World in 80 Days: John Farrow won an Oscar for co-writing the screenplay but was sacked as director.Credit:Fairfax Media

He met the right people, Vandenburg says He was advised to go down to Hollywood, which he did. It was perfect timing during the transition from silent to sound.

Farrow made another colourful newspaper story in 1933.

The Daily News reported that he had been threatened with deportation for moral turpitude after being arrested while dancing with Argentinian actress Mona Maris at the Cocoanut Grove nightclub.

John Farrow and his famous actress wife 9and Mias mother0 Maureen OSullivan attend a wedding in 1933.Credit:Getty

The paper added that Farrow, who had previously been engaged to actress Lila Lee, had been advised to quit the US two years earlier over his questionable residency permit. He left for Tahiti and England then returned with papers declaring he was an assistant consular attach to one of the Balkan countries.

Described in court as a screenwriter and actor, Farrow was given five years probation instead of being deported. He eventually became an American citizen in 1947.

These lively interludes did nothing to stop Farrows rise as a filmmaker. After all, he was not alone in reinventing his past among the immigrants in Hollywood.

A lot of figures including Errol Flynn and Merle Oberon would recreate or reshape their lives, Gonzalez says.

Pivotal movie: Johnny Weissmuller as Tarzan and Maureen OSullivan as Jane with Cheeta the Chimp in Tarzan Escapes.Credit:Reuters

When we checked, a lot of these things were proven false, but he was a great fabulist. He not only wrote good stories, he wrote good copy for his own life.

Author and critic Scott Murray says Tarzan Escapes (1936) was a pivotal movie for Farrow it was his first movie as co-writer and he met then married OSullivan after converting to Catholicism.

He soon directed his first movie, the Caribbean crime drama Men In Exile (1937), focusing on what were intended as second-string attractions in double bills. He had a surprise hit with plane-crashes-in-the-jungle pic Five Came Back two years later.

When World War II broke out, Farrow enlisted in the Canadian Navy and reached the rank of Commander before being shipped out with typhus in 1941. He returned to directing when he recovered making A-grade pictures for the top of the bill now and quickly succeeding with Wake Island.

Poster for Around the World in 80 Days.Credit:Getty

Farrow started directing Around The World In 80 Days until the famously brash producer Mike Todd sacked him, apparently over how long he was taking to shoot the movie. It went on to win five Oscars, including best picture.

His son, John Charles Farrow, says in the documentary that Farrow told his children and others that they were directly related to the kings of England.

It was important to people at that age and in his profession to have a polished side to them, he says. The raw and the rough of Australia wasnt in style at that time.

The documentary makers had no luck interviewing Mia Farrow not surprising given the continuing controversy around former partner Woody Allen and their children.

We wrote to all the family and they all responded differently, Vandenburg says. Mia was very private in her exchanges because she had a lot of her own issues going on. All families are dysfunctional, I suppose, but theirs is a little bit more tragic.

Mia was very private in her exchanges ... All families are dysfunctional, I suppose, but theirs is a little bit more tragic.

Farrow children prepare to fly to a film shoot in Ireland where their parents are working in 1948, from left, Paddy, 5, John, 21 months and Mia, 3.Credit:Getty

Gonzalez adds that Farrow died when his children were adolescents, leaving them without a very dominant, very dynamic father at an important time in their lives. But our agenda was giving John Farrow a voice: who was he as a person, what made his films so compelling and why should they be reassessed?

Hollywood director John Farrow carries his daughter Mia, aged 9, out of hospital after a 1954 polio scare.Credit:Getty

But Mia did appreciate one discovery during production the unmarked grave of her grandmother, Johns mother, at Rookwood cemetery.

When Jim told her the news, she paid for a plaque. She was delighted and wanted to place a memorial to her grandmother on the grave, he says.

It reads in part: In loving memory of Lucy Farrow. Death came before you could know your baby John.

John Farrow on the set of his last film.

While some of Farrows best-known movies are being released on DVD, they are not streaming. We hope with the documentary that more of his movies might become available, Gonzalez says.

So how did Farrow pack so much into his life?

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Gonzalez says two of his children described him as an insomniac who was constantly on the go.

As filmmakers, we know how difficult it is to make a film, he says. Can you imagine making, on average, 15 films per decade? Its an incredible amount of work, plus writing these books and also having affairs with some of the leading ladies of the time.

John Farrow Hollywoods Man In The Shadows is screening at Sydney Film Festival this weekend and then online at Sydney Film Festival On Demand from November 12. Tickets from sff.org.au or 1300 733 733.

Find out the next TV, streaming series and movies to add to your must-sees. Get The Watchlist delivered every Thursday.

Email the writer at gmaddox@smh.com.au and follow him on Twitter at @gmaddox.

See the article here:

The forgotten life of Australias most prolific Hollywood director... and the tall stories he told - Sydney Morning Herald

(This being a big subject that has been largely ignored it needs a lot of explanation, the essay is split into two parts. Part 2 will be posted tomorrow)

It has not worked.

The pro-choice movement opposed by the religious right has been making an enormous mistake. We know that because it is facing disaster. That when a solid majority of Americans favor abortion rights. It is all too clear that what it has been done in support of women being full class citizens has been gravely defective. It follows that it is time to move on to a more effective strategy.

Roe v Wade rests largely upon the 14thAmendment principle of privacy as a legal and societal expression of individual freedom from invasive state control in favor of personal responsibility. The thesis is valid, but it is a defensive posture that has proven insufficient to fend off assaults from a dedicated forced birth campaign. The situation is so bad for the sovereign rights of American women that even as Catholic heritage nations like Mexico and Ireland place their trust in the gender to make the best choice, the USA is reverting to the paternalistic misogyny of the early 1900s.

The womens right movement must go on the offensive to regain the legal and moral high ground over the force birthers. Doing that requires utilizing two interrelated lines of argument.

The Big Medical Lie

One issue that has for reasons obscure long been oddly underplayed is womens health. The ant-abortion conspiracy promotes the anti-scientific disinformation that first trimester feticides are artificial and therefore bad for mothers, while child birth is natural to the point that the government must force all pregnant women to do what is good for their health physical and mental. Law enforcement must protect an apparently gullible gender from a diabolical abortion industry that is so clever that it somehow seduces many hundreds of thousands of each year a third of the national female population over time to commit a dangerous unnatural act that is against the wise ways of Gods benign creation. That when not getting an abortion is as easy as simply not going to a provider. Yet many go to great lengths to get to such, sometimes traveling long distances if necessary, knowing exactly what will happen when they do so, yet only a small percentage report having significant post procedure regrets [https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2020/01/416421/five-years-after-abortion-nearly-all-women-say-it-was-right-decision-study].

The hard truth is that nature is not always the best. Modern medicine is the artificial practice that has saved billions of lives from the deadly side of the biological world, including the many risks of pregnancy. Early term abortions surgical and medicinal are over a dozen times less lethal than going through the months long complexities and risks of pregnancy [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22270271]. And because the latter pumps lots of mood altering hormones into mothers, they are highly likely to experience serious mental distress before and especially after birth, post-partum depression being very common and often serious. Early pregnancy does not involve such hormone loads, and mental trauma is much less frequent after termination. That is why the regrets are rare, of the many women I know who have had abortions none was gravely upset about it. Which makes sense since a woman is making the safest decision when ending a pregnancy as early as feasible. Legally sentencing a woman to bear her pregnancy violates her core medical rights. Its like preventing someone from taking say statins, or forcing them to smoke or use mind altering drugs.

But there is another major right that the anti-abortion project violates big time. the one that the pro-choice forces have been resisting despite its potential potency.

Religious liberty.

Forced Birth, its a Religious Thing

Heres the fact that is as screamingly obvious as it is irrationally paid much too little attention by the body politic. Almost the entire movement to render women second class citizens by making them reproductive slaves of the state once pregnant, stems from one source. The religious right. That is a historically rather novel entity formed by a once unimaginable collaboration of evangelical Protestants with the Church of Rome. The anti-abortion project is the core engine of a brazen attempt by one religious clique that constitutes about a third of the population to impose their hardline faith-based beliefs on everyone else. Outside of the religious right who opposes abortion rights? Nontheists against womens full reproductive rights are as scarce as hens teeth, I personally know of only one. Polling suggests that one in ten atheists are forced birthers, but the sample is small and the figure appears inflated. Many if not most Christians Protestants, Orthodox, Catholics, etc. of the center-left favor reproductive choice, along with most Jews and other theists. That alliance of nonrelig0ious and believers form the solid majority who want broad abortion rights to remain in force in all 50 states.

The overwhelming and narrow religious basis of forced birth differs strikingly from other conservative causes such as limited government size and power regarding guns and economics, and heavy law enforcement against crimes and drugs. Those secular theses enjoy substantial support outside theoconservatism, including many nontheists advocates of laissez faire capitalism for instance have included such prominent nonbelievers as Herbert Spencer, Ayn Rand, Milton Freidman, Penn Jillette and Michael Shermer.

No God Opposes Abortion

That feticide has become such a fixation of the religious right is remarkably ironic for a reason too few are aware of. The startling fact is that forcing women to bear pregnancies to term lacks theological justification. The central motivating claim by theoconservatives that they are sincerely merely obeying the dictates of a prolife creator is patently false both on real world and scriptural grounds. Our lovely but child toxic planet provides the proof that a prolife creator cannot exist. In the academic journal Philosophy and TheologyI was the first to calculate and publish the telling and terrible statistics that remain scandalously ignored [http://www.gspauldino.com/Philosophy&Theology.pdf. I further detail the problem in Essays on the Philosophy of Humanism https://americanhumanist.org/what-we-do/publications/eph/journals/volume28/paul-1 & http://americanhumanist.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/03_Paul-SkeptoTheoPt2.pdf%5D. The stats start with how it is well documented that about 100 billion people have been born to date. To that add how medical analysis indicates that about three quarters of conceptions naturally fail to come to term about half failing to implant in the first place usually due to rampant genetic defects, the rest are later term miscarriages, many of which go unnoticed. The human reproductive complex is a Rube Golbergian mess that usually fails far from the womb being a safe refuge for fetuses, it is where most lives come to a natural early end. As geneticist William Rice states, accidental abortion is the predominant outcome of fertilization [and] a natural and inevitable part of human reproduction at all ages. [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326485445_The_high_abortion_cost_of_human_reproduction] That means something like 300 billion pregnancies have been spontaneously aborted to date. Currently, somewhere in the area of 30,000 spontaneous abortions occur every day in the US, over ten times more than those that are induced. After birth half those born have died as children from a vast array of torturous diseases that infest our biosphere, so some 50 billion kids have not grown up. It is the artifice of medicine that has driven juvenile mortality down to a few percent, less can be done about our deeply dysfunctional reproductive system. As I detail in the P&Tand EPHstudies, it is demonstrably impossible for a supernatural creator that allows hundreds of billions of preadults to die to be prolife.

The mass loss of immature humans helps explain a stark scriptural truth birth enforcement adherents evade as much as they can. Neither the Jewish nor Christian texts come anywhere close to banning abortions. The only direct mention of the issue instructs that if someone accidently causes a miscarriage involving a woman who is not their wife, then the negligent party can be sued by the father who owns the fetus feticide is a civil property matter, not criminal murder in the Holy Bible. That the Biblical God orders the Israelite warriors to kill captive children as well as women even when pregnant reinforces the indifference of the deity to the lives of youngsters. The Gospels of Jesus have nothing to say about the topic. The abject absence of scriptural condemnation against abortion illuminates why most Bible believing Protestants, including the most popular evangelical of the day, Billy Graham, had no comment in the immediate wake of Roe v Wade. Then famed Southern Baptist leader W. A. Criswell did opine that he had always felt that it was only after a child was born and had a life separate from its mother that it became an individual person, and it has always, therefore, seemed to me that what is best for the mother and for the future should be allowed.The sanctity of preborn life was largely a Vatican thing it cannot be overemphasized the degree to which the Roman and Lutheran churches despised one another; a few years ago a couple of evangelicals standing right in front of me bemoaned how a relation who had gone Catholic was now worshipping the clergy, not Jesus. So why the ensuing great evangelical Protestant switch Graham and especially Criswell evolved into staunch forced birthers to sociopoliically weaponizing abortion as murder via a new found alliance with the heretical Catholic clergy? First a little history.

A Little History

Abortion was the norm in largely Protestant colonial and early independent America for that matter, early term feticide has always been very common in societies whether legal or not. The Puritans of yore were not as super repressive and chaste as usually thought, oops pregnancies outside of marriage were fairly frequent. And there were women who after having birthed a bevy of babies did not want to go through thatagain. All the more so because childbirth was very dangerous, about one out of fifty pregnancies killed the mother. Mother nature is not much kinder to mothers than their young ones. Early term termination with herbal toxins had its dangers, but to a lesser degree. Such abortions were not a concern to the authorities if it was done before quickening. When the all-male founders, nearly all Protestants and Deists, were assembling the Constitution that instituted separation of church and state they never imagined considering feticide, that being a womens affair outside their manly concerns. The only faction that might have been interested in the issue were the few Catholics. That they made no attempt to mention much less ban abortion was logical because the rest of the patriots would have slapped that down as an attempt to subvert the intent of the 1stAmendment to keep specific religious cliques from seizing control of governmental policies and vice-versa. Duh.

In the 1800s going into the early 1900s repression of sexuality and women reached a peak in tune with Victorian culture. Also of growing concern was that abortions were killing women, albeit less often than pregnancy. At the same time the all-male profession of medical doctors wanted to suppress competition form midwives who often aborted the much bigger money to be made from full term pregnancies. And the nativist eugenics based on agricultural selective breeding favored by Protestants (but not Catholics) called for WASP women to bear as many children as possible to prevent the others from dominating the population. Laws banning abortions appeared for the first time, and quickly became the national norm. (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1997/05/abortion-in-american-history/376851.)

The result. A little over a century ago the religious right owned these United States. Well over nine out of ten were Christians, nearly all conservative. It was a culture of imposed Judeo-Christian virtue. A pious repressive hyper misogynist patriarchy in which women were second class citizens required to wear heavy clothing even at the beach, and mandated to remain nonsexual until marriage in which husbands could legally rape their wives and she had no legal choice but to bear the child that by the way helps elucidate why modern forced birthers are often not concerned about if a pregnancy resulted from nonconsensual sex. The draconian Comstock laws banned mailing information on contraceptives in flagrant contradiction of the Bill of Rights. The culture of repressed sexual liberty had to have a heavy government hand to it. Lacking the force of law to keep people in reproductive line, most folks feel free to have way too much fun for the likes of the power craving forces who enjoy imagining they know what it best for all of us, feckless women especially. Note that the Dour Culture was to a fair extent a white matter, black culture was less uptight, as reflected in the advent of the sex music, jazz that quickly gained a following among white youth.

The rather Taliban like mainstream Christian scheme began to unravel what with women (mainly white) getting the vote, and the first sexual revolution of the Roaring Twenties. That unprecedented loosening of sexual habits was never entirely beaten back by the right, but as late as the 1950s women were still expected to be virgins on their wedding nights who then became stay at home housewives, access to contraceptives remained limited, and abortions forbidden. With blue laws keeping most retail closed on Sundays three quarters of American were church members according the Gallup, as virtually all professed a belief in God.

Since then its all gone to theocon hell. Even in the 50s the hot black culture continued to infiltrate the white majority via the first wave of rock-and-roll previously black slang for intercourse. What was Elvis doing up there on the stage with his pelvis? Seeing the way things were going Billy Graham started his mass crusades to try to restore America to its righteous ways.

That did not work.

Nowadays, with women being emancipated, first class citizens free to have sexy fun, sinfully tempting females strut down streets in minimal clothing. Sex outside marriage is actually the accepted societal norm. Marriage rates are down while divorce rates are sky high that started with the WW 2 generation in the late 60s BTW including among conservative Christians. Birth rates are below replacement level that when many on the right oppose the immigration of nonwhites thats needed if an expanding population is to help grow the economy. On the networks people can say screw when not talking about hardware. Then there is cable and the web. Most women have careers. The grand corporate project to convert pious frugal church goers into hedonistic materialists and digital social media addicts has succeeded spectacularly as Gallup tracks church membership plummeting from 70% at the beginning of the 2000s to 50% today [https://news.gallup.com/poll/341963/church-membership-falls-below-majority-first-time.aspx] as white Protestants are a fast shrinking minority, the religious right the once ran the country has been reduced to a widely disparaged subgroup, and the nonreligious balloon by an amazing tenth of the population each decade [for a look at that see http://americanhumanist.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/art-1-Paul-The-Great-and-Amazingly-Rapid-Secularization-of-the-Increasingly-Proevolution-United-States.pdf%5D. Even Republicans are becoming less religious for Christs sake listen to how the Trumpites swore like sailors as they stormed the capital, and denounce Biden with vulgarities like Richard Pryor.

Their Real Goal

That is what the forced birth movement is really about. Having lost the mainstream culture big time over the last century theocons have no viable means to recover it by persuasion, and deep down they know that bitter fact. All those crusades, religious TV channels, megachurches, and Christian rock are getting nowhere with the mainstream. What are they to do in their desperate power trip to return the country to the good old days of largely white righteous Christian domination?

Its obvious. Try to do what worked up to the 1920s, and see if reapplying governmental coercion will get America back to its straighter laced Godly ways. There is nothing else for them to. This invidious strategy to employ laws to achieve religious aims requires the high grade hypocrisy of theoconservatives who love to proclaim individual liberty while decrying government power when the latter promotes what they see as ungodly secular-liberal values, but to without batting a cynical eye deploy said government power to lever America back to something like it was in the 1950s. When father knew best and subservient women properly behaved themselves sex wise and raised their many kids and heaven forbid could not terminate their sacred pregnancies and the churches were packed on Sunday mornings rather than folks hitting Walmart and Home Depo.

So. How to get the government back under the blessed control of the theocon minority? You have to be fairly sneaky about it. Openly admitting that the ultimate goal is to use the state to bring back the good old theoconservative days by banning abortion et al. would intensify majority opposition, while fatally undermining the legal case for making a private procedure that the Puritans were OK with into murder.

To try to rewin the culture wars via the law they have smartly gone on the sociopolitical offensive by putting a peculiarly lethargic prochoice side on the public relations defensive, to the degree that even liberals agree that the feticide that has always been common should somehow become uncommon. A hard and sad choice consistently avoided by preventing unwanted pregnancies in the first place, rather than by barring terminations. Its the abortion should be legal but rare line, rather than rare because its illegal. Both are naive fantasies that have never been achieved and never will be. Early term abortions are the norm in all societies because they involve a modest collection of cells whose humanity is problematic and mainly propounded by extremist theocons, they are fairly easy to do, in secret if necessary, and are not as dangerous as is pregnancy to the mother. At least a fifth of observed pregnancies are terminated, whether that being in advanced democracies with excellent safe sex programs, or where the procedure is illegal and riskier [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/343147586_Unintended_pregnancy_and_abortion_by_income_region_and_the_legal_status_of_abortion_estimates_from_a_comprehensive_model_for_1990-2019]. This is in stark contrast to murder, which is rare in many nations including most democracies that these gun laden United States are the exception is pertinent because most who claim to be prolife support the widespread distribution of firearms that is the primary people killing device. Because murder involves a patent human being, can be difficult to do, produces an awkward corpse that is hard to secretly dispose of, and those who have been born are usually noticed to have gone missing, outlawing intentional homicide is correspondingly practical because only it renders only a tiny fraction of the population criminals while keeping the event highly atypical there are under 4000 homicides in western Europe per annum for instance, many dozens of times less than feticides. Whatever success is or is not achieved by criminalizing the latter, it does not make much actual difference because the great majority of conceptions will continue to naturally abort, so what is the point? That when making abortion illegal means turning a fifth or more of knowingly pregnant women into lawbreakers each year, and a quarter to a third of all women over their lives, while not saving many preborn, but injuring or killing a number of pregnant women in the punitive process. It is probably not possible to drive yearly American abortions below a few hundred thousand whatever the methods used. Prohibiting abortion works about as well as banning alcohol, and we know how that worked out. A basic legal tenant is that all legitimate laws must be reasonably practicable to implement the stop the abortions folks like to compare themselves to the abolitionists, but mass slavery can be ended simply by eliminating all laws that enforce bondage, leaving all slaves free to up and walk away from their masters birth enforcement does not meet that feasibility criterion. Pro-choicers, use that fact.

The theocon grand Godly plan to try to overturn modernity is simple enough. Having concocted the notion that abortion is against the will of a prolife Lord Creator contrary to all worldly and scriptural evidence, make the private procedure illegal. Hopefully eventually nationwide as a form of outright murder if enough hardcore theocon justices can be plopped into SCOTUS and extend personhood to conception the alternative is revision of the Constitution, perhaps via a constitutional convention dominated by theocons via the electoral manipulations they are working on. That doing so is not likely to actually protect enormous numbers of preborn is not the critical necessity. That would be nice if it happened in the opinion of many theocons, but the true activism driving societal hope of most forced birthers is that by making those who terminate pregnancies into criminals or at least subject to financial suits, that fear of having abortions will help tame wanton American women to be less willing to be get it on with men outside of holy matrimony. The idea is to discipline women into being both more chaste and fecund as the arrogant power hungry theocons want them to be. Its the fear and shame factors of the rights massive national social engineering project. To that add putting strictures on contraceptives to further boost the righteous mission to reChristianize America Catholics especially like that. That doing so may well increase induced abortions due to more unintended pregnancies is not the theoconservatives driving concern (with supreme irony, another side effect of protection reduction is a great increase in the rate of natural abortions).

The prochoice side often wonders often with breathtaking naivety why those opposed to abortion want to also cut back on the use of protection that can suppress said abortions. That is because abortion reduction is not the real point, lifestyle alternation is. Get that? That women will be injured and killed by unsafe outlaw abortions and by forced pregnancies is not a great concern of the birth forcers those wayward women should have known better than to get pregnant out of wedlock in the first place, and if raped oh well, the growing soul inside them takes priority to its reproductive vessel who needs to understand their Godly prolife duty. If a woman who would have gotten a legal termination if she could because it is safer than not having one happens to die from what seemed like a normal pregnancy oh well thats too bad, its Gods Will anyhow, and if she was right with Christ she is in a better place so what is the big problem. The wastage of pregnant women is well worth the glorious aims of the prolifers.

(Part 2 to continue 10/29/21)

Read the original:

The Forced Birth Movement Hates Real Religious Liberty How to Use That Against Them by Making Abortion a Religious Right; Part 1 - Patheos

MARIA BARANOVA-SUZUKI

Simon Dinnerstein in The Eye Is the First Circle.

The always adventurous Peak Performance series offering shows in the fields of dance, music, theater, visual art, acrobatics and film, often with elements of two or more of these moved its ambitious programming online during the pandemic. But it will return to live performances, at the Kasser Theater at Montclair State University, in October, and present a combination of live and online offerings for its 2021-22 season.

Here are the live shows, with quotes taken from the Peak Performances web site, peakperfs.org:

Oct. 14-17: The Eye Is the First Circle, conceived, directed and performed by Simone Dinnerstein. World premiere. The pianist, whose father Simon Dinnerstein is a painter, deconstructs and collages elements of her fathers acclaimed The Fulbright Triptych and Charles Ives Piano Sonata No. 2 (Concord Sonata).

Nov. 4-7: Look Whos Coming to Dinner, by Stefanie Batten Bland/Company SBB. United States premiere. Inspired by the 1967 film of the same name, this work represents performance at the intersection of dance-theater and installation, questioning contemporary and historical cultural symbolism and the complexities of human relationships.

Dec. 16-19: Fractales, by Cie Libertivore, written and choreographed by Fanny Soriano. The language of the circus and dance movement highlight the physical potential of the acrobatic body as performers are confronted by a landscape in transformation.

February (dates TBA): Strange Fruit, by Donald Byrd/Spectrum Dance Theater. This dance/theater work draws its title from the classic song written by Abel Meeropol and made into a Civil Rights anthem by Billie Holiday. In it, the facts of lynching act as springboards into a highly personal interior space and state of mind.

March (dates TBA): Movement, by Netta Yerushalmy. World premiere. As in Paramodernities, one of Yerushalmys previous works, existing dances are again quoted (this time from a vast array of sources) and pieced together into an intricate and elaborate quilt with radical and surprising results.

CAMILLA GREENWELL

Members of Gandini Juggling.

April (dates TBA): Smashed2, by Gandini Juggling. A sequel to Smashed, which Peak Performances presented in its United States premiere in 2018. Director Sean Gandini and Kati Yla-Hokkala borrow elements of Pina Bauschs gestural choreography and combine them with the intricate patterns and cascades of solo and ensemble juggling. (see video below)

May (dates TBA): Hotel Paradiso, by Familie Flz. United States premiere. Using clowning, acrobatics, magic, and improvisation, Familie Flz makes its highly anticipated U.S. debut after delighting European audiences for more than 20 years with captivating theatrical experiences.

June (dates TBA): Curriculum II, by Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company. World premiere. Originally commissioned as a film project but reimaged as a live performance, with the focal point coming from Louis Chude-Sokeis treatise The Sound of Culture: Diaspora and Black Technopoetics, which explores the connection between race and technology from minstrelsy, music production, cybernetics, to artificial intelligence and posthumanism.

Peak Performances online series, Peak Plus, is currently offering free streams of works by the Heidi Latsky Dance Company, the Richard Alston Dance Company, Gandini Juggling, Double Edge Theatre and more, and additional streams will be added during the season, starting with Elevator Repair Services Baldwin and Buckley at Cambridge, a play based on a debate on The American Dream that took place at Cambridge University Union in 1965 between novelist and activist James Baldwin and writer and pundit William F. Buckley Jr.

CONTRIBUTE TO NJARTS.NET

Since launching in September 2014, NJArts.net, a 501(c)(3) organization, has become one of the most important media outlets for the Garden State arts scene. And it has always offered its content without a subscription fee, or a paywall. Its continued existence depends on support from members of that scene, and the states arts lovers. Please consider making a contribution of $20, or any other amount, to NJArts.net via PayPal, or by sending a check made out to NJArts.net to 11 Skytop Terrace, Montclair, NJ 07043.

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Peak Performances will be as adventurous as ever in its 2021-22 season - njarts.net

Bishop Robert Barron said Tuesday that the Harvard University chaplains made a complete and abject surrender by electing an atheist as the president of their association.

What does bother me, Bishop Barron wrote in an August 31 op-ed for the New York Post, is the complete and abject surrender on the part of the presumably religious leaders at Harvard who chose this man.

If a professed atheist counts as a chaplain which is to say, a leader of religious services in a chapel then religion has quite obviously come to mean nothing at all, he continued.

Bishop Barron is the auxiliary bishop of Los Angeles and founder of Word on Fire Catholic media.

Last week The New York Times announced that Greg Epstein, an atheist and humanist chaplain at Harvard University, was unanimously elected as the chief chaplain of the Harvard Chaplains, the association of more than 40 chaplains serving Harvard students of various religious denominations.

However, the Harvard Catholic Centre and a Christian alumni association took issue with some reporting of Mr Epsteins new role. The Harvard Catholic Centre clarified to CNA this week that Mr Epsteins role as chaplain facilitator is administrative, and has no effect on its ministry at Harvard.

There really is no influence in the role other than the fact that he has the title as the president as the Harvard Chaplains and that hes the liaison between that group and the president of Harvard,said Nico Quesada, marketing and media director at the Harvard Catholic Center, to CNA on Monday.

Mr Epstein will also convene all the university chaplains when they have matters to discuss, he said, and thus will be representing the entire group but hes not representing his own opinions if that makes sense.

The Harvard Catholic Center is the chaplaincy to the universitys Catholic students, based at nearby St Pauls parish in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It is staffed by three priests serving as part of the universitys chaplains association.

Bishop Barron on Tuesday urged Harvard religious chaplains who elected an atheist to lead their association to [s]how a little self-respect. Being a chaplain has something to do with the worship of God and you shouldnt be ashamed to say it.

My point is, Bishop Barron said, that the relativising of doctrine has led, by steady steps through two centuries, to the situation at Harvard today: Even that most elemental of doctrines belief in God doesnt matter. One can still, evidently, be perfectly religious without it

Before his election as president, Mr Epstein previously served as the vice president of the university chaplains association. He has been the humanist chaplain at Harvard since 2005, and also serves as humanist chaplain at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

During the 2020 presidential election, he served as the national chair of Humanists for Biden on behalf of humanists, atheists, agnostics, and others. He has authored the book, Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe, a response to prominent atheists on humanism.

CNA

Related

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Election of atheist as Harvard chaplain president 'complete and abject surrender' Bishop Barron - The Irish Catholic

30 August 2021. The Spectator

We knew they were going to kill him. We knew that in Colombia then and now, a professor who asks more questions than he answers, a doctor who is pained by his patients hunger and knows that no problem belongs only to others, is seen as a danger; for authoritarians, kindness is subversive, and the free thinker who refuses to lose his rebelliousness knows that he carries a constant death sentence like a shadow.

Hctor Abad Gmez was always on the side of life; he taught and practised with passion, compassion and humanism and was assassinated in Medelln on 25 August 1987. Six bullets, two hired assassins, a white sheet and an infinite emptiness.

Hctor Abad Facio-Lince, one of the most widely read Spanish-language writers in the world, son of Doctor Abad Gmez and a beautiful woman named Cecilia, wrote 16 years ago a book so sad and so beautiful that one can only read it with misty eyes and a heart at midnight. El olvido que seremos, a mixture of novel and testimony, of tenderness and literature, is a work of art, of filial love and denunciation of these horrible decades of violence, which we have not been able to close.

Last year amidst overflowing hospitals, heroic doctors and entire villages witnessing parades of pandemic victims post-production of Fernando Truebas film, impeccably based on the book by Hctor Abad Facio-Lince, was completed. It was released in Colombia three months ago, and I didnt have the courage to see it until a couple of days ago. Perhaps because I knew that I would inevitably suffer as I revisited one of those tragedies that has crossed the lives of Colombians, especially doctors and those of us who have never given in to docility or resignation. It took me a long time to see it, but I know that it will stay with me as long as my memory is aware of the country, I live in.

The book and the film are both masterpieces. Javier Cmara portrays Professor Abad Gmez and I feel that he does it with such respect, with such genuine affection, that there is not a voice, a look, a texture of the sadness, of the defence of human rights and of the love of the Abad Facio-Lince family, that has gone unnoticed. It is this profound dose of humanity that one feels throughout the film. David Truebas script is perfectly in tune with our novelists book; I imagine he wrote it with his soul in every word, in every sentence of love, danger and rebellion. The images are not lacking or lacking in anything, the actors radiate light from within, and the music by the Polish composer is beautiful. Two hours of a film that you need to see, embrace and feel, just as you do when you read the book.

A buena hora Gonzalo Cordoba, Dago Garca Producciones and Caracol Televisin took on this odyssey that pays tribute to the generosity of the soul, to the urgency of rescuing public health and ensuring respect for life. How can you not love a beautiful production, full of social and emotional sense?

My respects to all the people who brought this unforgettable book El olvido que seremos to the cinema. Thus, broken and brave, with our lives on the edge and clinging to our dreams of building a just country; thus, wrapped up in so many deaths that should never have happened, we celebrate the goodness of this professor who 34 years and 6 days after being murdered, continues to give us lessons from a Heaven to which he never prayed.

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The memory we mourn - PRESSENZA International News Agency

Olafur Eliasson, Life (detail), 2021, water, uranine, UV lights, wood, plastic sheet, cameras, kaleidoscopes, common duckweed, dwarf water lilies, European frogbit, European water clover, floating fern, red root floater, shellflower, South American frogbit, water caltrop. Installation view, Fondation Beyeler, Basel. Photo: Pati Grabowicz.

THIS YEAR, to much publicity, Olafur Eliasson flooded part of Basels Fondation Beyeler, arguably the most significant private museum in Switzerland. The south-facing glass wall was removed so that the installation could be accessed from the lawn by humans, bats, ducks, insects, or whatever other life-forms happened to be passing by. Gangways were installed just above the waters surface so that bipedal visitors could walk through the southern gallery. The paths constituted a kind of labyrinth, leading through the rooms and back out to the grounds. The water was dyed with uranine, a bright-green biodegradable pigment. The ceiling carried a massive battery of fluorescent tubes that cast an even wall of ultraviolet light straight down on the water, causing the dye to luminesce.

We arrived after closing time. The garden was dark but luxurious, heavy with early-summer growth. Brought out by the first really warm night of the year, people gathered in small groups to walk down to the glowing rectangular pool. Illuminated against the darkness, the visitors were on display, the ultraviolet light making their clothes and teeth fluoresce. The clusters of Pistia stratiotes, or water lettuce, drifting on the aqueous surface were reduced by the strong backlight to abstract outlines, beautiful asterisks. I surreptitiously reached down to touch one and felt the furry, water-repelling leaf that enables it to float.

The distribution of floating plants and the title of the installation, Life, both recalled the Game of Life, the cellular automaton devised by the mathematician John Horton Conway to test how quickly emergent properties appear in simplified systems. That game has only four rules, iteratively applied, that determine which cells will be alive on each turn and which will be dead. Emergent properties, Conway discovered, appear very quickly indeed. Even in the hypersimplistic universe of the game, it is possible to create complex oscillating systems, gardens that grow or crumble or that expand in perpetuity; likewise, the water lettuce, one of the great weeds of the tropical world, will spread in its pond. The analogy cuts both ways. The screen on which this review is typed, and quite possibly read, is made legible by twisted nematics, common organic molecules that change their shape in electromagnetic fields to be either transparent or opaque. The glowing pond is a liquid-crystal display; your screen shares characteristics with a living membrane. The installation owed, in short, as much to screen aesthetics as it did to the classic signifiers of environmentalism, and in so doing took a step toward severing the romantic association between environmentalism and phenomenological experience. That Eliasson, or somebody on his team, knows this was implied by the digital side of the installation: a series of sophisticated webcams that mimicked the perceptual apparatus of nonhuman observers, allowing you to watch a livestream of the installation through the compound eye of a blowfly, among other creatures.

The installation owed, in short, as much to screen aesthetics as it did to the classic signifiers of environmentalism.

The next day, I returned to the pond. Rather than glowing like a vast LCD screen, as it had the night before, the few inches of water provided a murky veil for the museum floor. In the daylight, the installation very closely resembled its predecessors. Some years before The Weather Project at Londons Tate Modern made him internationally famous, Eliasson had flooded the Kunsthaus Bregenz in Austria for The mediated motion, 2001, and added uranine to six waterways around the world to create his Green River series, 19982001. Then, the language invoked was that of phenomenology, of presence.

Studio Olafur Eliasson has a long history of smuggling art theory into the business of artmaking itself, vertically integrating its own machinery for commentary. Now, however, the keywords have changed. Entanglement, natureculture, the Planthroposcene (an aspirational corrective to the human-centric Anthropocene), and so on all featured on the Beyelers website. The removal of the windows of the museums was described, in the parlance of our times, as an act of care. . . . Aesthetic critique is in any case redundant in an exhibition that promotes intraspecies equality. Perhaps more interesting were the projects potential legal ramifications. As architect Jakob Walter pointed out in our conversation, if bats actually took up residence in the Beyeler and started to breed, provisions for the protection of endangered species would have kicked in, and it might have been difficult to evict them to reinstall the permanent collection of Giacomettis and Picassos. It is in this scenario that the theatrics of interspecies rights and posthumanism would actually have been something to grab popcorn over. A legal fight between a family of bats and the estate of Ernst Beyeler might, however, have revealed that the show was not really about dismantling the nature/culture divide, but, as is always the case in the history of institutions, about the will of the dead versus the hunger of the living.

Adam Jasper is a researcher at the Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture (GTA) at ETH Zurich and edits the journal GTA Papers.

Read more here:

Adam Jasper on Olafur Eliasson at the Fondation Beyeler - Artforum

After creating various records like the most viewed streaming show, Disney+ Hotstars The Legend of Hanuman released its second season on 6 August 2021. The story of the Mahabalis journey from warrior to god has attracted a large Indian audience. Following the success footprints of season one, The Legend of Hanuman season two also proved to be a classic masterpiece with advanced animation style and powerful contemporary storytelling that touched a chord with audiences across India.

The mythological animated series is produced by Graphic India and created by Sharad Devarajan, Jeevan J. Kang, and Charuvi Agarwal. Directed by Jeevan J Kang and Navin John, with lead writers Sharad Devarajan, Sarwat Chaddha, Ashwin Pande and Arshad Syed. The 13 episodes of the show are available in seven languages Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Bengali, Malayalam, and Kannada.

Animation Xpress got in touch with Graphic India co-founder Sharad Devarajan to explore behind-the-screen aspects of season two of the mythological animated series.

What was the response received for the first season? Based on the first seasons response, were any particular points kept in mind while working on season two?

Its really rewarding for all of us to see the hard work we have put into this series, find an audience and achieve these great milestones for Indian animation. We continue to be truly humbled by the response and positive reviews and feedback we are receiving.

I have no doubt that any success for the series is first and foremost due to Lord Hanuman who is the quintessential hero whose legends and stories have inspired generations of people, including myself. This has been a very personal mission for everyone who worked on it and we all strived to do justice to this hero and the billions who hold his story in their hearts.

Because of the lead times in animation, we were already deep in production on the season two episodes when season one was released in February, so there was no real-time feedback from season ones release that we could incorporate or look to change for season two. However, we were really encouraged by the great audience response and encouragement for season one that it gave our team a renewed sense of energy and purpose to put all our efforts into season two and try to deliver a similarly strong experience for the audience.

Tell us about the ultimate faceoff between Ravana and Hanuman? Both are supremo, so how did you manage to give equal weightage to the characters?

Our series was shaped around the essential story of a young vanara rediscovering his godhood, which was a unique point of view as that journey of Mahabali Hanuman has not been depicted as widely and offered a fresh take on the legend. This is a journey of self-discovery and emotional growth.

In this younger hero, we see the traits of the legend he will soon become; playful, fun-loving, righteous, optimistic, humble, and authentically honest. Lord Hanumans journey is filled with challenges of the body, the mind, and the soul. But no challenge is greater than his encounter with the demon king, Ravan.

Ravan is the counterfoil to Hanumans journey of self-discovery as through both characters we get to explore the larger theme of immortality. While both are immortal Ravan has now become numb to his endless life, whereas Hanuman has just awoken to his own power and immortality. The second season contrasts these two opposing views of how immortality can be both a blessing and a curse.

For Ravan, he tore the universe apart to gain immortal power, only to find in the end, that eternal life without meaning leads only to madness, obsession, darkness, and despair. For Lord Hanuman, his power was taken from him as a young child, only to have him discover the true hero within himself by embracing faith, hope, love, and compassion and an unwavering spiritual anchor in his devotion to Lord Ram. This season is the story of two lives intertwined by the cosmic wheel of destiny; the demon king Ravan, whose end is soon beginning, and the immortal Hanuman, whose beginning shall never end.

The actions of Lord Hanuman in this second season, and throughout the series, will once again prove that courage and hope will always defeat darkness and that the true measure of a hero goes far beyond the powers they have, but rather, is defined by their inner strength, compassion, and character.

The backgrounds are very realistic and overall its a high-quality 3D animated show. How long did it take to create the entire 3D animated world for the series?

This was a multi-year project and that amount of character and world-building hopefully shows on the screen. The brilliant character designs and the visual world were a real testament to the amazing creativity of my co-creators, Jeevan J. Kang and Charuvi Agrawal who led the design of the series characters and environments. Along with the dedication of my fellow producers, Shaik Maqbool Basha, Roopa De Choudhury, Shivanghi Singh, Ashish Avin, and the amazing Navin John, who also directed the series with Jeevan we all together aimed to set a new high bar for Indian television animation. We were also fortunate to have the stellar team at ReDefine, led by Greg Gavanski and John Harvey work with us to scale that vision into an aggressive production pipeline.

One of our goals of the series was to make Indian audiences forget its an animation and just be pulled into the story, the world, and the characters, in the same way, they would with any big event live-action film or TV series. We focused a lot on creating a naturalistic humanism in the way the characters moved, acted, and spoke as well in their subtle facial expressions and emotions and all of this was heightened by the amazing character designs and environments. We were also fortunate to have some amazing voice actor talents, who really brought this series to life. The entire cast was incredible.

What is the response or feedback you are receiving from the industry and audience for The Legend of Hanuman season two?

For many years people have known the mission to really spark a creative renaissance in India across comics, animation, and character entertainment, and our colleagues and friends in the industry have really been supportive of what we are trying to do with this project.

The audience response through comments and ratings on IMDB have been amazing with a 9.4 rating as well as a 4.9 out of five on Google reviews, making it one of the highest audience-rated shows across all the Indian streaming originals. It reinforces our belief at Graphic India that animation has the potential to be enjoyed by wide audiences in India far beyond just kids. We hope new viewers will continue to discover and enjoy the series in the coming weeks, months, and years!

We also hope it will inspire audiences to explore new takes on our great mythology, both visually and narratively. These myths of our culture, like those of Lord Hanuman, have inspired generations for thousands of years and are some of the defining insights of all creation. Their relevancy and universal human stories continue to inspire over a billion people today. Our mythological epics should now be produced with the same visual grandeur and narrative complexity that does justice to their profound spiritual and emotional truths. Animation is certainly one path forward for that and we are also exploring live-action film and television opportunities as well.

Will there be another season of The Legend of Hanuman? Will we get to witness the life of Hanuman post the epic battle?

We are very hopeful a season three will happen, but there is no news on that yet. Anyone who sees the last episode of season two will realize that creatively we are just getting started with this series and have a lot more of Mahabali Hanumans story to tell. Hopefully, we will have that opportunity.

What would you like to say about the association with Disney+ Hotstar?

This moment in animation would never have happened without the amazing team at Disney+Hotstar. I have such admiration, respect, and gratitude for Gaurav Banerjee, Nikhil Madhok, Roopa De Choudhury, Shivangi Singh, and the entire production and marketing teams. Their belief in us and in this project never wavered and often inspired us to really attempt something unique and special. At every stage, they encouraged us to push the boundaries of what was possible in Indian series animation and reinvent new ways of working to create something special for OTT audiences in the country.

Also, the Disney brand is synonymous with animation, and I have no doubt that this association had an enormous impact on the shows success. To have this be launched on Disney+ Hotstar as their first animated Hotstar Special is an amazing responsibility and honor for us.

Are there any plans to release the series globally and will the local Indian audience get a chance to view it on linear TV as well?

The series is available only on Hotstar in India but also on the Hotstar platform in various territories outside India as well. We have received some amazing responses from audiences reaching out to us from Southeast Asia and the US who have watched the series there.

We are also exploring some interesting partnerships to hopefully launch the series in some key Asian markets like Japan and Korea and hope to announce some news there soon.

Whats next for Graphic India?

We have a number of new animation and live-action projects we are working on that we are hopeful we will be able to announce soon.

Separately, we recently announced we are going deeper into our roots as a comic book company to launch Indias first dedicated webtoons comics platform, Toonsutra, which will come out later this year. We are bringing our massive library of original Graphic India comics to the Toonsutra platform, but it will be so much more than that with the majority of the content we release in the first year coming from other partners and new creators.

At Graphic India, were recruiting artists, writers, painters, creators, and disruptors with one defining mission to create stories, heroes, and characters that spark the imaginations of audiences across India and the world. Thats the goal of our company and the personal driving mission of my life.

More:

The Legend of Hanuman may get another season and a release in Japan and Korea - Animation Xpress

A Moscow court sentenced Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny to two years and eight months in a penal colony, defying tens of thousands of his supporters who had rallied in his support since his return to Russia and Western governments who had urged for his immediate release.

Navalny, 44, was detained on Jan. 17 when he returned to Moscow from Berlin, where he had spent months recovering from a near-fatal poisoning attack in August he blames on President Vladimir Putin.

His arrest triggered mass protests across Russia, with supporters taking to the streets in more than 100 cities for unsanctioned rallies urging his release.

Theanti-corruption campaigner was charged with violating a 2014 suspended sentence for embezzlement by skipping out on check-ins with Russia's prison service while in Germany. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in 2017 ruled thatNavalny's 2014 conviction was "arbitrary and unreasonable."

Here's a look at events as they unfold:

10:48 a.m.: More than 1,400 protestors were detained across Russia throughout the day, OVD-Info reported. At least 11,45 people were detained in Moscow alone first at rallies outside the court where Navalnys hearing was taking place, but the majority later in the evening as spontaneous protests broke out through the city center. Another 248 were detained in St. Petersburg, which also saw violent clashes and a forceful police response.

12:40 a.m.:Police are conducting document checks and photographing passports of everybody entering the Kuznetsky Most metro station in central Moscow, near the site of clashes between riot police and protestors, Mediazona reports.

12:25 a.m.:At least 918 protesters have been detained in rallies against Navalnys imprisonment, according to OVD-Info, with 573 detained in Moscow and 150 in St. Petersburg.

12:05 a.m.: More videos shot on the ground in Moscow continue to show a forceful response from riot police to the unsanctioned and spontaneous protests that broke out across the city after Navalnys sentence was announced. One clip posted by Open Media shows a man being taken out of a taxi, kicked and pinned to the ground.

11:55 p.m.: At least 679 people have been detained in 10 cities across Russia so far, the OVD-Info police monitoring NGO reported. Around half were detained throughout the day during Navalnys court hearing, with the rest late Tuesday evening as protests broke out calling for his release. In Moscow, 557 were detained and another 108 in St. Petersburg.

According to journalists on the ground, the police crackdown has grown increasingly forceful as the crowds have grown in the hours since the verdict was announced and authorities deployed large numbers of riot police.

11:50 p.m.:German Chancellor Angela Merkel joined international calls for the immediate release of Navalny, and urged Russia to end a police crackdown on opposition demonstrators.

"The verdict against Alexei Navalny is far removed from any rule of law. Navalny must be released immediately. The violence against peaceful demonstrators must stop," Merkel said in a message posted on Twitter by her spokesman Steffen Seibert.

11:30 p.m.:Police continue to detain protesters who have taken to the streets in central Moscow, with various media outlets reporting police using tough measures to break up crowds. A video posted by the Baza telegram channel shows riot police hitting protestors with their truncheons.

Another video, shared by Navalnys team, purported to show a member of the riot police hit a journalist over the head with their baton, knocking them to the floor.

More than 525 protestors have been detained so far across Russia on Tuesday, according to OVD-Info. Some 488 of them in Moscow.

At least 29 people were detained in St. Petersburg on Tuesday evening, as protesters there were also met with a heavy police presence.

11:10 p.m.: An estimated 2,000 protestors are now marching through central Moscow to demand Navalnys release, according to journalists from the independent Meduza news site and other outlets.

10:40 p.m.: Small crowds have continued to gather at different locations in central Moscow demanding Navalnys freedom. Protesters shouted the Russia without Putin! and Putin is a thief! chants that are frequently heard at pro-Navalny rallies.Police are detaining protesters across the city, the Meduza news site reported.

10:30 p.m.:Russia described calls by Western countries to free Navalny as "disconnected from reality."

"There is no need to interfere in the internal affairs of a sovereign state," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova was cited by Russian news agencies as saying, adding that "appeals by Western colleagues" were "disconnected from reality."

The European Unions foreign policy chief Josep Borrell became the latest leader to call for Navalnys immediate release, joining the U.S., Britain, Germany, France and others in condemning the decision.

"The sentencing of Alexei Navalny runs counter Russia's international commitments on rule of law and fundamental freedoms," Borrell wrote on Twitter, adding "I call for his immediate release."

10:20 p.m.:Addressing the question of what happens next for Navalnys supporters and his organization, key ally Leonid Volkov, who is based outside Russia, has pledged to increase pressure on Putin from inside and outside the country to secure the release of Navalny and all political prisoners. We will release new investigations and hold more peaceful protests.

We will make sure that no world leader talks to Putin about anything other than the release of Navalny, he said in a post on Telegram.

10:15 p.m.: French President Emmanuel Macron has said the sentence handed down to Navalny is unacceptable. In a statement on Twitter he added: Political disagreement is never a crime. We call for his immediate release. Respect for human rights and democratic freedom are non-negotiable.

10:00 p.m.:Pockets of Navalny supporters have started gathering in central Moscow, following a call from his team to protest the court decision.

9:45 p.m.: Riot police have cleared journalists from a square in front of the Kremlin where Navalnys team had called for protests to gather, the Open Media telegram channel reported.

9:30 p.m.: Navalnys lawyers say they will appeal the decision to the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, which oversees the enforcement of ECHR decisions. The rights court previously said that the first ruling, upon which Tuesdays decision to imprison Navalny was based, was arbitrary and unreasonable, and ordered Russia to pay compensation to Navalny and his brother, Oleg, who served a 3.5 year jail sentence in the same case.

9:22 p.m.: Navalny has been taken away from the courtroom. His wife Yulia, who was in tears when the verdict was being read out, did not speak to reporters.

9:20 p.m.:Police have ordered three metro stations in central Moscow near to the Kremlin to be closed, the citys transport authorities said, after Navalnys team called for supporters to gather there and protest the verdict.

9:00 p.m.:A large number of riot police have been deployed to Manezhnaya Square, opposite the Kremlin, where Navalnys team called for supporters to protest the verdict.Police have started detaining some protesters that have already arrived, the Avtozak telegram channel reported.

8:55 p.m.:Western governments are already reacting to the decision and calling for Navalny's immediate release. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said: The United States is deeply concerned by Russias actions toward Alexei Navalny. We reiterate our call for his immediate and unconditional release as well as the release of all those wrongfully detained for exercising their rights.

In a post on Twitter,British Foreign Minister Dominic Raab said: Todays perverse court decision shows Russia is failing to meet the most basic commitments expected of any responsible member of the international community.

Germany Foreign Minister Heiko Mass said the verdict is a bitter blow against fundamental freedoms & the rule of law in Russia. He noted an ECHR ruling which found the original decision baseless and added: Navalny must be released immediately.

The Council of Europe has said the ruling defies all credibility and contravenes Russias international human rights obligations.

With this decision, the Russian authorities not only further exacerbate human rights violations ... they also send a signal undermining the protection of the rights of all Russian citizens, said the bodys Commissioner for Human Rights, Dunja Mijatovi in a statement.

8:35 p.m.: Navalnys team calls for immediate protests in the center of Moscow over the Kremlin critics jailing.We are going to Manezhnaya Square right now!, they said in a Telegram post Manezhnaya Square is located in the center of Moscow, directly in front of the Kremlin.

Large numbers of police have been deployed both to the Square and to the court, as well as other locations around central Moscow, according to various media reports.

8:31 p.m.:"Don't be sad, everything will be fine," Navalny said to his wife Yulia after the verdict was read out, Novaya Gazeta reported.

8:22 p.m.: The verdict is in.Navalnys suspended sentence of 3.5 years will be transferred into a prison sentence, the court rules.The 10 months Navalny already served under house arrest as part of the first trial will count against that time, meaning he will be imprisoned for a further two years and eight months.

The judge ruled that Navalny was in violation of the terms of his parole which required him to appear in person with a probationary officer twice a month after he was discharged from Berlin's Charite hospital September, where he was being treated for Novichok poisoning.

If he serves the full sentence, Navalny will be behind bars until September 2023.

8:14 p.m.:The judge has now returned to the courtroom and has started to deliver the verdict.

8:05 p.m.:Alexei Navalny has been brought back into the courtroom.

7:50 p.m.:Navalnys lawyers, his wife, Yulia, and journalists have returned to the courtroom. A verdict is expected shortly.

7:30 p.m.:The OVD-Info police monitoring watchdog has increased its count of the number of people who have been detained at protests today to 354. Four of those were in the city of Izhevsk and the rest in Moscow, where Navalnys court hearing is taking place. The detained Kremlin critic had asked supporters in Moscow to come out in his support once more after two weekends of nationwide protests as he faces a 3.5 year jail sentence.

6:50 p.m.: Police have closed Moscows Red Square, the Ekho Moskvy radio station reported, saying there was a large presence of security forces around the entrance to the square, which sits next to the Kremlin in the center of the city.Several eyewitnesses are also reporting a heavy police presence throughout central Moscow, including around the headquarters of the FSB security services.

5:43 p.m.:The verdict will be announced at around 8 p.m., the court's press service tells the Mediazona news website.

OVD-Info reports that 311 people have been detained so far today, four of whom were in the city of Izhevsk and the rest at the Moscow City Court.

5:29 p.m.:The judge has left the courtroom for deliberation.

5:23 p.m.: The prosecutor asks the judge to replace Navalny's suspended sentence with a real sentence:The court showed unprecedented lenience towards Alexei Navalny despite the gravity of his crime by giving him suspended sentences. However, Navalny, despite the humanism the court expressed toward him, continued to violate the terms of his probation.

She adds that theyare willing to count the 12 months that Navalny previously spent under house arrest toward the requested sentence of 3.5 years, meaning he would face a maximum prison sentence of 2.5 years.

5:15 p.m.:The prosecutor continues to cross-examine Navalny over whether he violated the terms of his parole.

5:01 p.m.:The prosecutor asks Navalny if he wasofficially warned about replacing his suspended sentence with a real prison term each time he missed a probation check-in. I confirm that this fabricated case was regularly used to stop my political activities, he replies. The prosecutor says she didn't hear an answer to the question.

4:57 p.m.:The prosecutor begins questioning Navalny, asking him whether he intentionally" missed six parole check-ins before his hospitalization in Siberia in August 2020. He says he went to all required check-ins twice per month since 2014 according to the judges instructions.

4:45 p.m.:Kobzev continues:The poisoning of Alexei Navalny in August 2020 was called political Chernobyl by many.Therefore, I would like to end my speech with a quote from the HBO series [Chernobyl]. [Valery] Legasov says: 'Dyatlov broke all the rules and brought the reactor to self-destruction.Nobody in that control room knew that the shutdown button would act as a detonator.' Dear judge, don't be like Dyatlov, don't push the button.

4:32 p.m.:Navalny finishes and his lawyer Kobzev begins speaking. Kobzev repeats his earlier arguments that Navalny didn'thide from surveillance and that he was put on the wanted list illegally, adding that his whereabouts were always known to the FSIN.

4:28 p.m.: It's easy to lock me up. The main thing in this process is to intimidate a huge number of people, this is how it works. They are putting one person behind bars to scare millions, Navalny says. I really hope that this process will be perceived as... a sign of weakness. ...You can't put millions and hundreds of thousands in jail and I hope people will begin to realize that. Once they do and this moment will come you won't be able to jail everyone.

4:24 p.m.:Navalny continues speaking:We have 20 million people below the poverty line; tens of millions live without the slightest prospects for the future. Life in Moscow is more or less fine, but if you drive 100 kilometers away it's full of poverty. The whole country lives in this poverty, and [the government is] trying to shut them up with such show trials.

4:15 p.m.:Navalny gives his closing statement.Lets talk about the elephant in the room: Its about putting me in jail because of a trial that was ruled to be unlawful. ... We know why this is happening. The reason: The hatred and fear of one man in a bunker. Because I offended him by surviving after they tried to kill me on his orders, he says, using a term he frequently uses to refer to Putin.

No matter how much [Putin] tries to pose as a geopolitician, his main resentment toward me is that he will go down in history as a poisoner. There was Alexander the Liberator and Yaroslav the Wise. Now well have Vladimir the Poisoner of Underpants. The police are guarding me and half of Moscow is cordoned off because we have shown that he is demanding to steal underwear from opponents and smear them with chemical weapons.

4:04 p.m.:The hearing has resumed following a two-hour break.

3:15 p.m.:Dozhd correspondent Vasily Polonsky posts video of himself being detained outside the court. He is later released.

2:00 p.m.:Ekho Moskvy correspondent Irina Vorobyovashares a photo of police officers with black tape covering their badges outside the Moscow City Court.

2:00 p.m.:After reading out documents for about a half hour, the judgeannounces a two-hour break for lunch. "Can you send someone to McDonald's?" Navalny asks.

1:57 p.m.: The court confirms to Interfax that diplomats from the Czech Republic, Austria, Lithuania, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, the United States, Canada, Germany, Switzerland, Britain, Latvia and Poland are present at the hearing as well as EU representatives.

1:27 p.m.:At least 237 people have been detained outside the Moscow City Court so far, the OVD-Info police monitor reports.

1:00 p.m.:Navalny questions the FSIN official: Comrade captain, do you respect the Russian President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin? ... You said you dont know where Ive been since August. Putin said on television that thanks to him Id been sent to Germany for treatment.

I was in a coma, then I was in the ICU, he continues. I sent you medical documents; you had my address and contacts. What else could I have done to tell you where I am? I have a lawyer and my lawyer has a telephone... how could I have informed you better?

The FSIN representative responds that Navalny needed to provide documents and explain the serious reasons for not showing up to inspections.

I was in a coma! Navalny says.

12:49 p.m.:Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova writes that the presence of foreign diplomats at Navalny's hearing "isn't just meddling in the internal affairs of a sovereign state, but the self-incrimination of the west's unsightly and illegal attempts to contain Russia." She accuses the diplomats of being"an attempt at psychological pressure on the judge."

12:45 p.m.: The Kremlin says Putin is not following today's hearing, adding that it hopes Navalny's fate would not affect Russia's ties with Europe.

"We hope that such nonsense as linking the prospects of Russia-EU relations with the resident of a detention center will not happen," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists, days ahead of a visit to Moscow by the European Union's foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell.

12:39 p.m.:Navalnys lawyer Kobzevasks why the FSIN didnt contact his family or lawyers when he missed his check-ins with his probation officer and only added him to Russias wanted list months after he was evacuated to Germany. Kobzev sayshe submitted medical files from Berlin the FSIN in person in November, contradicting prosecutors claims that they hadnt heard from Navalny or his representatives.The whole country, the whole world knew where he was, he says.

12:34 p.m.:At least 127 people have been detained outside the Moscow City Court so far, the OVD-Info police monitor reports.

12:20 p.m.:A Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN)representative formallyasks the judge to replace Navalny's suspended sentence with a real prison term of 3 years and 6 months.

"Since the end of September 2020, Navalny has been in outpatient treatment. Judging by media reports, he moved freely and gave interviews. He did not contact FSIN inspectors, although their phone number was posted on their website. He was put on the wanted list, as the service decided that he was systematically evading a suspended sentence," the representative says.

When the judge asks the prosecution why the FSIN didn't take action against Navalny earlier, they respond that there was hope hewould get on the road to reform.

12:01 p.m.:After the hearing resumes, the prosecutiondismisses the Charit document, saying it does not state where Navalny was after he was discharged for outpatient treatment on Sept. 23 and before his outpatient treatment ended on Jan. 15.

11:54 a.m.:Vyacheslav Detishin, the head of theSimonovsky district court that is presiding over Navalny's trial, submitted his resignation on Jan. 28, the Znak.com news website reports.

11:42 a.m.:Detentions continue outside the court as the judge calls a 10-minute break.

11:36 a.m.:Navalny's lawyerVadim Kobzev asks the courtto admit a medical document as proof that he was in outpatient treatment atBerlin's Charit hospital until Jan. 15 and that he was unable to check in with his probation officer before then, Mediazona reports. Kobzev also submits a document from Charit stating that Navalny underwent inpatient treatment forsevere poisoning from Aug. 22 to Sept. 23 as well as the European Court of Human Rights' statement that the verdict against Navalny in the Yves Rocher case was unfair.

He adds that ifNavalny hadn't been detained at the airport upon his Jan. 17 arrival in Moscow, he would have checked in with his probation officer the next morning.

Go here to read the rest:

As It Happened: Navalny Sentenced to 2 Years and 8 Months in Penal Colony - The Moscow Times

ByStaffThe Canadian Press

Posted January 28, 2021 12:38 pm

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Konrad Sioui, the former grand chief of the Huron-Wendat Nation, is taking the reins of the board of directors at the Socit de lassurance automobile du Qubec (SAAQ).

Sioui was appointed to the post at the provinces automobile insurance board by the Council of Ministers on Wednesday. He is the first representative of a First Nation to head the board of directors of a Quebec Crown corporation, according to the provincial government.

In a government statement, Sioui said he was very enthusiastic about his new responsibilities.

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Quebec Transport Minister Franois Bonnardel welcomed the appointment and praised the qualities of Sioui, whose experience and humanism will support the SAAQ in the constant improvement of its customer services and to road accident victims.

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Sioui was grand chief from 2008 to 2020 of the Huron-Wendat Nation in Wendake, near Quebec City. He was ousted from the position after he was defeated by current chief Rmy Vincent.

When he was elected in 2008, he himself took over the role from Max Gros-Louis, who died last November.

2021 The Canadian Press

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Former grand chief Konrad Sioui tapped to become next head of SAAQ board - Global News

The final moments of The Rescue continues the Disney-era Star Wars tradition of tying every supposedly new story back to the multigenerational adventures of the Skywalker family. Photo: Disney+

The second-season finale of The Mandalorian was the best of Star Wars and the worst of Star Wars, a momentarily thrilling and moving episode that, once you stepped back and took a hard look at it, felt more like a victory for the dark side.

Created by Jon Favreau Disneys speed-dial answer to David O. Selznick, a producer-director-writer who has worked on Marvel, Star Wars, and Disney Animation projects simultaneously The Mandalorian is earnest and lovingly crafted, easily the freshest thing Lucasfilm has given viewers since Genndy Tartakovskys 2003 Cartoon Network classic, Clone Wars. For two seasons, it has tapped into the light side of the franchise, represented by the humor, action, world-building details, and friendship narratives that have defined George Lucass science-fiction fantasies since 1977. But in the final moments of Chapter 16: The Rescue, the series succumbs to the dark side of parent company Disneys quarterly-earnings statements, which keeps dragging Star Wars back toward nostalgia-sploitation and knee-jerk intellectual-property maintenance.

Where to begin lamenting this self-defeat? For one thing, the Luke cameo in the final moments of The Rescue continues the Disney-era Star Wars tradition of tying every supposedly new story back to the multigenerational adventures of the Skywalker family. Even universe-expanding takes like Rogue One (a clever retcon of the original Death Stars structural flaw, with cameos by Darth Vader, Grand Moff Tarkin, Princess Leia, and other familiar characters) and Solo (an origin story for everyones favorite smuggler-general and the future baby daddy of Kylo Ren) fall prey to this tendency. It always feels like a sop to Disney stockholders and a way of hedging bets on any property that dares to take even a modest risk.

Its hard to capture in words the galaxy-collapsing shortsightedness of requiring that every new Star Wars tale ultimately connect, however tangentially, with the same handful of genetically linked characters. Star Wars bizarre obsession with Force-amplifying, midi-chlorian-rich blood, and the proximity of regular characters to those with special blood, makes Lucass galaxy far, far away a place so vast that you need hyperspace to cross it feel as rinky-dink as a backwater American town, the kind of place where everybody is required to kiss the same local familys butt for survivals sake. Every time a Star Wars story genuflects to the Skywalker saga yet again, Lucass mythos shrinks further in the collective imagination. Sometimes its so small-minded that youd think Disneys mandate was to reimagine Mayberry with starships and laser swords.

Thus does the galactic rim in the postCivil War era thrillingly envisioned by Favreau and his Mandalorian writers as a science-fiction fusion of two related genres, the spaghetti Western and the samurai adventure pivot without warning toward insularity. Thus does a great character like Pedro Pascals Din Djarin an orphan who adopted a fundamentalist interpretation of Mandalorian self-identity and a genocide survivor who feels kinship with members of the Alderaan diaspora become a mere extra upon the cosmic stage, fascinating not because of how he practices or compromises his beliefs but because he briefly met the dude who faced down Vader and the Emperor. And thus Grogu, a member of the same species as Yoda, becomes worthy of our attention not because hes a case study in nature and nurture possessing dark and light impulses and open to manipulation and corruption by vile tricksters like Moff Gideon (Giancarlo Esposito) but because Luke deemed him important enough to rescue. He has a special purpose, you see. Not like all those other gifted kids throughout the galaxy who need a parent to guide them toward the light.

We shouldve known things would wrap up this way the instant that Boba Fett (Temuera Morrison) moseyed into The Mandalorian and pulled focus from Mando. Miraculously disgorged from the Sarlacc pit that devoured him in Return of the Jedi (a silly twist canonized in spinoff properties), Fett had come to reclaim the armor sported by one of The Mandalorians most charismatic new characters, a Tatooine marshal (Timothy Olyphant) who wore Fetts gear like a knight riding into battle against a dragon (actually a sandworm/sand-shark monster). But Fett was really onscreen to reclaim The Mandalorian for that sector of the Star Wars fan base that refuses to accept anything that feels like a revision, subversion, or expansion of what they already know they like particularly when the new iteration asks them to look beyond all the lovely, shiny things onscreen and think about whether their own relationship with the tried-and-true elements of Star Wars is healthy.

Speaking as a card-carrying OG Star Wars nerd literally: I bought the first set of trading cards at my neighborhood comic shop in Kansas City, and to this day I cant look at jpegs of those babies without hallucinating an olfactory Proustian bubblegum rush I truly do understand the grateful tears that some viewers shed during the last ten minutes of The Rescue, particularly at the surprise revelation of Grogus savior. When that hood dropped, waterworks flowed around the world. And the saltwater level rose when episode director Peyton Reed held that anguished close-up of Mando watching his emerald child depart.

But only one of these two moments is rooted in something achingly real. And its not the one that smashes a Pavlovian fan-service button after spending several minutes pandering to the toxic not my Luke faction of the fandom, which would prefer to forego themes of regret, failure, bitterness, and other unpleasant but inevitable adult emotions and instead watch a character they spent a lifetime identifying with flip through the air while dicing up foes with a magic sword. Like an action figure the kind I used to play with when I was 9.

Lending new pungency to the phrase zombie IP, The Mandalorian Frankensteined a Luke cameo, employing the same CGI that gave Grand Moff Tarkin and Princess Leia their uncanny-valley vibes. A walking deus ex machina, Luke Rubberface arrived late yet just in time, like Han and Chewie at the battle of the first Death Star, then echoed (deliberately, one assumes) the most polarizing fan-service moment in the Disney-era films: Darth Vaders slaughter of Rebel troops in Rogue One.

Mingling terror and exhilaration, but settling mainly for exhilaration, Vaders hallway rampage in Rogue One underlined an area in which Lucass vision always needed bifocals: the tendency to let the spectacle of violent domination become an adrenaline-stimulating drug powerful enough to shatter any philosophical frame the storytellers try to put around it. Lucas envisioned the original trilogy and the prequels as anti-fascist tracts pitched at a level that a child could understand; despite sometimes getting lost in the weeds of merchandising, F/X innovations, and studio-building, the results consistently encouraged viewers to identify with the oppressed over the oppressors and tried to be clear about whom, in the real world, the oppressors were. A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi brazenly drew a connecting line between imperial England, the Nazi war machine, and the postwar American military-industrial complex. The Galactic Rebellion conflated the American colonists, the World War II anti-fascist underground, and the Vietcong into basically same mentality, different uniforms and gadgets. The Death Star was Lucass equivalent of the atomic bomb, a weapon that the United States alone is guilty of dropping on civilian targets. A generation later, The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, and Revenge of the Sith showed how democracies willingly let themselves slide into dictatorship: A complacent and out-of-touch Jedi Council lets young Senator Palpatine rise to power by solving crises that Palpatine himself secretly created, each time convincing the galactic legislature to surrender more authority to the chancellor and the military. By the end of his masterful campaign of manipulation, the Senate itself is dissolved, leaving power in the hands of a despot whose army pledges loyalty to him personally, rather than to any institution or creed.

Unfortunately, to a certain type of fan, good and evil, chaos and order, morality and treachery as laid out in Lucass cosmology are all mere pretexts for laser-sword fights, blaster battles, spaceship combat, and planets getting maimed or atomized by the bad guys doomsday weapon du jour. And heres where things get really dark: The power-fantasy thing has been an inextricable part of Star Wars appeal from the beginning, even when Lucas and his collaborators were studiously warning viewers that the Force should only be used for defense, never for attack, that there are alternatives to fighting, that fear leads to hate, hate to anger, anger to suffering, etc. The mirroring of the Rogue One hallway massacre and Lukes Cuisinarting of Moff Gideons death droids is charged with explosive storytelling potential, but its ideologically unstable. Any time Star Wars lets the mayhem genie out of the bottle, puffs of it stay out there in the world, where toxic fans can imbibe it, ignoring the context that Lucas and three generations of collaborators put around it.

Favreau, Mandalorian executive producer Dave Filoni & Co. need to keep a firm grip on possible fan takeaways moving forward and do all they can to make sure that any adrenaline rush that viewers may have gotten from watching Luke Skywalker make like a combo of the Terminator and Looney Tunes Tasmanian Devil is properly called out for what it is: an invocation of the appeal of the dark side of the Force, which is powered by rage, insecurity, childishness, and other negative emotions. The scene is already being held up in some Star Wars forums as proof that the franchise is committed to eradicating any remaining self-aware and questioning elements that were raised by Rian Johnsons brilliant The Last Jedi an anti-nostalgia tract that rejects dogma and received wisdom, argues that we are what we grow beyond, makes one of its male heroes a hothead who endangers the good guys by not listening to a female superior, intimates that its fearless young heroine is a nobody who succeeded on talent and discipline alone, and ends with a shot of an anonymous slave boy fantasizing about being a Jedi on the heels of J.J. Abramss The Rise of Skywalker. The ninth, and unfortunately probably not final, Star Wars feature was an ideological doomsday weapon, the Snyder Cut of Lucasfilm, meant to placate Star Wars obsessives who did not appreciate being made to feel uncomfortable about any of the problematic aspects of the series that theyd either approved of or failed to notice in the past. Shoehorning Palpatine into a trilogy that had been chugging along nicely without him, and chucking original trilogy characters (including Force ghosts and a CGI Leia) into a fan-service gumbo, the film wasnt a do-over exactly, but it had that sour and dutiful spirit. It was the cinematic version of firing a wunderkind new employee who had dared to question the companys mission statement, then throwing out any object hed touched when he worked there.

That a good part of Star Wars fandom has enthusiastically embraced the dark side demanding implied loyalty pledges to half-baked notions of childhood innocence and playground fantasies of dominance confirms that even when Lucas worried that he was using a mallet as a tack hammer, his blunt instrument still wasnt blunt enough. And, really, thats on Lucas. Maybe all these problem areas are features rather than bugs, built into the essence of the dazzling, wildly popular thing that he willed into being. Maybe the phenomenon is adjacent to Franois Truffauts observation that theres no such thing as a truly antiwar movie, because war is so exciting to watch that viewers cant help getting lost in the reptilian brain rush, forgetting the misery that violence leaves in its wake.

The impulse of the power-fantasy-worshipping, Skywalker-centric, royalty-obsessed faction of Star Wars fandom, which treats any hint of maturity, humanism, and inclusiveness as a declaration of war against fun, is related to a movement in modern political discourse that conflates any questioning of reactionary sentiments as censorship or cancel culture. This impulse is forever implying, sometimes flat out saying, that things were better the way they used to be; that nothing needs to change; that theres no better way of doing things, or even looking at things; and, therefore, everybody needs to just shut up and watch those lightsabers-go-brrrr.

The nostalgic/reactionary impulse is so intense that it retroactively obliterates The Mandalorians sincere attempts to add complexity and contradiction to Star Wars, in scenes like the Clients season-one speech asking if the galaxy was really better off without the Empire in charge and the sequence in season twos penultimate episode where ex-Imperial soldier Migs Mayfeld (Bill Burr) asks Mando whether theres functionally any difference between the New Republic and the old Empire if youre a peasant. Mayfeld, possibly the most philosophically conflicted character in 40-plus years of Star Wars stories, answers his own question in that same episode, purging his PTSD over participating in an Imperial act of genocide by shooting an officer who participated in it.

When Mayfelds long-suppressed guilt bomb detonates, Star Wars momentarily becomes as morally instructive and clearheaded as Lucas always wanted it to be. The episode asks viewers to think about the galaxys endless conflict from more than one point of view, and concede that, in the words of one of the greatest Onion headlines, the worst person you know might have a point but that awareness of relativity doesnt mean a person can throw their moral compass away and plead neutrality.

Its a pity that this same compass goes out the window when fans treat any self-questioning impulse in Star Wars as a personal attack. Like power itself, power fantasies corrupt absolutely. Thats how you end up with essays and YouTube videos arguing that the Empire was misunderstood or somehow right, or that, perhaps, somehow, it had a point. Its Walter Sobchaks famous line from The Big Lebowski played straight: Say what you want about the tenets of intergalactic fascism enforced by planet-killers, Dude at least its an ethos.

This is a dire development for a tale that Lucas first pitched to studios as a live-action Disney adventure like 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: suitable for the whole family but with an edge that let viewers reassure themselves that they werent watching kid stuff. After all of the meticulous, thoughtful work that The Mandalorians writers, producers, and F/X team had done over the previous 15 episodes to expand and deepen Lucass universe and make it seem infinite in its storytelling potential a vast mindspace, populated with kajillions of eccentric, fascinating beings with no genetic or political connection to the Skywalker clan here comes the season-two finale, making like Lucy yanking the football away from Charlie Brown. Now The Mandalorian, like Grogu, has the potential to go one way or the other: to embrace the light side or get swallowed up in the darkness. Cloudy the future is.

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Has The Mandalorian Succumbed to the Dark Side? - Vulture

Ajay BanerjeeTribune News ServiceNew Delhi, December 20

A narration of personal experiences of four officers, who took part in the historic and one-of-its-kind crossing of the Meghna river during the 1971 war with Pakistan, was the highlight of the concluding day of the 4th military literature festival on Sunday.

The annual event conducted in Chandigarh is being held virtually this year due to the COVID-19 protocols.

Each officer narrated how the crossing across the Meghna river (Dec 9- Dec 15, 1971) was done while the Indian Army approached to encircle Dhaka (then known as Dacca) from the eastern flank.

Interspersed with some thrilling anecdotes of the war and also the conduct of the 4 Corps Commander Lt Gen Sagat Singh, the session was moderated by Squadron leader Rana TS Chinna, who is part of the Centre for Armed Forces Historical Research (CAFHR), under the USI.

Dhaka was then the capital of East Pakistan, the river Meghna was crossed by troops using helicopters while tanks forded across the strong currents leading to a hasty fall of the Pakistan Army.

Lt Gen SS Mehta who led first tank troop using PT 76 tanks into Dhaka termed this as victory of democracy over military rule and a victory of humanism over barbarism.

The game changer was the helicopter-lift for crossing of troops and tanks by fording across the Meghna, he later told the Tribune. The river has strong currents and is as wide as 15 km.

The war was about liberation over occupation. Pakistan had occupied it (Bangladesh) and we have liberated them. We did not stay beyond 90 days, said General Mehta, who was commanding the 5th Independent squadron of his regiment, the 63 Cavalry.

The General, then a Major, did the task of making his squadron tanks cross the river using them in an amphibious role.

The proof is that Bangladesh is a faster growing economy. We captured Dhaka with just 3000 troops and 30,000 Pakistan Army surrendered.

He recollected how his tank squadron was parked in the grounds of the Dhaka University and at its edge stood a 16th century Nanak Shahi Gurdwara which was damaged by Pakistan Army and its granthi was killed.

The gurdwara was refurbished and troops got in a new granthi too. The first speech of new leaders of Bangladesh in their officiating capacity was made from the gurdwara.

Lt GS Sihota was air operations pilot tasked with Gen Sagat Singh the 4 Corps Commander described how the operation was planned and how the general himself visited each spot to select the best possible location to cross the Meghna after several air reconnaissance sorties.

Sagat Singh could not accept defeat, he said.

Group Captain CS Sandhu, who was commanding the 110 Helicopter unit of the IAF, was tasked with ferry troops across the Meghna said the unit had 10 Mi-4 helicopters supplied by then USSR.

In June 1971, I was told that I would be operating with the 4 Crops and asked to go and see General Sagat Singh, who then advised me to train for night flying.

With just a navigation light, a small cockpit light and with no radio transmission permitted, the task was to coordinate the flying speed of the copters with accuracy to prevent any mid-air crashes. The training was done post-monsoons in 1971.

From December 9 to December 15, IAF helicopters lifted 6,000 men from the east bank of the Meghna and dropped them at the west bank of the river for the onward march to Dhaka, he said.

Maj Chandrakant Singh, who was in the infantry, described the battle of Akhaura as the toughest battle of the eastern sector. Akhaura is further east of Meghna and close to Tripura, India.

By December 6, the troops were moving towards the river line of Meghna.

The planning to heli-drop troops was conveyed over night and it helped us push Pakistan further westwards towards Dhaka. Sagat Singh was clear in his mind that he would use helicopters in an offensive role.

The moderator Squadron Leader Chhina, said these individuals on the panel shaped the destiny of three countries and the operation across the Meghna was a daring plan which led to the fall of Dhaka.

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Crossing Meghna led to fall of Dhaka in 1971, share four officers - The Tribune India

Kolkata: On December 1, BJP Rajya Sabha MP Subramanian Swamy wrote a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi urging that some words of National Anthem be replaced by the version of the Jana Gana Mana composed by Netaji Subhash Chandra Boses Indian National Army.

That version is called Subh Sukh Chain.

Swamy wrote that the National Anthem composed by Rabindranath Tagore raised unnecessary doubts as to whom the poem was addressing.

It is also inappropriate for post 1947 independent India for example the reference to Sindh in the words of the national anthem, he wrote.

On December 12, Swamy shared the letter on Twitter along with a copy of acknowledgement from the prime minister.

Interestingly, perhaps unbeknownst to Swamy, Subh Sukh Chain too mentions Sindh in the second line itself.

For a section of Bengalis, this request is an insult to Tagore.

Five-time Congress MP from Bengal, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury hit back at Swamy and wrote a letter to the prime minister as well, stating that Swamys letter both in spirit and understanding is narrow, divisive and violates the deep national sentiment that exists on the subject matter.

Swamys understanding of Jana Gana Mana is too limited and narrow as he takes mere territorial understanding of the present India and hence, he considers Sindh as a misfit in the post-1947 India. But India is not merely a territorial land, it is an ocean of cultures and ideas with an infinite capacity to knit together infinite pluralism in perfect harmony. Gurudev, as Rabindranath Tagore is loved and remembered, is our nations pride and a global icon. He was primarily a humanistic thinker and his Jana Gana Mana only portrays the essence of humanism, Chowdhury wrote.

Rabindranath Tagore at work in his study at Santiniketan. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Swamys letter may have come a good 73 years since Independence, but the Bharatiya Janata Party to which he belongs and organisations ideologically similar to it has often been critical of Tagore and his ideas.

In 2017, Dinanath Batra, head of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh-affiliated Shiksha Sanskriti Utthan Nyas, recommended to the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) that Tagores thoughts, especially those related to nationalism be removed from NCERT textbooks.

After facing a lot of criticism in parliament, then Minister for Human Resources and Development, Prakash Javadekar, assured the House that no such thing was going to happen.

In 2017, while speaking at an event in Nagpur, RSS chiefMohan Bhagwat saidthat after winning the first Nobel Prize in 1913, Tagore was on a world tour with Gitanjali. In 1916, he visited a Japanese University and was supposed to address the students there, however, no students turned up. Bhagwat said, No matter how big an individual is, one does not gain enough respect if he comes from a weak country.

Senior Tagore scholar, and former director of Nippon Bhavana, a centre Tagore started to foster Indo-Japanese relations, Amitrasudan Bhattacharya said Bhagwats comment had no base. Tagore had elaborately documented his visit to Japan and there is no mention of this incident. He had always been very truthful about his foreign interactions. He was so touched with the relationships he built with the Japanese intellectuals that he started the Nippon Bhavan in Shantiniketan. So the question of such a rebuff does not arise, Bhattacharya told TOI then.

Tagore for the Hindutva cause

For the past few years, many BJP leaders in Bengal have tried to reimagine Tagore and have portrayed him as a Hindutva exponent. They keep referring to Swadeshi Samaj, an essay Tagore wrote after the partition of Bengal in 1905, to claim that he was a proponent of the Hindu Rashtra.

In 2019, historian Diptesh Chakrabarty wrote in The Telegraph, that he was simply appalled to see a distorted and caricatured Tagore now being mobilised to fan the flames of anti-Muslim sentiments among the Hindus of West Bengal all in the interest of harvesting a few more seats in the elections to the Lok Sabha.

In the piece, Chakrabarty writes that upon being forwarded an email that purported to show through various quotes how critical Tagore was of Islam, Chakrabarty found there was distortion and falsification of what the poet actually said throughout.

The forwarded message quoted the following by Tagore: Everyday, lower-class Hindus keep becoming Muslims or Christians [but] Bhatpara [pandits] remain unconcerned.

Rabindranath Tagore hosts M.K. Gandhi and Kasturba Gandhi at Santiniketan in 1940. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

What was entirely missing from this quotation, wrote Chakrabarty, were the first few words with which the sentence began: Everyday, to save themselves from social humiliation, lower-class Hindus

Thus, the sentence actually was an indictment of Hindu society and its caste oppressions, not of Islam, Chakrabarty wrote.

A common myth unofficially propagated by the RSS is that the Jana Gana Mana was actually written to greet King George V, and that it was made Indias National Anthem in place of the Vande Mataram only to ensure that the Muslim population were happy with the choice.

Tagore against the Hindutva cause

Memes circulated by rightwing accounts on social media often call Tagore characterless, anti-Hindu and a pimp of the seculars and the British.

Also read: In Bengal, Hindutva Confronts Two Icons Tagore and Fish

Propaganda outlets also attempt to put forth the cause of Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, who wrote Vande Mataram, as the rightful winner of the Nobel Prize instead of Tagore. While this is done in a clear effort to assuage Bengalis by propping up another Bengali and true Hindu hero, the point to be noted here is that Chattopadhyay died in 1894, a good seven years before the Nobel was first given out in 1901.

(L) Bankim: The litterareur who truly deserved the Nobel prize. He was not afraid to speak the truth.(R) Tagore (seen with Helen Keller reading his lips): The characterless, licentious, anti Hindu agent of foreigners and secularists who got the Nobel.

Of late, BJP has increasingly been using Tagore to prove its Bengali credentials and counter the outsider rhetoric of Trinamool Congress. So much so that, the saffron party in one of their membership drives in Nadia district used a popular Tagore song O amar desher mati, tomar pore thakai matha (O my motherland! I bow to thee), written in the heydays of the freedom movement.

These days, Prime Minister Narendra Modi very often quotes the bard in his speeches. The latest was on December 10, while laying the foundation stone for new parliament building, Modi quoted Tagore as having said, Ekota utshaho dhoro. Jatio unnoti koro. Ghushuk bhuboner shobe bharater joy! (Continue with the enthusiasm of unity. Every citizen should progress and India should be hailed all over the world!)

Previously, while addressing the 95th annualplenary sessionof the Indian Chamber of Commerce (ICC), Modi quoted from Tagores poem Ore nuton juger bhore (Dawn of new century).

But Modis wanton quoting of Tagore strikes as too much of an attempt to woo Bengalis in election season, considering the overall unfamiliarity with Tagore and his verses, displayed by BJP leaders.

BJP leader and Tripura chief minister, Biplab Deb on the occasion of Tagores birth anniversary in 2018 said, Rabindranath Tagore returned his Nobel Prize in protest against the British. Tagore never did that, but he did refuse the knighthood.

BJP Bengal president and MP Dilip Ghosh once wrongly credited Bengali social reformer Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar for writing Sahaj Path, an elementary Bengali text book written by Tagore.

To top it all, while addressing a rally in Birbhum during the Lok Sabha election last year, Union home minister Amit Shah said, Rabindranath Tagore was born in Shantiniketan. The mistake lent itself to a tweet by the Bengal BJP unit which claimed that Visva-Bharati is Rabindranath Tagores birthplace. The tweet was taken down after a few hours.

Original post:

BJP Is Always Uncomfortable With Tagore PM Modi Quoting His Poems Won't Reverse This - The Wire

New Delhi: In the run up to the India International Science Festival 2020, CSIR-Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (CSIR-IGIB), New Delhi participated in the Vigyan Yatra on December 21. The Director of CSIR-IGIB, Dr. Anurag Agrawal, kicked off the online program with a reminder of Article 5A(h) of the Indian Constitution which states that it is the duty of every citizen of India to develop the scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of enquiry and reform, stressing how the solution to many problems of the modern world lie in science. Dr. Agrawal emphasized that the rapid response of the scientific world to fight against the COVID-19 pandemic came from years of investment into good science, irrespective of the classifications of basic and applied.

Prof. K. VijayRaghavan, Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India delivering the keynote address noted how building redundancy into our scientific establishments is essential for a fast and nimble response in an emergency such as the COVID-19 pandemic. He spoke about how science in post-COVID era cannot stand isolated but rather had to move forward hand in hand with industry and society. Constant dialogue, challenges and counter-challenges from one to the other are important for us to keep our research relevant and responsive, he added.

A short video was screened highlighting the achievements of IGIB in the areas of genomic medicine. IGIB has a major focus on genomics with special emphasis on genomics of human diseases; from the sequencing of the first Indian genome in 2009 to sequencing the genome of 1000 Indians, to creating a reference database of Indian genomes for precision medicine development. The expertise in genomics also allowed the institute to rapidly sequence large numbers of COVID-19 samples when the pandemic struck India early this year. CSIR-IGIB has also been leading the fight against COVID-19 by developing a paper-based RNA diagnostic system called FELUDA based on the CRISPR-Cas9 system. This development was the result of already ongoing research into developing CRISPR-diagnostics for sickle cell anemia. IGIB is also using stem cell technology to correct genetic diseases such as sickle cell anemia and thalassemia, which has a wide prevalence in the country. Finally, research at CSIR-IGIB has led to the birth of a modern scientific discipline known as Ayurgenomics. Ayurvedic doctors and genomics scientists have over the years worked together to identify a genomic correlate for the Prakriti-based stratification of population used in Ayurveda.

Alagappa University organized a Special Lecture on History of Indian Science under the banner of India International Science festival (IISF) through the virtual platform to promote history of science in India. The event was conducted to create awareness amongst the youth about the Indian Civilization and its imprints across the globe. Total 600 participants, including Undergraduate students, post-graduates, research scholars and school students from various colleges, institutes and schools from the Sivaganga District of Tamil Nadu joined the event.

Prof. N. Rajendran, Vice-Chancellor, Alagappa University, Karaikudi mentioned about the very evolution of science as the struggle against nature. He also highlighted that the CharakaSamkitha invented anciently is used for 150 surgeries alongside shusritha.

Prof. S. Sivasubramainan, Former, Vice-Chancellor, Bharathiar University, Coimbatore in his special address emphasized upon the nature, types, fields and need of science through which scientists have plied their craft not because of the importance for glory or material award but to satisfy their own curiosity about the way the world works.

Dr. D.K. Hari, Founder, Bharath Gyan, Chennai in his Keynote speech said, India has been noted to be the scientific country right from Vedic to modern times with the usual fluctuations that can be expected of any country.

Shri. V. Parthasarathy, Treasurer, Arivial Sangam, VIBHA Tamil Nadu Chapter felicitated the chief guests. Prof. H. Gurumallesh Prabu, Registrar, Alagappa University delivered the thematic address. Prof. Sanjeev Kumar Singh, Nodal Officer Alagappa University, IISF 2020 proposed the Vote of thanks. He has also encouraged the participants of the event to join the main event of IISF 2020.

CSIR-National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (CSIR-NEERI) and Vigyan Bharati (VIBHA) organised the Vigyan Yatra as part of the 6th India International Science Festival (IISF-2020) and Jigyasa: Student-Scientist Connect Program to nurture scientific temper and inspire young minds. The Vigyan Yatra was organisedto showcase the scientific activities virtually. Students and teachers from KendriyaVidyalayas, NavodayaVidyalayas, Government Schools, etc. from Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and other parts of India prominently participated in this programme.

Dr. Rakesh Kumar, Director, CSIR-NEERI in his welcome address cited some interesting examples where science could be applied for betterment of the people and environment. Students can do better if they are innovative, creative, and think out of the box, he added.

Dr. (Mrs) AtyaKapley, Scientist and Head, Directors Research Cell, CSIR-NEERI outlined the role of CSIR-NEERI in IISF-2020. She informed that CSIR-NEERI would coordinate two major events, namely Women Scientists and Entrepreneurs Conclave and Sanitation & Waste Management.

Prof. Umesh Palikundwar, Department of Physics, RTM Nagpur University described about the role of VIBHA, Vidarbha Chapter in IISF-2020 and nation building. Dr. K V George, Scientist and Head, Air Pollution Control Division delivered a popular science lecture on Our Atmosphere and Its pollution. The students interacted with the CSIR-NEERI scientists and cleared their scientific concept. IISF promotional video and Dr APJ Abdul Kalams inspirational video were screened on this occasion.

The IISF 2020 is being organised by Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR) in collaboration with Ministry of Earth Sciences, Department of Science and Technology (DST), Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Ministry of Earth Sciences, Department of Biotechnology (DBT) and Vijnana Bharati (VIBHA).

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Special Lecture on History of Indian Science by Alagappa University - India Education Diary

Film: Unpaused

Director: Krishna D.K, Raj Nidimoru, Nitya Mehra, Nikkhil Advani, Avinash Arun, Tannishtha Chatterjee

Cast: Richa Chadha, Ratna Pathak Shah, Saiyami Kher, Gulshan Devaiah, Sumeet Vyas, Abhishek Banerjee, Lillete Dubey, Rinku Rajguru, Geetika Vidya Ohlyan and Ishwak Singh

Nonika Singh

Desperate times dont just call for drastic measures. Often, these can unlock doors of creativity. Covid-19 that tested our patience and resolve also brought out the best in many of us. And it is to this human instinct, the innate goodness in all of us that Unpaused, an anthology film, is dedicated to. Circling around the time when the world paused for there was no choice, here is an ode to humanity and to human spirit that invariably trumps whatever may be the odds.

With five (actually six for there is a duo too) directors coming together to present their individual takes on the testing Covid times, what we get are human and humane accounts by way of five short films. Directors are no wannabees but the best in the field.

Glitch by the masterly duo Raj and DK is a love story of sorts. From virtual dating to paranoia surrounding Covid to the silent warriors (pay attention, its no accident that the heroine played by Saiyami Kher is hearing and speech impaired) fighting the disease, the account is both mirthful and insightful. And it has a surreal futuristic feel to it, taking us back to the lockdown phase as well as post it in an exaggerated-dramatic fashion where hypo stands for hyper hypochondriacs.

In fact, most stories take off as much from the reality that surrounds us, as from the flight of imagination. Be it the migrants family finding refuge in a sample flat (Vishaanu by Avinash Arun) or the neighbours connecting despite the age gap (Rat-A-Tat by Tannishtha Chatterjee) or the bond that develops between an auto-rickshaw driver and a matronly senior citizen (Chaand Mubarak by Nitya Mehra), there is a utopian touch to the stories. Even Nikkhil Advanis Apartment which could well be an offshoot of a noted journalists me too tale very much out in public domain, has the wishful thinking tenor by way of this good Samaritan.

If you like to pick bones, well, certainly the short films are not unduly complex or highbrow. Nor are these trying too hard to unravel the complexity of the situation that had us in throes of anxiety. Undeniably, Covid-19 brought in its wake many a tragic story. But by design and intent Unpaused does not dwell over the negatives. Warm and fuzzy, these appeal to the heart more than the brain. Though you may like to read meaning in the references to clanking of vessels and Glitch employs subversive humour, Unpaused is not intrinsically political. Yet each story makes a statement.

In the tales of lockdown and coronavirus driving many of us on the brink of hypochondria, directors not only find humanism but also feminism, religious harmony and above all the inherent human need to bond. Sure the arcs, especially the climaxes are predictable. Besides, all stories are based in Mumbai. But then isnt the maximum city emblematic of India and its diversity. As the migrant woman character in Vishaanu says, Mumbai is good. The city which gives livelihood is good.

The triumph of all the five stories is that these stay with the trajectory of the storyline each individual director has chosen. There is no mishmash of thoughts, only an overriding connecting thread as each story is a stand-alone short film. The lead characters are flesh and blood with beating hearts. It helps immensely that actors at hand are superlative. Be it the seasoned ones like Ratna Pathak Shah (Chaand Mubarak) and Lillete Dubey (Rat-A-Tat) or newer faces like Ishwak Singh (Apartment) and Shardul Bhardwaj (Chaand Mubarak) or established names such as Richa Chadha, Gulshan Deviah, Sumeet Vyas or rising ones like Abhishek Banerjee, each actor puts his/her best foot forward. In the process we can feel them, feel their emotions and turn a tad more emotional ourselves.

More than one story touches our heart, but the most moving is Chaand Mubarak where bit by bit you warm up to the two lonely people connecting en route a ride despite religious and social divide. To be honest you connect to all these men and women, who bring to life an adverse situation and let only humanity shine like a beacon. Thats precisely why Unpaused offers wondrous joy and is a ray of sunshine in these dark and dismal times. You can certainly pause and pay heed to the breezy anthology that makes more than a point, often in an uncomplicated yet subtle manner. Direct to the heart is this OTT offering streaming on Amazon Prime.

nonikasingh@tribunemail.com

Read the rest here:

Direct to heart is this Amazon Prime offering Unpaused, calling for you to pause and pay attention - The Tribune

* Even after the Modi era ends, The genie will still be out of the bottle; hypernationalism will still be around

* He does briefly refer to his own party and the accusations made against it of being soft saffron, and acknowledges that the Congress has not done enough to take the BJP on ideologically

***

Shashi Tharoors new book is, in a way, a sequel to his earlier work Why I am a Hindu, in which he had sought to seize that most plural, inclusive, eclectic and expansive of faiths from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Hindu right wing. Over the years, and more so since the BJP came to power in 2014 under Narendra Modi, the BJP has endeavoured to appropriate, codify and rebrand the Hindu religion, Semitise it as it were, and set its followers at odds against those practising other faiths, and even Hindu liberals, many of whom are deeply religious, too.

The Battle of Belonging: On Nationalism, Patriotism, And What It Means To Be Indian takes off from that earlier book, and is, in the current context, a political work, too. Of course, it is much more than that. It provides an erudite and comprehensive analytical overview of nationalism and patriotism for the reader grappling with swiftly changing definitions of who is national and who is anti-national.

For the Indian National Congress, the more than century-old organisation to which Tharoor belongs and represents as a third-time MP, the book should be the starting point for a debate on how to counter the BJPs alternative vision of majoritarian nationalism, its attempt to bully a diverse population into uniformity, and push a richly multi-cultural, multi-religious and multi-lingual society into a saffron homogeneity. He does briefly refer to his own party and the accusations made against it of being soft saffron, and acknowledges that the party has not done enough to take on the BJP ideologically.

The Battle of Belonging: On Nationalism, Patriotism, And What It Means To Be Indian / Shashi Tharoor / Aleph Book Company / Non-fiction/ 550

Tharoor, of course, emphasises that it is not just a political battle against the party in power or the government of the day, but an existential issue that transcends the moment. Even after the Modi era ends, he writes, The genie will still be out of the bottle. Hypernationalism will still be around, mistrust between Hindus and Muslims will persist, the hollowness of weakened institutions will exist, the chasm between versions of history will remain, the abandonment of unifying civic principles in favour of divisive and exclusionary slogans will continue, the gaps between North and South may have increased, and the abusiveness on social media will continue.

The book is divided into six sections. The first part provides a historical context to ideas such as nationalism, patriotism, humanism and democracy and sets it in the context of globalisation; the second deals with the idea of India, as it was formulated during the freedom struggle and continued to dominate the public discourse in the coming decades, while the third expands on the Hindutva idea of India.

The fourth section brings us to the present and deals with the Modi-fication of India, the battle over the controversial Citizenship Act, the end of autonomy in Kashmir, and the decision to build a Ram temple in Ayodhya, signalling the enshrining of a Hindu rashtra. The fifth section The Anxiety of Nationhood dilates on subjects such as Gandhis Hinduism vs Hindutva, the North-South divide and civic nationalism. The final part, Reclaiming Indias soul, seeks to answer whether in a post Covid-19 world which seems to be retreating behind protective and protectionist barriers... we are witnessing a revival of the nationalism of primordial identities, and how the world and India should deal with it.

In brief, Tharoors passionately argued case for a civic nationhood of pluralism and institutions that protect our diversity and individual freedoms rather than the ethnic-religious nationalism of the Hindu Rashtra is a call to arms for all Indian patriots.

But while the book very lucidly explains what true Indianness is and what it means to be a patriotic and nationalistic Indian in the 21st century, it falls short in one crucial aspect: It does not suggest a road map to counter the rise of Hindutva. Tharoor merely says that as the battle over Indian nationalism is still being fought, it is impossible to predict exactly how it might be resolved.

For all those who want to understand how we as a people find ourselves living in a society where hate and unreason rule, I commend this scholarly and elegantly written book that is a pleasure to read. As for that blueprint to restore the idea of India to its rightful place, I ask Tharoor to urge his political colleagues across the secular spectrum and not just those in the G-23 (a group of Congress leaders who publicly declared their unhappiness with the way the party is functioning) to read the book and get to work. There is a battle to be fought and won.

Smita Gupta is a Delhi-based political journalist

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Shashi Tharoor's new book on nationalism is a call to arms for all Indian patriots - BusinessLine

ISLAMABAD: Amidst a possible threat of another attempt by India to conduct a surgical strike inside Pakistans territory, Pakistan Army has been put on high alert, informed sources told Dawn on Wednesday.

They said that after facing humiliating defeat in Ladakh and Doklam, India was preparing to launch another attack on the Line of Control (LoC) and across the Working Boundary at Pulwama, posing a threat to the regional peace and stability.

Meanwhile, Indian forces initiated ceasefire violations later in the day, martyring two Pakistan Army soldiers and injuring a civilian woman in different areas of Azad Jammu and Kashmir, officials said.

The Inter Services Public Relations in a tweet identified the soldiers as Lance Naik Tariq, 38, and Sepoy Zaroof, 31. Pakistani forces responded befittingly to the ceasefire violations, added the ISPR.

In Taai village, Nasim Fatima was injured, a police official told Dawn.

An official said a false flag operation was being planned by India to divert the worlds attention from several of its internal issues, including the ongoing farmers protest, its treatment of minorities, atrocities committed by Indian forces in occupied Kashmir and criticism of its policies by international institutions and media.

India may at any time repeat a Pulwama-like drama to divert attention from the internal problems and was planning an action along the LoC and Working Boundary, he said.

In 2016, India had claimed to have carried out a surgical strike on the LoC, a claim rubbished by Pakistan. Similarly, on Feb 26 last year, India had tried to launch a similar operation against Pakistan but failed and two of its planes had been shot down by Pakistan Air Force. Indian pilot Wing Commander Abhinandan was arrested and later released.

The sources said India had committed 9,215 ceasefire violations between 2014 and 2019, involving 1,403 casualties. India has so far this year committed 2,830 ceasefire violations, with the number of civil casualties totaling 271.

The decision to put the army on high alert comes days after the Indian government approved the creation of a new post of deputy chief of strategy at the army headquarters as per a plan envisaged during the Doklam crisis with China in 2017, besides creating the position of director general information warfare who will also be dealing with media affairs.

In a related development, speakers at a global virtual seminar on Wednesday discussed the question, Is India becoming a fascist state? in response to the rising authoritarian tendencies of the Modi government and human rights violations in the country.

The erosion of civil liberties, the aggression of police and the increasing politicisation of the judiciary mean that people are now seriously asking, Is India slipping towards fascism? As a friend of India, Australia and Australian politicians should support those voices from India and the diaspora who commit to our shared values of democracy, liberty and rule of law, NSW MP David Shoebridge said in his opening statement on the significance of the event.

Greens Foreign Affairs spokesman and Federal Senator Janet Rice said that human rights were fundamental and must be protected in all countries and for all people.

Sadly in India, as in many countries around the world, peoples human rights are frequently not respected. We are particularly concerned at the impacts on religious minorities, political opposition groups, indigenous peoples and other vulnerable communities, he added.

He said the forum was an important opportunity to hear from human rights advocates and a range of voices from around the world.

Australias former senator Lee Rhiannon said there has been an alarming decline in democratic and secular standards in India. I am often asked Is the Modi government promoting a fascist vision for India? I understand why people ask this question, she wondered.

Ms Rhiannon said massive detention centres have been constructed in India for the millions deemed to be non-citizens under new laws. Minorities are being killed. In occupied Kashmir, in addition to the unilateral abrogation of Article 370 of the Indian constitution, the entire population of the region has been deprived of their right to freedom of expression and opinion through protracted communication restrictions, in place for the past year. These actions are compounded by a censored media, continuing detention of political leaders and a compromised judicial system. This forum is timely. The global community needs to be informed, she added.

Shaffaq Mohammed, a British politician of Kashmiri heritage who served as a Liberal Democrat Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the Yorkshire & Humber region from 2019 to 2020, compared the fascism in Europe that led to the killing of around six million Jews and the ideology of Hindutva targeting minorities in India, especially Muslims.

He talked about the brutal lockdown now for more than a year imposed in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir following the revocation in August 2019 of Articles 370 and 35A that gave the region special status and autonomy.

In January this year, Shaffaq Mohammed was the lead proposer of a resolution against the Indian Citizen Amendment Act that gained the support of the main five political groups that made up the 750-seat European Parliament.

US Congresswoman-elect Marie Newman, who won election in Illinoiss 3rd congressional district to the United States House of Representatives as the Democratic nominee, talked about the change in the US and assured her full support to rights groups calling for accountability of the Indian government with respect to human rights in the country.

Suchitra Vijayan, the founder and Executive Director of The Polis Project who writes about war, conflict, foreign policy, politics, literature and photography, listed the increasing fascist policies of the Modi government and its total control on the judiciary, law enforcement and mass media in India in order to suppress the voices of dissent in the country.

Raju Rajagopal, co-founder of Hindus for Human Rights, talked about the cooperation of civil society activists from Indian diaspora to coordinate their efforts on a global level fighting against Hindutva ideology and creating awareness of human rights abuses in India by the Modi government amongst the international community.

Professor Anjali Arondekar, a professor of Feminist Studies and director of Centre for South Asian Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz, talked about the caste-based politics in India and discrimination, oppression and marginalisation of low caste Indians and other minorities, including Muslims, by the incumbent BJP government.

The round table was organised by a broad international coalition comprising Australia-based The Humanism Project, Indian American Muslim Council, Hindus for Human Rights, US, and Amnesty International, Australia.

Published in Dawn, December 10th, 2020

See original here:

Army put on high alert amid threat of Indian strike - DAWN.com

Editors note: The following is an edited version of alecture that Professor Loury presented to faculty and students in MITs Department of Economics in October 2020.

Let me be provocative right at the start. George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis, Minnesota, by police officer Derek Chauvin. Chauvin is white, and Floyd is black. Was it a racial incident? What would we mean if we said it was such an incident, beyond the trivial statement that one of the participants was white and one was black? Well, we might mean that we think we know Chauvins motive when he put his knee on the mans neck: that he acted out of racial animus. Alternatively, we might mean that people identify with the incident and interpret it in a particular way because of the race of the participants, quite apart from any discriminatory intent of the people acting in that situation. The fact is that the racial force of the incident is largely independent of causality and intentionality. Rather, it has a lot to do with interpretation, with narration.

There are Four Ps that I will use as my organizing principle for this talk about race and inequality in the United States.

Perennial. The problems been around forever. This is America.

Personal. Im black. Im from the south side of Chicago. These are my people that were talking about. How can I completely divorce that reality from the scientific imperatives? Whats my responsibility? How am I going to be read? If I speak out with a particular outlook, its going to be read in part in the context of my racial identity. People will understand that its a black economist, a black professor, a black intellectual, who says this or that. I cant control that.

Political. The stakes are incredibly high when talking about race and racial inequality in the United States. You had people marching for Black Lives Matter in cities across the country, even across the globe. The presidential election was partly enmeshed in this argument going on within American society about race, systemic racism, white supremacy, black marginality, diversity and inclusion, equity, and all thatthis is very political.

Perplexing. Because we do have problems here. We have a social-science problem. We have a challenge-to-the-country kind of problem. Were 50 years past the Civil Rights movement. Thats almost as long a period of time as from Appomattoxwhere Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grantto Versailles, where the Europeans sorted out the mess that was World War I. Technology has completely changed over the last 50 years. The economy is completely different. Polity is completely different. Tens of millions of non-European immigrants have come to the country in the last half-century. Everything is different. And yet, if you look at some of the speeches that are being given, consider some of the events recorded for posterity in social media, some of the incidents taking place, and the arguments being madeand its as if were still back in the 1970s. Why is this so? Its a puzzle.

Let me say something about my own biography. I grew up in Chicago in the 1950s and 1960s, in a working-class neighborhood. I came to MIT in the early 1970s. Before that I got a good education at Northwestern. Upon arriving at MIT, I discovered a few things. One was the deep structure of analytical economics, but I also learned that economics is a social science. Its not divorced from policy, politics, society, or people. Paul Samuelson and Bob Solow and Peter Diamond and Franco Modigliani and many othersStan Fischer, Marty Weitzman, Dick Eckaus, Frank Fisher:these were all among my teachers at MIT way back in the early 1970s. They cared about what was going on in the real world, not just about impressing their peers with the virtuosity of their technical practice. They addressed the great questions of their day. That lesson stuck with me.

I went on to teach at Harvard in the 1980s and at Boston University in the 1990s. Ive been teaching at Brown since 2005. I was a black, conservative, public intellectual, for a while affiliated with the Reagan administration, and then I tacked back toward the center. Nowadays people would probably classify me as a conservative again because Im a kind of contrarian on the issue of persistent racial inequality.

So thats my setup. Racial inequality in America. It has been around for a long time. It is a deep, political question. It involves me personally. And it is a puzzle.

I want to preface my argument about persistent racial inequality by invoking the notion of narrative, by at least gesturing toward an appreciation for the power of the story and by noting that historical evidence does not pin down the story that we tell ourselves about the evidence. Indeed, multiple accounts can be consistent with the same facts. So, there is an inescapable element of choice about how we narrate those facts.

Recently, some prominent economists, UC Berkeleys George Akerlof and Robert Shiller of Yale, for example, have also stressed the importance of narratives for understanding social outcomes. It is this viewpoint that I am invoking when I say that there are two opposing narratives on the persistence of racial inequality: the bias narrative and the development narrative.

Hands up, dont shoot: that was Michael Brown, killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, 2014the origin of the mainstreaming of Black Lives Matter. This is a singular event in recent history with respect to race relations and racial conflict in America. And it seems like it wasnt hands up, dont shoot. It really looks like Brown first attacked the police officer, who then shot him. The police officer probably feared for his life, and fired his gun. Two independent investigations, one by local authorities and one by the Justice Department, concluded that Michael Brown didnt have his hands in the air when shot. Eyewitnesses have testified to this effect. My sense of the matter is that hands up, dont shoot didnt happen.

But it did happen virtually. It happened in effect. It happened because of the force of the narrative: a black man brutalized by overbearing, vicious, and racist state powerfor many, that story overwhelmed all the facts in the case.

Theres a new documentary by filmmaker Eli Steele, narrated by his father, Shelby Steele, called What Killed Michael Brown? The film reviews the Michael Brown case and concludes that hands up, dont shoot is what Shelby Steele calls a poetic truthan account so powerfully resonant with a narrative paradigm that it may as well be true. Once it gets out there, many will have a hard time believing that its not true because the power of the narrative is so great.

Structural racism is a kind of narrative. What, after all, do people mean when they say structural racism? I think they mean that racially disparate outcomes are produced by a complex system of social interaction embodying historical practices that, in retrospect, were morally suspect, but that have taken on a life of their own with consequences that persist into the present. Mass incarceration, on this view, is structural racism because of the way that urban areas are organized, because of decisions that society has made about prohibiting trafficking in addictive substances, due to poor education and the inadequate economic opportunities for certain sectors of the society, all of which leaves many young people of color with fewer alternatives other than to engage in illicit activities.

They mean something like that, I think. They dont mean that theres a conspiracy somewhere trying to figure out how to hurt blacks. They are not talking about racism in the sense that the General Social Survey measures, when it asks questions like: How do you feel about having neighbors or having your child marry someone of a different race?

Still, I am not a big fan of the structural racism narrative. I think it is imprecise;I think that those who invoke structural racism are begging the question. I want to know exactly what structures, what dynamic processes, they mean, and I want to know exactly how race figures into that story. Often the people using this kind of language do not tell me this. History, I would argue, is complicated. So, racial disparities must have multiple, interwoven, interacting causes that range from culture, politics, and economic incentives to historical accident, environmental factors and, yes, the nefarious doings of individuals who may be racists, as well as systems of law and policy that are disadvantaging to some racial groups without having so been intended. So, I am often left wanting to know just what they are talking about when they say, structural racism. Often, use of the term seems to be expressing a disposition while calling me to solidarity, asking for my fealty, for my affirmation of a system of belief. It is only one among many plausible narratives.

If we restrict ourselves to the labor market and just talk about wages, then the structural racism narrative would be all about the demand side of the labor market. It would be about: what do employers do? What kind of information do they have? What contracts are they willing to enter into? What are the training opportunities being offered inside of organizations for employees to move ahead? Fixing this situation means anti-discrimination enforcement. We need a change of hearts and minds, on this view. We need implicit-bias training. Thats all on the demand side, where racial inequality is due to racial discrimination, and is best understood via the bias narrative.

I am offering instead, as a counterpoint to the bias narrative, what I am calling the development narrative, which stresses that patterns of behavior within the disadvantaged population need to be looked at. I speak now about African-Americans, about 35 million or 40 million people in the United States. This, of course, is a variegated, differentiated, and heterogeneous population. One size does not fit all. Nevertheless, I am willing to ask: are there patterns of behavior observable in certain communities of color that have the consequence of inhibiting the development of human potential?

Here is an illustration of why the distinction between these narratives might be important. Consider school discipline. I call attention to the Department of Education policy under the Obama administration of admonishing school districts that reported racial disparity in the frequency with which students were suspended from school for disruptive behavior. The statistics reveal that black students get suspended more often relative to their numbers. You can look at the average frequency of suspension for black and white students in a school district, that is, and you can see a disparate incidence of suspension by race.

Obamas Secretary of Education, via the Office of Civil Rights in the Department of Education, sent a letter to local school districts warning them that they should be aware of and take efforts to reduce this disparity, or they might find themselves subject to a civil rights investigation for racial discrimination.

Now, there is indeed a disparity, and its nontrivial. If it reflected the differential behavior of the school districtsprincipals, teachers, and security officersin how they treated disruptive behavior, such that the same behavior by a white student would be met with a less punitive responsethen that would, indeed, be alarming and would warrant the attention of the authorities to do something about it. Thats one possibility.

Another possibility, however, is that disruptive behavior occurs more frequently among black students for reasons that lie outside the school. If thats the caseif the problem is on the supply side of this marketthen interpreting disparate suspension rates as evidence of racial bias and responding to that by disciplining the school districts, cutting off their funding, perhaps hauling them into court, would be a terrible mistake. Rather, one would want to address the sources of this behavioral differences. One would certainly not dismiss the disparity, but one would address the disparity by attempting to enhance the opportunities or the experiences of the affected young people, which shape their behavior patterns, so as to make those students less subject to disciplinary measures. (There are other possibilities. For example, one might become more tolerant of disruptive behavior across the board because a punitive reaction to disruption could be predicted to generate an unacceptable racial disparity. One can go many places with this example, but Im using it here merely to illustrate the differences between the bias narrative and the development narrative as ways of responding to the fact of a racial disparity.)

Lets talk more specifically now about the development problem. Im willing to invoke the demographic observation of a high rate of single-parenthood in African-American families, where a mother is raising kids on her own. Three in four black kids, 70 percent, something like that, are today born to women without husbands. Common sense suggests that this reality cant be unrelated to some of the outcomes, like disruptive behavior, that concern us. Perhaps it is not the main factor, but it would be an important part of the picture when talking about persistent racial inequality. The fact that I am willing to take it onboard does not, however, answer the question: what is the causal mechanism? A historical sociologist, historian, or demographer well might argue that you have these different organizational patterns within families, but they are explicable in terms of the historical experience of the respective groups. For Orlando Patterson, a sociologist at Harvard, they are a result of slaveryof the fact that families were disrupted at their core by the intercession of the masters property claim over and against the filial and familial connections of natal bonding. It is impossible, on this view, that you could have had as intrusive an intervention into intimate social relations among African-descended people as was slavery and not see some present-day familial consequences.

Family organization matters. There is a big racial disparity in family organization. Therefore, part of the story that you need to tell to account for persisting racial inequality involves family organization. In saying that, I would not have precluded an historical argument about the sources of the family organizational patterns. I would simply have been willing to consider the supply side as well as the demand side when trying to understand persistent racial inequality. This narrative is fiercely resisted by many, but I am urging here that we consider it.

Violence, murder, homicidehuge racial disparities exist in this area. Everyone can read the newspapers. This is a reality of the contemporary urban scene. And theres a tightly networked set of social connections among the people who are committing and are victimized by much of this criminal violence. Is that phenomenon, in any straightforward way, a manifestation of biasof racism? Could it really be about white supremacy? Or is it about the failure of some part of a population to be socialized with the restraint, self-discipline, and commitment to civil behavior that, when widely embraced, make ordinary life and commerce in a community possible?

A willingness to ask about the behavior of the violent criminals preying on their neighbors, and the sources within a community of such behavior, is part of what it means to take seriously the development narrative. Again, I am not saying that we should forego trying to do anything about it, that policy has nowhere to go since the problem is mostly on the development side. Policy obviously has a lot to do with the development side, from better education to subsidizing child development to improving parenting skills. But we need to take seriously these patterns of behavior and their cultural antecedents.

Everyone talks about the academic achievement gap. Several groups are suing Harvard University, saying that the schools affirmative-action practices are penalizing Asian-Americans. And the special high schools in New York City are being pressured to change their selection criteria, so as to ensure that they dont enroll a class of more than 1,000 first-year students and have only a handful of black kids among that cohort. If you look at the National Assessment of Educational Progress, where a representative sample of American students are regularly tested for their cognitive abilities in mathematics and writing, you can see huge racial disparities in those data.

Am I willing to consider the supply side when I talk about that? Am I willing to ask: whats going on in the homes? And: what do peer groups value? Am I willing to measure how much time people spend on homework? How many books there are in the home? Is the large disparity by race in academic achievement better understood when it is viewed in terms of the bias narrative or the development narrative?

If you are prepared to discuss the supply sideif you are prepared, that is, to talk about the extent to which members of a disadvantaged, marginalized and oppressed group are implicated in their own disadvantagethen some will charge that you are blaming the victim. I reject that charge categorically. It is not assigning blame to simply observe that the labor market has a supply side; that people make choices and engage in behaviors having deleterious consequences for their future economic prospects.

Of course, those behavioral patterns well may be the consequence of structural conditions and historical dynamics. On the other hand, if the reflexive response to seeing any disparity of behavior is to say: Well, this is simply due to historical exigency, then that has its own moral and philosophic implications in regards to agencyi.e., the extent to which people can be presumed to control their own fate, and the extent to which their communal norms and ways of living are seen as being within their ability to change.

For instance, is it a necessity that the homicide rate be as high as it is in the black communities we talk about when discussing racial inequality? Is that really how we want to talk about such mattersto say, What can they do? Of course, there is a high level of violence. Look at our structures; our gun laws; our hypocrisy about drugs consumption and trafficking. Look at our history of racism in this country. Of course, theres going to be a higher level of violence. It is, in my view, morally repulsive to impute such a lack of agency to people in this fashion. It infantilizes them, makes them mere puppets at the end of strings being pulled by others. In the extreme, it robs them of their human dignity.

And perhaps worst of all, it robs a group of the ability to make social judgments. It undermines the capacity to clearly delineate right and wrong ways of living and to urge that individuals live rightly. I am not a philosopher, but I have read the Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals several times, trying to understand what brother Immanuel Kant was talking about. I understand him to be making a principled argument for the capacity to have a theory of morals. While it is certainly true, he says, that we are all embedded within the flux and the flow of history and under the influence of forces that are beyond our control of environment, psychology, and such, nevertheless, the theorist must assume the capacity of individuals to make free-will choices about their moral life, lest there be no possibility for any theory of morals whatsoever.

I am signing on to that argument here when insisting on the necessity to engage the development narrative alongside talk about bias; the necessity for calling attention to patterns of behavior and value that are internal to a community which limit their success; and when defending myself against the accusation that I give aid and comfort to racists, or that by making these observations I am somehow blaming the victims for their plight.

I am not unmindful of the pitfalls. I can hear the retort: But, what will the racists say if you talk like that? Whatever the merits of such a narrative, in a society like the one that we live in, where many people are much less sympathetic than are you to the well-being and the aspirations of black people, some will take your wordsthe words of a black manas license to entertain their own racist thoughts about why racial inequality persists. I cannot prove all this scientifically. But between the two pathswithholding arguments I believe true in order to manage political discourse, versus giving voice to such insight as I think that I might have, subject to rebuke, repudiation, and refutation by other critics, so as to enliven and enrich the political and public discourseI choose the latter course. I am willing to take the risk of telling the truth, as best I can discern it.

One other reason to be honest about what is going on, on the development side of the equation, is that everybody can see it. People are bluffing when they say, oh, Im not going to talk about the black family. Out-of-wedlock birthrates dont matter. People are bluffing when they say, Were Black Lives Matter, and were about cops killing kids, but we have nothing to say about kids killing kids. Everybody can see what is going on.

The fact is that, as long as race is a meaningful part of peoples identity in society and they reproduce those meanings through their patterns of association, then you are going to get some disparity by race in the structure of the social networks in which people are embedded. And when network-mediated spillovers in human capital development are important, this means there will be some persisting racial disparities of social outcome.

What about affirmative action and reparations? I have concernsgrave concernsabout these policies. I want briefly to give some hint of what it is that I am concerned about, which reveals something about my larger outlook on the age-old American dilemma of racial inequality.

Im against slavery reparations for a few reasons. One is, okay, when the Japanese Americans interred by the Roosevelt administration during the Second World War were finally, in an act of Congress signed into law by Ronald Reagan, acknowledged as having been wrongly victimized and offered a token reparation payment, it was $20,000 a head for 80,000 people. Thats $1.6 billion, paid out of the Treasuryand it should have been paid. I have no problem with that. By contrast, there are 35 million or 40 million African Americans, and if you take the modern equivalent of 40 acres and a mule, and you bring it forward at a normal rate of return, were reaching astronomical sums. Maybe it is $100,000 a head, with inflation, for 40 million people. That would be $4 trillion, compared with 80,000 people and $1.6 billion.

Heres what Im saying. Enacting reparations for slavery would be to create a Social Security-level-of-magnitude fiscal/social policy in America, the benefits from which would be based on racial identity. That, quite simply, is a monumental mistake. Its South Africa-esque. Our government would have to classify people and enact statutes and administer law based on peoples race. We ought not go down that path. That is the overarching moral argument that I would make.

My practical argument is that remedying racial disparity ought to be left as an open-ended commitment. True enough, this problemwhich is due in no small part to our bitter history of slavery and Jim Crow segregationmust be addressed. But, in my view, it would not be the smartest thing in the world for black Americans to cash out that obligation; to have a transaction where, metaphorically speaking, we sit on one side of the table with our moral capital, where America as a whole sits on the other side with its checkbook, and a transaction is negotiated wherein the debt gets discharged. We ought not to be in a hurry to commodify that obligation, I would say. For then, when confronted with lingering racial disparities, the country can say youve all been paid. Rather, what we should do is to take our moral chips, combine them with other progressive political initiatives, and aim to create a decent society for everyone, whether that concerns health care, housing, food security, employment, education, or old-age security. Were these efforts sufficiently robust on behalf of everybody, the most pressing concerns about racial disparity (having to do with extreme deprivation) would be ameliorated and we will have lent our moral capital to the right causenot a racially defined reparation, but rather a humanely defined improvement in the quality of the nations social contract.

One final word about affirmative action. We are now 50 years down the line with this policy. It has been institutionalized. Diversity, Inclusion, Equity and Belonging: in practice what that means is affirmative action. I have a concern, though, which is that equality of representation, when you are in the most rarified venues of selection, is in competition with equality of respect. Im specifically referring here to selecting at the 95th percentilethe right tail of the distribution of talents, not the population median.

It is impossible that there would not be post-admissions performance differences by race in students selected at this percentile if racially different criteria of selection are used pre-admission, so long as those criteria are correlated with performance. And, if the criteriaSAT test scores, grades, advance placement tests, quality of essay, letters of recommendation, whatever indicia of performance you want to useare not correlated with post-admissions performance, then they shouldnt be used. But they are being used because we all know that they are correlated with post-admissions performance to some degree.

I invite you to look at the data produced by discovery in the Harvard case, for example, to see the huge disparity in academic preparation characteristic of applicant populations by race to Harvard University in recent years. Theres going to be different post-selection performance if those criteria are correlated with performance, and thats what we see. What is the consequence of that? Either we will acknowledge the difference in post-admissions performance; or we wont; well cover it up by flattening assessment criteria and, in effect, pretending its not there. The dishonesty can be stifling in my view. Im in the economics department, so let me talk in terms of economics. My point: Right-tail selection plus racially preferential selection is inconsistent with true equality. It will get you representation, perhaps, but it wont get you equalityat least not equality of respect.

You need a closely approximating parity of performance to get equality of respect. But youve applied different levels of selectivity into a highly competitive and elite activity, where the selection criteria are correlated with post-admissions performance, so youre getting disparities in performance post-admission that youre not owning up to, or that youre covering up.

So, many have observed that there are not enough black economists on the faculty of leading universities. We can do better. We should be more diverse and inclusive at the top departments in the country. There should be at least two blacks at each one, lets say. Maybe I can agree with all of that. But suppose there are just not enough top-flight black economists to go around. If the way to do better is to make the criteria of selection into this rarified enterprise of academic economics, at the top, depend upon the racial identity of job applicants, then youre not going to get equality. Instead, youre going to get some degree of black mediocrity. This fact is currently unsayable. It is unsayable to observe openly that there could be racial differences in performance in venues such as this. Yet, I get emails all the time. Im a partner at a big law firm in New York City. Heres what I cant say publicly. Please dont quote me. Many of our associates who are of color are not up to snuff, but we hired them anyway because . . . Some of them are going to make partner here, and I shudder at that prospect. This is not equality of respect.

Heres what we ought to do instead. We should devote our efforts to enhancing the development of African-American prospects, such that when you apply roughly equal criteria of selection at the right tail, the numbers of blacks selected still goes up, but based on achievement. You dont increase the population of applicants by changing standards in order to achieve racial paritythat is a huge mistake.

Further, we dont have population parity in every pursuit. How can you expect population parity in an enterprise when there are some groups (Asians? Jews?) who are overrepresented by a factor of two or three relative to their population? You cannot get population parity with equal criteria of selection when all the groups are not feeding into the pool of qualified applicants at the same rate in every activity.

My view is that the permanent embrace of preferential selection in extremely selective, competitive venues by race is a mistake. I can understand its transitional use, historically speaking, but its institutionalization is inconsistent with true equality.

I have told you what I am against: elite affirmative action that uses different standards for selection of blacks and other people, and reparations, in the broad sense of America repaying a debt to black peoplefor the reasons that I adduced. But what am I for?

Educational opportunity, for starters. Heres what I would say about it. One principle of equality in the provision of educational services is influential these days. According to this principle, because local districts differ in the value of real estate and hence in their tax basis, and so are not equally situated for spending on kids education, the state should, through its revenue-transfer programs, redistribute resources among those districts, so as to equalize the expenditures per pupil.

But one could think about a different principle, something like equal effective educational opportunity, where the goal is to acknowledge that different districts are differently placednot with regard to real-estate values alone, but with respect to the social conditions of the students there. So, a district with lots of disadvantaged studentsmore special education, more behavioral problems in the classroom, less resources at home, economic disadvantage, food insecurity, things like thatmay require you to spend more per pupil there, if the goal is to try to equalize the effective educational opportunity of all students. This would be a different kind of equality principle to bring into the educational sphere and achieving it may require moremuch morethan merely shifting funds between districts.

Furthermore, I would say that we ought not worry about educational opportunity for Americans primarily in terms of the fact that African-Americans are disproportionate among those ill-served by educational opportunity. It feels to me like the proverbial tail wagging the dog, to make social policy in a country of 330 million people on the basis of an effort to rectify the historically inherited racial disparity that is affecting a quarter to a third of the African-American population. (Mind you, now, we are not saying that every person of African descent is fundamentally disadvantaged purely because of the color of their skin.) Remedying racial disparity ought not to be the primary motive when making social policy. I would argue this not only from a political perspective but also from a moral perspective. I think the right theory of social justice is one in which any persons idiosyncratic demographic characteristics should not have any bearing on the weight the social decision maker gives to that persons welfare when formulating policy. That is to say, ultimately some version of trans-racial humanism is the right philosophical stance.

Glenn C. Loury is the Merton P. Stoltz Professor of the Social Sciences and Professor of Economics at Brown University and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. He currently hosts a podcast called The Glenn Show on bloggingheads.tv.

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