International Leaders And Human Rights Ngos Call On South Korea To Stop Oppression On Minor Religion For Covid – The Nigerian Voice

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387 international leaders including human rights authorities, NGOs and religious communities are calling on South Korea to stop suppression on a minor religions group named Shincheonji Church of Jesus for COVID-19.

After the outbreak, a district court is investigating under suspicion of intentional spread of the COVID-19 arresting 6 church authorities including President Lee Man-hee of Shincheonji church. And the Seoul city government canceled a permit for a foundation of the HWPL, an international peace organization which Mr. Lee established.

In United Kingdom, Chairman of International Human Rights Committee, Iftikhar Ayaz said The brutal persecution of the members of the Shincheonji church in Korea and the inhumane denial of unregistering their corporation is a horrible negligence of State Responsibility which must treat all citizens equally without any discrimination whatsoever.

He added The Government must honor in practice the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights which emphasizes the inherent dignity and the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family.

Franklin Hoet Linares from Venezuela, Former President and Honorary Life President of the World Jurist Association, stated If the comments that are being broadly spread are true, I would not hesitate to describe it as national and human shame, in addition to turning such nefarious attacks into discrimination against the freedom of religion. We do not understand why, in a country where freedom of religion is enshrined, the Government can allow the Korean Constitution to be violated, whereas it clearly states in Article 20, Clauses 1 and 2 All citizens will enjoy freedom of religion and religion and state will be separated.

Willy Fautre, Director of Human Rights Without Frontiers (HRWF), said that the recent attack on Shincheonji can be viewed as an attempt by the fundamentalist Protestant groups in South Korea to weaken and destroy the competitor in the religious market.

Last month, 11 NGOs including European Coordination of Associations and Individuals for Freedom of Conscience (CAP-LC) submitted a report for annual report for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to the UN Secretary General at the 44th session in the UN Assembly Human Rights Council. The report is titled scapegoating members of Shincheonji for COVID-19 in the Republic of Korea.

The report stated, The virus cannot be an excuse to violate human rights and religious liberty of hundreds of thousands of believers. Intolerance, violence, and discrimination against Shincheonji should be put to an end.

Up to date, 512 members of the Shinchonji Daegu Church donated their blood plasma for development a new treatment for COVID 19. The Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention plans to produce corona-related drugs with plasma donated by members of the Shinchonji Daegu Church and conduct clinical tests from this September.

The church official said. The members recovered from COVID-19 donate their blood plasma as reward for treatment offered by government. We want to support the development of a vaccine."

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International Leaders And Human Rights Ngos Call On South Korea To Stop Oppression On Minor Religion For Covid - The Nigerian Voice

‘History on trial’: Why Japan’s wartime labor dispute is more than another tit-for-tat with South Korea – The Japan Times

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Japan has once again found itself entangled in a recurring skirmish with South Korea over wartime labor a seemingly intractable row with no end in sight.

On Tuesday, a South Korean district court completed the process of serving the Japanese side with documents ordering the seizure of Nippon Steel Corp. assets, including around 81,000 shares it had acquired through its joint venture with the Korean firm Posco.

The action pushes the liquidation of the assets closer to reality, following through on a 2018 decision by South Koreas Supreme Court ordering the Japanese firm to provide about 40 million in compensation to four Koreans who said they were forced to work against their will for the steel-makers predecessor during Japans colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.

Although the two neighbors have squabbled over history for years, compensating for wartime labor by liquidating Japanese assets, at least for Tokyo, is more than merely an instance of Seoul rehashing the past. In the Japanese governments view, South Korea is attempting to sabotage a 1965 economic pact that not only settled the wartime labor issue but also constitutes the cornerstone of the two countries 55-year postwar relationship.

On the other hand, Seoul, and in particular President Moon Jae-in, driven by a sense of justice and a desire to gain public approval, has placed the will of the victims and their families above the landmark bilateral agreement that normalized ties.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in, driven by a sense of justice and a desire to gain public approval, has placed the will of victims of wartime labor and their families above a landmark bilateral agreement that normalized ties. | BLOOMBERG

With growing mutual distrust between the two countries and their leaders constrained by publics that have grown increasingly skeptical of each other, there is little prospect of ending the deadlock any time soon. A feud of this type could further erode mutual trust, jeopardizing future economic and national security cooperation.

The issue of wartime labor hasnt been able to be solved in a bilateral discussion or through politics or diplomacy so as the legal framework of Japanese-South Korean relations is challenged, the relationship is put on trial, said Yuki Asaba, a professor of Korean studies at Doshisha University in Kyoto. Right now, history is being put on a trial. In other words, historical issues are points of contention in (an actual) court.

Even 75 years since Japan surrendered, ending World War II, Tokyos 1910-1945 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula and its deeds during that period remain sore subjects and a key source of anti-Japan sentiment among many Koreans to this day.

Japan systematically brought in heavy numbers of male workers from the Korean Peninsula between 1939 and 1945 to relieve labor shortages during the Sino-Japanese War and World War II.

After the conflicts ended and Korea was liberated, Seoul demanded compensation for its laborers, alleging they had been forced to work in Japan under harsh conditions. Through 14 years of negotiations, Japan and the newly formed South Korea agreed to settle all post-colonial compensation issues by concluding an economic cooperation fund that was used to turn around the frail Korean economy and pay wartime compensation to individual laborers.

Nearly six decades later, however, the South Korean Supreme Court determined in 2018 that four wartime laborers were entitled to receive compensation, concluding the pact did not deny the individual right of laborers to ask for consolation money for their suffering under Japans colonial rule.

Until this ruling, all South Korean leaders had agreed that the wartime labor issue had been legally settled as explicitly stated in the pact.

However, Moon, who leads the left-leaning Democratic Party and is a former human rights lawyer, refused to intervene after the ruling.

Instead, he insisted on a victim-centered approach to the individual claims in the lawsuits, with his administration taking the view that the court decisions should reflect the desires of the victims and their families, something his government argued is an internationally recognized legal principle.

The Moon administration took over after a disaster by Parks government and emphasized justice and morals, Junya Nishino, a political science professor who studies Japan-South Korea relations at Keio University, said in reference to the conservative former President Park Geun-Hye, who was impeached in 2017 over political scandals.

Many of those who serve in the Moon administration have a strong opinion that the start (of bilateral relations) in 1965 was a mistake and there should be a redo, Nishino said.

South Koreans chant slogans during an anti-Japan rally near the Japanese Embassy in Seoul in August last year. The banners read Condemn Abe regime. Make an official apology to victims of wartime forced labor. | REUTERS

In the years since the first democratically government came to power in 1988, South Korea has been undergoing a self-examination of its past and uncovering political oppression and human rights abuses by authoritarian leaders, including around the time when the pact with Japan was established in 1965.

Hypersensitive to public sentiment, Moon has opted to side with the ex-laborers to gain public approval and cement his political base. In a major shift away from the conservatives, who long held power after the war, Nishino said liberals now have more control across a broader swath of mainstream Korean society.

Still, Moons emphasis on justice and morals is facing growing scrutiny amid a litany of scandals.

Former Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon, a longtime advocate of womens rights who was widely believed to be a potential successor to Moon, committed suicide last month after being accused of sexual harassment by his secretary. And on Friday, six of Moons aides, including his chief of staff, offered to resign following revelations that senior officials were found to own more than one home even as the administration attempts to halt surging home prices.

Fearful of further antagonizing the public, Moon is expected to maintain his tough stance on wartime labor, Nishino said.

The mutual skepticism is reaching a critical level.

In a joint opinion poll by the Yomiuri Shimbun and Chosun Ilbo newspapers in early June, 84 percent of respondents in Japan and 91 percent in South Korea described relations with the other as bad. The ratio of Koreans who view Japan negatively also marked a record high.

The South Korean Supreme Courts 2018 ruling and subsequent stalemate have prompted ties between the countries to unravel further, including in trade and security.

In July last year, the Japanese trade ministry tightened rules on chemical exports to South Korea and subsequently ended its exemption on a plethora of trade regulations. Although Japanese officials adamantly denied having a political motive, the South Korean government viewed the move as retaliation for the 2018 ruling.

Just over a month later, South Korea struck back, this time on the national security front, unilaterally declaring it would not renew the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA), a bilateral pact governing exchanges of sensitive information primarily on missile threats from North Korea. Seoul reversed the decision at the eleventh hour after intense pressure from the United States, but has said the door still remains open to scrapping the deal at any time.

Nippon Steel Corp. on Friday filed an appeal against the seizure of its assets in South Korea that were earmarked for liquidation to compensate wartime laborers, in a move sure to put the two nations on a diplomatic collision course yet again. | REUTERS

Following Tuesdays ruling in the compensation case, Nippon Steel filed an appeal. Now, the South Korean court must decide whether to accept it, a process that could take months, buying the company time, Yonhap news agency reported, citing unidentified legal sources. But even if the appeal is rejected there, the company could take it to a higher court.

Due to the complexity of the process, the actual liquidation of the assets is expected to be months away.

In the meantime, observers say there remains little incentive for Moon or Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to back down.

Its impossible to compromise unless both leaders take a different stance than theyve taken and shown to their citizens which would be a tremendous blow to them, said Asaba. They are in a situation where they know theyll collide head-on if nothing is done, but no one can take the wheel and avoid the looming damage.

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'History on trial': Why Japan's wartime labor dispute is more than another tit-for-tat with South Korea - The Japan Times

The unbearable weight of being Kurdish – Ahval

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Ava Homas powerful debut novelDaughters of Smoke and Firetells the story of Leila Saman, growing up in Mariwan, Iran, a mainly Kurdish city of 90,000 people about 15 km from the Iraqi border.

The book opens on the day five-year-old Leilas brother Chia is born, which happens to be March 16, 1988 - the day Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein launched a chemical attack on Halabja, killing thousands of people, mostly Kurds, and injuring thousands more with nerve agents and mustard gas in the waning days of the Iran-Iraq war.

Halabja happens to be the hometown of Leilas father, who ends up weeping on the day his only son is born. Immediately the reader gets the sense that few moments of joy in this world will go unsullied by darkness.

One of the things you learn as a Kurd is that even when you have a little bit of joyful time, happy time, some freedom, it is going to crash, Homa told Ahval in a podcast.

Since its publication in May, Homas novel has received mostly rave reviews. The Independent described it as blisteringly powerful and named it one of the best books of May, while former U.S. ambassador Peter Galbraith called it one of the best books to come out of the Near East in a long time.

Grief and suffering are as regular as the sunrise in Homas Kurdistan. Leilas grandfather watches Iraqi authorities wipe out his family. Then Leilas father sees friends and relatives hung in prison, before finally Leila herself sees the person shes closest to executed.

Homa, who fled Iran at age 24, has written thatgrowing up Kurdish in Iran she learned at a young age that being alive was an act of subversion, that her life meant next to nothing to the state or the police - the very people whose responsibility it was to protect her.

Its a question that you deal with from the moment you learn your name, you know that you belong to this group that has been targeted for annihilation, she said. You are wondering, Why? How can I make meaning out of it? Why am I so hated? How can I be strong?

Homas novel examines how the four members of the Saman family - Leila, her brother Chia, her father Alan and her mother Hana - grapple with being a Kurd in Kurdistan in different ways, and how their reactions to their world ripple out to affect others.

Daughters of Smoke and Fire is one of the first novels written in English by a Kurdish woman, and as the book opens five-year-old Leila recalls her father explaining to her that women are worth half as much as men under Iranian law. Years later, after a desperate teenage Leila throws herself in front of a speeding car, her mothers main concern when she visits her in the hospital is not her daughters physical and mental well-being - both of which are seriously compromised - but whether her virginity is intact.

The generation of Kurdish women born in the 1950s and 1960s sometimes accidentally served as agents of the patriarchy, believing they were protecting their daughters even as they kept them from living. When not writing, Homa helps organise and run suicide prevention workshops for Iranian women, and shes found they are often driven by their parents to seriously consider the most drastic measure possible.

The people who are supposed to shelter and protect you become in a way agents of the state by bringing that oppression inside the home, said Homa. You cannot be a hypocrite. If you want justice and freedom, then you want to bring justice and freedom to your own house first.

Shiler, one of the novels most compelling characters, finds her own sort of freedom. Born in prison, she rebels all through childhood and ends up going to the Qandil mountains to join the Peshmerga. She represents the sort of 21st century Kurdish woman who might lead a battalion of militants into battle against the Islamic State or oversee Turkeys main pro-Kurdish party, the Peoples Democratic Party (HDP). Yet even these women face issues of identity and empowerment.

On the one hand, yes you are fighting side by side with your man to protect Kurdistan, she said. On the other hand you are fighting something within yourself - the voice that told you from the moment you are born there is a ceiling to how much you can achieve.

This type of Kurdish woman wascrucial to the creation of Rojava, the autonomous region of northeast Syria founded in late 2013 amid the chaos of the Syrian civil war, which Homa sees as a sort of beacon.

Everything we dreamed for and fought for was finally possible, she said, pointing to the regions famed gender equality and bottom-up power structure, its prohibition on under-age marriage, forced marriage and polygamy. It wasnt perfect, wasnt beyond criticism, but it was really the best thing to happen to Kurds.

The existence of Rojava has brought Kurds closer together, underscoring the potential of their struggle and the fact that Kurdish solidarity stretches beyond borders.

The happiness and achievement of Rojava was for all of us, the same way the Dersim massacre or Halabja massacre was everyones pain, regardless of borders, said Homa.

In Dersim, or Turkeys Tunceli province, Turkish authorities killed tens of thousands of Kurdish people in 1937-38, an event that made it crystal clear Kurds were unlikely to ever feel comfortable in any of the four states Western powers placed them in the wake of the First World War, setting them on the path to violent rebellion.

That it happened in Turkey may help explain why Turkish Kurds have in many ways led the fight against Kurds oppressors. The fact that Turkey is home to the worlds largest Kurdish population - an estimated 17 million Kurds, compared to some 10 million in Iran, 7 million in Iraq, and 3 million in Syria - likely also played a role.

Homas novel at one point mentions the Kurds in "Bakur, the north in Kurdish, whose villages were burned and whose women were raped by the Turkish army. This is a clear reference to the states response to the insurgency launched by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in the early 1980s, and which continues today. Earlier, Leilas father describes Kurds in Turkey as hopeless.

We look up to them, said Homa. We are amazed by how much they have been able to accomplish not only by standing up to state oppression but also by changing their society.

She pointed to the women co-leaders of the HDP, the influence of jailed former HDP co-leader Selahattin Demirta and the way Kurdish leaders in Turkey stand up not just for Kurdish rights, but for human rights, for diversity and democratic plurality.

Their ability to move beyond nationalism, their ability to organise themselves, even in the diaspora there is a sense of deep admiration and respect for Kurds from Bakur, she said. There is a real sense of aspiring to them, not just today but even in history, they have always been more advanced in womens rights and they have been braver in standing up for their own rights.

Thanks to their brutally painful and difficult history, Homa believes Kurds have become masters of rising from the ashes - a sentiment that nicely sums up Leilas story. Despite the Turkish incursion launched last year, Rojava still exists today.

Despite Turkeys recent military offensive, the Peshmerga and the PKK remain headquartered in the Qandil mountains.

And despite the vast and continuing crackdown by the Turkish government, the HDP continues to fight for the rights of Kurds and all oppressed people in Turkey.

The lesson might be that Kurdish oppressors tend to use similar methods and tend to fail in silencing their foes.

When you look at Machiavellis instructions, they are the same things the Iranian government or the Turkish government are applying today, said Homa. In this sense they are not original. We are capable of rising above these things if we believe we dont deserve the way we are treated.

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The unbearable weight of being Kurdish - Ahval

One last look at NEOWISE – On the 101

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By Rob and Georgina May

Passionate about Mercury, Rob May is known to always be on the hunt for Comets, cars that is. NEOWISE, an astronomical type of Comet, joined Mercury (the planet) in our solar system during the month of July 2020. Georgina Garcia May Photography provides us a glimpse of the lonely shy Comet that will not return for another 6,766 years following its orbital ellipse.Photographers made several stops On the 101 for a chance to see this rare galactic event.

Halleys Comet (last seen in 1986) is one of the most famous and well known comets. Its relative short-term repeat cycle and brightness highlight its popularity. In 1997, the Hale-Bopp Comet made its appearance. It too was luminescent; however, with an over 2500 year cycle, its return is for another era.NEOWISE is the brightest comet in the northern hemisphere since HaleBopp. An acronym with an acronym, Near-Earth Object (NEO) combining with Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) forms the name NEOWISE.

Launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base (VAFB) in December 2009, a Delta II rocket successfully placed the WISE telescope into orbit. It no longer will be in the shadow of its bigger brother Hubble. In addition to comet NEOWISE, numerous other less visible comets, asteroids, stars, and planets were discovered by the WISE telescope.

Back on Earth, multiple challenges hampered our NEOWISE sightings. Weather, from overcast skies to fog, are the obvious roadblocks in the skyways. Smoke from fires and general smog haze also hindered the comets performance on the astral stage.Ironically, clear nights with a bright moon are not optimal either due to its light outshining the comets appearance.In the same dilemma, popular places are not the best especially with headlights from others shining in camera lens.Remote locations were the most productive.

Speaking of location, simply locating the comet among the stars, planets, satellites, and streaking meteors was not so simple. The Big Dipper was the main reference point after dark. Each night, the comets location and brightness varied.The best time for viewing with the naked eye, binoculars, cameras, telescopes, and more was an hour after sunset. (Initial sightings were possible just before sunrise too). Information providing guides on the expected comets path included online websites and phone apps, quality varied.

Canon is the camera of choice for this writing and photography team. Sturdy tripods are mandatory. On some nights, no extras were needed to see the comet, although binoculars were best for the initial capture to verify ones eyes. Thirty-second long exposure is key to capturing the photo. Settings had to be adjusted to compensate for the dark and limited light (while at the same time not oversaturating). Color and black/white pictures allow for varying details and effects. Georgina Garcia May perfected her night photography on multiple scenes on the 101 and West Coast from Lompoc to Morro Bay and inland to the Carrizo Plains. From our backyard in Lompoc, Surf Beach, Buellton, and Los Alamos, all were locations for photographing the NEOWISE Comet.

Looking for the perfect backdrop for your night shots? The Milky Way (not the candy bar) is great for regular and panoramic views.While not always compatible with comet pictures, the Moon is a fantastic model on its own accord. Planets aligning into a Great Conjunction is a site to behold as well. Also not to be missed, is any solar eclipse from partial to totality. Of course, night rocket launches remain photogenic too.

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One last look at NEOWISE - On the 101

Accolades: Fundraising Efforts, Comet Sports Teams Garner Recognition – University of Texas at Dallas

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Accolades is an occasional News Center feature that highlights recent accomplishments of The University of Texas at Dallas faculty and students. To submit items for consideration, contact your schools communication manager.

Fundraising Program Earns CASE Award

UT Dallas has been honored with a 2020 Educational Fundraising Award from the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE).

The Universitys fundraising has helped transform the campus, including the addition of the Engineering and Computer Science West building.

The University earned this distinction in the category of Overall Improvement among public research/doctoral institutions with endowments over $215 million. The award recognizes significant achievement by university fundraising efforts over the past three years by measuring growth in total university support, alumni-giving participation and impact on key areas such as endowment, current operations and capital projects.

Our talented and dedicated staff works hard every day to create a culture of philanthropy in our community, said Kyle Edgington PhD13, vice president for development and alumni relations. This award is a testament to their accomplishments. I am grateful that University leadership continues to invest in our efforts. Of course, everything we do is made possible by the generosity of our loyal alumni, donors and friends.

Since 2017 UTDallas has added nearly 200 funds to its endowment, increasing its market value from $483 million to a high of $574 million. During this time, the University has continued to set record numbers for alumni participation and total gifts raised each year, realizing a 78% increase in annual donations from 2017 to 2019.

This fundraising success has made a transformative impact around campus. Highlights include theacquisition of world-renowned collections of art, the construction of new buildings such as theEngineering and Computer Science West, new awards to promote the research ofearly career faculty,record-setting scholarship endowments and a recent effort toaid students during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Talented students, staff and faculty are the face of every great university, said UTDallas President Richard C. Benson, the Eugene McDermott Distinguished University Chair of Leadership. The work they do inspires alumni and partners to support the aspirations of our students, groundbreaking research, life-changing clinical care and creative expression.

Womens Golf Team Wins Academic National Title

Boasting a team GPA of 3.86 over the 2019-20 academic year, the womens golf team has for the first time been crowned the Academic National Champion of NCAA Division III by the Womens Golf Coaches Association (WGCA).

From left: Comet golfers Karen Alvarez, Marissa Langer, Lindy Patterson and Michelle Edgar.

Seniors Michelle Edgar, Marissa Langer and Lindy Patterson and sophomore Karen Alvarez also were honored as All-American Scholars by the WGCA. The womens golf team was not the only UT Dallas sports program that collected major academic accolades over the summer.

The mens golf team received the Presidents Special Recognition Honor for the fifth consecutive year from the Golf Coaches Association of America (GCAA). Only teams with a GPA at 3.5 and higher collected the honor. Three Comets Harrison Hicks BS20, graduate student Jacob Rockefeller and junior Joseph Park also were recognized as All-America Scholars by the GCAA. Hicks also was named Academic All-American by the College Sports Information Directors of America after closing his career with a perfect 4.0 GPA.

The volleyball team earned the Team Academic Award from the United States Marine Corps/American Volleyball Coaches Association, and five members of the mens basketball program were named to the Honors Court by the National Association of Basketball Coaches. For the 2019-20 academic year, UT Dallas placed 112 student-athletes on the American Southwest Conference (ASC) Academic All-Conference Teams with six Comets named the ASCs Distinguished Scholar-Athlete for their respective sport.

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Accolades: Fundraising Efforts, Comet Sports Teams Garner Recognition - University of Texas at Dallas

Perseid Meteor Shower will peak over UK on August 11 and 12 – Newbury Weekly News Group

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THE Perseid meteor shower is an annual even which starts in mid-July, but reaches its peak on the night of August 11 and morning of the 12, when it should put on quite a show.

If you look anywhere in the lower part of the sky towards the north after it gets dark you might be able to see meteors every few minutes - weather permitting!At peak there could be on average 100 meteors per hour, with up to 75 meteors an hour or more visible from a dark site.

The best time to start looking for meteors is later in the evening until dawn. Perseid rates will increase leading up to peak night when there will be a sudden increase in the rate of showers. The spectacular shower show will continue for a couple of nights before gradually receding.

Tony Hersh, from Newbury Astronomical Society explains: "As comets heat up near the Sun, ice inside them turns to gas and bubbles off the surface, taking dust and rubble with it.The particles of dust and rubble stay drifting in space, but if the Earth travels through them on our path round the Sun they heat up in our atmosphere, glowing white hot as they disintegrate and they appear as streaks of light across the sky.

"The comet that causes the Perseid meteors is dust and rubble left behind as the Swift-Tuttle comet approached the Sun in 1862."

How to spot a meteor:

Wrap up warm and lie back in a reclining chair or on the ground, try and keep clear of trees, lights and buildings. Get your eyes accustomed to the night sky and then just watch. Meteors can come from any direction and blink and you might miss them, but if you spot one it will be a bright streak flashing across the sky, either on its own or a group of them.

Good luck - and if you manage to capture the Perseid meteor shower on camera, email your images to geraldine.gardner@newburynews.co.uk

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Perseid Meteor Shower will peak over UK on August 11 and 12 - Newbury Weekly News Group

The Transhuman Revolution: What it is and How to Prepare …

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What would it be like to live through our own species evolution? The biological process of natural selection that gave rise to every species on Earth takes hundreds of generations to turn one species into another, but what if that process could be skipped entirely?

What would it be like to significantly upgrade humanity in a matter of decades, or even a few years? Welcome to Transhumanism, the movement determined to use breakthrough technologies to make humanity into something more.

The idea of altering or augmenting the human body through technology is as old as humanity itself. From the moment humans first fashioned tools and learned to harness fire, humanity stepped beyond its biological constraints.

Where evolution gave wolves a fierce set of teeth and the cheetahs unmatched speeds, evolution gave humanity the most sophisticated intelligence of any animal on the planet and humans have been using that intelligence to overcome their biological deficits.

SEE ALSO: NEURALINK: HOW THE HUMAN BRAIN WILL DOWNLOAD DIRECTLY FROM A COMPUTER

Transhumanism talks about taking this dynamic and using it to not just impact the world around us, but to augment or even replace our biology with technology. Whereas humanity has fixed poor eyesight with corrective lens, straightened a persons teeth with braces, or countless other examples of humans altering out bodies or senses through technology, the transhumanist wants to replace the eye entirely or hijack existing senses in our bodies to detect any number of things that our bodies arent built to sense.

A transhuman then is someone who has taken this step and upgraded their body in a way that doesnt just fix a deficient part to behave as commonly expected but replaces something that works perfectly fine in order to do something more than is biologically possible.

Transhumanism is possible because of something known as neuroplasticity, the capacity for the neurons in our brain to make new connections and reconfigure its network in response to new stimuli, information, trauma, or dysfunction.

Examples include learning new skills, remembering information, people, or events, making complex movements with our bodies without consciously thinking about it, and taking the cacophony of stimuli around us and making sense of it all. Its how we go through life with part of our vision being obstructed by our nose though we simply dont notice it.

According to the late Paul Bach-y-Rita, we see with our brains, not our eyes. A neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and the co-founder of Wicaba company that develops technology based on his researchBach-y-Rita has shown that in many ways, our senses are interchangeable. His pioneering research into blindness has even led to the development of a device that can allow someone to see with their tongue.

The key is understanding what sightor hearing, or touching, or smelling, or any other senseactually is: converting external stimuli to electrical signals that the brain then processes into our sensory perception of the world around us. Since the electrical signals traveling through our nervous system are no different from one anotherthey differ only in how the brain processes themthis leaves the door wide open for our existing sensors to be repurposed through technology.

If the visible light that enters our eye and turns on the rods and cones of our retina are essentially turned into a 0 or a 1 being tapped out onto our optical nerve, what is stopping us from creating an artificial eye that allows us to see a wider spectrum that includes infrared and ultraviolet light?

If the eye is essentially a video camera for our brain, why not swap out the camera? Thanks to neuroplasticity, the brain may not know what to make of the different signals initially, but it will find a way to interpret them.

It will figure out how to see this new wavelength of light as if it were any other light. Its not hard to think of many other examples of this type of sensor swapping, which gives you an idea of why Transhumanist are such evangelists for the movement.

The idea of cyborgs running around is the stuff of science fiction films from the 1980s, but it is going to become a reality sooner than most people think. Transhumanists are a remarkably diverse group, with DIY biohackers and the US Department of Defense being two of the most prominent examples.

Piercings and tattoos are as old as civilization, but a Biohacker is willing to put their body in service of the movementand not necessarily with medical approval or even assistance. Biohacking can range from something as simple as implanting yourself with an RF tag that you can use to open electronic locks when you come to work to more extreme augments like inserting a tiny magnet under the skin of your finger to detect magnetic fields.

Likewise, its no surprise that armies around the world are eager to lead the way into the new frontier of transhumanism, generals and war leaders have always sought any means to give their army the upper hand over an opponent.

The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has come right out and said that humans [were] the weakest link in defense systems. Some examples of DARPAs research into transhumanist technologies include allowing humans to convert plant matter to glucose, threat detection through optical implants, and even a way for humans to cling to the surface of a flat wall the way lizards do.

As computer technologies advance alongside biotechnologies, there is a growing convergence between the two in the form of neural interfaces that in the future can open the door to linking your mind directly to an AI in order to facilitate greater learning, overcome neurological conditions, or just to use the internet.

In the coming decades, as more advanced computer technologies continue to shrink in size, its not out of the question that brain implants, linked to an AI, might be possible. In fact, DARPA has already started research along these lines.

Without question, these examples of transhumanism point to one of the essential questions every student or teacher of philosophy has grappled with: what does it mean to be human?

Evolution gave us the brain which has given us technologies such as flint tools, the wheel, and clothing that enabled us to extend ourselves past our biological limitations. Is an artificial eye any different? Are we any less human for using an arrow to kill a deer rather than our bare hands? Who gets to decide?

Some critics argue that the two positions transhumanists propose, rejecting human enhancement through augmentation and implants entirely or wholeheartedly embracing everything the transhumanist movement represents is a false dichotomy.

Writing in Psychology Today, Dr. Massimo Pigliucci, a Professor of Philosophy at the University of New York-Lehman College, believes that there is a necessary discussion society must have before we introduceor even think of developingsuch technologies: it is perfectly acceptable indeed necessary for individuals and society to have a thorough discussion about what limits are or are not acceptable when it comes to the ethical issues raised by the use of technologies.

Whats more, observers and economists note the movement towards a transhumanist society will exacerbating the gulf between the rich and the poor. Transhumanist technologies are expensive and will be for the foreseeable future, which inevitably means that the elites might pull even further ahead of the rest of the world, much of which is too poor for even basic healthcare.

The most essential thing that our society must do as these technologies advance is to have an open conversation about where we want humanity to go as a species. These technologies are being rapidly developed with no signs of slowing down, so it is up to us to decide how far down this road we want transhumanism to go. Unless we do, the transhuman future we will get may not necessarily be the one that we want.

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The Transhuman Revolution: What it is and How to Prepare ...

Mesothelioma Victims and Asbestos Companies Watching EPA on Asbestos Decision – Mesothelioma.net Blog

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Published on August 03, 2020

Exposure to asbestos continues to wreak havoc on the lives of people around the world, causing malignant mesothelioma, lung cancer, asbestosis and other serious and fatal diseases. In the face of pressure from victims and asbestos companies alike, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is considering more than 75 comments regarding their Risk Evaluation for Asbestos. While health advocates are lobbying for an outright ban of the toxic substance, the chemical industry worries that the agency will shift its established threshold of danger, effectively eliminating their ability to defend against personal injury lawsuits.

While mesothelioma victims rightly want asbestos and asbestos-containing products entirely eliminated from the American landscape, those on the other side of the argument worry that the draft Risk Evaluation issued in March of 2020 would create new legal obligations for manufacturers and suppliers. These companies would have to report information about the hazards posed by their products.

Of even greater concern is the EPAs proposed lowering of the Inhalation Unit Risk (IUR) for chrysotile asbestos, a number which is often referenced by expert witnesses during mesothelioma litigation.Asbestos companies worry that a lowering would shift the perceived risk of different types of asbestos in the eyes of mesothelioma juries, making it more likely that victims will win their lawsuits.

The IUR is an estimate of cancer risk, i.e. the risk of being diagnosed with malignant mesothelioma, for someone who has a lifetime of exposure to asbestos. Asbestos manufacturers worry that the proposed IUR for chrysotile asbestos is contrary to their preferred position that chrysotile is less dangerous than amphibole asbestos. This would jeopardize their use of the chrysotile defense that says that it does not cause mesothelioma or that calculates the risk in a way that is contrary to asbestos victims claims of negligence.

Though the EPA has more than 75 comments to consider before releasing their final decision on asbestos, they have pledged to make their final decision by the end of 2020.

The EPAs decision is likely to have a significant impact on the risk of malignant mesothelioma and other asbestos-related diseases, as well as on legal issues involving asbestos. For more information, contact the Patient Advocates at Mesothelioma.net at 1-800-692-8608.

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Mesothelioma Victims and Asbestos Companies Watching EPA on Asbestos Decision - Mesothelioma.net Blog

Watch Tech Giants Testify at House Antitrust Hearing …

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Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos the world's richest man, making his long-awaited first-ever appearance before a congressional hearing faced no questions at all for nearly two hours, before offering an inconclusive answer on whether the company uses data to undermine its third-party merchants. Amazon is still facing allegations that one of its executives misled Congress about that same issue last year.

The virtual testimony comes at a time of rising legal jeopardy for the major tech companies, who are the subject of antitrust and consumer-protection probes in Washington, multiple U.S. states and Europe.

Subcommittee Chairman David Cicilline (D-R.I.) set the tone early, with an opening statement vowing to check the power of the "emperors of the online economy." But so did Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, the top Republican on the full Judiciary panel, who laid out a long series of alleged slights against conservatives by top social media companies and later got into a shouting match after a Democrat accused him of promoting fringe conspiracy theories.

See live highlights from the hearing below.

Amazon is making more money from sellers fees because more third-party sellers are using its services, CEO Jeff Bezos told lawmakers, countering the idea that his company is unfairly profiting from the merchants.

But the Amazon CEO acknowledged that the marketplace algorithm may indirectly favor those who pay the company to fulfill orders.

Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (D-Pa.) cited a new report by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance that found Amazon brought in nearly $60 billion from seller fees last year 21 percent of Amazons total revenue and that the e-commerce giant keeps about 30 percent of each sale. That amount is up from 19 percent of each sale five years ago.

Bezos said the increased amount is because sellers are spending more money with Amazon by using additional services such as Fulfillment by Amazon, where the company stores and ships products on behalf of third-party sellers.

When you see these fees going up, sellers are choosing to use more of our services we make available, he said. Previously they were shipping their own products from their own fulfillment centers so they would have had costs doing that. Now they are doing that through Fulfilment by Amazon.

Bezos also acknowledged that the Buy Box which preselects the seller for when a user clicks on a product indirectly favors sellers who use the Fulfilled by Amazon services.

Indirectly, I think the Buy Box does favor products that can be shipped with Prime, he said. The Buy Box is trying to pick the offer that we predict the customer would most like. That includes price, that includes delivery speed, and if youre a Prime member, it includes whether the item is eligible for Prime."

In response to questions from Rep. Lucy McBath (D-Ill.) about stolen and counterfeit goods, Bezos said he believes that Amazon requires sellers to provide a real name and address, but wasnt sure whether a phone number is required. He also said he didnt know how many resources Amazon devotes to seller verification.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos took a rare swipe against a core feature of his Silicon Valley competitors late in todays hearing, singling out social media as destructive for free expression.

What I find a little discouraging is that it appears to me that social media is a nuance destruction machine, Bezos said. And I dont think thats helpful for a democracy.

Bezos offered his critique while testifying by videoconference, alongside the head of social media giant Facebook.

He was responding to House Judiciary ranking member Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who was invoking the idea of cancel culture and the notion of online mobs that shout down unfashionable opinions. The lawmaker was assessing whether lawmakers were concerned about the polarizing idea, which some question as overblown.

I am concerned in general about that, Bezos told Jordan.

Other tech CEOs also appeared sympathetic to Jordans cancel culture worries.

Apple CEO Tim Cook noted he wasnt all the way up to speed on the idea but expressed concern: If youre about where somebody with a different point of view talks, and theyre canceled, I dont think thats good. I think its good for people to hear from different points of view and decide for themselves.

Im very worried about some of the forces of illiberalism that I see in this country that are pushing against free expression, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told Jordan, without identifying specifics.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai simply noted the interest in building platforms to allow freedom of expression. John Hendel

The Chinese government steals U.S. technologies, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said making him the only one of the four tech CEOs willing to say that plainly in response to a question from Rep. Greg Steube (R-Fla.).

I think its well-documented that the Chinese government steals technology from American companies, Zuckerberg said.

Apple CEO Tim Cook said he had no personal knowledge about Chinese technology theft.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai initially followed Cooks line, but later corrected the record to confirm that in 2009 China stole Google information in a well-publicized cyberattack.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who answered last, acknowledged that he had read many reports about technology theft by Beijing, but had no first-hand experience beyond knock-off products sold on Amazon.

All four CEOs passed on the opportunity to suggest how Congress could better help defend U.S. companies abroad, against either technology theft or excessive regulation. Leah Nylen and Ryan Heath

Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.), who heads the Houses probe into tech giants, accused Facebook of tolerating a fountain of misinformation that benefits the companys engagement-driven business model even on topics as deadly as the coronavirus.

Theres no competition forcing you to police your own platform, the House antitrust subcommittee chairman told CEO Mark Zuckerberg. During the greatest public health crisis of our lifetime, dont you agree that these articles viewed by millions on your platform will cost lives?

The lawmaker cited articles that drew millions of views on sites like Facebook while making claims about Covid-19, including those describing President Donald Trumps musings about placing disinfectants inside the body or allegations that coronavirus hype is a political hoax.

Cicilline said Facebook allows such content to reap advertising dollars. But Zuckerberg countered that this kind of noxious material is not helpful for our business.

It is not what people want to see, and we rank what we show in Feed based on what is going to be most meaningful to people and what is going to create long-term satisfaction, Zuckerberg said.

Zuckerberg defended Facebooks policy of taking down bogus information that could cause imminent harm and its attempt to highlight authoritative guidance. But Cicilline brought up a Monday video from the conservative website Breitbart, which dismissed the necessity of masks and called hydroxychloroquine a Covid-19 cure and which experienced soaring Facebook traffic over several hours before Facebook removed it.

A lot of people shared that, Zuckerberg said. And we did take it down because it violates our policies.

After 20 million people saw it after a period of five hours? Cicilline countered. Doesnt that suggest, Mr. Zuckerberg, that your platform is so big that even with the right policies in place, you cant contain deadly content? John Hendel

Apple CEO Tim Cook speaks via video conference during the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law hearing. | Graeme Jennings/Getty Images

Apple didnt consider the impact on its own parental control app when it removed some of the most popular apps that limit screentime from its App Store, CEO Tim Cook told lawmakers.

Apple introduced its own Screen Time app, which allows parents to limit how much time kids spend on their phones, in September 2018. After that, the company removed a number of competing apps. Qustodio and Kidslox, two of the leading parental control apps, have filed a complaint with the European Commission about their removal.

Cook said Apple removed the apps because of privacy concerns.

We were worried about the safety of kids, Cook said in response to questions by Rep. Val Demings (D-Fla.).

Demings asked Cook why the company removed many of the most popular screentime apps but not Absher, an app created by the Saudi Arabian government that uses the same technology.

It sounds like you applied different rules to the same apps, Demings said.

Cook said he wasnt familiar with Absher, but said the App Store has about 30 parental control apps after it changed its policy last year. Rep. Lucy McBath (D-Ga.), who returned to the issue later in the hearing, noted that Apple eventually allowed the apps back into the App Store after six months without requiring major changes.

We apply the rules to all developers equally, Cook said. I see Screen Time as just an alternative. Theres vibrant competition for parental controls out there. Leah Nylen

Facebook has certainly adapted features from competing services, CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged Wednesday, but he denied it has threatened to copy start-ups if they wouldnt sell to his company.

But Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) expressed skepticism about his answer, reading from text messages between Zuckerberg and Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom and messages between Systrom and a venture capitalist. She asked Zuckerberg whether he threatened Systrom and Snap CEO Evan Spiegel by saying he would clone their products if they didnt sell to Facebook. The company bought Instagram in 2012, but Snap rebuffed offers to sell to the social network.

The House subcommittee also posted those documents to its website Wednesday.

Im not sure what you would mean by threaten, Zuckerberg said, referring to the companys effort to build an app called Facebook Camera. It was public we were building a camera app at the time. That was a well-documented thing.

It was clear this was a space we were going to compete in one way or another, he said. I dont think those are a threat in any way.

Jayapal reminded Zuckerberg he was under oath while testifying.

In closing her questioning, Jayapal said she didnt believe threats should be a normal business practice.

Facebook is a case study in monopoly power, in my opinion, because your company harvests and monetizes our data and then your company uses that data to spy on your competitors and copy, acquire and kill rivals, she said. Youve used Facebooks power to threaten smaller competitors and ensure you always get your way. These tactics reinforce Facebooks dominance. Leah Nylen

House Judiciary Democrats lost a big potential GOP ally if they had any hopes of bipartisan recommendations to update antitrust law as part of their probe into tech giants.

I have reached the conclusion that we do not need to change our antitrust laws, Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), the top Republican on the antitrust subcommittee, said hours into the hearing on alleged bad behavior by Google, Apple, Amazon and Facebook. Theyve been working just fine. The question here is the question of enforcement of those antitrust laws.

The subcommittees probe has been led by Chairman David Cicilline (D-R.I.), who has been preparing a report to conclude the long investigation. GOP buy-in would strongly bolster its conclusions, including potential recommendations for updates to antitrust law.

Notably, Sensenbrenner seemed to support the probe itself and said hes been working with the chairman for over a year on this bipartisan investigation. His support runs counter to some Republicans who have disparaged Democratic handling of the probe.

But Congress shouldnt toss out a century of precedent, added the retiring House Republican. He said lawmakers should instead pressure antitrust regulators like the Federal Trade Commission, an agency that has faced accusations of going lightly on companies like Facebook and Google. John Hendel

Tempers flared more than two hours into the hearing after Rep. Mary Scanlon (D-Pa.) began her questioning with a dismissal of what she called fringe conspiracy theories of House Judiciary ranking member Jim Jordan (R-Ohio).

That prompted an outburst from Jordan, who had just pressed Google on whether its biased toward Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden and said he had internal evidence of the search giants interest in encouraging Latino voters in 2016.

The only problem: It was no longer Jordans time to speak, as Democrats immediately reminded him as they shouted him down.

Mr. Jordan, you do not have the time! antitrust subcommittee Chairman David Cicilline (D-R.I.) declared amid gavel slamming.

When someone told him to wear a mask, Jordan sought to bring up the unmasking in the surveillance sense of former Trump White House national security adviser Michael Flynn.

When someone comes after my motives for asking questions, I get a chance to respond, Jordan said before letting the hearing proceed.

For the record, Google CEO Sundar Pichai maintained that his company is apolitical. John Hendel

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said the company is still investigating whether employees may have used data it acquires from its third-party sellers to launch competing products an issue that has prompted allegations that the company misled House lawmakers a year ago.

We have a policy against using seller-specific data to aid our private label business. I cant guarantee you that that policy has never been violated, Bezos said in response to questions from Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), whose district includes Amazon headquarters. If we found someone violated the policy, we would take action against them.

The Wall Street Journal reported this year that Amazon employees frequently looked at seller data to help determine what products the company should offer, contrary to what an Amazon executive told the House a year ago. Jayapal also quoted a former Amazon employee as telling the panel that seller data is a candy shop. Everyone can have access to anything they want.

Bezos also acknowledged that while company policy might prevent employees from looking at a specific sellers information, they could look at aggregate data. Jayapal and The Wall Street Journal story noted that Amazon workers took advantage of that by pairing a successful seller with one who had little business to gain insights into particular products.

You have access to data that other sellers do not have, Jayapal said. The whole goal of this committees work is to make sure that there are more Amazons, that there are more Apples, that there are more companies that get to innovate and small businesses get to thrive. ...That is why we need to regulate these marketplaces so that no company has a platform so dominant that it is essentially a monopoly. Leah Nylen

The first batch of questions saw the CEOs collectively struggle to directly answer lawmakers, who came armed with well-researched questions and strong opinions a shift in gear from previous congressional tech hearings.

The one exception was Jeff Bezos, who escaped all questions for the first hour.

As Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg defended his companys management of Instagram, citing the Federal Trade Commissions original decision not to challenge the companys 2012 merger with Instagram, hearing chairman David Cicilline (D-R.I.) dismissed Zuckerberg, saying the failures of the FTC in 2012 do not alleviate Facebooks current antitrust challenges.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai tried to fend off questions by citing examples of individual vendors using Google to grow their business, before Cicilline cut him off for not answering the question.

Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) reeled off a list of possible links and alignment between Google and the Chinese Communist Party, leaving Pichai to say only that Google had only a very limited presence in China. He repeated that answer to Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), who repeated charges by tech investor Peter Thiel that Googles China links are treason, and concerns from Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who said in 2018 that Googles artificial intelligence work in China puts the U.S. military at a competitive disadvantage. Ryan Heath

Apple CEO Tim Cook rejected allegations that the companys App Store rules for developers are enforced arbitrarily and argued that the company must compete with rivals to interest developers in building apps for its iPhone and iPad.

We treat every developer the same. We have open and transparent rules, Cook said under questioning from Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.). Those rules apply evenly to everyone.

Cook said the majority of apps sold through the App Store, 84 percent, pay no fees. The remainder pay either a 30 percent or 15 percent commission, he said.

Johnson noted that Amazon has an agreement with Apple to allow users to bypass the iPhones in-app payment service, and its 30 percent fee, and instead use the credit card on file in their Amazon account for the Amazon Prime Video app. Cook said that would be available to anyone meeting the conditions, though he didnt outline what those conditions are.

The Apple CEO also argued that the company must compete to attract developers, who could offer apps for Googles Android, Microsofts Windows or XBox or Nintendos Playstation.

Theres a competition for developers just like theres a competition for customers, Cook said. Its so competitive I would describe it as a street fight for market share in the smartphone business. Leah Nylen

Were starting to see some fruits of the subcommittees year-plus investigation, and its got Zuckerberg on the defensive.

The Facebook CEO and New York Democrat Jerry Nadler went back and forth over internal company emails in which, Nadler said, Zuckerberg told a colleague back in 2012 that it was buying the photo-sharing Instagram because it could meaningfully hurt us without becoming a huge business.

Zuckerbergs thinking at the time could become a critical piece of evidence if it bolsters the idea that Facebook was abusing its dominance and deep coffers to eliminate budding rivals. Facebooks buying up of Instagram has become a key focus for critics of the company, with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and others saying the deal should be unwound. Thats a threat for Facebook: Instagram has become wildly popular in its own right, and is central to Zuckerbergs plan to keep a toe hold with younger generations who are otherwise flocking to sites like TikTok.

Did you mean that consumers might switch from Facebook to Instagram? Nadler asked.

Congressman, started Zuckerberg, attempting to make the case that no one at the time saw Instagram has a general social network app, rather than a really good photo-sharing app. Nadler pressed on: Yes or no: Did you mean that?

Then Nadler went for the kill, asking what Zuckerberg meant when he wrote that what were really buying is time, adding, Mr. Zuckerberg: Mergers and acquisitions that buy off potential competitive threats violate the antitrust laws.

Zuckerberg tried again, insisting that the Federal Trade Commission knew how Facebook was thinking about Instagram back when it signed off on the merger almost a decade ago. Thats when antitrust subcommittee David Cicilline (D-R.I.) jumped in: I would remind the witness that the failures of the FTC in 2012 of course do not alleviate the antitrust challenges that the chairman described.

Translation: Dont think this is over just because that agency down the road said it was.Nancy Scola

A top House Republican used his questioning to press Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg over a recent content moderation squabble involving Donald Trump Jr., the presidents son, with Twitter.

It was reported that Donald Trump Jr. got taken down for a period of time because he put something up on the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine, Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), the top Republican on the Judiciary antitrust subcommittee. Although Sensenbrenner said he wouldnt take the medication, the lawmaker said, I think this is a legitimate matter of discussion.

Why has that happened? Sensenbrenner asked Zuckerberg.

Congressman, first, to be clear, I think what you might be referring to happened on Twitter, so its hard for me to speak to that, the Facebook CEO said. But I can talk to our policies about this.

Zuckerberg said Facebook would take down any claim a proven cure for Covid-19 exists when there is none, given the potential imminent risk for harm, although he said the social platform would allow free discussion about drug trials and what people may think more generally about a treatments prospects.

Our goal is to offer a platform for all ideas, Zuckerberg told Sensebrenner. Frankly I think weve distinguished ourselves as one of the companies that defends free expression the most. John Hendel

Google CEO Sundar Pichai denied that the search giant steals content from other websites and rejected reports alleging that the company steers users to its own products and sites rather than sources elsewhere on the web.

We have always focused on providing users the most relevant information, Pichai said in response to pointed questions from House Judiciary antitrust subcommittee chair David Cicilline (D-R.I.), who said the panel had seen evidence about Google taking content from other websites and placing more ads on its search results. The vast majority of queries on Google, we dont show ads at all.

Cicilline cited an investigation by The Markup that showed Google has devoted more space on the first page of search results to its own products -- which earn the company more revenue that if users go to other webpages. Pichai said that Google only shows ads when consumers are seeking to buy products and argued that they compete with other e-commerce platforms, like Amazon, where consumers often go directly to try to find products.

When I run the company Im really focused on giving users what they want, Pichai said. We see vigorous competition, whether it be travel or real estate, and we are working hard to innovate.

The Federal Trade Commissions investigation into Google in the early 2010s found Google scraped content from other websites, including Yelp and TripAdvisor. The company agreed to allow other companies to opt out of having their content scraped through 2017. Leah Nylen

One surprise so far in the hearing: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who generally likes to stick fairly religiously to a script in his public appearances, went far afield from his written testimony including strongly arguing that his 2-billion-member social network is an underdog when you look at the behemoths hes testifying alongside.

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Watch Tech Giants Testify at House Antitrust Hearing ...

Impacts and Recommendations After Big Tech Congressional Testimony – Government Technology

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On Wednesday, July 29, 2020, the CEOs of some of the biggest tech giants in the world testified (virtually) before Congress. Some characterized the bipartisan questioning as a brutal beating, but others reported that not much new was accomplished.

These hearings are the current ones in a series of actions at the federal and local governments and have involved other big tech such as Microsoft as other industry service providers

What can we learn? What were the impacts? How do these regulatory issues affect state and local governments? Most important, what can and should be done next by public and private sector leaders and their partners?

These are a few of the items I explore in this blog, with the help of long-time state government policy expert Andris Ozols who worked for many years with me in Michigan government before his retirement a few years ago. Andris was also a significant contributor to my recent blog efforts on elections security.

Background on the Congressional Hearings

First, the media coverage of the testimony was widespread before, during and after the virtual event. Here are a few headlines and relevant excerpts:

Washington Post: Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google grilled on Capitol Hill over their market power

Excerpt: The leaders of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google took a brutal political lashing Wednesday as Democrats and Republicans confronted the executives for wielding their market power to crush competitors and amass data, customers and sky-high profits.

The rare interrogation played out over the course of a nearly six-hour hearing, with lawmakers on the Houses top antitrust subcommittee coming armed with millions of documents, hundreds of hours of interviews and in some cases the once-private messages of Silicon Valleys elite chiefs. They said it showed some in the tech sector had become too big and powerful, threatening rivals, consumers and, in some cases, even democracy itself.

NPR.org: Heads Of Amazon, Apple, Facebook And Google Testify On Big Tech's Power

Excerpt: Rep. David Cicilline, D-R.I., the subcommittee chairman, spent all of his first five-minute block of questions on Google the company at most immediate risk of antitrust action. The Department of Justice is reportedly preparing to sue the company over its advertising business, and could be joined by state attorneys general who have also been investigating Google.

Cicilline pressed CEO Pichai on whether Google's business model presents a conflict of interest, because it has an incentive to give search results that keep users on its own site rather than anywhere else on the Internet.

New York Times: Lawmakers, United in Their Ire, Lash Out at Big Techs Leaders

Excerpt: The chief executives of Amazon, Apple, Google and Facebook, four tech giants worth nearly $5 trillion combined, faced withering questions from Republican and Democratic lawmakers alike on Wednesday for the tactics and market dominance that had made their enterprises successful.

For more than five hours, the 15 members of an antitrust panel in the House lobbed questions and repeatedly interrupted and talked over Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Tim Cook of Apple, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Sundar Pichai of Google.

Forbes: Why Big Tech Should Regulate Itself

Excerpt: Big Tech faces two main options. They can go on acting as if nothing is amiss and hope that government action will take a long time to become a reality. Or they can take proactive steps to recognize the legitimacy of the issues and regulate themselves with a commitment to reengage with acting honorably and doing no evil. The latter course of action will be the smarter and less painful one.

Fox News: Big Tech backlash: Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon CEOs grilled on Capitol Hill

Excerpt: House lawmakers on Wednesday grilled the heads of some of the world's largest tech companies - with Democrats questioning whether the companies violated U.S. antitrust laws and stole from competitors, while Republicans slammedthem over alleged censorship and bias against conservatives.

BBC News (UK spelling) - Big Tech: What comes next for the US giants?

Excerpt: It's highly unlikely though that anything much will happen before the US elections in November.

As well as the presidential vote, all the seats in the House of Representatives are up for grabs, as well as about a third of the Senate.

And so we reach a fork in the road for Big Tech in America.

A Republican win would probably see the tech giants scrutinised further over how they police free speech. Section 230 - which gives social media companies immunity from prosecution for what is published on their platforms - would probably be looked at.

If the Democrats win, expect more regulation in an attempt to inject more competition into the tech industry.

Consequences to State and Local Governments and Potential Actions

There are both direct and indirect consequences on state and local governments, and in order for the states and locals to both maximize the benefits as well as ameliorate the effects of regulations, the state and local governments need to understand these effects and their causes and work collaboratively among themselves and with the technology partners.

Collaboration involves shared assessments, solution design, programs, education and training, advocacy and more. Selected examples include:

Understanding State and Local Direct Impacts of Regulatory Issues

Direct impact issues are issues that are part of the federal review, litigation and hearing agendas and state Attorney General related agendas. Contested IT related issues involve direct business practices, platforms, hardware, software, services at variance with state and local government public values and ethics, policies, strategies, standards and agreements including accuracy, operations, outputs or outcomes.

Emphasis is placed on: State legal requirements; state and gubernatorial priorities; action and decisions needed for this decision cycle; potential for maximum effects on outcomes; facilitating integration, collaboration among governments; options available for sustained innovation involving the greatest range of state and local government services and customers.

1 - Direct effects of federal regulatory issues. Key issues identified in federal big tech, and related hearings include: Limiting options in services, decrease in control or discretion in managing services, decreased trust in government protection of security and privacy, accuracy and truthfulness of information.

2 - State and local regulatory issues. Key issues addressed in state Attorney General initiatives also include: Limiting options in services, decrease in control or discretion in managing services, decreased trust in government protection of security and privacy, accuracy and truthfulness of information.

Collaborative state initiatives announced last week for New York and California are accelerating the process and provide new models for state and local initiatives. This article from The Guardian (UK) is entitled, New York unveils landmark antitrust bill that makes it easier to sue tech giants.

New YorkState is introducing a bill that would make it easier to sue big tech companies for alleged abuses of their monopoly powers. New York is Americas financial center and one of its most important tech hubs. If successfully passed, the law could serve as a model for future legislation across the country. It also comes as a federal committee is conducting ananti-trust investigationinto tech giants amid concerns that their unmatched market power is suppressing competition. Also, The New York Attorney General's office will join the California Attorney General's office and the Federal Trade Commission's investigation intoAmazon's online marketplace.

3 State, local and federal regulatory roles and balance. Balance in roles and authority in regulations is a policy and legal point of contention among levels of government and also determines how the regulatory issues are prioritized. This includes topic like what stakeholders need to be involvedand timing for action. One of the NGA chairs priority issues for 2020 2021 will be federalism issues and questions of balance of roles and authority.

4 - State and local stakeholders and collaboration. States have established public and private sector collaborative networks (cite examples), but the current issues call for reinforcing relationships and strengthening ones with NGA, fiscal officers (https://www.nasbo.org/home ), procurement National Association of State Procurement Officials - NASPO , auditors NASACT , legislators (National Conference of State Legislatures) and their associations. Also, the perspectives of federal Congressional and Executive assessment sources such as Partnership for Public Service, GAO, GSA, CBO and public policy administrators would be helpful, including ASPA. https://www.aspanet.org/ASPA/

Understanding Indirect Impacts: Information, Procurement, Smart, Digital Government and Public Sector Policy and Procedural Issues

Indirect issues are those resulting from direct IT services such as hardware, software, services, outputs serving as IT inputs that support or enable other functions, processes, programs or services. In addition to processes and services, these may also affect policies, standards, decision-making, customer values, perceptions, satisfaction and trust.

In particular, these issues and how they are resolved help define and pre-structure the options available for smart, digital communities and governments.

1 Information Control and Management. Information and information management is a foundational issue, the wizard behind the curtain. Ownership, control, accuracy, misinformation and information management plays a central role in a number of the support platforms for smart, digital government - such as internet of things, mobile and location aware services, cloud, integrated and autonomous AI.

2 Procurement. Procurement management is the gateway to public / private relationships, partnerships, standards, performance, accountability, policy and value alignment, etc. Includes RFIs, RFSs, RFPs and contracts. National Association of State Procurement Officials - NASPO is a crucial partner on this issue and NASCIO has a strong established relationship.

3 Smart, Digital Government. Smart, digital government and communities and cities are vital constructs describing the connection, integration of technologies to transform how governments, citizens and businesses interact. Some of the regulatory issues can impact on smart government priorities; timing and scheduling; platforms; information ownership; privacy; security; accuracy and reliability; processes; state and local government control; public trust and others.

While many roadmaps for smart governments and communities address the role of regulations, not all of them do, and the pandemic as well as the overlap of the flu and hurricane seasons will further accentuate the risks. In general state and local assessments, policies, standards, plans and roadmaps do not consistently address the role of regulations or the consequences of not complying. However, there are sufficient examples and models such as NGA work on on Smart Transportation and Smart Energy roadmap, with sections on regulations from the Smart Community and State Initiative that can serve as models.

4 - Key State and Local Service Sectors. There are differential regulatory effects on service sectors and realignment of priorities and solutions. For example, differential effect of selected platforms on IT supported health and education services, distance learning and work, election processes, security, disaster management and recovery.

5 Key 2020 2021 Events and Decision Points. The juxtaposition of the pandemic, hurricane season, pending flu season in context of elections, economic disruptions a revenue and budget short-falls are altering priorities, reducing funding allocation levels, stressing state and local service capabilities and calls for modifications in disaster and management and recovery approaches and the supporting platforms in which Big Tech is involved.

Recommendations for Collaborative Action

The public sector IT community needs to work together in both recognizing the benefits of Big Tech and integrator services as well as addressing and resolving adverse effects. This needs to involve both the public and private sector communities and build upon existing networks and public private partnership models.

The following recommendations address both the three-month cycle before the election, the three months after the election, and reference issues for potential future action.

The next five or six month period covers the front end of most state and local government assessment, design and development cycles and also includes a number of state and local association and support group working sessions and planned deliverables that could include a regulatory issue perspective. The following four groups share a collaborative history are illustrative of potential opportunities and next steps regarding non-profits supporting state and local governments:

National Governors Association (NGA) - https://www.nga.org/

Follow-up to federalism issue after the Summer 2020 virtual session can include both infrastructure and regulatory issues from an IT perspective.

The Smart Transportation and Smart Energy roadmap sections on regulations, from the Smart Community and State Initiative can be one of the inputs in developing shared templates.

National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) http://www.nascio.org

Center for Digital Government (CDG) https://www.govtech.com/cdg/about/

Public Technology Institute (PTI) / CompTIA https://www.pti.org/

Recommended Collaborative Actions

1 Advocacy on Federal Hearing Report. Coordinate state and local advocacy on the pending federal hearing report and recommendations as well as follow-up with the executive branch and Congress.

2 Potential IT Related Advocacy and Potential Participation State AG Initiatives. Develop a coordinated and collaborative state and local review of AG initiatives from an IT perspective and recommendations, including the New York and California proposed actions. The federal hearings and NY initiatives are fulcrums for state and local IT related actions and may serve as models for selected state actions.

3 Enhance Role of Regulations in State and Local IT Policies, Strategies, Operations, Roadmaps and Advocacy. Collectively develop templates for addressing regulations in state and local policy and procedural guidelines, including procurement, operational and performance management, audits and others.

4 Conduct an Assessment and Recommendations of IT and Regulatory Effect and Support Capabilities for Pandemic Effects and Election Processes. Conduct a collaborative assessment of the capabilities and opportunities of IT support for the pandemic and election process, other pending emergencies and potential interactions with the regulatory issues. Develop recommendations for state leadership, NGA, NCSL and federal government.

5 Develop a Forum for IT Stakeholder Collaboration on Regulatory Issues. Identify scope of potential stakeholders for supporting recommendations and further action, and develop a forum for organizing a state, local, federal and private sector collaborative. This forum can be a Web based forum, perhaps hosted as part of the NASCIO virtual fall session.

Final Thoughts

Back in 2018, Deloitte Consulting wrote this: Regulations or absence of regulations can also alter or limit both direct government operations as well as stakeholder, customer benefits, and limit development or innovation options. As new business models and services emerge, such as ride-sharing services and initial coin offerings, government agencies are challenged with creating or modifying regulations, enforcing them, and communicating them to the public at a previously undreamed-of pace. And they must do this while working within legacy frameworks and attempting to foster innovation.

Here is another excellent piece by Deloitte on regulation and cybersecurity: National security and technology regulation. I also think it worth reviewing these biggest takeaways from the Washington Post on the antitrust hearings.

CNBCs expert analysts believe these companies will never be broken-up due to the U.S. desire to compete with companies from China and elsewhere. Nevertheless, they also say there is likely more regulation coming.

One thing is clear: Well be back to cover this topic many times in the coming years. The issues are not going away.

Time to do your homework and get ready for more in 2021 and beyond - regardless of who wins the upcoming election.

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Impacts and Recommendations After Big Tech Congressional Testimony - Government Technology

UK regulator is needed to keep powers of tech giants in check – Telegraph.co.uk

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One solution would be the creation of a regulator that couldgive local authoritiesand organisations in the UKcommunal ownership of data in a way that protects privacy, the report claims.

The regulator would be part of a new Office for the Digital Common, and would have the power to protect valuable UK digital data, such as that derived from the NHS, from unfair international exploitation.

It also recommends steps to bring the value created by data under local and regional control, as is already being pioneered by innovative cities such as Amsterdam and Barcelona.

"Local authorities, metro mayors and devolved administrations can do the same in the UK," said Mr Meadway.

For instance, they could compelcompanies to share data as a pre-condition of winning a service contract, and push for locally collected data to be made open to use by others.

"Competition policy alone, at least in the sense of simply trying to break up some of these digital giants, could both reduce the value to the public of operating at scale and, by creating smaller digital companies with similar business models, could simply reproduce some of the socially damaging behaviour we have seen," saidMr Meadway.

Big Tech faced a grilling from the US Congress last week over its swelling powers in an unprecedented hearing that saw the bosses of Amazon, Google, Facebook and Apple all appear together by videolink for the first time.

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UK regulator is needed to keep powers of tech giants in check - Telegraph.co.uk

Google-Fitbit deal to be scrutinized in Europe over data competition concerns – TechCrunch

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In a set-back for Googles plan to acquire health wearable company Fitbit, the European Commission has announced its opening an investigation to dig into a range of competition concerns being attached to the proposal from multiple quarters.

This means the deal is on ice for a period of time that could last until early December.

The Commission said it has 90 working days to take a decision on the acquisition so until December 9, 2020.

Commenting on opening an in-depth investigation in a statement, Commission EVP Margrethe Vestager who heads up both competition policy and digital strategy for the bloc said: The use of wearable devices by European consumers is expected to grow significantly in the coming years. This will go hand in hand with an exponential growth of data generated through these devices. This data provides key insights about the life and the health situation of the users of these devices.Our investigation aims to ensure that control by Google over data collected through wearable devices as a result of the transaction does not distort competition.

Google has responded to the EU brake on its ambitions with a blog post in which its devices & services chief seeks to defend the deal, arguing it will spur innovation and lead to increased competition.

This deal is about devices, not data, Google VP Rick Osterloh further claims.

The tech giant announced its desire to slip into Fitbits data-sets back in November, when it announced a plan to shell out $2.1BN in an all-cash deal to pick up the wearable maker.

Fast forward a few months and CEO Sundar Pichai is being taken to task by lawmakers on home turf for stuff like helping destroy anonymity on the Internet. Last years already rowdy antitrust drum beat around big tech has become a full on rock festival so the mood music around tech acquisitions might finally be shifting.

Since news of Googles plan to grab Fitbit dropped concerns about the deal have been raised all over Europe with consumer groups, privacy regulators and competition and tech policy wonks all sounding the alarm at the prospect of letting the adtech giant gobble a device maker and help itself to a bunch of sensitive consumer health data in the process.

Digital privacy rights group, Privacy International one of the not-for-profits thats been urging regulators not to rubberstamp the deal argues the acquisition would not only squeeze competition in the nascent digital health market, and also for wearables, but also reduce what little pressure there currently is on Google to compete in relation to privacy options available to consumers (both existing and future Fitbit users), leading to even less competition on privacy standards and thereby enabling the further degradation of consumers privacy protections, as it puts it.

So much noise is being made that Google has already played the we promise not to card thats a favorite of data-mining tech giants. (Typically followed, a few years later, with a we got ya sucker joker as they go ahead and do the thing they totally said they wouldnt.)

To wit: From the get-go Fitbit has claimed users health and wellness data will not be used for Google ads. Just like WhatsApp said nothing would change when Facebook bought them. (Er.)

Last month Reuters revisited the concession, in an exclusive report that cited people familiar with the matter who apparently told it the deal could be waved through if Google pledged not to use Fitbit data for ads.

Its not clear where the leak underpinning its news report came from but Reuters also ran with a quote from a Google spokeswoman who further claimed: Throughout this process we have been clear about our commitment not to use Fitbit health and wellness data for Google ads and our responsibility to provide people with choice and control with their data.

In the event, Googles headline-grabbing promises to behave itself with Fitbit data have not prevented EU regulators from wading in for a closer look at competition concerns which is exactly as it should be.

In truth, given the level of concern now being raised about tech giants market power and adtech giant Google specifically grabbing a treasure trove of consumer health data, a comprehensive probe is the very least regulators should be doing.

If digital policy history has shown anything over the past decade+ (and where data is concerned) its that the devil is always in the fine print detail. Moreover the fast pace of digital markets can mean a competitive threat may only be a micro pivot away from materializing. Theories of harm clearly need updating to take account of data-mining technosocial platform giants. And the Commission knows that which is why its consulting on giving itself more powers to tackling tipping in digital markets.But it also needs to flex and exercise the powers it currently has. Such as opening a proper investigation rather than gaily waving tech giant deals through.

Antitrust may now be flavor of the month where tech giants are concerned with US lawmakers all but declaring war on digital robber barons at last months big subcommittee showdown in Congress. But its also worth noting that EU competition regulators for all their heavily publicized talk of properly regulating the digital sphere have yet to block a single digital tech merger.

It remains to be seen whether that record will change come December.

The Commission is concerned that the proposed transaction would further entrench Googles market position in the online advertising markets by increasing the already vast amount of data that Google could use for personalisation of the ads it serves and displays, it writes in a press release today.

Following a preliminary assessment process of the deal, EU regulators said they have concerns about [emphasis theirs]:

By acquiring Fitbit, Google would acquire (i) the database maintained by Fitbit about its users health and fitness; and (ii) the technology to develop a database similar to Fitbits one, the Commission further notes.

The data collected via wrist-worn wearable devices appears, at this stage of the Commissions review of the transaction, to be an important advantage in the online advertising markets. By increasing the data advantage of Google in the personalisation of the ads it serves via its search engine and displays on other internet pages, it would be more difficult for rivals to match Googles online advertising services. Thus, the transaction would raise barriers to entry and expansion for Googles competitors for these services, to the ultimate detriment of advertisers and publishers that would face higher prices and have less choice.

The Commission views Google as dominant in the supply of online search advertising services in almost all EEA (European Economic Area) countries; as well as holding a strong market position in the supply of online advertising display services in a large number of EEA countries (especially off-social network display ads), and a strong market position in the supply of adtech services in the EEA.

All of which will inform its considerations as it looks at whether Google will gain an unfair competitive advantage by assimilating Fitbit data. (Vestager has also issued a number of antitrust enforcements against the tech giant in recent years, against Android, AdSense and Google Shopping.)

The regulator has also said it will further look at:

The tech giant has already offered EU regulators one specific concession in the hopes of getting the Fitbit buy green lit with the Commission noting that it submitted commitments aimed at addressing concerns last month.

Google suggested creating a data silo to hold data collected via Fitbits wearable devices and where it said it would be kept separate from any other dataset within Google (including claiming it would be restricted for ad purposes). However the Commission expresses scepticism about Googles offer, writing that it considers that the data silo commitment proposed by Google is insufficient to clearly dismiss the serious doubts identified at this stage as to the effects of the transaction.

Among others, this is because the data silo remedy did not cover all the data that Google would access as a result of the transaction and would be valuable for advertising purposes, it added.

Google makes reference to this data silo in its blog post, claiming: Weve been clear from the beginning that we will not use Fitbit health and wellness data for Google ads. We recently offered to make a legally binding commitment to the European Commission regarding our use of Fitbit data. As we do with all our products, we will give Fitbit users the choice to review, move or delete their data. And well continue to support wide connectivity and interoperability across our and other companies products.

We appreciate the opportunity to work with the European Commission on an approach that addresses consumers expectations of their wearable devices. Were confident that by working closely with Fitbits team of experts, and bringing together our experience in AI, software and hardware, we can build compelling devices for people around the world, it adds.

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Google-Fitbit deal to be scrutinized in Europe over data competition concerns - TechCrunch

The day a communitys pride was hurt – The Times of India Blog

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It was August 5, 2020. Times Square in New York had been rented to promote Hindutva (Hinduness). There were functions held in numerous western capitals. All of India was agog.

Except for Indias 200-million strong Muslim minority. Their mosque, the Babri Masjid, was torn down by Hindu zealots in the northern Indian town of Ayodhya. Many Hindus alleged that the mosque had been built by in turn tearing down a Hindu temple. So they wanted the temple restored.

Narendra Modi became Indias prime minister for the second time in 2019. Some months after his reelection, the Indian Supreme Court in a judgment dated November 9, 2019, stated that the demolition of the Babri Masjid was illegal. It also said that there was no evidence to suggest that a Hindu structure stood underneath the mosque.

Yet, the Court handed over the disputed land to Hindus to construct their temple, while at the same time awarding a large tract of land in Ayodhya for the construction of a new mosque. Modi hailed the verdict in his by now all-too-familiar television addresses.

I am a Hindu. A devout Hindu. Perhaps not as devout a Hindu as Mahatma Gandhi, the founding father of India. Yet Gandhi gave his life for Indias Muslims. Gandhi hails from the Indian state of Gujarat, the state of Modi. In his office, Modi has a statuette of Gandhi.

But does Modi follow Gandhis ideals? India is one of the biggest, most-diverse nations on earth. Gandhi wanted India to strictly separate church from state, and handed India to the atheist Jawaharlal Nehru to run for close to two decades. In 1984, there was a watershed election. The Hindu right, almost always marginalized until then, won only two seats in parliament.

They didnt know where to look. Their leader, LK Advani, latched onto the temple-mosque issue to gain power. It became a matter of pride for Hindus. Hindu pride.

But Hindu pride is not like white pride. Hinduism is one of the worlds oldest and one of the most peaceful religions in the world. Unlike some other religious groups, Hindus do not proselytize. Circa 1000 AD, Muslim invaders started arriving in the subcontinent and by 1200 AD they had captured almost all of India.

They ruled uninterrupted until the British arrived in the mid-eighteenth century. Nehru himself acknowledges in his Independence Day speech on the night of August 14, 1947, that the soul of India had been long suppressed. By the soul of India he meant the soul of Indias Hindus.

But Gandhi wanted every wind to sweep through the house of India. Advani stirred and shook the nation with a violent, traumatic journey across the country in 1992 to promote the temple. His partys seats grew to almost a hundred, still nowhere near enough to form a government.

But he knew he was on the right track. In 1998, Atal Bihari Vajpayee became the PM, and in 2014, Modi. Modi marginalized him and made him a part of the path-showing council, which is neither path-showing nor a council. It is defunct. Advani, the architect of Hindutva, was made defunct. Power does that.

He did not attend the foundation laying ceremony of the temple in Ayodhya. Maybe because its because of Covid, maybe because Modi did not want him to. Modi was of course the chief guest. This was not a Hindutva opportunity to be missed.

As many of Indias exult, almost all of Indias Muslims cow down in shame. Modis regime has not been kind to them. Cow vigilantism has led to numerous attacks of lynchings on Indias Muslims. The Muslim majority-state of Kashmir has been under a brutal lockdown for a year. Modi has given refuge in India to persecuted minorities in Indias neighborhood like Hindus, Sikhs and even Christians (in a sign of clear concession to the West), but not to Muslims.

Today the Indian Muslim lies almost comatose. He is at the bottom of the countrys societal and economic totem pole. No real programs are launched to help him. Many Hindus rejoice at his fate, who they consider their former tormentor.

The Babri Masjid was built circa 1520, almost five hundred years ago. Modis supporters say that with the construction of the temple, he has accomplished what no one had for five hundred years. But Indias soul is being torn apart. Gandhis ashes are being singed.

Modis supporters mock Hindus like me to be bad Hindus, just as Trumps supporters mock liberal whites to be bad whites. But what would Modi say about Gandhi? Does he pray to him only to show the world, while internally he regards him as a relic. Gandhi won India its freedom. Why not let his thoughts linger on for a while? Must we all breathe from the putrid stench of hate.

DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.

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The day a communitys pride was hurt - The Times of India Blog

Boycotted. Criticized. But Fox News Leads the Pack in Prime Time. – The New York Times

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In one sense, this has been a difficult period for Fox News: a star anchor fired after being accused of sexual harassment, a lawsuit depicting a misogynist workplace, a top writer exposed as a racist internet troll, advertiser boycotts and outrage after Tucker Carlson called protesters criminal mobs and questioned the patriotism of a senator who lost her legs in Iraq.

In another sense, business has never been better.

In June and July, Fox News was the highest-rated television channel in the prime-time hours of 8 to 11 p.m. Not just on cable. Not just among news networks. All of television. The average live Fox News viewership in those hours outstripped cable rivals like CNN, MSNBC and ESPN, as well as the broadcast networks ABC, CBS and NBC, according to Nielsen.

That three-hour slot is a narrow but significant slice of TV real estate, and it is exceedingly rare for a basic-cable channel to outrank the Big Three broadcasters, which are available in more households and offer a wider variety of programming.

Even the return of live sports did little to stop the momentum: The Fox News programs hosted by Mr. Carlson and Sean Hannity drew more live viewers than competing baseball and basketball games, including a Yankees-Nationals matchup on Opening Day.

Fox Newss big summer has been boosted by a rise in audience for news programming in general, an increase driven by interest in the pandemic, civil rights protests and the presidential election. ABC, CBS, and NBC, meanwhile, have more reruns on the summer schedule; the coronavirus has suspended most TV productions; and viewers are being lured away by streaming services and on-demand Hollywood movies.

But the Fox News ratings also demonstrate the size and resilience of Americas audience for pro-Trump opinion, and the loyalty of Fox News viewers who shrug off the controversies that routinely swirl around the network.

Massive news events that conservatives view through a highly partisan lens are driving the ratings, and none of the controversies really land with loyal Fox News viewers, said Nicole Hemmer, a scholar at Columbia University and a historian of American conservative media.

Lachlan Murdoch, the executive chairman of Fox Newss parent company, bragged on an earnings call last week about the networks astronomical ratings. He also said its ad revenue was up from a year ago a reminder that Fox News, for all the flak it takes from critics, politicians and the advertisers that fled Mr. Carlson, remains an unrivaled profit engine for the Murdoch empire.

Complaints that Fox News prime-time hosts downplayed the coronavirus and, in the case of Laura Ingraham, encouraged the use of hydroxychloroquine, a drug shown to be useless, and even dangerous, for Covid-19 patients made little difference.

The belief that hydroxychloroquine is something between a therapeutic and a miracle cure is wildly popular in conservative media, especially talk radio, Ms. Hemmer said. Tucker Carlsons controversies have never really hurt his ratings, though they have cost him advertisers.

Two days stood out when Fox News ratings fell significantly: the funerals of George Floyd, the Minnesota man who died after a police officer pinned him to the ground during a routine stop, and Representative John Lewis, the towering civil rights figure.

Like its rivals CNN and MSNBC, Fox News carried the memorial services live. During Mr. Floyds funeral, viewership on all three networks dipped. On both occasions, the drop in Fox Newss audience was stark, down to numbers more typically seen during overnight hours. (CNN and Mediaite previously reported on the ratings dips.)

Over all, viewers have shown a strong appetite for news on politics, public health and natural disasters.

The evening newscasts on ABC, CBS and NBC are notching their biggest audiences in years. David Muirs World News Tonight on ABC has been a standout: In July, its episodes were the top 18 telecasts across all of broadcast and cable television, drawing more viewers than usual summertime ratings leaders like NBCs Americas Got Talent.

All three of the network newscasts, which air at 6:30 p.m., draw more viewers than Fox Newss prime-time shows, with Mr. Muir more than doubling Mr. Hannitys average in July.

Cable channels define prime-time as 8 to 11 p.m., but the Big Three broadcasters include the 7 p.m. Sunday slot in their average prime-time audience counts. That is when 60 Minutes airs on CBS another news show that is hugely popular with viewers and the broadcast networks definition of prime time allowed CBS to eke out a win against Fox News in June and July.

But Fox News was the king of 8 to 11 p.m., in part because conservative viewers have few options for right-wing political commentary. Smaller networks like Newsmax and One America News have tried to siphon off viewers but lag far behind.

MSNBC, whose liberal prime time is an ideological inverse to Fox News, has increased its audience from a year ago. But Rachel Maddow, once neck and neck with Mr. Hannity at 9 p.m., has fallen behind all three of Fox Newss prime-time stars in total viewers. Ms. Ingraham, who appears in the less desirable 10 p.m. slot, has drawn more viewers than Ms. Maddow for many months.

Fox News won praise this summer thanks to several news-making interviews with President Trump, including Chris Wallaces grilling on Fox News Sunday and an interview with Harris Faulkner in which Mr. Trump struggled to address racial grievances. Even Mr. Trumps June forum with Mr. Hannity yielded headlines when the president could not name a policy priority for a second term.

But the networks critics say the language of its prime-time hosts can be reckless. Mr. Carlson has faced a particular backlash since Mr. Floyds death in Minneapolis in late May sparked nationwide demonstrations for civil rights.

Major advertisers, including the Walt Disney Company, T-Mobile and Poshmark, boycotted his program as Mr. Carlson denounced the protesters as violent anarchists. Later, the host called Senator Tammy Duckworth, a wounded veteran, a moron and questioned her patriotism. In recent days, Mr. Carlson called former President Barack Obama a greasy politician and wondered if Mr. Floyds death had been caused by drug use rather than being pinned to the ground by a police officer.

Mr. Carlsons ratings have never been higher. And based on Mr. Murdochs telling, the boycott had little effect on Fox Newss bottom line. Mr. Carlsons show has virtually no major sponsors, but many ads were redistributed to other programs on the network. Fox News also continues to make a fortune in so-called carriage fees, the money paid by cable and satellite providers to keep the network in their lineups.

Fox News vigorously defends itself from critics who say its news coverage is biased or its commentators are extreme. When a writer for Mr. Carlson, Blake Neff, resigned in July because of racist and sexist messages he had posted in an online forum, Fox Newss chief executive, Suzanne Scott, publicly denounced his conduct as abhorrent. Mr. Carlson issued a halfhearted mea culpa, saying Mr. Neffs posts were wrong but also warning that his critics would be punished.

Mr. Murdoch was made aware of Mr. Carlsons on-air remarks before the broadcast, according to two people with knowledge of the exchange, which was reported earlier by The Daily Beast.

CBS remains neck-and-neck with Fox News in the 8 to 11 p.m. slot, and could still take the summer crown.

On Wednesday, however, CBS aired what should have been a major draw: the two-hour season premiere of the reality show Big Brother, a rare new episode amid a raft of summer reruns.

Big Brother was seen by an average of 3.7 million live viewers. Tucker Carlson Tonight lured 3.9 million and Hannity just shy of four million the most-watched telecast of the night.

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Boycotted. Criticized. But Fox News Leads the Pack in Prime Time. - The New York Times

Rage Against the Machine: The Battle of Los Angeles | Review – Pitchfork

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Golden hour took over Los Angeles as Rage Against the Machine marched onto a small stage in a sanctioned protest zone across from the Staples Center, where President Clinton was about to deliver the keynote address at the 2000 Democratic National Convention. Thousands of young Angelenos packed into the area to scream along to the quartets final live performance before a seven-year hiatus. From the stage, guitarist Tom Morello could see a big screen outside the coliseum showing Hillary and Bill giving their speeches while their guests sipped champagne and dunked shrimp into ramekins of cocktail sauce. In his strident call to action, Zack de la Rocha introduced the concert from the stage: Brothers and sisters, our democracy has been hijacked!

Not only did the ad-hoc concert fit neatly into Rages political animus, but it was also a microcosm for American activism writ large in the 1990s: a multiracial group of pro-revolutionary leftists vs. the white figurehead of elite neoliberalism. The two sides flexed and preened for their respective crowds, separated by a tall barbed-wire fence and a phalanx of riot police armed with rubber bullets and tear gas canisters. For concerned parents asking their teenagers exactly whom this band was raging againstKnow what enemy? Fuck who I wont do what who tells me?on this afternoon in August, the answer was right there, standing at a podium, speaking to his delegates, with silver hair and an Arkansas drawl.

Backstage, Morello gave an interview about why this ostensibly liberal band had shown up to protest the coronation of the ostensibly liberal Democratic nominee, Al Gore. Hes practically indistinguishable from a President George Bush, Morello said with unequivocal bravado. Theyre both pro-death penalty, both pro-NAFTA, both pro-big business...I dont feel represented by either one. When the band kicked into Guerilla Radio, the lead single from their third album, 1999s The Battle of Los Angeles, de la Rocha said as muchincluding a line about the Republican nominee, branding Bush as the offspring of the corrupt former head of the CIA: More for Gore or the son of a drug lord/None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord! A film crews birds-eye camera view revealed five mosh pits going off simultaneously.

On The Battle of Los Angeles, Rage made clear the aim and origin of their anger, especially for those who didnt surf to ratm.com in the 90s to learn the word praxis from an animated gif. Here they cast their gaze back through history to reel in half a millennia of theft, enslavement, and slaughter at the hands of the colonial state in the Americas. The gravity of hip-hop and the thick brow of metal met the sincere gaze of radical politics, creating an album that upended the prevailing critical idea of what good rock music should be doing. It was obvious, didactic, heavy-handed, bluntly delivered to the thick of the nation, because you dont overthrow a racist police state with weepy songs about feeling alienated by technology. What better place than here, what better time than now to empty the missile silos at the so-called New Democrats and crypto-fascist Republicans, to give the opposition contour and dimension, to even embody it themselves, to show the world what an autonomous, dignified life could possibly look like.

There was this interesting thing that was happening during the Clinton administration, de la Rocha would later tell the Los Angeles Times. People were looking inward and not outward, and not addressing what was going on. The malaise of the 90sa tone set by the self-defeatist laconism of Gen Xsettled in during eight years of relative peace and economic prosperity under Clinton. While the bull market lined the pockets of the growing professional class, Clintons legislative victories broke from traditional liberal values and ballooned inequality in America. His disastrous welfare reform gutted the core tenet of the New Deal; his administration deregulated banking, allowing the most powerful financial institutions to amass unseen amounts of capital until they were too big to fail in the crash of 2008; they passed the abhorrent 1994 crime bill, the most sweeping in American history, a steroid injection to the carceral state that put thousands of disproportionately Black men into newly constructed prisons and increased the number of federal death penalty cases from three to 60.

Most egregiously, and perhaps most important to Rage lore, was the North American Free Trade Agreement. The treaty sought to accelerate the economy by opening borders between the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. In doing so, it moved profit away from workers and their communities toward business owners and shareholders, all while crippling unions and the American labor force, who could now be replaced by unconscionably cheap labor. For Mexico, free trade was seen asand has proven to beeconomically devastating: Some two million Mexican farmers have lost their land in the age of NAFTA. Indigenous workers, like those in the southernmost state of Chiapas who faced the importation of corporate American agribusiness, predicted correctly that free trade would decimate their heritage and livelihood.

And so on January 1st, 1994the day NAFTA went into effecthundreds of men, women, and children emerged from the Lacandon jungle and the canyons of Chiapas as a guerilla army and demanded autonomy from the Mexican government. Marking 500 years of genocide against indigenous peoples by colonial rule, the workers wanted control of their Mayan land and their food; they wanted democracy, peace, and justice on their own terms. They called themselves the Zapatistas (the armed faction is known as the Zapatista National Liberation Army, or EZLN) and carried a flag bearing a single red star centered against a black backgroundthe same insignia that peppers Rage iconography and stage shows. The Zapatistas bandoliers and rifles (some real, many fake) were a theatrical show of military might, but their real power lay in their philosophy, called Zapatismo, and the writings and speeches of the groups de facto leader, Subcomandante Marcos.

Quixotic, pseudonymous, and filmed wearing a balaclava smoking a pipe, Marcos spoke in winding allegory and professorial verse about the revolution of the Zapatistas. The Zapatista revolution was not for them, but for the greater world. Para todos todo, para nosotros nada, goes the most famous Zapatismo maxim, For everyone everything, for us nothing. As Alex Khasnabish, a professor and researcher of radical collectives, explained in one of Rages unauthorized biographies, Know Your Enemy, the cornerstone of Zapatismo is this: Rather than insisting that you support [the Zapatistas], they want you to struggle in your own way, in your own place, with your own commitment to dignity in a revolution that makes sense to you and the people around you. The grandiloquent ideas of the Zapatistas and Subcomandante Marcos took on the hue of surrealism and romance, a way of sounding a revolution through the tones and rhythms of language.

At heart, the music of Rage Against the Machine is a direct extension of Zapatismo: paradoxical, militaristic, generous, a conduit for power, not a concentration of it. De la Rocha visited Chiapas four times between 1995 and 1996, working closely with the Zapatistas and strengthening his connection to his Mexican heritage (his Sinaloan grandfather fought in the Mexican Revolution). These trips helped shape the idea of revolutionary bridge-building, of connecting the struggle of one to the many. I think every revolutionary act is an act of love, de la Rocha told Rolling Stone in 1999. Every song that Ive written, it is because of my desire to use music as a way to empower and re-humanize people who are living in a dehumanizing setting.

On its surface, it was easy to classify Rage as music for teenagers staging a leafy suburban rebellion against their parents or doing curls in the squat rack. But by The Battle of Los Angeles, Rage had ascended to something far more personal, spiritual, and bohemian. If 1996s Evil Empire came with a leftist library starter pack, Battle came with a politics of emotion, music that was nimble and serious. In her book Hope in the Dark, the writer and activist Rebecca Solnit describes the words of Subcomandante Marcos as the language of the vast, nameless, current movement that globalization has drawn together, a movement...driven by imaginations as supple as art rather than as stiff as dogma. It is from this delicate branch of politics that Zack de la Rochas words were formed.

In 1999, however, the context in which most people engaged with The Battle of Los Angeles was not through the insurrectionary poetry of Subcomandante Marcos or a readily accessible anti-globalization platform. The album was released in the last gasp of the monoculture, dropped into the scum pond of rocks commercial nadir. Korn led the nu-metal charge on radio, while Limp Bizkit and Kid Rock were rap-rocking without cause on TRL. There were only a few American anti-war protests against Clinton bombing a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan or the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia (in the press throughout the late-90s, Morello would often parry a journalists question about, say, the violence at Woodstock 99 with an indictment of Clintons warmongering, like his Tomahawk missile [that] destroyed the childrens hospital outside Belgrade). There were no wars predicated on a lie about weapons of mass destruction, no social media to disseminate revolutionary tweets to the masses, just pockets of left-wing activism fighting against the WTO in Seattle and the IMF in D.C. as Creeds Human Clay sat atop the charts.

The benefit of Rage reentering the mainstream during this odd musical and socio-political dead zone was that they sounded both nostalgic and of the moment. They had cleared the way for nu-metal and rap-rock with their first two albums, 1992s groundbreaking self-titled debut and 1996s angsty and downtrodden Evil Empire, both of which eventually went triple platinum. When they swung back in with The Battle of Los Angeles, it was like a reminder of the prophecy they foretold at the beginning of the decade. Once iconoclastic rap-rock alchemists, Rage now sounded pretty much like what was on the radio. Moreover, they sounded like the same band they always were but more lethal, more agile, able to fully disarm with a verse and a hook. What I did a lot on [Evil Empire] was, This is what I think. This is my comment, de la Rocha told Rolling Stone. Ive had to change. I want people to see reflections of themselves in the songs. His personal accountability fit squarely with the Zapatista ethos of wanting people to create a revolution in their own way, now bolstered with songs that moved quicker, had bigger hooks, and carried more weight than anything Rage had ever written.

It took nearly a year for de la Rocha to complete all the vocals on Battle, during which he gravitated to another plane of rapping. He is exacting and dynamic, the generalissimos preacher. On Calm Like a Bomb, he loops himself around the band in long ribbons of verse: I be walkin God like a dog/My narrative fearless/My word war returns to burn like Baldwin home from Paris. Then on the pre-chorus, as the band lurches into their signature mosh-rock cadence, de la Rocha hugs the turn on two wheels to deliver this slinky triplet: What ya say, what ya say, what ya say, what! When the chorus hits, it does exactly what he says: Ignite! The chameleonic ease with which de la Rocha slides between rap, funk, and rock on Calm Like a Bomb is indicative of the bands full symbiosis of all those genres on Battle; a chemical compound perfected, a longshot theory finally proved.

With Brad Wilk on the drums and Tim Commerford on the bass, Rage cut deep into the groove. The verse of Sleep Now in the Fire is the rhythm section at its best: the feel has that crab-creep shuffle with Wilk and Commerford laying down an Amen break while Morello makes his guitar sound like a British dial tone. The formula of Rages rhythm section can be largely predictablehushed intro, blues riffs, experimental sound-bed under the verse, more blues riffs, wacky guitar solo, breakdown with blues riffsbut theres just enough variety and mobility to let de la Rocha be the star. Hell blow a word out of his mouth in a huff with big pockets of air in his cheeks, or hell wrap his throat around a word like a snake, sucking the air out of it. The space he leaves between the names of Columbus ships, the trilled r on Maria, the oddly swung rhythm of a line dripping with sarcasmSo raise your fist and march around just dont take what you needsometimes there are more ideas in the rhythm of his raps than the raps themselves.

When the band was on tour with Gang Starr, DJ Premier told Spin that hed try to get a remix of a new Rage song onto rap radio, but that it might not be as easy as it was with Fred Durst. Zack is trying to penetrate the whole soul hes speaking the real, and that takes longer to sink in. One of the bands longest-running causes clbres was the fight for the freedom of Black Panther and radio journalist Mumia Abu-Jamalwho, it is widely believed, was unfairly convicted of killing a Philadelphia police officer in 1981. Long as the rope is tight around Mumias neck/Let there be no rich white life we bound to respect, de la Rocha stage-whispers on Voice of the Voiceless, a short ode to Mumias struggle. While the phrase Free Mumia became something of an activist meme in the 90s, Rage never took his sham trial or his then-impending death sentence for granted (Mumias execution case was dropped in 2011 and he is now serving life without parole). In January 1999, Rage threw an infamous benefit concert in New Jersey that raised $80,000 for Mumia and sparked a media war between a right-wing cop union and the band. And in April of the same year, de la Rocha flew to Geneva, Switzerland to speak on Mumias behalf at the International Commission of Human Rights.

Each song on Battle comes from an outgrowth of personal political conviction. Rage werent fretting from afar and hoping for change like Live Aid; de la Rocha was writing about the abject horror of immigrant sweatshop labor on Maria after Morello was arrested demonstrating against sweatshops in Santa Monica in 1997. De la Rocha wrote of the wealth inequality he saw in his hometown of L.A. (Born as Ghosts) and a final salvo about the Zapatistas struggle on War Within a Breath, the last in a series of songs about the Zapatistas stretching back to Evil Empire. Hidden in that track is a brief line that could be the albums subheadline: Its a war from the depth of time.

Perhaps most striking is Born of a Broken Man, a slow dirge cut from the cloth of Black Sabbath about de la Rochas father, the artist and muralist Beto de la Rocha. Beto was a member of the landmark Chicano painting collective Los Four; in 1974, he was one of the first Chicano artists to be exhibited at the L.A. County Museum of Art. After suffering a nervous breakdown in 1981, Beto fell into a destructive spiral of religious fanaticism. He would fast for weekends, sometimes making a young Zack fast beside him. One night, in a fit of anger and guilt, Beto destroyed over half of his paintings in front of his son. Born of a broken man, but not a broken man, Zack screams of complicated pride on the hook.

The anomaly of Born of a Broken Man, the only Rage song that ever pulled directly from de la Rochas personal life, lends emotional credence to the political screeds around itharanguenroll as Rolling Stone once derisively tagged the band. Few bands have been given more purity tests than Rage Against the Machine over the years, but the question inevitably arises with any group that stakes their identity on revolutionary thought and leftist causes: Do you buy it? You know these avowed socialists are signed to Epic, a multinational major label, right? They made millions of dollars from record sales, and Battle debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard charts, just as Evil Empire did in 1996. Are they redistributing their wealth? When de la Rocha left the band in October of 2000, he hinted at his own discomfort, saying that the groups decision-making process had undermined our artistic and political ideal. How do you square the bands leftist ideology with the defanged arena rock of Audioslave in the ensuing years?

Perhaps the biggest hurdle for buying into Rage Against the Machine is simply their name. All these years later, it has curdled into something sophomoric, trite, somehow too specific and too vague at the same time. If it is an albatross around the bands neck, its created a tautology that has forced them to stay true to themselves: The immutable law of a Rage Against the Machine album is that it must, by nature, rage against the machine. And so inherent in their silly band name lies the uncynical, righteous, and repetitious work of activism and fighting for justice, the search for the will to continue even when it seems like the battle is lost.

Im not buying this bullshit line that says the situation in Chiapas or with Mumia or with the garment workers somehow has nothing to do with middle-class white kids at our shows, de la Rocha told Spin in 2000. All this alienation has roots; its not just TV or boredom or bad parents. This was the great ambition of The Battle of Los Angeles, and perhaps Rage itself: to draw a line between their millions of Gen X and Millennial fans and the causes they fought for, from conquistadors to Clinton, from the Intifada to the Zapatistas, from Francis Fukuyamas claim that the end of the Cold War was the end of history to the spark of the anti-globalization movement around the world. Battle revealed the extentchronologically and geographicallyto which none of us live with dignity. They showed us this is a war we cant win but its a war we dont deserve to lose.

Correction: An earlier version of this review incorrectly stated that Mumia Abu-Jamal was convicted of killing a New York police officer in 1981.

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Rage Against the Machine: The Battle of Los Angeles | Review - Pitchfork

Wadhams: The ghost of Tom Strickland haunts Hickenlooper – The Denver Post

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It was a sure thing. And the rematch was a sure thing as well.

But well get back to that.

Democrats and most of the news media have already declared the 2020 Colorado Senate race over and done with.

Oh, sure, U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner has more than $10 million in the bank, and he has been lauded by Democratic Governor Jared Polis for their collaborative work on the coronavirus pandemic. He has a long litany of Colorado accomplishments such as securing permanent financing for the Land and Water Conservation Fund, getting the United States Space Command headquarters located in Colorado Springs, authorizing funding for the Arkansas Valley Conduit water improvement project that had been delayed for almost sixty years, and relocating the national headquarters of the Bureau of Land Management to Grand Junction from Washington, D.C.

But everyone knows the general election is a mere formality even though the recent primary election exposed former Gov. John Hickenloopers ethical lapses and profound weaknesses as a candidate. This is a sure thing!

Hickenlooper defeated underfunded Andrew Romanoff not because of his dogged pursuit of the nomination he claimed he couldnt debate because he needed his sleep but because the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in Washington, D.C. spent $7 million to drag him across the line.

Hickenlooper is owed this Senate seat! This is a sure thing!

And everyone knows that Colorado is now a deep blue state that will never again elect another Republican for statewide office. Just ask the newly arrived Democratic Socialist political activists who think Colorado politics began when they showed up.

Wasnt Colorado an impregnable Republican bastion before Democrats started winning in 2004? A little political history:

When Gov. Bill Owens the only Republican governor in the last fifty years was elected in 1998, Democrats had won six consecutive gubernatorial elections since 1974. Only two Republicans, Senators Bill Armstrong and Hank Brown, had won Senate elections between 1970 and 1994. So much for being a Republican bastion.

So when U.S. Sen. Hank Brown announced he would not seek reelection in 1996, Democrats were giddy. Winning the seat was a foregone conclusion with the formidable Republican incumbent out of the way.

Their giddiness went into overdrive when conservative Congressman Wayne Allard, a soft-spoken veterinarian from Loveland, won the Senate nomination over a respected Republican attorney general.

Meanwhile, Democrats nominated a powerful, wealthy lawyer-lobbyist straight from Denvers 17th Street power corridor, Tom Strickland, whose campaign said when they had won the primary that the general election was in the bag as well. They derided Allard as an inferior, inevitable loser to the much more polished Strickland. And early polls did show a substantial Strickland lead. It was a sure thing!

But Colorado voters are discerning, and they were terribly uncomfortable with a candidate whose campaign slogan could have been conflicts-are-us as many of Stricklands lobbying clients were at odds with his public positions. The low-key workhorse Allard ran an aggressive campaign on their professional contrasts, and he won an improbable upset victory.

Dismissing his loss as a lucky fluke by Allard, Strickland ran again in 2002 after trying to polish his resume with a brief tenure as the U.S. Attorney for Colorado. Allard didnt have a chance this time! This was a sure thing!

But U.S. Sen. Wayne Allard touted several environmental accomplishments while sharpening the contrast of the veterinarian versus the lobbyist. Allard was reelected by just about the same margin as he won in 1996.

Democrats will argue that Colorados electorate has fundamentally changed in the last decade and indeed it has. More than 800,000 people have moved to Colorado, many of them younger and instinctively liberal, especially on social issues. Unaffiliated voters have exploded to 40% of the electorate while Republicans have slipped behind Democrats.

They will argue that President Trump is like an anchor pulling Gardner into oblivion.

This is a sure thing!

But not all of those unaffiliated voters even those who vote for Biden over Trump will buy off on this sure thing Senate race. They are unaffiliated for a reason. They shy away from partisan labels, and they will give Senator Cory Gardner a fair hearing. Meanwhile, John Ethics-Laws-Are-for-Other-People Hickenlooper will continue to be unfocused and uninspiring.

The race is already tightening. A respected national polling firm, Morning Consult, shows the Hickenlooper lead has slipped to just six points, 48-42.

Cory Gardner is once again the aggressive, young, dynamic challenger, and Hickenlooper is the tired, old, self-entitled, ethically challenged incumbent.

The ghost of Tom Strickland haunts Hickenlooper.

Dick Wadhams is a Republican political consultant and a former Colorado Republican state chairman who managed campaigns for Gov. Bill Owens and U.S. Sen. Wayne Allard.

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Wadhams: The ghost of Tom Strickland haunts Hickenlooper - The Denver Post

Small Midwestern Colleges Have Been Through It All. Can They Make It Through The Pandemic? – KRCU

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The image of a small Midwestern college is one of quiet, peaceful campus nestled in a rural town.

Some now fear the global pandemic could silence many small schools altogether.

The coronavirus upended higher education this spring. Colleges had to lock down and refund thousands of dollars of tuition to students.

On the heels of financial struggles in higher education, the pandemic could land a death blow to smaller colleges dotting rural Missouri and Illinois. Over the past several years, economists have made dire predictions that many small colleges, possibly up to half, will go bankrupt and close in the next decade.

We get concerned about it. However, we've been fortunate that we see more folks wanting to be here, said Don Lofe, interim president at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri.

Through the Civil War, world wars and plenty of economic downturns, colleges like Westminster have continued to graduate students. But over the past two years, about a dozen small colleges have closed for good. Among them is MacMurray College in Jacksonville, Illinois. After 174 years, the coronavirus pandemic was one punch on the chin too many.

School leaders argue they still hold a valuable position in the higher education landscape: a robust liberal arts education rooted in small class sizes, strong student support services and idyllic settings.

I still believe personally, and I think a lot of people do, that there is a need for traditional college education, said Dan Westhues, a board member at William Woods University, also located in Fulton.

Higher education financial experts are less rosy on the outlook.

Forbes magazine gives colleges letter grades based on their financial health. Numerous small schools in Missouri and Illinois earn poor marks. Westminster and Williams Woods get Cs. Culver-Stockton College, Hannibal-LaGrange University and Quincy University all have Ds.

These organizations are going to tell you We're going to survive, but they're not in large numbers, said Gary Stocker, a college administrator-turned-analyst.

Stocker worked at Lindenwood University and Westminster College before starting College Viability, a website aimed at tracking and presenting college financial data to worried college officials and curious parents.

And you see some really, really ugly numbers, he said.

Many of these colleges rely too much on endowment spending and alumni donations, rather than strong student bodies to pump in tuition dollars, Stocker said. They have little cash on hand and endowments too small to weather strong headwinds.

These small rural colleges are not profitable enough year in and year out to be able to have long-term viability, Stocker said.

Itll also be harder to promote the picturesque college experience if colleges have to remain locked down and there are no in-person classes or athletics another big recruitment tool for some small schools.

We feel we provide a unique experience, said Lofe, the head of Westminster. Many colleges are going to say that, but we've been able to demonstrate that with actions. For instance, athletics, the other experiences we have on campus.

COVID-19 also upended finances for colleges. Having to send students packing in March and issue refunds was a major expense. Federal aid programs enacted by Congress in the spring helped cover some of the losses.

I would just tell you this, we managed it well, Lofe said. Our college is very stabilized right now with respect to financial matters. But throughout the years, like many colleges, revenue streams have caused issues as well as the demographics that are changing, as you know, with respect to available students in the population to go to college.

Ryan Delaney

/

St. Louis Public Radio

Westminster College Board of Trustees Chair Jim Morton and Interim President Don Lofe on the campus in Fulton, Missouri, in July.

Fewer high school graduates and the growing sticker shock of a private college education will mean schools have to evolve or possibly die out.

I don't expect a mass extinction of small private colleges, but we may see several years' worth of closures in just a few weeks or months, so I wouldn't be surprised if a few of the small private colleges in the Midwest end up closing, said Robert Kelchen, a Missouri native and associate professor of higher education at Seton Hall University.

While Westminster boasts being around since the Civil War, Culver-Stockton College can brag that it survived a tornado shortly after graduation in 2003.

Douglas Palmer is the new president of Culver-Stockton in Canton, Missouri. Any big aspirations he had when he accepted the job in February, before the pandemic, may need to wait.

I would not expect that many colleges and universities in the area or even in the country are going to be doing a whole lot of hiring or investment in capital projects until we're through this crisis, he said.

He first must focus on maintaining an enrollment of 1,100 students and paying the people who educate them. I think it's been harder here, and I think it will continue to be hard.

Recruiting traditional students to rural pockets of the Midwest, even with appealing tuition discounts and scholarships, is getting harder, said Westhues, the William Woods board member. And so we certainly have seen that over the years, but I think that's actually kind of a decent thing because what it's forced us to do is be creative, and it's forced us to evolve.

William Woods is investing in online programs and degree completion for older adults. Westminster is focused on expanding recruitment and supporting students. It also wants to find a new niche, such as cybersecurity, that "will be a strong selling point."

But going after nontraditional students will have to balance with the core product.

"The liberal arts education gives you the ability to think, think just not analytically, but creatively. And those are words but they're really, I believe in those very strongly," Lofe said. "And I believe this type of education, this type of institution provides that."

Stocker and other industry watchers advocate for mergers of small colleges to reduce costs. Health care provides an example. What were once dozens of small hospitals run by religious orders around the region are now operated by a single hospital system.

Still, the worst-case scenarios many predicted for colleges and universities this fall so far dont appear likely. Some estimates this spring suggested fall enrollments would be down by up to 20%, with students perhaps choosing to stay closer to home or take a gap year.

But as of now Westminster, William Woods and most other small colleges say students are planning to return when campuses reopen this fall, even if it won't be for a typical semester.

Follow Ryan on Twitter: @rpatrickdelaney

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Small Midwestern Colleges Have Been Through It All. Can They Make It Through The Pandemic? - KRCU

Trump’s America is a powderkeg waiting to be lit – The Canberra Times

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news, latest-news, donald trump, civil war, us presidential election, 2020

The United States Civil War of the 1860s was one of the bloodiest imaginable. Deaths were vastly greater than many external conflicts in which the USA has been involved. Whereas Vietnam cost 50,000 American lives, over 600,000 Americans died in the American Civil War. That was out of a population of around 31 million, compared to 205 million at the time of Vietnam. Some estimates say that if the Civil War was fought today and a similar proportion died, the death toll would be over 6 million. Of course, there were many reasons for the high death toll. Battlefield injuries were horrific due to the weaponry and tactics, and medical aid was rudimentary to say the least - it was almost a century before bacterial infection could be controlled. Many of the deaths occurred in prisoner-of-war camps, hellholes like Andersonville. But contributing to the toll too was the culture behind the war. When countries turn inward against themselves, the results can be truly horrific. Just look at the Taliban's killing of fellow Afghans over several decades, the Syrian Civil War, or Islamic sect fighting in Iraq. In the US, the battle between the anti-slavery north and the pro-slavery south knew almost no bounds, and had predecessors as far as violence goes. Even before the war there were bloody skirmishes between pro- and anti-slavery people. During the "Bleeding Kansas" years, anti-slavery forces, including the so-called Jayhawkers, launched attacks against pro-slavery civilians. Looting, burning and killing was under way even before the war officially began. The US was formed out of a belief in "manifest destiny", a God-given right to occupy the land, and that right was enforced by the firearm. First Nations people bore much of the brunt of those gun battles, but so did fellow Americans as the power of arms, enshrined in the constitution, meant that weaponry was resorted to alarmingly readily. The popularity of the "Western" genre of films and TV underlines how that gun violence was normalised in US culture. Maybe today's police culture emanates from the same roots. This right to bear arms has led to a situation today where each year nearly 40,000 Americans die of gunshot wounds, and 100,000 are injured. That 40,000 is two-thirds the size of Australia's losses in World War I. The shocking horror of mass shootings - Columbine, Sandy Hook and all the rest - has done nothing to stop this. The power of the National Rifle Association to quell any attempt to restrict gun ownership means that the present climate seems to show no sign of improving - rather the opposite. The US leads the world in civilian gun ownership on a per capita basis, with over 125 firearms (small arms) per 100 people. So, we find the US heading to a presidential election in a few months. Donald Trump's ascendancy to the highest office in the land was forged by forcing divisions in US society. Trump demonised anyone "liberal", meaning the Democrats, much of the media, virtually anyone remotely centrist, let alone anyone near the left. His following has been that vast segment of American society that felt itself disempowered by the so-called elites (never mind Trump being a New York billionaire who inherited a large portion of his wealth). As the world changed, they had lost jobs, lost self-worth, lost a sense of pride. Trump's chant of "Make America Great Again" was music to their ears - regardless of veracity or cost. Trump's populism has widened divisions in American society. His dog-whistling has promoted anger, giving air to rightist, racist and well-armed groups. Rather than promoting harmony, Trump has banked on pitting Americans against one another. The militias - like the famed Minutemen - that formed a significant role in the War of Independence loom large in the mindset and pantheon of his followers. Militias can be found widely today, armed with a firepower not dreamed of back in the 1770s when George Washington crossed the Delaware. READ MORE: Despite Trump and Republican small government sentiments, Trump has had no hesitation in using federal forces to try to quell Black Lives Matter protests and other outbreaks of unrest. His overriding of state governments would have drawn howls of outrage if undertaken by a Democrat leader. Today the US population is bitterly divided, dangerously armed, and sooled-on by a Commander in Chief who has trashed the once-noble office of President. Trump's bullying, aggressive defensiveness, capricious changes of personnel and policy, and mind-numbingly simplistic tweets are in stark contrast to his predecessor. Barack Obama's grace, gentility, caution, intellectual depth and empathy are a world away. That Trump has hinted he might not accept the result of the coming election (already alleging postal votes as potentially fraudulent, without a shred of evidence) has set an incredibly dangerous tone. Then there is his latest threat, to delay the election; even fellow Republicans have baulked at this, in the land of the free. He is determined to hold onto power, regardless of cost. We can only hope that somehow sense will prevail, that Trump will be seen even by his followers for the danger that he is, that the powder keg that is the armed population of the US will not be lit. The COVID-19 pandemic has done its worst in countries led by rightist leaders - the US, Brazil, Great Britain. Given the US death toll of over 150,000, and the enormous economic impact of the virus, perhaps it is COVID-19 that might finally turn his followers against him and avert a far bigger catastrophe. One that might well put the first US Civil War in the shade. As the Australian son of an American mother, I certainly hope so.

https://nnimgt-a.akamaihd.net/transform/v1/crop/frm/tPntrWhUbGLyDWYCTv46rt/1ebf9624-e443-4aad-9e30-68543f44fb7d.jpg/r2_427_4685_3073_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg

OPINION

August 5 2020 - 12:00AM

The United States Civil War of the 1860s was one of the bloodiest imaginable. Deaths were vastly greater than many external conflicts in which the USA has been involved.

Whereas Vietnam cost 50,000 American lives, over 600,000 Americans died in the American Civil War. That was out of a population of around 31 million, compared to 205 million at the time of Vietnam. Some estimates say that if the Civil War was fought today and a similar proportion died, the death toll would be over 6 million.

Of course, there were many reasons for the high death toll. Battlefield injuries were horrific due to the weaponry and tactics, and medical aid was rudimentary to say the least - it was almost a century before bacterial infection could be controlled. Many of the deaths occurred in prisoner-of-war camps, hellholes like Andersonville.

But contributing to the toll too was the culture behind the war. When countries turn inward against themselves, the results can be truly horrific. Just look at the Taliban's killing of fellow Afghans over several decades, the Syrian Civil War, or Islamic sect fighting in Iraq.

In the US, the battle between the anti-slavery north and the pro-slavery south knew almost no bounds, and had predecessors as far as violence goes. Even before the war there were bloody skirmishes between pro- and anti-slavery people. During the "Bleeding Kansas" years, anti-slavery forces, including the so-called Jayhawkers, launched attacks against pro-slavery civilians. Looting, burning and killing was under way even before the war officially began.

The US was formed out of a belief in "manifest destiny", a God-given right to occupy the land, and that right was enforced by the firearm. First Nations people bore much of the brunt of those gun battles, but so did fellow Americans as the power of arms, enshrined in the constitution, meant that weaponry was resorted to alarmingly readily. The popularity of the "Western" genre of films and TV underlines how that gun violence was normalised in US culture. Maybe today's police culture emanates from the same roots.

US President Donald Trump points to the media during a rally he held to mark 100 days in office. Picture: Shutterstock

This right to bear arms has led to a situation today where each year nearly 40,000 Americans die of gunshot wounds, and 100,000 are injured. That 40,000 is two-thirds the size of Australia's losses in World War I. The shocking horror of mass shootings - Columbine, Sandy Hook and all the rest - has done nothing to stop this. The power of the National Rifle Association to quell any attempt to restrict gun ownership means that the present climate seems to show no sign of improving - rather the opposite.

The US leads the world in civilian gun ownership on a per capita basis, with over 125 firearms (small arms) per 100 people.

So, we find the US heading to a presidential election in a few months. Donald Trump's ascendancy to the highest office in the land was forged by forcing divisions in US society. Trump demonised anyone "liberal", meaning the Democrats, much of the media, virtually anyone remotely centrist, let alone anyone near the left. His following has been that vast segment of American society that felt itself disempowered by the so-called elites (never mind Trump being a New York billionaire who inherited a large portion of his wealth). As the world changed, they had lost jobs, lost self-worth, lost a sense of pride. Trump's chant of "Make America Great Again" was music to their ears - regardless of veracity or cost.

Trump's populism has widened divisions in American society. His dog-whistling has promoted anger, giving air to rightist, racist and well-armed groups. Rather than promoting harmony, Trump has banked on pitting Americans against one another. The militias - like the famed Minutemen - that formed a significant role in the War of Independence loom large in the mindset and pantheon of his followers. Militias can be found widely today, armed with a firepower not dreamed of back in the 1770s when George Washington crossed the Delaware.

Despite Trump and Republican small government sentiments, Trump has had no hesitation in using federal forces to try to quell Black Lives Matter protests and other outbreaks of unrest. His overriding of state governments would have drawn howls of outrage if undertaken by a Democrat leader.

Today the US population is bitterly divided, dangerously armed, and sooled-on by a Commander in Chief who has trashed the once-noble office of President. Trump's bullying, aggressive defensiveness, capricious changes of personnel and policy, and mind-numbingly simplistic tweets are in stark contrast to his predecessor. Barack Obama's grace, gentility, caution, intellectual depth and empathy are a world away.

That Trump has hinted he might not accept the result of the coming election (already alleging postal votes as potentially fraudulent, without a shred of evidence) has set an incredibly dangerous tone. Then there is his latest threat, to delay the election; even fellow Republicans have baulked at this, in the land of the free. He is determined to hold onto power, regardless of cost.

We can only hope that somehow sense will prevail, that Trump will be seen even by his followers for the danger that he is, that the powder keg that is the armed population of the US will not be lit. The COVID-19 pandemic has done its worst in countries led by rightist leaders - the US, Brazil, Great Britain. Given the US death toll of over 150,000, and the enormous economic impact of the virus, perhaps it is COVID-19 that might finally turn his followers against him and avert a far bigger catastrophe. One that might well put the first US Civil War in the shade.

As the Australian son of an American mother, I certainly hope so.

Excerpt from:

Trump's America is a powderkeg waiting to be lit - The Canberra Times

Katy Perry said she and Orlando Bloom bound by ‘spiritual evolution’ – Insider – INSIDER

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Katy Perry has said that she and fianc Orlando Bloom are bound together by "spiritual evolution."

In an interview with The Times of London, Perry said that she was unaware Bloom was on a self-imposed six-month sex ban when she met him in 2016.

"I had no idea that was the case. I met him in 2016, we were both on a different journey," Perry said.

"He's very sensitive. Very emotionally evolved. He gets up at 7 a.m. and chants for an hour. One of the things that binds us is our desire to be more spiritually evolved? And our desire to investigate that realm? One of our main love languages is the spiritual evolution," Perry said.

Katy Perry announced her pregnancy in a music video. Capitol Records

"We love mysticism, conspiracies, aliens, all that stuff. We love an adventure of the mind. That's definitely something we are bound by."

Perry has previously spoken about spiritually before in an interview with Vogue India in which she called Bloom "sage."

"When we first met, he said we would pull the poison out of each other, and we really do," Perry told Vogue India.

"It's exhausting, but we really hold each other accountable. I've never had a partner who was willing to go on an emotional and spiritual journey like Orlando. It's challenging, because you're facing all the things you don't like about yourself. It's like a never-ending cleanse."

Perry and Bloom were together for a year before splitting in February 2017, but then reconciled in February 2018 and became engaged in February 2019. In March 2020, Perry announced via a music video that she and Bloom were expecting their first child together.

Bloom has a nine-year-old son called Flynn with his ex-wife Miranda Kerr, who Perry said she is close with."She's got three boys, so I ask her for all the tips," Perry told The Times.

Read more:

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Katy Perry said she and Orlando Bloom bound by 'spiritual evolution' - Insider - INSIDER

Global Spiritual Forum The Island – The Island.lk

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By Shamindra Ferdinando

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has advanced the swearing in of the cabinet of ministers to Wednesday (12). Earlier, the swearing in was to take place at Dalada Maligawa on Friday (14). The venue remains the same.

Sources told The Island that the government would abide by the 19th Amendment to the Constitution enacted in early 2015 until a new Constitution could be introduced or shortcomings in the current one rectified.

The SLPP has won 145 seats. Besides the SLFP, several smaller parties which secured seats back the government.

The UNP and the UPFA got together to form a national government in 2015 to appoint more than 30 Cabinet ministers.

The new government could appoint 30 ministers in addition to the President, who is the head of the Cabinet. The lions share of ministries would be shared among the SLPP members while the National Freedom Front (NFF), the Pivithuru Hela Urumaya (PHU), the MEP, the SLFP, etc., would receive the remaining slots. The EPDP, which contested the

Aug 5 election on its own, will receive a Cabinet portfolio; the CWC, which contested on the SLPP ticket, is entitled to one.

The Defence portfolio is unlikely to be assigned to anyone until a constitutional amendment is introduced to enable President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who is also the Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces to hold that post.

President Rajapaksa refrained from assigning the defence portfolio when he appointed caretaker cabinet soon after his swearing in as the President, last November.

The 19th Amendment has deprived the President of the right to hold ministerial portfolios.

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