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The craziest contract demands revealed, including no space travel, weight clauses and cooking lessons – The Sun

Posted on August 3, 2020 by Danzig

PLAYERS are valuable commodities.

So when they thrash out contracts with the world's biggest clubs, its important to get everything right and nothing's left to chance.

But there are times when stipulations are put in place by player and club to protect their interests, to let them fulfil their hobbies, or managers just don't trust them.

SunSport looks back at the wackiest requested to and by players.

When the Polish forward was at Borussia Dortmund in the last year of his contract Bayern Munich and Real Madrid were jostling for his signature.

And in leaked documents, Real Madrid's offer seemed lucrative.

Alongside a 166,000-per-week deal and a 10million signing-on fee were several requests they didn't want daredevil Lewandowski to do while he was their property.

Skiing, paragliding, climbing, going on a motorboat and even riding a motorbike were big 'no-nos' for Real Madrid's hierarchy... so that's why signed for Bayern.

WHEN negotiating a contract, its important to be 100 per cent clear about what is being stipulated.

When German forward Reina moved to Arminia Bielefeld in 1996, he demanded the club build him a house for every year of his contract.

The club accepted.

However, Reina didnt specify what size he required.

And Arminia provided him with a house made of Lego for the next three years.

FORMER Real Madrid and AC Milan midfielder was excluded from Argentinas 1998 World Cup squad for a bizarre reason.

Manager Daniel Passarella had refused to pick homosexuals or players with earrings and long hair.

Redondo was guilty of the latter.

He said: I was in great form. But Passarella had particular ideas about discipline and wanted me to have my hair cut.

I didnt see what that had to do with playing football so I said no.

CONGOLESE midfielder moved from Karlsruher to Eintracht Frankfurt in 1999.

However, he had one simple request: that his new club pay for his wife to have cooking lessons.

Were not sure Mrs Guie-Mien took too kindly to this demand.

Though, she was not available for comment at the time.

THE SWEDE moved to Sunderland in 1999 but the Wearsiders had one stipulation the former Arsenal man had to adhere to.

Schwarz was told that any potential flights into space would not be tolerated.

The Black Cats chief exec John Flicking said at the time: One of Schwarzs advisers has, indeed, got one of the places on the commercial flights [into space, due to take place in 2002].

And we were worried that he may wish to take Stefan along with him. So we thought wed better get things tied up now rather than at the time of the flight.

In fact, rather than managing to go up, his career ended when Sunderland went down in 2003.

THE former defender once admitted to eating 212 steak and kidney pies every year.

And Crystal Palace were advised Ruddock did come with some extra baggage when they signed him on a free in 2000.

Ex-Eagles chairman Simon Jordan wrote in his autobiography: On approaching West Ham I discovered he was a free transfer, although he did have a weighty salary which was not the only weighty thing about him.

Harry Redknapp, the West Ham manager at the time, told me to put in a weight clause.

So I decided to put a 10 per cent penalty on the contract we were proposing to offer him if he was over the recommended weight of 99.8kg, which by the way was still frigging huge.

Ruddocks Palace debut was allegedly delayed because the club couldnt find a pair of shorts big enough for him.

MORE recently Japanese legend Keisuke Honda joined Botafogo.

But moving to Brazil's crime-ridden city of Rio de Janeiro had the midfielder fearing for his safety.

So he stipulated he would need an ARMOURED VEHICLE as part of the deal.

More incredibly, Botafogo agreed.

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The craziest contract demands revealed, including no space travel, weight clauses and cooking lessons - The Sun

Hovering, Flying, and Hopping Across the Solar Sytem – Discover Magazine

Posted on August 3, 2020 by Danzig

If you're like most people, you've dreamed of flying (studies show that more than half of us have done it). If you're curious about the universe, you've probably also dreamed about visiting other planets. And if you're willing to wait about nine months, you are in luckbecause after that, you won't have to dream anymore.

Ladies and gentlemen, NASA is about to go flying on Mars.

The Perseverance rover, scheduled to land on February 18, 2021, is carrying a grapefruit-sized helicopter named Ingenuity strapped to its belly. Assuming all goes well with the touchdown, Perseverance will settle into its new home for about two months. Then it will release a small debris shield, fire a pyrotechnic cable-cutter, unleash a spring-loaded arm, and set the little Ingenuity flyer free.

After the rover has rolled a safe distance away, Ingenuity will soak up sunlight to charge its six lithium-ion batteries, like a newly emerged butterfly drying its wings. Then it will spin its twin rotors up to 2,400 rpm and begin a series of exploratory flights on Mars. That ultra-high rotor speed, necessary to generate lift in the thin air of Mars, means each of Ingenuity's flights won't last long (officially just 90 seconds) nor will it go very far (1,000 meters maximum). Still it's the principle of the thing. The first flight of the Wright Brothers covered just 37 meters.

Ingenuity will establish an equally impressive precedent: the first powered flight on a world beyond Earth. It will surely not be the last.

Science and science fiction visionaries have been sketching out ideas for flying on Mars for decades, even before the existence of NASA and space rocketry. The 1918 film A Trip to Mars, one of the earliest science-fiction movies, depicted a giant, buglike Martian airship. NASA's favorite ex-Nazi, Wernher von Braun, wrote a book-length outline for a human expedition to Mars, which prominently included air travel on the Red Planet; space artist Chesley Bonestell gave visual life to his ideas in his 1953 painting, Exploring Mars. No wonder, then, that NASA engineers are already mulling ideas about how to "add another dimension to the way we explore worlds in the future."

"Exploring Mars" by Chesley Bonestell, based on ideas drawn up by Wernher von Braun. (Credit: Chesley Bonestell)

Actually, it's much more than just ideas. NASA already has another off-world flyer approved and under developmentone that is even more audacious than the Ingenuity helicopter. In April of 2026, the agency is scheduled to launch Dragonfly, a nuclear powered octocopter (yes, eight rotors), on an eight-year journey to Saturn's giant haze-shrouded moon, Titan. After touching down on Titan's Shangri-La dune fields, Dragonfly will set off on a daring set of long-distance excursions, essentially carrying out a whole new mission each time it lands.

Dragonfly's capabilities will utterly eclipse those of Ingenuity. Titan has lower gravity than Mars, and its atmosphere is 200 times thicker, making flight far easier there. Also, Dragonfly will carry its own radiothermal energy source, so it won't have to rely on trickles of electricity from a small solar panel. The net result is that NASA expects its Titan 'copter will end up traveling a total of about 175 kilometers over the course of a nearly three-year campaignand judging from past NASA efforts, those numbers are probably highly conservative underestimates.

Dragonfly as it will appear after landing on Titan in 2034. The 450-kilogram flyer will sample the surface through its feet each time it touches down. (Credit: NASA/JHU-APL)

Titan is a fascinating target for this kind of exploration. It is a huge world, nearly as large as the planet Mercury, covered in cold organic compounds. Methane and ethane fall as rain, flow in rivers, and collect in lakesa hydrological cycle composed of liquid natural gas instead of water. Titan's dunes are probably composed of tar-like compounds, blowing over a bedrock of deeply frozen water ice. The exotic carbon chemistry happening on Titan today may resemble the reactions that occurred on Earth before life appeared 4 billion years ago. We want to see as much as we can of this unique place.

For now, there are no other flying missions planned for other worlds. But flying is not the only novel form of space transit in development. On small objects like comets and asteroids, hopping is an efficient way to get around. Really, it's almost the only way to get around, since the surface gravity is so low.

The European Space Agency's Philae lander did an accidental hop on Comet 67P after failing to harpoon itself to the surface. The Japanese Space Agency's Hayabusa-2 spacecraft dropped three active hoppers onto the asteroid Ryugu. (I wrote a separate account of their amazing journey.) The Hayabusa-2 probe did its own kiss-and-bounce rendezvous with the asteroid to collect samples. NASA's OSIRIS-REx is about to do a similar maneuver with the asteroid Bennu; Japan's Martain Moons Exploration (MMX) probe will perform yet another kiss-and-bounce on the Martian moon Phobos around 2025.

More sophisticated forms of space-hopping may be coming soon. Phil Metzger at the University of Central Florida is testing a robot called WINE that would visit a comet or asteroid, extract water from its surface, and use it to execute a series of steam-powered jumps. NASA recently funded the development of a similar concept called SPARROW, which could hop across the icy surface of Jupiter's moon Europa.

There could be a future for ballooning on other worlds as well. The Soviets have already pioneered this type of transit with the Vega balloon probe, which was deployed in the upper atmosphere of Venus in 1985. If NASA approves a new Venus exploreras I fervently hope it willa new-generation balloon experiment could be floating around the planet in the coming decade.

Any why stop there? I mentioned earlier that Titan has lakes, which would be prime locations for a future space boat or space submarine. NASA seriously considered a proposal for a Titan boat (the TiME mission) but passed it over in favor of the Mars InSight lander. Still, the concept could easily make a comeback. There are also concepts on the drawing board for Titan submarine and a tunneling machine on Europa.

There's even an experiment underway that could make it possible to navigate the oceans of Europa, if that tunneling machine can manage to break through the ice. If you dream of swimming like a fish, this would be the mission for you. Beneath its icy crust, Europa has more water than all of Earth's oceans combined. There may be volcanic vents below, warming and fertilizing the ocean. Many astrobiologists now consider Europa the most likely place to find life elsewhere in the solar sytem.

Flying on Mars is a breeze compared to traveling to Europa, breaking through 10 kilometers of ice, and exploring the pitch-black ocean below. But if we can master that tremendous challenge...damn, what we find could be well worth the perils of getting there.

For more science news, follow me on Twitter: @coreyspowell

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Hovering, Flying, and Hopping Across the Solar Sytem - Discover Magazine

Dayton meets first step to bring Space Command to Wright-Patt – Dayton Daily News

Posted on August 3, 2020 by Danzig

ExploreSpace City? Challenge and opportunity lie in Space Command competition

In a letter sent to the assistant secretary of the Air Force, Gov. DeWine endorsed the nomination. A letter signed by 22 area mayors and four county commission presidents was also submitted expressing mutual support for Daytons bid.

In May, the Pentagon said it would accept nominations for the headquarters location based on defined criteria. Coalition advocates have said since then that Dayton met all of the screening requirements.

This advancement of Wright-Patt in the selection process of U.S. Space Command is an important step forward that I have advocated strongly for, U.S. Rep. Mike Turner, R-Dayton, said in a statement. As the home of invention of flight and a pioneer in space travel and defense, Wright-Patt has the foundation to host the U.S. Space Command.

Among the criteria laid out by the Pentagon in its search for the headquarters: Communities should be within 25 miles of a military base, within the top 150 most populous metropolitan statistical areas, and score at least 50 out of 100 points on the American Association of Retired Persons Livability Index, among other criteria.

Dayton clearly has a military base nearby. As of July 2019, the Dayton-Kettering metro area was ranked at 107 in terms of population. And according to the AARP Index, the Dayton area scores a 53.

The Dayton area has a viable shot at winning the national competition for the U.S. Space Command headquarters, House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy said in a visit to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base this month.

If you look at history, flight was created here, McCarthy said at a brief press conference outside the Hope Hotel and Conference Center on the base. This place is definitely viable. Wright-Patt, theyre definitely in the running.

He added: If you look at the work that Wright-Patt does, theyre definitely in the running. But we want to make sure that its the right place, that it has the right synergy, and Ill let the experts take all of that into consideration.

The location decision announcement is expected early next year.

Originally posted here:

Dayton meets first step to bring Space Command to Wright-Patt - Dayton Daily News

Angela Merkel urged to resign as Germans march to show ‘lack of trust’ over coronavirus – Daily Express

Posted on August 3, 2020 by Danzig

Angela Merkel has been facing growing dissent from Germans questioning her strategy to contain and eliminate the coronavirus threat once and for all across Germany. Thousands of protesters came together in Berlin over the weekend to denounce the Government's ongoing social distancing requirements, with some demonstrators accusing Chancellor Merkel of imposing strict measures to extend her power over them. DW News reporter Leonie von Hammerstein said: "Some of their demands were included by the organisers in a document before the event, and they called this the day of freedom.

"They called on the German Government to resign and for the state broadcasters also to be dissolved.

"These were the demands of many of the people I spoke to at the protest. What united them was a distrust in the Government's measures. This is kind of a paradox."

Ms von Hammerstein reported a common thread uniting the protesters was the ongoing imposition of social distancing measures despite the limited death toll Germany had compared to other European countries.

Chancellor Merkel was praised earlier in the pandemic for her ability to contain the spread of the virus, which claimed 9,226 lives so far in Germany, but she is now facing pressure as the infection rate appears to have spiked again.

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The DW News reported continued: "A lot of the people were telling me the Government was telling us to keep our distance and stick to all these restrictions in order for the hospitals not to be overcrowded, in order for people not to die.

"But not that many people died, the hospitals are still empty, so why did the Government tell us that in the first place?

"There is an inherit distrust in what the Government is telling them and that's why we saw tens of thousands of people taking to the streets, not adhering to the rules, not adhering to face mask use.

"A lot of them were telling me they see face masks as a symbol of oppression that the Government is forcing them to wear."

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Forty-five police officers were injured in clashes with the crowd during the Berlin protests.

The demonstrators, which included representatives from the hard right and left as well as conspiracy theorists, marched down the German capital shouting "we are the second wave" as they urged fellow Germans to "resist."

Saskia Esken, the co-leader of the centre-left SPD party, lashed out at the protesters for putting their health and those of other Berliners at risk.

Ms Esken said: "They are not only jeopardizing our health, they are jeopardizing our achievements against the pandemic and the revival of the economy, education, and society."

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Germany reported 955 new cases on Saturday and 870 on Friday last week, with the public being accused of becoming "negligent on hygiene and social distancing rules."

Berlin Police have launched legal action against the organizers of the protest for the "non-respect of hygiene rules."

The protest came as Education Minister Anja Karliczek called for the mandatory introduction of face masks in schools because of the coronavirus spike Germany is experiencing.

Ms Karliczek said: "It's comprehensible when regional states want to forgo the social distancing rules at schools because the spatial conditions would only allow limited in-person classes.

"However, in-person classes will only work when additional hygiene regulations and rules for wearing masks and social distancing in school yards and corridors are strictly observed."

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Angela Merkel urged to resign as Germans march to show 'lack of trust' over coronavirus - Daily Express

LGBT+ Syrians Facing Extreme Oppression From Both Government And ISIS – Gay Nation

Posted on August 3, 2020 by Danzig

< 1 min read

A disturbing report has highlighted the widespread oppression and discrimination faced by LGBT+ Syrians at the hands of both the government and ISIS.

Interviewing 40+ LGBT+ people, three heterosexual men, as well as various caseworkers and humanitarian organisation representatives, the Human Rights Watch report found that LGBT+ citizens are being subjected to extreme acts of brutality and discrimination in Syria.

The 77-page report, which was published on Wednesday July 29 highlighted the disturbing range of oppression and cruelty forced against LGBT+ civilians by not only ISIS militants, but by government officials and non-state armed groups.

With instances of Mutilation that included mops inserted anally, electric shock, physical beatings, the burning of genitals, rape, and forced nudity where only some of the disgusting acts that have been inflicted o LGBT+ people in Syria even within the walls of state prisons, checkpoints and detention centres.

They rape you just to see you suffering, shouting, said Yousef, a 28-year-old gay man.

To see you are humiliated. This is what they like to see, explained a trans woman, as she described the horrifying moment when ISIS militants threw her gay friend from a high-rise rooftop to his death.

The papers authors add that Individuals who are seen to fall short of dominant masculine ideals, including by exhibiting traits or behaviours that are typically viewed as feminine, are perceived as weak and hence vulnerable to abuse.

The report also found that such acts of mutilation, rape, and abuse occurring on boys as young as 11 was commonplace.

The report further highlights the need for nations around the world to welcome LGBT+ refugees from the region who have endured such abuse against a backdrop of a nine-year-long war.

Last Updated on Jul 31, 2020 at 10:21 am

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LGBT+ Syrians Facing Extreme Oppression From Both Government And ISIS - Gay Nation

East Turkistan govt-in-exile urges Muslim world to break silence on Chinese oppression in Xinjiang – Devdiscourse

Posted on August 3, 2020 by Danzig

East Turkistan Government-in-exile has called on Muslim countries to break their silence on Chinese oppression and support people of Xinjiang in their fight against decades of occupation and genocide by the Chinese Communist Party. East Turkistan, also known as Xinjiang, Prime Minister Salih Hudayar made these remarks while extending greetings on an Eid-al-Adha. He urged Muslims across the world to oppose China's Genocide and Occupation in East Turkistan.

"On behalf of the people of East Turkistan, we wish all the Muslims across the world a blessed Eid Al Adha. What we expect from the Muslim world is solidarity and support be it politically, financially, diplomatically or any other means to help us seek justice and an end to China's decades of occupation and genocide in East Turkistan," Hudayar said in a video message. "We again call on the entire Muslim world to break their silence and do everything in their power to help liberate East Turkistan and its people from Chinese occupation and oppression," he added.

Elaborating on oppression by the Chinese government, Hudayar said over 3 million people in East Turkistan are currently being held in concentration camps. Mosques and other religious sites have been destroyed. "Qurans and other Islamic texts have been burned. Over 500,000 East Turkistan children have been forcibly separated from their families and sent to state-run orphanages to be raised as atheist Chinese citizens," said Hudayar.

"East Turkistan women are being sterilized, Muslims are being forced to eat pork and drink alcohol. The organs of East Turkistani Muslims are being harvested and sold to Muslims across the world as halal organs," he added. The Uyghurs, a Turkic-speaking minority from Central Asia, are a distinct ethnic group from Han Chinese, with Urumqi being closer to Kabul than Beijing.

In 2009, the most infamous riots broke out in the streets of Urumqi, Xinjiang which pitted Uyghur Muslims against Han Chinese. The CCP government has turned the entire region into a highly controlled, open-air prison after the Urumqi riots in 2009.

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East Turkistan govt-in-exile urges Muslim world to break silence on Chinese oppression in Xinjiang - Devdiscourse

The NBA, China and racial justice: How to untangle the leagues messy relationship with human rights – Yahoo Sports

Posted on August 3, 2020 by Danzig

Here are two statements:

The NBA, by professional sports league standards, has a decently strong record on human rights. It allows players to speak their minds. It believes that Black lives matter. It uses its power to fight injustice in the United States.

The NBA, an adored global corporation, has also gone to great lengths to build and maintain a multibillion-dollar relationship with a human rights-abusing government halfway around the world.

They are two factual statements that at this time last year coexisted peacefully. Yet recently, theyve become entangled, pitted against each other, by U.S. senators and laypeople alike. On Thursday, when the NBA season resumes, activism will be inescapable; players will protest police brutality and racial injustice in America; BLACK LIVES MATTER will scream at viewers off courts. And perhaps the most common criticism of the NBAs initiatives will be a prickly diversion.

But what about China?!?

Its a fascinating retort, because its grounded in the most glaring demerit on the NBAs recent record. An ESPN investigation published Wednesday raised more red flags. For years, the league ignored authoritarian crackdowns and ethnic persecution as it built and monetized a rabid fan base in China. It ran an abusive basketball academy in a police state where Muslims are interned in concentration camps. When Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey tweeted in support of Hong Kong last October, and the Chinese government attacking democratic freedoms in Hong Kong bristled, the NBA moved swiftly to salvage its relationship with that government. The leagues most prominent figures, from LeBron James to Steve Kerr, didnt rush to condemn injustice, as they had so often in the past and have so often since. Instead, they either criticized Morey, or remained conspicuously silent. Officials, in some cases, stepped in to silence them.

The silence was embarrassing. It enables and legitimizes oppression. Sure, the NBA actually stood up to China with more strength than most corporations do. But the widespread disapproval it received was deserved. Where things got messy, and problematic, was when that disapproval became bottomless ammo for whataboutism. When China became the catch-all counter. When injustice became the response to calls for justice.

We can, and should, criticize the league and its most prominent characters for refusing to outright condemn oppression in China. We also can, and should, support the league and its most prominent characters as they try to combat oppression closer to home. Our criticism and support arent contradictory. In fact, they necessarily go hand in hand.

When the NBA returns to action Thursday, some players will wear racial justice messages on their uniforms, and courts will declare, "BLACK LIVES MATTER." (AP)

Injustice clouds every second of every day in every country. To use the neglect of some injustice to detract from the fight against other injustice is to uphold all of it. Change is local. Successful fights for it are often hyper-focused. Black Americans, some of whom comprise a majority of the NBA, are trying to lead one. To support their fight, to affirm that Black lives matter, to do your part to dismantle systemic racism, is not an affront to Muslims detained in China, or families brutalized in Syria, or women denied rights in Iran, or LGBTQ+ people denied humanity everywhere.

To support NBA players advocacy is to fight for human rights, period. They are attacking one web of injustice among many. To refuse to support their fight because they havent attacked another web of injustice is hypocritical. It is unfair, and counterproductive, to criticize progressive action on the basis of inaction elsewhere. If we do, progress is unattainable.

Now, it is fair to separately criticize the inaction especially when that inaction could be described as suppression of action in the name of profit. We should acknowledge, and scrutinize, why the NBA cuddles up and cowers to China. It lost hundreds of millions of dollars in the wake of Moreys tweet. If it were to push harder for democratic freedoms in Hong Kong, it would lose more. Those losses hit the league, and spread to teams, and filtered down to players and employees. Which is why they all say nothing. The NBA believes in human rights, and recognizes how powerfully it can advocate for them. It pulled the 2017 All-Star Game out of North Carolina to pressure the state to protect them. But somewhere between Carolina and China, it drew its line. A line between social responsibility and money.

Story continues

We all have one. Every corporation, every institution, every individual. Even the most well-meaning people like and need money. Some arent willing to sacrifice any of it to make the world a better place. Some are. Everybody, though, is faced with the question of how much?

You can argue, and many would, that the NBA should sacrifice more. That the line should stretch well beyond China and those hundreds of millions of dollars. That no American company not the NFL, not Nike, not Apple should deal with China. (They all do.) But you probably cant argue the line shouldnt exist. If you believe the NBA should fight any injustice at any cost, then you, too, should quit your job and go fight injustice; then every company, regardless of industry, should cease production of their goods or services and pour all resources into the battle. Of course, thats unrealistic. The world will never be, cannot be, 100 percent selfless.

The NBA, like so many others, does the right thing until the right thing is too costly. We can, and should, criticize the billionaires who own it for not spending more in the name of human rights because thats essentially what this is. We can, and should, criticize the league for its response to Morey. We can, and should, criticize LeBron.

Because injustice is injustice, whether we, personally, feel it or not.

And that, precisely, is also why we must support the NBA players crusading against it.

You can, and should, call them out for not condemning all injustice. But if you do so to undermine their condemnations of some injustice, then youre not condemning all injustice yourself.

We care about Chinas oppression because were empathetic, and believe injustice is wrong. For the exact same reason, we will listen to NBA players on Thursday and beyond; we have heard them speak about the violence and prejudice they and their communities experience; we will hear them say, as a collective, that Black lives matter, and that systemic racism must end; and we will say, Yes. Absolutely.

Controversial Chinese film `The Eight Hundred` finally gets a release date after one year of delay – WION

Posted on August 3, 2020 by Danzig

Chinese audience will finally be getting to watch much talked about film 'The Eight Hundred' on the big screen come August 21. The film was slated to release across China in 2019 but was delayed to due mysterious political circumstances.

The film will open in both conventional as well as Imax cinemas in China. Its the first big-budget Chinese film to release in theatres post-pandemic. China has started operations of cinema halls since last July.

Made on a reported budget of $80 million by Huayi Brothers and is directed by Guan Hu, it is the first Chinese film to be entirely shot with Imax cameras.

The film's story highlights the sacrifices made by a ragtag group of Chinese soldiers in 1937 Shanghai as imperial Japanese troops advanced. The group's operations were once praised by Mao Zedong himself as a classic example of a national revolution.

The theme of the movie, many felt, was patriotic and in tune with the Chinese government's celebration of the 70th anniversary of the founding of the Peoples Republic.

The film was even selected to open the Shanghai International Film Festival in June last year but got canceled 24 hours before the screening. The film's commercial release on July 5 was aslo called off.

The censor board in China had given its clearance but the film did not get screening at the prestigious fuilm festival due to political reasons. Interestingly, the incident revealed a new dimension to the censorship and approvals system in the country.The film was screened prior to the festival to a group of Communist Party scholars and experts who call themselves the China Red Culture Research Association . The film recieved criticism from this group. The members of the association criticised the way the film depcted the role of rival Kuomintang Party, which ruled China until it lost the civil war against the Communists in 1949 and fled to Taiwan. The two parties continue to fight with each other over their respective roles during war with Japan .The associations secretary general, Wang Benzhou, criticized the film by saying: The class oppression within the ranks of the Kuomintang army, the misdeeds of its officers and its evil oppression of the people have disappeared without a trace, making it seem that the Kuomintang army was the real peoples army.While there is no clear evidence that the film's release was stalled for this reason, the assocuiation's stance likely echoes that of that of the Partys Propaganda Bureau, which since mid-2018 took over as Chinas top film censorship authority.This is not the first time that a film in China has been stalled. Zhang Yimous Cultural Revolution drama 'One Second' was abruptly pulled down from Berlin festival in February 2019, while youth drama 'Better Days' was similarly cancelled from Berlin, but later on went on to have a stellar theatrical career.According to reports, the country is particularlyt sensitive towards the portrayal of the Communist Party and deeply scrutinise the content of such political films. Since last year was the 70 anniversary of the Party's rule, each and every film was deeply scrutinised to match the patriotic sentiments of the government.

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Controversial Chinese film `The Eight Hundred` finally gets a release date after one year of delay - WION

Not a radical idea: The United States has previously paid reparations for the sins of its past – Milwaukee Independent

Posted on August 3, 2020 by Danzig

Slavery supported the American economy throughout its early years, and continues to do so today, albeit in a disguised form that still manages to elude the majority of the American public into thinking that slavery is a relic of a bygone period, like segregation or Jim Crow laws, both of which also still persist in slightly modified forms to this day.

Racist structures of systemic oppression that take advantage of the black community have allowed America as we know it to exist for centuries, and in order for true racial progress to be achieved, a concrete path forward needs to be devised to remedy past atrocities and provide future opportunities. One possible path forward is that of reparations.

Martin Hopkins, an activist and entrepreneur in Columbus, Ohio shared her insight about the concept of reparations for black Americans and what this process might look like.

Past Reparations

When one mentions the idea of the United States addressing the wrongs it has committed against certain groups throughout the nations history, many people almost immediately react as if the idea is something radical and unheard of. But the United States and governments of other countries around the world have used reparations as a way to accept responsibility for past wrongdoings and attempt to remedy the often horrendous situations caused by these offenses.

Reparations have been paid out to several groups in the United States in the past so its not something thats unheard of and its definitely not something thats a radical idea or anything, Hopkins said. Take a look at the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which provided reparations to victims of World War II era Japanese internment camps, which is basically just a polite way of saying concentration camps. As you can see, in certain instances the United States government has taken it upon themselves to address the issues they have created as a result of their treatment of certain groups.

However Hopkins argues that the compensation awarded to groups such as former Japanese internees did not properly address the extent of the governments wrongdoing:

Another thing that I want to be clear about is that I believe that all of these groups deserve more than what they were awarded by the government I feel like what they did receive was kind of a slap in the face. Even when these reparations have been paid, its still been a miscarriage of justice. Its almost like theyre saying, were going to take everything from you, and you should be happy that youre even getting anything.

Hopkins also noted the example of settlements paid to victims of police brutality, themselves a form of reparations, which he also argues dont happen enough and are usually a mere pittance when compared to the atrocities these victims have suffered.

What would reparations look like?

Calls for reparations are often met with severe backlash, and Hopkins believes that a driving force behind this opposition is that when people here the term reparations, they just think of a check when in reality and practice it would mean something completely different.

America was largely built by slave labor, and systems of economic and social oppression have continued to exploit the black community up to the present day. This isnt just a little cut that some monetary hand-outs will bandage and heal.

For over 400 years weve been put at a major disadvantage, Hopkins said. Were forced to live in the worst neighborhoods, attend the worst schools and have the worst access to healthcare. The mistreatment goes back too far and theres no amount of money that can remedy this mistreatment, but what has to happen is that people of color need a true seat at the table because weve been denied that for far too long.

So what needs to be done in order to give people of color this true seat at the table? As Hopkins explains, financial freedom is the only way to level the playing field, and to get to that point theres a couple things that I think need to happen. Reparations shouldnt just come in the form of a check, they need to be based on housing, education and taxes. As a result of redlining, discriminatory housing laws and predatory lenders we were denied access to being able to build generational wealth. So I think our housing should be paid for and we should be able to attend public colleges without paying tuition. Im not saying that I should be able to go to Yale without paying for it but if I wanted to go to Columbus State or my daughter wanted to go to Columbus State, we should be able to do that tuition free, based on the work of our ancestors. I also stand with Ice Cube when he says that black people should not have to pay taxes because weve already paid our taxes in the form of slave labor.

Hopkins told Citizen Truth that he has heard opponents of reparations say things along the lines of, Your ancestors are the ones who did the work, you didnt do anything, but my reply to that is that there are white families still benefiting from the money that slaveowners were able to take as a result of my ancestors free labor. The privilege that white people benefit from is a privilege that is gained from the oppression of other people.

Until the playing field is leveled and people of color finally are allowed the place the deserve at the proverbial table, American society leaves these communities with few routes out of poverty and destitution. Hopkins puts it bluntly when he says that Weve been told to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps for centuries, but we don have boots.

Generational Trauma

Africans were kidnapped from their countries and sold as a source of free labor, but the black community was and continues to be deprived of far more than a paycheck. These people had nearly all aspects of their culture robbed from them and in most situations were deprived of any opportunity to hold on to their language, religion and other customs under the threat of the harshest punishments imaginable.

Christianity plays a large role in many black communities throughout America, but at the end of the day this faith was one that was pushed on slaves by their white, Christian owners. Hopkins points out that the Christianity piece of things has been so ingrained in our society that people will fight to protect it. There are a lot of black people that really dont understand that there was a huge miscarriage of justice with regards to religion. They dont understand that we were pulled away from our religious and cultural history, where we come from, who we were, where we belong all of that was erased. But some people in the black community still look at that and go, Well, you know sometimes God works in strange ways and makes people have to suffer. And its a very troubling conversation to have and think about because you know if this suffering didnt happen, I wouldnt be here.

This is an existential conundrum that the majority of black people in America must grapple with on a daily basis. Hopkins analyzed the situation from his perspective, explaining that with regards to slavery If it didnt happen, I wouldnt have met my wife and three year old daughter, who I love more than anything. Sometimes I think I would rather not exist and have all of this so that my ancestors didnt have to suffer like they did. And how do you even begin to process that and remedy that problem? Im forced to accept that my existence is only possible due to a massive amount of suffering.

The traumatic crisis of identity doesnt end there. Hopkins told Citizen Truth, America is my home, but it doesnt really feel like home. Countries in Africa dont feel like home. Black people in America have been misplaced throughout history. I have the blood of slaves and slave masters coursing through my veins so Im experiencing an incredibly intense internal struggle as well as an outer one. What number can be put on that? Theres nothing that can really be done to make things truly right. The only that can be done is that it is addressed.

The Persistence of Slavery

Theres a huge misconception that slavery was completely abolished in the United States, whereas the 13th amendment actually says that Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Hopkins described how slavery persisted on like a dormant virus long after the Emancipation Proclamation. You had black people with no land and no money being arrested for vagrancy and being put right back into the system they had just escaped. Many criminal charges such as vagrancy and loitering were explicitly created so that black people could continue to be exploited as a source of free labor long after slavery had supposedly ended.

The Path Forward

According to Hopkins, If America is supposed to be the shining beacon of light for the world, then we need to start leading by example. Once we take care of these situations at home, then we can start addressing other issues.

With regards to reparations, Hopkins wants to be clear. I dont want there to be any misunderstanding that this isnt something that were asking for. Its what were owed, its our inheritance, its our birthright. Give us our due and proper so that we can move forward. And the sooner we can move forward, the better off the whole world would be. And its at the risk of giving up just a little bit of power, thats basically the only risk factor involved.

America still has a long road ahead before broken systems are done away with and generations of mental and physical wounds can finally begin to heal. In keeping with this mindset, Hopkins told Citizen Truth that, Its the only way that theres going to be any progress made. And reparations dont just have to benefit black people. For example, I feel like the whole country would benefit from tuition free public education and free public housing. Whatever youre willing to do for black people in terms of reparations you should be willing to do for other disenfranchised groups as well. The other benefit is that it will open up the conversation about reparations more and make the discussion more inclusive. If theres too much emphasis on this being something exclusively for black people that white people are going to have to foot the bill for its never going to be received well by the general public.

After centuries of systematic oppression brought to the forefront by police violence during a global pandemic, America is finally being forced to confront her racist past and present and realize that a new road must be paved forward or what little remains of the flame of American liberty will be extinguished for once and for all. However, it will be impossible to build that new road without addressing and remedying the wrongs of the past in a way that ensures this new road provides everybody with equal rights and opportunities.

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Not a radical idea: The United States has previously paid reparations for the sins of its past - Milwaukee Independent

Indian govt crosses all limits of oppression in IIOJK: Moeed Yusuf – Dunya News

Posted on August 3, 2020 by Danzig

Last Updated On 29 July,202008:46 pm

Indian govt crosses all limits of oppression in IIOJK: Moeed Yusuf

(Web Desk) - Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on National Security, Moeed Yusuf says the 5th August will be observed as Youm-e-Istehsal to mark one year of military siege in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir.

Addressing an interactive session with Attaches and foreign media in Islamabad today (Wednesday), he said after the 5th August illegal action when the whole world was busy fighting against Coronavirus pandemic, India started demographic apartheid of Muslims in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir.

The Special Assistant said Pakistan always stood by the Kashmiris and will always stand by them till the decisions of 5th August are reversed and Kashmiris achieve their right to self-determination.

He the present Indian government has crossed all limits of oppression, human rights violations and breach of international laws by abrogating the special status of the disputed territory.

Moeed Yusuf said the global media needs to view India afresh by recognizing the fascist ideology being promoted by the ruling BJP against Muslims and especially Kashmiris.

He said if all is well in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir as India advocates then why it doesnt allow foreign media and the United Nations observers to visit the held territory.

Moeed Yusuf warned the international community that India can make a false flag operation to justify its expansionist designs by initiating military action against Pakistan.

He said Indian expansionist policies are becoming a threat to Indias neighbours and peace of the region.

Speaking on the occasion, Secretary Information and Broadcasting, Akbar Durrani said in the light of UN Security Council resolutions, any action aimed at justifying Indian occupation of Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir is illegal.

He said Kulbhushan Yadavs case is living example of Indian sponsored terrorism and with the latest conflict with China, it has emerged as the epicentre of tensions in the region.

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Indian govt crosses all limits of oppression in IIOJK: Moeed Yusuf - Dunya News

Iranian Communities Should Stand With Black Lives Matter – Foreign Policy In Focus

Posted on August 3, 2020 by Danzig

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As federal police pour into U.S. cities, the Trump administrations crackdown on racial justice protests has taken its most authoritarian turn yet. At the same time, during a global pandemic, the Trump administration has continued to ratchet up devastating sanctions on Iran, while edging toward more overt military confrontation.

Iranian-Black Solidarity is a must now more than ever. We need strong, transnational movements to democratize and de-militarize our states, reverse hostile foreign policies, and call for solidarity between our communities against racism and authoritarianism.

In the face of mass protests against institutionalized racism, police brutality, and militarism, U.S. authorities deployed police and military forces across the country. Images of tanks and soldiers confronting protesters in Washington, D.C. and other cities drew analogies to Kabul and Baghdad the capital cities of Afghanistan and Iraq, which no doubt reminded Iranians of the endless U.S. wars in their region.

To stop police killings and different forms of violence against Black people across the United States, activists have demanded urgent reforms including defunding police departments and investing in communities, with some early successes. These demands could be extended to call for defunding the Pentagon, which not only supplies local police departments with military-grade weapons but also exports violence against people of color all over the world.

While civil rights activists in the U.S. have been trying to connect anti-racist struggles with the anti-war movement since the Vietnam War, the post 9/11 war on terror has made the point dramatically. By the most conservative estimates, 157,000 Afghans and 295,000 Iraqis have been killed during the U.S. wars in those countries, alongside many others in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, Libya, and beyond.

Iranians have also suffered, dating back to the CIA-led coup detat in 1953 to overthrow Irans democratically elected government and install a brutal dictatorship in its place.

The unconditional support of the U.S. government for Saddam Hussein during the eight-year Iran-Iraq war and decades of devastating economic sanctions against the Iranian people have also exacted a terrible toll including the destruction of the countrys infrastructure, widespread economic instability, and medicine shortages continuing well into the global pandemic today. These sanctions have hurt all Iranians but especially betrayed the most vulnerable groups, including the working class, immigrants, and Afghan refugees.

In Iran, the politics around the U.S. movement for racial justice are complicated by the regimes relationship with Washington.

While the Iranian government has its own record of oppression, a number of regime hardliners have expressed support for the movement for Black lives in the United States. Opposition figures on the other hand, some of which are funded by the U.S. government and its regional allies, have often criticized the movement. Many have claimed that racism in the U.S. is not comparable to the systemic violence that Iranians experience, or blamed Black Americans themselves for failing to secure their rights in the U.S. constitutional system.

These discredited claims are further intensified by the whiteness illusion among some migrant Iranian and Iranian American communities. Although Iranian Americans have not been equally privileged as their European white peers, they are still officially counted as white in the U.S. census. Some embrace this identity, despite being the target of racist harassment up to and including the Trump administrations Muslim travel ban.

Iranians and Iranian Americans need to overcome these illusions. To bring meaningful peace and justice to our communities, we should be determined to address the intersections of racism and state oppression against all human beings, regardless of their religion, nationality, and ethnic background.

Historically, numerous barriers have limited opportunities to unite across borders to end Americas racist policies in the U.S. and abroad. That needs to change. As fellow victims of long-standing state oppression, Iranian communities, along with their American Black and brown peers, should break these barriers to demilitarize, end sanctions, and imagine a peaceful word based on equity and freedom.

What the government isn’t telling you about annexation opinion – The Jerusalem Post

Posted on August 3, 2020 by Danzig

Within a couple of years, annexation of the territories morphed from a distorted vision in right-wing quarters to the declared policy of the Israeli government. The puzzling decision by Blue and White and Labor to join the Netanyahu government stoked the publics illusion that such a move was possible. Many of us shrug their shoulders and say, Actually, why not?Thus, without fully understanding the implications for our future, the Israeli Right with Netanyahu at the helm marketed one of the greatest dangers to the State of Israel as a legitimate achievement, without telling the public that such a unilateral declaration of annexation and its attendant legislation would install an apartheid regime in Israel.It should be stated up front: The idea of annexation was planted on the first day of the occupation, after the Six Day War. Already in late 1967, the Israeli government annexed eastern Jerusalem and its surroundings containing many Palestinian villages. The territory was annexed but the people one third of the citys population remained bereft of basic civil rights, giving rise to the first instance of institutionalized ethnic discrimination. It was not yet called apartheid, even though South Africas apartheid regime was at its height at that time and diplomatic relations between the two countries were almost a foregone conclusion.It bears noting that the word apartheid provokes moral revulsion worldwide as it recalls a deplorable criminal and inhuman regime, whereas among many Israelis it elicits a yawn and denial. However, the reality is clear: Laundered annexation is tantamount to apartheid. Its sad to see how the laundry works overtime in Israel.According to the Rome Convention, which serves as the source of authority for the International Criminal Court in The Hague, apartheid is a crime against humanity. The Israeli occupation regime in the West Bank is defined as temporary, and therefore the international community distinguishes between the military regime in the occupied territories and democracy in the State of Israel, despite the latters responsibility for the situation in the army-controlled West Bank, which bears clear characteristics of apartheid. Replacing the military occupation with annexation, or the synonymous application of Israeli law and jurisdiction in the occupied territories, is expected to make the world realize that an oppressive apartheid regime exists in Israel, with all that this implies.It is distressing that few of us know what took place in South Africas fearsome apartheid regime, how dark it was, and what institutions were established and laws enacted to allow the white minority to enjoy a high quality of life, at the expense of a violent and corrupt oppression of the black majority. The resemblance between then-South Africa to present-day Israel is heart-wrenching: one-sixth of South Africas population was white (a rate of 5:1), whereas in the West Bank settlers are one-sixth and Palestinians are five-sixths of the population (a rate of 1:5). In South Africa, whites enjoyed full privileges and blacks were deprived of any rights or future; in the West Bank, in contrast, it is the settlers who enjoy unique privileges and the Palestinians who have no rights or future, to the point that some even fantasize about deporting them to Jordan. Yet we deny reality and shrug off its consequences: Apartheid is already here! PEOPLE PLAY with laundered words and call it annexation, but the moment is approaching when Israeli institutions, including the Knesset and the government, will be able to enact laws that will apply to the occupied territories as well. In other words, a single regime may soon rule from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean with no recourse to the Supreme Court to stop it. This situation will turn Israel into an apartheid regime.A report by the Zulat Institute published this week under the name Laundromat shows how the Netanyahu government has methodically inured the Israeli public into believing that becoming an apartheid state is a legitimate and rational act. The systematic and deliberate use of laundered concepts such as annexation and applying sovereignty has become increasingly commonplace over time and has been advanced by politicians and media figures to divert attention elsewhere.As a result of this deliberate laundering, use of the term applying sovereignty in the media increased by 3,425% between December 2019 and January 2020, while mention of the word apartheid remained unchanged, and even declined in some media outlets.Applying sovereignty and partial annexation have been normalized and embedded in the public discourse, and have become policy moves expected to be approved by the Knesset with the passive/active support of Labor and Blue and White members, who are in the Knesset by virtue of the ballots cast by center and left-wing voters unfamiliar with their repercussions.It should be noted that the laundering mechanism strictly used the term applying sovereignty in the initial phases, while in subsequent stages the process went up one notch and the effort focused on emptying the concept of annexation itself and uploading it with a softer, more moderate and tolerable meaning. One of the key methods used to this end was to constantly emphasize the apparent difference between full and partial annexation.As part of the shift from the fringes to the mainstream, a growing number of voices started to be heard in Israeli politics and in the media much of it coming from the left-center whereby the implications are not disastrous, if at stake is only a partial annexation of settlement blocs or of the Jordan Valley. However, any annexation of territory that is not part of negotiations with the Palestinians be it large, partial, minimal or even symbolic runs counter to international law and to the post-World War II order created to prevent its recurrence. Annexation is annexation, and there is no fundamental, constitutional, political or security-based difference in the international arena where the chances of establishing a Palestinian state or our relations with the Arab countries, especially Jordan, are concerned.The sooner we understand it, the better: A bunch of laundered words will not change the fact that we are on the brink of the State of Israel becoming a full-blown apartheid regime, a move that will seriously impact our moral fortitude, international standing and national security.The writer is one of the founders of the Zulat Institute for Equality and Human Rights. He previously served as Israels ambassador to South Africa, and is currently chair of the Policy Working Group, an advocacy team on policy issues.

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What the government isn't telling you about annexation opinion - The Jerusalem Post

The NYPD Took a Step Toward Fascism When It Kidnapped Nikki Stone – The Nation

Posted on August 3, 2020 by Danzig

NYPD officers clash with protesters. (Tayfun Coskun / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

On July 28, a couple of hundred protesters in Manhattan watched helplessly as 18-year-old trans woman Nikki Stone was snatched off the street by plainclothes officers, shoved into an unmarked van, and taken who knows where.Ad Policy

Protesters who attempted to intervene were met with pepper spray to the face. Shortly after, video of the kidnapping was posted on Twitter for the world to see.

Stones crime that warranted a literal kidnapping? Allegedly damaging police cameras and spray painting.

In the months since the murder of George Floyd sparked nationwide protests against systemic racism and unjust policing practices, weve witnessed in person and on video federal and local law enforcement officials terrorize and brutalize protesters with impunity, making it ever more clear that were on the road away from democracy and getting closer to fascism. Just days before, we watched federal officers in Portland, Ore., snatch a protester in similar fashion. So, naturally, when Stone was taken, messages of fear and confusion proliferated quickly online. Were these federal officers? NYPD? Without clear markings, were these officers at all? An NYPD social media account came forward to take credit for the kidnapping, while also falsely claiming that officers were assaulted with rocks and bottles.

To those outside New York Citys border, and some within, this was new, novel, and terrifying. To those of us who have fought police terror in the city, its the same NYPD weve always known.

The division responsible for Stones kidnapping is known as the warrant squad. The name makes it sound like the officers ride around town like the A-Team, taking down the toughest criminals with unorthodox tactics, but for the right reasons. Quite the opposite. The warrant squad marshals the full weight of the departments multibillion-dollar budget to terrorize the citys most vulnerable communities.

A 2015 investigative report by John Surico for Vice highlighted the warrant squads repeated raids of homeless shelterswith a majority of arrests coming for nonviolent, minor offenses.Current Issue

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When I asked homeless people why this is happening, most said it was to meet quotasthe statistics-based policing that critics (and even some police officers) say is encouraged by One Police Plazaand that the homeless arrests can act as fodder for the stats, Surico wrote. This, they argued, may explain why the raids fluctuate: Some months have low numbers, perhaps meaning the cops dont need as many arrests; when the raids go up, the cops are presumably in need of some juice.

As a former public defender, Ive witnessed this police work masquerading as public safety up close. In the early years of my career, parades of warrant squad detainees were regularly marched into court, the rattle of chain gang shackles filling the room. Some were partially clothed, others missing shoes. The infractions that justified their appearing in this dehumanizing state were almost always dismissed. One by one, they were unshackled and sent on their waythe state acting like nothing had ever happened. Until the next raid.

Unlike many of the warrant squads incursions over the years, what happened to Stone on Tuesday night was witnessed by hundreds of thousands of people via cell phone cameras and social media. Several New York City Council members joined the righteous torrent of outrage, but many chose to look good rather than to do good when the time arrived to hold police accountable.

Last month, a multiracial coalition of New Yorkers did their part in working to disempower an out-of-control police force by advocating a $1 billion divestment from NYPD and an investment in social services. Those efforts were met with political chicanery when the City Council passed a budget that failed to cut the police budget in any meaningful way. The same legislators who are standing up now to express outrage and demand answers about Stones arrest sat down when their time came not just to demand accountability but to make real and lasting change.

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What happened to Stone should be a wake-up call to anyone who thought police violence would confine itself to Black, brown, and poor communities. That she was snatched from a dense throng of protesters shows the sophistication of NYPD surveillance. This was an intentional act meant to send a message to protesters: Speak out, and you too can be disappeared. If this happened in another country, wed be condemning the regime responsible, as we frequently do when foreign regimes that arent allies use their police forces to brutally suppress dissenting speech.

But it is easy to call out oppression beyond our borders, harder to do so when our government is waging violence and oppression against our own people. Difficulty cannot be a deterrent. History shows what happens when we fail to uproot oppression. The prophetic prose of Martin Niemllers First They Came rings loudly in my head. First they came for the Communists / And I did not speak out / Because I was not a Communist What started in the dark of night at homeless shelters is now in the streets in broad daylight. We are the last to speak for us. If you have not been already, its time to start shouting.

The NYPD Took a Step Toward Fascism When It Kidnapped Nikki Stone - The Nation

Another day, another dead Black body – MSR News Online

Posted on August 3, 2020 by Danzig

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We must unmask the true source of so-called Black-on-Black violence

News Analysis

A 17-year-old young Black man was killed on Thursday, July 23, three blocks from the George Floyd Memorial. No one knows the circumstances, but many inherently know the reason, and it goes deeper than the reported dispute that ended with a gun and a death.

The police report will say where and how he was shot and suggest a possible motive, but it will not capture the true genesis that, according to the experts, most likely began in an environment deprived of the social and economic resources needed to feel good about oneself and be successful in the competitive society we know as the U.S. Some suggest that the violence stems from the same motive that caused the first Black man to shoot his brother after being kidnapped from Africa: racial oppression.

Any violence within the Black community is always connected to levels of oppression, poverty, or the involvement of State agencies in infiltrating and imposing weapons, conflict, etc. onto an already existing unequal society, explains Morgan State University Professor Jared Ball.

Though this recent murder occurred near the scene of Floyds murder, there was no apparent change in the demeanor of the Minneapolis police who responded to the scene, no sense of shame. Instead there was thinly disguised hostility toward the crowd that had gathered, coupled with an obvious us-versus-them attitude.

The murder was reported far and wide, the 37th such killing this year. It was recorded as just another death among many in the Black community with no real attempt to scientifically analyze or politically evaluate the cause of such tragedy.

Historically, Minneapolis and other major cities have proposed solving the problem of violence in the Black community by employing more police. Yet so-called Black-on-Black violence persists.

Adding more police in the Black community has proven paradoxical since, according to a New York Times report, over the last five years police in Minneapolis used force against Black people at a rate at least seven times that of White people.

It escapes few that Floyd was killed by Derek Chauvin while he was fulfilling the supposed duties of law enforcement. In 2019, according to a Star Tribune report, the Minneapolis police reported solving only 56% of the murders committed in the city. Nationally, police solve about 62% of murder cases.

Internecine Black crime is used by some to mock Black efforts at racial progress and racial justice. They imply that because a small minority of Black people participate in committing violence against other Black people, then they have no right to make demands on a system that African Americans categorically say is discriminatory and oppressive.

Critics of Blacks who protest police violence appear hypocritical when they say that Black people should oppose so-called Black-on-Black violence, yet object to them expressing outrage or even protesting violence committed against them by those from outside their community, namely the police.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune engaged in this practice recently in an editorial written by Katherine Kirsten, apparently a Strib favorite since her columns appear somewhat regularly in the newspaper. Kirsten claimed that to be an adherent of racial justice and police reform (Woke as she called it) one must at the same time ignore the issue of violence in the Black community.

However, the idea that Black people are soft on crime while being tough on police violence is viewed by most in the Black community as comparing apples to oranges, as unfair and unfounded. The accusation, though false, seems to play well in conservative and right-wing segments of society unwilling to face the truth or in denial about the source of the violence. In Minneapolis alone there are numerous groups dedicated to addressing the issue of violence that occurs in the Black community.

Street crime is perpetrated mainly by strangers who may be in close proximity, but strangers nevertheless, who have no compact with anybody. The government, on the other hand, represented by the police department, has a compact with all of its citizens, mainly to protect and serve the citizenry.

Therefore the government is supposed to protect the interests of its citizens who pay allegiance to it and even taxes, so when the government or an agency of the government kills or brutalizes someone, they have committed a betrayal. Unlike the street thug, the government has a responsibility to protect and not injure.

Ironically few critics of the Black communitys supposed lack of response, and even fewer articles that seek to address the issue, ask why the police are not successful in eliminating violent crime in the Black community. None point the finger at the police themselves for failing to stem the tide.

Conservative Black academic Orlando Patterson places the blame for Black violence on the victim. There is one long-term, fundamental change that can come only from within the Black community: a reduction in the number of kids born to single, usually poor, women.

Two of the identified causes of violent crime, drugs and access to illegal firearms, have not been successfully corralled by police. Nor does there appear to be any concerted effort to stop the flow of illegal drugs and illegal guns at their sources.

Recently, the Minneapolis City Council voted to reduce funding to the Minneapolis Police Department. The idea of defunding the police has become popular among some activists. The City has promised to put the funds into efforts to stem violence in the city. Some activists suggest the City go further and, after defunding, allow the Black community to decide how those funds should be invested.

The Center for Popular Democracy suggests rerouting funds from policing to educational, community, restorative justice, and employment programs that have been shown to improve community safety, including investments in community-based drug and mental health treatment.

But simply reducing and redirecting some police funding will not address the structural problems of the correctional system as it relates to the Black community. According to Professor Amos Wilson in his book Black-on-Black Violence, The criminal justice system is best understood as a multi-billion-dollar industry wherein the African American is utilized as its basic raw material, the processing and the refining of which provides income for White families, vendors, construction firms, professionals, law and security enforcement agencies.

So-called Black-on-Black crime is born of a multi-decade attempt to distract from this truth, that people hurt and kill who they live near or with, says Ball. Most violence is personal. Whites have been killing each other for millennia and long before they even knew the rest of the world existed.

Even today Whites have mostly only other Whites to worry about regarding their safety. Its all meant to put the focus on mythologies of White superiority and Black inhumanity as reasons for any existing world problem.

Related content: WORD ON THE STREET | Why the increase in violence and whats the solution?

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Another day, another dead Black body - MSR News Online

Under the influence: Peddling conspiracy in a pandemic – The Interpreter

Posted on August 3, 2020 by Danzig

Celebrity sells it always has. But in the digital age, the boundaries of celebrity have changed. Once it was the prerogative of movie, sports or music stars to front a fashion label or promote perfume. But nowadays the marketplace is saturated with any number of online lifestyle and wellness influencers, social media users who by virtue of their taste, niche expertise or marketing savvy develop audiences of thousands sometimes millions who seek to emulate their lifestyle.

And promoting products is only the beginning. Such influencers can have a profound effect in imparting attitudes and beliefs, too.

Most of the time, this is harmless, a new thread in the media milieu. Yet at a time of pandemic, where medical advice is heavily contested and conspiracy theories from the dark reaches of the internet have proliferated, some online lifestyle influencers are amplifying misinformation and disinformation.

In a new twist during the Covid-19 crisis, three formerly distinct online ecosystems those occupied by lifestyle/wellness influencers, QAnon conspiracy believers, and violent extremists have in some instances become intertwined, through shared conspiracy-related hashtags and wild claims about the dangers of vaccines, 5G and the evils of the deep state.

QAnon is not only a conspiracy movement. It has also been deemed adomestic terror threat by the FBI.

Numerous recent studies and news reports have shown that extremist groups are exploiting the Covid-19 pandemic in an attempt to justify their narratives, recruit followers or incite violence. Extremist narratives have always contained strong conspiratorial elements, and this time is no different. Coronavirus-related conspiracies are deftly interwoven through extremist narratives and mobilisation efforts.

But the connection with online lifestyle and wellness influencers marks a change. This crossover came about after some online lifestyle and wellness influencers became entrepreneurs of conspiracy theories, using them to boost their profiles and to promote and validate their views of wellness. One of the more dangerous conspiracies promoted by lifestyle/wellness influencers are QAnon conspiracies.

The QAnon movement has its origins in the so-called pizzagate conspiracy of 2016. In its current form, QAnon alleges that there is a US government insider with a Q-level clearance who is communicating cryptically with his followers online. QAnon followers believe there is a deep state within the US government that is controlled by a cabal of Democrats and liberal Hollywood celebrities who are also Satan-worshiping paedophiles. Through Q, President Donald Trump was manifested to expose and shut down these ritualistic paedophile rings. During the Covid-19 pandemic, QAnon conspiracy groups and posts have also promoted the idea that the pandemic was, alternately, another deep-state plot, a hoax, and a Chinese bio-weapon, among other health disinformation.

However, QAnon is not only a conspiracy movement. It has also been deemed a domestic terror threat by the FBI. A leaked FBI memo written in May 2019 assessed QAnon believers as conspiracy-driven domestic extremists and that QAnon and other crowd sourced conspiracies would very likely motivate some domestic extremists to commit criminal and sometimes violent activity.

The memo cited two violent incidents linked to QAnon, but there have been at least three other violent incidents since its publication, with researchers also examining its spread beyond the United States. What started as a US-based pro-Trump conspiracy movement has now gone global and includes a number of proponents in Australia, reportedly including a family friend of the Prime Minister with a substantial social media following.

A recent article by Insider magazine highlighted a number of lifestyle influencers who were posting QAnon conspiracies related to the pandemic. Outlets such as Buzzfeed, Mother Jones and Huffington Post have also revealed a string of other popular lifestyle, design and wellness influencers who have become vectors of Covid-19 and QAnon conspiracies. Some have latched onto the discredited plandemic film released in May or QAnon memes, variously claiming the coronavirus is fake, or that the deep state is responsible for spreading the virus, or that pandemic lockdown measures are a tool of oppression. Still others have encouraged followers to attend anti-lockdown protests which have included a number of far-right extremists in their midst.

Ironically, one of the most widely shared erroneous memes about the virus being spread by people in China eating bat soup, which was created and circulated by conspiracy theorists and extremists alike, was itself appropriated from a Chinese online influencer and celebrity vlogger, who said that a video of her eating a local delicacy of bat soup in Palau for her vlog was hijacked by accounts fanning out malicious panic.

By promoting conspiracies or alternative information in the name of wellness and alternative lifestyles, the online influencers of today can serve, however unwittingly, as a gateway directing users to further, darker corners of the internet.

The intersection between wellness and violent conspiracies seems unexpected, but the wellness movement has its origins in anti-establishment and anti-mainstream medical circles. Scholars such as Charlotte Ward and David Vaos have examined the confluence of new age wellness and conspiracy, which they termed conspirituality, an intersection between new age wellness, belief in the dangers of a new world order and big pharma, and a shared emphasis on awakening and revealing truths.

Until recently, the convergence of wellness and conspiracy in a drive for awakening and societal change emphasised the non-violent and the peaceful. However, the emergence of the QAnon movement has pushed things in a more troubling direction.

The online links between far right, QAnon conspiracy groups and some online wellness and lifestyle influencers have grown during the pandemic, the ensuing lockdown and response to restrictions. Online wellness and lifestyle influencers who peddle QAnon conspiracy theories about the pandemic can potentially drive traffic to online extremist groups through shared QAnon related hashtags such as #QAnon, #TheGreatAwakening, #Plandemic, #GermJihad, #MAGA, #whitegenocide #WWG1WGA or #coronavirushoax. This can also be done when influencers have used memes and iconography also appropriated by right-wing extremists for example red pill blue pill, falling down the rabbit hole, or where we go one we go all.

More analysis is needed, but there is emerging evidence to suggest that online influencers posts related to QAnon are being cross-posted and referenced by extremists groups on online forums.And by promoting conspiracies or alternative information in the name of wellness and alternative lifestyles, the online influencers of today can serve, however unwittingly, as a gateway directing users to further, darker corners of the internet.

Social media lifestyle influencers posting about QAnon not only serve to normalise this fringe movement, but can potentially undermine efforts by internet companies to de-platform purveyors of disinformation, label misleading posts and weed out prohibited content (as identified in their terms of service). Internet companies such as Reddit have banned QAnon forums for inciting violence. Facebook has banned a number of QAnon pages for inauthentic behaviour ,and Apple has removed a QAnon app from its store. Twitter recently announced it is suspending thousands of QAnon accounts. But QAnon posts still flourish online.

Because lifestyle and wellness influencers generate substantial revenue, have helped build social media businesses, and have not generally intersected with extremist movements before, there is a danger that influencers will escape extremist content reporting and moderation. Furthermore, influencer posts are likely to reach a wider audience than extremist group posts as they are less scrutinised by social media mechanisms monitoring extremist content.

Lifestyle and wellness influencers are particularly challenging because, as numerous surveys have found, influencer marketing has exploded. More and more people are turning to influencers and online personalities for inspiration, recommendations and purchasing advise. Online influencers whove latched onto QAnon present conspiracies in an engaging, appealing and relatable manner, often interspersing posts promoting QAnon among stylised photos of fashion, workouts and recipes. The same skills that these influencers use for consumer brand marketing have helped turn an outlandish conspiracy theory into an acceptable option in the market place of ideas.

A expanded version of this article is available at Global Network on Extremism and Technology of which the Lowy Institute is a core partner. This post is part of a year long series examining extremism and technology.

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Under the influence: Peddling conspiracy in a pandemic - The Interpreter

Universities are failing to protect academic freedom from the anti-free speech radicals – Telegraph.co.uk

Posted on August 3, 2020 by Danzig

Universities, Saul Bellow, the US novelist and Nobel prize-winner, once declared, were anti-free-speech centres. An absurd caricature surely. Yet in 2018, Christine Lagarde, former head of the IMF, and Condoleezza Rice, former secretary of state, were forced to withdraw from US university commencement addresses for being too controversial.

Still, you might think, this could not happen in tolerant Britain. Sadly, a report published today by Policy Exchange, based on the largest poll of UK-based academics in recent years, warns that we are not exempt. It shows little support for dismissal campaigns against academics holding unpopular views, but widespread support for discrimination on political grounds in publication, hiring and promotion. The report finds no evidence that the Left discriminates more than Right. But there are many more academics on the Left in the social sciences and the humanities than on the Right, and around half of the Right-leaning minority have self-censored, reporting a hostile climate for their beliefs.

There is, then, a chilling effect whereby minority views are kept under wraps. At Oxford, my old university, Nigel Biggar, regius professor of theology, leads an inquiry on the ethics of Empire. He has been excoriated by colleagues, entirely without justification, as racist and imperialist. A younger untenured colleague would have to be brave to take part in such an inquiry, yet its intellectual value could prove great.

Among students, the chilling effect occurs through no platforming, whereby organisers of meetings are pressured to disinvite speakers with unpopular views. At Oxford, Amber Rudd was disinvited by the UN Womens Society at 30 minutes notice; Prof Selina Todd was disinvited by an academic conference because of her views on transgender rights.

The effects of the hecklers veto can be devastating. Instead of being able to sharpen their wits through a robust exchange of views with those with whom they disagree, students find themselves cocooned at university, in a hermetically sealed intellectual environment which traffics only in pre-approved ideas, where they must think twice before speaking out.

Biggar has rightly pointed to the discrepancy between what counts as common sense in a university and among the public; and indeed, one could get a more vigorous debate on Empire, or on Brexit for that matter, in a pub in Hartlepool, than in the average senior common room or student union.

In his defence of free speech, John Stuart Mill pointed out that the greatest threat to it in a democracy came not from government but from prevailing opinion and feeling, which could give rise to a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression. It was, Mill suggested, legitimate to avoid contact with someone whose views one finds offensive. What was not legitimate was to use social pressure or boycott to deter the expression of unpopular views.

When the 1988 Education Reform bill was debated in the House of Lords, liberals, led by Roy Jenkins, insisted on statutory protection of academic freedom. They feared that Margaret Thatcher would use the abolition of tenure to discriminate against radicals in the universities. Today, by contrast, we need government to prevent discrimination by radicals in the universities. The Conservatives, in their 2019 manifesto, promised legislation to strengthen it. But legislation is not enough.

For the universities have been the great exception to that central trend of postwar politics, the decline of the state. They are almost as much of a public monopoly today as they were in the days of the Attlee government. Indeed, when, in the late Eighties, Thatchers education secretary, Kenneth Baker, visited the Soviet Union, he was congratulated on the degree of central control that he had achieved. A public monopoly is always in danger of encouraging conformity. Freedom is best defended not by the state, but by a healthy diversity of institutions. We have, at present, just two private universities Buckingham and the New College of the Humanities. We need many more.

Vernon Bogdanor is professor of government at Kings College, London. His book Britain and Europe in a Troubled World is out in September

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Universities are failing to protect academic freedom from the anti-free speech radicals - Telegraph.co.uk

The world has stood by as China persecutes Uighur Muslims – and it makes me fear for my safety – iNews

Posted on August 3, 2020 by Danzig

As a Muslim woman living in the West, who is unfortunately too invested in the news cycle, Im all too aware of the fracturing human rights of Muslims across the globe. I wish this was an exaggeration but the collective experience of Muslims around the globe including the persecution of Uighur Muslims in China has made me long fear that, one day, a genocide against Muslims like me could become reality closer to home.

I stopped believing that those with the most power, those who reach the highest political offices, are driven by decency or humanity or the desire to make the world a better place a long time ago. Around the world, politicians and leaders like Boris Johnson, Donald Trump and Narendra Modhi have made it vogue to be openly Islamophobic.

This has created a hostile and fearful environment because it seems to be politically beneficial to be Islamophobic. It is now so normalised in our society that the general public has become desensitised to the abuses of Muslims across the world.

Whether its unfairly punishing an adult for a childs mistakes by making them stateless in the case of Shamima Begum. Or suddenly mandating everyone should wear facemasks in Europe following a burqa ban and years of stigma and abuse towards those who covered their faces for religious reason. In the UK niqabi Muslim women were labelled letterboxes and bank robbers, and a recent headscarf ban in Belgian universities restricted access to education for women.

Lets also not forget the Muslim ban in America, which stopped the travel of mostly Muslims entering the US a Virginia judge later ruled this ban as unconstitutional because there was a religious bias. The Citizenship Bill introduced in India last year, also known as the anti-Muslim law, offered amnesty to all refugees in India except Muslims. The law delegitimises Indian Muslims in the country who had long since been there without any citizenship protections and would not be viewed as illegal immigrants.

This everyday degradation by those in power and erasure of autonomy dehumanisies us and encourages others to do the same. If you treat people like they arent even a human then thats how society will eventually perceive them.

Recently the Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab publicly acknowledged the human rights abuses happening in China against Uighur Muslims. It was a gesture but thats all it was. Currently, there is a mass ethnic cleansing going on in China of Uighur Muslims but the rest of the world sits in ignorance or watches without taking action despite promises of never again. History is repeating itself.

In a BBC Panorama documentary, anthropologist Dr Adrian Zenz said: The world should acknowledge what this is, the largest internment of an ethnic minority since the holocaust. Since Raabs comments and the British Governments acknowledgements, the Muslim Council of Britain has asked that the Government follow up its condemnation, urging for sanctions against China to be imposed, and strong diplomatic power used before Uighur Muslims are subject to total destruction at the hands of the Chinese Government.

The US has recently imposed some sanctions in China due to the treatment of Uighur Muslims but they are fairly tame, with other countries simply turning a blind eye or being unwilling to question China.

More than a million Muslims have been placed in internment camps, according to human rights groups. China has claimed these they were correctional camps to help young people have a better life, but last year a document leaked to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) revealed that camps were basically run as high-security prisons where inmates had to seek permission for moving their bodies as well as being subjected to rigorous brainwashing and physical and sexual abuse. Recent reports claimed that Uighur Muslim women have been forcibly made to take birth control in an attempt to suppress the population.

In a recent BBC interview with Andrew Marr, the British-Chinese ambassador denied ethnic cleansing even after Marr quoted Chinese government statistics on population growth which said that the Uighur population in Xinjiang had fallen by 84 per cent in between 2015-2018. The ambassador responded with thats not right.

Though not surprising, the most deafening silence for me comes from the wider international Muslim community. In 2019 Pakistan, Saudia Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates blocked a motion led by Western ambassadors at the United Nations which called for China to allow independent international observation in the Xinjiang region.

Chinas actions unchallenged will further embolden global Islamophobia

It seems the same countries that were so enraged by drawings of the Prophet arent willing to intervene or even condemn a real-life mass ethnic cleansing of Muslims because it will not politically advantageous to them. At a press conference last year when Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan was asked about Chinas treatment of Uighur Muslim he admitted that Pakistans response to China was reflective of the help Pakistan had received from China when the country was at rock bottom.

Chinas actions unchallenged will further embolden global Islamophobia and yet it seems China is invincible even as it commits human rights abuses. So the question here is will any of the so-called global superpowers do anything? Or is politicking more important than basic human rights? Because right now the international community isnt doing anything to help Uighur Muslims and the silence is deafening.

There might not be internment camps in the Western world right now but internment is not the only way to dehumanise and oppress groups on mass. I fear that the everyday oppression of our rights in the West could one day lead to the erasure of Muslims and the Muslim identity.

Mariam Khan is the editor ofIts Not About the Burqa: Muslim Women on Faith, Feminism, Sexuality and Race

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The world has stood by as China persecutes Uighur Muslims - and it makes me fear for my safety - iNews

Chelsea Bond: The ‘new’ Closing the Gap is about buzzwords, not genuine change for Indigenous Australia – The Conversation AU

Posted on August 3, 2020 by Danzig

Anyone who has spent any amount of time in Indigenous affairs would be familiar with the buzzwords used in the announcement of the new Closing the Gap targets.

As Prime Minister Scott Morrison said, the national Closing the Cap agreement is supposedly practical and ambitious. Minister for Indigenous Australians Ken Wyatt described it as new approach to Indigenous disadvantage.

Read more: We have 16 new Closing the Gap targets. Will governments now do what's needed to meet them?

Thursdays press conference also talked of a historic agreement framed by honourable intentions and an evidence-base. We heard much talk of partnership between community-controlled organisations and mainstream government agencies, along with responsibility for all, accountability and reform.

Sadly, there is nothing unprecedented about the agreement, or the language used to sell it. This discourse of Indigenous affairs - of promise and failure - does little more than create the illusion of Indigenous agency, racial progress and state benevolence.

Most media reports of the announcement, including from Indigenous outlets, readily accept and reproduce the political doublespeak with little scrutiny of the governments claims.

We heard nothing from Morrison or Wyatt about the learnings from 12 years of Closing the Gap failure and how these insights have shaped a supposed new approach beyond, of course, setting different targets.

In fact, Morrison insisted prime ministers before him have had a passion and dedication for Indigenous affairs, and indeed shared a frustration with the lack of progress in it. As he explained, the problem was previous governments were too ambitious without understanding the detail.

And certainly, there is little that is actually ambitious about this supposed new approach.

The 16 new targets, while doubling in number, no longer have parity with non-Indigenous Australia as their target within this generation. So effectively, they aim to do less, but you wouldnt know it from the coverage we have seen.

In examining the detail of the targets, we see references to increases and decreases with some specific percentages. There are also vague references to toward zero, with others simply declaring a goal of sustained increase.

Beyond the target of life expectancy, the agreement offers no sense of when parity might be achieved or even aspired to. This is striking, given the ideological foundation of Closing the Gap is literally about closing gaps of disadvantage. It is severely disappointing the federal government has largely escaped scrutiny over their claims surrounding this new national agreement.

Amid the global Black Lives Matter movement, the Closing the Gap agreement makes lofty claims to dismantle institutional racism.

While identify and eliminate racism featured as a transformation element of one of the priority reform areas, racism was then mentioned just ten times in the 47 pages of the actual agreement, with no definition in its definitions list. It is odd that the foundational structure of oppression, responsible for producing the racialised disparities this agreement is trying to ameliorate, is so poorly understood.

The lack of understanding shows. The agreement suggests racism will be fixed by pushing Indigenous peoples into mainstream institutions, on boards and identified leadership positions, which we know is a haven rather than remedy for everyday and systemic racism.

In lieu of race and racism, the terms culture and cultural are littered throughout the agreement. Culture, much like the agreement itself, provides an opportunity to blame Indigenous peoples for the structural disadvantage they are subject to.

The big solution we are told - both in the press conference and the partnership agreement - is data. Data is offered both as a priority reform as well as a strategy in and of itself. Each Closing the Gap target is outlined in a table that lists how they will be monitored.

We are not offered a sense of the complexity of the problem being addressed, or even a strategy. Instead, we are told what data should be collected in relation to the goals.

It seems the strategy for addressing Indigenous disadvantage is to find better ways to monitor other forms of progress incrementally. Yet the focus here is largely on Black bodies and behaviours. There is little to no analysis of the institutions and systems responsible for the production of the racialised disparities Indigenous peoples experience.

As such, the data will likely reproduce the story of Indigenous failure that we are all too familiar with.

There is also little that is new about increased surveillance of Indigenous people as a policy measure - which is what this is. There is, however, a strong evidence base that tells of the long history of failure of such interventions

Read more: Ten years on, it's time we learned the lessons from the failed Northern Territory Intervention

The failings in Indigenous affairs are not due to Indigenous people making poor choices. Nor is it because we lack data or evidence of what works. It is a result of a sustained indifference to the lives of Indigenous peoples, disguised as benevolence in fictitious claims of policy reform.

The issue is the failure - or rather refusal - to commit to structural reform that meaningfully attends to the relationship between Indigenous peoples and the state. Such reform demands recognition of the unique rights of Indigenous peoples, not simply more data on disadvantage and supposed Indigenous deviance.

Yet we are now being offered a partnership approach with government-funded Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations. Few have noted the power imbalance at the heart of this relationship. As Roy Ah-See, co-chair Uluru dialogues at UNSWs Indigenous Law Centre has said,

You are never going to bite the hand that feeds you, so how can these organisations be representative if they only received resources from government?

When we cut through the talk of the new Closing the Gap agreement, it is clear this discourse of change works precisely so that everything can stay the same. The only actual difference in this weeks announcement was Indigenous organisations signed up to it.

And, it is most telling that while Indigenous peoples on the streets are still fiercely proclaiming sovereignty never ceded amid a pandemic, the peaks that represent them have signed up to an agreement in which sovereignty was never mentioned.

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Chelsea Bond: The 'new' Closing the Gap is about buzzwords, not genuine change for Indigenous Australia - The Conversation AU

John Lewis fought for equal protection. That means tackling pollution, poverty, and policing. – Grist

Posted on August 3, 2020 by Danzig

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In the two months since George Floyds death at the hands of police, Americans have marched, protested, rallied, and spoken out about the need for systemic change. Its the type of activism that the late U.S. Representative John Lewis, a key figure in the civil rights movement who died last month of pancreatic cancer, described as good trouble. Lewis sensed that this time with the massive scale, global impact, and inclusivity of the Black Lives Matter movement we are on the precipice of change.

There will be no turning back, he told CBS This Morning in June. What Lewis understood, having marched down the road for justice himself, was that its long past time for the United States to fulfill the promise of equal protection pledged in our constitution. As a young man, Lewis put his life on the line to challenge a system that today continues to penalize, prosecute, and strip away the civil rights of so many Black and brown Americans. We are tired. We are tired of being beat by policemen. We are tired of seeing our people locked up in jail over and over again, Lewis said in 1963 as he stood on the steps of Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington.

That is why, even after the initial fires of protest were extinguished in Minneapolis, the embers of discontent continued to burn as residents voiced their anger over their citys failure to address police misconduct. The racial disparities in arrests paint a stark picture: One 2015 analysis by the American Civil Liberties Union found that Minneapolis police arrested African Americans and Native Americans for low-level offenses at rates almost nine times higher than the rate for whites over a three-year period. The citys response in the past was never enough to truly reform policing or implement the type of systemic change that could address health and wealth inequities for people of color. As former mayor Betsy Hodges wrote in a recent first-person account, the citys white liberals have resisted systemic change for decades. Instead of doing the hard work of reforming zoning laws, addressing the lack of housing affordability, and providing for under-resourced schools, they put a Band-Aid on the citys problems by, for example, funding a rental assistance hotline and summer job programs for youth of color.

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These efforts make us feel better about racism, but fundamentally change little for the communities of color whose disadvantages often come from the hoarding of advantage by mostly white neighborhoods, wrote Hodges.

Today, were witnessing the tragic consequences of inaction for communities that have long been burdened by pollution and contamination and are now hardest hit by COVID-19. Everything in our health is determined by our environment, Linda Birnbaum, the former director of the National Institutes for Environmental Health Sciences and the National Toxicology Program, told the Intercept. Researchers are finding that many adults who are infected with COVID-19 are suffering the long-term effects of the environmental health damage they experienced as children, such as lead exposure and asthma.

In response to this health crisis, the newly-formed Title VI Environmental Justice Alliance, a coalition of environmental justice groups and their allies, issued a call to action in July to address the inequities that are exacerbating the spread of COVID-19 in communities across the country. The alliance has set out to address the systemic racism that has created these inequities by advocating for the ability of communities to challenge race discrimination in environmental decision-making under the Civil Rights Act, as well as the racially disparate effects of public policy decisions that lead communities of color to face greater exposure to environmental harms.

Its not a coincidence that race is the most salient factor explaining the location of hazardous waste sites and the worst polluters, says attorney Marianne Engelman Lado, an author of the call to action, member of the alliance, and expert on the effects of environmental contamination on vulnerable populations. Baked-in patterns of segregation have led to inequalities in environmental exposure, which are determined by the resources and the political power a community has to fight the siting of industrial facilities, as well as zoning and land-use decisions.

We have to start recognizing that all people have the right to equal protection, and we have to address these disparities in exposure to environmental hazards, said Engelman Lado. That means changing the way we do environmental decision-making: where we place things, and who has a say, and whether we listen to communities.

Addressing environmental disparities in neighborhoods where residents struggle to breathe due to pollution and contamination will also mean reckoning with the toxic environments created by other forms of oppression, such as police violence. The links between the two are undeniable, according to Angelo Logan, the campaign director of the Moving Forward Network in Los Angeles, which works to protect disadvantaged communities from the adverse effects of the global freight transportation system. He knows firsthand that the most vulnerable communities often endure a deadly combination of poverty, police oppression, and pollution.

In both cases youre physically choked, Logan said, by air pollution and by [law enforcement], whoever that might be.

For this reason, part of the dialogue around addressing the flaws in the criminal justice system should involve asking broader questions, such as: What can be done to prevent brown and Black men from landing in the criminal justice system to begin with? Some of the answers to that question lie quite literally in the ecological environment in which they are growing up. To get to the root of injustices facing communities of color, we must dig even deeper, by addressing the legacy of lead contamination in Americas cities in a comprehensive way. More specifically, we can begin by remediating contaminated soil in residential neighborhoods that were historically segregated and industrialized in the 20th century. Many believe that lead contamination in soil was addressed decades ago, but this invisible neurotoxin continues to be a threat in urban environments because it can take decades, if not longer, for lead to degrade in soil. Further, if municipal leaders fail to identify these hidden hazards in American cities and remove that threat of lead exposure, it puts the health of children and adults living in these polluted neighborhoods at risk for generations. In the 1980s, Howard Mielke, an urban geochemistry and health expert, did comprehensive soil testing across Minneapolis and provided ample evidence of the dangers facing residents in the citys urban center, as well as a roadmap of potential solutions. The question is: Did Minneapolis clean up its polluted environment?

On one hand, the state of Minnesota was a leader in convincing Congress that lead poisoning was a major problem across American cities, and that lead needed to be removed from gasoline. It was thanks to the testimony of a Minnesota delegation, which included Mielke, during a 1984 U.S. Senate committee hearing that Congress ultimately decided to phase out gasoline sooner than its projected 1988 target. But the phase-out of leaded gasoline was just the first step. Its the contamination left behind that must still be reckoned with. As Clair C. Patterson, the late California Institute of Technology geochemist who decades ago broke new ground on leads impact, once said: Sometime in the near future it probably will be shown that the older urban areas of the United States have been rendered more or less uninhabitable by the millions of tons of poisonous industrial lead residues that have accumulated in cities during the past century.

CHANDAN KHANNA / AFP via Getty Images

Minneapolis, despite its progressive reputation, is a deeply divided city geographically when it comes to race. Any discussion around how to address the implications of lead exposure requires an examination of how the citys neighborhoods were developed in the 20th century. Today, we have evidence that shows that housing segregation via racially restrictive housing covenants influenced the formation of poor communities of color near industrial zones and freeways that were built through historic African American communities. These same freeways were conduits for leaded gasoline emissions that settled into the surrounding neighborhoods.

The separate-but-equal era of injustice that galvanized a young John Lewis to take a stand paralleled Americas highway construction boom and the exponential growth of leaded gasoline use in cars. This spread the deadly neurotoxin at levels not seen before. Mielke, who teaches in the department of pharmacology at Tulane Universitys School of Medicine, has spent more than four decades investigating the dangers of lead contamination in soil across the country, including in Baltimore, where he researched his first lead soil study, and New Orleans, where hes currently based and has geographically mapped lead soil levels and investigated leads impact on childrens health and education.

Mielke has found that decades of contamination from leaded gasoline, lead-based paint, industrial emissions, and other sources has created invisible mountains of lead in Americas urban city centers that continue to harm children. Weve reached a point where [childhood blood lead levels] have come down enormously, but not evenly for the whole community. Its still in the environment, and its still exposing children at unacceptably high levels, said Mielke, a Minnesota native.

Mielke, other lead soil experts, and citizen-scientists have tested and mapped lead levels across America, so weve known for decades how extensive the lead contamination is in our soil: from Baltimore to Los Angeles, Cleveland to Chicago, Oakland to Indianapolis. But what has been done to address this environmental threat in American backyards? For the most part, not nearly enough to stop children from being exposed, says Mielke.

[Municipalities] seem to run away from it. Either they dont want to talk about it, they dont want to face it, or they look at it as an issue that they cant possibly do anything about that its way too expensive, said Mielke. In New Orleans, Mielke has diligently worked to show government officials and the public that there are low-cost solutions such as covering contaminated soil with geotextile, cleaner dirt, and vegetation to prevent more children from being exposed in childcare centers and parks. Mielkes Baltimore lead research in the late 1970s and early 1980s first opened his eyes to the awful problem of lead-contaminated soil, but it was his subsequent mapping in Minnesotas Twin Cities that led him to realize that America faced an extensive problem in its urban centers. It became his mission to do something about it.

Generation after generation living in the same place in the city theyre running into the same problems. And that can be resolved, but it takes concerted effort, said Mielke.

Today we know that even low-level lead exposure (blood lead concentrations below 5 micrograms per deciliter) affect not only a childs intellectual and academic abilities they are also a risk factor for higher rates of neurobehavioral disorders such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). A growing body of research also suggests that youth who have been exposed to lead run a higher risk of ending up in the criminal justice system. One 2008 University of Cincinnati study tracked 250 individuals and found that, when Cincinnati children reached adulthood, there was a strong relationship between their participation in criminalized activity and their exposure to lead in the womb, as well as their childhood exposure to lead. A 2017 study from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that suspensions and juvenile detentions rise with preschool blood lead levels. The study found that African American and Latino lead-burdened children were more likely to be suspended or detained in juvenile hall than their white counterparts. Historically, childhood lead exposure has disproportionately impacted Black and Latino children across the country, and one 2020 study found that a significant nationwide racial disparity in blood lead outcomes persists today for African American children, even after adjusting for risk factors and variables.

Harvard sociologist Robert Sampson has studied the relationship between neighborhood, lead toxicity, and racial segregation to understand the role of lead contamination as a source of environmental inequality in Chicago neighborhoods. His research has shown that lead toxicity, as shown through high blood lead levels among children, is closely linked to racial and ethnic segregation. As such, it has contributed to the legacy of Black disadvantage in the United States. Its what Sampson calls the ecology of toxic inequality, and it aligns with the links researchers have found between racial segregation, enviromental hazards, and poor health outcomes. Because lead exposure is concentrated in certain neighborhoods, Sampson also found in a 2018 study that lead exposure has a neighborhood effect much like inadequate housing, poverty, and violence that contributes to the reproduction of inequality over a persons lifetime.

The urgency to address lead contamination has been clear since the 1920s, when health experts cautioned the U.S. government about the dangers of putting lead in gasoline. In the 1960s, grassroots advocates in New York, Chicago, Boston, Oakland, and Baltimore called on government agencies to address the lead hazards in public housing. Their voices and advocacy reduced the impact of the toxin, but the lead problem never disappeared. And in the long run, the economic cost of inaction has been enormous. In 2002, researchers found that, even at low levels of lead exposure, the costs associated with direct medical care and potential productivity losses for lead-burdened U.S. children when they become adults amounts to $43 billion annually.

This urgency should be felt anew today. Then-President Barack Obama once described John Lewis as an American who knew that change could not wait for some other person or some other time, whose life is a lesson in the fierce urgency of now. Lewis may be gone, but his life, his actions, and his words are a reminder of the moral courage and political will thats required to address systemic disparities. He grew up in the cotton fields of Alabama as the son of sharecroppers, and he attended segregated public schools. In a moving CBS This Morning video where Lewis writes a letter to his young self, he describes how the activism of Rosa Parks and the words of Martin Luther King Jr. inspired him to join the civil rights movement. When you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you have a moral obligation to continue to speak up, to speak out, he said in the video. He looked back on his life and it brought him to tears, because he understood exactly what it took to overcome systemic racism.

Sometimes I feel like crying tears of happiness, tears of joy to see the distance weve come, he said. He also knew how much further we had to go on that road to justice. So he spent his life fighting these battles in the halls of Congress, reminding us to persevere, to get out there and push and pull until we redeem the soul of America.

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John Lewis fought for equal protection. That means tackling pollution, poverty, and policing. - Grist

What Tom Cotton Gets So Wrong About Slavery and the Constitution – The New York Review of Books

Posted on August 3, 2020 by Danzig

Mark Wilson/Getty ImagesSenator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, walking past a portrait of John C. Calhoun, leader of the proslavery forces in the Senate, Capitol Hill, Washington, D.C., February 23, 2016

Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, has introduced a bill in Congress that would punish school districts that use The New York Timess 1619 Project in their curriculum by withholding federal funding. In so doing, he announced in a newspaper interview that Americas schoolchildren need to learn that the nations Founders said slavery was the necessary evil upon which the union was built. His statement is as preposterous as it is false: presuming to clarify American history, Cotton has grievously distorted it.

(As this article went to press, Cotton supported his argument by citing me along with several other liberal historians who have criticized the 1619 Project; with my colleagues, I have fundamental publicized objections to the project, but these in no way mitigate Cottons serious misrepresentations of the historical record for evident political gain.)

None of the delegates who framed the Constitution in 1787 called slavery a necessary evil. Some of them called slavery an evil, but not a necessary one. Gouverneur Morris of New York, for example, declared to the Constitutional Convention that he would never concur in upholding domestic slavery, that nefarious institution based on the most cruel bondagesthe curse of heaven on the states where it prevailed. The great majority of the Framers joined Morris in fighting to ensure that slavery would be excluded from national law.

James Madison, the most influential delegate at the convention, explicitly repudiated the idea of building the union on slavery, stating that it would be wrong to admit in the Constitution the idea that there could be property in men. Though himself a slaveholder, Madison wanted to guarantee that the Constitution, while it might tolerate slavery in the states where it existed, would neither enshrine human bondage in national law nor recognize it as legitimate.

A minority of the Framers, from the lower South, disagreed, but they believed slavery was no evil at all. If slavery be wrong, Charles Pinckney of South Carolina declared, it is justified by the example of all the world.Far from a necessary evil, Pinckney thought slavery was a necessary good, as it had been for time immemorial. In all ages, he claimed, one half of mankind have been slaves.

There was, to be sure, one delegate who resembled Senator Cottons description: Pinckneys cousin, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, also from South Carolina. At one point in the convention debates, a perturbed Cotesworth Pinckney registered a complaint, seeming to desire, Madison noted, that some provision should be included in favor of property in slaves. That would have based the Union firmly on the constitutional right of slavery. And Cotesworth Pinckney did come close to calling slavery a necessary evil, noting that without it the Carolina economy could not survive (which was technically correct). But the convention majority, far from agreeing with anything he said, dismissed his objection out of hand.

The Constitution was hardly an antislavery document. Through fierce debates and by means of backroom deals, the lower South slaveholders managed to win compromises that offered some protection to slavery in the states: the notorious three-fifths clause giving an allotment of House seats and Electoral College votes based on a partial counting of enslaved persons; a twenty-year delay in authorizing Congress to abolish the nations involvement in the Atlantic slave trade; and a fugitive slave clause. Most importantly, the Constitution by implication barred the new federal government from directly interfering with slavery in the states where it already existed.

But neither did the Constitution, as Senator Cotton wrongly claims, establish slavery as necessary to the Union. Its true that a few proslavery delegates threatened that their states would refuse to join the Union unless their demands were met. This occurred with particular force with regard to the Atlantic slave trade. A majority of convention delegates wanted to empower the national government to abolish the horrific trade, striking the first blow against it anywhere in the Atlantic world in the name of a sovereign state. Appalled, the lower South delegates, led by South Carolinas oligarchs, threatened to bolt if the convention touched the slave trade in any way, but the majority called their bluff.

In the end, the proslavery delegates carved out the compromise that prevented abolishing the trade until 1808, salvaging a significant concession, though there could be little doubt that the trade was doomed. Even with this compromise, the leading Pennsylvania abolitionist Benjamin Rush hailed the slave trade clause as a great point obtained from the Southern States. His fellow Pennsylvanian and a delegate to convention, James Wilson, went so far as to say that the Constitution laid the foundation for banishing slavery out of this country.

History, of course, proved Wilson wrongbut not completely wrong. With the rise of the cotton economy, based on the invention of the cotton gin, which Wilson could not have foreseen, American slavery was far from stymied, but grew to become the mightiest and most expansive slavery regime on earth, engulfing further territoriesincluding Cottons own Arkansas.

The Framers compromises over slavery had little to do with it, however. The problem was not primarily constitutional but political: so long as a substantial number of Northerners remained either complacent about slaverys future, indifferent to the institutions oppression, or complicit in the growth of the new cotton kingdom, the Constitution would permit the spread of human bondage.

Even so, in fact, the Constitution contained powerful antislavery potential. By refusing to recognize slavery in national law, the Framers gave the national government the power to regulate or ban slavery in areas under its purview, notably the national territories not yet constituted as separate states. The same year that the Framers met, the existing Congress banned slavery from the existing territories north of the Ohio River under the Northwest Ordinance, a measure reflected in the Constitution, which the new Congress quickly affirmed when it met in 1789. Later antislavery champions, including Abraham Lincoln, always considered the Northwest Ordinance to be organic to the Constitution; proslavery advocates came to regard it as an illegitimate nullity.

In time, as antislavery sentiment built in the North, the condition of slavery in the territories and in connection with the admission of new states became the major flashpoint of conflict, from the Missouri crisis of 18191821 to the guerrilla warfare of Bleeding Kansas. Proslavery champions like John C. Calhoun of South Carolina invented an argument that denied the Congress any power over slavery in the territories; Lincoln and his fellow Republicans refuted that argument. And upon Lincolns election as president in 1860, this constitutional issue was enough to spark the secession that led to the Civil War and Emancipation.

Senator Cotton has some mistaken things to say about that history, too. The Framers, he asserts, built the Constitution in a way, as Lincoln said, to put slavery on the course to its ultimate extinction.This absurdly imputes to the Framers powers of clairvoyance. Although Lincoln sometimes suggested that the Framers had purposefully designed slaverys abolitioneven Lincoln could wishfully exaggeratethe Constitution hardly ensured slaverys doom. It took Lincolns and the antislavery Republicans concerted political efforts to vindicate the Constitutions antislavery elements that set the stage for what Lincoln in his House Divided speech of 1858 called ultimate extinction.

Far from establishing a Union based on what Senator Cotton calls the necessary evil of slavery, the Founders fought bitterly over human enslavement, producing a document that gave slavery some protection even as it denied slavery national status and gave the federal government the power to restrict its growthand so hasten its demise. The slaveholders, unable to abide that power, eventually seceded in an effort to form a new slaveholders republic, with a new Constitution built entirely on slavery: its cornerstone, as the Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens declaimed, was the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slaverysubordination to the superior raceis his natural and normal condition.

Senator Cottons contempt for constitutional rights was previously revealed in his intemperate call for the invocation of the Insurrection Act and federal military power against protesters exercising their First Amendment rights to decry racism. His ignorance of history and the Constitution is the latest evidence of how the current Republican Party is, to say the least, a distant cry from the party Lincoln helped to found. As far as a Union founded on the necessary evil of slavery is concerned, Cotton appears unaware of how profoundly the Constitution of the United States of America differed from that of the Confederate States of America.