New licensing platform for 5G IoT technology promises to streamline roll out of connected vehicles – Traffic Technology Today

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Avanci has announced the launch of its 5G automotive licensing programme, which promises to help the auto industry to develop the next generation of connected vehicles by ensuring that this technology can be shared efficiently and affordably.

5G connectivity will deliver significant value to the automotive sector, building on the use of previous standards in connected vehicles. This program, part of Avancis new 5G IoT platform, will enable patent owners and IoT and automotive companies to share 5G standard essential wireless patents in a single licence.

The 5G platform builds on the success of the Avanci marketplace, which transformed the licensing landscape by licencing the vast majority of the 2G, 3G, and 4G cellular essential patents in a single agreement at fixed, fair and transparent rates. Avanci is now the go-to global licencing platform for connected vehicles and other IoT devices, spanning 38 patent owners and with 14 automotive brands as licensees.

The 5G automotive program was reviewed by the US Department of Justice (DoJ) Antitrust Division. In its Business Review Letter, published on 28 July 2020, Makan Delrahim, assistant attorney general for the Antitrust Division of the DoJ, said: In sum, the proposed 5G Platform has the potential to yield efficiencies by reducing transaction costs and streamlining licensing for connected vehicles. Together these efficiencies may allow cellular standards-essential patent owners and vehicle manufacturers to focus resources elsewhere, such as investment in further research and development in emerging 5G technologies and applications. This possibility could enhance competition in these technologies, improve safety, and benefit American consumers.

Kasim Alfalahi, founder and CEO of Avanci, says: Through our one-stop Avanci marketplace we have licensed the vast majority of cellular standard-essential patents to millions of connected vehicles. 5G will power the IoT to expand to many new categories of connected products. As we begin operating our first 5G licensing program for connected vehicles, we will continue to transform how patent licensing is done.

Avanci will now begin discussions with IoT device manufacturers, the auto industry and patent owners about streamlining the patent licensing process for 5G connected devices, as it has done for the previous technologies.

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New licensing platform for 5G IoT technology promises to streamline roll out of connected vehicles - Traffic Technology Today

The Big Technology Winner From The Covid Crisis Is 3-D Printing – Forbes

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Face shield produced on 3D Systems technology to help address the PPE shortage

The coronavirus threw a wet blanket on economic growth the world over, and at least temporarily slammed the brakes on a manufacturing sector that had already been slowing for months. But a silver lining was the remarkable response by manufacturers to the supply chain breakdowns and shortages in the medical products market. Thousands of producers quickly revamped their factories in order to help make critically-needed medical supplies. And if theres a single technology that was the star of those efforts, it was 3-D printing.

Even before things started getting serious here in the U.S., 3-D printing (also known as additive manufacturing, or AM) was already in use to help deal with the medical crisis brought on by Covid-19. We saw very early on in northern Italy the lack of medical capacity to deal with the effects, said Ben Johnson, Director of Product Development, Healthcare, for 3D Systems. We had our partner there printing valves and splitters to allow the use of a single ventilator for multiple patients.

Once the crisis reached our shores, use of 3-D printers to respond really took off. 3-D printers were directly involved in so many ways, Johnson said. They were used to make complete face shields, face masks, swabs, and ventilator componentsand they drove innovative developments of complete new ventilator designs as well. The common response around face shields became a great opportunity for everyone, including hobbyists.

That immediate response by individual players in every corner of the 3-D printing field was remarkable. So, too, was the cooperation in response to the crisis. We collaborated with our competitors to ensure understanding of the regulations, validations of materials and products, and exactly what could and couldnt be printed, said Johnson. We worked with them on tech support and materials consulting as well. And we partnered with different consortiumsthe National Institutes of Health, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and America Makes [a 3-D printing development public-private partnership], for example.

Companies that have considered and planned for additive manufacturing can pivot quickly and ... [+] effectively in the face of supply chain disruptions

Now as the world emerges from medical crises and lockdowns, a lot of people are seeing 3-D printing in a whole new light. There are a few different threads to the trends going into the crisis and coming out of it, said Ferdie Bruijnen, VP, Supply Chain Operations at 3D Systems. An Ernst & Young study showed attitudes toward AM had already shifted between 2016 and 2019, with the percentage of companies using AM strategically doubling over that time, from 4% to 8%, and the percentage with no experience with it all falling by more than half, from 76% to 35%. Then Covid highlighted some important benefits of AM, like the fact that it requires no tooling, that it can handle complex geometries, and that it provides a naturally distributed manufacturing base.

The distributed nature of 3-D printing is a huge advantage as many companies look at alternative sourcing for both parts and products whose availability was hampered by supply chain breakdowns. AM has an on-demand base, and that lowers the barrier to entry, Bruijnen said. The distributed nature of its manufacturing was a big plus during the crisis Covid really highlighted the value of that.

Those advantages have put 3-D printing into a strong position as manufacturing recovers. Bridge manufacturing is a big opportunity, said Bruijnen. Rather than a manufacturer having a tool to cover 110% of normal demand, they can have one to cover 95% and use AM to handle flex capacity. AM showed in the pandemic how it offers quick turnaround and flexibility.

With capabilities such as stacked printing, additive manufacturing enables direct digital production ... [+] of end-use parts

The demonstrations of end-use product manufacturing that 3-D printing exhibited over the past few months have changed a lot of minds about the nature of the technology. AM showed itself to be much more than a prototyping technology, Bruijnen explained. In 2009, the market became enamored with AM, with people saying it would replace injection molding. Well, we know thats never going to be the case. But we also know that it has a proper place in the manufacturing tool set.

The coronavirus situation brought to light the capacity of 3-D printing to do rapid response, said Johnson. The ventilator splitter is a good example we saw a 24-hour turnaround on that response. The technology is going to be viewed now as having that kind of potential. It will help democratize production.

Bruijnen agrees. The technology has really emerged, he said. It was already seen as mature in particular areas dental, medical, and jewelry, for example, where it had already shown a great match between the technical capabilities and the business needs. But thats just scratching the surface of its potential. A good example is in cosmetics, where theres a company thats printing an advanced-geometry lipstick holder. That better-looking packaging sets it apart from all its competitors. And in general manufacturing, there are a number of areas where its imminent that well see the balance tip toward AM taking a chunk of final production.

AM wont replace injection molding, he concluded. But it doesnt have to. That never should have been the measure of success.

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The Big Technology Winner From The Covid Crisis Is 3-D Printing - Forbes

ATSC 3.0 Launches on 7 Portland TV Stations – TV Technology

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PORTLAND, Ore.ATSC 3.0, the next-generation television standard, has planted its flag in Portland, as seven local TV stations have begun broadcasting NextGen TV.

The Portland stations that are broadcasting ATSC 3.0 are the Meredith-owned KPTV (Fox) and KPDX (MyNet), Nextsars KOIN (CBS) and KRCW-TV (CW), Sinclair Broadcast Groups KATU (ABC), Tegnas KGW (NBC) and KOPB-TV (PBS). With the new technology, these stations will be able to support new developments like immersive audio and video, advanced emergency alerts with rich media, broadcasting to mobile devices and personalized viewing tools.

All participating stations are cooperating to ensure that current programming remains available to all viewers. For antenna viewers, they can rescan their TV sets to ensure full service. Cable and satellite subscribers do not need to take any action.

BitPath, a wireless network provider, led the planning process and coordinated efforts across the TV stations. The company said the Portland launch is its largest ATSC 3.0 deployment to date.

PLUS: ATSC 3.0: Deployments: Where and When Will NextGen TV be Available?

The future of television in Portland begins today, as the launch of NextGen TV opens the door for innovations that offer a more enriching experience for viewers across platforms, said Kurt Rao, senior vice president and chief technology officer of Tegna.

This deployment of NextGen TV in a key top-25 market not only continues the momentum we have built over the last several weeks with the roll-out of this advanced technology in markets such as Las Vegas, Nashville and Salt Lake City, it further enhances the value of Nexstars spectrum by enabling us to deliver the highest-quality viewing experience in tandem with internet-based information and hyper-targeted advertising, said Brett Jenkins, executive vice president and CTO for Nexstar. The day is rapidly approaching when we will be able to provide the full suite of benefits of NextGen TV to all of the communities served by Nexstar television stations across the country.

The rollout of NextGen TV began in earnest in 2020, with the goal of reaching the top 40 markets by the end of the year. However, the ATSC organization does acknowledge that there could be some impact from COVID-19 on the deployment of the standard.

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ATSC 3.0 Launches on 7 Portland TV Stations - TV Technology

Thermal Energy Storage Market Research Report by Technology, by Material, by Application, by End User – Global Forecast to 2025 – Cumulative Impact of…

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New York, July 29, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Reportlinker.com announces the release of the report "Thermal Energy Storage Market Research Report by Technology, by Material, by Application, by End User - Global Forecast to 2025 - Cumulative Impact of COVID-19" - https://www.reportlinker.com/p05942153/?utm_source=GNW

The Global Thermal Energy Storage Market is expected to grow from USD 4,185.19 Million in 2019 to USD 7,912.12 Million by the end of 2025 at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 11.19%.

Market Segmentation & Coverage:This research report categorizes the Thermal Energy Storage to forecast the revenues and analyze the trends in each of the following sub-markets:

Based on Technology, the Thermal Energy Storage Market studied across Latent Heat Storage, Sensible Heat Storage, and Thermochemical Storage.

Based on Material , the Thermal Energy Storage Market studied across Molten Salt, Phase Change Material (PCM), and Water.

Based on Application, the Thermal Energy Storage Market studied across District Heating & Cooling, Power Generation, and Process Heating & Cooling.

Based on End User, the Thermal Energy Storage Market studied across Industrial, Residential & Commercial, and Utility.

Based on Geography, the Thermal Energy Storage Market studied across Americas, Asia-Pacific, and Europe, Middle East & Africa. The Americas region surveyed across Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, and United States. The Asia-Pacific region surveyed across Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines, South Korea, and Thailand. The Europe, Middle East & Africa region surveyed across France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Spain, United Arab Emirates, and United Kingdom.

Company Usability Profiles:The report deeply explores the recent significant developments by the leading vendors and innovation profiles in the Global Thermal Energy Storage Market including Abengoa Solar, Baltimore Aircoil Company Inc., Brightsource Energy Inc., Burns & Mcdonnell, Caldwell Energy, Calmac, Chicago Bridge & Iron, DC Pro Engineering Llc., DN Tanks, and Evapco Inc..

FPNV Positioning Matrix:The FPNV Positioning Matrix evaluates and categorizes the vendors in the Thermal Energy Storage Market on the basis of Business Strategy (Business Growth, Industry Coverage, Financial Viability, and Channel Support) and Product Satisfaction (Value for Money, Ease of Use, Product Features, and Customer Support) that aids businesses in better decision making and understanding the competitive landscape.

Competitive Strategic Window:The Competitive Strategic Window analyses the competitive landscape in terms of markets, applications, and geographies. The Competitive Strategic Window helps the vendor define an alignment or fit between their capabilities and opportunities for future growth prospects. During a forecast period, it defines the optimal or favorable fit for the vendors to adopt successive merger and acquisition strategies, geography expansion, research & development, and new product introduction strategies to execute further business expansion and growth.

Cumulative Impact of COVID-19:COVID-19 is an incomparable global public health emergency that has affected almost every industry, so for and, the long-term effects projected to impact the industry growth during the forecast period. Our ongoing research amplifies our research framework to ensure the inclusion of underlaying COVID-19 issues and potential paths forward. The report is delivering insights on COVID-19 considering the changes in consumer behavior and demand, purchasing patterns, re-routing of the supply chain, dynamics of current market forces, and the significant interventions of governments. The updated study provides insights, analysis, estimations, and forecast, considering the COVID-19 impact on the market.

The report provides insights on the following pointers:1. Market Penetration: Provides comprehensive information on the market offered by the key players2. Market Development: Provides in-depth information about lucrative emerging markets and analyzes the markets3. Market Diversification: Provides detailed information about new product launches, untapped geographies, recent developments, and investments4. Competitive Assessment & Intelligence: Provides an exhaustive assessment of market shares, strategies, products, and manufacturing capabilities of the leading players5. Product Development & Innovation: Provides intelligent insights on future technologies, R&D activities, and new product developments

The report answers questions such as:1. What is the market size and forecast of the Global Thermal Energy Storage Market?2. What are the inhibiting factors and impact of COVID-19 shaping the Global Thermal Energy Storage Market during the forecast period?3. Which are the products/segments/applications/areas to invest in over the forecast period in the Global Thermal Energy Storage Market?4. What is the competitive strategic window for opportunities in the Global Thermal Energy Storage Market?5. What are the technology trends and regulatory frameworks in the Global Thermal Energy Storage Market?6. What are the modes and strategic moves considered suitable for entering the Global Thermal Energy Storage Market?Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p05942153/?utm_source=GNW

About ReportlinkerReportLinker is an award-winning market research solution. Reportlinker finds and organizes the latest industry data so you get all the market research you need - instantly, in one place.

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Thermal Energy Storage Market Research Report by Technology, by Material, by Application, by End User - Global Forecast to 2025 - Cumulative Impact of...

Indian technology moguls want Narendra Modi to be tougher on Chinese rivals – Economic Times

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By Saritha Rai

Leaders in Indias technology industry are urging the country to go even further to protect the interests of local companies against foreign rivals, or risk ceding the worlds fastest growing internet arena to Chinese and American monopolies.

Narendra Modis administration this month banned 59 Chinese apps in the country, including ByteDance Ltd.s short-video hit TikTok, a dramatic policy shift aimed at improving local control and data security. In separate interviews, Policybazaar co-founder Yashish Dahiya whose company is backed by Tencent Holdings Ltd. and MobiKwik frontman Bipin Preet Singh urged Modi to go further. Emboldened by growing hostility against its giant neighbor, they want regulators to curb their access to Indian markets, establish rules to wrest back control of user data and bankroll local startups.

China has long been the bratty kid who thinks its OK to grab others cake without sharing your own, Dahiya told Bloomberg News last week. India must strategically reduce market access before its neighbor becomes even more powerful. If India doesnt do it now, it can never be done, said Dahiya, whose online insurance service targets a 2021 IPO at a $3.5 billion value.

Dahiya and Singh are breaking with tradition in an Indian startup sector that over the past half-decade has attracted billions from Chinese companies and investment houses from Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. to Hillhouse Capital. Their stance reflects a shift in sentiment after a mid-June Himalayan border clash left 20 soldiers dead -- but also a wave of techno-nationalism as the coronavirus pummels global economies. It coincides with a surge of interest from American giants like Facebook Inc. and Google as Indias nascent digital economy blossoms.

Its not an easy position to take, said Dahiya, whose Policybazaar is now trying to raise $250 million of pre-IPO financing. A sovereign nation has no parent but someones got to stop China from misbehaving.

Before TikTok overtook YouTube to become Indias most popular social video platform, the dominance of WhatsApp and Amazon.com Inc. and Walmart Inc. in e-commerce had already rankled local businesses. Beijing is now the bigger target, as the world polarizes along U.S.-China lines and American-backed local champions such as Mukesh Ambanis Jio Platforms emerge. The influx of American investment sets up a potential clash with Chinas own internet titans in the future -- provided theyre allowed to operate in the country.

That, along with trade barriers erected in just past weeks, may have fired up the entrepreneurs. The government should identify strategic sectors and nurture local startups, Mobikwiks Singh advocated.

The China versus U.S. battleground is neither China nor the U.S., but India, said Singh, whose Sequoia Capital-backed payments startup competes with both Google Pay and Alibaba-backed Paytm.

If Indias entire 1.3 billion population is served only by foreign companies, how can that be a good thing? he said in a telephone interview from his base in New Delhi. Yet India doesnt have a single technology giant, its become a growth engine for global companies. What is India doing wrong?

Indias unprecedented apps ban thwarted the global ambitions of Chinas technology giants just as the spotlight is turning on the worlds largest untapped digital frontier. Indias roaring digital economy, with half a billion users and growing, is witnessing pitched battles in everything from online retail and content streaming to messaging and digital payments but largely between deep-pocketed foreign corporations. Thats coincided with growth tapering off at Infosys Ltd. and Tata Consultancy Services Ltd., which put Indias tech sector on the map but are now grappling with a fundamental shift to the cloud.

While India has attracted over $20 billion in just past months from American giants like Google and Facebook, China has over the years carved out a significant role in Indias tech industry, according to Mumbai-based think-tank Gateway House. Eighteen of Indias 30 unicorns are Chinese-funded, researchers Amit Bhandari, Blaise Fernandes and Aashna Agarwal said in a report. Apart from TikTok, smartphone brands like leader Xiaomi Corp. and Oppo have cornered three-quarters of the market. Firms like GGV Capital and Qiming Venture Partners nearly doubled Chinese investments in Indian startups to $3.9 billion in 2019, according to the Economic Times.

Im not advocating a closed or protectionist environment like Chinas, but India needs local champions and also needs to safeguard its data and security, Singh said. We need competition, we need choices. But we cant have a situation where theres no Indian player in entire segments from search to messaging, social media, ecommerce and payments.

Modis government has already set things in motion. It drafted an e-commerce policy that openly champions aid for local startups and oversight on how foreign companies handle data. A government panel recommended a data regulator to oversee monetization and privacy of user information to ensure maximum social and economic benefits for Indians. Local startups are enjoying something of a renaissance: TikTok-a-like Roposo is signing up half a million new users an hour.

But more is needed, Singh said. The system remains stacked against the hundreds of thousands of would-be entrepreneurs who have to take on global behemoths. The government could limit the influence of foreign capital as it has done in sectors like banking, he added.

Mobikwik has raised $100 million so far and is taking on companies with a collective market value of over $2 trillion, he said. We are doing injustice to our entrepreneurs if we stack them against dollars and yuans in every single segment.

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Indian technology moguls want Narendra Modi to be tougher on Chinese rivals - Economic Times

Rugged Technology Plays Pivotal Role in the Future of Business – Samsung Newsroom UK

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New research by Samsung looks at the benefits of rugged technology in businesses, revealing that nine out of ten employees would like their company to invest in more devices in the future

London, UK, 29th July 2020 Samsung Electronics UK Ltd. has today revealed the results of a multi-industry research study into the use of rugged technology, looking at key benefits such as productivity and cost saving, resulting in nine out of ten who have experienced these first-hand, keen to invest in more.

The results showcased that rugged tech will form a pivotal role in the future of business, with 81% of users believing that tougher devices will be essential in their workplace over the next two years. Feedback from those currently using rugged tech was resoundingly positive, with over four in five (86%) claiming that the devices are beneficial to their job.

The research[1] looked at employees and decision-makers across Construction, Manufacturing, Transport & Logistics, Health, Retail, Emergency Services, Utilities, and Automotive sectors to reveal current attitudes towards rugged technology. Rugged refers to hardware including smartphones, tablets, laptops and wearables designed to operate in extremely harsh environments and conditions, such as the award-winning Samsung Galaxy XCover Pro and the Galaxy Tab Active Pro.

Within the industries highlighted, Samsung uncovered an array of key insights into the benefits and attitudes towards the wider adoption of rugged tech, with those already using or deploying it in their workplace saying the following:

At Samsung, we are committed to listening to the opinions and challenges faced by our customers and it is excellent to see that rugged tech is making a difference for its users and their businesses, says Joe Walsh, Director of B2B at Samsung UK & Ireland.

These results highlight a clear enthusiasm and demands for the growth of the rugged tech market, and it is encouraging to see how many users want to continue to invest in the future. As more businesses adopt this technology, we only anticipate the appreciation for its financial and performance-based benefits to rise. At Samsung, our unyielding passion for excellence ensures we always enable our customers to thrive with innovative devices that balance their needs by being easy to use and hard to break.

While over two-thirds (68%) of rugged users claim that they cannot imagine work life without rugged technology, the survey also revealed a strong will from non-users to deploy it in the future.

Looking forward, the results suggest that rugged tech will form a pivotal part of digital transformation projects across many industries. Almost two-thirds (60%) of respondents believe that rugged tech will become imperative for their industry in the next two years, with 61% users stating that tougher devices will form a vital part of the 5G revolution.

To find out more about Samsungs Rugged portfolio, including the Galaxy XCover Pro and Galaxy Tab Active Pro, please visit: https://www.samsung.com/uk/rugged-range/.

###

About Samsung for Business:

Samsung is committed to developing devices and solutions that are built for the way businesses are evolving today. By understanding the needs of organisations large and small, Samsung for Business provides innovative mobile-first technology that solves their challenges and brings new opportunities.

Backed up by Samsungs unique defence-grade security platform, Knox, businesses can choose from a wide portfolio of devices knowing their company is in safe hands. Ranging from industry-ready and award-winning rugged devices, to top-spec Galaxy Enterprise Edition smartphones with full-service support, Samsung strives to deliver technology that powers business success.

For more information, https://www.samsung.com/uk/business/.

[1]The research was carried out by Ketchum Research and Analytics, on behalf of Samsung. A total of 1,202 people aged 18+ were surveyed in the UK, including 601 employees and 601 decision-makers across the following industries: Construction, Manufacturing, Transport & Logistics, Health, Retail, Emergency Services, Utilities, and Automotive. Fieldwork ran from 18th June 6th July 2020 and was conducted by Vitreous World.

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Rugged Technology Plays Pivotal Role in the Future of Business - Samsung Newsroom UK

Use of technology to clear courts backlog ‘needs to be assessed’ – expressandstar.com

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A new report by the Commons Justice Select Committee said the pandemic has caused the record backlog of court cases to top 450,000, leaving Crown and Magistrates Courts struggling to keep up.

It includes a backlog of 5,000 cases which were delayed at courts in the West Midlands between March and June. The system was already in crisis before the coronavirus hit, with cases at courts in Stafford and Wolverhampton taking an average of 215 days longer to complete in 2019 than they did in 2011.

Now efforts are being made to clear the backlog. They include the introduction of a Nightingale Court for the West Midlands at Telfords former county court, while the number of cases heard via video link trebled during the early stages of the pandemic.

Those within the judicial system are concerned about the impact of delays.

Paul Birch dealt with about 15,000 cases during a 15-year stint as a Justice of the Peace in the Black Country, and also served as chair of victim and witness support.

He said the system had deteriorated rapidly, with courts such as Sandwell shutting down and the number of magistrates falling by more than 10,000 in just four years.

The system has been run down and tragically it is the victims who have been forgotten. In many cases they have been left to themselves, he said.

The high profile cases to put back include the trial of a police officer accused of the murder of former Villa star Dalian Atkinson. PC Benjamin Monk was due to stand trial in September, but the provisional date is now April 12, 2021.

The delay prompted Judge Melbourne Inman QC to to say that social distancing measures had created significant restrictions for trials.

Last week the Star revealed fewer than one in 10 crimes reported to police forces across the West Midlands result in anyone appearing in court far fewer than five years ago.

Lord Chief Justice Lord Burnett of Maldon said jury trial cases were accumulating in the order of 1,000 a month.

HM Courts and Tribunals Service data shows that the number of cases heard each day with the use of audio and video technology increased from fewer than 1,000 in the last week of March to over 3,000 by mid-April.

The chairman of the committee, Sir Robert Neill, said the backlog needed to be addressed while also looking at how technology affects access to justice.

He said: Justice delayed can be justice denied. More and more people are waiting for their day in court. We welcome the Governments attempts to reduce the backlog by thinking beyond simply increasing sitting days.

We also urge it to ensure that access to justice remains at the heart of its proposals.

We are impressed by the way new technology has been used by courts to speed things along in some cases, but more research is needed on how ordinary people defendants and witnesses experience this technology.

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Use of technology to clear courts backlog 'needs to be assessed' - expressandstar.com

Silencing the SARS-CoV-2 Receptor With CRISPR and Epigenetic Modifications – Technology Networks

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The Hackett Group at EMBL Rome explores epigenetics, genome regulation and cell identity. Recently, the scientists developed a novel CRISPR molecular tool for editing the epigenome, enabling transient modifications that can switch certain genes "on" and "off" temporarily.The SARS-CoV-2 virus that has caused the COVID-19 global pandemic makes its way into a host cell via a protein known as ACE2, which is involved in a range of physiological functions in the body.

What happens when you transiently turn "off" the gene that encodes this protein? Can SARS-Cov-2 still enter the cell and cause infection? This is what Hackett and colleagues are currently exploring in animal models, to determine whether epigenetic silencing could be a treatment approach for COVID-19 in humans.Technology Networks spoke with Dr James (Jamie) Hackett, group leader at EMBL, to learn more about the CRISPR tool, how it can be used to silence ACE2 in the context of SARS-CoV-2 infection and whether there could be any adverse implications from doing so.Molly Campbell (MC): For our readers that may be unfamiliar, can you please describe what epigenetic modifications are?Jamie Hackett (JH): Epigenetic modifications are small chemical tags that are physically grafted onto DNA (or the histones that DNA wraps around) to help control how and when the DNA is used. These epigenetic modifications act as signposts that encourage a specific part of DNA, such as a gene, to be switched on or off. In other words, they help control which genes are "expressed", and which are ignored in each cell. This is important to ensure that genes that are required specifically in liver, for example, are only switched on in the liver, and not say, in the brain.MC: You are developing a CRISPR-based molecular tool to conduct epigenetic editing. Can you please tell us about this approach? How have you developed the tool and how does it work?JH: CRISPR systems normally locate a specific section of DNA in the genome and alter its genetic sequence, known as genetic "editing". Epigenetic editing uses the same principle but instead alters the epigenetic modifications at a specific region rather than the genetic sequence. This turns genes on or off in a "programmable" manner. Importantly, unlike genetic editing, epigenetic editing is largely reversible, enabling transient changes in how genes operate without changing the DNA sequence itself.MC: You plan to test the tool in mice to target airway cells that express the ACE2 protein. Can you talk to us about the rationale behind this?JH: ACE2 is a protein that sits on the outside of many cells and is normally involved in controlling blood pressure. However, the COVID-19 virus hijacks ACE2 by using it as a docking site that enables entry of the virus into a cell. If the gene ACE2 is switched OFF, this should remove the access point for COVID-19 and restrict infection. To test this possibility, we will use mouse models where we attempt to epigenetically switch off ACE2, which will help inform us whether this could be a viable strategy in humans in the future.

MC: Could there be adverse effects from targeting the ACE2 protein, as it is involved in several physiological processes in humans, for example? How will you explore and monitor this?JH: Impaired levels of ACE2 over long periods are linked with elevated blood pressure. However, over short-term periods loss of ACE2 appears to be relatively tolerable. This is one reason why a reversible "epigenetic" approach could be appealing since it would only temporality deplete ACE2 from cells, potentially to provide protection during high risk periods, before allowing it to return to its original status at the appropriate time.MC: What broader applications might this tool have, beyond SARS-CoV-2?JH: The same technology can, in principle, be applied to change the expression of genes other than ACE2, that are linked with disease. We are at the very beginning of exploring the potential of this, so it is not clear what realistic expectations are, but there is nonetheless great excitement about such precision strategies. For example, diseases where one of the two gene copies is a "mutant", such as Huntingtons disease, could be targets. Here it is hoped to be possible to epigenetically switch off only the mutant version of the gene, leaving the normal copy on. This scenario is predicted to help mitigate symptoms in a very precise and specific way. Conversely, in the neurological disorder Fragile X syndrome, the FMR1 gene has become inappropriately silenced (switched off). Epigenetic editing can be applied to selectively reactivate this gene to switch it on, with initial indications being that this helps restore neuronal functions. Jamie Hackett was speaking to Molly Campbell, Science Writer for Technology Networks.

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Silencing the SARS-CoV-2 Receptor With CRISPR and Epigenetic Modifications - Technology Networks

NuWave adds another DHS vet to leadership team – Washington Technology

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PEOPLE

One month on from getting a new investor, NuWave Solutions has made another addition to the executive team to help shape the government IT outfits next phase.

McLean, Virginia-based NuWave appointed as chief operating officer Andre Hentz, a former Homeland Security Department official whose career there included stints as acting deputy undersecretary for science and technology and chief scientist.

Hentz is the second DHS veteran to join the NuWave leadership team alongside CEO Dr. Reggie Brothers, the former DHS undersecretary for science and technology who prior to that was deputy assistant secretary for research at the Defense Department.

In June, private equity firm AE Industrial Partners acquired a majority stake in NuWave and subsequently appointed Brothers as chief executive and two-decade defense sector veteran Michael Buscher as chief growth officer.

NuWave has also since then added a new chief technology officer in Keith Conner, a nearly two-decade research-and-development veteran and former senior director of innovation at Peraton. Conner's career in industry includes senior technical positions with Bell Labs, BAE Systems and Technical Solutions LLC. He also once worked as a senior technical engineer at DHS.

About the Author

Ross Wilkers is a senior staff writer for Washington Technology. He can be reached at rwilkers@washingtontechnology.com. Follow him on Twitter: @rosswilkers. Also find and connect with him on LinkedIn.

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NuWave adds another DHS vet to leadership team - Washington Technology

How Safe is the OPPO 125W Flash Charging Technology? – gizmochina

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As we are heading towards a completely digitized society, smartphones and other gadgets are at the forefront of connecting us to the world. Consequently, our energy requirement is increasing every year, with portable devices like smartphones, tablets, and laptops becoming increasingly thin but more powerful than ever before. But unfortunately, we havent been able to achieve a breakthrough in battery density technology to satisfy our growing requirement.

So whats the workaround to this obstacle?

One way of meeting the growing energy needs of portable devices is to develop fast charging technology that tops up a battery in minutes.

When it comes to smartphones, OPPO leads the market with its innovative VOOC charging technology. And earlier this month, the company unveiled the worlds fastest wired charging solution for smartphones the 125W Flash Charge technology. It can charge a 4000mAh battery in just 20 minutes.

This is a significant development in smartphone charging technology, doubling charging speeds to never before seen values.

But how safe is it to pump in such high wattage into your compact smartphone battery? We have already seen laptops like the Dell XPS 15 charge at up to 130W. However, doing the same on an exceptionally compact battery raises a lot of questions.

So I decided to ask OPPO about 125W flash charging and how safe it is for the device and the end consumer.

When you are charging a 4000mAh battery at 125W, essentially topping it up to 100% in just 20 minutes, two primary questions come to your mind.

Before we find answers to these two questions, its crucial to understand how OPPOs 125W flash charging works.

OPPOs 125W flash charging is made possible with the help of many proprietary components and technologies working together in synergy.

To make things simple, here are some of the specialized components that allow the smartphone battery to flash charge at 125W.

When all these components come together, your smartphone can charge at up to 125W.

Heres a simplified version of how OPPOs 125W Flash Charging Works

When you connect OPPOs 125W charger to your phone via USB-C, the charger outputs power at 20V and 6.25A. This power is sent to the phone via a customized USB-C port that supports current over 6A. The power from the USB-C port is then transferred to the three charge pumps. However, the bi-cell batteries inside the phone do not support such high voltage. So the three charge pumps work together (along with the other microcontroller chips) to bring down the voltage to 10V and increase the amperage to 12.5A. Thus each of the three charge pumps outputs 42W (so 125W in total) of power to the battery with an impressive efficiency of 98%. OPPO claims that using three charge pumps significantly improves efficiency and reduces heat generation. Remember that heat is bad for your battery, and the less heat generated, the better it is for your phone.

An essential component that makes fast charging at such a high current possible is the quality of the batteries. OPPOs 125W flash charging technology works because the 6C batteries can charge at 12A.

The C-rating of a battery is the ratio of the maximum current draw and the battery capacity. Here, the 2000mAh ( equivalent to 2Ah) battery has a 6C rating. This means that the bi-cell batteries can charge effectively at a high current of 12.5A. But this would also mean that these batteries discharge at such a high rate, which is why OPPO added another charge pump to slow down the discharging rate. So in total, OPPOs 125W flash charging technology utilizes four charge pumps, three for controlling the power coming into the phone via the charger and one for controlling the discharge rate.

Editors Pick:Qualcomm announces Quick Charge 5 with support for 100W+ fast charging

Now that we have got a basic idea of how OPPOs new flash charging works, lets come back to the questions.

Heat is an inevitable byproduct of fast charging. Every smartphone battery has internal resistance, and when you pump in 125W of power during the charging process, the resistance generates heat.

But OPPO explained that they have taken additional measures to monitor and address this issue.

Moving on to the second question.

If heat is an inevitable byproduct of fast charging, then faster battery degradation is also an unavoidable consequence.

Remember how OPPO revealed that the 65W SuperVOOC 2.0 degrades the battery faster than standard slow charging?

OPPO Reno Ace with SuperVOOC 2.0 that charges at 65W degrades itsbatterys capacity to around 90% in 800 full charging cycles.

So if you think 125W would degrade the battery capacity even more rapidly, then you are correct.

OPPO revealed that according to their tests, the 125W flash charging reduces the battery life expectancy at 80% after 800 charging-discharging cycles.

This figure isnt really surprising. And it can be acceptable if you consider the convenience of ultra-fast charging in our day to day lives. If you charge your phone once every day, the 800 charging cycle amounts to over two years.

Unfortunately, this is the price you pay for not having to spend hours charging your phone.

Historically, OPPO has had an excellent track record with its VOOC and SuperVOOC 2.0 fast-charging technologies. Given that the 125W flash charging is built upon its earlier generation, safety seems to be given due priority on this new technology as well.

OPPO did well with its Reno Ace models 65W SuperVOOC 2.0, keeping the heat to manageable levels while charging. But well have to wait and see if the 125W flash charge technology with the additional temperature control measures can keep the phone relatively cool even when it charges a battery in just 20 minutes.

OPPO has confirmed that the technology is ready for mass production, but we dont know which product will get it first. Probably, the next OPPO Ace3 model (OPPO has dropped Reno branding from the Ace series) will launch with this flash charging technology later this year.

So what do you think of ultra-fast 120W+ fast charging technologies? Super cool or unnecessary?

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How Safe is the OPPO 125W Flash Charging Technology? - gizmochina

Brain Cells Linked to Sex and Aggression in Males – Technology Networks

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Two groups of nerve cells may serve as on-off switches for male mating and aggression, suggests a new study in rodents. These neurons appear to send signals between two parts of the brain the back tip, or posterior, of the amygdala and the hypothalamus that together regulate emotions including fear, anxiety, and aggression.Led by researchers at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, the study showed that male mice struggled to have sex in experiments that blocked signals from one amygdala cell group that communicates with the hypothalamus (MPN-signaling cells). When the same signals were instead bolstered, the animals were not only able to mate but would repeatedly court unreceptive females, something they would not do normally.

Similarly, when the action of a second cell group in the amygdala that also communicates with the hypothalamus (VMHvl-signaling cells) was blocked, the rodents attacked unfamiliar males half as often. When these same neurons were triggered, the mice became unusually aggressive, even attacking their female mates and familiar males.

Our findings provide new insights into the crucial role played by the posterior amygdala in driving male social behaviors like sex and aggression, says lead study author Takashi Yamaguchi, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow at NYU Langone Health and its Neuroscience Institute.

Past research suggested the amygdalas role in regulating social behaviors, but until now experts had not uncovered its precise role in sexual behaviors. Instead, researchers had focused on the neighboring hypothalamus, where both the MPN and VMHvl structures are located, as the brains regulator of mating and fighting.

The new investigation, published online in the journal Nature Neuroscience, is the first to uncover two distinct groups of cells that facilitate communication between the posterior amygdala and the parts of the hypothalamus responsible for sex and aggression, says Dr. Yamaguchi. It also provides key evidence that the posterior amygdala exerts tremendous influence over social behavior, he adds.

For the study, the researchers observed brain cell activity in more than 100 male mice that were mounting and fighting. The authors measured how often the nerve cells naturally fired signals throughout the animals day. They found that MPN-signaling cells were most active during sex, while VMHvl-signaling cells were most active during confrontations with other males. For each of the two cell groups, the researchers then suppressed or activated the neurons and observed how often the mice attempted to mount a mate or attack a strange male placed in their enclosure.

Our new understanding of which cells prompt sexual and aggressive behaviors should help us choose better brain targets as we design future treatments for psychiatric disorders, says senior study investigator Dayu Lin, PhD, an associate professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and Neuroscience and Physiology at NYU Langone and member of its Neuroscience Institute.

Still, Dr. Lin cautions that much of the posterior amygdalas structure remains poorly understood and that researchers still need to determine how these findings might translate to human brains. Her team also plans to study how the two groups of nerve cells interact in the brains of female rodents.

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Cuba’s Nobel Nomination and Baldwin’s Call to Begin Again – CounterPunch

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When an event is unexplained, it cant be repeated. Cubas astonishing internationalism, the good news of the pandemic, is talked about (outside Cuba) as if a miracle, without cause. Support grows for the Nobel Prize nomination but the justification for the Henry Reeve Brigade, established in 2005, is left out. The explanation is ideas.

It is urgent according to Eddie Glaude in a new book on James Baldwin.[1] Well, he doesnt exactly say that. But for Baldwin, what kind of human beings we aspire to be is most important and the explanation for Cubas success is precisely that. In Zona Roja, Enrique Ubieta Gmez says Cuban medical workers fighting Ebola in 2014 know about existence: We exist interdependently. Ubieta describes Cuban internationalism as an inescapable ethic. Once youve lived it, you cannot not live it.

You know human connection a fact of science and you learn its energy.

Ubietas explanation is existential. Baldwin used similar language. In 1963, he wrote, Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we imprison ourselves to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have. Glaude supports Baldwins call to begin again, with the America idea, shedding its old ideas. He might look South. Latin American independistas raised precisely Baldwins question: how to resist the lie at the heart of the [imperialist] nation when it is about love, life and death, that is, everything.

Truth is not enough. If Galileo had just provided truths, he wouldnt have been condemned. Galileo became threatening when he made those truths plausible with a larger picture of cosmic humility, contradicting the establishments comforting identity. One thing we might learn from Galileo, according to astrophysicist Mario Livio in a new book, is that he didnt just observe truths and tell stories about them. His phenomenal capacity for abstraction let him see where those truths led. [2]

Truths are easy when unexplained. Consider Olga Tokarczuks Flights. It gives truth about people traveling everywhere escaping their own lives, and then being safely escorted right back to them.[3] We see people running through airports with flushed red faces, their straw hats and souvenir drums and masks and shell necklaces. All this moving around in a chaotic fashion [to] increase their likelihood of being in the right place at the right time even has meaning. A travel psychologist explains that such chaos appears to call into question the existence of a self understood non-relationally.

It is funny to expect deeper meaning regarding people moving around in a chaotic fashion to increase their likelihood of being in the right place at the right time from a travel psychologist at an airport between flights. We laugh because we do in fact expect that, absurdly.

We get truth from Flights but its dismissible. Annushka, for instance, escapes her unbearable life : to go, sway, walk, run, take flight. She finds happiness when she does not have a single thought in her head, a single care, a single expectation or hope. Shes happy, free of her identity, her life, her responsibilities. But she is also cold, hungry, dirty, alone, tired, and homeless. The image is silly.

In fact, the idea underlying it is silly, namely, that to have no thoughts, you should have no identity, no responsibilities. Its as pervasive as friction, from which Galileo abstracted to get truth about inertia. In fact, to be happy with no expectations or hope, as Annushka is, is not silly. But understanding how that is so requires a phenomenal capacity for abstraction from social expectations.

Flights doesnt do that. It responds to an expectation identified by Cuban philosopher and diplomat Ral Roa in 1953 as the worlds gravest crisis.[4] It was indeed the America idea: Human beings imprisoned in discrete selves, defined by action and results. It is not humanist, as claimed, Roa argues, because it omits the fact of death, as Baldwin recognized. There were few dissenters to the man of action during the Renaissance, and Roa saw there would now be none because of US power.

Baldwin tried to escape that power by living outside the US. He struggled with what it had made of him. But American power follows one everywhere.

Emily Dickinson, the greatest poet in the English language, abstracts from expectations Flights dignifies. According to biographer Martha Ackman, Dickinson lived as if busyness and travel is not progress.[5] She never apologized for, nor defended, the priority she gave to silence and solitude. As result, we get truth from her poetry: about what it means to be human. For, she was in fact not detached from a world she never visited physically or had any desire to.

She lived as if isolation and detachment are not synonymous. But to know where this leads, you must abstract from the America idea that equates human worth and utility. Comfortably, though, Dickinson is odd Americas most enigmatic and mysterious poet and her way of life therefore dismissible.

Lord of all the Dead, like Flights, leaves comforting old ideas in place. [6]Javier Cercas tells the story of his great-uncle who fought a useless war for Franko. His memoire does give truth but doesnt explain it, so his story, which for him is just a story, cannot itself explain, and is dismissible.

Achilles in The Odyssey is lord of all the dead because he died young and beautiful, and gained immortality. That his great uncle was politically mistaken, theres no doubt. But was he a human failure? Cercas answer is no. At one level, Cercas rejects the Greeks ideal of beautiful death because it denies the existential reality of decrepitude: There is no escaping it. But on the other hand, Cercas assumes the separation of mind and body that makes beautiful death worth speculating about: the idea that the body decays and that the mind somehow escapes natures universal laws of causation.

He ends the book speculating about immortality. Nobody dies, he writes. Were just transformed, physically. He himself, at books end, is in the eternal present. It doesnt explain what needs to be explained, given the real story of this book which is what Cercas calls the silent wake of hatred, resentment and violence left over by the war. The silent wake is explained by ignorance precisely of shared humanity Cercas names but doesnt explain. It is decrepitude: the fact of death.

It is known by every human being. Cercas tells a story about his great uncle but denies the significance of that story because he tells it with the old ideas in place, the ones Glaude says need to be shed, like swaddling clothes to begin again as Baldwin urged. Glaude is not sure it can happen. But it has happened. Thats the good news about the Henry Reeve Medical brigade, if it were explained.

On Friday, March 20, Cuban president, Miguel Diaz-Canel, speaking nationally, outlined new measures to slow the pandemic. The good news, he said, is that Cuban people supported the decision to accept the Braemar, a UK cruise ship refused docking elsewhere because of infected passengers. A century ago, another ship sought aid from Cuba. Its passengers were Jews. It was turned away.

That, Diaz-Canel said, was before the Revolution. The good news was the expectation that the Braemar should be helped. That expectation is the success of the Cuban revolution. It explains the Henry Reeve Brigade. Expectations come from practises, from what is lived. Diaz-Canel then said, one day the truth will be known. But what truth? Its not the truth that solidarity is good. No, the truth that will be known is not moral. Instead, it is what that truth the moral one about solidarity does existentially when acted upon, and lived, and why that matters in a global crisis.

Baldwins humanism wasnt easy to understand. Glaudes thoughtful book goes some distance toward explaining. Its not clear, though, whether he knows the consequences. Bill V. Mullen, in a 2019 book, says Baldwin should be understood the way we understand Fanon, Garca Marquez, Assata Shakur: They wrote outside the US, aware of imperialism. [7]

It may be what it takes for Cuba to cease being a dismissible miracle.

Notes.

1) Begin Again: James Baldwins America and its Urgent Lessons for Our Own by Eddie Glaude Jr.(Penguin Random House, 2020). See review: https://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/book-review/begin-again-james-baldwins

2) Galileo and the Science Deniers by Mario Livio (Simon and Schuster, 2020) 181

3) tr. Jennifer Croft (NY: Riverhead Books, 2017) 62

4) Grandeza y servidumbre del humanismo, Viento Sur (Havana: Centro Cultural Pablo de la Torriente Brau, 2015) 44-62

5) These Fevered Days: Ten Pivotal Moments in the Making of Emily Dickinson by Martha Ackman ( W.W. Norton & Company, 2020).

6) Lord of all the Dead by Javier Cercas, tr. Anne McLean (Alfred A Knopf, 2020). See review: https://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/book-review/lord-all-dead

7) James Baldwin: Living in Fire by Bill V. Mullen (Pluto Press: 2019) xv

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Lawyer’s bold bid to end the lockdown – Daily Mercury

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A Sydney lawyer who went viral for telling Melbourne residents they did not need to wear masks is trying to take his battle against health orders to the High Court - but he wants you to pay for it.

Nathan Buckley has launched a GoFundMe campaign, seeking to raise $1 million so he can sue the nation's governments and "remove all lockdown restrictions immediately".

Mr Buckley named border restrictions against Victorians, mandatory quarantine for Queenslanders who visit a coronavirus hot spot, and guidelines around visiting aged-care facilities as just some of the rules he wanted to put an end to before taking aim at more specific health measures.

"People are being fired from their jobs for refusing to have a flu vaccination," he wrote.

"People are being told to wear masks when all the evidence clearly states that masks are useless. Masks represent oppression.

"Enough is enough. The purpose of this campaign is to raise enough money to challenge the states, territories and the Federal Government in the High Court of Australia. The challenge is to remove all lockdown restrictions immediately. We will end the lockdown laws."

Mr Buckley said his campaign would get millions of people back into work and "save Australia from the depths of despair of a deep recession".

"Like all Australians, I will forever be grateful to all contributors who free Australia from the chains of the Government's lockdown restrictions," he wrote.

Wearing masks or face coverings across Melbourne has become mandatory as the state of Victoria is gripped by a second wave of COVID-19. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Ian Currie

The lawyer, who says he is admitted to the roll of practitioners on the High Court of Australia, has already raised more than $12,500 towards his campaign, but if he does not raise enough money, he claims he will refund or redistribute the money to his other campaigns.

Mr Buckley's other campaigns include a $10 million bid to change laws in Australia around mandatory flu vaccinations for visits to aged care homes and some workplaces - which has since been updated to include a challenge to a health order in Victoria mandating masks be worn in public.

In the description, he explains the target is so high as to ensure he can pay in the event he loses in court and is ordered to pay costs.

Another fundraiser has been launched to fight the No Jab No Play laws in South Australia, which has raised nearly a quarter of its $200,000 target.

On July 24, Mr Buckley told supporters he was in discussions with "several high net-worth individuals" to try and get their financial support.

"I am positive that this will get off the ground," he wrote.

Nathan Buckley has also launched a $10 million bid against mandatory vaccinations for health workers. Picture: GoFundMe

Mr Buckley went viral earlier this month for telling Victorians: "Don't wear a mask."

"Get a $200 fine then elect to have it determined in court," he wrote on Facebook.

"Every single one of you 6.359 million Victorians can challenge the fines in court. The Victorian Government won't fight you in court. It is far too expensive for them to do so."

Mr Buckley has since taken the post down, noting on one of his GoFundMe accounts he acted "at the request of the NSW Law Society".

In June, he advised Victorians to avoid the lockdown, and the lawyer has also provided legal letters to healthcare workers who do not want a flu vaccination.

NCA NewsWire sent several questions to Mr Buckley about when his lawsuits might proceed, refunding the money if they didn't, who would be running the multiple High Court challenges, and what he believed was an acceptable alternative to the current health orders.

Mr Buckley said he was "not engaging with media" and declined to comment.

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Why Women Are The Vanguard Of The Black Lives Matter Movement – elle.com

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JEFF MITCHELLGetty Images

Before protests demanding equality for Black people swept across the country, Aba Amoah was finishing her criminology degree, practicing Mandarin and planning her next trip abroad.

Now, the 22-year-old is at the vanguard of the Black Lives Matter movement in the U.K., engaging with parliamentarians and organising protests from her London home.

'Women know how it feels to be marginalised. We are doubly oppressed - we have our skin colour, and the patriarchy,' she says.

KENZO TRIBOUILLARDGetty Images

Less than two months ago, she co-founded Justice For Black Lives, one of the dozen or so anti-racism groups to have mushroomed in recent weeks.

Across the country, pockets of resistance have been women-led, whether taking to the streets or using their government positions to seize upon the moment. Long marginalised and sidelined - they earn the least compared to all other groups while being overrepresented in single-parent households - they are uniquely situated to drive change.

Their uprising has turned the spotlight on a country both in denial about its colonial past and the endemic prejudice of the present.

'Black women are coming into their own across the world,' says Imarn Ayton, a 29-year-old childrens drama teacher and activist who has emerged as one of the movements figureheads. 'Strong Black women are demonised, were seen as having attitude. But were feeling more confident now,' she says, before relaying, with an almost disarming eloquence, proposals on how to reform the judicial, health and education systems.

The killing of George Floyd galvanised Ayton to action after a lifetime of experiencing what she describes as 'a very British combination of covert and overt racism.'

Ira L. Black - CorbisGetty Images

Adding urgency to the calls for change is the coronavirus pandemic, which is taking a heavier toll on people of colour, especially women, according to the Fawcett Society. A recent survey by the womens charity shows how the disease has laid bare a mixture of precarious work arrangements and undetected health conditions among minority women in recent months.

The protests come after a decade of austerity policies at the hands of a Conservative government whose role in the 2018 Windrush scandal, which wrongly targeted and even deported Caribbean immigrants, left many people in their communities pained and disillusioned.

Black women suffer disproportionately: mental ill-health is most prominent among them, and they are five times more likely to die in childbirth compared to white women (Asian women are twice as likely to die).

British Black women have pointed to Meghan Markles harassment by the media, including having her newborn son compared to a monkey by a BBC presenter, and her departure from royal life at the start of the year as public confirmation of the systemic racism running through society.

Black women have been at the front of a flurry of political action. In London, a university students petition to make colonial history part of the compulsory curriculum led to an ongoing debate within government. After protesters toppled and dumped the statue of slave owner Edward Colston into the river in Bristol, an artist temporarily erected a life-size steel monument of demonstrator Jen Reid, who climbed atop the plinth in his place, her right fist raised and clenched. And shortly after Floyds death in U.S. police custody, a cohort of Black female MPs changed their Twitter handles to include 'I cant breathe,' the final words uttered by the Black father as he pleaded for air when a white officer pinned him down at his neck.

Hollie AdamsGetty Images

'We still have a long way to go but I am hopeful that we are on the cusp of change, systemic change,' says MP Dawn Butler, the second Black woman to ever enter parliament.

Earlier this month, Butler says she was forced to close her constituency office, citing how the torrent of threats and abuse she regularly faces has shot up 'exponentially' since supporting Black Lives Matter. Even then, she still believes that the country is forging a new path. 'For the first time, were seeing generations fighting together,' Butler says. 'Now is the time when people are beginning to listen, actively listen, and then its time for action.'

Prime Minister Boris Johnson responded to the wave of protests by establishing a new commission to investigate racial inequalities in the U.K., but Labour politicians and activists were quick to condemn the bodys head, adviser Munira Mirza, who three years ago penned an article describing institutional racism as 'a perception more than a reality.'

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Ayton says men may be staying away from the limelight due to their 'more complicated relationship' with the police: under the controversial stop and search law, law enforcement have excessively targeted young men from Black, Asian and ethnic minority communities.

'If we dont engage, the passion people feel will turn into anger,' says MP Abena Oppong-Asare, who created the Twitter campaign. 'Its easy to make the case for Black women. We have so many barriers to overcome.'

Amie Ferris-Rotman is a contributing editor with The Fuller Project, a global nonprofit newsroom reporting on issues that impact women.

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No One Asked Me But (July 29, 2020) – mvprogress

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By DR. LARRY MOSES

No One Asked Me But I have just completed reading two books written by two men who served American presidents as their National Security Advisor. One, John Bolton, came from a career in the Washington, D.C. bureaucracy. The other, Colin Powell, from a career in the American military.

When John Bolton left the position of National Security Advisor to President Trump he did so in the mood of vengeance against what he perceived to be an unstable and incompetent leader.President Trump in his never-let-a-criticism-go-unanswered manner helped Mr. Bolton sell his book entitled The Room Where it Happened.

If indeed you are looking for something new or insightful, I would suggest you skip this book. There is nothing there that you have not already heard 100 times on CNN or CNBC.

Mr. Bolton did, however, confirm for me the fact that elected officials in Washington have not run the country for years. According to Mr. Bolton, President Trumps major fault was that he refused to merely rubber stamp the actions of the professional bureaucrats who have run the country.

Abraham Lincoln faced an issue with his cabinet when they all voted against the presidents proposal. President Lincoln said I vote aye. That is seven nays and one aye. The aye has it.

This is not the leadership desired by profession bureaucrats. Those who watched the recent impeachment hearings saw that the complaints of the bureaucrats who testified were not of any criminal activity on the part of President Trump but that he refused to do as the bureaucats told him.

If you are interested in how a real leader thinks, you will enjoy Colin Powells book My American Journey. Most of the rest of this column is made up of examples of the wisdom of Colin Powell. This wisdom led to his gaining the highest military rank in America and becoming the confidant of numerous presidents.

While these are the words of Colin Powell, I like to think they reflect the leadership principles I followed in the rather lowly leadership positions I have filled in my life. If this is true, it may well be due to the fact that we both learned our leadership qualities in the American military.

It is important to find ways to make individuals feel important and part of something larger than themselves. Therefore, traditions and rituals remain essential for they instill a sense of belonging and importance in these people. However, being in charge means making decisions, no matter how unpleasant. If its broke fix it. being in charge means sometimes making people mad.

Gen. Powell states: Incompetence, corruption, and flashy dress seems to increase as a direct ratio to rank. dont be buffaloed by experts and elites. Experts often possess more data than judgment. Elites can become so inbred that they produce hemophiliacs who bleed to death as soon as they are nicked by the real world. Dont be afraid to challenge the pros Moments of stress, confusion, and fatigue are exactly when mistakes happen. people want to share your confidence, however thin, not your turmoil, however real.

We elect a President to run the country, but Presidents soon discover that they dont necessarily control the machinery of government. Their wishes are often thwarted due to the fact that as President Franklin Roosevelt observed: the federal bureaucracy is a huge beast: you kick it in the tail and two years later it feels the sensation in the brain.

When confronted with bureaucratic nonsense Gen. Powell advised one should fulfill those requirements with a minimum of effort and then go on with the things that really matter. Dont wrestle with the pig, the pig has fun and you just get dirty. Leadership is the art of accomplishing more than management says is possible.

Gen. Powell advises that, Bad news in not like wine; it does not get better with age. Loyalty means giving the leader advice even if he doesnt like it. If he accepts the advice fine; if not, once a decision is made loyalty means executing the decision as if it were your own.

Something the CCSD leadership should learn is: The field commander is always right and the rear echelon is wrong, unless proven otherwise. The field commander is on the scene, feeling the terrain, directing troops, facing and judging the enemy.

The quote below explains Colin Powells political philosophy and explains why I would vote for him: I am a fiscal conservative with a social conscience. Neither of the two parties fits me comfortablyI am troubled by the political passion of the extreme right I am put off by extreme liberals who claim to know what is best for society but devote little thought to who will eventually pay the bills. I distrust rigid ideology from any direction the time may be at hand for a third major party to emerge to represent this sensible center of the American political spectrum.

Explaining why he is not interested in getting involved in the present political world, he states:I feel that civility is being driven from our political discourse. Attack ads and negative campaigns produce destructivedebate. television and radio talk shows, and print media chasing afteraudiencesdisplaces reasoned dialogue. any public figure espousing a controversial idea can expect to have not just the idea attacked but his or her integrity. And Lord help anyone who strays from accepted ideas of political correctness.(they) will be met with cries that the offender be fired Mr. Powell indicates we seem to have lost our sense of shame as a society.

What is his answer to these problems? We have to start thinking of America as a family. start caring for, sacrificing for, and sharing with each other. stop constantly criticizing.get back to the can-do attitude that made America.

These are the qualities I would like to see in our next President, and presently, I do not see any candidate that will fill those hopes and dreams for the America that I love.

If you think the riotous minority that are burning our cities and murdering our inner city residents are not a threat to America let me remind you that the revolution that established this country was supported by less than one third of the people in the colonies at the time.

While the majority of the law abiding American citizens quietly stand by, they may very well see the country where they grew up disappear.

Thought of the week The only thing that saves us from bureaucracy is its inefficiency. Eugene McCarthy

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No One Asked Me But (July 29, 2020) - mvprogress

Trumps Chicago theater: Guns, violence and a conservative offensive – Yahoo News

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The prospect of federal agents being deployed to Chicago marked the realization of long-held conservative aspirations.

Conservative media for decades have painted Americas third-largest city as a national hub of gun violence and gang activity, crippled by what they see as political correctness thwarting real solutions.

Now President Donald Trump is indulging the dream more than any national leader in recent history, attempting to turn a major liberal city into an election-year example of his pledge to deliver law and order across the country. The presidents drumbeat of attention on Chicago with a pledge to send in hundreds of federal agents to quell the citys gun violence problem has turned into a stampede of voices designed to rally his troops in the culture wars.

If I were mayor of Chicago, I would be begging the president to help me out here in terms of providing more resources to control gun violence, said John Lott, a prominent conservative gun researcher frequently cited by the National Rifle Association.

Lott, president of the pro-gun Crime Prevention Research Center, accused city leadership of years of neglect due to politically correct restrictions, budget reductions and cuts to the police force, leading to lower conviction rates for murders and fewer disincentives against crime. And he said Trumps overtures should be welcomed.

I wouldn't be yelling at him and calling him a racist for trying to help, because the people that are having their lives destroyed are poor Blacks, Lott said.

The federal government in recent weeks has deployed agents to Portland, Albuquerque, Seattle and Chicago. In Portland, and to a lesser degree in Seattle, federal agents are backing up police, guarding federal buildings and arresting protesters en masse with dubious methods. In Portland, that move has only fueled protests, prompting thousands of people to take to the streets, inadvertently creating riotous scenes that press secretary Kayleigh McEnany is, quite literally, broadcasting from the press room podium.

Story continues

Law and order will prevail, she told reporters last week as she played a dramatic video from Portland during a briefing. As you can see, that is anything but a peaceful protest. And this president will always stand on the side of law and order.

The process toward law and order is similar in Albuquerque and Chicago, where the agents are being assigned to work behind the scenes with the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Other cities on Trumps potential list include New York, Philadelphia, Detroit, Baltimore and Oakland, Calif.

Though Chicago has been the focus of conservative complaints for decades, at least dating back to the 1968 Chicago riots during the Democratic National Convention, Trumps recent actions capped off years of threats to send the feds into major cities for myriad reasons such as solving homelessness or ridding communities of undocumented immigrants. This time, Trump and his allies say weeks of protests against police brutality, white nationalism and Trump himself have turned into a nationwide spasm of antifa violence. If liberal city leadership cannot deal with it or, at least, push back against the visuals spreading across conservative media then it was up to Trump to fix it.

Liberals see it as a spectacle by Trump and his allies to distract from soaring coronavirus cases and a tanking economy just over three months from Election Day. The focus of his efforts are cities and towns whether Chicago or Portland that he wont win in November anyway. His effort to fight violence is a show for the rest of the country.

What Trump is doing now and I think this is part of his motivation is to portray cities as dystopic hubs of illegality and crime. And theres a heavy racial component to that, said David Axelrod, a longtime Chicago resident and senior adviser to President Barack Obama. I think its a strategy to try to scare particularly suburban voters back into his column.

Trumps views on Chicago were fueled in part by the rights focus on Obama, who during his administration sought to reduce gun violence by banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.

Theres no doubt that when Obama became president that the right wanted to use Chicago against him. It was his hometown, Axelrod said. The fact that Chicago was his hometown was something that intrigued Trump notwithstanding that he built Trump Tower here and had some regard for the city, or he wouldnt have built here.

Trump also poked at Chicago during Mayor Rahm Emanuels administration, likely, said Axelrod, because Emanuel worked as Obamas chief of staff. Rahm was associated with Obama. They were impetuses for him.

The fact that three Chicago mayors Richard M. Daley, Emanuel and now Lori Lightfoot sometimes criticized Trump regarding his lack of action on guns also may have irked Trump, who grates at any criticism.

Rev. Michael Pfleger, a gun control advocate whose Catholic parish is in the heart of the citys South Side, where gun violence has been pervasive, said the NRA has fueled the rhetoric about violence in Chicago.

They dont deal with statistics or data, he said. Chicago isnt even the most violent city in the country. The NRA deals in fear. It loves to glorify crime and violence in the Black community. More recently, its gotten help from the president who has created a racial divide greater than Ive seen in a long time.

Though Chicagos crime stats are lower than those of other major cities, no one doubts the city has a gang violence problem. One reason is that guns are so readily available which a City of Chicago study found are mostly coming from Indiana. And in recent weeks, Chicago has seen a spike in shootings and murders of children a development that has drawn repeated attention from Trump and his aides.

Lightfoot, the current mayor, said she welcomes federal support to assist agencies such as the ATF, DEA and FBI, all of which have offices in Chicago. We do not need or want troops, she said in a recent statement, referring to the type of federal involvement occurring in Portland.

Conservatives have wanted the federal government to take control of crime in Chicago for decades long before Trump got into politics.

In the 1960s, the city was a hub for riots, and that reputation stuck after violence erupted during the 1968 Democratic Convention.

But it wasnt until the 1980s that the right, especially the NRA, started zeroing in on Chicago, which had instituted a ban on handguns. In the 1990s, under the direction of then-mayor Daley, the city filed suit with families of murder victims, claiming the gun industry was to blame for Chicagos violence. The suit accused gun manufacturers of blanketing the city and its suburbs with guns.

It took six years to get the case to the state Supreme Court, which in 2004 ruled against Daley. In 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court then ruled in a landmark case against Chicagos ban on handguns. During the many years of court battles, the NRA and the right perpetuated the idea of Black-on-Black crime, a racist trope that has been used to instill fear especially in suburban white communities.

It became a political fight, a distraction, said Gary Slutkin, CEO and founder of Cure Violence Global, a Chicago-based group that trains residents to stop violence in their own communities. Each side blamed the other and neither properly stepped forward to find a solution.

Slutkin sees a similar political battle being waged in the middle of trying to control the Covid-19 pandemic. The political fight is a distraction from solving the problem, he said.

Three months from a general election, Trump is trying to energize the same suburban white communities that the NRA focused on years ago. One of the gun lobbys targets has long been the citys gun possession laws and how they differ from other cities.

It's really in Chicago that they're saying, Look, you do have all these strict gun control laws, and it's not actually doing anything about crime. So you shouldn't put restrictions on guns, said Nicole Hemmer, author of Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics.

Trump himself has falsely claimed that the city has a handgun ban, citing it as a reason the city is soft on guns, when in fact Illinois allows concealed carry.

Chicago also became a useful tool of deflection from other mass shootings over the past decades, such as Sandy Hook, the Las Vegas Strip and Pulse Nightclub, Hemmer said.

Whenever one of these mass shootings happens, it moves public sentiment towards gun control, she said. And so talking about Chicago is a way of deflecting the conversation.

Read the rest here:

Trumps Chicago theater: Guns, violence and a conservative offensive - Yahoo News

Everywhere and nowhere: The many layers of ‘cancel culture’ – Minneapolis Star Tribune

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NEW YORK So you've probably read a lot about "cancel culture." Or know about a new poll that shows a plurality of Americans disapproving of it. Or you may have heard about a letter in Harper's Magazine condemning censorship and intolerance.

But can you say exactly what "cancel culture" is? Some takes:

"It seems like a buzzword that creates more confusion than clarity," says the author and journalist George Packer, who went on to call it "a mechanism where a chorus of voices, amplified on social media, tries to silence a point of view that they find offensive by trying to damage or destroy the reputation of the person who has given offense."

"I don't think it's real. But there are reasonable people who believe in it," says the author, educator and sociologist Tressie McMillan Cottom. "From my perspective, accountability has always existed. But some people are being held accountable in ways that are new to them. We didn't talk about 'cancel culture' when someone was charged with a crime and had to stay in jail because they couldn't afford the bail."

"'Cancel culture' tacitly attempts to disable the ability of a person with whom you disagree to ever again be taken seriously as a writer/editor/speaker/activist/intellectual, or in the extreme, to be hired or employed in their field of work," says Letty Cottin Pogrebin, the author, activist and founding editor of Ms. magazine.

"It means different things to different people," says Ben Wizner, director of the ACLU's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project.

In tweets, online letters, opinion pieces and books, conservatives, centrists and liberals continue to denounce what they call growing intolerance for opposing viewpoints and the needless ruining of lives and careers. A Politico/Morning Consult poll released last week shows 44% of Americans disapprove of it, 32% approve and the remaining 24% had no opinion or didn't know what it was.

For some, "cancel culture" is the coming of the thought police. For others, it contains important chances to be heard that didn't exist before.

Recent examples of unpopular "cancellations" include the owner of a chain of food stores in Minneapolis whose business faced eviction and calls for boycotts because of racist social media posts by his then-teenage daughter, and a data analyst fired by the progressive firm Civis Analytics after he tweeted a study finding that nonviolent protests increase support for Democratic candidates and violent protests decrease it. Civis Analytics has denied he was fired for the tweet.

"These incidents damage the lives of innocent people without achieving any noble purpose," Yascha Mounk wrote in The Atlantic last month. Mounk himself has been criticized for alleging that "an astonishing number of academics and journalists proudly proclaim that it is time to abandon values like due process and free speech."

Debates can be circular and confusing, with those objecting to intolerance sometimes openly uncomfortable with those who don't share their views. A few weeks ago, more than 100 artists and thinkers endorsed a letter co-written by Packer and published by Harper's. It warned against a "new set of moral attitudes and political commitments that tend to weaken our norms of open debate and toleration of differences in favor of ideological conformity."

The letter drew signatories from many backgrounds and political points of view, ranging from the far-left Noam Chomsky to the conservative David Frum, and was a starting point for contradiction.

The writer and trans activist Jennifer Finney Boylan, who signed the letter, quickly disowned it because she "did not know who else" had attached their names. Although endorsers included Salman Rushdie, who in 1989 was forced into hiding over death threats from Iranian Islamic leaders because of his novel "The Satanic Verses," numerous online critics dismissed the letter as a product of elitists who knew nothing about censorship.

One of the organizers of the letter, the writer Thomas Chatterton Williams, later announced on Twitter that he had thrown a guest out of his home over criticisms of letter-supporter Bari Weiss, the New York Times columnist who recently quit over what she called a Twitter-driven culture of political correctness. Another endorser, "Harry Potter" author J.K. Rowling, threatened legal action against a British news site that suggested she was transphobic after referring to controversial tweets that she has written in recent months.

"The only speech these powerful people seem to care about is their own," the author and feminist Jessica Valenti wrote in response to the Harper's letter. "('Cancel culture' ) is certainly not about free speech: After all, an arrested journalist is never referred to as 'canceled,' nor is a woman who has been frozen out of an industry after complaining about sexual harassment. 'Canceled' is a label we all understand to mean a powerful person who's been held to account."

"Cancel culture" is hard to define, in part because there is nothing confined about it no single cause, no single ideology, no single fate for those allegedly canceled.

Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby, convicted sex offenders, are in prison. Former television personality Charlie Rose has been unemployable since allegations of sexual abuse and harassment were published in 2017-18. Oscar winner Kevin Spacey has made no films since he faced allegations of harassment and assault and saw his performance in "All the Money in the World" replaced by Christopher Plummer's.

Others are only partially "canceled." Woody Allen, accused by daughter Dylan Farrow of molesting her when she was 7, was dropped by Amazon, his U.S. film distributor, but continues to release movies overseas. His memoir was canceled by Hachette Book Group, but soon acquired by Skyhorse Publishing, which also has a deal with the previously "canceled" Garrison Keillor. Sirius XM announced last week that the late Michael Jackson, who seemed to face posthumous cancellation after the 2019 documentary "Leaving Neverland" presented extensive allegations that he sexually abused boys, would have a channel dedicated to his music.

Cancellation in one subculture can lead to elevation in others. Former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick has not played an NFL game since 2016 and has been condemned by President Donald Trump and many others on the right after he began kneeling during the National Anthem to protest "a country that oppresses black people and people of color." But he has appeared in Nike advertisements, been honored by the ACLU and Amnesty International and reached an agreement with the Walt Disney Co. for a series about his life.

"You can say the NFL canceled Colin Kaepernick as a quarterback and that he was resurrected as a cultural hero," says Julius Bailey, an associate professor of philosophy at Wittenberg University who writes about Kaepernick in his book "Racism, Hypocrisy and Bad Faith."

In politics, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam, a Democrat, remains in his job 1 1/2 years after acknowledging he appeared in a racist yearbook picture while in college. Sen. Al Franken, a Democrat from Minnesota, resigned after multiple women alleged he had sexually harassed them, but Lt. Governor Justin Fairfax of Virginia defied orders to quit after two women accused him of sexual assault.

Sometimes even multiple allegations of sexual assault, countless racist remarks and the disparagement of wounded military veterans aren't enough to induce cancellation. Trump, a Republican, has labeled cancel culture "far-left fascism" and "the very definition of totalitarianism" while so far proving immune to it.

"Politicians can ride this out because they were hired by the public. And if the public is willing to go along, then they can sometimes survive things perhaps they shouldn't survive," Packer says.

"I think you can say that Trump's rhetoric has had a boomerang effect on the rest of our society," says PEN America CEO Suzanne Nossel, who addresses free expression in her book "Dare to Speak," which comes out next week. "People on the left feel that he can get away with anything, so they do all they can to contain it elsewhere."

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Everywhere and nowhere: The many layers of 'cancel culture' - Minneapolis Star Tribune

Taibbi, Harper’s and the Intellectual Dark Web – CounterPunch.org – CounterPunch

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Just a day before the Harpers Open Letter appeared on July 7th, Osita Nwanevu wrote an article for The New Republic on The Willful Blindness of Reactionary Liberalism that made Matt Taibbi sound as if his name would show up there the next day. Indeed, in a convivial Rolling Stone podcast that Taibbi and his partner Katie Halper did with Thomas Chatterton Williams, the godfather of the letter regretted that he didnt have Taibbis email address otherwise he would have been invited.

Nwenevus article addressed the widespread assault on identity politics that makes it sound like the greatest threat to American democracy is diversity training seminars by Robin Diangelo, the author of White Fragility. Indeed, Matt Taibbi describedthe philosophy behind her book as positively Hitlerian.

This furor over cancel culture or what used to be called political correctness is not exactly new. I saw it as early as 1991 when Nat Hentoff was on the warpath against efforts to reduce racism at universities and the media, just as is happening today:

For 2 1/2 years, I have been interviewing students and professors across the country for a book Im writing on assaults by orthodoxies right and left on freedom of expression. Many specific incidents of political correctness with names have been printed in this column from those interviews.

One very bright young man at Brown, for example, told me he finally gave up offering his questions on affirmative action like What has it done for poor blacks? in class. He got tired of being called a racist, in and out of the room.

Just in case you hadnt noticed, Donald Trumps campaign was filled with tirades against political correctness. And after cancel culture became a ubiquitous buzzword, Trump made sure to take a stand against it. If you can spot any difference between the Harpers letter and his speech at Mount Rushmore, Id be amazed:

One of their political weapons is Cancel Culture driving people from their jobs, shaming dissenters, and demanding total submission from anyone who disagrees. This is the very definition of totalitarianism, and it is completely alien to our culture and our values, and it has absolutely no place in the United States of America.

Taibbi and Halper asked Williams to define canceling. He replied that there are two aspects, both often rooted in Twitter aggressions. The first might result in someone being fired from a job because they were politically incorrect, although it seems that JK Rowling neednt worry. Williams assured his hosts that he wrote the letter to protect those who were not so nearly as famous and powerful. While everybody should take a stand against people losing a job for their political beliefs, it struck Katie Halper as odd that Williams would have included Cary Nelson. Nelson campaigned for the firing of Steven Salaita in one of the most notorious cancellations of the past ten years. Williams begged off on that choice, saying that he knew nothing about Nelson beforehand. He trusted the judgment of his cohorts. Sure, why look too deeply into inconsistencies when a noble defense of free speech took priority.

More problematic was Williamss notion that canceling can put someone outside of polite, liberal society. By stigmatizing someone like Bari Weiss through repeated tweets, she ends up as a modern-day Hester Prynne with a scarlet letter. Taibbi was furious with how woke N.Y. Times reporters mounted a vendetta against her. It left the editorial page impoverished with its readers ending up with a picture of the world thats incomplete. Does Taibbi mourn the loss of her racist attacks on Palestinians and their supporters in the BDS movement? His silence during the exchange between Halper and Williams on Cary Nelson does make you wonder.

The overarching question is whether stigmatizing someone isnt just part of the battleground of ideas. When Max Blumenthal mysteriously began defending Basher al-Assad after attending an RT gala in Moscow, there were many tweets that canceled him, even leading to bookstores disinviting him from a reading. At the time, Blumenthals allies called this McCarthyism though neither the government nor the corporate elite had any interest in his book tour one way or the other. Blumenthal spoke for most of the left at the time, meriting red carpet treatment on the Taibbi and Halper podcast. If you have the slightest familiarity with left politics, youll realize that canceling has been around since the early 1900s. As long as it occurs only in heated polemics rather than firing squads, Id argue that it is essential.

Taibbi continued with his publicity campaign against the cancel culture. His next stop was a podcast with Bret Weinstein, an ex-professor at Evergreen State College in Washington and a victim of cancel culture, at least in his own eyes. In 2017, Weinstein, who was teaching biology there, clashed with minority students and faculty over a yearly day of remembrance, when they would stay off campus to highlight their contributions to the college. That year, the minority asked white students and professors to take part in a role reversal. They would remain off campus to discuss racism and the minorities would attend class on campus. Weinstein wrote an open letter denouncing this change as an act of oppression since it made a virtual demand for whites to stay away.

In the opening moments of their conversation, Taibbi repented for not making a big stink over Weinsteins ostracism and eventual resignation from Evergreen over student protests. Suing the school for $3.8 million in damage, Weinstein walked away with only a half-million.

One wonders if Taibbi looked into the case against Weinstein made by three Evergreen professors that year on Huffington Post titled Another Side of The Evergreen State College Story. One of them was Zoltan Grossman, who has written dozens of articles for CounterPunch over the years. The three make an essential point:

In order for a propaganda campaign to succeed, it needs a Big Lie. At Evergreen, the Big Lie is that Evergreens Day of Absence demonstrated reverse racism as whites were forced to leave campus because of the color of their skin. It is stunning to us how often this alternative fact has been repeated until it has become unchallenged truth. The truth is that the Day of Absence has long been an accepted and voluntary practice at Evergreen. On the Day of Absence, people of color who chose to do so generally attended an off-campus event, while whites who chose to participate stayed on campus to attend lectures, workshops and discussions about how race and racism shape social structures and everyday life.

Once they got past the Evergreen business, Weinstein and Taibbi settled into a litany of how bad things have gotten in the U.S. because of uppity anti-racist students dragging the country down. They struck me as two middle-aged men ready to write a book titled The Decline of the U.S. after the fashion of Oswald Spengler. They probably could make good money writing such a book since there is always a market for screeds against political correctness, identity politics, and that sort of thing. Usually written by conservatives like Allan Bloom (The Closing of the American Mind), they also have their liberal counterparts like Todd Gitlin, who wrote The Twilight of Common Dreams: Why America is Wracked by Culture Wars in 1996.

Gitlin, who signed the Harpers letter, described himself in the book as sympathetic to blacks but was distressed by their retreat into what he felt were self-absorbed, symbolic politics, according to a N.Y. Times review. He wrote that few political campaigns are launched against the impoverishment of the cities and that The diversity rhetoric of identity politics short-circuits the necessary discussion of what ought to be done about all the dying out there. He had come to the same conclusions as Adolph Reed Jr., who also got the red-carpet treatment from Taibbi and Halper.

Weinstein gushed over Taibbis long record of courageous journalism as if writing take-downs of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump risked a jail term. Yes, Taibbi is entertaining, but how far can you go stating the obvious, even if scabrously. Id prefer a little less scabrousness and a lot more economic analysis. Thats one of the reasons I stopped reading Taibbi after the good old vampire squid days ended.

What stopped me in my tracks during the interview was Taibbi calling for an all-out crusade against a culture that was inimical to freedom, enlightenment values and the core ideas of our American experiment. Listening to this, I began to wonder if Taibbi wrote Trumps Mount Rushmore speech rather than Stephen Miller.

We had to protect this great experiment against men like Lenin, whose greatest fault, according to Taibbi, was a lack of a sense of humor. In one of his Sovietologist tomes, Adam Ulam dwelt at length about this flaw, something that helped Taibbi steer clear of anything smacking of Bolshevism. Unlike Lenin, Taibbi has a great sense of humor. Politics, not so much.

Taibbi compared BLM type activists to Lenins little clan of super-motivated Bolsheviks who were never going to go anywhere because they were tiny. They came across as nuts to the Russians, including the more sensible socialists in Russia who saw things like Bernie Sanders rather than the ruthless and joke-averse V.I. Lenin. The Bolsheviks were victorious in 1917, only because they had a way of thinking difficult to counter in an institutional setting. Really? I always thought it had to do with hunger and a war that had cost the lives of over two million soldiers. But what do I know? Ive never read Adam Ulam.

Weinstein then raised the stakes on the kind of danger cancel culture presented. Yes, it could lead to Bolshevism, but other even worse scenarios could unfold. The people writing nasty tweets about JK Rowling or Bari Weiss could be the incubators for the same sort of genocides Nazi Germany, Rwanda and Cambodia suffered. Like the fearless anti-fascists of Weimar Germany, Matt Taibbi and Thomas Chatterton are the only men capable of stopping mobs ready to beat up Jews. Bari Weiss must thank her lucky stars that she has such courageous defenders of enlightenment values on her side.

After spending what seemed like an eternity listening to Taibbi and Weinstein telling each other how great they were, I decided to learn a bit more about Weinstein. It turns out that he is a member in good standing of the Intellectual Dark Web, a term that Bret Weinsteins brother Eric coined. Eric Weinstein is the managing director of Peter Thiels private equity firm. You might remember Thiel for his vendetta against the Gawker website that outed him as gay. Writing for the Cato Institute, Thiel blamed welfare and women getting the vote for making capitalist democracy into an oxymoron. He is also the author of The Diversity Myth, a book that blames political correctness and multiculturalism for the decline of higher education.

Eric and Bret Weinstein are prime movers in the Intellectual Dark Web, whose ideas appear in Quillette. This I.D.W. outlet once asked the question why Jordan Peterson did not make it to a list of the worlds top fifty intellectuals. No one else did, of course. Unsurprisingly, Quillette has embraced the Harpers Open Letter, claiming that it stands in the tradition of John Stuart Mill. Mill is famous for invoking the marketplace of ideas, a concept that is distinctly at odds with A.J. Lieblings insight that freedom of the press belongs to those who own one. Given the roost Harpers signatories enjoy at prestigious magazines and newspapers, one can understand why they are so willing to give free advice. Let others start their own periodicals like Ariana Huffington. No money? No problem. Just use social media even if it pisses off liberals.

The Intellectual Dark Web got a big boost when Bari Weiss wrote an op-ed piece hyping a development that dovetailed with her agenda. She wrote:

Here are some things that you will hear when you sit down to dinner with the vanguard of the Intellectual Dark Web: There are fundamental biological differences between men and women. Free speech is under siege. Identity politics is a toxic ideology that is tearing American society apart. And were in a dangerous place if these ideas are considered dark.

She quoted Eric Weinstein: You have to understand that the I.D.W. emerged as a response to a world where perfectly reasonable intellectuals were being regularly mislabeled by activists, institutions and mainstream journalists with every career-ending epithet from Islamophobe to Nazi. This claim, of course, is made by Taibbi and the Harpers Open Letter.

Weiss also pays tribute to Joe Rogan, whose podcasts reach millions. If you have the patience to sit through the Taibbi-Weinstein lovefest, youll note that Weinstein considers Rogan and Taibbi as two of the most fearless and capable defenders of the great American experiment. Taibbi felt flattered by this salute. Maybe he wasnt aware of the controversy Rogan was embroiled in about a month ago. A video surfaced with him laughing at a friends story about coercing a woman into giving him oral sex. The Independentquoted an exchange from Rogans podcast:

Recalling a woman performing oral sex on him in the Comedy Store in California, Diaz says: You think Im fucking kidding? Yeah, youve got to suck my dick to get up to [venue] the Belly Room. Ill make a call for you. Thats the fucking gateway into Hollywood, everybody knows that.

Rogan then asks: How many girls did you have do that? To which Diaz replies: 20. Rogan bursts out laughing and claps his hands.

I imagine that Taibbi got a big laugh out of this since it reminded him of his days at the eXile, a Russian English-language magazine that put out the same kind of garbage regularly. It had graphic descriptions of women being raped and humiliated, something Taibbi would later describe as only fictional and satirical.

What wasnt fictional was Taibbis nasty attacks on female correspondents in Moscow who had gotten on his and his pal Mark Amess wrong side. The Washington Post reported on their antics, including Taibbis disgusting reference to Kathy Lally, the author of the article The two expat bros who terrorized women correspondents in Moscow. If there was anything satirical about this, I for one couldnt see it:

When I wrote an article about advertisements that used sex to sell cigarettes new for Russia Taibbi addressed my Baltimore Sun editors in his eXile column: Lallys article is pathological, illogical, inaccurate, makes no point, and is insulting and hypocritical besides. ... Lallys gaffes may be comic, the wild meanderings of an aging woman nearing derangement. Once, the eXile declared me the winner of its Gnarliest Elephantine Ass on a Journalist With No Ethics Award. Another time, it published a cartoon showing me in bed with my editor.

In a conversation he had with Reason Magazines Nick Gillespie, this kind of misogynism came up. Taibbi naturally regretted having said things like this even though you get the feeling that he remains nostalgic for the time when political correctness wasnt such a hamper to the funny stuff that Lenin would never have published in Iskra.

Back in the mid-2000s, I used to catch Taibbi on the Don Imus show when the local Pacifica station became too ponderous. They got along famously, especially when Taibbi opened up on some lying politician. Imus, like Taibbi, was a notorious bad boy and much less worried about offending people. After all, thats what shock jocks do. In 2007, Imus resigned after referring to the mostly Black Rutgers womens basketball team as a bunch of nappy-headed whores. Thats a victim of cancel culture, no? If it were up to Taibbi and the Intellectual Dark Web, restrictions on speech would be relaxed even if it made Black people hurt. This is what the culture clash is all about in the long run. Oppressed people have the right to challenge and overcome the racism that has haunted the U.S. since 1619, even if it pisses off powerful liberals.

Originally posted here:

Taibbi, Harper's and the Intellectual Dark Web - CounterPunch.org - CounterPunch

What Journalism Is, and Isnt – Jewish Week

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In the Venn diagram that is my professional world journalism, Jewishness and New Yorkiness the red-hot overlap belongs to Bari Weiss, until recently a writer and editor on The New York Times opinion pages. Before coming to The Times in 2017 as a putative contrarian voice, Weiss, now 35, cut her teeth on pro-Israel activism and Jewish journalism. When she announced her resignation earlier this month, it was a sensation among journalists, but also among Jews on the right and the left.

The Jewish right reviles The Times Israel coverage. They lamented the loss of what they consider one of its few pro-Israel voices (Weiss, the author of a recent book on anti-Semitism, claimed that her colleagues mocked her for writing too often about Israel) and a bulwark against political correctness. In her scorching public resignation letter, Weiss accused her bosses and colleagues of liberal groupthink.

Her liberal Jewish critics have accused her of sloppiness, hypocrisy and disingenuousness, saying she promoted discredited conservative ideas under the guise of free speech, blurred distinctions between anti-Semitic and anti-Israel rhetoric, and sought to cancel writers with whom she has tussled.

From where I sit, rarely did the things she write and commission deserve the attacks she attracted (only among New York Twitterati, many suggest, would her centrist views be seen as far right). Even when I disagreed with Weiss, I looked forward to reading her. Id rather argue animatedly over something she wrote than nod with boredom over someone I always agree with. But she courted and welcomed controversy, and often her words and assignments seemed calculated to provoke exactly the reactions she now decries.

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The Weiss affair is tied up in current debates over wokeness, free speech, liberalism and, in Weiss case, gender and Israel politics. But one thing her resignation is not about is the death of American journalism, despite peoples efforts to portray it that way. Journalism is not the latest social media argument over this or that op-ed or tweet and whether it should have run or been written. Journalism is rarely what they are doing on cable news after 8 p.m., when panels of like-minded people agree to agree.

Andrew Silow-Carroll

The New York Times opinion section is journalism, of course, but only of a singular, if highly influential, kind. Like the paper itself, it tends to overshadow the more typical work of the thousands of reporters, editors and broadcasters who are trying to provide us with the diet of information that is essential to a healthy, functioning society.

So whats journalism? Its the small-town reporters who write up the days events, hold officials accountable and capture those moments a school honor, a retirement celebration suitable for framing, as Dan Barry recently put it. That these reporters are disappearing is a bigger blow to our democracy than the resignation of a celebrity pundit.

Journalism is the solid, dogged investigative work being done by nonprofits on everything from toxic chemicals in the environment to the opioid crisis to what it means to live on the minimum wage.

Journalism is about gaining access for us, the citizens to a massive federal database on coronavirus cases, and describing what it reveals about racial inequalities, as The Times did earlier this year.

Journalism is exposing a governments typically misleading statements, as Vox did in determining that U.S. Park Police did indeed use tear gas to disperse a crowd protesting outside the White House.

Journalism uncovers the true story behind a Republican presidents complex and deceptive finances (again, The Times) and behind a Democratic-led citys failed efforts to help its Black residents deal with the pandemic (The Washington Post, in an expos about its hometown).

Its the kind of storytelling that makes you take an interest in something through delightful writing and deep reporting that you never, ever thought youd care about. In other words, every issue of The New Yorker.

And at the risk of bragging, its the deeply knowing ethnic reporting done by my indefatigable colleagues at The Jewish Week, whether it is exposing sexual abuse in our community, chronicling the American-Jewish response to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or helping readers find essential services and solace in the midst of a global health and economic crisis.

Thats not to say every medium is firing on all these cylinders every day. Mistakes and biases sometimes creep into news stories, or newsrooms dont always treat their staff as they should.

But journalism is essential to our reeling republic. Luckily there are lots of good people still in the game, going out there and finding the facts and shining light in dark corners. They do their jobs well, and often without fanfare, and sometimes at great risk to their own lives, and we are a better society for it. Dont let Twitter tell you any different.

***

The July 31 issue of The Jewish Week will be the last in print while we explore our options, digital and otherwise, going forward. To all the readers who have written to mourn the loss of print, Ill say this: I agree with you. But given our growing deficit and shrinking revenues it would have been irresponsible to continue publishing a print edition. We will use our hiatus to create a new model that will satisfy our loyal readers and find new audiences as well. In the meantime, thank you for supporting a storied Jewish newspaper, and welcome to the next chapter in Jewish journalism.

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What Journalism Is, and Isnt - Jewish Week

Police Are The Real Cancel Culture – CounterPunch.org – CounterPunch

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Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

You can jail a Revolutionary, but you cant jail the Revolution.

Fred Hampton

As much as academics, celebrities,

friends or anti-capitalists may fret about being deplatformed in various

ways what about activists and unhoused people deplatformed of their

presence and existence by curfews and cops repression?

Tranquil Enes

getting canceled is what happend to heros like Steve Biko. Getting roasted for a Luke warm centrist/fascist take isnt getting canceled, its getting cuckholded

Austin Sankaran

What say the millions of jailed black and brown Americans to the fret over cancel culture? If they could say anything, we would know. But the real cancellation of black lives cannot be ignored as we attempt to assert a white opinion cosmopolitanism. How many Americans are canceled because of their neighborhood or their lack of one? How many Americans have had their literal lives canceled during coronavirus because they cant afford health care or cant afford to not work? How many immigrants are canceled because they cant even report this virus without being deported or caged? How many are canceled because of their record sheet or even specifically their race? Trans folks are canceled with near universality. Women dont have to worry about their abusers being canceled, they have to worry about the opposite. When was the last time a cop was canceled for murder? When was the last time a billionaire was canceled for slavery or ecocide?

The gambit by the right wing is that by pointing to liberal, yet authoritarian ruling class cultural institutions they can claim persecution when in fact the political and economic forces under this oligarchy increasingly favor the right to the point that it is nearing hegemony. Unfortunately, some on the left buy into this corporate cultural identification and fail to prioritize the class war against people of color on the ground. People of color and their allies are being canceled by bullets. Right now. Corporations who embrace cancel culture rejoice and collaborate in this class stratification through racial violence. Corporations may say they want to cancel bigotry but they really want to cancel the radical underclass by any means necessary.

The law is a paradox and merely a reproduction of the class hierarchy in a society with massive inequality. This is why I cant claim to be an ideologue but merely a person interested in the material consequences. The rich have too many police protecting them but not enough cops on the corporate crime beat. The opposite is true for the poor. Likewise the defunding of the police who generally police the poor through violence and jail will only work if we also find some way to hold the rich who cause poverty to be somehow held accountable. This is why we lose absolutely nothing by defunding the police. A new order will be formed. But it will be one that holds the corporate thieves accountable rather than locks up millions of black and brown folks because of the color of their skin.

The United States is a police state with mass incarceration. It has both occupying armies and slave cells to put in those who do not comply with the state. Similar use of force is used through a bloated military budget around the world. While the world is always on the verge of collapse amidst the class contractions of cruel survival for some and absurd excess for others we have the police as a force who cancels any resistance. These police arent on Twitter because they arent suppressing sketchy white twitter people. They have bigger fish to fry. A serious job of containing the underclass who doesnt believe in any of the shit coming from either the corporate duopoly or its cultural apparatus.

Those upset about cancel culture make the mistake of believing in said corporate structure. The underclass are canceled not because of what they say but because of who they are. Blue Lives Matter and cancel culture rhetoric is a defense of jobs that do not fit with their own ideals because of these class contractions and the limitations of democratization of any institution under austerity neoliberal regimes. Black Lives Matter and the states repression of it deals with the barbarity of being a person of the underclass in these times.

I am willing to accept that all of the trends in our society are related to the crumbling Empire, rapidly deteriorating ecosphere and the resulting heightening of class contradictions. I am willing to accept that just as police and the military have become more militarized to suppress the expression of the people neglected by the state, the media too has become a place less tolerant of dissent.

I am also to a point willing to accept the class reductionists claim that co-optation in the form of liberalism is one tactic used to subdue the real class crisis. But who is this propaganda working on? Or perhaps more importantly, how many people would actually classify as leftists in any traditional sense? What we have is a new order on the ground, one that is quite frankly not concerned by cancel culture because the cancellation of real protestors is not just cultural but also material.

The left can avoid getting stuck in a series of meta-narratives by simply saying cancel culture may be unfortunate but it is part of a broader problem of cancellation done by the state not because of political correctness but because of political necessity. The only way to satisfy the racist Republican base is law and order and the only way for Democrats to join in with the politics of austerity and war is to also join in with the law and order of suppressing their own base. This is why Democrats simply dont care that black and Latino people cant vote in this country. If they could the Republican Party would be toast and the Democrats would have to answer for what they do.

Why are people in cancel culture canceled? For some famous people its because they did something racist or sexually harassed somebody. For some like Adolph Reed or Meghan Murphy it is because they arent part of the consensus but clearly are part of the left we should have solidarity with even in disagreement. While we dont always give these people a fair trial it is also true that unless someone from the ground exposes them the corporate state doesnt really want to cancel them. Has cancel culture hurt our intellectual culture? Sure it has but doesnt it relate to a larger problem of solving problems through punishment and isnt cherry-picking the petty liberal cancellations buying into the right-wing narrative that liberalism is itself a repressive cultural apparatus that it is the cause for our problems? Isnt all of this shifting attention away from a non-ideological corporate oligarchy that doesnt believe in anything precisely because its language is force?

Real resistance is met with a real authoritarian state. We have seen this recently. Black people have always been the leaders of the struggle against the last protectors of the corporate state. Many black folks get it more right than white folks because there is no democracy for them to believe in precisely because they were never included in it.

Lets be honest about it. A black radical who can organize is killed in this country. Thats just the facts. Sure we may want an open discourse in society but it never has existed. If youre serious about taking on Empire and the corporations it protects, theyll kill you if they need to. The deadly force used against protesters recently is part of this tradition.

So the question to me isnt so much about free speech because even in this so-called free country the language of freedom itself has never been permitted. Bigotry may be canceled but the genocide of black people isnt. If such a contradiction exists how much can we even value the pure discourse? This is not to underestimate the power of true pedagogy and education. But this teaching is so much more than freedom of speech. Its about citizenship and critical thinking.

If we simply want a variety of opinions to be respected I again have to ask isnt this just a reproduction of the supposedly hegemonic liberalism that accepts diversity but never deals with class inequality? Because if we want the New York Times to add a left face and a right face to their multitudes of centrist ones isnt that just more diversity?

What we need is to organize first and accept debate and disagreement as part of a healthy left. Whether or not we agree hardly matters and therefore putting it as our primary right seems to be wrong. What we need to do is find other people who share our same goals and get together with them to achieve them.

This idea that everyone gets their own opinion is fine but its more or less a reproduction of the individualism of neoliberalism. When Fred Hampton was murdered it wasnt because he was a contrarian. It was because he organized people together under a common interest.

We have to be careful not to diminish the variety of ways human beings express themselves and how important art and music and literature is to any movement or any free life. However, if politics is a form of this aesthetic rather than the product of it then we have it backward. Art should inform our politics. Politics shouldnt be our art.

Politics at the end of the day is about community coming together to assert its class interest in the face of oppression. It involves putting yourself second. Anything less than that leaves a movement divided and weak. Part of the left project must be convincing people that the project of emancipation is bigger than any one of us.

Cancel culture may be a threat to this solidarity but it is only a product of a larger apparatus of repression of dissent. Resistance then is far more than resisting the hegemonic values embedded in corporate political correctness. It involves resisting the hegemonic corporate power expressed in material politics. Discourse alienated from the struggle on the ground is only used as a distraction from or apology for the brutality of the state.

The work on the frontlines then is this resistance to the police and the austerity politics they defend. Getting a word in may be possible down the line but until we address the true hegemony of Empire and corporatism upon the working poor and the environment I see the free speech debate as a distraction from the fundamental economic forces driving the repression of not only white voices in the left press but black bodies in the street. This is why I say give up the ideology and do the political work and we will see what real cancel culture looks like.

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Police Are The Real Cancel Culture - CounterPunch.org - CounterPunch