First Mover: Bitcoin Shows Signs of Life But Ether (And Crew) Steal the Limelight – CoinDesk – CoinDesk

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In the race to become the dominant cryptocurrency platform, Ethereum is gaining on Bitcoin.

Take a look at the market capitalization of ether, the native token of the Ethereum blockchain. Currently, the value stands at about $26 billion. But that figure doesnt include all of the digital assets built atop the Ethereum blockchain, including some of this years hottest tokens:stablecoinslike tether and USDC and altcoins likeCrypto.coms CRO, Chainlinks LINK, CompoundsCOMPand KybersKNC.

Youre readingFirst Mover, CoinDesks daily markets newsletter. Assembled by the CoinDesk Markets Team, First Mover starts your day with the most up-to-date sentiment around crypto markets, which of course never close, putting in context every wild swing in bitcoin and more. We follow the money so you dont have to. You cansubscribe here.

The combined value of those ERC-20-standard tokens is alsoaround $26 billion, according to the data provider Messari. That puts the market capitalization of the Ethereum ecosystem at more than $50 billion closer to bitcoins $170 billion than if ether were considered alone.

The comparison shows how the rapid pace of development this year on Ethereum has brought the blockchains ecosystem closer to challenging Bitcoin. The value gap narrowed overthe past month as bitcoins price stagnated,while demand for stablecoins and a flurry of activity in decentralized finance, known as DeFi, has ignited the value of Ethereum and the tokens that depend on it.

DeFi tokens continue their bull run, cryptocurrency analysis firm TradeBlock wrote Monday in aweekly commentary.

Messari, a digital-asset data firm, said in a report thatthe Ethereum blockchains daily settlement value recently surged to about $2.5 billion, surpassing Bitcoins for the first time since at least early 2019.

Ethereum has blown past Bitcoin, Ryan Watkins, a Messari analyst, wrote in the post on Monday. With the increasing amount of economic activity taking place on Ethereum, this trend is unlikely to reverse anytime soon, if ever.

Its the latest chapter in the competition among projects to attain critical mass in the cryptocurrency industry. For entrepreneurs and investors in the space, the goal is to establish networks and projects with enough name recognition, credibility and functionality to scale quickly if and when mass adoption comes.Bitcoin, the oldest and largest cryptocurrency, attracted most of the hype early in 2020 as some analysts predicted a once-every-four-years event known as the blockchains halving could send prices to $90,000. Bitcoin got another bluster of endorsements as the spreading coronavirus slammed the global economy, sending traditional markets plunging and prompting the Federal Reserve and other big central banks to createtrillions of dollars of freshmoney.

Many investors predicted that the money injections would debase the dollars purchasing power, driving up theprice of bitcoin. Yet over the past couple months, bitcoins price has stagnated below $10,000, and even its notoriousvolatility has withered prompting fickle crypto traders to seek faster-moving action.

Bitcoin has been stuck in a tight trading range for weeks, boring for a market that used to be known for itsthrills. However, there are signs Tuesday that an expected big move may be building.

Still, Ethers price is up 81% in 2020 to $237, almost three times bitcoins 30% year-to-date gain.

Steve Ehrlich, CEO of publicly traded cryptocurrency brokerage firm Voyager Digital, says bitcoin has accounted for about 15%oftrading volumes so far in July, down from about 60% prior to the May halving.

Weve seen a tremendous change in our retail customerbehaviors, Ehrlich said Monday in a phone interview. Whenbitcoin is extremely flat in the marketplace, people are looking at other tokens.

In terms of name recognition and popularity outside of the crypto industry, Bitcoin still dominates. According to a report last week from the trading platform eToro and data provider The TIE, only four stories about DeFiappeared in June in non-crypto news sources, versus some 200 about bitcoin.

There is a growing realization though that the 2020 DeFi hype may be overdone, Mati Greenspan, founder of the cryptocurrency and foreign-exchange analysis firmQuantum Economics, wrote Monday in an e-mail to subscribers.

Denis Vinokourov, head of research at the London-based cryptocurrency prime brokerBequant, said that ethereum risks becoming a victim of its own success, activity inthe tokens built atop the blockchain are driving up transaction fees.

This resurgence in the network performance has come with a raft of undesired consequences, Vinokourov wrote in emailed remarks.

And Jimmy Song, a well-known bitcoin developer and promoter, told the website CoinMarketCap in aninterview published last weekthat he thinks many DeFi projects will fail to live up to their decentralized billing because they almost always have to have some sort of back doorin case something goes wrong.

Its really just a form of gambling with limited upside for people that arent in control of the protocol, Song said.

For now, though, the Ethereum ecosystem is edging closer.

Jack Tan, of Taiwan-based quantitative firm Kronos Research, told CoinDesks Daniel Cawrey that he seesether hitting $500 by the end of this year. That would more than double ethers market capitalization, to say nothing of any potential increases in the value of ERC-20 tokens.

Ethereum the platform has done its job, the cryptocurrency investment firm Arca wrote Monday in a weeklyblog post.

Traders are apparently doing their jobs too following the action.

Tweet of the day

Bitcoin watch

BTC: Price: $9,347 (BPI) | 24-Hr High: $9,363 | 24-Hr Low: $9,152

Trend:Bitcoin is showing signs of life on Tuesday with prices trading above $9,340 at press time, representing a 1.9% gain on the day. Notably, the cryptocurrency hasnt witnessed an over 1% move since July 9.

The 4-hour chart shows the cryptocurrency has broken higher from the four-week-long narrowing price range. The breakout is backed by an above-50 or bullish reading on the relative strength index. Meanwhile, the MACD histogram is printing higher bars above the zero line, a sign the upward move may gather pace.

The immediate resistance at $9,480 a lower high created on July 9 could be put to test over the next few hours.

Acceptance above that level would confirm a Bollinger band (volatility indicator) breakout on the daily chart and may yield a rally to $10,000.

The bias would turn bearish if the cryptocurrency finds acceptance under $9,000. However, sellers have failed multiple times in the last two months to establish a foothold below that psychological support.

The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups.

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First Mover: Bitcoin Shows Signs of Life But Ether (And Crew) Steal the Limelight - CoinDesk - CoinDesk

Cryptocurrency firm KuCoin ‘shocked’ by Twitter hacking – The National

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A leading cryptocurrency exchange has voiced its concerns after hackers took over its Twitter account along with more than 100 others belonging to some of the worlds most influential people and companies.

KuCoin, which since being founded in 2017 has grown to become one of the worlds most popular crypto exchange services with five million users, lost control of its official Twitter account during the cyberattack this week.

For a company that depends on providing high levels of security to its users, the breach at Twitter was of particular concern.

A spokesman for the company, Jing Cheung, told The National: We are actually quite shocked at whats happening at Twitter.

As a crypto exchange, security is our top priority, he said.

We have implemented plenty of security mechanisms to protect account security. Thats why its hard to imagine such a hack could happen to Twitter.

The cyberattack is the biggest to have hit Twitter in its history.

Hackers are believed to have accessed Twitters internal systems to compromise the accounts of some of the platform's top voices, including US presidential candidate Joe Biden, reality TV star Kim Kardashian, former US president Barack Obama and billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, and use them to solicit digital currency.

The high-profile accounts that were hacked also included rapper Kanye West, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, investor Warren Buffett, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and the corporate accounts for Uber and Apple.

In its latest statement, Twitter said the hackers were able to gain control to a "small subset" of the targeted accounts and send tweets from them.

The FBI is leading an inquiry into the incident, with several US politicians also calling for an explanation of how it happened.

The investigative agency said that cyber attackers committed cryptocurrency fraud in the incident.

Freely available blockchain records show the apparent scammers received more than $100,000 (Dh367,000) worth of cryptocurrency.

KuCoin said it was working closely with Twitter to investigate the hacking which, it added, was handling the matter carefully and transparently.

The company said it was looking into using a new, decentralised social media channel using the same blockchain technology that protects cryptocurrency transactions to provide greater security.

Updated: July 17, 2020 08:54 PM

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Cryptocurrency firm KuCoin 'shocked' by Twitter hacking - The National

Telegrams TON Blockchain Project and GRAM Cryptocurrency Shelved – the blockchain land

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Many experts have regarded cryptocurrency as the future of money and finances around the world. These days, there are a lot of cryptocurrencies available online and more people are getting vested into these types of virtual currencies. Early this year, cryptocurrency has already earned over $155 billion market capitalization.

However, as more people invest their hard-earned money to this relatively new digital investment, cyber threats begin to arise in numbers as well. Bitcoin, the first cryptocurrency, and other virtual money are now susceptible to many cyber threats. In 2014, hackers ran off with about $487 million in bitcoins from Tokyos Mt. Gov exchange while the most prominent cryptocurrency hack that happened in 2018 costs around $534 million.

The risk lies in losing your crypto to a cyber theft that leaves no traces. Thats because governmental entities and central banks do not yet protect cryptocurrencies. Due to their decentralized nature, theres no centralized control over them, as is usually the case for fiat currencies. Cryptos cant be regulated like stock exchanges, which is one of the reasons governments have been skeptical towards them.

Therefore, if you own cryptocurrencies, its crucial to be aware of the risks of cyber-attacks. This is an extremely valid point for all our private data thats out on the internet. As a result of the growing number of people using the internet and the number of frauds and thefts that followed, there has also been a rise in the protection of privacy and data. If its to connect to your e-mail account, social media networks or even your favorite online streaming platform, there are authentication systems at work to protect you. So when it comes to cryptos, a form currency that is slowly growing in terms of adoption, there are already many ways you can protect yourself.

As you invest in cryptocurrency, you need to be on constant move and lookout of possible cyber-attacks and other cyber threats you might encounter. Here are some ways you can do to protect your cryptocurrency investment.

If you are starting to immerse yourself in the crypto world, do not invest everything at once. Doing this can draw attention to your end and have cybercriminals tagging behind you. Start making smaller trades instead to avoid cyber threats. This strategy will avoid putting yourself in the radar of hackers who are on the constant lookout for rich targets. This tactic can also be an excellent way to test yourself so you wont overextend yourself in your investment and exhaust your resources.

This method is probably similar to a piece of advice that you often hear when you make any standard investment. Experts always remind that you should not keep all of your eggs in one basket. As you begin to test the crypto waters, diversify your wallets and distribute your funds among them. You can always start with the most popular ones, such as Coinbase and Binance.

Cryptocurrency wallets are software programs that act as a digital wallet that store your virtual currencies. You can use it to send and receive cryptos and monitor their balance. When you put your money in different wallets, it would be safe to say that if one of them got stolen, you could still recover. It will not mean the end of the crypto adventure for you since the rest of your investment is safely allocated in different places.

Wallets are a much-needed tool in your cryptocurrency investment, so you need to make sure that you only use wallets from known sources. Crypto wallets come in two forms, hot wallets which can connect to the internet and cold wallets that are kept offline and come in types of hardware devices.

It is best also to learn the different types of crypto wallets, which include:

As cryptocurrency starts to be widely ventured by investors, the market has seen a growing number of wallets coming from less reputable companies. These wallets offer compelling features that are sometimes malware in disguise.

Most cybersecurity experts these days always remind people to use two-factor-authentication or 2FA to any of your online accounts. Using 2FA in your cryptocurrency investment accounts adds another second layer of security that helps protect your digital money. It should not only be done on your crypto wallet but also all your online accounts associated with your crypto investment.

When you enable 2FA, it will provide you with a 6-digit code or password through your e-mail or your mobile phone. These codes change within 30 seconds, which makes it hard for hackers and cybercriminals to crack.

Most cybercriminals get creative these days to steal online investment like cryptocurrency. Hackers can often use tempting ads that get users to click on them. Clicking on these ads would then signal a malware to install in your system.

To avoid this, you can install an ad blocker in your browser. This ad blocker extension will help you distinguish between safe ads from a malware-infested ad that hackers use. However, to be completely secure, it is better to avoid and refrain from clicking any advertisement you see on your browser.

It is a must to update your wallet and have it in the latest software. Should you fail to update it, theres a possibility that you expose your funds and investment. When this happens, hackers and cybercriminals can easily take advantage of it.

Closely monitor your mobile and desktop wallets for any updates. However, it would be best if when an update is available, do not rush to download it immediately. At least wait for 2-3 days before updating your wallet because some updates contain bugs when released. Developers can only get to know about it and clear it off when users give in their comments after utilizing the update.

Whenever you deal with money, its best to avoid doing it while connected to a public Wi-Fi. These public Wi-Fi-s may redirect your browser to a phishing version of a wallet or cryptocurrency exchange. Connecting to the unsecured networks can give hackers and cybercriminals a chance to access your mobile devices or laptop. They can collect your data, including your login credentials as well as your other confidential information.

As much as possible, do your online cryptocurrency business on your dedicated devices connected on a secured network. This can be your home Wi-Fi or your phones mobile data. This way, you can avoid any cyber threat that you may encounter on a public connection which can put your investment at risk.

Starting a cryptocurrency investment can be exciting and overwhelming; however keeping it safe from any cyber threats can be tricky, especially if you are new to it. Learn to turn these safety practices into daily habits, so you can be sure that your investment is well kept.

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How Can Cryptocurrenty Impact eCommerce

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Telegrams TON Blockchain Project and GRAM Cryptocurrency Shelved - the blockchain land

Peter Schiff Attacks Bitcoin as Silver Rallies to Six-Year High – Bitcoinist

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Peter Schiff believes silvers rally will be short-lived. In condemning it, he called the metal the new Bitcoin.

The previous one was a scam run by degenerate gamblers, says Schiff. It lacked a use case and had no underlying value; only greed and hype drove it higher. That is why the old version was inching towards a disaster.

So does that make Silver the same since it is the new version of a problematic Bitcoin? Only Peter Schiff can explain the man behind these conflicting and typically confusing remarks.

The prominent gold bug was at it again this Wednesday. He went after Bitcoin for hear this rallying barely 2 percent a day before. That was the cryptocurrencys first big move after weeks of sideways action. But for Mr. Schiff, it was not enough not when a traditional commodity jumped higher.

Silver, the second-in-command to gold, touched its highest level in six years. The metal climbed by as much as 6 percent to circa $21.17 an ounce its highest intraday gains since July 2014. Observers credited low-interest rates, as well as a pick-up in manufacturing demand, for inciting the Silver price to rally.

Mr. Schiff preferred to use the metals gains as a weapon to discredit the Bitcoins modest breakout. He commented that silver is the new Bitcoin, except with direct utility, adding that the cryptocurrencys bugs are dreaming about sending it to the moon, while missing the real-life moonshot in silver.

Incidentally, the comments came only hours after a report that apprehensively showed Bitcoins growth as a utility token. Crypto-focused data aggregator portal Messari wrote that the top crypto, as well as its silver-like Ethereum, settled a combined $1.3 trillion in transactions in 2020.

Ryan Watkins, a research analyst at Messari, noted that people used public blockchains like Bitcoin for multiple reasons. One of them is to conduct high-value transactions which is entirely different from paying for a cup of coffee via a cryptocurrency.

The purpose of [public blockchain] systems is to provide strong settlement assurances, wrote Mr. Watkins. Theyre supposed to fully guarantee payments so that they cannot be repudiated, reversed, or charged back without the agreement of the recipient, and meant to settle immediately.

People dont use Silver for settling payments in real-time. But Mr. Schiff conveniently opted to intermix the metals mechanical aspects with Bitcoin the cryptocurrency has nothing to do with poweringelectronics and photovoltaic cells in solar panels.

As for price, the comparison between silver and bitcoin shows Mr. Schiffs favoritism towards the former. One of the responses to the gold bulls anti-cryptocurrency tweet summarized it aptly.

Its taken gold and silver almost a decade to move the same amount Bitcoin normally would do in a monthly range. Dont let the facts get in the way eh Peter.

Just this year, Bitcoins recovery from its March nadir has taken its price 30 percent above zero on a year-to-date timeframe. Meanwhile, Silver is behind with a 25 percent surge.

Bitcoin is the new silver, maybe.

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Peter Schiff Attacks Bitcoin as Silver Rallies to Six-Year High - Bitcoinist

Assanges father speaks out, calls oppression of WikiLeaks founder a great crime of 21st century – The Grayzone

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DENIS ROGATYUK: The fight to bring Julian home has been a monumental challenge since his unjust conviction. But it has certainly become much more difficult since his expulsion from the Ecuadorian embassy in March 2019. What have been the primary actions that you and the campaign have undertaken since then?

JOHN SHIPTON: Well we fight against the United Kingdom, Sweden, the United States, and to a certain extent Australia. They have marshaled all of their forces and broken every law in human rights and due process in order to send Julian to the United States and destroy him.

Before our eyes, we have watched the gradual murder of Julian through psychological torture, through ceaseless breaking of procedures and due process. So that is what we fight against.

During the latest hearing, the judge Barrett asked Julian to prove that he was unwell, that he didnt come onto the video. So again, we see a process that we witness over and over again, blaming the victim.

In the case of Australia, the Australians say that theyve offered consular assistance. When I say the Australians, DFAT (the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade), and the prime minister, and the foreign minister, Marise Payne, say that they have consular assistance over and over again. Their consular assistance consists offering last weeks newspaper and to see if hes still alive. Thats about the extent of it.

So consular assistance, I think they maintain, DFAT maintains that theyve made 100 offers. Well this is a profound testimony to failure.

Its now 11 years; Julian has been arbitrarily detained 11 years. The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention declared that Julian was arbitrarily detained, and should be compensated and freed straightaway.

The latest of their reports was February 2018. It is now 2020 and Julian is still in maximum security Belmarsh prison under lockdown 23 hours a day.

DENIS ROGATYUK: And how would you describe the relationship between the current campaign for his release and the Wikileaks organisation?

JOHN SHIPTON: Well WikiLeaks continues its work and continues to hold the most extraordinary library of the American, United States diplomacy since 1970. Its an extraordinary artifact that any journalist or any historian, any of us can look up the names of those who have been involved in diplomacy with the United States, in their own countries or with the United States. This is a great resource. It continues to be maintained.

Just the week before last, WikiLeaks released another set of files, so WikiLeaks continues its work.

The people who defend Julian include Wikileaks, but include 100,000 people all around the world who are working constantly to bring about Julians freedom and stop this oppression of the free press, of publication, of publishers, and of journalists. We work constantly to do that.

There are about 80 websites around the world that publish and agitate for Julians freedom. And about 86 Facebook pages devoted to Julian. So there are many of us. And the upswelling of support continues, despite Covid. Covid slowed us down a little bit. Now that Covid-19 is withdrawing, the upswelling continues.

And it will do so until the Australian Government and the United Kingdom recognise that this is the crime, the oppression of Julian, is the great crime of the 21st century.

DENIS ROGATYUK: The latest superseding indictment of Julian regarding the alleged conspiracy with unnamed anonymous hackers appears to be another attempt to fast-track his extradition. Do you believe this is a symptom of desperation on the part of the Department of Justice of the United States?

JOHN SHIPTON: No I dont. The people who work in the Department of Justice get paid, whether this succeeds or not. Whether Julian is extradited they get paid; if hes not extradited they still get paid. They still go home, and have a glass of wine, take the kids to the movies, and then come to work the next day, and think up another instrument of torture for Julian. This is their job.

So I dont know why, but I could speculate or guess, if you like, that the Department of Justice would like to see the trial delayed, the hearing delayed, until after the American election (in November 2020). So there will be appeals by the lawyers in court that they havent had time to accommodate and that the judge, they asked the judge to move the hearing date. Thats what I imagine.

But I dont think its an act of desperation at all. If anything it is giving us who defend Julian more things to worry about, so that our energies are not focused singularly upon getting Julian out. So the conversation drifts over to this further indictment and about who is included in it.

It is Siggi and Sabu, both of whom are not credible witnesses. Siggi (Sigurdur Thordarson, or Siggi hakkari) is a convicted sex offender, a con man, who stole $50,000 from Wikileaks and so on. There are not credible witnesses (to these allegations). I guess that it is either to delay the hearing and or to cause the conversation to drift away from what is important.

DENIS ROGATYUK: I wish to move to the second part of our interview now, exploring Julians life.

A lot has been researched and published about Julians life and early days in the 1990s. I would like to discuss the aspects of his life that have given him the resilience and the strength to withstand the challenges that he faces now.

Julian is incredibly committed to telling the truth in his interviews. He is very articulate and he is very careful about communicating and choosing the exact words to describe things. Is this something that his family taught him or is it something special about Julian?

JOHN SHIPTON: I dont really know, you know, it is sort of a gift that I would like to have myself. So I dont know where it came from. I guess you would have to ask the gods, maybe they know the answer.

The path he has forged is distinct and distinctly his. I admire and am proud of him for his capacity to adapt, and his capacity to continue fighting, despite 11 years of ceaseless psychological torture. That doesnt come without cost. It cost him a lot.

However, we believe that we will prevail. And Julian will be able to come home to Australia, and maybe live in Mullumbimby for a little bit, or in Melbourne; he used to live here down the corner.

Oh actually I dont like the word, if I may withdraw that sentence, I dont like the word hope. Hope sort of makes a really nice breakfast, and a bad dinner. So we will prevail in this fight is what I would say.

DENIS ROGATYUK: Julian displayed incredible physical and mental resilience these past 9 years, particularly nearly 8 years he spent in the Ecuadorian embassy and this past year in the Belmarsh prison. Where do you think this strength is coming from his moral and political convictions or something he developed in his early life in Australia?

JOHN SHIPTON: I think its a gift that he has, that he will continue to fight for what he believes. And if there are elements of truth in what he is fighting for, well then he never surrenders. Its an aspect of character.

I dont mind in fact myself, but I am invigorated by fighting for Julian. And each insult or offence against Julian increases my determination to prevail, and the determination of Julians supporters to prevail. Each insult increases our strength.

And so you can see, when the second a lot of indictments were brought down week before last, supporters around the world raised their voices in disbelief, and began again to raise awareness of Julians situation.

So its really interesting, the Department of Justice might think one thing that it causes us to fracture, but what actually happens is the upswelling of support continues unabated.

DENIS ROGATYUK: John, I wish to ask you a more personal question. How does it feel to be the father of a man like Julian, and to see his son son go through all this hardship and slander, and to keep traveling and fighting for his liberation across the world?

JOHN SHIPTON: Well some of it is hard to believe, what people say about Julian. You know those American politicians are shooting, and you know the UC Global employees in Spain, who were supposed to look after the security of the Ecuadorian embassy, who speculated on how to poison Julian at the behest of CIA and Mossad and Sheldon Adelson, whatever whatever you want to call those bunch of creeps.

Im surprised, but you know I ignore it. For myself I take not the slightest bit of notice. Im surprised that people put their energies into calling Julian names, and theyve never met him, never even set eyes on him, some people, and yet they find the time and energy to write scurrilous things.

I think maybe they dont have anybody to go out with, or theres no friends at home, or something like that, or their their wife cant stand them, so they go down the backyard with their laptops and write scurrilous things about Julian or whatever, or their neighbors dog.

Im very surprised that people put the energy into that sort of thing.

DENIS ROGATYUK: But how does it feel to keep this campaign for a liberation going? Because you have done a lot of travel around the world; you have been advocating for his release everywhere you go. So what has that journey been like for you, personally?

JOHN SHIPTON: Uh Denis, I dont count the costs, not even for a minute. I do what Im here today with you, I do what comes before me, and then I go on to the next thing. But I never, ever count costs.

DENIS ROGATYUK: And for the last part of our interview I wanted to actually discuss your thoughts and your opinions on some of the more important and more prominent issues of our day.

Ever since the extradition hearings began, against Julian, the US government, particularly Trump, Mike Pence, and Mike Pompeo, have been doubling down on their attacks against Julian and WikiLeaks. Pompeo even called it a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia.

The US establishment appears to be dead set against them, and both major parties are playing along. So what do you think ought to be the strategy of activists and journalists in the US to challenge this?

JOHN SHIPTON: Well first of all, Mike Pompeo, dear oh dear, I mean a failed secretary of state and a failed CIA director, declares war on WikiLeaks in order to get the CIA support for his future ambitions to run for president. And he moves now from secretary of state to the Senate for Kansas.

The secretary of state is an important position. However Mike Pompeo doesnt strike me as being a historically significant personality.

The US establishment must fall in line with what the CIA wants and thinks. So Pompeo in that address on the (13th) of April 2017 that you just quoted, he just wants to get all of his workers to support him in his bid for presidency.

And also to oppress and intimidate journalists all over the world, and publishers and publications his sole aim is to ruin your capacity to bring to the public ideas and information, and our capacity as members of the public to talk amongst ourselves and sort out things through conversation with each other, on what we ought to do and how we ought to go about life.

They just want to have it all their own way, declare war on whomever, murder another million people, destroy Yemen, destroy Libya, destroy Iraq, destroy Afghanistan, the list goes on destroy Syria, millions of people refugees, flooding the world, and moving into Europe; the Maghreb in turmoil, the Levant in turmoil, Palestinians murdered this is their aim.

And so for us, we depend upon you to bring us truthful information, so that we can have fair opinions of how the world is moving around us.

What Pompeo wants is for what he says to be believed. Well you can see his history. They say it may be up to 5 million people since 1991 died as a result of the United States and its allies moving on Iraq in an illegal war.

You can watch Collateral Murder and you can see a good samaritan dragging a wounded man into his car to take him to the hospital, taking his children on the way to school, murdered before your eyes. The pilots of the helicopter begging for instructions to be able to shoot a wounded man, two kids, and two good samaritans, begging for instructions from their controller.

So they dont want us to see that. However we depend upon you journalists, publishers, publications to bring to us the crimes that governments commit so that we are energized, so that we place our shoulders to preventing these murders with all of the determination and energy we can muster, to prevent the murder and destruction of an entire country.

If I may remind you, in Melbourne, there were a million people marched against the Iraq War. All over the world I think a total of 10 million people. We dont want war. They lie to us in order to have wars, for whatever satisfaction, I cant make out myself.

Who would want to see and hear the lamentation of widows, the cries of children, the groans of men? Who would want that? Its monstrous.

And so we need the information in order to say no.

DENIS ROGATYUK: The new cold war between the United States and the European Union on one side and China and Russia on the other, threatens to pull the ordinary people of the world into another confrontation on behalf of these political and economic elites among these countries.

From your experience of seeking international support for Julian, what are the best ways of forging solidarity across borders in this new conflict that seems to be developing?

JOHN SHIPTON: I think the best way is to talk to your friends and discuss things, gathering friends and discussing things, becoming aware outside of what the mass communication outlets want us to see and hear.

So just face-to-face conversations and then conversations over social media is sufficient. Each day you will see, the last two weeks, Facebook and YouTube and Twitter removing, as platforms of discussion, certain subjects, and certain YouTube channels. They remove them because we are succeeding, not because nobody watches them, nobody goes there. Its because we are succeeding to educate ourselves as to what governments do in our name.

To bring peace between or fair relationships between the members of the European Union and Australia and China and Russia, ordinary people the Sochi World Cup, soccer world cup, was the greatest success, fabulous success. Everybody who went to Russia came back full of admiration for Russia and Russian hospitality.

Well this is what is needed, just ordinary people getting to know each other and discussing matters of importance, not depending upon CNN or any other talking head for how you should feel about this or that subject. Just talk to friends, talk to groups of people, talk amongst each other, exchange ideas, exchange where to get good information, and things will change.

I have an undying belief in the capacity and goodness of general humanity. And I am proved right every time, because 10 million people marched against the Iraq War, but a few hundred manipulated the nations by blowing up railway stations, what they called terrorism, just a few hundred manipulated those nations into destroying Iraq.

Ordinary people dont want war; we want to be able to just talk to our friends, look after our families, thats all.

DENIS ROGATYUK: And one final question, John. The Covid-19 pandemic has not only revealed the inadequacies of the neoliberal economic order, but it has also revealed its increasing instability and desperation to maintain itself.

This is also true with regards to prominent right-wing governments the United States, Brazil, and Bolivia seeking to silence journalists and reports regarding their mismanagement of the pandemic.

We are seeing independent journalism under attack around the world, through censorship, intimidation threats, and assassinations.

What do you think should be the best way of fighting back against them?

JOHN SHIPTON: These governments, they cant even look after their own populations, let alone order the world in a decent way. And their ambitions are to order the world, while they cant even look after the people of Seattle.

Its just, if it wasnt so tragic, it would be just amusing, you would read about it just to get a laugh every morning.

Of course they oppress the journalists; of course they oppress publications; of course the warrants that allow you to broadcast on a certain spectrum are removed; platforms are removed. Because we continue to understand and expose their shortcomings.

The shortcomings are criminal. They actually consider the phrase herd immunity to be something scientific. They actually contemplate allowing hundreds of thousands of old people or older people to die. And they use phrases like, Oh well, they had comorbidities. Everybody over 60 has a comorbidity. You dont get older and get weller; you get older and get a little bit sick, or a little bit not so strong.

The actual contemplation of doing away with the steadying part of a society older people steady the young; the young are full of vigor, and the old are full of caution; this is a fair balance in society allowing them to die off, for whatever reason we cant discern. We cannot discern; it doesnt cost any more money to look after a section of society and prevent Covid. You dont lose anything from it; you actually gain access to the experience and judgment of the older section of your society.

So it is incomprehensible, like neoliberalism itself, nobody quite understands why weve got, it but its there.

Denis is a Russian-Australian freelance writer, journalist and researcher. His articles, interviews and analysis have been published in a variety of media sources around the world including Jacobin, Le Vent Se Lve, Sputnik, Green Left Weekly, Links International Journal, Alborada and others.

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Assanges father speaks out, calls oppression of WikiLeaks founder a great crime of 21st century - The Grayzone

How people power strengthens the rule of law – The Kathmandu Post

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On a cold winters night in July 2016, thousands of people gathered inside and outside Rotten Row Magistrates Court in Harare to await the verdict in the Zimbabwean governments case against Pastor Evan Mawarire, the leader of the #ThisFlag movement and a staunch opponent of then-President Robert Mugabe. When the magistrate eventually threw out the treason charges brought against Mawarire for peacefully rallying people against corruption, a street party broke out. It was an unexpected victory for the rule of lawwon, at least in part, through collective nonviolent action by ordinary people.

In its most basic form, the rule of law simply means that no one is above the law. Everyone is treated fairly and justly, and the government does not exercise its power arbitrarily. These principles lie at the heart of the ongoing protests against systemic racism and police brutality in the United States following the death of George Floyd. The rule of law is very different from rule by law, which characterises many authoritarian states and, increasingly, some democracies as well.

Many argue, not unreasonably, that building robust institutions is essential to strengthening the rule of law. But what do you do when the institutions which are meant to uphold the rule of law are so hollowed out that they have become the primary tools for its subversion? The conventional focus on building institutions can leave ordinary people feeling disempowered, waiting patiently for the all-important institutions to reform, while they remain on the receiving end of oppression meted out by those very institutions. It can also lead to unhelpful interventions by well-meaning external actors, which inadvertently strengthen the authoritarian capabilities of captured institutions, rather than the rule of law.

To strengthen the rule of law, we first need to focus on strengthening people, not institutions. This involves the difficult, dangerous, and often unglamorous work of grassroots community organising that empowers citizens to act through informal channels outside of established institutions. Such action includes non-violent protestsmarches, boycotts, strikes, and picketsas well as community initiatives that directly improve peoples lives, such as worker advice centres and community gardens.

Such efforts are especially necessary in authoritarian states where institutions are fundamentally broken. But even in established democracies, the recent failure of supposedly strong institutions to prevent the rule of law from being undermined has shown that there is no substitute for an active and organised citizenry. Such engagement cannot be legislated or decreed, or copied and pasted from another jurisdiction. People must build it collectively from the ground up.

Building people power starts with opening citizens minds to a different type of society and a new way of doing things. In apartheid South Africa, for example, the study groups and adult literacy classes in townships during the 1970s helped to lay the groundwork for the mass movement that emerged in the 1980s under the banner of the United Democratic Front. The UDF would go on to play a leading role in the struggle against apartheid, culminating in 1990 with Nelson Mandelas release from prison and the unbanning of the African National Congress.

Next, like-minded people need to organise themselves, connect with one another in the real world (not just on social media), and become actively involved in issues directly affecting their lives. These issues might at first be local rather than national, and involve less risky actions. Over time, however, people build mutual trust and gain confidence in both themselves and their collective power as a group. Coalitions form, and actions become larger in scope and perhaps more confrontational. Before you know it, a social movement emerges that is bigger than any of the individuals or organisations involved and can unlock peoples power to bring about change.

People power can strengthen the rule of law in at least three ways. For starters, it can counteract and even neutralise the top-down pressure placed on courts and police by the authoritiestypically, the executive. This can help to ensure that even hollowed-out or compromised institutions discharge their duties in accordance with the rule of lawas in the case involving Mawarire.

A people-power movement can also create alternative spaces that prefigure a society in which the rule of law is respected. The movement must operate internally in a just and fair way, and apply the same standards to all its members regardless of rank. And any civil disobedience must have a strategic purpose and be highly disciplined, so that participants understand that such action does not constitute a rejection of the rule of law, but rather a means of establishing it.

Third, people power has repeatedly proved to be an effective tool in defeating even the most brutal dictatorships and achieving a transition to a more democratic system of governance. Far-reaching reforms that strengthen the rule of law can then be implemented in ways that would not have been possible under a corrupted system. In November 2019, for example, Sudans new transitional authorityestablished after months of non-violent protests against President Omar al-Bashirs dictatorship and then against the military regime that ousted himrepealed an oppressive public-order law that had governed how women could behave and dress in public. Although Sudans transition is by no means complete, this represented a huge triumph for the rule of law. It would not have been achieved without people power.

Authoritarian leaders understand and fear people power. Soon after Mawarires hearing, the Zimbabwean regime erected a fence around Rotten Row Magistrates Court to prevent similar public gatherings there in the future. But just as authoritarian regimes adapt and learn from their past mistakes, those of us fighting for a society based on the rule of law also must adjust, innovate, and improvise, and accumulate enough power to dismantle the oppressive systems that shackle us. Only through the struggle of ordinary people can we eventually shift our focus to building strong institutions that protect everyone equally.

***

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How people power strengthens the rule of law - The Kathmandu Post

Waiting for Annexation – The American Prospect

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It was an ordinary day for Palestinians under Israels rule. Ordinary, in the sense that the many ways that Israel oppresses Palestinians continued as usual, be it through military orders, court rulings, or direct state violence.

July 1 was the earliest launch date for Israels de jure annexation of parts of the occupied West Bank. Yet it was also a day that Israel simply continued doing what it pleases to Palestinians throughout the territory: Its infrastructure of oppression has already been in place for decades. But one thing is both certain and fixed: how oppressive, demeaning, and brutal this reality is.

The Israeli state has effectively annexed Palestinian lives. That on July 1 certain parts of the occupied West Bank did not switch their designation to de jure annexation was another arbitrary Israeli decision, in this case spelling out the occupying powers preference to continue to subjugate Palestinians in one certain way instead of through a novel approach. In that same arbitrary vein, this very decision may still changeor not.

More coverage of the Middle East

Though nothing changed on the ground, the political ground in Washington may be shifting.

Not at AIPAC. The so-called pro-Israel lobbying group has begun telling lawmakers that they are free to criticize Israels looming annexation plansjust as long as the criticism stops there, according to reports. Similarly, a leaked memo from the civil rights watchdog Anti-Defamation League offered parallel talking points: providing a space for local and national leaders to express their criticism of Israels decision while neutralizing anti-Israel legislative proposals, e.g. condemning and singling out its human rights record and conditioning its military aid.

In other words, it seems that the Israeli government and certain Jewish organizations have read the recent statement by some 50 U.N. experts, that [t]he lessons from the past are clear: Criticism without consequences will neither forestall annexation nor end the occupation. These American Jewish groups appear to be in agreement that genuine consequences may actually make a differenceand thus they are working diligently to keep the noise on a meaningless level, dialed precisely to allow criticism without leading to consequences.

Yet thanks to all the focus on potential de jure annexation, we can now see the difference between those still committed to expressing deep concern without taking any action and those refusing to continue with complicity.

In Washington, D.C., a letter signed by 191 House Democrats urge[d] the Israeli government to reconsider its annexation plans. The text is framed exclusively from the perspective of Israels interests; it fails to mention Palestinians human rights or their past, current, and future oppression. It also refrains from even hinting that there could be potential consequences if their urging is ignored.

But this business-as-usual acquiescence was soon eclipsed by a very different text, led by Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Pramila Jayapal, Betty McCollum, and Rashida Tlaib, and signed by Sen. Bernie Sanders, among others. Calling things by their proper names, the letter addresses the path toward an apartheid system. It details human rights violations from limitations on freedom of movement to continued demolitions of Palestinian homes. And it introduces meaningful consequences, leveraging the $3.8 billion of U.S. military funding to Israel.

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In Europe, one can witness a similar divide. On the one hand, the letter signed by more than a thousand European lawmakers calling for commensurate consequences and resolutions demanding action by parliaments in Belgium and the Netherlands. On the other, op-eds published by the European Unions foreign policy chief Josep Borrell and several EU ambassadors to Israel. Borrells op-ed barely mentions Palestinians. Instead, he puts great effort into trying to explain to Israelis whats in their best interest (Annexation is not the way to create peace with the Palestinians and to improve Israels security), and goes out of his way to spell out that for Brussels the path forward is paved with carrots, not sticks: Peace cannot be imposed Peace can also bring new possibilities for EU-Israel relations to further grow. Europe, internally dividedand humiliatedthrough Israels open alliances with the rising authoritarian forces on the continent, seems, so far, unable and unwilling to wake up to realitythe very reality arrived at to no small extent as a result of Europes failed foreign policy to date.

July 1 proved to be a very ordinary day in our reality. Other ordinary days will follow, in a path paved by Israeli bulldozers, backed by Israeli courts, trampling over Palestinian homes and rights and dignity. The talk of de jure annexation might focus global attention, but that attention may fade if weeks pass and Israel decides that its preferred method of further oppressing Palestinians is by means of long-lasting de facto annexation, without adding to it a dash of de jure. For one way or another, it is the government of Israel that controls everyone and everything between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.

It is essential that this lesson does not fade awayand that the ongoing reality of de facto annexation is not further normalized. Dont wait for formal legalization, or release a sigh of relief if that possibility is set aside for now. Do commit to an action-based rejection of the existing, appalling, reality on the ground.

De jure or de facto, Israels oppression of Palestinians already demands consequences.

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Waiting for Annexation - The American Prospect

To attract, retain diverse workforce, start with self-reflection – Idaho Business Review

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Molly Washington

Diversity on the jobsite and within the various departments of a construction company has numerous benefits, but building and retaining a truly diverse workforce takes an unwavering commitment to equity within organization walls. That commitment requires organizations to invest in the needs of all of its people and divest in systems that are causing harm.

The most important first step is to actively engage in genuine efforts to self-reflect on ways that a company might be actively instituting or perpetuating systems that exclude, devalue, and oppress Black, Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC), women, gender-nonconforming people and people who identify as LGBTQIA+. If a disproportionate number of people within these groups are unable to access or advance within a company, its systems must be reviewed for bias and institutional racism, sexism, transphobia and homophobia. Once identified, each of these issues must be addressed with intentionality and focus.

Is this task a substantial undertaking? Absolutely. Is the reward worth the effort? Without a doubt. Companies that choose not to invest resources in this level of self-exploration and honesty might never reach their full potential and instead will continue to limit themselves, the success of their projects, their partnerships and their people.

Access and advancement are imperative

Construction typically does not require a college degree at its entry point, eliminating the time investment and debt associated with other well-paying professions. It provides interesting work that pays a living wage and benefits. Although construction is not immune to economic downturns, it can be more sustainable because the government typically invests in it first to bring back economic growth. For someone without equitable access to a construction career, there is no opportunity to avail oneself of these benefits. Importantly, if some people are denied this opportunity at the outset due to bias and systems of exclusion, construction companies and the industry itself will never realize the true benefits of a diverse workforce.

A diverse workforce is valuable because it encourages innovation and elevates new perspectives. In construction, each project is different and the road to success includes distinct facets. Each person involved in a project brings a unique set of skills and abilities, adding to the companys overall ability to identify issues, solve problems, and deliver a successful project. The more diversity in experience, perspective and ingenuity, the better the ability to offer the best solution. In addition, when employees feel that their company is committed to diversity, and feel included, their investment and ability to innovate is increased.

Building a diverse workforce requires construction companies to reach out to marginalized groups, place value on the diversity of their lived experiences and prove to them that there are opportunities to work and be promoted. At the outset, simply seeing construction as a career path might mean the difference between access and obstacle. This requires companies to recognize that there is something to the mantra you cant be it if you cant see it. Construction companies should ensure that anyone who has worked for them has the ability to be it. This includes identifying and eliminating obstacles and barriers, including systems of oppression, within their own processes and practices.

Ultimately, companies have the power to decide whether BIPOC, women, gender non-confirming people, or people who identify as LGBTQIA+ are seen as valuable to the company and are recognized as leaders deserving of advancement. Furthermore, not only do these new leaders serve as examples of success to motivate others within the organization, but they also introduce people within their own communities to the idea of a career in construction. Community-centered organizations like Oregon Tradeswomen Inc., Latino Build, and programs administered by Portland Opportunities and Industrialization Center, Constructing Hope and Girls Build are great examples of how the next generation of nondominant culture leaders are helping our diverse youth see it.

An inclusive and respectful workplace is required

Creating access for marginalized groups is the first step. Organizations must then be prepared to engage in the self-reflection necessary to institute policies, processes and practices that help them retain the people who have overcome institutional obstacles to access construction careers people who historically have been pushed out. In essence, retaining a diverse workforce requires companies to create inclusive and respectful work environments for all employees.

Part of the self-reflection required for a company to create an inclusive and respectful work environment for all of its employees is analyzing the intersections of discrimination, opportunity and power within the organization itself. Using equity analysis is a beneficial tool in this regard. It helps identify racial, gender and other disparities that interfere or harm organizations, as well as provides ways to mitigate or eliminate those disparities. It assists organizations to align with outside equity initiatives and create processes and programs to support recruitment and retention of a diverse workforce.

Organizations that use equity analysis can proactively identify unintended consequences before damage is done by evaluating policies and practices, and then developing creative solutions to address concerns. If these issues are not identified and addressed in advance, the ability to recover and rebuild trust with those harmed can be arduous and, at times, insurmountable.

Final thoughts

A company that creates access and opportunity, as well as an environment and culture where all employees feel included and respected, reveals it has an ability to retain a diverse workforce. If companies want to attract and retain the best people, they need to create the best work environments. Ensuring access to the construction industry, valuing different lived-experiences, identifying and rectifying systems of exclusion and oppression, and utilizing equity analysis are good initial efforts for a company to become respected and sought after. At the very least, these are important steps to take to ensure a company is valuing its most important asset its people.

Molly Washington is a real estate and construction industry group attorney with Schwabe, Williamson & Wyatt PC in Oregon. She focuses on equity. Contact her at 503-796-2878 or mwashington@schwabe.com.

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To attract, retain diverse workforce, start with self-reflection - Idaho Business Review

The Protesters Are the True Patriots – Washington Monthly

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It is truly bizarre that, at a moment when the Trump administration is sending in federal stormtroopers to threaten peaceful protesters in Portland, Oregon, conservatives are claiming that it is liberals who threaten the foundation of our democratic republic. It all started with Trumps speech at Mt. Rushmore on July 4th.

Seventeen seventy-six represented the culmination of thousands of years of western civilization and the triumph not only of spirit, but of wisdom, philosophy, and reason.

And yet, as we meet here tonight, there is a growing danger that threatens every blessing our ancestors fought so hard for, struggled, they bled to secure.

Our nation is witnessing a merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values, and indoctrinate our children

This attack on our liberty, our magnificent liberty, must be stopped, and it will be stopped very quickly. We will expose this dangerous movement, protect our nations children, end this radical assault, and preserve our beloved American way of life

Make no mistake: this left-wing cultural revolution is designed to overthrow the American Revolution.

That was followed up by a speech from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo at the National Constitution Center to unveil the first report from his Commission on Unalienable Rights. The secretary had established the commission a year ago in order to ground our foreign policy in this countrys founding ideals. The first thing to note is that Pompeo thinks that it is necessary to prioritize which unalienable rights are most important.

the report emphasizes foremost among these rights are property rights and religious liberty. No one can enjoy the pursuit of happiness if you cannot own the fruits of your own labor, and no society no society can retain its legitimacy or a virtuous character without religious freedom.

Of course, what a Christian nationalist like Pompeo means when he talks about religious liberty is the freedom of white evangelical Christians to do what they please and all other religions be damned. That one has a lot of human rights advocates pointing out that it is the rights of women and LGBTQ persons to be treated as equal citizens under the law that are getting thrown under the bus.

Pompeo mentioned Trumps speech at Mt. Rushmore when he launched into his own attack on those who are protesting against police brutality.

President Trump spoke about this at Mount Rushmore on the Fourth of July. And our rights tradition is under assault.

The New York Timess 1619 Project so named for the year that the first slaves were transported to America wants you to believe that our country was founded for human bondage.

They want you to believe that Americas institutions continue to reflect the countrys acceptance of slavery at our founding.

They want you to believe that Marxist ideology that America is only the oppressors and the oppressed. The Chinese Communist Party must be gleeful when they see the New York Times spout this ideology.

Some people have taken these false doctrines to heart. The rioters pulling down statues thus see nothing wrong with desecrating monuments to those who fought for our unalienable rights from our founding to the present day.

This is a dark vision of Americas birth. I reject it. Its a disturbed reading of history. It is a slander on our great people. Nothing could be further from the truth of our founding and the rights about which this report speaks.

The commission reminds us its got a quote from Frederick Douglas, himself a freed slave, who saw the Constitution as a glorious, liberty document. That it is.

That quote from Frederick Douglass is a favorite among conservatives. What they dont tell you is that it comes from his speech titled, What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? given in 1852nine years before the Civil War. Speaking to a white audience, Douglass refers to your National Independence, and of your political freedom (emphasis mine), making it clear that it doesnt apply to those who were enslaved. You can almost see the tongue-in-cheek way that he talks about what led up to the Declaration of Independence from British rule.

Feeling themselves harshly and unjustly treated by the home government, your fathers, like men of honesty, and men of spirit, earnestly sought redress. They petitioned and remonstrated; they did so in a decorous, respectful, and loyal manner. Their conduct was wholly unexceptionable. This, however, did not answer the purpose. They saw themselves treated with sovereign indifference, coldness and scorn. Yet they persevered. They were not the men to look back

Oppression makes a wise man mad. Your fathers were wise men, and if they did not go mad, they became restive under this treatment. They felt themselves the victims of grievous wrongs, wholly incurable in their colonial capacity. With brave men there is always a remedy for oppression. Just here, the idea of a total separation of the colonies from the crown was born! It was a startling idea, much more so, than we, at this distance of time, regard it. The timid and the prudent (as has been intimated) of that day, were, of course, shocked and alarmed by it.

It seems pretty clear that Pompeo has never read Douglasss whole speech. So it might surprise him to learn that the man he quoted referred to our founding fathers as oppressed, but wise men who chaffed under their treatment by the home government. The Declaration of Independence was actually a protest document.

But by the end of his speech, Douglass made it clear that these founding ideals were not extended to people like him.

I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth [of] July isyours, notmine.Youmay rejoice,Imust mourn.

That is the part of Douglasss speech that Pompeo doesnt want you to hearmuch less read himself. There are people who are still mourning the fact that American hasnt lived up to its ideals. They are taking to the streets to protest and this administration is doing everything in their power to vilify, threaten, and stop them.

It is worth noting that it was this countrys first African American president who drew ourattention to the words contained in the preamble to the Constitution during his 2008 speech about race in America (emphasis mine).

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Heres what Obama said.

Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution a Constitution that had at its very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty and justice and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.

And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part through protests and struggles, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience, and always at great risk to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.

With the passing of John Lewis over the weekend, this is also a time to remember the words Obama spoke to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the march he led across the bridge in Selma, Alabama.

As we commemorate their achievement, we are well-served to remember that at the time of the marches, many in power condemned rather than praised them. Back then, they were called Communists, or half-breeds, or outside agitators, sexual and moral degenerates, and worse - they were called everything but the name their parents gave them. Their faith was questioned. Their lives were threatened. Their patriotism challenged.

And yet, what could be more American than what happened in this place? What could more profoundly vindicate the idea of America than plain and humble people - unsung, the downtrodden, the dreamers not of high station, not born to wealth or privilege, not of one religious tradition but many, coming together to shape their countrys course?

What greater expression of faith in the American experiment than this, what greater form of patriotism is there than the belief that America is not yet finished, that we are strong enough to be self-critical, that each successive generation can look upon our imperfections and decide that it is in our power to remake this nation to more closely align with our highest ideals?

Thats why Selma is not some outlier in the American experience. Thats why its not a museum or a static monument to behold from a distance. It is instead the manifestation of a creed written into our founding documents: We the People in order to form a more perfect union. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.

It is people like Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo who are in the process of threatening the ideals on which this country was founded. They are the ones who are calling protesters everything but the name their parents gave them and serving up the modern-day equivalent of the billy clubs used against people like John Lewis on Bloody Sunday.

The great divide in this country has always been the one between those in power who will do anything to maintain the status quo and those who revere our founding ideals enough to join the struggle to perfect our union. Its once again time to choose a side.

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The Protesters Are the True Patriots - Washington Monthly

‘Still looking the past in the face’: Murray statue continues to draw protests – The Trib

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MURRAY Though Robert E. Lee presided over the surrender of Confederate troops to effectively end the Civil War, Calloway County leaders signaled Wednesday they have no intention of surrendering in the fight over his likeness standing on the courthouse lawn.

In the face of a significant push over the last month and a half to remove the Confederate soldiers memorial thats stood for over 100 years at the courthouse, the Calloway County Fiscal Court voted unanimously Wednesday morning to leave the monument where it stands.

That evening, protestors again made their presence felt, with several dozen engaging in often heated exchanges with a small group of the statues supporters.

For hours, the two groups shouted back and forth about racism, history, crime, treason and the Civil War, with some interactions hostile enough that law enforcement officers removed participants from both camps at various times.

The only speaker at the fiscal court meeting, Murray State University Professor Kevin Elliott, told the governing body that the monument is bringing out the worst in our community.

In requesting the fiscal court to explore options for moving the statue, Elliott focused on its placement at the courthouse, lamenting that a statue honoring the Confederacy stands where everyone should feel their voice is heard.

The monument stands for the idea that the power of the government belongs exclusively to the white members of the community, Elliott said.

Throughout Elliotts time speaking, County Attorney Bryan Ernstberger routinely expressed skepticism at Elliotts estimation of the legal ease and simplicity of moving the monument.

After Elliotts presentation during which he also discussed the cost of the removal as likely less than people would expect, and potential placement at an abandoned cemetery that could easily be appropriated by the government, the fiscal court voted on a resolution that Elliott later said came as a surprise.

The resolution, which notes the negative connotations that the Monument may hold for some and unreservedly condemns slavery and racial oppression, also says the monument was erected simply to honor Calloway County residents who fought for the Confederacy and not as several have argued, for the purpose of promoting continued oppression.

Magistrate Paul Rister noted during the meeting that he took a survey of 280 people in his constituency, which he said he randomized by only approaching people who were outside during his survey. According to Risters calculations, 77% of his constituents supported leaving the monument where it stands.

Magistrate Don Cherry during the meeting said he believed the county was approaching the issue the right way, and lamented the idea of mob rule.

We cannot run our country that way. If we make decisions by mob rule then weve lost control of our government.

At that evenings protest, some urged supporters of the statue to consider racial disparities in the justice system and in health care.

Counter-protesters asserted that Black people commit violent crimes at significantly higher rates than white people, but said they werent claiming that Black people are naturally more violent or less civil than white people.

At times protesters brought up the prohibition on displaying Nazi symbols in Germany, but were not Germany came as a standard reply.

Counter-protesters, displaying an #alllifematters sign, routinely expressed concerns about erasing history and accused the protesters of not being Calloway residents that assertion drew guffaws and raised hands from many in the crowd proclaiming their local residency.

Though she was initially flanked by fellow protesters, as the night went on Murray resident Linda Arakelyan found herself surrounded by counter-protesters throwing rude hand gestures toward her TEAR IT DOWN sign and, she said, threatening her.

They tried intimidating me, Arakelyan said in a Thursday interview.

If anything, it kind of empowered me more, seeing how much they hated it.

Shawn Jackson, who moved to Murray from Mayfield, said that hes experienced a lot of racist stuff in the area, and said residents opposed to the statue have a right to have this taken down, the same right they have to keep it up.

People say put the past in the past, he said.

Were not putting the past in the past, because were still looking the past in the face.

Quintin Walls, who said he grew up in Murray before moving away then returning about a decade ago, said the statue doesnt represent anything good to me.

I ride by it, look at it and have bad thoughts about it, said Walls, who is Black.

It represents more dead American soldiers than any other war, and for a cause that wasnt good. It represents the losers and people who were really traitors to the United States of America.

Walls said that, if the statue remains up, the community could find potential business partners or residents less likely to move in.

People need to get involved, vote, protest peacefully and get this thing out of here, he said.

Im not saying destroy it. It just doesnt have to be on our court square.

Arakelyan said shes been involved in social justice movements before, but that she had never even known the statue topping the monument was an image of Robert E. Lee until Sherman Neal, a football coach at Murray State University, wrote a letter a month and a half ago that helped to spark the recent protests.

I definitely think its going to come down one day, whether its when were older or if its just right now through having meaningful conversations with those in opposition even continually pushing Judge (Kenneth) Imes and the magistrates to reconsider their opinion.

Arakelyan said near the beginning of the protest, two armed men stood atop a nearby building, which she perceived as intimidating, before police made them come down.

She called her experience protesting the statue eye opening in a good and bad way.

Im seeing people who, growing up, I would have never thought would be on the same side as me. Its also eye opening, the fact that theres still so many people who are so passionate and full of hate that they want something like that (statue) up.

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'Still looking the past in the face': Murray statue continues to draw protests - The Trib

Prospects bleak for recovery of US media presence in China – CPJ Press Freedom Online

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The slugfest between China and the U.S. over the treatment of media workers in each country appears to have paused. Rather than expel each others journalists, as they did a few months ago, each side in early July imposed registration and reporting requirements on those remainingstill many more Chinese in the U.S. than Americans in China.

Many observers say the U.S. government has badly misplayed its hand, resulting in the decimation of American media operations in China while Chinese operations in the U.S. suffer much less impact. And, even though a group of experts is working on recommendations to repair the damage, prospects for recovery are dim.

I imagine China is pretty happy with the way things are now, said James McGregor, a business consultant, longtime China resident, and former Wall Street Journal reporter who chairs APCO Worldwides greater China operation.

The expulsion from China of prominent reporters from The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal who had pioneered reporting on everything from COVID-19 to mass incarceration of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang was not the stated intent of the U.S. As Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in March, after the U.S. effectively expelled dozens of Chinese journalists: We expect Beijing to take a more fair approach towards American and other foreign press inside of China. Where the Chinese Communist Party has imposed increasingly harsh surveillance, harassment, and intimidation on our independent and world-class journalists, we will respond to achieve reciprocity.

Instead, The U.S., by taking on this issue the way they have, have played into the hands of all the bad actors in the Chinese system and given them carte blanche to get rid of American journalists, said Richard McGregor (no relation to James McGregor), senior fellow at Australias Lowy Institute, a private think tank. If the idea was to strengthen the leverage over a countrys nationals working in China, it has backfired spectacularly.

I think we fell into Chinas trap, said Minxin Pei, a Chinese politics specialist at Claremont McKenna College, arguing that China has long wanted to rid itself of the U.S. journalists.

As Richard McGregor, previously stationed in China and the U.S. for the Financial Times, said: The Chinese journalists in America, however many there are, add nothing to the greater universe of knowledge about America at all. If they stopped working tomorrow, I dont think anyone in China would be less wise about whats happening in the U.S. because the U.S. system is open, and well reported on by the locals.

By contrast, he said, restrictions on the local press in China are severe, leaving it to foreigners to dig into news and trends.

James McGregor agrees: Most of what you know about China that China doesnt want you to know comes out of those journalists [who are now expelled]. He adds that its a loss for the business community that needs to know what is happening in China.

The conflict has brewed for years, as China abused and oppressed foreign journalists, or those trying to gain entry. CPJ has documented repeated cases of China delaying or refusing to grant visas to those who wrote stories that China found embarrassing. On the ground in China, reporters frequently face harassment from security officials who do not accept rights of foreign correspondents to travel freely and interview anyone willing to talk to them. The number of Chinese willing to talk to a foreign journalist has also declined, as interviewees can face harassment or even arrest. Every year, the Foreign Correspondents Club of China documents the sad deterioration of the working environment for foreign correspondents in an annual report.

Meanwhile, as China blocked access to The New York Times and other news websites, the U.S. freely admitted hundreds, possibly thousands, of Chinese journalists and allowed them to roam the country and do what they wanted. (While the State Department apparently wasnt counting, the U.S. government should now have access to data on Chinese journalists, since forcing them to register as foreign missions.) China Global Television Network (CGTN) set up its own U.S. broadcast operation. Some Chinese outlets were openly propaganda controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.

Or worse: Some of them are spies; thats a fact, Pei told CPJ.

How to rectify the imbalance has long vexed journalists, China specialists and U.S. diplomats. Keith Richburg, head of the media program at Hong Kong University and a longtime foreign correspondent for The Washington Post, recalled a conversation with a U.S. diplomat in Beijing from 2011 where Richburg suggested casually that the U.S. go for reciprocity and get tough on issuing visas to Chinese. The diplomat responded that the U.S. could never win by going down that road. And, Richburg said, Whats happened so far was what all the people opposed to reciprocity always said would happen.

China described its retaliatory measures as entirely necessary and reciprocal countermeasures that China is compelled to take in response to the unreasonable oppression the Chinese media organizations experience in the U.S. It did not mention the history of its mistreatment of foreign correspondents in China.

Orville Schell, Arthur Ross Director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society, told CPJ that the rupture over media personnel was inevitable.

The Chinese had us in a stranglehold, Schell said. China was just flooding the place with journalists, executives, spies, you name it. We had limited numbers of journalists, constantly getting expelled and threatened. Its just total madness and total inequality and totally lacking in reciprocity.

The Trump administration said this was not sustainable, said John Pomfret, a former Washington Post Beijing bureau chief. And to that extent, I agree with them.

This isnt to say that either Schell or Pomfret applaud Trump administration tactics, which Schell calls inept and clumsy.

Whats next? Schell heads an Asia Society task force drawing up recommendations for the U.S. government. He suggests looking back to the Soviet era to see how the Soviet Union and the U.S. managed differences. Pomfret, part of the task force, suggested that each side cap media visas at a number, perhaps 100, and that under the cap each side would have total freedom to decide who gets the visas to send into the other country. If more U.S. journalists want China visas than allowed, a non-profit entity would decide who gets them. Pomfret then suggested that issues such as Chinese broadcasting in the U.S. and websites or broadcasts by U.S. outfits be negotiated as a trade issue.

Susan Shirk, chair of the 21st Century China Center at the University of California, San Diego, said a further round of expulsions that could reduce the headcount to zero in each country is a real possibility. At the same time, drawing on her experience in the State Department during the Clinton administration, she said the key is to start with something simple and achievable, such as a cap on visa numbers, on the assumption that China values the presence of its media operations in the U.S. enough to overcome its distaste of hosting foreign correspondents in China.

While Minxin Pei sees no prospect for movement under the Trump administration, he said a truce followed by agreement on stationing journalists in each country could be a relatively easy win for the two countries if they want to patch up relations, given the complexity of other issues of conflict.

Others are more skeptical, especially on the idea of reciprocal numbers. China probably would not go for it because they have far more journalists in the U.S. operating freely than they would allow in China, Richburg said.

James McGregor said Chinas media outlets can easily replace expelled reporters with experienced, out-of-work U.S. journalists.

What pressure point could you put on the Chinese to get them to treat American journalists better? Richburg asked, unable to provide an answer. It was better to have journalists working in China under those conditions rather than having them all kicked out.

No one knows how to roll back the clock, much less broadly improve the treatment of foreign correspondents in China.

The State Department declined to comment when CPJ asked whether it had proposed negotiations to China. The Chinese Foreign Ministrys International Press Center and the Department of Consular affairs did not respond to CPJs emailed requests for comment.

There are no good answers here, James McGregor said.

Read more from the original source:

Prospects bleak for recovery of US media presence in China - CPJ Press Freedom Online

The road beyond McMindfulness – Open Democracy

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The personal and political benefits of practices like meditation have been a staple of Transformations coverage since the site was launched eight years ago. These practices can help us to confront the fear, mental confusion and other limitations that weaken our potential to be agents of change on the broader stage of politics, economics and social struggle. But its clear that these effects arent automatic or uncomplicated.

Over the past few years theres been increasing interest in exploring one particular kind of practice called mindfulness - the basic human ability to be fully present, aware of where we are and what were doing, and not overly reactive or overwhelmed by whats going on around us. It seems clear that strengthening these capacities is a useful thing to do for individuals, but can mindfulness also play a role in promoting broader social change? What can the articles weve published tell us about the answers to that question?

A good place to start is Ron Pursers book McMindfulness, which exploded onto the scene in 2019 and sharpened the conversation enormously. In his piece about the book for Transformation, Purser argued that the mindfulness movement has degenerated into the new capitalist spirituality, a form of individualized stress relief that encourages practitioners to accommodate themselves more comfortably to the world as it is, packaged and sold by increasingly commercially-minded providers and gutted of any broader social utility.

Elements of this argument had already been circulating for a number of years - in critiques of the happiness industry and positive psychology, for example, and in exposs of corporations, consultants and entrepreneurs who were selling yoga and meditation as a cure-all. As one piece on mindfulness training in Silicon Valley put it as long ago as 2014, Take an ancient practice, remove it from its context, strip away its ethical imperatives and sell it for a profit. Is the goal of the corporate mindfulness movement to comfort the already comfortable?

The faux revolution of mindfulness, by Ronald Purser

The selective awareness of Wisdom 2.0, by Darrin Drda

The corruption of happiness, by William Davies

Why I choose Samuel Beckett over positive thinking any day, by Dionne Lew

The dangers of radical self-love, by Chloe King

Pursers book was harder-hitting and much more widely-circulated than these earlier critiques, and it stimulated a large number of responses on the site. By and large, these responses accepted the risks of commercial appropriation, but rejected the conclusion that this was inevitable, or that it applied to all forms of mindfulness. Once Pursers faux revolution has been exposed and rejected, these authors argued, the debate becomes much more interesting and fruitful, because were freed to get on with the task of promoting the real thing and learning as we go.

Purser himself contributed two of these pieces, arguing for a socially-engaged or civic mindfulness that moves the focus of training and practice from me to weWhen mindfulness is taught and practiced in ways that help people connect the dots between their personal troubles and public issues, it becomes potentially transformative.

Moving mindfulness from me to we, by Ronald Purser

The future of mindfulness, by Ronald Purser

Others used similar frames to show how this kind of mindfulness can generate concrete results in schools, local governments, political processes, the training of activists, the fight against climate justice, and responses to the coronavirus pandemic. For example, Welsh civil servants reported more openness to conflicting perspectives that had to be synthesized into an action plan very quickly as COVID-19 was spreading in the Spring of 2020, while counselors at a Brooklyn High School have introduced mindfulness into ninth grade English classes, not just to reduce stress but also to help students question the social conditions under which they feel pressured and get angry - conditions like under-resourcing of the school system and the effects of racial injustice.

Does mindfulness in politics make any difference? By Rachel Lilley and Mark Whitehead

The need for critical social mindfulness in schools, by David Forbes

Climate change and the attention economy, by Peter Doran

Can mindfulness help us in the midst of COVID-19 - and beyond? By Beth Berila, David Forbes, Mark Leonard, Rachel Lilley and Michael Edwards

Purposeful solitude: reading Thoreau in a lockdown, by Andreas Hess

These examples suggest that there are at least three factors which differentiate mindfulness as stress relief from mindfulness for social change. First, framing mindfulness in social or collective terms has to be a conscious choice - it doesnt happen automatically or by accident, and it takes careful preparation and particular kinds of training. That may seem like an obvious conclusion, but its extremely important in a world where meditation and other techniques are sometimes seen to have social consequences simply by virtue of their effects on the mind. They dont.

Instead, such broader and deeper effects depend on deliberate attempts to link the cultivation of personal and political awareness together - what the German activist-theologian Dorothee Soelle called the mysticism of wide-open eyes. This doesnt mean that every student of mindfulness has to vote for the Labour Party or the Democrats; just that they be mindful of everything around them, as well whats happening inside of them and the interplay between the two, since all aspects of reality are connected. In these circumstances there need be no conflict or contradiction between systems change and inner development (though mindfulness doesnt necessarily bring agreement on the details of what that change should be).

Time for new thinking about mindfulness and social change, by Jamie Bristow

No, you cant be the change alone, by Alessandra Pigni

Why positive thinking isnt neoliberal, by Sonja Aviljas

The mysticism of wide-open eyes, by Michael Edwards

Second, mindfulness alone isnt enough to make these links effectively. In successful cases, trainers and teachers use other tools to bring in the social and political dimensions of human experience. The Ulex Project in Spain, for example, adds anti-oppression pedagogy to its mindfulness programs for activists, while insights from a wide range of other behavioral and cognitive theories are used among local government workers in Wales.

Traditionally, calming the mind and developing greater self-awareness have been the building blocks of mindfulness practice, and a quick glance at whats unfolding in the US and the UK should be enough to convince the skeptics that these things provide a better foundation for decision-making than narcissism and personal insecurity: if you think mindfulness is suspect, then try mindless politics and economics instead. But adding other tools enriches the mix enormously, and makes it easier to see how our individual struggles are embedded in wider social structures.

Mindfulness and social change, by Paula Haddock and Luke Wreford

Dont wait for the future of mindfulness its already here, by Paul Haddock and Gee

Social mindfulness as a force for change, by Mark Leonard

Waking up in the time of Corona: four insights from psychology, by Willem Kuyken

The third distinguishing feature is that socially-engaged mindfulness doesnt shy away from the sharpest forms of injustice and our own role in perpetuating them, as some meditation training tends to do because this is seen as potentially divisive, upsetting or destabilizing. Instead, it embraces them and makes them part of the journey, encouraging us to be mindful of the social realities around us and how we internalize them.

Beth Berila contributed two pieces in this vein which show how mindfulness can help us to discern, interrupt and transform power differentials and biases, by asking how anxiety and stress are shaped by the wider world for people who occupy different positions in society. The ultimate goals of mindfulness may be peace, harmony, unity or oneness, but oneness isnt sameness as she puts it. Our own wellbeing is connected to that of everyone else, so we can never be at peace in a world where others suffer so much violence and oppression, however long we meditate.

Mindful social justice, by Beth Berila

White urgency to end racism: why now? By Beth Berila

All the articles in the series agree on one point: counterposing mindfulness against social action doesnt get us very far, even if its an accurate description of some mainstream or commercial training programs. The really interesting questions lie between these two supposed poles, in exploring how different facets of mindfulness connect with different elements of social change in different settings. Thats a hugely-creative process in which no-one has a monopoly of wisdom and were all learning as we go.

As Gee and Paula Haddock from the Ulex Project put it, unless activists are prepared to turn their attention inwards as well as outwards our struggles will continue to be undermined by our own mental habits, but if mindfulness isnt mindful of the realities in which its practiced then it won't fulfill its potential as a wellspring of social transformation.

Excerpt from:

The road beyond McMindfulness - Open Democracy

Help NASA Design a Toilet for Artemis Astronauts on the Moon – HamletHub

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Artemis astronauts exploring the Moon will use the most advanced space systems of the 21stcentury including some of the most basic home comforts, like a toilet.NASA is calling on the global community to helpinnovate space toilet conceptsthrough theLunar Loo Challenge.

The evolution of the space toilet began with the space shuttle, so astronauts living aboardthe International Space Stationuse a toiletdesigned for long-duration missions in microgravity.Astronauts exploring on the Moon, however,will needa smaller,lighter,simpler toilet inside theirlunar lander, becauseevery ounce ofmasson the landeriscarefully allocated.For every kilogram(2.2 pounds)of mass,10 kilograms(22 pounds)of propellant is neededto descend to the lunar surface and launch back to lunar orbit.

The Lunar LooChallenge seeks novel design concepts forlow-mass,compact toilets that canreduce the current state-of-the art toilet mass bymore than half from54 kg to 31 kg andreduce the volume by 70%from 0.17 cubic meters to 0.12 cubic meters.For comparison, the standard toilet you might have in your house weighs 30-60 kg, but the complexity of operating in reduced gravity environments requiresmore components for a space toilet.

Our astronauts accomplish amazing feats of science and space exploration. But at the end of the day, theyre still human. We need to provide them with the same necessitiesashere on Earth so they can continue to do their job, said MikeInterbartolo,manager for the Lunar Loo Challengeout ofNASAsHuman Landing System(HLS) Crew Compartment Office at NASAs Johnson Space Centerin Houston.

Lunar toilet design conceptsmustallow astronauts to urinate and defecate in bothlunar gravityand microgravity.Gravity on the Moon is approximately one sixth of Earths gravity.Microgravity is what is generally considered zero-g and is experienced as weightlessness.

The Technical Prize is open to anyone age 18 or older participating as an individual or as a team.TheJunior Challenge is open to anyone under the age of 18, participating as an individual or as a team.Entrants12 years old or younger will need to have a parent or guardian registertosubmit ontheir behalf.

Submissions will be evaluated based on proposed capabilities, technical maturity, safety, and overall innovation. The Lunar Loo Challenge has a total prize purse of $35,000 that will be shared among the top three designs. The top three participants in the junior category will each receive public recognition andan item of official NASA merchandise.

Getting back to the Moon by 2024 is an ambitious goal and NASA is already working on approaches toimproveexisting space toilets. The agency is also aware of the value in inviting ideas from the general public, knowing that theyapproachproblemswith a mindset different from traditional aerospace engineering.

The global community of innovators provides valuable insight and expertise we might not have in-house, said Steve Rader, deputy manager of the NASA Tournament Lab (NTL). Challenges like this allow us to tap into that creative thinking and find unknown or undeveloped solutions.

For more information about the challenge, and how to enter, visit:

https://www.herox.com/LunarLoo

NTL, part oftheagencysPrizes and Challenges programwithin the Space Technology Mission Directorate, supports the use of public competitions and crowdsourcing as tools to advance NASA research and development and other mission needs.

Learn more about opportunities to participate in your space program through NASA prizes and challenges, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/solve

Artemisincludes sending a suite of new science instruments and technology demonstrations to study the Moon, landing the first woman and next man on the lunar surface by 2024, and establishing a sustained presence bythe end of the decade. The agency will leverage its Artemis experience and technologies to prepare for the next giant leap sending astronauts to Mars.

The rest is here:

Help NASA Design a Toilet for Artemis Astronauts on the Moon - HamletHub

Q&A: Brandon Soderberg and Baynard Woods discuss their GTTF book ‘I Got a Monster’ – Baltimore Fishbowl

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I first heard the name Det. Daniel Hersl while working at City Paper, where my colleagues and friends Brandon Soderberg and Baynard Woods reported on his harassment of Kevron Evans, better known as rapper Young Moose.

Hersl cited Mooses lyrics and music videos in a warrant to raid the rappers home in July 2014, leading to the arrest of Mooses father, brother and mother. But he did not issue a warrant for the rappers arrest until weeks later. Mooses lawyer, Richard Woods, claimed Hersl was aware Moose was scheduled to open for Baton Rouge rapper Lil Boosie at Royal Farms Arenaa huge boost for the musicians careerjust days before police brought him in.

In March 2016, Moose and his family members were acquitted on drug charges stemming from the raid, one of several instances where Hersl locked up Moose or harassed the Evans family.

Only later did we learn that Hersl was part of the Gun Trace Task Force, a corrupt unit of the Baltimore Police Department whose members were federally prosecuted on racketeering, robbery, conspiracy and corruption charges.

Six of the officersringleader Sgt. Wayne Jenkins, Sgt. Thomas Allers, Momudo Gondo, Maurice Ward, Jemell Rayam and Evodio Hendrixpleaded guilty.

Two former detectives, Hersl and Marcus Taylor, took their cases to trial and were eventually convicted.

Today, Soderberg and Woods release I Got a Monster, a deeply reported account of the GTTFs corruption published by St. Martins Press. With each detailed entry on a robbery or piece of planted evidence from the rogue unit, Soderberg and Woods put the reader right into the car, the house or the interrogation room where it all went down, showing just how calculating and precise these sworn officers were in their crimes.

Even if you followed the trials and news stories on the GTTF closely, I Got a Monstermonster being the units code name for potential targetsis an engrossing read and a much-needed compendium of what they call the rise and fall of Americas most corrupt police squad.

Over emailunder ordinary circumstances, this conversation would have taken place over beers at Mick OSheas, our favorite post-deadline spot in our City Paper daysI talked with Soderberg and Woods about the importance of the details, what shocked even them as they reported more on the GTTF, and what they hope their book contributes to the ongoing national conversation about police reform.

Soderberg and Woods are taking part in a virtual book launch tonight with special guests Lisa Snowden of Real News Network and Baltimore Beat (full disclosure: another colleague and good friend of mine), Johns Hopkins professor Lester Spence, activist Ralikh Hayes of Organizing Black, former BPD officer and current defund the police advocate Larry Smith, Badges Without Borders author Stuart Schrader, and Baltimore Youth Public Defender Jenny Egan.

The event is hosted by Red Emmas and starts at 7 p.m.

Baltimore Fishbowl: I want to go back to City Paper in 2014, when you both reported on Det. Daniel Hersls campaign to harass and bring charges against Kevron Evans, better known as rapper Young Moose. Mooses case is mentioned in the book. Could you have imagined when you were reporting those stories that it would eventually lead to all this?

Brandon Soderberg: Not at all. Although that says as much about my relative naivete about police corruption as a fairly green white reporter at the time as it does about the extent of the Gun Trace Task Force scandal. As you know, that was a story about this rapper Young Moose being harassed by a cop (which was really something we knew about because of our friend D. Watkins) and courts being culpable by believing Hersls version of events and letting him use lyrics and music videos as evidence. That was something I already understood from my music journalism work: Cops mess with rappers because of envy and racism.

And there were the additional parts of what happened that Moose and his father told us, which included theft and accusations of planted evidence. And I believed them and they often provided evidence to back up their claims. From there, we heard more stories about Hersl but even that felt kind of contained, right? A dirty cop and his buddies. That Hersl turned out to be tied to this larger criminal conspiracy, I couldnt have predicted that. Moose is kind of an unsung hero of this story: You read his raps from 2014 about police harassment and they read like parts of the GTTF indictment from 2017.

Baynard Woods: It also happened that a month after that story, the city began to see massive protests in support of Ferguson following the shooting of Mike Brown by police officer Darren Wilson and the failure of the DA to prosecute the cop. As Brandon has said, the protests around Thanksgiving 2014 were, in many ways, the beginning of the Baltimore Uprising. And then, in 2015, that smoldering uprising really erupted in what was almost a revolution. I think at that moment, because revolution always breaks open the possibilities of imagination, we might have been able to get a slightly better sense that the story we had started writing about with Hersl and Young Moose would have very long legs and could be extended into something like a book. But it took the federal trial of GTTF members Hersl and Marcus Taylor to see what shape that would take.

BFB: To report and write the book you gathered wiretaps, body-worn camera footage, surveillance video, trial transcripts, and thousands of documents. And you conducted hundreds of interviews. What was your process for sorting through all that information?

BW: The first thing we had to realize is that we were telling a story, not just dumping out everything we knew about the GTTF. With seven cops originally indicted, with others to follow, and years and years of crime, the story was just too big. So we knew we had to find a lens that would make it clear why we chose certain cases and not others. That turned out to be defense attorney Ivan Bates, who had been battling Jenkins in court for yearsand also had a string of big cases against Jenkins during 2016, when most of the book is set. He was able to play the role that detectives play in a lot of stories like this, standing in for the reader, who can figure out things as he figures them out.

BS: At the same time, we had to be open to reading and obtaining anything and everything and talking to whoever because any character detail or anecdote might be useful somewhere and also because were trying to understand their world. Like, I spent a lot of time just chatting with people they arrested that didnt want to really go on the record (sometimes just through Instagram or Facebook Messenger for a few minutes) because they would have some small detail that might be illustrative or might connect to something bigger for us. But once we identified that this book would focus on these cops through 2016 and it would also follow Ivan Bates, it made it easier to sort through all of the information. Then it was about having to find specific pieces of information to flesh out the scenes that fit the part of this sprawling story that we wanted to tell.

BFB: Stylistically, the first two-thirds or so of the book offers vivid accounts of the crimes carried out by these cops, putting the reader right in the car as the officers approach their next victim. How important was that to show just how precise and calculated these corrupt acts really were?

BS: We wanted to really give readers a sense of what this all felt like. I thought of the book as more like a camera following them around. To make that feel visceral and real, you needed a lot of detail. And the detail is also where you saw just how terrible this was: Its not just that they robbed a couple on July 8, 2016 but that they followed this couple through a Home Depot and that when they drove to the couples home, it was in Westminster and thats a bit of a drive and each turn or exit taken made it worse as the couple slowly realized their house was going to be robbed. So the details build tension too. The robberies were also important to detail because each of them was a way to characterize the cops and their shifting dynamic. These robberies often created small alliances or mini-beefs between the cops and so you want the personal drama to resonate and that only hits when its a detailed scene.

BW: Yeah, writing in scenes was really important to both of us. And to go back to the previous question, it was also a way to narrow down some of the cases. If we could make a good scene, then it had a better chance of making it into the book. If we needed information, but didnt have a scene, we had to find another way to get that in. But it was also important to show all of the calculated ruses and wild improvisations that these rogue cops made because it can serve almost as a handbook for lawyers or other defendantsits laying out a compendium of the kinds of dirty tricks cops can play.

BFB: Did anything you learned in the course of reporting this book shock even you?

BW: The way that policing functions in white communities is so much different than in Black communities. So, for me, maybe the most shocking thing was how a lot of the things that seemed outrageous to me, werent surprising to Black people who had been telling stories about these things for years. And thats one reason we have such hypersegregated, redlined communities is to keep these things out of the view of white people. Only after cellphone cameras became widespread did white reporters start believing the things that Black residents had been telling us about policing for years. But it still shocks me that in 2016, you get this squad, the GTTF together, that had so many detectives who were engaged in their own criminal enterprises with their own drug dealersthat kind of criminality within the department is off-the-charts.

BS: Each person who told us about their experience either told us something that we connected to the cops typical M.O. (which was shocking because it showed me how premeditated and common this all was) and/or they told us some new ugly detail (which was shocking because there was seemingly no bottom to their cruelty). Sgt. Jenkins of the GTTF stealing a mans phone after he robbed and arrested him and texting the mans girlfriend pretending to be the man to get her to send naked pictures is a shocking one just because its so petty and cruel.

A lot of the things we learned from Donny Stepp, the bail bondsman and cocaine dealer, were really shocking. That he was able to use the fact that the Department of Justice was in BPD headquarters investigating BPD as a cover to go into BPD and scheme with Jenkins is pretty wild.

And the biggest shocker was just the sense of how much chaos these cops created. You cant fully quantify how much crime they created, how many people were hurt or even killed possibly because of their actions. Targeting violence interrupters, robbing people of drugs just about every nightthat is going to create more violence. No one has really reckoned with that side of corruption much.

BFB: There isnt much indication that top BPD brass had much oversight of the GTTF, or even offered direction on how the group should carry out its supposed mission of getting guns off the street. How were there no checks on this rogue unit?

BS: The checks, I think, were not there intentionally. A lot of it was about looking the other way. Not giving them oversight was part of the strategy. By not investigating them or even questioning the staggering number of gun arrests they were wracking up (which anybody who cared to notice would have realized were pretty much impossible to do constitutionally), higher-ups in BPD could take advantage of the GTTFs good results and play dumb and get publicly outraged when this was all exposed.

BW: Former BPD spokesperson Eric Kowalczyk wrote a book where he describes Kevin Davis first day as Commissioner and he and Deputy Commissioner Dean Palmere told them that the riot is over and to get back to doing what they knew how to do. Palmere had been a plainclothes cop and he knew how they operated. Beyond that, when BPD and the Feds started a new War Room to deal with the murder crisis, it was run by Sean Miller, another Jenkins mentortheres a great picture that Sean Hubbard took of Jenkins and Miller riding in a car together during the uprising. Now, it is true that there were very few checks on them. But that is by designwe hear people every day arguing that putting checks on officers causes crime.

BFB: Are you convinced the Baltimore Police Department has made enough reforms to prevent a different unit from acting in a similarly corrupt fashion?

BW: Clearly the answer is no. I dont know that theyve made any real reforms that would stop something like this from happening. I mean, just a couple weeks ago, a homicide detective was arrested by county cops for allegedly using his police powers and his squad, all of whom were on the clock, to force a contractor to write him a $3,000 check for private work he thought was unsatisfactory.

BFB: What did the victims tell you about the trauma they experienced from all this? You describe Ronald Hamilton testifying on the stand that the GTTF raid on his Carroll County home destroyed his family and led to divorce.

BW: Hamilton, who they abducted from a shopping center and robbed, was very clear about some of those impacts. He and his wife had just bought a new house. After the GTTF essentially held them hostage in it, she couldnt be there alone. Shed go to Wall-Mart to wait until he got home. She was terrified. But in many ways, they were luckier than a lot of others. When Jenkins chased Umar Burley and he crashed into a man named Elbert Davis and killed him, the cops planted an ounce of heroin on Burley. He was in prison between 2010 and 2017. The Davis family sued Burley and won a million dollar judgmentand he has the weight of Elbert Davis life on him. That kind of trauma becomes so compounded.

BS: Some people who talked to us for the book said it was cathartic though it also meant reliving it all which was certainly retraumatizing. But we also saw how there was so much work the people who were victimized by GTTF had been doing to keep going and wake up in the morning and deal with that trauma. Part of that was coming to terms with what happened to them and trying not to let it destroy them. Often that involved locating some sense of forgiveness or locating some kind of peace within themselves about what happened. I dont want to make too much of that because its a personal choice by the people traumatized but I want to mention the other side of that trauma too: trying to process it and live with it and not let these cops continue to loom over their lives.

BFB: At the same time, you also give the GTTF cops some depth. We learn, for example, that Wayne Jenkins and his wife lost a child, that Momodu Gondo was living kind of a double life as a sworn police officer and a Baltimore native with friends in the drug trade. Did you come out of this with a different understanding of a Jenkins or a Gondo than you had before?

BS: One of the things that made me very interested in this story were the cops because they were complicated people. The trick was showing their lives and being fair to them but not losing sight that there are victims and perpetrators in this story and the GTTF are the perpetrators. Theres a weird dialectic there, right? Theres too much media from the perspective of copscopagandaand yet to tell this story, to really show you how terrible they were, it meant really getting to know these cops.

Getting more information about their lives means you inevitably find some qualities you might relate to at least a little or understand if only because you have to understand them to write this. However, we wanted to avoid locating a single piece of personal info and blowing it up as simple motivation. Jenkins was undoubtedly deeply affected by the death of his child and we had evidence of that but we didnt want to use it to explain why he was who he was. Thats lazy storytelling and bad reporting, and its too simple.

BW: Just to add one little bit to thatJenkins and Gondo, for instance, are very different people not only in terms of character, but in terms of demographics. Jenkins is white and grew up in the county and Gondo is Black and grew up in the city. Their corruption was driven by very different factors. But for both of them, just like for the drug dealers they robbed, the drug war was the economy in post-industrial Baltimore. We kind of have this expectation as a society that cops should really believe in the mission theyre engaged in. So, when we get rid of that, were going to see a lot of complex motivations and complicated decisions made on the job every day. If were going to understand that, we cant pretend theyre all somehow the same person.

BFB: This book arrives in the middle of this national conversation about policing. What do you hope it adds to the discussionparticularly for people outside of Baltimore, who are possibly learning about a lot of these cases for the first time?

BW: As post-uprising cities around the country are dealing with crime spikes, it complicates the argumentwhich we saw recently in Bret Stephens risible piece about Baltimorethat asking police to follow the law leads to crime. It does, but not for the quasi-magical reasons that people like Stephens suggestmorale! Or whatever. In this case, it led to an increase in crime in part because the cops were causing the crime. This leads to a cyclethe more crime there is, the longer leashes and more overtime we give cops, giving them a chance to create more chaos and crime, ramping up the cycle.

BS: I think the story shows that while the GTTFs actions were exceptionalI mean, we call them Americas most corrupt police squadthey are also the logical extension of contemporary American policing and therefore, a strong argument against simple reform. If you dont radically change policing, you will keep seeing GTTF-like cops.

We wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post last month that argued that Baltimore Police sabotaged reform and the GTTF scandal is a great example of the limits of reform. During the period our book covers, body cameras were introduced, the Department of Justice was here investigating BPD, and you couldnt go a week in 2016 without some kind of panel about community relations and the cops. None of that stopped GTTF. If they got away with such brazen criminality amid a moment of reform, then you can assume more conventional corruption and brutality wasnt stopped either.

BFB: The book is dedicated to defense attorneys fighting for the Fourth Amendment and its protections against illegal searches and seizures. Following the killing of Breonna Taylor, activists have been pushing for an end to no-knock warrants. Are there other reforms you would like to see to uphold Fourth Amendment rights?

BS: The Fourth Amendment in particular goes out the window when we give police more leeway to police us. By dialing back what police can get away with and by taking away their responsibilities and power and giving that responsibility and power to people more equipped to handle a lot of societal problems (defunding the police pretty much), the right to a reasonable search and seizure might begin to be more easily exercised. Proactive policing where plainclothes cops like GTTF go around the city essentially hunting for people to arrest is straight-up an exercise in violating Fourth Amendment rights (and often Second Amendment rights too). Getting rid ofor if you want to be more moderate about it, at least reducingthe power plainclothes police have would protect the Fourth Amendment.

BW: Its astounding to me that we still refer to anyone on the Supreme Court over the last generation as a strict constitutionalist. We have, as a country, essentially done away with the Fourth Amendment for the sake of the drug war. Weve had plenty of fights over the First and Second Amendments, but then we fall silent about illegal searches and seizures as long as we arent the ones being illegally searched and detained.

Getting rid of no-knock warrants is really important and should be important for cops, too. They are extremely dangerous for everyone involved. But we need far higher standards for warrants in general. For instance, its not just that they shouldnt have been able to raid Taylors house with a no-knock warrantthey shouldnt have been able to get a warrant for it at all. There was no evidence presented to justify any kind of warrant. Part of the problem is with the cops, but a large part also lies with the judges who sign warrants. They should be held accountable.

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Q&A: Brandon Soderberg and Baynard Woods discuss their GTTF book 'I Got a Monster' - Baltimore Fishbowl

Family of George Floyd files lawsuit against city of Minneapolis and 4 former police officers – CNBC

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A protester wearing a mask holds a large black power raised fist in the middle of the crowd that gathered at Columbus Circle.

Ira L. Black | Getty Images

Members of George Floyd's family filed a lawsuit in federal court Wednesday against the city of Minneapolis and the four police officers involved in his fatal arrest in May.

The suit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota, alleges that the officers violated Floyd's constitutional rights. It claims that the city "caused officers [to] act with impunity and without fear of retribution" and failed to properly train police.

The family is seeking unspecified financial damages in addition to the appointment of a "receiver or similar authority" to ensure that the city "properly trains and supervises its police officers."

Video of Floyd's Memorial Day arrest shows former Minneapolis police officerDerek Chauvin, who is white, kneeling on Floyd's neck while Floyd, who was Black, cries out that he cannot breathe. According to charging documents, Chauvinheld his knee on Floyd's neck for about eight minutes.

Floyd's death while in police custody sparked weeks of protests against police violence around the globe.

Ben Crump, an attorney for the family, said at a press conference announcing the lawsuit that the case was "unprecedented."

"With this lawsuit, we seek to set a precedent to make it financially prohibitive" for police to "wrongfully kill marginalized people, especially Black people, in the future," Crump said.

"The city of Minneapolis has a history of policies and procedures and deliberate indifference when it comes to the treatment of arrestees, especially Black men, that cries out for training and discipline," he said.

The four officers involved in Floyd's arrest are facing charges, and Minnesota is pursuing an investigation into the "policies, procedures, and practices" of the Minneapolis Police Department over the past decade.A separate federal investigation into the arrest is also underway.

The suit names Chauvin as well as the other former officers involved in the arrest, Tou Thao, Thomas Lane and J. Alexander Kueng. The lawsuit claims that Chauvin's actions were unreasonable and that each of the other former officers had a duty to intervene to stop him.

"Every reasonable officer would have known that using force against a compliant, handcuffed individual who is not resisting arrest constitutes excessive force in violation of the Fourth Amendment," the suit says. The suit also alleges that each of the former officers "had a duty to intervene on behalf of a citizen whose constitutional rights were being violated in their presence by another officer."

Chauvin has been charged withsecond-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. The other former officers were charged with aiding and abetting second-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. All four were fired from the police department.

The suit claims that Minneapolis "frequently fails to terminate or discipline officers who demonstrate patterns of misconduct." It alleges that the Minneapolis Police Department "has observed unlawful or otherwise improper conduct by Chauvin throughout his career but has tolerated it and refused to remedy or mitigate it."

The suit says that the Minneapolis Police Department characterized neck restraints as "non-deadly" force "and did not warn it can cause death" from 2012 until June.

"Training materials offered to officers in 2014, including Defendants Chauvin and Thao, depict an officer placing a knee on the neck of an arrestee who is handcuffed in a prone position," the suit says.

Attorneys for the former officers either declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment. A judge last week imposed a gag order barring the attorneys from discussing the cases against the officers with the media.

Minneapolis interim City Attorney Erik Nilsson said in a statement that the city was reviewing the lawsuit and that Floyd's death was a "tragedy."

"Criminal charges are pending against four Minneapolis police officers and it's very important that the criminal case proceed without interference," Nilsson said.

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Family of George Floyd files lawsuit against city of Minneapolis and 4 former police officers - CNBC

Trump working with Bush torture lawyer to cut Congress out of lawmaking: report – Salon

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President Donald Trump suggested in aFox News Sundayinterviewthat he planned to act beyond his legal authority to implement sweepingchanges to immigration and health care policiesbased onan interpretation of a recent Supreme Court rulinggrantinghim "powers that nobody thought the president had."

Axios reportedthat the legally precariousstrategy,which cuts Congressout of the lawmaking process, relies on a theory of executive power floated in June by John Yoo, the George W. Bush administration lawyer who drafted the memo justifying the use of torture as an interrogation technique.

The first of the controversialorders will coverimmigration, per Axios. Trump told Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace that he would also invoke the authority to create "a full and complete health care plan."

You heard me yesterday. We're signing a health care plan within two weeksa full and complete health care plan that the Supreme Court decision on DACA gave me the right to do. So we're going to solve we're going to sign an immigration plan, a health care planand various other plans. And nobody will have done what I'm doing in the next four weeks.

The Supreme Court gave the president of the United States powers that nobody thought the president hadby approving, by doing what they did their decision on DACA. And DACA's going to be taken care of also. But we're getting rid of it, because we're going to replace it with something much better. What we got rid of already, which was most of Obamacare the individual mandate. And that I've already won on. And we won also on the Supreme Court. But the decision by the Supreme Court on DACA allows me to do things on immigration, on health care, on other things that we've never done before. And you're going to find it to be a very exciting two weeks.

Yoo argued in a National Reviewarticle that a recent Supreme Court decision upholding the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA)programempoweredthe president to bypass Congress through prosecutorial discretion: choosing not to enforce federal laws.

While the orders may be illegal, Trump would likely be able to run out the clock in the courts until Election Day, according to Yoo. Itwould also create legacy headaches for any successor, who would have to enforce the lawsunless and until the courts overturn them,Yoo claimed.

"SupposePresident Donald Trump decided to create a nationwide right to carry guns openly," Yoo wrote. "He could declare that he would not enforce federal firearms laws, and that a new 'Trump permit' would free any holder of state and local gun-control restrictions."

"Even if Trump knew that his scheme lacked legal authority, he could get away with it for the length of his presidency," he added. "And, moreover, even if courts declared the permit illegal, his successor would have to keep enforcing the program for another year or two."

"According to Chief Justice Roberts, the Constitution makes it easy for presidents to violate the law, but reversing such violations difficult especially for their successors," he concluded.

Yoo is most famousfor what has become known as the "torture memo," which justified the Bush administration's use ofwaterboarding via a constitutional reading called "the unitary executive theory."

As thetheory goes, in wartime a president can exercise virtually unlimited authority, which can only be checked by Congress'spending power.Because the "war on terror" might nothave a definitive end, the president wouldhave nearly dictatorial power in this realmfor the foreseeable future, including deploying federal troops for police actions and suspending the Fourth Amendment's ban on unreasonable searches and seizures.

Axios reported that Yoo's article has been spotted on Trump's desk, and the president had brought it up in meetings with aides.Yoo told the outletthat he had discussed the theory with White House aides in recent virtual meetings.

When Trump firstmentioned the plan, ina recent Telemundo interview, he drew fire from within the Republican tent.Not only would the orderinclude DACA, which the administrationjust spent years fighting to overturn,Trump claimed it would also createa path to citizenship, as well.

"I'm going to make DACA a part of it," said the president. "We're going to have a road to citizenship."

The White House immediately walked back that claim,which runs the risk of alienatingGOPimmigration hawks, as well asthe anti-immigrantbase which carried Trump through the 2016 primaries and general election.

"This does not include amnesty," White House spokesman Judd Deere said in a statement.

Fellow Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas quickly tweeted that "it would be a HUGE mistake if Trump tries to illegally expand amnesty."

"There is ZERO constitutional authority for a President to create a 'road to citizenship"by executive fiat," hewrote.

At the same time, Trump saidhe would change over toa merit-basedimmigration system, as opposed to one based on family connections,something which anti-immigration hardliners like senior White House adviser StephenMillerhave wanted for years.

Under Trump's earlier "merit-based" proposal, immigrants would be selected through a point-based system, which scores for "extraordinary talent, professional and specialized vocations and exceptional academic track records." However, the Republican-led Senate was not on board.

In 2018, Trump offered apath to citizenship as a concession to get Congress to authorize $25 billion for hiswall along the Mexican border, but lawmakers balked. In 2019, the Democratic-ledHouse passed a bill which would allow Dreamers to apply for citizenship, but the Senate still has not voted on it. The White House said at the time that Trump would veto such a bill.

It was not immediately clear how Trump would craft such an executive order to create a health care plan. He made the "repeal and replace" of Obamacare a cornerstone of his 2016 campaign, but allefforts to secure enough Republican votes in Congress failed.

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Trump working with Bush torture lawyer to cut Congress out of lawmaking: report - Salon

Judge considering whether deputies violated the rights of a Wellsville man arrested on drug dealing and other charges – Cache Valley Daily

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Booking photo for Tanner J. Mitton (Courtesy: Cache County Jail).

LOGAN A judge is expected to rule in the next month whether local law enforcement authorities violated a 26-year-old Wellsville mans constitutional rights. Tanner J. Mitton has been in jail since February, when Cache County sheriffs deputies arrested him on multiple drug charges during a traffic stop.

Mitton was in 1st District Court Wednesday afternoon, participating in the hearing by web conference from jail. He was previously charged with 24 felonies and misdemeanors.

On February 8, a deputy spotted Mitton, driving a red Volkswagon Jetta in Smithfield. The deputy claimed he recognized that the suspect had a warrant for his arrest.

Mitton allegedly became verbally confrontational with the deputy. He also appeared to be under the influence of methamphetamine and heroine.

Deputies obtained a warrant and searched the Jetta. Inside they found needles, aluminum foil, plastic packages with residue and two electronic scales. They also located two bags of marijuana and a baggy of cocaine. Multiple cellphones, laptops, a hard-drive, financial card swiping device and a printer were also discovered in the car.

Mitton admitted to law enforcement that he had been using drugs. He later tested positive for multiple illegal substances and was booked into jail.

During a virtual court hearing last week, public defender Mike McGinnis asked Judge Angela Fonnesbeck to dismiss the charges, stating law enforcement had violated Mittons Fourth Amendment Constitutional Rights against unreasonable searches and seizures.

McGinnis argued that his client was targeted by deputies, who were waiting for Mitton to leave a home so they could pull him over. They also detained him for an abnormal length of time during the traffic stop, so they could search the vehicle.

Prosecutors claimed the traffic stop was conducted lawfully. They also said the length of time was reasonable, while a K-9 detected the presence of drugs in the vehicle.

During Wednesdays court hearing, Mitton read a letter, asking for the court to release him from jail. He said he was not a bad person but had made some wrong choices because of his addiction to drugs.

Judge Fonnesbeck told attorneys she was going to issue a written ruling on McGinnis motions. She said there were some real important constitutional issues raised by the charges. She anticipated having the ruling completed by next week and ordered Mitton to appear again in court August 3.

will@cvradio.com

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Judge considering whether deputies violated the rights of a Wellsville man arrested on drug dealing and other charges - Cache Valley Daily

Is there life on Mars? – The Economist

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Jul 21st 2020

AROUND 3.5BN years ago conditions on Earth and Mars were similar. Both had thick atmospheres and liquid water on their surfaces. Both, in other words, had the conditions required to sustain life. And on one of those planets life was, indeed, sustained. Precisely when biology began on Earth remains obscure. But by 3.5bn years ago, a billion years after the solar system formed, it was well established there and has since evolved into the lush abundance of complex forms seen today. Mars, meanwhile, became a freezing desert.

The question nevertheless remains: given that the conditions needed for life to emerge on Earth also seem to have pertained for a time on Mars, might life have evolved there, too? And, if it did, might it still survive in some form, even if only in vanishingly rare amounts?

On July 30th NASA, Americas space agency, hopes to launch its latest Mars rover, Perseverance, which will try to answer at least the first of those questions. It is aimed at a 45km-wide crater called Jezero that was, 3.5bn years ago, home to a lake. Its main goal is to look for signs of ancient life. But it is also the opening gambit in a decade-long plan to bring Martian rocks to Earth. Nor will Perseverance be alone in its quest. It will be accompanied either now or soon by European, Chinese and other robots intent on finding out just what it was that happened on Mars.

Once upon a time...One such mission is already on its way. On July 20th the United Arab Emirates (UAE) joined the list of countries that have launched probes towards extraterrestrial bodies. That was when Al Amal, meaning hope, rose from Japans spaceport on Tanegashima, off the southern tip of Kyushu. Al Amals purpose is to study Marss weather and also how the Martian atmosphere is leaking into space.

All being well, Perseverance will follow soon from Americas principal spaceport, at Cape Canaveral, in Florida. This one tonne, six-wheeler, which cost $2.4bn to build and launch and will take another $300m to operate during its mission, will be the most sophisticated vehicle yet sent by America to the Martian surface.

Jezero, the crater around which it will trundle, sits on the inner rim of Isidis Planitia, one of the largest impact basins on Mars, which was excavated 3.9bn years ago. One source of the water which formed the lake that once lay within Jezero seems to have been a river leading to a well-preserved delta (see picture). The layers of sediment in this feature are prime targets in the search for Martian biology.

On Earth, some of the oldest evidence for life comes in the form of stromatolites. These stratified structures form in shallow water when colonies of microbes grow layer upon layer, trapping minerals as they do so. The most ancient examples are thought to be those found in Greenland in 2016, which have been dated to 3.7bn years before the present day. If there was sufficient time for stromatolite-forming organisms to evolve on Earth by this date then there is no obvious reason why they might not also have evolved on Mars.

Spotting stromatolite-like layers in rocks will not, though, be enough on its own. Researchers will also need to consider the textures of the rocks concerned and the distribution within them of minerals and potentially telltale organic molecules. Confusingly, in chemistry-speak, an organic molecule is not necessarily of biological origin. The term just means that it is built around carbon atoms, so organic molecules can also originate inorganically, as it were. The biological nature of an organic molecule has thus to be justified by other evidence. As Kathryn Stack Morgan, a geologist who is the Perseverance missions deputy project scientist, observes, This is exactly the type of thing that we do here on Earth to make a case for biosignatures in our own rock record, and for the very first time using our instruments we can do that on the surface of Mars.

Rocks and hard placesPerseverance carries two instruments in particular that are intended to examine the surfaces of rocks which the rover encounters. Both will look for pertinent minerals and organic molecules. SHERLOC, situated at the end of the rovers robotic arm, will shine a laser onto tiny grains in rocks it comes across. By analysing the spectrum of the light that is scattered back, this instrument will be able to identify molecules in the grains under scrutiny. WATSON, a camera, will then take close-ups of rocks that SHERLOC deems worthy of further study.

Mapping SHERLOCs chemical analyses onto WATSONs high-resolution images will show how different mineral layers are arranged and textured. That will be a big improvement over the instruments on board NASAs current operational Mars rover, Curiosity, which arrived in 2012. These are capable only of grinding up rocks to work out whether or not organic molecules are present in the bulk material. If there are stromatolites (or even fossils of more complex creatures) Perseverance will be able to see them, both chemically and optically.

As did Curiosity, Perseverance will rely on an autopilot to guide it through the atmosphere to the planets surface, after arriving at a velocity, relative to its target, of 19,500km per hour. We refer to it as the seven minutes of terror, says Matt Wallace, an engineer who is the missions deputy project manager. The rovers autonomy will then carry over to its everyday operations. Because of the time it takes radio waves to travel from Earth to Mars, Perseverance will receive instructions from its controllers only once a day. On the ground in Mars it will need to find and avoid awkwardly placed rocks, and also more serious hazards, such as cliffs, by processing, in real time, pictures coming from its dozens of cameras. This autonomy, NASA is confident, will permit the new rover to cross the Martian surface routinely and safely at a speed of around 150 metres per hour, double that at which Curiosity is usually allowed to travel.

As well as eyes, Perseverance has ears. A pair of microphones on board will permit people to hear the winds of Mars for the first time. They will also be able listen to the whirr of the rovers gears, the crunch of its wheels as it moves across the regolith (the crushed rock that passes for soil on Mars) and the percussive sounds of the drill at the end of its arm as it chips out samples of rocks to study.

Not all of those samples will be discarded after investigation. Some will be packed for eventual dispatch to Earth by a project called the Mars Sample Return mission. This is a collaboration between NASA and the European Space Agency, ESA, that involves launching five separate spacecraft over the course of a decade. Perseverance is the first, and its collaboration-related job is to seal samples of Martian rock that its operators think worthy of further investigation into one of around 30 titanium tubes which it carries. As the illustration overleaf presages, it will leave these on the surface to be picked up by an ESA-designed fetch rover that could arrive as early as 2028. Once collected, the tubes will be brought back to Earth by a system of relay craft, and their contents analysed.

Perhaps most intriguingly of all, Perseverance will also carry a 1.8kg helicopter, called Ingenuity. If this manages to fly in Marss thin atmosphere (which has about 1% of the density of Earths at the surface), it will represent the first controlled flight, beyond the landing and lift-off of a spacecraft, to take place on another heavenly body. And if that happens, it will pave the way for more sophisticated drones on future mission to act as scouts.

The life-seeking instruments on Perseverance are more advanced than anything that has come before them, but this was not the original plan for the next phase, after Curiosity, of NASAs attempt to find life on Mars. In February 2012, while Curiosity was still making its way there, Barack Obamas administration slashed NASAs planet-exploration budget by a fifth. At the time, American scientists had been developing a programme called ExoMars, in collaboration with ESA. This was to involve an orbiter and several rovers being launched from 2016 onwards, with a combination of tools intended to look for signs of life.

Mr Obamas cuts killed American involvement in ExoMars and, by the time Curiosity reached Mars in August 2012, NASA had no plans to send any future rovers. The overwhelmingly positive public reaction to Curiositys nail-biting landing, however, helped persuade the agencys chiefs to reconsider their priorities and put together a scaled-back version of previous plans that required no increase in the budget. The result, the mission now known as Perseverance, was announced a few months later.

Every contact leaves a traceMeanwhile, ESA had kept its part of the ExoMars programme alive, turning to Russia for help with launching and hardware. In 2016, the Europeans delivered the first part of the programme, the Trace Gas Orbiter, to its destination. Its goal is to measure the precise concentrations in Marss atmosphere of substances, including methane, water vapour, nitrogen oxides and acetylene, that each form less than 1% of the atmospheres total volume but which might be signs of biological activity.

Methane is of particular interest since its presence varies with both time and location on the planets surface. Methane does not live long in the Martian atmosphere, suggesting there is an active source of the gas. On Earth, living things emit methane as they digest nutrients. But purely geological processes can also liberate the stuff.

The next step in ESAs ExoMars programme is a rover, called Rosalind Franklin. This was also scheduled for launch about now, to take advantage, like the Perseverance and Al Amal missions, of the current alignment of Earth and Mars that allows for a quick, six-month journey between the two. However, a combination of technical delays and the effect of covid-19, which has meant the multinational team of engineers involved could not easily travel to complete the manufacture and testing of the rover, has pushed the launch date back to the next favourable alignment, in 2022.

When Rosalind Franklin eventually does arrive on Mars (which will be in 2023, if this timetable is adhered to), the craft will crawl over an area called Oxia Planum. This has clays that date back around 4bn years, which will make it the oldest site yet explored on Mars. Since clay minerals require water to form, there are high hopes that Oxia Planum may once have been a life-friendly region.

Rosalind Franklins scientific payload will be capable of much more sophisticated analyses than Perseverances. In particular, the Mars Organic Molecule Analyser (MOMA) will be able to extract organic molecules from rocks and regolith more effectively than before.

Previous attempts to study organic molecules on Mars have been plagued by the presence of chemicals called perchlorates. These were first seen in 2008, by NASAs Phoenix lander, and were confirmed by Curiosity half a decade later. Those missions baked their Martian samples in ovens, to release the organics. That also released chlorine and oxygen from the perchlorates, and these oxidised most of the organic molecules present. moma will circumvent this problem by using an ultraviolet laser that will knock organic molecules off rock samples so fast that any perchlorates present will not have time to decompose.

Rosalind Franklins most important tool, however, will be a drill that can collect samples from two metres below the surface. This is crucial for recovering material in which organic molecules can be found in a good state of preservation. The thin Martian atmosphere is easily penetrated by ionising radiation from space. This slams into the surface and even penetrates a little way beneath. As Jorge Vago, ExoMarss lead scientist, observes, Over many millions of years, this ionising radiation acts like gazillion little knives slowly cutting away the functional groups of the organic molecules you would like to hopefully discover. Use a drill to go deep enough, though, and any material collected will have been protected from radiation by several metres of rock. ESAs modelling suggests that samples from 1.5 metres down would be scientifically interesting. The deepest any mission has so far sampled under the surface of Mars is a few centimetres.

The jackpot of this treasure hunt would be to find things like sugars, phospholipids (constituents of the membranes of cells), nucleotides (the letters of genetic material) or amino acids (the building blocks of proteins) that are characteristic of life on Earth. But consolation prizes might be available in the form of less direct signals of biology within the chemistrytraces of the actions of enzymes, for example. As Dr Vago observes, the way fatty acids are synthesised biologically on Earth means that they usually have an even number of carbon atoms, although there is nothing in their underlying chemistry which favours that in abiotic syntheses. Finding a pattern like this, or something equally chemically striking, in Martian organic molecules would be encouraging to those who hope that Mars has or once had life.

Many handsAmerica and Europe have long histories of studying Mars. The uae is a newcomer. But it is not alone in that. Another country also wants to use the current launch window to join the Mars club: China.

Tianwen-1 (heavenly questions) is a combined mission consisting of an orbiter, a lander and a rover. It is built and operated by the China National Space Administration (CNSA) and is also scheduled for imminent launch. Chinese officials have been tight-lipped about the exact timing and have also declined to release much detail about the missions scientific aims. This is not Chinas first attempt at Martian space flight, however. In 2011 a Chinese craft called Yinghuo-1 attempted to hitch a ride with Phobos-Grunt, a Russian probe. Unfortunately, the rockets intended to propel the combined mission on its way malfunctioned, and it never left Earth orbit.

The little that is known of Tianwen-1 suggests that it will study the distribution of ice on Mars and examine how the planets habitability has changed over time. The various craft involved will host around a dozen scientific instruments, including cameras, chemistry sets, magnetometers and radars. Officials from the CNSA have said that the mission would make detailed surveys of the Martian surface. A ground-penetrating radar, for example, will measure the thickness and composition of layers within the regolith and identify any ice that is within 100 metres of the surface.

It will be a sophisticated spacecraft, if the details revealed about the missions landing system are accurate. Zhang Rongqiao, the chief designer, told Chinese television-viewers in 2019 that the lander would separate from the crafts main body at an altitude of 70 metres and hover until it found a safe landing spot. Cameras and laser scanners will help this lander avoid obstacles as it makes its way to the surface.

Whether the lander will be capable of the sorts of biology-detecting activity planned for Perseverance and, after it, Rosalind Franklin, is unclear. But even if it is not, those other two vehicles, combined with the forthcoming ESA and NASA Mars sample-return mission, do now offer a realistic possibility of answering the question of whether there is, or was, life elsewhere than on Earth. A failure to find it would be a disappointment, although the search would no doubt go on, both on Mars and elsewhere. But an answer in the affirmative, even were that life only bacterial and extinct, would surely transform humanitys view of itself as profoundly as did the discoveries of Nicolaus Copernicus and Charles Darwin.

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Is there life on Mars? - The Economist

Explained: What The Deployment Of Jaguar Fighters In Andaman And Nicobar Islands Means – Swarajya

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In the middle of its most serious standoff with China in decades, India has deployed Jaguar fighters in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the eastern Indian Ocean.

The Indian Air Force (IAF), it is believed, has flown at least 10 Jaguar fighters to the Car Nicobar Air Base in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

This deployment of the fighters, which took place earlier this month, came in conjunction with at least three naval exercises in areas around Andaman and Nicobar Islands over the last few weeks, including two Passex or passage drills with the navies of Japan and the US.

In all probability, the fighters deployed at Car Nicobar are the maritime strike variant of Jaguar, called Jaguar IM. While there is no confirmation, the fighters could be from the Number 6 Squadron 'Dragons based at the Jamnagar Air Force Base in Gujarat.

The first Jaguars (not the maritime variant) of the IAF had landed at the Jamnagar airbase from the United Kingdom this month nearly 40 years ago. While India acquired Jaguars in large numbers, the maritime variant forms a small part of IAF's fleet of Jaguar fighters.

Over the years, the IAF has upgraded its Jaguars to squeeze in new capabilities. The most recent upgrade involved the installation of an active electronically-scanned array (AESA) radar manufactured by Israels Elta Systems as part of the Display Attack Ranging Inertial Navigation III (DARIN III) upgrade programme of the IAF. Jaguar was the first fighter in the IAF's fleet to get an AESA radar.

AESA radar gives the Jaguars a new lease of life with the capability to track multiple targets at greater distances, much more accurately than before, and resist jamming.

In other words, Jaguars of the IAF can now track multiple enemy targets in air and on the ground during an operation, and guide missiles towards them while resisting enemys attempt at jamming.

Another upgrade, which came in the form of the integration of the Harpoon missile, has added more lethality to the platform, which some said was fast becoming obsolete.

Equipped with these capabilities, and deployed in Andaman and Nicobar Islands, the Jaguars of the IAF can prove to be a headache for China accentuate its Malacca Dilemma' if the conflict unfolding in the Himalayas escalates and expands to the maritime domain.

Along with assets of the Indian Navy, the Jaguars will play a vital role in the interdiction of Chinese shipping if India decided to do that in the event of war.

The Malacca Strait, a narrow stretch of water between the Malaya Peninsula in the north and the Indonesian island of Sumatra in the south, is crucial for China. It may not be the only shipping channel connecting the Indian Ocean with the South China Sea, but it is the most viable and widely used one. A large part of global seaborne trade (40 per cent by some accounts), including much of China's imports and exports, passes through the Malacca Strait.

Beijing's dependence on the Malacca Strait can be gauged from the fact that over 80 per cent of its crude oil requirement, a large part of which comes from the Middle East, passes through this narrow channel on its way to ports in China. Much of the ore and minerals it imports from Africa, which is critical for its industry, passes through the Malacca Strait.

In a long drawn out war with the US or India, a blocked Malacca Strait, if it lasts long enough, can starve China of resources critical for its industry.

Additionally, if China, in the event of war with India, decided to deploy its naval assets in the Indian Ocean region, maintaining supply lines through the Malacca Strait will prove difficult with the presence of Indian Navy warships and fighters of the IAF deployed in Andaman and Nicobar Islands. India can interdict these supply lines, forcing Chinese assets to depend on its limited bases in the Indian Ocean.

Equipped with the 124-km-range Harpoon anti-ship missiles, the Jaguars flying from Car Nicobar can target enemy ships exiting the Malacca Strait and moving towards Andaman and Nicobar Islands from standoff ranges.

This scenario, experts say, is unlikely unless the situation escalates drastically and an all out war breaks out. And in the current situation, the deployment of Jaguars in Andaman and Nicobar Islands is mostly aimed at deterring Chinese misadventures in the Indian Ocean region.

The Peoples Liberation Army Navy, over the last decade, has significantly increased its presence in the Indian Ocean. Chinese submarines make regular forays into the Indian Ocean, as do its research vessels studying submarine routes and mapping the ocean floor.

In September last year, the Indian Navy forced out a Chinese research vessel after it entered Indias exclusive economic zone in the Andaman Sea.

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Explained: What The Deployment Of Jaguar Fighters In Andaman And Nicobar Islands Means - Swarajya

Thousand Islands July 4th parties linked to COVID-19 spike – North Country Public Radio

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Jul 17, 2020 Contact tracers have linked 16 confirmed coronavirus cases in Jefferson County to parties along the St. Lawrence River July 4th weekend.

State and county health officials say theyve contacted more than a hundred people who may be at risk of having COVID-19. Theyre also actively working to identify additional individuals who may have been exposed.

Anyone who attended a large gathering in the Thousand Islands July 4th weekend should get tested immediately, especially if they may not have worn a mask or kept six feet social distance. The state set up a temporary testing center Friday afternoon at the Clayton fire department.

All New Yorkers are reminded that emergency orders banning large social gatherings remain in effect, and people should wear masks in public when they cant stay six feet away from others.

Overall, Jefferson County reported 26 new coronavirus cases in a week, bringing its total to 137 since the start of the pandemic.

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Thousand Islands July 4th parties linked to COVID-19 spike - North Country Public Radio