Select Page ::

End the Civil War Before It Starts: Vote Engel and Schleifer – The Jewish Press – JewishPress.com

Posted on June 22, 2020 by Danzig

Photo Credit: United States Congress / brandnewcongress.org

{Originally posted to the authors blog}

The tension in U.S. politics has grown progressively worse over the past few years. The center began to crumble several years ago when centrist Democrats felt like there was no room for them in a party lurching leftward (goodbye Evan Bayh (IN) and Joe Lieberman (CT)) and the moderate wing of the Republican party took a whipping with John McCains failed run for president in 2008. By 2016, outsiders began to take over each party, when Bernie Sanders (VT), an Independent on the far left extreme had a real shot at being the Democrats nominee, and a political novice who spent virtually his entire life as a Democrat named Donald Trump ran through the establishment Republican candidates.

The far left-wing of the Democratic Party was livid with the way Sanders was treated by the party establishment and even more that Trump became president. They organized themselves as Justice Democrats and pushed to elect socialists into congress and to rewrite the Democratic platform. They had success in 2018 with the election of a few of their favorites including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (nicknamed AOC) and three other women including Rashida Tlaib (MI), Ilhan Omar (MN) and Alyssa Pressley (MA), a group which became known as The Squad. These individuals would normally have only been found running on the Working Familys Party or the Green Party with no shot at winning a seat in a system dominated by two-parties. But they have pushed their way in and are transforming the Democratic Party in a very toxic way, much the way Trump has in the Republican party.

The Justice Democrats are targeting additional seats long held by centrist Democrats in 2020. Two are in lower New York State, including Eliot Engel (NY-16) and the seat vacated by retiring Nita Lowey (NY-17). Their candidates are every bit as extremist as the Squad but with more up-to-date woke initiatives, and will push jobs and people out of the region and add fuel to the budding civil war in the United States.

Adam Schleifer versus Mondaire Jones

There are eight Democrats running for Nita Loweys seat, and Jones is currently in the lead according to polls. His vision for America is more radical than AOC, Sanders or Elizabeth Warren, all of whom endorsed him. His goal is best described as give everything away for free and let corporations and the rich pay for it. The fact that the numbers dont add is irrelevant.

Behind Jones in the polls is Evelyn Farkas and Adam Schleifer. Voting for Farkas is equivalent to voting for former Secretary of State John Kerry (who endorsed her). She is well versed in foreign affairs but that doesnt mean she has good ideas or capabilities to effectuate good US policies. Adam Schleifer is tied with her for second. He is so mainstream that the New York Times refused to mention his name even while profiling the other seven candidates.

New York Times endorsement of all alt-left candidates, refuses to even mention Adam Schleifers name

If you want to avoid being represented by an even worse-AOC or a John Kerry-clone, vote for Schleifer.

Eliot Engel versus Jamaal Bowman

Like Jones, Jamal Bowman is endorsed by the alt-left fringe. His pedigree as a middle school principal makes him as qualified for congress as Trump was for the presidency.

His platform includes:

In the same breath as stating support for Irans nuclear weapons aspirations, he wrote that the US must stand up to this far-right authoritarian movement thats taking place across the world, not cozy up to them, whether thats in Saudi Arabia, Hungary, Brazil, India, Israel. Not Iran. Not North Korea. Not China or Venezuela. Israel.

New York voters have a chance to turn the tide against the growing cleft in America by rejecting the extremists running for office and push aggressively to get the vote out for Adam Schleifer (NY-17) and Eliot Engel (NY-16). Primary is June 23.

Adam Schleifer running for Congress

The Advancing Nihilism and the Rot of Post-Modernism in the West – The Jewish Voice

Posted on June 22, 2020 by Danzig

By: Jason D. Hill

Much has already been written on the horrific and tragic killing of George Floyd, and much has been written and debated about the existence or non-existence of systemic racism in our society and in the police departments of the United States of America. I submit that reasonable people can have reasonable disagreements about that issue; they can offer reasonable counterfactuals and equally compelling rejoinders. I am a philosopher by training, and one possessed of a cold, unsentimental mind by temperament. Therefore, I take it that an absence of a consensus about issues that are far from unassailable truths can exist without civic life and social trust and cohesion falling into total disarray.

What bothers me about the culture wars taking place in the streets of American cities as I listen (not unsympathetically to the cries of the hearts of people who have genuinely suffered from prejudice and brutality in their lives) is a number of things. First and foremost is the unchanneled rage and directionless anger that is harming not just innocent citizens of all races, but also the very people in whose names the protests and riots are offered up as a form of both restorative and retributive justice, and as invisible victims in systemically corrupt institutions: black people.

When black and white protestors indiscriminately tear down or deface the statues of slaves traders and white abolitionists with equal abandon; when Winston Churchill, a gallant war hero and indisputable defender of Western civilization who, along with the United States, saved the West from the rapacious ravages of Hitlers expansionist design for racially-dominated Aryan rule, is considered morally indistinguishable from racial separatists; and when the latter are lumped with white abolitionists who gave their lives for black emancipation, there is no lower place to sink in terms of both cognitive dissonance and moral depravity. In an imperfect world, moral and conceptual distinctions must be made. In London, the statue of Abraham Lincoln was vandalized at a Black Lives Matter protest.

Lincoln was the heroic president who went to war to free the American slaves and who was killed for it. In Washington D.C., protestors raged against Admiral David Farragut, who went against the separatists in his own state of Tennessee and joined the Union. Today he is widely known as the hero of the Battle of Mobile Bay which dealt a major blow to the Confederate States. Murderer and colonizer were also spray-painted near the name of abolitionist advocate Mattias Baldwin in Philadelphia. Here is a man who was a champion of black voting rights, who paid for and championed the education of black children before the Civil War, and who was known to pay for teachers out of his own money. To show the rampant ignorance at work here, in Boston, protestors vandalized a monument to the 54th Massachusetts regiment. This was the second all-black volunteer regiment of the Union. The list could go on of black and white fighters who fought against the oppression of blacks, and whose symbolic representations are the targets of indiscriminate attacks.

I leave aside the ethicality and appropriateness of removing historical symbols associated with racial oppression for the moment. When looters see a white statue and tear it down because it bears the representation of a white figureregardless of the moral values such a person whom the statue represents actually stood for, we have resorted to a dangerous form of inverted racism and biological collectivism; the logical corollary of the latter is an insidious form of determinism: the idea that a persons racial ascriptive identity can be used to ascribe moral, social or political significance to a persons genetic lineage.

This is the old-school type of racism that informed racial supremacy by whites over blacks in segregated America, and over Jews in NAZI Germany. One would expect the opponents of any kind of racial supremacy to recognize, in principle, the dangers of fighting one form of racism one believes one is fighting against with another: when you kill a person because he is black or Asian or white and for that reason only, you adhere to a principle of chemical predestination: the idea that characterological traits are produced by some form of racial internal body chemistry and, that for such a reason, you must rid the person of those traits by killing him or her.

In the calls to decolonize course syllabi on campus colleges we see a perversion of any fight against legitimate racism. There is now momentum on college campuses to decolonize the syllabi of courses populated with canonical texts written by white (usually) male scholars, writers and thinkers. If one can indiscriminately attack and vandalize the statues of slave abolitionists, cultural heroes and fighters for racial equality like Winston Churchill, David Farragut, Matthias Baldwin, and Abraham Lincoln, then one can equally imagine the deranged amoral imagination of educators calling for course syllabi to be expunged of male white canonical figures. Nowhere can it be imagined that the moral and emancipatory vocabularies for oppression could ever have arisen from some of these canonical figures such as John Stuart Mill, Immanuel Kant, John Locke, Thomas Paine, Hugo Grotius, Charles Dickens, and even Aristotle.

I myself was shocked when I received an email from my home institution apprising me of a workshop that had as one of many programs on its agenda the business of decolonize that syllabus. The reasoning is predicated on misguided social engineering. This is not a matter of diversifying the syllabus. It means literally divesting it of all white canonical figures who are presumed to be racist because they are white and who wrote during particular historical epochs that did not celebrate black agency. I leave aside the obvious malarkey of such reasoning which is putatively obvious and emphasize a point I have made in previous essays: our universities have ceased to be bastions of learning and have become national security threats, purveyors themselves not just of inverse racism, but educational tropes of cultural Marxism where hatred of America and the most ameliorative aspects of Americas civilization are presented as part of the systemic and endemic problem.

What we are witnessing in the ascendancy of the culture wars whether in certain segments in the streets, or, in virtually all domains of our educational systems is virulent nihilism predicated on an axis of moral and cultural relativism.

Moral relativism advances the idea that there are no objective criteria to adjudicate among competing truth claims. Its ruling principle is subjectivism. What one feels is the truth constitutes the truth. Logic and reason according to the more radical school of subjectivism, is the creation of racist and imperialist white constructs. But if nihilism is the logical concomitant of relativism, one must now ask: what is the school and the philosophical foundation of relativism? What first foundational principles underscore the relativism that gives rise to the nihilism in the streets and in our educational systems? (Front Page Mag)

Jason D. Hill is professor of philosophy at DePaul University in Chicago, and a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. His areas of specialization include ethics, social and political philosophy, American foreign policy and American politics. He is the author of several books, including We Have Overcome: An Immigrants Letter to the American People (Bombardier Books/Post Hill Press). Follow him on Twitter @JasonDhill6.

See the original post:

The Advancing Nihilism and the Rot of Post-Modernism in the West - The Jewish Voice

The Key to the West Lies Within Sir Roger Scruton’s Life – Merion West

Posted on June 22, 2020 by Danzig

(Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images)

In this 2014 book, he would define conservatism asamong other thingsa sentiment and one that all mature people can readily share: the sentiment that good things are easily destroyed, but not easily created.'

Following his death in January, Sir Roger Scruton was lauded by many commentators as one of the most important thinkers of our era. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson called himthe greatest modern conservative, while others mourned the empty space left behind by the great mans passing. And this was deservedly so; Scrutons many achievements were nothing short of remarkable. His lifes work was extensive and contained manifest variety, and his intellectual legacy will remain for years to come.

Yet six months later, we are forced to witness in horror the aftermath of George Floyds death at the hands of an American police officer. The riots and destructive movements that have followedand which hijacked the outrage from the very starthave led many writers to wonder if we are now witnessing the downfall of Western Civilization. As such, it is perhaps worthwhile to revisit Scrutons origins as a conservative thinker.

Known for his prolific writing, his long-lasting opposition to Communism, and for his graceful and frequent endorsements of high culture and its aesthetic potency, Scrutons intellectual breakthrough came about in Paris as he watched the riots of May 1968 from the window of his student apartment.He would later recall in The New Criterion in 2003: it was when witnessing what this meant, in May 1968 in Paris, that I discovered my vocation. In this 2003 essay entitled Why I became a conservative, Scruton described the riots as a kind of adolescent insouciance, a throwing away of all customs, institutions, and achievements, for the sake of momentary exultation which could have no lasting sense save anarchy.

And upon returning to his home-country of the United Kingdom, Scruton began diving into the great traditional thinkers, reading Edmund Burke, Leo Strauss, T.S. Eliot, as well as various libertarian economists. From there, he would begin his journey into an academic climate that was already hostile to perspectives such as his.

Many years later, in one of the last of his many books,How to Be a Conservative, Scruton undertook the task of compilingdecades of philosophical meditations into one comprehensive manual. In this 2014 book, he would define conservatism asamong other thingsa sentiment and one that all mature people can readily share: the sentiment that good things are easily destroyed, but not easily created.

Then cancer came for Scruton. And, in his final days, he reflected on the aftermath of the previous years controversy (that saw his reputation unfairly damaged in the conservative movement), his sudden illness, and the magnificent journey that life had handed him. His final published words still reflected the unique style and aura that his readers loved him for. In The Spectator,he wrote of 2019, During this year much was taken from meBut much more was given backComing close to death you begin to know what life means, and what it means is gratitude.

As I re-read these words, I cannot help but think that perhaps it was a good thing that Sir Roger Scruton was spared the horror of witnessing the events of these past few weeks. The feeling of anger and resentment across the West, the destruction of property, the violence, the looting, the buildings ablaze, the hate-filled mobs, and the desecrated memorials might have been a spectacle too much to bear for the honorable man from Lincolnshire. This was the man, after all, who had spent so much of his life emphasizing the significance of beauty and its ability to transcend destruction.

But Scruton was alive when the critical social justice lie slowly invaded the rhetoric of American universities, spreading throughout the West like an unstoppable disease. He was as prominent as ever in the prelude to the events that are now unfolding. Todays political correctness, which was disguised as a just and mighty undertaking on behalf of the downtrodden, was as tainted with hypocrisy as the May 68 riots. What he said of the riots, referring to them as the self-scripted drama of the baby boomers vanity could have been said much the same of critical social justice. They are both, in Scrutons words, Childish disobedience amplified into anarchy.

For Scruton, what is currently unfolding must be the legacy of Soixante-Huitards, and nowby the looks of it this was likely the end-goal of postcolonial theory. We now witness the opportunistic, ideological, and racial narrative of Black Lives Matter, the tyrannical nature of organizations such as Antifa, and the mind-boggling inconsistencies and unapologetic hypocrisy of some of their advocates. Much has been written already about the far-lefts role in the ongoing American riots, and Scruton would likely agree with much of it. However, many of the far-lefts practices are now so pervasive in the political sphere that sober-minded observers and, especially, modern conservatives risk overlooking one of the most crucial underlying issues: the lack of belonging apparent in our society. Scruton was as vocal on the necessity of a transcendent purpose in ones life as he was in critiquing Marx and Foucault.

With the decline of religion and family formation, the lonely existences of so many in the West crave for spirituality. Unfortunately, for many,politics has offered itself as the antidote. Activism, after all, offers a sense of community, the feeling of purpose that comes with being in a mob, along with blind faith to the cause. For many conservatives, this activism screams of hedonic nihilism. And, in turn, it raises a question: Can spiritual yearning lead to nihilism? The question, indeed, might appear paradoxical. Yet, in light of widespread destruction and years of ideological fanaticism (with their attendant instances of quasi-religious displays of self-abasement and full-blown nihilistic rage), it is a question that cannot be ignored.

All the while, chaos is emerging faster than expected, and it is constantly recruiting agents. It comes under different names, but, without a doubt, it has found its way into our societies. Now, it is pounding at the gates. In the meantime, as American cities burn and British historical sites and monumentsincluding one to Sir Winston Churchillare targeted, slightly optimistic conservatives find comfort in the knowledge thatrioting, historically, has made public opinion move their way. However, will that be enough? Sir Roger Scrutons legacy, if anything, reminds us that philosophy is much more than an opinion. As the English writer Ben Sixsmith puts it, If we look to faith simply for what it can do for us and how it can make us feel, the chances are well be disappointed when we hit hard times. Conservatism is, above all, a commitment, a way of looking at life. It is, as Roger Scruton saw it, a lasting vision of human society. What we hold dear cannot simply be preserved by a name cast upon a ballot at election time.

Unfortunately, that is precisely the message being echoed throughout the Westand on both sides of the political aisle. Make sure youre registered to vote in November, instead!, cried one black woman two weeks ago in New York City, passionately addressing the crowd and visibly enraged by the destruction left in the wake of the rioters gleeful nihilism. At the same time, on the other side of the political spectrum, conservatives suggest basically the same: that this all can be resolved by supporting Republican candidates come November.

Sadly, we may truly be witnessing the end of Western Civilization. But if that is the case, the key to its survival lies not only within our capacity to make the right decision. It lies not merely within our rights and libertiesand certainly not in our almost indistinguishable political candidates. Rather, it rests in our willingness to communicate with one another, to think, learn, and believe. That is what it is to step away from the shuttered windows concealing the violence in the street with a renowned sense of gratitude for our heritage and a responsibility towards our culture. This was, after all, what a young, bright, British student did in the French summer of 68, and he continued to do this until the very day he took his final breath.

Mark Granza is a freelance writer in Italy.

See original here:

The Key to the West Lies Within Sir Roger Scruton's Life - Merion West

Reflecting the light across space and time – Sydney Morning Herald

Posted on June 22, 2020 by Danzig

This was what alto saxophonist Lakecia Benjamin heard as a student, courtesy of her mentor, the incendiary alto player Gary Bartz. Discovering the music of both Coltrane and his wife, Alice, probably began Benjamin's own journey into the "why?" of making art, rather than the "how?". She came to play in the band of Rashied Ali, the last of Coltrane's drummers, and now has made her own ambitious statement, Pursuance: The Coltranes, cannily eschewing any tenor saxophones.

Like the road from Methodist orthodoxy to a more all-encompassing spirituality, that from gifted musician to inspirational genius reflected Coltrane's commitment to excavating universal truths, and revealing them through music of equally universal reach. In intent he resembled an artist of the Enlightenment more than of his own time, when the smattering of other genuine geniuses Picasso, Beckett could not hold back the tide of nihilism that was drowning hope. Coltrane was almost a lone beacon, which is why his ultimate masterpiece, A Love Supreme, is as monumental and timeless as anything created last century. When he came downstairs having finished composing it prior to its recording, he quietly told Alice, "It's the first time I have everything ready."

Lakecia Benjamin's tribute album.

Regardless of its sometimes hurtling velocity, cyclonic energy or exultant ecstasy, Coltrane's music was always trance-like in effect, as though not just time had slowed, but the speed of light, itself. His brilliant pianist, McCoy Tyner, said, "John felt that music was like the universe You look up and see the stars, but beyond them are many other stars. He was looking for the stars you can't see." As his wife and final pianist, Alice had a front-row seat at Coltrane's inner wrestle with such profundity, and after his death in 1967 she went on to make her own near-transcendental music.

Tribute albums are inherently dodgy. So you have heroes? Get over them, and build something of your own that's more than a house of cards. Benjamin has elevated Pursuance: The Coltranes beyond mere tribute status in many ways, including by uniting multigenerational players, among them bassist Reggie Workman, a revered Coltrane alumnus. Others spinning through the firmament include violinist Regina Carter, singers Dee Dee Bridgewater and Jazzmeia Horn, bassist Ron Carter and saxophonists Bartz, Steve Wilson and Greg Osby. She also intermingles Alice's compositions with John's, thereby highlighting not just the depth and power of Alice's own work, but its kinship with the mysticism of her husband's. Alice's Prema is a highlight, the mesmeric melody carried by alto, flute, viola and cello, and laced with Brandee Younger's harp. Benjamin's piquant alto reaches its own ecstasy, including on a piece by neither Coltrane, the hymn Walk with Me, which, perhaps, most liberated her from their giant shadows and dazzling light.

"I really feel like the world we live in now is kind of like a 'me, me, me' show-off world," Benjamin told me last year, "so people need to take the time to contribute to things feeling good. And once you can do that, then you can move to the next level." She has. Coltrane would have nodded and smiled.

Pursuance: The Coltranes streams on Spotify & Apple Music; on disc from Birdland Records.

Read the rest here:

Reflecting the light across space and time - Sydney Morning Herald

Understanding the Reactionary Outlook – Merion West

Posted on June 22, 2020 by Danzig

One of the defining features of the reactionary outlook is how thin its conception of lifes meaning is, and this, in turn, explains why reactionaries tend to be so anxious about it all falling apart

Introduction

It is not I who will die; it is the world that will end.

Ayn Rand, citing one of her favorite expressions

Rarely have so many concerned themselves with the politics of meaning. This is particularly true of the many reactionary figures who have emerged in our time, particularly post-modern conservatives. As far back as 2016a lifetime ago, it seemsthe conservative essayist Michael Anton described the culture war in the United States as being caught in an endless cycle of decline and fall brought about by progressive forces. So pervasive had progressives influence become, Anton argued, that even conservatives were increasingly willing to go quietly into the night. This he described as the mark of a party, a society, a country, a people, a civilization that wants to die. More recently, R.R Reno, the editor of First Things, condemned the strict measures in place to moderate the Coronavirus (COVID-19), describing them as symptomatic of a culture that places fear of death at the center of life. And, of course, there are the endless complaints about dangerous academics at elite universities propagating nihilistic, post-modern philosophies.

Upon reviewing these often shrill polemics, one might expect that reactionaries would be acutely sensitive to the politics of meaning, and that they would be leading the struggle against cultural nihilism. However, in fact, I believe the opposite to be true. One of the defining features of the reactionary outlook is how thin its conception of lifes meaning is, and this, in turn, explains why reactionaries tend to be so anxious about it all falling apart, an idea I will explore in this brief essay.

The Reactionary Outlook

It is important, first and foremost, to stress that the reactionary impulse is an outlook, rather than a developed political philosophy. Consequently, reactionaries can be found to hold a mishmash of metaphysical and historical views. Some reactionaries are devoutly religious traditionalists, while others are militant atheists. Reactionaries such as Nietzsche might heap scorn upon vulgar economic reasoning, while others like Ayn Rand may romantically praise capitalists as creators and producers. However, all reactionaries dispositionally share much in common. The reactionary sees existence as a fundamentally threatening place, with meaningless chaos being the norm rather than the exception. For reactionaries, existence is an anorexic god, endlessly hungry and always on the verge of imploding from its own lack of substance. This god can only be preserved by applying great strength. This gloomy outlook also extends to the vast majority of humankind, who lacks the strength to bring much of value into the world. This is the herd in Nietzsches terminology, second handers in Rands, and the inferior as Ludwig von Mises put it. This reduction of most people to beings of minuscule worth implies that a majority in a society cannotand should notbe given a great deal of power over the direction the society takes. Those who should have such power are the so-called superior men: individuals who possess the character and strength to create an enduring and stable order, which provides the herd with a sense of purpose while also keeping them in line.

Each reactionary has a different conception of what the superior man is, though there are many commonalities. The most important is that the superior man is not a figure of Aristotelian moderationlet alone a humble and self-sacrificing Christian. Indeed, one of the great ironies of traditionalist reactionaries is their tendency to invoke fear of a declining homogenous Christian order, while talking a great deal about war and enforcing order. This, after all, is not exactly following in the footsteps of the lamb of God. The superior man is also typically just that: a man. The reactionary imagination is typically parasitic on the culture it reacts against, which, invariably, means drawing liberally from the clichs and prejudices of the time. This means that many reactionaries, including women, tend to be misogynists. They castigate so called effeminate qualities like compassion and empathy, while still insisting that most men are not stereotypically masculine enough. In a more crude form, reactionaries may decry that a culture has become too dominated by feelings, rather than reason. But this always excludes the emotions reactionaries cherish. These emotions include anger, competitiveness, pride, etc. And emotions such as these are usually associated with a particularly repressed form of masculinity. Finally, reactionaries tend to revere strength, though not necessarily of character or virtue.

The strength reactionaries admire is the capacity to impose ones will upon the world, which, at its zenith, refers to the ability to compel or dominate others to bring them in line with the necessary order. This means that reactionaries tend to support hierarchical forms of political organization, with the exact form depending on whom the reactionary reveres as strong and who they castigate as unworthy. For early modern defenders of absolutism such as Robert Filmer and Joseph de Maistre, God had dictated that the aristocracy be in charge. With declining faith in theological arguments in the 19th century, reactionaries began to cherry pick more rationalistic sounding arguments about the superiority of their chosen culture. Or, at worst, they sought to develop scientific explanations for racial prejudice. In our day, many reactionaries insist that the secularized theological power of the invisible hand operates across the market to sort worthy creators from unworthy second handers. In doing so, the invisible hand bestows wealth and power on the former, while the latter is left to do the mundane work needed to keep the world turning. In each instance, it is only a small elite with the strength to maintain order that prevents the world from slipping into the vulgarity and chaos that would be associated with rule by the unworthy masses.

Conclusion: The Anorexic God

This brings me to the paradoxical approach to meaning at the center of the reactionary outlook. Reactionaries position themselves as opposed to the nihilism of the modern world, which has, without exception, decayed from some nostalgic ideal lost to history. One might respond to this by observing thateven if this ideal time did existit must not have been as spectacular as the reactionary supposes. Otherwise, it would not have been abandoned. If traditionalist Christian civilizationor unbridled 19th century capitalismwere such meaning saturated societies, then why did people rebel against them en masse, demanding dramatic changes? But this possibility is never entertained, with reactionaries much preferring vague but affective narratives of decadence, vulgarity, and a steep decline from greatness. More importantly, the often shrill denouncements of modern nihilism display how little meaning many reactionaries think the world actually has.

For the reactionary, the modern world is portrayed as dramatically fallen and drained of meaning. This is becauseunless the superior men and the right hierarchy are in placethe omnipresent threat of chaos and decline is all that can take their place. Modernity is damned precisely because it has ceded too much to the unworthy. The remarkable thing about this is just how fragile the reactionarys sense of the worlds meaning is. The reactionarys tremendous emphasis on strength and accomplishment displays an impotent fascination with bigness and grandeur that ignores the small but divine ways in which many ordinary people struggle to make life better for themselves and others. One of the reasons reactionaries despise the democratic culture of the masses is precisely because it directs our attention to the mundane needs that actually make up our lives. This often takes the form of a cooperative effort at gradually improving our communities and the world around us. The reactionary has no interest in that, solipsistically believing that unless the truly worthy are in charge (and the right order enforced), existence is leeched of significance.

This simplistic retreat from the complexity of the world demonstrates the existentially thin quality of the reactionary outlook. When commenting on Ayn Rand, Corey Robin, the Brooklyn College political scientist, observed that her bastardization of Aristotelian syllogisms such as A=Acombined with her relentless self-promotionrevealed more than she may have intended. Rand was attracted to a world where everything simply was what it was. She focused relentlessly on herself, while expressing scorn and disdain for the vast majority of people who came before and after her. She was convinced that when she diedfor all intents and purposesthe world ceased to exist. The only meaning that one could find in life came from oneself, paired with the private aspiration for romantic greatness as a heroic figure raised above the masses. This nihilistic outlook, along with its reactionary kin, worship an anorexic God, and we should reject their idolatries.

Matt McManus is Professor of Politics and International Relations at Tec de Monterrey, and the author of Making Human Dignity Central to International Human Rights Law and The Rise of Post-Modern Conservatism. His new projects include co-authoring a critical monograph on Jordan Peterson and a book on liberal rights for Palgrave MacMillan. Matt can be reached atmattmcmanus300@gmail.comor added on twitter vie@mattpolprof

Continued here:

Understanding the Reactionary Outlook - Merion West

Joker 2 Expected Release Date, What Will Be Cast? And How Is Productiom – Pop Culture Times

Posted on June 22, 2020 by Danzig

- Advertisement -

Joker 2 is an upcoming American supervillain film directed and produced and by Todd Phillips. The movie takes its inspiration from the DC Comics character of the same name.

It revolves around our male protagonist Arthur Fleck a failed stand up comedian who later descent into insanity. However, his acts give rise to nihilism and set out riot in the entire Gotham city.

- Advertisement -

The first part of the movie titled Joker was first released on 4th October 2019. The movie was initially going to be standalone.

But its massive success led, and appreciation led the makers to think about a sequel. And finally, sometime in the year 2019, the makers did confirm a sequel, i.e. Joker 2.

- Advertisement -

For now, we do not have confirmation about the release date of the show. And the entire Coronavirus Pandemic situation has put the entire release situation of the movie in doubt.

But rumours are going around and about on the internet that the movie might release sometime late in the year 2021 or early in the year 2022.

For now, we do not have the entire cast list for the movie. But we can expect the Oscar-winning actor Joaquin Phenoix to resume his iconic role as The Joker.

But as soon as we do get some information about the actors and which roles will they will be playing in the upcoming movie we will let you guys know soon.

For now, due to the outbreak of the deadly Coronavirus Pandemic, the entire entertainment industry is on complete shutdown. This has affected the production process of various filming projects.

And the Joker 2 is no less exceptional. The movie wasnt even in the production mode when the lockdown was announced the makers were discussing its possibilities and storyline.

- Advertisement -

See the original post:

Joker 2 Expected Release Date, What Will Be Cast? And How Is Productiom - Pop Culture Times

Philosophy and Education: A Review By Prof Mohi ud Din Hajini – Kashmir Observer

Posted on June 22, 2020 by Danzig

WhatsAppFacebook Twitter Email3Shares

Prof. Mohi ud Din Hajini (1917-1993)

PROFESSORMohi-ud-Din Hajinis collection of research papers titled, Discourses of Prof. Mohi-ud-Din Hajini compiled by Dr Ameen Fayaz, is the best illustration of Prof. Hajinis multi-dimensional personality. The book comprises three parts and carries three vibrant themes. The third and the last part of the book carry two papers, including Philosophy and Education: A Review.

The work is divided into two parts covering thirteen chapters, each one a comprehensive unit in itself, surveying various theories interconnecting Philosophy and Education. The contents are coherently interwoven and logically presented; and it appears very difficult to discover a striking incongruity in the thought-process of the author.

He forewarns the reader in the introductory note that anyone who makes broad statement about Education is philosophizing and on that account everyone has his own philosophy. Such a philosophy is prune to discuss Philosophy rather than education. He confesses that he himself does not belong to this category. For, according to his approach to the subject Education is a purposive activity, the direction and shape of which are determined by human beliefs most of them culturally and religiously quite deep rooted in human psyche.

A teacher with no belief or with no personal assumption is a blind teacher, and unfit for the job. To illustrate this theme, he delves deep into modern trends of thought gleaning upto-date information on the subject, re-evaluating contending theories, and subsequently sifting out the practicable from the impracticable in modern Education. He is conscientious enough to admit that in our bewildering era when secular humanism (in contrast to religious humanism) actually makes man the measure of all things, we need philosophy of life not for the chosen few but for an ordinary man as well, otherwise the mass-conditioning tendencies in politics shall choke up the roots of man as a living organism. Arguments in such a philosophy and thence in Education, may not prove or demonstrate anything to an average student, nevertheless if these help him to see afresh or rejuvenate interest towards a new vista of thought, the teacher has achieved his aim. How is that possible? Professor Reid begins the reply from the very definition of Philosophy and says that a philosopher, being presumably the lover of wisdom, it is the wisdom that we need, therefore it is not the technique of teaching that should come first, for even an efficient teacher can miseducate; it is the teachers personal acumen, culture and innate tendencies that keep, to use the authors simile, the wheels of education oiled.

Postulating these qualities in a teacher, we have further to admit that it is not he alone who guides the immature mind: infact, the society in modern age is equipped with dozens of mechanical devices that contribute towards making or marring the students career and these agencies commence impressing the mind long before he is admitted in the school. Thus we see that on the one hand, the assimilative nature of each mind grasps something which just happens to a person, while, on the other hand, it is quite possible that the set pattern of Education in each country may not be conducive to the imprints left on the mind in social contact. The worst situation will spring up when the society, the curriculum and the teacher are at variance with one another, regarding their respective assumptions in Education. To overcome such a triangular tension, it is the teacher who should come down to the students mental level till the student is imperceptibly extricated from an unhealthy environment, organized by the society or the state. In this enterprise, says the author, the teacher must be free as is the case in Great Britain; but the author appears to be quite ignorant of the teachers position in numerous Asian countries, where he has often to sell his soul to the devil for placating an officer, or for getting his book prescribed as a text..

The author clearly distinguishes between Personality and Personal Self, and says that the former, though altogether of a different kind and differentiated in numerous ways, is actually transcended by the Personal Self. The innate and inherited characteristics sub-consciously operating upon personality should be accepted as subjectively given, whereas the objective part of the Personal Self will come under Biology and Empirical Psychology. The chief aim of philosophical analysis should be to harmonize the subjective and objective constituents of the Personal Self, and to remove the confusion with least possible irritation, suppression or coercion. The compromising teacher can thus let the children go further in the direction which he believes to be right. As for the definition of rightness, the author says that the question of the rightness of an act arises through its relation to a larger situation in an indefinitely stretching context of life. This definition being too elastic for application, he later amends it, and says rightness as experienced is felt by each teacher as part of a larger good to probably a larger number of people. This is tantamount to saying that it is not necessary that the teachers conception of goodness will be ideally good; it may frequently be the least harmful from amongst the evil ones. This type of exposition gives rise to the relativity of rightness that has confused the European Educationists from Michaeveli to Marx. If the author had access to Imam-i-Ghazallis religious humanism or Vina Baves Sarodaya , he would be spared a lot of his theorizing. Nevertheless, the striking note of the book is that it does asseverate that evil is let loose by the purely materialistic pattern of education in Europe, and on this observation, the author has independently come to some conclusions (especially in Ethics) that can retard the crisis in faith generated by pure science in our curriculumn.

As for the concordance of social ideals within the frame work of education, the author has rightly pointed out that either the teachers beliefs must be sublime enough to reflect the societys ideals or the state should couch him before he begins his teaching; of course, without chaining his mind for all times, because extreme and perennial form of states directives can often re-emerge in the behavourist assumption that Education is entirely dependent on conditioning, wherein the child (or even the teacher) is presumed to be more as an object than as a person. The idea of shaping and moulding a child strictly according to totalitarian, Nazi or, I should add, extremely nationalistic, patterm, is an idea, which leaves out what may be the most important fact about human nature.

The author has lucidly and thoroughly discussed the topic in the ninth chapter of the book under the title The Need for Rootsin Humanities and Science. Pragmatism, with all its dollar-infection, has been subjected to rational criticism; and contemplative and meditative aspects of education are brought forth into a broader perspective. Ethical values which till recent times were deemed only as social demands are now re-evaluated, and admitted to be not only the powerful integrating factors in society, but real deterrents to fiendish tendencies especially in psychotic, neurotic and depressive states of a student. The author classifies value into three categories: (1)those which are ethically good or bad ; (2)those which are intrinsically higher or lower; and (3) those values that merely satisfy desires or give pleasure technically called fact-value. In this last category, there is not distinction of good or bad, higher or lower. The teacher has to see that more satisfaction of desire does not evolve into Epicureanism or Nihilism, nor does this recoil round a perversion that is likely to lead to sadism, or can accelerate the split of personality. In this delicate situation, if the teacher is expected to start, say, with only two maxims, i.e. that moral character is indispensable, and that a sense of responsibility must be developed from the elementary stage of education, he can really be a philosopher, provided he can satisfy all the heterogeneous temperaments in a class; otherwise the conflicting responses to a single stimulus from students will surely distort his appeal and disfigure his image of character and responsibility.

The most unpleasant exigency will crop up when an extroverted teacher may have to couch the majority of students with an introverted bent of mind or vice-versa. Similarly, the contradictory output of educational theories, simultaneously believed by the teacher as apt, can surely disintegrate the personality of the student-class, e.g; one school of educationists believes the moral imperatives are socially derived, and related to social needs, while another school asserts that these are underivative and final. The teacher shall have to find out a via media that can stimulate the inquisitive nature of the student rather than block his independent judgement. In effect, the teacher has to harmonize the contending elements by impressing upon the pupil that it takes all sorts, to make a world. We may differ here with the author when he feels reluctant to admit some supreme ordering principle behind absolute values. It is because of this innate attitude that he seldom makes any reference to the best teachers of the world, i.e, the Founders of all world religions. It is really a pity that European writers on education are often too sluggish to realize that those very precepts which have since time immemorial been taught by Prophets in the east, are now not only hinted at as principles of education but taken for guide lines in human behaviour, of course under a new name and after too long an exploration! That is why we find our author too, on the one hand, asserting a statement that does not straightaway fall under analytical or empirical classification and does not deserve to be taken seriously, while, on the other hand, imperceptibly proposing a shift from mechanistic to ethical mode of teaching, besides pinning for such a UNESCO that would regulate teaching on an ideal pattern.

The book makes a good reading despite a bit of dryness in style, generated by the authors too much love for analytic exposition of the subject.

Be Part of Quality Journalism

Quality journalism takes a lot of time, money and hard work to produce and despite all the hardships we still do it. Our reporters and editors are working overtime in Kashmir and beyond to cover what you care about, break big stories, and expose injustices that can change lives. Today more people are reading Kashmir Observer than ever, but only a handful are paying while advertising revenues are falling fast.

CLICK FOR DETAILS

Follow this link:

Philosophy and Education: A Review By Prof Mohi ud Din Hajini - Kashmir Observer

Why The Specials recorded Ghost Town – Radio X

Posted on June 22, 2020 by Danzig

22 June 2020, 21:10

Songwriter Jerry Dammers summed up the mood of the nation in the early 1980s... but what were the events that inspired this classic song?

"This town is coming like a ghost town / All the clubs have been closed down"

An eerie flute, a set of mournful voices and a beat that wouldn't be out of place at a funeral march... The Specials' Ghost Town hit the top of the UK charts in the summer of 1981, marking the collapse of a country under strain and flagging frustrations and injustices that burn on to this day.

The song was born out of an attempt to encapsulate the life of a young person living in inner city Britain, and particularly the experiences of the black community, who were frustrated at the lack of opportunities afforded to them. Could music hold up a mirror to what society had become?

The Specials had formed in Coventry 1977 as the perfect mult-racial band: founder and keyboardist Jerry Dammers, singer Terry Hall, bassist Horace Panter, guitarist Roddy Byers and drummer John Bradbury were white; guitarist Lynval Golding and vocalist Neville Staple were both Jamaican born and part of the Windrush generation that moved to the UK when they were children.

Immigration into the UK had increased throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, due to the independence of many former British colonies. The Empire Windrush was one ship that stopped off in Jamaica, allowing many residents to take advantage of their newly acquired British citizenship and re-settle in the UK. The same thing happened across Commonwealth countries in Asia and Africa - all of whom were invited to Britain to contribute to the post-war economy.

However, the increase in immigration saw the rise of the National Front, the right-wing party that opposed the influx of people from the Commonwealth. In 1977, the NF saw gains in the Greater London Council elections, causing protests and violent clashes. The Rock Against Racism campaign was founded in 1976 as a reaction to the increasing support for right wing causes and held their first gig in London's Victoria Park in April 1978.

Into this came The Specials. Jerry Dammers formed the group with the express intention of bringing together the black and white communities that lived in his hometown of Coventry. He told The Guardian in 2008: "It was all part of the same thing and for me it was no good being anti-racist if you didn't involve black people, so what The Specials tried to do was create something that was more integrated."

The Specials embraced ska: the Jamaican dancehall music of the 50s and 60s was mixed with the energy of punk and created a stylish, positive sound, light years away from the nihilism of the Sex Pistols. Even the label Dammers set up to release his music hinted at the integration he was aiming for - it was to be called Two Tone.

While The Specials hit the ground running with a number of hits - Gangsters and A Message To You Rudy were Top 10 and Too Much Too Young hit the top spot in January 1980 - by the making of their second album, More Specials, tensions were beginning to form within the band. The tour to support the record was blighted by violence among the crowds.

As The Specials made their way around the UK in October 1980, Jerry Dammers could see the cracks beginning to appear both within the group and within the country. "You travelled from town to town and what was happening was terrible," he told The Guardian in 2002. "The country was falling apart. In Liverpool, all the shops were shuttered up, everything was closing down. Margaret Thatcher had apparently gone mad, she was closing down all the industries, throwing millions of people on the dole. You could see that frustration and anger in the audience. It was clear that something was very, very wrong."

The animosity in the air worked its way into a song. Dammers had been working on what would become Ghost Town for the best part of a year, "trying out every conceivable chord".

The recording of what was to become one of the most memorable songs of the 1980s was not smooth sailing. "Everybody was stood in different parts of this huge room with their equipment, no one talking," Horace Panter remembered of the studio session. "I can remember walking out of a rehearsal in total despair because Neville would not try the ideas," recalled Dammers. When guitarist Roddy Byers started kicking a hole in the studio wall, the engineer threatened to throw them out. Dammers panicked, crying: "No! No! This is the greatest record that's ever been made in the history of anything! You can't stop now!"

The song Dammers had written encapsulated the despair within the band and within Britain. The "ghost town" of the title could have been anywhere in the country as unemployment rose to over 2 million and industry collapsed.

"Bands won't play no more..." the vocals chime. "Too much fighting on the dancelfoor".

After a disastrous show in Cambridge that saw singers Terry Hall and Neville Staple arrested for "inciting a riot" - they were actually trying to stop one - The Specials decided to quit touring.

As 1981 ground on, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's new "stop and search" policy meant police were targeting black youths more than ever. In April, disturbances began in Brixton over the police's heavy-handed tactics - but that was only the beginning.

Ghost Town was released on 12 June 1981 just as a series of riots began around the UK: Brixton and other parts of London, Liverpool's Toxteth area, Moss Side in Manchester, Chapeltown in Leeds. Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Sheffield, Nottingham, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Hull were all among the towns that experienced disturbances.

As Ghost Town climbed the charts, the protests increased. The single made Number One in the UK on 7 July, just as the unrest reached its peak. The Specials had summed up the angry mood of the nation.

Jerry Dammers felt vindicated: "It's hard to explain how powerful it sounded. We had almost been written off and then Ghost Town'came out of the blue."

However, his triumph was to be short-lived. Backstage at the BBC's Top Of The Pops show as The Specials were recording a performance of Ghost Town, Terry Hall, Neville Staple and Lynval Golding broke the news to the rest of the band that they were leaving. The trio went on to have pop success in the early 1980s as Fun Boy Three. Dammers continued with a band known as Special AKA with their memorable protest song Free Nelson Mandela. Various line-ups continued to record under the name throughout the 1980s.

The Specials reformed in 2008 for a show at Bestival, although without Dammers who claimed he'd been forced out. In 2019, the eighth Specials album, Encore, was released attracting good reviews. The core of the band is now Terry Hall, Lynval Golding and Horace Panter.

See the article here:

Why The Specials recorded Ghost Town - Radio X

The ACTU needs to start a daily paper. There’s nothing else left – Crikey

Posted on June 22, 2020 by Danzig

It's time to admit that the entire spectrum of daily newspapers is controlled by the right and that we need to do something about it.

The resignation of Alex Lavelle, editor of The Age, comes as a mild shock but no great surprise. A week after management and staff of that once great newspaper protested about both de facto control from Sydney over content, and directions to slant news in a rightwards direction, Lavelle has gone. Ahead of being pushed? Because there was no movement on managements part? Well find out, I guess, but it amounts to the same thing.

Both The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald are being pushed in a rightward political direction, after the abolition of Fairfax by Greg Hywood, and the folding of the papers into an outfit founded by Frank Packer and currently chaired by Peter Costello.

The sole aim of this process is to destroy a base of left-liberal, or even liberal-centrist, thought, for political purposes. This process was underway in the final decades of Fairfax. It was steered by no commercial decision.

There was a huge audience base for a pluralist centre-left daily publication in both cities and especially in Melbourne, Stockholm-on-the-Yarra. The papers were steered towards a centre-right perspective precisely to destroy the power of that social-political formation.

The destruction of The Age, once rated as one of the 10 great newspapers of the world, is a testament to the nihilism of capitalism, and the deep and complacent intellectual mediocrity of many of the people who led Fairfax in past decades, and who lead Nine now.

Well, look, save what can be saved, and support the staff in their struggle, but as a base for a left-liberal perspective, The Age is gone. Its simply over. We have to be clear-eyed about this and admit that the entire spectrum of daily newspapers/news sites is controlled by the right.

Those who want a left-liberal daily news centre are going to have to establish one. And realistically, the only body with the clout, cash and audience to do that is the union movement.

Yes, the ACTU needs to establish a daily newspaper. This is something the union movement should have done many decades ago, but the need now is urgent. They need to put very serious money into a daily that has both an online publication, and a tabloid paper publication.

They need to create a paper/site that can be read by anyone with an average high school education, that has good comprehensive coverage of news, sport, celeb stuff, without being dominated by it, but with a core section on politics, economics and social and global affairs that gives a range of left and centre-left views on the issues of that day.

We need a large-scale, hugely backed paper/site that can attack head on the de facto right-wing way in which all industrial relations is discussed currently as to how much union power should be restrained the bias towards privatisation, market solutions, an export culture which has seen us destroy our national manufacturing plant as a sacrifice to the gods of ideology, and much much more.

Would there be difficulties with this? You bet. The stab at a daily backed by super funds, The New Daily, appears to have lost some of its leftist zeal. But this is once again a case of the wider movement not seeing how much needs to be sunk in to such a thing, and how essential it has now become (something quite different to, and complementary of, the mission of this excellent publication, I should add).

How is it that a movement with millions of members and billions under command in super funds, is content to have no large-scale media of its own? That has a long history. For decades the union movement could rely on its role as a quasi-state apparatus to maintain its power, and the close communal relations of the working-class to form networks of political transmission. City-based tabloids werent right-wing pamphlets, because they had a left-wing working-class audience they didnt want to alienate. Indeed, until the 1960s, the main enemies were The Age and the SMH, the Liberal partys ideological wing.

That all switched pretty fast, as society changed its composition. From the 60s onwards both broadsheets became reliably left-liberal, and even if the middle-class more than the working-class read them, they were a crucial place to argue left political and economic policies toe-to-toe with the right. That reliance encouraged complacency, and now, here we are.

So, if we cant get an alternative voice, and I dont see who else can provide its core (even if a few liberal multimilli/billionaires are added on the top), then were finished. Presumably, with todays announcement on higher education, that point becomes obvious. Its going to be onslaught after onslaught from here on, with no large-scale base from which to mount a sustained alternative argument to a broad audience.

This country is then just Alabama on the Pacific, in which the left, even the centre-left, is a permanent oppositional presence, nothing more, and quietly abandons any notion of winning power, or even setting an agenda, which then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The leadership of the union movement needs to shake itself out of its modest expectations, its long-learnt petitioning, protesting role, its cultivated lack of audacity, its narcissistic pursuit of internal divisions, and acquire the ambition to set the agenda, and become a full countervailing force to what is now a large-scale right totality.

Like many people raised on The Age, Ill still glance at it in the morning. It still does great stuff investigation-wise. I still trust its core journos and editors to stand up to undisguised political heavying. But if management wants to go a certain way, it will eventually get its way. As something that it was, The Age and the SMH are gone. Mourn them and move on. Or stick around for the next funeral, which is ours.

Save up to 50% on a year of Crikey, or, dig deeper so that we can dig deeper.

Crikey may be small but our goal has always been to focus on the why, not the what of public life to explain how power is used and abused in Australia, and the systems and people who facilitate it.

But to do that effectively, we need subscribers. Lots of them.

Join Crikey now, and for the first time ever, choose what you pay.

Peter FrayEditor-In-Chief of Crikey

View original post here:

The ACTU needs to start a daily paper. There's nothing else left - Crikey

Public Enemy Number One: New Doc Takes on the War on Drugs – Westword

Posted on June 22, 2020 by Danzig

Denver film producer Chris Chiari says it was serendipitous that Public Enemy Number One, his documentary about the War on Drugs and its consequences, became available at roughly the same time media has been flush with images of over-equipped cops beating Black Lives Matter protesters on American streets.

Although the War on Drugs has been going on for fifty years, some of its fallout has been prominently on display for several weeks.

Theres a clear relationship, says Chiari. The correlation between drugs as a political tool for enhanced funding, and then what they use the enhanced funding for.

Police departments, he says, have long used, under the pretense of fighting the War on Drugs, tools like civil forfeiture to pay for toys they wouldnt otherwise have. The rise of the global war on terror has continued that tradition, with police departments given the military hardware of their dreams, everything from tanks to the sound weapons used to disperse protestors.

The documentary, directed by Robert Rippberger, also shows how politicians, led by President Richard Nixon, started the War on Drugs in the late 1960s as a way to consolidate more law enforcement power, traditionally a state and local matter, into the hands of the federal government.

Its starting to feel a lot like 1968 again. Trump is even using the language again, Chiari says. 'The 'law and order' president?' Hes using Nixons script.

Politicians also lumped marijuana in with much more harmful drugs like heroin as a way to marginalize Nixons perceived enemies namely black folks and people on the left politically. A person who is convicted of a felony can no longer vote,in many cases. Marijuana has been legalized or at least decriminalized across much of America now, but for decades, thousands of people have received insanely long prison sentences for selling and sometimes just possessing the drug.

They couldnt restrict what people said, their freedom of speech, Chiari says. So they take something that people commonly put in their mouth and make the act of putting that in their mouth a felony. It restricts someones political voice from that point on.

The result was a country with the highest number of people locked up per capita in the world, most of them black or brown, and cops that look more like they are ready to storm Fallujah rather than hand out parking tickets. Rising NBA star Len Biass death of a cocaine overdose in 1986 helped drag the Democratic Party into the fray, so overfunding the police is an issue on both the left and right sides of the political spectrum.

We're looking at it now through a lens [from] fifty years later, and looking at what's happening with crime at least our definition of crime, he says. We look at what's happened with incarceration, and to say that there is not a racial bias to incarceration, I will not make that statement.

Chiari is a long time marijuana user he owns a piece of a Denver dispensary and is unabashedly pro-cannabis and says he strived to present a balanced view of the War on Drugs and its consequences on American society fifty years out. The documentary includes interviews with addiction specialists; Keith Stroup, founder of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws; three former drug czars and several people from the anti-marijuana movement, among others. Rapper and actor Ice-T, who has an executive-producer credit on the film, also sits for an interview. (For the record, Ice-T doesnt smoke marijuana, as he finds it interferes with his hustle.)

Chiari says the documentary was somewhat inspired by the Netflix documentary 13th, which explores the intersection of race, justice and mass incarceration in the United States. The documentary was named after the Thirteenth Amendment, which ended slavery and involuntary servitude except for punishment for a crime.

I hope in any meaningful way we can contribute at least a part to this overall dialogue, he says. Films like 13th are becoming required viewing to grasp where we are and the types of discussions we need to have to move toward. Im hopeful we fit into that, and I think we do. It couldnt be any more timely.

Public Enemy Number One is available to rent or buy online.

Read the original here:

Public Enemy Number One: New Doc Takes on the War on Drugs - Westword

Devin Reaves: We can’t have black liberation without ending War on Drugs – TribLIVE

Posted on June 22, 2020 by Danzig

TribLIVE's Daily and Weekly email newsletters deliver the news you want and information you need, right to your inbox.

As a black man in America, I live in constant fear, and as a leader of an organization that aims to end the war on drugs in Pennsylvania, I also have tremendous fear for people who use drugs especially those of us who are black and brown. What we all want is liberation.

Liberation is an ideal this nations founders valued so much that it was enshrined in the Declaration of Independence. Yet it took longer for some of us to get to it than others, and some of us today are still not free.

Today, June 19, we celebrate Juneteenth, the day the last slaves in America were freed. The reality is, however, none of us are free while racist drug policies commonly known as the War on Drugs continues to enslave and oppress our communities.

The past few weeks have been filled with protests, unrest and pain. Police violence, the very issue we are protesting, has been on full display; the countys longstanding war against black and brown people is finally in plain sight, and hopefully now more than ever, racial injustice is something none of us can ignore. I dare to hope that things will change. My real hope is that black people may finally find the freedom that was promised in the Emancipation Proclamation.

Racist drug policies date back to the early 1900s, and the War on Drugs was formalized in 1971 by President Nixon. The policies that followed represented a new and disguised evolution of one of Americas greatest sins slavery.

And it worked. Slowly and methodically, while using the War on Drugs as a tool for racist oppression, people were criminalized for their existence, brought into a cyclical system of control and excluded from actively participating in society.

Black Americans are incarcerated at 5.1 times the rate of white Americans, not due to differences in rates of drug use, drug sales or crimes committed but rather due to racist stereotypes, prejudices, policies and practices that reach all parts of both the criminal injustice system and our entire society.

Our land is governed by laws, so now lets dismantle the bad ones. We hear politicians recognize the devastating failures of the War on Drugs and methodically repeat we cant arrest our way out of the overdose epidemic. These words mean little when our current laws are designed to do exactly that: arrest, incarcerate and oppress.

There are thousands of laws today that codify and perpetuate a system that inflicts violence against black people. These laws are oppression by design. They started during slavery and continued through the Jim Crow era until today, where they continue to oppress and harm black folks. White America was blind to these laws until the misnamed opioid epidemic landed on their doorstep. Only then did we hear louder cries for more compassionate responses to drug use and addiction. Truth be told, the only reason we are taking a more compassionate response to drug use today is that suburban white kids are dying of overdose.

This more recent phenomenon of white overdose deaths is only new because of the racist design and enforcement of War on Drugs policies which were historically directed at black and brown people. The War on Drugs has fueled mass incarceration, and destroyed black and brown communities across our state and our nation. These policies have also destroyed American life on both sides of the color line.

Tearing down statues, painting over murals, posting on social media, making statements of solidarity and acknowledging the voices of us black people means little. The days of platitudes, half measures and talk without change are over. Only direct action including speaking with legislators and decision-makers in your community and supporting black-led organizations that are working to change policy and deconstruct the War on Drugs will liberate the black community and start the healing process.

I call on all people, especially white people who stand with us in the Keystone State to educate themselves, to use their privilege to think about the intersectionality of the issues at hand and declare through action that now is the time for change. We as black people need to hold the power that has never been held by us. We need to live in a society that sees our humanity, honors us, respects us and treats us with equality that belongs to every being who walks this earth. It is time for black liberation.

Devin Reaves is co-founder and executive director of PA Harm Reduction Coalition.

Categories:Featured Commentary | Opinion

TribLIVE's Daily and Weekly email newsletters deliver the news you want and information you need, right to your inbox.

Link:

Devin Reaves: We can't have black liberation without ending War on Drugs - TribLIVE

The War on Drugs Drug Spurred America’s Current Policing Crisis – Reason

Posted on June 22, 2020 by Danzig

While growing up around Philadelphia in the 1970s, I had a number of interactions with policenone of which were particularly harrowing. On the night before Memorial Day, for instance, a friend and I were drinking beer (yes, we were underage) in a cemetery by the Delaware River when we saw lights flashing and were approached by officers.

Apparently, the police had gotten a tip that someone might be stealing the brass placards from the gravestones and we were in the wrong place at the wrong time. We didn't have any ID, so my friend handed a stuffed animal with his name on it to the officer. The policeman laughed, realized that we weren't up to any serious mischief, made sure we were OK to drive home, and sent us on our way.

Quite frankly, I couldn't imagine that scenario playing out in the same benign way today. I thought of that interaction as I've watched the angry, nationwide protests unfold over the disturbingdeathof George Floyd, where a Minneapolis officer placed his knee on his neck for nearly nine minutes. Many of my conservative friends, especially those who grew up in the world similar to the one I described above, have been caught off-guard by the depth of anger.

Even if some left-wingactivistsused the crisis to promote riots and mayhem, such mass protests do not happen in a bubble. Tens of thousands of people don't take to the streets because of outside agitators, but because they are angry about things they've often experienced themselves. And many Americansespecially in minority communitieshave experienced the brunt of an overall policing approach that has become overly militaristic.

Police strategies have changed dramatically in the past few decadesand not because of soaring crime. Despite recent spikes, crime ratesnow are much lower than at any time since the 1960s, and police can absolutely take some credit for that. I'm not nave here. Police abuse has been a problem as long as there have been police. I've read about the segregated South and the way police routinely terrorized African-Americans. But something significant has happened in the years following my cemetery experience.

I point to the nation's War on Drugs as a prime culprit. Recent commentary has correctly focused on various reasons for our current policing mess. Just as teachers' unions make it impossible to fire bad teachers,police unionsmake it impossible to fire overly aggressive and even corrupt officers. Then "limited immunity" protects cops from being sued even when they violate people's constitutional rights.

The federal 1033programprovides decommissioned military-style hardware to police departments. So, instead of sending a beat cop to deal with a routine arrest or disturbance, police nowadays like to bring out the toysi.e., those tank-like vehicles, SWAT teams and flash-bang grenades that are more appropriate for invaders than peace officers.

But few people have talked about the war on drugs, which started in the 1980s, and conditioned police departments to behave in this more militarized way. Police first took this approach during alcohol Prohibition, as others havenoted, and then stepped up the efforts after America's leaders looked for ways to combat a spreading drug epidemic. This issue isn't only about race, of course, given how aggressive police behave even in suburban Southern California. But these ham-fisted policies fall disproportionately on minority communities.

One of the earliest drug-war policies is"civil asset forfeiture,"which lets law enforcement quickly snatch the proceeds of drug kingpins. Police don't need to prove that you did anything wrong before they confiscate your car or other property. The police agency merely needs to assert that the property was used in the commission of a drug crime.

"Today, the old speed traps have all too often been replaced by forfeiture traps, where local police stop cars and seize cash and property to pay for local law enforcement efforts," wrote two federal officials who helped create the program, in a 2014Washington Postcolumn. "This is a complete corruption of the process, and it unsurprisingly has led to widespread abuses." It's led to widespread anger, too, as police mainly seize poor people's cars rather than cartels' assets.

It wasn't hard to predict what would happen when police take on a siege mentality and are provided with military hardware and exempted from constitutional limitations. In a 1996 editorial, William F. Buckley's conservativeNational Reviewwrotethat "the war on drugs has failed" and is "encouraging civil, judicial and penal procedures associated with police states."

Twenty-four years later we're seeing the fruits of those policies, even if most observers don't see the connection. By all means, let's review police-disciplinary procedures,union protections, racial bias, and other causes of police abusebut let's not forget the way the drug war has often turned minor interactions like the one I had into violent confrontations.

This column was first published in the Orange County Register.

View post:

The War on Drugs Drug Spurred America's Current Policing Crisis - Reason

According to these experts, the War on Drugs has contributed to making police more violent – The GrowthOp

Posted on June 22, 2020 by Danzig

Deadly police actions, punctuated by the ongoing protests after the murder of George Floyd, represent just one arm of an octopus-like creature that feeds off systemic racism. Another element that has been brought up a lot in recent weeks is the failed War on Drugs policy.

Despite the supposed end to the U.S. drug policy, it continues to claim victims, including those who remain in prison for non-violent weed convictions and those whose records prevent them from equal treatment in terms employment and housing.

The War on Drugs is a policy failure that has come at great cost, to society generally and to minority communities especially, drug policy experts Katharine Neill Harris and Alfred Glassell, III write in a blog posted last week on Rice Universitys Baker Institute for Public Policy website.

But, as Harris and Glassell point out in their post, the failures legacy stretches beyond the immediate victims: The war on drugs is an impediment to reducing unnecessary citizen-police encounters and to cultivating humane treatment of people who use drugs.By normalizing aggressive policing within a system already mired in institutional racism, the pair suggests that chances are greater for more and more violent interactions between people and police.

Approaches such as no-knock searches, often led by heavily armed SWAT teams, unsurprisingly carry a high risk for deadly violence. And drugs are a routine component of pretext stops, described as allowing police officers to stop people for one violation with the intent of uncovering a separate violation. This would be the case if a driver was pulled over for a traffic violation and on the pretext of smelling weed, the vehicle is then searched.

Proactive drug enforcement has normalized overzealous policing. / Photo: KatarzynaBialasiewicz / iStock / Getty Images PlusKatarzynaBialasiewicz / iStock / Getty Images Plus

Writing that proactive drug enforcement has normalized overzealous policing, the authors argue for the federal and state governments to remove their legal basis by decriminalizing low-level drug possession.

If the current approach aims to get serious drugs off the street, they write, it must be noted a recent analysis of more than 700,000 drug arrests in the U.S. found that 60 per cent of cases were for less than one gram.

FILE: Angele, a regular cannabis user, holds a bag of cannabis in Montreal Friday Oct. 11, 2019. / Photo: John MahoneyJohn Mahoney / Montreal Gazette

The nonprofit group The Last Prisoner Project reports that at least 40,000 Americans remain locked up for cannabis offences despite recreational cannabis being legal in 11 states and medicinal marijuana, in some form, allowed in 33 states, according to Merry Jane.

As for the police, Harris and Glassell write that enhanced training on defensive tactics and ensuring that the primary purpose of the police force is to serve as guardians of the public could also assist in de-escalating incidents that far too often turn deadly.

It is especially critical that marginalized populations, such as people who use drugs, are included as members of this public that are deserving of police protection and respect, the blog adds.

Want to keep up to date on whats happening in the world of cannabis? Subscribeto the Cannabis Post newsletter for weekly insights into the industry, what insiders will be talking about and content from across the Postmedia Network.

Read the rest here:

According to these experts, the War on Drugs has contributed to making police more violent - The GrowthOp

‘No Drugs, No Families, Lots Of Stress’: Prisons, Drugs And COVID-19 – TalkingDrugs

Posted on June 22, 2020 by Danzig

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected many areas of international life and commerce, including drug markets and the drug trade. Relaxed borders are key to the smooth functioning of both licit and illicit markets, and the restrictions enacted to suppress the spread of COVID-19 have had an impact on the supply, distribution and price of drugs, as well as the health and wellbeing of people in prison.

A recent report by the EMCDDA and Europol found the COVID-19 pandemic has had a temporary disruptive impact on the drug market leading to shortages of and higher prices for some drugs. While illicit markets are resilient, the report notes that drugs such as cannabis and heroin are experiencing inconsistent availability and inflated prices in many localities and countries. Reports from Hungary and Malta confirm disruptions in the availability of drugs locally, including cannabis, MDMA and synthetic cannabinoids.

Outside of Europe, reports have noted similar disruptions of both the drug and precursor markets in Mexico and China. Prison drug markets are not exempt from these wider developments, and market disruptions are contributing to the already extreme impacts of COVID-19 on prison conditions worldwide.

In April, the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe raised urgent concerns about the treatment of prisoners and detainees in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Identifying persons in detention as some of the most vulnerable to viral contagion, the Commissioner stated that the pandemic strikes in a context of overcrowded prisons and poor detention conditions in cramped, collective cells, with unsatisfactory health services, as well as higher rates of infectious and chronic diseases among detainees, such as tuberculosis, diabetes and HIV. To address the risk of prison overcrowding fuelling the spread of COVID-19, over fifty countries have implemented small and large-scale programmes of prisoner release.

One aspect of prison regimes that has been among the most affected by the pandemic is prison visitations. Given the risks posed by the rapid spread of COVID-19 in closed custody settings, prison systems around the world have understandably been suspending or restricting visiting from family and friends. Visiting restrictions or suspensions are reported in countries including the UK, the USA, Ireland, Australia, South Africa, Kenya, Indonesia, Thailand, Belize, Mexico and Guyana, to name but a few. While such restrictions are a sensible response to the risk of rapid COVID-19 spread in prisons, it is one that demands both health and human rights scrutiny, especially as COVID-19 is a virus the world will be dealing with for some time to come.

Maintaining contact with family and friends is essential for prisoners' lives and well-being. Prison is a socially isolating environment, with many regimes allowing only limited out-of-cell time and interactions with family even before the pandemic. COVID-19 restrictions on visits will necessarily mean an increase in this isolation, and with it an increased vulnerability to depression and other related mental health issues.

Many governments have highlighted the negative mental health impacts of the social isolation experienced by the general public during the COVID-19 lockdown. These impacts are multiplied exponentially for prisoners, for whom the loss of family visiting exacerbates the already extreme isolation and stress of detention. In some prison systems, detainees rely on visits from family not only for emotional comfort and support, but also to provide them with basic necessities food, toiletries, clothing, etc. that the prison itself does not provide. A number of countries including Brazil, Italy, Egypt, Indonesia and Jordan have seen sometimes violent protests and uprisings by prisoners in the wake of the curtailment of visiting.

The restrictions on visiting are also having impacts on the illicit economy in prisons. It is estimated that one in five people detained globally is incarcerated due to a drug charge, making the impact of the war on drugs a driver of both mass incarceration and the spread of COVID-19 in places of detention. While certainly frowned upon by prison systems, visitors from the outside represent one of the sources of drugs into prisons, and the reduction of contacts from the outside is having an impact on prison drug markets.

While the easy availability of drugs in prisons pre-COVID is well documented, in places of detention the impact of the disruption of wider drug markets, exacerbated by the suspension of visits, has caused significant reductions in drug availability. EMCDDA/Europol reports that COVID-19 visiting restrictions have indirectly led to a decrease in the availability of drugs in some prisons.

The lack of purposeful activities and the boredom of lock-up has been identified as an important factor in the use of drugs in prison. The current situation of long periods of lock-down, coupled with no visitors or activities (to ensure social distancing), generates a vicious cycle of more social isolation, more boredom, more tension one in which even the temporary relief offered by drug use is increasingly unavailable. As described in one Australian newspaper, COVID-19 has created a situation in prisons of No drugs, no families, lots of stress.

One example is Maghaberry Prison in Northern Ireland, where the ban on visitors has decimated the prison drug trade, leaving prisoners with heavy withdrawal symptoms from drugs such as the synthetic cannabinoid Spice. In Australia, the reduction in drug availability due to restrictions on visiting has led to increased drug prices, and to increased violence in the prisons related to control of the dwindling market. Similarly, it is predicted that UK prisons will experience an increase in withdrawal and of tensions as drug availability shrinks.

Some will see the disruption of prison drug markets as a positive development in the war on drugs. Yet it is also one that will contribute further to the negative impacts on the health and well-being of prisoners, and the overall prison regime, exacerbated by COVID-19.

* Ellie Harding is a final year student in Criminology at Swansea University. Dr Rick Lines is Associate Professor of Criminology and Human Rights, School of Law, Swansea University.

Link:

'No Drugs, No Families, Lots Of Stress': Prisons, Drugs And COVID-19 - TalkingDrugs

What time does the Eric Andres Legalize Everything release on Netflix? Find out – Republic World – Republic World

Posted on June 22, 2020 by Danzig

Eric Andre is a 37-year-old popular American comedian, actor, and producer. He is best known for his comedy series called The Eric Andre Show. He voiced Azizi, one of the hyenas in the live-action remake of The Lion King in 2019. Read this article to find out, What time does Eric Andres latest Netflix special Eric Andre: Legalize Everythingrelease on Netflix?

Read |US: Dave Chappelle speaks on George Floyd in new Netflix special

Eric Andres first-ever comedy special Eric Andre:Legalize Everything will drop on Netflix on June 23, 2020. Like most other Netflix shows the hour-long comedy special will be released at12:00 am Pacific time, which is 3:00 am Eastern time.Eric Andre: Legalize Everything, was filmed in November 2019 at a warehouse turned into a concert venue and club in New Orleans called Republic. The Netflix special will include a wide range of subjects such as the war on drugs, war on sex, and a whole lot of other edgy material.

Read |Dave Chappelle honours Kobe Bryant in latest Netflix special, says he 'cried like a baby'

American actor and comedian Eric Andre will take the stage in New Orleans. He will tackle the flawed fast-food icons, and even autofill and the strange choice for the ex-Paramount network show Cops theme song. The official description of the special reads, "Andre breaks the boundaries of comedy as he critiques the war on drugs, the war on sex, and the war on fart jokes!" Eric Andre: Legalize Everything begins with a sketch of Andre posing as a police officer, and offering drugs to every person on the street.

Read |Is The Andy Griffith show leaving Netflix? Find out when this 60's show is leaving

Andres special was filmed long before the Black Lives Matter movement and the countrywide protests in America began. In an interview given to a media portal, Andre revealed that some middle-aged white officials at Netflix wanted to remove the Copstheme song joke from his special.The CopsTV show was a Paramount network show, which got cancelled in the wake of George Floyds death. Andre also informed that the officials wanted him to remove all the other jokes on policemen in general.

Read |Kenya Barris, Pharrell developing Juneteenth musical movie at Netflix

However, Andrerefused to do so. He argued that this is one of the best times to be using humour to present the current situation. He added that humour makes it easier to point out the absurdity and hypocrisy of the police department. Eric Andre added that instead of shoving things under the rug, people need to talk openly about police brutality. He also confessed that he was blessed that his stand up is coming out in this time.

Get the latest entertainment news from India & around the world. Now follow your favourite television celebs and telly updates. Republic World is your one-stop destination for trending Bollywood news. Tune in today to stay updated with all the latest news and headlines from the world of entertainment.

Continued here:

What time does the Eric Andres Legalize Everything release on Netflix? Find out - Republic World - Republic World

The war on Covid gets fresh ammo – And pharma stocks are rejoicing – Times Now

Posted on June 22, 2020 by Danzig

Representational Image

So what happened in the pharma space today, that fired up Glenmark into a dizzying rally? Shares of Glenmark touched the skies, rallying to its best day ever.

The market has lapped up the approval by Drug Controller General of India or DCGI - to make and sell Favipiravir, on a restricted basis. The drug - being marketed as FabiFlu - is being used in the treatment of Covid infections. The medicine is priced at about Rs 103 per tablet and is the first oral Favipiravir-approved drug in India. That's not all. The war on Covid got even more armour today. News reports suggest Hetero Pharma and Cipla have got approvals to supply the generic version of Gilead's Remdesivir to hospitals, as early as this week. This, many say could mean the expenditure for Covid drug could get split up, since the drugs will be supplied to hospitals, first. Hetero is looking to price the drug between Rs 5,000-6,000 per vial, and it will be marketed under the brand name 'Covifor' in India.

The entire pharma pack is running ahead, in anticipation of greater business potential as these drugs get released into wider markets, over the months. But it remains to be seen what kind of competitions to these medicines are in the pipeline. Glenmark's drug FabiFlu is being marketed as a flu drug, for mild to moderate cases of Covid. Experts debate than even other medicines could be in a position to cure such cases.

Street may be ignoring the fact that Glenmark may not have exclusivity to the medicine. Speaking to ET NOW, Prabhudas Lilladher's Surajit Pal too said, the run-up seems unjustified. He said as earnings may not be able to justify these stock valuations.

Read the original post:

The war on Covid gets fresh ammo - And pharma stocks are rejoicing - Times Now

Don’t Mention The Drug War. We Must Decriminalize Being Black. Black Freedom Matters. – L.A. Weekly

Posted on June 22, 2020 by Danzig

Chaos Theory is the idea that very small events can have major consequences. It is often illustrated by what is called the Butterfly Effect, where the fluttering of tiny wings could set off a series of events leading to a major storm halfway around the world. Of course, even though there are millions of butterflies, they dont have cameras, so there is no way to monitor these events, but there are plenty of real world examples.

For instance, try to imagine that the cruel and incredibly stupid action of a policeman in a very liberal city would kill a suspect by keeping his knee on the suspects throat until well after he was dead. And all of it was caught on a camera and immediately broadcast around the world. What could possibly go right?

But what if there had not been a camera? The victims family would still grieve. There might even have been some disciplinary action taken against the police. But if there is an injustice and it isnt photographed, does it have any real world consequences?

In fact, even this death caught on camera would not have provoked a global reaction if there had not been literally countless examples of injustices burning in the collective consciousness of the African American community. This was not an isolated event, but rather all too familiar to all too many people with all too much real world experience.

It began when the community that witnessed the death, and then witnessed what looked like another official cover-up of the crime. And, as we should have learned from Watergate, Its not the crime. Its the coverup.

African Americans have seen so many unarmed black Americans killed by the police, who were then acquitted, if they were even prosecuted. In the land of the free and the home of the brave, where all men are created equal with liberty and justice for all? Say it aint so.

So the protests and demonstrations began. Freedom of Assembly and Freedom of Speech. So far, so good.

But then the looting and arson began, helped by apparently well-organized criminals. Then the usual suspects, political provocateurs from both the Left and the Right, saw their opportunity and joined in. But isnt that why we have the police?

Well, in the real world, elements in the police saw their opportunity and began to attack peaceful demonstrators, and even the media. As NeimanLab.org reported, U.S. police have attacked journalists more than 130 times since May 28.

Although the asphyxiation of an unarmed suspect is inexcusable, these isolated actions by a few bad apples pale by comparison with the systemic violence of the sustained low-intensity state terrorism that is the substance of the decades of the Drug War, of which marijuana prohibition is the key element, and the Black underclass is the main target.

But these arrests, while devastating to those involved, are only a small part of the violence injected into everyday life by marijuana prohibition.

From Race and The Drug War:

Nearly 80% of people in federal prison and almost 60% of people in state prison for drug offenses are black or Latino.

Research shows that prosecutors are twice as likely to pursue a mandatory minimum sentence for black people as for white people charged with the same offense. Among people who received a mandatory minimum sentence in 2011, 38% were Latino and 31% were black.

One in 13 black people of voting age are denied the right to vote because of laws that disenfranchise people with felony convictions.

One in nine black children has an incarcerated parent, compared to one in 28 Latino children and one in 57 white children.

The Queens Eagle reported that last year:

Nearly every single person arrested for weed in NYC was black or Latinx.

Black and Latinx New Yorkers accounted for 94 percent of all low-level marijuana arrests in New York City during the first six months of the year, according to NYPD arrest data compiled by the state.

The NYPD arrested 1,436 people for fifth-degree marijuana possession or fourth-degree sale from January to June and 1,349 of the people arrested were identified as black or Hispanic, according to the NYS Division of Criminal Justice Services. The state agency publishes quarterly reports on race and ethnicity data for certain felony and misdemeanor charges.

Obviously, we have created a new class for whom looting is a form of political expression. That is not an excuse for the inexcusable, but it is a fact of life and death. We have created entire generations of Americans for whom law enforcement is a source of community cynicism and personal fear.

The good news? Well, in polite society we are once again talking about Criminal Justice Reform, but that is just another excuse for ignoring the Drug War, which is the core of our criminal justice system. Now the mayor of Los Angeles is threatening to cut the citys police budget by $150 million, but that is simply another way to avoid the really difficult decisions about the Drug War.

We can only decriminalize being black by greatly decreasing occasions for African Americans interacting with the police by ending the Drug War. Otherwise, the police will be in the impossible position of ignoring the law while trying to protect their communities.

Almost 20 years ago, Portugal decriminalized the possession of personal use amounts of all drugs.

The conclusion:

Overall, this suggests that removing criminal penalties for personal drug possession did not cause an increase in levels of drug use. This tallies with a significant body of evidence from around the world that shows the enforcement of criminal drug laws has, at best, a marginal impact in deterring people from using drugs. There is essentially no relationship between the punitiveness of a countrys drug laws and its rates of drug use. Instead, drug use tends to rise and fall in line with broader cultural, social or economic trends

Additionally, decriminalisation does not appear to have caused an increase in crimes typically associated with drugs. Decriminalisation significantly reduced the Portuguese prison population and eased the burden on the criminal justice system.

The alternative for America is business as usual with continued violence from both law enforcement and contraband businesses disrupting communities. For violence to hit millions, it must threaten tens of millions, and not just marijuana users. Because there is no typical marijuana user. Everyone must live under suspicion, and anyone can become a target. Everyone is subject to random stops, urine testing and surveillance. But blacks are the targets of choice.

Children have been and still are lied to in a sustained prohibitionist propaganda campaign of an intensity unequaled in a democracy in peacetime. Politicians are allowed to prattle meaningless cliches about sending the wrong message to children but the children know that they are being lied to even when they do not know what is true. There is no worse message than that.

Authorities lie to the media, who then lie to the public, while pretending to be watch-dogs for their victims. At least when they lie to us, they are acknowledging that it somehow matters what we think. Perhaps even worse, the media generally still ignore almost all of the elements of marijuana prohibition. The numbers of arrests are almost never reported, even though marijuana arrests outnumber the total number of arrests for violent crimes.

According to the FBIs Uniform Crime Report, police made 663,367 arrests for marijuana-related violations in 2018. That is more than 21 percent higher than the total number of persons arrested for the commission of violent crimes (521,103). Of those arrested for cannabis-related activities, some 90 percent (608,776) were arrested for marijuana possession offenses only.

Silence can be the worst lie.

Beyond that, words have their meanings subverted until communication is impossible. As Orwell observed in 1984, when words become meaningless, censorship becomes unnecessary, because people are no longer able to express their ideas. Drug means marijuana, except when it does not. The very word prohibition is never used to describe the current policies. Marijuana prohibition is the hate that dares not speak its name.

The best lack all conviction: Even when good people do honest research and announce that marijuana is far less dangerous than the legal drugs, alcohol and tobacco, as well as most common over-the-counter drugs, and that users should not be arrested, these fine souls still cannot bring themselves to say that it should be legalized so that marijuana-users wont have to deal with the black-market and confront corrupt police.

While the worst are full of passionate intensity: When the laws are changed, as with medical marijuana in some states, law enforcement simply refuses to obey the law.

Can all of these things be happening without consequence? Can the flutter of a butterflys wings be thought to have an effect, while this massive evil has none? Given all of these elements of violence to body, mind, soul, community, and polity, dont Minneapolis and Louisville fit right in?

In a society that uses the welfare of children to justify the worst of crimes, can it be surprising that children become the victims, and then the victimizers?

Seen in this context, is the inexplicable violence of our society really so inexplicable?

For all that, there are a number of reasons why we will win. However, the most important reason is transcendent.

The Truth Shall Make Us Free, but only if we have the courage to speak

Richard Cowan is a former NORML National Director and co-founder at Real Tested CBD.

Don't Mention The Drug War. We Must Decriminalize Being Black. Black Freedom Matters. - L.A. Weekly

We Need to Take Care of Each Other After COVID-19 Too – Juvenile Justice Information Exchange

Posted on June 22, 2020 by Danzig

The Office of Neighborhood Safety (ONS) in Richmond, Calif., is a non-law enforcement governmental agency whose sole purpose is to reduce gun violence using street outreach as a primary vehicle to deliver optimal and sustained gun violence reduction outcomes.

As with most things in this country due to COVID-19, our work looks a little different. We are wearing masks, gloves and doing our part to social distance during outreach. These arent ideal conditions in an occupation that is based on building trustworthy relationships with skeptical clients. Yet, as always in this line of work, one must lead by example.

Many articles of late have described the essential role of professionals who facilitate gun violence prevention street outreach during these unprecedented times. We continue to remain on the front lines of violence interruption activities. Were experiencing new situations like being called to mediate conflicts within homes where families are battling due to cabin fever because the apartment is overcrowded and tensions flare. We are delivering food, water and other necessary supplies where few dare to venture.

Outreach workers have always been public health professionals who work in our toughest, most dangerous environments, but now we are using our status as trusted messengers to promote the seriousness of this virus and why it is important to follow the mandates of sheltering in place and social distancing. Also, dispelling misinformation about Black people and young people being immune to COVID-19. This work is critical to the health and well-being in urban America, which is even more evident due to our current situation. We are truly honored to be able to serve our communities in this way.

Our attention at the beginning of this pandemic was drawn to the many stories calling COVID-19 the great equalizer, considering this virus leaves no race, gender, religion or social class untouched. Yet as the weeks went on data showed that people of color and especially African Americans living in lower-income communities were suffering a much higher rate of infection and death.

Top to bottom: Jason Green, James Houston, Vaughn Miles, Charles Muhammad; bottom, left to right: Sal Garcia, Joe McCoy, Sam Vaughn

This created very interesting conversations about why. We now know there were a number of reasons. National public health experts told us this was due to the social, racial, educational, economic, housing and health care inequalities, and that African Americans suffered from underlying health conditions at a much higher rate than other citizens. COVID-19 has gone from being the great equalizer to the great revealer.

We who work in neighborhoods most impacted by gun violence found these so-called revelations to be very interesting. We question what COVID-19 has actually revealed. That urban America has been the least of this countrys concerns, since forever? No, that cant be it. As a nation, weve known this to be reality since slavery through the civil rights movement. From fighting for our freedom in the Civil War or after fighting in Vietnam for democratic principles and being called a nigger upon your return and being discriminated against by the job market back at home.

At the very least, weve been in the know since the life-destroying Tuskegee experiments or the war on drugs that decimated Black communities. For sure, anyone who knows the history of this country without a doubt knows that it has not treated its people of color equally. So, what is this great revelation everyone is talking about?

In our work, weve been trying to wrap our heads around this question for a while. Weve determined that both statements are true COVID-19 equalizes and reveals. What this pandemic has done to this country is horrific, and it is sad to watch the news and see the death toll rise daily. To see a line of cars more than a mile long at the food bank, filled with people worrying about whether or not there will still be something left when they get to the front. Watching the elderly lie in convalescent homes alone because they cant have visitors or, even worse, being left alone because staff werent getting the proper PPE, and no one showed up for work.

To hear the stories of people whove lost loved ones and didnt get to say their final goodbyes because of lockdown protocols. One cant imagine the sheer fear of someone in their last moments on this Earth possibly having to settle for being comforted by a complete stranger, instead of holding the hand of their spouse or children. This is truly a scary time to be alive, a time of fear, uncertainty, despair and maybe even hopelessness.

And then, all of a sudden we got it

It has also been a scary time to live for the young people across this country who are most impacted by gun violence for their entire lives. They dont plan for a future because they dont see a tomorrow. Not everyone in this nation is equal today in this regard. Many young people we work with dont know what they are going to do for food next week or how their rent will get paid. They dont know if they will even be alive tomorrow.

No one should live with these types of uncertainties on a daily basis. Yes, COVID-19 has many in its sights whove never thought or lived this way. But many in our nation have lived this way their entire lives and so have their ancestors. Although there have been policies to try to mitigate these disparities, they have never been enough and are often attacked because of who would receive the remedy.

So now with COVID-19, a spotlight has exposed governments great responsibility to care for us when we cannot care for ourselves and to create the conditions that enhance the opportunity for all to become self-sufficient. But not just because of this pandemic, no. But because that is what a just society does. COVID-19 is new and devastating, but it too shall pass.

And yes, many Americans will agree that the total loss of life could have been avoided. The epidemic of gun violence, however, is an age-old problem in this country, and until we deal with it with the same ferocity that we have for COVID-19, it will continue to be what it has always been an ongoing nightmare of death, harm, trauma and hopelessness.

As this nation slowly gets back to normalcy and people go back to work, school, church and Sunday barbecues, will the majority of us still be OK with some of us continuing to live in a hell like the one we all just escaped? Were reminded of a question anti-racism educator Jane Elliott asked a large group of white people in an auditorium:

If you are OK with being treated the way Black people are treated in this country, please raise your hand. No hands were raised.

We ask you now, are you OK with this country going back to a normal that leaves a part of it behind again? Please raise your hand. If not, please do something about it. Support community organizations on the front lines fighting this epidemic of gun violence and demand that more such efforts are created to do so. Lets take care of each other.

Sam Vaughn, program manager of the Richmond, Calif., Office of Neighborhood Safety and his team of neighborhood change agents James Houston, Sal Garcia, Joe McCoy, Charles Muhammad, Jason Green and Von Miles are co-authors of this column.

Excerpt from:

We Need to Take Care of Each Other After COVID-19 Too - Juvenile Justice Information Exchange

Column: In critical moment, calling all allies – WTOP

Posted on June 22, 2020 by Danzig

Black lives matter. The movement to make that statement a mandate and not just a slogan is not new. It is more than 400 years in the making, writes Thomas Warren, a former WTOP reporter who now works for NFL Network.

America is experiencing a critical moment.

The killings of Rayshard Brooks, George Floyd and Breonna Taylor by law enforcement have, once again, forced the country to reckon with its long history of systemic racism and, more specifically, police brutality.

In the weeks following their deaths, protesters of every hue have flooded the streets across the country to preach what should be a universal truth: Black lives matter.

The movement to make that statement a mandate and not just a slogan is not new. It is more than 400 years in the making. But to ensure this moment is not squandered, the work cant be shouldered by Black people alone.

We need allies, especially white ones. Its time for their privilege, and all the comfort it affords, to be used for a greater good. We need allies willing to speak truth to power.

We need allies to act as though their lives depend on ending the disease of systemic racism as much as Black lives do.

I work for the media group of the National Football League. In the wake of the deaths of Floyd and Taylor, the company held numerous open-forum-style Zoom conversations to discuss race in America.

During one of those meetings, a non-Black colleague asked me, What is it that an ally can do?

Its a question Ive thought a lot about.

The answer is, there are several things an ally can do. However, Ill focus on three.

I believe showing the willingness to at least try and understand the everyday struggle of being Black in America could improve the collective psyche of our society. The video of Floyds killing, specifically, seems to have awakened the conscience of white America to accept that challenge.

That makes me hopeful. I understand that you wont ever fully grasp what it means to be a Black man like me in this country. Even in that truth, you can empathize with how it felt the first time I got pulled over by the police, a feeling Id never wish upon anyone.

I was 16 years old and living in Inglewood, California. As I was driving to school in my moms white 1996 Mitsubishi Galant, I was stopped because I fit the description of someone stealing cars in the area, according to one of the officers.

They ordered me to get out of the car, then handcuffed me and forced me to sit on the curb. I felt the disdainful looks of drivers crawling past, peering at me like I was a criminal even though I hadnt done anything wrong.

Its hard, even now, to describe the embarrassment. My license and registration were legit. I hadnt stolen anything. That I feel compelled even now to clarify those points is infuriating.

At one point, I noticed the two officers standing on the sidewalk between their car and mine, not doing any police work but, instead, conversing while simultaneously looking at me and the traffic. It dawned on me years later that they were sending a message to all the onlookers: You dont know this kid, but you should be afraid of him.

After a while, one of the officers came over to me. He stood me up and after facing traffic for a few silent seconds he said, I think youve had enough. What do you think? He uncuffed me and let me go.

It was my initiation to driving while Black. The hurt I felt from that encounter, which was my first with police in that scenario, Ive carried with me for the last 24 years.

Im a father now. When my son gets his license, Ill celebrate that achievement like any other parent. But I also know it will come with a level of danger that Ill need to prepare him for.

My encounter that day also injected me with an anxiety toward police officers and their ability to disregard my well-being, degrade my humanity and steal my confidence all because they can. If you think Im the only Black man who feels this way, then you havent cared enough to pay attention.

We carry that dread with us each time we leave our homes, or, in Breonna Taylors case, while were asleep in our own beds.

Again, I get it. Its impossible to fully understand that mentality if you dont live it every day. However, if you can engage in empathy, then you can at least understand my perspective. And if youre honest with yourself, doing so will force you to realize that the law enforcement youve always viewed as protection is wielded with savagery on Black people far too often.

Thats a healthy discourse to have. It can lead to compassion, which is sorely needed if were really going to tackle systemic racism.

More than 80% of the U.S. population owns a smartphone, according to the Pew Research Center.

Were in an age when information is accessible from the palm our hands. So, its no longer acceptable to utter phrases like I wasnt aware, I didnt know or I didnt understand, when you can Google terms like racial profiling, mass incarceration or war on drugs to learn why Black people are fighting for our lives to matter.

You no longer need to leave your home to find educational tools like books, documentaries or films to learn about the atrocities committed against Black people.

So, frankly, willful ignorance to the generational plunder of Black people in America will no longer be tolerated.

When you see a racist act, when you hear racist language or when you know where racial injustice is taking place, call it out for what it is.

Heres an example. Youre at a family gathering. The family member who always tells racist jokes starts telling racist jokes. You dont laugh. Youve never laughed because youve never thought the jokes were funny. But you dont speak up for fear of making the mood uncomfortable.

I implore you to make the mood uncomfortable! Thats what an ally does! An ally is willing to accept the consequences of being a voice of reason. Your Black friends cant always be there to take up the mantle.

Personally, its paramount that the country moves in the direction of equality for Black people. My son is 2 years old. Im already preparing for the talks he and I will need to have, so he is properly equipped to handle a world that will perceive him and his Black skin as a menace to society.

Right now, its cute that because of his size and the clarity in his speech that hes often mistaken as a 4 or 5-year-old. But Im already thinking about when hes 8 or 9 but looks 13.

How will I explain to him that while I still see him as my sweet little boy, others will see him as a threat?

It was the same question my mother mustve asked herself when she had those conversations with me as a 13-year-old. I may have been her sweet little boy, but I was also 6 feet, 5 inches tall. I didnt fully understand when she would say things like, I know youre only 13, but most people dont see that. They see a grown man. You need to know that and conduct yourself accordingly when youre away from this house.

I get it now. And if you think thats hyperbole, go talk to Tamir Rices mother about her 12-year-old son, who was shot and killed by a Cleveland police officer who thought he was 20 years old.

Black parents, especially those of us raising Black boys, dont want this burden of having to lecture by means of protection. But we wont have a choice if America stays comfortable in its racial intolerance.

Empathy, education, accountability. Three action items that could lead to effective change if theyre practiced with a sense of urgency. It shouldnt take another George Floyd gasping for his life under the knee of a police officer to create it. We must do something different. The lives of our Black children depend on it.

Thomas Warren is a Sr. Editor for the NFL Network in Los Angeles, a graduate of Howard University and a former editor and reporter at WTOP Radio. Contact Thomas at Thomas.Warren@nfl.com.

Editors note: This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Rayshard Brooks name.

Follow this link:

Column: In critical moment, calling all allies - WTOP

We could create the biggest adult-use marijuana market on the planet | Opinion – lehighvalleylive.com

Posted on June 22, 2020 by Danzig

EDITORS NOTE: NJ Cannabis Insider is hosting a national webinar, in collaboration with Advance 360, on July 13 at 1 p.m. The webinar, Cannabis Reform 2020: Americas Growing Pains & Possibilities will feature heavyweights in the national arena. Heres how to sign up.

By Ari Hoffnung and Susanna Short

The more than 40 million tri-state area residents of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania are likely to grapple with the economic and social aftermath of the pandemic for many years. With the keen understanding that state boundaries mean very little to this virus, we are all learning how essential it is for our regions governments to coordinate their policies. One area ripe for collaboration is adult-use cannabis policy.

In 2019, a Regional Cannabis Summit gave hope for a collaborative approach. Now that our states are moving forward with phased re-openings, we ought to re-engage in regional discussions. After all, we have the opportunity to create a regional cannabis market that will eclipse the largest regulated adult-use markets on the planet namely Canada, California, and Colorado and generate more than $1 billion of new tax revenues for the region.

Projections based on the authors analysis of 2019 pre-capita cannabis excise tax collections in adult-use states

Each of the three states is uniquely positioned to benefit. The Garden State is poised to be the first to legalize through the ballot question that voters will address on Nov. 3. The Empire State, home to close to half of the population in the three states, will ultimately have the largest cannabis market in the northeast, while the Keystone State has the most developed medical cannabis infrastructure and is best positioned to transition to adult-use.

There are many reasons to coordinate cannabis policy, and the magnitude of the budget deficit estimates coming out of Albany, Trenton, and Harrisburg amplify the need for collaboration around tax policy.

The task at hand requires balancing the need to maximize revenues for the public good like investments in education, infrastructure, and the communities adversely impacted by the War on Drugs with the need to keep taxes at reasonable levels so the newly regulated industry can compete on price and ultimately eliminate the robust illicit market.

To date, each of our states has proposed different problematic tax structures, and there is an opportunity to learn from other states and move forward in a more coordinated manner. To this end, we recommend that our region adopt three innovative cannabis tax strategies.

Our first and most critical recommendation is to urge our three states to synchronize tax rates. Not too long ago, cars with New York license plates would line up at New Jersey gas stations to enjoy the significantly cheaper gas prices of up to 40 cents a gallon. Similarly, citizens of southeastern

Pennsylvania and southern New Jersey frequently travel to Delaware to benefit from that states zero percent sales tax.

If we do not implement similar cannabis tax rates, consumers in higher-tax states will shop in lower-taxed bordering states, adversely impacting tax collections and employment rates in their home state. Over time, the losing home state would likely decide to lower its tax rate below its neighboring state, which would kick off a classic race to the bottom, which benefits nobody.

Our second recommendation is that the states levy a potency tax instead of the traditional ad-valorem percentage-based tax. Similar to how alcohol is taxed, with higher rates on liquor than on beer, a potency tax would impose higher taxes on products that contain more THC (the primary intoxicating compound in cannabis).

A potency tax achieves several policy goals. Unlike a percentage-based tax, which results in lower tax revenues as prices decline, a potency tax ensures that the downward pressure on prices does not result in dwindling tax collections. Further, a potency tax promotes temperance, a sensible public health policy goal for non-medical consumers.

Our final recommendation is to phase in cannabis taxes over a multi-year period. If taxes are initially too high, consumers will stay in the illicit market, and tax collections will fall painfully short of their potential.

Just as our governors have skillfully coordinated their pandemic responses, they ought to collaborate on cannabis policy, which intersects with public health, economics, and social justice. To be clear, we do not view legalization as a panacea for a full economic recovery or racial reconciliation, but we do believe that smart cannabis policy could help our region heal more quickly.

Working together we can create a regional cannabis market that will not only maximize tax revenues but also maximize justice for our communities.

The time to legalize is now.

Ari Hoffnung is Chief Strategy Officer of Vireo Health, a medical cannabis company operating in New York and Pennsylvania.

Susanna Short is a cannabis industry consultant who has advised clients with operations in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.

Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com.

The Star-Ledger/NJ.com encourages submissions of opinion. Bookmark NJ.com/Opinion. Follow us on Twitter @NJ_Opinion and on Facebook at NJ.com Opinion. Get the latest news updates right in your inbox. Subscribe to NJ.coms newsletters.

Continued here:

We could create the biggest adult-use marijuana market on the planet | Opinion - lehighvalleylive.com

Select Page ::