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Hip Osteoarthritis Pain Medicine Market Research Size foreseen to grow exponentially over 2019 2025 – 3rd Watch News

Posted on May 31, 2020 by Danzig

The Hip Osteoarthritis Pain Medicine report provides independent information about the Hip Osteoarthritis Pain Medicine industry supported by extensive research on factors such as industry segments size & trends, inhibitors, dynamics, drivers, opportunities & challenges, environment & policy, cost overview, porters five force analysis, and key companies profiles including business overview and recent development.

Hip Osteoarthritis Pain Medicine MarketLatest Research Report 2020:

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In this report, our team offers a thorough investigation of Hip Osteoarthritis Pain Medicine Market, SWOT examination of the most prominent players right now. Alongside an industrial chain, market measurements regarding revenue, sales, value, capacity, regional market examination, section insightful information, and market forecast are offered in the full investigation, and so forth.

Scope of Hip Osteoarthritis Pain Medicine Market: Products in the Hip Osteoarthritis Pain Medicine classification furnish clients with assets to get ready for tests, tests, and evaluations.

Major Company Profiles Covered in This Report

Pfizer, Johnson& Johnson, GlaxoSmithKline, Bayer, Eli Lilly, Novartis, Sanofi, Horizon Pharma, Abbott, Mylan, Daiichi Sankyo, TEVA, Almatica Pharma, Astellas Pharma, Tide Pharmaceutical, Iroko Pharmaceuticals, Hengrui Pharmaceutical, Abiogen Pharma

Hip Osteoarthritis Pain Medicine Market Report Covers the Following Segments:

Segment by Type:

OralInjectionExternal

Segment by Application:

Medical CarePersonal Care

North America

Europe

Asia-Pacific

South America

Center East and Africa

United States, Canada and Mexico

Germany, France, UK, Russia and Italy

China, Japan, Korea, India and Southeast Asia

Brazil, Argentina, Colombia

Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa

Market Overview:The report begins with this section where product overview and highlights of product and application segments of the global Hip Osteoarthritis Pain Medicine Market are provided. Highlights of the segmentation study include price, revenue, sales, sales growth rate, and market share by product.

Competition by Company:Here, the competition in the Worldwide Hip Osteoarthritis Pain Medicine Market is analyzed, By price, revenue, sales, and market share by company, market rate, competitive situations Landscape, and latest trends, merger, expansion, acquisition, and market shares of top companies.

Company Profiles and Sales Data:As the name suggests, this section gives the sales data of key players of the global Hip Osteoarthritis Pain Medicine Market as well as some useful information on their business. It talks about the gross margin, price, revenue, products, and their specifications, type, applications, competitors, manufacturing base, and the main business of key players operating in the global Hip Osteoarthritis Pain Medicine Market.

Market Status and Outlook by Region:In this section, the report discusses about gross margin, sales, revenue, production, market share, CAGR, and market size by region. Here, the global Hip Osteoarthritis Pain Medicine Market is deeply analyzed on the basis of regions and countries such as North America, Europe, China, India, Japan, and the MEA.

Application or End User:This section of the research study shows how different end-user/application segments contribute to the global Hip Osteoarthritis Pain Medicine Market.

Market Forecast:Here, the report offers a complete forecast of the global Hip Osteoarthritis Pain Medicine Market by product, application, and region. It also offers global sales and revenue forecast for all years of the forecast period.

Research Findings and Conclusion:This is one of the last sections of the report where the findings of the analysts and the conclusion of the research study are provided.

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We publish market research reports & business insights produced by highly qualified and experienced industry analysts. Our research reports are available in a wide range of industry verticals including aviation, food & beverage, healthcare, ICT, Construction, Chemicals and lot more. Brand Essence Market Research report will be best fit for senior executives, business development managers, marketing managers, consultants, CEOs, CIOs, COOs, and Directors, governments, agencies, organizations and Ph.D. Students.

Hip Osteoarthritis Pain Medicine Market Research Size foreseen to grow exponentially over 2019 2025 - 3rd Watch News

Peru’s war on drugs is an abject failure here’s what it can learn from Bolivia – The Conversation UK

Posted on May 31, 2020 by Danzig

When Peruvian government forces began eradicating coca leaf, the raw material for cocaine, without warning in a remote corner of Perus principal coca growing region last November, they were met by growers armed with sticks and rocks. The security forces backing the eradication brigades responded by firing bullets and tear gas, seriously wounding five farmers.

We have an abusive government. They hit hard at the coca growers They shot at us with tear gas, with high calibre weapons, community leader Rben Leiva told us.

Drug crop production is primarily thought of as a crime and security issue. But most people are forced into production due to poverty and lack of opportunities in the legal economy.

For 40 years, policies in Peru have prioritised forced eradication of coca leaf under intense pressure from the US government. Weak economies, farmers turned into outlaws, and human rights violations are the result of this militarised crop and drug control strategy.

Coca production has not shrunk overall, merely shifting its location, often through extensive replanting, which aggravates deforestation. Global cocaine manufacture in 2017 reached its highest level ever: an estimated 1,976 tons, more than double the amount recorded in 2013, guaranteeing the flow of drugs northward.

These negative outcomes have stimulated regional debate around the violence, corruption and instability fuelled by current drug policies. Bolivia has emerged as a world leader in promoting a new model based on farmer participation and non-violence.

Beginning in 2004, successive governments have allowed growers to cultivate a restricted amount of coca leaf, with compliance conducted by local coca grower unions themselves. This coca leaf is sold to registered intermediaries and domestic markets as a mild stimulant, similar to caffeine. The leaf also packs a powerful punch of nutrients such as calcium and vitamin C.

This community-based model has proven more effective in reducing coca acreage than police and military repression, and has extended social and civil rights in previously peripheral regions. Government investment, gender equity policies, and the 2013 international recognition of Bolivians right to consume the leaf domestically have strengthened local stability.

In turn, this has encouraged economic diversification away from coca. In Bolivia, 23,100 hectares were under coca cultivation in 2018, less than half that in Peru.

The programme is recognised as a best practice by the Organisation of American States. The United Nations Development Programme reported in 2019 that:

By recognizing coca cultivation as a legitimate source of income, the [Bolivian] government has helped stabilize household incomes and placed farmers in a better position to assume the risk of substituting illicit crops with alternative crops or livestock.

While drug crop policy was undergoing profound change in Bolivia, neighbouring Peru continued eradication-based strategies designed and (until 2011) funded by the US.

Perus programmes experience the same problems as Bolivias before 2004 when it changed tack, but within a context of greater violence both by the state and insurgent forces. Perus growers have endured repeated cycles of forced eradication, failed development and violence by the state, insurgents and drug traffickers.

An urgency to trying something different led some Peruvian coca growers and their organisations to travel to Bolivias coca growing regions in 2019. Three delegations from six regions spoke with coca farmers, visited state-financed projects to promote alternative crops and fish farming and met with Bolivian officials, including the head of the anti-narcotics police and members of congress.

They came away with a solid understanding of what Bolivias community control could offer. Grower organisations subsequently educated their members about the model, as well as proposing its possible adoption with the European Union and the state coca crop control organisation (DEVIDA).

We could do a pilot project of the Bolivian model here, insisted grower leader Marianne Zavala from Perus Junin province. I know it would work well and we really want to try this.

But for Bolivias model to have any hope of success in Peru, two obstacles must be addressed. Perus rural union structures lack the grassroots cohesion that has proven critical in Bolivia. Coca grower organisations in Peru, as well as local municipalities, will need extensive training and capacity building, as well as assistance in forging a regional and national consensus on an alternative approach.

This challenge is compounded by the inordinately high distrust among Perus rural populations, including coca growers, towards the state, particularly the security forces and DEVIDA. Bolivias experience offers ideas for how this mistrust can be diminished.

Bolivian coca growers designed the community control policy, staffed related state institutions, and have seen their own political representatives in positions of power. They emphasised political participation to their Peruvian counterparts. We could never have reached as far if we had only worked as a growers union, Bolivian leader Felipe Martinez told the Peruvians.

But the destabilisation of Bolivia in November 2019, when President Evo Morales was ousted after accusations of conducting a fraudulent election, highlights how dependent community-based control of coca is on the commitment of the government in power.

The anti-Morales interim Aez government has threatened a return to forced eradication so as to undermine local unions loyal to Morales. It has killed nine people during a coca grower protest, and continues threats towards growers leaders under the guise of combating drug trafficking.

The trust that coca growers once had in government has evaporated, and with it the underpinnings of community control. This holds an important lesson. If a government continues to treat coca growers as enemies people whom policies should act upon rather than collaborate with then the violence, failed development and coca cultivation will continue unabated.

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Peru's war on drugs is an abject failure here's what it can learn from Bolivia - The Conversation UK

Peru’s war on drugs is an abject failure here’s what it can learn from Bolivia – MENAFN.COM

Posted on May 31, 2020 by Danzig

(MENAFN - The Conversation) When Peruvian government forces began eradicating coca leaf, the raw material for cocaine, without warning in a remote corner of Peru's principal coca growing region last November, they were met by growers armed with sticks and rocks. The security forces backing the eradication brigades responded by firing bullets and tear gas, seriously wounding five farmers .

'We have an abusive government. They hit hard at the coca growers They shot at us with tear gas, with high calibre weapons,' community leader Rben Leiva told us.

Drug crop production is primarily thought of as a crime and security issue. But most people are forced into production due to poverty and lack of opportunities in the legal economy.

Coca production has not shrunk overall , merely shifting its location, often through extensive replanting, which aggravates deforestation . Global cocaine manufacture in 2017 reached its highest level ever: an estimated 1,976 tons, more than double the amount recorded in 2013 , guaranteeing the flow of drugs northward .

In turn, this has encouraged economic diversification away from coca. In Bolivia, 23,100 hectares were under coca cultivation in 2018, less than half that in Peru.

The programme is recognised as a ' best practice ' by the Organisation of American States. The United Nations Development Programme reported in 2019 that:

While drug crop policy was undergoing profound change in Bolivia, neighbouring Peru continued eradication-based strategies designed and (until 2011) funded by the US.

Peru's programmes experience the same problems as Bolivia's before 2004 when it changed tack, but within a context of greater violence both by the state and insurgent forces . Peru's growers have endured repeated cycles of forced eradication, failed development and violence by the state, insurgents and drug traffickers.

An urgency to trying something different led some Peruvian coca growers and their organisations to travel to Bolivia's coca growing regions in 2019. Three delegations from six regions spoke with coca farmers, visited state-financed projects to promote alternative crops and fish farming and met with Bolivian officials, including the head of the anti-narcotics police and members of congress.

They came away with a solid understanding of what Bolivia's community control could offer. Grower organisations subsequently educated their members about the model, as well as proposing its possible adoption with the European Union and the state coca crop control organisation (DEVIDA).

'We could do a pilot project of the Bolivian model here,' insisted grower leader Marianne Zavala from Peru's Junin province. 'I know it would work well and we really want to try this.'

But for Bolivia's model to have any hope of success in Peru, two obstacles must be addressed. Peru's rural union structures lack the grassroots cohesion that has proven critical in Bolivia. Coca grower organisations in Peru, as well as local municipalities, will need extensive training and capacity building, as well as assistance in forging a regional and national consensus on an alternative approach.

This challenge is compounded by the inordinately high distrust among Peru's rural populations, including coca growers, towards the state, particularly the security forces and DEVIDA. Bolivia's experience offers ideas for how this mistrust can be diminished .

Bolivian coca growers designed the community control policy, staffed related state institutions, and have seen their own political representatives in positions of power. They emphasised political participation to their Peruvian counterparts. 'We could never have reached as far if we had only worked as a growers' union,' Bolivian leader Felipe Martinez told the Peruvians.

The anti-Morales interim Aez government has threatened a return to forced eradication so as to undermine local unions loyal to Morales. It has killed nine people during a coca grower protest, and continues threats towards growers' leaders under the guise of combating drug trafficking.

MENAFN3005202001990000ID1100245767

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Peru's war on drugs is an abject failure here's what it can learn from Bolivia - MENAFN.COM

Ruling upheld to cut 15 years off drug term – Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Posted on May 31, 2020 by Danzig

LITTLE ROCK -- Bobby Banks, a former gang leader in Little Rock who was convicted in 2006 of running a large drug-trafficking organization, was entitled last year to have his 55-year sentence reduced by 15 years, a federal appeals court said Thursday in affirming the reduction.

The three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis upheld an April 2019 ruling of U.S. District Judge Leon Holmes, who has since retired.

Holmes granted a request from Lisa Peters, chief federal public defender for the Eastern District of Arkansas, to apply the First Step Act of 2018 to Banks' case. It expanded the application of sentencing reductions that were first authorized in 2010 to counteract a sentencing disparity for crimes involving crack and powder cocaine.

The disparities stemmed from the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act, passed during the national "War on Drugs" to strengthen drug penalties. Congress found that the 1986 law treated crack cocaine crimes 100% more severely than crimes involving the same amount of powdered cocaine, resulting in unwarranted sentencing disparities based on race.

The 2018 law created new avenues for people convicted under the 1986 law to seek sentence reductions.

Banks was convicted on Feb. 7, 2006, of conspiring to distribute more than 5 kilograms of powder cocaine and more than 50 grams of crack cocaine, among other crimes. He had operated three crack houses in Little Rock and was known as "Big C," which referred to his leadership of the 23rd Street Crips gang. He had been featured prominently in a 1994 HBO documentary titled Gang War: Bangin' in Little Rock.

Peters asked Holmes to reduce Banks' sentence to 20 years, but he said 40 years was appropriate based on current federal sentencing guidelines.

Peters appealed, seeking a further reduction, and the U.S. attorney's office in Little Rock cross-appealed, saying Banks wasn't eligible for a sentence reduction.

In 2006, sentencing guidelines recommended a life sentence for Banks, but U.S. District Judge George Howard Jr., now deceased, imposed a 55-year sentence instead.

The 8th Circuit panel consisted of U.S. circuit judges Steven Colloton of Des Moines, Iowa; Bobby Shepherd of El Dorado; and Ralph Erickson of Fargo, N.D.

NW News on 05/30/2020

Print Headline: Ruling upheld to cut 15 years off drug term

The rest is here:

Ruling upheld to cut 15 years off drug term - Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

How to Curb Police AbusesAnd How Not to – Reason

Posted on May 31, 2020 by Danzig

Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin pins George Floyd's neck with his knee, eventually causing his death (Darnella Frazier, AP).

The brutal recent killing of African-American George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer has sparked outrage at police abuses, and led to rioting and looting in many cities around the country, as well as peaceful protests. It's understandable if many peopleparticularly minoritiesfeel a sense of anger, frustration, and hopelessness in the wake of these events, which come in the midst of a terrible pandemic. I sometimes feel that way myself.

But there is much that can be done to curb police abuses. The task is difficult, but far from hopeless. On the other hand, rioting and looting are not only wrong in themselves, but likely to have counterproductive effects.

I. What Can be Done

All too often, police get away with brutal treatment of civilians, particularly poor minorities. The problem is not that police officers are unusually bad people. It's that they have bad incentives, under which they are rarely held accountable for abuses. Those incentives can and should be altered.

An important first step would be to get rid of the legal doctrine of "qualified immunity," under which law enforcement officers are immune from suits for violating citizens' constitutional rights unless the officers' actions violate "clearly established" law. The Supreme Court interprets the term "clearly established" so narrowly that officers routinely get away with horrendous abuses merely because no federal court in their area has previously decided a case with essentially identical facts. Recent examples include stealing $225,000 from civilians and shooting a 10 year old boy in the course of an attempt to shoot the family dog (who posed no threat to the officer).

Qualified immunity is not required by the Constitution or even by a federal statute. It is a purely judge-made doctrine made up by the Supreme Court itself in a misguided effort to protect law enforcement officers from excessive litigation. University of Chicago law professor and Volokh Conspiracy co-blogger Will Baude explains why the doctrine lacks any valid legal basis in this excellent article.

The Court is right now considering taking several cases whose consideration could lead to the abolition or at least the narrowing of qualified immunity. Both Justice Clarence Thomas, the Court's most conservative member, and Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the most liberal, have been severely critical of qualified immunity. There is a real chance they can persuade at least three of their colleagues to take the same view.

Rolling back qualified immunity will not put an end to all police abuse. But it will make it possible to hold police accountable in court for egregious violations of civil rights, which in turn will alter their incentives.

Co-blogger Jonathan Adler rightly warns that state and local governments might respond by indemnifying police officers for the damages they have to pay in such cases. But even if that happens, it would still be a step in the right direction. Indemnification costs money that many local governments will be loathe to pay. They will therefore have an incentive to crack down on abusive officers, particularly repeat offenders who routinely force authorities to pay out large sums to settle claims.

As Adler also explains, empirical research shows that impunity for police abuses is often promoted by police unions. State and local governments should consider banning police unionization, or at least curbing unions' powers by, for example, eliminating disciplinary issues from the list of matters that are subject to collective bargaining. Whatever the merits of public-sector unions in other contexts, they create too much of a conflict of of interest in the case of employees who often literally wield the power of life and death over civilians.

Abolishing police unions or even limiting their power will not be easy. But progress is possible if liberal civil liberties advocates can work together with conservatives who dislike public sector unions more generally.

Police abuses can also be curbed by rolling backand eventually abolishingthe War on Drugs. Many of the worst police tactics and most dangerous confrontations with civilians (especially minorities in urban areas) are products of the War on Drugs. In his important book The Rise of the Warrior Cop, Radley Balko shows how the War on Drugs has been a major driver of the militarization of police, and of hyper-aggressive tactics that routinely lead to violence and abuse.

The recent trend towards legalization of marijuana in many states is a good start. We should build on that and begin cutting back on the rest of the War on Drugs, as well. In 2011, the NAACP called for an end to the War on Drugs because it causes great harm to minority communities. Police abuse is a major part of that harm.

Finally, we can also reduce police abuse and improve relations between law enforcement and minority communities by curbing the widespread practice of racial profiling. A 2019 Pew Research Center poll found that some 59% of black men and 31% of black women say they have been unfairly stopped by police because of their race.

Almost every black male I know can recount experiences of racial profiling by law enforcement. Admittedly, the people I know are not a representative sample. But given that I am a law professor, my African-American acquaintances are disproportionately affluent and highly educated. Working-class blacks likely experience racial profiling even more often.

If you don't trust survey data or take the word of my friends and acquaintances, take that of conservative Republican African-American Senator Tim Scott, who has movingly recounted multiple incidents in which he was racially profiled by police. Even being a powerful GOP politician is not enough for a black man to avoid such mistreatment.

It is not hard to see how racial profiling increases the risks of violence between police and racial minorities, and more generally breeds hostility between the two groups.

Reducing racial profiling is a very difficult task. In many cases, it is hard to tell whether it really occurred or not. The issue likely deserves a post of its own, which I hope to find time to do in the future.

For now, I will only emphasize that this is an issue we cannot afford to ignore. This is particularly true for conservatives whorightlyadvocate color-blind government policies in other contexts. For many years, I have repeatedly argued that color-blindness advocates on the right must not turn a blind eye to racial profiling in law enforcement. If you truly believe that government should not discriminate on the basis of race, you cannot tolerate a glaring exception to that principle when it comes to those government officials who carry badges and guns, and have the power to kill, injure, and arrest people. Otherwise, your position will be glaringly inconsistent, and many will suspect that your supposed concerns about discrimination only arise when whites are the victims, as in the case of affirmative action programs.

The reforms described here may not be easy to achieve. But they are feasible. Qualified immunity and the War on Drugs have already come under serious challenge, and there is room for plenty of additional progress.

We can also learn from the increasingly successful campaign to curb abusive asset forfeiture, the practice under which law enforcement can seize the property of (often innocent) civilians -a practice that, like police brutality, disproportionately harms minorities and the poor. Thanks to the efforts of a cross-ideological coalition of reformers, including libertarians, liberals, and even some conservatives, many states have enacted reform laws, and courts have begun to crack down on the practice. Much remains to be done to fully address the problem of asset forfeiture abuse. But the progress achieved so far can be a model for other efforts to curb law enforcement abuses.

II. Why Rioting is Not the Answer

Much can be done to roll back abusive law enforcement practices. The ideas described above are far from exhaustive. But one tactic that must be avoided is the kind of rioting and looting that has occurred over the last few days. Such actions are not only wrong in themselves, but also likely to be counterproductive.

Most of the damage caused by rioting is inflicted on innocent people who are in no way responsible for police abuses. Destruction and looting of stores and other businesses not only hurts the owners and employees of those enterprises, but also impoverishes the broader communities of which they are a part. Violence and violation of property rights reduce investment and economic development, which predictably exacerbates the poverty of minority inner-city neighborhoods. The negative economic effects can persist for many years.

It may be tempting to say that rioting and other similar violence is justified if you are doing it in the name of a just cause. But even people with legitimate grievances must still observe moral limits on tactics they use to pursue them. Ignoring this principle is a recipe for disaster.

Many of the worst atrocities in world history were perpetrated by groups who themselves had legitimate grievances. Soviet communists had legitimate complaints about the injustices of czarist Russia. Their disregard for moral constraints still contributed to mass murder on a horrific scale. German nationalists in the 1920s and 30s had legitimate grievances about the injustices of the Treaty of Versailles. That in no way justifies what they did in response. Being a victim of injustice cannot be a license to perpetrate injustices on others, especially people who did not perpetrate the wrongs you suffered.

Obviously, currently ongoing riots are nowhere near as bad as the actions of the Nazis and communists. But the same general principle applies: we should be wary of perpetrating new evils in the name of addressing the old.

It is admittedly possible there are situations where committing a wrong is the only way to address an even greater injustice. But this is not such a case. There are more constructive ways to curb police abuses. Moreover, rioting is likely to make the problem worse, rather than better.

Rioting and other violent racial protests in the 1960s not only failed to curb police abuses, but actually boosted support for "tough on crime" politicians who advocated giving cops more of a free hand. When white swing voters see riots on TV, many of them react by supporting harsh tactics to restore "law and order." Such reactions may be wrong. But they are predictable and difficult or impossible to avoid.

In 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. warned that "riots are socially destructive and self-defeating" and that, "[e]very time a riot develops, it helps George Wallace." Today, they are likely to give a boost to Donald Trump and other politicians who support cruel law enforcement tactics. We would do well to heed King's warning. Pursuing reform by peaceful means is both more just and more likely to be effective than resorting to violence against innocent people.

UPDATE: I have made a few small additions to this post.

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How to Curb Police AbusesAnd How Not to - Reason

The Only Solution Is to Defund the Police – The Nation

Posted on May 31, 2020 by Danzig

A Minneapolis Police Office advances on a crowd of protesters while wearing riot gear, Friday, May 29, 2020, in St. Paul, Minn. (John Minchillo / AP Photo)

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The explosion of protest across the United States in recent days makes clear that the crisis in Minneapolis is a national crisis. Its been almost six years since the murders of Mike Brown and Eric Garner, and little has changed in how poor communities of color are being policed. Its time to rethink superficial and ineffective procedural police reforms and move to defund the police instead.Ad Policy

In the immediate aftermath of Browns and Garners murders in Ferguson and New York City, the Obama administration responded by calling for more federal investigations and ultimately issued a report, the Task Force on 20th Century Policing, that laid out a whole host of reformswhich I and others criticized at the time. These reforms were rooted in the concept of procedural justice, which argues that if the police enforce the law in a more professional, unbiased, and procedurally proper way, then the public will develop more trust in them and fewer violent confrontations and protests will ensue. This concept ends up taking the form of interventions like implicit bias training, police-community encounter sessions, tweaks to official use-of-force policies, and early warning systems to identify potentially problematic officers.

The Obama Justice Department used this framework to bring a small number of pattern and practice cases against select police departments, such as the one in Ferguson, to compel them to adopt these measures. It also poured millions of dollars into training and community relations initiatives like the National Initiative for Building Community Trust and Justice, which included money for Minneapolis.

But these kinds of federal interventions have failed to show any signs of creating positive changes in policing. They typically involve establishing a monitor who creates a series of benchmarks; the metrics for these benchmarks tend to be based on the implementation of the recommendations and not actual changes in the impact of policing on those most intensively policed. An insider look at this process by Matt Nesvet, an auditor on a federal consent decree in New Orleans, showed just how pointless the whole endeavor was; as described by Nesvet in The Appeal, monitors required things like pictures of officers talking to community members as proof that community policing was being implemented.

Theres also no evidence that implicit bias training or community relations initiatives help. The Urban Institute, which was part of the National Initiative for Building Trust and Justice, evaluated the effort and found little to show for it. These kinds of reforms turn out to have a lot more to do with providing political cover for local police and politicians than with reducing the abuses of policing. In part, thats because they assume that the professional enforcement of the law is automatically beneficial to everyone. They never actually question the legitimacy of using police to wage a war on drugs, arrest young children in school, criminalize homelessness, or label young people as gang bangers and super-predators to be incarcerated for life or killed in the streets. A totally lawful, procedurally proper, and perfectly unbiased low-level drug arrest is still going to ruin some young persons life for no good reason. There is no justice in thatand giving narcotics units anti-bias training will do nothing to change this fact.

Many of these reforms have been implemented in Minneapolis. In 2018, the City issued a report outlining all the procedural justice reforms it has embraced, like mindfulness training, Crisis Intervention Training, implicit bias training, body cameras, early warning systems to identify problematic officers, and so on. They have made no difference. In fact, local activist groups like Reclaim the Block, Black Visions Collective, and MPD 150 have rejected more training and oversight as a solution and are now calling on Mayor Jacob Frey to cut the police budget by $45 million and shift those resources into community-led health and safety strategies.

Unfortunately, at the national level, Democratic members of Congress appear to have learned few lessons from the failures of six years of police reform. One by one, they have condemned racist policing and called for investigations and accountability. Democratic National Committee chair Tom Perez called out the names of those killed in recent years, but failed to offer any substantive proposals other than a vague call for justice. Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, who consistently refused to prosecute police when she helmed the Hennepin County attorneys office, called for more DOJ pattern and practice investigations. And in a May 29 resolution condemning police brutality, even Ilhan Omar, whose district includes Minneapolis, and Ayanna Pressleyfailed to propose a single significant reduction in specific police powers, preferring to call for more investigations and the establishment of more civilian review boards, which have never shown any effectiveness in reducing abusive policing. (A more valuable model can be found in legislation Pressley herself introduced in November 2019. Called the Peoples Justice Guarantee, the legislation puts forward a number of worthy proposals, including decriminalizing the police and redirecting resources to alternatives to policing;Omar is a cosponsor.)Current Issue

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These strategies will do nothing to change the basic mission of policing that has expanded so dramatically over the past 40 years. Another DOJ investigation, another officer fired or indicted, wont end the war on drugs, the criminalization of the poor, or the demonization of young people of color.

If congressional lawmakers are serious about reining in abusive policing, there are things they can do at the federal level. They can start by eliminating the Community Oriented Police Services (COPS) office. Created by the 1994 Crime Bill, it has been the central conduit for funds to hire tens of thousands of new police and equip them with a range of surveillance technology and militarized equipment.

One of the projects it currently administers is Operation Relentless Pursuit, the Trump administrations signature crime-fighting initiative, that is set to flood seven major cities with scores of federal agents in partnership with local police to go after the presidents favorite bugaboos of gangs and drug cartels. Congress approved $61 million to pay for it, and that money should be taken out of any future appropriations. Lawmakers can also take more steps to undo the damage done by the 1994 Crime Bill, like defunding school policing in favor of providing more counselors and restorative justice programs; investing in harm reduction strategies, like safe-injection facilities and needle exchanges, as well as high-quality medically based drug treatment on demand; and rethinking the use of the criminal justice system to manage the epidemic of domestic violence.

It is time for the federal government, major foundations, and local governments to stop trying to manage problems of poverty and racial discrimination by wasting millions of dollars on pointless and ineffective procedural reforms that merely provide cover for the expanded use of policing. Its time for everyone to quit thinking that jailing one more killer cop will do anything to change the nature of American policing. We must move, instead, to significantly defund the police and redirect resources into community-based initiatives that can produce real safety and security without the violence and racism inherent in the criminal justice system.

Editors note: an earlier version of this article stated that Representatives Ayanna Pressley and Ilhan Omar had failed to propose a single significant reduction in specific police power. In fact, as the article now states, Rep. Pressley introduced, and Rep.Omar supports, legislation calling for police power to be curtailed through a variety of means. We regret the error.

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The Only Solution Is to Defund the Police - The Nation

In this documentary, Duterte’s drug war is a hunt for the aswang – CNN Philippines

Posted on May 31, 2020 by Danzig

Manila (CNN Philippines Life) Kapag sinabi nilang may aswang, ang ibig sabihin nila: matakot ka.

The central metaphor of the newest full-length documentary on the Duterte administrations war on drugs campaign isnt just apt; it resonates true to the Filipino experience, like a gong in any locals psyche.

As the first Filipino-directed full-length documentary, it draws parallels with the aswang not just as a vampiric, shape-shifting monster of folklore, but also as a CIA creation for fear-mongering, and as a real-life marauder that mimics the behavior of something out of lower mythology, disguised and clandestine.

Even now during the community quarantine, there are rumors that Iloilo and West Visayan officials are using aswang scare tactics to help impose the curfew against the locals.

In the late 2010s, director Alyx Ayn Arumpac was in Europe for a few years, completing her Docnomads Erasmus Mundus Joint Master in Lisbon, Budapest, and Brussels. But she came home in 2015 sans job, later on witnessing how Rodrigo Duterte was elected president. To make ends meet, she took projects and production gigs, while she accompanied her friend, the photojournalist Raffy Lerma (both were former Philippine Collegian colleagues), to his nightwatch rounds on the police and city beats, curious about the rumors of extrajudicial killings.

What Arumpac witnessed on those ride-alongs convinced her of the need for a Filipino perspective on tokhang. Her full-length documentary would not just tackle the emotional heft of the horrid event, but also attempt an expression of her feelings on it that might, she hoped, eventually exorcise her own demons.

From 2016 until post-production in 2019, Arumpac and her crew took to the streets from late night to dawn and bore witness. This was the seed of "Aswang," a joint effort from institutions in France, Norway, Qatar, and Germany that pooled their resources and funding for its completion. First shown at the prestigious International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), it was supposed to have its local premiere in March 2020s Daang Dokyu festival before the lockdown against COVID-19 cancelled all events.

The documentary follows characters whose fates entwine with the growing violence during two years of killings in Manila. The two central ones are Brother Jun Santiago of the Redemptorist Brothers and the young street kid Jomari.

Santiagoworks not just to document the killings but also helps in the funeral and burial fees for those who are left behind, often poor and almost destitute. While Jomari tells the story of the drug war kids, the orphans and the abandoned youth, since in Jomaris case both his mother and father are in prison for drug-related charges. Its pretty good serendip, too, that the filmmaker met Jomari at the wake of Kian Delos Santos.

There is a third character in this trinity: a woman who confesses to being imprisoned inside the secret jail behind the bookshelf and filing cabinet in a police station in Tondo. Like some ghost she only appears in shadow, close shots of her arms and hands as she draws the cramped layout of the cell on a notebook, filled to the nooks with her fellow prisoners.

"Aswang" can be a bit meandering at first, mostly since it assumes you know the major peaks and valleys of the tokhang chronicles from Kian Delos Santos murder and the rise of the tandem shooting modus, to the secret bookshelf jail and the funeral parlors that deal with the influx of the dead.

"Aswang" director Alyx Ayn Arumpac. Photo by MATTEO GARIGLIO

The two major, and arguably more popular, foreign-made documentaries on the drug war are National Geographics "The Nightcrawlers" (U.K.) and PBS Frontline's "On the President's Orders" (U.S.). Theyre mostly straightforward docus of the informative this-and-that-happened type, with talking heads and arms length objectivity. In Arumpacs narrative though is something innately magic realist, something that is innately Asian rather than Western in approach and tenor. This was made for those who couldnt escape the news, who lived daily with the threat of tandem riders.

"Aswang" is a meditation on the tokhang chronicles by a local, at once sublime and gruesome. What makes this different is its point of view: the perception by a Filipino for fellow Filipinos. The tone is quite liberating, making it free to reflect our own collective feelings of frustration, grief, horror, and utter bewilderment back at us.

That it is beautifully composed of imagery worthy of the caliber of a Hollywood movie or South Korean horror cinema, Arumpac credits to her cinematographer Tanya Haurylchyk, and her editors Anne Fabini and Fatima Bianchi. She states that they truly made the gritty visions look cinematically exquisite. For Arumpac though, there was a feeling of aestheticizing the horror, a distrust of the attractive imagery that happened to be bathed in the blood of real people. Its something that the director struggled with.

That you wish this was some fictional Bong Joon-Ho movie is part of why "Aswang" is so effective. Part of what makes it very Filipino is how it hits the emotive inflection points that the other major tokhang documentaries often only casually gloss over in favor of just-the-hard-facts.

"Aswang" never lets the facts get in the way of the truth, finding a way to conjure emotive exorcism without being sentimental or forgetting the plain bloodiness of it all. Arumpac obviously knew the tragedy and sorrow of her country and her fellow Filipinos intimately. Here, she has lovingly constructed an important, unredacted record for these dark times for our own use, free of pretense or agenda.

The film just won theAmnesty International Human Rights Award at the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival. The citation for the film said:[Aswang is a]powerful denouncement against state terror, resilient and painful humanitarian stories coming from different voices, enthralling connections between the popular myth of the Aswang monster and everyday violence, poverty and death looming in the cities. A cry of despair from the marginalized, pleading for justice and human rights.

In this interview, Arumpac, executive producer for GMA News and Current Affairs,talks about the making of this powerful and riveting documentary. Opinions expressed in this interview are the subjects.

"Aswang" never lets the facts get in the way of the truth, finding a way to conjure emotive exorcism without being sentimental or forgetting the plain bloodiness of it all. Photo courtesy of ASWANG 2019

Theres a really intimate and comforting feeling that pervades the film in its tone and vibe that it was made for Filipinos. How did you adjust and manage to toe that creative line?

I insisted on this form. I insisted on the aswang, on using the metaphor. And I was told off many times, mostly by my foreign producers. And then I was told, you know, maybe we can do instead a straight reportage? Or a straight film with talking heads and everything? Just so it could be bought by broadcasters.

I was just saying: No, I still want to do the aswang; I want to do the metaphor. I think that was also basically the guide for me as to how to film it, how to approach it. And then I was very fascinated with the connections as well, the spirituality of the Filipino, since the fact that my protagonist was a priest.

Throughout the process, especially during the first month I really tried digging through my thoughts and feelings. So after every shoot I would go home at 5 a.m. or 6 a.m. and I would transfer material right away. Then I would write a bit about what happened during the day, sometimes just to make sure I had the names and locations right. Sometimes I would write about what happened. What I thought. What I felt.

Did you draw on personal experiences about the stories of the aswang?

I am from General Santos City and we lived beside a forest inside this subdivision, because it was a newly constructed subdivision. I was around eight years old, I think. One day the yaya of our neighbor said theres a sigbin [Visayan aswang variant] who roams around the village and lives in that forest. At night you need to sleep and you cant wake up, because if you do and you look at the window youll see red eyes and long nails. The windows back in the day were jalousie types. She said the sigbin would put its long clawed fingernails inside the window to get you. I was terrified for so long!

The documentary follows characters whose fates entwine with the growing violence during two years of killings in Manila. Photo courtesy of ASWANG 2019

The beauty of the cinematography really clashes with the bloody subject matter. Its a stark and very powerful contrast.

One of the things that I wrote [a few months in] and [still] remember: I was saying, you know, I always wanted to make cinematic films, beautiful films, but I wrote down that There's nothing beautiful about this. I mean, how can you make a good film out of this? Because there's nothing good about it. I even felt bad about trying to construct images, trying to construct a frame around this entire situation.

The idea of using a beast from folklore that scares makes this documentary very different and very Filipino. That kind of clarity in a nonfiction product is rare.

The entire idea of this war on drugs for me was finding a common enemy, finding a scapegoat. And that's what the president did there. No one liked the drug user and the drug dealer who would rape kids and [Duterte] made this narrative. It has always existed, but he made this narrative and then he made everyone go against this set of people. So that was his common enemy, the same way that previous generations think they went for the communists. That was very clear to me and this was also why I immediately went for this idea, as well, of the aswang.

While other foreign-made and major documentaries about the war on drugs are very different in approach, we think that Filipinos and those familiar with how the tokhang events and stories have gone may find something ritually therapeutic in watching this docu.

I have to say Filipinos will get it more. Filipinos will feel it more, and it was made that way. I didn't expect foreigners to understand all the connections of the images. But then I also had what you would call a target audience. I knew who I was making the film for, and the sooner that was clear to me then the easier I could make my decisions and the easier the rest of my team would get on board.

"Aswang" will soon be available on video-on-demand internationally.

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In this documentary, Duterte's drug war is a hunt for the aswang - CNN Philippines

The Week that Was: All of Lawfare in One Post – Lawfare

Posted on May 31, 2020 by Danzig

Julian Ku analyzed Secretary of State Mike Pompeos refusal to certify that Hong Kong is autonomous from China.

Ganesh Sitaraman argued that to understand the conversation on U.S. policy toward China, its helpful to break down hawks and doves into more precise categories.

Jen Patja Howell shared an episode of the Lawfare Podcast discussing Beijings proposed new national security law for Hong Kong and the ensuing protests:

Adam George analyzed Chinas failed attempt at mask diplomacy in Africa.

Stewart Baker shared an episode of the Cyberlaw Podcast discussing the FBIs pursuit of Chinese commercial spying with Mara Hvistendahl, investigative journalist at The Intercept:

Jordan Schneider also shared an episode of ChinaTalk discussing Hvistendahls recent book, The Scientist and the Spy: A True Story of China, the FBI, and Industrial Espionage:

Elliot Setzer shared the president's executive order on social media and Section 230.

Benjamin Wittes talked with Kate Klonick, Eugene Volokh, Jack Balkin and Quinta Jurecic in a live conversation with viewers of the daily YouTube show, In Lieu of Fun, about the executive order and what it means:

Patja Howell shared an episode of Rational Security discussing Twitters efforts to fact-check President Trump:

Margaret Taylor summarized the current state of FISA reform legislation in Congress.

Jake Laperruque criticized the Justice Departments argument that a provision giving greater power to amici arguing before the FISA Court could endanger national security.

Mikhaila Fogel shared transcripts of the December 2016 calls between former national security adviser Michael Flynn and then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. The calls are at the center of the ongoing criminal case against Flynn.

Patja Howell shared an episode of the Lawfare Podcast in which Benjamin Wittes debates the Flynn case with journalist Eli Lake, who makes the case that Michael Flynn was railroaded:

Patja Howell also shared an episode of the Lawfare Podcast featuring an interview with Steve Teles on his new book, Never Trump: The Revolt of the Conservative Elites:

David Kris discussed the hard national security choices an incoming Biden administration will face if Biden is elected.

Preston Lim analyzed a Canadian judges dismissal of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhous application to end hearings on her potential extradition to the United States.

Patja Howell shared an episode of the Lawfare Podcast discussing a Malaysian law ostensibly aimed at stamping out disinformation with Gabrielle Lim, a researcher at Harvard Kennedy Schools Shorenstein Center:

Mara Revkin reviewed Darryl Lis The Universal Enemy: Jihad, Empire, and the Challenges of Solidarity."

Setzer shared an indictment from the Justice Department bringing charges against North Korean bank officials.

Omar Rahman argued that years of dereliction has left the Palestine Liberation Organization facing annexation without a plan.

Russell Miller analyzed a German Constitutional Court ruling that German espionage activity must conform to the countrys constitution, even if conducted overseas on non-German citizens.

Setzer shared a letter from White House counsel Pat Cipollone intended to offer a legal rationale for President Trumps firing of two inspectors general.

Patja Howell shared an episode of the Lawfare Podcast discussing the SpaceX launch and the future of space law:

Patrick Hulme argued that while President Trump has the authority to decide whether to use force against Iran, Congress has taken steps that may make him unwilling to do so.

And Lester Munson shared an episode of Fault Lines discussing the current state of the global war on drugs with Kirsten Madison, Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs:

And that was the week that was.

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The Week that Was: All of Lawfare in One Post - Lawfare

My fellow Jews: Get in the fight – Forward

Posted on May 31, 2020 by Danzig

I am sure you are as outraged as I am over the murder of George Floyd during a violent arrest by police in Minneapolis. This brutality took place on the heels of the murder of Ahmaud Arbery, who was chased and gunned down by armed white men while on a jog in Georgia, and the fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor, after police stormed her home and shot her while she was asleep in her bed.

These deaths did not take place in a vacuum. They bring into full view deeply entrenched systemic racism. Whats more, they took place amid staggering racial disparities during the COVID-19 pandemic and in our prison system. It is no wonder that the grief-stricken black community is raging in anger and pain.

This is a pivotal moment in our history. As we reboot the Jewish community in the post pandemic world, we must ask ourselves what kind of world we hope to live in and what can we do to safeguard a society that works for justice for all people. We cannot ignore what we witnessed in these videos and go on with business as usual.

The American Jewish community has a distinguished history of addressing the injustices in our nation. We are proud of our role during the Civil Rights era and our legacy of social action. However, resources for Jewish advocacy on civil rights issues have diminished over the past two decades. I hope that these recent incidents will serve as a call to action.

How can we use our influence and support to further the cause of justice? To answer this question, we must first reckon with the plight of the black community in America and the scale of the injustice and the grim statistics. Black Americans are three times more likely to be killed by police than White Americans. Over the past few years, more than 12 cases have received national attention. The criminal justice system and the war on drugs has disproportionately harmed black communities and has brought four decades of mass incarceration upon the nation. Black Americans make up only 13% of the U.S. population, yet they make up 33% of the nations prison population and are imprisoned five times the rate as white Americans.

In 2018, more black Americans were uninsured compared to white Americans, 9.7% compared to 5.4% among whites and reported higher [rates of discrimination] [https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/newsletter-article/2018/sep/focus-reducing-racial-disparities-health-care-confronting], when seeking medical care. Those same inequities and pre-existing conditions are also part of the reason the black community is disproportionately harmed by COVID-19. In 2016, the average income of white American households was $171,000, which is 10 times more than black American households income of $17,100.

Here are some ideas for what the Jewish community can do to reduce racial inequality and systematic injustice:

We can speak out against racism and killings of black citizens by police and others. The Jewish community has an important role to play with law enforcement, as we have built relationships with them in securing our own community. We can heal the divide between law enforcement and the black community. At the same time, we can hold law enforcement accountable for the necessary cultural and systemic change.

We can recommit to building a just society by ending racism and racist policies and supporting equal opportunity for all people regardless of their race, religion or color of their skin. We must recognize that these disparities exist along racial lines and not pretend to be colorblind.

We must build and strengthen trusted relationships. Jewish and black communities need to have a deeper understanding of each others histories, traumas, and hopes for the future. While the Jewish community is impacted by growing anti-Semitism, the black community is harmed by bigotry and racism. Our shared history in fighting in the Civil Rights era can inspire a new generation of joint activism against it. While this was more than 60 years ago, it can energize us and provide a blueprint on how we can collaborate on todays challenges.

We must also advocate on issues of priority to the black community. We can play an important role in finding a solution to mass incarceration and several disparities in or criminal justice system. Philanthropies should invest in Jewish advocacy and anti-discrimination work.

We must nurture relationships with emerging leaders of both communities and prioritize the voices of Black Jewish leaders. We must acknowledge that there are Jewish people of all races and make sure that Jews of Color feel fully supported within the Jewish community. Black Jews may feel less welcome in spaces with increased police presence.

Finally, we must educate the Jewish Community about the challenges faced by the black community, so we become motivated to act.

While the Jewish community contemplates our next steps of rebuilding what was lost in the pandemic, there is a tremendous opportunity to play a role in creating a better society for everyone.

Melanie Roth Gorelick is the senior Vice President of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Forward.

The Minneapolis Uprising in Context – Boston Review

Posted on May 31, 2020 by Danzig

Minneapolis protestors outside of a burning Arbys, Friday, May 29, 2020. Image:John Minchillo / AP

A proper understanding of urban rebellion depends on our ability to interpret it not as a wave of criminality, but as political violence.

Thursday evening, protestors in Minneapolis seized the city polices third precinct building and set fire to it. The immediate cause of the flames is a devastating incident of state violence with deep historical roots: on Monday, a white police officer jammed his knee into the neck of George Floyd, a black resident, for several minutes as three other officers held Floyds body down on the street. In his final moments, Floydunarmed and in handcuffspled for his life and repeatedly informed the officer and the crowd of bystanders that he couldnt breathe.

It can be a struggle to imagine some of the most overpoliced, marginalized, and isolated Americans as political actors.

Minneapolis residents have become all too familiar with this type of premature death. The city has been rocked by officer-involved shootings in recent years and subsequent protest. In 2015 two Minneapolis police officers faced no repercussions for shooting and killing Jamar Clark, a twenty-four-year-old black man. In 2016 police killed Philando Castile, a thirty-two-year-old black man, in nearby Falcon Heights, an encounter that was captured on social media and received national attention. A jury ultimately acquitted the officer who took Castiles life, but its not as if Minneapolis police are completely above the law. A black Minneapolis officer killed a forty-year-old white woman in 2017 and is currently serving a twelve-and-a-half-year sentence in prison.

Thousands took to the streets in peaceful protest the night after Floyd died, demanding justice for his life. Demanding that, this time, the officers involved be held fully accountable for their actions. By Wednesday none of the officers involved in Floyds death faced criminal charges. Authorities have so far declined to prosecute any of the four men.

Minneapolis residents, in turn, responded to the buildup of unanswered grievances and the lack of concrete changes to their immediate living conditionsproblems of under-protection, intentional segregation, and structural exclusion that have only been exacerbated by COVID-19by using the available resources at their disposal: throwing rocks, bricks, bottles, and Molotov cocktails at buildings, police precincts, and police cruisers; and by taking goods and food from major retailers such as Target and AutoZone, and then burning these and other institutions to the ground. Police have unleashed tear gas and rubber bullets on protesters in response, and the National Guard has been deployed. Although some protest in the city remains peaceful, and has spread to Memphis, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Birmingham, and other major cities, Minneapolis continues to burn.

These types of uprisings have been a nearly perennial occurrence in the United States for more than fifty years. In the month following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., black uprisings erupted in more than 125 cities, leading to 50 deaths and more than 15,000 arrests. In the years that followed (196872), at least 960 segregated black communities witnessed 2,310 separate incidents of what journalists and state security officials described as disturbances, uprisings, rebellions, melees, eruptions, or riots. As in Minneapolis today, this type of collective violence almost always started with contact between residents and the frontline representatives of the statethe policeand then quickly moved to other institutions. Indeed, following Kings murder, many black residents in cities across the United States responded to the process of criminalization and unanswered calls for greater socioeconomic inclusion by throwing rocks and punches at police officers, detonating firebombs, and plundering local stores.

With his embrace of Law and Order politics, Trump continues a long tradition of seekingto manage the material consequences of socioeconomic problemswith more police, more surveillance, and more incarceration.

Although this period of unrest remains marked in many peoples memories of the period, it was hardly the beginning of violent urban uprising by black Americans. In fact, U.S. cities had been beset with black rebellion since the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Federal policymakers and officials blamed this earlier period of disorders (and the hundreds of millions of dollars in property damage it caused) primarily on the behavior of young black men. They sought to address it as a criminal problem, launching the War on Crime and passing the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, which incentivized increased local policing and surveillance of black urban areas, as well as formal riot control training. However, a proper understanding of sixties-era urban rebellionand similar rebellions nowdepends on our ability to interpret it not as a wave of criminality, but as a period of sustained political violence.

Arguably, the success of Kings brand of nonviolent direct political actionso often valorized by pundits over and against destructive riotingdepended on the presence of this violent direct political action. As King recognized, the coercive power of mass nonviolence arose in part from its ability to suggest the possibility of violent resistance should demands not be met. Therefore, we should endeavor to see violent and nonviolent expressions of black protest as entwined forces that shaped the decade. In addition, and more challenging perhaps, we should attempt to understand violent rebellion on its own terms, as a form of direct political action that was just as integral to the decade.

It can be a struggle to imagine some of the most overpoliced, marginalized, and isolated Americans as political actors, and this bias has influenced the writing of history. Even those of us interested in forms of resistance to structural racism have been reluctant to take seriously the political nature of midcentury black uprisings. Yet they were neither spontaneous nor meaningless eruptions. Just as much as nonviolent direct action, rebellion presented a way for the oppressed and disenfranchised to express collective solidarity in the face of punitive state forces, exploitative institutions, and calcified democratic institutions.

Reviving our knowledge of midcentury violent rebellion against police and state forces also has important ramifications on how we tell the history of the rise of mass incarceration. Some scholars of the rise of the carceral state, including Michael Javen Fortner and James Forman, Jr., have recently argued that black Americans called for more police on the streets, at schools, and in housing projects. These accounts, implicitly or explicitly, suggest that black Americans championed the politics of law and order and are therefore partly to blame for the punitive turn in domestic policy. But the history of the forgotten rebellions adds another, dynamic layer and set of actors to the story of the so-called black silent majority. As much as some segments of the black middle class, political leaders, and clergy joined the clamor for law and order, many otherswho do not appear in traditional archives and many of whom were too young to votecollectively defied the legitimacy of new policing and carceral strategies.

In addition to the failure to attend to the voices of African Americans across class strata and outside of traditional archives, a crucial part of the story of how these rebellions became obscured in our memory is bureaucratic. By the late sixties, President Lyndon Johnsons Safe Streets Act and the subsequent militarization of local police effectively quashed any nascent movement of political rebellions by making them matters of local administration and pacification instead of national political crises. The legislation established an unprecedented $330 million federal investment in crime control that effectively began the process of militarizing local police forces operating in communities that seemed vulnerable to rebellion with surplus weapons from Vietnam, and training them in systematic riot control methodsa playbook that would be copied almost exactly after 9/11. The act essentially created the infrastructure and punitive apparatus to make smaller police departmentsparticularly those in deindustrializing cities with a critical mass of black residentscapable of handling uprisings on their own before they became spectacular enough to generate national media or activist attention.

Near the end of his life, King observed that social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention.

Unfortunately, the unrest in Minneapolis reminds us that this legacy is still very much with us. Rather than responding to violent political rebellion with policysuch as addressing mass unemployment, failing public schools, and inhumane housing conditionspolicymakers and officials, from Richard Nixons War on Crime to the bipartisan War on Drugs to Donald Trumps embrace of Law and Order politics, have consistently sought to manage the material consequences of socioeconomic problems (e.g., urban decay and drug abuse) with more police, more surveillance, and, eventually, more incarceration. We as a nation still fail to reckon with the wisdom King prophetically offered toward the end of his life: that only social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention. There is no other answer. Constructive social change will bring certain tranquility; evasions will merely encourage turmoil.

Echoing King roughly fifty years later, Minneapolis NAACP president Leslie Raymond reflected on the citys disturbance to a reporter: We know we need systemic reform and change. So what does that look like? Resources need to be poured into the African American community. . . . The system often does it wrong, and the black community really needs to be the decision-maker at the table and be given proper resources. And as the unrest continues to unfold, City Council vice president Andrea Jenkinsthe first openly transgender black woman to be elected to public office in the United Statescalled for racism in the city to be treated as a public health emergency. Until the structural roots of collective violence are addressed as King indicated a half century ago, and Raymond and Jenkins join thousands of protesters in calling for today, spiraling tensions and distrust between police officers and the racially marginalized citizens they are charged with protecting will remain. Indeed, COVID-19 has exacerbated another deadly virus that caused Floyds death and has been killing the United States for centuries: racism.

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The Minneapolis Uprising in Context - Boston Review

No time to be selling arms to the Philippines | TheHill – The Hill

Posted on May 31, 2020 by Danzig

The COVID-19 pandemic has slowed down a lot of things, but U.S. arms sales are not one of them.Since March, the Trump administration has made over$9 billionin major offers in 15 separate deals.But its not just about the money, its about whom were arming.

A case in point is the Philippines, where the Duterte regime is one of the worlds most aggressive human rights abusers.Over27,000people have been killed in the governments war on drugs, many of them by the police and military or government-affiliated death squads. People are being gunned down in the streets without benefit of a trial or formal charges.And the victims have included lawyers, journalists, human rights defenders and trade unionists whose only crime has been opposing the regimes repressive practices.

Despite this record, the Philippine military is slated to receive apackageof attack helicopters, bombs and missiles worth up to $1.5 billion.This comes on the heels of offers of firearms last year that included pistols and semi-automatic rifles for the Philippine armed forces.The helicopters are likely to be used in Dutertes scorched earth counterinsurgency campaign on the island of Mindanao, where450,000 peoplehave been driven from their homes by indiscriminate aerial attacks. As the U.S. State Department has noted in its annual human rightsreport, the killings have included environmentalists and land rights activists with no connection to the armed opponents of the government.

If anything, the regimes repression has gotten worse during the pandemic, with over30,000people arrested for alleged violations of social distancing rules, many of them herded into overcrowded prisons orplaced in dog cages,where they are at far greater risk of contracting COVID-19.Meanwhile, President Duterte has been granted emergency powers akin to martial law and has used them to harshly crack down on critics of the regime, including news outlets that dare to raise questions about its mishandling of the pandemic. Even voluntary aid groups that have been providing food aid to people not reached by the governments inadequate assistance programs have been harassed andarrestedby the police and military.

The Philippine deal is just one of many examples of the Trump administrations penchant for arming authoritarian regimes, often citing the economic benefits of weapons exports, which it gives preference over human rights and security concerns.Just this week Sen. Robert MenendezRobert (Bob) MenendezGovernment watchdog: 'No evidence' Pompeo violated Hatch Act with Kansas trips No time to be selling arms to the Philippines Senate panel approves Trump nominee under investigation MORE (D-N.J.), the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,revealedthat there is a deal in the works to sell more precision-guided bombs to Saudi Arabia, which is waging a brutal war in Yemen in which it has killed thousands of civilians in air strikes carried out with U.S. aircraft and bombs.Last year Congress voted to block a similar deal, only to have its action vetoed by President TrumpDonald John TrumpDonald Trump and Joe Biden create different narratives for the election The hollowing out of the CDC Poll: Biden widens lead over Trump to 10 points MORE.

And thats not all. In addition to the offer of attack helicopters to the Philippines, the Trump administration is seeking to close deals for thousands of armored vehicles to the United Arab Emirates, which has been implicated in running secrettorture sitesin Yemen,divertingU.S.-supplied weapons to extremist militias and members of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), and arming opposition forces in Libya in violation of a United Nations arms embargo.

The administration is also offering upgraded Apache attack helicopters toEgypt, where the al-Sisi regime haskilledthousands of non-violent opponents and thrown tens of thousands of critics in jail, even as it wages a harsh counterterror campaign marked by arbitrary arrests, torture, the forced removal of thousands of people from their homes and the bombing of civilian targets.

Several members of Congress are organizing a letter to Secretary of State Pompeo and Secretary of Defense Esper demanding a delay in the flood of arms sales announced in the past few months to allow Congress adequate time to be briefed on and carefully consider each of them. In an ideal world, Congress would block all of the sales specifically mentioned above, which are likely to cause suffering in the recipient countries even as they undermine long-term U.S. interests in peace and stability in key regions. But its not an easy task.It currently takes a veto proof majority two-thirds of both houses of Congress to stop an arms sale. The procedure should be reversed, so that major arms sales cannot go forward without explicit congressional approval.

The COVID-19 pandemic has raised serious questions about how best to protect the United States and the world.Mindlessly trafficking in weapons to questionable regimes is just one of the things that needs to change.

William D. Hartung is the director of the Arms and Security Program at the Center for International Policy.

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No time to be selling arms to the Philippines | TheHill - The Hill

US declares a vaccine war on the world – Asia Times

Posted on May 31, 2020 by Danzig

Donald Trump launched a new vaccine war this month, but not against the virus. It was against the world.

TheUnited States and the UKwere the onlytwo holdoutsin the World Health Assembly from the declaration that vaccines and medicines forCovid-19 should be available as public goods, and not under exclusive patent rights. TheUnited States explicitly dissociated itself from the call for a patent pool, talking instead of the critical role that intellectual property plays in other words, patents for vaccines and medicines.

Having badly botched his Covid-19 response, President Trump is trying to redeem his fortunes for the November elections by promising an early vaccine. The 2020 version of Trumps Make America Great Again slogan is shaping up to be, in essence, vaccinesfor us but the rest of the world will have to queue up and pay what Big Pharma asks, as it will hold the patents.

In contrast, all other countries agreed with theCosta Rican proposal in the World Health Assemblythat there should be a patent pool for all Covid-19 vaccines and medicines. President Xi Jinping saidChinese vaccines would be available as a public good, a view shared by European Union leaders. Among the10 candidate vaccines in Phase 1 and 2of clinical trials, the Chinese have five, the United States has three, and the UK and Germany have one each.

Trump has given anultimatum to the World Health Organization (WHO)with a permanent withdrawal of funds if it does not mend its ways in 30 days. In sharp contrast, in the World Health Assembly (the highest decision-making body of the WHO), almost all countries, including close allies of the United States, rallied behind the WHO.

Thefailure of the US Centers for Disease Control and Preventionagainst Covid-19, with nearly four times the annual budget of the WHO, is visible to the world. The CDC failed toprovide a successful testfor SARS-CoV-2 in thecritical months of February and March, while ignoring the WHOssuccessful test kitsthat were distributed to 120 countries.

Trump has yet to hold his administration and the CDC responsible for this criminal bungling. This,more than any other failure, is the reason that Covid-19 infections in the US now number more than 1.5 million, about a third of the global total. Contrast this with China, the first to face an unknown epidemic, stopping it at 82,000 infections, and the amazing results that countriessuch as VietnamandSouth Koreahave produced.

One issue is now looming large over the Covid-19 pandemic. If we do not address the issue of intellectual-property rights, we are likely to see arepeat of the AIDS tragedy.

People died for 10 years (1994-2004)as patented AIDS medicine was priced at US$10,000 to $15,000 for a years supply, far beyond their reach. Finally,patent laws in India allowed people to get AIDS medicineat less than a dollar a day, or $350 for a years supply. Today, 80% of the worlds AIDS medicinecomes from India.

For Big Pharma, profits trumped lives, and they will continue to do so, Covid or no Covid, unless we change the world.

Most countries have compulsory licensing provisions that allow them to break patents in case of epidemics or health emergencies. Even the World Trade Organization (WTO), after a bitter fight, accepted in its Doha Declaration (2001) that in a health emergency, countries have the right to allow any company to manufacture a patented drug without the patent holders permission, and even import it from other countries.

Why is it, then, that countries are unable to break patents, even if there are provisions in their laws and in the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement? The answer is their fear of US sanctions against them.

Every year, the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) issues a Special 301 Report that it has used to threaten trade sanctions against any country that tries to compulsorily license any patented product.

India figures prominentlyin this report year after year, for daring toissue a compulsory licensein 2012 to Natco, an Indian pharmaceutical company, for nexavar, a cancer drug Bayer was selling formore than $65,000 for a year of treatment. Marijn Dekkers, the chief executive of Bayer, was quoted widely that this wastheft, and We did not develop this medicine for Indians. We developed it for Western patients who can afford it.

This leaves unanswered how many people even in the affluent West can afford a $65,000 bill for an illness. But there is no question that a bill of this magnitude is a death sentence for anybody but the super-rich in countries like India. Though a number of other drugs were also under consideration for compulsory licensing at that time, India has not exercised this provision again after receiving US threats.

It is the fear that countries can break patents using their compulsory-licensing powers that led to proposals for patent pooling. The argument was that since many of these diseases do not affect rich countries, Big Pharma should either let go of their patents to such pools, or philanthropic capital should fund the development of new drugs for this pool.

Facing the Covid-19 pandemic, it is this idea of patent pooling that emerged in the recentWorld Health Assembly, WHA-73. All countries supported this proposal, barring theUnited States and its loyal camp follower, the UK.

TheUnited States also entered its disagreementon the final WHA resolution, being thelone objectorto patent pooling of Covid-19 medicines and vaccines, noting the critical role that intellectual property plays in incentivizing the development of new and improved health products.

While patent pooling is welcome if no other measure is available, it also makes it appear as if countries have no other recourse apart from the charity of big capital. What this hides, as charity always does, is that people and countries have legitimate rights even under TRIPS to break patents under conditions of an epidemic or other health emergency.

The United States, which screams murder if a compulsory license is issued by any country, has no such compunction when its own interests are threatened. During the anthrax scare in 2001, the US secretary of healthissued a threat to Bayerunder eminent domain for patents for licensing the anthrax-treatment drug ciprofloxacin to other manufacturers.

Bayer folded, and agreed to supply the quantity needed at a price that the US government had set. And without a whimper. Yes, this was the same Bayer that considers India a thief for issuing a compulsory license.

The vaccination for Covid-19 might need to be repeated each year, as we still do not know the duration of its protection. It is unlikely that a vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 willprovide a lifetime immunitylike the smallpox vaccine.

Unlike AIDS, where the patient numbers were smaller and were stigmatized in different ways, Covid-19 is a visible threat for everyone. Any attempt to hold people and governments to ransom on Covid-19 vaccines or medicines could see the collapse of the entire patent edifice of TRIPS that Big Pharma, backed by the United States and major EU countries, have built.

That is why the more clever in the capitalist world have moved toward a voluntary patent pool for potential Covid-19medicines and vaccines. This means that companies or institutions holding patents on medicines, such as remdesivir, or vaccines would voluntarily hand them over to such a pool.

The terms and conditions of such a handover, meaning at concessional rates, or for only for certain regions, are still not clear, leading to criticism that a voluntary patent pool is not a substitute for declaring that all such medicines and vaccines should be designated as global public goods during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Unlike clever capital, Trumps response to the Covid-19 vaccine is to bully his way through. He believes that with the unlimited money that the United States is now willing to put into the vaccine efforts, it will either beat everybody else to the winning post, orbuy the companythat issuccessful. If this strategy succeeds, he can then use his Covid-19 vaccine as a new instrument of global power. It is the United States that will then decide which countries get the vaccine (and for how much), and which ones dont.

Trump does not believe in arule-based global order, even if the rules arebiased in favorof the rich. He is walking out of variousarms-control agreementsand hascrippled the WTO. He believes that the United States, as the biggest economy and themost powerful military power, should have the untrammeled right to dictate to all countries. Threats ofbombing and invasionscan be combined withillegal unilateral sanctions and the latest weapon in his imaginary arsenal is withholding vaccines.

Trumps little problem is that the days of the United States being a sole global hegemon passed decades ago. The United States has shown itself to be afumbling giantand its epidemicresponse shambolic. It has been unable to provide virus tests to its people in time, and failed to stop the epidemic through containment/mitigation measures, which a number of other countries have done.

Chinaand theEUhave already agreed that any vaccine developed by them will be regarded as a public good. Even without that, once a medicine or a vaccine is known to be successful, any country with a reasonable scientific infrastructure can replicate the medicine or the vaccine, and manufacture it locally.

India in particular has one of thelargest generic drug and vaccinemanufacturing capacities in the world. What prevents India, or any country for that matter, from manufacturing Covid-19 vaccines or drugs once they are developed only the empty threat of a failed hegemon on breaking patents?

This article was produced in partnership byNewsclickandGlobetrotter, a project of the Independent Media Institute, which provided it to Asia Times.

Prabir Purkayasthais the founding editor ofNewsclick.in, a digital media platform. He is an activist for science and the Free Software movement.

Asia Times Financialis now live. Linking accurate news, insightful analysis and local knowledge with the ATF China Bond 50 Index, the world'sfirst benchmark cross sector Chinese Bond Indices.Read ATFnow.

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US declares a vaccine war on the world - Asia Times

12 Essential Books To Read Following The Death Of George Floyd – British Vogue

Posted on May 31, 2020 by Danzig

Its easy to feel powerless reading the news at the moment, especially when it comes to the issue of racial injustice. But there are ways to help, including signing petitions launched by Change.org and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Another positive step? Educating yourself about the history of systemic racism within America and, indeed, the world. Below, a reading list to help you better understand the context of the protests following the death of George Floyd, a 46-year-old African-American man who died in custody after an officer from the Minneapolis Police Department stood on his neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds.

Numerous quotes by the pioneering activist Angela Davis have gone viral on social media in the wake of George Floyds tragic death but there is far more to be learned from the Black Power icon than can be contained in an Instagram post. Start with Freedom Is A Constant Struggle (2016), which compiles her thoughts and essays on everything from the legacy of Apartheid to the nature of the Ferguson protests and the many ways in which racism has clouded feminist thought through the years.

Structural racism is by no means a problem limited to the US as Reni Eddo-Lodge makes clear in her seminal Why Im No Longer Talking To White People About Race. The title is lifted from Eddo-Lodges own viral blog post from 2014, in which she famously declared that she had had enough of trying to reason with white people who were living a life oblivious to the fact that their skin colour is the norm and all others deviate from it. The full work expands on this concept picking apart the insidious nature of white privilege in minute detail and mapping the ramifications of racial bias in the UK, from slavery through to the lynch mobs that swept across key British cities following the First World War.

A classic of the Civil Rights Movement, The Fire Next Time is divided into two parts: one is a letter written to Baldwins 14-year-old nephew on the 100th anniversary of the abolition of slavery, and the other is a powerful reflection on the authors formative years in Harlem. While it captures Baldwins entirely justified anger at the state of the nation in the 1960s, its also, in many ways, a hopeful and galvanising read. If we and I mean the relatively conscious whites and the relatively conscious blacks, who must, like lovers, insist on, or create, the consciousness of others do not falter in our duty now, we may be able, handful that we are, to end the racial nightmare, and achieve our country, and change the history of the world.

In addition to her powerful novels Salvage the Bones and Sing, Unburied, Sing, National Book Award-winner Jesmyn Ward is also the author of a gut-wrenching memoir, Men We Reaped, which recounts the deaths of five young black men in her life over as many years men pinioned beneath poverty and history and racism. The title is a nod to a verse written by abolitionist Harriet Tubman following a Civil War battle in which countless African-American soldiers died: We heard the thunder and that was the big guns; and then we heard the rain falling and that was the blood falling; and when we came to get in the crops, it was dead men that we reaped.

As a reporter for The Washington Post, Wesley Lowery spent much of President Obamas second term in office travelling from city to city, covering the deaths of unarmed black men at the hands of white police officers, including Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, and Freddie Gray. They Cant Kill Us All begins with his own aggressive arrest during the Ferguson protests after allegedly failing to disperse quickly enough when police officers cleared out a McDonalds then goes on to recount the evolution of the Black Lives Matter movement from the front lines. In short, its essential reading right now.

Written by a United Nations diplomat turned Indian National Congress MP in New Delhi, Inglorious Empire firmly discounts any romantic notions of colonisation in taking India as its subject. Published in the immediate aftermath of Brexit, it documents the systematic subjugation of a country whose share of the world economy at the start of the 18th century was 23 per cent, a figure which had plummeted to 3 per cent by the time the British left. As Britain reassesses its imperial fantasies, this book is an urgent read.

Toni Morrisons Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece encapsulates the collective, refracted trauma felt by slaves and their descendants. Inspired by a true story reported in the American Baptist in 1856, the novel centres on Sethe, a slave mother who has ostensibly escaped from the fictional Sweet Home plantation to live in the free state of Ohio, but is haunted, literally and metaphorically, by the ghosts of her tragic past. As she says, Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another. Consider it a testament to the power of the novel form, and a lesson in radical empathy.

As Ava DuVernay pointed out in her brilliant documentary 13th (now available to stream on Netflix), the American Constitutions 13th Amendment outlaws slavery except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted. Civil rights lawyer Michelle Alexander reflects on the many ways in which this loophole has been exploited tracing how and why the number of prisoners in America rose from roughly 300,000 to more than 2 million between the 1980s and 2010. Her central thesis: that the so-called war on drugs launched by President Reagan ultimately emerged as a stunningly comprehensive and well-designed system of racialised social control that functions in a manner strikingly similar to Jim Crow. Note: at the close of 2019, a staggering 4.7 per cent of all black millennial men in the US were incarcerated, according to research conducted by The Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality.

I write you in your fifteenth year, Ta-Nehisi Coates notes at the beginning of this extended letter to his son. I am writing you because this was the year you saw Eric Garner choked to death for selling cigarettes; because you know now that Renisha McBride was shot for seeking help, that John Crawford was shot down for browsing in a department store. And you have seen men in uniform drive by and murder Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old child whom they were oath-bound to protect. And you have seen men in the same uniforms pummel Marlene Pinnock, someones grandmother, on the side of the road. And you know now, if you did not before, that the police departments of your country have been endowed with the authority to destroy your body. What follows this heartbreaking declaration is a nuanced analysis of racisms centrality to American life and, critically, a study of the development of the fictional notion of whiteness.

Edited by the British journalist Nikesh Shukla, this crowdfunded book of essays includes submissions from Reni Eddo-Lodge, Riz Ahmed, and Vinay Patel, amongst others, with unique perspectives on deeply ingrained racist attitudes in the UK. Sparked by a comment underneath one of his articles on the Guardian, Shukla was inspired to write a progressive book about race issues in Britain. I was sick of the assumption that whenever people of colour get an opportunity its not because of our skill or merit, he has said, of conceiving of the project. Centring on the binary that a good immigrant is symbolised by a BAME-background Olympic gold medallist, and a bad immigrant is written off as a benefits-scrounger, the book, which Shukla describes as a document of what it means to be a person of colour now, explores the constant anxiety at the heart of the immigrant experience.

Of all the millions transported from Africa to the Americas, only one man is left. He is called Cudjo Lewis and is living at present at Plateau, Alabama, a suburb of Mobile. This is the story of this Cudjo. So begins Zora Neale Hurstons Barracoon, a compilation of interviews between the author of Their Eyes Were Watching God and the last known survivor of the Middle Passage in 1927. Interwoven with Cudjos own story preserved in his lyrical dialect are Hurstons endearing reports of trying to get him to speak to her: appearing on his doorstep with baskets of Georgia peaches and a box of Bee Brand insect powder to get rid of mosquitoes. A phenomenally important and deeply rewarding book.

I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own, declared Audre Lorde during a keynote talk in Connecticut in 1981. And I am not free as long as one person of colour remains chained. Nor is any one of you. Every work by the self-proclaimed black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet deserves to be read more than once but this compilation of her greatest speeches and writings is a powerful introduction to this revolutionary voice.

Stevenson: We have to find ways to create more equality, more opportunity, more justice – Harvard Law School News

Posted on May 31, 2020 by Danzig

Toward the close of his Harvard Law School commencement address, Bryan Stevenson J.D./M.P.P. 85 let the graduates in on a secret: He did not attend his own HLS graduation in 1985. I dont have a good excuse, like a pandemic. I was just kind of anxious to get to work, things were busy.

Stevensons work as a lawyer and social activist has made him an inspirational figure to many. He is the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, the nonprofit organization behind the recently opened National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Alabama, which is dedicated to the victims of lynching in the United States. In a pre-recorded talk for HLS first virtual commencement ceremony on Thursday, he urged the graduates to jump into their work with the same zeal that he didand to keep their ideals and their hopes intact.

The class, he said, had already mastered law; the next step is to pursue justice. This pandemic has exposed the issues that we have in our society. Too many people are sick. Too many people are dying. So many people cant get the health care they should be getting because of these problems. Its the same with legal services and access to justice. Too many people cant get the legal help they need We have to find ways to create more equality, more opportunity, more justice.

Bridging these gaps will require a commitment to doing things sometimes not for money, but because it is what we are called to do, Stevenson said. He outlined a four-point program for graduates to call on for bringing about real justice. They need, he said, to stay proximate to those they hope to represent. They need to fight back against the narratives that have created injustice. They need to stay hopeful and remember that your hope is your superpower. And finally, they have to be willing to do inconvenient and uncomfortable things.

Find a way to get proximate to the people who are marginalized, who are excluded.

Stevenson said that proximity can take many forms: For him it meant going to death row to represent inmates. I learned that we have a criminal justice system that treats you better if youre rich and guilty than if youre poor and innocent. I learned that each of us is more than the worst thing weve ever done. While the graduates may not choose the same path, he urged them to find a way to get proximate to the people in your neighborhoods, your communities, the places where you work, the places where you livethe people who are marginalized, who are excluded.

He called on the graduates to change the narratives that sustain inequality and make us indifferent to human suffering. In particular he cited the war on drugs that began in the late 70s and identified drug users as criminals rather than addicts with a medical problem. The result, he said, was that by 2001, one in three black male babies was expected to eventually go to prison. The other consequence was a nation divided by fear and anger.

But the roots of this inequality go back further, to the killing of American natives by European settlers and to the institution of slavery. The true evil of American slavery was this narrative we created that black people arent fully human. Stevenson encountered this narrative himself as a lawyerwhen a judge saw a well-dressed black man and presumed he was a defendantand he saw it again in the recent Georgia killing of Ahmaud Arbery. Two white men killed that young man on the street, and our system did not respond. We tried to justify that violence based on these narratives of racial difference.

This is a strange time. Its a difficult time. We cant all be together. But I am persuaded that we shall overcome.

Finally, he urged the graduates to remain hopeful, and to risk uncomfortable situations. He recalled doing both at one trial, when the discriminatory treatment of his 14-year-old client led him to write a motion that the teenager instead be treated like a 75-year-old corporate executive. The language in that motion triggered a courtroom shouting match. But Stevensons defense of his client led an older black man, who worked as a court janitor, to appear uninvited at the trial to urge Stevenson to keep his eyes on the prize.

Stevenson emphasized that each of the graduates has the ability to make the future more just. We will get to a different place, he said. This is a strange time. Its a difficult time. We cant all be together. But I am persuaded that we shall overcome.

The cannabis industry promised social justice. The moment demands that we now deliver. – PotNetwork

Posted on May 31, 2020 by Danzig

When Colorado legalized cannabis almost a decade ago, positive social upheaval took a slight step forward. It gave the masses of activists whod fought during the intervening years something new towards which they could aspire hope. Amendment 64 would usher in a new era of criminal justice with an emphasis on the latter half of the term, as the state slightly relaxed the burdens of Americas longstanding War on Drugs. Early statistics showed that the death of prohibition was a successful step forward for social justice, as 80 percent fewer Coloradans caught a cannabis charge after the implementation of legal weed.

This demonstrates that the people of Colorado are just as smart as we thought they were, Mason Tvert, a director of the Yes on 64 Campaign, told the Denver Post following the vote on Amendment 64. They were fed up with prohibition and decided they want a more sensible approach.

But, as the Roman poet Ovid once said, hopes are not always realized. While overall arrests for marijuana fell following the passage of Amendment 64, racial disparities persisted. Despite cannabis now being legal across the state, law enforcement continued to arrest black Americans at a rate of 2.5 times more than their white counterparts. They comprised 9 percent of all marijuana arrests while accounting for only 3.9 percent of the state's overall population.

Over the years since, as weed became cannabis, spread across the country, and traded on the New York Stock Exchange, the promise of social justice has fallen flat. Although black Americans have been the hardest hit by Americas failed War on Drugs, theyve been the least likely to see an economic benefit from the legalization of cannabis. In legal states like Colorado, for example, they are three times more likely to be arrested on charges of possession or distribution than white people.

Meechy Darko of the hip hop trio Flatbush Zombies once summed up the situation as being separate but unequal.

What hurts me is when I see an article like Mom from Denver makes millions off her new brownie company, Meechy said in an interview last year. Im like, [a] dude I went to high school with is in jail people are still in jail for some weed they sold 10 years ago

Today, black America is under assault, and the streets have erupted in protest because racial inequities that go far beyond the legal cannabis trade continue to plague this country like a virus. Theres a fever spread throughout the populace, and a collective voice screaming out to be heard that makes writing about Seth Rogens love of weed or MedMens downfall seem petty and insignificant at this moment.

On May 25 in Minneapolis, George Floyd, a 46-year-old African-American man, was killed when police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, asphyxiating him. The three other officers, Thomas K. Lane, Tou Thao, and J. Alexander Kueng, stood by and watched as Floyd, who was on the ground with his hands cuffed behind his back sobbed, screaming, "please, the knee in my neck, I can't breathe."

Those were the same words spoken by Eric Garner, another African American man, who was killed by New York City police officer Daniel Pantaleo.

Floyd is the latest in an all-too long line of black men and women murdered for the color of their skin. Breonna Taylor. Ahmaud Arbery. Michael Brown. Botham Jean. Philando Castille. Trayvon Martin.

Floyds death primarily has led to a crescendo of social uprising across the country, as black Americans and their allies look for answers and fight to have their voices heard. In response to this moment, police forces have grown militant, provocateurs from the left and right are sowing discord, and the media has turned into an agent of chaos, fanning the flames of fear for ratings. Though before you begin to condemn the violence, know that the violence has been amplified and produced for mass consumption.

These arent riots. They are legitimate expressions of unheard societal pain. And this very moment demands that all of us listen.

Take pause and recognize the gravity of the hour. Dont try to imbue predetermined biases upon these events, instead embrace them for what they are and attempt to learn the lessons that others are trying to impart. Tomorrow, we can talk about the best strain of cannabis or the benefits of CBD, but George Floyd cant. He deserves to be heard.

Because there might be a lesson here for the cannabis industry too. For too long, weve sanitized and whitewashed the legal pot trade in favor of profit margins and perfecting the seed-to-sale chain. But the bill has come due on the capital investment in social justice, and equity made almost a decade ago. Many in this industry have reaped economic rewards on the backs of millions of African Americans who were imprisoned for petty cannabis crimes. Many more continue to sit in prison for doing what CEOs are paid millions to do.

We owe it to them to listen.

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The cannabis industry promised social justice. The moment demands that we now deliver. - PotNetwork

KushCo Appoints Industry Veteran and Former Green Thumb Industries… – New Cannabis Ventures

Posted on May 31, 2020 by Danzig

Former Leading MSO Executive and Philanthropist Strengthens KushCos Commitment to New Strategy of Aligning Deeper with Core Customers

CYPRESS, CA / ACCESSWIRE / May 29, 2020 / KushCo Holdings, Inc. (OTCQX:KSHB) (KushCo or the Company), the premier provider of ancillary products and services to the legal cannabis and CBD industries, has announced today the appointment of Pete Kadens, former CEO of Green Thumb Industries (GTII) (GTBIF) a leading national cannabis consumer packaged goods company and retailer-to the Companys board of directors (the Board), effective June 1, 2020.

Kadens served on KushCos advisory board since August 2019, and will now play a more active role in guiding the Companys strategic vision and direction, especially in strengthening its relationships with premier multi-state operators (MSOs), licensed producers (LPs), and leading brands (the Companys Core customers) while positioning the Company to achieve near-term positive adjusted EBITDA and long-term profitable growth. Having run one of the most successful MSOs to date, Kadens will leverage his cannabis industry experience and relationships to help drive the execution of the Companys go-forward strategy.

Kadens is a serial entrepreneur and dedicated philanthropist who currently serves as the chairman of The Kadens Family Foundation, a charitable organization dedicated to closing the pervasive wealth and education gaps in the U.S. Kadens retired in August 2018 as CEO of Green Thumb Industries, one of the largest publicly-traded cannabis operators in the U.S. with a current market capitalization of over $2 billion. Prior to joining Green Thumb Industries in 2016, Kadens started SoCore Energy in 2008, one of the largest commercial solar companies in the U.S., with clients including Walgreens, IKEA, JC Penney, Kimco, and Simon Properties. Under his leadership, SoCore expanded operations into 17 states and was named one of Chicagos most innovative businesses by Chicago Innovation Awards. In 2013, Kadens sold SoCore Energy to Edison International, a Fortune 500 energy holding company. Kadens employed over 4,000 people over his 16 year career as a CEO.

Kadens currently serves as the Chairman of Crazy Clean, a high tech disinfecting business he founded as well as the Chairman of Kadens Family Holdings and Katalyst Management Collective. He also serves on the board of directors of NewLake Capital Partners and IgniteADR, and previously served on the board of directors of Green Thumb Industries and Marijuana Policy Project, one of the leading nonprofit organizations advancing the cause of ending the War on Drugs by orchestrating legislative and ballot initiatives to legalize cannabis. In addition, Kadens is one of 25 current and previous cannabis industry executives currently serving on the board of directors of the Cannabis Trade Federation, an organization focused exclusively on federal cannabis policy reform.

On behalf of everyone at the Company, I could not be more excited to welcome Pete to our board of directors, especially at this pivotal time in our organization, where we have made significant strides in aligning deeper with our Core customers, have substantially cut costs, and are moving closer to our near-term goal of achieving positive adjusted EBITDA.

Kovacevich added, We recognized Petes unparalleled talent, experience, and passion for the industry early on, which led to our decision to appoint him to our advisory board in September 2019. However, given how quickly and drastically the industry landscape has changed since then-and just as importantly, how we expect it to change going forward-we recognized that Pete could provide a much greater value as an actual Board member, especially as we look to strengthen our relationships with many of the premier MSOs, LPs, and leading brands who look more poised than ever to dominate this dynamic and consolidating industry. Having a true industry pioneer and successful MSO executive like Pete in our corner gives us an edge when learning more about what our customers want and how we can align our business with their future growth plans. Overall, I look forward to having Pete join what is already a diverse and talented team of directors, as we look to become the provider of choice for ancillary products and services for the legal cannabis and CBD industries.

Kadens added: I have always admired KushCos unique position in the legal cannabis and CBD ecosystem, even well before my appointment to the Companys advisory board. KushCos established track record, entrepreneurial leaders, and best-in-class service have always set the industry standards for how a successful ancillary company should operate and grow with their customers. In addition, the Companys philanthropic initiatives, such as their recent donation of nitrile gloves to COVID-19-impacted medical professionals lacking personal protective equipment, strongly complement my deep passion and activities for leaving a positive impact in the world, and provides a solid foundation for creating a company culture that benefits both the business direct stakeholders and the communities surrounding it.

And now that the Company has prudently shifted its focus toward the premier operators with the near-term goal of getting to profitability, Im excited to roll up my sleeves and play a more active role in helping shape the Companys strategic direction as it looks to capitalize on what appears to be an impending industry shakeout separating the winners from the losers.

To be added to the distribution list, please email ir@kushco.com with Kush in the subject line.

About KushCo Holdings

KushCo Holdings, Inc. (OTCQX: KSHB) (www.kushco.com) is the premier provider of ancillary products and services to the legal cannabis and CBD industries. KushCo Holdings subsidiaries and brands provide product quality, exceptional customer service, compliance knowledge and a local presence in serving its diverse customer base.

Founded in 2010, KushCo Holdings has now sold more than 1 billion units to growers, processors and producers across North America, South America, and Europe.

The Company has been featured in media nationwide, including CNBC, Fox News, Yahoo Finance, Cheddar, Los Angeles Times, TheStreet.com, and Entrepreneur, Inc Magazine. While KushCo Holdings provides products and solutions to customers in the cannabis and CBD industries, it has no direct involvement with the cannabis plant or any products that contain THC.

For more information, visit http://www.kushco.com or call (888) 920-5874.

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KushCo Appoints Industry Veteran and Former Green Thumb Industries... - New Cannabis Ventures

An Entrepreneurial Ecosystem on the Rise – Babson Thought & Action

Posted on May 31, 2020 by Danzig

How does an entrepreneurial ecosystem survive and thrive?

In Miami, the key is an entrepreneurial culture, strong supportive networks, and an attractive location.

This is according to the latest special report from the U.S. Global Entrepreneurship Monitor ecosystem project led by Babson College and eMerge Americas. Built from research conducted before the coronavirus outbreak, the report, An Ecosystem on the Rise: Entrepreneurship in Miami, reinforces where founders in the city should focus their efforts.

Networks and entrepreneurial culture are two of the 10 categories considered critical in a thriving entrepreneurship ecosystem. Both categories are ranked by several of Miamis most influential players as strong pillars in the South Florida ecosystem today, and the community should take advantage of them to navigate this current crisis and emerge even stronger, said Gustavo Trindade MBA17, director of Babson College Miami.

While strong in culture, networks, and location, Miamis ecosystem still has room for improvement. The report details two areas of growth and opportunity: entrepreneurial finance, which ranks low relative to other categories; and retentionthe region often loses highly qualified young people.

Although a lot has changed since the COVID-19 outbreak, we have outlined four key recommendations to further improve the Miami entrepreneurial ecosystem that we believe will remain relevant post-COVID: (i) to continue developing the entrepreneurial finance community in the region, addressing any gaps in access to capital for underserved groups such as women and young people; (ii) to find more ways to retain highly educated young people; (iii) to promote impactful and inclusive entrepreneurship; and (iv) to encourage government to work with the private sector in supporting entrepreneurship, said Donna Kelley, professor of entrepreneurship.

As a community, were now facing a new set of challenges to recover from the impact of the COVID-19 global pandemic, said Melissa Medina, president of eMerge Americas. We are proud to partner with Babson College to highlight the underlying strengths and exceptional talent within Miamis diverse tech ecosystem that are critical to our economy.

In a session at the GEM annual meeting in Miami this winter, several of the citys leadersincluding Medina and Mayor Francis Suarezdiscussed ways to help the ecosystem thrive. The event was held before the coronavirus outbreak.

We have to make sure we implement policies and procedures as a city that make opening and running a business easy and possible, said Suarez during the session.

Support from government organizations, corporations, and universities like Babson, Medina says, has helped the citys ecosystem grow. The foundation is built, thanks to the support that weve had from the community, and the sky is the limit for South Florida. We are creating a new ecosystem and launch pad for ideas.

Posted in Research & Insights

Tagged Entrepreneurship Ecosystems, Startups

Poaching in Indonesia’s biodiverse Leuser Ecosystem on the rise amid COVID-19 – Mongabay.com

Posted on May 31, 2020 by Danzig

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia Wildlife poaching is on the rise in a key Sumatran habitat thats home to some of the rarest species on Earth. But hunters in the Leuser Ecosystem appear to be targeting animals for food, rather than the areas prized tigers, rhinos or orangutans, according to conservationists.

Our teams have found a lot of deer snares, and these arent set up by professional hunters, said Dedi Yansyah, wildlife protection coordinator at the Leuser Conservation Forum, an NGO.

We think those snares were set up by people whose activities have been disrupted by the corona, he added, referring to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Noviar Andayani, country director for the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), agreed, saying in a webinar last month that her own organizations patrol teams had reported an increase in poaching activities amid the pandemic. She attributed this to economic losses suffered by communities living in the area as a result of shutdowns imposed in response to the COVID-19 crisis.

Local authorities working with conservation groups manage 26 patrol teams to protect the Leuser Ecosystem in Indonesias Aceh province. The protected area spans 23,000 square kilometers (8,880 square miles), more than double the size of Jamaica, and is the last place on Earth where the Sumatran rhino, tiger, elephant and orangutan coexist.

But rates of illegal poaching and logging there are estimated to be some of the worst in Indonesia. And local lockdown measures meant to curb the spread of the coronavirus have halted patrols, Dedi said.

There are many challenges in protecting wildlife currently. Teams cant be mobilized from one region to another, he said.

Indonesia has shut down conservation areas for tourists to stem COVID-19 transmissions both among people and to wildlife such as orangutans. Many communities have also restricted access to their areas, and these local lockdowns have slammed the countrys tourism sector, including the small businesses relying on tourists who visit the parks.

With some 4 million people currently living in and around Leuser, the ecosystem is already under heavy human pressure. Species like rhinos that persist there do so in small, fragmented populations and remain highly sensitive to any human activity, Dedi said. Rhinos are very different from other species that can live near human settlements. Rhinos need an environment thats truly safe and sound away from human activities, he said.

Noviar of WCS called for more efforts by the authorities to beef up security across wildlife habitats like Leuser and an end to the wildlife trade. Protect the wildlife in their natural and healthy habitat, she said.

Banner image of a Sumatran rhino captured by camera trap in Mount Leuser National Park, courtesy of the park agency.

This story was first reported by Mongabays Indonesia team and publishedhereon ourIndonesian siteon May 16, 2020.

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Poaching in Indonesia's biodiverse Leuser Ecosystem on the rise amid COVID-19 - Mongabay.com

Anchoviesand Their PredatorsHelp Researcher Solve Ecosystem Mysteries – The Pew Charitable Trusts

Posted on May 31, 2020 by Danzig

All anchovies may look similar to the untrained human eye, but that doesnt mean theyre all headed for the same fate. Some end up as pizza toppings, some as bait, and some as food for larger fish, marine mammals, or seabirds.

To Dylan Sinnickson, its that last category that matters most. The University of Florida fisheries and aquatic sciences Ph.D. student believes anchovies and the wildlife that eat them hold answers to how ecosystems work.

Sinnickson is studying how river flow affects bay anchovies and their predators at Cedar Key on Floridas west coast. The region is known as the Nature Coast for its vast seagrass beds, salt marsh, and abundant wildlife that support fishing and other nature-based activities that form the backbone of local economies.

For the past year, the 28-year-old Sinnickson has been analyzing the impact of river discharge and the nutrients it brings to an estuary.

Sinnickson confirmed some basic things: More river water means the estuary provides added nutrients and food for marine life. Nutrients, such as nitrogen and phosphorous, cause an increase in plankton, which is food for anchovies. As anchovy populations grow rapidly, predators have more to eat.

But Sinnickson, using computer models and state fishery data from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, found there is much more to the story. In general, predators tend to enjoy an all-you-can-eat buffet only so long before they look for another food source. For example, Sinnicksons modeling predicted that more anchovies would deliver bountiful meals for both snook and seatrout, giving their population numbers a boost. But snook benefited the most. With higher numbers, snooks dietary needs grew, and they began preying more on another anchovy predatorseatrout.

Dylan Sinnickson examines anchovies collected during a sampling trip along the Cedar Key coast as part of the fishery independent monitoring program run by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Research Institute. Courtesy of Dylan Sinnickson

Most predatory fish species benefit from abundant prey, but its not a linear relationship, said Sinnickson, who hopes to become a professor of fish ecology. The ecosystem is complex and acts in unpredictable ways.

The mysteries Sinnickson is unraveling are important because they can help fishery managers better understand complex food webs. If they can predict how or when some species may be abundant, they can set fishing rules accordingly.

Sinnicksons investigation is part of the Forage Fish Research Program, which awards annual fellowships to students who study small prey species, also known as forage fish. The program is run by theFlorida Forage Fish Coalition,which is led by the International Game Fish Association and includes The Pew Charitable Trusts, the Florida Wildlife Federation, the Angler Action Foundation, Wild Oceans, and the American Sportfishing Association. The coalition collaborates with leading academics and scientists from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Research Institute to increase knowledge about forage fish.

Estuaries host many kinds of forage fish and are breeding and feeding grounds for most of the larger fish that people like to catch. Flooding, runoff from land, and drought have major effects on estuaries, and Sinnicksons research will help fishery managers take an ecosystemwide view of a place when making rules.

People should care about changes and impacts to estuaries because ecotourism and fishing are some of Floridas biggest industries, said Sinnickson, who grew up fishing for striped bass with his parents on Long Island Sound. We need information to sustainably manage these resources for future generations.

Holly Binns directs The Pew Charitable Trusts U.S. Conserving Marine Life program in the Gulf of Mexico and U.S. Caribbean.

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Anchoviesand Their PredatorsHelp Researcher Solve Ecosystem Mysteries - The Pew Charitable Trusts

How EcoMotion evolved from ‘unconference’ to ecosystem – Automotive News

Posted on May 31, 2020 by Danzig

Tell us more about how EcoMotion helped start an industry in Israel.

Mamo: From Day One, our inspiration was "Let's do something different. Let's not do another event. Let's create this ecosystem where people can really know each other." We call it a community. People really feel like they're part of something together, not coming to an event. The event is just like a highlight of something bigger than that.

Arnon: When we started EcoMotion there were less than 100 startups that were somewhere around, including by the way, Mobileye. GM had a research center in Israel. ... All the OEMs, and most of the Tier 1s have a presence in Israel. There was a tailwind from some successes like Mobileye. The industry started to switch between materials to knowledge, software instead of rubber, etc., and Israel is full of these technologies because these are all military spec technologies, connectivity, electrification, machine learning, cyber defense, cybersecurity. Israel is kind of the land of milk and honey for this particular technology.

Describe how the industry evolved.

Arnon: If you look at the history of the industry of Israel, in the '80s it was the printing, digital printing. Israel today is the world leader in digital printing. In the '90s it was connectivity and communication, because a couple of companies, such as Nokia, bought a few startups here in Israel, and so on. 2015 onwards, I would say, it became the mobility era in Israel.

Mamo: We can't take credit for building what exists today in Israel totally. But definitely, there is a correlation. Obviously, we can't take credit for the hard work the entrepreneurs did, and the investors that pour money into the industry, and talented HR. But I think we have some kind of credit for supporting that movement. ... Instead of like, running 20 miles an hour, we've made it to run at 100 miles an hour, getting entrepreneurs the support they need, giving this industry the acceleration they need in order to become what it is today in Israel.

How much venture capital activity was there prior to mobility becoming a hot topic? Tel Aviv is well positioned in that respect, like Silicon Valley. Does it have an advantage over other places that have the technology but maybe not the regional funding to see it through?

Arnon: There were already I would say a couple dozens VCs, most of them U.S. ones with an office in Israel. When we started EcoMotion, the VC area was already pretty well established. But what happened during that time, there became specialty VC firms only for mobility. Like Autotech Ventures and like the corporate VCs. ... So it's not a big problem raising money in Israel today. It used to be a big problem.

Mamo: When we started, like Meir said, there was a lot of VCs that were generically investing. ... I think GM's Cruise acquisition was the big tipping point for the VC industry in automotive. The fact that, a company that was established, and very shortly after, it was acquired for a billion dollars. That opened the appetite of these investors. They want to be part of this party. And it's an industry of billions of billions, of trillions of dollars of potential investment there. So, it wasn't easy in the beginning, but there was some kind of tipping point, I think it was like 2016. And you just see the shift between super hard to raise money to it's super easy to raise money.

What is the outlook for startups in Israel and elsewhere in light of COVID-19?

Arnon: Well, it just creates more opportunities.

Mamo: Churchill said, "Never waste a good crisis." So I think that, you know, a lot of people see crisis as a challenge. But these are entrepreneurs. They see every challenge as an opportunity. That's what we see. We see every challenge as an opportunity. One of the activities that I'm still involved in is Drive TLV. It's sort of like an accelerator-incubator-innovation hub. We put on our website what [the companies] are offering for COVID-19. Technology is very agnostic. So you can use technologies with different use cases. For example, there is a company that is doing an outside inspection of the car with cameras, so basically, you can have a touchless kind of experience for people doing car rentals, just cameras inspecting the car before and after you return it.

I read an article: The new unicorn is the camel. So you're not looking for the ones that are running really fast because if you're in a desert and this is literally what's happening now in COVID-19, we're in a desert if you're in a desert, you want to have a camel, you want to have companies that have the strength to overcome that crisis.

What will happen in general?

Mamo: I think that we're going to see, I would say, three trends. We're going to see companies that were strong and will be stronger from that crisis. We're going to see consolidation; maybe companies that were actively competing with each other. And we're going to see companies that are going to get closed because they weren't good enough. And it's OK. This is part of the process. This is part of the deal. If you're going to be a startup, most of the chance is that the company is going to get closed. Let's be honest. So it's just going to accelerate an existing kind of trend or vector.

But I believe that the strength of the Israeli ecosystem, and the startup ecosystem, is the being adaptable and be able to change.

Arnon: Resilience is the name of the game today. Israelis are used to crisis. You know, we are a small country surrounded by enemies and fish. And so we are pretty isolated. And that's why one of the things that EcoMotion did, bringing the industry to Israel rather than all these startups running around the world, and by calling the industry to come over, that was a big thing.

We are the land of where history started, quote, unquote, so to speak. I'm an antique collector, I have 72 pieces that are older than 500 years. I mention this because for many years, this is what Israel had to offer: oranges and history. But actually for many years now Israel became a high-tech and startup nation, and the brain is sort of leading the tradition now.

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How EcoMotion evolved from 'unconference' to ecosystem - Automotive News

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