Daily Archives: June 17, 2020

Sparked by the police murder of George Floyd and fueled by Minneapolis authorities reluctance to arrest and charge the murderers three police accomplices, mass protests have been sweeping across the United States with an intensity not seen since the 1960s. In over 150 cities, African Americans and their allies have flooded the streets, braving the COVID-19 pandemic, braving police violence, challenging centuries of racial and class inequalities, demanding liberty and justice for all, day after day defying a corrupt, racist power structure based on violent repression.

1. Breaches in the Systems Defenses

Today [June 7ed.], after ten consecutive days in the streets, this outpouring of popular indignation against systematic, historic injustice, has opened a number of breaches in the defensive wall of the system. The legal authorities in the state of Minnesota, where George Floyd was murdered, have been forced to arrest and indict as accomplices the three other policemen who aided and abetted the killer, against whom the charges were raised from third to second degree murder. A split has opened at the summit of power, where the Secretary of Defense and numerous Pentagon officials have broken with their Commander-in-Chief, Donald Trump, who has attempted to mobilize the U.S. Army against the protesters.

This historic uprising is an outpouring of accumulated black anger over decades of unpunished police murders of unarmed African-Americans. It articulates the accumulated grief of families and communities, the sheer outrage over impunity for killer cops in both the North and the South. It reflects anger at capitalist Americas betrayal of Martin Luther Kings dream of non-violent revolution. and horror at the return to the era of public lynchings cheered on by the President of the United States. It impatiently demands that America at long last live up to its proclaimed democratic ideals, here and now. In the words of one African-American protester, William Achukwu, 28, of San Francisco: Our Declaration of Independence says life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Right now, we are only dealing with the life part here. This is a first step. But liberty is what a lot of people out here are marching for.

2. Violence and Non-Violence

It came as no surprise that local and state officials across the U.S. reacted to largely peaceful, spontaneous mass protests against police brutality and racism by unleashing a maelstrom of militarized police violence.[1]For a generation, the Federal government has been quietly gifting huge stocks of surplus military equipment, including tanks, to local police forces and sheriffs offices eager to play with lethal new toys designed for counter-insurgency in places like Afghanistan. Under both Democrats (Clinton, Obama) and Republicans (Bush, Trump) the federal state has been arming law enforcement in preparation for a preventive counter-revolution. This is precisely what President Trump is calling for today: full dominance by means of military crackdowns, mass arrests and long prison sentences in the name of law and order. Thanks to the determination of these masses of militant but largely non-violent protesters, the military is divided and Trump will not have his way.

Apropos of violence, it was feared at first that the numerous incidences of setting fires, smashing shop fronts, and looting, especially after dark when the large, orderly crowds of mixed demonstrators had gone home, would in some way spoil the uprising and provide a pretext for the violent, military suppression of the whole movement, as called for by Trump, who blamed it all on an imaginary terrorist group called ANTIFA (short for anti-fascism, in fact a loose network). At the same time, reports of gangs of young white racists wearing MAGA (Make America Great Again) hats committing vandalism, of Accelerationists systematically setting fires in black neighborhoods to provoke revolution, and of violent policeprovocateursare not entirely to be discounted.

Such actions play into Trumps hands. On the other hand, the more reasonable voices of the hundreds of thousands of angry but nonviolent protesters, might not have been listened to by the authorities if it had not been for the threat of violence from the fringes if their voices were ignored. Instead of burning their own neighborhoods, as has happened in past riots, todays militants are strategically hitting symbols of state repression and capitalism lighting up and destroying police property, trashing the stores of million-dollar corporations, and even pushing against the gates of the White House. In any case, as far as looting is concerned, as the spokeswomen of BLM argued at George Floyds funeral, white people have been looting Africa and African-Americans for centuries. Payback is long over-due.

3. Black and White Anti-Racist Convergence

What is especially remarkable and heartening to see as we view the impassioned faces of the demonstrators through images on videos, newspaper photos, and TV reports, is the realization that at least half the demonstrators in the crowds proclaiming Black Lives Matter are white people! Here again, a serious breach has been opened in the wall of systemic, institutionalized racism that has for centuries enabled the U.S. ruling class to divide and conquer the working masses, pitting slave laborers and their discriminated descendants against relatively privileged white wage slaves in a competitive race to the bottom. Today, they are uniting in the fight for justice and equality. Equally remarkable is the continuing. leadership role of women, especially African-American women in the founding of both the #BlackLivesMatter movement and the Womens March against Trumps Inauguration. The participation of young and old, LGBT and physically challenged folks is also to be remarked.

This convergence ofthese freedom struggles across deeply rooted racial divides promises to open new paths as U.S. social movements emerge from the COVID confinement. Even more remarkable, albeit limited, are incidents, also recorded on citizen video, of individual cops apologizing for police violence, hugging victims, and taking the knee with demonstrators. Public officials, like the Mayor of Los Angeles, have also been obliged to meet with the protesters and to apologize for their previous racist remarks. Moreover, as we shall see below, serious cracks have emerged in the unity of the U.S. military, both among the ranks, which are 40 percent people of color, and even among top officers. Such is the power of this massive, self-organized, inter-racial movement demanding freedom and justice for all.

4. Cracks Within the Regime

Today, after ten days during which the protests have continued to increase numerically and to deepen in radical content, cracks have opened in the defenses of the ruling corporate billionaire class and have reached the White House, where Donald J. Trump, the self-deluded, ignorant bully and pathological liar supposedly in charge, has finally been challenged by his own appointed security officials.

It must be said that in Trump, todays billionaire ruling class has the representative it deserves, and the Donalds ineptitude, visible to all, is symbolic of its historic incapacity to retain the right to rule. Trumps flawed, self-centered personality incarnates the narrow class interests of the 0.01 percent who own more than the bottom 70 percent of the population. His obvious selfishness exemplifies that of the billionaires he represents (and pretends to be one of). Out of his willful ignorance, Trump speaks for a corporate capitalist class indifferent to the global ecological and social consequences of its ruthless drive to accumulate, indifferent to truth and justice, indifferent indeed to human life itself.

Trumps clownish misrule has embarrassed the state itself. First came the childish spectacle of the most powerful man in the world hunkering down in his basement bunker and ordering the White House lights turned off (so the demonstrators outside couldnt see in?). Then came the order to assault peaceful protesters with chemical weapons to clear the way for President Trump to walk to the nearby Presidents Church (which he never attends and whose pastor he didnt bother to consult) in order to have himself photographed brandishing a huge white Bible (which he has most likely never read) like a club.

Trump, whos only earned success in life was his long-running reality-TV show The Apprentice, apparently devised this bizarre publicity stunt to rally his political base of right-wing Christians and show how religious he is. But it backfired when the Bishop of Washington pointed out that Jesus preached love and peace, not war and vengeance. The next day, even demagogues like Pat Robinson of the far-right wing Christian Coalition spoke out against him, while the anti-TrumpNew York Timestriumphantly headlined: Trumps Approval Slips Where He Cant Afford to Lose It: Among Evangelicals.

Let us pause to note that American Christianity, like every other aspect of American civilization, is a knot of contradictions all rooted in the fundamental problem of the color line. Although the racist, conservative, pro-Israel,Christian right has been the core of Trumps support, liberation theology and the black church have long been the base of the civil rights movement for equality. Indeed, George Floyd (known as Big Floyd and the Gentle Giant) was himself a religiously motivated community peacemaker. So are many of the demonstrators, white and black, chanting No Justice, No Peace.

Trumps phony populist act may have helped catapult him into office in 2016 (thanks to Republican-rigged electoral system and despite losing the popular vote by three million votes), but asAbraham Lincoln is often supposed to have saidof the American public, You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cant fool all of the people all of the time. Today, Trumps time is up.

5. Police: The Vicious Dogs of the Bourgeoisie

To me, the most emblematic image of the moment is that of a self-deluded Donald Trump, huddled (like Hitler) in his underground bunker with the White House lights turned off, shivering with fear and rage at the demonstrators outside, and threatening to sick (purely imaginary) vicious dogs on them. Trump has the Doberman mentality of the junkyard owner from Queens he incarnates; he is the spiritual descendant of the slave-catcher Simon Legree chasing the escaped slave Eliza with his dogs (seeUncle Toms Cabin).

Vicious dogs of the bourgeoisiethats what the police are paid to be (even if a few of them may turn out to be basically friendly German Shepherds underneath, like those who took the knee with the protesters). Their canines are the sharp teeth of the American state. Along with the Army, cops are the essence of the actual deep state which Marx defined as special bodies of armed men, courts, prisons etc. (as opposed to the people armed in democratically-run popular militias).

Although subservient to the bourgeois state, this police apparatus, like the Mafia with which it is sometimes entwined, has a corporate identity of its own based onomertor strict group loyalty. This unwritten rule is the notorious Blue Wall of Silence, which prevents cops who see their brothers committing graft and violent abuses from speaking out or testifying against them. The blue wall assures police impunity, and it is organized through police unions that, although affiliated with the AFL-CIO, are violently reactionary, anti-labor and pro-Trump. The President of the International Police Union has been filmed wearing a red Make America Great Again hat and shaking hands with Trump at a political rally, while protesters in Minneapolis have been calling for the ousting of Bob Kroll, the local police union president who has been widely criticized for his unwavering support of officers accused of wrongdoing.

The Blue Wall of silence extends up the repressive food chain to prosecutors, District Attorneys and even progressive mayors, like New Yorks Bill de Blasio, who defended N.Y. police driving their SUVs straight into a crowd of demonstrators, although his own mixed-race daughter was arrested as a Black Lives Matter demonstrator! De Blasiolike his reactionary predecessor, Rudy Giuliani, former law and order District Attorney and current Trump advisorknows that his political future is dependent on the good will of the Police Union. (Even junkyard owners are afraid of their own vicious dogs.)

This customary coddling of the police even extended to theNew York Timesinitial coverage of violent police attacks on members of the press in Minneapolis and elsewhere. In its report, theTimeshid behind a twisted notion of objectivity (blame both sides) to avoid pointing fingers at cops, thus observing the blue wall of silence even when reporters are victims. (At this writing over a thousand such attacks have been recorded). Using passive voice rather than naming the actual assailants (brutal racist cops), theNYTreport conflated a single isolated incident where a crowd attacked news people from Trumps FOX network, with systematic, nationwide police attacks on members of the media.[2]

A week later, that sacrosanct Blue Wall is beginning to crumble. Not only have the D.A. and Governor of Minnesota been forced to escalate the charges against Derek Chauvin, George Floyds killer, to second degree murder and arrest his three police accomplices, the latter have begun to rat each other out. Facing 40 years in prison and a bail of at least $750,000, Thomas Lane and J. Alexander Kueng, both rookies, are blaming Chauvin, the senior officer at the scene and a training officer, while Tou Thao, the other former officer charged in the case, hadreportedlycooperated with investigators before they arrested Chauvin.

6. Cracks in the Military Wall

Such is the power of todays mass Black Lives Matter uprising, that it has opened a breach in U.S. capitalisms most important defense wall: the military. For if the police are American capitalisms junkyard Dobermans, the Armed Forces are the basis of its domination over the world. And if the cry for equal justice has opened a tiny crack in the Blue Wall of Silence, the breach in the ranks of the U.S. military, which is 40 percent people of color and recruited from the poorest classes of American society, is more like a gulf.

The rank and file in todays U.S. Army, Navy and Air Force are a reflection of American society, of a population of mainly poor and minority people for whom the military provides one possible solution to unemployment and discrimination. The mood of the troops reflects that of the communities they are recruited from, and their officers, who are responsible for their morale, discipline, and loyalty, must be sensitive to their feelings. This situation is epitomized by the following quotations from theNew York Times:

The Navys top officer, Adm. Michael M. Gilday, said in a message on Wednesday to all sailors: I think we need to listen. We have black Americans in our Navy and in our communities that are in deep pain right now. They are hurting.

And Chief Master Sgt. Kaleth O. Wright of the Air Force, who is black, wrote anextraordinary Twitter thread declaring, I am George Floyd.

Although Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,released a messageto top military commanders on Wednesday, June 3 affirming that every member of the armed forces swears an oath to defend the Constitution, which he said gives Americans the right to freedom of speech, the Generals and Admirals, retired and active, who have been speaking out for racial justice and the rights of demonstrating citizens this week are not all sudden converts to the cause of peace and justice. Rather, the American officer class is sharply focused on its global mission, which is to protect American domination around the world by leading these troops to kill and be killed in bloody civil war situations in mainly non-white countries.

TheNew York Timesarticle cited above also quotes an email from Adm. Sandy Winnefeld, a retired vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff:

We are at the most dangerous time for civil-military relations Ive seen in my lifetime. It is especially important to reserve the use of federal forces for only the most dire circumstances that actually threaten the survival of the nation. Our senior-most military leaders need to ensure their political chain of command understands these things.

For the troops, policing the world for capitalism is an endless, incomprehensible and demoralizing mission of violent counter-insurrection from which they return physically and psychologically damaged, often haunted by guilt, only to face unemployment and lack of support from the public and the underfunded Veterans Authority. As for the officers, it is a question of maintaining discipline and morale. The top brass know that deploying troops trained in counter-insurrection to control civil disturbances on U.S. soil would inevitably have one of two negative results (if not both): 1. unacceptable violence against civilians and/or 2. fraternization with the protesters, mutiny, and disobedience among the ranks. Hence the Pentagons open break with their law and order Commander-in-Chief. The danger of fraternization is especially real in National Guard regiments, whose troops are drawn from the populations of the states their families live in. As anotherTimesarticlenoted:

Senior Pentagon leaders worry that a militarized and heavy-handed response to the protests, Mr. Trumps stated wish, will turn the American public against the troops, like what happened in the waning years of the Vietnam War, when National Guard troops in combat fatigues battled antiwar protesters at Kent StateAdm. Mike Mullen, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, denounced the use of the military to support the political acts of a president who had laid bare his disdain for the rights of peaceful protest in this country.

Although the eternal showman Trump apparently appointed Mark Milley aschairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on the basis of the Generals physical resemblance to John Wayne, Milley happens to be a serious military historian. So is Secretary of Defense Esper. Both are aware that revolutions can only happen when there is a split in the ranks of the soldiers. In their West Point courses on counterinsurgency, they have certainly read of the classic example of Russia in 1917 when the Cossacks were sent to block the demonstrators in St. Petersburg. These fierce cavalry men sat passively still on their horses as the strikers dove between their legs, leading Trotsky to famously remark that the revolution passes underneath the belly of a Cossacks horse. And indeed, not long after this incident the Russian soldiers formed soviets (councils) and joined the workers and peasants in overthrowing the Czar.

Of course, in 1917 Russia was in the middle of a social crisis, ruled by an inept, self-deluded autocrat and an outdated, parasitical aristocracy, heedlessly bleeding lives and treasure into an endless, pointless, unpopular foreign war. Nothing even vaguely similar could ever happen in optimistic, triumphant, happy, America under the firm leadership and uniting presence of our loveable President, Donald J. Trump.

7. Race and Class in U.S. History

American society has been riddled with contradictions since its beginnings, and these contradictions, rooted in race and class, are still being played out today in the streets of over 150 U.S. cities. Todays uprisings, interracial from the beginning, express popular frustration that after centuries of struggle against slavery, after a bloody fratricidal Civil War in the 1860s and after the second American revolution of Reconstruction, after the Civil Rights movement and the urban riots of the 1960s, the lives of the descendants of black slaves are still not safe in the land that first proclaimed the human right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

The murder of George Floyd is said to be the straw that broke the camels back. It was the straw that set fire to the haystack of anger and frustration that was smoldering for generations. Will this blaze be yet another fire of straw, fated to die out? I think not. The context has changed. U.S. society, like the whole capitalist world, is in crisis. The economy, with productivity declining, with inequality and unemployment increasing, with debt and speculation ballooning was already in crisis. The pandemic pushed it over the top, and the resulting recession has only just begun. Thirty years after the post-Cold War new world order of democracy, peace and un-ending grown was proclaimed, few Americans believe that their lives and those of their children likely to improve, what with social and ecological doom impending. The system has little to promise them and its leaders little to inspire confidence in them. In other words, they are no longer politically and socially hegemonic and must depend on coercion to hold power. Today, the credibility and legitimacy of that coercive power, the cops and army, is being called into question by the masses, white and colored, demanding justice and equality.

The police may well continue to attack the demonstrators and while Trump and his followers call for militarization of the country in the name of protecting property, law and order, it is clear that a breach has been opened in the Blue Wall of Silence protecting the privileges of the billionaire class against the power of the working masses who today face not only a political crisis but also the crisis of an ongoing pandemic, the crisis of poverty and mass unemployment, and the impending climate crisis of which COVID is a symptomatic forerunner.

Throughout U.S. history, from the white Abolitionists, to the Yankee Civil War volunteers, to the Northern carpet-baggers who worked for Reconstruction, to the white Civil Rights marchers of the 1960s to the millions of whites in the streets proclaiming Black Lives Matter today, the unity in struggle of Americas racialized peoples has brought about whatever progress in freedom and democracy this race-benighted Republic as ever known.

Todays privileged white demonstratorsthemselves victims to a lesser degree of American capitalismknow in their hearts that they can never be free and never be safe from state violence until black lives really do matter. They know that Black and White Unite and Fight is the only possible way to block authoritarian government, prevent fascism, establish democracy, institute class equality, and face the future with a modicum of hope.

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[1]Facing Protests Over Use of Force, Police Respond With More Forcehttps://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/31/us/police-tactics-floyd-protests.html. Videos showed officers using batons, tear gas, pepper spray, and rubber bullets on protesters and bystanders.

[2]A Reporters Cry on Live TV: Im Getting Shot! Im Getting Shot!https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/30/us/minneapolis-protests-press.html. See the following phrases in italics: From a television crew assaulted by protesters to a photographer struck in the eye, journalists havefound themselvestargeted on the streets of America. Linda Tirado, a freelance photographer, activist and author,was shotin the left eye Friday while covering the street protests in Minneapolis. Ms. Tirado is one of a number of journalists around the country whowere attacked, arrested or otherwise harassedsometimes by police and sometimes by protestersduring their coverage of the uprisings that have erupted nationwide after the death of George Floyd in MinneapolisWith trust in the news media lagging, journalists havefound themselvestargeted.

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This piece was originally published at New Politics.

Continue reading here:

Ten days that may have changed the world: an internationalist perspective - Red Flag

Huffpost AustraliaScott Morrison Says There Was No Slavery In Australia', Instantly Gets Dragged On Twitter

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison drew strong criticism after he said that there was no slavery in Australia during a discussion of the early days of British settlement, which he acknowledged was pretty brutal.

He told Sydney radio: While slave ships continued to travel around the world, when Australia was established, sure it was a pretty brutal settlement ... but there was no slavery in Australia.

Historians, First Nations activists and a number of lawmakers called the PM out on the factually incorrect comments.

Sharman Stone, a former federal lawmaker turned politics professor at Monash University said, Slavery of Indigenous, men, women and children is well documented in a series of State government inquiries, in particular in the WA Royal Commission into the conditions of Natives, 1904, but also in 1913, 1929 in SA and Commonwealth parliamentary papers.

Slaves in Australia were made to work in the pearling, fishing, the pastoral industries or provide domestic labour.

The capturing of labour from the Pacific to work in Queensland cane fields is also well documented, Stone said.

Denial of slavery in Australia is akin to denial of the Stolen Generations. Now is the time for all Australians to learn, understand and acknowledge its history.

Rapper Briggs scoffed at the PMs statements.

Blackfullas worked for free, for the love of it. Bit of sun, bit of air, bit of a chain around your neck, bit of a stolen wage, he Tweeted.

Labor Senator for the Northern Territory Malarndirri McCarthy told ABC News Breakfast on Friday that the PM needed to get out more.

This is a big country and there are so many things that need to be understood. And truth-telling begins with telling all those stories, she said.

Meanwhile Bruce Pascoe, the award-winning author of Dark Emu condemned Morrisons comments.

When you capture people, and put chains around their necks, and make them walk 300 kilometres and then set them to work on cattle stations, whats that called?

Many others on Twitter called out Morrison with someinviting him to sugar cane regions of Queensland to work for free.

See the rest here:

Scott Morrison Says There Was No Slavery In Australia', Instantly Gets Dragged On Twitter - HuffPost Australia

In 1999, Washington Post music writer Richard Harrington asked Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello whether he thought any of the band's fans could be "oblivious" to the political content of their music. "It's not very well hidden," Morello said. "It's on every Rage T-shirt, on every backdrop, in every song and every video, on the front of the amplifiers. I don't think you can get with Rage Against the Machine without at least being aware of what it's about."

It seemed preposterous that anyone could have overlooked the band's message(s) then, or that they could've even ignored the cover of their debut album, which featured Malcolm Browne's still-shocking photograph of Thch Qung c, the Buddhist monk who sat cross-legged on a cushion in a Saigon intersection and lit himself on fire to protest the government's treatment of Buddhists.

It's equally hard to imagine someone listening to literally any song on the three records that Rage had released at the time and missing the lyrics about racial inequality and class warfare ("Now I'm rolling down Rodeo with a shotgun / These people aint seen a brown skin man since their grandparents bought one") about political hypocrisy ("They rally round the family with a pocketful of shells") or about white supremacy's prevalence in law enforcement (every word of "Killing in the Name.")

And more than 28 years after Rage laced their boots, clenched their fists, and released their first 52 minutes of righteous fury, it's bonkers to imagine that a dude like Scott Castaneda exists. Earlier this week, the Michigan man logged into his Twitter account and sent 260 unfortunate characters to Morello. "I use [sic] to be a fan until your political opinions come out," he wrote. "Music is my sanctuary and the last thing I want to hear is political bs when Im listening to music. As far as Im concerned you and Pink are completely done. Keep running your mouth and ruining your fan base."

First, Scott, we're sorry to hear that you've been cryogenically frozen for the better part of the 21st century, but congrats on finally being defrosted. But the larger question here is how can anyone become a so-called Rage fan without noticing the "political opinions"? That's like writing a letter to Count Dracula to tell him that you appreciate the architecture of his castle, but have recently discovered a few problems with his dietary habits. And finally, having a go at Tom Morello has been a bad idea since about 1968. "Scott!!! What music of mine were you a fan of that DIDNT contain political BS? I need to know so I can delete it from the catalogue," Morello responded.

Other Twitter users enthusiastically ratio-ed Castaneda to the earth's core and back. (He has since deleted his account.) "I do miss RATM music when it was all about partying, highschool crushes and candies," one person wrote. "I liked Sesame Street until they started introducing so many 'numbers' and 'letters' into their music," another added.

"It's one of those things where, can we just listen to music and just enjoy life? EDM, techno, rock, I get all kinds of different stuff, and that's my safe haven," Castaneda told the Detroit Metro Times. "I don't want to listen to political stuff. And once someone taints that for me, it just kills the mood." (He added that he knew the band had "always been political," but "it's getting worse and worse." Never mind that lately, everything feels like it's getting worse and worse.)

A willingness to uncompromisingly challenge the establishment is right there in RATM's band name, and it's been a part of the band's ethos since before there even was a band. After the members of Morello's early-90s band Lock Up went their assorted ways, he took out an ad in a SoCal music weekly to try to find a "politically radical front-man" for his "hip-hop, hard rock, punk rock" band. ("I didn't get too many calls," he told the Hartford Courant in 1997but he did eventually connect with rapper and lyricist Zack de la Rocha, who ticked all of those boxes, and more.)

Ignoring Rage's unyielding activism and the political causes they've championed isn't even reading Playboy for the articles; it's peeling the address label from the magazine's front page, tearing out a DirecTV ad, and throwing the rest into the bin. There's even an entire Wikipedia page called "Political views and activism of Rage Against the Machine," which covers everything from their support of Mexico's Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) to their feedback-soaked, all-nude anti-censorship demonstration, with brief stops to mention how they were asked to leave the Saturday Night Live set after hanging upside-down American flags from their amps.

The band's politics have also been a central focus of almost every piece written about them for the past two decades-plus. For example:

"Asked what he thinks of the Russian Revolution today, Morello notes that today is the 4th of July, and ties the original hopes of the Russian Revolution to those of America's Revolutionary War. He brings it up to the present, observing 'There's a permanent culture of resistance here in Russia, and I feel pretty comfortable with that,' before cautioning Russians fleeing the authoritarian past not to adopt the moden excesses of the West. 'I would warn all your listeners to closely watch Boris Yeltsin and his masters on Wall Street,' he finishes."

"The World's Most Dangerous Band," Spin, October 1996

"Indeed, de la Rocha will not rock without a mission: 'Thats why Im in this bandto give space and volume to various struggles throughout the country and the world. To me, the tension that exists in this band, and its effect on me, is a minimal sacrifice.' Without the politics, he contends, 'I would not be in this band. And thats the honest truth.' [...] On his first trip [to Mexico] in the spring of 1995, de la Rocha joined a team of observers from Mexico City monitoring talks between the Zapatista army and Mexican government officials. At one point, de la Rochas group formed a protective human chain around the building where the negotiations took place'to make sure,' he says, 'that if there was any attempt on the Zapatistas lives, we would be there.'"

"The Battle of Rage Against the Machine," Rolling Stone, November 1999

"The band's activism has many faces. In May, for instance, a conservatively dressed de la Rocha addressed the International Commission on Human Rights of the United Nations on the [Mumia] Abu-Jamal case as well as the racially disproportionate application of the death penalty in the United States. The band's album liner notes and website offer socialist and generally left-leaning reading lists, news updates and links with such organizations as Rock for Choice, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, Refuse and Resist, and the defense committees for [Leonard] Peltier and Abu-Jamal. And, Morello points out, those are real Los Angeles sweatshop workers in the band's new video for "Guerrilla Radio," already one of MTV's most requested."

"Rage Before Beauty," Washington Post, November 1999

"Rage have entered the political fray most prominently in the U.S. with their support of Abu-Jamal, the former NPR essayist and Black Panther sentenced to death in a much-disputed 1982 conviction [...] The Fraternal Order of Police, a right-wing group based in Nashville, called for NBC to cancel Rages appearance on Late Night With Conan OBrien and placed Rage on a hit list of celebrities it opposes (from Michael Stipe to Bishop Desmond Tutu). Says FOP National President Gilbert Gallegos: 'This is a mediocre band, at best, whose real talent is marketing an anti-everything image. We should not have to sit idly by and allow a murderer to be celebrated.'"

"Enemies of the State: Rage Against the Machine Strike Back," Spin, March 2000

"What we've done so far is nowhere near enough for what a band like Rage Against the Machine could be doing,'' [Morello] said. 'While Leonard Peltier is in jail, we have not done enough. While the system of wage slavery is in place, we have not done enough. I don't put any cap on what it is that we can or should be doing in the weeks and months and years to come.''

"A Rock Machine with Creaks," New York Times, December 2000

As entertaining as it is to dunk on one Twitter user for being casually oblivious, it's also worth noting what a privilege it is for all of those lyrics and that imagery to mean nothing to you. If you can disregard or critique the politics in Rage Against the Machine's music, then it means that these particular injustices haven't affected you in any meaningful way. It's a privilege to have a "safe haven" where you can squeeze your Airpods into your auditory canals and block out the ongoing calls for racial equality, the protests against police brutality, or the other literal cries for help from marginalized communities that have been amplified by bands like Rage.

Listening to nothing but the kind of bland pop that helps you ignore any problem bigger than, like, a clogged downspout or a dead bird in the back garden doesn't make these problems go away any more than covering your own eyes makes you invisible. And to anyone out there wringing their hands over the realities of Rage's politics, if song lyrics make you uncomfortable, that's a pretty good sign that you should turn that track up instead of skipping it.

Excerpt from:

Ignoring the Politics of Music Isn't Just a Blind SpotIt's a Privilege - VICE

A house submerged in Assam after the 2019 flood. Photo: PTI.

I felt as if I had fallen into an ocean, said Moharshi Chaudhary, a 52-year old farmer in Churu, Rajasthan, as he watched an army of locusts cover the sky, two hours before sunset one evening this May. He had been warned by neighbours, so he had rushed to his field with drums, plates and crackers.

As hundreds of thousands of insects descended on his cotton crop, the farmer lit crackers, but the grasshoppers didnt budge. In five minutes, the locusts ate my dreams and hard work, Chaudhary said, Can you imagine the impact that had on me?

This May, armies of locusts hormonally charged grasshoppers flying from Iran and Pakistan chomped on over 200,000 hectares of farmland with standing crops of cotton, pulses, vegetables and oranges. It is the second consecutive year of locust attacks.

Chaudharys locust tragedy has its roots in three cyclones that hit a remote and barren Arabian Peninsula desert in 2018. The moisture and new vegetation created fertile breeding and feeding grounds for them. Some swarms flew south, towards Yemen and the Horn of Africa, while the other groups flew north into Iran.

In early 2019, torrential rains in Iran, one of the heaviest downpours in decades, helped locusts multiply, leading to even bigger swarms flying eastwards to Pakistan and India. The unusual cyclones and frequent and intense rainfall, scientists say, owe themselves to climate change.

At the end of May in North and Central India, a scorching heat wave made stepping out in the sun to chase locusts nearly lethal. In Churu, for example, the temperature touched 50 C.

As extreme weather events, made more likely by climate change, pummel the planet with increasing force and frequency, they are reinforcing long-standing inequalities of caste, class and gender in poor and marginalised communities.

When temperatures hovered at around 45 C in Churu in May, Vikas Regar, a brick-kiln labourer, was still working. Regar is paid 20 rupees for every tractor he loads. He spends several hours stacking bricks in the tractor. Then he spends several hours baking bricks. Its like I am putting my hand in the oven, Regar told me about working with a kiln that can be fired up to 1,100 C.

At the end of a 14-hour day, the 26-year old, who is paid per unit of work, takes home about Rs 300 to his wife and infant. Although Indias wage code requires employers to set a fair piece-work rate pegged to the minimum wage, brick-kiln owners routinely exploit workers by setting low piece-work wages, forcing them to work faster and for longer hours, even in the heat.

One oppressively hot afternoon that week, Regars head ached, his eyes burned. I was resting and then I started to vomit, he said. When Regar started to feel giddy after throwing up several times, his wife took him to the doctor.

The doctor gave me an injection, four litres of water and some glucose, said the man with blisters on his palms and feet from working in the sun. Because of the blisters, I cant hold a cup of tea in my hand. But my boss doesnt care he hasnt even paid the doctors fees. On May 28, after a two-day break, Regar returned to the kiln.

Workers are not able to take breaks in many piece-work jobs, including in brick-kilns, Vidhya Venugopal, a professor at the department of environmental health engineering, Sri Ramachandra Institute of Higher Education and Research, Chennai, said, This is because employers set impossible daily targets for workers to complete.

A 2017 paper Venugopal co-authored, on climate-change-induced heat risks for labourers in brick kilns, recommended that any technical improvements to reduce pollution or mitigate heat stress must be accompanied by measures to end human rights abuse and slavery on site.

Addressing heat and climate change without considering human rights and ecological injustices ignores the obvious elephant in the room, the paper noted.

Some 1,600 km east of Rajasthans Churu, and two days after Chaudhary saw locusts destroy his crop, Cyclone Amphan triggered heavy rain, fast winds and storm surges in Bengal. South 24 Parganas, a district that extends across the Sundarbans delta in India, is one of the worst-hit. It is a devastation I have not seen in my life. Nearly 99% of South 24 Parganas district has been wiped out, said Mamata Banerjee, the chief minister of West Bengal.

For decades, rising seas and violent storms have swept mud homes, breached embankments and flushed saltwater into fields. One in five households in the Sundarbans has a family member who works elsewhere; 64% of migrants said economic or environmental factors have pushed them out. Close to nine in 10 households are either landless or own land less than an acre big.

Within the Sundarbans, there is a particular geography of inequality, Megnaa Mehtta, an environmental anthropologist who specialises in the Sundarbans, said in a recent interview. The people who are the poorest and often landless live on the rivers edge. These are people who live right next to embankments and are the first to be hit.

Sundarbans workers fleeing one climate catastrophe will likely face another this decade: rising heat. A little over 2% of total working hours, an equivalent of 80 million full-time jobs, will be lost to warmer weather by 2030, according to a 2019 International Labour Organisation report that examined the impact of heat stress on labour productivity. This report noted that high rates of vulnerable employment will put workers at greater risk of heat stress.

After adopting the UN Sendai Framework for disaster risk reduction, Indias released its national disaster management plan in 2016. It mentioned women, children, the elderly and the disabled as groups vulnerable to natural disasters. The policy identified Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes as groups-at-risk only in 2019, when the plan was revised.

Policy statements for vulnerable groups dont go far enough. We need funding and staff to develop and implement an operational framework for marginalised communities, said Lee Macqueen, senior programme manager at National Dalit Watch of the National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights, a civil society group that monitors the exclusion of Dalits and other marginalised communities in disaster situations.

For example, using Indias census data, the state and central governments can identify vulnerable groups by their caste, the quality of their homes, their livelihoods, their access to electricity, water, their migration status and disabilities, Macqueen said. The government can overlap this data with Indias hazard maps, and develop focused strategies to protect and build resilience of families in high-risk situations.

In the aftermath of Cyclone Fani in Odisha and the 2018 Kerala floods, National Dalit Watch interviewed over 3,900 affected individuals in both states. Marginalised communities in Kerala and Odisha, both reports found, were likely to be poorer when disaster struck; are more likely to be in harms way; are more likely to suffer damages; and are likelier to receive delayed relief.

As the planet heats and Himalayan glaciers supplying rivers begin to melt, some of the subcontinents perennial river systems that support over a billion people could dry up for months each year, spurring further conflict.

In Lucknows Manak Nagar slum, Pallavi Tharu and her family of seven live in a 150 square-foot mud hut. This May, the hand-pump in their settlement the one that Tharu and over a thousand plus residents depend on broke down. As temperatures breached 47 C, Tharu had to cycle a kilometer to a railway officers colony to use their water tank.

On one of her trips to the colony in late May, she was shoved by a policeman: He pushed me as I was filling water and kicked my bucket. Tharu said the officer told her that she did not have permission to fill her buckets in the colony. They said I was spreading the coronavirus and threatened to lock me up in jail, she said.

The Tharus, like many in the settlement, have voter and ration cards but dont have electricity. A group of economists and scientists this May, via an article in Nature Climate Change, urged governments to ensure continuity of basic services. They said providing electricity, water and other utilities will be critical to limit loss of life during heat waves, wildfires and hurricanes.

The locust outbreaks are expected to get worse this year, according to Indias Locust Warning Organisation. In Churu, Moharshi Chaudhary doesnt think he will be compensated for his losses. He is probably right. The Centres locusts relief package for Rajasthans farmers in 2019-2020 was restricted to only four of the 12 districts that reported losses.

In the four districts, compensation could be claimed for up to two hectares of land, lower than the average landholding size of 2.73 hectares. Payouts per hectare were capped at Rs 13,500 less than half of the farmers average cultivation costs.

With his cotton profits, Chaudhary was going to repair his house. His brother Omkarmal was going to have a kidney operation. I dont know what I will do now, he said.

Amit Mishra is a community journalist in Lucknow. Nikhil Eapen is a freelance journalist and a researcher at Equidem, a labour-rights organisation.

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How Inequality Is Aggravating the Impact of Climate Change for Millions in India - The Wire

Coronavirus deaths are passing their peak in many countries, with millions of people who have been locked down for months venturing out of their homes on non-essential trips for the first time.

While nations such as the US and the UK are coming out of lockdown having seen huge numbers of people die of this disease, life is already back to normal in New Zealand and Vietnam has not recorded a single death. And with the virus taking hold in North America and Western Europe but not affecting Africa to anything like the same extent, it is upending old notions about the respective abilities of First World countries and their former colonies.

So what can countries learn from one another as we all creep back towards normal and try to ward off a second wave? Since the pandemic began, The Conversation has published thousands of articles on the subject of COVID-19. Heres a selection from this vast new archive that highlights different approaches to controlling the pandemic around the world.

International borders began to slam shut around the world soon after the WHO declared that coronavirus was a pandemic on March 11. Doing so changed the trajectory of the virus in many countries, helping them avoid the worst effects.

Australia. Prime minister Scott Morrison announced the closure of Australias borders and the establishment of a mandatory 14-day quarantine period in hotels, not in homes for all incoming travellers regardless of nationality in late March. Stephen Duckett and Anika Stobart explain that this largely prevented the virus circulating in the community, making sure the majority of COVID-19 cases to date are linked to overseas travel.

Vietnam. Closing borders with China but also between cities within the country has been a vital part of Vietnams world-beating coronavirus strategy. Robyn Klingler-Vidra and Ba-Linh Tran say that by instituting a self-funded 14-day quarantine in government-assigned facilities for anyone entering certain cities, like Danang, and fencing off villages, the country has managed to keep deaths to zero.

Countries with the most successful coronavirus strategies are those that have had a strong test, track and trace system in place from early on. Those that didnt have paid the price.

UK. A test and trace system launched in the UK on May 28, much later than other countries. Pandemic modeller Jasmina Panovska-Griffiths says the failure to fully test and trace positive cases from the beginning of the epidemic is one of the reasons why the UKs death toll is so high, and public health expert Andrew Lee explains how the country might be able to turn things around.

South Carolina. The US is the worst affected country in the world, and there have been criticisms of many states for reopening too soon after lockdown. But Anthony Fauci, the countrys top infectious diseases expert and member of the governments coronavirus task force, has singled out the state South Carolina as a success story when it comes to fighting the virus. Jenny Meredith explains how the states contract tracing strategy paid off.

The need to bring down infection rates is often at odds with the desire for privacy during this pandemic. Contact tracing apps have raised concerns in the UK, Canada and Australia. But some countries are using surveillance to get ahead of the pandemic.

China. Much has been made of Chinas state-sponsored lockdown and mass testing efforts. But the country has a relatively small state bureaucracy, writes Qi Chen, and has relied on private surveillance, including networks of security guards, to enforce its measures.

South Korea. After being hit hard early by coronavirus, South Korea reversed its fortunes and managed to swiftly get the virus under control. Part of its success was down to a large-scale contact tracing scheme, writes Jung Won Sonn, but it also relied heavily on widespread and publicly accepted surveillance.

Coronavirus may be the most significant pandemic the world has seen this century, but there are still lessons to be learned from the Ebola, Sars and Mers outbreaks of recent years.

Mers. While many countries have struggled to get adequate personal protective equipment (PPE) to healthcare staff, South Korea was already prepared to prevent these workers getting infected. Thats because the country was hit hard by Mers in 2015, writes Michael Ahn, and learned that health workers needed to be prevented from contracting and spreading the disease.

Ebola. Sierra Leone suffered badly during the 2013-2016 West African Ebola outbreak. But it also learned valuable lessons in targeted quarantines, social distancing and made significant investments in health education and prevention, writes Jia B. Kangbai, and all of this is helping with its COVID-19 response.

The coronavirus crisis had laid bare some stark differences in political leadership around the world. While Jacinda Ardern and Angela Merkel have been praised for their quick action in responding to COVID-19, the worlds strong man leaders have frequently been criticised for coming up short.

Jacinda Ardern. As a relatively isolated group of islands, New Zealand had some natural advantages when it came to limiting the spread of COVID-19. But the countrys other secret weapon has been prime minister Jacinda Ardern and her authentic, empathetic approach to leadership, writes Suze Wilson, who researches executive development. She explains how Ardern has acted as an effective public motivator during the crisis, and how the UKs Boris Johnson has fallen short by comparison.

Jair Bolsonaro. In Brazil, president Jair Bolsonaro has clashed with health experts, spread misinformation and refused to practice social distancing, all while the countrys death toll shot up to become the third-highest in the world. A trio of Brazil experts calls his approach a strategy of chaos.

Joseph Magafuli. Tanzanias president Joseph Magafuli has used the coronavirus pandemic to wage a personal war against the countrys national laboratory halting regular updates on cases, recommending home remedies and questioning the validity of testing. Its all part of his unilateral playbook, writes Aikande Clement Kwayu: He will decide whether cases of COVID-19 in Tanzania have declined or increased, no matter what the science says.

Its clear that coronavirus does not affect everyone equally in the US, UK and Brazil, black people have been shown to be at far greater risk of the disease than white people. In Canada, Indigenous populations are particularly vulnerable. Understanding these inequalities is one of the biggest challenges in any government response.

Migrant workers. Heralded as an early success story for its comprehensive coronavirus response, Singapore saw its cases rise again among populations of migrant workers, many of whom live in overcrowded dormitories. Sallie Yea says its all part of Singapores history of institutionalised neglect of these communities.

Domestic workers. Given the higher rates of serious COVID-19 among black people in Brazil, its perhaps no surprise that the countrys domestic workers have been badly affected by the virus. With a history dating back to slavery, the domestic workforce in Brazil is predominately made up of black women, says Mauricio Sellmann Oliveira. As the disease rages out of control in the country, this population is now disproportionately at risk of both contracting and passing on the virus, and will also be hit hard by the economic fallout.

Girls. The closure of schools in Kenya has meant that many girls who relied on the governments Sanitary Towels Programme to manage their periods no longer have access to menstrual hygiene products. This is only compounded by a lack of running water in poor areas and the loss of incomes among poor households, writes Caroline Kabiru.

Want to know more about whats happening in relation to coronavirus? Check out Coronavirus Weekly, The Conversations regular round-up of expert information about coronavirus from around the world.

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Coronavirus around the world: Conversation authors on lessons from different countries - The Conversation UK

A protester gestures in front of the burning Third Precinct building of the Minneapolis Police Department on May 28, 2020. (Julio Cortez / AP Photo)

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Calls to abolish the police are spreading. Dozens of cities are considering cutting police budgets, and police are resigning across the country. In Minneapolis, where the police murdered George Floyd and the insurrection first broke out, the city council is moving to disband the police department. While this would only be a first step toward full abolitionwhich would require ending all forms of policing, evictions, imprisonment, courts, and racial capitalismthree weeks ago, that a major city would even consider this was unthinkable.Ad Policy

For many whove been fighting for police abolition for years, the sudden uptake of these ideas has been disorienting. Gratifying, certainly, but also surprising and overwhelming. Many respond with frustration, as the meaning of abolition is watered down, reduced to defunding or even less drastic reforms. Black people in America have lived through a partial abolition before: The enslaved overthrew the regime of slavery in what W.E.B. Du Bois called the General Strike of the Slaves, only for it to be reinstituted in all but name in convict leasing, sharecropping, Jim Crow, vigilante white terrorism, chain gangs, and prisons. Abolition not accompanied by a social revolution will just be another in the long history of white supremacist reforms that allow this settler state to continue as it always has.

But even with these caveats, the question remains: How did this demand jump from a small, mostly black contingent of revolutionary thinkers to the mainstream in the span of a few weeks? The most obvious answer is two weeks of rioting, looting, and protesting. That is correct, of course, but its not enough. Rioting and looting against the police took place in Ferguson, Mo., and eventually across the country, following the murders of Michael Brown and Eric Garner in 2014; Baltimore rose up against the killing of Freddie Gray in 2015; and Charlotte, N.C., saw looted and overturned semitrucks turned into burning highway barricades for Keith Lamont Scott in 2016. And yet the call that emerged out of that movement was for officers to wear body cameras.

The difference, this time, is not simply in the national character of the riots, nor some other quantitative change in their ferocity or visibility. It was, I believe, the destruction of the Minneapolis Third Precinct house on the night of May 28, three days into the riots. Having just completed a book on the history of anti-police rioting and uprisings in America, I cannot recall another time when protesters took over and burnt down a police station. It was an unprecedented and beautiful moment in the annals of rebellion in this country. By seizing the cops home base, rioters showed millions of people that they could defeat the police. For many, it finally broke through the veil of omnipotence, timelessness, and domination that kept abolition from seeming possible. Police were returned to the realm of history.

The police are rarely imagined to have a history at all. As Kristian Williams, a historian of the police, writes in Our Enemies in Blue, people seem to imagine that the cop has always been there, in something like his present capacity, subject only to the periodic change of uniform or the occasional technological advance. But what the rioters of Minneapolis demonstrated by torching the police base in their community is that cops are just people operating out of ordinary buildings. Particularly powerful and cruel people, yes, but theyre individuals no more free from the forces of history than the rest of us.

The dehistoricization of the police is a long and constant project of the US state and media apparatus. There are thousands, perhaps millions of hours of TV and movies full of mythologizing stories about the police. There are heroic police, conflicted police, troubled cops with a heart of gold, good cops taking on corrupt cops, slapstick cops, and genius cops. The detective is the only profession in America that has its own wildly popular genre of novels. And news media gives a constant and free platform to police (often in exchange for special access).

And yet, none of this vast media project concerns the early history of the police. Almost none of us learn in school about the emergence of the police in the 19th century and their role in the oppression and control of black communities. We dont learn about how they took techniques and inspiration from colonial forces in Caribbean slave colonies. We definitely dont hear that the first modern police force in the world, the Charleston South Carolina City Guard, was formed to terrorize and control the citys slave quarters.Current Issue

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Antebellum Southern urban economies were built around the practice of enslavers hiring out laborers to other employers in town. These enslaved workers earned a wage from their bosses, most of which they would then turn over to their enslaver. These laborers most often lived together, usually at a remove from both their employer and their enslaver, and their lives outside work unfolded mostly in black neighborhoods known as slave quarters. These communities were spaces of relative autonomy for the enslaved, and as such were a cause of anxiety to white residents, who feared the possibility of black peoples organization and rebellion. These neighborhoods were frequently outside of white control. They were places where the enslaved and free alike could organize and trade; where recent fugitives could hide out and Underground Railroad stations could form; where African, Creole, and subversive Christian religious practices could flourish; and where white people werent respected, deferred to, or welcomed.

Such communities threatened the slave order. So Southern cities developed city guards, militarized forces of young white men whose large numbers and modern weaponry allowed them to patrol and control those quarters. The earliest of these, in Charleston, S.C., is historys first modern police force, formed in 1783, though most other early police forces, like the NYPD, wouldnt even emerge until the 1840s.

Nor do we learn that one of the main tasks of the earliest Northern police force, alongside repressing strikes and other labor unrest, was to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act. Cops kidnapped and returned black people who escaped captivity and put down anti-slave-catcher riots and protests. Another way standard history obscures the possibility of abolition is by erasing the role of the militant and often riotous urban vigilance committees of black freedmen in the Underground Railroad. We dont learn that prisonsplaces where people are held for years as punishment in and of itself, as opposed to jails or dungeons where people were held preceding trial or executiononly emerged in the 1820s. And we dont learn that because if we did, we might begin to imagine a world without them.Related Article

Wherever they appeared in the United States, police were the first urban bureaucracies. Law enforcement provided most urban governmental services in the 19th century. Only slowly, as their utility to city governments became clear and their burden grew larger and larger, did cities begin creating new departments to handle urban tasks like sanitation and transportation. In other words, the model of bureaucratic urbanism that dominates and organizes our cities is made in the image of these anti-black police departments, in the image of slave catchers, white terrorists, and colonial officers. It is this history that abolition seeks to break with, and why it would mean uprooting the entire anti-black system.

So how did one moment of direct action in Minneapolis serve to counter years of disinformation, miseducation, and media violence? Black Panther Party cofounder Huey P. Newton, in a speech called The Correct Handling of a Revolution, analyzed how rioting like what took place in Watts in 1965 was politically powerful because it could not be reinterpreted by the press. In Watts, Newton said, the economy and property of the oppressor was destroyed to such an extent that no matter how the oppressor tried in his press to whitewash the activities of the Black brothers, the real nature and cause of the activity was communicated to every Black community. This kind of communication is what we saw in Minneapolis at the end of May. Martin Luther King Jr. famously said that riots are the language of the unheard, but rioters do not address themselves to the state, the bosses, or the politicians. Instead they speak to each other, over the heads of the media and the white establishment, with words of fire and punctuation of broken glass.

As I write this, the riots have receded, but the movement is not slowing down. The media, having demonized the rioters, has tried to go back to ignoring peaceful protest. But the capture of another police precinct, this one the East Precinct in Seattle, has led to the creation of the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ), six blocks of rioter territory defended by barricades. The CHAZ is such an impressive provocation that it caused Donald Trump to have one of his Twitter meltdowns, but it has also been intensely weakened by nonviolence advocates, local politicians, and peace police, who refused to let the building be attacked. Instead, it sat empty and unharmed inside the CHAZ, allowing for the police to reenter it on June 11.

It is truly incredible that two precinct houses have fallen in the space of two weeks, and that fact has already dramatically shifted the calculus of what is possible. But while the burning of the Third Precinct building in Minneapolis led to countrywide riots and the emergence of police abolition as a mainstream argument, the hesitation in the CHAZ may mean the movement in Seattle has much less significant long-term impact in the abolitionist imagination. Nevertheless, events continue to unfold, and the example of creating a cop-free resistance zone is leading organizers and rioters around the country to think more boldly and openly about new tactics. It is a real-time lesson in the wisdom of action, the power of crowds, and the diversity of tactics, strategies, and possibilities that we have when we fight together.

Most importantly, however, the seizing of two police precincts is a blow against whiteness, against the police, against capitalism and the anti-black world it upholds. May the blows continue to fall, until we stand side by side in a post-abolition world.

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Burning Down the 3rd Police Precinct Changed Everything - The Nation

Published Jun 16, 2020 at 8:00 am(Updated Jun 16, 2020 at 7:59 am)

Strength in numbers: young and old take part in a Caribbean-led Black Lives Matter rally at Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn yesterday. Protests have grown since the May 25 murder of George Floyd by a policeman (Photograph by Kathy Willens/AP)

First, I cannot make an apology for my opinion. Its my qualified assessment, while realising there are levels along a full spectrum of racial attitudes some more humanly evolved than others.

I therefore speak to the lowest level of that spectrum, which has been the most negative and most impactful. Looking at Bermudas racial dimensions, we know what we witnessed in the United States with George Floyd could never occur in Bermuda.

Going all the way back to the Belco riots in the 1960s, it became crystal clear that Bermudians had no fear of combating the police. If four white police accosted a black man in Bermuda, the concern would immediately shift to whether or not those police could survive an immediate and overwhelming retaliation.

OK, so does that mean we are spared the degradation and humiliation that is so rabidly displayed in America? Are we asymptomatic to the ravages of racism? So, are there no racist whites in Bermuda like those that exist in the US? Or could it be that in Bermuda, racist attitudes existed, but the actions was sublimated to manifest in a different form and be equally as effective?

The cunningness and subtle disguise, which saw that same knee pressed so firmly and comfortably upon our necks, was done so perniciously in Bermuda and just as openly. But it looked like it wasnt happening and, if so, it was interpreted as the victims fault.

Indeed, in some cases, we did contribute when too often, rather than militate against what were offences or properly termed lynchings, we offered an applause, laughed and clapped as they lynched our men. And while they were burning at the stake, we stood in lines passing gasoline to the saboteurs.

The lynchings to which I refer took place in banks and law firms where they did not have to use the name n****r; you just happened to be black and potentially progressive and your name would roll around the banks like mud.

They played games propping us up and tearing us down visibly as examples to prove our unworthiness. Unless, of course, we had some relevance to maintaining their order, you could shine for a while, but then just as long as you did their bidding.

It was legal to take plans to the planning department, then for them to be withheld and suddenly reappear with someone else. The same was true at the banks, where you could present a good proposal to be denied, but soon thereafter it would appear as someone elses. It was all legal.

How many individuals and groups do we know of that were a bit undercapitalised, who got an injections only to become then controlled and even owned by that injection? Or those who sought advice, to be eventually taken over by their advisers?

It was not just legal but fashionable to have usury in the form of capital as the core means to deprive the undercapitalised.

It did not help that during the 1960s and a little beyond, an ideology developed amid the unrest within the black population that labelled its own businessmen as gradualist and a host of other unworthy titles germane to left-wing thinking, which wasnt our struggle.

The Cold War was between the Soviet Union and the US and the West. We carried a Soviet-modelled ideology, ostracising and insulting our own in a battle between two forces, neither of which was our benefactor. Russia did not have open arms to black people, certainly no more than the US, yet we were prepared to destroy the integrity of our ancestors who built businesses and a culture of entrepreneurship for an alien cause.

Look at what happened to Somalia and Ethiopia. We were all puppets in another mans war. That which was built by our hands over 150 years since slavery, we watched and cheered its destruction in a couple of decades worse, we labelled some of them who led the destruction as revolutionaries and heroes.

Simultaneous to that, the white community developed a continuous sense of entitlement, with the obliteration of the black merchants, and without rivals, the economy and all things economic became their business alone.

The trade-off? Just pay us a decent wage, give us some good benefits and we will remain your loyal but demanding labour force.

The racism we have has been a not-so-silent killer that has destroyed generations and, undetected, was easily deniable. When there is a threat of a market shift that challenges the status quo, that is when the veil comes down. Every ploy, whether environmental or outright lies, rational or irrational, becomes the arsenal used to discredit the risk, if not eliminate it altogether.

This is where C.V. Jim Woolridges statement becomes prophetic: White folks dont mind you being in charge as long as you do as they say.

Again, not too different from that of Sir John Swan, whose statement after he introduced an independence referendum Bill and later was made to give up what was otherwise a useful 13-year premiership: They dont invite me for tea and cookies any more.

These are unfortunate comments by two highly public men who gave the better part of their life to the cause of inclusivity, and whose works were tossed aside when they did not serve their real cause.

Of course, all of this will be firmly denied and many will say it is an unfair generalisation. However, the sense of entitlement is so deep that it is normalised and just the expected way. When you dont follow the current, regardless of the reason, it is seen as wrong or improper.

Even I have tried to avoid that saga, but have never in any of my affairs to date been able to disprove. I am also willing to accept that my experience is not the sum totality of all encounters, but I do say that because of being open and always seeking inclusivity, my experience has been vast.

This racial synopsis is not a new phenomenon because as far back as Sir Stanley Gascoignes term as governor, you will find clear evidence of the British trying to encourage a reluctant oligarchy to step into the new world, which was becoming increasingly open to real integration and plurality.

Bermuda was stuck and lagging behind the world in embracing diversity. The United Bermuda Party was a failed, theoretical attempt to evolve racial unity. However, As late as 2000, there was still a deep resistance among white politicians to recognise the structural racism and polarisation of the marketplace; hence their ouster to political obscurity was an inevitable consequence of that narcissism.

If my argument was not true, Bermuda would look different today. But like Tulsa of 1921 when the most affluent black community, known as the Black Wall Street in the US, was completely destroyed, Bermuda enjoyed a similar status as a progressive, post-slavery economic example in the Fifties and early Sixties before being similarly and ruthlessly destroyed within a decade.

This is a tactical fact of history, the cause of which has been never explored.

Some believe that Bermudas racism is so entrenched that it is endemic almost like DNA with persons hardly aware of their own racism which has become a culture. Thus, the only cure for that kind of racism in Bermuda is time. Not time alone, but the emergence of newer and younger generations as the older generations pass on, taking their cultural attitudes with them.

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Racism dies only with passing of generations - Royal Gazette

Good morning, early birds. Calls for Victorian cabinet minister Adem Somyurek to step down and potentially face criminal investigation over branch stacking allegations, and in the US Atlanta's police chief has resigned following another police shooting. It's the news you need to know, with Chris Woods.

Pressure is mounting for Victorian cabinet minister Adem Somyurek to step down and potentially face criminal investigation over allegations of industrial-scale branch stacking, after a joint Age-60 Minutes investigation released recordings of the Labor powerbroker handing Nick McLennan a political adviser to another minister Marlene Kairouz over $2000 and multiple fake membership forms.

While The Age reports that Somyurek has denied allegations of branch stacking, Victorian Liberals and Greens figures have called for him to be stood down and Labors Kevin Rudd and Doug Cameron have called for internal investigations. The paper has also called for Somyurek to be expelled from the party, while Premier Dan Andrews is expected to address the matter today.

BUT LNPSPILL JUST SOUNDS WRONG: After damaging internal polling was leaked to News Corp papers, The Australian ($) reports that Queensland LNP leaderDeb Frecklington has slammed backroom bully boys thought to include party president Dave Hutchinson, former premier Campbell Newman and former LNP president Bruce McIver allegedly agitating for a coup.

As US Black Lives Matter rallies enter their third week, CNN reports that Atlantas police chief has resigned and a Wendys has burnt to the ground after a white police officer shot and killed a 27-year-old black man, Rayshard Brooks, following an altercation on Friday.

In other updates from the now-global movement, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo pleaded with protesters to stop after announcing a new reform package, and far-right protesters have clashed with both police and BLM demonstrations in London in part, the BBC reports, to protect a boarded-up statue of Winston Churchill.

Back home, Australia saw a police officer appear to flash a white power OK signal at a Sydney rally; statues of Captain Cook, John Howard and Tony Abbott were either fenced up or, embarrassingly, guarded by police on horseback and volunteer statue protectors; and The Daily TelegraphsPeter Gleeson deployed some 60s-era racism against aboriginals and negroes (sic).

PS: In a strong flashback to the 2018 Victorian election, The Age has also named a NSW Greens staffer who helped deface Hyde Parks Captain Cook statue.

According to the ABC and The Australian ($), Scott Morrison will today announce 15 national priority projects to be fast-tracked under streamlined state and federal planning and assessment laws (red tape). The projects are set to include metro rail, dams and mines, and will likely ahead of a new report into the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act act as prelude for more cuts to environmental regulation (green tape).

Morrison will announce the plan along with $1.5 billion in infrastructure funding at a CEDA virtual State of the Nation event, while Anthony Albanese will also make the case for a post-COVID recovery centred on renewable energy, Indigenous constitutional reform, and, according to The Guardian, a new national skills body and progressive taxation system.

OTHER FEDERAL TIDBITS: Elsewhere, the Oz ($) reports that delayed rollouts mean those submarines will require $3.5 billion refits, The New Daily has received only incomplete evidence from Australia Post over their vaunted decline in letter volume, and The Guardian reports that Stuart Robert, Dan Tehan and Simon Birminghamcharged taxpayers more than $4500 for an overnight trip for a Nine-hosted Liberal party fundraiser.

We are going to have so much fucking fun with these people. Im going to take Cranbourne branch off them. Were gonna bring all our Young Labor people that weve just got real little fucking slimy little fuckers, right little passive aggressive fucking gay kids

Adem Somyurek

Even without all the alleged branch stacking, those recordings from the Victorian Local Government and Small Business Minister are a great reminder that homophobia and misogyny know no political affiliation.

Its becoming very hard to understand the tangled logic of the Morrison government, its media cheerleaders, and business, over remaining lockdown restrictions.

On the one hand, recalcitrant states mainly Labor states should end border closures and start opening up their tourism sectors. We need to get planes flying around Australia, Scott Morrison says. If you want to see planes flying around Australia, we need to open up these domestic borders.

For the last three months, Australians have been lab rats. Since the coronavirus hit our shores, weve become unwitting participants in a perverse social and scientific experiment that would probably never get ethics approval.

By closely monitoring these population-wide experiments, weve learned an awful lot. We know that social distancing, avoiding gatherings, spending months in dismal hibernation is probably the most effective way to keep the virus under control.

Australias history of slavery is as Prime Minister Scott Morrison made apparent yesterday poorly understood and often denied. (The PM has today apologisedand sought to clarify his statement.)

But the fact is, either through slavery, servitude, exploitation or stolen wages, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders and men kidnapped from Melanesia played a massive role in developing Australia into the wealthy country it is today.

Australian sentenced to death in China for drug trafficking honest to a fault, friends say

All lies: how the US military covered up gunning down two journalists in Iraq

LAND 159/4108 deal: $2b defence contract war looms ($)

Australias first wage theft laws set to pass in Victoria

Attorney-General John Quigley targets misuse of charitable trusts ($)

NSW opens door to thousands of defect claims ($)

COVID-19 fines in NSW alone totalled more than $1 million

Queensland investigating travel bubble with NSW

Journalists at the Age express alarm over increasing politicisation and loss of independence

Majority of Australians say extending jobkeeper and jobseeker would help coronavirus recovery

Nations doctor is moving on ($)

Targeting police will do little to stop Aboriginal deaths in custody Don Weatherburn (The Sydney Morning Herald): Police treatment of Aboriginal people and Aboriginal over-representation in prison are two distinct issues requiring different responses. The former requires change in the behaviour of police. The latter requires an Aboriginal-led government-supported effort to improve Indigenous outcomes in child welfare, health, education and employment.

Why is Bernard Collaerys trial a secret? ($) Steve Bracks (The Australian): I suspect a primary motivation for the excessive secrecy surrounding Collaerys prosecution is to protect former prime minister John Howard and Alexander Downer, who could both be called to give evidence about why the spying was authorised. I can understand why they would be uncomfortable seeking to justify the bugging in open court.

Australias media industry had a chance to fix its race problem. It blew it. Osman Faruqi (Medium): The biggest issue when it comes to racism in Australia, and this applies across society as well as to the media, is denial that it actually exists. Very, very few senior managers, editors and journalists understand how structural racism operates on a societal level, across the media as a class, and in the organisations they run and work in.

Canberra

Both Scott Morrison and Anthony Albanese will speak on day one of CEDAs two-day virtual State of the Nation forum, to be followed by a series of panel events with government, industry and unions representatives.

Melbourne

As part of Refugee Week 2020, South Australia-based Eritrean storyteller Manal Younus will host virtual Wheeler Centre event Words Without Borders: An Evening of Poetry and Spoken Word. The event will feature storytellers from Australias refugee communities including Lujayn Hourani, Hani Abdile, Flora Chol, Awale Ahmed and Marziya Mohammadi.

Sydney

Norfolk Island

Like almost every news media out there, we thought wed struggle to get through these past few months.

So we played our natural game digging, reporting and holding the powerful to account.

What happened next was truly remarkable. Crikey readers signed up in droves and records were broken day after day, despite the strain the events of 2020 have put on our wallets.

We think its because people come to Crikey to understand the news.

While others focus on the day-to-day news cycle, we widen our lens to find out and understand whats really going on.

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

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

For a short time only, save up to 50% on a year of Crikey, or, chip in a little extra and get Inside Access to Crikey HQ like never before.

Peter FrayEditor-In-Chief of Crikey

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Crikey Worm: Has he totally stacked it? - Crikey

Jun 11th 2020

The Economics of Belonging. By Martin Sandbu. Princeton University Press; 296 pages; $24.95 and 20.

Economic Dignity. By Gene Sperling.Penguin; 384 pages; $28 and 23.99.

BEFORE COVID-19 struck, the rich worlds economies were in a paradoxical state. In many countries jobs were as plentiful as they had ever been. On many measures inequality had not risen much over the preceding decade, or had risen more slowly than in past economic expansions. And yet political systems were gripped by a populist backlash which, at least in part, reflected an indignant reaction against perceived economic injustice. The liberals who had constructed the old order were suffering a crisis of confidence.

The establishments ideas factories were whirring. How, exactly, should populists be disarmedand which of their complaints had merit? The results are now being rebranded as ways to rebuild economies after the pandemic. Two new books fall into this category. In The Economics of Belonging Martin Sandbu, a columnist at the Financial Times, excoriates policymakers for unforced errors over recent decades and sets out an agenda for correcting course. In Economic Dignity Gene Sperling, a former top economic adviser to Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, argues for a new value system to underpin American economic policy.

Mr Sandbus book is in some respects the more optimistic of the two. He rejects the fatalistic argument that populism is a straightforward revolt against immigration and progressive cultural attitudes. Economic insecurity always triggers angst about culture and suspicion of outsiders, he points out. Fixing the economy, in other words, will heal cultural divides. The key is to get the economic diagnosis right. Trade, immigration and globalisation more broadly are easy scapegoats for lost manufacturing jobs and growing geographical inequality. But it is technological change that has really caused the rise of a service- and knowledge-based economy. The solution, thinks Mr Sandbu, is for governments to forge social contracts fit for technologically advancing economies, not to try to turn back the clock.

Yet his policy proposals do not reflect the compensate the losers redistribution for which economists frequently reach. Instead, he favours increasing workers productivity and bargaining power so that they are never too dependent on a single employer. To that end, monetary policy must put greater emphasis on keeping labour markets running hot, so that firms compete for workers rather than workers for jobs. Tax-free earnings allowances should be replaced with a small universal basic income, to reinforce safety-nets without laying poverty traps. And governments should direct investments in the knowledge economy, such as publicly funded research, towards places that have been left behind.

Mr Sandbu claims this agenda is not left-wing, and does not require an increase in government spending as a share of GDP. But it does require a recognition that individuals must not completely lose control over their economic fate to market forces. Otherwise, as they endeavour to wrench it back, they may be swayed by extremists.

Mr Sperlings book isperhaps unsurprisinglymore partisan. For him, policy failures have been the fault of small-government fundamentalists, chiefly in the Republican Party, who have failed to appreciate that there is more to life than GDP and the free market. He argues for what political philosophers might call a sufficientarian approach to economic policymaking, whereby everyone is entitled to a basic minimum. This is not calibrated in dollars, as advocates of a universal basic income might recommend. Instead it is measured in economic dignity, which includes sufficiently high pay, time to spend with family members (or take care of them), and the peace of mind that comes from adequate health care and a strong safety-net.

The notion that some spheres of life should be beyond the reach of the economy or the state is a powerful one with a rich heritage. It motivates the concept of rights, which are usually considered immune both to utilitarian calculuswhat Mr Sperling calls aloof welfare economicsand even to some individual choices. Most people agree, for example, that no one should be able to sell themselves into slavery, or bargain away their right to a free trial. But Mr Sperling mostly dodges the hardest parts of establishing such a philosophy: defining its boundaries and proving that it is feasible to organise society in a way that protects the dignity of everyone simultaneously. Save for one inconclusive chapter on whether it is in fact possible for all work to have true meaning, Mr Sperling tends to intuit the answer to these questions, while pouring scorn on those who cast doubt.

As a result it can seem as if he has taken a Democratic wish-list of ideas and bolted on the dignity justification. Some of these ideas are sensible. He might have used any number of values, including fairness, justice and efficiency, to argue for reform of American health care, or to object to the exploitative practices of for-profit colleges. Others, such as a disdain for stock buy-backs and a desire for more barriers to entry for careworkers, are less appealingand not helped much by invoking dignity.

Mr Sandbu is more interested in justifying his proposals from several angles. Like Mr Sperling, he wants a higher minimum wage. But not just on distributive groundshe says it would spur firms to invest in training their workers (the sort of argument that sounds plausible but needs proof to be convincing). Sometimes his economic logic ties him in knots, as with his discussion of wealth taxes. Mr Sandbu supports them on grounds of efficiency as well as fairness, arguing that they will encourage the rich to take entrepreneurial risks. But he hurries over the fact that the paper he cites in support of this view imagines a world in which wealth taxes replace all other taxes on capitalincluding the corporate taxes which a few pages later he wants to raise, too.

On a fundamental level, these books are similar in attitude. Messrs Sandbu and Sperling both combine a basic support for free markets with a fear of their power. It is precisely because incentives are so potent that competitive forces must not be allowed to go haywire, as when firms gain an edge by reclassifying their workers as contractors, or by moving to tax havens. Such races-to-the-bottom define many of the policy failures of recent history.

And both books highlight the moral blind spots that many liberals and economists think have been exposed by the era of globalisation (and perhaps by the pandemic, too). Clarifying those problems, and finding solutions that avoid compromising too much on freedom and free markets, is crucial work.

This article appeared in the Books & arts section of the print edition under the headline "Free but fair"

Read more:

Two authors wrestle with inequality and the allure of populism - The Economist

Camilla Bradford (Courtesy Photo)

As an In-Home Supportive Services (IHSS) provider who cares for seniors and people with disabilities, I am a caregiver on the frontlines of this pandemic. As a Black woman, I am also at a higher risk of dying should I become infected with COVID-19.

This dangerous intersection of race and occupational hazard is not unique to me. The essential workforce contains a disproportionate percentage of black people. Once again, we are the glue keeping this country together while little is being done to protect our health and safety. Along with our heroic black doctors, nurses and researchers helping to fight this pandemic, many black people are out there delivering food, stocking shelves, and maintaining our utilities; all the while knowing their risk of death from the virus is exponentially higher than the general public. And, like me, many are caring for others while being left out of considerations for personal protective equipment (PPE) and supplies at almost every level of government.

I became a caregiver in 2008, when I left my corporate job to care for my sick mother. When my mother passed away and my brothers condition worsened, I joined the IHSS program as his full-time caregiver. Now, I provide around-the-clock care for my brother who was diagnosed with a mental disability at a young age. I am also on call for various IHSS clients who do not have enough food, medicine and other necessities and who do not have a live-in caregiver to provide these essential items. The care I provide keeps my community healthy and safe.

Over half a million low income seniors and people with disabilities receive care through the IHSS program. Made up of a workforce that is majority women of color, we grocery shop, cook, clean, drive our clients to appointments, and even perform paramedical services. Now more than ever, our clients depend on us to make it through the week.

I am alarmed at how quickly health inequities, fueled by years of racism, classism and the legacy of slavery, have emerged. We are seeing data from around the country that shows that people in black and brown communities are dying from COVID 19 at disproportionately high rates, likely due to higher incidence of underlying health conditions as well as lack of access to testing and treatment.

Historically, domestic workers have been marginalized and excluded from worker protections specifically because it was work usually done by women of color. Its a power dynamic that traces back to slave times when Black women were forced to work for slave ownersnot only as cooks and housekeepers, but as caregivers for their family members.

Women of color continued to make up the largest share of the domestic workforce for centuries. This holds true even today. Those caring for these IHSS clients, like me, are mostly women (79%) and people of color (63%). We assumed roles as caregivers and wetnurses, and effectively became the backbone of the feminism movementtaking care of middle class womens households while they struggled to join the workforce and break the glass ceiling. For all the support domestic workers provided to equality movements, we were rewarded with exclusionary labor laws that banned us from organizing and shut us out of health and unemployment benefits.

Some things have changed, but many of these exclusionary practices still affect the lives of thousands of California domestic workers today. We still do not have all of the state and federal labor protections afforded to other workers, and now we have been thrust to the frontline of this pandemic with little to no protection or support from the counties that run the IHSS program.

At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, IHSS caregivers like me were not given any PPE in most counties. That means we did not have access to any N95 masks, gloves, or sanitation supplies, even though we work in the most intimate situations with the most vulnerable populations. It wasnt until caregivers in unions intervened directly with each county and at the state level that we were able to get access to a limited supply, but its simply not enough. Considering the critical services we provide, its shameful that we had to remind these local governments that we, too, need protection.

The reality for many caregivers is that we are underpaid, overworked and disregarded. That needs to change now.

We need to be paid a wage we can live on, and, as many of us are paid minimum wage or have a contract based on the minimum wage, we need to ensure the minimum wage increase to $14, scheduled for January 1, 2021, is not delayed or postponed. It is essential that those most disproportionately impacted by this pandemic can pay our bills and feed our families.

We are an integral part of the healthcare system and we keep over half a million vulnerable clients from unnecessary hospitalization and costly institutionalization. Now we are truly risking our lives to do it. Our position in the labor market is a legacy of the worst crime in American history. We deserve, at the very least, recognition of what we contribute.

Camilla Bradford is an IHSS home caregiver in the Inland Empire working on the frontlines of this pandemic with virtually no protective equipment. She is a member of United Domestic Workers (AFSCME Local 3930).

Read more:

Domestic workers have always been on the frontlines, COVID-19 just made it clear - Lasentinel