Daily Archives: November 17, 2020

VIEW FROM HERE--People tend to believe what they want to believe and few people want to believe facts which upset them.

Also, the first information in organizes subsequent information even when the original data is totally wrong and the latter data is absolutely correct. That is how the human mind has evolved.

A very unfortunate corollary is the huge divide which can occur in a population when two significant segments passionately believe mutually exclusive Alt Facts. As the Trump made famous, Alt facts are considered valid if they support Trumps viewpoint, and it is equally true that the Dems accept Alt Facts which support their viewpoint.

There is a characteristic pattern how Trump embraces his Alt Facts. Trump boldly, loudly and incessantly proclaims falsity to be true. He began with the size of the inaugural crowd going so far as to present a doctored photo of the crowd on national TV. The Dems Alt Facts take a stealth approach of omission. The Dems simply ignore the horrible electoral defeat the nation just gave Nancy Pelosi in the House. Dems similarly ignore that there is no such group as Latinos even if you call them Hispanics or Latinx.

Alt Facts Combined with a Mission Are Deadly

When Alt Facts are combined with a sense of mission, people become zealots. We see this situation with cults. David Koreshs followers died because they believed the Alt Fact that he was a messiah. Heavens Gate followers committed suicide to hitch a ride on spaceship hidden behind the Hale-Bobb comet. The Rev Jim Jones followers not only murdered US House of Representative Leo Ryn and four others, while over 900 of his followers committed suicide. Hence the saying, Dont drink the Kool Aid. to warn people not to buy into the Alt Facts of charlatans.

The sense of being on a mission floods the brains neurology so that both mass murder and suicide become not only acceptable but are elevated to holy goals. Germanys Nazism showed how decent people infused with Alt Facts combined with a Mission can destroy civilization.

Alt Facts on a Mission Are Not New to Western Civilization

After Martin Luther began The Protestant Reformation on October 31, 1517 by posting his 95 Thesis to the door of Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany, hundreds of years of religious wars ravaged Europe. As closer examination shows, a host of secular goals were advanced under the guise of the holy religious missions. The faithful seemed unconcerned with the death and destruction which their side inflicted but found the other sides minor transgressions to be the mark of Satan. Their sense of mission highjacked their minds not unlike how the Evangelicals are blind to Trumps decades of sinful behavior and the Dems cannot comprehend how Nancy Pelosi has ginned up the Alt Right with her prolonged attack on blue collar whites. When a populace is convinced it is on a holy crusade, it can do no wrong and the opponent can do no good.

Presently, the world is witnessing how difficult is it for Trump and many of his followers to accept what is obvious the majority of Americans are tired of Donald Trump, personally. At the same time, Pelosi Dems are similarly unable to accept the fact that their mission to Make America Socialist Again [MASA] has likewise been rejected.

Biden Stands Between Two Populations on Opposing Missions

Biden rejected both Trumpism and Pelosism when he said during the last debate, This is not about his family and it is not about my family, but about your family. There was no Black-White divide, no Gay-Straight divide, no Dem-GOP divide, there was no dividing of any type. E Pluribus Unum was in charge once again.

The Lurking Economic Disaster

A nation divided by opposing missions is not prepared to deal with real threats. The Pandemic Infection rate is like successive tsunamis inundating the shore while much of the GOP urges people to flock to the beaches. They are on a mission to prove that no masks and social crowding will bring us to herd immunity ASAP and the virus will thus magically vanish.

The Dems have their own folly, i.e. the lack of money cannot be solved by funneling cash to the bottom of the economic ladder. Trump is correct about one thing Pelosi has made certain no more funds reach Americans by proposing legislation which she knows GOP have to oppose.

Heres Whats Happening

Millions of Americans are trying to financially survive by doing a lot of things which endanger the entire economy. People are borrowing huge sums from the life insurance policies. If Pelosi had allowed biweekly or monthly payments to everyone as Munchin proposed, people would not be depleting cash reserves. People are beginning to live off credit cards. People who paid off their cards each month are paying off maybe 80% and then 70% and then they get down to paying the minimum. Credit card companies will have to reduce credit limits. People are slashing their coverage on auto insurance and increasing their deductibles to reduce premiums. The hurricanes will result in underlayment of claims and the raising of premiums in addition to carriers exiting certain markets. As Americans cut corners to protect themselves, they harm someone else. If Pelosi Dems had allowed cash to flow to the bottom, it would have flowed upwards and everyone would have benefited.

Both Pelosi Dems and GOP Business Practice Trickle Down Economics

We know about the GOP trickle down fallacy, but we never hear about the Pelosis form of trickle down. Pelosis demand that money go to cities is trickle down. The Dems want to save the Dem cities with corrupt mayors like LAs Eric Garcetti. For purposes of trickle down, there is no difference between GOP corporations and Dem cities

Trickle Up Works for All Americans

When a family gets cash, it pays rent and then the landlord pays his mortgage. With cash, people pay off their credit card each month and they need not borrow from the life insurance. It was Pelosi who reduced Munchins $1,000.00 twice a month to only $1,200.00 once and then the Dems, aping Trump, proclaimed that they had raised the amount by 20% while ignoring the fact that they had wiped out 100% of the second round. Also, Munchin favored more direct payments directly to people and not funneling all the money through hands of politicos where billions of dollars were stolen.

There is nothing more dangerous than people on a mission armed with Alt Facts -- except a nation divided by conflicting missions both of which are based on their own Alt Facts.

(Richard Lee Abrams is a Los Angeles attorney and a CityWatch contributor. He can be reached at: Rickleeabrams@Gmail.com.Abrams views are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.)

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People Believe What They Want to Believe - City Watch

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An anonymous New York architect has imagined how Donald Trumps presidential library might look like if it faithfully reflected his time in office. Immediately setting the stage are sculptures of COVID-19 proteins displayed right outside the entrancea monument to the hundreds of thousands of Americans who succumbed to the disease. In the Alt-Right Auditorium, films such as Birth of a Nation and Jud S, a 1940 Nazi propaganda film, are on a constant loop. Hypothetical permanent exhibitions include the Wall of Criminality, Tax Evasion 101, and the Twitter Gallery, while interactive elements include Lie to America, where visitors get to spin their own alternative facts. The Criminal Records Room, part of the Play the Prosecutor library archive, offers up the opportunity to do the research on how YOU would prosecute Trumps crimes against humanity!

Though the designer behind the concept remains unidentified, the renderings make their opinion of the outgoing president very clear. Even from behind the legendary Resolute Desk, Donald Trump set new bars for all future presidents, reads the curatorial statement. You can rest assured, no matter how low they go, no one in all eternity will ever be able to sink this once-great office any lower.

More than 700 works by the influential graphic designer Ivan Chermayeff have been donated to the Milton Glaser Design Study Center and Archives at the School of Visual Arts in New York. Made possible by the late designers children, the expansive gift contains works created as early as 1952 spanning all the way until his death, in 2017. The collection includes paintings, prints, book covers, and even his personal artworks and collages. Among his most recognizable designs include the NBC peacock, the Smithsonians yellow sun, and PBSs faces in profile. Bringing much of my fathers design and collage work to the permanent collection at the School of Visual Arts was enormously exciting for myself and my siblings, Maro Chermayeff, the chair of the universitys MFA Social Documentary Film program, tells The Art Newspaper. It was an obvious home for the works. He would be so pleased to know that students could continue to partake in his thinking and design ideas.

An overdue memorial dedicated to Native American veterans, now open in Washington, DC, marks a major step forward in recognizing their service. According to the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI), Native Americans serve in the U.S. armed forces more than any other ethnic group. As a collective, they have served in every major military tangle since the Revolutionary War, yet their efforts have gone largely unnoticeduntil now. Located a stones throw from the National Museum of the American Indian, the memorial overlooks a freshwater landscape adjacent to the National Mall. Harvey Pratt, a member of Oklahomas Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes and a Marine Corps Vietnam veteran, designed the 12-foot-tall stainless steel ring. Postured on a carved stone drum, the sculptures shape holds special significance to many Native American cultures, symbolizing traditions in dance, storytelling, and prayer. The monument is an emblem for reverence, as visitors are encouraged to leave prayer tiesa symbol of spiritualityon four vertical lances.

Each year, Vancevas World of Color Award (WOCA) goes to a design firm that best uses the brands color interlayers in laminated glass configurations. For the Museum of Fine Art, Houstons recently unveiled expansion, Steven Holl Architects encased its Kinder Building in white glass, including the canopied entrance, clerestory windows, and double-layered facade of laminated glass tubes over an opaque weather wall. Translucent interlayers filter sunlight into the galleries while protecting the artworks from harmful UV rays. As for the projects monochromatic nature, its difficult execution makes it worthy, explains WOCA juror Benjamin Wright. As an aesthetic maximalist, it seems somewhat contrary to give a color award to a white building, but in this case the architects and fabricators used the shape and nature of the glass to optimal effect. The challenge of lighting a museum with natural light cannot be understated.

Last week, a controversial sculpture of the feminist author Mary Wollstonecraft was unveiled in Richmond, London. The fleshy, naked depiction of the mother of feminism polarized critics, many noting that its representation was insulting to Wollenstonecrafts legacy. In response, a campaign to fund a statue of Virginia Woolf, created by the sculptor Laury Dizengremel, has received an influx of donations. The nonprofit Aurora Metro Arts and Media has been saving for three years to commission the sculpture, which will be situated by the river in Richmond, where the author lived and worked for a decade. Almost $21,000 of the $66,000 target has been raised to fund the monument, a life-size bronze statue of Woolf sitting on a bench and looking toward the river, with just enough space for visitors to sit next to her.

Todays attractive distractions:

What does a prenup smell like? Goops latest candle might have the answer.

This surrealism exhibition in Madrid is a welcome escape from the pandemic.

Patricia Carr Morgan captures the majestyand disappearanceof glaciers.

McDonalds will debut a plant-based hamburger, the McPlant, early next year.

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Imagining Donald Trumps Presidential Lie-Brary, and Other News - Surface Magazine

The million MAGA march that took place yesterday in Washington, D.C. was a staggering display of stupidity, racism, and the complete denial of reality. Of course that kind of behavior is expected from Trumps marauding death cult, but there was one moment that blew our collective minds. Among the protesters were two people in costume: one dressed as Joe Biden in a prisoner uniform, being held by the other, a man wearing a Trump mask while dressed as Homelander from The Boys.

Showrunner Eric Kripke tweeted an image of the duo, asking Um are they actually watching the show? Great question, Eric!

I mean, they know that Homelander is the villain of the series, right? After all, the Amazon series has repeatedly shown Homelander to be a frighteningly heartless sociopath who murders with impunity. In just two seasons, weve seen Homelander abandon a plane full of innocent passengers, murder his mommy figure, and threaten anyone who goes against him. Homelander is unequivocally a bad man.

Huh. Maybe Homelander IS a stand-in for Donald Trump. They both have dyed blonde hair, theyre both obsessed with their appearance, theyre both bottomless wells of insecurity and they both resent the very people who worship them. Theyre torn between a desperate need to be loved and an utter disdain for everyone in their orbit.

But the similarities dont stop there. Both Homelander and Trump f-ck with nazis (quite literally for Homelander and Stormfront), and they both love fascist military posturing and denigrating other countries. They wrap themselves in American flags and pretend to be heroic patriots, when theyre really just using the flag to conceal their various crimes. Oh, and they court conservative Christians with false piety while comparing themselves to Christ.

The similarities between these two megalomaniacal monsters are many, and most of us view these traits as deplorable. The deplorables themselves however, celebrate it. One wonders what the thought process was behind this Homelander Trump costume. Did the wearer get confused and think he was dressed as Superman? Or did he watch The Boys and just completely miss the point?

It certainly confused Antony Starr, the actor who plays Homelander, who tweeted his thoughts on the costume:

Homelander wouldnt be the first piece of popular culture the alt-right has misappropriated. There have been viral videos of MAGAts dancing to Rage Against the Machine while woefully misinterpreting their lyrics. Trump enters his rallies to Fortunate Son, which is a song that rails against men like Trump. And of course, there are plenty of internet vigilantes who worship Watchmen red pill anti-hero Rorschach.

At this point, Trump supporters have a preternatural ability to reshape popular culture into supporting their cause. They truly see what they want to see, regardless of logic or reality. Unfortunately for us, were stuck living with the consequences of their unhinged actions.

(featured image: Amazon Studios)

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Trumpers Fail To Realize That Homelander Is the Villain of The Boys - The Mary Sue

The 2020 U.S. presidential election brought into sharp relief the contrast between the American and Israeli Jewish communities, the two main centers of the Jewish world. According to post-election surveys, American Jewish support for the Democrats remains extremely high, at 77 percent (up from 70 percent in 2016). President Donald Trump was estimated to have received a mere 21 percent of the Jewish vote. In Israel, however, surveys have shown that Israeli Jews prefer Trump to Biden by 70 percent to 13 percent.

Much has been written on the growing gap between American Jews and Israel in terms of values and Jewish identity. In particular, the entrenchment of the occupation and the growing authoritarianism of the Benjamin Netanyahu regime has provoked growing disillusionment with Israel, especially among young Jewish progressives in North America. On the one hand is Israels unmistakable shift to the nationalist right; on the other, American Jews commitment to liberal, pluralistic, and progressive ideals, exemplified by the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The liberal icon symbolized for many the role that Jewish Tikkun Olam can play in the struggle for universal social justice.

Now, the two communities find themselves not only drifting apart, but also increasingly at loggerheads. Most American Jews see Trump as a clear threat, while most Israeli Jews view him as an ally who offers security and hope. This divergence has to do not only with the two communities different values, but also their structural positions.

For a relatively prosperous and largely white minority, the extent of American Jewish backing for the Democrats is striking. A 2015 study found that Jewish support for Democrats was 40 percent higher than that of non-Jews in similar socio-economic positions. And while some of it can be explained in Jewish levels of education and concentration in metropolitan areas, this is clearly far from the whole story.

The Democratic Partys model of inclusive citizenship fits American Jewish aspirations to cultivate a cultural and religious minority identity alongside civic participation. In such a model, Jewish particularism and universal American citizenship reinforce each other as two sides of the same coin. The Republican Partys overwhelmingly white Christian character, on the other hand, is far less accommodating in this regard. The GOPs strong Evangelical base, and its Christian-infused social conservatism, have dissuaded most Jews from considering it a political home.

In the last four years, Trumps connections with the extreme right have added an explicit antisemitic dimension to this equation. Trump has repeatedly refused to denounce white supremacist groups and the antisemitic QAnon conspiracy. GOP politicians routinely invoke conspiracies regarding the Hungarian Jewish financier George Soros, while using their support for Israel to deflect charges of antisemitism.

The Womens March on New York, January 21, 2017. (Gili Getz)

The shift in the GOPs rhetoric under Trump has revealed that the general assimilation of white Jews into whiteness has clear limits. Trumps comments to American Jews, in which he referred to Israel as your country and Benjamin Netanyahu as your prime minister, betrayed his understanding of U.S. Jews as not fully American, in keeping with his overall exclusivist notion of citizenship.

The 2018 deadly attack on the Pittsburgh synagogue by a white nationalist who subscribed to GOP-amplified conspiracy theories involving Soros and immigration, meanwhile, showed in the starkest terms the dangers of Trumps normalization of white supremacy. The place of Jews in a nativist America is far from secure, and it is clear why they reject overwhelmingly this political vision.

Israeli support for Trump is similarly rooted in structural realities, and is tied to the transformation of Israels political system in the last 20 years. The slow but sure demise of the two-state solution, and the effective incorporation of the occupied West Bank into Israel, mark the emergence of a one-state political system in which Jewish dominance is secured through the erosion of Israels democratic features. If American Jews are a minority, Israeli Jews are in the opposite position. They constitute a hegemonic group of about 50 percent of the population in Israel-Palestine.

As Raef Zreik recently wrote on +972 Magazine, the 2018 Jewish Nation-State Law spells out the new model of Jewish political dominance, with the downgrading of citizenship for Palestinians in Israel and commitment to Jewish settlement as a national value. As the permanence of the occupation becomes increasingly obvious, Israel can no longer maintain its democratic credentials and present itself as an island of liberalism in the Middle East.

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This explains why Israel has sought in the last decade to position itself as a strategic ally of the rising global authoritarian, revanchist, and Islamophobic right, headed by Jair Bolsanaro, Narendra Modi, Viktor Orbn and, of course, Trump. For now, this alliance appears to be working in Israels interests, in an increasingly illiberal world. Israeli right-wing commentators supportive of Trump have adopted alt-right rhetoric, and have spoken in disparaging and even antisemitic terms about U.S. Jews support for liberal values. Key Netanyahu surrogates have described J Street as Jew boys, referred to American Jews as suburban rich people with private police, and routinely circulated Soros conspiracies.

Could this change under a Joe Biden presidency? It is almost certain that Bidens White House will try to revert, at least rhetorically, to previous patterns. No doubt the administration, very much like the EU, will try to revive the charade of the peace process and two-state solution. This will not change any of the existing dynamics, but it would enable international actors to continue ignoring the reality of effective Israeli annexation of the West Bank. Yet it is doubtful that this could work for much longer.

For Israel, the global hard right is now a natural and perhaps inevitable choice. Israels preference for a Trumpist GOP is therefore a logical conclusion, while for most American Jews, Trumpism is an anathema and a threat. Under these conditions, the rift between the communities could deepen and become about much more than values or disillusionment. It represents the clash of radically different alignments, rooted in the political trajectories and positions of both communities. This is no longer only about the future of Israel, but also about the future of Jews in the United States.

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The global right is threat to US Jews but a natural home for Israelis - +972 Magazine

Mothers talk to me of the fear they have for their kids going out into the community, worried about the violence they might face.

At a virtual meeting with advocates Tuesday, Singh endorsed an action plan by the National Council of Canadian Muslims calling for federal legislation that would allow authorities to shut down white supremacist organizations that do not meet the threshold for a militia or terrorist entity.

The plan also demands authorities move more proactively to dismantle hate groups under existing provisions of the Anti-terrorism Act and the Criminal Code.

Bernie Farber, chair of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, says national law enforcement agencies need to establish dedicated anti-hate crime divisions.

Right now it is in my view one of the most dangerous times in Canadian history when it comes to extreme right-wing violence, said Farber, former head of the Canadian Jewish Congress, which disbanded in 2011.

Twenty-two people have been killed as a result of right-wing radicalization over the past four years, he said, including the 10 who died during the van attack in Toronto two years ago.

The trial for Alek Minassian, who told police he planned and carried out the attack in April 2018 but has pleaded not criminally responsible, began via video conference Tuesday.

Minassian told interrogators he corresponded before the attack with two mass murderers motivated by the misogynist incel culture propagated by males claiming to be involuntary celibate.

Hate groups and white supremacist ideas are wildly enabled by mainstream social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter and message boards like 8chan, but also fringe platforms including Gab, Telegram and Parler, says Barbara Perry of the Centre on Hate, Bias and Extremism.

Were also seeing a lot more of what Ive been calling floaters people who dont necessarily affiliate with any particular group but, given the availability of online venues, sort of move in and out of social media platforms, cherry-picking narratives that seem to fit their own grievances or their own lot in life, Perry said in a phone interview.

Advocates including Perry and the national Muslim council met virtually with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Public Safety Minister Bill Blair and Diversity Minister Bardish Chagger on Monday evening to discuss possible steps.

Anti-Semitic incidents have been on the rise since 2016, exceeding 2,200 last year, according to advocacy group Bnai Brith Canada.

Liberal MP Anthony Housefather said most of them begin online.

He and Conservative MP Marty Morantz are part of a task force launched this fall that includes politicians from Australia, Israel, the United Kingdom and the United States who aim to push their legislatures to pass similar laws and collectively pressure web companies to act.

Ayatollah (Ali) Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, has tweeted vile anti-Semitic content multiple times in the past month, and Twitter has not flagged it, Housefather said in a phone interview.

He said companies should work harder to contextualize or remove hateful posts.

The Inter-Parliamentary Task Force to Combat Online Antisemitism was scheduled to host its first virtual briefing with community organizations Tuesday evening.

Monday and Tuesday marked the anniversary of Kristallnacht also known as the Night of Broken Glass a 1938 pogrom against Jews in Nazi Germany that saw scores of civilians killed, stores and synagogues smashed and thousands rounded up for concentration camps.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 10, 2020.

Christopher Reynolds, The Canadian Press

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Singh says government must move to counter hate groups, which have tripled since 2015 - Lethbridge News Now

Donald Trump is not much of a note-taker, and he does not like his staff to take notes. He has a habit of tearing up documents at the close of meetings. (Records analysts, armed with Scotch Tape, have tried to put the pieces back together.) No real record exists for five meetings Trump had with Vladimir Putin during the first two years of his Presidency. Members of his staff have routinely used apps that automatically erase text messages, and Trump often deletes his own tweets, notwithstanding a warning from the National Archives and Records Administration that doing so contravenes the Presidential Records Act.

Trump cannot abide documentation for fear of disclosure, and cannot abide disclosure for fear of disparagement. For decades, in private life, he required people who worked with him, and with the Trump Organization, to sign nondisclosure agreements, pledging never to say a bad word about him, his family, or his businesses. He also extracted nondisclosure agreements from women with whom he had or is alleged to have had sex, including both of his ex-wives. In 2015 and 2016, he required these contracts from people involved in his campaign, including a distributor of his Make America Great Again hats. (Hillary Clintons 2016 campaign required N.D.A.s from some employees, too. In 2020, Joe Biden called on Michael Bloomberg to release his former employees from such agreements.) In 2017, Trump, unable to distinguish between private life and public service, carried his practice of requiring nondisclosure agreements into the Presidency, demanding that senior White House staff sign N.D.A.s. According to the Washington Post, at least one of them, in draft form, included this language: I understand that the United States Government or, upon completion of the term(s) of Mr. DonaldJ.Trump, an authorized representative of Mr. Trump, may seek any remedy available to enforce this Agreement including, but not limited to, application for a court order prohibiting disclosure of information in breach of this Agreement. Aides warned him that, for White House employees, such agreements are likely not legally enforceable. The White House counsel, Don McGahn, refused to distribute them; eventually, he relented, and the chief of staff, Reince Priebus, pressured employees to sign them.

Those N.D.A.s havent stopped a small villages worth of ex-Trump Cabinet members and staffers from blabbing about him, much to the Presidents dismay. When people are chosen by a man to go into government at high levels and then they leave government and they write a book about a man and say a lot of things that were really guarded and personal, I dont like that, he told the Washington Post. In 2019, he tweeted, I am currently suing various people for violating their confidentiality agreements. Last year, a former campaign worker filed a class-action lawsuit that, if successful, would render void all campaign N.D.A.s. Trump has only stepped up the fight. Earlier suits were filed by Trump personally, or by his campaign, but, last month, the Department of Justice filed suit against Stephanie Winston Wolkoff for publishing a book, Melania and Me, about her time volunteering for the First Lady, arguing, astonishingly, that Wolkoffs N.D.A. is a contract with the United States and therefore enforceable by the United States. (Unlike the suit against Trumps former national-security adviser John Bolton, relating to the publication of his book, The Room Where It Happened, there is no claim that anything in Wolkoffs book is or was ever classified.) And Trump hasnt stopped: last year, he required doctors and staff who treated him at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center to sign N.D.A.s.

Hardly a day passes that Trump does not attempt to suppress evidence, as if all the world were in violation of an N.D.A. never to speak ill of him. He has sought to discredit publications and broadcasts that question him, investigations that expose him, crowds that protest him, polls that fail to favor him, and, down to the bitter end, ballots cast against him. None of this bodes well for the historical record and for the scheduled transfer of materials from the White House to the National Archives, on January 20, 2021. That morning, even as President-elect JosephR.Biden, Jr., is ascending the steps of the Capitol, staffers from the archives will presumably be in the White House, unlocking doors, opening desks, packing boxes, and removing hard drives. What might be missing, that day, from file drawers and computer servers at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is difficult to say. But records that were never kept, were later destroyed, or are being destroyed right now chronicle the day-to-day doings of one of the most consequential Presidencies in American history and might well include evidence of crimes, violations of the Constitution, and human-rights abuses. It took a very long time to establish rules governing the fate of Presidential records. Trump does not mind breaking rules and, in the course of a long life, has regularly done so with impunity. The Presidential Records Act isnt easily enforceable. The Trump Presidency nearly destroyed the United States. Will what went on in the darker corners of his White House ever be known?

The truth behind a Presidents actions can be found only in his official papers, HarryS.Truman said in 1949, and every Presidential paper is official. Truman became an advocate of archival preservation after learning about the fate of his predecessors papers. When George Washington left office, in 1797, he brought his papers back to Mount Vernon, but, loaned out, they were extensively mutilated by rats and otherwise injured by damp; eventually, they were carried by the historian Jared Sparks to Massachusetts, where Sparks threw out anything he didnt like, scrapped what he found worthless, gave away much of the rest, and, beginning in 1837, published what he liked best as The Writings of George Washington.

For many years, there was no alternative for a departing President but to take his papers home with him; there wasnt really any place to put them. Thomas Jefferson, having no confidence that the office of the private secretary of the President of the U.S. will ever be a regular and safe deposit for public papers, took pains to deposit many of his papers with his Cabinet departments. In 1810, Congress established a Committee on Ancient Public Records and Archives of the United States. It reported that the records of the federal government were in a state of great disorder and exposure; and in a situation neither safe nor convenient nor honorable to the nation. Congress took little action. In 1814, the congressional library burned to the ground.

Most of the papers of William Henry Harrison, the log-cabin candidate, succumbed to flames when that log cabin burned down. Those of both John Tyler and Zachary Taylor were largely destroyed during the Civil War. In 1853, when Millard Fillmore left the White House, he had his papers shipped to a mansion in Buffalo. He died in 1874, having made no provisions for the papers. When Fillmores only son died, in 1889, his will ordered his executors to burn or otherwise effectively destroy all correspondence or letters to or from my father. Only by the merest miracle were forty-four volumes of Fillmores Presidential-letter books found in an attic of a house, in 1908, and only because it was on the verge of being demolished.

Chester Arthurs son had most of his fathers Presidential papers burned in three garbage cans. The only place I ever found in my life to put a paper so as to find it again was either a side coat-pocket or the hands of a clerk, UlyssesS.Grant once said. For years after Grants Administration, scholars were able to locate hardly any of his Presidential papers. In 1888, Congress urged the Library of Congress to collect the papers of the Presidents. In the eighteen-nineties, the library established a Manuscript Division, and a historian who later became its chief began lobbying for the establishment of a National Archives; meanwhile, the American Historical Association formed a Public Archives Commission. In 1910, after the commission reported that many of the records of the Government have in the past been lost or destroyed, the A.H.A. petitioned Congress to build a depository. Congress authorized the funds, but no plan was undertaken until after the close of the First World War.

Grover Cleveland, during his two terms, preferred to communicate in person, leaving no paper trail. He insisted that the records of his Presidency were his personal property and, in 1886, refused to turn over papers that the Senate had demanded: if I saw fit to destroy them no one could complain. (That is what, during the Presidency of DwightD.Eisenhower, came to be called executive privilege.) Clevelands contention became a convention: the Presidents papers belong to the President, who can deny requests for disclosure not only from the public but from other branches of the federal government. William McKinley was assassinated in 1901; his secretary held on to his papers until 1935, when he donated them to the Library of Congress, where they remained under his, and later his sons, tight control until 1954. In 1924, a raft of papers from the Taft, Wilson, and Harding Administrations were found in the attic of the White House. Warren Hardings Presidency was riven by scandal; after his death, his wife told the chief of the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress that she had destroyed all his papers, although she had burned only those she thought would harm his memory. Most of the rest she left to the Harding Memorial Association. The Library of Congress acquired a cache of those and other papers in 1972, on the condition that they be closed to the public until 2014. (They turned out to include a thousand pages of love letters between Harding and his mistress. Wont you please destroy? he wrote her in one letter. She did not destroy.) Calvin Coolidge instructed his private secretary to destroy all his personal files; on Coolidges death, the secretary said, There would have been nothing preserved if I had not taken some things out on my own responsibility.

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Will Trump Burn the Evidence? - The New Yorker

The controversy over the People of Colour exhibition at Mercy Pictures shows how alt-right ideas can thrive in irony-steeped artistic environments, writes Amal Samaha.

On Saturday, a gallery show in Auckland ended. The exhibition featured rows upon rows of flags, each on a relatively uniform rectangular frame, set in neat rows.

All apparently normal, except for something that became increasingly obvious.

All photos: Tash van Schaardenburg

There seemed to be a lot of swastikas.

Really, a lot of swastikas. Of 150 or so flags, 20 were Nazi symbols, and others represented more obscure hateful ideologies. Each wall had at least a few swastikas, many positioned provocatively as if to ask are these not the same as the flags beside them?

In each case, I hope the audiences answer was no, one of these is a fucking swastika.

The People of Colour show created by artists Jerome Ngan-Kee, Jonny Prasad and Teghan Burt, also the co-directors of Mercy Pictures, the gallery where it was shown was clearly out to court controversy. And they got it: on the first night the show was vandalised, and the Mercy Pictures Instagram was quickly inundated with criticism.

Ngan-Kee issued an apology soon after the exhibition ended, only for the other gallery staff to turn on him and ridicule the apology in a now-deleted post.

On Tuesday, Mercy Pictures other directors issued a statement which stopped short of an apology. It noted that Mercy Pictures wider family contains many people of marginalised identities, and called allegations of fascism offensive and untrue.

So what caused such outrage? Lets go back to the exhibition itself, where among the many, many swastikas were other far right symbols: some obvious, such as a sign saying its okay to be white, and others more obscure, such as the Sonnenkreuz, Sonnenrad, Vichy French and Spanish Falangist flags. In fact, it was hard to think of a fascist flag that wasnt there. Worse, these were displayed alongside the tino rangatiratanga flag, the United Tribes flag and Thoes mana motuhake, all apparently without permission from tangata whenua.

But such easy shocks are a dime a dozen for gallery shows. A swastika is a guarantee of controversy, though usually audience fears are allayed by an artist statement or write-up making some banal point about how nationalism is bad.

This, however, wasnt the case, with People of Colour. The shows artistic statement was anything but banal, since it was supplied by one Nina Power.

Power is a UK philosopher and former academic, and a bizarre figure to be linked to the wider ecology of the alt-right, being something of a convert from the post-modern, leftist intellectualism that the alt-right often derides. Once a committed feminist activist and scholar of philosophers like Alain Badiou and Giorgio Agamben, it seems that by gradually becoming involved in anti-transgender feminist activism, she found herself associating with progressively more right-wing figures.

Former friend and fellow academic Linda Stupart says that these days, Nina Power is openly aligning herself with violent edgelord alt-right men [and] transphobes, and has definitively divested herself of contemporary feminist thought.

Power strongly rejects suggestions that she has any relationship with the alt-right or that she holds anti-transgender views.

Many took Powers exhibition text to mean she was directly involved in the project, but this isnt necessarily the case. Ngan-Kee, Prasad and Burt are graduates of the University of Aucklands Elam Art School and have no apparent relationship with Power; its unclear exactly how much she knew about the content of the show.

But Power is only a small part of this story. Perhaps the more interesting aspect is what the show revealed about the contemporary art world.

With their obsession with shock value, censorship and political correctness, some of the cool kids of art can be surprisingly reactionary. Before knowing the back story, it would have been easy to assume the whole People of Colour drama was a case of a clueless gallery accidentally giving space to the alt-right. In fact it was actually a case of edgy gallery kids flirting with fascistic concepts from the start, with little help needed from their associates in the UK.

Its in this environment of plausible deniability that alt-right ideas and flirtations with fascism can thrive. The People of Colour story shows how fascism can creep into academia and the art world alike, simply because both allow for extreme detachment between an author and their body of work, and convoluted, wordy justifications are par for the course.

Its normal practice in academia to quote the works of people who were Nazis (for example, philosopher Martin Heidegger or jurist Carl Schmitt) despite their Nazism. Its considered perfectly fine to appreciate their ideas, so long as that appreciation of their ideas doesnt stray into admiration for their Nazism.

Similarly, in the art world it is normal to be fascinated by fascist iconography, to find its visual language useful, to use it to shock or provoke dialogue (for example, see the art of NZ-Tongan artist Benjamin Work). Too easily, though, this interest in the visual signifiers of fascism can stray into admiration often without opposition, so long as the artist can provide a sufficiently long-winded justification. Had Mercy Pictures just done this and not made the mistake of drawing attention to themselves further by involving Power, they might well have gotten away with the whole thing.

Because fascist ideas creep into public life under a veil of plausible deniability, and because they often preempt and provoke controversy, it is very easy to characterise the outrage over events like the People of Colour show as overblown, conspiratorial or out of touch. After all, it is just art. Theyre just flags. Theyre just colours and shapes.

The German-Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin once suggested that fascism is partly about making politics into an artform: rendering politics as simply a game of colours and symbols. Modern internet fascists do this extremely well, from turning Pepe the frog into a Nazi meme, to flooding the internet with StoneToss comics, to making ironic use of alt-right hand gestures.

It seems Mercy Pictures did this by taking the most intensely political images on earth and putting them all together, as if to say theyre just colours and symbols, do you cucks really care about this?

Perhaps the best way to counteract situations in which fascist ideas hide behind art world bullshit is to put the politics back into art.

By challenging artworks like these we take what is held to be apolitical and re-politicise it. In doing so, we remove the plausible deniability that allows fascists to find a footing.

In 2020, it might not be good enough for edgy art to explore concepts: your art might actually have to say something worthwhile about them. It might not be enough to provoke dialogue you might have to contribute to it.

The Bulletin is The Spinoffs acclaimed daily digest of New Zealands most important stories, delivered directly to your inbox each morning.

Originally posted here:

Swastikas off K Road: How the worst art show in New Zealand came to be - The Spinoff

Question: Why did God make Jesus white, when the majority of peoples in the world are non-white?

Answer: The color of Jesus skin is of little or no consequence. The whiteness or blackness of ones skin is a biological quality which has nothing to do with the intrinsic value of the personality. The significance of Jesus lay, not in His color, but in His unique God-consciousness and His willingness to surrender His will to Gods will. He was the Son of God, not because of His external biological make up, but because of His internal spiritual commitment. He would have been no more significant if His skin had been black. He is no less significant because His skin was white.

This is the quote the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave when asked about the race of Jesus in October of 1957.

What made this quote off putting to me was not the existence of a conceptualization of Jesus as white, so much as the idea that one of the most prominent figures in the American history of Black Civil Rightswho was himself Blackthought the Son of God was white.

While Kings statement that Jesuss skin color is of little consequence should perhaps be true, as Howard Blum says, a Jewish Prophet from the Roman era ran so explosively into the American obsession with race that his image has been used to justify the worst atrocities of white supremacy as well as inspire the most heroic of civil rights crusades. That is to say that, while empirically the race of Christ shouldnt matter, it does.

Even though race is a social construct, and one that is much different today than it would have been in Jesuss time, it is a construct with very real implications. For Christianity to ascribe Jesus' race as white distorts the historical fact that, geographically speaking, he would have been of Mediterranean or African descent. More than that, to assert that Jesus was white is to imbue him with a sense of privilege and power contrary to the story of what Christ experienced.

This matters because Christ is the essence of Christianity, and Christianity is essentially distinguished from other faiths by the fact that everything in it is related to the redemption accomplished by Jesus of Nazareth.

So how, then, if Jesus is so central to the faith, did Christianity get this one imperative construction wrong?

The process of white washing Jesus was not unique in any real sense. It was done through art, through writing and of course through sermon. Art like Leonardo da Vincis Last Supper, Michelangelos Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel and Warner Sallmans light-eyed, light-haired Head of Christ made Jesus palpably white to common people. This art worked in conjunction with the already dominant theology built on centuries of white European thought that deemed Jesus to be a white man.

This white washing set the stage for the justification that Jesus stood with the powerful rather than the disenfranchised. For example, when hate groups such as the Klu Klux Klan called themselves Christian groups, they did so under the guise of protecting the purity of a race pre-ordained.

Yet briefly in the 1930s and again in the 1960s and 1970smore sustainably the second time aroundJesus was not only analyzed as standing with the oppressed and dismantling the status quo, but he was constructed as a Black Man. This construction of Jesus arose from the assertion by Black theologians that a Jesus who stood and empathized with the marginalized and was crucified at the hands of an unjust government could not be white.

In recent years, academia and some parts of the church have begun the process of recognizing the actuality of what Jesus looked like, to more closely agree with the constructs of Black theologians of the 1930s and 1960s. More simply put: people finally realize that Jesus wasnt white.

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That leads one to ask: how have we simultaneously made Jesus so racially malleable and static? And how do we properly speak truth to power about the nature of Jesuss race and appearance, while acknowledging that the church and Christians at large have not always gotten this right?

This brings us back to Kings quote. I will never agree with him on the fact that Jesus was white. Nor will I agree that race is completely inconsequential. Race has been used as a construct to subvert and deny the rights of generations of peoples and that matters. Race is still usedwhether explicitly or notto justify the murder of Black and Brown people, and that matters.

So yes, understanding that Christ was NOT a white man who stood for status and abuses of power matters. Actually, it does more than matter; it is imperative.

Jesus Christ came to liberate humanitys minds, bodies and souls. He came to teach us to do unto others as we would have done unto us. He came to show us that we should stand with the oppressed and never allow injustices to go unnoticed. Understanding what he looked like while he did it is not an inconsequential thing in a world where skin color has literally meant the difference between life and death. Yes, the message he brought and the lessons he taught are also of major importance, but for us to get the race of Christ right is essential.

If we can understand that the man who Christians consider to be their savior not only usurped ideas of power and status, but that he did it in the body of a man of color, then perhaps the messages that come out of pulpits on Sunday will change. Perhaps we will no longer allow alt-right Christian hate groups to use Jesus as a reasoning for their unfounded hatred.

Perhaps we will be one step closer to understanding who Jesus was, what he stood for and just how revolutionary he truly was.

Tatayana Richardson is a Trinity senior who thinks everyone should read "The Black Messiah" at least twice in their lifetimes. Her column, "Searching for Canaan," runs on alternate Mondays.

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News flash... Jesus wasn't white - The Chronicle - Duke Chronicle

We should be applauding social housing projects, but resist the rhetoric that sees council housing as the only solution to the housing crisis, says Owen Hopkins.

Donald Trump may have been vanquished, but Trumpism is still alive and well, as evidenced by the 71 million votes he received the highest ever for a US presidential candidate, apart, of course, from his vanquisher, president-elect Joe Biden.

After four years of Trump, we've become used to hearing about right-wing populism, which has spawned manifestations across the world, from Bolsonaro in Brazil and Orbn in Hungary to Boris Johnson in England. But populism is not confined to the right, it is also alive and kicking on the left for whom architecture is central to linking the macro to the micro, just as it is for the right.

A neat illustration of the micro scale can be seen in a new council housing project in Greenwich in south-east London by the British architect Peter Barber, which he recently tweeted out. It's the type of project that would be familiar to anyone who has followed Barber's career since he came to prominence with the Donnybrook Quarter in Hackney in 2006.

Barber's commitment to the social value of architecture has made him an almost sainted figure among the architectural commentariat

Since then, Barber has built a reputation as quite possibly Britain's leading housing architect, renowned for his cleverly planned and generously detailed projects. Aligned with this is Barber's commitment to the social value of architecture, which has made him an almost sainted figure among the architectural commentariat.

As a result, Barber's work is something of an ever-present on social media. So far so familiar, you might say. But what made Barber's tweet about this project catch my eye was that it had been liked a massive 57,000 times and counting.

For anyone active on "architecture Twitter" this is in stark contrast to the recent proliferation of Trumpian "alt-right" accounts which deploy "traditional architecture" as a way of promoting deeply unpleasant far-right views about some kind of mythical "authentic" western values.

Mikhail Riches' Goldsmith Street social housing wins Stirling Prize 2019

So, it was refreshing and not a little bit uplighting to see something so different generate such a response.

Reading the replies, it was striking that many of the people who responded positively did so not just because it is such a well-considered architectural project, but because it is council housing, standing as the built embodiment of collective values that many on the political left hold dear. Those who were critical of the project were generally so for the same reason.

I couldn't help wondering whether what I was seeing here was council housing functioning as cypher for political ideology

Perhaps it's a function of the inherent reductiveness of social media, but I couldn't help wondering whether what I was seeing here was council housing functioning as cypher for political ideology in a way that's not so different to how traditional architecture is used by those "alt-right" Twitter accounts. To be absolutely clear, this is not suggesting a false equivalence between whatever political position one might infer in being pro council housing and the abhorrent views of the "alt-right". Instead, it's about a commonality or equivalence of tactics.

If this sounds a stretch, consider the familiar left-wing "critique" of the housing crisis: the vilification of private landlords, housing developers and the Right to Buy policy introduced by Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government 40 years ago all examples of blame directed at elites. Then, in contrast, is the idea that only the state has the solutions, through tighter regulation and, above all else, a massive council housing programme.

Running through all of this is the attempt to reduce a complex situation to a simple solution think of Trump's exhortations that only he could "Make America Great Again". But at a structural level, this is little different from believing only the state has the answers, a position that, when it comes to architecture, fetishises council housing with the same conviction as the right fetishises traditional styles.

The inescapable question that follows is whether we should still be troubled by these populist tactics when they are used to promote policies we happen to agree with, like building more council housing?

What Barber builds is actually very different to the populist mass council housing building programme advocated by the left

This question becomes more pertinent when we realise the substantial disconnect that exists between this left-wing populist rhetoric and projects by the likes of Barber that it so idolises. What Barber builds is actually very different to the populist mass council housing building programme advocated by the left as the solution to all our housing ills. Barber's projects are generally small in scale, designed by a private practice rather than the public sector, and, like much of the best council housing being built right now, are generally in London.

"London has an ambition for quality public housing design not seen since the 1970s"

The latter is a quirk of the city's sky-high property prices, which allows the more ambitious (and well located) local authorities to use units built for private sale to subsidise those developed for social rents. While this arrangement is a function of councils still being limited by central government, it simply could not happen in a housing market that wasn't so overheated.

Given this, one might wonder whether Barber would actually be able to deliver housing of such high quality if the political situation was more aligned to the one advocated by left-wing populists. It is certainly the case that the highly specific nature of his projects and the way they are tied into their sites on which their success to a significant degree rests would be more difficult to achieve on larger, more comprehensive, "mass" scales.

All this goes to show how little concerned populists whether of the right or the left are with actual architecture

After all, this is one of the key architectural lessons of the post-war era, which judging by much of the council housing going up in London right now is one that almost all of its architects, Barber included, are fully signed up to. This simple fact makes clear just how misguided the populist rhetoric that harks back to those glory days actually is in its naive assumption that our relationships to state, environment and to each other are little changed since the 1950s and 1960s.

All this goes to show how little concerned populists, whether of the right or the left, are with actual architecture. For the right, the only thing that matters is style; for the left, it's council housing and state intervention. Anything else is a betrayal. And it's this insistence on a zero-sum game that is populism's fatal flaw.

Peter Barber Architects creates terraced tenement block in Peckham

The opposite of populism is pluralism, diversity and multiplicity. History tells us that it's the kind of culture that produces the best architecture, not one of conformity. So while we should certainly be applauding council housing projects today and Barber's especially we must resist populist rhetoric that sees council housing as proxy for the state as the only solution to the housing crisis, just as we do the right's weaponisation of traditional styles. A political position that claims it has all the answers leaves no room for innovation or doing things differently.

It's always tempting to look for the easy solution, but we should be immediately suspicious of claims there is only one answer to a problem, as much as we of anyone who says there's only one way to build. While Trump's fall could lead us to think that populism is on the wane, on the ground the fight against populisms of the right and of the left is only just beginning.

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The left "fetishises council housing with the same conviction as the right fetishises traditional styles - Dezeen

Police in Auckland are investigating a foiled attempt by a man to deliberately infect the citys LGBTQI and ethnic communities with COVID-19.

News of the sickening and depraved crime first emerged on the websiteexpress magazine where it is claimed the man has posted messages on an alt-right website. The posts allegedly stated he had come down with the woohoo flu a racist reference to where the virus originated and that he had a really sore throat and the inability to stop coughing.

It is alleged the man had intended to visit a gay bar on Wednesday night with the hopes of achieving 10-20 infections and had asked fellow users of the alt-right website how best to fit in at the bar without risking get hit on.

Further to this, the man had allegedly planned to visit a number of ethnic churches, where in a separate post he asked whether it would be too suspicious if they then drove 10 to 20 minutes from their place of residence over the weekend to deliberately infect people who attend a predominately ethnic church as the one closest to him was predominately white.

After a local bar manager hadalerted express magazine to the messages, they then passed all of the screenshots onto local police with a spokesperson for Auckland Police saying that they arecontinuing to make enquiries into an anonymous post made on an online forum on Monday.

The nature of this anonymous post is concerning, and Police take these sorts of matters extremely seriously. Police are limited in further comment at this stage as our enquiries are ongoing,

After being alerted of the investigation, a spokesperson for the New Zealand Minister for Health added,The Ministry supports the Police as being the appropriate agency to look into this incident as they will be best placed to find out whats happened and determine what further actions are required.

More here:

Plot To Infect New Zealand LGBTQI Community With COVID-19 Foiled - Star Observer