Monthly Archives: March 2021

Chinese demand for lithium and other energy metals to power its growing fleet of electric vehicles (EVs) is proving more powerful than its anger with Australia over disputed Covid-19 pandemic claims.

With the price of lithium almost doubling since the start of the year, a Chinese lithium chemical company has prepaid for future delivery of the metal from an Australian mining company.

Didi Chuxing's new D1 electric vehicle on display during a launch event in Beijing in November 2020. ... [+]

Sichuan-based Yibin Tianyi earlier this week signed an offtake and prepayment agreement with Australias Pilbara Minerals for the provision of up to 40,000 tons a year of concentrated spodumene (lithium ore).

The deal has a modest value of just $15 million, but it could be one of several signs that the war of words between two natural trading partners is fading in its intensity.

Yibin Tianyis cash will help pay for an expansion of Pilbaras operations, though lithium from the upgrade is not expected to be delivered to China until later this year.

The lithium deal follows an earlier transaction between an Australian and a Chinese company over the production of titanium minerals, mainly used to make paint, and zircon, which is mainly used in ceramics.

Thunderbird Is Go, With A Chinese Cash Boost

Yansteel, a subsidiary of Tangshan Yanshan Iron & Steel, last week agreed to pay $100 million for a 50% stake in Kimberley Mineral Sands, which is developing the Thunderbird project in the north of Western Australia.

Australias Sheffield Resources owns the other half of Thunderbird, which is in the final stages of design and planning with an investment decision scheduled for later this year

Another hint, this time at a political level, that the frozen China-Australia relationship might be thawing is a decision by the Premier of South Australia, Steven Marshall, to accept a Chinese government invitation to formally open a controversial Chinese consulate in the state capital of Adelaide.

South Australian Premier Steven Marshall is happy to accept a Chinese government invitation to open ... [+] the new Chinese consulate in Adelaide.

Marshall will be sharing the stage at the March 30 opening with Chinas Ambassador to Australia, Cheng Jingye, who has been a harsh critic of Australia after it led a campaign for an independent inquiry into the cause of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Despite the sometimes harsh criticism of each other, China and Australia remain major trading partners with a steady flow of goods and services, mainly minerals from Australia and manufactured goods from China.

The quarrel reached a peak last year when China refused to take delivery of some Australian shipments of coal and slapped punitive tariffs on Australian wine, barley and shellfish.

Fading Pain

Short-term pain for Australian exporters of those products has largely faded with new markets being found.

Some of the barley earmarked for China has made its way to Mexico. Wine shipments to Britain are booming and coal, meant for China is being delivered to the Middle East and Pakistanwith commodity traders reportedly reloading and shipping it into China.

No winners are likely to emerge from the dispute, which is more about bruised Chinese pride and Australias dislike of Chinas attempts to dictate terms of the relationship.

Economic rationalism and a sense that its time to find an exit appears to be topping current thinking on both sides, not to mention Chinese drinkers preferring Australian barley as the base for beer made by famous brewers such as Tsingtao.

More here:

Lithium Deal Could Signal An End To The China-Australia Trade War - Forbes

Having gone to considerable lengths in lobbying for one of our very own, former finance minister Mathias Cormann, to become Secretary-General of the Paris based OECD, the Government at least the international set would be very pleased with itself.

Unfortunately, the OECDhas long outlived its former fervour for economic rationalism: balanced budgets, low tariffs,andsmall governmentthat leavescompetitive free markets to be the essential supply force(with agriculture always an exception given the protectionism ofits key European membership).

In more recent times it has focussed on decarbonisation,assisting the poor,gender issues (there is an OECD gender portal and scoldings about how progress-on-gender-equality-is-too-slow). The OECD is also probably always was a proponent of Keynesian stimulus.As a result, it usually has an unwarranted faith in fiscal stimulus in bringing about faster growth and tends to miss the damage done by government spending especially that which supposedly favours the poor. It totally missed the excessive lending to those with no collateral that causedthe USeconomy to implode in 2007 triggeringtheglobalGreat Recession of 2008.

The outgoing Secretary-General is the Mexican socialist JosngelGurra.

Cormann seemed an unlikely successful candidate. Though ticking the boxes in linguistic skills, this was no different fromother candidates.

Australias former finance minister was up against several female candidates at a time when all the pressures favour womenbeing appointedas leaders in what are often seen as male bastions. The favourite was Cecilia Malmstrm, a politician from the small centre-right Swedish Liberal Party. She is an advocate for children and combating terrorism through preventive measures, rather than through confrontation. Beyond Swedish politics, she has a distinguished diplomatic career and was the former European Commissioner for Trade.

Cormann,as a Liberal,isostensibly fiscally conservative, normally the key credential for aFinance Minister. Peter Walsh (1984-90) wasAustraliasoutstanding finance minister,holding back theinnate spending excesses of the Hawke government but Penny Wong (2010-13) also did a reasonable job in the Gillard-Rudd administration. Among Liberals, Nick Minchin can claim credit in paring back the size of Commonwealth spending from the 25 per cent of GDP which he inherited to 23 per cent.

Cormann can make no such claims. Even prior to the COVID spendathon, he proved unable to reduce the size of government which was 24.4 per cent in his first year (2014)and 24.5 per cent in 2019.He was unable to build on the fat-cutting progress that Penny Wong set in train.

Perhaps he is just too nice a guy.

If not, he demonstrated oceans of adaptability in pursuing the top job in Paris.Hisacceptance statement talked ofa big job to be done to help drive stronger, cleaner, fairer, more inclusive growth. Cleaner, fairer and more inclusive is the trifecta essential to win the EU and US/Canada votein the modern woke era.

Hopefully, Cormann in his statement was just turning on the marketing charm. But probably notin view of his mundane record in holding backhis fellowpoliticians predisposition to see themselves as the best spenders of their constituents hard-earned.

Like most bureaucracies, the OECD has a culture with established fiefdoms and ideologies. Its Secretary-Generals have becomefigureheads. The organisation would appear to have little to fear from Cormann breaking the mould by pushing back on its policies favouring carbon taxes, feministasand other goals deemed worthy by the elites.

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Why did Cormann get the top job at the OECD? His track record shows he won't upset woke globalists - The Spectator Australia

In many ways, March 22, 1987, was an ordinary Friday night. A crowd of students congregated in Ferris Booth Commons, with the usual noise and rush of excitement in anticipation of the weekend. On any other Friday night, you might not have noticed Mike Jones, a junior at Columbia College. Jones friends describe him as short and unassuming in build but with a toughness and sense of self-assurance. But on this particular nighta night that would shape the months to comeJones walked into the dining hall with the urge to be heard.

For weeks, a group of white football players repeatedly harassed Jones, who is Black. A friend recalls instances of the football players physically obstructing Jones path in the stairwells of campus. Jones had grown tired of the constant intimidation and expressed his frustration to a group of friends, who encouraged him to seek out the football players, confront them, and demand that they leave him alone. On that night, Winston Grady-Willis, a Columbia College senior at the time, was one of a handful of Jones friends who agreed to accompany him to Ferris in an attempt to identify the perpetrators. I was out there; we were all out there, several of us, says Grady-Willis. Not to throw down but to literally just observe what was going to happen, take some names.

Grady-Willis says that they planned to follow the Universitys protocols and bring the football players names to the dean. JacQuie Parmlee-Bates, CC 89 and former Black Students Organization president, was also there that night. [Jones] didnt come out fighting, she says. He was trying to just tell [the perpetrator], Im tired of your crap. Before Jones could confront the students civilly, witnesses recall that a circle of 10 to 15 white football players began to form around him. According to Parmlee-Bates, Jones had not registered that there were people behind him when he was suddenly punched in the back of the head.

Grady-Willis says he has never been a fighter, but he still entered the action to pull Jones away from someone holding him in a headlock. A crowd formed around the scene as the fight spilled onto Broadway. Parmlee-Bates remembers with dismay that many of the onlookers immediately took sides without knowing what was happening. The crowd contained more than 50 students, many attracted by the spectacle, and soon, the initial punch launched at Jones had launched the peaceful Friday night into unadulterated chaos. The horde of people grew so loud that first-years leaned out of their dorm windows in Carman Hall to see the cause of such commotion. The altercation reached its point of no return when a few of the football players yelled threats and racial slurs at the Black students. Both Grady-Willis and Parmlee-Bates have yet to forget it.

And then, Parmlee-Bates says, then it was a fight.

A fight that landed Mike Jones at St. Lukes hospital for medical treatment.

In the early hours of the next morning, a group of Black students convened in the Malcolm X Lounge to recover from the incident and form a new campus activist organization: Concerned Black Students of Columbia.

Grady-Willis was one of the Black students who went to the Malcolm X Lounge that night and became directly involved in the CBSCs formation and operation. What do we do? he remembers the group members asking themselves. One of the key things that we realized is that we have to organize, and we have to make a statement thats bigger than the incident itself.

The CBSC initially focused on directly responding to the previous nights fight. It filed witness reports to the police and called for disciplinary action against the following four white Columbia College students involved in the altercation: Matt Sodl, Drew Krause, Don Chiesa, and Michael Bogacki. It then expanded its focus to promote a list of larger demands that aimed to advocate for the Black community on campus. These demands included the creation of an Africana studies department and the hiring of more Black faculty members. We knew that this incident was just a precipitation of a condition that was already there, Parmlee-Bates states.

In the weeks following, the CBSC hosted informational meetings in residence halls where students could learn about the organization and voice their concerns. One such meeting occurred on April 14, when members of the CBSC updated attendees on the lack of progress with the police statements they submitted immediately following the fight. Members also addressed concerns regarding the perceived exclusion of white students in the movement. In a Spectator article published the following day, Dorian Scott, a steering committee member and a sophomore at Columbia College, responded by clarifying that the CBSC welcomed the support of white students. However, she also asserted the importance of Black leadership by adding that [Black people] should be in the leadership of a black movement.

The CBSC also organized various rallies and marches on campus. A march held on April 4, 1987, drew a crowd of approximately 600 protesters. In addition to advocating for the CBSCs causes, the rally commemorated the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and the second anniversary of the 1985 Hamilton Hall blockade.

Grady-Willis remembers detritus being thrown at protesters from nearby windows during a march held by the organization. What we saw on campus was this really visceral response to the activism of Black students and white allies, he says.

On April 21, the CBSC organized a sit-in in front of Hamilton Hall, chaining the doors closed for roughly 12 hours before being broken up by the New York Police Department. Students identified from videos of the protest received disciplinary action, with the arrested students spending their summer on campus while anxiously awaiting a court date. What ended up happening is that we became the victims, or we became victims again, because we were already victims the first time, says Parmlee-Bates.

The judge ultimately dropped the students cases, but the anxiety and the injustice associated with the summer of probation still remain with Parmlee-Bates to this day.

Emira Woods, a senior in Columbia College who was a University Senator and a member of the CBSC, points out that the Universitys hostility to the Black student protesters stood in contrast to its relative inaction against the white students involved in the original incident. To her, this hypocrisy was also reflected in the racial bias of campus discourse, including Spectators coverage.

It wasnt an equal representation, says Woods. It was almost like, in spite of the impediments, were going to try to force to be heard. It wasnt a level playing field.

From the very outset, the CBSC clashed with both the Columbia administration and popular campus discourse. The first opinion segment critiquing the organization was printed in the Columbia Daily Spectator on March 24.

An op-ed titled Rationalism, not radicalism, is the way out of racism inaccurately describes the incident outside of Ferris as a confrontation between several white students and a crowd of blacks [that] took place outside Ferris Booth Hall. People on both sides of the altercation were Columbia students, but the statement refers to the Black students only as blacks.

The article further frames the CBSCs flyering and public statements as an explosion of propaganda. The writer, Niloofar Razi, claims that the allegations made by this group occurred on the first day of Black Power week. With a sarcastic tone, Razi poses a question: A coincidence? My sense of morality forces me to say yes.

This cloud of doubt surrounding the CBSCs political motives was present from the very beginning. As the CBSC planned actions and protests in a matter of days after the incident, students were skeptical that such swift organizing could happen organically. They assumed that the protests must have been planned in advance to observe Malcolm X Day, but Parmlee-Bates says that the holiday had no part in the CBSCs organizing.

We wanted to address the issue immediately, and thats how we organized, Parmlee-Bates says. We just did it that next day and anybody who wanted to participate did.

Razis article continues to question the legitimacy of Black students characterization of the initial altercation. The events surrounding the outbursts are hazy; the conflicting accounts of the story make it unlikely that what happened will ever be resolved. A few sentences later, Razi offers her own interpretation of the incident asking, if, as Sodl, Krause, and others maintain, the white students were surrounded by a group of blacksan obviously intimidating situation, who then is doing the assaulting?

Woods reflects on the discourse surrounding the CBSC. Its almost like a presumption of guilt for the person of color, which is wrong, she recalls.

The next day, Spectator published a rebuttal to Razis article written by Ubah Hussen, a Barnard senior. The opinion piece directly responds to Razis misplaced blame on the Black victims, while also making a statement to the larger community. Hussen writes, Razi offers the tired-ass argument that black people should be rational in the face of physical, life-threatening violence. Based on the racist assumption that we somehow deserve what we get since we must have somehow instigated it, this farce also runs in the face of rational human nature.

The critiques against the CBSC only mounted following Hussens rebuttal, however, with further editorials sharing the sentiment that the CBSC was too radical and that adopting a more moderate, reformist tone was in its best interest. One such editorial was published on March 30 by Spectators managing board, highlighting the so-called misdirected militancy of the organization. If the CBSCs efforts are to be truly productive, it will need a wide base of support, the piece reads. The groups tactics have already left some students alienated and threaten to alienate more.

On April 9, 1987, Spectator published a To the Editor opinion by Lawrence Temlock, a white Columbia College sophomore, who encouraged the CBSC to be more welcoming of students who do not support its over-radical tactics. In essence, this brief piece demands that the CBSC stop fighting invisible enemies and start fighting the real racists. A few weeks later, an editorial by Tim Gershon titled Standing up for Columbia describes the CBSCs work as slanted, exaggerated, and full of inflammatory falsehoods. He writes, [the CBSCs] tactic may succeed in radicalizing some who feel guilty for the racism that still has not been eliminated from society. But the strategy also alienates many who object to the destructive abuse of this universitys tolerant spirit. Several of the CBSCs demands are absurd.

Parmlee-Bates clarifies that the marches, sit-ins, and demands that some detractors referred to as extremism were necessary to raise awareness of the incident with Jones. Without these protests, the CBSC felt that its calls for change would be overlooked and ultimately dismissed.

I could see them saying that we were revolutionary in the types of things that we were doing, but what we were trying to explain to them was that they were going to sweep it under the rug. That was very clear early on, Parmlee-Bates says. So we had to do things that would keep it front of mind for them, keep it at the top of their minds. We werent damaging property, we werent snatching people up. We were just doing the traditional ways of protesting.

Exclusion was another key accusation hurled at the CBSC. On March 31, Spectator featured a To The Editor titled Racism is no excuse for racism that equates the experience of two white students being turned away from a CBSC meeting to Jim Crow segregation. The piece closes with the lines, although I understand how Sundays incident might cause such a reaction on the part of Columbias black community, I cannot sympathize with such blatant discrimination.

According to former members, certain CBSC meetings were specifically for Black students to come together and heal, while others were open to all members of the Columbia community to attend. Grady-Willis remembers tension surrounding the perceived exclusivity of such CBSC meetings, and his inability to articulate the importance of having a safe space for Black students at the time. We didnt have that kind of language [to explain it], we didnt have that toolkit, he says.

Once claims of being radical and exclusionary against the organization were seemingly exhausted, Johnathan Sobels piece on April 3, The fiction and the fury, unleashed yet another critique.

Sobel accuses the CBSC of lying about the incident outside of Ferris to serve its own self-interest, writing in opposition to the demand for the creation of a mandatory Core Curriculum course that educates students on racism and racially motivated violence against people of African descent.

An illustration accompanying the article depicts a white man inflating a massive balloon emblazoned with the word HYPE, directly implying that the CBSCs claims rely on the momentum of popular attention rather than merit or value.

While the CBSCs demand to institute a new Core Curriculum class ultimately fell short, its demands were included in a proposal that led to the Columbia College Committee on Instructions approval of a new interdepartmental program in African American studies. Parmlee-Bates recalls, My major came out of [the CBSCs work]. There was not an African American Studies major and I became one of the first people to get that major. Thats one of the key things I remember.

The majority of opinion articles run by Spectator in the weeks and months following the fight involving Jones characterize the CBSC as a group of militant, radical, exclusionary Black students who brushed past the evidence to serve their own personal causes. But these descriptors are not how former CBSC members recall their experiences with the organization, which became a vital network during their time at Columbia.

Though the group disbanded about two years after its formation, former members of the CBSC still hold onto vital pieces of the groups collective identity. In fact, the enduring power of the CBSCs mission is perhaps most strongly manifested in the way that its members still speak of their time in the group with the same passion and dedication to fighting injustice as they did in 1987.

According to some former CBSC members, much of the organizations actual mission centered not around revolution, but around education. In addition to making demands for institutional change, members advocated for social education on issues of race within the Columbia community. Parmlee-Bates recalls, We had to educate even the Black people on campus. Youre either with us or youre not, you know, but we had a bigger fight to fight.

The larger effort to undo inequities and further diversification and sensitivity at Columbia predated the CBSC and persists today. Woods explains that the manifold challenges the CBSC faced in educating the student body and making the groups points heard were partly due to a bastion of conservatism on campus in the 1980s that arose in response to the first class of women admitted in 1983 and the emergence of progressive leaders of color in the anti-apartheid divestment movement of 1985.

Contrary to the popular depiction of the CBSC as uncooperative and fixated on radical shows of protest, the CBSC made concerted efforts to affect change through the Universitys established channels: its members met with administrators to discuss their demands and activists like Woods advocated for a racism resolution drafted by the Student Affairs Committee in response to the incident. When the racism resolution was proposed to the University Senate, however, it was rejected on the spot, and the meeting with administrators was deemed unproductive by both the CBSC and the administrators.

Woods recalls that exerting pressure from within the system was nearly impossible when spaces like the University Senate were dominated by entrenched forces, both within the faculty, within the administration, as well as the student body, the alumni networks, [working to] maintain the status quo without a real reckoning of why there was a need for change. It was only after the CBSCs attempts at internal pressure proved largely futile that the organization turned toward forms of active protest on campus, a maneuver that Woods calls outside strategy.

The accumulation of attacks, unfair treatment, and racial bias from the University and campus discourse left the CBSC battle-tested in the face of constant criticism during Grady-Willis senior year. We knew what it meant to speak truth to power and that was our intention this time as well, Grady-Willis says.

He also admits that in response to the constant attacks taught him to ignore Spectator articles. It just becomes about self-care, he says. Self-care was important for student activists like Grady-Willis who were still healing from the incident: I wasnt thinking this at the time but I think I was depressed in the midst of the movement in 1987. I just felt alone, just kind of fragile, vulnerable, as a graduating senior. I mean the situation was just intense.

The feelings of isolation engendered by the University and its institutions persisted all the way through graduation, Woods recalls. As senior students within the CBSC grappled with the bittersweet culmination of their Columbia experience, many of them were still under academic probation from the University for protesting in Hamilton Hall.

We were facing issues of, as you go toward graduation, do you want to walk and why? Does this campus reflect your values? Woods says. It went to that point, even at graduation, of expressing discontent to how issues of race and issues of justice were playing out both on the campus, and in areas off the campus that the university had influence on.

The CBSCs spring 1987 activism culminated with seniors walking out of the graduation ceremony in an act of protest. A Spectator article published on May 20, 1987, states that more than 30 students marched out of commencement in favor of their own graduation ceremony, which they held in the courtyard outside of Hamilton Hall.

These shared acts of solidarity ultimately molded the CBSC into a network of Black students who came together to process trauma, heal, advocate for themselves, and enjoy social support. The Malcolm X Lounge was critical for this network, with Grady-Willis describing it as a place where we had one anothers back when things really really got challenging.

We got to dance together, he wistfully recalls. [We] got to sweat together and just establish bonds that are so tremendous. The community that the CBSC established remains strongone of Grady-Willis friends from his years in the CBSC is now the godfather of his youngest child.

In the face of mounting critiques and a lack of institutional support, the CBSC mobilized in the spring of 1987 to build a community that would last beyond the groups existence. Some amazing things happened because we have the audacity to really kind of care about one another even if it meant that it was a really adversarial relationship with the university itself, Grady-Willis remembers. He smirks before adding, And I mean adversarial, all-caps underlined.

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The Fight, The Movement, and The Backlash: Columbia's Reckoning with Racism in 1987 - CU Columbia Spectator

If successful politics is all about messaging and news management, Downing Street really seems to have got the hang of it. Either that or the Prime Minister has been on the receiving end of fortuitous triumphs, like a lucky general whose adversaries make spectacular unforced errors.

To have the EU move overnight from trashing the reputation of the UKs AstraZeneca vaccine so discrediting its effectiveness that thousands of European doses were going unused to threatening a block on vaccine exports to the UK and wartime confiscation of manufacturing facilities in a demand for more of the very vaccine that it tried to devalue, would have been good enough. But no sooner had the bizarre contradictions and alarming legal precedents in the EU position begun to unravel than along came, by an extraordinary coincidence (or not?) on the very same day, a leaked NHS letter showing that the UKs own immediate vaccine supply appeared to be in doubt.

By God, what a gift. The Government got a slew of newspaper front pages juxtaposing Ursula von der Leyens thunderous warning of all-out-vaccine-war with the news of a forced slow down in our own magnificent rollout programme.

So maybe not a coincidence? As Matt Hancock said in his press briefing, delivery of the vaccines has always been lumpy and this particular glitch was not going to cause any disruption to the roadmap dates, or interfere with any vaccination appointments already booked. Nothing much to worry about then. In fact, both of the descriptions of this very temporary delay are almost certainly true.

There will be a brief hiatus to do with the supply from India and it will make almost no difference to the scheduled stages of the end of lockdown, or even the predicted vaccination targets (since those were running ahead of schedule anyway). There have quite possibly been a number of previous such letters sent out by the NHS about hiccups in supply but this one leaked to the media on that particular day had a stupendous effect on news coverage of Mrs von der Leyens bombshell.

Then again, perhaps this is just journalistic cynicism. Anyway, it is not an accusation of any sort of dishonesty. Everything that was said was genuine (both the NHS letter and Mr Hancocks dismissive account of it), and, if it was a tactic, it was fair game in what is becoming an increasingly irresponsible propaganda war being waged by the EU in a quite hysterical attempt to save its credibility. In the meantime, there will almost undoubtedly be unnecessary deaths directly attributable to the words and actions of European leaders who are playing political games that have more serious consequences than a bit of headline manipulation for home consumption.

Downing Street has won a genuine moral victory as well as a public relations one. It made a succession of good calls on vaccine requisition and then handled the distribution of those vaccines superbly even with occasional supply problems taken into account. But it isnt just in verbal contention with the EU that Downing Street is getting cannier. There has been over the past week a systematic attempt to come to terms with the history of our national Covid struggle. Now, with the present circumstances coming good: a world-beating vaccine programme, numbers of cases and deaths heading downwards, and promising predictions of economic recovery, it clearly seemed to be time to admit earlier misjudgements.

The two biggest mistakes made at the start of the pandemic are generally thought to be the failure to close the borders particularly to travellers from China early enough and to lock down internally before the spread of the virus had got out of control. (Both of these points are still subject to argument but they are the most persuasive criticisms made of early policy.)

The Government has made an explicit point now of accepting that these decisions were wrong. But, crucially, it has pointed out that they were made following the official advice of scientific advisers who believed at the time that closing borders would be pointless because the virus was already circulating in this country, and that too early an introduction of lockdown measures would result in public fatigue and loss of compliance. You may recall Sir Patrick Vallance and Professor Chris Whitty saying these things quite explicitly at press briefings a fact which they now admit without reservation.

So this admission of error may seem to be framed rather cleverly in the least damaging way possible: yes, we did the wrong thing but it wasnt our fault. We were just doing what we had always promised to do following The Science. But what ministers were actually doing was following the advice of particular scientific experts who would always have been (I am sure) prepared to admit that they were fallible. Because science does not consist of immutable truths and individual scientists are not handing down inviolable sacred doctrine.

Perhaps the single biggest mistake that the Government has made (and is possibly still making although it drops hints that this is changing) is to misconstrue the nature and objectives of science itself. Scientific endeavour is a way of examining phenomena, adducing evidence for competing theories, and putting rival interpretations forward for debate.

Scientists argue with one another all the time, in their symposia and their publications: thats the whole point. That is how science progresses. Doubt is at the heart of it: a rejection of medieval certainties. Descartes, reputed to be the founder of modern rationalism, began by resolving to doubt everything it seemed possible to doubt until he was left with only his own existence as undeniable because he was the one doing the thinking. (This lone certainty was later refuted by even more modern thinkers who argued that all that could be asserted was that thought existed, not a person thinking.)

To blame the scientists for giving what turned out to be bad advice is unfair: mistakes and revisions are essential to their occupation. What should never have happened was that elected leaders handed over responsibility for political judgments to people who were unsuited to that role, and unaccountable to the country.

Read more:

At home and abroad, Boris is now winning the Covid political war - Telegraph.co.uk

A video from a recent event has been interpreted to allege that Telangana Welfare Schools were against Hinduism.

A video from an event by the Swaero movement, launched by senior IPS officer RS Praveen Kumar from Telangana and others, has triggered a row in the state. Following this, Praveen Kumar has clarified that the Swaero movement does not teach prejudice against any religion. Based on a video clip from the launch event of the Swaero Holy Month on Monday, a few Telangana BJP leaders have accused Praveen Kumar of promoting teachings against Hinduism among students.

Swaero is a social transformation movement launched by Praveen Kumar, who is the secretary of the Telangana Social & Tribal Welfare Residential Educational Institutions Society, and others. It mainly consists of alumni from the society.

The Swaero Holy Month, also called Bheem Deeksha, is a month-long event, marked by reading Dr BR Ambedkars works and other such activities. This year, the event was launched at the historical Dhulikatta Buddhist Shrine in Telanganas Peddapalli district, known for its Buddhist heritage.

According to Praveen Kumar, a members of a local Buddhist family who attended the event went on stage and recited the Buddha Vandanam, or the vows taken by Dr B R Ambedkar on the historic day of his conversion to Buddhism on October 15, 1956, at Deeksha Bhoomi in Nagpur. In the video clip that is now being circulated and criticised by right wing groups, Praveen Kumar is seen repeating Ambedkars vows after a person leading the oath on stage. These vows include denouncing faith in certain Hindu gods, as well as striving for equality and refraining from committing sins.

Read: Harvard University students to study success story of Telangana social welfare schools

Based on a video of the oath, Telangana BJP leaders and VHP (Vishva Hindu Parishad) members have accused Praveen Kumar of cultivating sentiments against the Hindu religion through the Swaero movement, among students of the Telangana Social & Tribal Welfare Residential Educational Institutions. Clarifying his stand, Praveen Kumar issued a statement saying Swaeroism is an inclusive ideology, where people of all religious faiths are working for liberation of the poor from poverty.

Swaero Network has people with all religious beliefs in it and we take the best from all religions and we don't teach any prejudice against any religion both in our homes and in work places and celebrate all festivals. We work for just and equal society in the country only through education, health awareness, scientific thinking and economic empowerment, not through hatred, the statement said.

Praveen Kumar said that he and his Swaero colleagues do not subscribe to what the Buddhist family said on stage. We deeply regret if it has hurt anyone's religious sentiments. Our organisers have clarified this to all the participants on the stage itself immediately, Praveen Kumar said.

In a video from Praveen Kumars speech at the Bheem Deeksha, the IPS officer is seen saying, Bheem Deeksha means knowledge, rationalism and discipline. It means tolerance towards all religions. Regardless of caste, religion and region, to find our own hidden potential, and to strive for greatness, is the aim of this event. Bheem Deeksha and Swaeroism does not discriminate against or blame any particular religion, caste, region or nation.

Watch Praveen Kumar's speech at the event

Praveen Kumar has been widely recognised for his transformational work in the field of education in the Telangana residential welfare schools, bringing a wide range of opportunities to students from marginalised backgrounds.

Read: Telangana's Poorna becomes first tribal in world to scale 6 mountain peaks in 6 continents

The Swaero movement, based on the ideologies of Jyothi Rao Phule and Dr BR Ambedkar, consists of alumni of the Telangana Social & Tribal Welfare Residential Educational Institutions Society. It aims to instill self-confidence in students from marginalised communities and to encourage them to pursue higher education.

Read: How Telangana welfare schools are beating the challenge of inequality during lockdown

In another instance in the past, baseless allegations have been made that anti-national activities were being carried out in the welfare schools.

Read: Brawl in Hyd press club: A larger conspiracy at play against Praveen Kumar of TSWREIS?

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After video triggers row in Telangana, IPS officer Praveen Kumar issues clarification - The News Minute