Monthly Archives: September 2021

Following the Black Lives Matter protests last year, the British central bank had said it would review its art collection.

The Bank of England has removed 10 oil paintings and busts of seven governors and directors who had known connections to the slave trade in the 18th and 19th centuries, it said on Friday.

Following the Black Lives Matter protests last year, the British central bank had said it would review its art collection.

The review is now complete and artworks depicting former Governors and Directors, where we have been able to establish links to the slave trade, have been removed from display, a BoE spokesperson said, adding the central bank has also hired a researcher on slavery for its museum.

We have also appointed a researcher to work in our museum to explore the banks historic links with the transatlantic slave trade in detail. This work will inform future museum displays interpreting these connections.

The portraits and busts depicted Gilbert Heathcote, the banks founding director and governor, James Bateman, Robert Bristow, Robert Clayton, William Dawsonne, William Manning and John Pearse. They had been on display within the BoEs headquarters and adjoining museum.

Announcing the review in June 2020, the BoE said it had never itself been directly involved in the slave trade, but that it was aware of some inexcusable connections involving former governors and directors, and apologised for them.

The 330-year-old Lloyds of London insurance market advertised in February for an archivist whose tasks would include researching artefacts related to the African and Caribbean history of slavery and abolition.

The City of London, where both financial institutions are located, is itself reviewing what to do about the statue of William Beckford in its ancient Guildhall home.

Beckford was twice lord mayor of London in the 18th century and had plantations in Jamaica with slaves.

Read more here:

Bank of England removes paintings of governors linked to slavery - Al Jazeera English

Opponents of "critical race theory" protest June 22 outside of the Loudoun County School Board headquarters in Ashburn, Virginia. (CNS/Reuters/Evelyn Hockstein)

To hear some describe it, critical race theory is Marxism, a threat to the American way of life, reverse racism and a scheme to indoctrinate children.

The reality is less sensationalistic.

"It's a legal theory that started in the early 1970s, after the civil rights movement, that comes mostly out of graduate and law school work," said Sam Rocha, a professor of education philosophy at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, who has studied and written on the subject.

Critical race theory is primarily an academic legal framework centered on the idea that racism is systemic; that it's embedded in institutions, culture, values and laws, and not just a manifestation of personal bigotry or animus.

The theory holds that racial inequality, because of the country's history of chattel slavery, Jim Crow and other overt racist practices such as redlining, continues to be seen in many facets of American society, including lower educational attainment and home ownership for minority communities, income inequality, and disproportionate arrest and incarceration rates for Black men.

Protesters are seen near Capitol Hill May 21, 2018, in Washington to demand elected officials take immediate steps to confront systemic racism. (CNS/Tyler Orsburn)

"Critical race theory compels us to confront critically the most explosive issue in American civilization: the historical centrality and complicity of law in upholding white supremacy," the scholar Cornel West wrote in 1995 inCritical Race Theory: The Key Writings that Formed the Movement.

Rocha told NCR that critical race theory can be understood as "post-civil rights abolition."

"A lot of times I think people assume that critical race theory is a moral theory of anti-racism, but it's really not," he said. "It's a legal theory that helps itself to a broad and wide tradition, from Black Reconstruction to the founding of the NAACP all the way into the civil rights movement."

In analyzing racism through an institutional lens, critical race theory aligns with the understanding in Catholic social teaching that sin transcends the individual. For example, Pope John Paul II referred to "structures of sin" more than a dozen times in his 1987 encyclical,Sollicitudo Rei Socialis.

"On the face of it, there's nothing in the entire deposit of Catholic Social Teaching, from Leo XIII'sRerum Novarumin 1891 to Pope Francis'Fratelli Tuttiin 2020, that is antagonistic to the principles of abolitionism," said Rocha, who will be presenting on critical race theory and Catholic social teaching at the University of Dallas on Oct. 27.

Tia Noelle Pratt, director of mission engagement and strategic initiatives and a sociology professor at Villanova University, told NCR that critical race theory challenges the effects of racial inequality.

"When the law does not work in the same way for everyone, the Dignity of the Human Person is not fully realized," Pratt told NCR in an email. "This is a particular concern for the poor and vulnerable. Racial inequality makes BIPOC [Black, Indigenous, and people of color] vulnerable to all manner of harm. This is exacerbated for those who are also low-income."

Critical race theory's legal academic roots date to the 1960s and '70s in its precursor, critical legal studies, which examined how the law and legal institutions served the interests of wealthy and powerful people at the expense of the poor and marginalized. Scholars say some of its concepts originate further back to the work of earlier 20th-century civil rights activists like W.E.B. Du Bois, Fannie Lou Hamer and Pauli Murray.

In the 1970s, the late Harvard Law School professor Derrick Bell expressed frustration with what he saw as the limitations of the civil rights movement. Bell and other legal scholars such as Kimberl Crenshaw and Richard Delgado argued that civil rights legislation and court victories had not totally eradicated racial injustice, and that racial progress in many respects had stalled.

"In the decade after the civil rights movement, you had these Black scholars in law schools, studying the very laws that had justified the enslavement and oppression of their own families and ancestors," Rocha said.

The U.S. Supreme Court's 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which declared racial public school segregation to be unconstitutional, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Emancipation Proclamation and other moments of racial progress for Black people in the country's history generated ferocious backlashes from white Americans.

"After Brown v. Board of Education, you can look at the pictures that journalists took then of protests and signs and the demographics of protesters, and those same identical protests are happening now with respect to critical race theory," Rocha said.

Concerned with what would be the backlash to the civil rights movement, Rocha said Bell and his fellow scholars created a way to read case law that was "attentive to race in a way that had never been seen before." By 1989, critical race theory had emerged as its own organized field of study when academics attended the first annual Workshop on Critical Race Theory.

In 2001, Delgado, who is recognized as one of the founders of critical race theory, and fellow legal scholar Jean Stefancic, published, "Critical Race Theory: An Introduction," where they outlined several tenets that they said most critical race theorists would accept:

Notions of race "correspond to no biological or genetic reality; rather, races are categories that society invents, manipulates, or retires when convenient," Delgado and Stefancic wrote.

Because it argues that racism is codified in laws, embedded in structures and woven into public policy, critical race theory rejects the idea that racism can be eradicated through meritocracy or "colorblindness." In critical race theory, it is not individual bigotry that causes widespread racial inequality, but rather the systemic nature of racism.

Critics would say that the theory finds racism too present and that it echoes a Marxist class struggle, zero-sum battle of oppressors and victims.

Angry parents and community members in Ashburn, Virginia, protest after the Loudoun County School Board halted its meeting because the crowd refused to quiet down June 22. Many at the meeting objected to critical race theory being part of the curriculum. It is an academic framework examining various issues as they relate to race and racism. Opponents say it discriminates against white people and rejects fundamental tenets of U.S. history. (CNS/Reuters/Evelyn Hockstein)

"I wonder if those who expound that rhetoric know what CRT is," said Pratt, who curatesthe #BlackCatholics Syllabus, a collection of resources related to Black Catholics in the United States.

In recent months,several Republican-led state legislatureshave passed laws to ban the teaching of critical race theory or similar topics in public schools. Conservativesin other statesare pressing similar bills andlobbying local school boardsto impose their own bans. Teachers nationwidehave protested against those measuresfor having a chilling effect on their classrooms.

Pratt said white Catholics should learn what critical race theory is, and what it isn't.

"CRT is taught to law students and sometimes to graduate students. It's not taught in elementary schools," she said. "Second, those who are truly committed to living out the principles of [Catholic social teaching] should want to support ways to challenge racial inequality in the law and society more broadly. That's what CRT does."

Rocha said critical race theory has shortcomings when it's used outside of its legal academic context.

"Critical race theory is designed to analyze the law, so anything that's not law or policy or really close to something like a statute, it's not really an appropriate object of investigation," he said. "So at the end of the day, critical race theory is a sophisticated tool of analysis of legal harms, but it assumes and it works on the foundations of a larger tradition of abolitionism for its moral apparatus."

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Link:

Explainer: What critical race theory is and is not - National Catholic Reporter

ST-HYACINTHE, QC Olymels management is pleased with the result of the vote by the members of the Olymel workers union in Valle-Jonction (CSN) ratifying the agreement in principle and the return-to-work protocol reached onAugust 29. The vote was held earlier today and puts an end to the strike that began onApril 28at its hog slaughterhouse and cutting plant in Valle-Jonction, in Beauce. The new six-year collective agreement will expire inMarch 2027.

Olymel has already taken steps to resume operations as soon as possible, but must first ensure that all equipment is in working order, that the plant is sanitary, and that workers are available to form teams for the day and evening shifts. The employee recall is expected to begin tonight and normal resumption of operations should therefore extend over a few days. The company believes, however, that it could, in the best scenario, resume slaughtering as early asFriday, September 3.

Under these circumstances and in the context of a rapid resumption of operations, Olymels management decided to maintain the evening shift at this plant and to renounce its abolition as previously announced in the event that the strike could have gone on longer. The 1050 employees will therefore all be called back to work.

Olymel is relieved to have been able to reach a common ground with union members at the Valle-Jonction plant. Working conditions and employee compensation will thus be improved, while maintaining the companys ability to operate in a highly competitive market. Olymels management would like to salute the work and efforts of its negotiating team who spared no effort to resolve this conflict and meet the conditions for a settlement, as well as the professionalism of the Qubec ministry of Labours conciliation teams which accompanied the parties throughout most of the negotiations. Such a long strike is still to be deplored and lessons will have to be learned. The management of Olymel, for its part, will do everything in its power to ensure that plant operations resume in a calm and constructive atmosphere. Furthermore, I would like to highlight the great resilience of the pork producers heavily affected by this conflict, said Olymel 1stVice-President, Mr.Paul Beauchamp.

BACKLOG OF HOGS READY FOR SLAUGHTER

The Valle-Jonction plant should gradually regain its weekly slaughter capacity of approximately 35,000 hogs and the company should resume winning over and serving clients accustomed to quality products from this facility. Incidentally, a significant portion of the production volume of the Valle-Jonction plant is shipped to the Japanese market. The strike called onApril 28is the main cause of the increase in waiting pigs and the resumption of activities should gradually reduce the pressure on hog producers. However, thanks to the rapid adoption by Olymel, in collaboration with its partners, Les leveurs de porcs du Qubec, of various measures such as the sale of pigs and piglets inthe United Statesand the movement of market pigs elsewhere inCanada, Olymel and its partners have to date succeeded in preventing humanitarian slaughter and its consequence, food waste.

ABOUT OLYMEL

Olymel isCanadasleader in the production, processing and distribution of pork and poultry meats. The company has made feeding the world its mission, which it pursues passionately with products of impeccable quality. It employs near 15,000 people and has production and processing facilities inQuebec,Ontario,Alberta,SaskatchewanandNew Brunswick. Olymel exports nearly a third of its total sales. Its annual sales reach$4.5billion. The company markets its products mainly under the Olymel, Lafleur, Flamingo, Pintys, Tour Eiffel and F.Mnard brands.

Excerpt from:

Olymel Announces the Resumption of Operations at its Valle-Jonction Hog Slaughterhouse and Cutting Plant in Beauce - PerishableNews

For many of us, leaded gasoline is a relic of a long-ago motoring past that never touched our driving experience. In 1996, leaded gasoline was banned in the U.S. and many other countries. However, some poorer countries have been forced to hang on to leaded gasoline for a while longer. Now that Algeria the last nation using the stuff has run out, the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) announced that the extra-nasty fuel has now been universally outlawed.

Leaded gasoline was created by GM in 1921. According to CarScoops, adding tetraethyl lead to fuel was first seen as a major breakthrough in eliminating engine knock. This knocking occurs when fuel is prematurely ignited in the engines cylinder, which degrades efficiency and can be damaging to the engine.

Fuels ability to remain un-ignited longer is indicated by the octane rating you see at the fuel pump. If you are unfamiliar with this term, it is because modern fuel has eliminated knock by adding higher octane ratings (i.e., 87, 89, 93.)

As of 1975, leaded fuel was widely available in the U.S., which greatly decreased engine knock. However, heart disease, various cancers, and underdeveloped children followed where leaded fuel gasoline was used. Leaded gasolines toxic exhaust led to its abolition in 1996.

Now that Algeria has finally run dry of its leaded gasoline supply, the world can finally fully outlaw the nasty stuff.

The successful enforcement of the ban on leaded petrol is a huge milestone for global health and our environment, said UNEP Executive Director Inger Andersen.

The fact that this fuel has finally been phased out everywhere on earth is, UNEP says, the result of a 20-year-long campaign that employed a mix of science, public education, and policy work. CarScoops reports that the ban on leaded fuel saves 1.2 million lives while sparing the world $2.4 trillion in healthcare expenses and other costs. Numbers like that make the UNEPs win really hit with some force.

This quote from the EPA is a hearting word in a time where we almost only hear stories of doom and gloom on the environmental front; I think this may be the single biggest success story in the environmental field, said Michael Walsh, the former head of motor vehicle pollution control programs with the United States Environmental Protection Agency.

The eradication of leaded fuel has been a hard-fought battle. Given the varied infrastructure challenges across the globe, it took a while for certain regions to make the switch from leaded fuels to fuel with Ethanol and other chemicals to help boost octane.

According to the Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI), ethanol has a higher volatility than gasoline, meaning it vaporizes more quickly; it is a cleaner-burning alternative to petroleum-based octane boosters. This octane booster is also more effective and cheaper than other ways to boost fuels octane. But how does it affect our cars?

Like everything, it depends on the application. Most modern cars wont see much if any abnormal degradation from ethanol, according to Bell Performance. However, many small motors manufacturers in the marine industry do not recommend using blended fuel. It can also hurt older vintage cars engines if used for a long time. However, the short and easy answer is no; ethanol is plenty safe for most cars.

This is a great step for the population of the world and environmental health. As Walsh goes on to say, Im certainly not a Pollyanna about climate change, but at least we can say We solved (the leaded fuel) problem. Lets do something similar. It gives me hope.

This is a win for the planet and people everywhere.

RELATED: How Long Can Gasoline Last in Your Tank?

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Leaded Gasoline Is Officially Illegal Everywhere On Earth After Last Country Ran Out | MotorBiscuit - - Todayuknews

(Representational Image)  |  Photo Credit: iStock Images

New Delhi:Riding two-wheelers dressed in t-shirts of solid colours, app-based delivery personnel are the most visible testimony to the growth of food and goods delivery business in India.

While ride apps, goods delivery and food delivery apps app have surely provided employment and flexibility in work timings to a large chunk of unskilled workforce in India; there have been concerns over lack of social security raised by gig workers working for these apps.

Shaik Salauddin, National General Secretary of Indian Federation Of App Based Transport Workers (IFAT), says that commissions to app-based delivery personnel have declined from around Rs50 per delivery to Rs20 per delivery, with an equally gruesome picture for cab drivers.

But one of the biggest challenges according to him is the revised daily targets for gig workers, which he claims makes it practically impossible for riders to claim daily bonuses of Rs. 500 or above. Stating that the pinch of absence of social security is hitting even harder with reducing commissions, he is of the view that rising daily delivery targets often deny a delivery bonus to the gig workers, leave alone an opportunity or time to work with another delivery app side-by-side.

Gig workers are outside the ambit of Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act, 1970 and The Employment Compensation Act, 1923. Technically, a gig worker engaged with a company can also work with another company as none of the contract binds him/her.

Former Additional Solicitor General (ASG) of India, senior lawyer Sidharth Luthra clarifies that what gig workers enter into is traditionally called a job work contract, though it's an e-contract.

This implies that whatever norms apply to other job workers should be applicable to them, with a clarification that those working with multiple service providers will need to be specifically protected in law.

Last year, the Centre had released a code on social security for workers of the unorganised sector along with a National Social Security Board. Even various states have started forming similar boards, but gig workers claim that they haven't been included as part of possible beneficiaries, which is denying them an opportunity to access the government's social welfare schemes.

Rituparna Chakraborty, Co-founder and Executive Vice-President at Teamlease Services, clarifies that gig workers don't share an employer-employee relationship and hence they are not and should not be a part of employment labour regulations.

She feels that the social security code will provide benefits like medical coverage for gig workers in case of exigencies, through the social security fund proposed to be set up by the Union Government with contributions from platform operators.

However, the social security code or its associated benefits won't designate gig workers as employees or give them job security, as Chakraborty terms job security and a gig as two different planes taking off from two different runaways. She opines that while the regulations will take care of the long term perspective, the key now is to push the Centre to regulate and notify the rules of labour codes for on ground implementation.

Apart from lack of implementation, gig workers have been complaining about unclear laws and varying statements by apps on insurance policies for them.

Protesting exclusion from the recently launched E-Shram card for unorganized sector workers, IFAT has sought individual insurance instead of bulk insurance for all gig workers, claiming that compensation for deceased or critically injured workers is often determined by social media outrage instead of a fair and uniform policy.

Manish Sabharwal, Vice-Chairman of Teamlease Services, offers a word of caution for the world's biggest gig economy in India, where 50% of labour force is self-employed, as he terms many of the self-employed unviable entrepreneurs as self-exploiting.

He feels that the productivity of gig workers connected to tech platforms and their capacity utilization is higher, and they also learn important digital and soft skills. He cautions that it would be premature to start rebadging self-employed people as wage workers and bring down the regulatory cholesterol of our labour laws onto them.

More:

What kind of regulations are needed for gig workers? - Times Now