Monthly Archives: January 2022

Of all the remembrances of January 6, the most searing for me was a simple tweet thread. It came from a Presbyterian pastor named Duke Kwon, and it was a photo compilation of Christian imagery on January 6. There were crosses, Bibles, public prayers, and Christian flags amid the tear gas. In fact, Christian flags and symbols were on the front lines of the fighting, carried like men used to carry regimental colors into battle.

Its hard to think of the worst image, but the picture belowwhich combines the Christian flag with an American flag and a Trump flagalmost perfectly captures the syncretism of Trumpist Christianity:

Ive written at length about Christian nationalism generally and the specific version of Christianity that was suffused throughout Trumps effort to steal a national election. But I want to write about something a bit different, about the definition of a Christian nation and the sense that America is (or was) a Christian nation that is now moving to a post-Christian future where it will become increasingly difficult for faithful Christians to find a home here and to feel welcome in their own communities.

This ideathat America is moving from a Christian past to a post-Christian futureisnt precisely Christian nationalism, but it does lend an enormous amount of emotional urgency to Christian political engagement. But lets unpack these thoughts for a moment. Is America a Christian nation? Has it been a Christian nation? And is it harder to live life publicly, openly, and authentically as a Christian than it used to be?

I know thats a lot to unpack. One essay can only scratch the surface. Books have been written on the subject. But lets have the conversation anyway. First, lets try to define what a Christian nation is.

We know that the United States does not meet one definition of a Christian nation. It does not have an established Christian church, and our Constitution explicitly rejects any formal religious establishment. There is nothing like the Church of England here. Our nations head of state is not also the defender of the faith.

But formal establishment is only one way to define a Christian nation, and its perhaps the least instructive. Theres the rather important matter of the religious faith and practice of its citizens. But does the mere fact that a majority of a nations citizens identify as Christian render a nation a Christian nation?

Id argue that a nations religious character is defined by the interaction between the individual faith of the citizens and the institutional expression of the nations values. A functioning Christian nation is going to combine both a robust private practice of faith with a government that is committed to basic elements of justice and mercy. In other words, when determining the identity of a people and nation, by their fruits you shall know them.

For example, Ive argued that American classical liberalism, at its best, not only respects and reflects the inherent God-given dignity of man by protecting our most fundamental human rights, it also recognizes and seeks to mitigate the inherent sinfulness of man by recognizing our capacity for tyranny and oppression. In other words, One way of reading American history is as a reflection of the central theological tension inherent in the gospel: the push and pull between humans as made in the image of God and humans still trapped in sin.

But we know enough about Americas experiment with classical liberalism that it has often fallen profoundly short of its professed values and has long engaged in behavior that its own founding declaration decisively rejects.

By this more exacting definition of Christian nation, which combines both individual faith identities and collective, national expressions of justice and mercy, then its far less clear that America has been a Christian nation or that our future looks to be more post-Christian than our past. In fact, a more fair reading of our history is one of conflict between Christians, where all too many times one set of believers sought to oppress others and used the power of government in the most profoundly un-Christian of ways.

In Lincolns second inaugural address, he famously said of the Union and the Confederacy, Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. That was true most dramatically in the Civil War, but its been true in countless conflicts before and since.

In fact, in the present day, its still true. As Republicans and Democrats hate each other with increasing ferocity, both parties utterly depend on the two most churchgoing demographics in America to attain and hold power. While Democrats are more secular than Republicans, its a rump party without the black vote, and black voters are among the most devout and churchgoing citizens in the United States of America. Republicans of course depend on the white Evangelical vote, and white Evangelicals attend church and believe in the God of the Bible at rates similar to black Protestants.

And what of Americas religious past, the good old days that so many Republican Christians seem to remember and long for? Reality is far more messy. One can make a good argument that white Protestant religious power may well have reached its American apex during Prohibition. A religiously infused temperance movement was so powerful that it succeeded in passing a constitutional amendment essentially imposing morals legislation throughout the United States.

Yet what else was happening in the United States during that era? Well, the entire southern United States (the Bible Belt, by the way) was essentially an apartheid sub-state within the larger United States. It brutally oppressed Americas black citizens, including its black Christian citizens. The Tulsa Race Massacre happened in 1921, at the peak of white Protestant power.

At the same time, white Protestants were also busy persecuting Catholics. The late 19th and early 20th centuries were the heyday of so-called Blaine Amendmentsstate constitutional amendments that were explicitly aimed at protecting Protestant political and cultural power against perceived Catholic political and cultural encroachment.

So do we want to claim America as a Christian nation in that period? Even though there were millions of American Christians who possessed and wielded power to an extent not seen before or since? Where was the justice? Instead a nation of Christian was proving that it could act in affirmatively un-Christianeven anti-Christianways.

And what about the idea that it is increasingly difficult to live out your Christian faith in this new, post-Christian era? I do think there are communities in the United States that are more hostile to authentic Christians expressions than in years past. I spent years of my life defending Christian liberty in higher education, for example, and I can give you chapter and verse on blatant anti-Christian hostility. Ive seen it. Ive experienced it.

There are influential people and institutions in this country whove taken the position that orthodox expressions of Christian sexual morality represent nothing more than bigotry and hatred.

But as much hostility as Ive seen and experienced from some secular leftists in response to the public expression of my Christian values, nothing compares to hostility Ive seen and experienced from self-identified Christians when I rooted my opposition to Donald Trump in the same Christian values that sometimes earned me scorn in the Ivy League.

In other words, Christians were more hostile to my public expressions of my values than the secular left ever was. And Im far from alone. Where does that cut on the question of whether its easy or hard to publicly and authentically live out your Christian faith? And whos hostile to that faith?

Lets think for a moment about the Bible Belt. Heres a pop quizwas it more or less difficult to be publicly and authentically Christian in the South in 2022 or 1952? The answer is easy. The South is far more welcoming of orthodox, authentic Christianity now. Why? Because orthodox, authentic public Christianitywhich would necessarily include opposition to the racial oppression of Jim Crowcarried profoundly greater risks even in the relatively recent past.

If you were black, it could get you killed. The Civil Rights Memorial lists the names of 41 martyrs of the movement, and the overwhelming majority are black. The victims include pastors and four young girls killed when white supremacist terrorists blew up the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham in 1963. These terrible losses represent a fraction of the thousands of black Americans lynched in the South after the Civil War.

If you were white, you could face economic retaliation and physical violence that could make modern cancel culture look tame. White Christian and Jewish allies also risked death. For example, segregationists beat a white pastor named James Reeb to death in Birmingham. An Alabama sheriffs deputy shot and killed an Episcopal seminary student named Jonathan Daniels. The infamous Mississippi Burning murders of 1964 claimed the lives of a black Mississippi man named James Chaney and two Jewish men from New York named Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner.

These men were just a few of the casualties of a movement that called for racial justice in the heart of one of the most Christian regions in the nation.

Heres a challenging reality: America has become more justand thus closer to the ideals one would expect of a Christian nationas white Protestant power has waned. The United States of 2022 is far more just than it was in 1822 or 1922 or 1952 or even 1982. And while white Protestants have undeniably been part of that storythey were indispensable to the abolitionist movement, for examplethe elevation of other voices has made a tremendous difference.

In the civil rights movement, the sad reality is that all too often the person wielding the fire hose and the person facing the spray both proclaimed faith in Jesus and both went to church, but only one of them was acting justly. And any account of American civil rights has to include the vital contribution of the American Jewish community.

Once again, the same theme pops up: Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other.

Even one of the most defining moral issues of modern Christian conservatismthe fight against abortionarose largely out of the Catholic Church, the same church that Protestants spent decades vigorously trying to suppress. The pro-life alliance between Evangelicals and Catholics is a relatively recent phenomenon.

I make this observation not to state that white American Protestants are uniquely problematic. The history of Christian power wielded by virtually any Christian faction anywhere is replete with examples of injustice and abuse. Nor are Christians uniquely terrible. Weve seen the awful consequences of corrupt religion throughout world history and throughout world religions. We still see it today.

The Christianity of the United States of America, both as a matter of individual expression and institutional justice, is an enormously complex topic, but one thing I can say with confidencethere was no golden age of American Christianity. And we cannot look back at any moment and say, this is when America was a Christian nation.

What conservative Evangelicals are losing today isnt so much liberty as power. Christians of all theological stripes enjoy more religious freedom now, in this nation, than virtually any group of believers anywhere in the world. Yet even so its always uncomfortable to lose power.

And that brings me to my last thoughtsince when is comfort our goal? The Kingdom of God is upside-down, remember. The last shall be first. To save your life you must lose your life. There is no higher calling than taking up your cross to follow Christ. If youre living a life where your Christianity is comfortable, and anything remotely resembling a cross is far, far from your experience, thats when we should wonder if weve conformed to the culture. Because we know the culture has not conformed to the cross.

There is a misplaced emotional urgency in parts of the church today. Theres a longing for a past we shouldnt seek to recover, panic over a present that is still laden with privilege, and fear of a future that is in the hands of a sovereign God. We saw that all on January 6. We see it still in rhetoric that blankets our Christian political discourse.

Yet if our history teaches us anything, it is that we cannot equate Christian power with Christian justice, and while weve always been a nation of Christians, we have not always borne Christian fruit.

One more thing

In the latest Good Faith podcast, Curtis and I talk about the relationship between justice and power and also about the relationship between Christianity and the American founding. We take the themes of this weeks newsletter and go deep.

Give it a listen. And please rate us! Were trying to get to 1,000 recommendations (then 2,000 of course). Your ratings make it easier for new listeners to find us and The Dispatch. Thank you!

One last thing

This is so good. Ive linked to Tenielle Nedas music before, and I listen to it all the time. This is a favorite. Enjoy:

Original post:

A Nation of Christians Is Not Necessarily a Christian Nation - The Dispatch

Boris Johnsons government has been of trying to subvert the justice system after the attorney general announced she could refer the Colston statue case to the Court of Appeal.

Lawyers, campaigners and opposition parties condemned Suella Braverman after she claimed the jury verdict which cleared four protesters of criminal damage after they toppled a monument of slave trader Edward Colston had caused confusion.

Speaking toThe Independent, Peter Herbert, retired judge and chair of the Society of Black Lawyers, described the attorney generals intervention as a disgrace.

The senior figure added: The Court of Appeal has no role to play in this acquittal Her involvement smacks of institutional racism, demonstrating the need to defend the narrative of slavery and oppression, the direct link to colonialism, and therefore to present day injustices.

Labour accused Ms Braverman of playing politics with the jury system, after Ms Braverman said she was carefully considering whether to refer the outcome to senior judges to give them a chance to clarify the law.

The attorney general has a duty to uphold democracy, the rule of law and the sanctity of the jury system not play political games when she doesnt like the results, said Emily Thornberry, the shadow attorney general.

The barrister defending one of the so-called Colston Four in Bristol told The Independent the attorney generals move amounted to Trumpian behaviour.

BarristerRajChada, who represented 33-year-old protester Jake Skuse, said: [Ms Braverman] is undermining public confidence in the criminal justice system by undermining the role of juries. Its Trumpian politics you dont like a decision then you seek to undermine it any way you can.

Nazir Afzal, former chief crown prosecutor for the northwest of England, also condemned the governments decision to interfere in the case.

The senior solicitor told The Independent: If the attorney general would like, I can refer several thousands of jury acquittals to her to consider. The case ends here, and to suggest otherwise is damaging to public confidence in the justice system.

If the Colston case is referred to Court of Appeal, the senior judges will not be able to overturn the jurys verdict, but they could potentially point out an error in law in directions that were given to the jury in the case.

The acquittal of the four activists who claimed the presence of the statue was a hate crime and was therefore not an offence to remove it has sparked an angry backlash among Tory MPs who warned it would allow mob rule and encourage the pulling down of more statues.

In a statement posted to Twitter on Friday, Ms Braverman said the jurys decision was causing confusion and she was able to refer matters to the Court of Appeal so that senior judges have the opportunity to clarify the law for future cases. I am carefully considering whether to do so.

But the defence barrister in the case insisted there was nothing to clarify. Our lawful excuse defences were reviewed by the judge and he sent robust directions to the jury, said Mr Chada. There was no suggestion by the prosecution the judge got it wrong.

Cabinet minister Grant Shapps suggested that the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill close a loophole limiting the prosecution of those who damage memorials. The bill, currently going through parliament, would move more cases into crown court and increase the maximum sentence in such cases to 10 years imprisonment.

But legal expert Prof Thomas Lewis, director of theCentre for Rights and Justiceat Nottingham Trent University, told The Independent that the bill could see more jury acquittals.

The bills seeks to give extra protection to memorials by moving these cases from low-level magistrates courts and putting them before a jury, he said. The point about juries, dating back to the Magna Carta, is that they are the voice of the ordinary people. You have to accept their verdict.

Zehrah Hasan a barrister at Garden Court Chambers and campaigner at the Black Protest Legal Support group, warned the government against questioning jury verdicts. Suella Braverman threatening to use her power to question the legal basis for the jury decision is ill-informed, and its another example of the Tory governments authoritarianism.

Grey Collier, advocacy director at human rights campaign group Liberty, added: This government has form for trying to overturn things it doesnt like. This looks like the government is trying to subvert the rule of law by going behind the systems we have in place.

Wera Hobhouse MP, the Liberal Democrats justice spokesperson, said it was unacceptable that politicians are trying to trespass into what should be left to our independent court procedures the Tories should step back from undermining our democracy.

Section 36 of the Criminal Justice Act 1972 allows the attorney general, following a submission from the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), to ask a higher court to clarify a point of law. But it is not a means of changing the outcome of an individual case.

A CPS spokesman said: We are considering the outcome of the case but, under the law, the prosecution cannot appeal against a jury acquittal.

See the original post:

Government accused of subverting rule of law with Colston statue case appeal move - The Independent

Tesla has opened a new sales and service center in the Xinjiang region of China, home to a Muslim population known as the Uyghurs whom the United Nations and rights organizations have identified as arepressed ethnic group.

In 2021, theUnited States, United Kingdom and Canadasaid China engages in "forced labour, mass detention in internment camps, forced sterilisations" and other abuses against Uyghurs. Separately, theEU imposed sanctions on China for "arbitrary detentions"of Uyghurs.

China has repeatedly dismissed those claims as"lies and disinformation."

Tesla announced the move last week on Weibo, a popular social media platform in the country. The Wall Street Journal previously reported on Tesla's move into Xinjiang.

A Dec. 31 post on Tesla's Weibo account which was translated by CNBC said: "The UrumqiTeslaCenter officially opens #inanewdirection... As the firstTeslaCenter in Xinjiang, this location integrates sales, service and delivery. It will help Xinjiang users enjoy the experience of one-stop service, escortingTeslacar owners on their journey to the west."

Another Weibo post on that same date said: "#inanewdirection UrumqiTeslaCenter has officially opened! On the last day of 2021 we meet in Xinjiang. In 2022, let's begin Xinjiang's journey to pure electric [vehicles]! Encounter even more beauty!"

The hashtag phrases comprised wordplay in Chinese. The character that spells "new" is contained in the first half of the region's name, Xinjiang.

Tesla currently has one supercharger in Urumqi and another that's "coming soon," according to its website.

Many social media users in China expressed appreciation in response to Tesla's posts. But the move elicited outrage in the West.

As NBC News previously reported in June 2021, Amnesty International researchers found that "Chinese authorities in the western region of Xinjiang have been rounding up women and men largely Muslims from the Uighur, Kazakh and Kyrgyz ethnic minorities and detaining them in camps designed to rid them of terrorist or extremist leanings since 2017.

"More than 1 million Uighurs and other minorities from Xinjiang are believed to be held in internment camps, where they are forced to study Marxism, renounce their religion, work in factories and face abuse, according to human rights groups and first-hand accounts. Beijing says these 're-education camps' provide vocational training and are necessary to fight extremism."

In response, U.S. senators recently approved abill banning importsfrom China's Xinjiang region unless businesses can prove they were produced without forced labor.

The author of the bill, U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), said of Tesla in a press statement, "Nationless corporations are helping the Chinese Communist Party cover up genocide and slave labor in the region."

Tesla did not respond to requests for comment. Tesla shares rose more than 13% on Mondayafter the company reported record vehicle deliveries for 2021.

Elon Musk's electric vehicle company and his re-usable rocket company SpaceX have both faced scrutiny in China.

For example, China sent a complaint to the United Nations last year revealing that SpaceX satellites had nearly collided with China's space station on two separate occasions in 2021.

With nearly 30,000 satellites and other debris believed to be orbiting the planet, scientists have urged governments to share data to reduce the risk of disastrous collisions. SpaceX has deployed nearly 1,900 satellites to serve its Starlink broadband network, and is planning to launch thousands more.

Before that, China mandated recalls of Tesla vehicles over quality defects, and the Chinese government restricted the use of Teslas by some state and military personnel citing security concerns.

But Tesla has also helped Beijing demonstrate that it is open to foreign businesses, and that a foreign company can thrive in its relatively closed market.

In 2019, when Musk broke ground on Tesla's Shanghai factory, the CEO said, "Somebody who joins today as a junior engineer in Tesla China could one day be CEO of Tesla worldwide...They could have my job one day maybe."

In July 2020, Musk posted on Twitter that "China rocks" while the U.S. is full of "complacency and entitlement."

Read the original:

Tesla opened a dealership in Xinjiang, China, despite widespread reports of Uyghur oppression there - CNBC

Several countries including the United States, Australia, Belgium, and the UK have already decided to boycott the upcoming Beijing Winter Olympic Games diplomatically in protest against Chinas repression of democracy and separatist movements in Hong Kong and Taiwan and not least the treatment of the Muslim minority of Uighurs in Xinjiang province.

But with under a month to go until kick-off, the Danish government has yet to make a decision and is under massive pressure,DR Newswrites.

Minister of Culture Ane Halsboe Jrgensen and Minister of Foreign Affairs Jeppe Kofod refuse to be interviewed on the very grounds that the government has not yet decided whether it wants to boycott the Games diplomatically.

To DR News, Eva Flyvholm, foreign affairs spokeswoman for the Unity List, says: Now the government must get together, they have had time to think about this for a long time and we must know where the country stands.

In relation to human rights, its really important that Denmark draws a line, both when it comes to China, but also when it comes to the World Cup in Qatar, she says.

Foreign policy spokesman from the Liberal Party, Michael Aastrup wonders why the Danish government has yet to decide and says, Almost every day we see that China takes new steps and crosses the line in relation to freedom of speech in Hong Kong, in relation to the aggression against Taiwan and in relation to the oppression of the Muslim minority in the country.

Michael Aastrup does not believe Denmark is risking more than 70 years of diplomatic cooperation with China. No, because now its very simple; we have to choose a side. The United States and a large number of our allies have made it clear that they want a diplomatic boycott. Since they made the announcement so clearly, we should also join them and stand on the right side, he says.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has said that the committee considers other countries governments presence to be a political decision that each country must make, which IOC in its political neutrality fully respects.

Several Danish political parties believe a diplomatic boycott is a good idea which they would rather see happen in cooperation with other EU countries.

Stanis Elsborg, a senior analyst from Play the Game, which works to promote democracy, transparency, and freedom of speech in world sport, has long followed the debate on the diplomatic boycott of the upcoming Games.

For me, it testifies that China is a major political power, and Denmark is in the process of a very, very difficult balancing act to figure out how to deal with the situation in China because the country is also a big and important partner, he says.

The Winter Olympics are scheduled to start on 4 February 2022 and end on 20 February 2022.

Here is the original post:

Danish government under pressure to boycott the Beijing Winter Olympics - ScandAsia.com

The federal government just set aside a huge sum $40bn to compensate the victims and relatives of a system of cruel racial exploitation that existed for much of the countrys history. This news is not about the United States, where debate over reparations for slavery have been stalled in Congress for decades. No, this news comes from the USs neighbour to the north, Canada.

The national government of Canada has agreed to set aside this sum, the equivalent of $31bn, for Indigenous Canadians who were harmed by the countrys child welfare system. The huge sum will go towards compensating Indigenous children who were unnecessarily removed from their families in the last three decades, and fixing the discriminatory system itself. The decision is the latest step in Canadas efforts to provide redress for historic wrongs against Indigenous Canadians and especially Indigenous children. It is an acknowledgement that even after the closure of Canadas infamous residential schools, the welfare system remained focused on removing Indigenous children from their families rather than supporting them in place.

For years, Indigenous Canadians were subjected to Canadian boarding schools. These institutions, generally operated by the Catholic Church and other religious institutions, forcibly removed First Nations, Inuit and Mtis children from their parents and communities and systematically stripped them of their cultural identities while imposing upon them English and French, Christian religious practices, and white Canadian culture.

This programme of state-sanctioned kidnapping and indoctrination officially ran from 1883 until the last school was closed in 1996, despite a long and well-known record of abuse. The stories that have emerged over the decades concerning these schools are horrific. Sexual abuse of children was common, and many of the schools had horrific mortality rates, as children died from tuberculosis and other communicable diseases, malnutrition, violence and even infanticide. The recent revelations of hundreds of newly-discovered unmarked graves on the sites of the now-closed boarding schools has created public outrage across Canada in recent months. These public scandals, combined with a ruling from a 2016 tribunal that surviving victims should be compensated, as well as a pair of pending lawsuits concerning more recent cases of discrimination, finally prompted the Canadian government to act.

In contrast, the debate about reparations continues to ebb and flow in the US without any resolution. Legislation in the House of Representatives to create a national commission to explore the issue, symbolically titled House Resolution 40 (HR 40) after the famous Forty Acres and a Mule promise to compensate freed slaves after the American Civil War, has been introduced by Black legislators every year since 1989, to no avail. The racial reckoning that occurred after the deaths of George Floyd and others in 2020 seemed to produce newfound momentum for the reparations conversation. HR 40 moved out of committee for the first time in 2021 but has yet to be put up to a full vote.

Unlike Canada, where the revelation of the graveyards of Indigenous children helped spur moral outrage and governmental action, the evils of American slavery have been extremely well-documented in academic and popular discourse for some time. And attempts like the 1619 Project to highlight the centrality of slavery and its aftermath to American history have led to backlash and laws designed to specifically downplay and obscure the magnitude and horror of American slavery and racial oppression. Such laws portend a renewed opposition to calls for reparations. And so attempts to appeal to moral outrage are likely to be counterproductive in the face of defensive conservatives and state policies designed to whitewash history.

Despite these setbacks in the United States, the American case for reparations can draw encouragement and examples from Canada. The multibillion-dollar sum allocated in Canada comes after years of increasingly large awards and settlements across the country. An earlier settlement reached in 2006 obligated the federal government and the Catholic Church to pay compensation to victims of the residential schools system. In recent years, the provinces of Quebec, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick have agreed to settlements with specific First Nations worth tens or hundreds of millions of dollars each, based on improper allocation of lands based on treaties that are decades or even centuries old. An Ontario court recently ruled that the government had been significantly under-compensating members of various First Nations under the terms of an 1850 treaty, requiring potential billions in back pay.

The first lesson to draw from these Canadian examples is that localised action can have significant effect. This is encouraging for the US where, absent federal legislation, local jurisdictions have taken up the task of reparations. Evanston, Illinois recently became the first US city to implement a policy of reparations for its African American residents. The city has inspired other municipalities to look into similar programmes; main cities such as Detroit and Boston have taken steps towards implementing reparations. Evanston even recently hosted a meeting of the National African American Reparations Commission, which seeks to create a national network among advocates working on reparations at the local level. California, the countrys most populous state, created a task force in 2020 that has been investigating the details of how to implement reparations across the state. Even private institutions have begun implementing programmes to benefit descendants of American slaves, including Georgetown University and several other colleges and universities with histories of profiting from slavery.

Furthermore, reparations have been made or considered for more specific cities and statewide programmes that victimised Black people. North Carolina has been paying out millions to victims of forced sterilisation during a statewide eugenics programme that operated until 1976. The city of Chicago has been paying millions of dollars to compensate victims of police torture under now-deceased Police Commander Jon Burge. The city government of Tulsa, Oklahoma has begun deliberations over compensating any survivors as well as descendants of those victimised by the 1921 Tulsa Massacre, which rose into popular consciousness over the 100th anniversary of the ethnic cleansing against the citys Black residents.

In each of these examples, at least some of the recipients of compensation are living survivors of the policies in question, as is the case for the Canadian programme as well. However, these programmes have also established that families of direct victims are eligible for compensation. Furthermore, while slavery in the United States ended far too long ago for any of its direct victims to still be alive, there is a strong case that slavery represented just one phase in an unbroken chain of anti-Black policies that include Jim Crow segregation, redlining policies that discriminated against Black homeowners, and biased policing and criminal justice systems, all of which continue to affect Black people today. Indeed, scholar and prominent reparations advocate Ta-Nehisi Coates has made just such an argument, including in his landmark 2014 essay: The Case for Reparations.

If the Canadian example is to be followed, focusing on these specific and localised cases redlining in American cities, the Tulsa Massacre, police torture in Chicago, reparations in specific cities or states can lay the groundwork for larger and more general plans for compensation for the larger system of racial oppression. This type of bottom-up approach to reparations can actually support and complement the top-down approach that has been pursued in Congress through HR 40.

The final lesson coming from Canada is that, until legislation is passed to recognise and compensate past injustices, the court system can be an effective avenue for gaining redress. The United States has seen the judiciary move ahead of the legislature in other areas, from desegregation in the 1950s with Brown vs Board of Education to LGBTQ rights in the recent cases of Obergefell vs Hodges and Bostock vs Clayton County. One such lawsuit for reparations in the US was dismissed in 2004 without prejudice, meaning that it can be revived. As local, state and corporate efforts for reparations become more widespread, such changes could add momentum for a renewed legal case for reparations. A legal victory, or simply a strong court case, may in turn spur legislators to finally move on HR 40, seeking legislative redress for the evils of slavery and subsequent racial oppression.

The Canadian process for redressing the wrongs that continue to be inflicted upon Indigenous people has a long way to go. As the head of the First Nations advocacy organisation behind one the recent lawsuits notes candidly, no final agreement has been reached for the $40bn set aside by the Canadian government and promises actually dont end the discrimination for kids if theyre not implemented. The US case for reparations has even further to go, having yet to even revive the 40 Acre promise of 1865. But the progress made in select US localities, and the recent advancements in Canada, offer new hope and new strategies for finally achieving a measure of racial justice and repairing some of the damage that has accumulated over generations and centuries.

Correction: (8 January 2022) A previous version of this article stated that the $40bn sum set aside by the Canadian government was for Indigenous Canadians subjected to boarding schools. It is actually for Indigenous Canadians harmed by the discriminatory welfare system in the last three decades. The article has been updated to correct this error.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial stance.

Link:

Canada approved reparations the US can be next - Al Jazeera English

Europe has faced such ugly moments too often before, where matters of life and deathand of war and peacedepended on the balance of power and test of wills between despots and more benevolent forces.

The Cold Wars peaceful end thirty years ago was meant to alter that bloody history and usher in a period that then US President George H.W. Bush in 1989 hoped would bring a Europe whole and free, where Russia would find its rightful and peaceful place.

For forty years, the seeds of democracy in Eastern Europe lay dormant, buried under the frozen tundra of the Cold War, said President Bush on May 31, 1989, in Mainz, Germany, six months before the Berlin Walls fall and more than two years ahead of Soviet dissolution. And decade after decade, time after time, the flowering human spirit withered from the chill of conflict and oppression The world has waited long enough. The time is right. Let Europe be whole and free.

It is with that as context that US President Joe Biden this week confronts a moment of truth for the dying embers of that aspiration and the signature foreign-policy initiative of his presidency. Biden is rallying allies for the systemic competition between democracy and Chinese and Russian autocracy that he has said will define the twenty-first century.

That collides with Russian President Vladimir Putins signature ambition of reversing the breakup of the Soviet Union and the enlargement of NATO to his borders, the former of which he famously called the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the [twentieth] century. As he turns seventy this year, he seems more determined than ever to cement his legacy, as have Russian czars and leaders before him, through territorial expansion or the control of neighbors.

This weeks talks begin with Mondays bilateral US-Russian meeting in Geneva, starting with an initial conversation Sunday evening, move on to the Russian-NATO Council in Brussels on Wednesday, and then end on Thursday in Vienna at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

What has prompted all these emergency meetings are Russian security demands delivered in mid-December in the form of two draft treaties. Their provisions would prohibit Ukraine from ever joining NATO and require the Alliance to withdraw forces stationed in member countries in Central and Eastern Europe and stop all military exercises in those countries. That was followed a few days later by brash Putin brinksmanship in the form of an ultimatumbacked by some one hundred thousand troops near Ukraines bordersthat he would take military-technical action if not satisfied.

Thus far, the United States and its allies have answered his escalation through the carrot of reciprocal talks on some aspects of the treatiesincluding allowable missile systems and military maneuversand through the stick of punishing, new financial, military, and technology sanctions should Russia invade Ukraine.

US officials told the New York Times that those plans include cutting off Russias largest financial institutions from global transactions, imposing an embargo on American-made or American-designed technology needed for defense-related and consumer industries, and arming insurgents in Ukraine who would conduct what would amount to a guerrilla war against a Russian military occupation, if it comes to that.

By this weeks end, the United States and its allies likely will know whether Putin is willing to negotiate or whether hes determined to escalate.

The fluidity of the situation was underscored by this past weeks swift, Russian-led military intervention in Kazakhstan, at the request of Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, ostensibly to quell widespread public protests against a fuel-price increase on January 2.

It would be a mistake to separate Putins actions in Kazakhstan from his ambitions in Ukraine. By his calculus, they are inextricably linked.

When the dust settles, Kazakhstan is likely to land deeper in Moscows expanding sphere of influence than at any time since it broke from the Soviet Union in 1991complete with its energy and mineral riches, which include 40 percent of the worlds uranium reserves.

Although the situation is still unfolding and reliable information is hard to come by, whats beyond dispute is that the timing and swift execution of Russias intervention underscore Putins determination to see and seize strategic opportunities in the former Soviet space. It is the fourth time in just two years that Moscow has intervened in neighboring states that had been tilting toward the Westfollowing interventions in Armenia, Belarus, and Ukraine.

Rumors are rife in Kazakhstan regarding Russias role in this past weeks events, ranging from the possibility that it was a Russian-organized coup from the beginning to the certainty that the always-opportunistic Putin simply seized the moment.

Whats clear is that with his country in turmoil and his leadership at risk, Tokayev turned to Putin to ensure his political survival. That is likely to bring lasting change to a countryand perhaps to other parts of Central Asiathat had benefited from balancing relations with Moscow, Beijing, and Washington.

With Moscows support, Tokayev issued shoot-to-kill orders against protesters and ousted Nursultan Nazarbayev, 81, his erstwhile benefactor, and the countrys first president, as head of Kazakhstans powerful security council. He also ousted and arrested Karim Masimov, his intelligence chief, on charges of treason.

Russian troops are now on the ground protecting the countrys most crucial airports and military installations, alongside other soldiers from the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), made up of six nations from the former Soviet Union, in its first such military intervention since its 1992 founding.

As US Secretary of State Tony Blinken said this week, One lesson of recent history is that once Russians are in your house, its sometimes very difficult to get them to leave. If there is a message from Kazakhstan to US officials negotiating this week with the Russians, it is this: Whatever you hope to negotiate, recognize that Putin is playing for keeps, believes he has the initiative, is willing to take risks, is prepared to send in troops, and sees the Biden administrationparticularly following the Afghanistan debacleand its partners as weak, divided, and indecisive.

The least-likely scenarios are those of Putin backing off from his demands on NATO or executing a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Watch instead for something murkier and craftier that would be designed to divide alliesthe taking of additional swatches of Ukrainian territory, the annexation of Luhansk of Donbas provinces, where Russian separatists dominate, or the stirring up of internal Ukrainian dramas with a hidden hand.

The question is whether the United States and its allies can avoid both appeasement and war. The future of Europe is again in the balance.

This article originally appeared onCNBC.com

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter @FredKempe.

#1 The future of Europe hinges on the coming talks between the West and RussiaTHE WASHINGTON POST

The recent passing of Fred Hiatt, the legendary editorial page editor of the Washington Post, was a blow to democracy advocates around the world.

So it was heartening to see the Posts lead editorial on Sunday rightly warning that history could repeat itself in Europe if the United States and its allies dont respond properly to Putins aggressions. Hiatt would have been proud of the piece, comparing the gravity of the moment to the specter of Munich in 1938, when Britain and France traded a piece of Czechoslovakia to Adolf Hitlers Germany in return for his false pledge not to make war.

What the United States cannot do is allow Mr. Putin to win concessions at the point of a gun, the Post concludes. In the all too likely event that he is not bargaining in good faith, and does invade Ukraine, President Biden will have to help that country defend itself, rally NATO and ensure that Russia pays a heavy price. Read more

#2 Kazakhstan Unrest and Russias Intervention Transform Ties With MoscowYaroslav Trofimov | THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

For more on the history of Russian-Kazakh relations, look no further than this excellent explainer from Yaroslav Trofimov.

Longtime Kazakh leader Nursultan Nazarbayev oversaw moves to strengthen the Kazakh identity and weaken Russias historic influence following the fall of the Soviet Union, Trofimov writes. But now by inviting Russian-led foreign intervention into Kazakhstan, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has risked upending that balancing act.

Recent history provides two contrasting paths for Kazakhstan to follow: Belarus, where President Alyaksandr Lukashenkas brutal crackdown has successfully kept him in power for now, and Ukraine, where then President Viktor Yanukovych couldnt quell the 2014 revolution and fled to Russia, leading to Putin taking over Crimea and invading the Donbas region. The question now is whether Tokayev will have enough political will to take Lukashenkos path, Russia expert Andrey Kortunov tells Trofimov. Read more

#3 Russias menacing of Ukraine is unlikely to induce NATO to retreatTHE ECONOMIST

The Economist examines how Putins menacing build-up across the Ukrainian border could push NATO closer together, a risk the magazine argues the Russian dictator could be more than willing to take.

The irony, the Economist writes, is that Russias efforts to halt NATOs eastward expansion may end up achieving precisely the opposite. But for Putin, the gamble may be worth it. Better to start a war now, despite the attendant costs, than risk a Ukraine bristling with foreign troops in a decade.

The article ends with a sobering reflection by Munich Security Conference Chairman Wolfgang Ischinger, who in 1993 asked a top official in Moscow how Russia was going to calm the fears of former Soviet bloc countries such as Poland and Ukraine.

Whats wrong with our neighbors living in fear of us? replied the official. Unfortunately, says Ischinger, very little, if anything, has changed. Read more

#4 Ukraine is Only One Small Part of Putins PlansLilia Shevtsova | THE NEW YORK TIMES

Longtime Russia expert Lilia Shevtsovas smart, concise analysis of Putins attempt to remake the international order into a shape more friendly to authoritarian Russia is a crucial read in order to understand Putins endgame.

Judging from the Wests awkward, anguished response so far, Shevtsova warns, Putin might be close to getting what he wants. And Ukraine could only be the beginning. Writes Shevtsova: Today, Ukraine is the jewel to fight for. But it wont end there: Belarus, whose embattled leader relies on Russias support, could be the next prize in the geopolitical rivalry or perhaps it will be Kazakhstan, where popular anger at the corrupt, Russian-backed regime has erupted. The drama is just beginning.

The result, she argues, is a deadlock, as Russia and the West play a seemingly endless game of who blinks first. Read more

#5 In Kazakhstans Street Battles, Signs of Elites Fighting Each OtherIvan Nechepurenko and Andrew Higgins| THE NEW YORK TIMES

This weeks must-read is this superbly reported explainer of the riots in Kazakhstan from Ivan Nechepurenko and Andrew Higgins on how a power struggle within the Kazakh leadership may well have spilled into the streets and fueled the unrest sweeping the country.

The [fuel-price] crisis, they write, coincided with a power struggle within the government, fueling talk that the people fighting in the streets were proxies for feuding factions of the political elite.

Still, they note that discontent, even if exploited by political elites, is very real. Now that Tokayev has invited Russian troops into the country, the situation has only escalated further. What happens in Kazakhstan will leave ripples throughout the regionand perhaps beyond. Read more

Image: Demonstrators hold the Ukrainian national flag during a protest against Russian President Vladimir Putin's policies, in Kyiv, Ukraine January 9, 2022. Picture taken with a drone. Photo by Valentyn Ogirenko/Reuters.

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Can the US avoid both appeasement and war? This week's Russia talks will be revealing. - Atlantic Council

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Imam Hussain University, affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), published an assessment of the November 2019 uprising, which spread to 200 cities with lightning speed in reaction to the tripling of fuel prices and shook the regime to its foundations.

This assessment underscores the significance of the 2019 uprising as a turning point in the face-off between the Iranian people and the regime.

This study underlines that those protests were organized, and that the protesters were not a spontaneous expression of outrage nor indiscriminate vandalizing of shops or public locations.

The Enemys Tactics in Creating Urban Riots, acknowledges that people expressed their disdain toward the ruling theocracy by targeting the regimes centers of oppression and plunder.

The IRGCs latest report was reviewed by 30 IRGC commanders, officials of security brigades, IRGC intelligence organization, Basij organization, and Sarollah Headquarters in Tehran [charged with maintaining Tehrans security].

The report highlights that Poor people and a part of the middle class who had become poor, mostly youth who did not foresee a clear economic, social and political future for themselves, participated in November protests.

The report also acknowledges that the nature of these protests differed significantly from protests in the 1990s and 2000s in that they resembled the protests in the 1980s that were organized by the principal Iranian opposition movement, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK).

The report also underlines that the November 2019 uprisings nationwide character and anti-government nature made it distinct from the 1999 and 2009 protests.

While this report sheds light on the regimes paranoia over the explosive state of Iranian society, it distorts the ruthless manner in which the security forces cracked down on the protest and deliberately ignores Supreme Leader Ali Khameneis directive to open fire on the innocent protesters.

The following are some excerpts of this report.

The Rioters Field Tactic

Policy Recommendation

To manage urban crises like November 2019, we recommend:

Summary

The IRGCs latest report once again highlighted that major Iran protests in 2019 were a turning point and had a significant impact on the regimes standing both domestically and internationally. The November 2019 uprising laid bare the regimes vulnerability and illegitimacy in Iran, explaining why Tehran had to resort to stepped-up intransigent policies regarding its nuclear and missile program.

The IRGCs report also acknowledges that the protests were highly organized, and protesters only targeted the regimes centers of oppression and plunder.

This report reconfirms that unlike what Tehrans apologists have tried to imply for years, Iranians do not believe in reform, have rejected the regimes factions, and see regime change as the only viable option to the current economic and social crises.

The report lays bare the fragile and vulnerable state of the regime vis-a-vis an increasingly restive society. Against this backdrop, Western governments should refrain from providing Irans moribund regime with any lifeline. Including the easing of the sanctions. On the contrary, they should stand with the Iranian people as they stand for liberty.

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Exclusive: IRGCs Report Says 2019 Iran Uprising Was Organized - National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI)

DA MP says GOOD SG working to strengthen the hand of national Police Minister Bheki Cele

STATEMENT BY CAPE TOWN MAYOR, GEORDIN HILL-LEWIS

7 January 2022

Effort to weaken local policing powers endangers the lives of Capetonians

The City of Cape Town is committed to building and expanding Cape Towns policing powers and resources, because, given the failings of the national police service, this is the only way that we can keep Capetonians safer.

Inexplicably, a former mayoral candidate in the city, Brett Herron, has proposed that we give up, and shut down, successful examples of local policing like the Safety and Security Investigations Unit (SSIU).

Herron appears to be actively working to undermine Cape Towns local policing powers in an effort to strengthen the hand of national Police Minister Bheki Cele, with whom Herrons political party is in partnership at national level. If he gets his way, criminals and corrupt cops will be let off the hook and residents will pay the price.

Far from yielding policing and enforcement powers to the national Minister, this administration is working hard to devolve far more of those powers to Cape Town, where we know we will use them to better protect residents both from criminals and from the failing national state.

We know, as does any resident who lives daily in fear of crime, that residents trust and rely on Cape Towns policing abilities far more than they rely on any other sphere of government. It is regrettable that Herron appears willing to endanger residents by weakening Cape Towns policing powers for political reasons.

Residents cannot rely on SAPS to keep them safe. While there are many hard-working SAPS officers, the fact is that it is another national service that is in steep decline, with devastating consequences for the lives of citizens.

Cape Town must and will step into this gap to keep residents safer, because, unlike politicians who seek to centralise policing powers in the hands of Bheki Cele, we understand that we cannot hope to deliver a city of dignity, safety and shared prosperity so long as people suffer the oppression of violent crime and the constant anxiety that comes with feeling unsafe.

Devolution of power will accelerate over the coming decade in public transport, electricity, and in policing and it will happen whether national government likes it or not, because every crucial national service on which the public depends, is failing.

The Citys Safety and Security Investigations Unit is also extraordinarily successful, making Herrons objections doubly strange.

This unit was established in 1994 to address internal discipline, ensuring that the City of Cape Town maintains its record for the lowest levels of corruption among its policing and enforcement staff so that we do not degenerate into the bribe-taking chaos observed in police forces elsewhere in South Africa.

It is because of the work done by the unit that the City of Cape Town maintains its record for the lowest levels of corruption among its policing and enforcement staff.

The SSIUs role was expanded to deal with criminal cases involving City infrastructure and City Rental Stock where units had been hijacked by gang and criminal activity.

While this remains a priority for SSIU, the unit also functions to assist the South African Police Service (SAPS) and City enforcement agencies with watching briefs, which is the monitoring and tracking of registered criminal cases through the courts.

As such, the SSIU is responsible for the deployment of investigators who will perform watching briefs on the firearms and drug-related cases in the 10 crime hotspots to ensure that we secure convictions on these cases.

They will act in support of the excellent results being achieved by the nearly-1000 Law Enforcement Advancement Programme (LEAP) officers who are deployed in these hotspots. LEAP, like the SSIU, is an innovation of this government (in partnership with the Western Cape Provincial Government) designed to pick up the slack left by the decline and under-resourcing of the SAPS.

Thanks to the work of the SSIU, we have been able to:

- recover 30 hijacked council vehicles between 2020 and 2022

- achieved 2 920 convictions alongside City enforcement agencies and the South African Police Service (SAPS) between 2016 and 2021

- Conduct watching briefs for more than 23 000 arrests made by City enforcement staff for possession of drugs, driving while under the influence, possession of firearms and ammunition.

- Achieve a large number of meaningful convictions for drug, firearm, copper theft, robbery, extortion and even assisting with Interpol investigations leading to the capture of wanted persons.

Unlike Herron, this administration is not prepared to sacrifice these law enforcement successes and the safety of Capetonians merely to please Cele and the national government.

Issued by: Media Office, City of Cape Town, 7 July 2021

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Wrong for Brett Herron to want to close Cape Town`s SSIU - GHL - POLITICS - Politicsweb

The decision this month by an Israeli judge in the Beer Sheva Court caught advocate Maher Hanna off guard. And Hanna, a member of the Israel Bar Association, had already encountered the most bizarre case of his career as he attempted to have his client, Mohammed El-Halabi, released.

El-Halabi, humanitarian organization World Visions former head of operations in Gaza, has been in an Israeli jail since June 2016. He was arrested on his way back from Jerusalem and stands accused of masterminding a financial conspiracy to divert millions of dollars earmarked for humanitarian work to organizations Israel authorities have labeled terrorist groups.

The Israeli media reported an astronomical figure of $50 million for the value of the alleged fraud. This far exceeds the entire budget of the US-based Christian organization. In fact, World Vision and its Australian donors conducted an independent, high-level forensic audit of all the accounts of their Gaza operations and found no evidence of wrongdoing by El-Halabi. His maximum personal spending limit was $300, while the financial ceiling for his entire office was a mere $15,000.

Since his arrest, and reported torture for more than 50 days, Israeli authorities have repeatedly offered to release him if he accepts a plea bargain in which he admits, well, almost anything, just to cover up for the gross mistake that was made in arresting him. He has refused, saying he will not admit to a crime he did not commit.

Israels attempts to hide its actions behind a veneer of just laws have been totally exposed for what they are: Instruments of oppression and discrimination

Daoud Kuttab

The case has been bizarre from day one, including secret evidence and irregularities surrounding what the defense lawyer was allowed to see and do. It culminated last summer with the Israeli judge ordering Hanna to type his closing argument into the computer of the Israeli prosecutor, and refused to give him a copy of it.

Hanna finalized his argument in September in accordance with the unusual demands of the court. A ruling has yet to be made and the Israeli high court has ordered the Beersheba court to make a decision by Jan. 24. Bail has been repeatedly refused on the grounds that El-Halabi is accused of treason.

The most recent shock to Hanna in the case was an order by the judge, on Jan. 5, that he must reduce his 386-page closing argument to 100 pages. And that he can do so only when the Israeli prosecutor allows him to access to the laptop computer on which he was forced to type the original argument.

As bizarre as that case is, another judicial travesty also emerged in the first few days of 2022 when an Israeli court ordered the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate to pay $13 million in fines to the Jewish National Fund over a 20-year-old case involving the expiration of a lease on land granted by the church to Israeli builders in the 1950s. The case arose when Jewish Israeli criminals tricked both the church and the JNF over an extension of the lease.

The fraudsters were caught, convicted and jailed but now the courts have ordered the church to pay a huge fine for a crime it did not commit.

These two cases were foreshadowed by the continuing Israeli policy of administrative detention, under which about 450 Palestinians are being held without charge or trial. Some, such as Hisham Abu Hawash, have protested against their detention by going on a hunger strike.

The policy of administrative detention was inherited by Israel authorities from the previous British government which, toward the end of the Second World War, had passed an emergency law allowing the detention of suspects without charge or trial. The power is supposed to be used only in rare and exceptional circumstances, under close supervision and with restrictions to ensure that suspects rights are not abused.

But under Israeli government rule it has become a form of political punishment used against Palestinians. The frequent cases have become so embarrassing that Israels leading independent daily newspaper, Haaretz, has called on the Israeli government to abandon the draconian law and either charge people and present the evidence against them or set them free.

The cases I have mentioned will not be new to those who follow Israeli violations of Palestinian human rights. They are a damning indictment of the total deterioration of Israels judicial system, which has been hijacked completely by the Israeli security and intelligence services and has become an instrument of right-wing Israeli governments.

Western democracies have for a long time referred to the democratic values of justice and the rule of law they share with Israel. If the above cases are any indication, such a claim must be reviewed.

Israels attempts to hide its actions behind a veneer of just laws have been totally exposed for what they are: Instruments of oppression and discrimination.

When Israeli and international human rights organizations describe an apartheid regime that exists for the people living between the river Jordan and the Mediterranean, the corrupt Israeli legal system is a reflection of this system of discrimination.

Crimes of apartheid have been declared war crimes. Will the international community therefore address Israels continued war crimes, including the discriminatory policies of its judicial system?

Daoud Kuttab is an award-winning Palestinian journalist and former Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University. Twitter: @daoudkuttab

Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not necessarily reflect Arab News' point-of-view

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Recent cases expose to the world the unjust and discriminatory Israeli legal system - Arab News

Who says we cannot guide ourselves

through the boiling reefs, black as they are...

EDWIN Morgan, the first Poet Laureate of Glasgow, and also of Scotland, bequeathed 1 million to the cause of Scotlands independence. His poetry is also a precious legacy of self-knowledge: he reminds us of our history, both proud and difficult, and urges us to move into our future with courage, determination, love and empathy for the world around us especially our fellow mortals from hyenas, wolves, rhinos and gangsters, to joyful family shoppers in Glasgows Christmas streets.

Yes! Morgan would tell us now. Yes, it might be hard to go, but lets go! because we can do it, because the adventure of Scotlands great chance will give us all the hope and motivation we need to make it work. Morgan believed in Scotland, in our people and in our future as an independent nation.

In the first place, independence is our chance to heal some of the wrongs of history ancient and modern; in the second, remembering hard lessons from that history, independence is the starting gun to Scotlands future in a world that has drastically changed since September 2014.

We will be joining the battle to save Planet Earth from the lethal effects of corporate greed, corruption, toxic pollution and global warming. To prevent mass extinctions; to answer desperate human migration with compassion and positive pragmatism, Scotland can and will be an inspiration and leader. Our independence will offer the chance of a better future to everyone in the British Isles. The twin disasters of Brexit and Covid have horribly demonstrated that the so-called United Kingdom has developed key symptoms of a failing state.

No matter how much anachronistic pomp accompanies the golden coach, how much ermine, how many swords and black tights decorate the premises, Westminster has descended into blatant corruption at the highest levels of government: executive contempt for parliament and the law itself; dislocation from the electorate; expedient and devious power grabs; lethal incompetence; fragmentation of society, racism and dangerous blame culture. All this and huge investment in propaganda to distract us, the rumbling masses, into acquiescence.

David Edgerton (below), Professor of History at Kings College, London, recently argued that: England needs to liberate itself from the Anglo-UK state just as much as Scotland [does]. He claimed the break-up of the UK would help England to establish a new democratic settlement and a new political class.

Yes indeed, Scotlands independence will surely galvanise England into reforming Westminster, still strait-jacketed by outdated conventions and a ridiculous class system that continually and terrifyingly processes smoothly polished, plausible fools to positions of power; it can help to bring England a new, meaningful parliament. That change is long overdue.

Meanwhile, in stark contrast to the racism of Brexit and other vicious Westminster policies such as the hostile environment and the rape clause, the unanimous decision of our Holyrood Parliament to adopt the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child challenged in the Supreme Court by the UK Government is proof that the people of Scotland already expect their government to act as if we are in the early days of a better nation. If independence is a process, we are already on our way.

Learn from history or you will repeat mistakes! urged an old Unionist. It is, nevertheless, easy to understand the recent appalling attempt by frightened Tories and right-wing think tanks to control the teaching of Scotlands history in our schools without any help from Mel Gibson, textbooks show that the past 1300 years in Scotland have been dominated by our dangerously acquisitive, fearful and aggressive neighbour. Tories are quite right to fear our young peoples reaction to injustice and oppression but burning their books wont preserve a rotten state. Everyone in Scotland has the right to know why we are where we are.

I learnedsome more about Scotlands constitutional status in the 1970s when I was handed a government document which explained that a Galloway hill, Mullwharchar, had been chosen as the UK high-level nuclear waste dump not because the granite there was more suitable than anywhere else, but because the communities nearby were small, remote and unsophisticated and unlikely to protest successfully.

Mullwharchar was saved only by a strong earthquake that those same 1970s Westminster special advisers had predicted would never happen. Galloway learned exactly what Westminster thought about our hills and our communities.

Since then there have been many similar examples, each one demonstrating that Scotland is at the mercy of a system which ignores or changes the rules, from planning to the constitution, simply to impose its will. We were subjected to the poll tax while our steel and shipbuilding industries were destroyed. Westminster attempted to circumvent the international London Dumping Convention ban on dumping nuclear waste at sea by dumping it in Scottish territorial waters instead. Scotland was handed over to Nato as the only live bombing range for war games in Europe.

Forty years ago, however, another powerful constitutional lesson came from the people of Orkney. In the 1970s, they had had to fight against a uranium mine which would have destroyed their West Mainland. The UK Government openly acknowledged the inevitable destruction but true to form ordered that the mine should proceed in what they called the national interest. Orkney was saved only by an unexpected world glut of uranium.

Three years later, a new threat arrived: an experimental nuclear reprocessing plant at Dounreay. Westminster MPs made requisite gestures of concern but disingenuously urged adherence to the UK planning system. Anticipating that, as before, London would ignore their protests and proceed in the national interest, Orkney with Shetlands help made a direct appeal to Norway, the Faroe Islands and Denmark they used their history to protect their future.

We will never be allowed to know the full extent of the interventions. However, while the UK Government followed the usual course of ignoring local protest, those independent Scandinavian governments repeatedly expressed concern within the EU and in other international forums. Shortly afterwards, despite the UK determination to press on, the reprocessing experiment dependent on European support was unexpectedly cancelled.

The lesson for Scotland was, and is, crystal clear: be like Norway independent since 1905.

As Brexit drives us into a future that the Scottish electorate vehemently rejected, that Orcadian history lesson seems even more striking. I have absolutely no doubt that Scotland is now regarded as the very last colony to be exploited by a desperate British establishment.

We are, at one and the same time, an inconvenience, with rebellious characters protesting against, for instance, Londons racist immigration policies, and also a vital convenience, not just as a remote empty space for nuclear weapon silos and rotting nuclear submarines, but also as the last milch cow.

The Clair oilfield and our other natural resources are about to be consumed by the voracious appetite of the otherwise bankrupt, post-Brexit, post-Covid Westminster government, fantasising, still looking around for a servile empire that escaped long ago.

The Greta Thunberg generation demands that climate change, pollution and bio-diversity are made global priorities. Their concerns are not new: 50 years ago, when EF Schumacher published Small Is Beautiful his diatribe against mass consumption and destruction of natural resources he also pleaded for thrift and conservation.

Scotlands history shows a traditional understanding of the need to travel lightly on the Earth, taking what we need, respecting nature, leaving it fit to nurture others once we are gone.

The starkest example I know is the story of our black puddings part of the same 1960s colourful primary school history lessons that provided youngsters with such a vivid grasp of time, causes, events and justice. Because, we were told, Scotlands people were too poor to kill their beasts for meat, they bled them instead and mixed the blood with oatmeal and spices. The family was fed and the animals lived on to feed them again.

A very beautiful, poignant version of the same philosophy is found in the gentle song Travellers Trade written by Ian MacGregor, the grandson of a Scottish Traveller and pearl fisherman. He urges us to take only what we need, with thoughts of fellow man, and all forms of life whose right is tae survive.

So, while Westminster wallows in arguments about sausages and signs up to more trade deals that are disastrous for Scottish farming, we can adapt, as our ancestors did, to the new circumstances perhaps, for example, with imaginative diversification from killing young lambs to massive investment in wool production, product innovation and education.

It makes sense. Scientists are advising the world to consume less meat, to produce and discard no more microfibres and plastics to the oceans. Scotlands hill farmers already offer the sustainable alternative: wool for insulation; for duvets; for carpets and rugs; for blankets. Wool is even now being used as a successful absorbent in major oil spills.

Our Scottish wools are already known throughout the world Shetland, Soay, North Ronaldsay, Harris, Fair Isle: the re-instatement of beautiful Paisley shawls is another possibility. We have our patterns and brands our new ideas, with more to follow once we are free to try.

Independence will give us our first chance to know the truth about rest of our economy currently obscured by Westminster calculations about everything from origin of exports to allocation of taxes and tariffs and liabilities. To those who want our youngsters to believe that we are too wee and too poor to survive on our own resources, I would recite such a long, long list of these precious, sustainable resources, from electricity to food (and water), and remind them that they are shared among only 5.5 million people.

And when we are asked about currency, we should surely answer that whatever currency we choose to use will be backed up by those economic surpluses of food, electricity and sustainable natural resources, including our huge fishing grounds. In the past 120 years, Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are just a few of the many European countries who have become independent, established new currencies and prospered: none of them started off with such natural wealth. And if we are asked about how we should protect our currency, we can refer again to history: Scotland will treat corrupt gamblers and bankers and their systems with the same effective resolution that Iceland (population 344,000) showed in 2015.

With independence, another dramatic, positive change will surely be in transport and international trade. Remembering our historic links with Flanders and Baltic ports, Scotland can choose to look, again, directly to Ireland, Scandinavia and Europe rather than the current bottleneck strangulation (and demoralising disguise of our national exports) via the M6, to the Kent lorry parks, Brexit bureaucracy and Dover.

Just as people make Glasgow, so immigrants have made Scotland over thousands of years. Celts, Picts, Scots, Vikings, British, Flemish, Irish, French, Polish, Italians, Chinese, Indians, Pakistanis: we are indeed all Jock Tamsons Bairns and we are all as somebody from Kenmure Street posted fae somewhere.

Google Bhangra Scottish Dancers and you can watch a stunning combination of Sikh and Scottish Highland dancers performing together to the same music! And in my opinion, the most wonderful, powerful moment in the marches for independence has always been when the St Georges Flag comes by, with English Scots for Yes emblazoned across.

OUR people will make independence work for Scotland. Fifty years ago, in his rectorial address to Glasgow University, Jimmy Reid famously promised that the untapped resources of the North Sea are as nothing compared to the untapped resources of our people.

His words are echoed in our songs, music and poetry; they reflect our love of Scotlands land and sea, our hearty irreverence for highness and mightiness and our readiness to challenge the powerful and corrupt when necessary. Wherever we are from, everyone who witnesses Scotlands reinstatement as one of the oldest independent nations in the world will have the best reason to try.

Like Schumacher and Edwin Morgan, Jimmy Reid also pleaded against the ruthless anonymity of a rat-race society; for recognition and fulfilment for every human being and reminded us of another Scottish instinct that still, despite those 300 years of contradictory rule, survives. On May 13, in Kenmure Street, Glasgow, ordinary people showed gloriously that, in our Scotland:

...a the bairns of Adam

Can find breid, barley-bree and painted room

Therefore, since our history and continuing experiences teach us repeatedly that Scotland is a very different nation, we simply cannot afford to be over-ruled by inappropriate policies designed by Westminster, for the needs of England. We can and will do better. It might, sometimes, still seem hard to go, but we are, indeed, going to do this for Scotland, for England, and for the rest of the world:

Why should we idly waste our time

Repeating our oppressions?

...Tomorrow we

Shall don the Cap of Libertie!

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Who says Scotland cannot guide itself through 'boiling reefs, black as they are'? - The National