Monthly Archives: July 2022

Last week on Fox News' Tucker Carlson show, a young Dutch media personality introduced American viewers to a frightening new vision: The government of the Netherlands, she said, was stealing Dutch farmland "under the guise" of a fabricated environmental crisis, but actually as part of a communist plot to transform Holland's countryside into mass housing for immigrants and to enact something called the "Great Reset."

The oracle behind this dire prediction was Eva Vlaardingerbroek, a former candidate for Holland's far-right Forum for Democracy party whose strident demeanor and good looks have earned her the Dutch media nicknames "Aryan princess," "shield maiden for the right" and, apparently since last week, "Eva Braun." But Vlaardingerbroek and Carlson aren't the only folks advancing this narrative.

Half a year after it went all-in for the Canadian trucker convoy protesting COVID-19 vaccine mandates, the American right has adopted a new international cause: Dutch farmers who are demonstrating against environmental regulations by parading tractors down highways, lining roads with burning hay bales, blocking food distribution centers, international borders and airports, and spraying liquid manure on government buildings.

Much as during the Canadian trucker protests last January, right-wing Twitter is overflowing with praise and protest tributes: montages of tractors chugging down highways and protesters kicking police vans, all to the tune of AC/DC's "Thunderstruck." The conspiracy-theory outlet Epoch Times dedicated much of the past week to dispatches from the Netherlands, including an interview with far-right Dutch politician Thierry Baudet, who claims the government is trying to sever the Dutch people's connection to their land to further a "post-identitarian" agenda of "Great Reset mass migration." Canadian website Rebel News, long affiliated with white nationalist and far-right groups, sent three young reporters to embed themselves among the protesters. And right-wing outlets from LifeSiteNews to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s anti-vaccination website to the New York Post have cast the protests as a working-class uprising against authoritarian global elites.

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There is a real and significant issue playing out in the Netherlands, below the U.S. right-wing outrage cycle. Since late June, Dutch farmers have been holding large-scale demonstrations to protest new plans to radically reduce the amount of nitrogen oxide and ammonia emissions produced in the country, particularly from farms.

In 2019, Holland's highest administrative court ruled that the country's efforts to reduce nitrogen pollution were failing to meet the conditions of European Union environmental law. The ruling led to the suspension of thousands of new construction projects including the building of sorely-needed new housing and slower speed limits on Dutch highways, as well as plans to reduce the size of Holland's agricultural industry.

There's a significant issue of agricultural and environmental policy playing out in the Netherlands, which has little to do with America's right-wing outrage cycle.

Part of the problem is that, given the size of the Netherlands which, at 16,000 square miles, is smaller than 41 of the 50 U.S. states many farms have adopted "intensive" agriculture methods, including heavy use of fertilizer and livestock factory farming, in order to increase output from limited land. Those practices have allowed the tiny country to become the second-largest agricultural exporter in the world and Europe's largest producer of meat, but have also made it a major nitrogen and ammonia polluter from both fertilizer runoff and livestock waste, some of which particularly threatens nature preserves protected by European law.

For years Dutch politicians have debated how to address the issue, and in June, the Netherlands' recently-appointed minister for nature and nitrogen policy, Christianne van der Wal, announced new restrictions to cut nitrogen emissions in half by 2030, to meet international climate action goals. Doing so will likely require an estimated 30% reduction in the country's livestock herds as well as severe reductions in fertilizer use changes that large farms may be able to afford but which could spell bankruptcy for many smaller, family-run farms.

In a country where agriculture is closely tied to national identity, with family farms dating back generations, it's an undeniable blow. Holland's government, reported the AP, called the plans an "unavoidable transition" that would force farmers to "become (more) sustainable, relocate or stop." Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte acknowledged that the move would have "enormous consequences. I understand that, and it is simply terrible."

The government has allocated around $25 billion to implement the plans, with much of that targeted toward helping farms become more sustainable or offering generous buyouts to those that can't. But as Anya van Wagtendonk reported this week at Grid, the "clumsy government rollout" of the regulations "made a bad situation worse," particularly when the government released a map indicating that some farms near nature preserves would need to reduce emissions by 95% effectively closing them without providing additional information about plans to help farmers adapt or compensate their losses.

Farmer protests began soon after the 2019 court decision, and some tipped into violence. That year, protesters carried a coffin emblazoned with the name of a Green party politician, compared farmers' plight to the Holocaust and used tractors as battering rams to force open the doors of a provincial city hall, tear down neighborhood fences and drive into a police horse. But while the pandemic largely forced the protests to halt in 2020, they've come roaring back since June, growing widespread, aggressive and sometimes out of control.

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Last week, Dutch law enforcement shot at a tractor driven by a 16-year-old they claimed was trying to drive through a police barricade. (Nobody was injured and initial charges have been dropped.) The week before, protesters demonstrated outside the home of nature minister van der Wal, attacking a police van with sledgehammers and dumping manure on her street. In one province, local government offices that had been the site of protests were temporarily closed over a bomb threat, and a supermarket distribution center that's become a focal point of protest conspiracism was mysteriously burned to the ground, although it's unclear whether either incident was related to the demonstrations.

* * *

All of this is complicated enough on its own: a seemingly zero-sum situation, in which some farmers are almost certain to lose their livelihoods. But as the farmers' cause has been adopted by the far right, both in the Netherlands and abroad, it's grown into something larger and uglier. According to those narratives, the new regulations are part of a globalist "Great Reset" intent on imposing liberal authoritarianism across the world. Global elites, in this view, are orchestrating a food crisis in order to subdue unruly populations, and Dutch farmers will be displaced to make room for new immigrants, in a literal recapitulation of the "great replacement" conspiracy theory shared by European and American white supremacists.

In this version of conspiracy theory, global elites are orchestrating a food crisis in order to subdue unruly populations and displace Dutch farmers with new immigrants.

Some of that narrative is homegrown. On July 6, far-right Dutch parliamentarian and Party for Freedom chair Geert Wilders, best known for his aggressive Islamophobia, including calls to ban the Quran or tax women who wear hijab, tweeted an image of a document he claimed was proof that farmers were being forced off their land in order to build an "application center for asylum seekers."

Another far-right Dutch parliamentarian went even further: Forum for Democracy founder Thierry Baudet, who was once viewed as a more genteel and intellectual face of the right, but has fallen into disgrace after a series of racism and antisemitism scandals and his claim that George Soros invented COVID-19 to "take away our freedom."

In an interview with Epoch Times this week, Baudet charged, "the people governing this country are following the script written by the EU to realize what they call a 'Great Reset.'" That's a reference to a slogan originally used in 2020 by the World Economic Forum to call for creating a more equitable post-pandemic global economy. But almost immediately, on the right, the term was adopted to refer to an amorphous conspiracy theory that globalist elites are using crises like the pandemic as pretext to radically reinvent society along authoritarian, one-world government lines.

Baudet argued as much, claiming the EU wants to "weaken Dutch sovereignty" and impose "mass immigration" on the country with the goal of turning the Netherlands "into a giant city" without its own means of food production, so that people will be more "dependent on the international rulers, the globalists, who are trying to take over."

Part of the new farm regulations, Baudet continued, involved a "spiritual or deeper" impetus to sever the connection between Dutch farmers and their land, since farmers "form a direct threat to the globalists' post-territorial, post-identitarian agenda." In case that allusion to great replacement theory was too subtle, Baudet then made it explicit, calling on international allies to recognize this was a shared struggle, since "All our peoples are being diluted by the systematic influx of people from entirely different ethnicities and cultures and religions."

In multiple appearances on U.S. and Canadian media over the last week, the aforementioned Eva Vlaardingerbroek echoed a number of these claims. She told Tucker Carlson, "It's very clear the government is not doing this because of a nitrogen crisis. They're doing it because they want these farmers' land and they want it to house new immigrants."

To Rebel News,Vlaardingerbroek said, "They're taking away property because they see a future for us in which we'll be completely dependent on the state. We eat bugs, they own your land." She added, "'You'll own nothing and you'll be happy'" quoting a meme that's become internet shorthand for the "Great Reset."

That narrative is filtering down, mixing with ambient talk about "replacement theory" that figures like Wilders have traded in for years. The far-right, conspiracist Austrian weekly Wochenblick argued succinctly, "Mass immigration as part of the 'UN Replacement Population Plan' could be the reason for the mass dispossession of farmers."

In interviews with Epoch Times host Roman Balmakov, several Dutch protesters claimed their own government had "created the nitrogen hoax because the farmers own all the land on which the government wants to build" or "It's all to get foreigners on their land." (During one such episode, Balmakov paused to advertise his own survivalist prepping company, My Patriot Supply, offering $150 discounts on three-month food kits, so that viewers won't be forced to eat "WHO-issued bug sandwiches" when the "global food crisis" comes.)

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s anti-vax publication suggested the Dutch government was "disrupting food supplies" in order to "weaken people's resistance" along with the side effects of COVID vaccines.

But the story also became a broader phenomenon across a wide swath of U.S. right-wing media. Newsweek and Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk cast the protests as a "popular uprising" and a "historic" example of "worker-centered revolts," pitting Davos and the WHO against "the citizen." Right-wing anti-abortion news outlet LifeSiteNews launched a petition to gather support for the "fightback against not just environmental regulations and the resulting inflation, but also the elites' Great Reset agenda."

Pizzagate promoter-turned right-wing media personality Jack Posobiec used his podcast to suggest the occasional violence of the protests was justified, saying, "Understand what point in the movie we're in. These farmers clearly understand." And Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s anti-vaccination publication The Defender suggested that the Dutch government was "disrupting food supplies" so that, in combination with side effects from COVID vaccines, they might "weaken people's resistance." Rebel News' embedded reporters landed segments on One America News and Fox's Laura Ingraham Show.

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The linkage of farmers' grievances with "great replacement" and other conspiracies was "quite clever," said investigative journalist Allart van der Woude, of the Dutch public radio show Argos. "It manages to combine a whole host of anxieties that are prevalent on the right." The protest movement as a whole, he said, has done the same, drawing together two distinct groups: traditionalist conservatives "who see farming as a marker of Dutch identity, and view this measure as urban elites destroying rural livelihoods," and then a group of people generally opposed to any large state projects, whether farm regulations, pandemic safety measures or vaccines.

"One shared consequence of this, though," van der Woude continued, "is that it's become an incredibly aggressive discussion with a huge potential for violence." In 2020, the country's National Coordinator for Security and Counterterrorism published a threat assessmentwarning that the farmer protest movement was uniting groups with different grievances but shared antipathy to government, whose alliance could represent a troubling pathway toward radicalization. Last August, Dutch newspaper De Groene Amsterdammer published an investigation tracking the movement's main social media hubs, finding that farm protest pages were increasingly dominated by other concerns: pandemic skepticism, the sale of fake vaccine certificates, QAnon-like fixations on pedophile networks or public riots and talk of the "Great Reset."

The potential for violence also seems to be rising. Van der Woude noted that the police officer who shot at the tractor last week has reportedly been in hiding for a week. Last January, a photojournalist taking pictures of a car fire near a farm was attacked by bystanders wielding sticks before one used a tractor shovel to flip his car with him and his girlfriend inside it into a ditch.

Last year, an Amsterdam newspaper found that farm protest pages were increasingly dominated by pandemic truthers, fake vaccine certificates and QAnon-like conspiracy theories.

In recent weeks, protest supporters like Vlaardingerbroek have taken aim at the Dutch supermarket chain Picnic through a sketchy web of insinuations. They claim the chain is owned by a relative of a Dutch minister who has pushed the new regulations, that Bill Gates invested heavily in the franchise and that Gates, as Vlaardingerbroek told Rebel News, is "the man who wants you to eat fake meat," rather than, presumably, Dutch beef. This week, one Picnic supermarket was burned to the ground overnight, and while there's no clear proof that the fire was connected to the protests, a number of protest supporters have shared the news triumphantly.

Also this week, Baudet's Forum for Democracy colleague, legislator Gideon van Meijeren who last year accused Prime Minister Rutte of supporting the "Great Reset" told a group of protesters, "It is not always healthy in a democracy if there is a taboo on the use of violence," prompting a formal complaint from another MP that van Meijeren was inciting "violence against the government."

All the intensity, says van der Woude, ignores the fact that "there is an obscene amount of big money" behind the protests, from large-scale agricultural corporations that "stand to lose way more in absolute terms than the farmers themselves." Leading that pack, as Dutch publication Volkskrant reported Wednesday, is one of the Netherlands' five richest families, which controls a huge percentage of the country's animal feed market and has stated its concerns about the future of its business if farmers are forced to reduce livestock. In response to that threat, Volkskrant reported, the family has funded journalism that "downplay[s] the effects of nitrogen" as well as highway billboards encouraging drivers to attend farmer protests.

While right-wing coverage has boasted that the protests enjoy huge public support, others have suggested that the Dutch public is unlikely to condone aggressive demonstration tactics or food shortages caused by blockades for long. But all that may be beside the point, at least for those intent on transforming the protests into an international cause.

"What we have been seeing in the last few years is the transnational nature of the white supremacist and far-right extremist movements," said Wendy Via, cofounder and CEO of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism. In April, Via testified before the Canadian House of Commons about the pattern of cross-border activism that surrounded last winter's "trucker convoys," and how conspiracy theories like the "great replacement" have become "unifying concept[s] for white supremacists worldwide."

That pattern, Via said, can be seen across all levels of the movement: in Tucker Carlson taking his show abroad, interviewing authoritarian leaders like Hungary's Viktor Orbn and Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro, and introducing Europe's "great replacement" theory to his fans; in the ways European politicians like Wilders and Baudet have made "quite a few white nationalist connections in the U.S." just as grassroots far-right activists have built alliances with international peers; and in how legislators around the world have strategized on culture-war issues, as with Hungary's anti-gay legislation, which was quickly mirrored by Florida's "Don't Say Gay" bill.

"It is a true transnational movement," Via said. "And it's a lot more insidious than people might think." In furtherance of their common agenda, Via continued, "far-right extremists will latch onto any event or protest that they can including the serious issues at the heart of these farmer protests and use [such issues] to further spread conspiracy theories, reduce faith in institutions and inspire hatred, in almost every case, against immigrants and Muslims."

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from Kathryn Joyce on the rise of the far right

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Far right's latest cause: Manure-flinging Dutch farmers and the "Great Reset" - Salon

By F.H. Buckley RealClearPoliticshttps://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2022/07/12/progressive_conservatives_will_restore_the_american_dream_842105.html

The following essay is adapted from "Progressive Conservatism: How Republicans Will Become America's Natural Ruling Party." (Encounter Books.)

As we age, we slip softly from one country to another, and what began in innocence led down a path littered with betrayals and smelly compromises. Charles Pguy understood how it happens. After defending Alfred Dreyfus, he found himself allied to unscrupulous and opportunistic politicians. Everything begins in mystique and ends in politics, he wrote. But the dreams of our youth never quite die, and without quite knowing it we continue to yearn for something we had lost along the way. And that is purity.

For Americans, purity is a dream of republican virtue, a shining city on a hill, free from baseness and corruption and peopled by secret romantics who are hard on the outside and soft on the inside. Our heroes arent kings or princes, but common folk, the knights-errant of the dusty trail and mean streets in search of their private grail. When surrounded by cynics they keep their integrity, like John Wayne in "Stagecoach" and Humphrey Bogart in "Casablanca."

Like them, our country was touched by grace. We knew there was something special about America, that this was the country of the Declaration of Independence, of equality and liberty, where lingering injustices are in time corrected. We were the country of the American Dream, the idea that, whoever you were, wherever you came from, you can flourish and know that your children will have it better than you did. In any struggle, wed always be on the right and the winning side.

More recently, however, the Left has made love of country seem indecent and republican virtue a fraud. Every patriotic instinct was scorned, and every sacred institution mocked. Our pathways crumbled beneath our feet, and we peered dizzily down unfathomable depthsthe ivresse des grandes profondeurs. Everything, everything you loved is dirty, said the Left. On the Right, the madness was mimicked by reactionaries who blame the countrys ills on the Founders liberalism. In a national apostasy, extremists on both Left and Right abandoned our liberal heritage.

We have come to a dead end, and well not see a way back except through a recovery of the mystique of American purity in the republican virtue of the Founders and the GOPs great leaders: Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower, and the content they gave to our idea of the common good. That is the Partys task, and as progressive conservatives the Republicans will restore the American Dream.

Right-wingers detest the progressive label, without knowing a great deal about it. They trace the modern regulatory state all the way back to Theodore Roosevelts embrace of administrative agencies and think that thats when it all went to Hell. But then a lot of things needed regulating 120 years ago. No one would want to go back to the unregulated meatpacking industry portrayed in Upton Sinclairs "The Jungle."

Right-wingers are Manicheans who see things in terms of black or white, but the attempt to read everything malign into progressivism distorts it, as if through a fun-house mirror in the words of Ken Kersch. In truth, there was no one progressive movement, but a variety of them. Some were recognizably left-of-center, like that of Herbert Croly (1869-1930) with his mistrust of extreme individualism and faith in centralized government and scientific planning by a body of experts. Others, especially the western agrarians, were conservative and individualistic, and more Jeffersonian than the Hamiltonian Croly. What they wanted, and what every conservative wants today, was a mobile society where everyone who puts in the effort can get ahead.

The conservative strain in progressivism arose in the West, the land of free soil and free labor where the Republican Party was born and found its champion in the first great progressive historian, Frederick Jackson Turner (1861-1932). What made Turner both a conservative and a progressive was his celebration of democracy and freedom, which he said were the gifts of the frontier.

Our history was forged not in Jamestown or Boston, but in Stephen Vincent Bents Tucson and Deadwood and Lost Mule Flat, and the way in which America had constantly reinvented itself in its restless movement westward, even as the dude became Mark Hannas damn cowboy when Theodore Roosevelt bought a ranch in the North Dakota badlands.

Eastern states were corrupt, undemocratic and immobile, said Turner, while western states were the repository of republican virtue, democratic and mobile. They had to be, to attract the settlers they needed, and so they competed for people by offering them fresh starts, free land and egalitarianism. They gave women the franchise, enacted initiative and referendum laws and supported the popular election of senators under the 17th Amendment. They liked competition and didnt think there was enough of it back east. All this came to define the American Dream, the idea that there were boundless possibilities of self-improvement in this country. In time, the eastern states that were losing people to the west began to compete for people by liberalizing themselves. It all came from the west.

While the Goldwater movement sought to supplant progressive conservatism, it never succeeded in doing so; and with Trumps nomination and election that era came to an end and progressive conservatism became the new face of the GOP. This was only the most recent of four progressive conservative moments in the party, when it was led by Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower and Trump, with each man adding his own imprint to it.

For Lincoln, it meant the American Dream, a society where artificial barriers were removed and everyone was permitted to rise. For Theodore Roosevelt, it meant a return to republican virtue and an end to corruption. For Eisenhower, it meant a safety net for those who through no fault of their own were unable to rise, and a liberal nationalism that was on the right side of the Civil Rights revolution. For Trump, it was all of that, as well as a determination to take on a corrupt establishment that had made America immobile. At each turning, progressive conservatism renewed itself in defense of the common good.

Ive described a leader who resembles Eisenhower more than Trump. Ike spoke to the needs of the day, over issues such as civil rights and national welfare, and didnt have to raise his voice or sound like a populist to do so. A leader like that, or like Virginias Glenn Youngkin, would bring back the suburban Republicans who left it over Trumps personality and the scandal of Jan. 6, 2021.

But wait, says the right-wing intellectual. You want to promote the common good. Fine, but wheres your theory? Ah, you noticed that did you, answers the progressive conservative.

Youre right. I dont have a theory. I think theyre baloney. They offer a false security, and not the kind of answers needed for the multitude of problems life throws at you. It is illogical to guillotine a prince and replace him with a principle, said Ortega. The latter, no less than the former, places life under an absolute autocracy. Besides, political theories deepen our divisions and weaken our sense of fraternity with each other. An intellectual hatred is the worse, said Yeats, and weve proven him right.

In place of a theory, then, I propose the Republican virtue of the founders, the desire to see everyone flourish, the willingness to tackle corruption and love of country. And so, supple and not circumscribed, progressive conservatism will seek the common good, and like the key that nicely fits the slot, the bolt that slides itself into place, its rightness will be recognized by all who desire a better country. It is the secret driver of American politics and when adopted will make Republicans Americas natural governing party.

F.H. Buckley is a foundation professor at Scalia Law School.

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Progressive conservatism will restore the American dream - The Highland County Press

At her father's drug store in Mesa in the 1970s, a young Karrin Taylor Robson earned her first paychecks sweeping floors and cleaning for 25 centsan hour.

She sold macrampotholders in the corner, her first business venture in what would grow over the next five decades into a career in law, lobbying and real estate development.

Now Taylor Robson, 57, is hoping to jump to the state's highest office. She is seeking the Republican nomination to replace Gov. Doug Ducey, counting on her significant personal wealth and connections built over decades of community involvement to buoy her.

She wants to encourage economic and small business growth, secure the state's southern border, and "triage" the state's water woes with a long-term solution. She's leaning on her career in land use and wants to take a strategic approach to the state's public lands, looking to lease or sell more space to generate funding for education and other causes while creating opportunities for construction that could alleviate the state's housing crisis.

But that doesn't mean the desert landscape will be erased by development, insisted the Phoenix resident who, even during the demands of a campaign, has made dawn hikes of Piestawa Peak a routine.

"I want to keep Arizona, Arizona," she said in an interview, asked why she was running for governor. "Arizona has been extremely good to me and my generation. And it's my opportunity to give back. My life's journey has prepared me to lead."

What they're saying: What Arizona's governor candidates say about the border, elections, abortion

Taylor Robson is a member of the notable East Valley clan, the Kunaseks. Her father, Carl Kunasek, spent 17 years in the state Legislature, and her brother, Andy Kunasek, was on the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors for 19 years.

"I honestly always thought she was probably the best suited for public office," Andy Kunasek said. "(Karrin has) the best temperament. We all have our talents, but intellectually shes a pretty smart person, focused and has a great work ethic."

Taylor Robson's career has taken her from macram in Mesa to the White House and back home to Arizona. Along the way, she married and had four childrenwho are in high school or young adults nowand whom she raised following a divorce in 2006. In 2014, she approached the developer Ed Robson, of Robson Resort Communities, about hosting a gala for a civics education organization she led.

"I asked him to sponsor, and he asked me to dinner," she said. They married in 2017.

As a young woman, Taylor Robson worked as an assistant to Ronald Reagan's economic policy council for a year and spent another with George H.W. Bush's office of Cabinet affairs.

She returned to the Grand Canyon State to earn a law degree at Arizona State University, and with two other partners began the law firm Biskind, Hunt & Taylor, which focused onland use and what would become her expertise.

One of her clients at the time, the prominent developer DMB Associates known for giantmaster-planned communities like Verrado in Buckeye and Eastmark in Mesa brought Taylor Robson in-house to lead the team of entitlement attorneys that make sure those projects can succeed.

It was Taylor Robson's, and her team's,job to navigate the complex web oflocal, state and federal regulations and zoning requirements to make sure projects could move forward; that involved internal work, making sure development plans fit into local rules, but also lobbying local jurisdictions, businesses and development opponentsto allow projects to proceed.

A blend of expertise, connections and follow-through made Taylor Robson excel, saidDrew Brown, the "D" in DMB Associates and a founding partner at the firm.

"She's good with people, and is good at maintaining relationships," he said. "She builds trust, she does what she says shes going to do, and knows what shes talking about."

Taylor Robson left in 2016 to start her own small land use firm, Arizona Strategies, that continued to count DMB Associates among its lobbying clients.

"My executive experience over the last 30 years has prepared me not only from a leadership perspective, but from a substantive perspective," she said. "Everything from infrastructure, transportation, water, education, everything. I've been involved with tax policy, economic development."

Before you vote: What's on your August 2022 primary ballot for Arizona?

In 2017, Ducey appointed Taylor Robson they met while both studied at ASU to the Arizona Board of Regents, the body that oversees the state's public universities. While there, the board shepherded the universities through tuition hikes and the COVID-19 pandemic. Taylor Robson helped start a debate program and, during an overhaul of the general education curriculum, advocated for students to learn American history.

She resigned the post in July 2021 to run for governor, after years of speculation that she would seek public office.

Taylor Robson has picked up significant endorsements from Arizona's establishment leaders, including each of the state's living Republican governors: Ducey, Jan Brewer, and Fife Symington. Former Congressman and former state Republican party chair Matt Salmon ended his run for governor in late June, going all-in for Taylor Robson.

He proclaimed her a "successful businesswoman and a conservative outsider who is well qualified to serve as chief executive of the state we love."

In several of her advertisements, Taylor Robson claims to be a "conservative outsider."ButTaylor Robson has, for decades, run in influential circles.

She's been a precinct committeewoman for nearly three decades, an elected but low-ranking post. In 2020, she chaired the Republican Legislative Victory Fund, which spent over $850,000to keep Republicans in control of the state Legislature.

She led the Joe Foss Institute, a leading advocacy group for civics education that fueled Ducey's interest in the topic, and on the board for the Arizona Chamber of Commerce.

She lobbied from 2018 to 2021on behalf of Arizona Public Service Co., one of the deepest-pocketed and most-influential organizations in state politics, to build power substations in downtown Phoenix.

In 2018, she also lobbied for Chicanos Por La Causa, a powerful social justice and equity organization, records show. Founded by local Latino civil rights advocates, Chicanos Por La Causa offers a wide variety of services from housing to loans, as well as operating multiple private real estate development companies.

Taylor Robsons campaign said she helped the nonprofit with a single real estate deal near the airport. Chicanos Por La Causa honored her for that work in 2020 during its annual dinner.

And she also was selectedby the governor to help oversee the state's three universities.

Taylor Robson said her "conservative outsider" claim was based on not running for high-ranking office before.

"It's a very, very different thing to be a member of the business community and in the arena," she said.

While she is known in Arizona's business community, Taylor Robson has spent heavily on advertising to propel her from an unknown name to the general publicinto a viable candidate.

She's spent over $4 million from her mostly self-funded campaign bank account, and that's only through the end of March, the last time candidates had to disclose their finances. One leading opponent, Kari Lake, tallied Taylor Robson's spending on advertising alone at $12 million, but Taylor Robson declined to provide a more current spending figure.

Her silence stems at least in part fromLake's barrage of attacks that Taylor Robson is trying to buy the election.

Taylor Robson has also taken criticism for donating to Democratic candidates herself, including $1,000 to the liberal Congressman Ruben Gallego, even as she attacks Lake for donating to Barack Obama. Taylor Robson dismissed the criticism, noting her lengthy record as a donor and fundraiser funneling millions of dollars to Republican candidates and committees.

"First off I would, I would put my donation record up against anybody's," she said, adding that there is a"big difference between a first-time congressional candidate and the most liberal progressive presidential candidate and president in this country's history."

Who else is running?These are the major candidates in the Arizona governor race

Throughout the campaign, Taylor Robson has said she would not run without receiving donations from voters, a sign of support she believes is necessary for anyone running for office.

While she's banked millions in contributions from others, she's also had to refund a large number of them. Some donors' family members who received refunds said that Taylor Robson was using deceptive fundraising tactics. After defending its practices initially, the campaign said it would end the use of pre-checked boxes that made one-time donations recurring.

In an interview, Taylor Robson said she didn't feel the tactic was deceptive, citing multiple chances to opt-out,and explained away the controversy by saying many campaigns use the same tactic.

Asked if she was deploying an everyone-else-is-doing-it defense that voters should expect to hear if she's elected, Taylor Robson said "what they should hear is I'm extremely transparent, and when somebody raises an issue, I'm going to respond."

Taylor Robson's wealth, and her willingness to spend it to become the most powerful politician in the state, hasopened the door to criticism from opponents that she cannot relate to Arizonans who are struggling to make ends meet or fill their gas tanks due to exorbitant inflation.

I grew up in a working-class Arizona family where my siblings and I were taught that anything is possible with education, hard work and persistence," she said.

"I believe these same values are universal and something my family shares with Arizona families across our state.

Reach reporter Stacey Barchenger at stacey.barchenger@arizonarepublic.com or 480-416-5669. Follow her on Twitter@sbarchenger.

Support local journalism. Subscribe to azcentral.com today.

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Arizona Governor's Office primary 2022 candidate: Karrin Taylor Robson - The Arizona Republic

Pro choice does not advocate abortion

In the 70s when Roe v. Wade was being argued and then passedI was chairperson for the southern part of the state to advocate for pro choice. As I traveled from city to city explaining the issues to audiences and responding to their concerns I was called names by some, castigated in the Legislature by a representative and even had things thrown at me. At that time we also had a very brave Las Cruces woman, Carmen Fruedenthal, who started the Planned Parenthood clinic here. At that time Doa Ana County had a higher birthrate than India, so this service was sorely needed with so many impoverished families having more children than they could afford.

I was present at a conversation when Father Ryan, the priest at Holy Cross told Ms. Fruedenthal that any woman going to Planned Parenthood would be ex-communicated. Her response was a classic rebuke of the churchs stand on birth control and the need for the church to provide funding to these families as well as health care for women.The Supreme Court decision with regard to abortion was disgraceful and an affront to both men and women. In these times of turmoil this was another problem we did not need to deal with. We must use all our resources and strength to get it overturned. God Bless, America.

Frances F. Williams, Las Cruces

A reporter working for a small newspaper in a third-world country was visiting the US for the first time.He was pleased to be able to meet with the editor of a large American newspaper.After explaining the reason for his visit, which was to learn as much about democracy as he could, as his own nation was basically a dictatorship, he was awed by the fact that Americans could vote, and that their vote has a say.

Unfortunately, as he explained to the American editor, his nation gets only bits and pieces of American news, with never the whole story."I was told," he began, "that your nation was fairly liberal.So I was rather surprised to learn that the majority of Americans voted to out-law abortions."

The editor replied, "No, we didn't vote on that.That decision was made for us by the Supreme Court justices."

After a pause, the visitor said, "Oh. Well, anyway you were able to vote for those people who made that decision."

"Well, no, we didn't do that either. You see, those people were all appointed by former presidents, and they keep their positions for life."

"Darn that editor of mine!" the visitor exclaimed, "sending me on this wild goose chase!But I'll keep looking.There must be some country somewhere that really is a democracy.Sorry to have bothered you.Goodbye!"

Gary Carlson, Las Cruces

The Gila River area is a fascinating place with a 12,000-year-long history. It is home to wildlife such as the famous Gila monster. While climate change has caused Arizona's section of the river to dry up, New Mexico's section is still flowing freely. The Gila is the only river in New Mexico without a dam, but it still does not have federal protections.

The biggest threat facing the Gila is diversion, which will change its flowing patterns through the establishment of structures such as dams. Diversion will drive away fish and other wildlife that need the river to survive. As a result of attempts at diversion, the Gila has been listed as America's most endangered river.

Senators Martin Heinrich and Ben Ray Lujan have introduced the M.H. Dutch Salmon Greater Gila Wild and Scenic River Act, which would not take away people's land rights or private property. The bill will establish the highest protections for over 440 miles of the Gila River by designating it as Wild and Scenic. I thank our New Mexico Senators and urge the U.S. Senate to pass this bill immediately to establish the Gila River's long-overdue protections.

Asha Dhakad, West Harrison, N.Y. (intern for Environment New Mexico)

A June 8 Sun-News article reveals (again) how ill-equipped and ineffective Representative Yvette Herrell is in actually serving District 2. The topic is this: "How does New Mexico support the existing gas and oil industry at the same time the world transitions to significantly greater demand for electricity, solar power, hydrogen power and other sources of energy?"

Herrell's solution is the election of more Republicans who will then scale back "regulatory burdens." I suppose her next expectation is the oil and gas industry will then immediately roll back gas prices at the pump to $1.50. And of course, if the Republicans are elected, Joe Biden will lose his veto pen.

A logical strategy for supporting the transition from where we are to where we need to go must consider many extremely complex factors and require give-and-take on all sides. Republicans and Democrats, whoever is the majority, must work together to get an important result. The result will be unsatisfactory to everybody to some degree, but it will support stability and continuity on all sides.

Face it. Black and white, two-way politics have left us with a dysfunctional Congress. Let's get some new players into Congress who are more interested in good government than party politics.

Jon Hill, Las Cruces

A lot of people when they get the Sunday newspaper look forward to the "funnies." On July 10, the Sun-News gave us an exhibit of more "funny" than we imagined. A Letter to the Editor had the former president of the USA being compared to Moses (the biblical figure).

After my hilarity subsided I started to think: Was Moses a habitual liar, did he lead an insurrection against the government, was he an adulterator, did he cheat the government out of taxes, did he tell you they are going to steal the election months before November, did he sell snake oil?

While you can take a pick of the many choices, the "Big Lie" is the most obvious but to hold this person as the leader or party to take you out of the "desert" is inconceivable! Hopefully even the most staunch (or gullible) Republicans should know that just having an "R" after their name doesn't mean the candidate is the second coming of Moses.

Bill Perry, Mesilla

More letters to the editor:

Here is the original post:

Letters to the editor: On abortion - Las Cruces Sun-News

Kansas Reflector welcomes opinion pieces from writers who share our goal of widening the conversation about how public policies affect the day-to-day lives of people throughout our state. Eric Thomasdirects the Kansas Scholastic Press Association and teaches visual journalism and photojournalism at the University of Kansas.

Kansas neighborhoods have been flaunting new landscaping in the form of political yard signs during the run-up to the Aug. 2 vote on whether the state constitution protects abortion rights.

As next-door neighbors advertise their conflicting worldviews, its easy to use the number of yard signs on either side as a proxy for the upcoming vote. Whoever has the most signs is most likely to win, we think. Some Kansans might be tempted to count yard signs.

Or maybe you are using the signs to suss out your neighbors politics so you dont say the wrong thing during the next Little League game. (You might alternately learn exactly who you want to confront at that same ballfield.)

Me? Im obsessed with the design of these posters and what those decisions say about the groups that made them.

As a lifelong visual communicator, I love to pause and stare at the visual choices made by any brand: Juul or LEGO or the GOP. I teach my students to critique designs, photos and videos for the visual messages they are sending conscious or not.

After taking my visual storytelling class, a student said: I cant enjoy anything anymore. Im constantly critiquing the stuff I see. If she is still curious, this summers yard signs urging us to vote yes or no should be giving her lots to analyze.

Heres my breakdown of the visual choices each group made in designing their yard signs.

VOTE YES!

This sign has been the most common in my travels around Kansas, partially because it is just about the only yes sign I have seen. This kind of unified messaging is a hallmark of contemporary conservativism. One bold voice leads an unwavering chorus.

The sign itself is effective in a few ways. First, it speaks visually and verbally. The choice of purple is sly: it nods to both femininity and royalty. Purple also functions as a midpoint between conservative red and liberal blue, positioning the pro-life stance as centrist.

The illustration at the left of the poster creates a symbol with three literal meanings. The silhouette of a mother and a baby with hands holding one another is the most obvious. The two figures combine to create the outline of a heart, although completing the shape of the heart involves decapitating the mother, a grim prospect. The other odd twist to the illustration? The negative space between the mother and the baby creates the shape of a hammer.

The wording of the poster leverages one of the biggest advantages provided to those hoping to pass the amendment. Because voters will select yes on the ballot, the campaign poster is able to be positive in its language. Add the exclamation point to the all-caps YES, and you get a message of enthusiasm. (Imagine the scolding tone of an exclamation point combined with NO from the opposing side.)

The concision of the poster is also admirable. It takes just 12 syllables to read the sign aloud. This careful word choice allows individual words to be huge for drive-by reading.

STOP THE BAN

If the poster for Value Them Both is able to use positive language, this poster slides into the dreaded land of the double-negative. Readers might need a moment to connect the slogan with the perspective it advocates. That rhetorical stance hampers persuasion.

Reading the final line of the sign on the constitutional amendment seems next to impossible from the seat of a passing car. The sentiment that a constitutional right is at risk has resonance. But can a sign carry that message?

The colors are interesting as a Kansas allusion, specifically the colors of KU without the crimson. Of course, the campaign sign for a liberal cause might smartly omit red.

The centerpiece of the design is a sharply angled sans serif font that strikes a decisive tone. With its precisely circular Os and pointed edges to the Vs and Ns, the font mixes contemporary curves that speak to femininity while also displaying definitive angles.

VALUE HER CHOICE

This poster is the most formidable rival to the purple VOTE YES! yard sign. The gradient illustration shifting from blue to pink to red hues shows a womans profile heading right. That specific direction speaks to the value of moving forward (left to right) andpolitical consensus (from the left side of the aisle to the right).

The billowing hair also references a woman in motion. Of course, this reference to an active woman speaks to American values of liberty and progress.

Value her choice is more hopeful and energizing than Stop the ban. Of course, politicians have forever successfully cultivated fear (such as worry about a ban) as a motivating force. However, pro-choice as a political perspective could use the positivity of this poster after years of being labeled as baby killers and murderers.

As for a concise message, this poster is brief. Its bold-faced font is instantly legible, while emphasizing the voter education of voting NO.

My apologies to the designers tasked with these signs, but its difficult to imagine any of the micro-decisions that I applauded or criticized here making the difference in the vote tally that will define reproductive rights in Kansas.

Nevertheless, the way that we voice our political messages whether visually or verbally matters. Signs like these help to define our political arguments and reflect our political values.

Sans serif vs. serif choices wont determine our fate as a state. But seeing how differing sides use those tools reveals how creative and disciplined they were during this vital campaign.

Through its opinion section, the Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary,here.

Continued here:

What those Kansas abortion amendment yard signs are really saying - Kansas Reflector

ensitivity to the claims of the people is in fact the only way we have of contributing to the solution of the great human problems - for no universal value is worth the name if it cannot be applied on a national or regional scale and to the local living conditions of each family. Allende

Patrice Lumumba made history in Congo by confronting the colonial regime with its brutalities and paid for the audacity with his life. That saga was repeated in South America. This time the victim was Salvador Allende, Chiles first socialist president.

His full name was Salvador Allende Gossens. He was born on June 26, 1908, in Valparaso. After leading an eventful life, he died on September 11, 1973 in Santiago.

Like several other South American countries, Chile had been a colony of Spain for nearly 300 years until Napoleon Bonapartes conquest of Spain weakened the countrys imperial grip on its South American colonial possessions.

Under the Spanish colonial rule, northern and central Chile were part of the Viceroyalty of Peru. Allende was born into an upper-middle-class family when Chiles destiny was in doldrums. In a situation of extreme uncertainty, Allende took a degree in medicine but instead of practising medicine opted for a career in politics. In 1933, he helped found Chiles Socialist Party, which had a Marxist ideology.

Success didnt come to Allende instantaneously. He had to strive long and he strived assiduously. America was already finding it hard to contend with Fidel Castro in Cuba after he came to power in 1959. Another socialist-led polity could not be countenanced.

Plots hatched from within and from outside to bring the government down had started surfacing immediately after Allende assumed power. After election to the Chamber of Deputies in 1937, he served (193942) as minister of health in the liberal leftist coalition of President Pedro Aguirre Cerda. Allende won the first of his four elections to the Senate in 1945. He ran for the presidency for the first time in 1952 but was temporarily expelled from the Socialist Party for accepting the support of the outlawed Communists; he placed last in a four-man race.

He ran again in 1958with Socialist backing as well as the support of the then-legal Communistsand was a close second to the Conservative-Liberal candidate, Jorge Alessandri. With the same support, he was decisively defeated in 1964 by the Christian Democrat Eduardo Frei.

For his successful 1970 campaign, Allende ran as the candidate of Popular Unity, a bloc of socialists, communists, radicals and some dissident Christian Democrats, leading in a three-sided race with 36.3 percent of the vote.

Thus, he ran for president unsuccessfully three times before winning narrowly in 1970. Despite the slim margin to sustain him in power he attempted to restructure the Chilean society along socialist lines while retaining democracy, civil liberties and due process of law. He reformed the education system and provided free milk for children. He also arranged distribution of land among landless farmers. Allende was opposed to foreign companies that were taking away natural resources, like copper, from the country.

Despite his good intentions and well-meaning efforts to create an egalitarian society by redistributing wealth, he had to contend with stagnant production, food shortages, rising inflation and widespread strikes. The American media and Chicago school of economists under the tutelage of Milton Friedman highlighted the rising inflation and labour strikes with extraordinary zeal.

Some of his problems can be put down to his coalition partners, who didnt allow Allende to carry out reforms the way he wanted. In neo-colonial states, the colonial structures and the forces lending them support trenchantly resist any measure taken to reform society or the state. In some cases, the leaders vying to undertake reforms are summarily deposed. Some are physically obliterated like Lumumba and Allende and demonised through false narratives.

The US government believed with a great deal of consternation that Allende would move closer to socialist countries like Cuba and the Soviet Union. They feared that he would push Chile into socialism and that all American investments in the copper-rich Chile would be lost.

A document released by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in 2000, titled, CIA Activities in Chile, revealed that the CIA actively supported the military junta after the overthrow of Allende and that it recruited many of Pinochets officers as paid contacts of the CIA or US military.

Having said that, one must not lose sight of the fact that Allendes coalition, Unidad Popular, faced the problem of being a minority in the congress and was beset with factionalism. On September 11, 1973, a successful coup led by Gen Augusto Pinochet overthrew the government. It is argued that Allende too had a part in the process having himself appointed Augusto Pinochet to replace Gen Carlos Prats, although the appointment of Pinochet was strictly in compliance with the rules, procedures and according to military ranks. Pinochet had been, until then, a constitutionalist and a defender of the Allende government. Allende was an unfortunate victim of the circumstances. He fought, failed and died.

During a concerted attack on the presidential palace, Allende died, and the manner of his death became a subject of controversy. Military officials claimed that he had committed suicide. Others believed that he had been killed and that the evidence of an apparent suicide had been planted.

Long years of atrocious rule by Gen Pinochet followed.

Allende had the support of many workers and peasants; his electoral coalition had won 44 percent of the vote in the March 1973 congressional elections.

The writer is Professor in the faculty of Liberal Arts at the Beaconhouse National University, Lahore

Excerpt from:

Salvador Allende, who fought and failed - The News International

Where did the idea of Jamila becoming a swimmer start?First of all, Aga Khan Primary School started a swimming program under coach Muzafaru Muwanguzi, then a teacher, and Tony Kasujja.The first person drafted was Jamila and she had never swam at the age of nine. The head teacher asked, why.Later on, I realized that the mother of Muwanguzi was called Lunkuse and died. So, he saw Jamila as a means to get the mother back. But, within a few years, she was already a swimming champion and at 12, she represented Uganda at the 2009 World Swimming Championships in Rome, Italy.So, I realized that she had the potential. We started on that journey. Its a very expensive sport. Personally, as a parent, I got her involved from day one because I knew that sports shapes a wholesome person.

There is character, discipline. Its not about medals. There is a parent called Sserunjongi who became the Godfather of Jamila. His sons were all good swimmers. When we went to championships. Jamila wouldnt talk to me. She would talk to him, together with MuzafaruI had no idea, I cannot even swim in a pond.

Is support to swimmers entirely coming from parents?Here, everything is parental. We didnt have all the facilities except a few pools at ISU (International School of Uganda), Munyonyo (Commonwealth Resort), Kampala Parents School and Aga Khan. Aga Khan gave us free training. Only thing that helped was that Sudhir (Ruperelia) gave it us the Kampala Parents pool at a nominal fee.However, when it comes to equipment, we had to import and buy from buy from swimming shops in the UK. Most of this we had to come in as parents.Further training and competition we had to take them to Kenya. Kenya, then, was a very big swimming powerhouse but with time, Uganda is beating all those Kenyans.

By the time we started, clubs had between 10 and 15 swimmers. Now, clubs have 100 to 150 members. At least, all the galas here, you can compete.But when it comes to timing, the pools are small and dont meet international standards. Some shapes are leisure pools so we still have to go to Kenya to Kasarani (Sports Complex) and Mombasa in East Africa to get good timers. Further, for Cana Zone IV, we go to Zimbabwe, Namibia and Botswana.

How then does Jamila end up in the UK?I had to apply to the best swimming school in the UK, its in Plymouth. In a town called Devon. It has produced some of the best swimmers in the world.Unfortunately, most people thought she was on a scholarship but no, I paid. The only scholarship given to her was just 2000 pounds per semester on tuition as a waiver. Thats not even 2% of the tuition. She moved there at the age of 11. It was a nightmare. The mother tells me that when she dropped her at Devon. Devon to London is like Kampala to Kabale. When she was coming back on the train, she kept whispering to herself Subhanallah [Arabic phrase to mean (all) praise be to God].

She couldnt believe that you can take your own 11-year old that far. First, to the UK, then to Devon. No even a relative in the UK could visit her. She was the only black in the Captains house which was for sportsmen and women. Only swimmers.She has told me there was no segregation. She only found that at university. That school was very cold, at the sea. Everything was strange. But I have no regrets. She was shaped into a very responsible person. When you meet her, and what she does, you cannot believe she is just 25.

Jamila says there is a religious conflict with how she wants to dress as a Muslim and swimming outfits. How do you fit into that as a parent?Its a very big challenge. You cannot say you strike a balance to be liberal and then conservative. Its not even about being conservative. Those are virtues of religion. In a few years from now, she will be a Haafiz [a trustee of Islamic values, an example to others]She can as well serve as an administrator in sports. She only has to strike a balance. Its not easy. At home, the mother is a very conservative lady. She prays on time, fasts all days including the (monthly) white days.

What needs to change about the way government supports sports?I think its a deliberate policy of the NRM government to kill sports. Why? Sports would bring people together to bond and talk about national issues. They want people to sit in Bibanda (video halls) and watch Arsenal and not ask about what is going on.Its deliberate, its not that they are not aware that sports as an industry can be a revenue stream and that its helps build society and create a dynamic youthful group you can mobilize in development. When you look at this governments policies, they are centered on dividing people who arent happy. They want people to look at leaders as saviours. Its about patronage. With that kind of government policy, you cannot talk about sports.What I would encourage leaders especially in parliament is to realize that sports is not just games where people go to play. They should see it as an industry a centre for mobilising people and galvanizing them.

What is Parliament doing about this since you are an MP?What you see in the House is people with a background where sports had died and maybe buried. They are not even aware that this area can be an area to mobilize people.Now, they sent us on leave to mobilize for the Parish Development Model. They are talking of patriotism. Where do you find those people? All sports facilities are gone. Even village playgrounds are sold out by local government. They are not protected. They are not titled. There is no assistance.If you look at the district budgets for sports, they are minimal. I think its a big issue and you cannot leave it to parents because again, parents have their own selfish interests.If my kid was playing football and wasnt a good footballer, I cannot buy another ball for a place. If my daughter is out of swimming, I may never step at a swimming competition at all.I think the minister of sports should write a very good paper for us to look at the budget framework.You sound like there is no hope but sports recently got a budget increase.

Even what happened recently is not right. It was selfish. (Fufa president and Budiope East MP Moses) Magogo had to get an additional Shs7b for football and they are saying its ring-fenced.It should have been NCS (National Council of Sports) to bring its needs, assess each federation and bring it to the House. Instead, parliament, at a plenary, decided on its own.I rose to say whatever was going on is wrong but I was not given the opportunity to really to ensure that my point was driven home.Otherwise, I believe that we have enough resources within the budget allocation to promote sports, specifically the facilities. I had gotten land in Kapchorwa close to the High Altitude Center, particularly to build a hostel. The plan was to start looking out for good runners to use it but up to now, its not finished. So, you cannot put up a hostel when the major facility is not done. In the budget this year, its not anywhere.

How best should sports be funded?Government has no goodwill. We were suggesting tax waivers and incentives like seen in Rwanda. There is no way you can run away from government.There has to be tax cuts for the private sector that invest in the community. You also have a big problem of people in sports who have no passion or professional background.People like you (yours truly) should be somewhere involved but you are at the periphery. For example; (former Uganda Boxing Federation and Uganda Olympic Committee president Rogers) Ddungu had all these federations in his time just to keep his UOC position. He was just a businessman. The situation has changed a bit. It is changing. When you find people like (current UOC president) Don (Rukare), the performance of different sports is changing.

How does your shade of politics fit in?I once met a lady who was in charge of netball (Suan Anek) for lunch in Lugogo. I wanted to discuss how best we can help the sport get money but she responded with the movement, the movement. For you, you are opposition. I did a bit of background check and there is no way we can cooperate. Luckily, the team performed well.I spoke to (Lt Col) Juma Seiko to do the fast-tracking of the high performance centre in Kapchorwa. We discussed and then he pulled out. What we should look out is professionals not the politics.

Starman. Tendo Mukalazi is one for the future, with Nsibambi hopeful that he and others can win a World Championship.al soccer again. PHOTO/ISMAIL KEZAALA

We have the talent like you know with boxing. Uganda was competing with Cuba and Russia during (President Idi) Amins regime.There has always been good young boys in Naguru. Boxers are the most disciplined people, surprisingly. I normally take a walk to meet the boxers and these boys cannot afford cassava.In Kapchorwa, the runners are there. No coaches. They have no spikes. These are basics we can get.But, you are in parliament and we see you move motions to appreciate excellent performers like Joshua Cheptegei.For me, I dont even participate in that. One day, my daughter refused to attend dinner with the President after the London Olympics because the participants were not treated well.When we got gold (referring Stephen Kiprotichs marathon victory at the 2012 London Olympics), (then-Prime Minister Rt. Hon.) Ruhakana (Rugunda) went to visit their camp. Then they came here, they were told to meet the president so she asked; why?

She was seated with (runner Dorcus) Inzikuru who didnt have the best spikes. She had ordinary spikes which caused her an injury when she was running. Whats really going on? she asked.

When you say the face is changing? How can we use people like Cheptegei to promote sports and this country?As a country, the NRM government is not happy. I am very sure they are not happy to see some like Cheptegei appearing as number one.They are so much interested in the military and confrontation so when you see the Cheptegeis there. They think that maybe other Ugandans are galvanized to talk about other issues of democracy.I was not happy when the president gave the Cheptegeis cars and house. He and others are supposed to be nurtured and managed like a national assets.When you give those benefits to a person who had nothing, most of them, after getting gold, will come here and become managers of factories. You excite them.We should be looking at developing sports, creating 100 more Cheptegeis and managing fame. We need administrators to manage fame as an industry, as a sector. This is the only way it can be sustainable to ensure continuity.After a few years, Cheptegei will be gone. While he has Europeans handling him but locally, do we have anyone or people who can manage our athletes, Cheptegei aside? When our stars get here, they are nothing. We should use them as brands. There are places you go and all you hear and know who (Ethiopian long distance running legend Haile) Gebreselassie is.

We have had Kiprotich, Inzikuru and (former Olympic sprinter Davis) Kamoga. We need preserve them and encourage others.Kiprotich got here and they gave him cars. He became an investor yet his real investment is talent. You may find him looking after a maize mill yet business is not his expertise.We should be looking at bigger than that. Such names are not personal to the holder. They are national assets like we preserve the equator, gorillas and national parks.These people should be getting Special Forces Command (SFC) protection. They should be having doctors for personal health and monitoring their social lives. With success, they seize to be just themselves but national assets and treasures.

As a leader, where is the leadership to offer this?This is the problem in Uganda. We have a leadership crisis. Even in parliament, MPs see themselves as people who should attend some functions and wear gomesis. We should be thinking. If I am in charge of sports or Kampala city, it would be different.There is a lot of hopeless exercises. You go and build a church or mosque but God is not supposed to be under a structure. You can even pray under a tree.People want to get votes so they do those exercises. I am not part of such things.Some have argued that detaching sports from the education ministry would help. Is it the magic bullet?It can be a standalone. Maybe sports and youth like in other countries but it can be standalone. Youth is 65% of Ugandas population and has many issues. Sports maybe swallowed.If you want to promote it and it can be a big industry that can make money, it should be alone.I believe it should be managed by former sportsmen and women or people associated with sports because it involves passion and understanding the athletes and them reciprocating that.When you are not involved, there is no way you can relate with it. In other areas, they put it with youth because they think most of the active sportspersons are youth.

One day, I spoke to (Proline director) Mujib Kasule. I feel that if his program had been supported by government, it would have changed the face of sportsWhen I was chairman of Kampala Land Board, I gave 20 acres of land next to Luzira prison and (former UOC president William) Blick failed to raise Shs80m for surveyor. Now the Uganda Land Commission has given the same land to an Arab, a tea grower based in Fort Portal.

We were supposed to build a multipurpose Olympic recreation centre like we have in Zambia but there is no land now available in the whole Kampala. You see, even Namboole has issues.

Way forwardI think what should be done is for government to let NCS operate without any influence and direction apart from policy. When you look at NCS, its basically a political institution of the government in charge. They do that because they know it has contact with the population. Also, allow NCS to be led by professionals or people connected to sport. Secondly, the sector should be different from education. We should also adopt the Rwanda model to encourage many corporate companies to invest in sports. These companies see something that is not clear and hence cannot invest in it. There is need to invest in talent identification at the grassroots. We need a policy. I dont know how that can be done. We had people here like Philip Omondi (RIP).

The only person you can compare him to is (Brazils) Ronaldinho in terms of talent. But, he is a star cos of the system. There is Jackson Mayanja. There was Joachim Matovu (RIP) and others. No talent identification. No support. I am not in politics to look for a job. (President Yoweri) Museveni once wanted to appoint me as a minister and I refused but if I was appointed minister of sports without getting involved in his other funny things of politics. I can show you something different. However, they just pick from nowhere putting on ties and they do nothing. At times you want to cry because what you see is different from what it should be. We started swimming when we were at zero. I am sure in 10 years time, we will have a finalist at the World Championships. Its doable. See what the Kirabos, Tendos and others are doing (referring to Kirabo Namutebi and Tendo Mukalazi). Just look at the strokes, they are refined. Before, we were gambling. Even the coaching levels have improved.

When Muzafar got scholarship to Germany (in 2010) we had to raise money for upkeep and family as parents. He is now a good coach. If only government supports people like him. You find a young army officer given billions of money for operations yet we are not under any threat. We need to build confidence within government and the population. We dont need to fight. Look at some of those small Asian tigers like Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia and others, the population is happy. Why do we buy helicopters to kill people? When we talk about this to the president, he says we are wrong. I told him I cannot work with you because I will oppose you.Why should we have a classified budget when you can invest it sectors for people to be happy like sports then we collect taxes to build hospitals? These are doable.

Birth: Nsibambi was born on April 4, 1965 to Hajji Ausi and Hajjat Jalia Kalega in a village called Kalagala, Nkozi, Mawokota, Mpigi district.

Education: Went to Nkozi primary school, Kibuli secondary school for O and A-level and then Makerere University for a bachelors degree in Law which he completed in 1989.

Work: He joined Sebalu and Lule advocates for one year before joining Greenland bank. In 1995, he did a masters in International Financial Crime at the University of Florida.

After Greenland: After the closure of Greenland Bank, he joined Nyanzi, Kiboneka and Mbabazi advocates as a partner. He worked there for seven years, but was forced to quit because of politics.

The firm got a lot of pressure [because some people associated it with Kizza Besigye]. Clients were withdrawing instructions. Other partners were not politicians like me. We sat and agreed that I should leave. When I left, I formed a firm called Nsibambi and Nsibambi advocates, he said.

Teacher: Alongside his legal practice and political activism, Nsibambi found time to teach Law at Makerere University. It is something he has been doing since 1991. Some of the prominent personalities, he says, he has taught are: DP President Norbert Mao, former speaker Jacob Oulanyah (RIP), Lt Gen James Mugira and the late Brig Noble Mayombo.

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MP Nsibambi on investing in sports, allowing his 11-year old leave home - Monitor

The Shadows of MenBy Abir MukherjeePenguin, IndiaISBN: 978-1787300606352pp.

Set in Calcutta [now Kolkata], capital of the Indian state of West Bengal, The Shadows of Men by Abir Mukherjee is both historical fiction and murder mystery. It is the fifth in a series that features detectives Captain Sam Wyndham and Sergeant Surendranath Suren Banerjee of the Imperial Police.

The year is 1923. The freedom movement has gained traction all across the Subcontinent and anti-British sentiment is at an all-time high. With the colonisers departure now all but imminent, it seems the big question isnt when the British will leave; rather, it is who will wield influence in Indias power structures once the Raj is gone.

Consequently, despite Mohandas Karamchand Gandhis efforts at forging a united India and repeated calls for Hindu-Muslim unity, communal tensions are on the rise, aggravated further by the activities of the Union of Islam and the Shiv Sabha two political organisations representing polar extremes in the struggle for political power.

At this point, the brutal murder of a Hindu scholar named Prashant Mukherjee propels the situation towards all out violence, bringing Calcutta into the grip of riots and bloodshed. This is doubly perilous because, if the violence spreads, it can seriously affect the possibility of conducting the national elections, scheduled for the end of the year.

A historical novel set within a murder-mystery genre is an entertaining read but its postcolonial ambitions are thwarted by an ability to come to grips with the issue of class

It bears mentioning that, historically, the elections of 1923 were won by the Swaraj [self rule] Party, co-founded by Motilal Nehru (father of Jawaharlal Nehru), so the significance of the timing can hardly be underplayed.

The heroic duo of the novel are tasked with the responsibility of discovering the identity of Prashant Mukherjees murderer and preventing or at least containing, as far as possible the outbreak of communal violence. Cracking the case becomes all the more urgent when, in a strange turn of events, the prime suspect in the eyes of the Imperial Police turns out to be none other than Suren.

With his only guarantor Police Commissioner Lord Charles Taggart having fallen victim to an assasination attempt and now lying unconscious in the infirmary, there is no one who can clear Surens name.

Will Sam and Suren apprehend the criminal in time and prevent a national disaster, while also managing to help Suren avoid a definite death sentence? Were this a typical murder-mystery, this is the only question the novel would be interested in.

This is usually the standard for genre novels that conclude once the villain is unmasked and the status quo has been restored. But even genre novels, post-Theory, tend to take on more nuanced challenges. As a storyteller, the self-aware postcolonial writer knows that, in the broadest sense, the narrative has been marked by an absence of the native voice for far too long.

This absence must be addressed. The story, as it were, has always been told by the coloniser at the cost of the native. The Shadows of Men strives to right this historical wrong with great seriousness and a sense of responsibility.

Author Mukherjee flexes his postcolonial muscle as he attempts to tackle the larger, more insidious questions relating to the colonial project itself as an inherently exploitative and ruthless exercise of power, the institutions such as the Imperial Police that maintain it and its impact on the very idea of justice. Can an immoral occupying force really ever be expected to deliver justice? Is it even possible?

Sams musings as an English officer of the Imperial Police often raise these questions: ...I had no proof of anything but that was the great thing about our laws. If you had the merest suspicion that an Indian had committed a crime, you could simply arrest him and come up with a rationale later.

And again: I was tired of always being on the back foot, always defending the indefensible. Placing oneself in a position of semi-permanent hypocrisy, thats what it meant to be an Englishman in India...

Surens perspective, meanwhile, often considers the flip side, the receiving end of colonial culture: ... there is no sight more incongruous, nothing that speaks more to our moral subjugation, than that of an Indian in a morning suit. There is no reason for it, save to salve the sensibilities of our masters.

As a postcolonial text, Mukherjees novel engages with the absence of a native voice and attempts to strike a fairer balance.

Suren, therefore, insists at the onset that this story is, in large part, his and cannot fully be told without his narration. Thus, each chapter in the book offers the perspective of either one or the other of the two detectives. This device not only helps with character development as the reader gets to learn what Suren thinks about Sam and vice versa it also provides the reader with two distinct voices, one of which would ordinarily have been ignored.

Interestingly, the murderer too is characterised not because of what is present, but what is all too conspicuously absent. Or what should have been present, but isnt. This becomes integral to solving the mystery.

Finally, Mukherjee manages to conjure an India that isnt a monolithic abstraction, but a linguistically and culturally diverse land, as opposed to the usual hot and dusty monstrosity that the white man constantly complained about finding so difficult to govern even as he robbed it blind.

However, Mukherjees narrative, while giving voice to an Indian, fails to address another important issue: class. Suren is a graduate of the University of Cambridge and, though seemingly unassuming, he comes from wealth. He can, when the circumstances call for it, simply board a ship and sail off to Europe till things settle down back home.

And except for the usual liberal favourite the stock character of the noble whore there really isnt much to be said about the working class in Mukherjees narrative.

At worst, it is greedy and violent. At best, it consists of laughable clods. And this brings us to a larger issue, one that is integral to the postcolonial framework: its bourgeois nature. It simply cannot confront the issue of class except in the same way that Jospeh Conrad confronts black identity in his Heart of Darkness: superficially, through a filter marked by stereotype.

Thus, the novel, charged as it is with postcolonial angst and rightfully so unfortunately falls prey to the same error as the theory that appears to inform it. It manages to subsume class within a liberal account of the anti-colonial struggle, till it disappears in name, but not in fact.

Then, as the novel progresses, we discover that the primary sources of aid for our heroes are two extremely wealthy women, among whom one, at least, seems motivated purely by the desire to be amused. The circle is complete. Money services money.

That being said, The Shadows of Men is overall a quick, entertaining read. It may not be perhaps the best example of its genre, but nevertheless it does deliver. And as far as attempts to write revisionist literature go, feminist interventions aside, this is a fair attempt and may appeal to a large audience.

The reviewer is a bibliophile

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, July 17th, 2022

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FICTION: THE SHADOWS OF CLASS - Newspaper - DAWN.COM - DAWN.com

On the intellectual bankruptcy of moral equivalence

By David French

The Third Rail examines the disputes that divide America. Sign up to get it in your inbox.

Theres a pattern emerging in parts of the right. It goes something like this. Yes, Russia is wrong to invade Ukraine, but And what follows the but is invariably an avalanche of excuse-making and false moral equivalence. NATO provoked Russia, Ukraine provoked Russia, orand this is my favoriteWestern wokeism provoked Russia.

Earlier this week the extraordinarily popular Canadian professor Jordan Peterson released a lengthy (and immediately viral) video that represented the virtual platonic form of the argument that Russia is wrong, but If you have a spare hour, Id urge you to watch his entire lecture, if only to understand a view you may not hear much in your daily life.

I want to focus on a specific claim by Petersonthat Russia has not only gone to war to protect itself from what he describes as Western degeneracy, but that our alleged degeneracy robs the West of the moral high ground in the conflict. Heres a key quote:

And what is this degeneracy? Peterson talks about radical gender ideology, the nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson (yes, really), and her reluctance to define a woman during her confirmation hearings. Heres more Peterson:

Petersons moral equivalence does not (yet) hold majority Republican support. While Republicans are less likely to support Ukraine in the conflict than Democratsand less likely to support strict economic sanctions against Russia and sending military support to Ukrainestrong majorities still oppose Vladimir Putin.

Petersons beliefs, however, are still worth addressing, and not just because they undermine American support for an ally that is directly confronting one of our nations chief geopolitical foes. His beliefs also lead to a sense of unjustified existential despair about the state of our own civilization and culture.

In short, while the West has problems, it is not degenerate by any reasonable historical measure, and there is no reasonable comparison between the virtue of NATO and Russia. To argue otherwise is to be ignorant or to engage in gravely deficient moral reasoning.

The rights disproportionate commitment to moral equivalence in the Russia-Ukraine war is explained partly by pure contrarianism (opposing anything the elite supports) and partly by a profoundly negative view of modern Western cultural life, and a prewar view of Putin as a muscular representative of specifically anti-woke Christian nationalism.

Theres no question that Putin has forged a close relationship with the Russian Orthodox Church, but that is an indictment of the Russian Church, not an endorsement of Putin. Hes a brutal war criminal who employed his military in indiscriminate attacks against civilians in the wars in Chechnya and Syria well before the wholesale slaughter in Ukraine.

Moreover, its hardly the case that Russia itself is a hotbed of religious fervor. Its far more secular than the United States (53 percent of Americans say religion is very important in their lives, versus only 16 percent of Russians). Russia has a substantially higher murder rate than every member of NATO, including the United States. It suppresses religious freedom, and it has one of the highest measured abortion rates in the world.

Is Russia defending itself against Western degeneracy and protecting the Christian faith? No, its distorting and appropriating Christianity to inflict its own pathological criminality on a peaceful nation and its innocent people.

Petersons critique of the West as degenerate or insane rests largely on the existence of radical gender ideology and illiberal wokeness that does have profound influence in a number of key Western cultural institutions, including the academy, large corporations, and much of the mainstream press.

Yet the Western-protected regime of individual liberty and the rule of law not only protects its citizens from the worst excesses of authoritarians on the left and the right; it protects the mechanisms of internal critique that can and do lead to reform. Moreover, even with wokeness abroad in the land, NATO countries remain among the best places in the history of the world to build a life and raise a family.

Neither America nor its Western allies have ever been perfect. Weve always been profoundly flawed. Indeed, the United States that fought World War II was far more degenerate or pathological than it is today. We liberated Europe from Nazi tyranny and Asia from Japanese despotism at the same time that we maintained an apartheid-like Jim Crow regime in the South.

But that did not render the moral high ground in the Second World War up for the most serious debate.

Ive long been a participant in the American culture war. I was a pro-life and religious-liberty litigator for more than 20 years before I became a journalist. I also know that its easy to lose perspective when you spend too much time immersed in domestic disputes. Most of us, however, get jolted back to reality when we see the true face of aggressive, authoritarian evil. A clash over whether to use the word woman or a person with the capacity for pregnancy is a moral and philosophical dispute that can be mediated through the instruments of liberal democracy.

A Russian cruise missile launched into an apartment building, by contrast, represents a truly different order of depravity. A nation or culture does not have to be perfect to be right, and make no mistakein the clash between the war criminal in the Kremlin and Ukraine and its NATO allies, the true moral high ground could not be more clear.

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Jordan Peterson Is Wrong About Russia, and the West - The Atlantic