Category Archives: Government Oppression

By Rich Tenorio

When Juan Baez worked in the casino industry as a human resources training specialist, he knew how important it was to help patrons who showed signs of a gambling problem. Baez who had previously struggled with substance abuse now sought to educate fellow casino staff on recognizing the signs of addiction.

This is all part of his new life, having come full circle to be a problem gambling specialist for the State of Kansas. Hes coupled that with his Spanish fluency (his father is Puerto Rican and his mother Salvadoran) to help Latinos with gambling problems.

Baez anticipates hell soon get a lot more work: He and other experts are concerned about the recent explosion in sports betting, and how its affecting Latinos nationwide.

A survey by the Global Sport Institute at Arizona State University shows young Latino males are the demographic that bets on sports most frequently.

We suspect (sports betting) will be an increasing issue for the general population, as well as Latinos, Baez said. Its just a matter of how much. Its happening so quickly, (its hard to) know exactly how much. We expect it likely will be, with the expansion of availability.

This expansion began in 2018 when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned nationwide gambling restrictions in Murphy v. National College Athletic Association which invalidated federal restrictions set by the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA). Since then, a majority of states have expanded sports betting through legislation. And professional sports leagues have done an about-face, embracing gambling as a new opportunity. Since 2018, legalized sports betting has added roughly 20 million adults to the gambling ranks. The risk for gambling problems has increased by 50% between 2018 and 2021, according to Keith Whyte, executive director of the National Council on Problem Gambling.

In general, folks (in the survey) were supportive (of sports betting), said Scott Brooks, director of research for the Global Sport Institute. I think that favorability, being supportive, did surprise me When I grew up, there was Pete Rose not being able to get into the Hall of Fame.

In the rush to engage gamblers, the betting industry has identified Latinos as an untapped market demographic.

In March, amid college basketballs annual March Madness playoff frenzy (and, ironically, during Problem Gambling Awareness Month) a bilingual platform called JefeBet.com debuted as an initiative of Las Vegas-based Fifth Street Gaming which owns several Vegas casinos, including the Silver Nugget.

The NCPGs Whyte said, JefeBet is the first US-based gambling site targeted to the Latino community, though Im sure there are others.

In April, the site shifted focus to baseball, soccer and American football, among others, with articles on its website interspersed around gambling ads Juega gratis / y gane (gana) premios en dinero real!

There are some articles about the Latino market being a huge, kind of untapped market in the U.S. with regard to sports betting potential, said Ted Hartwell, community outreach liaison for the Nevada Council on Problem Gambling. A recent survey by Futbol Sites found that 61% of U.S. Latinos are either betting on sports or interested in doing so, while a significant number are familiar with the Mexico-based gambling platform Caliente.

Some of the research that the (National Council on Problem Gambling) has done suggests sports betting is one of the forms of gambling with some of the highest self-reporting of problematic behavior, said Hartwell, who also overcame a gambling problem before counseling others with the addiction. People who engage in sports betting are more likely to report unhealthy gambling behavior than those who typically engage in other types of gambling.

Michael Campos, a clinical psychologist with the UCLA Gambling Studies Program, estimates 631,873 Latinos in the U.S. suffer from disordered gambling covering both the clinical diagnosis of a gambling disorder and subclinical problem gambling.

According to the NCPG, less than 1% of U.S. adults, around 3 million people have a severe gambling problem, which means a much higher risk for severe consequences, including bankruptcy and even death, Whyte said. People with gambling problems have a high rate of suicidal behavior. People think often gambling addiction is just a financial problem. Of course, you can lose your entire life savings in a day, but the money you can get back. Its the psychological and emotional consequences that can be even more devastating.

Compulsive gambling led to a litany of problems in the 1990s for Julin, a Mexican American in Arizona who did not wish to give his full name because he is a member of Gamblers Anonymous in continuous recovery from his gambling addiction. A married father of two, he saw gambling end his marriage, threaten his job as an engineer and bring him to bankruptcy after maxing out 17 credit cards.

It caused a lot of pain, emotional pain, for all of us, he said. I would go out to gamble almost every day. I couldnt stop myself. I wanted to stop, but couldnt It was literally something I had to do. I felt I was going to die if I couldnt do it.

Once I got into the casino, my brain short-circuited, he added. I couldnt think straight anymore. I was just in there to gamble. I could not control how long or how much money I would gamble, every bit I had. Once I had no more money, I would leave and come home.

After multiple attempts to stop himself from gambling, Julin ended up reaching out to Gamblers Anonymous. He started going 21 years and eight months ago and it has helped dramatically: He has not placed a bet since July 21, 1997. Initially, he joined an English-language group. Although he is bilingual, he recalls other Latinos having a harder time at meetings.

I saw Hispanics struggling to communicate in the English meetings, he said. I thought it might be a good idea to start a Spanish Gamblers Anonymous meeting where people feel more comfortable (and) recover from gambling in their language.

His idea became one of the earliest Spanish-language GA meetings in Arizona in 2002. Twenty years later, Latinos with gambling problems still face a shortage of resources compared to the general population.

From what little research has been done, people in the Latinx or Hispanic community face a disproportionate burden, likely because of lesser access to healthcare resources, Whyte said. There are fewer gambling counselors who speak Spanish, or materials and resources in Spanish.

Cultural factors may also make it hard to seek help, according to experts.

One of the things we have with addiction is that very often, the individual who is involved in addiction resists admitting he has a problem, said Mercy College criminal justice program director Mary Cuadrado, a scholar of addiction. Pressure very often comes from outside, from those around him. In Hispanic culture, the problem is with men. Everyone around them thinks what men do is whatever they want. Nobody pressures them to see their behavior as problematic.

Also, she said, in general, Hispanics are not very open to going to probably the most prevalent type of gambling addiction treatment, Gamblers Anonymous. Hispanics dont feel the most comfortable, even (in) Alcoholics Anonymous, going into a group, talking about things theyve done affecting their family. Its not a very attractive way of treatment for Hispanics. Its been very problematic.

Gambling in Latin America has its own history, some of which has taken different directions than in the U.S.

In Hispanic countries, theres horse racing, cockfights, domino playing, Cuadrado said, a lot of activities involving gambling Its not necessarily for money, but rather a type of enjoyment, in particular for the men.

Meanwhile, Latin American immigrants often have a relationship of distrust toward the government in their homeland.

First of all, they come with a bad government experience from their own country. Maybe its even why they headed for the U.S. the government was not a resource, just a mechanism of oppression. They may be reluctant to go to any sort of government entity to seek help. She added, for any sort of treatment, theres the matter of language. Are they really understanding what the therapist asks of them? Can they truly share what needs to be shared?

Venus Moore, who works in Latino outreach for the New York Council on Problem Gambling, has tried to marshal community resources and Spanish-speaking clinicians to help individuals in the Bronx, which has a diverse Latino population that includes Puerto Ricans, Dominicans and Panamanians.

In an email, Moore said that the Bronx Problem Gambling Resource Center (PGRC) has a core group consisting of her advisory council to address and engage the Hispanic community to make sure that they are aware of gambling treatment services we provide. We also partner with organizations that serve that population and are always looking to collaborate with more.

Sports betting is a problem in multiple neighborhoods of the Bronx, reflecting the industrys growth in New York ever since the state legalized it this year.

When Cuadrado, a New York resident, watches TV, she sees a constant stream of gambling commercials offering different kinds of software to download, and enticements such as double winnings. Some commercials are sponsored by casinos such as MGM or Caesars; gamblers no longer have to travel to Atlantic City or Las Vegas.

Its really problematic, Cuadrado said. Anybody before who might be having a problem, in my mind, is now at even greater risk. Everybody carries a phone.

Julin, the recovering gambling addict, said he knows another Latino compulsive gambler an attendee of a Spanish GA meeting who cant stop betting on sports online.

He kept having relapses, Julin said. I think online gambling, betting on sports online using your telephone its only going to aggravate the problem of compulsive gambling. The impact of compulsive gambling on Hispanics is just going to grow and grow and grow.

Jugadores Annimos

NYC Problem Gambling Resource Center

National gambling hotline: 1-800-522-4700

- - -

Rich Tenorio is a writer and editor whose work has appeared in a variety of media outlets. He is a graduate of Harvard College and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Tenorio is also a cartoonist.

Go here to read the rest:

Addiction experts fear recent explosion in sports betting will have disproportionate impact on Latinos - MLive.com

From Femi Folaranmi, Yenagoa

Ijaw Youths from the nine states of the Niger Delta region under the aegis of the Ijaw Youth Council Worldwide(IYC) have called for the immediate release of the member of the Federal House of Representatives, Hon Farah Dagogo who was arrested on Thursday on the orders of Rivers Governor, Nyesom Wike over allegation of violence against at the secretariat of the PDP in the state.

IYC noted that despite their call on Wike to rescind his arrest order against Dagogo, he still went ahead to arrest and arraigned him in court.Accordingly the group said the charges should be dropped his trial as it is politically motivated.

IYC in a statement issued by its spokesman, Ebilade Erekefe said Wike and the PDP should know that Dagogo is an Ijaw son and his persecution is a persecution of all Ijaws in the Niger Delta.The decision of the ijaws to tow the line of peace is all in a bid not to distrupt the peace in the region and also in recognition of the development efforts of Wike administration in Rivers.We may not be a partisan body, the arrest and arraignment of Hon. Fara Dagogo is in bad taste to the Ijaws. While it may seem Wike is deliberately ignoring the calls by the youths of the region, we call on the Court not to allow itself to be used in an effort to get political revenge over the choice to support any Presidential aspirants within the PDP.

It explained that despite calls by Rivers Stakeholders for Wike to give a level playing ground to all those who are vying to become the governor of Rivers state in the next gubernatorial election, the arrest order issued against Hon. Dagogo will be viewed as showing there is no level playing ground and selective witch hunt in the processes leading to the selection of Governorship candidate for PDP in the state.

The statement reads in part: Governor Wike should realize that his becoming governor today is as a result of sacrifices of Ijaw youths in Abonema who resisted injustice, intimidation and oppression by the federal government during his second term elections when others where afraid to confront the federal might, and wonder why others will suffer similar fate simply because he perceived them as his political opponents.

This is totally unacceptable and we are calling on the security agencies in Rivers state to carry out their duties professionally as any attempt to intimidate Farah Dogogo and any other Ijaw son by the Rivers state government at a time the Ijaw nation is clamoring for a Riverine governor will be seen as an affront.

See the rest here:

Road to 2023: Ijaw youths demand immediate release of Dagogo - Daily Sun

Russia's brutal invasion of Ukraine has created a massive refugee crisis, withover 5 million Ukrainians fleeing the country. Many Western countries have admirably accepted Ukrainian refugees in response. But critics argue that this relative openness by the US and Europe involves a pernicious double standard under which white European refugees from Ukraine are welcomed, but non-white ones from Syria, Africa and elsewhere, are mostly shut out, even though many are fleeing comparably grave dangers from war and oppression. Pope Francis, among others, has said that the differential treatment of refugees is driven by "racism."

The critics have a legitimate point. But the right way to address the problem is not to close our doors to Ukrainians, but to be more open to other migrants and refugees fleeing horrific conditions.

Non-white refugees from Africa and the Middle East really do often face violence and oppression comparable to that which threatens Ukrainian refugees, and many Western nations have been less willing to let them enter. In the case of the US, the difference is less glaring than in Europe, because the Biden administration has so far taken only modest steps to open US doors to Ukrainians. Some of those steps, such as granting Ukrainians already in the US "Temporary Protected Status" have parallels in similar policies adopted towards some predominantly non-white groups of refugees, such as Venezuelans (regardless of their actual skin color, Venezuelans and other Hispanics are usually not considered "white" in the US). The contrast is greater in Canada and various European nations that have been relatively more open to Ukrainians than the United States has been so far.

Although racial and ethnic bias surely plays a role, it probably isn't the only factor at work. It is also significant that the US and its European allies have an important strategic stake in the Russia-Ukraine War that is either smaller or entirely absent in the cases of Syria and various African conflicts. Openness to Ukrainians is not only a moral gesture, but also a way of opposing Vladimir Putin's brutal war of aggression, which threatens Western security interests.

It's also worth noting that the US and its European allies have done little or nothing to open their doors to Russian refugees fleeing Putin's intensifying repression, despite the strong moral and strategic case for doing so. Most Russian refugees are white, just like most Ukrainian ones. Western nations' unwillingness (so far, at least) to take them is likely driven by shortsighted unwillingness to distinguish them from the very regime they are fleeing.

That said, racial and ethnic bias clearly is a factor. Some European officials openly admit it. For example, Bulgarian Prime Minister Kiril Petkov said in February that his country is welcoming Ukrainians in part because "[t]hese are not the refugees we are used to. These people are EuropeansThese people are intelligent."

But, as I explained in one of my earliest pieces making the case for admitting Russian and Ukrainian refugees, the right way to combat such disparities is "leveling up" the treatment of non-white refugees, not barring Ukrainians.

There are some cases where it is perfectly legitimate to end discrimination by "leveling down" the treatment of the previously favored group. For example, if the government gives subsidies to white-owned businesses that aren't available to others, there is nothing wrong with just abolishing the subsidy program entirely.

But barring refugees fleeing war or repression is a grave wrong even if it is done in a "race-neutral" manner. It still unjustly consigns people to oppression or even death merely because they happen to be born to the wrong parents or in the wrong place. That itself is an injustice similar to racial discrimination. In the same way, if police brutality is directed against African-Americans more often than whites, the problem could not be justly "solved" by having the police abuse whites more often. Rather, the only defensible approach in that situation is to curb brutality directed at blacks.

In my view, there should be a strong presumption against barring any peaceful migrants, especially those fleeing war, authoritarian regimes, or other severe oppression. But I recognize this ideal is unlikely to be fully achieved anytime soon, if ever. In the meantime, we should seek whatever incremental improvements are feasible, which may include measures focused on specific refugee crises, even as others remain (relatively) neglected.

And while I have long argued it is essential to make the general moral case for migration rights, there is nothing wrong with also noting considerations that may only apply to a specific situation. For example, there are specific strategic advantages to opening our doors to Russians fleeing Putin, because doing so strengthens the West's position against one of the world's most dangerous illiberal authoritarian regimes.

In my view, Russians fleeing Putin's regime (like others fleeing repression) should be accepted even in the absence of those strategic advantages. But these points still add to the case for openness, and they may be more decisive for observers who are less generally pro-migration rights than I am.

The issue of racial and ethnic double standards on migration rights often comes up when I speak about admitting Ukrainians and Russians during the present war. Reporters and interviewers routinely ask about it. I always emphasize that my support for migration rights is not and never has been bounded by race or ethnicity.

For members of the media and anyone else who may be interested, here is a convenient, though not exhaustive, list of my writings advocating migration rights for predominantly non-white groups (as "white" is usually defined in US political discourse). Unless otherwise noted, these are all posts at the Volokh Conspiracy blog:

1. "The Moral and Strategic Case for Admitting Syrian Refugees," Nov. 23, 2015.

2. "Obama's Cruel Policy Reversal on Cuban Refugees," Jan. 14, 2017. While many Cuban migrants are light-skinned, they are not usually considered white in the US.

3. "Supreme Court Ruling on Travel Ban Ignores Religious Discrimination," USA Today, June 26, 2018. This piece and the next one are just a small sampling of my extensive writings opposing Donald Trump's anti-Muslim travel bans.

4. "Trump's Expanded Travel Ban Compounds the Wrongs of Previous Versions," Feb. 2, 2020.

5. "Let Hongkongers Immigrate to the West - And other Victims of Chinese Government Oppression, too," May 29, 2020. This is just one of several pieces I have written on Asian refugees.

6."Immigration Restrictions and Racial Discrimination Share Similar Roots," The Hill, Nov. 24, 2020.

7. "The Case for Accepting Afghan Refugees," Aug. 20, 2021.

8. Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom, (Oxford University Press, rev. ed. 2021). In Chapters 5 and 6 of this book, I include an extensive critique of justifications for racial, ethnic, and cultural discrimination in migration policy. In the case of the US and many other Western nations, such restrictions most often target non-whites.

9. "The Case Against Covid-19 Pandemic Migration Restrictions," Cato Institute, Feb. 1, 2022. In the US, these restrictions have most heavily impacted non-white migrants from Latin America. That's especially true of the Title 42 "public health" expulsions, against which I also authored an amicus brief when their legality was challenged in court.

This list could easily be expanded. But it's enough to give a representative sampling of my work on this issue.

Committed conspiracy theorists (though not Volokh Conspirators!) might still say I only wrote the above because I anticipated there would someday be a refugee crisis involving whites. My previous writings about non-white refugees would store up credibility that I could then make use of. But that just goes to show there's no satisfying hard-core conspiracy theorists!

UPDATED: I have made a few small additions to this post.

Read more:

Ukraine and Double Standards on Refugees - Reason

The 2020 defeat of Donald Trumps failed presidency after a single disastrous term during a deadly worldwide pandemic will always be considered one of the most important elections in American history.

But a year and a half later, were just beginning to realize Trumps politically corrupt appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court and more than 220 other lifetime federal judgeships will continue destroying our Constitutional protections for decades.

Trump himself had surprisingly little to do with it. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell began dishonestly manipulating an extreme rightwing takeover the nations judiciary before Trump ever took office. When rightwing Justice Antonin Scalia died in early February 2016, Majority Leader McConnell refused to hold a Senate confirmation hearing on Obamas highly qualified nominee Judge Merrick Garland for nearly a year until Obamas term ended so Trump could fill the vacancy.

The rightwing Federalist Society supplied Trump with a steady stream of extremist nominees carefully screened for opposition toRoe v. Wadeand other far right causes. Trump obediently appointed them to three Supreme Court seats and other federal judgeships with McConnells Senate confirming them at breakneck speed.

No one should be surprised 10 of Trumps nominees received a Not Qualified rating from the American Bar Association. Two of those unqualified political hacks withdrew their nominations. Only three received a single Republican negative vote two from Maines Susan Collins and one from Arizonas Jeff Flake, considered too moderate to win Republican re-election in 2018. Every other grossly unqualified Trump nominee received unanimous Republican support.

One of those seriously flawed judicial appointees has just made herself famous by destroying the ability of the Centers for Disease Control to protect public health during a pandemic. She ruled it was illegal for the CDC to require face masks on airplanes and every other form of crowded public transportation where people are packed tightly together in a confined space breathing each others air.

Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelles potentially deadly decision failed to provide any legal rationale for her ruling. She simply declared the CDCs action was illegal despite a federal statute explicitly empowering the CDC to make and enforce such regulations . . . necessary to prevent the introduction, transmission and spread of communicable diseases by requiring sanitation . . . and other measures. Face masks preventing the transmission of a deadly respiratory disease under crowded conditions certainly qualify as a reasonable public health measure.

LEARN MORE

Mizelle was only 33 when McConnell rushed her confirmation through a lame duck session of the Senate in his final days as majority leader. She could be overturning U.S. laws based solely on her own political whims for a half century.

The radical rightwing 6-to-3 Trumped-up majority on the Supreme Court might not have to gut the Constitution so many different ways. The justices can simply let Trump judges in Republican states like Texas, Florida and Louisiana do their dirty work for them. Trumps appointees in all those states have begun using local cases brought by rightwing fringe groups to issue national injunctions throwing out Bidens policies fighting climate change, restoring environmental protections and treating immigrants and refugees more humanely.

Republicans have always been more politically focused on judicial appointments than Democrats have and look where its gotten us. The 80% of Americans who support the Constitutional right of a woman to end an unwanted pregnancy according to Gallup are holding their breath to learn whether the Trump Court will completely abolish the 50-year-old right of a woman to control her own life or merely eviscerate it.

There was something disturbing about the whoops of selfish delight breaking out on airplanes when pilots and flight attendants announced midair on some flights a Florida judge had just thrown out the federal mask mandate. There was hooting and hollering and tossing masks in the air by a joyous privileged class who take airplanes like the rest of us run to the Stop N Shop. They had finally thrown off the yoke of government oppression, emerging from the torturous nightmare of being forced to wear a square of cloth over their mouth and nose to protect the lives of people they dont even know.

Biden is leading the democracies of the world to provide support for Ukrainians fighting for their lives against real torture and oppression from an invading Russian army. Bidens also fighting another war at home to protect democracy from Republicans who violently attempted to overthrow his free and fair election.

For some reason protecting American democracy from destruction has not yet become the top priority in Novembers midterms. But there is no more important issue in Novembers election and the election after that and the one after that and on and on until Republicans as well as Democrats support voting rights for all Americans and accept the outcome of free and fair elections in a democracy.

Joel McNally is a national-award-winning newspaper columnist and a longtime political commentator on Milwaukee radio and television. Since 1997, Joel has written a column for the Shepherd Express where he also was editor for two years.

Apr. 25, 2022

12:36 p.m.

Original post:

Trump's Destruction of Our Courts Will Last for Decades - Shepherd Express

Introduction: How did we get here?

Over the course of 2020 and 2021, groundbreaking investigations revealed in stark detail Israeli authorities intensifying use of surveillance and predictive technologies to police and control Palestinians. Subjecting Palestinians to such scrutiny from security and military apparatuses narrows their expressive spaces and plunges them into a state of constant anxiety. This practice also carries out a commercial purpose: Occupied Palestine effectively functions as an open-air laboratory for Israel to test techniques of espionage and surveillance before selling them to repressive regimes around the world. This commerce has troubling implications, particularly as more governments have leveraged digital monitoring tools against political opponents, activists, journalists, civil society workers, and others deemed threatening. The case of the Palestinians, then, can be understood as an ominous example of how various actors can probe deep into private lives through the ever-watching eyes of surveillance.

Palestinians are subjected to multiple layers of surveillance, all of which aim to monitor Palestinian voices, restrict freedom of expression, and discourage their autonomy. Surveillance in Palestine bears an uncanny resemblance to the Panopticon, a mechanism of social and psychological control proposed by the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham in the 18th century. At the center of the Panopticon stands a guard in a watchtower. Surrounding the watchman are prison cells, all within his eyeshot, so the prisoners, not knowing whether they are being watched at any given time, are constantly on their best behavior. The French philosopher Michel Foucault, in his analysis of the Panopticon, argued that its purpose is to arrange things [so] that the surveillance is permanent in its effects, even if it is discontinuous in its actions. The same megalomaniacal logic undergirds Israeli surveillance: The point is not only to watch Palestinians through strategically placed cameras, but also and whats perhaps more insidious to make them feel watched no matter where they are. Israels digital surveillance is thus the latest iteration of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) tactic of demonstrating presence, which promotes Israeli patrols of Palestinian communities for the sole purpose of exhibiting the armys sprawling reach.

Surveillance lies at the very heart of occupation. As Edward Said wrote in his book Orientalism: Knowledge of subject races or Orientals is what makes their management easy and profitable; knowledge gives power, more power requires more knowledge, and so on in an increasingly profitable dialectic of information and control." Surveillance empowers the occupier by yielding information about the politics, culture, and daily life of the occupied.

Palestinians are subjected to Israeli authorities' digital monitoring on a daily basis, at checkpoints, during protests and social gatherings, and on social media. Palestinians are also subjected to what Shoshanna Zuboff has termed surveillance capitalism, whereby social media companies collect user data for profit through increasingly invasive means of data collection and analysis. In theabsence of legislation protecting their right to privacy, Palestinians are particularly vulnerable to such corporate meddling into their lives. Finally, Palestinians regularly experience breaches of their privacy by the Palestinian Authority in its attempt to monitor them and prevent opponents from expressing their opinions.

Surveillance in daily life

Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank living under military occupation have always suffered significant social control and monitoring, often in the form of unannounced raids or searches of their homes and brutal interrogation at border crossings and checkpoints. In the past 20 years, this monitoring has penetrated the digital realm and has been ramped up with digital technologies. Palestinians are routinely monitored in public spaces, as Israeli authorities deploy CCTV cameras in the streets of the Palestinian territory, specifically in Hebron and East Jerusalem. This practice began in the year 2000, when Israel launched its technological and surveillance center Mabat 2000. Mabat, meaning gaze in Hebrew, has increased the number of cameras. In June 2014, the Israeli government passed resolution No. 1775, which calls for more CCTV cameras in Jerusalem under the pretext of "enhancing security." As a result of the resolution, Israel earmarked 48.9 million NIS ($15.26 million) in 2015 for increased CCTV surveillance in Jerusalem.

This digital monitoring is expanding and honing in on its targets. Israeli authorities have made extensive use of facial recognition technologies through surveillance cameras and smartphones. According to the Jerusalem Municipality, there are 1,000 cameras installed in the city with the ability to identify objects; 10% of these are connected to servers that can analyze data. Some of these cameras can even capture numbers and letters on fixed and moving license plates, impinging on Palestinians mobility rights within their own neighborhoods.

Meanwhile, Israeli authorities have installed face-scanning cameras in Hebron, used by soldiers to identify Palestinians without having to check their IDs. This innovation was born of a surveillance initiative that the Israeli authorities implemented in 2020. At the start of the pandemic, while the whole world was fighting to stop the spread of the virus, Israeli authorities were preparing to intrude further on Palestinians privacy. This surveillance initiative gave rise to "Blue Wolf," a smartphone app powered by a massive database of Palestinians personal information. The database for this application draws from a larger database called the Wolf Pack, which seeks to profile every Palestinian living in the West Bank. Each profile contains photographs, a family history, an educational background, and a security rating.

Israel enlists its soldiers to photograph Palestinians without their consent in order to expand the Wolf Pack database. Israeli soldiers are ordered to enter the photos and details of at least 50 Palestinians into the IDFs Blue Wolf tracking system over the course of each shift. Soldiers who fail to make the quota are forced to remain on duty until they do. They are even competing to see who can harass the greatest number of Palestinians.

Access and data

The Israeli government maintains control over information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure in the Palestinian territory, thus depriving Palestinians of their basic right to access affordable, quality internet. Israeli authorities have deliberately kept Palestinians internet technology obsolete. While Israel is upgrading to the fifth generation of the internet, Palestinians in the West Bank still use the third generation; Palestinians in Gaza get only the second.Depriving Palestinians of access to new technologies increases the price of the internet while decreasing the security of communication channels. In addition, Israeli authorities now possess the ability to monitor every phone conversation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Israeli bugs are implanted in every mobile device imported into Gaza through the Kerem Shalom crossing, without the knowledge or consent of the eventual buyer. Finally, Israel utilizes surveillance spyware, which it manufactures and exports worldwide, against Palestinian human rights defenders. Such surveillance exerts a chilling effect on freedom of expression in spaces of civil society.

Israel uses surveillance cameras and other surveillance methods as a means of intimidation that engenders the terrifying feeling of always being watched. Surveillance cameras affect people's behavior, and Palestinians are no exception. For example, some women in Jerusalem are afraid to remove their hijabs at home because they sense theyre being watched, even in the most intimate of settings..

In the short term, minor tweaks to daily routines may suffice to alleviate the anxieties of unceasing surveillance, but Israels government hopes that in time its cameras will pressure Palestinians into more drastic changes to their behavior. This unabating sense of surveillance threatens to bring about a fragmented society wracked with suspicion and cowed by fear.

Psychological surveillance

Edward Snowdens explosive disclosures about the mass surveillance of U.S. citizens in June 2013 led researchers to conduct a study to see how users were changing their behavior online. The study demonstrated that, in the wake of the Snowden revelations, there had been a sudden drop in searches on Wikipedia for certain keywords related to terrorism: Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, the dirty bomb, chemical weapons, and jihad. While fear of searching for the aforementioned terms may not harm an individuals basic well-being, one can reasonably imagine that Muslims and members of other scrutinized minority groups might hesitate to seek out information online the hours of prayer at a local mosque comes to mind that is essential to their realizing an important part of their identity.

Research has also shown that the presence or threat of surveillance leads to a loss of trust and an increase in apathy. Targets of monitoring become inured to it, and, claiming they have nothing to hide, sacrifice their right to privacy. Citizens keep their ideas to themselves and steer clear of initiatives to organize and mobilize resistance to oppression. In other words, surveillance prompts Palestinians to self-censor, which is inimical to the principles of an open society. This is especially the case for those who, like the Palestinians, live in colonized societies or under the rule of oppressive regimes such as in China.

Consequently, surveillance technology in all its forms, be it mass surveillance, CCTV, spyware, call monitoring, or ICT infrastructure control, infringes on Palestinians human rights, such as their rights to privacy, anonymity, free expression, and access to information.

One of the most distressing and invasive forms of surveillance used in the occupied territories and around the world is facial recognition technology. A relatively new phenomenon with disturbing privacy implications, government use of facial recognition systems has been banned by at least a dozen U.S. cities, and calls for prohibition have progressed in the EU and even inside Israel. A proposal by law enforcement officials to introduce facial recognition cameras in Israeli public spaces was opposed by the Israeli Cyber Authority and struck down by Israel's Supreme Court, presumably because Jewish citizens of Israel would have been affected. From such decisions, it has become clear that the Israeli government considers the meaning of privacy and autonomy to be variable, subject to distinct logic depending on whose privacy is at stake.

Conclusion: Toward a universal right to privacy

Palestinian activists, journalists, scholars, and citizens have long drawn attention to their humiliation at the hands of innovative forms of surveillance that violate their privacy. In many ways, the case of the Palestinians shows how technologies can be weaponized, particularly as a means of inducing self-censorship and compliance from people living in occupied territories or designated by governments as dangerous or threatening minority groups, as is the case with Uyghurs in China and Kashmiris hounded by Indias Hindu nationalist government. In the Middle Eastern context, the intimidation of activists, journalists, and human rights defenders through technological means has been witnessed in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and beyond.

Palestinians are clearly not the only ones contending with invasive technologies in the digital age, even if they do represent a unique case in that their monitored daily lives feed into the development of cutting-edge methods of surveillance. Given the problems global scope, resistance requires not only efforts from Palestinians, but also an intersectional and cross-cutting global campaign to safeguard individual privacy and to counter arguments justifying surveillance.

We need to organize ourselves globally to confront these technologies and pressure our governments to cut ties with manufacturers and suppliers until they comply with international law. We need to reclaim our digital and urban spaces and question the necessity of these surveillance technologies. Unfortunately, government monitoring has been so normalized in the collective conscience that surveillance cameras no longer raise indignation.

The encroachment of military and security forces on the spaces of Palestinians as well as other minorities and colonial subjects sows terror among its targets and constitutes a form of discrimination on racial, ethnic, and national grounds. In the fight against surveillance, nothing less than freedom is at stake. Concerned observers have a duty to collaborate with progressive civil society organizations in the struggle to end the abuse of these technologies by overzealous governments.

Mona Shtaya is a Palestinian digital rights defender working in the MENA region. She works as an advocacy advisor at 7amleh (The Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media) and is a non-resident scholar with MEI's Cyber Program and an MA candidate in Social Media and Digital Communications at the University of Westminster. The views expressed in this piece are her own.

Photo by HAZEM BADER/AFP via Getty Images

See original here:

Nowhere to hide: The impact of Israel's digital surveillance regime on the Palestinians - Middle East Institute

The received wisdom of capitalism is that progressive reforms are gradually won as ideas slowly evolve and enlightened leaders gain positions of power. The 1917 Russian Revolution provided an entirely different model of social changeone in which revolutionary workers radically changed the society around them almost overnight through their own collective action.

Through strikes, demonstrations and mass action, workers first overthrew Russias monarchy in February 1917. Then, nine months later, they overthrew its capitalist class, replacing it with democratic structures of workers' power, known as soviets.

At the centre of the revolution was the Bolshevik party, described by Victor Serge in his eyewitness account Year One of the Russian Revolution as the nervous system of the class. The radical Bolsheviks fought to unite all the oppressed in the struggle against their common oppressors, and then to challenge centuries-long discriminatory practices once the fledgling workers state was established.

Indeed, during the first day of workers' power, a series of decrees began to reshape society. Russia withdrew from World War Ithe revolutionaries understood it was a bosses war paid for with the blood of workers and peasants. Land ownership was transferred from wealthy landlords to peasant committees, and the nations oppressed by the Russian empire were granted the right to self-determination. Life in the cities and towns also changedworkers control of production was codified in law, and repressive social ideas and practices were challenged in workplaces, homes and public spaces.

Capitalism imbues workers with a sense of powerlessness: theyre deprived of any control over society, which discourages them from imagining a radically different world. Bigoted ideas, including racism and sexism, are normalised through the powerful structures of capitalism, including the education system and media. These ideas help maintain ruling-class power by dividing workers and the oppressed into separate, counterposed social categories. But united struggle in the Russian Revolution began rapidly to transform the ideas that workers held about themselves and others.

In his book on workers democracy during the revolution, Oskar Anweiler described the lead-up to the final seizure of power: In the Russian provinces the revolution had destroyed the old administration. Czarist officials, from provincial governor down to the lowliest village policeman, were deposed within a few days or weeks, and some were arrested ... the most diverse public and semi-public organizations arose in cities and towns in the form of existing self-governmental bodies or on an ad hoc basis. Through dealing with the strategic questions that the revolution posed, the workers gained confidence in their ability to run society themselves, and learnt they didnt need to rely on the elite.

Following the insurrection of October 1917, when the Bolshevik party overthrew the existing government and seized power for the working class, the radical ideas that had taken hold of the workers during the revolutionary process began to shape a new society. One of the biggest transformations concerned the place of women.

Prior to the revolution, Rabotnitsa, a working womens newspaper, described life for working-class women bearing a double burden of never-ending housework alongside 12-hour working days:

Exhausted, sick from unhealthy, endless mill work, knowing no peace at home, from morning to night, day in and day out, month after month, the worker mother drudges and knows only need, only worry and grief. Her life passes in gloom, without light ... And she dies having known no happiness in life; she perishes like a broken young tree.

But during the revolution, working-class women changed. Collectively, they took history into their hands and began to mould it. It was women workers who sparked the revolution, marching from their factories on International Womens Day in 1917 to take over the streets and demand that men join them. They joined in debates in their workplaces and in the streets, a world away from the drudgery of family life. A woman at the Treugolnik Rubber Factory recalled the transformation in an account reproduced in David Mandels social history of the revolution:

I cant express my joy ... I considered myself lost forever at the bosss factory. And suddenly I was resurrected, I grew up. That night I put on Russian boots and my husbands cap, a workers overcoat. I said farewell to my children and left. I didnt appear at home for four days, until March 2. My family thought I had been killed.

Immediately after the workers seizure of power, it became illegal to fire pregnant women, and women were granted equal pay and legal freedom of choice over their jobs. The Family Code, implemented in 1918, legalised divorce and gave official status to de facto relationships, removing the church from marriage. The code removed the legal inequalities between children born in and out of wedlock, and pushed men to provide child support for children they had fathered outside of marriage. Homosexuality was decriminalised, and debates opened up about issues of gender and sexuality. Restrictions on abortion were lifted in 1920.

The revolutionaries understood that they could not end womens oppression with the stroke of a pen. Legal measures were accompanied by practical changes. Working rights, for example, were accompanied by a mass state-run nursery program, an attempt to ensure that women would not remain trapped in the home through lack of access to childcare.

In 1920, Lenin wrote an address to working women in which he argued, It is a far cry from equality in law to equality in life. We want women workers to achieve equality with men workers not only in law, but in life as well. For this, it is essential that women workers take an increasing part in the administration of public enterprises and in the administration of the state. The party urged workers to elect women into soviets, and argued for women to take an increasing role in political life.

Restructuring society in a progressive way necessarily meant taking on the Orthodox Church, a bulwark of conservatism. The Orthodox Church had previously had immense power in society and the state, while the empires many religious minorities were oppressed and persecuted. The Bolshevik approach was designed to remove the privileges and power of the church, while lifting the oppression of the persecuted religious groupings and allowing them freedom of religious expression. Along with cutting out the Orthodox Church from administration over family life and schooling, the Bolsheviks stripped it of its assets, repurposing many of its buildings as public infrastructure. In a statement To all the Muslim workers of Russia and the East, issued on 24 November 1917, the new Soviet government wrote: Muslims of Russia ... all you whose mosques and prayer houses have been destroyed, whose beliefs and customs have been trampled upon by the tsars and oppressors of Russia: your beliefs and practices, your national and cultural institutions are forever free and inviolate.

Mosques were given freedom to operate, and religious expression allowed. Native languages began to be spoken and taught in schools, and used in official government documents, challenging the Russian chauvinism that had previously dominated. Universities were established to train non-Russians in technical skills, and people from the many indigenous and nationally oppressed populations were given prioritised access to employment. Alongside this, sacred objects that had been looted by the previous despotic rulers from Islamic societies were returned, and Friday was declared a national day of rest.

Like everyone else, Muslims were politicised by the revolution. In May 1917, the First All-Russian Congress of Muslims voted for an eight-hour working day, the abolition of private landed property and equality of political rights for women. Large numbers of Muslims joined the Bolshevik party, particularly Jadids, who represented a liberal intellectual current within Central Asian Islam. While researching the relationship between the Bolsheviks and Islam, Dave Crouch discovered that there was widespread discussion among Muslims of the similarity of Islamic values with socialist principles.

This tendency to radicalise and to develop more left-wing intellectual currents extended beyond Muslims. During the revolution, Bolshevik intellectuals and workers had established late-night literacy lessons for workers. S.V. Malyshev, secretary of the revolutionary newspaper Pravda, described the lives of the new generation of worker intellectuals:

We had never been able to go to school. We were all semi-literate Bolshevikswe all put off studying until we were imprisoned, as we nearly always were. There, day after day, we wrote out declensions, verbs, subordinate clauses and participles. When we were released from prison, we sat down at a secretarys or editors desk on party orders. It was these newly literate Bolshevik workers who prepared other workers articles for print, and encouraged others to write.

When the Bolsheviks seized power, the revolutionary state implemented mass literacy programs across the country. These drew workers and peasants into public life. Schooling for children was reorganised to place the administration of popular education completely and immediately in the hands of the people, in the words of Nadezhda Krupskaya, a Bolshevik who helped shape educational policy.

The revolutionary state also began to transform the medical system. A recruitment drive for new nurses was launched and new forms of nursing such as visiting nurses were created, as Susan Grant documents in her essay Nursing and the Public Health Legacies of the Russian Revolution. The Commissariat of Public Health attempted to transform nursing from a role largely connected to charity and religious organisations into a respected working role grounded in science. Nurses began to be educated to a cultural and technical level that would make them equal to other highly skilled workers. The new state introduced specialised training for nurses in hospitals and for those nursing in factories and in the countryside.

The revolution brought about deep structural changes and demonstrated how dramatically oppression can be challenged once workers get a sense of the power that comes from unity. The gains that the Bolsheviks made, however, were limited by the dire straits that the revolution found itself in. Capitalist nations across the world waged war on the Russian workers, and the failure of revolutions in neighbouring countries left the revolution isolated.

Without support from outside Russia, a period of capitalist restoration began under the rule of Stalin and his lackeys. In his book The Revolution Betrayed, Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky documented the reversal of many of the gains that the revolution had made in womens lives, workers democracy and the attitude of the state to national minorities. In 1936, Stalins government introduced legislation banning abortion in almost all cases and restricted the right to divorce. Capitalism breeds and requires oppression, and so as it restored itself in Russia, the old oppressive social structures and ideas also returned.

But at its pinnacle, the revolution demonstrated the scale of the changes that revolutions can produce. As Trotsky wrote, socialists highest goal is to free finally and once for all the creative forces of mankind from all pressure, limitation and humiliating dependence. The Russian Revolution gave us valuable evidence that this is possible.

The rest is here:

What workers won in the Russian Revolution - Red Flag

Hyderabad: Accusing the BJP of creating hatred against Muslims in the country, AIMIM (All-India Majlis-e-Ittehadul-Muslimeen) chief Asaduddin Owaisi on Friday alleged that the saffron party and Narendra Modi-led government at the Centre have declared a war against them.

Owaisi asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi to stop the incidents of hatred, saying it is weakening the country.

In our country, BJP has created a storm of hatred against Muslims. Muslims dont lose patience and courage. Fight this oppression by being within the Constitution, said the AIMIM president and Hyderabad MP.

Addressing Jalse Yaum-Ul-Quran on the Mecca Masjid premises here on the occasion of Jumat Ul-Vida (last Friday of Ramzan), Owaisi said, The BJP wants to put so much pressure on Muslims, and hurt them so they will eventually take to arms

We want to tell the Prime Minister to stop this hatred. This is weakening the country. Your party and your government/regime have declared a war against Indian Muslims, Owaisi alleged, saying, We are respectable citizens of this country. Our lives also matter .

Referring to the bulldozer row, Owaisi said houses of Muslims were demolished in Khargone city and Sendhwa in Madhya Pradesh. Calls are given to boycott Muslims and not to buy from their shops. Recently, in Haryana, those calling themselves gau rakshaks (cow vigilantes) grabbed the beard of an elderly person and thrashed him. Similarly, another person was taken away from his house, alleging that hed slaughtered a cow and he was thrashed, too, he said.

We know several incidents are happening in our country. I get several phone calls and people tell me, Asaduddin Owaisi, our houses and shops are being demolished. We are being destroyedsome say they are scared and some others are saying they are worried. I am telling you there is no need to panicbe courageous, Owaisi said.

Owaisi, who also got emotional during his address, told Muslims not to lose hope and courage.

Read the rest here:

BJP creating hatred, waging war on Indian Muslims, alleges Owaisi - The Siasat Daily

While the right continues to undergo a process of factional introspection, it can be easy to forget that our opponents in the culture war arent a monolith either. And while it seems that the Cathedral pushes our society to the left via a unified front, the progressive coalitions unity is not just sustainable, its artificial.

The lefts ability to patch together a truly bizarre coalition is, however, undeniably impressive. Itd appear theyve learned how to apply the Saul Alinsky-esque tactics of community organizing across, rather than just within, communities. How else can one explain the puzzling composition of the coalition? Consider just how divergent the interests and identities of so many of the Democratic Partys supporters truly are.

What, for example, do the drug-addled Antifa of Seattle, the residents of CHOP, have in common with old money East coast liberals with summer homes in Nantucket? What do the technocratic middle managers in the hills of Palo Alto share with illegal immigrants on the other side of Silicon Valley? What does your average attendee of the Womens March share with an H1B recipient from China or India, and what do either have in common with a hardcore Black Lives Matter activist? Perhaps more glaring than the rest, what is it exactly that a transgender activist in San Francisco and a traditional Muslim can bond over?

Is the progressive mythos of global citizenry really that binding? The reality that this coalition is maintained while leftwing messaging amplifies, not downplays, the role of identity makes it all the more intriguing. Unifying this bloc is no small feat.

In trying to discern how the left has effectively bound together a coalition of disparate interests, it is vastly more useful to examine what they oppose rather than the policies they support. Its much easier too.

One would think that natural political discord would occur between those who want to eat the rich and the rich themselves, or between those who abide by a patriarchal sexual ethic and a movement that endured a collective aneurysm when Florida told them teachers couldnt talk about sexuality with elementary schoolers. The natural splintering of this leftwing coalition is delayed through what the French philosopher Renee Girard referred to as the scapegoat mechanism.

Through the scapegoat mechanism, internal social conflict between groups or individuals can be deferred by identifying a villain, the scapegoat. The scapegoat is held responsible by the conflicting parties, who mutually, although not always consciously, cast the blame on those who simultaneously fulfill the role of the victim and the villain.

This scapegoat then cannot be regarded as a guiltless Christ figure who dies with the sins of its sacrificers, but is identified as the very source of the sin the inciter of conflict. Accordingly, overcoming this scapegoat is naturally regarded as a necessary prerequisite to the avoidance of conflict.

The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy explains: the victim must be thought of as a monstrous creature that transgressed some prohibition and deserved to be punished. In such a manner, the community deceives itself into believing that the victim is the culprit of the communal crisis, and that the elimination of the victim will eventually restore peace.

Identifying our woke regimes scapegoats isnt difficult. Simply observe the cultural messaging from any of the institutions that are owned and operated by progressives. The regime media and their allies throughout much of the government, academia, and the non-profit complex offer frequent reminders of who you are supposed to disdain.

Masculine men are turned into scapegoats when they are dubbed toxic, sexist enforcers of patriarchy. Christians similarly face accusations of oppressing women and those who are LGBT. White people are also approved targets, thought to be inherently racist and privileged, simultaneously the beneficiaries and the managers of an intangible but ever-present system of oppression. Even stable nuclear families are to be viewed with skepticism, either for perpetuating gender roles or straining the environment by daring to have kids.

The terms for the regimes scapegoats are many. Hostility for the deplorables, the sexists and the racists, the rednecks and the retrogrades, the bigots, the karens and all different stripes of -phobes, is what holds together such a fragile coalition. Party operatives blame their internal conflicts on those who are regarded as the oppressors and pit Americans against one another. The terms differ but serve the same purpose: to designate a scapegoat as a regime-approved target.

Those who fall into one of the several oppressor identity categories but align with the left are offered the opportunity to prove themselves but never absolve themselves as dutiful allies through ritualistic self-degradation. If theyre servile enough, they might even get promoted to the rank of co-conspirator, delaying their inevitable designation as scapegoats until their expediency runs dry.

The grand irony is of course that none of these collectives wield significant power and are instead openly maligned by the ruling class. Nevertheless, we are constantly told that America and her institutions are engaging in organized oppression on a mass scale.

In the lefts worldview, our institutions enforce the patriarchy and the gender binary, all while they are governed by white supremacy. Its a self defeating argument when one realizes that it is these very power structures that pay diversity consultants their exorbitant fees, fund pride parades, push transgenderism, and adopt discriminatory affirmative action policies. It is, of course, vital to note that the rights gripe should be with these hostile institutions, not the everyday Americans who are influenced by them, to the detriment of all.

The simplest way to expose the incongruity of the leftwing coalition is to merely ask questions that highlight the absurdity of the progressive bloc. Raise ethical inquiries about abortion or transgenderism among Democrat-aligned Muslims, or ask Austin tech workers why they support H1B visa programs that threaten their job security. Ask progressive white women if they truly believe that they and their white tears will be able to maintain their rapidly deteriorating status among the oppressed and the immunity that comes with it.

Question radical feminists who rage against toxic masculinity, asking why they support mass immigration from highly patriarchal Islamic countries. Or ask a Seattle communist what the appropriate tax rate is for the millionaire who funded the neoliberal candidate he ended up voting for.

This must be done without trafficking in the same dangerous divisiveness that the left used in their ascent to power, without engaging in scapegoating ourselves. The goal is not to weaponize the coalitions parts against itself because the coalition isnt the problem it is the institutions that sought to bind their base together by haphazardly casting blame on entire collectives.

Done correctly, this approach will offer much needed nuance and obstruct the woke regimes attempt at fostering conflict. It will also expose how Democrat apparatchiks and their co-conspirators across sectors have taken advantage of their constituency while they constructed it, weaponizing identities in cynical power games.

Its a necessary step in ensuring that whatever unity our country attains is based on healthy, sustainable foundations not institutionally manufactured disdain for the regimes scapegoats.

Continue reading here:

The Left Is United By Who They Despise, Not What They Support - The Federalist

Is there hope for Hong Kong? Thats the question the citys citizens, including nearly 1 million Protestant and Catholic Christians, are being forced to ask daily.

Under more than 150 years of British rule, Hong Kong established itself as a bridge from East to West, and an economic powerhouse that protected the basic freedoms of speech, religion, and assembly. In 1997, when the British government relinquished control to Beijing, a 50-year transitional period was established under a principle known as one country, two systems. The idea that China would respect the agreement and Hong Kongs liberties might have been tenuous, but it wasnt completely irrational. In terms of economic prosperity and a tolerance for democratic norms, some even hoped Beijings own system would evolve to mirror Hong Kongs.

That hasnt happened. In fact, as The AtlanticsTimothy McLaughlin wrote in April, [T]hese hopes have now all but been extinguished.

In 2014, China announced that, though Hong Kong voters could choose their chief executive, candidates first had to be screened by a Beijing committee. The response in Hong Kong was explosive. Over 1.2 million people took to the streets in peaceful protest, occupying the central commercial district and famously using yellow umbrellas to deflect tear gas.

In 2019, protests were renewed over a proposed extradition bill that would grant authorities the ability to transport anyone accused of a crime, including political dissidents, to mainland China. Again, the backlash was massive. In a city of 7.5 million people, an estimated 2 million took to the streets, many pushing children in strollers or elderly in wheelchairs. Even when Chief Executive Carrie Lam eventually scrapped the extradition bill, it did little to stop the momentum.

But COVID-19 did. And, like all authoritarian regimes, China did not let a good crisis go to waste. As the city locked down, key protesters were arrested and momentum stalled. China bypassed Hong Kongs government and implemented a draconian national security bill of its own.

Now, the citys future seems especially dire. While some embers of protest still smolder, two of Hong Kongs last British judges resigned this April. By some estimates, nearly 50% of European firms are planning to leave the city. Though an economic blow like that should make Beijing think twice about Hong Kongs fate, economics has never been the primary driver behind the actions of the Chinese Communist Party or Xi Jinping.

Christian concern goes beyond our commitment to human rights, or the tragedy of watching such a vibrant, beautiful place fall under oppression. Our brothers and sisters in Christ have long played a dramatic part in Hong Kongs non-violent resistance. From the beginning, in fact, Hong Kongs Christians have formed the backbone of its pro-democracy movement.

A powerful example is retired pastor Chu Yiu-Ming who, along with eight others, was sentenced to prison for his role in the 2014 and 2019 protests. While his sentence was lightened due to his age, Pastor Chu was fully ready to bear the cost of following Christ and articulate why. Chus speech, in which he described why he was compelled to act, should be required reading for all of us:

I am a Christian minister committed to the service of God, and yet, at this very moment, my heart tells me that with this defendants dock, I have found the most honorable pulpit of my ministerial career. The valley of the shadow of death leads to spiritual heights.

To those who are naked or hungry, the Christian minister has no business responding with greetings of Peace, Peace. I wish you well; keep warm and well fed, but does nothing about their physical needs. What good are such greetings? [A]sk the Bible.

This is our conviction based on the faith we hold: Every person is created according to Gods image.

As such, every person should be respected and safeguarded. We strive for democracy, because democracy strives for freedom, equality and universal love. Human rights [are] a God-given gift, never to be arbitrarily taken away by any political regime.

We have opted for a peaceful, non-violent way. Although the power of injustice before us is immense and those holding power capricious, we are not afraid, nor will we run away.

We have no regrets,

We hold no grudges,

No anger,

No grievances.

We do not give up.

In the words of Jesus, Happy are those who are persecuted because they do what God requires; The Kingdom of heaven belongs to them! (Matthew 5:10)

Please pray for Hong Kong, for Pastor Chu, and for the other courageous Christians.

John Stonestreet serves as president of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. Hes a sought-after author and speaker on areas of faith and culture, theology, worldview, education and apologetics.

Kasey Leander is a writer, speaker, apologist and BreakPoint contributor.

Originally published on BreakPoint.org. Republished with permission of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview.

Excerpt from:

The Plight of Hong Kong and Its Christians - The Stream

Chris Jones reflects back 27 April 1994, when he participated in the first democratic elections and looks back on the notes he made at the time about his hopes and fears for the future.

Commemorated annually on 27 April,Freedom Dayis a significant day on our national calendar because it reminds us of the first democratic election in our country, held on this day in 1994.

While planning this article for Freedom Day, I revisited the notes I wrote down after participating in the first non-racial election in South Africa, 28 years ago. I made notes of my experience because I was working on my doctorate in Theological Ethics and Human Rights at the time. I focused, among others, on the Draft Bill of Human Rights prepared by the Constitutional Committee of the ANC.

I had two sets of notes. The one was lengthy, focusing on all the possible benefits of the new South Africa. The other one was short it pointed to what possibly could go wrong. I must admit, the latter I wrote quite reluctantly because I firmly believed that the new South Africa would be one ofreconstruction, nation-building, advancinghuman rights, and constitutional democracy.

One of my first remarks in abovementioned notes referred to the fact that apartheid did not just fail morally and politically, but damaged each one of us, the oppressor as well as the oppressed. There were so many invisible injuries people had to deal with. I knew we needed a South Africa in which we could heal our spirits, restore our confidence, and allow our trust to blossom.

Constitutional mechanisms

While scanning through my notes, I came across something written by Justice Albie Sachs in his 1992 bookAdvancing human rights in South Africa: "Yet important though the vote is, we must think beyond it We are not asking for less than the vote. We are exploring means of having the vote plus".

He then continues by making the vital point that the plus is constitutional mechanisms to ensure that inequalities are dealt with in an orderly, progressive, and principled way.

Political democracy, in his words, is essential and necessary, but on its own insufficient. It must not only create an institutional framework within which power is to be expressed, but it must also put mechanisms in place to ensure that human rights are advanced and enjoyed.

I found a further note reasoning that after the euphoria of this first democratic election would be over, our newly elected government which I was very excited about would have to prepare themselves for the problems of the day.

Failure to do so, I wrote, would result in betrayal of everything so many people have fought for. What we were doing during that first election was the beginning of dotting thei'sand crossing thet'sof the ANC'sFreedom Charter.

We must remember that the Freedom Charter was always about people's rights, rather than a people's power document. However, it did not deal with mechanisms to achieve the rights of people, therefore we had to pick up where the Freedom Charter left off.

Considering this, I asked myself in another note: What would the result of the first democratic election be over the next 20-30 years? I was so positive about our future because we were creating new possibilities throughnegotiation, and therefore I reasoned that our people would be spared the destruction and collapse of infrastructures often involved in theseizureof power like in some other countries.

I knew at that stage although I have pushed this idea aside that the danger exists that a new elite could emerge which would use its official position to accumulate wealth, power, and status for itself. And that the poor would remain poor and the oppressed would remain oppressed. Instead of racial oppression, we then would have non-racial oppression and poverty.

There is a saying: Oppression in the name of the good is worse than oppression in defence of the bad.

Making the country governable

I was hoping that the new government would be able to make the transition from being in opposition, mainly accountable to the future, to being in authority, answerable to the present and all its challenges. The freedom organisations during apartheid gained considerable experience in making the country ungovernable in circumstances of racist autocracy, but they had yet to master the art of making the country governable in the context of constitutional democracy.

I was also worried that the years of the long struggle would have made our new government and its officials intellectually weary and that their principal objective would be(come) getting into office and little more. I feared for intellectual fatigue, and a loss of moral imagination.

I came across another interesting quote from Sachs's 1992 book, which encapsulated my worries and fears: "Having resisted the bullets and bombs of lead, we now face the bullets and bombs of sugar, and slowly we succumb to their sweetness. A job for a friend here, a place for a relative there [and] directing contracts".

The danger was always there that the new leaders would just deracialise oppression and poverty and legitimise inequality, and that politics would become the art of the manipulable. However, I rejected these concerns somewhat naively.

Everyone matters

Then came 4 December 1996, the day on which ourConstitutionwas approved, taking effect a bit later, on 4 February 1997. And this I embraced right from the beginning to this day because the Constitution is about human rights, not political power. Constitutionalism is the enemy of opportunism. Constitutional principles cannot be dependent on growth, Sachs reasons. It is rather in circumstances of scarcity that a constitution plays its fullest role through its principles and through fair procedures, deciding what the prioritiesshould be.

Constitutional democracy will live on, not as a form of institutionalised political power, but as active civic involvement in the processes of transformation, based on human rights and constitutional principles. The Constitution should be a glittering shield in which we all see our faces reflected. It is a document that establishes that everyone matters, counts, and that no one is born worthless. As Sachspoints out: "a Constitution is not a product to be sold to the people through skilful advertising. It is something that emerges from our innards, that express our highest idealism while protecting us from our basest temptations".

- Dr Chris Jones heads the Unit for Moral Leadership in the Faculty of Theology at Stellenbosch University.

To receive Opinions Weekly, sign up for the newsletterhere.

*Want to respond to the columnist? Send your letter or article toopinions@news24.comwith your name and town or province. You are welcome to also send a profile picture. We encourage a diversity of voices and views in our readers' submissions and reserve the right not to publish any and all submissions received.

Disclaimer:News24 encourages freedom of speech and the expression of diverse views. The views of columnists published on News24 are therefore their own and do not necessarily represent the views of News24.

See more here:

OPINION | Chris Jones: A reflection on voting day 28 years ago - News24