#florida and some other states institutes a new genocidal law by the day

[cascadianights]

I don't know how to describe how hurtful it is to watch all the communities and individuals who were out and loud and vocal about BLM and Roe v Wade be dead silent now

[newstfionline]

Wednesday, March 24, 2021

Biden Team Prepares $3 Trillion in New Spending for the Economy (NYT) President Biden’s economic advisers are pulling together a sweeping $3 trillion package to boost the economy, reduce carbon emissions and narrow economic inequality, beginning with a giant infrastructure plan that may be financed in part through tax increases on corporations and the rich. The enormous scope of the proposal highlights the aggressive approach the Biden administration wants to take as it tries to harness the power of the federal government to make the economy more equitable, address climate change, and improve American manufacturing and high-technology industries in an escalating battle with China.

Hugs, at last: Nursing homes easing rules on visitors (AP) An 88-year-old woman in Ohio broke down in tears as her son hugged her for the first time in a year. Nursing home residents and staff in California sang “Over the Rainbow” as they resumed group activities and allowed visitors back in. A 5-year-old dove into the lap of her 94-year-old great-great-aunt for a long embrace in Rhode Island. Nursing homes, assisted living facilities and other kinds of elderly residences battered by COVID-19 are easing restrictions and opening their doors for the first time since the start of the pandemic, leading to joyous reunions around the country after a painful year of isolation, Zoom calls and greetings through windows. The vaccination drive, improved conditions inside nursing homes, and relaxed federal guidelines have paved the way for the reunions.

Miami’s South Beach confronts disastrous spring break (AP) Florida’s famed South Beach is desperately seeking a new image. With more than 1,000 arrests and nearly 100 gun seizures already during this year’s spring break season, officials are thinking it may finally be time to cleanse the hip neighborhood of its law-breaking, party-all-night vibe. The move comes after years of increasingly stringent measures—banning alcohol from beaches, canceling concerts and food festivals—have failed to stop the city from being overrun with out-of-control parties and anything-goes antics. This weekend alone, spring breakers and pandemic-weary tourists drawn by Florida’s loose virus-control rules gathered by the thousands along famed Ocean Drive, at times breaking into street fights, destroying restaurant property and causing several dangerous stampedes. The situation got so out of hand that Miami Beach Police brought in SWAT teams to disperse pepper bullets and called in law enforcement officers from at least four other agencies. Ultimately, the city decided to order an emergency 8 p.m. curfew that will likely extend well into April after the spring break season is over. Some tourists are angry about the curfew, which they say has put a damper on long-sought vacations for which they paid good money. Meanwhile, some officials say they should have enacted more stringent measures sooner—as was done in New Orleans prior to Mardi Gras last month—instead of reacting in the middle of the chaos.

England slaps 5,000 pound fine on most travel abroad (Reuters) Fines of 5,000 pounds ($6,900) will be introduced for people from England who try to travel abroad before the end of June in a tightening of the country’s border controls. Health minister Matt Hancock said the government’s original plan to review international travel in April and possibly permit it from May 17 still stood but the travel fines were included in legislation in case that would not be possible. In the UK, foreign holidays are currently banned. Europe’s airlines and travel sector are now bracing for a second lost summer. Having already racked up billions in debt to survive a year of travel restrictions, they are facing further strain and some may need fresh funds.

Tensions mount between Afghan government, powerful warlord (AP) Tensions are mounting between Afghanistan’s government and a powerful local warlord, with deadly clashes erupting in a rural province between his fighters and government troops. The government has launched an assault in central Maidan Wardak province, vowing to punish the warlord, Abdul Ghani Alipoor, after the defense minister accused his fighters of shooting down a military helicopter last week, killing nine personnel. Alipoor holds widespread loyalty among ethnic Hazaras, a mainly Shiite community who are a minority in Afghanistan but make up most of the population in Maidan Wardak. If Kabul considers warlords as agents of turmoil, their supporters see them as their only protection and support in the face of a notoriously corrupt government and violent insurgents. Many Hazaras, who face attacks by Sunni militants and discrimination by the government, see Alipoor as a hero, defending them against the Taliban and keeping local institutions running. “The government is incompetent, so people depend on Alipoor and support him,” said Mohammed Jan. “Alipoor serves his people. If our government would serve the people, everyone would support it and there wouldn’t be any need for an Alipoor.”

China Makes It A Crime To Question Military Casualties On The Internet (NPR) When China acknowledged this year that four of its soldiers had died fighting Indian forces on the two countries’ disputed mountain border eight months prior, the irreverent blogger Little Spicy Pen Ball had questions. “If the four [Chinese] soldiers died trying to rescue their fellow soldiers, then there must have been those who were not successfully rescued,” he wrote on Feb. 19 to his 2.5 million followers on Weibo, a Chinese social media site. “This means the fatalities could not have just been four.” The day after, Qiu Ziming, the 38-year-old former newspaper journalist behind the blog, was detained and criminally charged. If convicted, he faces a sentence of up to three years. “Little Spicy Pen Ball maliciously slandered and degraded the heroes defending our country and the border,” according to the annual work report published by the country’s chief prosecutor office this month. Qiu’s is the first case to be tried under a sweeping new criminal law that took effect March 1. The new law penalizes “infringing on the reputation and honor of revolutionary heroes.” At least six other people have been detained or charged with defaming “martyrs.” The government uses the terms “revolutionary heroes” and “martyrs” for anyone it memorializes for their sacrifice for the Communist Party. The detentions typify the stricter controls over online speech under Chinese leader Xi Jinping, which have deterred nearly all open dissent in the country. The new law even seeks to criminalize speech made outside China. Such is the case of Wang Jingyu, 19, who lives in the United States and is now a wanted man in his hometown of Chongqing, China. The authorities accuse him of slandering dead Chinese soldiers after Weibo reported him for a comment questioning the number of border fight casualties. “Cyberspace is not outside the law,” the Chongqing public security bureau said in an online notice after it declared Wang would be “pursued online” for his comments.

West sanctions China over Xinjiang abuses, Beijing hits back at EU (Reuters) The United States, the European Union, Britain and Canada imposed sanctions on Chinese officials on Monday for human rights abuses in Xinjiang, the first such coordinated Western action against Beijing under new U.S. President Joe Biden. Beijing hit back immediately with punitive measures against the EU that appeared broader, including European lawmakers, diplomats, institutes and families, and banning their businesses from trading with China. Western governments are seeking to hold Beijing accountable for mass detentions of Muslim Uighurs in northwestern China, where the United States says China is committing genocide. China denies all accusations of abuse.

Australian floods (AFP) Devastating flooding is ongoing across Australia, where an area the size of Alaska with some 10 million people is at risk for excessive rainfall and storminess. The flooding comes amid colliding weather systems gripping the country. Up to 35 inches of rain fell in just four days, and some places are seeing their worst flooding in 60 years. Nearly three times the average March rainfall has fallen in a number of locales, which Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology described as “phenomenal,” with additional rain and flooding expected in the days ahead.

Israel TV satirist says grateful to politicians but needs a break (AFP) As Israel heads into its fourth election in two years, the presenter of the country’s favourite satirical TV show has a request, and he’s only half joking. “I would like us to finally have a stable government and make a boring programme,” says Eyal Kitsis, frontman of the Channel 12 show “Eretz Nehederet” (“A Wonderful Country”). As much as Israel’s political turmoil may be straining the patience of the electorate, it has been television gold because “reality is crazy”, Kitsis told AFP. “Elections and politics have really become entertainment in this country. Our challenge as a satirical programme is to add a layer to it, to take it to the next level.”

Israel vote deadlock: Netanyahu appears short of majority (AP) Uncertainty hovered over the outcome of Israel’s parliamentary election Wednesday, with both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and sworn political rivals determined to depose him apparently lacking a clear path to a governing coalition. Deadlock in the 120-seat parliament was a real possibility a day after the election, which had been dominated by Netanyahu’s polarizing leadership. With about 87.5% of the vote counted by Wednesday morning, Netanyahu’s Likud party and its ultra-Orthodox and far-right allies fell short of a 61-seat majority.

Saudi Arabia offers cease-fire plan to Yemen rebels (AP) Saudi Arabia on Monday offered a cease-fire proposal to Yemen’s Houthi rebels that includes reopening their country’s main airport, the kingdom’s latest attempt to halt years of fighting in a war that has sparked the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. The move comes after the rebels stepped up a campaign of drone and missile attacks on the kingdom’s oil sites, briefly shaking global energy prices amid the coronavirus pandemic. It also comes as Riyadh tries to rehabilitate its image with the U.S. under President Joe Biden. Saudi Arabia has drawn internationally criticism for airstrikes killing civilians and embargoes exacerbating hunger in a nation on the brink of famine. Whether the plan will take hold remains another question. A unilaterally declared Saudi cease-fire collapsed last year. Fighting rages around the crucial city of Marib and the Saudi-led coalition launched airstrikes as recently as Sunday targeting Yemen’s capital of Sanaa. A U.N. mission said another suspected airstrike hit a food-production company in the port city of Hodeida.

Rail and derailments (Vice) Freight rail is an essential vein of the transportation system in the U.S., moving 57 tons of goods per American each year. It’s also the safest way to move hazardous materials, but freight train derailments are more common than one might think: in 2019, there were 341 reported derailments on main line track, of which 24 were freight trains carrying 159 cars of hazardous materials. The labor unions in the rail industry have been calling this out as a symptom of a degrading safety culture, and warn that it’s only a matter of time before one of those derailments causes catastrophic damages.

[thinkveganworld]

I’ve been writing about politics and the U.S. drift toward fascism for over 20 years.  I know the country’s recent fascistic moves are a continuation of the things I’ve investigated for decades.  I hope the public wants to be well informed about the history that led up to our present situation.  For a glimpse of that history, here’s an article I wrote 18 years ago, “A Whiff of Fascism:” During election 2000, Bush paid campaign operatives posing as ordinary voters shoved people and banged on doors at the Miami-Dade canvassing offices in an effort to stop the Florida vote recount. Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) said he detected “a whiff of fascism” in their tactics.

Some people criticized Nadler for drawing the comparison, but, of course, not all forms of fascism have to equate precisely to the classic form represented by Hitler or Mussolini. Fascism doesn’t have to involve mass genocidal slaughter, nor does it have to be equal in degree to the fascism practiced by members of the Axis powers. Traits of classic fascism include: strong nationalism, expansionism, belligerent militarism, meshing of big business and government with a corporate/government oligarchy, subversion of democracy and human rights, disinformation spread by constant propaganda and tight corporate/government control of the press. Today all of those conditions exist in our country to a degree. Let’s focus on corporate/government control of the press, specifically corporate control of U.S. television news networks. According to a March 24 article, “Protests Turn Off Viewers” by Harry A. Jessell, 45 percent of Americans rely on cable channels as their primary source of news, and 22 percent get most of their news from broadcast networks evening newscasts. Only 11 percent rely on other forms of media as their principle source of war news.Our corporate controlled TV networks might as well be state controlled, because they promote the war and Bush policies fairly consistently and have virtually eliminated all dissenting voices. NBC fired Phil Donahue despite his good ratings, saying in an internal network memo they didnt want to air Donahue’s antiwar views. Peter Arnett was fired for giving an interview to Iraqi TV and merely stating the obvious on a number of issues. For example, Arnett said media reports of civilian casualties had helped the growing challenge to President Bush about the conduct of the war. According to William Shirer (The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Ballantine Books, 1950), the Reich Press Law of October 4, 1933, ordered editors not to publish (among other things) anything “which tends to weaken the strength of the German Reich . . . or offends the honor and dignity of Germany.” The Nazis forced dissenting journalists out of business and consolidated the press under party control. U.S. television news networks have been consolidated under the control of a handful of corporations. America doesn't need a press law prohibiting the airing of anything which might weaken the strength of Bush's war policies, because the corporate owners of today’s television networks are in total agreement with the state .It is irrefutable that corporate owners of American television networks want only pro-Bush, pro-war opinions aired, because those are virtually the only views that are in fact aired. The Phil Donahue and Peter Arnett firings, especially when coupled with the NBC internal memo explaining the Donahue firing, also indicate this is true. Do the various TV networks do a good job of informing the public, or do they more often propagandize? Propaganda is aimed at the emotions, while news sources that disseminate factual information aim toward reason.  In Nazi Germany: A New History (Continuum Publishing, 1995), Klaus P. Fischer says Hitler promoted a system of prejudices rather than a philosophy based on well-warranted premises, objective truth-testing, and logically derived conclusions. Since propaganda aims at persuasion rather than instruction, it is far more effective to appeal to the emotions than to the rational capacities of crowds. If you’ve spent much time watching the pro-Bush, pro-war cable television news programs, you can’t help but notice they manipulate (whether deliberately or not) the viewing audience’s emotions rather than appealing to viewers' logic.  That is, instead of providing the American public with a broad range of necessary facts and varied viewpoints about the war, the TV networks exploit emotions by urging the audience to focus on and identify with the day-to-day plight of individual soldiers and their families. There's nothing inherently wrong with empathizing with the troops. However, when that aspect of war news is heavily emphasized at the expense of hard facts and varied debate, the networks serve the purpose of managing the public mood rather than informing the public mind. According to Klaus Fisher, the Nazis eliminated from state media any ideas that clashed with official views. He writes that permissible media topics for public consumption included war itself and the Nazi movement; support of Nazi soldiers; praise for Hitler and celebrating the thrill of combat and the sacredness of death when it is in the service of the fatherland. Today’s Bush-friendly TV networks have also deemed only certain subjects permissible, as evidenced by the irrefutable fact that they only cover a narrow range of subjects. Coincidentally, the proverbial network list would read virtually the same as the list in the paragraph above. Permissible topics include praise for the war; praise for the administrations policies; support for our soldiers; praise for Bush and the celebrating the thrill of combat and the sacredness of death when it is in the service of  (in this case) the homeland, even though there is no rational link between attacking Iraq and defending our soil.Of course, who needs rationality or facts from TV news when the American public already has enough information about world events? In a March 26 article for Editor and Publisher, “Polls Suggest Media Failure in Pre-War Coverage,” reporter Ari Berman refers to a Knight Ridder/Princeton Research poll. This poll showed 44 percent of respondents believed most'or some'of the September 11 hijackers were Iraqis. Only 17 percent gave the correct answer: none.In the same poll, 41 percent said they believed Iraq definitely has nuclear weapons. As Berman points out, not even the Bush administration has claimed that. Berman also refers to a Pew Research Center/Council on Foreign Relations survey showing that almost two-thirds of people polled believed U. N. weapons inspectors had found proof that Iraq is trying to hide weapons of mass destruction. This claim was never made by Hans Blix or Mohammed ElBaradei. The same survey found 57 percent of those polled falsely believed Saddam Hussein assisted the 9/11 terrorists, and a March 79 New York Times/CBS News Poll revealed that 45 percent of respondents believed Saddam Hussein was directly involved in the 9/11 attacks.TV news reporters have done little to correct the publics misconceptions. On the contrary, network reporters and their guests have often helped bolster the false impressions by mentioning September 11, or the threat of terrorism by al Qaeda, and the threat'posed by Saddam in the same breath.Individual TV reporters aren't always free to choose the information they pass along to the public. CNN now has a relatively new script approval'system, whereby journalists send their copy in to CNN chiefs for sanitizing. In his article, Guess who will be calling the shots at CNN,' British foreign correspondent Robert Fisk quotes a relatively new CNN document (dated Jan. 27), Reminder of Script Approval Policy. The policy says, “All reporters preparing package scripts must submit the scripts for approval . . . Packages may not be edited until the scripts are approved . . . All packages originating outside Washington, LA or NY, including all international bureaus, must come to the ROW [a group of script editors] in Atlanta for approval.” William Shirer comments on the Nazi party's control of press, radio and film, “Every morning the editors of the Berlin daily newspapers and the correspondents of those published elsewhere in the Reich gathered at the Propaganda Ministry to be told by Dr. Goebbels or by one of his aides what news to print and suppress, how to write the news and headline it, what campaigns to call off or institute and what editorials were desired for the day.  In case of any misunderstanding, a daily directive was furnished along with the oral instructions.” In an interview with TomPaine.com, Janine Jackson of the media watchdog group, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), said that the group examined two weeks of nightly television news coverage. FAIR found that 76 percent of all news sources or guests on ABC, NBC, CBS and PBSs NewsHour were current or former government officials,'leaving little room for other diverse voices.In addition, FAIR found that only 6 percent of those sources were skeptical about the war. Jackson noted that on television news at night, there's virtually no debate about the need to go to war.'It would further public understanding if the TV networks would offer substantial debate on the following: The Bush administration's invasion of Iraq has alienated many world leaders and lost this country the respect of millions of citizens around the globe. The Bush team has created instability in the Middle East and risked retaliation. They've undercut the U.S. economy with the financial cost of this endeavor. They’ve increased the likelihood that worldwide nuclear weapons proliferation will increase. And, according to a recent Red Cross report, they have likely helped create a horrifying number of human casualties and a rapidly expanding humanitarian crisis in Iraq. The content of television news lacks range and diversity, but the way the news is presented is also disturbing. Television reporters often deliver news of the war with apparent breathless excitement, as if they're giving play-by-play descriptions of football games. People are dying in this conflict. Civilians are caught in the middle, being blown to pieces or losing loved ones. Children are left behind when their soldier-parents are killed. Instead of presenting news of this war'with giddiness, wouldn’t it be more appropriate, more human, for network reporters to take a somber, respectful approach? On TV, we see bombs dropping from a distance. Network commentators seldom offer the public close-ups. In his article, Military precision versus moral precision,'Robert Higgs, writes that the much-used JDAM bombs dropped in Iraq kill most people within 120 meters of the blast. According to Higgs, such a bomb releases a crushing shock wave and showers jagged, white-hot metal fragments at supersonic speed, shattering concrete, shredding flesh, crushing cells, rupturing lungs, bursting sinus cavities and ripping away limbs in a maelstrom of destruction. Just yesterday I heard a TV reporter describe certain casualties with the sterile phrase, This is what war does. Well, it isn’t “war” that bursts sinus cavities and rips away limbs - nothing as nebulous as that.  George W. Bush and his administration have done these things. They have directly ordered that these things be done.

The bombs' shredding of flesh and crushing of human cells didn’t just passively happen .In an April 5 article for The Mirror, “The saddest story of all,” reporter Anton Antonowicz describes an Iraqi family's loss of their daughter.  “Nadia was lying on a stretcher beside the stone mortuary slab. Her heart lay on her chest, ripped from her body by a missile which smashed through the bedroom window of the family's flat nearby in Palestine Street.”  Nadias father said,”My daughter had just completed her PhD in psychology and was waiting for her first job. She was born in 1970. She was 33. She was very clever. Everyone said I have a fabulous daughter. She spent all her time studying. Her head buried in books.” Nadias sister Alia said, I don't know what humanity Bush is calling for. Is this the humanity which lost my sister? It is war which has done this. And that war was started by Bush.” Today we're again getting a whiff of fascism from the Bush administration. This isn't the equivalent of Hitler or Mussolinijust sort of a creeping fascism light, and the corporate controlled television news networks are only one example of the way even light fascism undermines American values. With the Bush administration and television networks currently fixated on the high melodrama of winning the war and sprucing up its aftermath, they don't have much time to reflect on whether winning at any cost is a good idea. Whether the slaughter in Iraq and its aftermath go well, the war has already destroyed many lives in Iraq and the U.S. and damaged the American character and democracy at home. For thoughtful people in this country, the question has never been will we win, but at what cost?

[sinrau]

It shocks and horrifies the world. America has 120,000 dead and counting of Coronavirus. That number’s going to rise to 200,000 in the blink of an eye. Where will it end? 500,000, a million — these figures are no longer the stuff of nightmares. Just of the grim and dystopian reality called American life.

But what truly startles the world is this: Donald Trump doesn’t appear to care. Not one bit. Mostly, he’s — still — golfing. When he wasn’t golfing, first, he minimized, then he pretended it would all go away, then he told people to drink bleach, then he…reopened the economy before the first wave had even crested. Which means that, of course, this.

While much of the rest of the world is already carefully preparing and planning for how to fight a second wave — America still has no strategy or plan for the first. It never did have anything resembling a national strategy for a lethal pandemic. Hence, in America, there’s just a rising tide of death, still surging ever higher. What the?

The question is this. Why doesn’t Trump care about Coronavirus?

Imagine that you’re Trump. A man with the mind of a wounded child. A narcissist, with nothing inside but the desperate need to be loved, but since you can’t have that, you’ll settle for being feared. What would you be thinking of right about now?

You wouldn’t be thinking of a pandemic. Why would you care about that? Right about now, you’d have one — and only one — priority. How to stay in power, by any means necessary.

You’d be obsessed with that challenge. You’d be brooding over it and ruminating over it every second of every day. Your mind would race and twist itself into a frenzy. You wouldn’t be able to sleep. You’d dream up every scenario under the sun, and then examine them carefully. That, by the way, is why Trump’s sending record tweets: he’s a malignant narcissist, driven into a mania, by the idea of keeping power by any means necessary.

That craving is about to come to a crescendo. An election looms — which you’re likely to lose. But you know, having manipulated both public opinion and official results your whole life long, that “losing” depends very much on perception. That, by the way, is why you call everyone else a “loser” so much — it’s precisely the one thing you can’t stand being. And so the thought of being the biggest loser of all — losing an election? My God! It’s unbearable. That’s why you’ve been driven into a mania by the very thought. It’s the one thing you fear most: being a loser. The mere idea fills you with anxiety, dread, fear, horror.

What would you do in that situation — if you had the mentality of a Donald Trump? If you were about to lose — but being a “loser” — was the one thing that you couldn’t stand, because your entire psyche depending on being superior and supreme? You’d go into a mania, a frenzy, too. You wouldn’t care about a pandemic, either. You’d be utterly consumed by one thing: how to keep power, now that you had it.

You’d probably rationalize the pandemic away, too. Disproportionately, the deaths are happening to minorities — blacks, Latinos, etcetera. Who cares about them? A pandemic is your friend, not your enemy. It’s doing the work the camps and walls won’t. It’s destroying your opponents and enemies, the portion of the population who stands against you. Why bother caring?

The other thing you are is a fascist. Americans might not be able to say it, but…it’s true. Camps, bans, raids, purges, kids in cages…who does such things but fascists? And there’s nothing that a proper fascist loves more than a catastrophe, which sorts the weak and subhuman from the strong. There’s a pandemic? That’s mostly killing the poor, vulnerable, old, frail, and marginalized?

Good! That’s just what should happen. They’re subhumans, after all. And if they can’t survive — well, that’s their lot, their fate. It’s what they deserve.

They are getting their just desserts. Only the strong deserve to survive.

And the strong have to prove their mettle, too. That’s why you encourage pool partying during a literal lethal pandemic. What the? Who wants to jump into a pool of water half naked with strangers when a virus is everywhere that can kill you? What kind of insanity is that? Ah, but to the fascist mind — which is also the mind of Trump’s army of American Idiots — there’s a deep and compelling psychosocial force behind it.

You have to prove your strength — and their weakness. To yourself, and to the rest of the tribe. Prove you’re one of the chosen people. Who can resist exactly the calamities that kill off the weak. How else are they subhuman? How else are you stronger than them? So you jump in the pool. You don’t wear the mask. You’re not weak. You’re one of the strong, the chosen, the pure, the true. You’re an American Idiot.

The world is divided into superhuman and subhumans to the fascist mind. A pandemic isn’t something to be fought — it’s something to be embraced. Because it draws a bright, bright line between these two groups.

That’s why a curious relationship has emerged. In those parts of America where Trumpism reigns…Coronavirus is simply being given up on. It’s Texas, Arizona, Florida, the South, that’s reopening. And, of course, seeing huge, huge spikes, which indicate a tidal wave of death to follow shortly.

That’s not a coincidence. It’s a relationship. The American South is the original fascist heartland. It’s where the ideas that inspired and guided the Nazis were born, from race laws to slavery. Could you really enslave — or even exterminate — a whole race? The Nazis wondered. They trembled when they discovered the American South — because here was a place that had done it.

Fascism began in the American South of the 1700s, not Germany in the 1930s. That is where the processes and systems, the laws and institutions, to systematically genocide, torture, and enslave a whole race, were really born. Americans won’t like to hear it, but increasingly, it’s something that good historians concur on.

That history left behind a poisonous residue: the mentality of the superhuman, and the subhuman. It manifests itself in racism, of course. But look at it even more deeply than that.

Why is it that the American North has taken serious steps — like New York — to defeat the virus, while the American South has given up, laughing in glee, grinning like an idiot?

(Now, if you’re from the South, I don’t mean you personally. But I do mean that there is an obvious and disturbing pattern between Southern states and indifference to a deadly pandemic.)

Not a coincidence — a relationship. A simple way to say it is: Coronavirus kills off more minorities, and so mass death of this kind is a good thing, not a bad thing, to such a poisoned mentality. But a truer way to say it is: a pandemic is a test, an apocalyptic one. It sorts the weak from the strong. The subhuman from the superhuman.

And so if you are a fascist, you welcome a pandemic. You jump in that pool. You share that beer. You dance half-naked in the firelight. Woo-hooo! The Great Testing is here! Now you finally get to prove what you always were: a superhuman, one of the chosen, the pure blooded, the strong.

And you get proof, too, that they — the hated ones, the minorities — are the subhumans. Why else are they dying off fastest and most? They aren’t strong, like you. They aren’t fit. They don’t take care of themselves. They’re lazy and dirty. They have bad genes that are the result of generations of filth and indolence. You can already see this pseudoscience emerging, by the way, to back up exactly this kind of poisonous belief system.

To the fascist, a pandemic isn’t the infection. The infection is the refugee, the immigrant, the impure one, the weak one. Trump has said so much himself, over and over again, when he referred to refugees and immigrants as vermin. Once you understand that, why would Trump or his Trumpists care about coronavirus?

A pandemic is something you want. Maybe not consciously, but unconsciously, for sure. And your actions show it. You’ve long claimed that you were the superior one, and they were the inferior ones. Now you have proof.

So what if some of your own tribe die? Mostly, it’s the poor and the old, even among your own. They are past the point of usefulness, anyways. They are no longer strong, productive, fit. The fascist mind can’t care about them, either. That’s another way that it welcomes a pandemic.

Killing all these people off — it’s good to the fascist mind. Minorities. The old. The poor. The frail. The ones who don’t belong. Even if some of you die — the chosen, the true, the pure — you still get something much more valuable to you: proof. That you really are superior, supreme, superhuman, fit, strong, pure, pious, faithful. Better. You’re not a subhuman — no, they are. You? You’re a superhuman, the walking Zarathustra, the ubermensch of Nietzschean fantasies.

Why else have you been chosen to survive this plague?

There is a very good reason Trump and his army of American Idiots aren’t fighting the pandemic, but embracing it. Are positively gleeful about it. Appear giddy with happiness over it, much more than they should be, partying.

A pandemic is a winnowing to the fascist mind. That mind is what Trump and his American Idiots represent. That is the entirety and totality of their belief systems. Trump is their surrogate father, perfect and pure, ultimately strong, capable of miracles. They are superhuman, superior to the subhumans, meant to rise supreme above them, to rule over them as genetic and moral destiny.

A mind like that doesn’t fight a winnowing. It welcomes it. It does everything it can to help it along.

That mindset still exists in the American South. It’s attitude to the pandemic is one of the most backwards in the world. Even a country like Vietnam has made stunning progress fighting Coronavirus. The American South is one of few places in the world which welcome it. It’s vivid proof that the old slavers’ mentality, which gave way to fascism, that the Nazis studied, as they wondered — is it really possible to enslave or exterminate a whole race — has gone nowhere.

Meanwhile, there’s Trump, in the Oval Office, obsessed with one thing: keeping power. Not being the one kind of figure he hates so: a loser.

That’s exactly the same mindset. The hatred of the weak, the frail, the liability, the despising of vulnerability. Trump doesn’t care about the pandemic because he hates the weak, like any good fascist. To him, they deserve to be winnowed. The nation will be stronger as a result. He can’t bear the merest thought of weakness — “loser!” — even in himself. So why would he care about a nation stricken by a lethal plague?

On some unconscious level, Trump probably knows, too, like all people who are alike do: the pandemic is pleasing his base. It might be frightening them, but it’s a thrilling kind of fear, like in a horror movie. It’s tinged with the promise of rising supreme, in the end. So what if there’s a tidal wave of death? If you can just keep afloat a little while longer — you’ll have proven how strong you are, that you’re a winner, that the lazy, filthy, dirty ones were them, not you.

Trump knows his base is excited by the pandemic. Aroused by it. Giddy over it. They dream of the power and glory that’s to be theirs. A winnowing? An apocalypse? Bring it on! It’ll kill off the subhumans, and prove to everyone else who the superhumans really are. Who cares if a few hundred thousand have to die? Especially if they’re mostly weak? Isn’t the feeling of supremacy worth that — and more?

Why don’t Trump and his army of American Idiots care about Coronavirus? They do, just not in the way you think. They want it. They need it. They crave it. That is why the South, where this mindset is concentrated, where it has flourished, is proudly trumpeting that it’s “reopened”…and doesn’t seem concerned whatsoever by a rising tide of death.

Every fascist movement needs an apocalypse. If it doesn’t get one, it has to make one. Most create their own — from world wars to genocides. America’s fascist movement is luckier. It stumbled into a ready-made apocalypse. Coronavirus already has a death toll on the order of a world war. On the order of a genocide. It is the apocalypse the American fascist craves.

Umair June 2020

[gibsongirlselections]

Let’s Talk About Contemporary Slavery

Slavery is at the forefront of American public discourse these days. Some focus their attention on public monuments—even to our nation’s founders—and whether or not such public art is somehow an endorsement of our country’s “original sin.” Some debate the degree to which slavery affects institutional racism in America’s criminal justice system, housing policies, and education disparities, among others. Still others argue over reparations for the descendants of black slaves.

Yet largely overlooked in this “national conversation” is another tragedy: slavery still exists in the United States, and it disproportionately affects black Americans.

Many readers may be surprised to learn that about 40.3 million people globally are estimated by the United Nations’ International Labour Organization (ILO) to be enslaved today (that’s about 80 times the number of people who have thus far died from the coronavirus). It is also more than at any point in history. “A person today is considered enslaved,” explains a February 2019 article at The Guardian, “if they are forced to work against their will; are owned or controlled by an exploiter or ‘employer’; have limited freedom of movement; or are dehumanised, treated as a commodity or bought and sold as property.” Globally, more than half of current victims are in forced labor, while more than a third are living in forced marriages. Slavery, which is most prevalent in Africa and Asia, is big business, generating about $150 billion each year.

Slavery may seem a distant problem, but a 2018 U.S. Department of State report ranks the United States alongside Mexico and the Philippines as the three worst countries in the world for human trafficking, one form of slavery. The number of people in the United States who would be classified as enduring some manner of slavery are notoriously difficult to estimate, though some experts suspect it could be as high as the hundreds of thousands, if one includes child labor and forced sex work. An estimated 14,000-20,000 people are estimated to be trafficked into the United States every year. More than 300,000 young people in this country are considered “at risk” of sexual exploitation, according to a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services report. Approximately 199,000 incidents of sexual exploitation occur within the U.S. each year.

The insatiable demand of the sex industry drives much of this. “We have a major issue here in the United States” said Geoff Rogers, co-founder of the United States Institute Against Human Trafficking (USIAHT), in a June 2019 interview. “The United States is the No. 1 consumer of sex worldwide. So we are driving the demand as a society.” Many of the people trafficked in the sex industry are from outside the United States, particularly Mexico. But most are American. “If you are trafficked in the United States, 85 percent of victims that are trafficked here are from here,” said Brook Bello, founder of anti-trafficking organization More Too Life in Florida. “These are American kids, American born, 50% to 60% of them coming out of the foster care industry.”

Moreover, trafficking disproportionately affects black, latino, and Native Americans. According to one study, 40% of victims of human trafficking are African-Americans. African American children comprise 52% of all juvenile prostitution arrests. In Phoenix, Arizona, one of the top jurisdictions for trafficking in the United States, an estimated 40% of sex trafficking victims in 2015 were Native American. Also in 2015, half of the Homeland Security’s “most wanted” sex traffickers were from a single place in Mexico: Tenancingo,Tlaxcala.

Given these disparities, one might think there would be a groundswell of activist demand to address this human rights crisis. Yet there is no mention of human trafficking on Black Lives Matter’s mission statement, nor *anywhere* on their website, for that matter. A few voices have sought to associate BLM’s broader policy objectives with fighting trafficking, but these have so far been rare. “The way that law enforcement is addressing (human trafficking) right now is a microcosm of everything that the Black Lives Matter movement is talking about,” Vanessa Bouche, an Associate Professor at Texas Christian University told Reuters. Michelle Mason at John Jay College, has similarly urged using “the current momentum of the Black Lives Matter movement” to end “ the targeted sex trafficking of young black girls,” as well as reform the criminal justice system to not incarcerate and criminalize victims of this industry.

Some BLM objectives may actually aggravate trafficking and its effects on the black community. The Washington, D.C. chapter of BLM, for example, is calling for the decriminalization of sex work. “This will cause more harm and more exploitation of our most marginalized people,” Yasmin Vafa of Rights4Girls told the New York Times. “Girls have told us they heard about the bill for the first time from their pimps, who were excited about it. If pimps and sex buyers are on the same side of this legislative proposal, doesn’t that say something to the other supporters?”

Defunding the police, another frequent BLM demand, would have similar effects. “The specialist nature of investigating and prosecuting human trafficking cases at the local level… would be affected by defunding policing agencies,” argues Dr. Roberto Potter, a sociologist teaching in the Criminal Justice Department at the University of Central Florida. “Defunding is likely to have the impact of further reducing the availability of personnel to address human trafficking and similar activities.” More provocatively, Jaco Booyens, a vocal activist in the fight against child sex trafficking and fellow at Liberty University, recently argued at Newsweek that  “defunding the police would directly benefit pedophiles and sex traffickers who prey upon innocent Americans.”

None of this is intended as a distraction from legitimate, overdue demands to address institutional racism. Indeed, in some cases the two intersect. Some data, for example, indicates our criminal justice system disproportionately impacts African-Americans. Black people who are convicted of sex trafficking minors are on average sentenced for 39 months longer than white people, according to a database created by Bouche. Moreover, many of those arrested or convicted of participation in sex trafficking are treated as criminals rather than victims. Only eighteen states have adopted a human trafficking affirmative defense statute, which requires a court to determine if a survivor’s criminal act is a direct result of his or her trafficking.

Rather, this article urges a broader contemplation of the myriad inhumanities suffered by black Americans. Most human trafficking victims are underage, and a significant percentage are coming out of foster-care and other broken-home situations. This points to another crisis — the disintegration of black families, as the majority of black children grow up in broken homes (BLM, according to its website, aims to “disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement”). Yet another is abortion, which Dr. Carol Swain (of Black Faces, Black Interests: The Representation of African Americans in Congress fame) has labeled a modern genocide committed against the black community (BLM often collaborates with pro-choice activists).

Nor is this a case of “whataboutism” aimed at distracting from demands to address other racial injustices (indeed, as noted, other black Americans are urging BLM and other activists to care about this). Rather, it is aimed at addressing one of the most extreme manifestations of this inhumanity, the current enslavement of people (of whom a disproportionate number are black) in this country (and a topic TAC has consistently covered; see here, here and here).

So sure, let’s talk about slavery. Let’s talk about contemporary slavery vis-a-vis human trafficking in the United States. And let’s take aggressive action to combat it. Apart from the policy issues mentioned above, there are efforts to shut down Pornhub, the largest pornography website in the world, one which does not police itself, and is notorious for enabling and profiting off of the mass sex-trafficking and exploitation of women and minors. Trust me, taking that down will have a far better impact than attacking a statue of George Washington or Thomas Jefferson.

Casey Chalk covers religion and other issues for The American Conservative and is a senior writer for Crisis Magazine. He has degrees in history and teaching from the University of Virginia, and a masters in theology from Christendom College.

The post Let’s Talk About Contemporary Slavery appeared first on The American Conservative.

[the-final-straw-blog]

August 19th Prisoner Protest: convo w Ben Turk of IWOC

This week, Bursts spoke with Ben Turk about the August 19th call out for solidarity with prisoners.  The Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee, a project of the Industrial Workers of the World (or IWW) syndicalist labor union is one body organizing the inside and outside actions, and Ben is a member.  Ben's also affiliated with Lucasville Amnesty Last year was a huge time for radical organizing around the U.S.  Prisoners from around the country participated in the September 9th national prisoner strike, the first of it's size and scope that we've seen.  This event mobilized individual prisoners and also sprang from groups like the Free Alabama Movement and it's sister pushes in other carceral states, Anarchist Black Cross chapters, the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee, or IWOC, of the Industrial Workers of the World labor union and also by just lots of unaffiliated prisoners.  Now, we have what could be called a hard Law and Disorder administration in the White House talking about increasing funding and support for cops, further militarizing the border and terrorizing residents, reviving the 1980's style war on drugs and other repressive actions.  In this context, it feels necessary for those who have a different vision of the world to push back and keep pushing as we were under Obama, under Bush & before. More on IWOC can be found at https://incarceratedworkers.org and more about public call for the strike can be found at IAmWeUbuntu.com Soooooo many Announcements But first, we have a bunch of announcements we wanted to share with you.  If you have things you want announced on the show, send us an email and we may include it! Firstly, if you follow the show on twitter, we're shifting the show's account over to @StrawFinal.  If you're on that or other, despicable forms of social media, consider checking us out for announcements about the show, about related projects and for the occasional anti-social, cat memes. Kevin "Rashid" Johnson in transit An update on the case of Kevin "Rashid" Johnson from http://rashidmod.com :

"Supporters have received word that Kevin “Rashid” Johnson was picked up by Virginia officials and removed from Clements Unit on Thursday, June 23rd. He is no longer being held by Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Thanks to so many people phoning Virginia Interstate Compact Supervisor Terry Glenn, we have found out that Rashid is now in Florida at a “reception facility”. However, we do not know where that is, if he can receive mail there, or where he will end up. We will keep you informed as we find out more, and in the meantime will be asking people to phone Glenn back on Monday. Rashid is Minister of Defense of the New Afrikan Black Panther Party (Prison Chapter); he is a Virginia prisoner organizer and revolutionary communist. As a result of his organizing he has been repeatedly transferred out of state, under a setup called the “Interstate Compact” which is used to remove rebellious prisoners and exile them to locations where they have no friends, support, etc. For the past four years Rashid has been held in Texas, where he has been beaten, threatened, had his property confiscated,  been set up on bogus infractions, and more — nonetheless, he used his time there to forge connections with other prisoners and to write a series of powerful exposés about violence, medical neglect, abuse, and murder in the Texas prison system. Transfers can be opportunities for prison officials to arrange for violence and abuse. Rashid was beaten when he was first brought to Texas, and lost much of his property at the time. Outside supporters and people concerned about prisoners’ rights and basic human dignity need to make sure this does not happen again!" Kevin "Rashid" Johnson's support site suggests people call the following prison employee to support Rashid, and there's a simple script for calls available at http://rashidmod.com: Mr. Terry Glenn, Interstate Compact Supervisor Virginia Department of Corrections P.O. Box 26963 Richmond, VA 23261-6963 Phone: (804) 887-7866 Fax: (804) 674-3595 QTLUG & VPNs When this show is over, consider bringing your linux or soon-to-be linux laptop, tablet, phone or whatever device over to Firestorm for the QTLUG.  A linux and open source software enthusiasts' meetup. Asheville Queer & Trans Linux User Group (QTLUG, pronounced "Cutie Lug") aims to provide a welcoming environment for queers, trans folks, women and others who want to explore technology and receive support from peers. QTLUG meets monthly and can be contacted at qtlug@tuta.io .  Today, June 25th at 3:30pm EST there'll be a VPN clinic, where attendees will be helped to set up Virtual Private Networks, or VPNs, on their devices.  Little to no experience necessary! Self-Protection Class Today at 4 to 6pm, and every Sunday, in Haw Creek Park at 40 Avon Rd in Asheville there will be a self-protection class taught by folks at Mountain Forge.  This class is informed by Combat Systema and other tendencies. J20 benefit with Thou Tonight, on June 25th at 7pm at the Pinhook in Durham, NC, there'll be a benefit concert to raise funds for J20 defendants, those swept up in the kettle on January 20th in D.C. during the protests against the inauguration. Bands playing include the New Orleans, anarcho-doom band THOU as well as Bad Friends and Slime. Info Session on Stonewall On Tuesday June 27th, the other Tranzmission in Asheville will be hosting An Information Session downstairs at the Pack Library in Downtown AVL from 6-8pm.  "Learn about the Miss Major, Marsha P Johnson and Sylvia Rivera. Myka Johnson from TQPOC, Charlotte (Queer Trans People of Color, Charlotte) will teach us about the leaders who kicked off the modern day LGBTQ movement, trans people of color!" DIY Screen Printing workshop On Wednesday, June 28th, you can attend a DIY Screenprinting workshop// Taller de serigrafía from 7-8:30pm at the Kairos West community center, behind Firestorm at 610 Haywood Rd in West Asheville. Bring a blank, light colored tshirt to print on! Trouble #4: There Is No Justice... Just Us On Friday, June 30th at 7:30pm, there'll be a showing of the 30 minute, 4th installment of TROUBLE, the new serial documentary series from sub.Media.   This episode has a focus on Repression and Movement Defense with examples around support for Fernando Barcenas in Mexico, defense of water defenders from the #NoDAPL struggle, support for #J20 defendants, La Fuga anti-carceral organizing across Chile, Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee about U.S. prison strikes and more. This'll be followed by a conversation based on prompts from the film makers.   Prison Books packaging On Saturday July 1st and every following Saturday, Asheville Prison Books Project will be hosting a weekly book packaging and letter writing event in the back of Downtown Books & News, 67 N Lexington Ave, Asheville.  APBP sends free books and letters to prisoners around the South Eastern U.S. Stonewall Folk Punk concert Also on July 1st in Asheville, the other Tranzmission will be hosting Folk Punk Transtravaganza at the members-only bar, Broadways from 7-10pm. Performances by  Gullible Boys, Bless Your Heart, Brynn Estelle and ATL's wWaylon.   NVDA training against Coal Ash & Pipelines On Sunday July 2nd, there'll be a Non Violent Direct Action training camp from 9am to 5pm hosted by Claire and Coleman in preparation for a protest on July 4th against the Duke Energy coal-ash pit and Atlantic Coast Pipeline that Duke is investing in.  The action is entitled "Lake Julian Action: Independence From Fossil Fuels".  The action camp will take place at 406 Overlook Rd Extension in Arden. There's also a request on that fedbook page for fundraising for the direct action. Blue Ridge ABC letter wriitng Letters save lives! Join Blue Ridge ABC each month for an evening of solidarity with incarcerated comrades. Celebrate their birthdays by sending words of encouragement and support. From 5-7:30pm at Firestorm Books & Coffee,  more info on the group at BRABC.Blackblogs.Org Needle Exchange July 4th falls on a Tuesday and every Tuesday at 1:30pm, the Steady Collective, a harm reduction project in Asheville, does it's Needle Exchange at Firestorm, 610 Haywood Rd.  Show up if you need clean needles, information on Narcan, or wanna start helping out!  They'll also be at the Haywood Street Congregation, 297 Haywood St in downtown from 10am to 3pm every Wednesday. July 4th Critical Mass Bike Parade Also on July 4th, from 5:30pm to 9pm, there will be an Anti-Nationalist Critical Mass Bike Ride and bike parade in Asheville.  Leaving from Montford Park Place, near between Panola and Cumberland, the ride will be a reasonable distance at a reasonable pace to allow more participation and will return to the park for cool-down, vegan popsicles, or vice lollies as they may be called in the U.K., plus speakers, info and maybe music.  From the announcement:     "Gather with us on July 4th to demonstrate resistance to nationalism and the american empire's history of genocide, slavery and ecological devastation. Especially in the present climate of rising white nationalism, attacks on indigenous sovereignty, and disregard for impending climate disaster, we reject this holiday and its gratuitous flag-waving propaganda. Instead, we'll celebrate collective resistance by taking the streets in a critical mass bike ride through downtown. Show your opposition to war and eco-devastation in this pedal-powered parade!" More on this event and other local events to WNC, check out http://avlcommunityaction.com Anarchist Summer Camp, Register by July 5th! The Institute for Advanced Troublemaking, which is "a small collective of long time anarchist organizers seeking to create a lasting movement education hub in the Northeast of the so-called US", is hosting an anarchist summer camp which will be held August 11th – 18th in Worcester, MA this year. Some information about the group from their website "The I.A.T. aims to raise collective capacity to target our enemies at the systemic level with effective direct action and campaign work. As Trump’s presidency spurs a swell of anarchist organizing and renewed interest in anti-state anti capitalist perspectives, we want to escalate by building skills in direct action, creating movement infrastructure, and community organizing for new anarchists. We also want to bring experienced organizers together to innovate strategies and tactics for our contemporary context. Rather than an activism 101, our intention is to cultivate deeper understanding and praxis of anarchist organizing among people who are already doing some of that work." The main idea is to build on the social and political potential of events like conferences and bookfairs to expand what is possible in this upcoming era in which it feels increasingly vital to have a vibrant and adaptive anarchist praxis. You can see more information about this event at https://advancedtroublemaking.wordpress.com/ which will include a three part presentation by some past interviewees about Burn Down The American Plantation! Registration ends on July 5th, and will prioritize "people of marginalized identities including POC, working class, trans or gender nonconforming, those with dis/abilities, LGBTQI, and women, but recognize that many of these may not be visibly apparent". When There Is No 911  On Thursday, July 6th to 9th from 9am to 5pm each day in Knoxville, TN, there will be a workshop entitled "When There Is No 911: Emergency Care".  This will be hosted by Mountain Forge "Learn the skills for the Right Now emergencies. There is no time to google for the answer, you can't consult your mentors, the stars, or your power animal, you need to act NOW ! Now what? Skills that will help us to take care of ourselves and each other. This class will start you off in the fundamental skill of emergency care in urban, suburban, rural, wilderness, and disaster (short, long, and very long ) emergency situations." More info, including the location and the requisite pre-registration, can be found at their fedbook page. BK Punk Rock Karaoke If you're in Brooklyn on July 14, consider the Punk Rock Karaoke benefit for Certain Days political prisoner calendar.  The karaoke will take place from 9:30pm til 12:30am at the Pine Box Rock Shop at 12 Gratton st in Brooklyn. Meet Your Local Redneck Back in Asheville, Carolina Mountain Redneck Revolt will be having a public event in Carrier Park (220 Amboy Rd) on July 16th from 12 noon to 4pm. This'll be a meet and greet with the local chapter in the hopes of networking, discussion of community engagements, Redneck Revolt praxis and more.  This is a potluck with veg options, and it's suggested you bring sides to share. Playlist

Check out this episode!

[merledevito46271-blog]

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[newsacramento]

The Inner Workings of the "White Code"  This is an artist's rendition of Nat Turner's meeting with co-conspirators in preparation for the rebellion that he would lead in South Hampton, Virginia in August of 1831. "The scars and stains of racism are still deeply embedded in the American society." - John Lewis "You don't fight racism with racism, the best way to fight racism is with solidarity." - Bobby Seale "Self-determination is not a mere phrase. It is an imperative principle of action, which statesmen will henceforth ignore at their peril." - Woodrow Wilson "Here's the reality. The image of a white Jesus has been used to justify enslavement, conquest, colonialism, the genocide of indigenous peoples. There are literally millions of human beings whose lives have been snuffed out by people who conquered under the banner of a white god." - Tim Wise Slave Codes Slaves did not accept their fate without protest. Many instances of rebellion were known to Americans, even in colonial times. These rebellions were not confined to the South. In fact, one of the earliest examples of a slave uprising was in 1712 in Manhattan. As African Americans in the colonies grew greater and greater in number, there was a justifiable paranoia on the part of the white settlers that a violent rebellion could occur in one's own neighborhood. It was this fear of rebellion that led each colony to pass a series of laws restricting slaves' behaviors. These laws were known as Slaved Codes. The earliest slave codes date back to the 1640s in Virginia. They were passed by the House of Burgesses to separate the fates of white indentured servants and black slaves and to help strengthen the white race's hold on the continent. Although each colony had differing ideas about the rights of slaves, there were some common threads in slave codes across areas where slavery was common. Legally considered property, slaves were not allowed to own property of their own. They were not allowed to assemble without the presence of a white person, and slaves that lived off the plantation were subject to special curfews. In the courts, a slave accused of any crime against a white person was doomed. No testimony could be made by a slave against a white person; therefore, the slave's side of the story could never be told in a court of law. Of course, slaves were conspicuously absent from juries as well. Slave codes had ruinous effects on African American society. It was illegal to teach a slave to read or write. Religious motives sometimes prevailed, however, as many devout white Christians educated slaves to enable the reading of the Bible. These same Christians did not recognize marriage between slaves in their laws, however. This made it easier for them to justify the breakup of families by selling individual members off to another owner. As time passed and the numbers of African Americans in the New World increased, so did the fears of their white captors. With each new rebellion, the slave codes became ever more strict, further abridging the already limited rights and privileges this oppressed people might hope to enjoy. Perhaps, the most famous slave revolt was that of Nat Turner. He was taught to read by his first owner, Samuel Turner, and became a slave preacher. He also began receiving visions which convinced him that he was receiving messages from God. He interpreted these messages as meaning that he needed to free his people from their condition. On August 21, 1831, after some years of preparation, he commenced a rebellion in South Hampton, Virginia that would strike fear into the hearts of whites across the whole of the South. Though his rebellion was put down just two days later, and he was put to death just as quickly, new laws were passed throughout the South that made it to where even free African Americans could not gather in public masses, usually meaning church services, unless they were accompanied by a white person. New laws were also passed restricting the establishing of schools for free African Americans. Black Codes In the United States, the Black Codes were laws passed by Democrat controlled southern states in 1865 and 1866, after the Civil War. These laws had the intent and the effect of restricting African Americans' freedom, and of compelling them to work in a labor economy based on low wages or debt. Black Codes were part of a larger pattern of southern whites trying to suppress the new freedom of emancipated African American slaves, the freedmen. Black Codes were also enacted by northern states such as Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and New York prior to the Civil War to ban free blacks from residing in those states.  From the colonial period, colonies and states had passed laws that discriminated against free blacks. In the South, these were generally included in slave codes; the goal was to reduce the influence of free blacks, particularly after slave rebellions, because of their potential influence on slaves. Restrictions included prohibiting them from voting, although North Carolina allowed this before 1831, bearing arms, gathering in groups for worship and learning to read and write. A major purpose of these laws was to preserve slavery. In the first two years after the Civil War, white dominated southern legislatures passed Black Codes modeled after the earlier slave codes. They were particularly concerned with controlling movement and labor, as slavery had given way to a free labor system. Although freedmen had been emancipated, their lives were greatly restricted by the Black Codes. Jim Crow Laws Jim Crow laws were state and local laws that enforced racial segregation in the southern United States. Enacted by white Democrat dominated state legislatures in the late 19th century after the Reconstruction period, these laws continued to be enforced until 1965. They mandated de jure racial segregation in all public facilities in the states of the former Confederate States of America, starting in 1896 with a Separate But Equal status for African Americans in railroad cars. Public education had essentially been segregated since its establishment in most of the south after the Civil War. This principle was extended to public facilities and transportation, including segregated cars on interstate trains and, later, buses. Facilities for African Americans were consistently inferior and underfunded compared to those which were then available to European Americans; sometimes they did not exist at all. This body of law institutionalized a number of economic, educational, and social disadvantages. De jure segregation existed mainly in the southern states, while northern segregation was generally de facto, patterns of housing segregation enforced by private covenants, bank lending practices, and job discrimination, including discriminatory labor union practices. Jim Crow was a pejorative expression meaning Negro.  Jim Crow laws, sometimes, as in Florida, part of state constitutions, mandated the segregation of public schools, public places, and public transportation, and the segregation of restrooms, restaurants, and drinking fountains for whites and blacks. The U.S. military was already segregated. President Woodrow Wilson, a southerner, initiated segregation of federal workplaces at the request of southern cabinet members in 1913. These Jim Crow laws revived principles of the 1865 and 1866 Black Codes, which had previously restricted the civil rights and civil liberties of African Americans. Segregation of public, state-sponsored, schools was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1954 in Brown v. Board of Education. In some states it took years to implement this decision. Generally, the remaining Jim Crow laws were overruled by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, but years of action and court challenges have been needed to unravel the many means of institutional discrimination. Three-Strikes Laws In the United States, habitual offender laws, commonly referred to as Three-Strikes Laws, were first implemented on March 7, 1994 and are part of the United States Justice Department's Anti-Violence Strategy. These laws require a person guilty of committing both a severe violent felony and two other previous convictions to serve a mandatory life sentence in prison. The purpose of the laws is to drastically increase the punishment of those convicted of more than two serious crimes. Twenty-eight states have some form of a Three-Strikes Law. A person accused under such laws is referred to in a few states, notably Connecticut and Kansas, as a "persistent offender," while Missouri uses the unique term "prior and persistent offender." In most jurisdictions, only crimes at the felony level qualify as serious offenses; however, misdemeanor offenses can qualify for application of the Three-Strikes Law in California, whose harsh application of the laws have been the subject of controversy at times. The Three-Strikes Law significantly increases the prison sentences of persons convicted of a felony who have been previously convicted of two or more violent crimes or serious felonies, and limits the ability of these offenders to receive a punishment other than a life sentence. A study entitled , "I'd rather be Hanged for a Sheep than a Lamb: The Unintended Consequences of 'Three-Strikes' Laws," released by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that Three-Strikes Laws discourages criminals from committing misdemeanors in fear of getting sentenced to life in prison. Although this deters crime and contributes to lower crime rates, the laws also have the possibility to push previously convicted criminals to commit more serious offenses. The study's author argues that this is so because under such laws, felons realize that they could face a long jail sentence for their next crime, and therefore they have little to lose by committing serious crimes rather than minor offenses. Through these findings, the study weighs both the pros and cons for the law. What is rarely discussed, however, is who is most often the victim of these Three-Strikes Laws. These laws usually are only applied to the poor, as the rich do not commit such crimes or they have good enough lawyers, so they can get out of trouble a whole lot easier than can the poor. This means that the poor get hit by these laws the most. Further, these laws were written specifically to target certain sections of the poor population, mainly minorities. Thus, it is African Americans, Latin Americans, and others that are the ones who are the most likely to be unable to afford to defend themselves against the laws. If the law's purpose was to lock up minorities, so as to weaken their ability to fight for change in the outside world, it has succeeded. Roughly two-thirds of the American prison population is made up of minorities. Gerrymandering  In the process of setting electoral districts, gerrymandering is a practice intended to establish a political advantage for a particular party or group by manipulating district boundaries. The resulting district is known as a gerrymander; however, that word can also refer to the process. The term gerrymandering has negative connotations. Two principal tactics are used in gerrymandering: "cracking," i.e. diluting the voting power of the opposing party's supporters across many districts and "packing," or concentrating the opposing party's voting power in one district to reduce their voting power in other districts. In addition to its use achieving desired electoral results for a particular party, gerrymandering may be used to help or hinder a particular demographic, such as a political, ethnic, racial, linguistic, religious, or class group, such as in U.S. federal voting district boundaries that produce a majority of constituents representative of African American or other racial minorities, known as "majority-minority districts." Gerrymandering can also be used to protect incumbents. Further, gerrymandering has been used as a political tactic in American politics since the first voter districts were drawn, and now, just as then, they are being used to purposefully dilute the voting power of minorities and to keep the white ruling elite in power. Voter ID Laws Voter ID laws in the United States are laws that require a person to provide some form of official identification before they are permitted to register to vote, receive a ballot for an election, or to actually vote. At the federal level, the Help America Vote Act of 2002 requires voter ID for all new voters in federal elections who registered by mail and who did not provide a driver's license number or the last four digits of a Social Security number that was matched against government records. Though state laws requiring some sort of identification at voting polls go back to 1950, no state required a voter to produce a government issued photo ID as a condition for voting before the 2006 election. Indiana, in 2006, became the first state to enact a strict photo ID law, a law that was upheld two years later by the U.S. Supreme Court. As of September 2016, 33 states have enacted some form of voter ID requirement. Lawsuits have been filed against many of the voter ID requirements on the basis that they are discriminatory with an intent to reduce voting by traditionally Democratic constituencies. Parts of voter ID laws in several states have been overturned by courts. On June 25, 2013, the US Supreme Court declared, by a 5 to 4 decision, in Shelby v. Holder that Section 4(b) of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was unconstitutional. Previously, states with a history of proven voter discrimination were required to obtain preclearance from a federal court before making changes to their voting laws. Section 4 of the Act contained the formula for determining which states or political subdivisions were covered by Section 5. The majority opinion argued that the formula used to determine which jurisdictions required federal oversight or preclearance had not been updated to reflect current social conditions, including a decline in institutionalized discrimination and direct voter suppression. Since this ruling, several states, to include Texas, have passed stricter Voter ID laws targeting minority communities with the express and highly effective intent of restricting their ability to affect outcomes in local, state, and federal elections. The end goal, of course, is to ensure that the white ruling elite remains in power. White Privilege White privilege is a term for societal privileges that benefit people identified as white in Western countries, beyond what is commonly experienced by non white people under the same social, political, or economic circumstances. Academic perspectives such as critical race theory and whiteness studies use the concept of White Privilege to analyze how racism and racialized societies affect the lives of white or white skinned people versus those of non white skinned people. White Privilege is the outcome of the near four hundred years of race laws that have just been reviewed. White people in the United States assume a certain protected status, whether they know it or not, wherever they go. They are less likely to be attacked or robbed, they are most definitely less likely to be harassed by the police, and interestingly enough, when they do commit a crime, they are more likely to be able to get away with it. It also manifests itself in how a white person is treated once they have committed a crime. In the case of the Colorado theater shooting, the gunman killed twelve people and wounded several more. The police took him alive. In another instance in Florida, one man stabbed and killed two people to death, and the police waited for fifteen minutes while he stabbed another victim and then began to consume the victim's face before finally taking him alive. There is then, or course, the Columbia, SC shooting. A white man went into a black church shot twelve people, killed nine of them, and specifically targeted a state official. The local police were called, but he had time to run, find his car, and make his way to North Carolina before he was caught. So, of course, he was taken alive; but even worse, on the way back, the officers that caught him took him to Burger King because he was hungry. Turn the tables and the story is completely different. A young African American teenager was walking through a quite suburb and was shot dead for not responding to a white neighborhood watchman's calls. As it turns out, he had his walkman playing in his hears and could not hear the watchman. What happened to the white watchman for using excessive force? Nothing. In another instance, a black kid selling bootleg cigarettes, a misdemeanor offense, was shot dead at the hands of a white police officer. The white officer is still on duty even though he clearly used excessive force. There is, of course, the shooting death of Michael Brown. Had Brown been a white teen, the officer, Wilson, would not have fired twelve shots at him to make sure he was dead. It is likely that he would never have even drawn is weapon. The list could go on. Personal Story In public, white people that have bought into white privilege have ways of communicating each other. It could be the wink of an eye, the nod of a head, the shake of their hat, or any number of similar movements that lets other white people around them know that they too are engaged with the program. It could also just be a brazen racist remark that lets their comrades know who they are and what they are about. This is their way of letting them know that if something goes down, they have a comrade in arms to back them up, they have a witness to corroborate their version of the story, or if things get too rough, they have someone to help them get out of the trouble they have caused. In my thirty-five years, my pail skin has gotten me caught up in situations like this on more than one occasion, whether it be a slight nod here, a quite look there, or a gentle shake of the hand. As a child, I did not know what it meant, as a teenager, it made me uncomfortable; as an adult, it enrages me. It makes my physically ill. This is especially the case since I now know the fullness of my own heritage. My father was mixed African American and white, which means, so am I. I am grateful for that fact, and it makes me proud, so when the following event occurred, one can imagine that I was not in the mood to put up the trash this guy was spewing. It was about five years ago when I was still delivering pizza and finishing up my first Master's degree. I was running low on gas because I had forgotten to fill up my tank before work, and I was starting to get a little hungry. So, I stopped at a Valero gas station to fill up my gas tank, to get a snack, and to get some Gatorade to go with the snack. I parked at the pump and walked inside. There were people everywhere. I ducked and weaved around my fellow patrons as I picked out my items, and then I got into one of two fairly lengthy lines. The wait was going to be few minutes, at least. At first, everyone was waiting patiently. That was, of course, until Jimbillybob Joecurtiskylescott McGregor-Martin-Jones started bellowing in as loud a voice as he could that these "Hajjis," in reference to the tellers behind the counter, should really get their stuff together and speed things up. It was at that moment that he eyeballed me and winked like I was supposed to agree with his filth. I did not take it for a second. I tapped him on the shoulder and said, "If you don't mind, we civilized souls here are just trying to wait here in peace, so could you please keep you bellowing to yourself? It's stinking up the air." He looked at me disgusted but was quite for the remainder of his tenure in line, and for that moment, at least, reason won the day. As has been shown recently, however, with the rise of Donald Trump and his right wing fringe, these types are getting bolder and bolder and spending less and less time caring about reason. This only means that those of us that care for what is right and good in this world have to be that much more steadfast in defense of our liberties and those of our fellow Americans. Solutions One of the things that needs to be done for sure is that white people need to wake up from the near four hundred year slumber that they and their ancestors have been in. They have been caught sleeping in a system that places whites in an illegitimate position of power over the people that originally inhabited this land, Native Americans. They have also been caught sleeping in a system that puts them in an illegitimate position of power over a group of people who were brought here against their will, African Americans. There are also other groups of people included in this paradigm by other circumstances like Chinese Americans and Mexicans Americans. None of these people have a real choice in how this country is run. The country is run by white people. This is known as a "Settler Democracy," and that is essentially, no democracy at all. Solve this root problem, and much of what of troubles the United States domestically will drift way. Ignore it, and we may lose everything. If this problem is not solved; which many believe to be impossible given the circumstances, then the only other options are Self-Determination, or De-Colonization. The right of people to self-determination is a cardinal principle in modern international law. It states that a people, based on respect for the principle of equal rights and fair equality of opportunity, have the right to freely choose their sovereignty and international political status with no interference. De-colonization refers to the complete removal of the domination of non-indigenous forces within the geographical space and different institutions of the colonized, but it also refers to the de-colonizing of the mind from the colonizers' ideas that made the colonized feel inferior. It may involve either nonviolent revolution or national liberation wars by pro independence groups. Aftermath Such a set of solutions will leave what was once the United States of America broken up into a series of smaller successor states, and while there will be many people that will mourn the death of the United States, there will be even more people celebrating the end of the multiple forms of discrimination that existed under American "Settler" democracy. White people will likely still be the most confused by the situation long after it is over, but circumstances will show them over time that their behavior and the behavior of their ancestors was absolute rubbish and the central cause of the problem all along. They will be forced to adapt to new power structures that will show them how it truly feels to be judged based on the color of their skin, and they will wonder how they could have ever been so foolish before the "Great Change," or whatever the revolution will be called. With that in mind, hopefully, they will raise future generations of children who will grow up with a deep respect for all of humankind in all of its diversity, holding to the philosophy, "Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations."