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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 3 years

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

August 27, 2021

Heather Cox Richardson

America is in a watershed moment. Since the 1980s, the country has focused on individualism: the idea that the expansion of the federal government after the Depression in the 1930s created a form of collectivism that we must destroy by cutting taxes and slashing regulation to leave individuals free to do as they wish.

Domestically, that ideology meant dismantling government regulation, social safety networks, and public infrastructure projects. Internationally, it meant a form of “cowboy diplomacy” in which the U.S. usually acted on its own to rebuild nations in our image.

Now, President Joe Biden appears to be trying to bring back a focus on the common good.

For all that Republicans today insist that individualism is the heart of Americanism, in fact the history of federal protection of the common good began in the 1860s with their own ancestors, led by Abraham Lincoln, who wrote: “The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not, so well do, for themselves---in their separate, and individual capacities.”

The contrast between these two ideologies has been stark this week.

On the one hand are those who insist that the government cannot limit an individual’s rights by mandating either masks or vaccines, even in the face of the deadly Delta variant of the coronavirus that is, once again, taking more than 1000 American lives a day.

In New York, where Mayor Bill de Blasio has required teachers to be vaccinated, the city’s largest police union has said it will sue if a vaccine is mandated for its members.

In Texas, Governor Greg Abbott on Wednesday issued an executive order prohibiting any government office or any private entity receiving government funds from requiring vaccines.

In Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis has also forbidden mask mandates, but today Leon County Circuit Judge John C. Cooper ruled that DeSantis’s order is unconstitutional. Cooper pointed out that in 1914 and 1939, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that individual rights take a back seat to public safety: individuals can drink alcohol, for example, but not drive drunk. DeSantis was scathing of the opinion and has vowed to appeal. Meanwhile, NBC News reported this week that information about the coronavirus in Florida, as well as Georgia, is no longer easily available on government websites.

On the other hand, as predicted, the full approval of the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine by the Food and Drug Administration has prompted a flood of vaccine mandates.

The investigation into the events of January 6, when a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, also showcases the tension between individualism and community.

Yesterday, after months in which Republicans, including former president Donald Trump, called for the release of the identity of the officer who shot Capitol rioter Ashli Babbitt, Capitol Police officer Lieutenant Michael Byrd, the 28-year veteran of the force who shot Babbitt, gave an interview to Lester Holt of NBC News.

Right-wing activists have called Babbitt a martyr murdered by the government, but Byrd explained that he was responsible for protecting 60 to 80 members of the House and their staffers. As rioters smashed the glass doors leading into the House chamber, Byrd repeatedly called for them to get back. When Ashli Babbitt climbed through the broken door, he shot her in the shoulder. She later died from her injuries. Byrd said he was doing his job to protect our government. “I know that day I saved countless lives,” Byrd told Holt. “I know members of Congress, as well as my fellow officers and staff, were in jeopardy and in serious danger. And that’s my job.”

The conflict between individualism and society also became clear today as the House select committee looking into the attack asked social media giants to turn over “all reviews, studies, reports, data, analyses, and communications” they had gathered about disinformation distributed by both foreign and domestic actors, as well as information about “domestic violent extremists” who participated in the attack.

Representative Jim Banks (R-IN) immediately responded that “Congress has no general power to inquire into private affairs and to compel disclosure….” He urged telecommunications companies and Facebook not to hand over any materials, calling their effort an “authoritarian undertaking.” Banks told Fox News Channel personality Tucker Carlson that Republicans should punish every lawmaker investigating the January 6 insurrection if they retake control of Congress in 2022.

Biden’s new turn is especially obvious tonight in international affairs. The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, a country we entered almost 20 years ago with a clear mission that became muddied almost immediately, has sparked Republican criticism for what many describe as a U.S. defeat.

Since he took office, Biden has insisted on shifting American foreign policy away from U.S. troops alone on the ground toward multilateral pressure using finances and technology.

After yesterday’s bombing in Kabul took the lives of 160 Afghans and 13 American military personnel, Biden warned ISIS-K: "We will hunt you down and make you pay.”

Tonight, a new warning from the State Department warning Americans at the gates of the Kabul airport to “leave immediately” came just before a spokesman for CENTCOM, the United States Central Command in the Defense Department overseeing the Middle East, announced: "U.S. military forces conducted an over-the-horizon counterterrorism operation today against an ISIS-K planner. The unmanned airstrike occurred in the Nangarhar Province of Afghanistan. Initial indications are that we killed the target. We know of no civilian casualties."

Biden’s strike on ISIS-K demonstrated the nation's over-the-horizon technologies that he hopes will replace troops. Even still, the administration continues to call for international cooperation. In a press conference today, Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby responded to a question about U.S. control in Afghanistan by saying: “It’s not about U.S. control in the Indo-Pacific. It’s about protecting our country from threats and challenges that emanate from that part of the world. And it’s about revitalizing our network of alliances and partnerships to help our partners in the international community do the same.“

Meanwhile, this afternoon, news broke that the Taliban has asked the United States to keep a diplomatic presence in the country even after it ends its military mission. The Taliban continues to hope for international recognition, in part to claw back some of the aid that western countries—especially the U.S.—will no longer provide, as well as to try to get the country’s billions in assets unfrozen.

A continued diplomatic presence in Afghanistan would make it easier to continue to get allies and U.S. citizens out of the country, but State Department spokesman Ned Price said the idea is a nonstarter unless a future Afghan government protects the rights of its citizens, including its women, and refuses to harbor terrorists. Price also emphasized that the U.S. would not make this decision without consulting allies. “This is not just a discussion the United States will have to decide for itself.… We are coordinating with our international partners, again to share ideas, to ensure that we are sending the appropriate signals and messages to the Taliban,” he said.

Evacuations from Afghanistan continue. Since August 14, they have topped 110,000, with 12,500 people in the last 24 hours.

Perhaps the news story that best illustrates the tension today between individualism and using the government to help everyone is about a natural disaster. Hurricane Ida, which formed in the Caribbean yesterday, is barreling toward the U.S. Gulf Coast. When it hit western Cuba today, it was a Category 1 storm, but meteorologists expect it to pick up speed as it crosses the warm gulf, becoming a Category 4 storm by the time it hits the U.S. coastline. The area from Louisiana to Florida is in the storm’s path. New Orleans could see winds of up to 110 miles an hour and a storm surge of as much as 11 feet. Louisiana officials issued evacuation orders today.

The storm is expected to hit Sunday evening, exactly 16 years after Hurricane Katrina did. But this time, there is another complication: this is the very part of the country suffering terribly right now from coronavirus. Standing firm on individual rights, only about 40% of Louisiana’s population has been vaccinated, and hospitals are already stretched thin.

Today, President Biden declared an emergency in Louisiana, ordering federal assistance from the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to the region ahead of the storm, trying to head off a catastrophe. The federal government will also help to pay the costs of the emergency.

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Notes:

https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/pentagon-officials-hank-taylor-john-kirby-press-briefing-transcript-august-27-afghanistan-update

https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/27/weather/tropical-storm-ida-friday/index.html

https://apnews.com/article/health-louisiana-coronavirus-pandemic-1a2264b5a43033ed70fe9790c2e89437

NYPD story is from the New York Post, but a citation from them always stops the delivery of lots of letters, so I’m going to suggest people look for it themselves.

https://gov.texas.gov/uploads/files/press/EO-GA-39_prohibiting_vaccine_mandates_and_vaccine_passports_IMAGE_08-25-2021.pdf

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/08/27/president-joseph-r-biden-jr-approves-louisiana-emergency-declaration-2/

://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/08/27/afghanistan-kabul-taliban-live-updates/#link-KFQMWZKFSNH4DBBMK2VAJMAZF4

Meredith Lee @meredithlleeCENTCOM: "U.S. military forces conducted an over-the-horizon counterterrorism operation today against an ISIS-K planner. The unmanned airstrike occurred in the Nangahar Province of Afghanistan. Initial indications are that we killed the target. We know of no civilian casualties."

78 Retweets151 Likes

August 28th 2021

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2021/08/27/afghanistan-live-updates-taliban-kabul-news/5611093001/

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1277715

https://apnews.com/article/lifestyle-health-education-florida-coronavirus-pandemic-1908088a0b5c5b02d89fd7e007822408

Ryan Struyk @ryanstruykThe United States is now reporting 1,194 new coronavirus deaths per day, the highest seven-day average since March 19, according to data from @CNN and Johns Hopkins University.

246 Retweets677 Likes

August 27th 2021

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/officer-who-shot-ashli-babbitt-during-capitol-riot-breaks-silence-n1277736

Jim Banks @RepJimBanksRead my letter to 1/6 Chair @BennieGThompson about his norm shattering decision to spy on his colleagues. @ATT @Verizon @TMobile @Facebook @Twitter @FCC

136 Retweets311 Likes

August 27th 2021

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https://news.yahoo.com/gop-rep-jim-banks-republicans-195845753.html

https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/27/politics/us-military-airstrike-isis-k-planner-afghanistan/index.html

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#letters from an american #heather cox richardson #political #capital riots #Federal Government #US History

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newstfionline · 3 years

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Saturday, July 31, 2021

Biden to allow eviction moratorium to expire Saturday (AP) The Biden administration announced Thursday it will allow a nationwide ban on evictions to expire Saturday, arguing that its hands are tied after the Supreme Court signaled the moratorium would only be extended until the end of the month. The White House said President Joe Biden would have liked to extend the federal eviction moratorium due to spread of the highly contagious delta variant of the coronavirus. Instead, Biden called on “Congress to extend the eviction moratorium to protect such vulnerable renters and their families without delay.” By the end of March, 6.4 million American households were behind on their rent, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development. As of July 5, roughly 3.6 million people in the U.S. said they faced eviction in the next two months, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey.

Evacuation flight brings 200 Afghans to US (AP) The first flight evacuating Afghans who worked alongside Americans in Afghanistan brought more than 200 people, including scores of children and babies in arms, to resettlement in the United States on Friday, and President Joe Biden welcomed them home. The evacuation flights, bringing out former interpreters and others who fear retaliation from Afghanistan’s Taliban for having worked with American service members and civilians, highlight American uncertainty about how Afghanistan’s government and military will fare after the last U.S. combat forces leave that country in the coming weeks. Family members are accompanying the interpreters, translators and others on the flights out. The commercial airliner carrying the 221 Afghans in the special visa program, including 57 children and 15 babies, according to an internal U.S. government document obtained by The Associated Press, touched down in Dulles, Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C.

Not in control (NYT) Consider these Covid-19 mysteries: In India—where the Delta variant was first identified and caused a huge outbreak—cases have plunged over the past two months. A similar drop may now be underway in Britain. There is no clear explanation for these declines. / In the U.S., cases started falling rapidly in early January. The decline began before vaccination was widespread and did not follow any evident changes in Americans’ Covid attitudes. / In March and April, the Alpha variant helped cause a sharp rise in cases in the upper Midwest and Canada. That outbreak seemed poised to spread to the rest of North America—but did not. / This spring, caseloads were not consistently higher in parts of the U.S. that had relaxed masking and social distancing measures (like Florida and Texas) than in regions that remained vigilant. / Large parts of Africa and Asia still have not experienced outbreaks as big as those in Europe, North America and South America. / How do we solve these mysteries? Michael Osterholm, who runs an infectious disease research center at the University of Minnesota, suggests that people keep in mind one overriding idea: humility. “We’ve ascribed far too much human authority over the virus,” he told me.

Diasporas at the Olympics (Foreign Policy) Cuban athletes at the Tokyo Olympics are evidence of the exodus from the island over the years. By the Cuban sports journalist Francys Romero’s count, more than 20 athletes at the Olympics were born in Cuba but became naturalized in and are now playing for other countries. That’s a group almost one-third the size of Cuba’s own delegation.

Peru’s politics (Foreign Policy) Peru’s new President Pedro Castillo chose Guido Bellido, a congressman and fellow member of his Marxist Free Peru party, as his prime minister as part of a cabinet announcement on Thursday, setting up a tense confirmation battle with the country’s opposition-led Congress. Bellido courted controversy in a local media interview in April when he expressed sympathy for members of Shining Path—a Maoist guerilla group who fought a bloody insurgency during the 1980s and 1990s.

Death toll in Turkish wildfires rises to four, blazes rage on (Reuters) The death toll from wildfires on Turkey’s southern coast has risen to four and firefighters were battling blazes for a third day on Friday after the evacuation of dozens of villages and some hotels. More than 60 wildfires have broken out across 17 provinces on Turkey’s Aegean and Mediterranean coasts this week, officials have said. Villages and some hotels have been evacuated in areas popular with tourists, and TV footage had shown people fleeing across fields as they watched fires close in on their homes.

Three Jehovah’s Witnesses sentenced to six or more years in Russian prison for their faith (RNS) Three Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia were convicted and sentenced to prison for practicing their faith on Thursday (July 29). Vilen Avanesov, 68, was sentenced to six years, and his son Arsen Avanesov, 37, along with a third defendant, Aleksandr Parkov, 53, were both sentenced to six-and-a-half years. All three men have already spent more than two years in pretrial detention. “These men should never, ever have had to spend a minute in prison, and yet they’ve been locked up for two years,” said Rachel Denber, deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Europe and Central Asia division. The three Jehovah’s Witnesses were detained in Rostov-on-Don in May 2019 and accused of continuing the operations of a Jehovah’s Witness organization that had been liquidated. All three were charged with organizing extremist activities. In January 2020, Arsen Avanesov was also accused of “financing extremist activities” by collecting donations to rent a room to meet with other Jehovah’s Witnesses. Near the trial’s conclusion, Arsen Avanesov spoke of his devotion to God: “I dedicated my life to him and did it sincerely. … I don’t want, I can’t and will not give up my promise.” The sentences for the three men are considered particularly harsh in a country where rape is punishable by three years in prison and kidnapping by five. The sentencing follows a 2017 ruling that categorizes the religious group as “extremist.”

Myanmar leaders ‘weaponizing’ COVID-19, residents say (AP) With coronavirus deaths rising in Myanmar, allegations are growing from residents and human rights activists that the military government, which seized control in February, is using the pandemic to consolidate power and crush opposition. Supplies of medical oxygen are running low, and the government has restricted its private sale in many places, saying it is trying to prevent hoarding. But that has led to widespread allegations that the stocks are being directed to government supporters and military-run hospitals. At the same time, medical workers have been targeted after spearheading a civil disobedience movement that urged professionals and civil servants not to cooperate with the government, known as the State Administrative Council. “They have stopped distributing personal protection equipment and masks, and they will not let civilians who they suspect are supporting the democracy movement be treated in hospitals, and they’re arresting doctors who support the civil disobedience movement,” said Yanghee Lee, the U.N.’s former Myanmar human rights expert and a founding member of the Special Advisory Council for Myanmar. “With the oxygen, they have banned sales to civilians or people who are not supported by the SAC, so they’re using something that can save the people against the people,” she said. “The military is weaponizing COVID.”

North Korea began the summer in a food crisis. A heat wave and drought could make it worse. (Washington Post) At the beginning of the summer, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un described the country’s food situation as “tense” after border closures caused by the coronavirus pandemic and crippling floods. By midsummer, a cycle of grinding heat and record-low rainfall could be a sign of a greater food crisis and hunger ahead. Temperatures in North Korea have climbed as high as 102 degrees in some areas this week—a shock in a country where temperatures do not often break 100 degrees. The heat wave has been compounded by a growing drought. North Korea had gotten 21.2 millimeters, or less than an inch, of rain as of mid-July. It is so hot that state media reports have been repeatedly warning residents about the dangers of dehydration and low sodium levels, especially for the elderly and those at risk of heart disease or stroke. They are urging residents to stay out of the sun, eat more fruits and vegetables, and drink more than two liters (about two quarts) of water per day, according to NK News, which monitors North Korea’s state media.

Hong Kong protester given 9-year term in 1st security case (AP) A pro-democracy protester was sentenced Friday to nine years in prison in the closely watched first prosecution under Hong Kong’s national security law as the ruling Communist Party tightens control over the territory. Tong Ying-kit, 24, was convicted of inciting secession and terrorism for driving his motorcycle into a group of police officers at a July 1, 2020, rally. He carried a flag bearing the banned slogan, “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times.” Tong’s sentence was longer than the three years requested by the prosecution. He faced a possible maximum of life in prison. Tong’s sentence is a “hammer blow to free speech” and shows the law is “a tool to instill terror” in government critics, Amnesty International’s Asia-Pacific regional director, Yamini Mishra, said in a statement. The law “lacks any exemption for legitimate expression or protest,” Mishra said. “The judgment at no point considered Tong’s rights to freedom of expression and protest.” Defense lawyers said Tong’s penalty should be light because the court hadn’t found the attack was deliberate, no one was injured, and the secession-related offense qualified as minor under the law.

New Zealand rated best place to survive global societal collapse (Guardian) New Zealand, Iceland, the UK, Tasmania and Ireland are the places best suited to survive a global collapse of society, according to a study. The researchers said human civilisation was “in a perilous state” due to the highly interconnected and energy-intensive society that had developed and the environmental damage this had caused. A collapse could arise from shocks, such as a severe financial crisis, the impacts of the climate crisis, destruction of nature, an even worse pandemic than Covid-19 or a combination of these, the scientists said. To assess which nations would be most resilient to such a collapse, countries were ranked according to their ability to grow food for their population, protect their borders from unwanted mass migration, and maintain an electrical grid and some manufacturing ability. Islands in temperate regions and mostly with low population densities came out on top.

Ethiopian roadblock (NYT) Aid workers in Ethiopia claim that an unofficial Ethiopian government blockade has cut off the only road into the conflict-torn region where millions of Ethiopians face the threat of mass starvation. A relief convoy headed for Tigray came under fire on the road on July 18, forcing it to turn around. On Tuesday, the World Food Program said 170 trucks loaded with relief aid were stranded in Semera, the capital of the neighboring Afar region, waiting for Ethiopian permission to make the trek into Tigray. The blockade is intensifying what some call the world’s worst humanitarian crisis in a decade. The crisis comes during an intensifying war, which has deepened ethnic tensions and stoked fears that Ethiopia will collapse. The United Nations estimates that 400,000 people there are living in famine-like conditions, and another 4.8 million need urgent help. The Ethiopian prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, who won the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize, said last week that his government was providing “unfettered humanitarian access” and committed to “the safe delivery of critical supplies to its people in the Tigray region.” However, Mr. Abiy’s ministers have publicly accused aid workers of helping and even arming the Tigrayan fighters, leading to aid workers being attacked at airports, and even killed.

#headlines #news

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mafiablogg · 4 years

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Charles "Lucky" Luciano born Salvatore Lucania November 24, 1897 – January 26, 1962) was an Italian-born gangster who operated mainly in the United States. Luciano started his criminal career in the Five Points gang and was instrumental in the development of the National Crime Syndicate. Luciano is considered the father of modern organized crime in the United States for the establishment of The Commission in 1931, after he abolished the boss of bosses title held by Salvatore Maranzano following the Castellammarese War. He was also the first official boss of the modern Genovese crime family. In 1936, Luciano was tried and convicted for compulsory prostitution and running a prostitution racket after years of investigation by District Attorney Thomas E. Dewey. He was sentenced to 30 to 50 years in prison, but during World War II an agreement was struck with the Department of the Navy through his associate Meyer Lansky to provide naval intelligence. In 1946, for his alleged wartime cooperation, his sentence was commuted on the condition that he be deported to Italy. Luciano died in Italy on January 26, 1962, and his body was permitted to be transported back to the United States for burial. On January 17, 1920, the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution took effect and Prohibition lasted until the amendment was repealed in 1933. The amendment prohibited the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcoholic beverages. Demand for alcohol naturally continued, and the resulting black market for alcoholic beverages provided criminals with an additional source of income. On January 17, 1920, the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution took effect and Prohibition lasted until the amendment was repealed in 1933. The amendment prohibited the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcoholic beverages. Demand for alcohol naturally continued, and the resulting black market for alcoholic beverages provided criminals with an additional source of income. By 1920, Luciano had met many future Mafia leaders, including Vito Genovese and Frank Costello, his longtime friend and future business partner through the Five Points Gang. That same year, Lower Manhattan gang boss Joe Masseria recruited Luciano as one of his gunmen. Around that same time, Luciano and his close associates started working for gambler Arnold "The Brain" Rothstein, who immediately saw the potential windfall from Prohibition and educated Luciano on running bootleg alcohol as a business. Luciano, Costello, and Genovese started their own bootlegging operation with financing from Rothstein. Rothstein served as a mentor for Luciano; among other things, Rothstein taught him how to move in high society. In 1923, Luciano was caught in a sting selling heroin to undercover agents. Although he saw no jail time, being outed as a drug peddler damaged his reputation among his high-class associates and customers. To salvage his reputation, Luciano bought 200 expensive seats to the Jack Dempsey–Luis Firpo boxing match in the Bronx and distributed them to top gangsters and politicians. Rothstein then took Luciano on a shopping trip to Wanamaker's Department Store in Manhattan to buy expensive clothes for the fight. The strategy worked, and Luciano's reputation was saved. By 1925, Luciano was grossing over $12 million per year, and made a personal income of about $4 million per year from running an illegal gambling and bootlegging operations in New York that also extended into Philadelphia. After Luciano's secret trip to Cuba, he spent the rest of his life in Italy under tight police surveillance. When he arrived in Genoa on April 11, 1947, Italian police arrested him and sent him to a jail in Palermo. On 11 May, a regional commission in Palermo warned Luciano to stay out of trouble and released him. In early July 1949, police in Rome arrested Luciano on suspicion of involvement in the shipping of narcotics to New York. On July 15, after a week in jail, police released Luciano without filing any charges. The authorities also permanently banned him from visiting Rome.

#journal #writing #writers on tumblr #lucky luciano #mob #mafia #italian mafia #followme

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fuckyeahmarxismleninism · 5 years

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U.S. slanders, attributing to Cuba supposed responsibility for the organization of popular mobilizations against neoliberalism in South America, constitute an incredible pretext, to justify and tighten the blockade and hostile policies directed against our people. Likewise, it is useless to attempt to hide the failure of the capitalist system; to protect failing, repressive governments; to cover up parliamentary, judicial and police coups; and to revive the specter of socialism to intimidate people. In doing so, the U.S. also seeks to justify repression and the criminalization of social protest.

Cuba is only responsible for the example set by our heroic people in defending our sovereignty, in resisting the most brutal and systematic aggression, in the invariable practice of solidarity and cooperation with sister nations in Latin America and the Caribbean.

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berniesrevolution · 6 years

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IN THESE TIMES

ACROSS THE COUNTRY, A NEW COHORT OF PROGRESSIVES IS RUNNING FOR—AND WINNING—ELECTIONS.

The stunning victory of democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the Democratic congressional primary in New York is perhaps the most well-known, but she is far from alone. Most of these candidates are young, more than usual are people of color, many are women, several are Muslims, at least one is a refugee, at least one is transgender—and all are unabashedly left. Most come to electoral politics after years of activism around issues like immigration, climate and racism. They come out of a wide range of social movements and support policy demands that reflect the principles of those movements: labor rights, immigrant and refugee rights, women’s and gender rights, equal access to housing and education, environmental justice, and opposition to police violence and racial profiling. Some, though certainly not all, identify not just with the policies of socialism but with the fundamental core values and indeed the name itself, usually in the form of democratic socialism.

Rashida Tlaib, a Palestinian-American woman in Detroit, just won the Democratic primary for the legendary Congressman John Conyers’ seat. Four women, two of them members of Democratic Socialists of America and all four endorsed by DSA, beat their male incumbent opponents in Pennsylvania state house primaries. Tahirah Amatul-Wadud is running an insurgent campaign for Congress against a longstanding incumbent in western Massachusetts, keeping her focus on Medicare-for-All and civil rights. Minnesota State Rep. Ilhan Omar, a former Somali refugee, won endorsement from the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, and is running for Keith Ellison’s former congressional seat as an “intersectional feminist.” And there are more.

Congressional nominee Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez shocked the Democratic political community recently after an upset win against Representative Joe Crowley in the New York Democratic primary. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Many highlight their movement experience in their campaigns; they are champions of immigrant rights, healthcare, student debt organizing and the fight for $15. Intersectionality has grown stronger, as the extremism of Trump’s right-wing racist assault creates significant new gains in linking separate movements focused on racism, women’s rights, immigrant rights, climate, poverty, labor rights and more.

But mostly, we’re not seeing progressive and socialist candidates clearly link domestic issues with efforts to challenge war, militarism and the war economy. There are a few exceptions: Congressional candidate and Hawaii State Rep. Kaniela Ing speaks powerfully about U.S. colonialism in Hawaii, and Virginia State Rep. Lee J. Carter has spoken strongly against U.S. bombing of Syria, linking current attacks with the legacy of U.S. military interventions. There may be more. But those are exceptions; most of the new left candidates focus on crucial issues of justice at home.

It’s not that progressive leaders don’t care about international issues, or that our movements are divided. Despite too many common assumptions, it is not political suicide for candidates or elected officials to stake out progressive anti-war, anti-militarism positions. Quite the contrary: Those positions actually have broad support within both our movements and public opinion. It’s just that it’s hard to figure out the strategies that work to connect internationally focused issues, anti-war efforts, or challenges to militarism, with the wide array of activists working on locally grounded issues. Some of those strategies seem like they should be easy—like talking about slashing the 53 cents of every discretionary federal dollar that now goes to the military as the easiest source to fund Medicare-for-all or free college education. It should be easy, but somehow it’s not: Too often, foreign policy feels remote from the urgency of domestic issues facing such crises. When our movements do figure out those strategies, candidates can easily follow suit.

Candidates coming out of our movements into elected office will need clear positions on foreign policy. Here are several core principles that should shape those positions.

A progressive foreign policy must reject U.S. military and economic domination and instead be grounded in global cooperation, human rights, respect for international law and privileging diplomacy over war. That does not mean isolationism, but instead a strategy of diplomatic engagement rather than—not as political cover for—destructive U.S. military interventions that have so often defined the U.S. role in the world.

Looking at the political pretexts for what the U.S. empire is doing around the world today, a principled foreign policy might start by recognizing that there is no military solution to terrorism and that the global war on terror must be ended.

More broadly, the militarization of foreign policy must be reversed and diplomacy must replace military action in every venue, with professional diplomats rather than the White House’s political appointees in charge. Aspiring and elected progressive and socialist office-holders should keep in mind the distinction between the successes and failures of Obama’s foreign policy. The victories were all diplomatic: moving towards normalization with Cuba, the Paris climate accord and especially the Iran nuclear deal. Obama’s greatest failures—in Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen—all occurred because the administration chose military action over robust diplomacy.

Certainly, diplomacy has been a tool in the arsenal of empires, including the United States. But when we are talking about official policies governing relations between countries, diplomacy—meaning talking, negotiating and engaging across a table—is always, always better than engaging across a battlefield.

A principled foreign policy must recognize how the war economy has distorted our society at home—and commit to reverse it. The $717 billion of the military budget is desperately needed for jobs, healthcare and education here at home—and for a diplomatic surge and humanitarian and reconstruction assistance to people of countries devastated by U.S. wars and sanctions.

A principled foreign policy must acknowledge how U.S. actions—military, economic and climate-related—have been a driving force in displacing people around the world. We therefore have an enormous moral as well as legal obligation to take the lead in providing humanitarian support and refuge for those displaced—so immigration and refugee rights are central to foreign policy.

For too long the power of the U.S. empire has dominated international relations, led to the privileging of war over diplomacy on a global scale, and created a vast—and invasive—network of 800-plus military bases around the world.

Now, overall U.S. global domination is actually shrinking, and not only because of Trump’s actions. China’s economy is rapidly catching up, and its economic clout in Africa and elsewhere eclipses that of the United States. It’s a measure of the United States’ waning power that Europe, Russia and China are resisting U.S. efforts to impose new global sanctions on Iran. But the United States is still the world’s strongest military and economic power: Its military spending vastly surpasses that of the eight next strongest countries, it is sponsoring a dangerous anti-Iran alliance between Israel and the wealthy Gulf Arab states, it remains central to NATO decision-making, and powerful forces in Washington threaten new wars in North Korea and Iran. The United States remains dangerous.

Progressives in Congress have to navigate the tricky task of rejecting American exceptionalism. U.S global military and economic efforts are generally aimed at maintaining domination and control. Without that U.S. domination, the possibility arises of a new kind of internationalism: to prevent and solve crises that arise from current and potential wars, to promote nuclear disarmament, to come up with climate solutions and to protect refugees.

That effort is increasingly important because of the rapid rise of right-wing xenophobic authoritarians seeking and winning power. Trump is now leading and enabling an informal global grouping of such leaders, from Egypt’s Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to Victor Orban in Hungary and others. Progressive elected officials in the United States can pose an important challenge to that authoritarian axis by building ties with their like-minded counterparts in parliaments and governments—possibilities include Jeremy Corbyn in the United Kingdom and Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico, among others. And progressive and leftist members of Congress will need to be able to work together with social movements to build public pressure for diplomatic initiatives not grounded in the interests of U.S. empire.

In addition to these broad principles, candidates and elected officials need critical analyses of current U.S. engagement around the world, as well as nuanced prescriptions for how to de-escalate militarily, and ramp up a new commitment to serious diplomacy.

GEOPOLITICAL POWER PLAYS

1. RUSSIA:

Relations with Russia will be a major challenge for the foreseeable future. With 90 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons in U.S. and Russian hands, and the two powers deploying military forces on opposite sides of active battlefronts in Syria, it is crucial that relations remain open—not least to derail potential escalations and ensure the ability to stand down from any accidental clash.

Progressives and leftists in Congress will need to promote a nuanced, careful approach to Russia policy. And they will face a daunting environment in which to do so. They will have to deal with loud cries from right-wing war-mongers, mainly Republicans, and from neo-con interventionists in both parties, demanding a one-sided anti-Russia policy focused on increased sanctions and potentially even military threats. But many moderate and liberal Democrats—and much of the media—are also joining the anti-Russia crusade. Some of those liberals and moderates have likely bought into the idea of American exceptionalism, accepting as legitimate or irrelevant the long history of U.S. election meddling around the world and viewing the Russian efforts as somehow reaching a whole different level of outrageousness. Others see the anti-Russia mobilization solely in the context of undermining Trump.

But at the same time, progressive Congress members should recognize that reports of Russian efforts to interfere with the 2016 and 2018 elections cannot be dismissed out of hand. They should continue to demand that more of the evidence be made public, and condemn the Russian meddling that has occurred, even while recognizing that the most serious threats to our elections come from voter suppression campaigns at home more than from Moscow. And they have to make clear that Trump’s opponents cannot be allowed to turn the president’s infatuation with Vladimir Putin into the basis for a new Cold War, simply to oppose Trump.

2. CHINA:

The broad frame of a progressive approach should be to end Washington’s provocative military and economic moves and encourage deeper levels of diplomatic engagement. This means replacing military threats with diplomacy in response to Chinese moves in the South China Sea, as well as significant cuts in the ramped-up military ties with U.S. allies in the region, such as Vietnam. Progressive and socialist members of Congress and other elected officials will no doubt be aware that the rise of China’s economic dominance across Africa, and its increasing influence in parts of Latin America, could endanger the independence of countries in those parts of the Global South. But they will also need to recognize that any U.S. response to what looks like Chinese exploitation must be grounded in humility, acknowledging the long history of U.S. colonial and neocolonial domination throughout those same regions. Efforts to compete with Chinese economic assistance by increasing Washington’s own humanitarian and development aid should mean directing all funds through the UN, rather than through USAID or the Pentagon. That will make U.S. assistance far less likely to be perceived as—and to be—an entry point for exploitation.

3. NATO:

A progressive position on NATO flies straight into the face of the partisan component of the anti-Trump resistance—the idea that if Trump is for it, we should be against it. For a host of bad reasons that have to do with personal enrichment and personal power, Trump sometimes takes positions that large parts of the U.S. and global anti-war and solidarity movements have long supported. One of those is NATO. During the Cold War, NATO was the European military face of U.S.-dominated Western anti-Communism and anti-Sovietism. With the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, peace activists from around the world called for the dissolution of NATO as an anachronistic relic whose raison d’etre was now gone.

Instead, NATO used its 50th anniversary in 1999 to rebrand itself as defending a set of amorphous, ostensibly “Western” values such as democracy, rather than having any identifiable enemy—something like a military version of the EU, with the United States on board for clout. Unable to win UN Security Council support for war in Kosovo, the United States and its allies used NATO to provide so-called authorization for a major bombing campaign—in complete violation of international law—and began a rapid expansion of the NATO alliance right up to the borders of Russia. Anti-war forces across the world continued to rally around the call “No to NATO”—a call to dissolve the alliance altogether.

But when Trump, however falsely, claims to call for an end to the alliance, or shows disdain for NATO, anti-Trump politicians and media lead the way in embracing the military alliance as if it really did represent some version of human rights and international law. It doesn’t—and progressives in elected positions need to be willing to call out NATO as a militarized Cold War relic that shouldn’t be reconfigured to maintain U.S. domination in Europe or to mobilize against Russia or China or anyone else. It should be ended.

In fact, Trump’s claims to oppose NATO are belied by his actions. In his 2019 budget request he almost doubled the 2017 budget for the Pentagon’s “European Deterrence Initiative,” designed explicitly as a response to “threats from Russia.” There is a huge gap between Trump’s partisan base-pleasing condemnation of NATO and his administration&rdqou;s actual support for strengthening the military alliance. That contradiction should make it easier for progressive candidates and officeholders to move to cut NATO funding and reduce its power—not because Trump is against NATO but because the military alliance serves as a dangerous provocation toward war.

THE WAR ON TERROR

What George W. Bush first called “the global war on terror” is still raging almost 17 years later, though with different forms of killing and different casualty counts. Today’s reliance on airstrikes, drone attacks and a few thousand special forces has replaced the hundreds of thousands of U.S. and allied ground troops. And today hardly any U.S. troops are being killed, while civilian casualties are skyrocketing across the Middle East and Afghanistan. Officials from the Bush, Obama and Trump administrations have repeated the mantra that “there is no military solution” in Afghanistan, Syria, or Iraq or against terrorism, but their actions have belied those words. Progressive elected officials need to consistently remind the public and their counterparts that it is not possible to bomb terrorism out of existence. Bombs don’t hit “terrorism”; they hit cities, houses, wedding parties. And on those rare occasions when they hit the people actually named on the White House’s unaccountable kill list, or “terrorist” list, the impact often creates more terrorists.

The overall progressive policy on this question means campaigning for diplomatic solutions and strategies instead of military ones. That also means joining the ongoing congressional efforts led by Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) and others to challenge the continued reliance on the 2001 and 2002 Authorizations for the Use of Military Force (AUMF).

In general, privileging diplomatic over war strategies starts with withdrawing troops and halting the arms sales that flood the region with deadly weapons. Those weapons too often end up in the hands of killers on all sides, from bands of unaccountable militants to brutally repressive governments, with civilians paying the price. Congress members should demand an end of massive arms sales to Saudi Arabia, the UAE and other U.S. allies carrying out brutal wars across the Middle East, and they should call for an end to the practice of arming non-state proxies who kill even more people. They should call for a U.S. arms embargo on Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan, Jordan and Israel (which presents a whole other set of arms-related challenges), while urging Russia to stop its arms sales to Syria, Iran and Pakistan. Given the power of the arms industries in the United States, arms embargoes are the most difficult—but perhaps the most important—part of ending the expanding Middle East wars.

Progressives in Congress should demand real support for UN-sponsored and other international peace initiatives, staffing whole new diplomatic approaches whose goal is political solutions rather than military victories—and taking funds out of military budgets to cover the costs. The goal should be to end these endless wars—not try to “win” them.

1. ISRAEL-PALESTINE:

The most important thing for candidates to know is that there has been a massive shift in public opinion in recent years. It is no longer political suicide to criticize Israel. Yes, AIPAC and the rest of the right-wing Jewish, pro-Israel lobbies remain influential and have a lot of money to throw around. (The Christian Zionist lobbies are powerful too, but there is less political difficulty for progressives to challenge them.) But there are massive shifts underway in U.S. Jewish public opinion on the conflict, and the lobbies cannot credibly claim to speak for the Jewish community as a whole.

Outside the Jewish community, the shift is even more dramatic, and has become far more partisan: Uncritical support for Israel is now overwhelmingly a Republican position. Among Democrats, particularly young Democrats, support for Israel has fallen dramatically; among Republicans, support for Israel’s far-right government is sky-high. The shift is particularly noticeable among Democrats of color, where recognition of the parallels between Israeli oppression of Palestinians and the legacies of Jim Crow segregation in the United States and apartheid in South Africa is rising rapidly.

U.S. policy, unfortunately, has not kept up with that changing discourse. But modest gains are evident even there. When nearly 60 members of the House and Senate openly skipped Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech when he came to lobby Congress to vote against President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, the sky didn’t fall. The snub to the Israeli prime minister was unprecedented, but no one lost their seat because of it. Rep. Betty McCollum’s bill to protect Palestinian children from Israel’s vicious military juvenile detention system (the only one in the world) now has 29 co-sponsors, and the sky still isn’t falling. Members of Congress are responding more frequently to Israeli assaults on Gaza and the killing of protesters, often because of powerful movements among their constituents. When Trump moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, the Israeli daily Ha’aretz acknowledged the divide: “While members of the Republican Party overwhelmingly expressed support for the move, Democrats were split between those who congratulated Trump for it and those who called it a dangerous and irresponsible action.”

That creates space for candidates and newly elected officials to respond to the growing portion of their constituencies that supports Palestinian rights. Over time, they must establish a rights-based policy. That means acknowledging that the quarter-century-long U.S.-orchestrated “peace process” based on the never-serious pursuit of a solution, has failed. Instead, left and progressive political leaders can advocate for a policy that turns over real control of diplomacy to the UN, ends support for Israeli apartheid and occupation, and instead supports a policy based on international law, human rights and equality for all, without privileging Jews or discriminating against non-Jews.

To progress from cautiously urging that Israel abide by international law, to issuing a full-scale call to end or at least reduce the $3.8 billion per year that Congress sends straight to the Israeli military, might take some time. In the meantime, progressive candidates must prioritize powerful statements condemning the massacre of unarmed protesters in Gaza and massive Israeli settlement expansion, demands for real accountability for Israeli violations of human rights and international law (including reducing U.S. support in response), and calls for an end to the longstanding U.S. protection that keeps Israel from being held accountable in the UN.

The right consistently accuses supporters of Palestinian rights of holding Israel to a double standard. Progressives in Congress should turn that claim around on them and insist that U.S. policy towards Israel—Washington’s closest ally in the region and the recipient of billions of dollars in military aid every year—hold Israel to exactly the same standards that we want the United States to apply to every other country: human rights, adherence to international law and equality for all.

Many supporters of the new crop of progressive candidates, and many activists in the movements they come out of, are supporters of the increasingly powerful, Palestinian-led BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) movement, that aims to bring non-violent economic pressure to bear on Israel until it ends its violations of international law. This movement deserves credit for helping to mainstream key demands—to end the siege of Gaza and the killing of protesters, to support investigations of Israeli violations by the International Criminal Court, to oppose Israel’s new “nation-state’ law—that should all be on lawmakers’ immediate agenda.

2. AFGHANISTAN:

More than 100,000 Afghans and 2,000 U.S. troops have been killed in a U.S. war that has raged for almost 17 years. Not-Yet-President Trump called for withdrawal from Afghanistan, but within just a few months after taking office he agreed instead to send additional troops, even though earlier deployments of more than 100,000 U.S. troops (and thousands more coalition soldiers) could not win a military victory over the Taliban. Corruption in the U.S.-backed and -funded Afghan government remains sky-high, and in just the past three years, the Pentagon has lost track of how $3.1 billion of its Afghanistan funds were spent. About 15,000 US troops are still deployed, with no hope of a military victory for the United States.

Progressive members of Congress should demand a safe withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Afghanistan, acting on the long-held recognition that military force simply won’t work to bring about the political solution all sides claim to want.

Several pending bills also would reclaim the centrality of Congress’ role in authorizing war in general and in Afghanistan in particular—including ending the 2001 AUMF. Funding for humanitarian aid, refugee support, and in the future compensation and reparations for the massive destruction the U.S.-led war has wrought across the country, should all be on Congress’ agenda, understanding that such funding will almost certainly fail while U.S. troops are deployed.

3. IRAN:

With U.S. and Iranian military forces facing each other in Syria, the potential for an unintentional escalation is sky-high. Even a truly accidental clash between a few Iranian and U.S. troops, or an Iranian anti-aircraft system mistakenly locking on to a U.S. warplane plane even if it didn’t fire, could have catastrophic consequences without immediate military-to-military and quick political echelon discussions to defuse the crisis. And with tensions very high, those ties are not routinely available. Relations became very dangerous when Trump withdrew the United States from the multi-lateral nuclear deal in May. (At that time, a strong majority of people in the United States favored the deal, and less than one in three wanted to pull out of it.)

The United States continues to escalate threats against Iran. It is sponsoring a growing regional anti-Iran alliance, with Israel and Saudi Arabia now publicly allied and pushing strongly for military action. And Trump has surrounded himself with war-mongers for his top advisers, including John Bolton and Mike Pompeo, who have both supported regime change in Iran and urged military rather than diplomatic approaches to Iran.

Given all that, what progressive elected officials need to do is to keep fighting for diplomacy over war. That means challenging U.S. support for the anti-Iran alliance and opposing sanctions on Iran. It means developing direct ties with parliamentarians from the European and other signatories to the Iran nuclear deal, with the aim of collective opposition to new sanctions, re-legitimizing the nuclear deal in Washington and reestablishing diplomacy as the basis for U.S. relations with Iran.

It should also mean developing a congressional response to the weakening of international anti-nuclear norms caused by the pull-out from the Iran deal. That means not just supporting the nonproliferation goals of the Iran nuclear deal, but moving further towards real disarmament and ultimately the abolition of nuclear weapons. Progressives in and outside of Congress should make clear that nuclear nonproliferation (meaning no one else gets to have nukes) can’t work in the long run without nuclear disarmament (meaning that the existing nuclear weapons states have to give them up). That could start with a demand for full U.S. compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which calls for negotiations leading to “nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament.”

(Continue Reading)

#politics #the left #in these times #foreign policy #imperialism #military industrial complex #military intervention #diplomacy #war on terror #Israeli Occupation #freepalestine #Russia #china #Iran nuclear deal #iran #Syrian Civil War #yemen crisis #war in syria #war in afghanistan

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xtruss · 3 years

Text

China Backs Cuba in Saying US Should Apply Sanctions to Itself

— Tom O’Connor | 26 July, 2021 | Newsweek | Anti-Empire

Labor Day, Havana, 2018

China has supported Cuba’s argument that the United States should consider applying sanctions to itself for alleged human rights abuses before taking on other countries.

Speaking Friday at a press conference in Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian asserted that his country “firmly supports the efforts of the Cuban government and people to maintain social stability” as President Joe Biden doubles down to pressure Cuba in the wake of historic protests in the island nation.

The latest measures, unveiled Thursday, included sanctions against the head of the Cuban armed forces and a division of the Interior Ministry in response to their suspected roles in cracking down on the demonstrations. The U.S. leader warned that “this is just the beginning” and that “the United States will continue to sanction individuals responsible for oppression of the Cuban people.”

Zhao lashed out against the approach the following day.

“We resolutely reject any external interference in other countries’ internal affairs, imposition of unilateral sanctions, and attempt to gang up on other countries under the pretext of ‘freedom,’ ‘democracy’ and ‘human rights,'” Zhao said.

And he referenced earlier remarks on Twitter by Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez, who dismissed the “unfounded & slanderous US gov. sanctions” and suggested that the country “should rather apply unto itself the Magnitsky Global Act for systematic repression & police brutality that took the lives of 1021 persons in 2020.”

The legislation has been used by the White House to roll out restrictions on finances and travel for individuals accused of corruption and human rights abuses. But Zhao said it was Washington that fit this bill.

“The U.S. should first and foremost examine its own human rights issues,” Zhao said, “instead of wielding the big stick of sanctions, grossly interfering in other’s internal affairs and creating division or confrontation.”

He then issued a plea for Washington to remove its decades-long trade embargo on Havana.

“China maintains that mutual respect, fairness, justice and win-win cooperation are the right way to conduct state-to-state relations,” Zhao said. “At present, Cuba is at a critical moment in its fight against COVID-19 and in its efforts to alleviate people’s suffering. The U.S. must immediately and completely lift unilateral sanctions against Cuba in compliance with the purposes of the U.N. Charter and basic norms governing international relations, and do more to improve U.S.-Cuba relations and contribute to international and regional stability.”

— Source: Newsweek

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gov-info · 7 years

Link

December 15, 2017

Press Release: "American Dream is rapidly becoming American Illusion," warns UN rights expert on poverty” [Spanish]

Full Report [English] [Spanish]

Sections:

Introduction (below)

The human rights dimension

Who are ‘the poor’?

The current extent of poverty in the US

Problems with existing policies

The undermining of democracy

An illusory emphasis on employment

Shortcomings in basic social protection

Indigenous peoples

Children in poverty

Adult dental care

Reliance on criminalization to conceal the problem

The gendered nature of poverty

Racism, disability, and demonization of the poor

Confused and counter-productive drug policie

The use of fraud as a smokescreen

Privatization

Environmental sustainability

Principal current governmental responses

Tax reform

Welfare reform

Healthcare reform

New information technologies

Coordinated entry systems

Risk assessment tools in the pre-trial phase

Access to high-speed broadband access in West Virginia

Puerto Rico

About the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights

I. Introduction

1. I have spent the past two weeks visiting the United States, at the invitation of the federal government, to look at whether the persistence of extreme poverty in America undermines the enjoyment of human rights by its citizens. In my travels through California, Alabama, Georgia, Puerto Rico, West Virginia, and Washington DC I have spoken with dozens of experts and civil society groups, met with senior state and federal government officials and talked with many people who are homeless or living in deep poverty. I am grateful to the Trump Administration for facilitating my visit and for its continuing cooperation with the UN Human Rights Council’s accountability mechanisms that apply to all states.

2. My visit coincides with a dramatic change of direction in US policies relating to inequality and extreme poverty. The proposed tax reform package stakes out America’s bid to become the most unequal society in the world, and will greatly increase the already high levels of wealth and income inequality between the richest 1% and the poorest 50% of Americans. The dramatic cuts in welfare, foreshadowed by the President and Speaker Ryan, and already beginning to be implemented by the administration, will essentially shred crucial dimensions of a safety net that is already full of holes. It is against this background that my report is presented.

3. The United States is one of the world’s richest, most powerful and technologically innovative countries; but neither its wealth nor its power nor its technology is being harnessed to address the situation in which 40 million people continue to live in poverty.

4. I have seen and heard a lot over the past two weeks. I met with many people barely surviving on Skid Row in Los Angeles, I witnessed a San Francisco police officer telling a group of homeless people to move on but having no answer when asked where they could move to, I heard how thousands of poor people get minor infraction notices which seem to be intentionally designed to quickly explode into unpayable debt, incarceration, and the replenishment of municipal coffers, I saw sewage filled yards in states where governments don’t consider sanitation facilities to be their responsibility, I saw people who had lost all of their teeth because adult dental care is not covered by the vast majority of programs available to the very poor, I heard about soaring death rates and family and community destruction wrought by prescription and other drug addiction, and I met with people in the South of Puerto Rico living next to a mountain of completely unprotected coal ash which rains down upon them bringing illness, disability and death.

5. Of course, that is not the whole story. I also saw much that is positive. I met with State and especially municipal officials who are determined to improve social protection for the poorest 20% of their communities, I saw an energized civil society in many places, I visited a Catholic Church in San Francisco (St Boniface – the Gubbio Project) that opens its pews to the homeless every day between services, I saw extraordinary resilience and community solidarity in Puerto Rico, I toured an amazing community health initiative in Charleston (West Virginia) that serves 21,000 patients with free medical, dental, pharmaceutical and other services, overseen by local volunteer physicians, dentists and others (WV Health Right), and indigenous communities presenting at a US-Human Rights Network conference in Atlanta lauded Alaska’s advanced health care system for indigenous peoples, designed with direct participation of the target group.

6. American exceptionalism was a constant theme in my conversations. But instead of realizing its founders’ admirable commitments, today’s United States has proved itself to be exceptional in far more problematic ways that are shockingly at odds with its immense wealth and its founding commitment to human rights. As a result, contrasts between private wealth and public squalor abound.

7. In talking with people in the different states and territories I was frequently asked how the US compares with other states. While such comparisons are not always perfect, a cross-section of statistical comparisons provides a relatively clear picture of the contrast between the wealth, innovative capacity, and work ethic of the US, and the social and other outcomes that have been attained.

By most indicators, the US is one of the world’s wealthiest countries. It spends more on national defense than China, Saudi Arabia, Russia, United Kingdom, India, France, and Japan combined.

US health care expenditures per capita are double the OECD average and much higher than in all other countries. But there are many fewer doctors and hospital beds per person than the OECD average.

US infant mortality rates in 2013 were the highest in the developed world.

Americans can expect to live shorter and sicker lives, compared to people living in any other rich democracy, and the “health gap” between the U.S. and its peer countries continues to grow.

U.S. inequality levels are far higher than those in most European countries

Neglected tropical diseases, including Zika, are increasingly common in the USA. It has been estimated that 12 million Americans live with a neglected parasitic infection. A 2017 report documents the prevalence of hookworm in Lowndes County, Alabama.

The US has the highest prevalence of obesity in the developed world.

In terms of access to water and sanitation the US ranks 36th in the world.

America has the highest incarceration rate in the world, ahead of Turkmenistan, El Salvador, Cuba, Thailand and the Russian Federation. Its rate is nearly 5 times the OECD average.

The youth poverty rate in the United States is the highest across the OECD with one quarter of youth living in poverty compared to less than 14% across the OECD.

The Stanford Center on Inequality and Poverty ranks the most well-off countries in terms of labor markets, poverty, safety net, wealth inequality, and economic mobility. The US comes in last of the top 10 most well-off countries, and 18th amongst the top 21.

In the OECD the US ranks 35th out of 37 in terms of poverty and inequality.

According to the World Income Inequality Database, the US has the highest Gini rate (measuring inequality) of all Western Countries

The Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality characterizes the US as “a clear and constant outlier in the child poverty league.” US child poverty rates are the highest amongst the six richest countries – Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Sweden and Norway.

About 55.7% of the U.S. voting-age population cast ballots in the 2016 presidential election. In the OECD, the U.S. placed 28th in voter turnout, compared with an OECD average of 75%. Registered voters represent a much smaller share of potential voters in the U.S. than just about any other OECD country. Only about 64% of the U.S. voting-age population (and 70% of voting-age citizens) was registered in 2016, compared with 91% in Canada (2015) and the UK (2016), 96% in Sweden (2014), and nearly 99% in Japan (2014).

About the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights: Professor Philip Alston is the current Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights. The Special Rapporteur is an independent expert appointed by the Human Rights Council and undertakes the following main tasks: (1) conducting research and analysis to be presented in separate thematic reports to the Human Rights Council and the General Assembly; (2) undertaking country visits and reporting on the situation in those countries in relation to the concerns of the mandate; (3) sending letters to governments and other relevant entities in situations in which violations of human rights of people living in extreme poverty are alleged to have taken place.

The mandate on extreme poverty was first established in 1998 by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, and was taken over by the Human Rights Council in June 2006. It is one of a number of mandates that together form what is known as the United Nations system of special procedures. For more information on those procedures see: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/SP/Pages/Welcomepage.aspx

#un #economics #taxes #asap

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yessadirichards · 4 years

Photo

Deaths pass 1,900 in New York; Cuomo calls those who won't stay at home 'selfish NEW YORK

New York authorities rushed to bring in an army of medical volunteers Wednesday as the statewide death toll from the coronavirus doubled in 72 hours to more than 1,900 and the wail of ambulances in the otherwise eerily quiet streets of the city became the heartbreaking soundtrack of the crisis.

As hot spots flared around the U.S. in places like New Orleans and Southern California, the nation's biggest city was the hardest hit of them all, with bodies loaded onto refrigerated morgue trucks by gurney and forklift outside overwhelmed hospitals, in full view of passing motorists.

”It’s like a battlefield behind your home," said 33-year-old Emma Sorza, who could hear the sirens from severely swamped Elmhurst Hospital in Queens.

And the worst is yet to come.

“How does it end? And people want answers," New York Gov Andrew Cuomo said. "I want answers. The answer is nobody knows for sure.”

Cuomo cracked down even harder on public gatherings in the face of the coronavirus, calling residents who disregarded stay-at-home rules "selfish." He told New York City police to more aggressively enforce rules for social distancing as deaths in the state shot up to nearly 2,000.

"Young people must get this message, and they still have not gotten the message, you still see too many situations with too much density by young people," said Cuomo, who said models showed the outbreak worsening until the end of April.

Cuomo said he was closing playgrounds, swing sets, basketball courts and similar spaces, while open spaces in parks would remain open for now.

People can still use wide-open green spaces as long as they stay 6 feet apart. Police went around in patrol cars, blaring warnings to obey the rules.

Cuomo sounded vexed by reports of crowds gathering at a Manhattan pier to watch the arrival of the U.S. Navy hospital ship, the Comfort.

"How reckless and irresponsible and selfish for people not to do it on their own," Cuomo said.

Stocks tumbled on Wall Street and markets around the world, a day after President Donald Trump warned Americans to brace for “one of the roughest two or three weeks we’ve ever had in our country," with 100,000 to 240,000 deaths projected in the U.S. before the crisis is over. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost more than 970 points, or over 4%.

Under growing pressure, Florida Gov Ron DeSantis belatedly joined his counterparts in more than 30 states in issuing a statewide stay-home order, taking action after conferring with fellow Republican Trump. The governors of Pennsylvania and Nevada, both Democrats, took similar steps. Mississippi's GOP governor was expected to follow suit.

The U.S. recorded about 200,000 infections and about 4,400 deaths, with New York City accounting for about 1 out of 4 dead.

More than 80,000 people have volunteered as medical reinforcements in New York, including recent retirees, health care professionals taking a break from their regular jobs and people between gigs.

Few have made it into the field yet, as authorities vet them and figure out how to use them, but hospitals are expected to begin bringing them in later this week.

Those who have hit the ground already, many brought in by staffing agencies, have discovered a hospital system being driven to the breaking point.

“It’s hard when you lose patients. It’s hard when you have to tell the family members: ‘I’m sorry, but we did everything that we could,’” said nurse Katherine Ramos, of Cape Coral, Florida, who has been working at New York Presbyterian Hospital. "It’s even harder when we really don’t have the time to mourn, the time to talk about this.”

To ease the crushing caseload, the city's paramedics have been told they shouldn’t take fatal heart attack victims to hospitals to have them pronounced dead. Patients have been transferred to the Albany area. A Navy hospital ship has docked in New York, the mammoth Javits Convention Center has been turned into a hospital, and the tennis center that hosts the U.S. Open is being converted to one, too.

With New York on near-lockdown, the normally bustling streets in the city of 8.6 million are empty, and sirens are no longer easily ignored as just urban background noise.

“After 9/11, I remember we actually wanted to hear the sound of ambulances on our quiet streets because that meant there were survivors, but we didn't hear those sounds, and it was heartbreaking. Today, I hear an ambulance on my strangely quiet street and my heart breaks, too,” said 61-year-old Meg Gifford, a former Wall Streeter who lives on Manhattan's Upper East Side.

Nearly 6,200 New York City police officers, or one-sixth of the department, were out sick Wednesday, including about 4,800 who reported flu-like systems, though it was not clear how many had the virus.

Cuomo said projections suggest the crisis in New York will peak at the end of April, with a high death rate continuing through July.

“Let's cooperate to address that in New York because it's going to be in your town tomorrow," he warned. "If we learn how to do it right here — or learn how to do it the best we can, because there is no right, it's only the best we can — then we can work cooperatively all across this country.”

Elsewhere around the country, the number of dead in Louisiana was put at more than 270. In Southern California, officials reported that at least 51 residents and six staff members at a single nursing home east of Los Angeles have been infected and two have died.

Florida's DeSantis was locked in a standoff over whether two cruise ships with sick and dead passengers may dock in his state. More than 300 U.S. citizens were on board. Two deaths were blamed on the virus, and nine people tested positive, Holland America cruise line said.

DeSantis, who is close to Trump, said the state's health system is stretched too thin to accommodate the passengers. But the president said he would speak with him. “They're dying on the ship,” Trump said. “I'm going to do what's right. Not only for us, but for humanity.”

Meanwhile, European nations facing extraordinary demand for intensive-care beds are putting up makeshift hospitals, unsure whether they will find enough healthy medical staff to run them. London is days away from unveiling a 4,000-bed temporary hospital built in a huge convention center.

In a remarkable turnabout, rich economies where virus cases have exploded are welcoming help from less wealthy ones. Russia sent medical equipment and masks to the United States. Cuba supplied doctors to France. Turkey dispatched protective gear and disinfectant to Italy and Spain.

Worldwide, more than 900,000 people have been infected and over 45,000 have died, according to a tally kept by Johns Hopkins University, though the real figures are believed to be much higher because of testing shortages, differences in counting the dead and large numbers of mild cases that have gone unreported.

Even as the virus appears to have slowed its growth in overwhelmed Italy and in China, where it first emerged, hospitals on the Continent are buckling under the load.

"It feels like we are in a Third World country. We don't have enough masks, enough protective equipment, and by the end of the week we might be in need of more medication too,” said Paris emergency worker Christophe Prudhomme.

Spain reported a record 864 deaths in one day, for a total of more than 9,000, while France registered an unprecedented 509 and more than 4,000 in all. In Italy, with over 13,000 dead, the most of any country, morgues overflowed with bodies, caskets piled up in churches, and doctors were forced to decide which desperately ill patients would get breathing machines.

India’s highest court ordered news media and social media sites to carry the government’s “official version” of developments, echoing actions taken in other countries to curb independent reporting.

The strain facing some of the world's best health care systems has been aggravated by hospital budget cuts over the past decade in Italy, Spain, France and Britain. They have called in medical students, retired doctors and even laid-off flight attendants with first aid training.

The staffing shortage has been worsened by the high numbers of infected personnel. In Italy alone, nearly 10,000 medical workers have contracted the virus and more than 60 doctors have died.

For most people, the coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough. But for others, especially older adults and people with health problems, it can cause severe symptoms like pneumonia.

China, where the outbreak began late last year, on Wednesday reported just 36 new COVID-19 cases.

#yessadirichards

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kileyrae · 7 years

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What’s going on? I don’t know how to blog anymore.

The Trump administration ended DACA. It’s now in the hands of Congress, but Trump tweeted (yes, tweeted) that he will “revisit” issue if Congress doesn't legalize DACA in six months. You can donate to help some Dreamers whose permits are expiring prior to March 5, 2018 here.

Hurricane Irma is now a Category 5 storm and is predicted to affect the Caribbean (Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Cuba, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Bahamas, Turks and Caicos) and Florida causing potentially catastrophic damage.

Rohingya, a Muslim ethnic minority, are fleeing Myanmar into Bangladesh with “stories of systematic rape, murder, and arson they escaped.” The Guardian has a good intro to the ongoing conflict here.

The North Korea situation continues to escalate. Trump meanwhile is planning to end trade deal with South Korea and calling them out on Twitter because ????

The La Tuna fire is now 70% contained according to officials.

Eagle Creek Fire: “Officials believe the teen and others may have been using fireworks that started the forest fire. Police made contact with the teen in the parking lot of the Eagle Creek Trailhead, and he is cooperating with police.” Potential ways to help those affected here.

Flooding in South Asia (India, Nepal, Bangladesh) has caused more than a thousand deaths so far this year.

Over 100,000 people have been displaced in Nigeria due to flooding.

The U.S. Justice Department confirmed on Friday that neither they nor the FBI has any evidence that the Obama administration wiretapped Trump Tower during the 2016 presidential campaign despite Trump’s tweet in March.

#donald trump #daca #hurrican irma #rohingya #myanmar #la tuna fire #eagle creek fire #south asia #south asia floods #climate change #trump tower #president obama #politics #news #world news

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newstfionline · 4 years

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Headlines

WHO Issues Warning As Daily Caseload Grows (Foreign Policy) As dense crowds of protesters gather around the world, and New Zealand announces a return to life as usual, it’s easy to forget that a pandemic is still raging. On Monday, the WHO recorded the largest daily increase in new coronavirus cases since the pandemic began, 136,000 in total; 75 percent of new cases came from just ten countries, mostly in the Americas and South Asia.

Stress is skyrocketing among the middle-aged (Marketwatch) If you’re middle-aged and you’re thinking, “I don’t remember everyone being this angry and miserable 20 or 30 years ago,” you’re not wrong. A recent study confirms what many people in later middle age already feel: We really are much more stressed than middle-aged people were back in the 1990s. The good news? As we get older our levels of stress will go down again. We’ll be happier in retirement than we are in our 40s and 50s, even with health issues. Older people experience fewer stressors and are able to cope with them better, says David Almeida, a psychologist and professor of human development at Pennsylvania State University. Meanwhile, the simplest answer is to move more. “My advice to people is to move when you are exposed to stress,” he says. “Moving, physical activity, is probably the best stress reducer.”

After Protests, Politicians Reconsider Police Budgets and Discipline (NYT) In an abrupt change of course, the mayor of New York vowed to cut the budget of the nation’s largest police force. In Los Angeles, the mayor called for redirecting millions of dollars from policing after protesters gathered outside his home. And in Minneapolis, City Council members pledged to dismantle their police force and completely reinvent how public safety is handled. As tens of thousands of people have demonstrated against police violence over the past two weeks, calls have emerged in cities across the country for fundamental changes to American policing. The pleas for change have taken a variety of forms—including measures to restrict police use of military-style equipment and efforts to require officers to face strict discipline in cases of misconduct. Parks, universities and schools have distanced themselves from local police departments, severing contracts. In some places, the calls for change have gone still further, aiming to abolish police departments, shift police funds into social services or defund police departments partly or entirely.

U.N. General Assembly won’t meet in person for first time in 75-year history (Washington Post) For the first time in the United Nations’ 75-year history, world leaders won’t convene in New York for the annual U.N. General Assembly meeting this September. U.N. General Assembly President Tijjani Muhammad-Bande explained Monday that an in-person gathering during the coronavirus pandemic would be impossible because world leaders typically travel with large delegations of aides and security personnel, making it hard to keep the numbers of attendees at events low. “A president doesn’t travel alone, leaders don’t travel alone,” he said. The session will instead take place remotely, though U.N. officials have yet to say exactly what that might look like.

Mexico’s Leader Rejects Big Spending to Ease Virus’s Sting (NYT) Across the globe, governments have rushed to pump cash into flailing economies, hoping to stave off the pandemic’s worst financial fallout. They have mustered trillions of dollars for stimulus measures to keep companies afloat and employees on the payroll. The logic: When the pandemic finally passes, economies will not have to start from scratch to bounce back. In Mexico, no such rescue effort has come. The pandemic could lead to an economic reckoning worse than anything Mexico has seen in perhaps a century. More jobs were lost in April than were created in all of 2019. A recent report by a government agency said as many as 10 million people could fall into poverty this year. Yet most economists estimate that Mexico will increase spending only slightly. Hostile toward bailouts, loath to take on public debt and deeply mistrustful of most business leaders, Mexico’s president has opted largely to sit tight.

Cuba almost coronavirus free (Foreign Policy) Cuba—a country that prides itself on its health system—has almost vanquished its coronavirus epidemic, according to official data. It has recently averaged less than ten cases per day and on Monday went nine consecutive days without a reported death from COVID-19. “We could be shortly closing in on the tail end of the pandemic and entering the phase of recovery from COVID,” President Miguel Diaz-Canel said over the weekend.

Spain makes masks mandatory until coronavirus defeated (Reuters) Wearing masks in public will remain mandatory in Spain after the country’s state of emergency ends on June 21 until a cure or vaccine for the coronavirus is found, Health Minister Salvador Illa said on Tuesday.

This round’s on us, says Malta (Reuters) Residents of Malta will be given $112 vouchers by the government to spend in bars, hotels and restaurants in an effort to revitalize the tourist industry. Tourism accounts for a quarter of the Mediterranean island’s GDP but it has been at a standstill since mid-March when flights were stopped during the coronavirus emergency. Flights to a small number of countries will resume on July 1 but they exclude big tourism source markets Britain and Italy.

Russia rejects Iran embargo (Foreign Policy) Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov has called for “universal condemnation” of the U.S. campaign to pass a permanent arms embargo on Iran through the United Nations Security Council. In a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, Lavrov called the U.S. attempt to hold Iran to the confines of the Iran deal while the United States had already broken the deal was “ridiculous and irresponsible.”

Moscow’s strict coronavirus lockdown turns lax overnight (Washington Post) In a sudden about-face from one of the world’s strictest coronavirus lockdowns, Moscow dramatically eased restrictions Tuesday, abolishing the city’s digital-pass system for travel and allowing salons and most other nonessential businesses to open. Schedules for when Muscovites were allowed outside based on their address have also been done away with after just one week. Restaurants and cafes will be allowed to serve people on verandas starting June 16 and nearly all restrictions will be lifted by June 23—the day before Russia’s rescheduled Victory Day parade on Moscow’s Red Square. The city’s walk schedules and requirements for wearing face masks outside have increasingly been ignored by residents, and Moscow authorities might have been feeling the pressure from small businesses that have been closed since late March with little government aid to sustain them.

Tracking the origin of the coronavirus outbreak (Daily Telegraph) Coronavirus may have broken out in the Chinese city of Wuhan much earlier than previously thought, according to a new US study looking at satellite imagery and internet searches. The Harvard Medical School research found that the number of cars parked at major Wuhan hospitals at points last autumn was much higher than the preceding year. It also found that searches from the Wuhan region for information on “cough” and “diarrhea”, known Covid-19 symptoms, on the Chinese search engine Baidu spiked around the same time. It has led researchers to suggest that the outbreak began much earlier than December 31, the date the Chinese government notified the World Health Organization of the outbreak.

North Korea cuts off all communication with South Korea (AP) North Korea said it was cutting off all communication channels with South Korea on Tuesday, a move experts say could signal Pyongyang has grown frustrated that Seoul has failed to revive lucrative inter-Korean economic projects and persuade the United States to ease sanctions. The North’s Korean Central News Agency said all cross-border communication lines would be cut off at noon in the “the first step of the determination to completely shut down all contact means with South Korea and get rid of unnecessary things.” North Korea has cut communications in the past—not replying to South Korean phone calls or faxes—and then restored those channels when tensions eased.

The Palestinian Plan to Stop Annexation: Remind Israel What Occupation Means (NYT) Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel is pressing for annexation in conjunction with the Trump administration’s peace plan, which at least ostensibly contemplates an autonomous Palestinian entity as part of what it calls a “realistic two-state solution.” Mr. Netanyahu has vowed to annex up to 30 percent of the West Bank, and could do so as early as next month. But to the Palestinians, annexation flouts the ban on unilateral land grabs agreed to in the Oslo Accords in the 1990s, and would steal much of the territory they have counted on for a state. For that reason, they say it would kill all hope of a two-state solution to the conflict. In response to the annexation plan, Mr. Abbas renounced the Palestinians’ commitments under the Oslo agreements last month, including on security cooperation with Israel. The strategy aims to remind the Israelis of the burdens they would assume if the Palestinian Authority disbanded, and to demonstrate that they are willing to let the authority collapse if annexation comes to pass. The Palestinian Authority says it will cut the salaries of tens of thousands of its own clerks and police officers. It will slash vital funding to the impoverished Gaza Strip. And it will try any Israeli citizens or Arab residents of Jerusalem arrested on the West Bank in Palestinian courts instead of handing them over to Israel.

#headlines #news

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aspiringjournalistworld · 5 years

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The Fall of Democracy:Are Western Democracies becoming autocracies? ‘Focusing on The United States’

“History used to be told as the story of great men. Julius Caesar, George Washington, Napoléon Bonaparte, Adolf Hitler-individual leaders, both famous and infamous, were thought to drive events. But then it became fashionable to tell the same stories in terms of broader structural forces, raw calculations of national power, economic interdependence, or ideological waves. Leaders came to be seen as just vehicles for other more important factors, their personalities and predilections essentially irrelevant. What mattered were not great men or women but great forces.”

The World is becoming less democratic

In its 2018 annual report, Freedom House noted that since 2006, 113 countries saw a net decline in freedom, and for 12 consecutive years, global freedom declined.

Source: Freedom House

Western governments across Europe and North America are experiencing a recession in their democratic liberalism norms. On the one hand, Political extremes could be regarded as the cause of this trend. Both the far left and the far right are, according to this view, willing to ride over democratic institutions to achieve radical change. Moderates, by contrast, are assumed to defend liberal democracy, its principles and institutions. On the other hand, ineffective governance, economic inequality, socio-cultural upheaval, and identity-based struggles that have resulted in the rise of populist movements both on the left and right of the ideological spectrum, (some of which have authoritarian tendencies), could be another cause of this backsliding.

According to the previous notion, we find out that all Centrists seem to prefer strong and efficient government over messy democratic politics. This important finding stresses the fact that authoritarianism can have a strong and inevitable effect on all parties in guiding their ideology.

Source: World Values Survey/ European Values Survey/ The New York Times

The rising danger to democracy as a global phenomenon takes center stage in Larry Diamond’s book. “In every region of the world,” he writes, “autocrats are seizing the initiative, democrats are on the defensive, and the space for competitive politics and free expression is shrinking.” It is now obvious that mature democracies are becoming increasingly polarized, intolerant, and dysfunctional. Emerging democratic states are sliding into corruption, struggling for legitimacy, and fighting against growing external threats. Authoritarian leaders are simultaneously becoming more repressive at home, more aggressive abroad, and more convinced that they are sailing with the wind at their back.

The United States

While the U.S. had the fifth-highest democracy score in 2012, its score had fallen to 31st place five years later. Indexes from both V-Dem and Freedom House have downgraded U.S. democracy scores sharply since 2016, due to the possible foreign election interference, a reduction of government transparency, weakening legislative constraints on the executive, a decline in the range of media perspectives and other decreases in election fairness.

Source: Freedom House

For the United States, it’s hard to know what kind of foreign policy Americans want today. What we are witnessing today from Donald Trump is a kind of a vacant diplomacy. In addition, the United States is going to do whatever it takes to enforce the notion of “America First”. Even if that means backing authoritarian allies, no matter how repressive and corrupt they are. In fact, the U.S. President has celebrated his “great relationship” with Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, who designed a deadly anti-crime campaign that has attracted criticism at home and abroad. For Trump, it is important to be an ally with him as The Philippines host U.S. military bases that help combat terrorism and contain China. The same happens with Egypt, who is a key player in maintaining peace in the region and helps the U.S. in countering terrorism. And obviously with Saudi Arabia, who provides the U.S. with millions of dollars in exchange with arms used against the Iranian threat. As a liberal democratic country, its duty is to promote and raise human rights concerns, support advocates for freedom and accountability, and encourage gradual political reform. It is important to point out to the fact that when Washington blindly backs these kinds of regimes, it often ends badly both for their people and for the Americans, like what happened with Anastasio Somoza and Shah of Iran.

The United States and Saudi Arabia

America has a history of allying with bad actors to effect change in other countries, for instance, the historical relationships with authoritarian regimes in Nicaragua, Guatemala, Cuba, Iran and Pakistan. It is claimed that such cooperation is to serve the national interest. And now with the Trump administration, we are witnessing how the US President embraces the MBS as a close ally. Early, the Trump administration made Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman the centerpiece of their anti-Iran campaign. His decision was not affected by the MBS’s repressive actions; whether when he ordered the killing of the Saudi Journalist Jamal Khashoggi, or the fact that he is behind the humanitarian crisis of the Saudi-led coalition and blockades in Yemen. Instead, he is frank about what he sees in him. He said that the Saudis have been a great ally, they spent $400 billion in his country over the last number of years. When talking about the American arms sales to the Saudis, Trump told reporters, "It's America First for me. It's all about America First. We're not going to give up hundreds of billions of dollars in orders, and let Russia, China, and everybody else have them ... military equipment and other things from Russia and China. ... I'm not going to destroy the economy for our country by being foolish with Saudi Arabia."

To sum up, Democracy is under threat, it is slipping away in the countries that are supposed to promote and protect its values from the autocratic nations, who are imposing their ill-fitted norms on the international system. Candidates from Europe and North America are becoming more authoritarian, party systems are more volatile, and citizens are more hostile to the norms and institutions of liberal democracy.The struggle today is not the same as it was during the Cold War, but it is clear that ideology is playing a major role between democratic and authoritarian systems now compared to to the past three decades.The United States, which is known as the leader of the free world, is questioned nowadays in its polices and ideological directions. It is irrational to have an American President, who is expected to protect the democratic values, to be himself praising dictators from all over the world. Consequently, that raises the following questions “To what extent an executive leader can go in order to achieve the national interest?” Is it more important for a politician to hold onto diplomatic ties that goes against the values of his/her country or to get rid of them for the sake of such values?

References

Byman, Daniel and Pollack, Kenneth. “Beyond Great Forces: How Individuals Still Shape History”. Foreign Affairs, November/December, 2019. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2019-10-15/beyond-great-forces?fbclid=IwAR1QVI78_yb23LMVE7xxlEZApFoOPL8IMPBaYvhazgKllvg6x7DG0Mfv1Ms.

Edel, Charles. “Democracy Is Fighting For Its Life”. Foreign Policy, September 10, 2019. https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/09/10/democracy-is-fighting-for-its-life/?fbclid=IwAR1_-H4yrkg8N3Sbfs6raL-ZdH_GFx1JTfC7te6gnKWNS162jgRgOa8IUZk. ➢ Adler, David. “ Centrists Are the Most Hostile to Democracy, Not Extremists". The New York Times, May 23, 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/05/23/opinion/international-world/centrists-democracy.html

Leatherby, Lauren and Rojanasakul, Mira. ‘’Elected Leaders Are Making The World Less Democratic’’. Bloomberg, July 23, 2018. https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-democracy-decline/?fbclid=IwAR1QPrqt-tCENtZEr-4O7Y4Q0R4WcBxlmvxGUBd0FDip-c8H9hZq9SOp8mg.

Marshall, Will. ‘‘How Democrats Can Replace Trump’s Failing Foreign Policy’’. The Daily Beast, February 11, 2019. https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-democrats-can-replace-trumps-failing-foreign-policy?ref=scroll.

Diamond, Larry. “America’s Silence Helps Autocrats”. Foreign Policy, September 6, 2019. https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/09/06/americas-silence-helps-autocrats-triumph-democratic-rollback-recession-larry-diamond-ill-winds/

Lavine, Howard and Ron, James. “To Protect Human Rights Abroad, Preach to Trump Voters”. Foreign Policy, August 21, 2019. https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/08/21/to-protect-human-rights-abroad-preach-to-trump-voters-dictators-authoritarianism-ethnocentrism

Free Thoughts Podcast, ‘‘America’s Authoritarian Alliances,’’ Oct 23, 2015, https://www.libertarianism.org/media/free-thoughts/americas-authoritarian-alliances.

Collinson, Stephen. ‘‘The World Is Learning The Price Of Friendship With Donald Trump’’. CNN, October 2, 2019. https://edition.cnn.com/2019/10/02/world/meanwhile-oct-2-intl/index.html.

Bergen, Peter. ‘‘A year later, what Khashoggi's murder says about Trump's close ally’’. CNN, September 30, 2019.https://edition.cnn.com/2019/09/30/opinions/khashoggi-murder-a-year-later-mbs-bergen/index.html.

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fuckyeahmarxismleninism · 6 years

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May Day 2018 - Baltimore

Tuesday, May 1 - 5:30 to 7:30 pm

Gather at McKeldin Square, 101 E. Pratt Street, Baltimore, MD (corner of Pratt & Light Sts.)

Hosted by Peoples Power Assembly

We will be gathering @ McKeldin for a brief rally 5:30 pm and marching to several locations to underscore the following issues and demands: OUR DEMANDS ON MAY DAY 2018 WORKERS RIGHTS NOW! We demand decent wages and a $15 minimum wage NOW!; Support teachers and striking workers; Defend workers rights to unionize including prisoners; No Janus; Decriminalize sex work; No privatization of postal services; Support postal workers and community demands for postal banking; Jobs program for all! END RACISM AND POLICE TERROR -- Disband and abolish the corrupt Baltimore Police Department; End cooperation with Israeli companies and the IDF; Divest from the police and prisons, invest in schools; No private police at Johns Hopkins University END THE ATTACKS ON IMMIGRANTS & MUSLIMS! End ICE raids and deportations; Permanent protection, dignity & respect for all migrants; Support restoration of DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) JOBS, NOT WAR! Say No to U.S. Imperialism; U.S. Out of the Middle East; Africa; Asia, the Global South and the Caribbean; No war on Syria, Korea, Venezuela, Russia or China; close all U.S. military bases around the world; return Guantanamo to Cuba. FUND PUBLIC EDUCATION -- Fund public schools; $3 billion to Baltimore City in the form of racial equity block grants; equal funding for HBCU (Historic Black Colleges and Universities) in Maryland; Make education affordable to all, cancel college student debt; community control (student, teachers, parents) of Baltimore schools. END VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN, THE TRANS COMMUNITY & OPPRESSED GENDERS -- An end to rape culture and violence against women, trans people and the LGBTQ community; end police attacks on trans and LGBTQ community. HEALTH CARE FOR ALL -- This includes free and on demand community focused addiction treatment and decriminalization of drugs; Medicare for all; No privatization of water, instead roll back rates and declare a moratorium on shut-offs: no gas & electric shut offs; affordable nutritious food for all communities. DECENT HOUSING FIT HUMAN BEINGS IS A RIGHT -- No privatization of public housing; Moratorium on evictions, roll back rents; . TRANSPORTATION IS A RIGHT -- SINK THE LINK -- Free accessible transportation for all; restore and expand bus routes; Decent transportation for all communities -- end the apartheid MTA system; community, riders and union control of transit. (If you are unable to physically March, transportation will be provided). Call 443-221-3775

#MayDay2018 #Baltimore #protest #workers #BlackLivesMatter #antiwar #NoBanNoWallNoRaids #migrants #solidarity #SinkTheLink #PPA

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chicagotinyhouse · 5 years

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Please help people in need

Micki Denis prepares the bed in the car she lives in at Lake Washington United Methodist Church’s parking lot in Kirkland, Wash., on Sunday, Oct. 13, 2019. Lindsey Wasson, for the Deseret News SALT LAKE CITY — When Micki Denis first moved to Seattle, she tried to find a studio apartment she could afford — nothing fancy, just a warm room for sleeping and a small kitchen so she could have her son over for dinner. Instead, the mother of five and grandmother of 14 is sleeping in her car, a 2007 Toyota FJ Cruiser. She is not alone. Each night, Denis shares a parking lot outside a Methodist church with as many as 50 cars, vans and trucks, some housing entire families. In the morning, kids spill out and go into the church to get ready for school. But Denis — the 64-year-old cousin of U.S. Senator Marco Rubio and sister of a Nevada state senator — wakes up each day in disbelief that this is her life now. She lived in nice homes for decades, until her divorce in 2003. From 2005-07, she served a mission in Florida and El Salvador for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Just last summer, she traveled around Europe. Coming from Utah, where despite rising rental costs Denis could live on a variety of part-time jobs — like being an interpreter for a school district and a cafeteria cashier at her church’s Salt Lake Temple — she was shocked by the Seattle-area housing market. She found a part-time job to supplement a pension and Social Security, but it’s not enough. “I thought I could get something for about $700, a nice studio, but I can’t. I don’t know what’s going on here,” Denis said. What’s going on is that low- to moderate-income Americans who don’t own their own homes are being hammered by skyrocketing rents, stagnant wages and a shortage of affordable housing. Applicants for subsidized housing face years on a waiting list. Those in need of emergency shelter find beds are often full while people sleep in the streets. No state has an adequate supply of affordable rental housing, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, which recently released a report that examined the increasing gap between wages and rent. The coalition found that rental costs are rising faster than wages, and that, on average, a worker earning the federal minimum wage would have to work 103 hours a week to afford a one-bedroom apartment. In some communities, it’s worse than that. In King County, where Denis now lives, a worker needs an income of more than $62,000 to afford a one-bedroom apartment, compared to $46,548 for all of Washington state, the report said. This has driven Denis and thousands of other Americans to live in their vehicles, many of them from vulnerable groups like children and seniors. This solves one problem but creates others — like where to park at night and how to maintain hygiene. Cities and municipalities where they stay face unsavory choices. Should they accommodate the “vehicular homeless” with relaxed laws and safe parking lots, or try to legislate them away? California is considering legislation that would require its largest cities to provide parking for people living in their vehicles. But in the meantime, faith groups and nonprofits are stepping up to help, even when neighbors say “not on my street.” ‘Completely un-affordable’ As darkness envelops the parking lot at Lake Washington United Methodist Church in Kirkland, Washington, a suburb of Seattle, Denis prepares for another cold evening near Crissy Norton, a mother of three who has two vehicles in which to house her family. Norton, who is 26, is here at the church’s “safe lot” with her common-law husband, Matt, and their girls, who are 6, 3 and 1. They sleep in two vehicles: a Honda they own and a Ford F-150 truck they borrowed from a friend. They also have a Volkswagen Jetta that doesn’t run, but is good for storing clothes, blankets and toys. The family’s troubles began when Matt lost his job just before Christmas in 2017. “We struggled for a year to pay rent with odd jobs, but finding him one was tough. Last Christmas, we finally couldn’t do it and got evicted. We stayed with some friends in the winter, but come summer, we had to leave, and since then, it has been truck living,” Crissy Norton said. The family’s struggles, however, have been a little easier thanks to a ministry of Lake Washington United Methodist Church, a 200-member congregation that decided in 2011 to put its often-empty parking lot to good use. The church established a “Safe Parking” zone where people can sleep in their vehicles without fear of being harassed, interrogated or ordered to move. Volunteers come to the church early in the morning so school-aged children can come inside and get ready for school, and again in the evening, so “guests” can use bathroom facilities and the church’s kitchen and phone. The guests also have access to a refrigerator and Wi-Fi. They are welcome to join church activities but don’t have to do so. Karina O’Malley, a church member and volunteer who oversees the program, said the church started small, with six parking spaces, but as the program has grown, they’ve had up to 50 vehicles parked overnight. The demand exists, she says, because rent prices in the county are “completely unaffordable.” Moreover, the gap between wages and rent is expected to worsen in the coming years, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition. “The median-wage worker in eight of the nation’s 10 largest occupations, including retail salespersons, fast food workers, personal care aides, customer service representatives, and office clerks, do not earn enough to afford a modest one-bedroom rental home,” the coalition’s report says, adding, “The number of low-wage jobs is expected to grow significantly in the next 10 years.” This means that many people like Denis, despite having a steady income and a job, either can’t afford to rent a place, or if they could, would have nothing left over for utilities and food. And sleeping in a car is more appealing to some people than going to a homeless shelter. Some are uncomfortable with the stigma; others don’t want to abide by a shelter’s schedule or prefer the privacy of their car. Moreover, deciding to live in a car provides people with few options a sense of autonomy. “There’s a tiny minority who say I’m choosing to live in my car because that’s the only solution that works for me at this point. But most of these folks are desperately trying to get back into housing,” O’Malley, at Lake Washington UMC, said. “Folks don’t have a lot of great options, but there’s a sense of dignity that comes with saying what you’re doing is your choice.” A painful secret Denis, a native of Cuba who came to the U.S. with her parents when she was 5, had no experience renting for most of her life. From age 18 through 50, she had always lived in homes that she owned. Her five children, ages 33 to 45, are well off enough to help, but Denis doesn’t want to impose, which is why she hasn’t told them where she’s living been living since the middle of July. She said she figures she’ll need help when she is in her 70s or older and doesn’t want to tap that reservoir of goodwill while she’s still healthy and able to work. “I haven’t asked my children for help. I haven’t told a soul,” she said, adding that even her brother, a Nevada state senator and former LDS bishop, doesn’t know. “I want to fix this problem on my own,” she said, her voice breaking. Denis traveled Europe cheaply between April and October of last year, staying in hostels and LDS temple housing, and so when she returned to the U.S. for a grandchild’s baptism, she thought she could live equally well here while maintaining her mobility. But that hasn’t been the case, at least not in the Pacific Northwest. “Even if I pay $1,100 (in rent), that leaves me with hardly anything for gas, for food, for insurance. And the housing that I could afford is in places that aren’t nice. I can’t do that. I’m safer here,” she said. Denis is working as a cashier, so she has a place to go during the day. She has a membership at the YMCA, where she goes to swim, do yoga and shower, and she also spends time at the local library. At night, she stretches out on a foam mattress in the back of her Toyota and covers herself with a down comforter. Since she’s a half-inch shy of 5 feet tall, sleeping in the car isn’t so bad, Denis said, except for when she needs to go to the bathroom at night. The church provides port-a-potties, but she doesn’t like to leave her car at night, especially now that it’s cold. (When it’s 32 degrees or colder, the church lets people sleep inside, but it hasn’t gotten that cold yet this fall.) That said, she knows she has it better than some of her parking-lot neighbors. “There are women here who never leave their car,” she said. What cities can do At the other end of the spectrum is Bob Wells, founder of the Cheap RV Living website and its corresponding YouTube channel, which has 339,000 subscribers. Wells, the author of “How to Live in a Car, Van or RV,” promotes what he calls “nomadic tribalism in a car, van or RV,” and his followers include people trying to get out of debt and those who embrace a minimalist lifestyle. Because Wells is so well-known, he’s been approached by some government officials about how cities and towns can best address the challenges presented by vehicle dwellers, the most pressing of which is where they can park and where they can dispose of waste. He urges cities to build a cooperative relationship with vehicle dwellers, provide parking and portable restroom facilities, and even a place where people can go to get temporary work. Such things would produce big results for a little money. “They’re going to have happier residents, and they’re not going to be dumping their tanks or sleeping outside people’s homes.” But some cities are doubling down on enforcement to try to get the car dwellers to go elsewhere. In July, police in Fort Collins, Colorado, issued tow notices and tickets to more than two dozen people camping in their cars, the Coloradoan reported. And San Diego has enacted a new “vehicle habitation ordinance” that prohibits people from sleeping in their cars near residences and schools. At the same time, however, the city has expanded a Safe Parking Program that it operates in conjunction with Jewish Family Service of San Diego. Pamela C. Twiss, a professor at California University of Pennsylvania and co-author of “The Homelessness Industry, a Critique of U.S. Social Policy,” said she applauds cities and faith groups that are expanding safe parking. “A car is obviously not a suitable home, but using a car for sheer survival shouldn’t be criminalized,” Twiss said. “People have to have ways to survive, and we don’t have enough shelter spaces for those who need emergency shelter.” She also noted that there is a multiyear waiting list for subsidized housing in much of the the U.S. “We’re only serving about one-quarter of those who are eligible on an income-basis,” which means that three-quarters of people who qualify for government assistance won’t get it, Twiss said. And there aren’t enough emergency shelters, either. The National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty estimates that there are 286,203 emergency shelter beds available for the 553,000 people who need them. ‘Not a solution’ Teresa Smith, founder and CEO of a San Diego nonprofit that helps the homeless, said groups that offer safe parking often are approached by people who are living in their cars happily but need a place to park for a few days. “I can’t tell you how many calls we get from people who want to urban camp,” she said. Smith’s organization, Dreams for Change, runs two safe-parking lots with a capacity of 30 to 35 vehicles, but they’re always full, and there’s a waiting list, so they can only accept people with the most urgent need, she said. Also, Dreams for Change only accepts people who are actively looking for housing. “This is not a lifestyle for them; it’s a transition, and their goal is to move back into housing.” Conversely, at Lake Washington United Methodist, the safe-parking lot is open to people to anyone living in a vehicle, whether or not they’re looking for housing. Crissy Norton, the mother of three, has been actively searching and just found out last week that she and her husband have qualified for traditional shelter. She hopes to be in apartment with her children within a few weeks. Denis, however, remains uncertain of her plans. Unwilling to ask her family for help and reluctant to move from Seattle, she believes her car is her only option right now. Hers is a situation that an increasing number of seniors are facing, said Smith at Dreams for Change. Smith said that 15-20% of the people living in their cars on Dreams for Change lots are 58 and older, and 20% are families with kids. And while most safe parking programs are on the West Coast, she said she has been contacted by people in North Carolina, Tennessee, Pennsylvania and Colorado about how they can start similar programs there. “It’s clearly not just a California issue. The problem is growing, very much so,” Smith said, adding that safe-parking lots are “not a solution, by any means.” “But they’re at least something that helps.” And Denis and Norton said it’s been good to be surrounded by other people in the same situation, and they’ve made friends there. In fact, for other people contemplating turning their car into a residence, Norton says it’s critically important to have a community of support. “Don’t do it alone,” she said. “Make friends. Never, ever let yourself be alone.” Over and over I keep hearing discouraging stories like this throughout our state and others. Chicago Tiny House needs your help to provide housing to those that need it. We are desperately looking for help from those that want to make a difference. If you would like to make a difference please let us know, we are looking for individuals to organize a winter welfare check unit as well as people to help with fundraising and direction of our organization. Make a difference in someone's life today and join Chicago Tiny House's mission to help people in need. Read the full article

#@chicagotinyhouse #fundraiser #textdonation #tinyhouse

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roidespd-blog · 5 years

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Chapter Twenty-Eight : STONEWALL

50 years to this day. I was really looking forward to this one. (breathe) (breathe again) (keep breathing). With three articles left, we’ve come to the most important of them all. Think of it as Game of Thrones’s 9th episode of the season. Today, we’re talking about America in the 60s, how the Stonewall Inn became the set of such remarkable events and what the Riots of 1969 have left of as a legacy (Spoiler : close to everything).

GETTING RID OF THOSE FAGS : 60s EDITION

The end of the Second World War saw a need for the American population to “restore the prewar social order and hold off the forces of change”. Now, let’s make it clear. Homosexuals were not a welcome bunch before the war. But starting with the 50s, their life became considerably more difficult. A witch hunt of Anarchists, Communists and Homosexuals started. With the creation of a list of known homosexuals by the U.S. State Department and the F.B.I, came the firing of thousands of government employees either homosexuals or under the suspicion of sodomy. No pity. In a 1950 report, an investigation from the Senate noted “it is generally believed that those who engage in overt acts of perversion lack the emotional stability of normal persons” and “sex perverts in Government constitute security risks”. The 60s saw a rise in the homosexual population in NYC. More and more young queers would run away (of be thrown out) from home and take refuge in an up-and-coming neighborhood, Greenwich Village. The risks were heavy (frequent raids of bars and cops all over the streets ready to arrest you for less than nothing) but at least, for the first time ever, homosexuals were able to meet and discover what would soon become a community. In David Carter’s book Stonewall, it is said “it has often been pointed out that no specific statute outlawed being homosexual, that only homosexual acts were illegal. While this is technically true, the effect of the entire body of laws and policies that the state employed to police the conduct of homosexual men and women was to make being gay de facto a crime”.

By 1961, American laws reprimanding homosexuals were harsher than those in Cuba, Russia or East Germany. If you were to have sex with another adult of the same gender in the privacy of your home and got caught, you could get anything between a light fine to life in prison. Loitering in public toilet became a new law, just as laws concerning “sex psychopaths” in at least 20 states. Sentences on sodomy were harshened while professional licenses could be revoked on the basis of your sexuality, making it impossible to survive.

It would be a mistake to think that no attempt at organizing and change laws were made until that fateful night of 1969. Many protests that preceded the Gay Rights movement were made starting in Los Angeles in 1959. Between 1964 and 1968, numerous protests were held in L.A, New York City, San Francisco, Philadelphia. Some were organized, some were not.

Several amazing activists like Dick Leitsch (1935–2018) and Craig Rodwell (1940–1993) were pioneers in smart marketing actions and counter attacking the Police. Leitsch was instrumental in stopping the automatic shut down of bars and clubs that would serve known homosexuals and in ending the campaign of police entrapment while Rodwell opened in 1967 the first openly gay bookstore, the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop and is considered by some as the leading gay rights activist of the early 60s. I digress, I know. There’s so much to talk about.

ANYWAY, organizations like One, Inc and the Mattachine Society (initially created by a communist activist in 1950, so you can see how easy the link between chasing communists and homosexuals was made back then) were more and more vocal about the treatment of their kind by the government. BUT only in big cities and only in very small and peaceful gatherings of people. Not powerful enough. Queer people were too scare to organize fully, and I kind of get it. If you were too feminine to pass for a heterosexual, you would end up on the streets, selling your body for a penny. If you were discovered with another man, your life was ruined. Frequent raids in homosexual clubs by incognito cops (who would sometimes go as far as exposing themselves to lure you into an inappropriate situation) were not appealing to the masses.

“Thankfully”, the social repression of the post-war climate resulted in a cultural revolution in Greenwich Village. Beat generation poets like Ginsberg and Burroughs (who were not hiding their sexualities) moved there. Their personalities and writings attracted liberal-minded people to the neighborhood, giving more space to the slowly-forming gay community. Interestingly enough, none of the bars frequented by gay men and lesbians in the Village were owned by gay people. Most of them were controlled by organized crime. Those places were terrible, with poor treatment of clientele and watered-down drinks but the mafia was paying off the police so gays kept coming back.

The Stonewall Inn, located at 51 and 53 Christopher Street, was owned by the Genovese crime family, because of the interest of the son of one of the important mafioso, called Fat Tony, for gay businesses and the exploitation of this minority. Originally a regular straight bar in ruins, it was turned into a gay establishment in 1966. The Stonewall Inn had no liquor licenses, but that didn’t keep the drinks from being poured. It was the only gar bar in New York City where dancing was allowed but otherwise, this bar was a shit show.

All the bribes didn’t keep police raids away — just averaging them to once a month. During a typical raid (that the owners knew in advance due to police tip-offs), the lights were turned on, the customers were lined up and their ID cards checked. Those without IDs and dressed in women’s clothes were arrested while the rest of them would be left alone. The police would leave and the party would continue. The short period before June 1969 saw an increase of raids and the closing of the Checkerboard, the Tele-Star and two other clubs in Greenwich Village.

JUNE 28th, 1969

On the night of Friday, June 27th to Saturday, June 28th, 1969, revolution began. You also have to remember that the events that occurred that night divert from one person to another and we might never completely know how it truly went down, here’s two things everyone who had been at the Stonewall Inn that night could agree on : what happened had happened fast and it had been entirely spontaneous.

At 1:20 am, four plainclothes policemen in dark suits, two patrol officers in uniform, a detective and a deputy arrived at the Stonewall Inn’s and announced “Police! We’re taking the place!”. Four undercover police officers had entered the bar earlier to gather evidence of immoral evidence and the Public Moral Squad was waited outside for their signal. The music was turned off and the lights were turned on. 205 patrons were inside the bar that night. A few that understood what was happening started to run for doors and windows in the bathrooms, but the police kept them inside. The raid turned badly from the start. Clients dressed as women refused to follow female officers to the bathroom so that they could verify their gender identity (the procedure at the time. Yeah.) and many refused to produce their identifications.

The police decided to take everyone who did not cooperate to the police station AND take the bar’s alcohol in the process. Fortunately, the patrol wagons had not yet arrived and the arrested clients were told to wait in line for about 15 minutes. Those free to go were told to leave by the front door but this time, they did not run away. They stayed outside the bar as a crowd began to grown and watch. By the time the time the first wagon arrived, the crowd was ten times the number of people arrested. The first to be put in wagons were the mafia owners and that did not create any anger inside the crowd. Edmund White, who was passing by, recalled “Everyone’s restless, angry and high-spirited. No one has a slogan, no one even had an attitude, but something’s brewing”.

A transvestite was shoved by a police officer while getting escorted to a wagon and responded with hitting him with her purse. A lesbian in handcuffs, identified as Stormé DeLarverie, escaped repeatedly, fought with four police officers and screamed at the crowd “Why don’t you do something ?” before being hit on the head with a baton. Rumors of some patrons still stuck inside the Stonewall Inn being beaten and lesbian being molested started to spread around the 150–200 people around the bar. The crowd became a mob and “it was at that moment that the scene became explosive”.

I used this expression way too many times this past month but it’s never been more appropriate now : SHIT JUST HIT THE FAN. The police became overwhelmed by the response of the bystanders, knocking a few people down in panic, which gave more rage to the crowd. Those handcuffed in the back of the wagons were left unattended, which allowed some of them to escape. Two of the police cars left immediately when they saw the angry mob trying to overturn the police wagon, creating even more panic for those police officers left. Coins sailed through the air towards the police as the crowd shouted “Pigs!” and “Faggot Cops!” — remember, it might not all be 100% accurate but DAMN. By that time, at least 500 people were kicking the shit out of the police force, throwing beer cans and screaming at the top of their lungs. The police retaliated with everything that they had, forcing some to found shelter near a construction site. nevertheless, it wasn’t enough. 10 police officers barricaded themselves inside the Stonewall Inn, taking with them several detainees with them for their own “safety”. Garbage cans, bottles, rocks and bricks were thrown at the building, breaking the windows.

And now a quick flashback to yesterday’s articles. I told you that Marsha P. Johnson was known to had thrown the first brick at Stonewall, starting the Gay Rights Movement in the process ? Well, it’s a great story and it suits Marsha but it ain’t true. Johnson, though designated by many as one of the three individuals to have started the pushback, said herself in 1987 that she had arrived at around 2:00 am after hearing about the riots and informing her friend Sylvia Rivera and that the riots had already started. Nevertheless, someone reported that Marsha threw a shot glass at a mirror in the torched bar (Oops, spoilers) screaming “I got my civil rights!” and it became famous as “the shot glass that as heard around the world”. Well, almost definitely a legend.

Back to our regular broadcast.

The mob spirit was at full speed. Parking meters were uprooted from the streets and used to kick the doors in. They lit garbage on fire and stuffed it through the broken windows. The police grabbed a fire hose but break the crowd but the water pressure was low and it did nothing but encourage the people to go harder on them. When the demonstrators broke through the windows and the door flew open, the police officers pointed their weapons at them, threatening to shoot. Someone squirted lighter fluid into the bar and lit it. 45 minutes had passed since the beginning of the raid. That’s when the fire trucks AND the Tactical Patrol Force (TPF) arrived at the scene to free the police officers trapped inside the Inn. One passerby said “I had been in enough riots to know the fun was over… The cops were totally humiliated. This never, ever happened. They were angrier than I guess they had ever been, because everybody else has rioted… but the fairies were not supposed to riot. No group had ever forced to retreat before, so the anger was just enormous. I mean, they wanted to kill.” The TPF formed rectangular mass formation, marched slowly and started to push the crowd back. The mob openly mocked the police. Some were singing :

We are the Stonewall Girls We wear our hair in curls We don’t wear underwear We show our public hair

As the line got into a full kick routine, the police rushed in a cleared the crowd. One account said “I just can’t ever get that one sight out of my mind. The corps with nightsticks and the kick line on the other side. It was the most amazing thing (…) I think that’s when I felt rage. Because people were getting smashed with bats. And for what ? A Kick line”.

Participants were chased through the street by police (as they were in bigger numbers, it was easier for them). But do not think the mob got overpowered by the pigs. Oh no. They kept on running and coming back to the Stonewall area and started overturning police cars that were blocking the streets. To some reports, it was the crowd that was screaming “Catch Them!” to the police officers running away. It took until 4 am for the streets to be cleared out. Thirteen people in total had been arrested. Some were hospitalized, and four police officers were injured in the fight. The Stonewall Inn was destroyed. Pay phones, toilets, mirrors, jukeboxes. All smashed. By the morning hour, the feeling of electricity and rebellion was still in the air. This was not over.

ROUND TWO

News of the riot were quickly known to all, inside and outside Greenwich Village. The New York Times, the New York Post and the Daily News all covered the events during the night, with the latter putting it on its front page. All day, people came to take a look at the Stonewall Inn or what was left of it. Graffitis were written on the walls. “The invaded our rights”, “Legalize gay bars”, “Support Gay power”, “Drag power” and… “We are open”.

That very night, it all happened again. Opinions differ on which night was more violent but the attitude was different. A form of structural unison was present, and the demonstrators — most of those from the previous night — were showing their true selves openly for the first time. Hugging, kissing, holding hands. “We were just out. We were on the streets” said one witness. Thousands of people gathered in front of the Stonewall before being dispatched all around the neighborhood to keep police force to intervene. They surrounded buses and cars, harassing occupants to either admit their homosexuality or their allegiance to the gay cause.

Marsha P. Johnson (yes, and this time, it’s more solid information) climbed a lamp post and dropped a heavy bag onto the hood of a police car, shattering the windshield. Fires were once again started in garbage cans. More than a hundred police officers were trying to contain the situation and little after 2 am, the TPF showed their faces again. For the next two hours, war was upon Christopher Street and its surrounding blocks. Demonstrators were arrested, with their companions fighting back to free them. Dozens of people were hurt and bled heavily from baton kicks. At 4 am, it was over.

When recalling the events, Allen Ginsburg said to a friend “you know, the guys there were so beautiful. They’ve lost that wounded look that fags all had 10 years ago”.

AFTERMATH

At the annual picketing in front of Independence Hall in Philadelphia (organized by the Mattachine Society) on July 4th, there was some sense that things were changing. People who felt oppressed now felt empowered. Many, moved by the two nights of rebellious spirit, started attending organizational meetings, with the intent to take advantage of the opportunity for the better. But not everyone in the not-so-community was happy about what happened on Christopher Street. Older homosexuals, many members of the Mattachine Society, were embarrassed by the display of violence and effeminate behavior during those nights, as they tried for years to convince the general population that homosexuals were no different to heterosexuals. Early homophile activist Randy Wicker said “screaming queens forming chorus lines and kicking went against everything that I wanted people to think about homosexuals… that we were a bunch of drag queens in the Village acting disorderly and tacky and cheap”. Anyway. Rodwell (remember him ?) left the July 4th demonstration with a strong determination to change the established ways to get attention. All that led the creation of the Gay Liberation Front and the Christopher Street Liberation Day AKA the first pride — but that’s a story for tomorrow.

As for the Stonewall Inn ? By October 1969, it was up for rent. Rodwell’s boycott and the too-notorious riots discouraged business from interfering. Another Stonewall Inn was opened in Miami in 1972 under the same management but burned down two years later. The original Stonewall Inn was eventually leased as two separate spaces to a number of different businesses over the years. The historic vertical sign was removed in 1989 after the closure of the a two-year-life bar. Someone leased the place again with a new name but a year later came back to the original name.

Since 2006, Stonewall Inn has been owned and operated by the same person. It has been listed as a National Historic Landmark in the early 2000s and on June 24th, 2016, the Stonewall National Monument, which is directly across the street from the Stonewall Inn, was put together as the first U.S. National Monument dedicated to the Queer Rights Movement. And just so you know, I bursted crying about 6 times since I’ve started the article. This one’s the hardest.

WHAT NOW ?

First of all, do not watch the biopics about Stonewall (there’s two, and I’m not even gonna name them or their release dates because they’re horrible. Everybody’s white, no transgender people anywhere, it’s shit, shit, SHIT). Go read the overly-detailed book by David Carter named Stonewall (duh) or watch the documentary that followed called Stonewall Uprising if you want to know more that my mere 3,000+ words.

Second… Well, everything talked about in my previous articles comes directly from that life-changing night of June 28th, 1969. And so much more.

I get to have a boyfriend, to openly say that I’m queer, to write Queer articles about our struggles to at least a dozen people, struggles and beauty.

That’s all because of what happened at Stonewall Inn. Landmarks are not my thing. I do not care about buildings. When Notre-Dame burned, I was like “well, that’s too bad”. If the Tour Eiffel was to disappear, I wouldn’t cry over it. That’s because I have no emotional attachment to those kinds of things. Surprisingly, I do feel an attachment to 51–53 Christopher Street, although I’ve never been there. I don’t believe in ghosts and every time I think of this place, I feel surrounded by the spirits (alive or dead) of the only queer ancestors that we have. Because our History has been erased time after time after time. To the world, we’ve been nothing. A error of judgement from a god that doesn’t exist. Not after June 28th, 1969. 50 years ago, some homeless queers and good-for-nothing drag queens and ignored black trans women impacted our world so much that from this day on, we couldn’t be ignored.

I feel immense gratitude towards those people. That’s why I always ask Queer people I met if they know about Stonewall. Most of them in France do not. Well, they should. This article might give you a general idea of what happened but I truly invite you to go look further for yourself.

We, as Queer people, need our History to be remembered. And to make it official, it started at Stonewall.

PS the cover photo is the ONLY picture from that night. It shows Queer homeless youth trying to resist police force. The rest of the picture were taken from other nights of protests. Just so you know.

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