#also poor central countries being forced to live with South Americans

[starryrosebud]

Crazy how she put the school in the middle of fucking AMAZONIA!! Most of Brazilians never went to the north in their entire life or even want/or have money to go there. Plus imagine putting Paulistas, cariocas and sulistas all in a room or Amazonenses and paraenses actually imagine putting people from different Brazilian states in the same place,adding Argentinians,Uruguayans,Paraguayans and Bolivians ,the ones we share a complex history(euphemism),and all of them having magic…this would be a disaster.

This fucking thread about JK Rowling’s shit world building.

[blackholebaybee]

The thing about dumbfucks is that they seem to think that when we say that everything is political and politics are relational, they think we're saying it as a fad rather than as a scientific observation. But this is a problem of liberals (whether they're conservative or "socially liberal") projecting their views onto reality. They think everyone else treats politics like a fad because that is how *they* treat politics, being the deeply unserious people that they are.

But here's the realness: when we say, on the "far left", that, for example, you can't be anti-racist without being anti-colonial/communist/etc., it is because we have trained ourselves to view political struggle scientifically. That is, we understand that racism will always exist as long as capitalism exists because capitalism *necessitates* the dispossession of certain groups to the benefit of certain others. Black people and migrants in Amerikkka are kept poor and disenfranchised by a system that was designed with the intention of using them for mass slave labour, the function of which has been taken over by the prison system officially and by clandestine trafficking operations unofficially (California, Georgia, Texas, Florida, New York, Nevada, Ohio as if Ohio couldn't get any worse). Both of these situations, while obviously immoral (the liberal concern), are quite profitable for the companies that make use of this subjugated labour force. These same companies make use of their ample profits to lobby the government to ignore these operations or even expand them. (See any conservative crime bills, especially as they relate to private prisons.)

This obviously isn't enough to make the point, so let's develop it further. Migrants make their way to the imperial core in search of a "better life" (liberal perception), but they do not flee "bad lives" in a vacuum. *All* refugee crises, all migrant crises are the direct result of foreign policy decisions enacted by bourgeois governments in the imperial core. These imperial governments have a vested interest in maintaining global hegemony, that is, total economic domination over all potential competitors. Taking South and Central America as our first example, every single time a Latin American country attempted to achieve some measure of independence from the imperial core, the United States would go to work to destabilize and overthrow democratically elected governments in favour of brutal military dictatorships. In Guatemala, the CIA launched Operation PBSUCCESS in 1954, bombing Guatemala City and installed several military rulers *in response* to Guatemalans successfully overthrowing a puppet dictatorship representing the interests of the United Fruit Company (also US-backed) and electing a progressive government that sought agrarian reforms in favour of Guatemalan independence. When Haiti tried to throw off the shackles of the CIA-sponsored Tonton Macoute militia regime, the CIA stepped in again to inflate the size of the former to double the size of the Hatian military. This period was marked by prison and torture camps with the aim of suppressing all dissent. For more examples, see here and here for fuller lists of Latin American invasions and operations. The same methodology is being waged in the Middle-East as well. You can read about it here and here. The reasons for these invasions, US-backed coups, destabilization efforts, and war aggression is always, always, always about the strategic interests of imperial hegemony. They are always concerned with preserving a state of affairs where the imperial core can reap massive profits from cheap labour and streamlined resource extraction (blood for oil, etc.). This general strategy of total domination and deliberate dispossession is and will remain the primary reason for all migrant crises.

We identify anti-colonialism and communism as the proper and *only* solutions to these problems because these ideologies and strategies were devised as *systemic responses* to the systemic problems created by capitalism and colonialism. These are not lefty ideas made up out of thin air. Colonialism and capitalism are historical processes which were and are heavily documented by the colonists and capitalists. They willfully admit that they are the engineers of these systems. And every time a liberal assumes that this state of affairs is simply natural, that is the inevitable result of a centuries-long strategy of world domination and propaganda designed specifically to make this state of affairs seem all-encompassing and natural. But if these things were natural, the imperial core wouldn't have to spend trillions of dollars bombing, murdering, and pillaging every single attempt to change it. Nature needs no assistance. Indeed, the Red Scare, which is still ongoing, exists to convince liberals that there is no alternative specifically because communism *is* a major threat to the brutality of capitalism and thus needs to be combated by the bourgeoisie and their running dogs the same way that every coup and genocide instigated by the CIA was for the purpose of "bringing democracy" to the so-called barbarous Middle-East and Latin America. Thus, they characterize us and our ideology as murderous and apocalyptic, but we should never forget the confession of one Elon Musk who, as many of us still remember, proudly declared "We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it." To take this as a joke, given all the evidence here provided, would be naive, to say the least. We choose socialism as our weapon against the imperial core because socialism is a scientific strategy developed by the working class for the purpose of taking control away from these forces and, for the first time, learning to govern our own affairs, the most horrifying outcome of all to the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, whose brutality and apocalyptic tendencies require no propaganda because the evidence is all around us, filling our phones daily with atrocity after atrocity, cutting our kin down in the streets, levelling our cities, eroding all semblance of safety in and outside the workplace.

We say that everything is political and that politics are relational because that is what simple observation reveals. That is why reactionaries are increasingly irrationalist and anti-intellectualist by default. They cannot cope with the reality of the situation around them because to truly understand it would be to implicate them in a class war so all-encompassing that no comfort or succor exists outside of active struggle, which carries the very real risk of losing one's life and the lives of loved ones. But it is a decision an ever-increasing number are making for a better future because our present has already been robbed from us. No one is irrational when a gun barrel is pointed in their face.

[hussyknee]

A self proclaimed anarchist who completely misunderstands communism? On MY tumblr? It's more likely than you think. Communism isn't fascism and it certainly isn't authoritarianism. Get off my lawn.

I have generational poverty trauma from the food insecurity my parents suffered under our socialist government in the '60s and '70s. Their nationalist policies, and those of their capitalist counterparts, sparked three separate ethnic cleansings of Tamils. They burned thousands of people alive on the streets. That led to a 26 year war between Sinhalese state forces and Tamil Marxist separatists - Asia's longest civil war.

The corruption of both capitalist and socialist governments sparked two other, unrelated, Sinhalese (majority) nationalist Marxist insurrections. One of those groups threatened to kill my father, causing my mother to lose her baby from stress. Mum and I were sent to go live with my grandmother in the village for safety and leave my father behind because he couldn't leave his post. My earliest memories are of being scared at night that men would come and kidnap or kill my parents, like I heard on the news. The government in turn deployed death squads that kidnapped, tortured and murdered suspected insurrectionists. When my aunts were pregnant with my cousins, they were told not to look up on their way to work so they wouldn't see the corpses strung up on electricity poles.

The war began four years before I was born and kept on until I was 22. My friends and I didn't know a world where we could step outside of our houses without accepting the possibility that we might not make it home. We couldn't even imagine it. People were regularly caught in suicide bombs and bus bombs. My first year in primary, my classmates Mum died when they attacked the Central Bank three blocks away from our school. And we were the lucky ones living in the capital city, which only got bombed at random. The North and East of my country was razed to the ground, hundreds of thousands disappeared, killed and displaced.

All of this? Happened under both socialist and capitalist governments, when allegiances were switching between Communist China, the USSR, and the US and its allies. A communist/socialist government will always be nationalist, because that's the base rationale for state control over all industries and isolationist market policies. Nationalist always means the ethnic supremacy of the majority. Our socialist government right now is quite literally Aryan supremacist.The capitalist government has also persecuted minorities and robbed and tortured and killed just as much, because capitalists are in bed with neoliberal colonizers and they need a scapegoat for the starving poor.

This is not based solely off the trauma of my own country. I'm a scholar of decolonization and political science, following leading academics from the Global South who have a huge body of research on post-colonial geo-political and ethnic conflicts and their dynamics. This is the consensus of decolonization scholars especially from South and Southeast Asia with whom I work.

So when I tell you that communism is a genocidal dictatorship just as much as Nazism, just as bad as capitalism, maybe I know what I'm talking about.

But obviously, you'd know that if you looked up literally ANY Asian or Eastern bloc country that used to be communist. You just don't actually give a single shit. You think that communism only failed for the rest of us because we're poor, brown, non-Western, "unfortunate" and incompetent. You think only you can instate a "proper" communist government because you're white or Western or American, and therefore cleverer and stronger and richer.

In a word - you're a white supremacist, imperialist piece of shit. Y'know. Like Nazis.

[englishchinesetranslations]

Since she began posting rustic-chic videos of her life in rural Sichuan province in 2016, Li Ziqi, 29, has become one of China’s biggest social media stars. She has 22 million followers on the microblogging site Weibo, 34 million on Douyin (China’s version of TikTok) and another 8.3 million on YouTube (Li has been active on YouTube for the last two years, despite it being officially blocked in China).

Li’s videos – which she initially produced by herself and now makes with a small team – emphasize beautiful countryside and ancient tradition. In videos soundtracked by tranquil flute music, Li crafts her own furniture out of bamboo and dyes her clothing with fruit skins. If she wants soy sauce, she grows the soybeans themselves; a video about making an egg yolk dish starts with her hatching ducklings. The meals she creates are often elaborate demonstrations of how many delicious things can be done with a particular seasonal ingredient, like ginger or green plums.

There is even a Li Ziqi online shop, where fans can purchase versions of the steel “chopper” knife she uses to dice the vegetables she plucks from her plentiful garden, or replicas of the old-fashioned shirts she wears while foraging for wild mushrooms and magnolia blossoms in the misty mountainside.

While she occasionally reveals a behind-the-scenes peek at her process, Li – who did not respond to interview requests for this article – is very private. By all accounts, she struggled to find steady work in a city before returning to the countryside to care for her ailing grandmother (who appears in her videos).

Recently, Li has been thrust into a wider spotlight by the Chinese government, who seem to have realized her soft power potential. In 2018, the Communist party of China named her a “good young netizen” and role model for Chinese youth. In September 2019, the People’s Daily, a CPC mouthpiece, gave Li their “People’s Choice” award, while last month, state media praised Li for helping to promote traditional culture globally, and the Communist Youth League named her an ambassador of a program promoting the economic empowerment of rural youth.

Revealed: how TikTok censors videos that do not please Beijing Read more

As the government increasingly champions her, Chinese citizens have taken to Weibo to question whether Li’s polished, rather one-dimensional portrayal of farm work conveys anything truly meaningful about contemporary China – especially to her growing international audience on YouTube.

They have a point: Li’s videos reveal as much about the day-to-day labor of most Chinese farmers as the Martha Stewart Show does the American working class. As Li Bochun, director of Beijing-based Chinese Culture Rejuvenation Research Institute told the media last month: “The traditional lifestyle Li Ziqi presents in her videos is … not widely followed.”

In reality, many of China’s rural villages have shrunk or disappeared completely in past decades as the nation prioritized urbanization and workers migrated to cities, with research suggesting the country lost 245 rural villages a day from 2000 to 2010. The 40% of China’s population still living in rural areas encompass a huge diversity of experience, yet life can be difficult, with per-capita rural income declining sharply since 2014 and environmental pollution often as rife as in industrial centers. That’s not to say the beautiful forests and compelling traditions of Li’s videos are not genuine – like many social media creators, she simply focuses on the most charming elements of a bigger picture.

So what do Li’s videos reflect about modern China, if not average daily life in the countryside?

For one, they say something about the mindset of her mainland audience – primarily urban millennials, for whom a traditional culture craze known as “fugu” or “hanfu” has been an aesthetic trend for a number of years.

“Fugu”, according to Yang Chunmei, professor of Chinese history and philosophy at Qufu Normal University, reflects the “romanticized, pastoral” desires of youth “disillusioned by today’s ever-changing, industrial, consumerist society.” In practice, it looks like young people integrating more traditional clothing into their daily looks, watching historical dramas and following rural lifestyle influencers like Li. (While Li is an extremely popular example of the trend, she’s not the only young farmer vlogging in China right now, and outdoor cooking videos of people making meals with wild ingredients and scant equipment are a genre of their own on Douyin.)

Among urban millennials in the west, giving up the nine-to-five grind and living humbly and closer to nature is a popular dream. In China, the contemporary experience of burnout is compounded by the intensity of “urban disease”, an umbrella term for the difficulties of living in megacities like Shanghai or Guangzhou, which can be used to refer to everything from traffic jams and poor air quality to employment and housing scarcity.

Also at play in Li’s popularity is the particular tenor of Chinese wistfulness. “It’s called xiangchou. Xiang means the countryside or rural life, and chou means to long for it, to miss it,” says Linda Qian, an Oxford University PhD candidate studying nostalgia’s role in the revitalization of China’s villages.

“It is quite prevalent for youth living the city life. They get really sick of [the city] so the countryside” – or a fantasy of it – “looks increasingly like the ideal image of what a good life should be.”

Qian also likens Li’s appeal to that of “Man vs Wild”-style entertainment in the west. “We’ve gotten to a certain point of materialism and consumption where there’s only so much you can buy, and we’re like, ‘What other experiences can I have?’” she says. “So we go back to what humans can do.”

Yet as her fame grows internationally, some have questioned, in comments, blogposts and Reddit threads, whether Li’s channel is communist propaganda.

In addition to providing China a form of international PR, Li embodies a kind of rural success the government hopes to generate more of through recent initiatives. With the aim of alleviating rural poverty, the Communist Youth League has embarked on an effort to send more than 10 million urban youth to “rural zones” by 2022, in order to “increase their skills, spread civilization, and promote science and technology”.

“We need young people to use science and technology to help the countryside innovate its traditional development models,” Zhang Linbin, deputy head of a township in central Hunan province, told the Global Times last April.

By using technology to create her own rural economic opportunities while simultaneously championing forms of traditional Chinese culture before a huge audience, Li may seem like a CPC dream come true.

According to Professor Ka-Ming Wu, a cultural anthropologist at the Chinese University of Hong Kong: “Li represents a new wave of Chinese soft power in that she’s so creative and aesthetically good, and knows how to appeal to a general audience whether they’re Chinese or not.” And yet, “I don’t think this is some kind of engineered effort by the Chinese state,” she says.

Li’s narrative hinges on her failure to thrive in the city; that failure is antithetical to China’s overarching narrative of progress and urban opportunity. Were she a manufactured agent of propaganda, Wu speculates, “[Her failure] is something the Chinese state would never even mention.

“And I think that’s what really fuels her popularity,” says Wu. “That despair of not being able to find oneself in the ‘Chinese dream’. I don’t think she’s propaganda because one of her major successes is that she’s making that failure highly aesthetic … However, the Chinese government is very smart to appropriate her work and say that she represents traditional culture and promote her.”

According to some Chinese media, Li’s content is better than propaganda – doing more to generate genuine domestic, and especially international, interest in rural Chinese traditions than any government initiative of the past decade. “Dozens of government departments with billions at their disposal spent 10 years on propaganda projects, but they have done a worse job than a little girl,” writes the South China Morning Post’s Chauncey Jung, summarizing a tweet from journalist Jasper Jia.

However you feel about Li as a cultural force, her ability to flourish despite a unique set of contradictory circumstances is impressive. Out of the past and present, failure and success, independence and authoritarianism, she’s spun a truly pleasant vision. If only life was really so simple.

[newstfionline]

Tuesday, April 20, 2021

Minneapolis Braces for Verdict in Floyd’s Death (NYT) MINNEAPOLIS—Around midday last Monday, Samir Patel received a phone call from his friend, a dentist: Gunshots had rung out, his friend told him, and the contractors who were rebuilding the office he lost in last year’s unrest had fled. He was boarding up, and he told Mr. Patel he should move quickly to protect his own business, a dry cleaning shop. Elite Cleaners, Mr. Patel’s shop, is on a side street, not far from the shell of the Minneapolis Police Department’s Third Precinct station house, which burned last year in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death. The surrounding community of Lake Street, a corridor of immigrant-owned businesses—taquerias, furniture shops, liquor stores and cafes—was devastated by looting in the days of protests and the riots that followed. The city has said that the unrest led to $350 million in losses, with more than a thousand buildings either destroyed or damaged. As the trial of Derek Chauvin, the white former police officer charged with murder in the death of Mr. Floyd, a Black man, draws to a close, the city is on edge, fearing that a not-guilty verdict would bring anger, chaos and destruction once again.

New migrant facilities crop up to ease crowding, again (AP) For the third time in seven years, U.S. officials are scrambling to handle a dramatic spike in children crossing the U.S.-Mexico border alone, leading to a massive expansion in emergency facilities to house them as more kids arrive than are being released to close relatives in the United States. More than 22,000 migrant children were in government custody as of Thursday, with 10,500 sleeping on cots at convention centers, military bases and other large venues likened to hurricane evacuation shelters with little space to play and no privacy. More than 2,500 are being held by border authorities in substandard facilities. So many children are coming that there’s little room in long-term care facilities, where capacity shrank significantly during the coronavirus pandemic. As a result, minors are packed into Border Patrol facilities not meant to hold them longer than three days or they’re staying for weeks in the mass housing sites that often lack the services they need. Lawyers say some have not seen social workers who can reunite them with family in the U.S. Both Donald Trump and Barack Obama faced similar upticks in Central American children crossing the border alone in 2019 and 2014. The numbers have now reached historic highs amid economic fallout from the pandemic, storms in Central America and the feeling among migrants that Biden is more welcoming than his predecessor.

Students’ struggles pushed Peru teacher to run for president (AP) As schools across Peru closed due to the coronavirus pandemic, Pedro Castillo tried to find a way to keep classes going for his 20 fifth- and sixth-grade students. But in his impoverished rural community deep in the Andes, his efforts were futile. Seventeen of the students didn’t even have access to a cellphone. Tablets promised by the government never arrived. “Where is the state?” Castillo, 51, told The Associated Press after a day of planting sweet potatoes on his own land. It was the last straw for Castillo, who over 25 years had seen his students struggle in crumbling schools where teachers also cook, sweep floors and file paperwork. He’d already dabbled in activism with the local teachers’ union and helped lead a national strike in 2017. But now he went further, tossing his name into a crowd of 18 candidates in Peru’s presidential election. Defying the polls, the elementary school teacher came first in the April 11 voting, albeit with less than 20% of the overall vote. The stunning result gave him a place in June’s presidential runoff against Keiko Fujimori, one of Peru’s most established political figures and the daughter of former president Alberto Fujimori. It is her third attempt to become president. Castillo’s unlikely campaign comes at a turbulent time for the South American nation that has suffered like few others from the COVID-19 pandemic. It recently ran through three presidents in a week after one was removed by congress over corruption allegations. Every president of the past 36 years has been ensnared in corruption allegations, some imprisoned. One died by suicide before police could arrest him.

New direction needed: EU launches website for citizens to discuss its future (Reuters) The European Union launched on Monday a website for citizens to debate the future of the 27-nation bloc as the exit of Britain, climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic and the rise of nationalism force the EU to reflect on how it wants to develop. The website, available for contributions in the EU’s 24 official languages, is part of what EU institutions call the Conference on the Future of Europe—a forum for debate to help identify issues the EU needs to address in the changing global context. “The conclusions of the conference could be the backbone for reforms in the Union in the future,” one of the leaders of the initiative, member of European Parliament and former Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt told a news conference. The website prompts debates on subjects including climate change, the environment, health, the economy, social justice and jobs, the role of the EU in the world, values and rights, the rule of law, security, digital transformation, democracy and migration. Citizens can also launch their own topics.

Cheating at Greek universities (Foreign Policy) Greek universities are experiencing a crisis of confidence in their students as remote learning takes the place of traditional education. Professors have noted surprisingly high marks from previously poor students, raising suspicions that the students may be using underhanded tactics. “Result averages are up, and people we haven’t seen in years are showing up for exams because the system makes it easy to cheat,” Kostas Kosmatos, an assistant professor of criminology at Thrace’s Democritus University told AFP. Sofia, a psychology student, admitted to have taken two exams “on behalf of two of my friends and nobody realized.” Resourceful students have created technological workarounds to boost their chances during exams, crowdsourcing answers in live chats with students at the University of Crete even enlisting a linguistic expert to help them during exams. “But even he got a verse wrong,” Angela Kastrinaki, dean of the University of Crete’s literature department, told AFP. “So I got 50 papers with the same mistake. It was funny.”

Russia Expels 20 Czech Diplomats as Tensions Escalate (NYT) A day after the government of the Czech Republic blamed operatives from Russia’s military intelligence agency for a series of mysterious explosions at an ammunition depot in 2014 and expelled 18 Russian diplomats, the Russian government announced on Sunday that 20 Czech diplomats would be ejected in response. The expulsions signal further escalation of tensions between the Kremlin and western governments, reaching an intensity not seen since the Cold War. The spat between the Czech Republic and Russia comes just days after the United States imposed heavy sanctions on Russian government officials and businesses in response to a large-scale hacking of American government computer systems. In a statement, the Russian Foreign Ministry called the Czech accusations “absurd” and accused the government of being an American puppet. “In an effort to please the U.S.A. following recent American sanctions against Russia, the Czech government in this instance even exceeded its overseas masters,” the Russian Foreign Ministry statement said.

Montenegro’s billion-dollar dilemma (NYT) Few Europeans thought it was a good idea for Montenegro to take a mammoth loan from China to build a highway. Now the tiny, mountainous country is asking the European Union for help to repay the debt—and the answer, so far, has been no. The situation in Montenegro is the latest skirmish in an escalating global push for influence by China, which has made inroads in economically weak countries by offering loans that demand loyalty to Beijing but otherwise have few strings attached. Montenegro’s first debt payments are due this summer. The $1 billion loan is nearly a fifth the size of the country’s entire economy. Montenegrin leaders say they won’t miss their loan payment this summer even if no E.U. aid is forthcoming. European officials said they wanted to help Montenegro but were searching for a palatable way to do so. Linking the aid to the loan too directly could be politically difficult, since many E.U. officials do not want to be in the position of effectively paying down a Chinese loan that E.U. leaders warned against in the first place. “China has been filling any opening it felt it could,” said Vuk Vuksanovic, a researcher at the Belgrade Center for Security Policy, a Serbian think tank. “Local capitals were hungry for cash, particularly on big development issues like infrastructure. And the Chinese were willing to go places where Western institutions were not.”

Afghan Women Fear the Worst, Whether War or Peace Lies Ahead (NYT) Farzana Ahmadi watched as a neighbor in her village in northern Afghanistan was flogged by Taliban fighters last month. The crime: Her face was uncovered. People silently watched as the beating dragged on. Fear—even more potent than in years past—is gripping Afghans now that U.S. and NATO forces will depart the country in the coming months. They will leave behind a publicly triumphant Taliban, who many expect will seize more territory and reinstitute many of the same oppressive rules they enforced under their regime in the 1990s. The New York Times spoke to many Afghan women about what comes next in their country, and they all said the same thing: Whatever happens will not bode well for them. Whether the Taliban take back power by force or through a political agreement with the Afghan government, their influence will almost inevitably grow. In a country in which an end to nearly 40 years of conflict is nowhere in sight, many Afghans talk of an approaching civil war. “All the time, women are the victims of men’s wars,” said Raihana Azad, a member of Afghanistan’s Parliament. “But they will be the victims of their peace, too.”

Hard-line Islamists take 6 Pakistani security personnel hostage amid deadly clashes (Washington Post) A hard-line Islamist group on Sunday took six Pakistani security personnel hostage after days of deadly clashes in the northeastern city of Lahore over a French satirical newspaper’s publication of cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad and the arrest of the group’s leader by Pakistani authorities. A senior police officer and two paramilitary fighters were among those taken after protesters surrounded a police station and stormed the compound, according to Lahore police spokesman Arif Rana. A week of violence across the country has left at least four dead, according to the protesters. Police officials say thousands have been arrested. The tensions driving the protests, led by the Islamist party Tehrik-e-Labbaik Pakistan, have been simmering for months after French President Emmanuel Macron honored a teacher who was beheaded last year in France after he showed a class the cartoons depicting Muhammad. For many Muslims, depictions of the prophet are blasphemous and deeply insulting. Macron’s comments sparked protests across the Muslim world last year.

India’s capital to lock down as nation’s virus cases top 15M (AP) New Delhi was being put under a weeklong lockdown Monday night as an explosive surge in coronavirus cases pushed the India’s capital’s health system to its limit. Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said in a news conference the national capital was facing shortages of oxygen and some medicine. “I do not say that the system has collapsed, but it has reached its limits,” Kejriwal said, adding that harsh measures were necessary to “prevent a collapse of the health system.” Similar virus curbs already have been imposed in the worst-hit state of Maharashtra, home to India’s financial capital, Mumbai. The closure of most industries, businesses and public places Wednesday night is to last 15 days.

Pacific Ocean storm intensifies into year’s first super typhoon (Reuters) Strong winds and high waves lashed the eastern Philippines on Monday as the strongest typhoon ever recorded in April barrelled past in the Pacific Ocean, killing one man and triggering flooding in lower-lying communities, disaster officials said. More than 100,000 people were evacuated from coastal areas, according to provincial disaster agencies. The core of Surigae, or Bising as the storm is known locally, is not expected to hit land. But with a diameter of 500 km and winds reaching 195 km per hour, parts of the eastern islands of Samar experienced flooding, while several communities lost power. The first super typhoon of 2021 foreshadows a busy storm season for the region in the year ahead, experts say.

Lebanon’s crumbling capital (AFP) Beirut’s roads are riddled with potholes, many walls are covered in anti-government graffiti and countless street lamps have long since gone dark. At night, car drivers creep cautiously past broken traffic lights and strain their eyes for missing manhole covers, stolen for the value of their metal. Many parking metres have been disabled in protest over an alleged corruption scandal, while cars are parked randomly on sidewalks. To many, the dysfunctional capital has become emblematic of a country mired in its worst crisis since the 1975-1990 civil war after decades of mismanagement and corruption. Much of Beirut’s infrastructure started falling apart long before last August’s massive portside explosion killed more than 200 people, levelled the waterfront and damaged countless buildings. Amid the crisis, the Lebanese currency has collapsed and continues its downward slide at a sickening rate that in itself is deepening the problem. As the currency has dived by more than 85 percent on the black market, wary contractors are steering clear of any municipal repairs that are paid for in Lebanese pounds.

Eleven dead, 98 injured after train derails in Egypt (Reuters) Eleven people were killed and 98 injured on Sunday in a train accident in Egypt’s Qalioubia province north of Cairo, the health ministry said in a statement. The train was heading from Cairo to the Nile Delta city of Mansoura when four carriages derailed at 1:54 p.m. (1154 GMT), about 40 kms (25 miles) north of Cairo. More than 50 ambulances took the injured to three hospitals in the province, the health ministry said. The derailing is the latest of several recent railway crashes in Egypt. At least 20 people were killed and nearly 200 were injured in March when two trains collided near Tahta, about 440 kms (275 miles) south of Cairo.

South Africa wildfire (Washington Post) Cape Town ordered precautionary evacuations of communities living along the edges of city landmark Table Mountain on Monday as firefighters struggled to contain a fire that gutted historical landmarks, including the oldest working windmill in South Africa and a library housing African antiquities at the University of Cape Town. The fire started Sunday morning near the memorial to colonial leader Cecil Rhodes and quickly spread uncontrolled beneath Devil’s Peak in Table Mountain National Park in an area popular with weekend hikers and cyclists. By Monday morning, strong southeasterly winds, which were expected to reach more than 30 miles per hour (50 km/h) later in the day, had pushed the fire toward densely-populated areas above Cape Town city. Well-known tourist sites, such as the Table Mountain aerial cableway, were temporarily closed. Heavy smoke engulfed the city forcing the closure of a major highway and other nearby roads. Hikers, park visitors, visitors to the nearby Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden and hundreds of students from the university campus were evacuated on Sunday.

NASA’s Ingenuity Makes First Powered Flight On Mars (NPR) “Orville and Wilbur would be proud. NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter has made the first-ever powered flight on another planet, 117 years after the Wright Brothers’ historic flight on this planet. The flight itself was modest. The 4-pound helicopter rose 10 feet in the air, hovered briefly, and returned to the Martian surface.

[mudaship39]

Heart of Fire Dragon, Soul of Flame Phoenix, & Sea Fairy Ocean Blood Uncut and Uncensored Version Excerpt

Chapter 6: Verse 3:

Blackbirding and the Chân Đăng (Chained Feet):

I know alot about blackbirding as a Polynesian Tahitian Indigenous Pasifika 

I also know about the Chân Đăng or Chained Feet as a Southeast Asian Vietnamese or Kinh Indigenous person of color

We as Kinh Indigenous people share a lot of history with the Melanesian Kanaks or South Sea Islanders

Blackbirding or as we know it the Pacific Island slave trade 

European colonizers thought they were not capable of the labor planting cotton, coffee, & sugar cane themselves

They were convinced that they would die if they did the labor of sugarcane, coffee, & cotton plantations in the tropics 

They believed that they would need a colored labor force to do the work for them

With little to no pay to compensate them so they resorted to slavery

Blackbirding 

The coercion of people through deception or kidnapping to work

As unpaid or poorly paid laborers in countries distant to their Indigenous lands

It is still happening today with Indigenous Central Americans forced to become plantation laborers

Blackbirding as Indigenous Pasifika know it

When thousands of Melanesian Kanak Indigenous Pasifika from Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Tuvalu, & Fiji 

Were stolen or kidnapped from their homes and forced onto slave ships

Others were tricked into signing contracts they didn’t understand

They were then led into ships marked for sugar plantations where they were exploited for their labor when they received little to no pay

Many Melanesians died from malnutrition, European diseases, poor working conditions, & mistreatment

Bills were then introduced to end the practice of using Melanesian Indigenous Pasifika as slaves

Other bills were passed to improve employment conditions and protect worker’s rights

No longer could they pay us the measly five pounds for labor

An amendment was passed that allowed the deportation of Kanakas from Australia 

When it was passed ten thousands South Sea Islanders were living in New South Wales

Are people aware of how Vietnamese or Kinh Indigenous people of Vietnam came to New Caledonia of Melanesia?

We didn’t exactly come willingly  

This is the story of the Chân Đăng

We came as contract workers when the French enslaved us and exploited our labor

At the end of the 19th century during a dark time of French colonialism and imperialism

Our story in New Caledonia begins in the 1800s with French prisoners being exiled there 

Banished from their European and African homelands 

It also begins with Vietnamese workers who came to the island of New Caledonia starting in 1890 as contracted laborers

We worked in the island’s nickel and chromium mines

We helped establish France as a trading nation

As exploited workers 

We were given numbers not names 

Reduced to only numbers cuz our Vietnamese or Kinh Indigenous makes were deemed too hard to pronounce by French oppressors

The money they gave us was supposed to be enough to buy small rice paddies to save Vietnamese families from starvation

They signed five year contracts and left for what was promised to us as a new eden or island paradise 

But we were lied to as they chained us into boats

When we were beaten and whipped along with the Melanesian Kanak Indigenous Pasifika

New Caledonia the home of  Melanesian Kanaks who were Indigenous like us  

We were called Chân Đăng or chained feet 

It was similar to blackbirding of Indigenous Pasifika Blackbirding or as we know it the Pasifika Slave Trade

The coercion of people through deception or kidnapping to work

As unpaid or poorly paid laborers in countries distant to their Indigenous lands

This is what happened to the Chân Đăn

Cuz they exploited the illiteracy of Vietnamese or Kinh Indigenous workers 

We were whipped, beaten, chained, and given other forms of corporal punishment

When the French and later the Japanese was defeated

It gave many Vietnamese or Kinh Indigenous people hope that we ourselves can return to our indigenous homeland 

To a home not oppressed by the Chinese, French, and Japanese anymore

But we were attacked by anti Asian and anti native racist slogans from the French 

Like signs that said buying from the Vietnamese is betraying France or Vietnamese out! 

The Vietnamese in New Caledonia were split into two groups

Those of us who wanted to return home who sided with the north Vietnamese led by radical and revolutionary Ho Chi Minh 

And those who sided with French since they feared they would be persecuted as Catholics in a now communist Vietnam 

Unwelcomed on the island nation

Many of the Vietnamese or Kinh Indigenous people left to return home to Vietnam our Indigneous homeland

They were displaced disconnected Southeast Asian and Indigenous diaspora deported to a land they have never known 

Since they were displaced disconnected diaspora born in Melanesia

They passed down the inter generational trauma to their children 

Some of stayed behind and hid in New Caledonia when that ship returned to Vietnam 

That is why there was still 1000 displaced disconnected Vietnamese or Kinh Indigenous people left in New Caledonia in Melanesia

Today there are 2400 of us who call Melanesia home

In the 21st century of 2013 a group of Vietnamese who were  Chân Đăng returned to New Caledonia in Melanesia 

Years after after being exiled to Vietnam

It was an emotional moment for many Vietnamese citizens of New Caledonia 

Today 1 percent of New Caledonia is Vietnamese and a percent of that are Asian natives who are both Vietnamese or Kinh Indigenous and Melanesian Kanak Indigenous Pasifika

Today there is a statue commentating the Vietnamese who were tricked into boats as exploited workers and shipped onto French ships 

They took away our beautiful Vietnamese or Kinh Indigenous makes and reduced us to only numbers

Many Vietnamese or Kinh Indigenous people died in the French mines not with names but only numbers…

So that is why Vietnamese history is so painful as an Vietnamese or Kinh Indigenous person and Polynesian Tahitian Indigenous Pasifika 

It feels like there is no end to the cruelty

That we suffered at the hands of colonialism imperialism neocolonialism and occupation

It feels like there is not end to the brutality we suffered 

At the hands of colonizers and imperialist oppression that has occupied Indigenous Kinh land for years centuries and millennia

So what exactly does China, France, Japan, and America owe the Vietnamese for years of oppression 

How are we going to tally up and ask to settle the score

They can’t cash that check cuz if we are going to be owed everything they ever did to us 

As Southeast Asian and Indigenous Kinh Vietnamese people of color 

Then the list of reparations is a long ass one

[seriousbusinessforhumans]

C.J. Polychroniou: Although Biden has won the election, the Democrats failed to materialize a blue-wave landslide, and it is clear we will continue to deal with large-scale Trumpism. Given that you were extremely skeptical of the polls from day one, what do you think contributed to the massive turnout for Trump, even as Biden saw an even more massive turnout?

Noam Chomsky: The very fact that someone could be considered a serious candidate after just having killed tens if not hundreds of thousands of Americans through a disastrous response to COVID-19 is an extraordinary victory for Trump — and a defeat for the country, for the world and for hopes for a decent future.

Some of Trump’s victories are very revealing. A report on NPR discussed his victory in a solid Democratic county on the Texas-Mexico border with many poor Latinos that hadn’t voted Republican for a century, since Harding. The NPR analyst attributes Biden’s loss to his famous “gaffe” in the last debate, in which he said that we have to act to save human society from destruction in the not very distant future. Not his words, of course, but that’s the meaning of his statement: that we have to make moves to transition away from fossil fuels, which are central to the regional economy...

Poor working people in the border area are not voting for the predictable consequences of Trump’s race toward cataclysm. They may simply be skeptical about what science predicts. Sixty percent of conservative Republicans (35 percent of moderate Republicans) believe that humans are contributing “not too much/not at all” to global warming. A poll reported in Science found that only 20 percent of Republicans trust scientists “a lot…to do what is right for the country.” Why then believe the dire predictions? These, after all, are the messages pounded into their heads daily by the White House and its media echo chamber.

South Texan working people may not be ready to sacrifice their lives and communities today on the basis of claims in elite circles that they are instructed not to trust. These tendencies cannot be blamed solely on Trump’s malevolence. They trace back to the failure of the Democratic Party to bring to the public a serious program to fend off environmental catastrophe while also improving lives and work — not because such programs don’t exist; they do. But because they don’t appeal to the donor-oriented Clintonite neoliberals who run the Democratic Party.

There’s more. Trump has shown political genius in tapping the poisonous currents that run right below the surface of American society..... A careful study by political scientist Larry Bartels reveals that Republicans feel that “the traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save it,” and more than 40 percent agree that “a time will come when patriotic Americans have to take the law into their own hands.”

Trump has also skillfully tapped reservoirs of anger and economic resentment among the working and middle classes who have been subjected to the bipartisan neoliberal assault of the last 40 years. If they feel that they have been robbed, they have good reason. The Rand Corporation recently estimated transfer of wealth from the lower 90 percent to the very rich during the four neoliberal decades: $47 trillion, not small change. Looking more closely, the transfer was primarily to a small fraction of the very rich. Since Reagan, the top 0.1 percent has doubled their share of the country’s wealth to an astonishing 20 percent.

Less educated workers may not know the details or understand the mechanisms that have been designed to undermine their lives, but they see the outcomes. The Democrats offer them nothing...Trump in fact harms workers even more than the opposition, but he excoriates “elites” — while slavishly serving the super-rich and corporate sector, as his legislative program and executive orders amply demonstrate.

Apart from almost daily steps to chip away at the environment that sustains life and to pack the judiciary top-to-bottom with far right young lawyers, the main achievement of the Trump-McConnell administration has been the tax scam of 2017: “a delayed tax increase dressed up as a tax cut,” economist Joseph Stiglitz explains. “The Trump administration has a dirty little secret: It’s not just planning to increase taxes on most Americans. The increase has already been signed, sealed and delivered, buried in the pages of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.”

The law was carefully designed to lower taxes initially so as to “hoodwink” Americans to think their taxes were being reduced, but with mechanisms to ensure that tax increases “would affect nearly everyone but people at the top of the economic hierarchy. All taxpayer income groups with incomes of $75,000 and under — that’s about 65 percent of taxpayers — will face a higher tax rate in 2021 than in 2019.” It’s the same device that the George W. Bush Republicans used to sell their 2001 “tax cut” — for the rich.

[girlwithwolftatoo]

Your “eco-friendly fashion” can go and f*ck itself, and so you do.

Let me explain this: no, I don’t hate the eco-friendly trending of, actually, trying to get the less waste of products and similar stuff, for we need to be more responsible with the planet because, just as Starlord said, we are the idiots living on it. 

The problem comes when this idea of a “green life” becomes just another fashion to follow, building another bloody capitalist industry around it so those poor nasty rich people feel a little less bad for basically being the ones who contributes at more than 50% of carbon emissions  and contamination. What am I talking about? Let’s check some advices to contribute to help the enviroment which are in fact just pacifiers for first world, good wealth people:

Wasting reduction, a.k.a “my zero waste challenge”. Yes, plastic is the big villain at this moment, and to fight against it the population across the world is recomending the use of certain stuff to replace it, like glass recipents (fun fact: some idiotics enjoy saying how millenials are guilty for using plastic containers instead of glass like “my good ol’ granpa used to”, but hey, guess which generation started exploiding petroleum -where plastic comes from- to increase their wealth and reduce costs of production? One clue: not Millenials) or fabric bags. A good idea? Yes, until you remember most of the products like food come in plastic stuff, and I’m not just talking about that first world obssession for covering their fruit and veggies with fucking plastic when, hello, fruits and veggies ARE ALREADY PROTECTED BY THEIR SKIN, YOU JUST NEED TO FUCKING WASH IT A LITTLE BEFORE COOKING. 

Yes, Karen, I know what you’re thinking, “Well, duh, if you don’t like plastic around your food go to an organic market, they have this lovelies glass or fabric containers, stop complaining and do what U need to do”. And here comes problem number two:

Organic everything, the new way to show how rich you are. I have some news for ya, except for the processed food, EVERYTHING IS ORGANIC. The only problem is you are afraid of “toxicity in food for pesticides and dark water” which, guess what, is pushed violently by your bloody wild capitalism in order to produce more food. And now a lot of stores selling you organic, zero-waste, green food is just part of the same system, it just puts a huge stick in front of your ecologic container swearing these overpriced carrot (which vitamins are THE SAME AS THAT DOUBLE-LEGGED CARROT PLACES LIKE FUCKING WAL-MART RATHER THROWS TO THE GARBAGE) is good and fair... yeees, you just need to make some researchs on internet to find out the “fair price” for the peasants and agriculture workers just doesn’t equals the price you are paying to your white, nice lady in white uniform attending your weekly shopping of “clean” veggies and soy and quinoa. 

I know some countries aren’t used of local/producers market where you’re actually buying to the producer and paying a low price that goes directly to the field workers, but here’s a funny thing: the organic stores doesn’t just sell you the idea of “organic, ecologic” stuff, but the key word is “clean”, the idea of a mutant potato sounds “unclean” for them, because if it has a brother stuck in a side of it is because it was soaked in “evil chemistry stuff to make it grow like that”. Well, say thanks to Monsanto for covering the world with their bloody products who are actually doing worse damage than your ugly looking veggies, and all of it just to make money and provide you, person of a wealthy, capitalist, whitey country, of your organic stores and the rest of your nice stuff like year model car and Starbucks. 

In short: organic stores are just face washed supermarkets feeding with the explotation of people in other countries, putting an enormous, unnecessary price to their stuff which not everybody can afford just to make you feel good and a planet savior. 

The cow didn’t suffered, but what about Pablo? I know I’m entering a dangerous point here, but with these eco-friendly trending, veganism has been exploited like the panacea for everything, from enviroment contamination to poor cows and pigs crying in the farms. And yes, becoming more aware of the cruelty towards animals has been the iceberg peak to become more humans and protective to the other living forms in our society, and yes, the carnic industry tends to be awful and utterly disgusting... IN FIRST WORLD COUNTRIES. 

This might sound shocking, but the images of cattle of any shape being tormented since the moment of birth are usually from USA, UK and similar “farms” which act more like a corporation in the middle of a field than like a real farm. Places like South and Central America has a carnic indsutry which works pretty different; you can actually see, in a daily basis, cows and goats walking free in the farm’s territory, eating as much as they want and sometimes getting involved in fights with cars on the road, and though this isn’t an excuse for the late slaughter, at least those aren’t creatures jailed and tortured inside a 5x5 box. Chickens are the same, for instead of killing the males the farms in Mexico and sibbling countries rather let them grow to become the source of meat, the hens aren’t eaten a lot in our culture so they live to lay eggs and they also have a nice life in comparison with their north-americans or european pals. 

In other words: stopping meat consume doesn’t make you the person of the year, but fighting for animal rights and stop eating meat from massive industries will help a lot more than just hating everyone for getting a burger. 

“But still I rather take vegan products, soy and quinoa and other stuff...” Uh, do you remember what I said about the organic stores selling you smoke and mirrors? Yes, perhaps none animal died because of your vegan product (at least not none of the cuties like baby cows and chubby pigs, just a bunch of insects which exists as part of the natural balance and very probably wild life), but a lot of people of third world countries certainly will. Illegal buy of land made by corporations to needy goverments, privatization of fucking water from local comunities in order to create and feed fields of “organic food”, child and indigenous abuse due to this “legal steal” of land and bad payed, forced work (because in the end, the poor need to, you know, fucking live even if it’s at the minimun wage)... All of this so the white lady who enjoys speaking to managers and drives a massive truck just for her and her two children, can go and buy her quinoa and post a pic on Instagram claiming how “nice and easy” is save the enviroment.

Oh, I know, I’m being too mean to that people, am I? I don’t fucking care, because the hidden part of this fashion, the worst part of this idea of “ecologic capitalism” comes with this only truth:

Poor people aren’t “eco-friendly”. Classism has become the key to keep this trending just made for the wealthy, the idea of poor people not being “good with the enviroment” comes from a lot of cultural ideas created by the vision of a thirds of the population. Rich people hates seeing images of countries like India, Colombia, Phillipines and similar because the images sell a complete lie which helps to keep them in a bubble: poor people eating fast food or buying things in plastic containers is gross and they think “Oh thank God I left that life style behind” as they drive his car leaving a lot of CO2 compared to those who takes public transport, that same public transport that looks disgusting in those images I’m talking about, because hat portion of the world has no money to get new vehicles every year, because they can’t #govegan because their only sources of a certain quality food is the normal food, those who doesn’ have a seal of aproval which claims how enviroment-savior is, because that lack of wealth forces them to work much more than people of France, Germany or USA and gaining much less than them, with so little time to think on “being green”, sometimes even with little time to cook natural food in their homes, and of course being unable to pay to an inmigrant to cook for them like... well, you know like who. And because these poor people, who works and dies because their country and the “free market” is pushing them to a modern slavery for international corps which provide to their targets, people who aren’t from the South of the tropics, white and wealthy, free of any guilt because they spend 50 bucks every week in organic coffee which was grounded in the last remains of an indigenous land and harvested for a dark-skin, 10 y/o boy who is forced to work instead of studying because all this economic machine made him part of the poorest side of the society, the idea of being “better than others”. Because they’re selling the idea that being a helper for the enviroment is easy, as long as you can afford it in their terms, becaus they’re making you think your green bag is making more for the world than stop and think how those who make that bag are being paid 5 cents of dollar at day in a dark little room in the East of the world, consumed by the greed and vanity of capitalism.

You can be eco-friendly without spending like an idiot in that special stores and markets. How? You can recycle when you’re able to, you can use public transport or walk for short distances instead of depending of your car, you can carry water in a bottle to avoid buying one-use bottles outside, you can support your local producers market and stop thinking of the “zero waste challenge” and making it the “less, well thinking waste daily basis”. And, for the love of any God you’re praying to, STOP SUPPORTING FUCKING MARKET CHAINS OF ALLEGEDLY VEGAN, GLUTEN-FREE, ECOLOGIC SHIT. If you have the time and money to make your own food or to spend less plastic, FUCKING DO IT FOR YOURSELF AND NOT VIA BUYING USELESS SHIT FROM THOSE COMPANIES.

This was my 2020 year advice, thanks for reading. If you want more info, you can search for “international agriculture explotation”, “organic food origin” and “most enviromental dangerous companies” in your favorite searcher.

[fuelcut]

A thought experiment on Silicon Valley’s third era

[ read the tweetstorm if you’re in a rush] 

June 19th marks the end of American slavery, July 4th American Independence and July 14th the storming of the Bastille. It’s also my 40th birthday, and I’m exploring what we can learn from the past to help navigate today’s struggles for racial justice and economic freedom. 

1940-1980: “Atoms” and the military-industrial-labor complex

My dad arrived in the Bay Area in 1970-1971 to get his PhD at Berkeley - just as the area was being rebranded as Silicon Valley.  

Free from the stifling hierarchy of the East, the Bay was America’s center for social, technical and institutional change. Black Panthers policed the police in Oakland, shiny BART trains crossed the Bay to SF where the Gay Rights movement was flourishing. My family tree waited a millennia for India to recognize intercaste marriage. My parents would see radical social change in America across every axis in a single generation. Bold leadership in the 60s expanded civil rights and embraced immigration. They (and I) benefited greatly from an economic and social foundation that had been laid over many decades. 

Caterpillar Tractor - founded in the Bay Area - embodied the spirit of this era. It went from liberating France in WW2 to building a massive middle class, unionized labor force. Cat later moved its headquarters to Peoria, Illinois - because in this era, cities across the country - not just the coasts - had the ability to compete. Since WW2, America pursued an intentional strategy of geographically broad-based economic development - via highways, airline regulation and distributed national labs.  

Caterpillar didn’t just give Peoria a chance, it also gave my dad a chance to put down roots in America by sponsoring his green card. There was no H1B limbo. The nexus of military, industry and labor unions brought immigrants, Women and Blacks into the workforce - with paid apprenticeships (not exorbitant higher education) and technically-focused community colleges paving the way for millions. My mom learned COBOL while her toddlers played in the back of class. Even Hunter’s Point in SF was vibrant during much of this period.  (Of course, it was far from a halcyon era - the war machine had massive human cost globally and civil rights were far from evenly enforced in America.)

And while atoms reigned supreme during this era, the military and government patiently invested risk capital in advanced manufacturing, semiconductors and software/networking to prepare America for its future. 

1980-2020: “Bits” and global capital, jackrocks and polarization

In 1980, Reagan was elected President - and I was born. This would also be the peak of private sector labor employment in the US and the beginning of global capital (and the multinational companies they backed) as the leading force in forging the social contract.

They promised us that countries with McDonald’s would never go to war with each other. Indeed the Berlin Wall fell, Asian laborers got jobs and Americans could buy cheap stuff at WalMart. Global capital (bits) put atoms inside shipping containers and sent them around the world - abstracting consumers from the manufacturing base. 

The writing was on the wall for unions.

As a middle schooler, I saw Cat management and labor (UAW) locked into a multi-year strike over the future. The front line was not in a boardroom or on the picket line. It was neighborhoods, schools and community groups. I remember when a classmate whose dad was in the union talked about how folks in the factory were peeing on effigies of management - including my dad.

Naturally I knew which side I was on. Cat needed wage concessions and freedom to operate to be globally competitive.  I’d read Akio Morita, TPS and Lee Iacocca. I worried about Japan Inc. eating our lunch (yes as a 12 year old!) UAW workers and families were much more grounded. They needed a livelihood and wanted certainty for their future.

---

War continued to wage into high school. We came home one day to find “jackrocks” outside of our driveway - a tool used in feudal Japan to thwart the advancing armies - horses, chariots - etc. of those in power.  In <60 years, Caterpillar had gone from transforming America’s agrarian society to becoming the enemy of American workers. We had the GOP’s Contract with America (stored in my Trapper Keeper) and Clinton signing NAFTA within a couple years. Both parties supported global capital and global capital supported both parties. Maybe jackrocks worked better than voting?

Corporate America soon figured out that if your workers were in China, Mexico or the South, it’s harder for them to stick jack rocks in your driveway. If your kids go to private school or you live in a quasi-private suburb, they’ll be insulated from the wrath of the have-nots in heavily policed, declining urban centers. No peeing on your effigy or having your kid hear about it!

---

After college, I became an analyst at Bain & Company. Once an auto parts company hired us to do a “portfolio review”. I meticulously compared the costs of building mirrors in Eastern Michigan or Malaysia - creating a zero defect Excel model. Guess which location won? The auto parts company - like Cat - had the freedom to choose where to put jobs. 

But what freedom did the workers have? Marie Antoinette once said “let them eat cake”. The elites of our era now say “let them move”. Social capital is critical for folks navigating change. The educated elite take the portability of social capital (embedded in college degrees and iMessage threads) as a given. 

But place and social capital are deeply intertwined especially if you’re poor or a minority. While the deep introspection elites once had during 2016 has now been paved over by new crises, we should never forget that there’s a cost to society of losing its manufacturing base and jobs. How do you model the costs of broken families, drug addiction and a polarized electorate in Excel? 

---

I grew disillusioned with management by spreadsheet. But I saw a bright spot on the horizon: tech. I remember opening my first iPod, getting 1000 songs in my pocket and believing that America had a shot at leading a new generation of consumer electronics when everyone a decade earlier had written us off in favor of the Japanese. Perhaps tech could bring jobs and prosperity back to the country? I wanted to be part of it. 

So I moved to the Valley in 2004 and joined a VC fund. I saw how the VC funding model that Silicon Valley was built on incentivizes high-risk, high-leverage and massive-scale. It encourages companies to cherry-pick top-end talent (immigrants, marquee college grads) to build the differentiated bits. Pick the highest leverage point in the stack, outsource everything else - by building in China and/or pushing the last-mile to an ecosystem that you can control at arms length.

Tech companies could more than pay back the largely fixed costs of software / semiconductor design from the large and homogenous American market. This dynamic attracted massive amounts of private risk capital and enabled aggressive expansion abroad. This model didn’t work for everything (I got burned with cleantech) - but it worked amazingly well for broad swaths of enterprise software, consumer services and marketplaces. I saw how tech could be an incredible lever for wealth creation. But every visit back home to the Rust Belt made me wonder - wealth creation for whom?

---

2020+ - A thought experiment on institutional innovation and putting people first

July 14, 2020 - Q2 Earnings - CEO, MEGA TECH CORP - Hi everyone. These aren’t normal times. We’re not going to talk about our 10Q on this call. We’re here to talk about the next 10 years. So if you’re here for DAUs, ARR or CPC, you can drop off now.


We’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the race, health and economic crises our country faces. Over the last few weeks, I’ve asked our exec team to leave their homes, their Zoom calls, their DoorDash deliveries - to join protests and explore our community through new eyes. 

Race & Place: On Juneteenth, we biked from Sheraton Place to Hunters Point to Tanforan. We saw the real life impact of redlining, mass incarceration of Blacks and the lack of jobs from decades ago - and how our headquarters sustain - rather than disrupt - the region’s policies of de facto segregation. We also remembered how political demagogues once imprisoned our neighbors of Japanese descent. We see today how their rhetoric affects our Black neighbors and colleagues. What might it do tomorrow to folks without legal status in ag/service industries that California depends or the H1Bs we depend on? What does diversity & inclusion mean in this context?

Jobs: The next Friday we biked from SRI to PARC to Sunnyvale and Moffett Field. Our industry once dreamed of a bicycle for the mind and embraced technical education and apprenticeship as a path in the door for Women and Blacks. Meanwhile we’ve pushed vast swaths of work to contractors or platform-mediated transactions - making it harder to use up-skilling as a talent lever like manufacturing employers did in the last era. What’s the impact on income mobility? At what point will 40 million unemployed Americans affect our share prices and the stability of society?

Climate: On Independence Day, we biked on the Bay Trail past landfills, superfund sites and the 101 - alongside poor and minority neighborhoods with terrible health outcomes. We talked about the Bay Area weather forecast for 2060 “fire with a chance of flooding”. We passed abandoned railways and dreams of regional transport - the result of which is folks commuting hours each way from the central valley to work service jobs in our campuses.  We wondered about the long run political consequences of isolating our employee base inside the WiFi confines of a private bus network. Where is the voting base to drive institutional change? How many axles or tires will our commuter buses need to keep them safe from jackrocks on the 101?

Health: Last week, we rode from the old Permanente cement quarry to 101 (built by the same cement workers.)  We talked about how Kaiser - a private employer of low-skilled workers - internalized their healthcare needs, pursued disruptive innovation and faced fierce clashes with the medical establishment. We thought about how COVID is exposing the brittleness of our employee’s isolation inside a private insurance bubble. No one can be healthy in a pandemic without competent public health infrastructure. Meanwhile, the growing cost of private healthcare makes it harder for tech - let alone the rest of the country - to employ American workers across the wage spectrum - exacerbating job loss and instability. 

And as we spoke with others, we saw how the issues that Silicon Valley faces are not unique to one metropolitan area or one industry. It just happens to be the ultimate archetype of Global Capitalism and de facto segregated American metros.

What we now see - more clearly than ever - is that our entire company, our entire industry, our entire Valley - is built on a flawed foundation. 

We can no longer just focus on the magical software bits and hope someone else figures out racial equity, employment, climate and health. This is Joel Spolsky’s Law of Leaky Abstractions on the ultimate scale. The abstractions are failing - and we’re seeing bugs and unintended consequences all around us. And the more we invest to deal with one-off bugs, the more likely we are to calcify change and imprison ourselves inside a failing stack.

It’s like we decided to build the world’s notification service on Ruby on Rails - or building an iPhone competitor on Windows CE. Fail Whale everywhere. Unfortunately, America’s democratic institutions are in poor condition. They are struggling to deal with inequality let alone looming environmental disaster.  A polarized electorate - particularly at the national level - leads to populism and makes it hard for these institutions to execute meaningful, long-term plans.

We talk a lot about speech, misinformation, fairness of targeted ads etc. But it’s becoming clear that UX, linear algebra/training data and monetization in our products is just the tip of the spear to address polarization. We believe polarization is a product of the underlying conditions of civil rights, education, health and climate debt that affect Americans differentially based on race, wealth, neighborhood and region. e.g. If we care about justice, how far does focusing on the fairness of employment ads get us in a world when many people lack the skills and negotiating power to secure a living wage?

So will today’s peaceful protests for racial justice expand into tomorrow’s revolution(s) for economic freedom? If you don’t think things are bad now, think about what happens when the stimulus checks run out. Take a look at the amount of debt in the public sector, use any imagination about COVID, work out what happens to their tax base / pension returns and consider the impact on public services, public servants and their votes.  MMT better be a real thing. Maybe we didn’t start these fires, but that refrain won’t save us when the flames come our way. 

We’re done debating why we need to act. It’s clear America needs our help. Let’s talk about how we’re going to rise to the occasion. Our mantra will be “internalize, innovate, institutionalize”.

First, we’re going to internalize our problems. I’m here to tell you that issues of racial and economic justice are not just moral issues but they’re financial issues. Racial debt, education debt, health debt, climate debt  will hit us harder and harder each year.  (By the way, revolution probably won’t be great for your DCF models.) So we’re going to recognize these off-balance sheet liabilities - which amount to a few hundred billion in the US alone over the next 10 years for a company at our scale. 

Second, we’re going to innovate against these systemic problems - but our only shot at making progress is if we realign the entire company’s mission to address them. This is not about optics. This is not about philanthropy. This is not another bet.  We’re putting all our chips behind one bet - America. It's the country that backed us in the first place, it's where most of our people are and most of our profits.  The job for our existing products, platforms and cash flows will be to advance four areas: place / race, skilling / manufacturing, health / food and climate / mobility - starting in America. The board will measure me based on job creation and diversity.  It should go without saying that we’re pausing dividends and buybacks for the foreseeable future. Every dollar will serve our mission.  Every senior leader will need to sign up for our new mission - and those who choose to stay will receive a new, back-end loaded, 10 year vesting schedule.  We want them focused on the long-term health of society - not the whims of Robinhood day traders or strengthening the moats of existing products. We will need to invent entirely new ways to operate and ship products. As Joel Spolsky said, “when you need to hire a programmer to do mostly VB programming, it’s not good enough to hire a VB programmer, because they will get completely stuck in tar every time the VB abstraction leaks”.  We need engineers, designers and product managers that will look deep into the stack, confront the racial, job access, health and climate debts that our products, our companies and our communities are built on top of. This is not about CYA process to protect cash cows or throwing things over the fence to policy. We will need to innovate across technical, cultural and organizational lines. This requires deep understanding and curiosity. This will bring more scrutiny to our company - not less.  Not everyone’s going to be on board - so for the next 12 months, we’re giving folks a one-time buyout if they want to leave. 

Third, we can’t do any of this by ourselves.  The problems are too big. Our role will be to provide enlightened risk capital (from our balance sheet or by re-vectoring operating spend) alongside R&D, product, platform leverage to help leaders and innovators pursue solutions in these areas.  Of course we will work with our peers and the public sector wherever possible - buying/R&D consortia, public-private partnerships, trusts, etc. But the new era and landscape demands that we explore institutional models beyond global capital/startups, labor unions, NGOs or government. We need models that can more flexibly align people and purpose, that innovate on individualized vs. socialized risk/reward - and that ultimately help build and sustain local, social capital.  It’s difficult to say what these will look like - but increasingly figuring this out will be existential for our core business too. Right now, it doesn’t matter if you’re designing the best cameras in Cupertino or the best way to see their snaps in Santa Monica - we’re all just building layers of an attention stack for global capital. Our Beijing competitors have figured this out. ByteDance is already eating our lunch. They’re using the same tech inputs as us - UX, ML and large-scale systems - which are now a commodity - but with vastly lower consequences for the content they show - creating a superior operating / scaling model. They’re not internalizing social or political cost.

 What we need in this era is the accumulation stack - where each interaction builds social capital.  This is not about global likes. This is about local respect. We’ll create competitive advantage when we build products that reach across race / economic lines to harness America’s amazing melting pot and do so in ways that build livelihoods / property rights for creators and stakeholders.  

With this operating model in place, we’re committing to fundamental change in four areas:

Place & Race - We’re done with de facto segregation. Over the next 10 years, 100% of our jobs will be in diverse communities that embrace inclusive schooling, policing, housing and transit policies. (Starting tomorrow, we’re putting red lines on our maps around towns with exclusionary zoning.) This is not about privatizing cities or an HQ2-style play to extract concessions. This is about investing our risk capital and our reputation to innovate alongside government. How do we bring world-class education to neighborhoods with concentrated poverty? What is the future of digital/hybrid charter schooling? Unbundled, community-driven public safety? We’ll embrace “remote-first” as a means to this end. The Bay will become one physical node alongside others (e.g. Atlanta, DC, LA) creating an Interstate Knowledge System that develops diverse talent across the country. We’re going to coordinate our investment with leading peers - since after all, this isn’t about cost savings or cherry-picking. It’s about broadening our country’s economic base.

Skilling & Manufacturing - We will 10x the tech talent pool in 10 years - by inventing new apprenticeship models that bring women, minorities and the poor into the workforce. We’ll start with our existing contractor base, convert them to new employment models with expanded benefits and paths for upward mobility.  Next, we will invent new productivity tools for all types of workers - from the front office to mobile work to call center - that brings the power of AI and programming to everyone. These will be deeply tied into new platforms for work designed from the bottom-up to build social and financial capital for individual workers and teams.  Last, we’re going to manufacture most of our hardware products - from silicon all the way to systems - entirely in the US within 10 years. This will require massive investment, collaboration and innovation. It may require a revolution in robotics - but we will pursue this in a way that makes the American worker competitive - not a commodity to be automated away. If we’re successful, the dividends of our investment here will have massive spillover benefits to every other sector of manufacturing in the US - autos, etc. - including ones we have yet to dream up. 

Health & Food -  We’re not going to tolerate a two-class system for healthcare anymore. As we convert our contract workforce to new employment models, we’re going to have to innovate on the fundamental quality/cost paradigm across our benefit stack. This may feel like a step down but it will put us (and the rest of society if we’re successful) on a fundamentally better long-term trajectory.  Food is part of Health, and we’re going to innovate there too. Free food for employees is not going to come back post-COVID. Instead, we’ll use our food infrastructure to bootstrap cooperatively-owned cloud kitchens. We’ll provide capital to former contractors - mostly Black and Hispanic - to invest and own these. We’ll build platforms to help them sell food to employees (partly subsidized), participate in new “food for health” programs and eventually disrupt the extractive labor practices we see across food, grocery and delivery. 

Climate & Mobility - Lastly, we’ll be imposing a carbon tax on all aspects of our own operations - which we’ll use to “fund” innovation in this space - with a primary focus on job creation.  This is an area where we’re going to be looking far beyond our four walls from the beginning.  As a first step, we’re teaming up with Elon and Gavin Newsom to buy PG&E out of bankruptcy and restructure it as a 21st century “decentralized” utility.  It will accelerate the electrification of mobility - financing networked batteries for buses, cars and bikes along with charging infrastructure - and leading a massive job creation program focused on energy efficiency.  Speaking of mobility, private buses aren’t coming back after COVID. Instead, we’re teaming up with all of our peers to create a Bay-wide network of electric buses (with bundled e-bikes) that will service folks of all walks of life - including our own employee base.  Oh and one more thing - we’re bringing together the world’s most advanced privacy/identity architecture and computational video/audio to bake public health infrastructure directly into the buses. For COVID and beyond. None of this is a substitute for competent, democratically accountable regional authorities. This is us investing risk capital on behalf of society - with the goal of empowering these authorities. Yes the New York Times will have a field day with this. Maybe in time they’ll leave their bubble, enter the real world, see the sorry state of their institutions - the behavioral health and infrastructure crises on their crumbling streets - and get on board. Until then, our job is to be patient longer than they can be inflammatory. 

Open technology for global progress - While we have to prioritize America given the scale of problems, the intent is not to abandon the rest of the world or hold back it’s progress. We feel the opposite - that over the coming decades each country’s technology sectors will thrive. To get there, we will continue to invest patiently - hiring, training, partnering, investing and innovating - but with a clear north star to help each country develop local leaders in new areas. Long-term, we’ll continue to contribute open technology that others can build upon. 

America should be the proverbial city on a hill for everyone - not a metaverse for the rich with the poor dying in the streets. We don’t have much time so we’re getting to work now. See you next quarter.

----

This call may be imaginary but none of this is sci-fi or requires MMT. What it requires is us to care. To act. Join me on bike rides to explore our past and discuss what tangible actions Silicon Valley’s leading companies can take in the coming quarters and years. Logistics here for rides on June 19, June 26, July 2 and July 10!

[grimnoire87]

I feel like people need to understand U.S. history to get why American minorities are very stressed about the possibility of a draft or a war with Iran. It is extremely frustrating to see how few people actually put effort into learning this even though they regularly make general criticisms about the US. Even a basic comprehension of U.S. current events would prepare someone to understand this. White Americans might be victimizing themselves but the rest of us are worried for a different reason and it needs to be recognized. And if you recognize it you probably can also understand why we bristle at the implication that we only benefit from a system that was built around enslaving or killing us or people who look like us, or why its so wrong to equate Soleimani to a black victim of police brutality.

People are able to have generalized discussions of US white supremacy and Imperialism but only in a way that reflects the last 50 years and only in a manner that treats it as just an external problem that never effects us here. Which is why folks sound so tone deaf when they talk about "Americans".

U.S. white supremacy was not built around fascism or the desire to police the rest of the world. Nor is Imperialism a US creation. Both takes are neo liberal ways to avoid responsibility and completely ahistorical.

Some context (warning, this will be a long post and might get redundant at times but I promise that there is a reason for it.):

Edited because I finally figured out how to install a break

The U.S. was, at one point, and English colony. It was "The New World" aka a just another colony in a long line European Imperialism. French, Spanish, and Dutch "explorers" also were making a mark on the continent. They were using and killing indigenous people and importing enslaved black people. Black and Native people have always been the first and most longstanding victims of U.S. agression. After the Revolutionary War, the new U.S. continued to expand, engaging in genocide against Black and Native peoples for hundreds if years. While the U.S. would eventually seek to expand its borders on the continent, in the beginning it was rather isolationist in regards to world affairs. Like Australia, their white supremacy was almost entirely "local" due to the nature of its origin, it wasn't powerful enough to take over entire countries on the other side of the world but it was powerful enough to murder and enslave people here .

White supremacy was central to that white American identity. American Exceptionalism and Manifest Destiny (and US Imperialism in general) sprung from this new identity as a "White Christian Nation". Its similar to how the "White Man's Burden" was used to justify British Imperialism in Africa and Asia.

That was a tangent but...anyways. U.S. identity has always been fostered by the idea of the "other". For whiteness to function it needs an other or a scapegoat. And how does this relate to the fear if another war? Well all you have to look at the Civil War.

Black people were made into scapegoats on both sides. The Draft Riots were race riots where Irish draftees went out and burned a black orphanage and killed men, women and children. It got worse after that war ended. Black people in the North were scapegoated for the war, draft, and taking lower paying jobs. In the South, they were scapegoated for the loss of the economic and political power that came from slavery. Thus white resentment led to black people being tortured and terrorized by their white neighbors. They hunted us. This would be a common pattern, and would happen anytime white people felt anxiety over a war, economic problems, loss of political power, etc. They would ride out and sooner or later a black person, family, or entire town would be lynched. We were surrounded by a majority who could do what they wanted to us.

It was the same thing after WWI. Black vets would come home and wind up being the sole defense against white mobs numbering in the hundreds. The Red Summer consisted of massacre after massacre. There were no consequences for the perpetrators. Survivors were put in camps or prison, none would be compensated. And yes, by this point U.S. imperialism had allowed white Americans to continue to slaughter Natives and steal Mexico, and go beyond its shores to start wars to see which Imperialist nation could colonize where.

The U.S. has loved scapegoating "others" to justify limiting rights, expanding its borders, taking resources and supporting white supremacy. It was as American as apple pie. Look at the Japanese Internment. When Timothy McVeigh committed the Oklahoma City bombing, no one blamed white fundamentalists. He was seen as an individual.

That's not what happened in 2001. On Sept. 11, 2001, after a cowardly attack that killed close to 3,000, white anxiety would lead to the scapegoating of another community in a manner similar to how black people were scapegoated for the Civil War. It didn't matter that this mass murder was orchestrated by Saudi Arabia, "9/11 was committed by Muslims", therefore it was open season. Regardless of the fact that Muslims died in the attack and were the primary victims of these terrorist groups in the Middle East. They were at fault simply because they appeared to be "Muslim". And the US already had an issue with Islam because of its role in black civil rights. So that attack just made it worse and shifted the vitriol away from black Muslims and towards all Muslims. Folks would go out and hunt for Muslims and people would justify it. Mosques were being targeted in a manner similar to black churches in the South. They were criminalized into terrorists. And the Iraq War would only make this worse and create refugees that would come here and be scapegoated all over again. After the Pulse shooting white people railed against Muslims and Black Lives Matter, but Dylann Roof was just one person.

We have had laws passed that scrapped civil liberties, Trump had a Muslim travel ban list, ICE is actively detaining and deporting brown and black people, and modern weaponry and lax gun laws allow people to commit mass murder on a scale never seen before. White supremacists and Islamophobes have already killed people for "looking like Muslims". Black people are being killed by the thousands every year and we have to convince people we don't deserve to be murdered. People going out and assaulting/killing Jewish people. There is a lot to be anxious about over because white American aggression is not purely an external problem.

White anxiety and scapegoating gets people killed. Daily. And white Americans (just like Europeans) LOVE to take their frustrations out on a scapegoats and always have. Because U.S. white supremacy is built around the idea that whiteness entitles you to privilege and if you lack it than its someone else's fault and you have the right to hurt them for it.

And that is a very stressful reality when you are a minority surrounded by people with the privilege and power to harm you whenever they feel a little anxious. Especially when you have someone like Trump in power (unlike Obama he surrounded himself with white supremacists, courts them, and sics them on people). It doesn't matter whether there is a war or just an escalation of tensions. No matter whether there is a draft or not, you always be vulnerable to a white supremacist with an assault rifle who can walk into a Mosque and murder you by the dozen. U.S. history has set a precedent.

And imagine the horror of a draft! Imagine everyone between the ages of 18-35 being told they are in a lottery and if picked have to go to war (and potentially commit war crimes) or go to jail in a country that loves for profit prisons, locks up minorities, kills black and Native detainees and pardons people who murder prisoners of war. Use common sense. It is perfectly reasonable to be nervous about a draft here and you can't call people immoral for joining the military and then turn around and call kids selfish for being scared of being forced to do so. And a draft would only fan the flames of white resentment here just like what happened during the earlier drafts. There would be war crimes against Iranians, for sure. A draft would be awful. No one should be joking about it. It would be horrifying.

I was vague about it before because I figured that asking for empathy would be enough but it isn't. A lot of people talking about the Suleiman strike are far removed from U.S. white supremacy and don't necessarily understand our anxieties and it shows in how they talk about the situation and who "benefits". The fact that they think American minorities (especially Muslims) won't face *any* backlash or consequences for Trump's actions here is evidence enough.

This isn't an attempt to paint Americans into the victim of this situation with Iran. To do so would be despicable. And joking about it is in poor taste and can come off as cruel even if US minorities do it to cope with our reality here.

But acknowledging that U.S. minorities (including Iranian and Iraqi immigrants and refugees) will be at risk isn't taking away from Iranians or Iraqis in the Middle East. American minorities are here because of U.S. and European Imperialism. And it is a fact that Imperialism will lead to more deaths in an already traumatized region and it is a fact that white supremacy will put people in a precarious position here where they are more vulnerable to white aggression all year round. Both are true. Its not a competition and seeing US minorities talk about it shouldn't be bothering you because both are symptoms of the same problem.

Kind of a tl;dr: American minorities aren't being selfish (or US centric) by talking about their fears of war with Iran and a draft because many will be more vulnerable than they already are and U.S. history has demonstrated why these fears are valid. Learn it. It explains a lot of why we do what we do. Also a draft would terrible for Americans and devastating for Iranians (i.e. look at Vietnam). There us a difference between white Americans victimizing themselves and American PoC being worried about what this situation means for them. Learn the difference; those disclaimers are necessary for a reason. You dont show someone empathy by denying it to others, I wish more progressives figured this out. Its not a competition or ideological chess. People could and probably will die and its scary to be surrounded by angry white people just looking for an excuse (like a war).

[alexsmitposts]

The “Corruption” Narrative: Who’s Afraid of Isabel Dos Santos? And Why? The words they use to describe her are nasty, cliché, but all too familiar. They call her “Princess,” “Oligarch,” and accuse her of “embezzlement” “peddling influence” etc. The truth is that Isabel Dos Santos, the richest woman in Africa, has for decades been on the hit list of the most powerful people in the world.  In the first month of 2020, the international media has doubled down, taken aim, and decided to go for the kill. And who are the hitmen? The same folks who brought you the Panama Papers, the shady International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). The outlet with ties to the Democracy Fund of the United Nations, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and George Soros’ Open Society Foundation is repeating their same old mantra. They accuse independent leaders around the world, from Russia, China, Latin America, and Africa of being “corrupt.” They display in rather convenient “leaks,” as if it is somehow shocking, that the leaders of countries with massive populations and resources in-fact possess lots of wealth. The international audience is led to the conclusion that the targeted leader should be removed. Misuse of government funds and other malpractice is certainly a plague rampant in many developing countries. When nations are working to raise themselves out of poverty, shady practices often become a kind of way of life as the population learns to “take care of each other.” The result is often widespread inefficiency. But what is the obvious goal of these Soros, USAID backed ICIJ operations? To keep intact the corrupt, monopolistic global financial order that exists by selectively targeting those who challenge it. The deeply corrupt global order where Wall Street and London bankers rule the world, keeping it poor so they can stay rich, pushing policies of “de-regulation” and “free markets” that have failed over and over, never gets called into question. “Corruption” charges were used to oust Dilma Roussef, to imprison Lula Di Silva who would have won the 2018 election according to every poll, and install autocratic free market demagogue Jiar Bolsanaro in Brazil. “Corruption” allegations are constantly used to stir up opposition to the Putin government by forces who were quite satisfied with the free market looting during the Yeltsin-era, and dislike that Russia has been restored as an economic power and energy exporter. Leftist Vice President Christina Kirchner in Argentina was also hit with a series of “corruption” charges by supporters of the IMF and the free market policies, who attempted to undo her progressive reforms during the Mauricio Macri. Meanwhile, many politicians in the “free” western capitalist countries have offshore bank accounts, take care of their relatives and business associates, and otherwise engage in notably corrupt behavior. The President of the United States is pretty obviously tied to a chain of “Trump Hotels” around the world, and many questions have been raised about that since the 2016 elections. Former Vice President Joe Biden’s son conveniently got a well paying job at a Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian Natural Gas corporation, at the very moment when the USA was backing the “EuroMaiden” events that toppled President Yanukovych. An Oil Rich Country, Kept Poor by Western Capitalism Angola is not a poor country. It has lots of oil. Its natural gas potential is just being realized. It has minerals and a vast population. However, poverty is widespread in this southern African nation. Until 1975, Angola was a colony of Portugal. The population lived as colonial slaves, worked to death, kept in poverty, as their resources were utilized to line the pockets of Portuguese businessmen. The People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) was formed in 1956 to throw off the colonial chains. The MPLA was a Marxist-Leninist political organization backed and armed by the Soviet Union. It waged a guerilla insurgency, fighting Portuguese troops, right up until the Carnation Revolution.  When the fascist government of Portugal fell in 1975, colonial territories were granted independence. The MPLA took power as the elected government of a newly free Angola. Immediately following independence, the apartheid government of South Africa invaded Angola. Over 65,000 Cuban soldiers were sent to support the MPLA in fighting off this and subsequent invasions by the apartheid regime. Cuba continued to maintain a military presence in Angola to support the MPLA. At the time of independence, the United States government had already been arming and training a group of terrorists and extremists called the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) that conducted assassinations and other acts of violence against the MPLA.  UNITA at first claimed to be Maoist Communists and had relations with China, but by the late 1970s they were Evangelical Christians and advocates of western capitalism. The United States was their primary supporter, and anti-communism was their rallying cry. The leader of the CIA trained and armed UNITA terrorists like  Jonas Savimbi. Savimbi murdered civilians, bombed schools and hospitals and committed horrendous atrocities. Savimbi was a practitioner of witchcraft and a literal cannibal, who ate the corpses of MPLA soldiers. The horrendous atrocities of Jonas Savimbi has been well documented, but this did not stop the Reagan White House and other US administrations from embracing them as freedom fighters. The goal of the MPLA was to peacefully develop Angola into a prosperous socialist country. This was not possible in a state of total civil war, as US-backed terrorists ravaged the country for 27 years. Even when peace was finally declared in 2002, the United Nations noted that Angola was littered with landmines, and most of its bridges and essential infrastructure had been destroyed. “Angola Starts Now!” In 2002, with peace declared, the MPLA declared “Angola Starts Now!” and began to eradicate poverty and economically develop the country. Their efforts were aided significantly by the highest oil prices in world history. The GDP increased at a staggeringly high average of 11.1% from 2001 to 2010. China worked with Angola to build new railways connecting previously isolated parts of the country. The capital city of Luanda became a prosperous business center. Millions of Angolans were lifted from poverty. Who was key in making all of this happen? Isabel Dos Santos. Isabel is the daughter of the country’s first elected President Jose Eduardo Dos Santos. It is largely because of her efforts that Angola now has a state controlled mobile telecommunications corporation, Unitel. She also helped to set up Banco de Fomento Angola and Banco BIC, two private banks based in Angola. These are banks subsidized with state oil profits, that have provided loans allowing the domestic economy of Angola to flourish. Isabel Dos Santos has traveled around the world working to bring foreign investment into her homeland. In 2016 Isabel Dos Santos moved out of the private sector and was named as the director of Sonangol, the state-run oil company that remains at the center of the Angolan economy. Much like Putin did in Russia with Gazprom and Rosneft, Sonagol is a “national champion.” It is a state-controlled energy corporation utilized to create economic growth and stabilize the market. It was with Sonangol’s proceeds that the mining and agricultural sectors were stimulated. Nigeria is now the top oil exporting country in Africa. It has been a playground for Chevron, BP, Royal Dutch Shell, and Exxon-Mobile for years. Nigeria has a few billionaires, but the population is overwhelmingly poor and illiterate. While lots of oil is extracted and lots of profits made by western corporations, nothing like Angola’s economic boom of 2002-2014 has ever happened in Nigeria, despite decades and decades in the oil business. The successes of Angola cannot be blamed on high oil prices alone, but rather on state central planning, utilizing oil proceeds to eradicate poverty and construct. Isabel Dos Santos has spent very little time working in government. She prides herself on her success as a businesswoman in the private sector. Her dynamic leadership and strategic management of private companies, in coordination with state central planners, created all kinds of spectacular results. “There are thousands of people whom we gave their first job,” she told BBC. When a new President took office in 2017, the Wall Street Journal celebrated Isabel Dos Santos’ departure. It accused her of running “turgid bureaucracy.” American oil companies were angry that she “required that they buy supplies from select domestic firms.” Dos Santos enforced environmental laws, and would not privatize the newly discovered natural gas resources that “by law belongs to the government.” Immediately before  the ouster of Isabel Dos Santos from Sonangol, Total, BP, Haliburton, and Exxon-Mobile had terminated their relationship with the state-run firm. It appears that the big oil bankers almost demanded her ouster from the new administration of President Juan Lourenço and their wish was granted. A Failed Administration Scapegoating Its Predecessors Lourenço promised to usher in an “economic miracle” with his free market reforms once elected. The opposite has occurred. Unemployment has risen. Strikes and social unrest are also increasing. 28% of Angola’s population lives on less than $1.90 per day. Lourenço has signed on with the International Monetary Fund, known for pushing deregulation and Milton Friedman style economic reforms in exchange for “development loans.” Since he cannot fix the economy, Lourenço seems to be focused scapegoating his predecessors, who presided over huge economic achievements. President João Lourenço calls himself “the terminator,” and he has worked hard to single out members of the Dos Santos family and their allies for prosecution. 45 cases are currently in court, and Isabel Dos Santos is now among those facing charges, as is her younger brother. However, a BBC article published on January 16th seems to have revealed that the campaign against Santos isn’t simply about retaliation against the Dos Santos family. During  an interview, Isabel Dos Santos “declined four times to rule out” running for the Presidency. Later she told a Portuguese network “it’s possible” that she may intend run for head of state in 2022. And what else, she could very well win, despite massive huge efforts to besmirch her reputation with the convenient “Luanda Leaks” presented by the Soros, USAID tied outlet. To Angolans who have endured decades of civil war followed by miraculous amounts of growth, the name “Dos Santos” is associated with the legacy of the anti-colonial struggle, as well as a decade of exciting hope. The “Iron Lady” Southern Africa Needs? Indicating why she might consider a Presidential run, she told BBC “President Lourenço is fighting for absolute power. There’s a strong wish to neutralize any influence that [former] President Dos Santos might still have in the MPLA…. If a different candidate would appear [ahead of the 2022 presidential election] supported by former President Dos Santos or allies linked to him, that would really challenge [Mr Lourenço’s] position because his current track record is very, very poor.” In fact, Isabel Dos Santos could be the kind of leader that Southern Africa desperately needs. Her father was a guerilla fighter who fought the Portuguese and went into exile. Her mother was a Russian Communist. While the MPLA backed away from Soviet-style Marxism-Leninism in 1991, it remains a Democratic Socialist Party, and its members are dedicated to building a society where all Angolans have what they need. Already, from both the private sector and as the head of Sonangol, Dos Santos has put into practice a successful implementation of policies that could be called “petro-socialism” i.e. using state-run oil profits to centralize and build up an economy. On the northern end of the continent, Libya flourished under such policies. The Islamic Socialist government of Moammar Gaddafi built the world’s largest irrigation system, “the man-made river.” Libya had the highest life expectancy on the African continent until 2011 and had achieved universal housing and literacy. Libya worked hard to suppress Al-Qaida and terrorist groups and provided financial support to the Irish Republican Army, the Nation of Islam, the Black Panthers, and many other socialist and anti-imperialist forces around the world. In his final year, Gaddaffi openly spoke of establishing an African currency and an African bank, laying the basis for independence from western financial power. All of this culminated in the USA funding an uprising against him, and NATO bombing campaign that destroyed the country. During Gaddaffi’s leadership, Africans from across the continent piled into the Libya where the state provided them with employment. Now, in a war-torn, newly impoverished and destroyed post-Gaddafi, pro-western Libya, Africans are trying to get out on rafts, and drowning in the Mediterranean trying to reach Europe. Russia and China were both deeply impoverished countries at the beginning of the 20th Century, but it was with state central planning, mobilizing the population and rationally organizing the economy that they became superpowers. Both countries have learned the lessons of the Soviet Union’s demise, and recognize the need for foreign investment and a private sector, which will  allow more entrepreneurialism. However, Russia and China continue to get stronger because they have not fallen into the trap of “profits in command” and the chaos of the market. All across the developing world, the absolute failure of Milton Friedman-style economics can be seen. Even the Bretton Woods institutions now admit that they have been “too Neoliberal.” All out “free trade” Adam Smith-style capitalism is not the answer, for Angola or any other country. If Isabel Dos Santos, a savvy businesswoman was elected, carrying with her a family name that is associated with better times, and resilient leadership, she could very well turn things around. As Russia becomes more involved in helping strengthen African countries, and  as China’s Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank works to build infrastructure to help the development of independent economies, Isabel Dos Santos has great potential as a leader. With her strength and boldness, she could bring economic growth, financial independence, and hope to millions of people, not just in her own country, but throughout the region.

[hogtown-socialist-alternative]

Can the Working Class Change Society? Socialists Say Yes

By Tom Crean -September 10, 2018

One hundred years after the Russian Revolution and 50 years after the revolutionary general strike in France in 1968, many on the left question whether the working class has a central role in changing society. This is understandable given the enormous retreat of the labor movement in recent decades. Working people in the U.S. [see the companion piece “The American Working Class“] no longer look to the unions as the leading force in the struggle for a better life as they did in the 1930s and 1940s and to a degree after World War II. Also the U.S. is virtually alone among Western countries in having no historical experience of a mass working-class political party which challenges for control of the government.

For a Self-Aware Working Class

Karl Marx, the pioneer of scientific socialism, in describing the modern working-class, differentiated between it being a “class in itself” as opposed to a “class for itself.” The working class, defined as those who have to sell their ability to work to the employer class to survive, has enormous potential social power because of its ability to stop the wheels of the economy. As the accompanying piece explains, contrary to those who say that globalization or automation have eliminated the American working class, it remains without doubt the majority of society. While the capitalist media is at pains to obscure this, just-in-time production, logistics hubs, and other large concentrations of workers, like in airports, show that the big corporations are vulnerable to collective action.

But the key issue is whether the working class moves from being an objective reality, a “class in itself” to being a force that sees its interests as counterposed to those of the capitalists and organizes to challenge their power. Since the Great Recession, working people in the U.S. have become keenly aware that the top 1% and even the top .01% have gained disproportionately while the bottom 99% and especially the bottom 50% are sliding backwards.

Progressives often point to how the tax system has increasingly favored the rich. This is absolutely true but there is a deeper reality: Massive gains in productivity have been made by American workers, yet their wages have barely risen while profits have skyrocketed. The bosses have been winning a one-sided class war. It has recently been reported that even with virtual “full employment” wages in the U.S. are not keeping pace with inflation. This reflects the lack of an organized challenge to the bosses’ power in the workplace.

A Grim Future

There is massive anger at social inequality and the social crisis which faces large sections of the working class. There is a loss of faith in institutions and especially in the political establishment. There is a growing awareness that the future under capitalism promises endless inequality, automation replacing good jobs, and a developing climate catastrophe. In poor countries, wars, famines, and massive displacement of people are likely to intensify. Capitalism no longer pretends to offer a vision of a more abundant future for ordinary people.

The growing anger of working people and young people was reflected in the 2016 campaign of Bernie Sanders who called for a “political revolution against the billionaire class.” It is also reflected in the massive interest in socialism, especially among young people. This is continuing with the wave of “democratic socialist” candidates including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. But in the absence of a political force that clearly represents the interests of the working class, the door was opened to the right populism of Donald Trump who also attacked “free trade” deals and proclaimed himself a champion of the working class. This has led to a dangerously reactionary regime which threatens to destroy any remaining gains made through past struggles by workers, women, and African Americans.

But until recently, working class revolt was only expressed in a partial way and largely on the electoral plane. The retreat of organized labor continued – less than 7% of private sector workers are now in a union and strikes at historically low levels. The recent Janus decision by the Supreme Court aims to drastically undermine organization in the public sector where union density remains higher.

This is why the revolt of teachers in West Virginia, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Arizona, Colorado, and North Carolina is so important. Now there is the potential for a major fight by the key UPS workforce against a rotten contract. There are important organizing drives among airport workers. In Missouri, voters defeated an anti-labor “right-to-work” law brought in by the Republicans by a two-to-one margin. In Europe, Amazon warehouse workers in three countries went on strike in July which could inspire workers in logistics here. These are the signs of a desire to fight. What is desperately needed is leadership and a new direction away from the failed approach of labor leaders of the past 30 years – refusal to use militant tactics or to assert labor’s independent political interests.

Lessons of History

The American working class has a rich tradition of struggle over the past 150 years. In the 1930s and ‘40s, powerful multiracial industrial unions were built using bold tactics including local general strikes and workplace occupations (“sitdown” strikes). Black workers were the driving force of the civil rights movement which brought down Jim Crow in the South in the ‘50s and ‘60s. Working-class women were the driving force in changing chauvinist attitudes in the ‘60s and ‘70s as part of massive rank and file labor upsurge.

And yet working people in the U.S. never had a true mass political party that expressed their interests. The absence of this helps explain why our pension and heath care system is so much worse than most advanced capitalist countries where there were powerful social democratic and labor parties. Recent commentary in various mainstream publications asks why socialism was not stronger in the U.S. in the past although some have correctly pointed out that socialists have played a major role in the labor movement at all the key points when it has been moving forward.

There are many arguments for why the U.S. is allegedly “exceptional.” Seth Ackerman, an editor at the widely-read left magazine Jacobin, has argued that at the end of the 19th century the U.S. moved on a different course than other capitalist “democracies,” placing onerous restrictions on the development of third parties. The two main (corporate dominated) parties were institutionalized and Ackerman concludes that “the United States [like the Soviet Union] is also a party-state, except instead of being a single-party state, it’s a two-party state. That is just as much of a departure from the norm in the world as a one-party state,”(“A New Party of A New Type,” Jacobinmag.com).

There are elements of truth in Ackerman’s analysis but it is missing an underlying historical reality. Despite all the obstacles, it was hardly inevitable that a workers party would not be created in the U.S. This could have been achieved in the ‘30s and ‘40s for example but was blocked by key labor leaders – unfortunately with assistance from sections of the left, particularly the Communist Party.

The broader truth is that the obstacles to creating a workers party in the past were not primarily legal but lay in the strength of U.S. capitalism which was increasingly dominant in the 20th century on a world scale. The capitalists were able to concede a higher standard of living for a period but they also made relentless use of racism and nativism to keep the working class divided. But again the rise of the CIO industrial unions in the ‘30s proved that common struggle could begin to overcome profound divisions.

Compared to the postwar boom or even the neoliberal era which began in the late 1970s, the situation today is very different. It is very clear that U.S. capitalism is in decline on a global scale. Restoring the previous position through trade wars or other means is an illusion. The workforce is more diverse and integrated than ever before and, despite all the differences in lived experience, there is a burning need for collective struggle to push back the relentless regime of workplace exploitation and the immiseration of wider and wider sections. When 40% of adults don’t know how they would pay for a $400 emergency while the billionaires’ banks accounts grow ever fatter – it’s time to fight back.

Can a new party representing these common class interests be built? Bernie Sanders raised over $200 million with no corporate money – which all pundits said was impossible – and was only defeated because of a rigged primary. Most progressive workers and young people today continue to pursue the idea of reforming the Democratic Party. As working-class struggle reemerges in a more developed way, the need to for political independence will become clearer and the need for a program that challenges capitalism itself and points towards democratic socialism. This will truly be the emergence of a working class “for itself” in America.

[rowandriftwood]

The Racist History of U.S. Immigration Policy & Citizenship Rights

This started as a Facebook rant, and then ballooned into a more comprehensive dissertation on the racist history of U.S. immigration policy and citizenship generally (or as comprehensive as a dissertation can be that was written in 6 hours in a sleep-deprived state).

I’m sure I missed some important points. Feel free to reblog with relevant information and corrections. Some of this was new information to me, and I may not have understood it perfectly, or explained it well. Please copy, paste, and share any or all of this information wherever you think it might do some good. Links are provided not only as sources, but also as starting points for additional reading about any of the topics summarized below.

Part I: Immigrants Are Not A Threat

The number of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. has been slowly declining since it peaked in 2007. (i.e., there is no current immigration "crisis" in the U.S.)

Between 2009 and 2016, the number of undocumented immigrants from Mexico living in the U.S. declined by around 12.5%. (i.e. unauthorized immigration is not an issue of Mexicans "sneaking" across the U.S.'s southern border.)

The U.S. civilian workforce includes 8 million unauthorized immigrants (~5% of people working or unemployed and looking for work), down slightly from a peak of 8.3 million in 2008, but essentially more or less level since 2007. (i.e., no, undocumented immigrants are not coming here to leech off U.S. government benefits, which would be impossible for them to claim in any case.)

Only 6 U.S. states have seen an increase in the number of undocumented immigrants since 2009. 7 others have showed a decrease, and the rest have showed no change.

Since 2003, there has been a steady decline in the number of undocumented immigrants who have been in the U.S. 5 years or less, and a steady increase in the number who have been here 10 years or more. (i.e., an increasing share of the undocumented population are adults who have been contributing to the U.S. economy for at least a decade, living and working and raising their families here.)

Illegally crossing the border into the U.S. is a misdemeanor for first-time (adult) offenders, on par with such crimes as driving more than 25 mph over the speed limit or shoplifting, and carries a penalty of a fine or up to 6 months of jail time.

In 2014 42% of the undocumented population of the U.S., and 66% of new undocumented arrivals, were visa overstayers. (i.e., they entered the U.S. legally, but overstayed the terms of their visa, and would not have been prevented from entering the U.S. by a border wall.)

A growing number of people who do cross the U.S./Mexico border without a visa are refugees from Central America, fleeing violence, persecution, and poverty. By and large, they do not seek to evade border checkpoints, but openly present themselves and request political asylum. (i.e., they would not have been prevented from entering the U.S. by a border wall.)

The proposed border wall is a ludicrous and unconscionable waste of tax dollars, even if you believe stricter immigration standards are warranted.

Apart from the initial misdemeanor offense of being in the country illegally, undocumented immigrants are less likely (and in many cases, far less likely) than native-born U.S. citizens to engage in criminal activity, especially violent crime. (i.e., trying to blame a general crackdown on illegal immigration on gang violence is disingenuous.) 

[additional source on immigration and crime statistics] 

In summation: There is no immigration crisis in the U.S., and no real reason to be cracking down now, other than to score points with the party base, or as a distraction.

Part II: Legal Immigration Is Not A Reasonable Option For Most People

The process of legal immigration to the U.S. is opaque, complicated, expensive, time-consuming, restrictive. An applicant can do everything "right" and still end up waiting years or decades for a visa. 

Fewer than 1 million immigrants per year are granted permanent residency (green cards), out of 6 million applicants. That number includes asylum seekers. (Permanent residency is not the same thing as citizenship, which can take an additional 5 years.) 

No more than 7% of the green cards issued annually in the U.S. may be granted to citizens of any one country. This seriously limits immigration opportunities for people from more populous countries, such as Mexico, India, and China. 

Around 66% of legal immigrants are admitted to the U.S. on the basis of family ties (limited to children, parents, spouses, and fianc(e)és of citizens or legal permanent residents). Another 13% are granted employment visas. 17% are accepted for humanitarian reasons, such as refugees.

Legal immigration for the child or spouse of a legal permanent resident (green card holder) can take 5-10 years. This is a serious strain and hardship of family relationships.

Unless you are a highly skilled (and highly educated) immigrant in an in-demand field, obtaining an employment visa can take 6 years or longer.

In summation: unless you have money, a lot of free time, an outstanding skill set, a keen ability to cut through red tape and navigate bureaucracy, and/or a strong family support system already established in the U.S., you can forget about immigrating legally.

Part III: The History of Immigration and Citizenship Rights in the U.S. is Racist AF, in Case You Hadn’t Heard

The U.S. has a long history of restricting and withholding citizenship rights from people of "undesirable" ethnicities and nationalities (usually non-white). (i.e., there is no good historical precedent for equating legality with morality.)

The 3/5ths Compromise of 1787, written into Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution, declared each enslaved African person to be counted as 3/5ths of a person, for the purpose of establishing proportional representation in the House of Representatives and the Electoral College. Slaves were not, of course, represented by the new government, and were considered property rather than citizens under the law.

The Naturalization Act of 1790 granted U.S. citizenship to all free white residents "of good moral character" who had lived in America for at least two years, regardless of where they had been born. Subsequent laws passed in 1795 and 1798 increased the term of residency requirement.

The passage of the 14th Amendment in 1868 granted birthright citizenship to anyone born in the U.S., regardless of race or ethnicity (with the exception of Native Americans), cancelling out the 3/5ths Compromise.

In 1870, African immigrants were granted the right to become naturalized citizens. Non-white male citizens were granted voting rights by the 15th Amendment, but were often prevented from exercising them effectively by Jim Crow laws. Asian immigrants were still barred from becoming citizens.

The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 banned virtually all immigration from China until its repeal in 1943. It was the first immigration law passed by Congress.

The Dawes Act of 1887 granted citizenship to Native Americans who agreed to disassociate from their tribes. Native men who agreed to this were granted the right to vote. 

Throughout the 19th century, government policies routinely forced Native American tribes off the land they had occupied for centuries, in order to make more room for white European settlers. Today, Reservation lands make up only 2% of U.S. geography. Many Native traditions were outlawed, including traditional religious practices, in an attempt to destroy and erase Native cultures. Children were taken from their families through programs of forced assimilation, and sent to boarding schools, where they were not permitted to speak their own languages or even use their own names. Many children died due to poor conditions and harsh treatment at these school, and many more never saw their families again. It is estimated that the pre-contact population of the territory now occupied by the U.S. was between 4 and 18 million. On the 2010 census, just over 5 million U.S. citizens reported themselves to be Native American, or Native American plus another race.

The California Alien Land Law of 1913 prohibited all non-U.S. citizens from owning land in California. The law was primarily intended to target Japanese immigrants, but also resulted in many other Asian immigrants losing their land, since foreign-born Asians were still not permitted naturalized U.S. citizenship.

The Emergency Quota Act of 1921 set the first numerical limits on immigration. It restricted immigration to no more than 3% of the number of people reporting the same ethnic origin in the 1890 U.S. census, to the great advantage of immigrants from Northern European countries, and disadvantage of all others. 

The United States vs. Bhagat Singh Thind Supreme Court ruling (1923) officially declared South Asian immigrants to be non-white, and retroactively stripped them of their citizenship, by arguing that they had obtained it illegally.

The Immigration Act of 1924 further increased restrictions on immigration from Catholic countries, Eastern Europeans, Arabs, Jews, and many other non-white ethnicities. It virtually banned all Asian immigration, while leaving Northern European immigration virtually unlimited. 

The Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 finally granted birthright citizenship, and the right to vote, to all Native Americans.

During the Mexican Repatriation (1929-1936), between 400,000 and 2,000,000 people of Mexican heritage were forcibly deported to Mexico. It is estimated that around 60% of them had birthright U.S. citizenship. The justification used at the time was that the region of the U.S. that they lived in had been ceded to the U.S. by Mexico in 1848. The U.S. wanted the land, but decided that the people living on it were still Mexicans, and should therefore be sent "home". (But actually it was all about stirring up racial resentment and scapegoating Mexicans for the Great Depression.)

The Magnuson Act (aka Chinese Exclusion Repeal Act) of 1943 granted Chinese immigrants citizenship and voting rights.

During WWII, the U.S. turned away thousands of Jewish refugees, many of whom later died in Nazi concentration camps.

Also During WWII, the U.S. stripped Japanese Americans of their citizenship rights and forced them into internment camps.

Operation "Wetb*ck" in 1954 resulted in many more legal U.S. citizens being deported to Mexico, besides resulting in a number of other civil rights violations.  (I know tumblr loves Woody Guthrie, so here’s a song he wrote about this particular policy and the people who lost their lives to it, as performed by Woody’s son Arlo.)

"Equal opportunity" immigration was not implemented until the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. Since 1970, there has been a sharp decline in immigration from European countries, giving rise to racist rhetoric concerning white Americans possibly becoming a racial minority at some point in the future, in spite of the fact that nearly 2/3 of the current U.S. population is white. 

In conclusion: America's history on immigration policy and its treatment of those it considers outsiders has always been shady as heck, and pretending otherwise (”HOW is this happening in AMERICA????”) is blatant historical erasure.

I do not bring up any of these things because I hate America, or think that anyone else should, but I think we should be honest about our history, and the suffering that history has caused, and continues to cause. We can learn from the past, and do better going forward, but only if we understand and acknowledge what our history is and how it impacts the present. "Make America Great Again" denies the negative aspects of our past, and is disrespectful and dismissive towards the people who remind us that America has never been "great" for them.

Here endeth the history lesson.

[marvsreflections]

On Guatemala's place in global history

There are few things you might take as intrinsically unchangeable on this world, one of those is human stupidity and the other one can be “change” or a least the concept related to such word.

I’m from a little country named Guatemala a piece of land south to Mexico, about 2 hours flight from Texas, this little country has been for most of its history nothing but a pseudo-democracy resembling more a modern feudal state than a republic, however the last century big changes (there’s the word again!) have transformed Guatemala into what some people called “a young democracy”.

Well as with manny ideas it is imperative to understand the social and historical context that gave birth to such labels, so in order to understand Guatemala and more importantly, why we matter more than ever before, we have dive into Guatemala’s history and it's now very close and bound relationship with the United States of America.

A bit of global history...

It all begins back in 1944, second war world has just finished, Hitler has been defeated and Europe is looking ahead to a feature of prosperity and unity, up until now the USA has been in the same side with Russia, however the end of the war leaves the world with two massive super powers.

The USA on the west with capitalism as the economic model, judeo-christian beliefs as moral templates and their own version of Greek political machinery called republic as its structure of power. The USSR on the east with communism, a one-party nation and socialism wrapping it all up, ideas that people somehow believe were totally opposite to western values.

This landscape of power lead to a “cold war” named like that because it wasn’t a war of direct military conflicts between the USSR and the USA but instead it was a war based on ideology, with both side creating propaganda to make their people believe those who did not live like them were the enemy and needed to be eradicated before they eradicate you!

This idea was aggravated by the fact that now both nations have the destruction power of the nuclear bomb, a new weapon of mass destruction capable of erasing human life from this earth, as you might expect the stakes were high, they were threats made, missile placed in close location to the enemy like Cuba or Ukraine, none of the parties was willing to lose and used every allie they could get to gain power and push the enemy further away from their motherland.

On this side of the globe, the USA declared war against communism and started programs of all kind to make sure there were no communist influence inside the motherland or anywhere close to it, so, guess where Guatemala landed on that plan? Yep, we weren’t really there, I mean, Guatemala was a bit more than a farm for the USA you might even say we were not consider humans back then, it is inevitable to say that we were just another “banana nation” for the white upper class of the big super countries.

About Guatemala on the 1940’s

Guatemala on the the 20th century was a nation owned by a big company that took the place of the Spanish crown, our communications system, train roads and the majority of the land, belong to the United Fruit Company (UFCO), they bought land at a really low price so they didn’t have to pay much taxes, they did not pay workers for the labor instead the “rent” a pieces of land as part of a “deal” where they could use the land to survive by also “paying” a part to the company, however the land was still under UFCO’s possession.

The precarious work situations under companies like the UFCO are depicted on the famous novel 1000 years of solitude by Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez, in a very dramatic and extreme representation, in the book after a strike by the workers demanding better conditions, the government reacts by inviting over 3000 of them to a meeting with the leadership to resolve their difference, however it was a tramp! The workers found themselves surrounded by machine guns and get methodically killed, the bodies were then thrown on a train and dropped off in the sea, after the event the government keeps exterminating any surviving union leader and denying the reports of the massacre.

Well, conditions were not that much better in Guatemala and I’m sorry to say that as in many good books, usually fiction is nothing by a reflection of reality, after years of being used for free labor, Guatemalans decided they needed a change they cannot longer live in a land that is not theirs, so in 1944 after numerous public demonstration and the killing of the teacher María Chinchilla in a protest, over 100,000 people gather to protest and stop the country for a week until the then president Jorge Ubico resigned en July 1, 1944, this initiated what some people called the first real “democratic period” in Guatemala, this new set of changes and reforms landed to a fresh-type president in 1951, it was a democratically elected president from the highlands of the country Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán .

About the CIA and UFCO

The thing with power is that is a human invention, so is fair to say that power is limited to what humans believe to be more important, as a mention before back in 40’s and 50’s we were not seen as humans by the USA or any of the companies coming from that side of the border, therefore we were not intitle of having an opinion nor to have a decent life or to be part of a country, we were only workers, just a step above from a horse or any other beast.

When a president of Guatemala decides that we can’t be a country if we don’t have land or infrastructure of our own, it is only inevitable he will have to make some changes that will not vibe with UFCO or some of its allies, and that is exactly what happened. Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán started using government power to buy the land from the UFCO and give it to the poor people that were actually leaving on it and using it, buying land from the UFCO at the same low prices the claimed the bought it, he decided that train roads should be of public use and created a plan that aim to put Guatemala on the track to development.

The UFCO did not like what was happening in the country, their lands were being taken, they now have to come out with payment for their workers and a series of restriction help create the environment for workers unions and better working conditions that were impacting profits, this went on for about 3 years and the UFCO was doing everything they could to create propaganda and manipulate Guatemalans and Americas in order to take Arbenz from power.

One thing we need to understand is the people that were in Guatemala at that time and how their connection made a coup possible, one of the lawyers working for the UFCO was John Foster Dulles a republican from Washington D.C. that would eventually become the United States Secretary of State, Dulles’s brother Allen was the director of the CIA, in order to stop the “attacks” against the company, the Dulls brother worked together to convicend the President of the United States that Guatemala was a possible location for a soviet embassy in the western hemisphere. To achieve their goal they created a PR campaign to create fear among politician and the American people.

A CIA operation was created under the code name PBSUCCESS , the goal was to take way  Guatemala’s president from power and to make sure general Carlos Castillo Armas was in the presidency so the UFCO would be able to continue business as usual, the operation was a success, however as with many thing in history “success” not necessarily means “the beginning of a peaceful and great period”, so now we need to dive a bit deeper on “What happen when you interfere with a democratic elected government and place a puppet president instead?” type of question..

About the civil-war

Castillo Armas and most of the head of states that came after him were nothing but puppets to the UFCO and the United States, they did not put Guatemalans interest and needs on the agendas, instead they were working for the top sphere of the country therefore leading to a very unhappy population that were being oppressed by their own army and their own government, this is something we need to discuss, because again it shows how bound the United States’s and Guatemala’s faith are.

Because of the fact the the USA put the general in charge people did not like him, so we did not really pay for the army nor we wanted our taxes to go to a dictator, so the USA feeling bad or wanting to keep control of the country founded Guatemala’s army and let the generals do whatever they please, this lead to an army that was not found by taxes, nor it had to respond to the people of Guatemala, the army was the tool dictators have to keep people down, either disappearing anyone who did not agree with the government or rightout killing them.

As you might expect once you start killing and disappearing people, they will start fighting back, so the paramilitary forces were born and a 36 year war started, a conflict that took some 70,000 lives and countless more were disappeared, the army sustained with US money were going to villages and killing every men, raping women, some stories from my own family even mention babies being smashed against rocks, there was some pretty bad human right violations going on and you can’t deny how Guatemala and US government officials were involved in all of this.

About the USA and its gang problems in all of this...

Well, once you take a country to its knees is just a matter of time before people that are unable or don’t want to fight get themselves out, just as we are seeing happening today with Syrians refugees, there were a lot of Guatemala and Central America refugees that ended up in the US, they created communities in places like LA and New York, however racism and violence towards latino communities made them organize to protect themselves, back in the 1980’s as their countries of origin were consumed by civil war (some of the initiated by the USA itself) they created some of the first latino gangs in the US, MS-13 and Mara Salvatrucha.

So, you might ask, what did the US did after creating a problem in Guatemala that ended up as gangs members in their backyard? Well they did what the US had been doing since its first contact with Guatemala, they ship out whatever bad shit they could to us, however we have to give them some credit, they did not think of that right away, it actually started back in the 1990’s so it is fair to say that the US had to deal with gangs for about a decade before deciding that it would be easier to ship them back to where they came from.

Even though I would not have any problem with a country kicking illegal immigrants that committed a felony to their original country, it is imperative to say that the US did not stop to think how can this change (the word again!) Guatemala and how it will affect the USA? Because if they would’ve stopped to think on that for a moment, there is a chance the would’ve realized they were making the same mistake all over again, they were creating a problem in Guatemala hopping it won't reach back to them, however we all know that is not how life works.

By 1996 “peace” was signed in Guatemala, there was even a speech by then president of the USA - Bill Clinton, promessing the Guatemalan people that human right will not be violated again and that the horrible civil-war we went through should never be repeated and the USA will not commit to the same wrong practices they did in the past, It was all good a least on a diplomatic level, however the US was on its high of deportation of gang members to our country.

There is this question I feel is worth asking at this moment… What would happen if you send a bouch of highly educated criminals (highly educated in contrast to the rest of Guatemala). that used to leave in big cities, they were resourceful, smart and on top of that we had never had to deal with a gang member or “marero” before?, in other words, the USA send criminals to a country with not infrastructure of any kind to contain them, nor it had a police force capable of facing this gang members.

Guatemala came out of the 36 years of civil war just to end up with a war with gangs that still last until today, something about 30 years dealing with a problem created by Guatemala and Central American refugees in the streets of LA, refugees that were there because a national army founded with US money were killing their families back home, this “war on gangs” lead Guatemala to a level of violence that reminded us of the war all over again, it stop the few progress we wanted to have, instead our youth was being recruited or killed by MS-13 and Mara Salvatrucha, yet again people were forced to leave the country and find land were they would not be killed or robbed or extorted.

So, yep….We are talking about another exodus to the USA!

About “Mojados” or illegal immigrants to the USA after the 1990’s

There something we have to admit about the 1990’s - today problem with gangs, it is not all fault of the USA as is never “just on person’s” fault, when you put a country in a situation like we are, people don’t usually get access to education, information, food and health care, you know, the things that once cover might lead somebody to care about what their politicians are doing or where to money goes, but as Marx used to say, seas the means of production and you will have control of the system!.. Or something like that, because, that is what the top businessman and wealthy families of the country did, they took control over the country and made money out of the always unstable status of our nation.

So by the 1990’s after 30 years of military regimes, guatemala democracy was finally flourishing, like a baby that gets into age, it started to be aware of itself and every more and more people started to understand how this democracy thing is supposed to work ( a least more people in the capital city) and what can we do to make sure it is use in benefit of the people, however our leaders still coming from the upper class, mostly spanish descendant with old money and with little interest or connection with the population of their own country., they were used to do whatever they want with  our country, they took advantage of our national institutions to control the country and steer it on the direction they saw better for them and their business, our all times lover impunity was still with us and as time passes she would reveal itself more and more clearly.

So after the war we found ourselves in a country with MS-13 and Mara Salvatrucha, with no police, with a government handle by the rich class that only cares about their business and how they can get out of Guatemala, a government dedicated to use the country to make themself richer, even if that means stealing money from heath, education and security programs that were supposed to be in place to take our country to a better future after the war ended.

We did not have (and would argue we still not have) a national identity, Mayan people made up to 65% of the population however they were being discriminated, no jobs, no services and a country that up until today is very divided. On the other had the USA in a effort to stop gangs and immigration say something like  “We’re sorry for taking your president out of power and starting a civil war” but now we will reinforced our borders, American visas would be expensive and rare for you and we start ICE to send all illegal Guatemalans in the USA back as we have been doing with gang members.

So as you might know by now this also had and effect that wasn’t what they expected. Instead of Guatemalans saying, “well I guess we can’t get to the USA anymore and here comes Juan from San Diego after he was deported”, people from all over the country started to hire human traffickers, people that knew how to move between borders and that could charge up to 5000 USD for trip, this “coyotes” as they called them are part of a organized net of crime that also includes drug traffickers, illegal gun sales, force prostitution and others, however when you come from a country where the government does care about you and the gangs want to kill you, dealing with a coyote might be the best of your options.

[southeastasianists]

There’s an interest in reading the Philippines. Some of us are just unsure where to start.

As a teacher of Sociology with an active social media presence, I often get asked for suggestions on what to read about Philippine society, culture, and politics. When I made a Twitter thread of my reading list, I did not expect it to go viral. There seems to be a demand to understand the Philippines beyond the world of fake news and hot takes.

This list is a response to the challenge of doing slow reads in a fast-paced world. Discussion points may continue to change but the idiosyncrasies of the Philippines, a Southeast Asian archipelagic nation-state of over 7,600 islands, still remain as they were in the past.

Organised chronologically based on the historical contexts of the readings, this list includes: what the reading is all about, who might find it useful, and the debates and further lines of inquiry it opens.

1. Scott, William Henry. 1994. Barangay: Sixteenth-Century Philippine Culture and Society. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press.

Few academic text focuses solely on pre-colonial Philippines. This book still answers the call. It offers ethnographic material showing the habits of the people before their colonisation and before the influence of some contemporary major religions such as Islam and Catholicism.

Scott’s main agenda, however, is to present how the Spaniards saw the Philippine islanders and what the Spaniards said about the inhabitants of their new-found colony. Traditions that come across as barbaric in today’s standards are situated in their historical context, such as skull moulding of infants to give way to a flat forehead and a flat nose. This book is useful to scholars who want a glimpse of the uncolonised ancestors’ identity construction and community life, and see how they were changed by the colonizing process.

2. Ileto, Reynaldo Clemeña. 1979. Pasyon and Revolution: Popular Movements in the Philippines, 1840-1910. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press. In this book, Ileto offered a fresh take on the revolution against the Spaniards, centering on the revolution from below—those by peasant brotherhoods. Earlier historical analyses have focused on the role of the elite and middle classes in the revolution, but this book examines not only movements orchestrated by the peasants, but also the peasants’ ideas on, and the meanings they attribute to, the revolution.

Ileto finds that their recognition is grounded on their view and lived experience of the Pasyon, a lengthy poem about the birth, life, and death of the savior Jesus Christ. This poem is sung and chanted in many provinces in the Philippines during Holy Week. A mixture of religious dogmas and indigenous traditions have allowed the peasants to see the Pasyon in a revolutionary lens, one of which is the belief on the efficacy of anting–anting, an amulet that gives extraordinary abilities to its wearer.

This book cites some parallelisms of the Bible to the situations in colonial Philippines under the Spaniards. Examples of this are the struggles of Jesus Christ in comparison to the struggles of separatist movement leaders, and the estrangement of the Anointed Son and the Holy Mother in comparison to the separation of the Philippines from Spain. This book is useful especially to those interested in the religious character of the Philippines.

3. Constantino, Renato. 1970. “The Mis-Education of the Filipino.” Journal of Contemporary Asia1(1):20-36. This journal article problematises the Philippine educational system, particularly the dominance of the English language and the propagation of American standards and ideals in schools. Constantino asserted that when the Americans introduced public education in the Philippines, they assumed that the making of an educated Filipino was equal to the making of an educated American—an assumption that can be accepted if and only if the Philippines and America had the same economic and political goals and were at the same economic and political level.

As a result, Filipinos were forced to understand themselves and their society through the eyes of an outsider, a phenomenon that has crucial implications for today’s foreign policies and national consciousness. The article highlights that the goal of education should be the making of an individual so that s/he may contribute well to the society. This implies that the Philippines should have a system of education that is of the Filipino, for the Filipino. This is a sure treat to readers keen on scrutinising Filipino education and modes of thinking.

4. Ileto, Reynaldo Clemeña. 2005. “Philippine Wars and the Politics of Memory.” Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique13(1):215–35. In this brief examination of Philippine history, Ileto outlined what he termed as the five wars namely: war of independence from Spain, Filipino-American war (also known as Philippine insurrection), war with Japan, war against the Huks and other movements led by the radical left, and Moro wars.

Ileto argues that these seemingly disparate wars are united by a single theme—resistance against a foreign dominator. However, due to the kind of education made available by the Americans that is still practiced up to this point, Filipinos are led to forget about the Filipino-American war and to misrecognise the Moro wars. This forgetting and misrecognition are the reasons Filipinos today have an incomplete view of their history, which has problematic consequences on how they interpret contemporary events sweeping the country. The enthusiast of historical framing will find this article helpful.

5. Mulder, Niels. 1997. “Filipino Images of the Nation.” Philippine Studies45(1):50–74. This article is a primer on how Filipinos view themselves. Mulder examined the self-flagellating tendencies of Filipinos and argued that what keeps the country’s low self-esteem are: colonial mentality, dependence on the United States, selfish interest of politicians, non-institutional approach to problems, and excessive emphasis on individual morality. He also presented the curious phenomenon of Filipinos having rootless assumptions of their superiority in Asia but have optimistic inferiority complex towards America.

Mulder flagged that the Philippines needs a complete overhaul of cultural systems and must start from scratch because of the distortions of people’s collective memory, absence of positive imagination of the public sphere, cultural destruction of the Marcos regime, disinterest of the central state in nation-building, and even clumsiness of the social science curriculum.

6. McCoy, Alfred W., ed. 1994. Anarchy of Families: State and Family in the Philippines. Madison City: University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Southeast Asian Studies. This book is for those who are curious about corruption and power grabbing of politicians in the Philippines. It provides a glimpse of the different strategies used by political dynasties in the Philippines to stay in power, and the different mechanisms by which they mobilise their resources to gain votes.

McCoy showed the violent and fraudulent nature of the Philippine political arena where elite families continue to dominate. He also stressed that one should not forget to look at the oligarchy endemic in the Philippines if one wishes to understand Philippine history.

Elite families have always been a constant in the Philippines, from being the pre-colonial Maharlika, to the Spanish colonisation’s Gobernadorcillos and Ilustrados, and to the political dynasties brought forth by American electoralism. These families have always been present and have betrayed the Filipino people many times before. In the contemporary Philippine society, McCoy cited warlordism and rent-seeking as the most prevailing strategies for power maintenance.

This book also includes case studies, written by book contributors, of different provinces in the Philippines with various political families exercising different approaches to consolidating their reign.

7. Fallows, James. 1987. “A Damaged Culture: A New Philippines?” The Atlantic. Are the Marcoses always at fault? This article thinks not.

Fallows explored how Filipino culture, above all, broke the promise of the EDSA People Power 1 Revolution that ended the dictator Ferdinand Marcos’s rule. After the revolution, Filipinos were positive that all that was wrong with the Philippines will change, only to be kept waiting more than three decades on. Fallows asserted that although a lot of Filipinos see Marcos as the be-all and end-all of all that is rotten in the country, Marcos merely intensified them. It is true that the Marcos era is marked with wealth inequality, corruption, monopolies, and land-ownership disputes but  these problems have already existed long before the strongman took power.

Culture, Fallows said, is the culprit. This damaged culture started from the inferiority inculcated by the Spaniards to the mainstream consciousness and continued when the Americans did not allow Filipinos to finish their revolution against Spain. Fallows zeroed in on some of the problematic Filipino cultural phenomena such as love for religious icons, lack of nationalism, and electing the least evil politician instead of the most competent one.

There are lots of Filipinos who thrive outside of their culture, making it no wonder that in the Philippines, the national ambition is to change one’s nationality. This reading is appropriate to those who are wondering what keeps the country poor.

8. Constable, Nicole. 1997. Maid to Order in Hong Kong: Stories of Migrant Workers in Hong Kong. New York: Cornell University Press. This book presents tales of female overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) in relation to the capitalist world system that has put pressure on developing regions of South and Southeast Asia to answer to the demands of the international care chain.

Over 120,000 Filipinas aged 20 to 40, some with college degrees and others with high school diplomas, have entered into two-year contracts in Hong Kong. In her analysis, Constable investigated factors such as the interest of both Philippine and Chinese governments that benefit from the foreign capital generated by the flow of human resources; recruitment and placement agencies in the Philippines that have made responding to the need for unskilled workers abroad their mission and business venture; and employers who provide not only salary but also housing arrangements to OFWs in Hong Kong.

These factors all actively contribute to disciplinary measures aimed at perfecting the docility of OFWs, extending to their private lives—their emotions, ambitions, voice, and body. But women are not powerless. The book demonstrates how women assert their power in different ways, from legal avenues and public demonstrations to seemingly trivial and everyday jokes.

9. Mojares, Resil B. 2008. Brains of the Nation: Pedro Paterno, T.H. Pardo De Tavera, Isabelo De Los Reyes and the Production of Modern Knowledge. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press. This book traces the evolution of the Filipino thought by looking at the changes in ideologies and aspirations of some of the Ilustrados. It as well presents how Philippine history was understood and written about by Filipinos as early as the 19th Century. Mojares, newly-named National Artist for Literature, deviated from the penchant of other historical writings to focus on Rizal and mention other Ilustrados only when they come incidental to the life and writings of Rizal. Mojares identified three Ilustrados who he claimed had been glossed over in the construction of national historical viewpoints. Pedro Paterno is disparaged as the original balimbing, the political butterfly who changed allegiance based on convenience; T.H. Pardo de Tavera has been downplayed since his cooperation with the Americans; and Isabelo de los Reyes had been devalued following his involvement in the Philippine Independent Church.

These three Ilustrados, dubbed by the author as the “three figures of Filipino enlightenment”, are part of the generation that started the consciousness of the Filipino in terms of their identity. Mijares also effectively shows the agreements and disagreements among these Ilustrados themselves, making this book worthwhile for those who want to look at the beginnings of Filipino intellectualism.

10. Medina, Belen T. G. 2015. The Filipino Family. Third ed. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press. A striking feature of the Filipino culture is the primacy of the family as a unit of analysis. This book examines the constitution of the Filipino family and discusses its definition, selection of romantic partners, courtship, love and sex, role of members, and decision-making, among others. Medina employed the sociological perspectives of structural functionalism, symbolic interactionism, feminism, and postmodernism in her inquiry into the Filipino family.

The latest edition of the book includes new takes on some emerging phenomena brought about by a fast-changing world. These additions cover relationships engendered online, courtship via social media, and deconstruction of the traditional view of family as composed of the father, the mother, big sister, big brother, and bunso (youngest), and the roles ascribed to each family member. While the analysis of the book is limited only to the middle-class families in lowland urban Christian communities, this book still provides a preview of what can be considered the most important social institution of the nation.

11. Lara, Francisco J. 2014. Insurgents, Clans, and States: Political Legitimacy and Resurgent in Muslim Mindanao, Philippines. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press. This book discusses the conflict espoused by the neglect and marginalisation of the Mindanao economy. This neglect was appropriated by local politicians, which ultimately enabled them to subvert the legitimacy of Muslim separatist movements such as the Moro National Liberation Front and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front at the very time that parts of Muslim Mindanao gained autonomy from the state. Although Mindanao still contribute to the Manila-centric Philippine economy, it cannot be denied that business ventures in the region are under the shadow economy. This type of economy lays the groundwork for local elites and powerful clans to navigate the weak Philippine state and negotiate with national politicians for rents. Consequently, this book also examines how local politicians may regard peace as a threat to their power and interest since their claim to legitimacy is based on their ability to monopolise the repository of security. This reading is helpful for those concerned with sub-national state building and its auxiliary violence.

12. Curato, Nicole, ed. 2017. A Duterte Reader: Critical Essays On Rodrigo Duterte’s Early Presidency. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press. Perhaps a lot of intellectuals out there are developing interest on the Philippines as a result of the controversies surrounding the country’s president and his main political agenda. This book is composed of critical essays from Philippine scholars of various specialisations encompassing topics from Duterte’s rise to power, to the issues that arose in his early presidency.

This is an essential reading for those who want to have a comprehensive view on Duterte’s rise to power. This anthology, simply put, places Duterte in context. It explores Dutertismo and asserts that when one talks about Duterte, one does not only talk about his eccentric manners and personality as a President, but also the different institutions and cultural traditions that made his rise possible and that continue to cradle his presidency.

The need to talk about Rodrigo Duterte, the first president to ever come from Philippine’s geographical South, is emphasized as his election entailed the deconstruction of the historically imperial Manila. This book also brings into light the different misconceptions about the Duterte administration, from internet trolls associated with the DDS (Duterte Die-hard Supporters), to Duterte’s misogyny, to his politics of memory, among others.

There are lots of other books that are also useful in understanding Philippines. This list is focused on concise and comprehensive journal articles and books with the goal of providing a bird’s eye view of the Philippines and the contemporary issues facing the country.

These twelve readings may not be enough to capture the colorful breadth of issues surrounding the Philippines, but they undoubtedly give a start to the individual enthusiastic over the Philippine society, culture, and politics. Until then, one can always go further into more specific materials.

[newstfionline]

Monday, August 16, 2021

U.S. Air Force veteran comforts children plagued by gun violence (Reuters) Like many cities across the United States, Washington has seen a spike in shooting-related deaths during the pandemic. Homicides were up 19% in 2020 compared to 2019, according to the Washington Metropolitan Police Department. This month’s data shows that the city has already clocked more cases than at the same time last year. “It’s like a war zone. It’s like being in the military,” Jawanna Hardy said. Frustrated by the senseless loss of life, Hardy, an Air Force veteran and now a 34-year-old high school English teacher, launched ‘Guns Down Friday,’ an outreach program to support neighborhoods plagued by gun violence—including the one she has lived in since childhood. She has raised money for shooting victims’ gravestones, advocated for more streetlights, and trained people how to treat bullet wounds themselves. She drives her van—adorned with photos of young gun violence victims—through the streets to greet youngsters. On a recent Friday, she arrived with water balloons. “Put your guns down and pick your water balloons up!” Hardy cried through a megaphone as children outside an apartment complex in southeast Washington laughed and scrambled to drench one another. She knows her Friday night street parties will not stop gun violence but hopes they can at least provide children a brief respite from the constant fear in which many live.

Haitians scramble to rescue survivors from ruins of major quake (Reuters) Haitians labored overnight to pick through shattered buildings in search of friends and relatives trapped in the rubble after a devastating earthquake struck the Caribbean country on Saturday, killing 1,297 people and injuring at least 5,700 more. The 7.2 magnitude quake flattened hundreds of homes in the impoverished country, which is still clawing its way back from another major temblor here 11 years ago, and has been without a head of state since the assassination of its president last month. Churches, hotels, hospitals and schools were badly damaged or destroyed, while the walls of a prison were rent open by the violent shudders that convulsed Haiti. Access to the worst-hit areas was complicated by a deterioration in law and order that has left key access roads in parts of Haiti in the hands of gangs, although unconfirmed reports on social media suggested they would let aid pass.

Want to stay long term in France? First come the classes on how to be French. (Washington Post) In France, la vie en rose comes wrapped in red tape. Foreigners hoping to stay here long term must sign an “integration contract” and agree to uphold French values. The contract requires four days of civic education, yet what’s taught is more akin to a government crash course in how to be French. There are discussions about Marianne—the symbolic embodiment of the French Republic—and about classical culinary dishes, such as duck confit and escargot. France 101 covers both the cultural (how to visit museums) as well as the practical (how to navigate the national health-care system). The classes, plus language lessons for anyone whose fluency doesn’t measure up, help determine whether an applicant gets a multiyear visa. Every year, an average of 100,000 people take the courses, in cities across the country. The contemporary agreement explicitly states that receiving an extended residency visa is conditional on abiding by its terms, a key one being deference to French values. After an applicant signs the document, the language test is administered and 24 hours of classes scheduled.

Taliban sweep into Afghan capital after government collapses (AP) The Taliban swept into Afghanistan’s capital Sunday after the government collapsed and the embattled president joined an exodus of his fellow citizens and foreigners, signaling the end of a costly two-decade U.S. campaign to remake the country. Heavily armed Taliban fighters fanned out across the capital, and several entered Kabul’s abandoned presidential palace. Suhail Shaheen, a Taliban spokesman and negotiator, told The Associated Press that the militants would hold talks in the coming days aimed at forming an “open, inclusive Islamic government.” Kabul was gripped by panic. Helicopters raced overhead throughout the day to evacuate personnel from the U.S. Embassy. Smoke rose near the compound as staff destroyed important documents, and the American flag was lowered. Several other Western missions also prepared to pull their people out. Fearful that the Taliban could reimpose the kind of brutal rule that all but eliminated women’s rights, Afghans rushed to leave the country, lining up at cash machines to withdraw their life savings. The desperately poor—who had left homes in the countryside for the presumed safety of the capital—remained in parks and open spaces throughout the city. Many people watched in disbelief as helicopters landed in the U.S. Embassy compound to take diplomats to a new outpost at the airport. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken rejected comparisons to the U.S. pullout from Vietnam.

From hubris to humiliation: America’s warrior class contends with the abject failure of its Afghanistan project (Washington Post) Twenty years ago, when the twin towers and the Pentagon were still smoldering, there was a sense among America’s warrior and diplomatic class that history was starting anew for the people of Afghanistan and much of the Muslim world. “For you and us, history starts today,” then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage told his Pakistani counterparts. Earlier this month, as the Taliban raced across Afghanistan, retired Lt. Col. Jason Dempsey, a two-time veteran of the war, stumbled across Armitage’s words. To Dempsey, the sentiment was “the most American thing I’ve ever heard” and emblematic of the hubris and ignorance that he and so many others brought to the losing war. “We assumed the rest of the world saw us as we saw ourselves,” he said. “And we believed that we could shape the world in our image using our guns and our money.” Both assumptions ignored Afghan culture, politics and history. Both, he said, were tragically wrong. Michèle Flournoy, one of the architects of President Barack Obama’s troop surge in Afghanistan in 2010, said, “In retrospect, the United States and its allies got it really wrong from the very beginning. The bar was set based on our democratic ideals, not on what was sustainable or workable in an Afghan context.” Flournoy acknowledged in hindsight that the mistake was compounded across Republican and Democratic administrations, which continued with almost equal fervor to pursue goals that ran counter to decades—if not centuries—of the Afghan experience.

Afghanistan’s collapse leaves allies questioning U.S. resolve on other fronts (Washington Post) The Taliban's stunningly swift advances across Afghanistan have sparked global alarm, reviving doubts about the credibility of U.S. foreign policy promises and drawing harsh criticisms even from some of the United States' closest allies. And many around the world are wondering whether they could rely on the United States to fulfill long-standing security commitments stretching from Europe to East Asia. "Whatever happened to 'America is back'?" said Tobias Ellwood, who chairs the Defense Committee in the British Parliament. "People are bewildered that after two decades of this big, high-tech power intervening, they are withdrawing and effectively handing the country back to the people we went in to defeat," Ellwood said. "This is the irony. How can you say America is back when we're being defeated by an insurgency armed with no more than [rocket-propelled grenades], land mines and AK-47s?" As much as its military capabilities, the United States' decades-old role as a defender of democracies and freedoms is again in jeopardy, said Rory Stewart, who was Britain's minister for international development in the Conservative government of Theresa May. "The Western democracy that seemed to be the inspiration for the world, the beacon for the world, is turning its back," Stewart said. Rivals of the United States also have expressed dismay. Among them is China, which fears that the ascent of an extremist Islamist government on its western border will foster unrest in the adjoining province of Xinjiang, where Beijing has waged sweeping crackdowns on the Uyghur population that have been denounced by the West. The United States' Arab allies, which have long counted on the U.S. military to come to their aid in the event of an attack by Iran, also have faced questions over whether they will be able to rely on the United States.

Torrential rains lash wide areas of Japan, three feared dead after landslide (Reuters) Torrential rain lashed much of Japan on Sunday, flooding roads and buildings in the western part of the country, while three people were feared dead after a landslide in central Nagano prefecture. Large parts of Japan, particularly the southernmost main island of Kyushu, have seen record levels of rainfall, causing rivers to overflow and triggering landslides. While the rain had stopped in much of Kyushu as of Sunday morning, Tokyo and other parts of the country were pounded by the downpour. Japan “will continue to face conditions in which a large-scale disaster could occur at anytime, anywhere,” Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said at a ministerial meeting on Sunday. He called on local municipalities and relevant organisations to cooperate and act with speed on rescue missions and aid.

More military personnel deployed to enforce Sydney Covid restrictions as entire state locks down (CNN) Additional Australian military personnel will be deployed to enforce tighter Covid-19 restrictions in the greater Sydney area next week, authorities announced Saturday, as the entire state of New South Wales (NSW) prepares to go under lockdown. Stay at home orders will be applied across the country’s most populous state, with people only permitted to leave home to shop for essentials, receive medical care, outdoor exercise with one other person, and work if residents cannot work from home. Schooling will also be moved back online. Sydney, the capital of NSW, has been under lockdown measures for more than seven weeks now, and they will likely be extended further; they were set to end on August 28 but the state government has indicated restrictions will remain through September.

Fuel explosion in Lebanon kills 28, wounding dozens (AP) A warehouse where fuel was illegally stored exploded in northern Lebanon early Sunday, killing at least 28 people and injuring 79 more in the latest tragedy to hit the Mediterranean country in the throes of a devastating economic and political crisis. It was not immediately clear what caused the explosion near the border with Syria. Fuel smuggling operations have been ongoing for months. The Lebanese Red Cross said a fuel tanker exploded and its teams recovered 28 bodies from the site in the border village of Tleil. In a statement, it said it evacuated 79 people who were injured or suffered burns in the blast. Hours after the blast, Lebanese Red Cross members were still searching the area for more victims as Lebanese soldiers cordoned the area.

'Once the best in the Middle East,' Beirut hospital pleads for fuel as it faces shutdown (The Week) A once-famed Beirut hospital is now pleading for international aid to avoid running out of essential resources. The American University of Beirut Medical Center in Beirut, Lebanon, is making an urgent appeal to the United Nations and its specialized agencies, the World Health Organization and the U.N. Children's Fund, to supply the hospital with fuel before it's forced to shut down by Monday. Lebanon is mired in an economic and political crisis, and the nationwide fuel shortage is currently the most dire consequence. That's perhaps most clearly reflected in the plight of AUBMC, which said 40 adults and 15 children living on respirators would die immediately and many other patients will be at great risk if the shutdown is not avoided. The medical center said it's been rationing fuel and electricity for weeks, but is running out of both. Liz Sly, The Washington Post's Beirut bureau chief, notes that the American University hospital "was once the best" in the entire Middle East region; the announcement shows that the country is "truly heading to disaster," she writes.