#congress serves the powerful and ignores the suffering of the poor

[baby-girl-aaron-dessner]

[foreverlogical]

To battle the economic crash from the coronavirus pandemic, Congress is sending Americans cash. The deal just hammered out will send $1,200 to every adult making under a certain income threshold, and $500 for every child. But will the money actually get to everyone?

In many cases, it turns out, it could take weeks or months. And many of the poorest and most vulnerable Americans will face further difficulties once the check arrives.

"The Treasury Department is expected to begin directly depositing checks within a few weeks of the bill's passing," The New York Times reported. "But mailed payments will take one or two weeks longer, Republican Senate aides said Wednesday." It sounds like the mailed checks, for individuals who don't have bank information already on file with the IRS, could take up to two months, and earlier reports suggested they could take up to four. And that time frame doesn't even get to the question of people who may be too poor to have filed taxes, who may move a lot, or who may not have reliable housing, and whose address has to be pieced together from Social Security data or the Veterans Administration.

Meanwhile, one out of every four U.S. households either has no bank account or has real trouble accessing one, which adds further hurdles to actually being able to use the money. "You'll have to cash that check, and take that cash and put it into a money order again to pay your bills," Mehsra Baradaran, a professor at the University of California at Irvine who studies banking inclusion and inequality, told The Week. That process will impose further fees, not to mention the costs, time, and effort required to physically go from the check casher to the utility and landlord's offices to pay bills and rent.

Senate Democrats, including Sen. Sherrod Brown's office, tried to do something about this. Baradaran helped Brown draft a provision that would give any American who needed it a free banking account — available at any local bank or post office — in which the $1,200 aid could be directly dropped. Others in the House, like Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), have their own proposals to do something similar. Ultimately, none of this made it into the Senate deal, which has now passed the House and is headed to President Trump for signing. But Brown and Tlaib have also introduced their proposals as standalone bills. And we really need to fix this, for both moral and economic reasons.

Around 8.4 million U.S. households (or 6.5 percent) are "unbanked," meaning they have no bank account at all. Another 24.2 million households (18.7 percent) are "underbanked," meaning they technically have a bank account but have real difficulty using it. As Baradaran explained, low-income Americans' finances don't mesh well with banks' business models, which are designed more for the steady income flows of the middle class. Less fortunate Americans are constantly hit with fees for things like overdrafts or not having enough money in their accounts. Nor are they particularly profitable for banks, so many institutions have simply abandoned those communities, leaving people with either no banking option, or a branch that's 50 miles away. Regulations used to require banks to keep a branch in every community, but those rules were dismantled in the 1990s, and "those voids were filled with payday lenders and check cashers" as Baradaran put it. Those outfits charge even more onerous fees and interest rates for their services.

Imagine the U.S. payments system as three concentric networks, with each network serving different groups — and each of very different quality. The innermost circle links the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve with the major private banks, and those banks to each other. This network can settle transactions extremely fast, say three to five days. (There are efforts afoot to get this down to 24 hours or less.)

The next network out is essentially the public-facing side of the private banking system — it's what connects individuals and households and businesses to the banks. This is the network that can get everyone their direct deposits in a few weeks.

This situation is already rather remarkable, since we have a public system — the first innermost network — that no one but big private banks are allowed to participate in. Meanwhile, private for-profit banks get the privilege of being the middle-man between that public system and the actual public. "There's no reason banks should be that middle man unless they're mandated to give everyone an account, and they're not," Baradaran noted.

Things are even worse out at the fringes of the circles of inclusion. That's the third network that serves the unbanked and the underbanked and people less directly tied into the second network. This is where people have to wait two months for a check in the mail, cash it with a bank if they're lucky, and otherwise go through the whole obstacle course of check cashers and payday lenders and money orders.

At a minimum, we should plug the people in the third fringe network directly into the first, which is what Brown's bill would do. Under that proposal, when your check got mailed to you, you could pick it up at the post office and open a simple banking account — free, no fees, no minimums — that would plug you directly into the Fed and Treasury Department's payment system. You could cash your check right there and use the money via a debit card that would come with the account, without dealing with any profit-seeking third parties.

Providing a public option for basic banking services via the U.S. Postal Service is an idea that's actually been floating around for a while — in fact America did do that, from 1911 to 1966. (There are also proposals to just give every American an account with the Federal Reserve directly.) Baradaran said her "dream version would be every post office would have this option" — i.e. use this scheme to take every American in both the second and third networks, and plug them directly into the first, innermost network. But Brown's more limited bill would've at least plugged the third network's unbanked and underbanked into that first inner network.

Admittedly, this wouldn't completely solve the initial problem of how fast the checks go out. But it would help, and it would end the obstacles and exploitation that marginalized Americans face when using the money. And if Congress needs to authorize more of these payments — which will almost certainly be needed — the bank accounts will now be in place.

Tlaib's bill is even more ambitious: It would give every American a pre-paid debit card that would plug directly into that inner network, and that Congress and the Treasury Department could automatically refill with money whenever they wanted. In fact, Tlaib's proposal called for four payments of $2,000 each to every person of all ages. "It's trying to provide a novel infrastructure through the pre-paid cards, to get past the limitations of direct deposit or mailing checks," Rohan Grey, president of the Modern Money Network, who helped Tlaib's office draft the proposal, told The Week. (News reports tended to ignore this aspect of Tlaib's bill, focusing instead on its unusual financing mechanism: have the Treasury Department mint trillion-dollar coins and deposit them with the Fed to avoid having to issue new debt.)

The U.S. government already uses similar debit card systems for programs like food stamps, so the basic infrastructure is in place. Between mailing the cards and making them available for distribution at banks and post offices and schools and the like, Tlaib's proposal might actually have been able to get the first payment out even faster. And again, further payments would be automatic, and the debit card system could be integrated with a postal banking public option or Fed-accounts-for-all down the line.

Unfortunately, as I mentioned, none of these ideas made it into the final package. It's not clear why, but we can speculate: lobbyists for industries like payday lenders have clout on Capitol Hill, and these proposals would be an existential threat to their industry. For the moment, the ease and reliability of that inner network remains a privilege reserved for the powers of the banking and financial industries, while we mere citizens have to deal with the private banking system on its terms — and the least fortunate among us are left out in the cold entirely.

Many of the millions who have already lost jobs probably need money now. Even people who still have jobs, but who don't earn much, face a coming cascade of hardships, from the need for food, rent, utility bills, and more. (The government also didn't do itself any favors by making the money means-tested, which will add further time for government agencies to calculate what everyone is owed.) Millions of human beings will suffer because of the delay. Meanwhile, the longer it takes for that money to hit people's pocketbooks, the more time there is for the negative feedback loop of job loss leading to less spending leading to business closures leading to more job loss to build on itself, deepening the hole the economy will eventually have to dig out of.

But Congress can always pass more bills, and by all accounts the coronavirus crisis will last long enough that political pressure for more cash aid to average Americans will likely become overwhelming. The sooner we can stand up a fast and simple public banking option for all, the faster we can get aid out to everyone — both in this crisis and the next.

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[maskedinstructor]

Black Education in America- The Great War in the Ukraine and The Fannie Lou Fight

President Zelensky of the Ukraine

Weeks have passed since Russia has invaded The Ukraine. Thousands of Ukrainians have perished as Russia has bombarded military and civilian targets. More than 3 million citizens have abandoned the country. As the weeks turn into months more will exit their homeland. America, the greatest and most powerful country in the world has provided assistance to the tune of more than $13 billion. As for military support and aid America has supplied The Ukraine with 600 stinger anti-aircraft systems, 2,6000 javelin anti - armor systems, 5 Mi -17 helicopters, 3 patrol boats, 70 high mobility multipurpose wheeled vehicles, 200 grenade launchers and ammunition, 200 shotguns & 200 machine guns, nearly 40 million rounds of small arms ammunition, 1 million + grenade, mortar and artillery rounds, radar systems and body armor and helmets. This was a bipartisan effort by the Congress...And it cannot pass a voting rights act ? Rather it will not pass such legislation. President Zelensky pleaded for help as the country has been under siege for 8 weeks or more. Black people in America have been persecuted for more than 2 centuries . Our political, leaders must believe whole heartedly that we, the Black folks of America, are both dumb and dormant. What is the cry in The Ukraine? Freedom!!! What is the plea of our ancestors through us? Freedom !!! To add insult to the injury, another $800 million have been added to the assistance package. 

It is a tragedy what is happening in the Ukraine. No one knows pain, persecution and prejudice better than Black Americans. However, do not ignore what is the affront we endure daily...racism. No one wants to even call it what it is. No one wants to relieve the pressure African Americans suffer by just leaving their domiciles. Surely The Ukraine needs the aid, compassion and helping hand but then what do Blacks deserve? When we suffer the effects of poor health, housing and educations and remedies are presented to eliminate the ravages of these hardships, moans of austere budget fill the halls of Congress. There is no will to improve our plight. We are the step children of America even in matters which involve foreign nations. 

President Zelensky shamed the world. He was right when he said that the United States has an obligation to shine its light on the rest of the world so that all might benefit from its leadership. There ARE other words which are just as significant...CHARITY BEGINS AT HOME.

Zelensky is no amateur in matters of state. He asked for more than verbal commitments. He wanted physical demonstration of collaboration and cooperation in the war for the life and preservation of his country. How did his appeal say these things? He said that America and the Ukraine are brothers in arms. We live by the same [principles and values of democracy, freedom and respect for the law. On Mount Rushmore, you can see the sculptures of the great presidents who served America. The Ukraine needs you right now Remember Pearl Harbor ? We are engaged in that kind of combat but for 8 weeks. Remember 9-11. America was attacked. The Ukraine is now under attack and we need your help. Just like in the attacks  at Pearl Harbor and on 9-11 innocent Americans died .So it is true of what is happening today in the Ukraine. Zelensky established a visceral relationship with the painful events in Amrerican history. We are united by our fight for our beliefs and values Just like it was said in America, ‘I have a dream. Today in the Ukraine, ‘I have a need.                  ***The dream of Dr. King is still a fight that has gone unfinished...Let me explain

[posterboy4duality]

‘You’ve got bad blood’: The horror of the Tuskegee syphilis experiment

In the fall of 1932, the fliers began appearing around Macon County, Ala., promising “colored people” special treatment for “bad blood.”

“Free Blood Test; Free Treatment, By County Health Department and Government Doctors,” the black and white signs said. “YOU MAY FEEL WELL AND STILL HAVE BAD BLOOD. COME AND BRING ALL YOUR FAMILY.”

Hundreds of men — all black and many of them poor — signed up. Some of the men thought they were being treated for rheumatism or bad stomachs. They were promised free meals, free physicals and free burial insurance.

What the signs never told them was they would become part of the “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male,” a secret experiment conducted by the U.S. Public Health Service to study the progression of the deadly venereal disease — without treatment.

On Tuesday, the Tuskegee History Center will mark the 20th anniversary of its founding and President Bill Clinton’s apology to the survivors of the experiment with a day-long program devoted to the fallout of the study. It destroyed the trust many African Americans held for medical institutions — a legacy that persists today.

[When Henrietta Lacks had cervical cancer, it was a ‘death sentence.’ Her cells would help change that.]

“These anniversaries offer a unique opportunity for us to remind America and the world of the medical injustice that occurred here in Macon County,” said Fred Gray, the civil rights attorney who brought a class-action lawsuit on behalf of unwitting study participants. “We have to continue to tell their story so that such injustices never happen again.”

Men who participated in the experiment, part of a collection photos in the National Archives labeled “Tuskegee Syphilis Study. 4/11/1953-1972.”

The study recruited 600 black men, of which 399 were diagnosed with syphilis and 201 were a control group without the disease. The researchers never obtained informed consent from the men and never told the men with syphilis that they were not being treated but were simply being watched until they died and their bodies examined for ravages of the disease.

Charles Pollard, one of the last survivors, recalled that he heard that men were receiving free physicals at a local one-room schoolhouse, according to the James H. Jones book “Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment.”

“So I went over, and they told me I had bad blood,” Pollard remembered. “And that’s what they’ve been telling me ever since. They come around from time to time and check me over and they say, ‘Charlie, you’ve got bad blood.’ ”

In the book, Herman Shaw, a farmer, recounted hearing about the study as a kind of health care program. “People said you could get free medicine for yourself and things of that kind, and they would have a meeting at Salmon Chapel at a certain date.” So he went.

Initially, when the study began, treatment for syphilis was not effective, often dangerous and fatal. But even after penicillin was discovered and used as a treatment for the disease, the men in the Tuskegee study were not offered the antibiotic.

“All I knew was that they just kept saying I had the bad blood — they never mentioned syphilis to me. Not even once,” said Pollard, who added: “They been doctoring me off and on ever since then. And they gave me a blood tonic.”

Shaw explained: “We got three different types of medicine. A little round pill — sometime a capsule — sometime a little vial of medicine — everybody got the same thing.”

Although originally projected to last six months, the study extended for 40 years. “Local physicians asked to assist with study and not to treat men,” the Centers for Disease Control reported in a timeline of the experiment. “Decision was made to follow the men until death.”

Eunice Rivers, a local nurse, was recruited by doctors to serve as a recruiter and conduit between researchers and the men. Nurse Rivers, as she became known, kept records of the men and drove them to government doctors when they visited the community. She took them to doctors’ appointments in “a shiny station wagon with the government emblem on the front door, according to “Bad Blood.” On one occasion, she followed a man to a private doctor to make sure he did not receive treatment.

In 1945, according to the CDC timeline, penicillin was “accepted as treatment of choice for syphilis.” The U.S. Public Health Services created what they called “rapid treatment centers” to help men afflicted with syphilis — except the men in the Tuskegee study.

In 1966, a public health service investigator raised concerns about the study. Peter Buxtun wrote to the director of the U.S. division of venereal diseases about the ethics of the experiment. But the agency ignored Buxtun’s concerns.

Buxtun eventually leaked information about the study to an Associated Press reporter named Jean Heller, who years later called it “one of the grossest violations of human rights I can imagine.” On July 26, 1972, Heller’s story appeared on the front page of the New York Times, revealing that the men had deliberately been left untreated for 40 years.

[Syphilis victims in U.S. study went untreated for 40 years]

The study was finally brought to a halt, and the following year, a congressional subcommittee held hearings on the Tuskegee experiment.

In 1973, a class-action lawsuit was filed on behalf of the men in the study by Gray, the civil rights lawyer who had represented Rosa Parks. Pollard was among those he represented.

A $10 million out-of-court settlement was reached in the case. “The U.S. government promised to give lifetime medical benefits and burial services to all living participants,” the CDC reported.

In 1974, Congress passed the National Research Act, which was aimed at preventing the exploitation of human subjects by researchers.

On May 16, 1997, President Bill Clinton issued an apology to the eight remaining survivors of the experiment:

“The United States government did something that was wrong — deeply, profoundly, morally wrong,” Clinton said. “It was an outrage to our commitment to integrity and equality for all our citizens. To the survivors, to the wives and family members, the children and the grandchildren, I say what you know: No power on Earth can give you back the lives lost, the pain suffered, the years of internal torment and anguish. What was done cannot be undone. But we can end the silence. We can stop turning our heads away. We can look at you in the eye and finally say on behalf of the American people, what the United States government did was shameful, and I am sorry.”

Herman Shaw, one of the last survivors of the Tuskegee study, raises his arms with praise as President Bill Clinton apologizes for the infamous experiment. (Susan Biddle/Washington Post)

[xtruss]

On Behalf of Environmentalists, I Apologize For the Climate Scare

"Climate change is happening. It’s just not the end of the world. It’s not even our most serious environmental problem"

— Michael Shellenberger | August 1, 2020 | Anti-Empire | Quillette

On behalf of environmentalists everywhere, I would like to formally apologize for the climate scare we created over the last 30 years. Climate change is happening. It’s just not the end of the world. It’s not even our most serious environmental problem. I may seem like a strange person to be saying all of this. I have been a climate activist for 20 years and an environmentalist for 30.

But as an energy expert asked by Congress to provide objective expert testimony, and invited by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to serve as expert reviewer of its next assessment report, I feel an obligation to apologize for how badly we environmentalists have misled the public.

Here are some facts few people know:

Humans are not causing a “sixth mass extinction”

The Amazon is not “the lungs of the world”

Climate change is not making natural disasters worse

Fires have declined 25 percent around the world since 2003

The amount of land we use for meat—humankind’s biggest use of land—has declined by an area nearly as large as Alaska

The build-up of wood fuel and more houses near forests, not climate change, explain why there are more, and more dangerous, fires in Australia and California

Carbon emissions are declining in most rich nations and have been declining in Britain, Germany, and France since the mid-1970s

The Netherlands became rich, not poor while adapting to life below sea level

We produce 25 percent more food than we need and food surpluses will continue to rise as the world gets hotter

Habitat loss and the direct killing of wild animals are bigger threats to species than climate change

Wood fuel is far worse for people and wildlife than fossil fuels

Preventing future pandemics requires more not less “industrial” agriculture

I know that the above facts will sound like “climate denialism” to many people. But that just shows the power of climate alarmism.

In reality, the above facts come from the best-available scientific studies, including those conducted by or accepted by the IPCC, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and other leading scientific bodies.

Some people will, when they read this, imagine that I’m some right-wing anti-environmentalist. I’m not. At 17, I lived in Nicaragua to show solidarity with the Sandinista socialist revolution. At 23 I raised money for Guatemalan women’s cooperatives. In my early 20s I lived in the semi-Amazon doing research with small farmers fighting land invasions. At 26 I helped expose poor conditions at Nike factories in Asia.

I became an environmentalist at 16 when I threw a fundraiser for Rainforest Action Network. At 27 I helped save the last unprotected ancient redwoods in California. In my 30s I advocated renewables and successfully helped persuade the Obama administration to invest $90 billion into them. Over the last few years I helped save enough nuclear plants from being replaced by fossil fuels to prevent a sharp increase in emissions.

But until last year, I mostly avoided speaking out against the climate scare. Partly that’s because I was embarrassed. After all, I am as guilty of alarmism as any other environmentalist. For years, I referred to climate change as an “existential” threat to human civilization, and called it a “crisis.”

But mostly I was scared. I remained quiet about the climate disinformation campaign because I was afraid of losing friends and funding. The few times I summoned the courage to defend climate science from those who misrepresent it I suffered harsh consequences. And so I mostly stood by and did next to nothing as my fellow environmentalists terrified the public.

I even stood by as people in the White House and many in the news media tried to destroy the reputation and career of an outstanding scientist, good man, and friend of mine, Roger Pielke, Jr., a lifelong progressive Democrat and environmentalist who testified in favor of carbon regulations. Why did they do that? Because his research proves natural disasters aren’t getting worse.

But then, last year, things spiraled out of control.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said “The world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change.” Britain’s most high-profile environmental group claimed “Climate Change Kills Children.”

The world’s most influential green journalist, Bill McKibben, called climate change the “greatest challenge humans have ever faced” and said it would “wipe out civilizations.” Mainstream journalists reported, repeatedly, that the Amazon was “the lungs of the world,” and that deforestation was like a nuclear bomb going off.

As a result, half of the people surveyed around the world last year said they thought climate change would make humanity extinct. And in January, one out of five British children told pollsters they were having nightmares about climate change. Whether or not you have children you must see how wrong this is. I admit I may be sensitive because I have a teenage daughter. After we talked about the science she was reassured. But her friends are deeply misinformed and thus, understandably, frightened. I thus decided I had to speak out. I knew that writing a few articles wouldn’t be enough. I needed a book to properly lay out all of the evidence.

And so my formal apology for our fear-mongering comes in the form of my new book, Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All. It is based on two decades of research and three decades of environmental activism. At 400 pages, with 100 of them endnotes, Apocalypse Never covers climate change, deforestation, plastic waste, species extinction, industrialization, meat, nuclear energy, and renewables.

Some highlights from the book:

Factories and modern farming are the keys to human liberation and environmental progress

The most important thing for saving the environment is producing more food, particularly meat, on less land

The most important thing for reducing air pollution and carbon emissions is moving from wood to coal to petroleum to natural gas to uranium

100 percent renewables would require increasing the land used for energy from today’s 0.5 percent to 50 percent

We should want cities, farms, and power plants to have higher, not lower, power densities

Vegetarianism reduces one’s emissions by less than 4 percent

Greenpeace didn’t save the whales, switching from whale oil to petroleum and palm oil did

“Free-range” beef would require 20 times more land and produce 300 percent more emissions

Greenpeace dogmatism worsened forest fragmentation of the Amazon

The colonialist approach to gorilla conservation in the Congo produced a backlash that may have resulted in the killing of 250 elephants

Why were we all so misled?

In the final three chapters of Apocalypse Never I expose the financial, political, and ideological motivations. Environmental groups have accepted hundreds of millions of dollars from fossil fuel interests. Groups motivated by anti-humanist beliefs forced the World Bank to stop trying to end poverty and instead make poverty “sustainable.” And status anxiety, depression, and hostility to modern civilization are behind much of the alarmism.

Once you realize just how badly misinformed we have been, often by people with plainly unsavory or unhealthy motivations, it is hard not to feel duped. Will Apocalypse Never make any difference? There are certainly reasons to doubt it.

The news media have been making apocalyptic pronouncements about climate change since the late 1980s, and do not seem disposed to stop. The ideology behind environmental alarmism—Malthusianism—has been repeatedly debunked for 200 years and yet is more powerful than ever.

But there are also reasons to believe that environmental alarmism will, if not come to an end, have diminishing cultural power. The coronavirus pandemic is an actual crisis that puts the climate “crisis” into perspective. Even if you think we have overreacted, COVID-19 has killed nearly 500,000 people and shattered economies around the globe.

Scientific institutions including the World Health Organisation and IPCC have undermined their credibility through the repeated politicization of science. Their future existence and relevance depends on new leadership and serious reform. Facts still matter, and social media is allowing for a wider range of new and independent voices to outcompete alarmist environmental journalists at legacy publications.

Nations are reverting openly to self-interest and away from Malthusianism and neoliberalism, which is good for nuclear and bad for renewables. The evidence is overwhelming that our high-energy civilization is better for people and nature than the low-energy civilization that climate alarmists would return us to.

The invitations from IPCC and Congress are signs of a growing openness to new thinking about climate change and the environment. Another one has been to the response to my book from climate scientists, conservationists, and environmental scholars. “Apocalypse Never is an extremely important book,” writes Richard Rhodes, the Pulitzer-winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb. “This may be the most important book on the environment ever written,” says one of the fathers of modern climate science Tom Wigley.

“We environmentalists condemn those with antithetical views of being ignorant of science and susceptible to confirmation bias,” wrote the former head of The Nature Conservancy, Steve McCormick. “But too often we are guilty of the same. Shellenberger offers ‘tough love:’ a challenge to entrenched orthodoxies and rigid, self-defeating mindsets. Apocalypse Never serves up occasionally stinging, but always well-crafted, evidence-based points of view that will help develop the ‘mental muscle’ we need to envision and design not only a hopeful, but an attainable, future.”

That is all I hoped for in writing it. If you’ve made it this far, I hope you’ll agree that it’s perhaps not as strange as it seems that a lifelong environmentalist, progressive, and climate activist felt the need to speak out against the alarmism.

I further hope that you’ll accept my apology.

— Source: Quillette

[xxbalamazxx]

Downfall Of Democracy In The West

I have said it for years now, the writing has been on the wall. Democracy is crumbling around us all. It is shattering into grains smaller than that of sand. Yet the people seem to be ok with it, blinded by their rage, their misunderstanding. Popularism seems to be the new trend, it seems to be the core of what society wants. Popularism, however, is not a system of governance. Rather it is a mere opinion or feeling, a social condemnation for anything shunned, it doesn't matter if it is right or wrong... It is easily manipulated and worse than mob rule… It is the voice of celebrity and notoriety seekers over the want and demand of the masses. It holds no gain other than that of the select few…. Often leading the suppression of one's rights for the obtaining of personal wealth…

Democracy is failing my friends, it is crumbling unto dust. For the first time, we see the vote of people being undone. The rights to privacy, the freedom of speech, the will of the people being abridged. Not to any measurement of justice, nor any measurement of will, rather for the select power acquisition of a few celebrities or corporate powers… It is crushing what once made the west great. is obliterating our system of law. Each generation has its battle, ours has been masked from us. It has been confused with civil movements, and seeking more “Rights” for the few whiles ripping them from others… While in the dark the powers that be move against us… Its time to wake the hell up. How is this occurring?? What is going on? It is simple, democracy is being subverted, the vote of the people is being overturned and not just in one country either.

Step 1: In the United States, a president comes into power, he takes his oath and is sworn into office. Within moments protest start in the streets. Riots break out all over the USA. The president came to power via the system, yet it was not good enough for the masses. For the first time in the history of the USA social media is used by those whom were denied power to disrupt the rightful process of what should have occurred. It immediately becomes normalized. The rule of law becomes undone. The Media immediately starts to report it as a resistance, encouraging for more to join in. Treason to the president, to the government, openly heralds. Yet how did this occur? I am still scratching my head trying to figure it out. While I did not oppose nor support Donald Trump in the elections (I am an independent). It is clear something is a miss, on both sides… To the left ( The Democrats) we had a woman “ Hillary Clinton” seeking power. Openly she commits over 300,000 acts of treason to the USA. Enough to have had her shot before a firing squad. Yet the FBI covers for her. Witnesses “Mysteriously” hang themselves the night before testifying before Congress. Openly her people call for revolt, open violence against the government as she lost the election. She accuses the system of being corrupt, rigged… Yet the system was good enough to get her bigoted husband Bill Clinton into power… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ULl41fNBLA To the other side, President Donald Trump begins to undo years worth of bills that were put into place to help those whom needed help. Overnight corporate power grows, the richer become richer and the poorer becomes poorer. Each side blames each other… Yet they seem to be working together to divide the population and conquer. After all, all bills that are passed by Trump help the Clinton's, and all actions Hillary openly declares, adds more fuel to trumps fire… One sits in the literal office, while the other controls the nation and its media through popular control... Using social media to challenge every bill the president passes, criticizing his actions until the country is divided… Openly weak, openly fractured to all that dare looks towards it… Over the next term, for the first time, singular un-elected groups have sway over the government, policy and more importantly the people…. Step 2: In the United Kingdom the people go to the vote as the largest exercise of democracy takes place in a referendum to leave or stay in the EU “Brexit”. With in the first few months of the exercise, the Media begins to report that Brexit will fail. They push with all their might to sway the people. For the first time openly the Media in the UK begins to attempt to sway the people in another Popular exercise of control. They parade celebrities on T.V, they condemn anyone that would oppose their view as “insane” “unstable” and “racist”, even in some cases calling for violence… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSBAYP-BKbg Yet as the voting day draws near like the election in the USA something unexpected occurs. Instead of following the popular opinion of celebrities and the press, the people vote to leave the EU. Overnight the news, the media and the government begin to insult and punish the people… For the first time, direct cuts are targeted against the poor in a cruel retaliation. The government attempts to drop benefits on the lowest of the poor that would see them impoverished to destitution. This, however, was blocked by the House of Lords. Yet to subvert even the most basic checks and balances, the government then brings universal credits to implement the cuts. The Bank Of England increase mortgage rates to apply pressure to the Nation. Guilds and Large corporations raise the prices of food and what the people now deemed Project fear begins… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJRQO50VTKU Un Investigates Uk Poverty With already obscenely high taxes, increases in food& basic's pricing. The threat of the loss of jobs and an economy deliberately destabilized by the unhappy elite the government of the united kingdom announces an apocalyptic view of a post Brexit environment. Immediately a repeat of the USA drama plays out on the world stage. To the left the “ Labour” they openly condemn Brexit, demanding a re-vote. ( Similar to Hillary Clinton in the USA election.) They accuse the government of being corrupt tyrannical, all while voting up bills that harm the population. Jeremy Corbin calls for resistance condemning the Tories... Openly a Popular plot is launched. Every attempt to negotiate a deal with Europe is trampled by the Labour Party. They subvert the mass vote by going to the courts, calling on the queen, and even going to the house of lords ( which labor has condemned as being unelected officials each time they don't agree in their favor). In the past two years, the Prime Minster changes hands not once but two times. From David Cameron to Theresa May. From Theresa May to now Boris Johnson. Much like the despicable acts in the USA, each leader is deemed Tyrannical, Racist, bigoted, and downright nasty by the populist elite. They are targeted, discredited and driven from office… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkgWsJPA_B8 Jeremy Corbyn once again tries to change Prime Minister Now three times Democracy has been directly subverted in the courts of the United Kingdom. Each time by a private citizen using the supreme court to overrule actions, suing for openings of parliament. And abusing the democratic process. While I hold no opinion as a Resident of the UK and Not a citizen. The People voted, yet subversion of the vote is blatant. The Entire government works against the will of the people… And I wished, I truly do that it just ended there, but it does not. Step 3: In France, the people riot as their rights are being trampled over. The minimum wage is not enough to live on. Yellowjackets ( workers) take to the streets in protest. In a direct statement of defiance, the government condemns them as unlawful, even terrorist and begin using the military. Chemical weapons are deployed to suppress the movement. In the United Kingdom, the movement spreads and to Holland and Germany, each countries government follows suit… Condemnation erupts, the will of the people is openly oppressed… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aw-9o0GXrns It does not seem to matter where you are in the west at the moment, laws violating privacy have become commonplace, with little retaliation from the population, other than “ If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear!”. Yet our forefathers, mothers, brothers, sisters and uncles died for that right to privacy… They died for the right to be at peace… Even worse the freedom of speech and that of the press now goes silenced… Due to popularism, social media pressure and a new generation who do not understand the importance of the right to say a word. The freedom of speech is being slowly oppressed. In the United Kingdom and all of the EU you can be arrested for saying the wrong word, and serve years. Even in the USA now due to social media pressure ( Most of it not even being of western descent.) The rights of the singular person are now trampled on for what is often mislead ideals of the larger sum. The mere words uttered of “ That Offends Me” Are grounds to summon the law… This is what our governments have wanted for a while. An excuse to silence all that oppose them. With offense everywhere and arguments such as Corporate rights, company rights, governmental rights. You can be deemed a sense offender at any time… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnIQalprvR8 From fear-mongering & stripping away rights. To open full-blown governmental rebellion, to that of party politics committing both mass conspiracy and downright treason. Democracy is openly and utterly being subverted at its core. Yet the people seemed to be more concerned by who is offending whom. They seem to be more concerned by someone's right to use whatever bathroom they want to, over the rights that will be left for their children and grandchildren. The reality of things is that it's becoming Orwell's 1984. The people ignore the facts, suffering has erupted on a global scale due to the great division of western nations. Children starve, innocent women and men are detained for merely uttering their desires to have what many of us would so easily give up. In just and Inhuman wars are being ignored without western intervention. Yet it is our duty, our mandate to secure and protect the people of all nations. Not just the ones that are white of skin or western in idealism. But all nations in which a people want to be free… Yet the word of a Russian condemning US or EU forces actions is so easily repeated by our children that are already out of control. The violence spreads through our streets as foreign agents subject the minds of our people with dissidents, simply by using an account on Facebook that says Alabama on its location… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QoTHQV0Dts Sinister forces are implementing plans that are dividing the west while the east unifies. During this process of the last four years Russia, China and Iran have formed a coalition that has thrived off western division. Yet internally nothing is done about it, the people forget that it is through the actions of previous generations that we have lived good lives. That it is was through their sacrifice that we obtained wealth. Yet now the people wag their finger at every success the west has had. They trust in foreign conspiracies than the words of our men and women that were there… It is as if they are looking for a reason to betray, any reason what so ever. We simply stare at our phones and condemn anyone that would speak up against it… As if we are already occupied. Dictators have arisen to the world stage, yet the west continues to focus on which is the best YouTuber while Russia veto’s every and all action to help those in need. For anyone who speaks up about this tyranny, Russia needs not do a thing, for it is commonplace for children and Internet trolls to recite law and give up all morality or virtue… Chemical weapons are used on UK soil by Russian agents, that is backed by Dutch chemists who prove the compound. The people scream “ Leave Russia alone” as if they had done nothing wrong, yet victims lay dead. It is as if some mental illness has taken hold. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZf8FwIPAuc Ukraine has an entire province annexed after being threatened by Russia for years. We, their allies abandon them due to the calls of communists in our streets. Russia uses an excuse that there are Russians their so they have the right to take the land by force… Yet in the defense of Ukraine, the law does not apply? Again our people remain silent and do nothing. Three years after Russia uses its hold on the region to choke trade ships and bully the international stage… Russia openly admits to interfering in elections all over the world. It admits to global espionage, yet the modern population sticks its nose up. The only time that matters is when their populist leaders make a point of it. The fact that this level of espionage is back indicating that the west is again on the brink of another cold war… Yet instead of acting, instead of stripping an international threat back down to size… The social influence, the populist elite rather wait until the threat becomes all too real… Until we are again at full-blown war… Because to do nothing today will make them a few more bucks, and it is not their children who will die tomorrow… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHzwMLx-rKc Elected officials in all offices are being run out of power by the minority view votes, well not votes, rather demand made from the sum of losing parties. In the USA the democrats accuse men and women of rape, incest, bigotry and acts of legal violations to grip hold. While in the UK similar processes are occurring. Each is a subversion of the will of the masses. It is as if someone wrote a bad play and we no longer care as we are fixated on celebrities, drama, and perceived special rights for said groups… It is as if not being offensive is more important then protecting our rights and thus protecting our children, our grand children's and their children. For if we are the generation that does nothing… It is us to blame for when they have nothing. How long will this last? How long till we no longer can call ourselves democracies? How long till our old enemies march to our doorstep? How long till we see that the ancient old trick of Divide and conquer is being used upon us today... Rather it is by sinister forces in our governments such as Jeremy Corbin, a known communist, and socialist sympathizer. Or Hillary Clinton who openly committed treason by releasing classified secrets. And perhaps the President of the USA whom is believed to have colluded with Vladimir Putin himself. Or that of foreign powers growing by the day. How long till we wake up? When is it too late to stand up for the rights and ways that our forefathers and mothers fought for? How long till we lose our democracy completely? Will it take another Pearl Harbour for you to finally see? Read the full article

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Rosa Parks

Rosa Louise McCauley Parks (February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005) was an African American civil rights activist, whom the United States Congress called "the first lady of civil rights" and "the mother of the freedom movement". Her birthday, February 4, and the day she was arrested, December 1, have both become Rosa Parks Day, commemorated in California and Missouri (February 4), and Ohio and Oregon (December 1).

On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks refused to obey bus driver James F. Blake's order to give up her seat in the colored section to a white passenger, after the white section was filled. Parks was not the first person to resist bus segregation. Others had taken similar steps, including Bayard Rustin in 1942, Irene Morgan in 1946, Sarah Louise Keys in 1952, and the members of the ultimately successful Browder v. Gayle 1956 lawsuit (Claudette Colvin, Aurelia Browder, Susie McDonald, and Mary Louise Smith) who were arrested in Montgomery for not giving up their bus seats months before Parks. NAACP organizers believed that Parks was the best candidate for seeing through a court challenge after her arrest for civil disobedience in violating Alabama segregation laws, although eventually her case became bogged down in the state courts while the Browder v. Gayle case succeeded.

Parks' act of defiance and the Montgomery Bus Boycott became important symbols of the modern Civil Rights Movement. She became an international icon of resistance to racial segregation. She organized and collaborated with civil rights leaders, including Edgar Nixon, president of the local chapter of the NAACP; and Martin Luther King, Jr., a new minister in town who gained national prominence in the civil rights movement.

At the time, Parks was secretary of the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP. She had recently attended the Highlander Folk School, a Tennessee center for training activists for workers' rights and racial equality. She acted as a private citizen "tired of giving in". Although widely honored in later years, she also suffered for her act; she was fired from her job as a seamstress in a local department store, and received death threats for years afterwards. Her situation also opened doors.

Shortly after the boycott, she moved to Detroit, where she briefly found similar work. From 1965 to 1988 she served as secretary and receptionist to John Conyers, an African-American US Representative. She was also active in the Black Power movement and the support of political prisoners in the US.

After retirement, Parks wrote her autobiography and continued to insist that the struggle for justice was not over and there was more work to be done. In her final years, she suffered from dementia. Parks received national recognition, including the NAACP's 1979 Spingarn Medal, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Congressional Gold Medal, and a posthumous statue in the United States Capitol's National Statuary Hall. Upon her death in 2005, she was the first woman and third non-US government official to lie in honor at the Capitol Rotunda.

Early years

Rosa Parks was born Rosa Louise McCauley in Tuskegee, Alabama, on February 4, 1913, to Leona (née Edwards), a teacher, and James McCauley, a carpenter. She was of African ancestry, though one of her great-grandfathers was Scots-Irish and one of her great-grandmothers was a slave of Native American descent. She was small as a child and suffered poor health with chronic tonsillitis. When her parents separated, she moved with her mother to Pine Level, just outside the state capital, Montgomery. She grew up on a farm with her maternal grandparents, mother, and younger brother Sylvester. They all were members of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), a century-old independent black denomination founded by free blacks in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the early nineteenth century.

McCauley attended rural schools until the age of eleven. As a student at the Industrial School for Girls in Montgomery, she took academic and vocational courses. Parks went on to a laboratory school set up by the Alabama State Teachers College for Negroes for secondary education, but dropped out in order to care for her grandmother and later her mother, after they became ill.

Around the turn of the 20th century, the former Confederate states had adopted new constitutions and electoral laws that effectively disfranchised black voters and, in Alabama, many poor white voters as well. Under the white-established Jim Crow laws, passed after Democrats regained control of southern legislatures, racial segregation was imposed in public facilities and retail stores in the South, including public transportation. Bus and train companies enforced seating policies with separate sections for blacks and whites. School bus transportation was unavailable in any form for black schoolchildren in the South, and black education was always underfunded.

Parks recalled going to elementary school in Pine Level, where school buses took white students to their new school and black students had to walk to theirs:

I'd see the bus pass every day... But to me, that was a way of life; we had no choice but to accept what was the custom. The bus was among the first ways I realized there was a black world and a white world.

Although Parks' autobiography recounts early memories of the kindness of white strangers, she could not ignore the racism of her society. When the Ku Klux Klan marched down the street in front of their house, Parks recalls her grandfather guarding the front door with a shotgun. The Montgomery Industrial School, founded and staffed by white northerners for black children, was burned twice by arsonists. Its faculty was ostracized by the white community.

Repeatedly bullied by white children in her neighborhood, Parks often fought back physically. She later said that "As far back as I remember, I could never think in terms of accepting physical abuse without some form of retaliation if possible."

In 1932, Rosa married Raymond Parks, a barber from Montgomery. He was a member of the NAACP, which at the time was collecting money to support the defense of the Scottsboro Boys, a group of black men falsely accused of raping two white women. Rosa took numerous jobs, ranging from domestic worker to hospital aide. At her husband's urging, she finished her high school studies in 1933, at a time when less than 7% of African Americans had a high school diploma. Despite the Jim Crow laws and discrimination by registrars, she succeeded in registering to vote on her third try.

In December 1943, Parks became active in the Civil Rights Movement, joined the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP, and was elected secretary. She later said, "I was the only woman there, and they needed a secretary, and I was too timid to say no." She continued as secretary until 1957. She worked for the local NAACP leader Edgar Nixon, even though he maintained that "Women don't need to be nowhere but in the kitchen." When Parks asked "Well, what about me?", he replied "I need a secretary and you are a good one."

In 1944, in her capacity as secretary, she investigated the gang-rape of Recy Taylor, a black woman from Abbeville, Alabama. Parks and other civil rights activists organized the "Committee for Equal Justice for Mrs. Recy Taylor", launching what the Chicago Defendercalled "the strongest campaign for equal justice to be seen in a decade."

Although never a member of the Communist Party, she attended meetings with her husband. The notorious Scottsboro case had been brought to prominence by the Communist Party.

In the 1940s, Parks and her husband were members of the Voters' League. Sometime soon after 1944, she held a brief job at Maxwell Air Force Base, which, despite its location in Montgomery, Alabama, did not permit racial segregation because it was federal property. She rode on its integrated trolley. Speaking to her biographer, Parks noted, "You might just say Maxwell opened my eyes up." Parks worked as a housekeeper and seamstress for Clifford and Virginia Durr, a white couple. Politically liberal, the Durrs became her friends. They encouraged—and eventually helped sponsor—Parks in the summer of 1955 to attend the Highlander Folk School, an education center for activism in workers' rights and racial equality in Monteagle, Tennessee. There Parks was mentored by the veteran organizer Septima Clark.

In August 1955, black teenager Emmett Till was brutally murdered after reportedly flirting with a young white woman while visiting relatives in Mississippi. On November 27, 1955, four days before she would make her stand on the bus, Rosa Parks attended a mass meeting at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery that addressed this case as well as the recent murders of the activists George W. Lee and Lamar Smith. The featured speaker was T. R. M. Howard, a black civil rights leader from Mississippi who headed the Regional Council of Negro Leadership. Howard brought news of the recent acquittal of the two men who had murdered Till. Parks was deeply saddened and angry at the news, particularly because Till's case had garnered much more attention than any of the cases she and the Montgomery NAACP had worked on—and yet, the two men still walked free.

Parks and the Montgomery bus boycott

Montgomery buses: law and prevailing customs

In 1900, Montgomery had passed a city ordinance to segregate bus passengers by race. Conductors were empowered to assign seats to achieve that goal. According to the law, no passenger would be required to move or give up his seat and stand if the bus was crowded and no other seats were available. Over time and by custom, however, Montgomery bus drivers adopted the practice of requiring black riders to move when there were no white-only seats left.

The first four rows of seats on each Montgomery bus were reserved for whites. Buses had "colored" sections for black people generally in the rear of the bus, although blacks composed more than 75% of the ridership. The sections were not fixed but were determined by placement of a movable sign. Black people could sit in the middle rows until the white section filled; if more whites needed seats, blacks were to move to seats in the rear, stand, or, if there was no room, leave the bus. Black people could not sit across the aisle in the same row as white people. The driver could move the "colored" section sign, or remove it altogether. If white people were already sitting in the front, black people had to board at the front to pay the fare, then disembark and reenter through the rear door.

For years, the black community had complained that the situation was unfair. Parks said, "My resisting being mistreated on the bus did not begin with that particular arrest...I did a lot of walking in Montgomery."

One day in 1943, Parks boarded the bus and paid the fare. She then moved to her seat but driver James F. Blake told her to follow city rules and enter the bus again from the back door. Parks exited the vehicle and waited for the next bus, determined never to ride with Blake again.

Her refusal to move

After working all day, Parks boarded the Cleveland Avenue bus, a General Motors Old Look bus belonging to the Montgomery City Lines, around 6 p.m., Thursday, December 1, 1955, in downtown Montgomery. She paid her fare and sat in an empty seat in the first row of back seats reserved for blacks in the "colored" section. Near the middle of the bus, her row was directly behind the ten seats reserved for white passengers. Initially, she did not notice that the bus driver was the same man, James F. Blake, who had left her in the rain in 1943. As the bus traveled along its regular route, all of the white-only seats in the bus filled up. The bus reached the third stop in front of the Empire Theater, and several white passengers boarded. Blake noted that two or three white passengers were standing, as the front of the bus had filled to capacity. He moved the "colored" section sign behind Parks and demanded that four black people give up their seats in the middle section so that the white passengers could sit. Years later, in recalling the events of the day, Parks said, "When that white driver stepped back toward us, when he waved his hand and ordered us up and out of our seats, I felt a determination to cover my body like a quilt on a winter night."

By Parks' account, Blake said, "Y'all better make it light on yourselves and let me have those seats." Three of them complied. Parks said, "The driver wanted us to stand up, the four of us. We didn't move at the beginning, but he says, 'Let me have these seats.' And the other three people moved, but I didn't." The black man sitting next to her gave up his seat.

Parks moved, but toward the window seat; she did not get up to move to the redesignated colored section. Parks later said about being asked to move to the rear of the bus, "I thought of Emmett Till and I just couldn't go back." Blake said, "Why don't you stand up?" Parks responded, "I don't think I should have to stand up." Blake called the police to arrest Parks. When recalling the incident forEyes on the Prize, a 1987 public television series on the Civil Rights Movement, Parks said, "When he saw me still sitting, he asked if I was going to stand up, and I said, 'No, I'm not.' And he said, 'Well, if you don't stand up, I'm going to have to call the police and have you arrested.' I said, 'You may do that.'"

During a 1956 radio interview with Sydney Rogers in West Oakland several months after her arrest, Parks said she had decided, "I would have to know for once and for all what rights I had as a human being and a citizen."

In her autobiography, My Story she said:

People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.

When Parks refused to give up her seat, a police officer arrested her. As the officer took her away, she recalled that she asked, "Why do you push us around?" She remembered him saying, "I don't know, but the law's the law, and you're under arrest." She later said, "I only knew that, as I was being arrested, that it was the very last time that I would ever ride in humiliation of this kind..."

Parks was charged with a violation of Chapter 6, Section 11 segregation law of the Montgomery City code, although technically she had not taken a white-only seat; she had been in a colored section. Edgar Nixon, president of the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP and leader of the Pullman Porters Union, and her friend Clifford Durr bailed Parks out of jail the next evening.

The boycott

Nixon conferred with Jo Ann Robinson, an Alabama State College professor and member of the Women's Political Council (WPC), about the Parks case. Robinson believed it important to seize the opportunity and stayed up all night mimeographing over 35,000 handbills announcing a bus boycott. The Women's Political Council was the first group to officially endorse the boycott.

On Sunday, December 4, 1955, plans for the Montgomery Bus Boycott were announced at black churches in the area, and a front-page article in the Montgomery Advertiser helped spread the word. At a church rally that night, those attending agreed unanimously to continue the boycott until they were treated with the level of courtesy they expected, until black drivers were hired, and until seating in the middle of the bus was handled on a first-come basis.

The next day, Parks was tried on charges of disorderly conduct and violating a local ordinance. The trial lasted 30 minutes. After being found guilty and fined $10, plus $4 in court costs, Parks appealed her conviction and formally challenged the legality of racial segregation. In a 1992 interview with National Public Radio's Lynn Neary, Parks recalled:

I did not want to be mistreated, I did not want to be deprived of a seat that I had paid for. It was just time... there was opportunity for me to take a stand to express the way I felt about being treated in that manner. I had not planned to get arrested. I had plenty to do without having to end up in jail. But when I had to face that decision, I didn't hesitate to do so because I felt that we had endured that too long. The more we gave in, the more we complied with that kind of treatment, the more oppressive it became.

On the day of Parks' trial — December 5, 1955 — the WPC distributed the 35,000 leaflets. The handbill read,

We are...asking every Negro to stay off the buses Monday in protest of the arrest and trial ... You can afford to stay out of school for one day. If you work, take a cab, or walk. But please, children and grown-ups, don't ride the bus at all on Monday. Please stay off the buses Monday.

It rained that day, but the black community persevered in their boycott. Some rode in carpools, while others traveled in black-operated cabs that charged the same fare as the bus, 10 cents. Most of the remainder of the 40,000 black commuters walked, some as far as 20 miles (30 km).

That evening after the success of the one-day boycott, a group of 16 to 18 people gathered at the Mt. Zion AME Zion Church to discuss boycott strategies. At that time Parks was introduced but not asked to speak, despite a standing ovation and calls from the crowd for her to speak; when she asked if she should say something, the reply was, "Why, you've said enough."

The group agreed that a new organization was needed to lead the boycott effort if it were to continue. Rev. Ralph Abernathy suggested the name "Montgomery Improvement Association" (MIA). The name was adopted, and the MIA was formed. Its members elected as their president Martin Luther King, Jr., a relative newcomer to Montgomery, who was a young and mostly unknown minister of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.

That Monday night, 50 leaders of the African-American community gathered to discuss actions to respond to Parks' arrest. Edgar Nixon, the president of the NAACP, said, "My God, look what segregation has put in my hands!" Parks was considered the ideal plaintiff for a test case against city and state segregation laws, as she was seen as a responsible, mature woman with a good reputation. She was securely married and employed, was regarded as possessing a quiet and dignified demeanor, and was politically savvy. King said that Parks was regarded as "one of the finest citizens of Montgomery—not one of the finest Negro citizens, but one of the finest citizens of Montgomery."

Parks' court case was being slowed down in appeals through the Alabama courts on their way to a Federal appeal and the process could have taken years. Holding together a boycott for that length of time would have been a great strain. In the end, black residents of Montgomery continued the boycott for 381 days. Dozens of public buses stood idle for months, severely damaging the bus transit company's finances, until the city repealed its law requiring segregation on public buses following the US Supreme Court ruling inBrowder v. Gayle that it was unconstitutional. Parks was not included as a plaintiff in the Browder decision because the attorney Fred Gray concluded the courts would perceive they were attempting to circumvent her prosecution on her charges working their way through the Alabama state court system.

Parks played an important part in raising international awareness of the plight of African Americans and the civil rights struggle. King wrote in his 1958 book Stride Toward Freedom that Parks' arrest was the catalyst rather than the cause of the protest: "The cause lay deep in the record of similar injustices." He wrote, "Actually, no one can understand the action of Mrs. Parks unless he realizes that eventually the cup of endurance runs over, and the human personality cries out, 'I can take it no longer.'"

Detroit years

1960s

After her arrest, Parks became an icon of the Civil Rights Movement but suffered hardships as a result. Due to economic sanctions used against activists, she lost her job at the department store. Her husband quit his job after his boss forbade him to talk about his wife or the legal case. Parks traveled and spoke extensively about the issues.

In 1957, Raymond and Rosa Parks left Montgomery for Hampton, Virginia; mostly because she was unable to find work. She also disagreed with King and other leaders of Montgomery's struggling civil rights movement about how to proceed, and was constantly receiving death threats. In Hampton, she found a job as a hostess in an inn at Hampton Institute, a historically black college.

Later that year, at the urging of her brother and sister-in-law in Detroit, Sylvester and Daisy McCauley, Rosa and Raymond Parks and her mother moved north to join them. The City of Detroit attempted to cultivate a progressive reputation, but Parks encountered numerous signs of discrimination against African-Americans. Schools were effectively segregated, and services in black neighborhoods substandard. In 1964, Mrs. Parks told an interviewer that, "I don't feel a great deal of difference here...Housing segregation is just as bad, and it seems more noticeable in the larger cities." She regularly participated in the movement for open and fair housing.

Parks rendered crucial assistance in the first campaign for Congress by John Conyers. She persuaded Martin Luther King (who was generally reluctant to endorse local candidates) to appear with Conyers, thereby boosting the novice candidate's profile. When Conyers was elected, he hired her as a secretary and receptionist for his congressional office in Detroit. She held this position until she retired in 1988. In a telephone interview with CNN on October 24, 2005, Conyers recalled, "You treated her with deference because she was so quiet, so serene — just a very special person ... There was only one Rosa Parks." Doing much of the daily constituent work for Conyers, Parks often focused on socio-economic issues including welfare, education, job discrimination, and affordable housing. She visited schools, hospitals, senior citizen facilities, and other community meetings and kept Conyers grounded in community concerns and activism.

Parks participated in activism nationally during the mid-1960s, traveling to support the Selma-to-Montgomery Marches, the Freedom Now Party, and the Lowndes County Freedom Organization. She also befriended Malcolm X, who she regarded as a personal hero.

Like many Detroit blacks, Mrs. Parks remained particularly concerned about housing issues. She herself lived in a neighborhood, Virginia Park, which had been compromised by highway construction and urban renewal. By 1962, these policies had destroyed 10,000 structures in Detroit, displacing 43,096 people, 70 percent of them African-American. Parks lived just a mile from the epicenter of the riot that took place in Detroit in 1967, and she considered housing discrimination a major factor that provoked the disorder.

In the aftermath Mrs. Parks collaborated with members of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers and the Republic of New Afrika in raising awareness of police abuse during the conflict. She served on a "people's tribunal" on August 30, 1967 investigating the killing of three young men by police during the 1967 Detroit uprising, in what came to be known as the Algiers Hotel Incident. She also helped form the Virginia Park district council to help rebuild the area. The council facilitated the building of the only black-owned shopping center in the country. Parks took part in the black power movement, attending the Philadelphia Black Power conference, and the Black Political Convention in Gary, Indiana. She also supported and visited the Black Panther school in Oakland.

1970s

In the 1970s, Parks organized for the freedom of political prisoners in the United States, particularly cases involving issues of self-defense. She helped found the Detroit chapter of the Joann Little Defense Committee, and also worked in support of the Wilmington 10, the RNA-11, and Gary Tyler. Following national outcry around her case, Little succeeded in her defense that she used deadly force to resist sexual assault and was acquitted. Gary Tyler was finally released in April 2016 after 41 years in prison.

The 1970s were a decade of loss for Parks in her personal life. Her family was plagued with illness; she and her husband had suffered stomach ulcers for years and both required hospitalization. In spite of her fame and constant speaking engagements, Parks was not a wealthy woman. She donated most of the money from speaking to civil rights causes, and lived on her staff salary and her husband's pension. Medical bills and time missed from work caused financial strain that required her to accept assistance from church groups and admirers.

Her husband died of throat cancer on August 19, 1977 and her brother, her only sibling, died of cancer that November. Her personal ordeals caused her to become removed from the civil rights movement. She learned from a newspaper of the death of Fannie Lou Hamer, once a close friend. Parks suffered two broken bones in a fall on an icy sidewalk, an injury which caused considerable and recurring pain. She decided to move with her mother into an apartment for senior citizens. There she nursed her mother Leona through the final stages of cancer and geriatric dementia until she died in 1979 at the age of 92.

Final years

In 1980, Parks—widowed and without immediate family—rededicated herself to civil rights and educational organizations. She co-founded the Rosa L. Parks Scholarship Foundation for college-bound high school seniors, to which she donated most of her speaker fees. In February 1987 she co-founded, with Elaine Eason Steele, the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development, an institute that runs the "Pathways to Freedom" bus tours which introduce young people to important civil rights and Underground Railroad sites throughout the country. Parks also served on the Board of Advocates of Planned Parenthood. Though her health declined as she entered her seventies, Parks continued to make many appearances and devoted considerable energy to these causes.

In 1992, Parks published Rosa Parks: My Story, an autobiography aimed at younger readers, which recounts her life leading to her decision to keep her seat on the bus. A few years later, she published Quiet Strength (1995), her memoir, which focuses on her faith. On August 30, 1994, Joseph Skipper, an African-American drug addict, entered her home to rob it and attacked the 81-year-old Parks. The incident sparked outrage throughout the United States. After his arrest, Skipper said that he had not known he was in Parks' home but recognized her after entering. Skipper asked, "Hey, aren't you Rosa Parks?" to which she replied, "Yes." She handed him $3 when he demanded money and an additional $50 when he demanded more. Before fleeing, Skipper struck Parks in the face. Skipper was arrested and charged with various breaking and entering offenses against Parks and other neighborhood victims. He admitted guilt and, on August 8, 1995, was sentenced to eight to 15 years in prison. Suffering anxiety upon returning to her small central Detroit house following the ordeal, Parks moved into Riverfront Towers, a secure high-rise apartment building where she lived for the rest of her life.

In 1994 the Ku Klux Klan applied to sponsor a portion of United States Interstate 55 in St. Louis County and Jefferson County, Missouri, near St. Louis, for cleanup (which allowed them to have signs stating that this section of highway was maintained by the organization). Since the state could not refuse the KKK's sponsorship, the Missouri legislature voted to name the highway section the "Rosa Parks Highway". When asked how she felt about this honor, she is reported to have commented, "It is always nice to be thought of."

In 1999 Parks filmed a cameo appearance for the television series Touched by an Angel. It was her last appearance on film; health problems made her increasingly an invalid.

In 2002 Parks received an eviction notice from her $1800 per month apartment due to non-payment of rent. Parks was incapable of managing her own financial affairs by this time due to age-related physical and mental decline. Her rent was paid from a collection taken by Hartford Memorial Baptist Church in Detroit. When her rent became delinquent and her impending eviction was highly publicized in 2004, executives of the ownership company announced they had forgiven the back rent and would allow Parks, by then 91 and in extremely poor health, to live rent free in the building for the remainder of her life. Her heirs and various interest organizations alleged at the time that her financial affairs had been mismanaged.

In popular culture

In 1979, the Supersisters trading card set was produced and distributed; one of the cards featured Parks's name and picture.

The Neville Brothers recorded a song about Parks called "Sister Rosa" on their 1989 album Yellow Moon. A music video for the song was also made.

The song "Daybreak" from The Stone Roses' 1994 album Second Coming pays tribute to Parks with the line "Sister Rosa Lee Parks / Love forever her name in your heart".

In March 1999, Parks filed a lawsuit (Rosa Parks v. LaFace Records) against American hip-hop duo OutKast and their record company, claiming that the duo's song "Rosa Parks", the most successful radio single of their 1998 album Aquemini, had used her name without permission. The lawsuit was settled on April 15, 2005 (six months and nine days before Parks' death); OutKast, their producer and record labels paid Parks an undisclosed cash settlement. They also agreed to work with the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute to create educational programs about the life of Rosa Parks. The record label and OutKast admitted to no wrongdoing. Responsibility for the payment of legal fees was not disclosed.

The documentary Mighty Times: The Legacy of Rosa Parks (2001) received a 2002 nomination for Academy Award for Documentary Short Subject. She collaborated on a TV movie of her life, The Rosa Parks Story (2002), starring Angela Bassett.

The film Barbershop (2002) featured a barber, played by Cedric the Entertainer, arguing with others that other African Americans before Parks had been active in bus integration, but she was renowned as an NAACP secretary. The activists Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton launched a boycott against the film, contending it was "disrespectful", but NAACP president Kweisi Mfume stated he thought the controversy was "overblown." Parks was offended and boycotted the NAACP 2003 Image Awards ceremony, which Cedric hosted.

Grime musician Skepta's track "Shutdown" includes the lyrics "Sittin' at the front, just like Rosa Parks".

Death and funeral

Parks resided in Detroit until she died of natural causes at the age of 92 on October 24, 2005, in her apartment on the east side of the city. She and her husband never had children and she outlived her only sibling. She was survived by her sister-in-law (Raymond's sister), 13 nieces and nephews and their families, and several cousins, most of them residents of Michigan or Alabama.

City officials in Montgomery and Detroit announced on October 27, 2005, that the front seats of their city buses would be reserved with black ribbons in honor of Parks until her funeral. Parks' coffin was flown to Montgomery and taken in a horse-drawn hearse to the St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church, where she lay in repose at the altar on October 29, 2005, dressed in the uniform of a church deaconess. A memorial service was held there the following morning. One of the speakers, United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, said that if it had not been for Parks, she would probably have never become the Secretary of State. In the evening the casket was transported to Washington, D.C. and transported by a bus similar to the one in which she made her protest, to lie in honor in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol.

Since the founding in 1852 of the practice of lying in state in the rotunda, Parks was the 31st person, the first American who had not been a U.S. government official, and the second private person (after the French planner Pierre L'Enfant) to be honored in this way. She was the first woman and the second black person to lie in state in the Capitol. An estimated 50,000 people viewed the casket there, and the event was broadcast on television on October 31, 2005. A memorial service was held that afternoon at Metropolitan AME Church in Washington, DC.

With her body and casket returned to Detroit, for two days, Parks lay in repose at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History. Her funeral service was seven hours long and was held on November 2, 2005, at the Greater Grace Temple Church in Detroit. After the service, an honor guard from the Michigan National Guard laid the U.S. flag over the casket and carried it to a horse-drawn hearse, which was intended to carry it, in daylight, to the cemetery. As the hearse passed the thousands of people who were viewing the procession, many clapped, cheered loudly and released white balloons. Parks was interred between her husband and mother at Detroit's Woodlawn Cemetery in the chapel's mausoleum. The chapel was renamed the Rosa L. Parks Freedom Chapel in her honor. Parks had previously prepared and placed a headstone on the selected location with the inscription "Rosa L. Parks, wife, 1913–."

Legacy and honors

1976, Detroit renamed 12th Street "Rosa Parks Boulevard."

1979, the NAACP awarded Parks the Spingarn Medal, its highest honor,

1980, she received the Martin Luther King Jr. Award.

1983, she was inducted into Michigan Women's Hall of Fame for her achievements in civil rights.

1984, she received a Candace Award from the National Coalition of 100 Black Women.

1990,

1992, she received the Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience Award along with Dr. Benjamin Spock and others at the Kennedy Library and Museum in Boston, Massachusetts.

1994, she received an honorary doctorate from Soka University in Tokyo, Japan.

1995, she received the Academy of Achievement's Golden Plate Award in Williamsburg, Virginia.

1996, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor given by the US executive branch.

1998, she was the first to receive the International Freedom Conductor Award given by the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center.

1999,

2000,

2002,

2003, Bus No. 2857 on which Parks was riding is restored and placed on display in The Henry Ford

2004, In the Los Angeles County MetroRail system, the Imperial Highway/Wilmington station, where the Blue Line connects with the Green Line, has been officially named the "Rosa Parks Station".

2005,

Parks was invited to be part of the group welcoming Nelson Mandela upon his release from prison in South Africa.

Parks was in attendance as part of Interstate 475 outside of Toledo, Ohio is named after Parks.

she received the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest award given by the US legislative branch, the medal bears the legend "Mother of the Modern Day Civil Rights Movement"

she receives the Windsor–Detroit International Freedom Festival Freedom Award.

Time named Parks one of the 20 most influential and iconic figures of the 20th century.

President Bill Clinton honored her in his State of the Union address, saying, "She's sitting down with the first lady tonight, and she may get up or not as she chooses."

her home state awarded her the Alabama Academy of Honor,

she receives the first Governor's Medal of Honor for Extraordinary Courage.

She was awarded two dozen honorary doctorates from universities worldwide

She is made an honorary member of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority.

the Rosa Parks Library and Museum on the campus of Troy University in Montgomery was dedicated to her.

scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Parks on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.

A portion of the Interstate 10 freeway in Los Angeles is named in her honor.

On October 30, 2005 President George W. Bush issued a proclamation ordering that all flags on U.S. public areas both within the country and abroad be flown at half-staff on the day of Parks' funeral.

Metro Transit in King County, Washington placed posters and stickers dedicating the first forward-facing seat of all its buses in Parks' memory shortly after her death,

the American Public Transportation Association declared December 1, 2005, the 50th anniversary of her arrest, to be a "National Transit Tribute to Rosa Parks Day".

On that anniversary, President George W. Bush signed Pub.L. 109–116, directing that a statue of Parks be placed in the United States Capitol's National Statuary Hall. In signing the resolution directing the Joint Commission on the Library to do so, the President stated:

By placing her statue in the heart of the nation's Capitol, we commemorate her work for a more perfect union, and we commit ourselves to continue to struggle for justice for every American.

2006,

2007, Nashville, Tennessee, renamed MetroCenter Boulevard (8th Avenue North) (US 41A and SR 12) in September 2007 as Rosa L. Parks Boulevard.

2009, On July 14, 2009, the Rosa Parks Transit Center opened in Detroit at the corner of Michigan and Cass Avenues.

2010, In Grand Rapids, Michigan, a plaza in the heart of the city is named Rosa Parks Circle.

2012, President Barack Obama visited the famous Rosa Parks bus at the Henry Ford Museum after an event in Dearborn, Michigan, April 18, 2012.

2012, A street in West Valley City, Utah (the state's second largest city), leading to the Utah Cultural Celebration Center was renamed Rosa Parks Drive.

2013,

2014, the asteroid (284996) Rosaparks was named after Rosa Parks.

2015,

Portion of Interstate 96 in Detroit was renamed by the state legislature as the Rosa Parks Memorial Highway in December 2005.

At Super Bowl XL, played at Detroit's Ford Field, long-time Detroit residents Coretta Scott King and Parks were remembered and honored by a moment of silence. The Super Bowl was dedicated to their memory. Parks' nieces and nephews and Martin Luther King III joined the coin toss ceremonies, standing alongside former University of Michigan star Tom Brady who flipped the coin.

On February 14, Nassau County, New York Executive, Thomas Suozzi announced that the Hempstead Transit Center would be renamed the Rosa Parks Hempstead Transit Center in her honor.

On February 1, President Barack Obama proclaimed February 4, 2013, as the "100th Anniversary of the Birth of Rosa Parks." He called "upon all Americans to observe this day with appropriate service, community, and education programs to honor Rosa Parks's enduring legacy."

On February 4, to celebrate Rosa Parks' 100th birthday, the Henry Ford Museum declared the day a "National Day of Courage" with 12 hours of virtual and on-site activities featuring nationally recognized speakers, musical and dramatic interpretative performances, a panel presentation of Rosa's Story and a reading of the tale Quiet Strength. The actual bus on which Rosa Parks sat was made available for the public to board and sit in the seat that Rosa Parks refused to give up.

On February 4, 2,000 birthday wishes gathered from people throughout the United States were transformed into 200 graphics messages at a celebration held on her 100th Birthday at the Davis Theater for the Performing Arts in Montgomery, Alabama. This was the 100th Birthday Wishes Project managed by the Rosa Parks Museum at Troy University and the Mobile Studio and was also a declared event by the Senate.

During both events the USPS unveiled a postage stamp in her honor.

On February 27, Parks became the first African American woman to have her likeness depicted in National Statuary Hall. The monument, created by sculptor Eugene Daub, is a part of the Capitol Art Collection among nine other females featured in the National Statuary Hall Collection.

the papers of Rosa Parks were cataloged into the Library of Congress, after years of a legal battle.

On December 13, the new Rosa Parks Railway Station opened in Paris.

Wikipedia

[iasshikshalove]

C.A Dated On 19-08-2019

C.A Dated On 19-08-2019 GS-1 Delimitation commission Why in news? SINCE THE bifurcation of Jammu and Kashmir state into the Union Territories of J&K and Ladakh, delimitation of their electoral constituencies has been inevitable. While the government has not formally notified the Election Commission yet, the EC has held “internal discussions” on the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, 2019, particularly its provisions on delimitation. Why is delimitation needed?  Delimitation is the act of redrawing boundaries of Lok Sabha and state Assembly seats to represent changes in population.  In this process, the number of seats allocated to different states in Lok Sabha and the total number seats in a Legislative Assembly may also change.  The main objective of delimitation is to provide equal representation to equal segments of a population.  It also aims at a fair division of geographical areas so that one political party doesn’t have an advantage over others in an election. Delimitation is carried out by an independent Delimitation Commission.  The Constitution mandates that its orders are final and cannot be questioned before any court as it would hold up an election indefinitely. How is delimitation carried out?  Under Article 82, the Parliament enacts a Delimitation Act after every Census. C.A Dated On 19-08-2019  Once the Act is in force, the Union government sets up a Delimitation Commission made up of a retired Supreme Court judge, the Chief Election Commissioner and the respective State Election Commissioners.  The Commission is supposed to determine the number and boundaries of constituencies in a way that the population of all seats, so far as practicable, is the same.  The Commission is also tasked with identifying seats reserved for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes; these are where their population is relatively large.  All this is done on the basis of the latest Census and, in case of difference of opinion among members of the Commission, the opinion of the majority prevails. . How often has delimitation been done in the past?  The first delimitation exercise in 1950-51 was carried out by the President (with the help of the Election Commission), as the Constitution at that time was silent on who should undertake the division of states into Lok Sabha seats.  This delimitation was temporary as the Constitution mandated redrawing of boundaries after every Census.  Hence, another delimitation was due after the 1951 Census. Pointing out that the first delimitation had left many political parties and individuals unhappy, the EC advised the government that all future exercises should be carried out by an independent commission.  This suggestion was accepted and the Delimitation Commission Act was enacted in 1952. Delimitation Commissions have been set up four times — 1952, 1963, 1973 and 2002 under the Acts of 1952, 1962, 1972 and 2002. There was no delimitation after the 1981 and 1991 Censuses. Why was there no delimitation then?  The Constitution mandates that the number of Lok Sabha seats allotted to a state would be such that the ratio between that number and the population of the state is, as far as practicable, the same for all states. C.A Dated On 19-08-2019  Although unintended, this provision implied that states that took little interest in population control could end up with a greater number of seats in Parliament.  The southern states that promoted family planning faced the possibility of having their seats reduced. To allay these fears, the Constitution was amended during Indira Gandhi’s Emergency rule in 1976 to suspend delimitation until 2001.  Although the freeze on the number of seats in Lok Sabha and Assemblies should have been lifted after the 2001 Census, another amendment postponed this until 2026.  This was justified on the ground that a uniform population growth rate would be achieved throughout the country by 2026.  So, the last delimitation exercise — started in July 2002 and completed on May 31, 2008 — was based on the 2001 Census and only readjusted boundaries of existing Lok Sabha and Assembly seats and reworked the number of reserved seats. Why is delimitation for Jammu and Kashmir in the news now?  Delimitation of Jammu and Kashmir’s Lok Sabha seats is governed by the Indian Constitution, but delimitation of its Assembly seats (until special status was abrogated recently) was governed separately by the Jammu and Kashmir Constitution and Jammu and Kashmir Representation of the People Act, 1957. As far as delimitation of Lok Sabha seats is concerned, the last Delimitation Commission of 2002 was not entrusted with this task. Hence, J&K parliamentary seats remain as delimited on the basis of the 1971 Census.  This month, the Union government scrapped the state’s special status and turned J&K into a Union Territory.  Under this law, delimitation of Lok Sabha and Assembly seats in J&K UT will be as per the provisions of the Indian Constitution. C.A Dated On 19-08-2019  The Act also states that in the next delimitation exercise, which is expected to kickstart soon, the number of Assembly seats will increase from 107 to 114. The increase in seats is expected to benefit Jammu region. Chief of defence staff What is the office of the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS)?  The CDS is a high military office that oversees and coordinates the working of the three Services, and offers seamless tri-service views and single-point advice to the Executive (in India’s case, to the Prime Minister) on long-term defence planning and management, including manpower, equipment and strategy, and above all, “jointsmanship” in operations.  In most democracies, the CDS is seen as being above inter-Service rivalries and the immediate operational preoccupations of the individual military chiefs. The role of the CDS becomes critical in times of conflict..  He is the most senior military officer and military adviser to the President, and his remit extends to the National Security Council, the Homeland Secuirty Council, and the Defence Secretary So, why had India not appointed a CDS until now?  India has had a feeble equivalent known as the Chairman, Chiefs of Staff Committee (CoSC); but this is a toothless office, given the manner in which it is structured.  The seniormost among the three Service Chiefs is appointed to head the CoSC, an office that lapses with the incumbent’s retirement.  The current Chairman CoSC is Air Chief Marshal Birender Singh Dhanoa, who succeeded the former Chief of the Naval Staff Admiral Sunil Lanba on May 31. When ACM Dhanoa retires at the end of September 2019, he would have served as Chairman CoSC for a mere four months. C.A Dated On 19-08-2019 Early proposal  The first proposal for a CDS came from the 2000 Kargil Review Committee (KRC), which called for a reorganisation of the “entire gamut of national security management and apex decisionmaking and structure and interface between the Ministry of Defence and the Armed Forces Headquarters”.  The Group of Ministers Task Force that studied the KRC Report and recommendations, proposed to the Cabinet Committee on Security that a CDS, who would be five-star officer, be created.  In preparation for the post, the government created the Integrated Defence Staff (IDS) in late 2002, which was to eventually serve as the CDS’s Secretariat.  However, over the past 17 years, this has remained yet another nebulous department within the military establishment. But what happened to the proposal?  No consensus emerged among the Services, with the IAF especially opposed to such a move.  The Congress, then in opposition, was against the idea of concentrating too much military power in the CDS’s post.  The Ministry of Defence (MoD) too, opposed it subtly for the same reasons, and because it could disrupt civil-military ties in the latter’s favour. What is the case for having a CDS?  Although the KRC did not directly recommend a CDS — that came from the GoM — it underlined the need for more coordination among the three Services, which was poor in the initial weeks of the Kargil conflict. C.A Dated On 19-08-2019  The KRC Report pointed out that India is the only major democracy where the Armed Forces Headquarters is outside the apex governmental structure.  It observed that Service Chiefs devote most of their time to their operational roles, “often resulting in negative results”.  Long-term defence planning suffers as day-to-day priorities dominate.  Also, the Prime Minister and Defence Minister do not have the benefit of the views and expertise of military commanders, in order to ensure that higher level defence management decisions are more consensual and broadbased.  The CDS is also seen as being vital to the creation of “theatre commands”, integrating tri-service assets and personnel like in the US military. And what are the arguments against?  Theoretically, the appointment of a CDS is long overdue, but there appears to be no clear blueprint for the office to ensure its effectiveness.  India’s political establishment is seen as being largely ignorant of, or at best indifferent towards, security matters, and hence incapable of ensuring that a CDS works. Who at present advises India’s Prime Minister on military matters?  In effect it is the National Security Adviser.  This has been especially so after the Defence Planning Committee was created in 2018, with NSA Ajit Doval as its chairman, and the foreign, defence, and expenditure secretaries, and the three Service Chiefs as members. C.A Dated On 19-08-2019 GS-3 BASIC group Why in news? The BASIC countries -- a grouping of Brazil, South Africa, India and China -- held their 28th Ministerial meeting on Climate Change between August 14 and August 16 in Sao Paulo, Brazil. India was represented by Union Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change Prakash Javadekar, who underlined the importance of the grouping in "making the (2015) Paris (climate) Agreement accepted by all countries in its true letter and spirit". Who are the BASIC, and what is the significance of the grouping?  The BASIC group was formed as the result of an agreement signed by the four countries on November 28, 2009.  The signatory nations, all recently industrialised, committed to acting together at the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference, commonly known as the Copenhagen Summit, scheduled in Copenhagen, Denmark from December 7-18 of that year.  These nations have a broadly common position on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and raising the massive funds that are needed to fight climate change.  The BASIC countries constituted one of the parties in the Copenhagen Accord reached with the US-led grouping; the Accord, was, however, not legally binding. Relevance  The BASIC group wields considerable heft purely because of the size of the economies and populations of the member countries.  China, India, and Brazil are the world's second, fifth, and ninth-largest economies. And as Javadekar said in Sao Paulo this week, “Brazil, South Africa, India and China put together has one-third of the world’s geographical area and nearly 40% of the world’s population, and when we unitedly speak in one voice this shows our determination." C.A Dated On 19-08-2019  BASIC nations -- expressed their concern about climate change and its adverse effects, and reaffirmed their commitment to the successful implementation of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), its Kyoto Protocol and its Paris Agreement, based on the recognition of the needs and special circumstances of developing countries and in accordance with the principles of Equity and Common But Differentiated Responsibilities and Respective Capabilities (CBDR-RC), in the light of different national circumstances. Role in fighting climate change  BASIC is one of several groups of nations working together to fight climate change and carry out negotiations within the UNFCCC.  Other than BASIC, there are the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), the group of countries of Central Asia, Caucasus, Albania and Moldova (CACAM), the Cartagena Dialogue, the Independent Alliance of Latin America and the Caribbean (AILAC), and the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of our America (ALBA in Spanish), etc.  There are also the Group of 77 developing countries, the African Group, the Arab States, the Environmental Integrity Group, the Least Developed Countries the Small Island Developing States, etc. Parker solar probe Why in news?  On August 12, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe completed a year in service. About  It is part of NASA’s “Living With a Star” programme that explores different aspects of the SunEarth system.  The probe seeks to gather information about the Sun’s atmosphere and NASA says that it “will revolutionise our understanding of the Sun”.  It is also the closest a human-made object has ever gone to the Sun. C.A Dated On 19-08-2019 Aim of mission  The mission’s central aim is to trace how energy and heat move through the Sun’s corona and to study the source of the solar wind’s acceleration.  The mission is likely to last for seven years during which it will complete 24 orbits.

[aria-i-adagio]

"If you really change your ways and your actions and deal with each other justly, if you do not oppress the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow and do not shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not follow other gods to your own harm, then I will let you live in this place, in the land I gave your ancestors for ever and ever. But look, you are trusting in deceptive words that are worthless." —Jeremiah 7:5-8

Posted August 8, 2019 - One week ago, we were in El Paso at the invitation of the Border Network for Human Rights to highlight the violence that their community has been suffering. We heard stories of families separated, asylum seekers turned away and refugees detained like prisoners of war. We heard how their community has been militarized and how poor border communities have been especially targeted. We promised that we would do everything in our power to compel the nation to see this violence. Just a few days later, a terrorist opened fire in El Paso. And then another attack occurred in Dayton.

In reflecting on these outbreaks of violence, our hearts are broken. This moment demands a moral reckoning with who we are and who we want to become as a nation.

The truth is that, while every generation has worked to push us toward becoming a more perfect union, we have also tolerated lies that beget violence. America’s founding fathers spoke of liberty, while drafting documents that called Native Americans savages, accepted the enslavement of Africans, and ignored the voices of women. This hypocrisy created space for slaveholder religion to bless white supremacy, pseudo-science to justify eugenics, a sick sociology to pit people against one another, and predatory policies to scapegoat non-white immigrants and blame poverty on the poor.

Politicians who try to denounce the racism of an individual, but do not denounce racist policies refuse to deal with the depths of the problems we face. We cannot address the violence of white nationalism without stopping the policies of white nationalism and the lies that are told to justify them. In 1963, George Wallace began to spew racist rhetoric from the governor’s office in Alabama. By the end of that year, Medgar Evers was dead, four girls in a church were dead, and a President was dead because these words and these policies were a breeding ground for violence. It always has been that way. Whenever we've had these words and policies, they have also unleashed this kind of violence.

For this reason, we call on President Trump, Members of Congress and Presidential Candidates, our people on the ground in movements and communities of struggle, people who have embraced the lies of white nationalism, and our religious leaders and people of faith and conscience to revive the heart and soul of this country.

Why is this important?

Mr. President, we recognize that you are a symptom of our decaying moral fabric and you have ignited a modern day wildfire. The coals of white nationalism are always smoldering in our common life, and they have fueled the violence of indigenous genocide, slavery, lynching and Jim Crow. Stop stoking the fires of violence with racist words and policies. Mr. President, you must repent in word and deed if your leadership is to bring us together, rather than tearing us apart.

To Members of Congress and our elected representatives, we ask you to ensure our domestic tranquility. You can take immediate action to stop the President’s racist attacks on immigrants. You can act to ensure voting rights, pass gun reform to keep weapons of war out of our communities, end federal programs that send military equipment to our local and state police departments, pass immigration reform that allows us all to thrive and build up the country, ensure good jobs and living wages and relief from our debts, and guarantee health care and social programs that meet our needs. The lies of white nationalism have prevented action on all of these issues, and those who have enabled the President or remained silent are culpable.

As you return to Washington D.C, we call on Congress to honor the August 28 anniversary of the March the Washington and the murder of Emmett Till by passing an Omnibus Bill that offers a comprehensive response to the systemic racism that connects the issues facing 140 million poor and low-wealth people in this country.

To all candidates running for President in 2020, we call on you to address both the violence of racism and the policies of racism and white nationalism in the public debates. We ask you to connect these policies of systemic racism to poverty, ecological devastation, the war economy, militarism and a distorted moral narrative that accepts, justifies and perpetuates systemic violence.

To our movements and organizations on the ground, do not go back to your silos; instead we must build a moral fusion movement. We have been organizing in separate streams, often along lines of race, issue area or geography, but we need much more than our own fights can win. This is not the time to become entrenched in those divisions. We need to come together across race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, issue, geography and other lines of division to make a fight for everything we need and make sure we are all in – nobody is out.

To those who have embraced the lies of white nationalism and racism, we humbly recognize the power of fear. We live in a time when many people do not know if they will have work today or health care tomorrow. Many families do not know what agency is coming for them or their children. We do not know who to trust and have been left to fend for ourselves and whoever we believe to be on our side. Let us find strength in our pain, mourn our losses, and remember that we are all part of a common human family. Let us reject every attempt by politicians and corporate interests to pit us against one another. Let us confess that white nationalism is a myth that has not served most people, even those it claims to protect. Let us fight for each other and for a world where everyone can thrive.

To our religious leaders and people of faith, we call on you to offer moral leadership in the public square. If you have condoned the lies of white nationalism or remained silent, you have failed to keep your sacred vows. We ask you to recall the struggles of our ancestors so we can work together to build up a more perfect union in our common life.

We call on all people of faith and conscience to sign on to this letter and share it throughout your networks. Let us prevent this violence from defining who we are as a nation and people.

Forward together, not one step back.

Rev. Dr. William Barber, II, President, Repairers of the Breach and Co-Chair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival

Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, Director, Kairos Center for Religions, Rights and Social Justice and Co-Chair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival

Rev. Teresa Hord Owens, General Minister and President of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)

Rabbi Rick Jacobs, President, Union of Reform Judaism

Minister Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, Red Letter Christians

[thetruthseekerway]

Our World is Sinking

New Post has been published on http://www.truth-seeker.info/quran-science-2/our-world-is-sinking/

Our World is Sinking

By Siraj Islam Mufti

Introduction

The June 24, 2019, issue of Time on Our Sinking Planet shows Antonio Guterres, the U.N. Secretary-General on the cover off the coast of Tuvalu – one of the world’s most vulnerable countries, to highlight the urgency of rising seas. Among other small island nations grappling with the effects of rising sea levels are Fiji, Kiribati, Maldives, Marshall Islands, and the Bahamas. Left alone these poor countries cannot tackle this huge problem. In the U.S., Florida, Louisiana and North Carolina among other coastal states face the adverse effects of rising sea level.

Global Rising Sea levels

Globally, it is estimated that at present the sea level is 5 to 8 inches higher on average than it was in 1900, and is expected to rise more quickly by the end of the 21st century.

It is generally agreed that changes in climate we see today are largely caused by human activity. Sea levels started rising in the late 1800s soon after the industrial revolution with the burning of coal, gas and other fossil fuels for the energy needed. These fuels when burnt produce carbon dioxide, which absorbs heat from the sun and traps it, leading to a warming of the atmosphere and our planet. Global average temperatures rose about 1oC since the beginning of the industrial era, melting ice on land and increasing volume of water into the seas.

Vulnerable Nations Leaders Meet

The Time describes how the leaders of 15 Pacific nations came together on September 2015 in Suva, the capital of Fiji to chart out their course for the approaching international negotiations in Paris. They had three goals in mind: a halt to new coal mines in countries that support the industry; back research and development on issues facing climate change; help poor countries prepare for extreme weather. One demand was paramount: any new global climate pact must aim to stop temperatures from rising more than 1.5oC by the year 2100, half a degree from the 2oC targeted by global climate experts. And they brought in other vulnerable countries in pressuring their wealthier peers.

Activists from all over Europe joined their cause chanting the mantra, “One point five to stay alive.” Ireland President Mary Robinson, who served as the U.N. climate-change envoy during the talks called climate change as an “existential threat”, which has to be overcome.

The result of these efforts was the Paris Agreement signed in 2015 that raised hundreds of billions of dollars in financial commitments by the richer countries of the developing world. It led to the creation of an International Panel on Climate Change in 2018 and subsequently helped save climate talks from collapsing.

World Areas and Lands hit the Hardest

An April 30, 2018 article posted by Smithsonian indicates that a rise in sea level will hit coastal lands the hardest. Over the coming centuries, this land that is home to between 470 and 760 million residents will be inundated by rising sea levels associated with a 4oC warming of the atmosphere, with China most to lose, followed by India, Bangladesh, Viet Nam, Indonesia, Japan, and the United States. Rising sea level is already making storms more dangerous, causing more flooding and damaging areas crowded with people.

According to a report by the United Nations Environmental Program, “The 52 [small island] nations, home to over 62 million people emit less than one percent of global greenhouse gases, yet they suffer disproportionately from the climate change that global emissions cause.” These island nations face increased flooding and erosion of their shorelines, and their sources of fresh water and agricultural land become unusable by seawater seeping in.

The Maldives lowest country on the planet has an average height of its 1,2000 islands across 1,000 miles in the Indian Ocean, is only 4 feet above the sea level. The ever-higher waves encroach on its lowest islands and erode beaches with nowhere for residents to retreat when a tropical cyclone or a tsunami wave hits, and they are forced to move as refugees of the world’s worsening climate.

What Are the Future Prospects?

Predicting the future is a difficult task because we do not know how our planet will respond to a warming climate, and there are enough naysayers, including President Donald Trump and his cohorts. However, there are some inescapable trends already taking place that cannot be ignored.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change by the scientists at the United Nations in its 2013 report projected that sea level will rise by 2 to 3 feet by 2100 if we do not slow our carbon dioxide emissions by using less energy or renewable energy sources.

Short-term alternatives followed are to build barriers: they won’t reduce sea level rise or even to completely remove its impact. They are also costly and have to be maintained consistently, as waves and salt quickly erode concrete and as sea level rises they need to be built higher and higher. They also render beaches useless for humans and animals that live there with disruption of the natural movement of sand and waves.

A recent study by U.S. Center for Climate Integrity found that it would cost $400 billion to build 50,000 miles seawalls up and down in 22 states, with Florida costing nearly $76 billion, followed by Louisiana at about $38 billion, and North Carolina at almost $35 billion, but with other costs far outreaching than building concrete barriers.

Another alternative is moving somewhere else. However, coastlines are lined with homes of millions of people, cities, power plants and ports they rely upon. It won’t be easy to pick up and move inland without massive effort and reconstruction. Over the next century, people will be forced to abandon their homes along the coasts as increased flooding makes life difficult. Many cities, states, and countries are incorporating sea-level rise and shifting coastlines in their planning and policy.

Reducing emissions is the only viable alternative for our future sustainable world. And it is heartening that Democrats like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are cognizant of the climate issue and working in the U.S. Congress for the best interest of us all.

———

Siraj Islam Mufti, Ph.D. is an activist involved in intercommunity affairs. His latest book Western Families in Crisis, Muslims Resurging is available on Amazon.com.

[todaynewsstories]

Senator John McCain, ex-POW and political maverick, dead at 81

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Senator John McCain, a former prisoner of war in Vietnam who ran unsuccessfully for president as a self-styled maverick Republican in 2008 and became a prominent critic of President Donald Trump, died on Saturday, his office said. He was 81.

    McCain, a U.S. senator from Arizona for over three decades, had been battling glioblastoma, an aggressive brain cancer, discovered by his doctors in July 2017, and had not been at the U.S. Capitol in 2018. He also had surgery for an intestinal infection in April of this year.

His family had announced on Friday that McCain was discontinuing further cancer treatment.

A statement from his office said: “Senator John Sidney McCain III died at 4:28 p.m. on August 25, 2018. With the senator when he passed were his wife Cindy and their family. At his death, he had served the United States of America faithfully for sixty years.”

No further details were immediately provided.

“My heart is broken. I am so lucky to have lived the adventure of loving this incredible man for 38 years,” Cindy McCain wrote on Twitter. “He passed the way he lived, on his own terms, surrounded by the people he loved, in the place he loved best.”

Alternatively affable and cantankerous, McCain had been in the public eye since the 1960s, when as a naval aviator he was shot down during the Vietnam War and tortured by his North Vietnamese communist captors during 5-1/2 years as a prisoner.

    He was edged out by George W. Bush for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000, but became his party’s White House candidate eight years later. After gambling on political neophyte Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate, McCain lost in 2008 to Democrat Barack Obama, who became the first black U.S. president.

McCain, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, was a frequent critic as well as a target of his fellow Republican, Trump, who was elected president in November 2016.

McCain denounced Trump for among other things his praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin and other leaders the senator described as foreign “tyrants.”

    “Flattery secures his friendship, criticism his enmity,” McCain said of Trump in his memoir, “The Restless Wave,” which was released in May.

McCain in July had castigated Trump for his summit with Putin, issuing a statement that called their joint news conference in Helsinki “one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in memory.” He said Trump was “not only unable but unwilling to stand up to Putin.”

Sources close to McCain have said Trump would not be invited to the funeral.

Shortly after McCain’s death was announced, Trump tweeted: My deepest sympathies and respect go out to the family of Senator John McCain.”

McCain, a foreign policy hawk with a traditional Republican view of world affairs, was admired in both parties for championing civility and compromise during an era of acrid partisanship in U.S. politics. But he also had a famous temper and rarely shied away from a fight. He had several with Trump.

THUMBS-DOWN

    He was the central figure in one of the most dramatic moments in Congress of Trump’s presidency when he returned to Washington shortly after his brain cancer diagnosis for a middle-of-the-night Senate vote in July 2017.

Still bearing a black eye and scar from surgery, McCain gave a thumbs-down signal in a vote to scuttle a Trump-backed bill that would have repealed the Obamacare healthcare law and increased the number of Americans without health insurance by millions.

Trump was furious about McCain’s vote and frequently referred to it at rallies, but without mentioning McCain by name.

After Trump in 2015 launched his presidential campaign, McCain condemned his hard-line rhetoric on illegal immigration and said Trump had “fired up the crazies.” Trump retorted that McCain was “not a war hero,” adding: “I like people who weren’t captured.”

    After Trump became president, McCain blasted what he called the president’s attempts to undermine the free press and rule of law, and lamented the “half-baked, spurious nationalism” of the Trump era.

McCain denounced Trump’s performance at a summit meeting with Putin in July as “a tragic mistake,” adding, “The damage inflicted by President Trump’s naivete, egotism, false equivalence, and sympathy for autocrats is difficult to calculate.”

MCCAIN VS OBAMA

McCain, the son and grandson of U.S. Navy admirals, was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Arizona in 1982 after more than two decades of Navy service.

    He served four years in the House before Arizona voters elected him to the Senate in 1986 to replace Barry Goldwater, the 1964 Republican presidential nominee revered by conservatives.

In running for president in 2008, McCain tried to succeed an unpopular fellow Republican in Bush, who was leaving office with the country mired in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and stuck in a financial crisis.

    It was a stark contrast between McCain, then a 72-year-old veteran of the Washington establishment, and the 47-year-old Obama, who was offering a “Yes, we can” message of change.

    McCain tried to inject some youth and enthusiasm into his campaign with his selection of Palin, Alaska’s governor, as his running mate. But the choice backfired as her political inexperience and shaky performances in media interviews raised concerns about her qualifications.

In his new book, McCain voiced regret for not choosing then-Senator Joe Lieberman, a Democrat turned independent, as his running mate.

McCain wrote that he had originally settled on Lieberman, Democrat Al Gore’s running mate in the 2000 election, but was warned by Republican leaders that Lieberman’s views on social issues, including support for abortion rights, would “fatally divide” the party.

“It was sound advice that I could reason for myself,” McCain wrote. “But my gut told me to ignore it and I wish I had.”

FILE PHOTO – Republican presidential hopeful John McCain points to his head during his Carolina kickoff rally at Presbyterian College February 2, 2000. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo

Obama won 53 percent of the vote to McCain’s 45.6 percent.

WAR INJURIES

During the Vietnam War, McCain flew attack planes off aircraft carriers. He was preparing for a bombing run in 1967 when a missile inadvertently fired from another plane hit his fuel tanks, triggering a fatal explosion and fire. He suffered shrapnel wounds.

    A few months later on Oct. 26, 1967, McCain’s A-4 Skyhawk was shot down on a bombing mission over North Vietnam’s capital and he suffered two broken arms and a broken leg in the crash. A mob then dragged him from a lake, broke his shoulder and stabbed him.

    Held at the notorious “Hanoi Hilton” prison and other sites, McCain was beaten and tortured, suffering broken bones and dysentery. He was released on March 14, 1973, but was left with permanent infirmities.

    In Congress, McCain built a generally conservative record, opposing abortion and advocating higher defense spending. He supported Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq and criticized Obama for not doing more to intervene in Syria’s civil war.

    Still, he prided himself on his reputation as a maverick and had a history of working across party lines on immigration, climate change and campaign finance reform.

    He also spoke out against the Bush administration’s use of waterboarding, a torture technique that simulates drowning, and other harsh interrogation tactics on detainees in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

    He urged the closure of the prison for foreign terrorism suspects at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and also sponsored an anti-torture measure that passed Congress in 2005.

    In a 2002 memoir, McCain wrote, “I’m an independent-minded, well-informed public servant to some. And to others, I’m a self-styled, self-righteous maverick pain in the ass.”

    John Sidney McCain III was born on Aug. 29, 1936, at an American naval installation in the Panama Canal Zone – U.S. territory at the time – when his father was stationed there.

    He conceded he was a “smart ass” during his years at the U.S. Naval Academy and graduated fifth from the bottom of his class.

    McCain divorced his wife Carol after 15 years of marriage in 1980 and weeks later married the former Cindy Henley, daughter of a wealthy beer distributor in Arizona.

    A dark period for McCain came as one of the “Keating Five” group of senators accused of improperly intervening with federal regulators to help political contributor and bank executive Charles Keating, whose Lincoln Savings and Loan failed in 1989 at a cost to taxpayers of $3.4 billion.

    McCain was cleared of wrongdoing in 1991, but the Senate Ethics Committee rebuked him for poor judgment.

    On July 25, 2017, McCain delivered a Senate floor speech not long after his cancer diagnosis that was widely seen as his farewell address. It included a call to fellow Republicans to stand up to Trump and for all lawmakers to work together to keep America as a “beacon of liberty” in the world.

Slideshow (14 Images)

“That is the cause that binds us and is so much more powerful and worthy than the small differences that divide us,” McCain said.

Additional reporing by Jason Lange, Maria Caspani, Paul Grant, Patricia Zengerle and Bill Trott; editing by Diane Craft and G Crosse

Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Expert: The concluding sentence of Roy Medvedev’s superb account of Russia during the Stalin years reads: When the cult of Stalin’s personality was exposed [in the XXth and XXIInd Congresses in 1956 and 1961 respectively] a great step was made to recovery.1 It’s a vital point, similar to that made by the incredible truth and reconciliation commission event that followed the dismantling of apartheid in South Africa, and that point is this: before any society can really advance it must recognise and admit to itself the mistakes and crimes perpetrated by its own trusted leaders. Or, as Rosa Luxemburg once put it: Self-criticism – ruthless, harsh self-criticism, which gets down to the root of things – that is the life-giving light and air of the proletarian movement.2 Yet self-criticism of our own governments is almost impossible. Infinitely more effective than state censorship – which can restrict criticism – is self-censorship, and that’s pretty much what we have: a society which is incapable of seriously challenging those in power, let alone calling them to account for any wrongdoing – not through any state-imposed censorship, but through creating a culture that’s utterly brainwashed into believing the perfection of their constitution and therefore refusing to even imagine its very considerable imperfections. Whilst we do not have the domestic death squads and concentration camps of Hitler’s Germany or Stalin’s Russia to enforce domestic obedience, we still have loyal populations that are almost as effectively programmed to believe the perfections of their state leaders and their institutions as many Germans and Russians were during the Hitler and Stalin years. In Britain, for example, in 2015 when the leader of the Green Party Natalie Bennett was provocatively questioned about the Party’s well-known opposition to monarchy she remarked, I can’t see that the Queen is ever going to be really poor, but I’m sure we can find a council house for her — we’re going to build lots more. This obviously whimsical comment, although factually reasonable, provoked the following headline in The Independent: ‘We would evict Queen from Buckingham Palace and allocate her council house,’ say Greens Similar sensationalist headlines led in almost every newspaper and TV news broadcast. Green Party membership, which had been surging until that moment, immediately fell off a cliff. I was a membership secretary for our local Green Party branch at the time and had been signing up new members at the rate of about two a week. New memberships not only stopped completely, but some who had just joined us immediately cancelled their memberships. And this from people who would see themselves as progressives. No need to guess how Tory voters, who comprise most voters, reacted to Bennett’s quip. Such is the level of brainwashing in a supposedly democratic country about the perfection of the British monarchy, and its unchallengeable position as unelected head of state. But it’s not just Britain that has to endure a majority of brainwashed citizens. I remember seeing a TV documentary about the time of the illegal Iraq War in 2003. The programme was about heroic US marines bravely defending western freedom, by helping to kill defenseless Iraqi civilians. Some of the heroes were interviewed about the hard time they were having, and the one that will forever stick in my mind implied that no amount of personal suffering was too great for him. “I would slit my own throat for my president”, he said. So Iraqi civilians didn’t have much chance. The marine’s remark reminded me of a quote in Medvedev’s book, showing the similarity between modern US citizens and the brainwashed Russians of Stalin’s day: Just as [religious] believers attribute everything good to god and everything bad to the devil, so everything good was attributed to Stalin and everything bad to evil forces that Stalin himself was [supposedly] fighting. “Long live Stalin!” some officials shouted as they were taken to be shot.3 When, very occasionally, some of the major crimes of our great trusted leaders are brought to our attention, there is never any clamouring for justice, no national outrage that the public’s trust could be so cheaply squandered. Whilst some newspapers might print a subdued story or two, located somewhere towards the bottom of page thirty nine, and whilst national TV stations may record a few words tucked away deeply buried somewhere on their websites, in the sacred name of “balance”, the real gravity of the misdeeds of our trusted leaders are otherwise routinely ignored, and the revelations are quickly lost in the usual myriad of trivial distractions. For example, when, after many years and thirteen million pounds of treasure, the Chilcot Report was eventually published, effectively providing sufficient evidence for Tony Blair and other establishment leaders to be indicted for war crimes, no such calls from our trusted leaders were heard – just a deafening silence, followed almost immediately by business as usual.   But those who dare to provide the evidence of our rulers’ misdeeds are quickly and viciously victimized – as any whistleblower could easily confirm; with the better-known of whom, such as Daniel Ellsberg, Mordechai Vanunu, Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning and Ed Snowden standing as fine examples of the terrible consequences of speaking the truth about power. This is how Rosa Luxemburg’s ruthless self-criticism is rendered impossible in our “free” societies where official censorship doesn’t exist, but where official “news” isn’t worth censoring. One of the holiest cows of the establishment, the institution which, almost above any other, will not tolerate any form of criticism, are our so-called “defence” forces. The word “hero” has been re-defined to mean absolutely anyone wearing a military uniform. TV commercials encouraging young people to join the armed forces appear almost every night. TV programmes depicting the military as brave heroes resisting overwhelming odds in the sacred name of freedom and democracy appear almost every night. Every year people adorn themselves in little plastic poppies and stand in silence for two minutes on the 11th November, not so much to recall those who were needlessly slaughtered for the supposed “war to end all war”, but to serve as a subliminal recruitment aid. Criticising the armed forces is always strictly off limits. The Annihilation of Raqqa Yet a recent report by Amnesty International (AI), who investigated the devastating attack by western coalition forces on the Syrian city of Raqqa, is so damning that anyone who does not criticise those responsible is guilty by association of war crimes.4 They are in a similar position to those who silently stood by as their neighbours were carted-off to Nazi concentration camps. Although AI has a somewhat dubious reputation, earned mainly by its very tepid response to the multitude of horrors perpetrated over many years by the Zionist regime in Occupied Palestine, its latest report on Raqqa has some merit. Raqqa, Syria, February 2018 (AI Photo) No one will ever know how many civilians perished in last year’s battle for Raqqa. However, estimates for the numbers of people living in the city prior to the war are given at around 220,000, whilst the number estimated to be living there earlier this year is around 61,000.  Some civilians managed to flee the city, but many did not, as they were prevented from doing so by IS. Amnesty summarised the terrible situation for civilians as follows: The four-month military operation to oust the armed group calling itself Islamic State (IS) from Raqqa, the Syrian city which IS had declared its capital, killed hundreds of civilians, injured many more and destroyed much of the city. During the course of the operation, from June to October 2017, homes, private and public buildings and infrastructure were reduced to rubble or damaged beyond repair. Residents were trapped, as fighting raged in Raqqa’s streets between IS militants and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) fighters, and US-led Coalition’s air and artillery strikes rocked the city. With escape routes mined by IS and the group’s snipers shooting at those trying to flee, civilians fled from place to place within the city, desperately seeking refuge or escape. Some were killed in their homes; some in the very places where they had sought refuge, and others as they tried to flee.5 If Amnesty was referring to North Korea, say, or Iran, Russia, China, or the Syrian government, almost certainly its report would have been leading the western world’s news broadcasts. Outraged politicians and their tame propagandists in the mainstream media would have been demanding that “something should be done”. But those countries were not the subjects of the Amnesty report. It was referring instead to the biggest villains in the world — the US and British governments, joined on this occasion by France. Although other countries were implicated in this particular “coalition of the willing”, their roles were relatively minor. Consequently our politicians and their lackeys in the mainstream media seem hardly to have noticed AI’s report. Once again the truth is available, but has been conveniently self-censored by all the usual tricks of state. Entire neighbourhoods in Raqqa are damaged beyond repair (AI Photo) Two investigators from AI spent two weeks in February 2018 visiting the ruins of Raqqa. They went to 42 different locations and interviewed 112 civilian residents. About half of the report focuses mainly on the personal stories of four families whose lives were devastated by the “liberation” of Raqqa from IS occupation by the combined efforts of western firepower, and ground-troops supplied by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) – a mainly Kurdish militia. Although the so-called global coalition: boasts membership of 71 countries and four inter-governmental organisations; an eclectic alliance including nations as diverse as Panama and Poland, Australia and Afghanistan. Some Coalition members, Chad, for example, or Niger, are likely to have given support in name only. Others, particularly European states, were more deeply involved, although the exact extent of their actions is not always clear.6 Whilst most people are probably aware that US, British and French air forces bombed countless targets in Syria generally, and specifically here, in Raqqa, fewer people know about the involvement of western ground troops. But AI tells us: [T]he US deployed some 2,000 of its own troops to north-eastern Syria, many of whom were engaged in direct combat operations, notably firing artillery into Raqqa from positions outside the city. In addition, a smaller number of special forces were operating close to front lines alongside SDF members. British and French special forces were also deployed to the area, but in much smaller numbers. Among the US deployment were Army High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) with GPS-directed 227mm rockets, which could be fired from 300km away, as well as hundreds of Marines from the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) and the 24th MEU equipped with M777 howitzers, which they used to rain down 155mm artillery fire upon the city from a distance of up to 30km.6 Children riding a bicycle among destroyed buildings in Raqqa. (AI Photo) AI concludes its summary of the involvement of “coalition” forces as follows: The Coalition launched tens of thousands of strikes on Raqqa during the military campaign. Of these, more than 4,000 were air strikes, almost all of them carried out by US forces. British forces carried out some 215 air strikes, while the French military was responsible for some 50 air strikes with the overwhelming majority – more than 90% – carried out by US piloted aircraft and drones. No other members of the Coalition are known to have carried out air strikes in Raqqa. At the same time, US Marines launched tens of thousands artillery shells into and around Raqqa… While Coalition forces operated mostly from positions several kilometres outside the city, a small number of special operation forces from Coalition member states – notably the US, UK and France �� operated alongside the SDF close to front line position in/around the city, reportedly mostly in an advisory rather than combat role. The SDF were partly responsible for locating targets for Coalition air and artillery strikes. It is not clear what percentage of the Coalition air and artillery strikes were carried out based on co-ordinates provided by the SDF – as opposed to strikes on targets identified by Coalition forces themselves through air surveillance or other means – and the extent to which Coalition forces verified targets identified by the SDF prior to launching strikes on those targets.7 Although Kurdish militia were reportedly too lightly-armed to be physically accountable for the destruction of Raqqa, their target identification function was clearly significant. It has long been routine for the military’s propaganda machine to dismiss concerns about civilian casualties inside war zones, and the carnage wreaked on Raqqa was no exception. Furthermore, the military’s word is always accepted at face value. [A]t the height of conflict in Raqqa, Lieutenant General Stephen Townsend wrote that ‘… there has never been a more precise air campaign in the history of armed conflict’.8 But the alleged accuracy of the ordnance used by the military is not the point. The point is that no matter how smart the smart bombs are, they’re still killing civilians – and that’s a war crime. An estimated 4,000 bombs were dropped on the defenceless civilians of Raqqa by “coalition” warplanes. Given that many of those are only accurate, on a good day, to within ten metres of their target, it’s very clear to see that these alone must have accounted for considerable civilian casualties. But they may not have been the main problem. Sergeant Major John Wayne Troxell (senior enlisted adviser to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff), suggests that the Coalition operation was far from precise: ‘In five months they fired 35,000 artillery rounds on ISIS targets… They fired more rounds in five months in Raqqa, Syria, than any other Marine artillery battalion, or any Marine or Army battalion, since the Vietnam War.’8 But legitimate ISIS targets must have been almost negligible, as IS had immersed themselves amongst the civilian population. Given also that most artillery shells are considerably less accurate than guided missiles, and can only be expected to strike within a hundred metres of their targets, and given that tens of thousands of these things rained down on the trapped and defenceless civilians of Raqqa, the claims by the military’s propagandists that they tried everything possible to minimise civilian casualties are obviously ludicrous. There has never been a more precise air campaign in the history of armed conflict [than in Raqqa] — Lieutenant General Stephen Townsend The ruins of the destroyed house where 28 members of the Badran family and five neighbours were killed in a Coalition strike on 20 August 2017 in Raqqa (AI Photo) Isis withdraws, undefeated, from Raqqa Sometime in October some sort of deal was suddenly worked out which allowed Isis to simply pack up and leave Raqqa, in a convoy of trucks, together with most of their weaponry. According to a BBC report, the deal: enabled many hundreds of IS fighters to escape from the city. At the time, neither the US and British-led coalition, nor the SDF, which it backs, wanted to admit their part.  Has the pact, which stood as Raqqa’s dirty secret, unleashed a threat to the outside world – one that has enabled militants to spread far and wide across Syria and beyond? Great pains were taken to hide it from the world. But the BBC has spoken to dozens of people who were either on the convoy, or observed it, and to the men who negotiated the deal… [T]he convoy was six to seven kilometres long. It included almost 50 trucks, 13 buses and more than 100 of the Islamic State group’s own vehicles. IS fighters, their faces covered, sat defiantly on top of some of the vehicles… Freed from Raqqa, where they were surrounded, some of the [IS] group’s most-wanted members have now spread far and wide across Syria and beyond. War crimes The US-led “coalition” undoubtedly committed a vast number of war crimes in the “liberation” of Raqqa, and the considerably-referenced AI report summarises the particular breaches of law applicable: (a) The Principle of Distinction This requires parties to conflict to at all times, ‘distinguish between civilians and combatants’ and to ensure that ‘attacks may only be directed against combatants’ and ‘must not be directed against civilians’. Parties to conflict must also distinguish between ‘civilian objects’ and ‘military objectives’. Anyone who is not a member of the armed forces of a party to the conflict is a civilian, and the civilian population comprises all persons who are not combatants. Civilians are protected against attack unless and for such time as they take a direct part in hostilities. In cases of doubt, individuals should be presumed to be civilians and immune from direct attack. Making the civilian population, or individual civilians not taking a direct part in hostilities, the object of attack (direct attacks on civilians) is a war crime (My emphasis).9 It isn’t clear how hard the “coalition” tried to distinguish combatants from non-combatants, but in the four detailed case studies that Amnesty supplied – which were the tragic stories of just four families from a city of tens of thousands – it would appear they didn’t try very hard at all. One such piece of evidence was supplied by “Ammar”, who told Amnesty International that on ‘the second or third day of Eid” [26-27 June 2017] an air strike killed 20-25 people, mainly civilians but some IS too, at a communal water point, around the corner from Abu Saif’s house.’10 So, clearly essential water supplies were either deliberately targeted by the “coalition”, or some “legitimate” target was so near that the likely presence of defenceless civilians was simply ignored. (b)  Proportionality The principle of proportionality, another fundamental tenet of IHL, also prohibits disproportionate attacks, which are those “which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated”. Intentionally launching a disproportionate attack (that is, knowing that the attack will cause excessive incidental civilian loss, injury or damage) constitutes a war crime. The Commentary on the Additional Protocols makes clear that the fact that the proportionality calculus requires an anticipated “concrete and direct” military advantage indicates that such advantage must be “substantial and relatively close, and that advantages which are hardly perceptible and those which would only appear in the long term should be disregarded (my emphasis).11 Whilst it is undeniable that the head-chopping organ-eating occupiers of Raqqa were about as vile a group of psychopaths as it’s possible to get, and that their removal from Raqqa would no doubt be extremely difficult to accomplish, it’s deeply questionable that the total destruction of a civilian-occupied city could be considered proportional to the reign of terror it was supposed to terminate. The fact that IS were eventually cleared out of Raqqa, very much alive and well, shows that they were not committed kamikaze warriors and suggests that alternative methods for bringing to an end their repulsive occupation may have been possible. (c) Precautions In order for parties to an armed conflict to respect the principles of distinction and proportionality they must take precautions in attack. “Constant care must be taken to spare the civilian population, civilians and civilian objects”; “all feasible precautions” must be taken to avoid and minimise incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians and damage to civilian objects. The parties must choose means and methods of warfare with a view to avoiding or at least minimising to the maximum extent possible incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians and damage to civilian objects. As well as verifying the military nature of targets and assessing the proportionality of attacks, the parties must also take all feasible steps to call off attacks which appear wrongly directed or disproportionate. Parties must give effective advance warning of attacks which may affect the civilian population, unless circumstances do not permit. When a choice is possible between several military objectives for obtaining a similar military advantage, the parties must select the target the attack on which would be expected to pose the least danger to civilians and to civilian objects. The limited information available on the precautions in attack taken by the Coalition suggests that they were not adequate or effective. The cases examined in detail indicate that there were serious shortcomings in verification that targets selected for attack were in fact military, with disastrous results for civilian life. Further, several attacks examined by Amnesty International suggest that the Coalition did not, at least in those instances, select weapons that would minimise harm to civilians. Also, the warnings that were given to civilians were not effective. They did not take into account the reality that civilians were blocked from leaving Raqqa, and did not include specific information (such as warning civilians to stay away from tall buildings).11 Amnesty claim that up to the point of publication of their report repeated approaches to “the coalition” for specific details regarding their attacks on Raqqa were either inadequately answered or had not been answered at all. Therefore questions relating to whether sufficient precautions were taken remain unanswered, and could imply breaches of international law. (d) Joint and individual responsibility of coalition members One of the attractions to “coalition” actions is the difficulty in attributing specific responsibility for possible crimes after the event, and Amnesty states: It is concerned that this lack of clarity may enable individual Coalition members to evade responsibility for their actions. The UK Government, for example, maintained until May 2018 that it had not killed a single civilian in Syria or Iraq, despite carrying out thousands of air strikes across the two countries. On 2 May 2018 it admitted for the first time that one of its drone strikes had caused one civilian casualty in Syria in March 2018.11 However, there is very limited wriggle-room in attempting to evade responsibility by trying to divert attention to others. International Humanitarian Law (IHL): Requires all states to ‘respect and ensure respect’ for its provisions under Common Article 1 of the Geneva Conventions. This includes both positive and negative obligations on states providing assistance to another state which is then used to commit a violation of international humanitarian law. The negative obligation is not to encourage, aid or assist in violations of IHL by parties to a conflict. The positive obligation includes the prevention of violations where there is a foreseeable risk they will be committed and prevention of further violations where they have already occurred. The USA, UK, France, and other states involved in military operations as part of Operation Inherent Resolve therefore may be legally responsible for unlawful acts carried out by Coalition members.12 (e) Duty to investigate, prosecute and provide reparation States have an obligation to investigate allegations of war crimes by their forces or nationals, or committed on their territory and, if there is sufficient admissible evidence, prosecute the suspects. They must also investigate other war crimes over which they have jurisdiction, including through universal jurisdiction, and, if appropriate, prosecute the suspects.12 A young man holding a child staring at the ruins of bombed buildings in Raqqa (AI Photo) Life-giving light – and those who would snuff it out The Amnesty International report provides compelling evidence that, at the very least, there are legitimate questions to be answered regarding the attacks on Raqqa by the USA, Britain and France. And it must never be forgotten that the whole IS phenomenon is mostly a creation of the west, that without the deeply cynical plotting of the US, British and possibly French deep states, IS would likely never have come into existence. The words of French foreign minister Roland Dumas should be recalled: I’m going to tell you something,” Dumas said on French station LCP. “I was in England two years before the violence in Syria on other business [in 2009]. I met with top British officials, who confessed to me that they were preparing something in Syria. This was in Britain not in America. Britain was organizing an invasion of rebels into Syria. They even asked me, although I was no longer minister for foreign affairs, if I would like to participate. Naturally, I refused, I said I’m French, that doesn’t interest me. So Dumas may have said – but the French were involved in the destruction of Raqqa. Raqqa’s residents surveying the destruction in the city centre (AI Photo) If similar probable war crimes had been carried out in some other country by Russia, say, or China, or Iran, or any other nation to which the west is routinely hostile, almost certainly outraged voices would be heard caterwauling in Westminster and Washington. Front pages of newspapers, together with TV and radio news programmes would be howling that “something must be done”. Yet in Westminster and Washington the silence is deafening. Not a single word of protest appears on the front pages of our newspapers, and our TV and radio stations appear to be looking the other way. Why? Because our “heroes” are personally involved, and personally responsible for the terror, and that is the terrible truth that cannot be admitted. The cold hard fact is that far from being heroic, many people in the military are de facto war criminals. From at least as far back as the second world war, when defenceless civilians were bombed to death and incinerated in their homes in the pointless bombing of Hamburg, Dresden and Tokyo, for example, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, through the slaughter of countless defenceless civilians in later wars, in Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos to the more recent civilian killing fields of Iraq, Libya and now Syria, our so-called heroes have just as much innocents’ blood on their hands as any Nazi war criminal ever had. With very few exceptions, the military seldom do anything heroic. The very last thing that senior officers want, the generals, admirals, air marshals and so on, is a peaceful world – for the very obvious reason that they would all be out of work, vastly overpaid work requiring very little real and useful effort, work that not only pays these people far more than they’re worth, but also, which is far worse, gives them far too much power in our societies. Consider, for example, the words of an unnamed general in a recent Observer interview that if Jeremy Corbyn – a lifelong pacifist – was to win a general election: There would be a mutiny in the armed forces… unless he learnt to love NATO and the nuclear bomb.13 The cold hard fact is that these people, those who run our so-called “defence” forces are out of control. They are more interested in protecting their own careers than doing what they’re supposed to be doing, and which so many people mistakenly believe they are doing – protecting us. We are not made safer by the ruthless and illegal destruction of civilian cities such as Raqqa. The people that carry out these war crimes should be brought to account and charged like the common war criminals they really are, which is pretty much the same conclusion reached by Amnesty International: Where there is admissible evidence that individual members of Coalition forces are responsible for war crimes, ensure they are prosecuted in a fair trial without recourse to the death penalty.14 We need complete, truthful information. And the truth should not depend on whom it is to serve. — V.I. Ulyanov, (Let History Judge, Roy Medvedev, Preface.)) Self-criticism – ruthless, harsh self-criticism, which gets down to the root of things – that is the life-giving light and air of the proletarian movement. — Rosa Luxemburg15 Sometimes I think we biologists may find ourselves coming into politics from our own angle. If things go on as they are going – We may have to treat the whole world as a mental hospital. The entire species is going mad; for what is madness but a complete want of mental adaptation to one’s circumstances? Sooner or later, young man, your generation will have to face up to that.… I have an idea, Father, a half-formed idea,that before we can go on to a sane new order, there has to be a far more extensive clearing up of old institutions… The world needs some sort of scavenging, a burning up of the old infected clothes, before it can get on to a new phase. At present it is enormously encumbered… This is just a shadowy idea in my mind… Something like breaking down condemned, old houses. We can’t begin to get things in order until there has been this scavenging. — HG Wells, The Holy Terror, Simon and Schuster, 1939. * Let History Judge: The Origins and Consequences of Stalinism, Roy Medvedev, p. 566. * Let History Judge: The Origins and Consequences of Stalinism, Roy Medvedev, Preface. * Medvedev, p. 363. * Amnesty International Report, p. 9. * AI Report, p. 5. * AI Report, p. 48. * AI Report, p. 49. * AI Report, p. 53. * AI Report, p. 62. * AI Report, p. 44. * AI Report, p. 63. * AI Report, p. 64. * How the Establishment lost control, Chris Nineham, p. 93. * AI Report, p. 67. * Let History Judge, Roy Medvedev, Preface http://clubof.info/

[cleopatrarps]

U.S. top court backs Ohio voter purge; Democrats blast ruling

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday revived Ohio’s contentious policy of purging infrequent voters from registration rolls in a ruling powered by the five conservative justices and denounced by liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor as an endorsement of the disenfranchisement of minority and low-income Americans.

In a 5-4 decision in the closely watched voting-rights case, the high court overturned a lower court’s ruling that Ohio’s policy violated a 1993 federal law enacted to make it easier to register to vote. All four liberal justices dissented, and top Democrats said the decision will boost what they called Republican voter-suppression efforts. But other states may now follow Ohio’s lead.

Voters purged from registration rolls who challenged the policy in the Republican-governed state argued that the practice illegally erased thousands of voters from registration rolls and disproportionately impacted racial minorities and poor people who tend to back Democratic candidates.

The state said the policy was needed to keep voting rolls current, removing people who have moved away or died.

Under Ohio’s policy, if registered voters miss voting for two years, they are sent registration confirmation notices. If they do not respond and do not vote over the following four years, they are purged.

“This decision is validation of Ohio’s efforts to clean up the voter rolls and now with the blessing (of the) nation’s highest court, it can serve as a model for other states to use,” Republican Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted said.

Five other states also remove voters from their registration lists for failure to vote. The challengers called Ohio’s policy the most aggressive.

Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito said the court was not deciding whether Ohio’s policy “is the ideal method for keeping its voting rolls up to date. The only question before us is whether it violates federal law. It does not.”

Many states over the decades had erected barriers to voting, sometimes targeting black voters. The National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) among other provisions had forbade removing voters from registration lists for failing to vote.

In a dissenting opinion, Sotomayor said the ruling “ignores the history of voter suppression against which the NVRA was enacted and upholds a program that appears to further the very disenfranchisement of minority and low-income voters that Congress set out to eradicate.”

A 2016 Reuters analysis found roughly twice the rate of voter purging in Democratic-leaning neighborhoods in Ohio’s three largest counties as in Republican-leaning neighborhoods.

‘BLATANT UNFAIRNESS’

“Communities that are disproportionately affected by unnecessarily harsh registration laws should not tolerate efforts to marginalize their influence in the political process, nor should allies who recognize blatant unfairness stand idly by,” added Sotomayor, the first Hispanic Supreme Court justice.

The U.S. Supreme Court is seen after the court revived Ohio’s contentious policy of purging infrequent voters from its registration rolls, overturning a lower court ruling that Ohio’s policy violated the National Voter Registration Act, in Washington, U.S., June 11, 2018. REUTERS/Erin Schaff

The challengers criticized what they called Ohio’s “use it or lose it” policy that they said violated registered voters’ right to choose when to vote, noting that some voters do not cast a ballot when they do not support any of the candidates running.

Republican President Donald Trump’s administration backed Ohio, reversing the stance taken by Democratic former President Barack Obama’s administration against the policy, and welcomed the ruling. Democrats disagreed.

“Democracy suffers when laws make it harder for U.S. citizens to vote,” top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer said.

“This wrongly decided decision paves the way to mass disenfranchisement in Ohio and around the country,” top House of Representatives Democrat Nancy Pelosi added.

The challengers, represented by liberal advocacy group Demos and the American Civil Liberties Union, sued Husted in 2016 to end the policy. One of the lead plaintiffs was U.S. Navy veteran Larry Harmon, who was blocked from voting in a 2015 marijuana-legalization initiative.

“If states take today’s decision as a sign that they can be even more reckless and kick eligible voters off the rolls, we will fight back in the courts, the legislatures and with our community partners across the country,” Demos attorney Stuart Naifeh said.

The ACLU’s Dale Ho said the ruling “is not a green light to engage in wholesale purges of eligible voters without notice.”

Conservative advocacy groups praised the ruling.

“Leftists opposed to election integrity suffered a big defeat today. Frankly, this and their other assaults on clean election measures suggest the organized left and their politician allies want to be able to steal elections if necessary,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said.

Liberal Justice Stephen Breyer, in a dissent joined by the other liberal justices, said, “Using a registrant’s failure to vote is not a reasonable method for identifying voters whose registrations are likely invalid.” Since people tend not to send confirmation notices back to the government, it is not a reliable way to determine whether someone has moved away, Breyer added.

Ohio’s policy would have barred more than 7,500 people from voting in the 2016 presidential election had the lower court not blocked it, according to court papers.

Slideshow (2 Images)

For graphic on major cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, click: tmsnrt.rs/2Mjahov

Reporting by Andrew Chung; Additional reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham

The post U.S. top court backs Ohio voter purge; Democrats blast ruling appeared first on World The News.

from World The News https://ift.tt/2JzCOV2 via News of World

[dragnews]

U.S. top court backs Ohio voter purge; Democrats blast ruling

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday revived Ohio’s contentious policy of purging infrequent voters from registration rolls in a ruling powered by the five conservative justices and denounced by liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor as an endorsement of the disenfranchisement of minority and low-income Americans.

In a 5-4 decision in the closely watched voting-rights case, the high court overturned a lower court’s ruling that Ohio’s policy violated a 1993 federal law enacted to make it easier to register to vote. All four liberal justices dissented, and top Democrats said the decision will boost what they called Republican voter-suppression efforts. But other states may now follow Ohio’s lead.

Voters purged from registration rolls who challenged the policy in the Republican-governed state argued that the practice illegally erased thousands of voters from registration rolls and disproportionately impacted racial minorities and poor people who tend to back Democratic candidates.

The state said the policy was needed to keep voting rolls current, removing people who have moved away or died.

Under Ohio’s policy, if registered voters miss voting for two years, they are sent registration confirmation notices. If they do not respond and do not vote over the following four years, they are purged.

“This decision is validation of Ohio’s efforts to clean up the voter rolls and now with the blessing (of the) nation’s highest court, it can serve as a model for other states to use,” Republican Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted said.

Five other states also remove voters from their registration lists for failure to vote. The challengers called Ohio’s policy the most aggressive.

Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito said the court was not deciding whether Ohio’s policy “is the ideal method for keeping its voting rolls up to date. The only question before us is whether it violates federal law. It does not.”

Many states over the decades had erected barriers to voting, sometimes targeting black voters. The National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) among other provisions had forbade removing voters from registration lists for failing to vote.

In a dissenting opinion, Sotomayor said the ruling “ignores the history of voter suppression against which the NVRA was enacted and upholds a program that appears to further the very disenfranchisement of minority and low-income voters that Congress set out to eradicate.”

A 2016 Reuters analysis found roughly twice the rate of voter purging in Democratic-leaning neighborhoods in Ohio’s three largest counties as in Republican-leaning neighborhoods.

‘BLATANT UNFAIRNESS’

“Communities that are disproportionately affected by unnecessarily harsh registration laws should not tolerate efforts to marginalize their influence in the political process, nor should allies who recognize blatant unfairness stand idly by,” added Sotomayor, the first Hispanic Supreme Court justice.

The U.S. Supreme Court is seen after the court revived Ohio’s contentious policy of purging infrequent voters from its registration rolls, overturning a lower court ruling that Ohio’s policy violated the National Voter Registration Act, in Washington, U.S., June 11, 2018. REUTERS/Erin Schaff

The challengers criticized what they called Ohio’s “use it or lose it” policy that they said violated registered voters’ right to choose when to vote, noting that some voters do not cast a ballot when they do not support any of the candidates running.

Republican President Donald Trump’s administration backed Ohio, reversing the stance taken by Democratic former President Barack Obama’s administration against the policy, and welcomed the ruling. Democrats disagreed.

“Democracy suffers when laws make it harder for U.S. citizens to vote,” top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer said.

“This wrongly decided decision paves the way to mass disenfranchisement in Ohio and around the country,” top House of Representatives Democrat Nancy Pelosi added.

The challengers, represented by liberal advocacy group Demos and the American Civil Liberties Union, sued Husted in 2016 to end the policy. One of the lead plaintiffs was U.S. Navy veteran Larry Harmon, who was blocked from voting in a 2015 marijuana-legalization initiative.

“If states take today’s decision as a sign that they can be even more reckless and kick eligible voters off the rolls, we will fight back in the courts, the legislatures and with our community partners across the country,” Demos attorney Stuart Naifeh said.

The ACLU’s Dale Ho said the ruling “is not a green light to engage in wholesale purges of eligible voters without notice.”

Conservative advocacy groups praised the ruling.

“Leftists opposed to election integrity suffered a big defeat today. Frankly, this and their other assaults on clean election measures suggest the organized left and their politician allies want to be able to steal elections if necessary,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said.

Liberal Justice Stephen Breyer, in a dissent joined by the other liberal justices, said, “Using a registrant’s failure to vote is not a reasonable method for identifying voters whose registrations are likely invalid.” Since people tend not to send confirmation notices back to the government, it is not a reliable way to determine whether someone has moved away, Breyer added.

Ohio’s policy would have barred more than 7,500 people from voting in the 2016 presidential election had the lower court not blocked it, according to court papers.

Slideshow (2 Images)

For graphic on major cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, click: tmsnrt.rs/2Mjahov

Reporting by Andrew Chung; Additional reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham

The post U.S. top court backs Ohio voter purge; Democrats blast ruling appeared first on World The News.

from World The News https://ift.tt/2JzCOV2 via Today News

[xxbalamazxx]

Downfall Of Democracy In The West

I have said it for years now, the writing has been on the wall. Democracy is crumbling around us all. It is shattering into grains smaller than that of sand. Yet the people seem to be ok with it, blinded by their rage, their misunderstanding. Popularism seems to be the new trend, it seems to be the core of what society wants. Popularism, however, is not a system of governance. Rather it is a mere opinion or feeling, a social condemnation for anything shunned, it doesn't matter if it is right or wrong... It is easily manipulated and worse than mob rule… It is the voice of celebrity and notoriety seekers over the want and demand of the masses. It holds no gain other than that of the select few…. Often leading the suppression of one's rights for the obtaining of personal wealth…

Democracy is failing my friends, it is crumbling unto dust. For the first time, we see the vote of people being undone. The rights to privacy, the freedom of speech, the will of the people being abridged. Not to any measurement of justice, nor any measurement of will, rather for the select power acquisition of a few celebrities or corporate powers… It is crushing what once made the west great. is obliterating our system of law. Each generation has its battle, ours has been masked from us. It has been confused with civil movements, and seeking more “Rights” for the few whiles ripping them from others… While in the dark the powers that be move against us… Its time to wake the hell up. How is this occurring?? What is going on? It is simple, democracy is being subverted, the vote of the people is being overturned and not just in one country either.

Step 1: In the United States, a president comes into power, he takes his oath and is sworn into office. Within moments protest start in the streets. Riots break out all over the USA. The president came to power via the system, yet it was not good enough for the masses. For the first time in the history of the USA social media is used by those whom were denied power to disrupt the rightful process of what should have occurred. It immediately becomes normalized. The rule of law becomes undone. The Media immediately starts to report it as a resistance, encouraging for more to join in. Treason to the president, to the government, openly heralds. Yet how did this occur? I am still scratching my head trying to figure it out. While I did not oppose nor support Donald Trump in the elections (I am an independent). It is clear something is a miss, on both sides… To the left ( The Democrats) we had a woman “ Hillary Clinton” seeking power. Openly she commits over 300,000 acts of treason to the USA. Enough to have had her shot before a firing squad. Yet the FBI covers for her. Witnesses “Mysteriously” hang themselves the night before testifying before Congress. Openly her people call for revolt, open violence against the government as she lost the election. She accuses the system of being corrupt, rigged… Yet the system was good enough to get her bigoted husband Bill Clinton into power… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ULl41fNBLA To the other side, President Donald Trump begins to undo years worth of bills that were put into place to help those whom needed help. Overnight corporate power grows, the richer become richer and the poorer becomes poorer. Each side blames each other… Yet they seem to be working together to divide the population and conquer. After all, all bills that are passed by Trump help the Clinton's, and all actions Hillary openly declares, adds more fuel to trumps fire… One sits in the literal office, while the other controls the nation and its media through popular control... Using social media to challenge every bill the president passes, criticizing his actions until the country is divided… Openly weak, openly fractured to all that dare looks towards it… Over the next term, for the first time, singular un-elected groups have sway over the government, policy and more importantly the people…. Step 2: In the United Kingdom the people go to the vote as the largest exercise of democracy takes place in a referendum to leave or stay in the EU “Brexit”. With in the first few months of the exercise, the Media begins to report that Brexit will fail. They push with all their might to sway the people. For the first time openly the Media in the UK begins to attempt to sway the people in another Popular exercise of control. They parade celebrities on T.V, they condemn anyone that would oppose their view as “insane” “unstable” and “racist”, even in some cases calling for violence… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSBAYP-BKbg Yet as the voting day draws near like the election in the USA something unexpected occurs. Instead of following the popular opinion of celebrities and the press, the people vote to leave the EU. Overnight the news, the media and the government begin to insult and punish the people… For the first time, direct cuts are targeted against the poor in a cruel retaliation. The government attempts to drop benefits on the lowest of the poor that would see them impoverished to destitution. This, however, was blocked by the House of Lords. Yet to subvert even the most basic checks and balances, the government then brings universal credits to implement the cuts. The Bank Of England increase mortgage rates to apply pressure to the Nation. Guilds and Large corporations raise the prices of food and what the people now deemed Project fear begins… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJRQO50VTKU Un Investigates Uk Poverty With already obscenely high taxes, increases in food& basic's pricing. The threat of the loss of jobs and an economy deliberately destabilized by the unhappy elite the government of the united kingdom announces an apocalyptic view of a post Brexit environment. Immediately a repeat of the USA drama plays out on the world stage. To the left the “ Labour” they openly condemn Brexit, demanding a re-vote. ( Similar to Hillary Clinton in the USA election.) They accuse the government of being corrupt tyrannical, all while voting up bills that harm the population. Jeremy Corbin calls for resistance condemning the Tories... Openly a Popular plot is launched. Every attempt to negotiate a deal with Europe is trampled by the Labour Party. They subvert the mass vote by going to the courts, calling on the queen, and even going to the house of lords ( which labor has condemned as being unelected officials each time they don't agree in their favor). In the past two years, the Prime Minster changes hands not once but two times. From David Cameron to Theresa May. From Theresa May to now Boris Johnson. Much like the despicable acts in the USA, each leader is deemed Tyrannical, Racist, bigoted, and downright nasty by the populist elite. They are targeted, discredited and driven from office… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkgWsJPA_B8 Jeremy Corbyn once again tries to change Prime Minister Now three times Democracy has been directly subverted in the courts of the United Kingdom. Each time by a private citizen using the supreme court to overrule actions, suing for openings of parliament. And abusing the democratic process. While I hold no opinion as a Resident of the UK and Not a citizen. The People voted, yet subversion of the vote is blatant. The Entire government works against the will of the people… And I wished, I truly do that it just ended there, but it does not. Step 3: In France, the people riot as their rights are being trampled over. The minimum wage is not enough to live on. Yellowjackets ( workers) take to the streets in protest. In a direct statement of defiance, the government condemns them as unlawful, even terrorist and begin using the military. Chemical weapons are deployed to suppress the movement. In the United Kingdom, the movement spreads and to Holland and Germany, each countries government follows suit… Condemnation erupts, the will of the people is openly oppressed… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aw-9o0GXrns It does not seem to matter where you are in the west at the moment, laws violating privacy have become commonplace, with little retaliation from the population, other than “ If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear!”. Yet our forefathers, mothers, brothers, sisters and uncles died for that right to privacy… They died for the right to be at peace… Even worse the freedom of speech and that of the press now goes silenced… Due to popularism, social media pressure and a new generation who do not understand the importance of the right to say a word. The freedom of speech is being slowly oppressed. In the United Kingdom and all of the EU you can be arrested for saying the wrong word, and serve years. Even in the USA now due to social media pressure ( Most of it not even being of western descent.) The rights of the singular person are now trampled on for what is often mislead ideals of the larger sum. The mere words uttered of “ That Offends Me” Are grounds to summon the law… This is what our governments have wanted for a while. An excuse to silence all that oppose them. With offense everywhere and arguments such as Corporate rights, company rights, governmental rights. You can be deemed a sense offender at any time… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnIQalprvR8 From fear-mongering & stripping away rights. To open full-blown governmental rebellion, to that of party politics committing both mass conspiracy and downright treason. Democracy is openly and utterly being subverted at its core. Yet the people seemed to be more concerned by who is offending whom. They seem to be more concerned by someone's right to use whatever bathroom they want to, over the rights that will be left for their children and grandchildren. The reality of things is that it's becoming Orwell's 1984. The people ignore the facts, suffering has erupted on a global scale due to the great division of western nations. Children starve, innocent women and men are detained for merely uttering their desires to have what many of us would so easily give up. In just and Inhuman wars are being ignored without western intervention. Yet it is our duty, our mandate to secure and protect the people of all nations. Not just the ones that are white of skin or western in idealism. But all nations in which a people want to be free… Yet the word of a Russian condemning US or EU forces actions is so easily repeated by our children that are already out of control. The violence spreads through our streets as foreign agents subject the minds of our people with dissidents, simply by using an account on Facebook that says Alabama on its location… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QoTHQV0Dts Sinister forces are implementing plans that are dividing the west while the east unifies. During this process of the last four years Russia, China and Iran have formed a coalition that has thrived off western division. Yet internally nothing is done about it, the people forget that it is through the actions of previous generations that we have lived good lives. That it is was through their sacrifice that we obtained wealth. Yet now the people wag their finger at every success the west has had. They trust in foreign conspiracies than the words of our men and women that were there… It is as if they are looking for a reason to betray, any reason what so ever. We simply stare at our phones and condemn anyone that would speak up against it… As if we are already occupied. Dictators have arisen to the world stage, yet the west continues to focus on which is the best YouTuber while Russia veto’s every and all action to help those in need. For anyone who speaks up about this tyranny, Russia needs not do a thing, for it is commonplace for children and Internet trolls to recite law and give up all morality or virtue… Chemical weapons are used on UK soil by Russian agents, that is backed by Dutch chemists who prove the compound. The people scream “ Leave Russia alone” as if they had done nothing wrong, yet victims lay dead. It is as if some mental illness has taken hold. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZf8FwIPAuc Ukraine has an entire province annexed after being threatened by Russia for years. We, their allies abandon them due to the calls of communists in our streets. Russia uses an excuse that there are Russians their so they have the right to take the land by force… Yet in the defense of Ukraine, the law does not apply? Again our people remain silent and do nothing. Three years after Russia uses its hold on the region to choke trade ships and bully the international stage… Russia openly admits to interfering in elections all over the world. It admits to global espionage, yet the modern population sticks its nose up. The only time that matters is when their populist leaders make a point of it. The fact that this level of espionage is back indicating that the west is again on the brink of another cold war… Yet instead of acting, instead of stripping an international threat back down to size… The social influence, the populist elite rather wait until the threat becomes all too real… Until we are again at full-blown war… Because to do nothing today will make them a few more bucks, and it is not their children who will die tomorrow… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHzwMLx-rKc Elected officials in all offices are being run out of power by the minority view votes, well not votes, rather demand made from the sum of losing parties. In the USA the democrats accuse men and women of rape, incest, bigotry and acts of legal violations to grip hold. While in the UK similar processes are occurring. Each is a subversion of the will of the masses. It is as if someone wrote a bad play and we no longer care as we are fixated on celebrities, drama, and perceived special rights for said groups… It is as if not being offensive is more important then protecting our rights and thus protecting our children, our grand children's and their children. For if we are the generation that does nothing… It is us to blame for when they have nothing. How long will this last? How long till we no longer can call ourselves democracies? How long till our old enemies march to our doorstep? How long till we see that the ancient old trick of Divide and conquer is being used upon us today... Rather it is by sinister forces in our governments such as Jeremy Corbin, a known communist, and socialist sympathizer. Or Hillary Clinton who openly committed treason by releasing classified secrets. And perhaps the President of the USA whom is believed to have colluded with Vladimir Putin himself. Or that of foreign powers growing by the day. How long till we wake up? When is it too late to stand up for the rights and ways that our forefathers and mothers fought for? How long till we lose our democracy completely? Will it take another Pearl Harbour for you to finally see? Read the full article

[newestbalance]

U.S. top court backs Ohio voter purge; Democrats blast ruling

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday revived Ohio’s contentious policy of purging infrequent voters from registration rolls in a ruling powered by the five conservative justices and denounced by liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor as an endorsement of the disenfranchisement of minority and low-income Americans.

In a 5-4 decision in the closely watched voting-rights case, the high court overturned a lower court’s ruling that Ohio’s policy violated a 1993 federal law enacted to make it easier to register to vote. All four liberal justices dissented, and top Democrats said the decision will boost what they called Republican voter-suppression efforts. But other states may now follow Ohio’s lead.

Voters purged from registration rolls who challenged the policy in the Republican-governed state argued that the practice illegally erased thousands of voters from registration rolls and disproportionately impacted racial minorities and poor people who tend to back Democratic candidates.

The state said the policy was needed to keep voting rolls current, removing people who have moved away or died.

Under Ohio’s policy, if registered voters miss voting for two years, they are sent registration confirmation notices. If they do not respond and do not vote over the following four years, they are purged.

“This decision is validation of Ohio’s efforts to clean up the voter rolls and now with the blessing (of the) nation’s highest court, it can serve as a model for other states to use,” Republican Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted said.

Five other states also remove voters from their registration lists for failure to vote. The challengers called Ohio’s policy the most aggressive.

Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito said the court was not deciding whether Ohio’s policy “is the ideal method for keeping its voting rolls up to date. The only question before us is whether it violates federal law. It does not.”

Many states over the decades had erected barriers to voting, sometimes targeting black voters. The National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) among other provisions had forbade removing voters from registration lists for failing to vote.

In a dissenting opinion, Sotomayor said the ruling “ignores the history of voter suppression against which the NVRA was enacted and upholds a program that appears to further the very disenfranchisement of minority and low-income voters that Congress set out to eradicate.”

A 2016 Reuters analysis found roughly twice the rate of voter purging in Democratic-leaning neighborhoods in Ohio’s three largest counties as in Republican-leaning neighborhoods.

‘BLATANT UNFAIRNESS’

“Communities that are disproportionately affected by unnecessarily harsh registration laws should not tolerate efforts to marginalize their influence in the political process, nor should allies who recognize blatant unfairness stand idly by,” added Sotomayor, the first Hispanic Supreme Court justice.

The U.S. Supreme Court is seen after the court revived Ohio’s contentious policy of purging infrequent voters from its registration rolls, overturning a lower court ruling that Ohio’s policy violated the National Voter Registration Act, in Washington, U.S., June 11, 2018. REUTERS/Erin Schaff

The challengers criticized what they called Ohio’s “use it or lose it” policy that they said violated registered voters’ right to choose when to vote, noting that some voters do not cast a ballot when they do not support any of the candidates running.

Republican President Donald Trump’s administration backed Ohio, reversing the stance taken by Democratic former President Barack Obama’s administration against the policy, and welcomed the ruling. Democrats disagreed.

“Democracy suffers when laws make it harder for U.S. citizens to vote,” top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer said.

“This wrongly decided decision paves the way to mass disenfranchisement in Ohio and around the country,” top House of Representatives Democrat Nancy Pelosi added.

The challengers, represented by liberal advocacy group Demos and the American Civil Liberties Union, sued Husted in 2016 to end the policy. One of the lead plaintiffs was U.S. Navy veteran Larry Harmon, who was blocked from voting in a 2015 marijuana-legalization initiative.

“If states take today’s decision as a sign that they can be even more reckless and kick eligible voters off the rolls, we will fight back in the courts, the legislatures and with our community partners across the country,” Demos attorney Stuart Naifeh said.

The ACLU’s Dale Ho said the ruling “is not a green light to engage in wholesale purges of eligible voters without notice.”

Conservative advocacy groups praised the ruling.

“Leftists opposed to election integrity suffered a big defeat today. Frankly, this and their other assaults on clean election measures suggest the organized left and their politician allies want to be able to steal elections if necessary,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said.

Liberal Justice Stephen Breyer, in a dissent joined by the other liberal justices, said, “Using a registrant’s failure to vote is not a reasonable method for identifying voters whose registrations are likely invalid.” Since people tend not to send confirmation notices back to the government, it is not a reliable way to determine whether someone has moved away, Breyer added.

Ohio’s policy would have barred more than 7,500 people from voting in the 2016 presidential election had the lower court not blocked it, according to court papers.

Slideshow (2 Images)

For graphic on major cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, click: tmsnrt.rs/2Mjahov

Reporting by Andrew Chung; Additional reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham

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