Young People Really Don’t Like Donald Trump
That doesn’t bode well for the future of the Republican Party.

by Nancy LeTourneau July 3, 2020

The White House/Flickr

Pew Research published a national poll this week that showed Biden with a ten point lead over Trump, much as we’ve seen from other polls. But when they broke the responses down by age, the most startling result was that with 18-29 year-olds, Biden’s lead is 40 points (68-28). That might not be surprising. But here is a comparison to previous Democratic candidates.

For comparison, past Democratic performance among 18-29 year olds:

1992: Clinton +9
1996: Clinton +18
2000: Gore +1
2004: Kerry +9
2008: Obama +34
2012: Obama +23
2016: Clinton +19
Today's Pew poll: Biden +40 https://t.co/uC3XZJ5Ct0

— Brandon (@Brand_Allen) July 1, 2020

Pew also found that for Biden supporters, 67 percent said that their choice is more about opposition to Trump. I’m sure that is probably true for the subset of voters under 30 years of age. In other words, young people really don’t like Donald Trump.

We watched that play out when young people used social media to troll the Trump campaign into thinking there would be a massive crowd at his Tulsa rally. The small attendance was related to people’s concerns about the coronavirus, but the groundswell requesting tickets lured the campaign into boasting about all of the enthusiasm for the president—which crashed spectacularly. It was an excellent reminder that young people will find their own ways of making their voices heard in the political arena.

As always, the concern about young people is whether or not they will actually show up at the polls to vote. We’ve already seen that, for all of the emphasis the Sanders campaign put on that demographic group, they didn’t show up for the primaries in great numbers. So that will remain a concern in 2020.

But the Trump presidency has solidified the fact that young people are being repelled by the Republican Party. Contrary to the myth about voters getting more conservative with age, this is what the research tells us.

On an individual level, of course, many people’s political views evolve over the course of their lives. But academic research indicates not only that generations have distinct political identities, but that most people’s basic outlooks and orientations are set fairly early on in life. As one famous longitudinal study of Bennington College women put it, “through late childhood and early adolescence, attitudes are relatively malleable…with the potential for dramatic change possible in late adolescence or early adulthood. [B]ut greater stability sets in at some early point, and attitudes tend to be increasingly persistent as people age.”

The distinct political identities of Millennials and Generation Z are being formed and solidified in the Trump era. That doesn’t bode well for the future of the Republican Party.

CEO promises to eliminate 'toxic behaviours' at Ubisoft
THEY NEVER MENTION BEING A CAPITALIST 
AS A TOXIC BEHAVIOUR

Ubisoft pledged to take 'appropriate action' after investigations into the allegations are completed

The head of Ubisoft has promised a "structural shift" to eliminate toxic behaviour following allegations of sexual assault and harassment by managers at the French video game publisher.

Ubisoft, whose games portfolio includes Assassin's Creed, Tom Clancy's, Far Cry and Watch Dogs, and is one of the world's top gaming companies, apologised last week and launched an investigation after the claims were made on social media.

In a letter to employees on Thursday, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot said the company is "not looking for a quick fix, but rather a structural shift at Ubisoft that fully aligns with our values -– values that do not tolerate toxic behaviours and where everyone feels safe to speak out."

Guillemot acknowledged that employees were eager for the probes to wrap up, but said it was important they are conducted with rigour.

"When they are concluded, all appropriate actions will be taken," he said.

Ubisoft representatives were unable to say Thursday if anyone had been suspended pending the outcome of the investigations.

The French firm which counts 18,000 employees worldwide will also conduct a survey and employee listening sessions. A senior manager has been appointed to examine the company's workplace culture.

Ubisoft is the latest player in the gaming industry to be the target of such accusations, after staff and former staff in other companies took to social media recently to denounce predatory behaviour by powerful managers.

Incidents alleged on Twitter include a Ubisoft creative director licking the face of a female co-worker during an office party, and a manager demanding oral sex from a colleague.

"I am a former employee and they swept every claim of sexual harassment under the rug," read one tweet.

Guillemot acknowledged "the situations that some of you have experienced or witnessed are absolutely not acceptable."


Explore furtherChina's Tencent to take stake in Ubisoft games maker

© 2020 AFP
Citation: CEO promises to eliminate 'toxic behaviours' at Ubisoft (2020, July 3) retrieved 4 July 2020 from https://techxplore.com/news/2020-07-ceo-toxic-behaviours-ubisoft.html

Why it’s so damn hot in the Arctic right now

Siberia’s triple-digit heat wave and wildfires are a glimpse into the future of the Arctic.

By Umair Irfan Updated Jul 1, 2020, 3:42pm EDT

A firefighter in Siberia on June 2 monitors a controlled burn to reduce the threat from wildfires. Amid record heat, the region is bracing for more blazes. Yevgeny Sofroneyev/TASS via Getty Images

The Arctic is continuing to swelter in a heat wave, as temperatures around the Arctic Ocean this week top 93 degrees Fahrenheit.

Extremely hot again on the fringe of the Arctic Ocean.

An astonishing + 34 °C has just been recorded at a latitude of 73 °N today in Russia. This is about + 20-25 °C warmer than normal.

Note how much open water there is compared to normal. Sea ice is taking a hit. pic.twitter.com/y0w5PLjkHx— Scott From Scotland (@ScottDuncanWX) June 30, 2020

The recent heat follows an even more stunning data point: Last month, Verkhoyansk, Russia, hit a temperature of 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit. Researchers are still working to confirm the result, which may be recognized as a record high for the Arctic Circle. This is a town that holds the record for the coldest temperature above the Arctic Circle, -90 degrees Fahrenheit in 1892.

“That is a fantastical degree,” said Roman Vilfand, head of Russia’s weather service, during a press conference this week.

And the small Siberian town isn’t alone. Much of Russia has been facing a heat wave in recent weeks, with multiple locations reporting temperatures as high as 113 degrees on June 19. The surprising warmth was also felt in other parts of the Arctic like northern Canada and Scandinavia.

It’s part of a pattern of soaring temperatures this year in what are ordinarily some of the chilliest parts of the planet. The current searing weather of the region stands to have global consequences and foreshadows the future of the Arctic, and the planet, as the climate changes.

Russia is emerging from its hottest winter on record, and since the beginning of the year, temperatures have averaged 12.4 degrees Fahrenheit above what’s typical in Siberia.

And this polar heat has led to a string of woes for the region, from a major oil spill stemming from thawing permafrost to early wildfires north of the Arctic circle in Russia and Alaska.

Several key factors aligned in recent months to heat up the Arctic. And they’re building on top of long-term warming trends. That means more of this kind of heat is likely in the future, and so are thawing, fires, and climate disruption.
Why parts of the Arctic are searingly hot right now

The term “heat wave” is a relative measure. What temperatures count as a heat wave differ depending on the regional climate. It’s usually defined as temperatures above the 95th percentile of the historical distribution for a region.

So the bar for a heat wave in the Arctic is considerably lower than in lower latitudes. But the recent temperatures in the far north would be sweltering just about anywhere.

A heat wave begins with high atmospheric pressure building up over an area. A downward-moving air column compresses the air that’s closer to the ground, holding it still and heating it up. That high pressure also forces clouds away and around the column, creating an unobstructed line of light between the ground and the sun.

Over a period of days and weeks, the ground absorbs sunlight, and with stagnant air, heat accumulates and temperatures rise. “There’s nothing coming in and nothing going out,” explained Walt Meier, a senior research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado Boulder. “It’s kind of like an oven basically.”

That’s the general formula for heat waves around the world. But there are also several unique ingredients contributing to the Arctic one.

In northern latitudes during the summer, there is near-continuous sunlight — even at night. That allows heat to accumulate faster than in areas that experience sunsets and can cool off in the evening.

Number of wildfires in the Arctic part of Yakutia continues to rise, with towns as high north as Chersky and Srednekolymsk reporting fires getting really close and threatening power lines #wildfires2020 #wildfires2020Siberia pic.twitter.com/cJtVbxrKox— The Siberian Times (@siberian_times) June 23, 2020

Another factor this year was the lack of snow. With an unusually warm winter, less snow built up across parts of the Arctic, and with a warm spring, much of it melted away sooner than usual. “The snow is very reflective of the sunlight,” said Meier. “This year, the snow went away earlier, so then you have the bare ground that can absorb more solar energy.”

The warmer ground also dries out in the heat. With less moisture, there is less evaporation that can cool the surrounding air. “The drier ground and the air over the top of it makes it more susceptible to rapid warming when you have the right conditions like we’re seeing now,” Meier said.
The Arctic heat wave highlights the impacts that lie ahead from climate change

For Siberia’s heat wave, past may be prologue. Last year, amid temperatures that were 14 degrees Fahrenheit above the long-term average for the region, forest fires burned over a near-record area, sending choking smoke into cities like Novosibirsk, Russia’s third-largest city. The plumes even reached the western United States.

Siberia also saw massive fires in 2018, 2017, and 2016. Forest fires naturally occur in Siberia and can occasionally spark north of the Arctic circle, often ignited by lightning in dry forests in summer months. But the blazes in recent years were unusually large and close to population centers. The fires burning in the region now could continue to spread as the summer season warms the region further.

One of the overarching trends behind the heat wave and the wildfires is climate change. Earth as a whole is warming up due to human emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide. But every place isn’t warming up at the same rate; the Arctic is warming at double the rate of the rest of the planet, which is why some of the earliest effects of climate change are felt in the region. The north pole also presents a window into the future for the rest of the world.Workers in Norilsk, Russia, clean up an oil spill caused in part by thawing permafrost. Denis Kozhevnikov/TASS via Getty Images

Those higher average temperatures mean extreme heat will become even more likely and more intense, exacerbating threats like forest fires as vegetation dries out. “The wildfires definitely come from the extreme heat and the dryness,” Meier said.

The loss of these ancient, slow-growing forests will release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that will take decades to reabsorb, further warming the planet. Warming in the Arctic is also thawing permafrost, which releases even more carbon into the atmosphere.

And while it’s summer in the Arctic right now, the region has also experienced heat waves in the winter. In fact, researchers have found that in general, winters are warming faster than summers. That’s part of the reason why the Arctic is now losing sea ice at its fastest rate in 1,500 years. 

 

Christina Animashaun/Vox

Antarctica is also warming up. Earlier this year, the continent broke two high-temperature records within a week.

With average temperatures poised to rise further, more heat, thawing, melting, and fire lie ahead for the Arctic. “This year it’s in Siberia. Next year it might be in Alaska or northern Canada or it might be in Scandinavia,” Meier said. “On average, what we consider to be extreme events are going to become more and more normal.”

Human-induced climate change reversed 6,500-year global cooling trend

By Michael Irving July 01, 2020  ENVIRONMENT


A new study spanning 12,000 years shows that human-induced climate change has disrupted a long-term global cooling trend
auntspray/Depositphotos

What would Earth’s climate naturally be doing if it weren’t for human intervention? Researchers at Northern Arizona University have now analyzed over 12,000 years of climate data, and found that human-induced warming interrupted and reversed a long-term natural global cooling period.

It’s no secret that the Earth is heating up at an incredible speed, with recent months, years and decades all breaking temperature records. But this data only goes back to the 1880s, when observations began being routinely recorded. So how does the current trend compare in the longer term?

To find out, researchers have been compiling data from various sources that stretch back many millennia. A few months ago, a team of 93 scientists published a particularly comprehensive record of paleoclimate data, spanning the past 12,000 years. It includes 1,319 data records from samples like lake deposits, marine sediments, peat, cave deposits, coral, and glacier ice cores, collected from 679 sites around the world.

From that, the researchers were able to chart changes in the surface air temperature over the last 12,000 years – a time when the world was coming out of the last Ice Age. This was then compared to the average for the century between 1800 and 1900, to track how the Industrial Revolution might have changed things.


A chart demonstrating temperature changes over the past 12,000 years, relative to the 19th century average Victor O. Leshyk, Northern Arizona University
CLICK TO ENLARGE

IN THE UPPER RIGHT HAND CORNER IS THE TIME LINE IT SHOWS THAT AT THE BEGINNING OF CAPITALIST INDUSTRIALISM AND IMPERIALISM, 1700 REMAINS
PART OF THE COOLING PERIOD, IT IS NOT UNTIL AFTER WWII 1950 THAT CAPITALISM BECOMES LATE CAPITALISM, MASS INDUSTRIALIZATION BEYOND EVEN WWII THOUGH BEGUN THEN. IT IS NOW IN ITS ETERNAL CONTRADICTION NOT OF BOOM OR BUST BUT OF CAPITALISM IN CRISIS DESTROYING OUR PLANET TEMPORARILY IT WILL RECOVER BUT WE WON'T 
NOR WILL THE 1500 SURVIVING BILLIONAIRES SAFELY ENSCONCED IN THEIR SECRET HIDEAWAYS (IN NEW ZEALAND)ALL IS NOT LOST THOUGH THE TECHNOLOGY AND THE PANDEMIC HAVE SHOWN US THAT SOCIALISM, WORKS BETTER THAN CAPITALISM (AMERICA), AND THAT THE TECHNOLOGY CAN BE APPLIED TO CHANGE DIRECTION FROM ENDLESS ACCUMULATION OF CAPITAL 
TO ITS APPLICATION TO DEVELOP TECHNOLOGY FOR THE COMMON GOOD OF ALL INCLUDING OUR HOME PLANET.


As expected, at the beginning of that period temperatures were much colder than the 19th century baseline. But they steadily warmed up over the next several millennia, eventually surpassing the baseline. Temperatures peaked around 6,500 years ago, and since then the planet has been slowly but surely cooling down.

“The rate of cooling that followed the peak warmth was subtle, only around 0.1 °C (0.2 °F) per 1,000 years,” says Michael Erb, co-author of the study. “This cooling seems to be driven by slow cycles in the Earth’s orbit, which reduced the amount of summer sunlight in the Northern Hemisphere, culminating in the ‘Little Ice Age’ of recent centuries.”

Of course, the world is no longer cooling – human activity saw to that. Instead, we’ve raised average temperatures by as much as 1 °C (1.8 ° F) since the mid-19th century. That’s a huge spike in a relatively short time, rising even higher than that peak 6,500 years ago.

“It’s possible that the last time the sustained average global temperature was 1°C above the 19th century was prior to the last Ice Age, back around 125,000 years ago when sea level was around 20 feet higher than today,” says Darrell Kaufman, lead author of the study.

Although we’re heading into largely uncharted territory, in terms of climate change, investigating these historic patterns can help us better understand what might lie ahead, under different scenarios.

The research was published in the journal Scientific Data.

Source: Northern Arizona University

Statue of British coloniser Francis Light splashed with red paint by Penang vandals, police investigating possible BLM motive

Friday, 03 Jul 2020
BY TAN MEI ZI
 

Police are still investigating the case under Section 427 of the Penal Code for committing mischief. — Picture from Twitter/AntifaM3

PETALING JAYA, July 3 — Penang police are considering anti-colonialist and anti-slavery sentiments as possible motives for vandals who defaced a statue of British coloniser Francis Light.

George Town OCPD assistant commissioner Soffian Santong issued a media statement today saying that the statue was found splashed with red paint on the morning of June 30 by Fort Cornwallis’ operations manager, who lodged a police report yesterday.

The case is currently being investigated under Section 427 of the Penal Code for committing mischief.

Soffian also confirmed that the operations manager was not in debt to unlicensed money lenders or “Ah Longs,” who are known to use red paint as a warning to those who failed to pay up in time.

The police are looking into the possibility that the vandals were inspired by Black Lives Matter activists in the United States and Europe who tore down monuments of slave owners and white supremacists after the death of George Floyd, an unarmed African American man who died at the hands of a white police officer in May.

The Penang vandals could face a jail term between one and five years, a fine, or both if found guilty.

The issue became a hot topic on Twitter on July 1 after user @AntifaM3 tweeted out images of Light’s defaced statue.

“Finally in 2020, the statue of a coloniser and slave owner named Francis Light in Penang, Malaysia meets the same fate as other statues around the world,” the user wrote.

Akhirnya pada tahun 2020, tugu penjajah dan pemilik hamba bernama Francis Light di Pulau Pinang, Malaysia menemui nasib yang sama dengan tugu-tugu lain seumpamanya di seluruh dunia. pic.twitter.com/vRkleKpLI5— AntifaM (@AntifaM3) July 1, 2020

A post on The Thrifty Traveller blog shows a transcript of Light’s will at the Penang state museum, which states that he did own slaves and bequeathed them to his partner Martina Rozells.

“I leave all my Caffree slaves the following choice, either to remain with Martina during her life she being willing to maintain them or each man to pay her 50 dollars and be free,” Light wrote in the document.

Light is best known for founding the British colony of Penang in 1786 and was a prominent representative of the British East India Company.

His acquisition of Penang from Sultan Abdullah Mukarram Shah allowed the British to expand rapidly into the Malay states and accelerate British colonisation in Southeast Asia as a whole.

Light’s statue in Fort Cornwallis was first erected in 1936 to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the founding of George Town.
The Star wrote that the monument has been cleaned since the vandalism incident but remnants of red paint remain visible.

Trump campaign spokesperson pushes Mt. Rushmore meme that adds president to monument

July 3, 2020 By David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement

Would adding President Donald Trump to the famous Mt. Rushmore monument to four of America’s greatest president’s make it better?

A spokesperson and Trump re-election campaign “Rapid Response” official seems to think so.

Just hours before President Trump is set to travel to South Dakota’s famous 60-foot tall 80-year old carving, Abigail Marone posted a widely-circulated meme of the 45th President’s image, not only added to Mt. Rushmore, but in front of Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt, and Lincoln.


Defend democracy. Click to invest in courageous progressive journalism today.



Washington Post national political reporter Michael Scherer says “Democrats think the continued ego gratification of Trump is one of the best things they have going for them.”

This is being pushed out by Trump advisers today. Democrats think the continued ego gratification of Trump is one of the best things they have going for them. My story on how “I alone can fix it” no longer means the same thing amid Covid with @ToluseO https://t.co/7PXDhykK4e https://t.co/0e7SDO3f8M
— michaelscherer (@michaelscherer) July 3, 2020

I PREFER MY MEME THANKS


The President traveling to South Dakota for a fireworks show he forced to have happen despite experts warning about the pollution of local drinking water and possible wildfires it could cause is one more addition to the long list of Trump ego gratification items.


Meanwhile, this Twitter user offered up an appropriate (fact check: true) response.
Since the sculptor who created Mount Rushmore, Gutzon Borglum, was a member of the KKK and avowed anti-Semite, you’re more accurate than you dreamed. https://t.co/XkFb586d8V
— George Kaplan (@GeorgeKaplan8) July 3, 2020

AND EVERY PRESIDENT REPRESENTED WAS AN INDIAN KILLER

 SO HERE IS WHO MOUNT RUSHMORE REALLY REPRESENTS AS A SACRED SITE

WASHINGTON / JEFFERSON AS REVOLUTIONARIES AND THEN LATER AS AMERICAN ATTEMPTS TO INVADE CANADA  USED FRENCH HURON MERCENARIES AGAINST BRITISH ALLIES THE MOHAWK, AFTER THE REVOLUTION THE MOHAWK OF LOWER  CANADA AND NY WIPED OUT THE HURON OF QUEBEC.THE MOHAWK CONTINUED TO FIGHT FOR CANADA AGAINST AMERICAN INVASIONS.

THE WEEK THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION BY LINCOLN WAS MADE HE ALSO HAD DOZENS OF INDIAN'S WHO HAD REVOLTED AGAINST THEIR RESERVATIONS,

HUNG.

ROOSEVELT FOUGHT IMPERIALIST WARS AGAINST INDIGENOUS PEOPLES INCLUDING IN AMERICA WHEN HE DECLARED THEIR LANDS TO BE OWNED 

BY THE ARYAN CLASS OF AMERICA, WHITE PEOPLE AND MADE THEM NATIONAL PARKS

To the World, We’re Now America the Racist and Pitiful 

COME NOW NO FALSE HUMILITY YOU WERE ALWAYS KNOWN AS RACIST & PITIFUL REPEATING USA! USA! WE'RE NUMBER ONE!! SAYING OVER AND OVER DOES NOT MAKE IT SO.

ITS USA NOT AMERICA, THAT'S THE CONTINENT, OF WHICH CANADA IS A PART MAKING US AND MEXICANS, AMERICANO'S TOO

By Robin Wright July 3, 2020 NEW YORKER

The anti-slavery symbolism of the Statue of Liberty is an overlooked part of the monument’s history. Photograph from National Park Service

The real saga of the Statue of Liberty—the symbolic face of America around the world, and the backdrop of New York’s dazzling Fourth of July fireworks show—is an obscure piece of U.S. history. It had nothing to do with immigration. The telltale clue is the chain under Lady Liberty’s feet: she is stomping on it. “In the early sketches, she was also holding chains in her hand,” Edward Berenson, a professor of history at New York University, told me last week. The shackles were later replaced with a tablet noting the date of America’s independence. But the shattered chain under her feet remained.


The statue was the brainchild of Edouard de Laboulaye, a prominent French expert on the U.S. Constitution who also headed the French Anti-Slavery Society. After the Civil War, in 1865, he wanted to commemorate the end of slavery in the U.S., enshrined in the new Thirteenth Amendment, which, in theory, reaffirmed the ideals of freedom—this time for all people—first embodied in the Declaration of Independence. The now famous line—“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” from a poem by Emma Lazarus—wasn’t added until 1903, Berenson noted. The poem had been donated as part of a literary auction to raise funds for the statue’s pedestal. France donated the statue; the Americans had to raise the funds to pay for its pedestal. Long after Lazarus’s death, a friend lobbied to have the poem engraved on a plaque and added to the base. It has since associated the Statue of Liberty with a meaning that Laboulaye never intended.

One has to wonder what Laboulaye would think of America today, amid one of the country’s gravest periods of racial turmoil since the Civil War. Last month, a poll by Ipsos found that an overwhelming majority of people in fourteen countries, on six continents, support the protests that erupted across the United States after the murder of George Floyd. Russia, the fifteenth country in the survey, was the only place where a minority—about a third—backed the demonstrators.

On the eve of America’s anniversary—our two hundred and forty-fourth—much of the world believes that the country is racist, battered and bruised. “Europe has long been suspicious—even jealous—of the way America has been able to pursue national wealth and power despite its deep social inequities,” Robin Niblett, the director of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, also known as Chatham House, in London, told me. “When you take the Acela and pass through the poorest areas of Baltimore, you can’t believe you’re looking at part of the United States. There’s always been this sense of an underlying flaw in the U.S. system that it was getting away with—that somehow America was keeping just one step ahead of the grim reaper.”

The flaw, he said, is reflected in the American obsession with the stock market as the barometer of national health—economically, politically, socially. The reaction to Floyd’s murder exposed the deep injustices in the American economic model, as well as in the police and judicial systems, Niblett said. Europeans, he added, are no longer so envious.

The Trump Administration’s ineptitude in handling the covid-19 crisis, as well as the President’s disdain for longstanding allies and international treaties, have compounded the damage to America’s image. A second poll, released last week by the European Council on Foreign Relations, reported that public perceptions of the United States are increasingly negative in virtually all of the European nations surveyed. In France, the country that backed the American Revolution and later donated the Statue of Liberty, forty-six per cent of the people polled said that their opinion of the U.S. has “worsened a lot.” The proportion of respondents who still view America as a key ally is “vanishingly small”—as low as six per cent in Italy.

America’s standing worldwide has sunk before, although usually over foreign-policy decisions, such as the invasion of Iraq, in 2003. The mood globally feels different now, Richard Burkholder, who was the director of Gallup’s international polling for decades, told me. Criticism is now focussed on American practices at home. “The United States was once a beacon,” he said. “I don’t see people looking up to us as they did before.” Fintan O’Toole, a columnist for the Irish Times, was blunter. “Over more than two centuries, the United States has stirred a very wide range of feelings in the rest of the world: love and hatred, fear and hope, envy and contempt, awe and anger,” he wrote, in April. “But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the US until now: pity.”

Negative polls, however, don’t capture the depth of anguish among people who long believed in American ideals, however imperfectly they were implemented in the past. Antoinette Sithole’s little brother, Hector Pieterson, was the George Floyd of South Africa. On June 16, 1976, I was in Soweto, then the black township outside Johannesburg, when the first mass uprising against apartheid began. The white minority government had just announced that children would henceforth be taught in Afrikaans, the language of white settlers. Black children poured out of schools in protest. Police opened fire. Hector, who was thirteen, was the first to die. The picture of a teen-ager carrying Hector’s limp body, Antoinette screaming at his side, made the front pages of newspapers worldwide—and eventually onto the walls of the United Nations. The memorial to the uprising—which eventually led to Nelson Mandela’s freedom, fourteen years later—is the Hector Pieterson Museum, in Soweto. Over the decades, Antoinette and I have stayed in touch. Her firstborn is named for her brother.

“You know everyone in South Africa, including me, thought the United States is the country where one can live better and be comfortable—a dreamland,” she told me. But America has recently turned into “a bully,” she said, adding, “I am wondering, why do they dwell so much on color? Being black, it’s a threat to them. Why? George Floyd was killed like a beast. For what?” Black and white go together “like hands,” she said. “How can you separate people? The one hand needs the other.” Discrimination in the twenty-first century in the United States is the same as apartheid in South Africa was in the twentieth, she said. Both represent evil.

Abdulkarim Soroush was an Iranian revolutionary who soured on the Islamic Republic. I met him at Tehran University, after he became the father of the country’s reform movement, in the nineteen-nineties. Soroush was known as the Martin Luther of Islam because—like the catalyst for the Protestant Reformation, in the sixteenth century—he challenged the absolutist beliefs and abusive practices of a faith. Soroush, a British-educated philosopher, infuriated Iran’s theocratic rulers by arguing that individual freedoms preceded religious belief. “The first pillar is this: To be a true believer, one must be free,” he told me, in 1995. “To become a believer under pressure or coercion will not be true belief. And this freedom is the basis of democracy.” A few months after that discussion, I was at the Jefferson Memorial, in Washington, D.C., and saw four quotes on its walls. I took photos and carried them back to Iran on my next visit. I laid the four pictures out on Soroush’s oak desk. One of them read “Almighty God hath created the mind free. All attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burdens . . . are a departure from the plan of the Holy Author of our religion.” Soroush read each one, then took off his wire-rimmed glasses. “Exactly,” he pronounced

Soroush subsequently wrote about the need to separate mosque and state. He argued that the Supreme Leader could not be above the law—or possess powers to override the President, veto legislation, overturn judicial verdicts, or disqualify candidates from running for office. Soroush was increasingly harassed and threatened. In 2000, he fled to the West. He did teaching or research stints at Harvard, Princeton, Georgetown, Stanford, Columbia, and the Library of Congress. He is now an American citizen and lives in California. One of his sons works for Microsoft in Seattle.

“My life here has been a happy experience. I have the freedom to think and write and lecture—all the things denied to me in my own country,” he told me last week. But he is haunted by current events in his new home. America formerly demonstrated an ability to absorb big changes—a hallmark of democracy, he said. “The United States, after the black movement led by Martin Luther King, Jr., became a different country. If it had happened in another place, it could have caused a revolution, but here the system could absorb it.” To the outside world, America appeared to be a place to find justice and fairness. “But nowadays, I see a different face,” he said. “Something is going badly wrong in this country.”

America today is a capitalist democracy more than a liberal democracy, Soroush said: “Capital is the tyrant here.” Even justice—“the pounding heart of democracy”—has become expensive, he added. “I greatly fear that this may be lost—due to racism, and capitalist democracy and the justice system becoming weaker for the poor. Heaven forbid, if that happens, America would not be the aspiration of anyone in the world.”


The sorry state of America’s political and physical health ripples across the globe. The United States, long the bedrock of the Western alliance, is less inspirational today—and perhaps will be even less so tomorrow. “The United States has traditionally had an ability to reinvent itself,” Mark Leonard, the co-founder and director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, told me. “The brutality of the American political system—where entire élites get kicked out whenever there is a change of party at the top—has led to resilience historically. What you see now are structural problems much more difficult to solve.” He added that inequality is so “deeply baked”—in education, property and the economy, job opportunities, gerrymandering of voting districts, policing and justice, and the media—that America is now a “toxic brew” of problems. “That means there’s not much bandwidth in America for thinking about anything other than its culture wars,” he said.

This Fourth of July holiday is one of the most humbling in our history. Even at the height of world wars or the Great Depression, America inspired. But, today, the United States is destroying the moral authority it once had. There will still be fireworks. And the Statue of Liberty still towers over New York Harbor. But it is harder today to convince others that Americans embrace—or practice—the ideals that Lady Liberty represents.






Robin Wright has been a contributing writer to The New Yorker since 1988. She is the author of “Rock the Casbah: Rage and Rebellion Across the Islamic World.”

Hubble and ALMA mosaic captures stellar fireworks of star formation

By Michael Irving July 02, 2020

The Hubble and ALMA telescopes have captured some cosmic fireworks in a star-forming molecular cloud
ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), Y. Cheng et al.; NRAO/AUI/NSF, S. Dagnello; NASA/ESA Hubble
Astronomers are celebrating the 4th of July weekend in their own trademark fashion – by releasing a new image of some cosmic fireworks. The spectacular shot is made up of a mosaic of radio and infrared images, showing a cluster of young stars exploding into life.

The image captures a cluster called G286.21+0.17, located about 8,000 light-years from Earth in the Carina region of the Milky Way. There, stars are forming in dense molecular clouds, as pockets of dust and gas collapse and fire up under intense heat and pressure.

Taking a snapshot of this process in action required two telescopes imaging different electromagnetic wavelengths. The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) captured over 750 individual radio observations, while Hubble took nine infrared images of the same region.

Together the two instruments paint a fascinating picture of what’s happening. ALMA’s contributions can be seen in purple, representing the molecular clouds that are in the process of forming new stars. Those stars are where Hubble shines, capturing their infrared light in red and yellow.

An animated image showing the different layers of the molecular cloud
ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), Y. Cheng et al.; NRAO/AUI/NSF, S. Dagnello; NASA/ESA Hubble

In this shot, around a thousand newly-formed stars can be seen, including a large group of them bursting out of the cloud, in the upper right of the image. The energy and radiation they’re giving off is beginning to clear the clouds. The team says that the rest of the clouds look like they have enough mass to continue the process for another million years or so.

“This illustrates how dynamic and chaotic the process of star birth is,” says Jonathan Tan, co-author of the study. “We see competing forces in action: gravity and turbulence from the cloud on one side, and stellar winds and radiation pressure from the young stars on the other. This process sculpts the region. It is amazing to think that our own Sun and planets were once part of such a cosmic dance.”

The research was published in two papers in the Astrophysical Journal.

Source: National Radio Astronomy Observatory

Former World Leaders Warn Against Israeli Annexation Plan

The Elders, founded by Nelson Mandela, sent letters to the leaders of France, Germany, Britain and the European Union


A Palestinian man argues with an Israeli soldier during a protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank, in Jordan Valley, June 24, 2020. Credit: MOHAMAD TOROKMAN/ REUTERS 

WATCH WHERE YOU ARE POINTING THAT GUN THIS IS WHAT VIOLENCE LOOKS LIKE 
The Associated Press

A group of former world leaders urged European leaders on Friday to keep pressuring Israel against annexation of parts of the West Bank, warning against complacency after Israel made no move to take over the territory on July 1.

The Elders, founded by Nelson Mandela in 2007, said in letters to the leaders of France, Germany, Britain and the European Union that they should insist to Israel that annexation would have negative political and economic consequences for bilateral and regional relations.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had aimed to start the process by Wednesday, saying he wanted to begin annexing West Bank territory in line with President Donald Trump’s Mideast plan.

But Israeli Cabinet minister Ofir Akunis said the annexation process had been delayed, telling Israel’s Army Radio station on Wednesday that officials were still working out the final details with their American counterparts. He said he expected the annexation to take place later in July.

The two-state solution, backed by the U.N. Security Council and the vast majority of the international community, envisions an independent Palestinian state in the entire West Bank — territory Israel captured from Jordan in 1967 — and Gaza, with agreed land swaps. The Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of their state but the future of Jerusalem is considered a final status issue to be decided in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

The Trump administration’s peace plan, unveiled in January, envisions bringing some 30% of the West Bank under permanent Israeli control and gave a green light for Israel to annex that territory. The plan would establish a disjointed Palestinian state with limited autonomy in carved-up pockets of the remaining land. The Palestinians have vehemently rejected the plan as pro-Israeli.

The delay cast further uncertainty over whether Israel will ultimately follow through on the explosive annexation initiative, which has also drawn fierce international condemnations from some of Israel’s closest allies.

The United Nations, the EU and key Arab countries have all said annexation would violate international law and undermine the already diminished prospects of establishing a viable independent Palestinian state alongside Israel.

The Elders — led by former Irish President Mary Robinson with Mandela’s widow Graca Machel and former U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon as co-chairs — said annexation “is fundamentally contrary to the long-term interests of both the Israeli and the Palestinian peoples.”

They said annexation “will not dampen future Palestinian demands for rights and self-determination, but destroying hopes in a two-state compromise will increase the risks of future violence in one of the most combustible areas in the world.”

The Elders called on EU leaders to consider suspending the 27-nation’s Association Agreement with Israel if annexation goes ahead in any form. They also recalled the United Kingdom’s “historical and abiding responsibility” as the colonial power in pre-1948 Palestine.


The Elders’ appeal followed an appeal from British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to Israel to call off the annexation plan.

In a front-page article Wednesday in Yediot Ahronot, one of Israel’s largest newspapers, Johnson wrote that as a “passionate defender of Israel,” he was fearful that annexation will fail in the country’s objective of securing its borders, “and will be contrary to Israel’s own long-term interests.”

“I profoundly hope that annexation does not go ahead,” he said. “If it does, the UK will not recognize any changes to the 1967 lines, except those agreed between both parties.”

In addition to opposing annexation, the Elders reiterated their support for Israeli and Palestinian human rights defenders and civil society activists, saying their “voices need to be protected and amplified at this challenging time."

Ehud Olmert to 'Post': Israel is becoming a fascist country
At some point, after an incubation period, the buds of fascism begin to sprout and push forth from within the soil. We are well beyond the incubation period.

By EHUD OLMERT  JULY 2, 2020 

Jerusalem Post  Opinion

ZIONIST APARTHEID STATE ISRAEL ILLEGAL OCCUPATION 

OF PALESTINE

Israel Police close off a Muslim cemetery in Jaffa to protesters, June 17, 2020
(photo credit: ISRAEL POLICE)

EHUD OLMERT WAS THE 12TH PRIME MINISTER OF ISRAEL

Sliding down the slippery slope to fascism always starts with slight steps. Sometimes they’re so small that they are out of sight and invisible to the public consciousness. Their maturation period can be quite protracted, and they can manage to stay under the radar of public attention and out of the eye of the media, too, even though the media is supposed to be more sensitive.

At some point, after an incubation period, the buds of fascism begin to sprout and push forth from within the soil. From this point on, they can grow quite quickly, sometimes so quickly that it’s hard to stop them from contaminating everyone around them.

We are well beyond the incubation period. The buds have not only thrust down deep roots into the ground of our reality, but have already grown branches that are spreading quickly. Soon, we will be surprised when it becomes clear that the most fundamentally basic element that has enabled the State of Israel to become a strong, stable, credible and beloved country, despite all of our weaknesses that have been exposed, is disappearing from our lives: democracy.

I said that it starts with small things. Like when, for example, the prime minister, his wife and family members steal small amounts of money from the state treasury – because they are known to be morbidly stingy and want to exploit every chance to increase what the state pays them for their public service.

An almost trivial issue embarrassing even to mention – the theft of empty plastic bottles of soft drinks or cleaning liquids – purchased for the prime minister’s house. These were collected and stored by the mistress of the house, who then had them sent with a trusted courier to be redeemed for cash where the public pays for recycling of such bottles. 

Afterwards, they quietly pocket these hundreds, and sometimes even thousands of shekels.
They don’t return the money they received for recycling the bottles to the public, but instead keep it for themselves as pocket money. Yes, I agree, this sounds so petty, even embarrassing. I mean, for goodness sake, don’t you have anything more important to do than worry about a few thousand shekels? We’re talking about the prime minister, who is giving up his soul to serve the public. He could have earned millions in the private sector, but chooses instead to devote every day and night to taking care of us. Honestly.

In the end, all these little acts of thievery will be forgotten. But then they turn into larger acts. The family wants to eat especially good food, which also happens to be terribly expensive. So, they order it delivered, and to take the money from state coffers, they forge invoices, deceive the gatekeepers and charge the state

Perhaps some of us would be willing to let this go, too. It’s less embarrassing than turning such a minor detail into a public battle. They might say this is a little greedy. So what? For this we’re willing to fight with a prime minister whose entire being is devoted to state affairs?
And then they call their rich friends and ask for presents. Just like that. After all, it’s permissible to give friends presents and their friends are allowed to receive presents. And when it’s allowed, they take what they can. And when it’s permissible, they ask for what they want. And if it’s possible, they prosecute anyone they can.

It started with just one crate of champagne. But after a while, one crate turns into an entire truck with hundreds of crates, thousands of bottles, hundreds of cigars and expensive gold jewelry. The people who are giving these gifts are not volunteering them – they are being requested to offer them. And in the end, everyone does what they are asked to do.

Slowly, the family achieves immunity, as the public watches these acts taking place, but remains silent. Because they deserve this. Because they are taking care of us. Their status changes. They’ve morphed into a royal family. A family that deserves everything, that is permitted to just take anything they desire. The treasures of the country are open to it.

And that’s just the beginning. It starts here and moves on to the most delusional things that only happen in undemocratic regimes. By now, everything moves quickly, so it all seems natural and unstoppable. Requesting that the country’s secret services track civilians as a way to locate individuals who’ve been exposed to COVID-19 virus is one thing, but it quickly becomes clear this claim is unfounded.

THE SHIN BET’S (Israel Security Agency) capabilities are well-known. Gaining this information will not help lower the number of people who become infected with the virus. It could, however, expose citizens to constant monitoring by governmental bodies. Then it would be possible to take advantage of this information for matters that have nothing to do with the COVID-19 epidemic, by identifying citizens who have reason to fear being harassed by the authorities.

Then, of course, there is the police. The Israel Police consists of two divisions. The first is the Investigation Division, which until the next round of appointments to be decided by Minister of Public Security Amir Ohana (Likud), is known in certain circles as the government’s enemy. They are the investigators who come up with cases against the prime minister, his wife, and perhaps in the future also against his son. To these circles, the viewpoint is that hey must be stopped. The dangerous investigators among them, who could be used by opponents of the prime minister, need to be filtered out.

In their place, we (the people who hold this viewpoint) need to bring in people who know how to freeze investigations, who aren’t really interested in submarines, or in how the prime minister earned NIS 16 million in a very short period from an investment he made with money he received from his cousin and then invested in his cousin’s company. Investigators who won’t hurry to investigate why the prime minister failed to report earnings to the tax authority, or to pay taxes as he’s required to by law, or what is the connection between the company whose shares were “sold” to the prime minister by this cousin and the shipyards that are building submarines, or why and how he violated the instructions that require reporting this activity to the state comptroller.

The role of the second police division, according to the worldview of the current administration, is to silence anyone who takes advantage of their natural right to protest,and wants to make their voice heard and oppose the growing trend of governmental violence. The police officials who work in this division need to break up protests without hesitating. Does anyone remember the days when hundreds of people stood outside the house on Balfour Street and shouted out, “Murderer!” at former prime minister Menachem Begin? Did anybody imagine that police would be sent out then to arrest any of the protesters?

Today it is different. Police officers who are biding their time until the upcoming round of appointments, are arresting protesters who are following all of the rules. They are being handcuffed lest they get violent and dragged away. Soon the protests themselves will be deemed illegal and the protesters will be prosecuted. They will always be able to find reasonable grounds that are based on the need for law and order. They will be considered as protecting the government and maintaining proper leadership that can function under conditions of immunity from any disorder.

We are not at the beginning of this process – it is already well underway.

The highlight, of course, was the debate in the Knesset Finance Committee that was intended to line the prime minister’s bank account with another few hundred thousand or millions of shekels, that will retroactively be taken from tax refunds, following the present prime minister’s claim that he’s being discriminated against compared to his predecessors. This claim is false – those who preceded him never received any benefits whatsoever for the maintenance of their private homes, and therefore were not liable for paying taxes on this.

He’s “economically disabled,” shouted Netanyahu’s supporters, while at the same time he and his coalition counterparts voted against the bill that would have slightly improved the economic situation of the “disabled” people who were harmed and some of whom were left without the means to feed their families due to the mismanagement of the COVID-19 epidemic by the prime minister and his ministers.

The absolute separation between what is good for the prime minister and his family, and what serves his private needs, and what helps the citizens who he is meant to protect, is the crudest and most violent expression of utter disdain of the rules of the game. The norms need to characterize a democratic nation that operates on the basis of equality among all citizens.

In contrast, the norms should be distant from a regime that ignores these rules, which are increasingly eroded by the government through brutal force. And all of this is taking place in an atmosphere of intimidation, threats and silencing that manages to slowly but consistently tire out the opposition. This happens not only through parliamentary means, but also by suppressing many good citizens from expressing their opinions and trying to protect their rights.

This is going to end badly. It’s about to become the flame that will ignite violence on the streets of Israel. Netanyahu is not as well versed in history as he sometimes claims. And yet, he knows enough to understand that this unrest is quickly leading to civil unrest, which will end in bloodshed.

As with many crooks who came before him, who were voted into office in democratic elections, Netanyahu is using the power extended to him as the leader to crush anyone who attempts to oppose him. It’s not yet too late to stop the deterioration, but this could be our last chance.