It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Saturday, September 26, 2020
Analysis: Racial discrimination has been major factor in U.S. executions
Tuesday's report notes that of the 57 people presently on federal death row, 34 are persons of color. More than two dozen are Black men and some were convicted by all-White juries. File Photo by Paul Buck/EPA
Sept. 15 (UPI) -- The Death Penalty Information Center said in a new analysis Tuesday that racial discrimination in the United States has played a prominent role in the administration of capital punishment in the past.
The report, titled, "Enduring Injustice: the Persistence of Racial Discrimination in the U.S. Death Penalty," examines the way that people of color -- particularly Black Americans -- have disproportionately faced executions, lynchings and police killings.
"The death penalty has been used to enforce racial hierarchies throughout United States history, beginning with the colonial period and continuing to this day," said Ngozi Ndulue, DPIC senior director of research and special projects and the report's lead author.
"Its discriminatory presence as the apex punishment in the American legal system legitimizes all other harsh and discriminatory punishments. That is why the death penalty must be part of any discussion of police reform, prosecutorial accountability, reversing mass incarceration and the criminal legal system as a whole."
Tuesday's report notes that of the 57 people presently on federal death row, 34 are persons of color. More than two dozen are Black men and some were convicted by all-White juries.
The analysis specifically cites the cases of Abu-Ali Abdur Rahman, who's argued that a prosecutor unjustly removed two potential Black jurors based on racial stereotypes -- and Julius Jones, who was sentenced to death by an all-White jury for killing a White businessman.
The report said between 1990 and 2010, 20% of inmates scheduled for execution in North Carolina were sentenced by all-White juries, and qualified Black jurors were disqualified at more than twice the rate of their White counterparts in almost 200 capital cases.
A mock jury study of more than 500 Californians six years ago also found that White jurors were more likely to sentence poor Latino defendants to death than poor White defendants, Tuesday's report noted.
Further, it cited an analysis that found killers of Whites were more likely to face capital prosecution than killers of Blacks.
The DPIC report also tied the racial history of capital punishment to ongoing civil unrest over police brutality that followed the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, noting that exonorations of Black Americans are more likely to be linked to some type of official misconduct.
A separate report on Tuesday similarly found that more than half exonerations of innocent victims of all races involved some type of misconduct by prosecutors or police.
"Racial disparities are present at every stage of a capital case and get magnified as a case moves through the legal process," DPIC Executive Director Robert Dunham said.
"If you don't understand the history -- that the modern death penalty is the direct descendant of slavery, lynching and Jim Crow-segregation -- you won't understand why."
N.C. Supreme Court reduces 3 death row inmates' sentences to life]
Sept. 25 (UPI) -- The North Carolina Supreme Court on Friday reduced three death row inmates' sentences to life in prison after they appealed under a now-defunct law that protected against racial bias.
They each sought a new sentence under the Racial Justice Act, which was passed in 2009 but repealed by Republicans in 2013. The law allows death row inmates to appeal their sentences if there's evidence of racial bias.
The state Supreme Court this summer ruled that even though the law was repealed in 2013, it could still be applied retroactively to cases tried before the repeal.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which represented the three defendants, hailed the high court's decision.
"Today's decision affirms that the state won't sweep evidence of the racism people experienced in their capital cases under the rug. It's an important move towards rectifying the harm that has been caused," the organization said.
Augustine was convicted of killing a Fayetteville, N.C., police officer in 2001; Golphin of killing a North Carolina Highway Patrol trooper and a Cumberland County sheriff's deputy in 1997; and Walters of two gang-related killings.
Michelangelo Caravaggio, The Calling of Saint Matthew (1599–1600). Photo: Public Domain
Again and again during this pandemic, unable to actually see art in person, I have time-traveled within myself for sustenance — with the help of the internet, of course. Viewing art online flattens the contextual experience: It is just as easy, or just as difficult, to call up a Renaissance masterpiece as a contemporary painting, and each appears on my computer screen in precisely the same way, without any of the trappings of art-historical importance (gilded frames, museum lighting, grand settings) or contemporary novelty (the vacuum-quiet space of a blue-chip gallery, the buzz of hype).
In these sessions of inner priestcraft, I invariably arrive in the past, indeed always the distant past, often the Renaissance. Lately, I’ve been traveling to Rome in 1600, when, at the age of 28, Michelangelo Caravaggio triggered a thermo-nuclear artistic explosion when the first two of his paintings of St. Matthew were installed in a small, newly built chapel in a church. Even then, everyone knew something shocking had happened. Painters were “looking upon his works as miracles,” it was written. Rivals groused that “this monster of genius” had wrought the “end of painting.” Artists had spent the previous 50 years revering Raphael, Leonardo, and Michelangelo, so much that ersatz Renaissance paintings had become a cottage industry among worshipful painters and princes wanting to show they had the same taste as popes and potentates — much like current monkey-see-monkey-do collectors of contemporary art. Yet there were brilliant Mannerists like Pontormo and Bronzino, who were estranged from this type of classicizing but found ways around it by wildly exaggerating certain aspects of Renaissance paintings: elongating necks, fingers, and torsos till bodies became paranormal apparitions to express strained emotions in ethereal spaces. In one fell swoop, Caravaggio shattered Renaissance wholeness, clarity, recessional space, and unity, along with Mannerism’s aristocratic affectations, anxious self-consciousness, and abstruse optical effects. (I adore Mannerism for all of this.) Caravaggio’s work seems to unleash new human forces into art; whirling, corkscrewing space; shafts of light and shadow; theatricality; and, above all, a new, colossal unideal naturalism of painting from life. He creates an almost modern psychological interiority that leads directly to geniuses like Rembrandt and Velázquez (who dispense with theatrics for miracles of sensual inwardness), Vermeer and Bernini, and, in English literature, to John Milton’s lines like “Blood, death, and deathful deeds are in that noise, Ruin, destruction at the utmost point.” All this is why Caravaggio’s follower Nicolas Poussin praised him for coming “into the world to destroy painting.”
Caravaggio would be dead within ten years, but he changed art history. He arrived in Rome in his early 20s, destitute and often in trouble, but was soon taken in by a Medici-family associate. Before his life and career were over, the constant brawler was arrested numerous times, imprisoned, convicted of murder, and sentenced to beheading; he escaped south and never returned to Rome. He may have been murdered himself while trying to get back. Nevertheless, he was, in his few years, a pop-culture superstar loved by the people and controversial among the clergy. Caravaggio’s titanic new style is called Baroque, and it transformed painting, sculpture, architecture, music, literature, fountains, cities, religion — everything. The Baroque feels vital now in the way it refuses to accept a simple world of surfaces, rule-bound theoretical art, and overly thought-out scenes and instead probes deeper into the core of lived experience.
The commission for the Matthew cycle came in July 1599, courtesy of that Medici connection, and paved the way to stardom for the unruly, unconventional painter while allowing this new chapel to take a chance on a new artist. A lot rode on this commission; plus, the pope might even see it. The cycle was painted in a tear — he must have been on fire. The last painting of the story was begun first, The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew. It is the greatest depiction ever made of what Shakespeare, writing concurrently, in Hamlet, calls “murder most foul.” Two large figures center the painting, one of them a twisting, nearly naked young man with a pointed rapier in his right hand. He is standing over and grimacing in fury at an older man who is sprawled on the ground between his legs. He has murdered the old man, running his heart through with the now-withdrawn sword. Blood spurts from the mortal wound. That man is Matthew; this is his martyrdom; he is already dying. The slayer stands in dominion over Matthew the way Muhammad Ali stood over a knocked-out Sonny Liston. This is the exact second before death, an instant of action, and pain, never before or since rendered this realistically, horrifically, or beautifully. We are stunned, hypnotized, repelled, frightened, fascinated, confused, and stupefied by it all. Caravaggio’s realism is so derived from observation that the scene becomes undeniable. The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew (1599–1600). Photo: Public Domain
According to some tellings, Matthew was martyred in Ethiopia after saying Mass. This is why he wears vestments here and seems to be on the steps of an altar. People in various states of nakedness suggest baptisms. All the dress is contemporary; the executioner appears to have been painted from life and was perhaps a friend of Caravaggio’s. Predator and prey form this riveting, still center of the pandemonium around them. The geometry is a kind of swirling, chambered-nautilus spiral. There may be 13 figures here, but it’s hard to make them all out; it’s like some pictorial deep-sea vent.
Our eyes search for anything anchored — some place of stability among the chaos. There it is: Above Matthew, visible only to him, is a beautiful, winged angel who twists and bends to offer the palm of martyr-dom to the dying disciple. An altar boy in white robes screams and flees. His right arm mimics Matthew’s; his trunk turns the opposite way of the murderer’s. Caravaggio often echoes, opposes, mirrors, and flip-flops poses. Often someone will face forward next to a figure facing away. In the darkness over the swordsman’s right forearm, we see the artist, large boned, brooding, staring, and intense.
As maximal as the Martyrdom is, the Calling of St. Matthew is minimal. This is the scene where Christ calls Matthew as his disciple. The entire top of this picture is almost empty. That’s radical! Whole areas are just blackness. In a dim room, five figures sit around a table. We know Matthew was a Jewish tax collector. He’s the richly dressed patrician with a coin in his hat; his right hand is near the money pile in front of him. Note his elegant belt. Around him are a man apparently paying his taxes, an associate, and two sword-wielding, thuggish young buccaneers, typical types of Caravaggio’s time, when Rome was overrun with crime, unemployed soldiers, mercenaries, gangs, and local Mafia-like warlords.
Jesus and Peter appear on the right. Jesus raises his hand and arm toward the table. This gesture intentionally echoes Michelangelo’s Sistine-ceiling Adam extending his left hand to be touched by God. This makes sense for an artist saying there’s a new game in town; narratively, Christ is also known as the “the new Adam.” (Challenging Michelangelo so directly took amazing guts and risked offending the taste of any patron insulted by this gesture of pictorial gall.) A beam of light from above Jesus dawns across the room. It shines on Matthew, who instinctively raises his left hand as if to wonder, Who, me? In the Bible, Jesus calls Matthew thusly: “ ‘Follow me’ … And Matthew got up and followed him.” Some say Matthew is gesturing at the man to his right, as if saying, “Who, him?” Yet this man has no idea what’s going on around him and still looks down. Now examine Matthew’s legs and feet. They unconsciously turn toward Jesus. This is Matthew in the act of leaving one life and joining another. Talk about being “called.” Caravaggio is mind-blowing this way. The Inspiration of Saint Matthew (1602). Photo: Public Domain
The final painting in the cycle, the Inspiration of St. Matthew, is Matthew writing his Gospel. He has just arrived at a table — there’s an open book on it waiting for him — and dipped his pen into an inkwell. He’s so taken by something that he hasn’t even sat down and turns on one knee while standing. (The stool is about to fall off the ledge it’s on.) I’ve never seen anyone painted this way before or since. I know this pose in my bones, though. I’ve run to my desk in the grip of imagined inspiration like this, possessed. Matthew isn’t looking at the page. He looks above him at the same seraph we see in the Martyrdom. This angel gestures with his fingers as if counting — one, two, three, this, then that, then the next — as if establishing and clarifying the narrative of the life of Jesus that Matthew is attempting to set down. It is patient angelic aid for an author trying to get this right. In effect, the angel is consoling him, saying, “Okay, Matthew, first comes the Sermon on the Mount, then the loaves and the fishes, then his entry into Jerusalem, then the Last Supper.”
I’ve seen these paintings thrice; each time ranks among the best days of my life. In this, my 188th day of quarantine, largely away from galleries and museums and fixated on the chaos around us, something in these paintings called to me. A mystery of some kind beckons; a skeleton key that wants turning. I can’t stop thinking about that angel showing Matthew how to write, the same one who reaches quietly downward, extending the palm as Matthew’s arm rises upward. This way of rising speaks volumes. But what is it telling us? Then, bam, after ten days, I see it. Amid all the action, observation, and dramatics, a paradoxical deep content opens. It is slowness — the slowness of Matthew wondering, not quite knowing what is happening in any of the paintings; a slowness that makes him me, you, all of us. Humanness.
In the painting of him writing, I see an author at a loss for words to suit the subject, trying, failing, hoping a ghost of inspiration might appear. This is a slowness and desperation that all writers and artists know. The Martyrdom is a man looking away from his killer, knowing another presence is here, not knowing what, coming to terms with something, allowing his hand to reach in wonder toward this otherness he feels above him. None of this comes with a lightning bolt of revelation and is more like the gradual, almost glacial, boreal reckonings I have been feeling these days away from the world yet watching the world lurch in starts. Matthew’s hand doesn’t extend in protest or terror. It extends in a gradual, final acceptance of grace, of knowing something new. In these frozen moments of painting, time eases into some cosmic soup of slow knowing. This lets me finally let go, too. I give up on knowing how Caravaggio created this quelling quietude of balm within clamorous space. Instead, I just savor it.
*This article appears in the September 28, 2020, issue of New York Magazine.
Aaron Sorkin’s Annoying Tics Are Actually Good in The Trial of the Chicago 7 By Alison WillmoreMOVIE REVIEW SEPT. 25, 2020 The speeches, the grandstanding, the quips — they totally work in the context of this Netflix courtroom drama. Photo: Niko Tavernise/Netflix
The most maddening, irresistible proposition in an Aaron Sorkin production is that a speech can change hearts and minds. Sorkin loves speech, period — motormouthed walk-and-talks where the cleverness of the characters mitigates the fact that they sound awfully similar, quippy exchanges that ping-pong back around to an eventual callback, arguments that rise in a calculated crescendo until one character breaks into a yell and the room abruptly falls silent. He’s a playwright who moved into film and then television and, more recently, started to direct. The Trial of the Chicago 7, about the protests at the 1968 Democratic National Convention and the seven participants who were charged by the federal government with crimes like conspiracy and inciting a riot, is Sorkin’s second venture behind the camera, after Molly’s Game in 2017. But he’ll always be a writer first, and you can see it in his certainty that the correct words, delivered with the proper amount of conviction, can win someone over from the other side of the aisle, even if it’s only one instance — cracking a closed mind open with some carefully crafted sentences.
There are a lot of speeches in The Trial of the Chicago 7, but it’s hard to mind, given what it’s about. This film is one of those exhilarating instances when Sorkin finds a context in which all of his well-established impulses that can be so annoying elsewhere — the self-righteousness, the straw men, the great men, the men who aren’t onstage but are nevertheless digging deep in their diaphragms to deliver their lines to the back row — actually work. (It helps that there are almost no women here for Sorkin to mangle.) It’s about a trial, and it’s about activism, two worlds where people spend a lot of time trying to move hearts and minds with instances of grandstanding. The film moves between these innately theatrical spheres with a crackling energy, slipping easily from the courtroom in 1969 to the preparations and protests in 1968. What makes it so rousing is not the floridness of the dialogue but the way it’s used to acknowledge that moral clarity is not an end unto itself. While Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Schultz (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), acting at the behest of the new Nixon administration, tries to create a monolithic bogeyman out of the “radical left,” we’re shown how little agreement there actually is on the side of the seven defendants as to what it means and how to effect change.
There’s so little agreement that there are actually eight defendants when the trial begins. Black Panther co-founder Bobby Seale (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) insists on his own representation, despite being forced to fend for himself after his lawyer has a medical emergency. It’s politically expedient for the prosecution to group Bobby in with the others in what they dub “the all-star team,” but he rejects the forced comparison — “Your life, it’s a fuck-you to your father, right? And you can see how that’s different from a rope on a tree?” he asks Tom Hayden (Eddie Redmayne) midway through the movie, after Fred Hampton (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) is killed by the FBI. Tom and Rennie Davis (Alex Sharp) are part of Students for a Democratic Society, and their focus on stopping the war and winning elections doesn’t entirely jibe with the anti-authoritarian Yippies, as represented by Abbie Hoffman (Sacha Baron Cohen) and Jerry Rubin (Jeremy Strong), who want a cultural revolution as well as a political one. Their readiness to hurl Molotov cocktails in turn contrasts with David Dellinger’s (John Carroll Lynch) committed pacifism. John Froines (Danny Flaherty) and Lee Weiner (Noah Robbins), more minor players who comment from the sidelines, muse that “this is the Academy Awards of protests, and as far as I’m concerned, it’s an honor just to be nominated.”
It’s a sprawling ensemble — capped by Mark Rylance and Ben Shenkman, as the group’s attorneys, William Kunstler and Leonard Weinglass, and Michael Keaton in a small but pivotal role — and Cohen and Strong emerge as the standouts. They sometimes feel like a stoner-comedy duo, with Strong doing a voice best described as Tommy Chong by way of Bullwinkle J. Moose. But Cohen emphasizes Abbie’s shrewdness, the intention behind all the jokey irreverence. The Trial of the Chicago 7 plays fast and loose with certain details; when Seale was infamously bound and gagged at the order of Judge Julius Hoffman (Frank Langella), who wears his biases openly, it was for days, not for the minutes shown in the movie before his trial is severed from the rest of the defendants’. But as an account of history as filtered through Sorkin’s sensibility, the film takes a thrillingly unexpected, if also understated, turn against civility. When Abbie and Tom have it out over who should be the one among them to take the stand, it’s Abbie whose point is the better one and Abbie who tells the courtroom, “I think the institutions of our democracy are wonderful things that right now are populated by terrible people.”
Sorkin will always romanticize the idea of the honorable conservative and the promise of polite bipartisanship that accompanies it. At the end of a talk at the San Sebastián Film Festival earlier this week, he offered up his scenario for how he would script the end of Election Night, and it was more unbearable than anything The Newsroom had to offer: Trump refuses to concede, and “for the first time, his Republican enablers march up to the White House and say, ‘Donald, it’s time to go.’” It’s the reason that fantasy of the perfect speech is as nauseating as it is appealing: It’s one based around the idea that there’s a universal understanding of what is right and that everyone wants to act on behalf of it, once enlightened or appropriately shamed. From the first time Gordon-Levitt appears onscreen as Schultz, who is portrayed as an eager up-and-comer disturbed by some of the trial’s developments, it’s obvious that the movie won’t be able to resist giving us some sign that he’s not just a good soldier. It’s an eye-rolling moment but minor compared with the film’s underlying acknowledgement that this trial was about attempting to punish people for refusing to abide by rules and structures that are inherently unfair. The movie ends not with a speech but with a listing of names — a reminder that demands for respectability and good behavior can equal demands for silence, especially when the straightforward speaking of facts counts as rebellion.
DEJA VU DOO
THE TOMB: DEVIL'S REVENGE Trailer (2020) Shatner Vs. Satan PLOT: John Brock is a down-on-his-luck archaeologist who returns from an expedition to the caves of rural Kentucky, after unsuccessfully trying to locate a mysterious relic that his family has sought for generations. Upon his return, John starts to see dream-like visions of a ferocious bird-like creature from ancient folklore.
John soon learns that the cave he came into contact with on his last expedition was indeed the cave that contains the relic, and also a portal to Hell and a place of worship for the occult. John discovers that the only way to stop the increasingly realistic visions is to go back to the cave with his family, find the relic once and for all, and destroy it...
CAST: William Shatner, Jeri Ryan (Star Trek: Voyager), Jason Brooks (Star Trek, 2009), Jackie Dallas (Stranger Things) and Michael Yahn (Daredevil).
Nick Sweat1 week ago This movie's been out for close to a year now. It's horrible by the way, just warning anybody thinking of watching it>
Earl Richardson1 week ago (edited) Fact Check: Aired in 01-Oct.-2019 to watch try Amazon prime. It was released as "Devil's Revenge". In US.
WAIT A MINUTE SPEAKING OF REALLY BAD MOVIES WITH SHATNER VS SATAN
CHECK OUT THIS SEVENTIES DRIVE IN THROW BACK
Featuring William Shatner as Mark Preston, Ernest Borgnine as Jonathan Corbis, Tom Skerritt as Tom Preston, Ida Lupino as Mrs. Preston, Anton LaVey as High Priest, and John Travolta in his first feature film role as Danny ("Blasphemer! Blasphemer!").
Opinion:
A Little Bit of History Repeating – The New “Satanic Panic”
We live in a strange world, my friends, one that is populated with many colorful personalities and individuals. Our diversity is our strength. We have no shortage of opinions, perspectives, and voices and that myriad of voices is what makes the “alterative spirituality movement” as robust and vibrant as it is.
[Envanto Elements]
While many of those voices–if not most— are what adds strength and beauty to our communities, there are some that are – either in their ignorance or outright derangement — a growing threat to rational thought and the health of our society. A dire-sounding warning, and not one that I am leveling lightly.
I am referring to QAnon, the latest manifestation of group psychosis and hysteria to hit the scene since a failed businessman and mediocre reality TV show host was gobsmackingly elected to the nation’s highest office. Even I have been tempted to at least consider the possibility that the CERN collider timeline-slip theory might actually have some merit at this point. (Okay, fine – maybe not.)
A QAnon supporter at a 2019 rally for Donald Trump’s re-election [Marc Nozell, Wikimedia Commons, CC 2.0]
I’m a warlock of a certain age, and so I remember the Satanic Panic and what it did to real people’s lives. Accusations of a global Satanic conspiracy that had infiltrated police and governments abounded, in which member-families were alleged to ritually abuse and even sacrifice their children to the devil, often drinking their children’s blood in their macabre rites. No evidence was ever found, of course, because of “the conspiracy,” and perhaps even because of special technology not available to the public like portable cremation machines.
It was all so over the top that it’s hard to think anybody ever actually believed in it. But believe it they did, and real people went to jail without a scrap of physical evidence. The McMartin preschool scandal in 1983 was a precursor to the more recent Pizzagate, but both shared the same DNA: both involved accusations of occultist pedophiles operating with impunity under everyone’s noses, enough to stoke real fears even if nothing ever actually happened.
It might have been “fake news,” but real people’s lives were destroyed as a result. Like Damien Echols of the “West Memphis Three,” who in 1993, was wrongfully convicted, along with two other teens, of the grisly murders of three eight-year-old boys in what law enforcement and the media proclaimed to be the result of a “Satanic ritual.” While there was no physical evidence linking the teenagers to the murders, Echols was interested in the occult, and this proved to be all that was needed for the prosecution to focus on him in what became a literal witch trial.
Now in hindsight, it all sounds somewhat incongruous, in much the same way that the events of the Salem witchcraft trials might sound as much to the modern observer. But taken contextually, these intangible, unprovable accusations remain enough to stoke fear to the degree that eventually anything seems possible, even the otherwise unthinkable – no matter how far-fetched, demonstrably false, or downright absurd. The West Memphis Three spent eighteen years of their lives in prison because of unfounded fears and prejudices. And some people are still in prison because of the Satanic Panic today.
When I first heard of QAnon it seemed easy enough to dismiss. It’s not even that original an idea; it directly draws from anti-Semitic propaganda and repurposes many of the same claims and accusations that have been leveled against Jewish people for centuries, repackaging them for a new fad movement of pop hatred, only disguised in the form of defending the vulnerable. The ultimate “concern trolls,” QAnon believers hide behind the fallacy of “protecting children” – and in so doing, may actually be hurting the very cause they think they are here to champion.
What causes my concern, however, is the sheer number of people who seem to be – for lack of a better phrase — “body snatched” by the movement, as if their brains have been rewired to only believe what the cult tells them to believe. Despite all evidence to the contrary, they believe wholeheartedly that they are the only ones that have it right and that the rest of us are either ignorant sheep or part of the secretive cabal as well. And in part, we are to blame.
TWH’s readers may already know this, but it recently came to my attention that, depending on where a person lives, their Google results will be drastically different. And we’re not just talking about which Starbucks is closest or what the local Walmart’s hours are. We will get fundamentally different results in terms of news and information and current topics.
For extra credit do this little experiment: In a separate page, go to Google and type in “Climate change is” and observe what the predictive search suggestions say. Feel free to share the results in the comments section of this article.
I’ll start:
What does Google say where you live? [S. Faerywolf]
This underscores the necessity to get our information from multiple sources, but we also have to consider those sources as well. For years I have heard people on the Left as well as the Right bemoan the existence of “corporate media”. The accusation is that, since these media conglomerates are privately owned businesses, it is in their best interest to not report on activities that would cast a bad light on their corporate masters. I do think that this is a concern, but not to the degree that it has been assumed by this growing fringe. And this is a fringe that has easily infiltrated the Pagan and spiritual communities, and been quietly growing in plain sight for many, many years.
In the “Venn diagram” of Pagan community fringe interests, QAnon seems to fall somewhere in the middle, between alternative healing, chemtrail enthusiasts, anti-vaxxers, the transphobes, and the racists. With respect to alternative healing, the rest of these ideologies have usually been begrudgingly tolerated in some form at the Pagan events I have attended over the years in various states across the US, with more of a push in recent years to weed-out the more racist and transphobic elements. But corrosive ideologies do not simply go away when they are swept under the rug or into a corner. They fester. They grow. They mutate.
The poison remains, only now clothed in the garments of current events, seemingly new, but really just telling the same sad old story: from the depth of our feelings of powerlessness and insignificance, we turn to crutches and to the vice of small-minded ideologies because we find comfort in them. We find comfort in them because they make us feel larger than others, and that, to a wounded ego, is what we think will bring us healing and satisfaction.
The followers of QAnon truly believe that they are in possession of special knowledge and that they are truly awake, while the rest of us remain asleep. This is a tactic used in cults to help separate members from “outside influences;” it is employed in all the cults that are effective, even cults that have are typically called religions, including Christianity, Mormonism, Scientology, and the like. If members can be separated into “Us vs. Them,” then the battle is already half-won.
Right now, that battle is very real. I have been personally shocked at some who have suddenly “turned to the dark side.” People whom I casually knew but whom I thought were sane, balanced individuals, now spouting pro-Trump memes that draw directly from racist propaganda, without a flicker of conscious awareness of what they are actually serving. In one recent exchange, when confronted with the argument that there was no scientific basis for any of their spurious claims, their response was, “Well, who funds your science?” (I hadn’t realized it was my science. I sort of assumed it was for everyone.) And that, as they say, was that.
For practitioners of spirituality, this level of unconscious bypassing is alarming as many of these individuals have positioned themselves to be authorities in their largely insular communities, creating the perfect environment for the rot of cultish thinking to flourish.
It is important that we research for ourselves but not limit ourselves to social media like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, or 8Chan. (I think I just threw up in my mouth a little.) If one were to assume that the corporate media is lying to the public, then what exactly do we think these platforms would be doing any different? If the goal is to suppress free speech, as is alleged, then what is stopping the corporations that own Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and 8Chan from doing the same? The goodness of their hearts? How is social media more credible than the Associated Press? Or BBC News? Or Reuters? I’m supposed to get my news from the same place that made PewDiePie famous for – I’m checking my notes – being anti-Semitic and racist?
It used to be funny. Oh, that person believes in chemtrails. That one is a flat earther. This one believes that they have alien DNA. But now it isn’t funny. Things are getting serious. Trump has praised and courted the conspiracists and now this shade of crazy is just a shade away from being brought into Congress. We are already on the precipice of a functional democracy, experiencing a pandemic during the most closely watched election cycle of more than a century. And now we have another pandemic, one born of denial, cognitive dissonance, racism, and propaganda. And it’s so much closer than we could have imagined. It’s in our neighborhoods, maybe even in our covens. Qanon believers see Trump as a savior, and they intend to keep him in office.
The world holds its breath.
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To protest against reform bills, farmers block Delhi-Noida road at Sector 14A NOIDA
Updated: Sep 25, 2020
Shafaque Alam
Farmers from Noida Friday blocked the city’s border with Delhi for over two hours to protest against three farm reforms bills passed by Parliament last week, throwing traffic in the area out of gear till afternoon.
A number of farmers bodies, under the aegis of Bharatiya Kisan Union, had come together to march from Noida to Delhi in support of the nationwide protest, but were stopped on the way by police.
More than 150 farmers —all members of Bharatiya Kisan Union — reached Noida Gate near Mayur Vihar border around 11.45am, but were met by barricades that had been set up by Delhi Police personnel.
Around 150 Delhi Police personnel — armed with anti-riot gear — were deployed at Chilla village on the border on Friday morning in a bid to prevent the agitating farmers from crossing over to the national capital.
The deployment of Delhi Police personnel at Alipur on the Delhi-Haryana border was minimal.
The farmers parked several tractors and cars on the Noida side of the border, completely halting vehicular movement from both sides. The protesters blocked the road till 2pm, slowing down vehicular movement on the Noida-Greater Noida Expressway, and forcing the police to divert traffic.
According to Delhi deputy commissioner of police (east) Jasmeet Singh, traffic going towards Noida was diverted towards other border points, including New Ashok Nagar, Kondli, and Mayur Vihar Phase-3. Except the Chilla border, which was blocked for nearly three hours, all other routes connecting Noida from Delhi, including the Delhi-Noida Direct flyway, were open for motorists. The traffic diversion, however, caused some confusion among several motorists.
At 12.44 pm, the Delhi Traffic tweeted a traffic alert, informing the public about the “obstruction in traffic at Chilla border due to demonstration.”
However, the police, in a tweet two hours later, said that the traffic had returned to normal.
Uttar Pradesh (UP) police officers spoke with leaders of the farmers’ groups in Noida, said Alok Kumar, joint commissioner of police (JCP), (eastern range), Delhi Police.
The farmers were apprised about the guidelines of Unlock 4, which prohibits any kind of mass gathering or protests across the country, including the national capital, owing to the Covid-19 pandemic after which the protests were called off.
The three farm bills approved by Parliament, the Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Bill; Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance; and Farm Services Bill and The Essential Commodities (Amendment) Bill, have become contentious issues.
The new laws aim to liberalise the agriculture sector by removing hurdles created by the Agriculture Marketing Produce Committee (AMPC) Act in direct procurement of agriculture produce by buyers and create a level-playing field for all, thereby allowing private players a bigger role in farm trade.
Farmer bodies and opposition parties say that these reform bills take away price protection provided through Minimum Support Price (MSP), whereas the government maintains that MSP will remain in place and the bills will ensure higher remuneration for farmers.
BKU’s NCR chapter president, Subhash Chaudhary said through the bills, the government will abolish mandis (agricultural produce marketing committees) and open avenues for corporates to directly access farmers’ produce.
“There are no measures in the bills to ensure farmers are able to sell their produce at decent rates. The government should at least ensure that grains are bought at or above the MSP. The government is promoting capitalism with the bills, and hence farmers demand amendments in them,” he said.
Ashok Bhati, spokesperson, BKU (Noida), said the farmers had held a symbolic protest in different districts of Uttar Pradesh on September 21 as well. “We had requested the government to address our grievances. The government ignored our demands hence we hit the streets,” he said. Bhati said the government framed the three bills— Farmers Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Bill, 2020, Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement of Price Assurance and Farm Services Bill, 2020; and the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Bill, 2020—without consulting farmers and without safeguarding their interest.
Vipin Pradhan,a farmer leader, said that the farmers submitted a memorandum to senior police officers demanding the three bills to be rolled back.
Kumar Ranvijay, additional deputy commissioner of police, Noida, said the protest was peaceful. “We had diverted the Delhi-bound traffic to DND Flyway and Kalindi Kunj. The police personnel were also deployed at the DND Flyway loops and Noida Expressway to guide the commuters. Delhi Police had diverted Noida-bound traffic to internal roads,” he said.
Ganesh Saha, deputy commissioner of police, (traffic) Noida said arrangements were placed on time to divert the traffic in light of the protest and there were no jams on Thursday.
The happy hug of a clinic clown
It is established that dementia rates are rising worldwide. According to the World Health Organization, 50 million people already suffer from dementia, with 10 million new cases being added every year
The happy hug of a clinic clown
6 min read.Updated: 25 Sep 2020, 10:20 PM ISTPriti Salian
As dementia rates rise worldwide, clinic clowns are helping to induce positive emotions and create a sense of well-being among patients
In Auroville, a few years ago, a bed-ridden woman was watching Fif Fernandes attentively as she sang and pranced around, playing on her ukulele. When the woman, who was living with dementia, finally smiled, Fernandes asked, “What did you do as a child?" The woman beamed and drifted into a childhood memory, when as a four-year-old she would travel on a bullock cart with her father to get an ice lolly. “The lolly melted and dripped down my chin, and then down my clothes, and then it broke and fell," she recalled just before her thoughts meandered elsewhere.
It is established that dementia rates are rising worldwide. According to the World Health Organization, 50 million people already suffer from dementia, with 10 million new cases being added every year. India itself has about 4.1 million cases, as The World Alzheimer’s Report 2015 notes. Experts believe this number may be higher, since many cases go undiagnosed, with people ascribing forgetfulness to old age. In such a scenario, clinic clowns, or clowns working in healthcare spaces, can be harbingers of joy to the elderly. Studies show that they induce positive emotions and a sense of well-being among patients.
Fernandes is one of the handful of trained clinic clowns in India. After practising for over 30 years in Canada, she moved to Auroville and co-founded MeDiClown Academy in 2013 with her husband, Hamish Boyd, also a therapeutic clown. The academy’s work entails training and conducting workshops for individuals and organizations. The couple also visits people of all ages in hospitals and senior homes across cities. “Music is a huge part of what we do," says Fernandes. “It brings back beautiful memories for the elderly."
Once she is in an elderly person’s room, she observes pictures on the wall, a favourite pillow or a dress, which can be used in conversation. Once she has forged a connection, Fernandes recreates stories related to those objects through her clowning skills.
Once, for instance, an elderly woman with dementia told Fernandes that as a nine-year-old, she would walk to the village school with her four sisters. “One day, when we reached school late, we covered up by saying that the milk pot broke at home and that delayed us," recalls Fernandes. The teacher believed the five sisters and gave them a glass of milk each. In the evening, she told their mother, who was angry with the children for lying. Fernandes took cues from the story and enacted it for the lady with her colleagues. “The elderly love to go back to their childhood and like the freedom to laugh and be silly with clowns," chimes in Boyd.
Such exercises are significant for people with dementia; they often feel lost because they can’t remember things. “Families keep checking about facts and dates, without realizing the trauma and agitation it can cause," explains Fernandes. “Role-playing their narratives, under their direction, gives them the power to be in control without being challenged about their memory. We never tell them something could not have happened, however surprising it may appear."
Clowning in hospital settings was first started in North America in 1986 by Michael Christensen, co-founder of the New York-based Big Apple Circus. Karen Ridd (Robo the Clown), a child life specialist, simultaneously founded Canada’s first therapeutic clown programme at the Winnipeg Children’s Hospital. The practice later spread to Europe.
Since the 1990s, it has played a particularly significant role in Germany, where one in five citizens is over 65, and almost 10% of the seniors have dementia. Take Arnsberg, a city of 73,000 that is considered a model for inclusion of the elderly. It has nine trained clinic clowns like Julia Wille, who goes by the clown name of Mia Mumpitz and visits senior homes at least once a month.
The process has a therapeutic value for clowns too. Wille, 46, found her calling in clowning more than four years ago, during a long spell of clinical depression. “I saw a picture of a clinic clown in a newspaper and instantly knew the road ahead for myself," she recalls. She works at an assisted living facility in Arnsberg but has been doing honorary clowning work at elderly care facilities. “Clowning has kept me in good mental health without medication," she says.
One cheerful morning in July, Mia Mumpitz entered Helena Desol’s room at the St Anna home with a loud and affectionate “Hola", a red clown nose covering her own, hair pulled up into ponytails and lips defined with red gloss. Spain-born Desol, who is 80, lost the ability to speak a few years ago but squealed with delight on seeing her. Like a long-lost friend, Mumpitz enclosed her in a hug. Desol wrapped her left arm around Mumpitz—it’s her good side, ever since she suffered a paralytic attack.
Mumpitz then broke into a song, placed her hands on her waist and began the footwork. Eyes brimming with joy, Desol swung back and forth in her armchair and hummed along.
“About a third of the 90 residents at St Anna have dementia, and benefit from clown visits," says Dagmar Freimuth, the leader of social service at St Anna. Wille’s clowning gently persuades elderly people to participate in her activities. “Sometimes, though, all it takes is a gentle touch to reduce their agitation and anxiety caused by dementia," Wille says.
One of the residents of St Anna stopped talking to everyone after his sister’s death but opened up after the clowns cajoled him, recalls Wille. “An old lady always shooed me away, however hard I tried talking to her, but one day I happened to sing a song from her childhood and that was it. I am always welcome in her room now," Wille smiles.
Johannes Föster, who trained to be a clinic clown three years ago at the age of 72 and now volunteers as Clown Berti in Arnsberg, interjects with another story. There is a woman, Föster says, who would never respond to the clowns, but the last time she saw him in the lounge, she said, “Have a nice day!" Föster smiles, “I think she is coming around."
Fernandes has seen similar results in India, where medical clowning is still in its infancy. There are only a handful of individuals and groups working in Mumbai, Chennai and Bengaluru. Like Sheetal Agarwal, a former teacher who got into clowning in 2016 and founded Clownselors, now heads a team of 15 regular volunteers in Delhi. Then there is Humanitarian Clowns, which has had 250 volunteers visiting hospitals and old-age homes for the past eight years in Vellore and sometimes Chennai.
Generally, however, the absence of training institutes means clinic clowns are untrained and doing voluntary work. Which is why, in August 2019, MeDiClown Academy started its first 600-hour course on medical clowning with 11 students, to educate participants on art, storytelling, yoga, music and improvisation. “We want medical clowning to become a respectable profession in the country," says Boyd.
Students learn about patient psychology, dealing with care facilities and working in tandem with a medical team. “However," emphasizes Fernandes, “the most important thing for clowns is to know how to make a connection with their heart."
Priti Salian is a freelance journalist who has covered human rights, social justice, development and culture issues in India, Germany and Uganda.
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Fif Fernandes of MeDiClown Academy. Photo: courtesy MeDiClown Academy
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Julia Wille (standing, second from left) at work.
Best of Phoenix 2020: A Longtime Arizona UFO Hunter Still Has His Eyes on the Skies
Phoenix's independent source of local news and culture
The truth is out there — and maybe in Phoenix. Luster Kaboom
“Some of the things you see flying around in the sky are questionable,” says Jeff Willes. “It could be a Mylar balloon, or a military aircraft. I try to weed that stuff out.”
Willes has made a career of sorts out of weeding that stuff out. As a UFO hunter — Arizona’s first and original, he insists — he’s spent decades eyeing the skies in and around Phoenix. His vigilance has paid off with hundreds of hours of footage that show off strange things hovering in our heavens. Most of his discoveries are logged in video clips on a website, ufosoverphoenix.com, and on a YouTube channel jammed with images of shiny objects dancing around in the sky.
He started early. “I moved to Phoenix in 1978 and I couldn’t believe how many flying objects are visible here. Phoenix is a good place for UFOs because there’s a lot of wide-open desert spaces where a spacecraft can move 100 miles this way or that way without bumping into stuff.”
One of many UFO hunters who spotted the infamous Phoenix Lights in March 1997, Willes has continued to document the return of those same boomerang-shaped craft in the years since. “I got video of them in 2005, and they came back with jumping lights and similar craft in 2006,” he says. “These spacecrafts are real interested in this part of the desert, for some reason.”
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Alien abductions are totally a thing around here, Willes swears. “Those mainly occur from the Zeta Reticuli guys,” he explains. “Those are the beings with gray skin and big eyes, and we usually call them the Greys. The most common thread among abductees is the Greys take ovum and sperm, and sometimes they’ll show the woman a half-alien, half-human baby. So the theory is that the Zetas are doing a breeding experiment on us.”
Some of the mysterious things flying around up there, Willes says, are secret American military experiments and not little gray joyriders from other planets. And then there are the hoaxers, whose faked UFO videos and photos make a mockery of real UFO-hunting. “There’s even an app now that’s designed to help you make a fake UFO video,” he moans. “The fake flying saucer thing is getting a little out of hand.”
Willes thinks people are skeptical about the existence of life in other galaxies because aliens haven’t given us enough drama. Yet.
“They haven’t landed a fleet of vehicles on the White House lawn,” he says. “There hasn’t been a massive sighting of alien spaceships over every city that has stayed in the sky for 24 hours so the whole world could see it. Can you imagine what that would be like? Anyway, that would finally prove that UFOs are real.” Robrt L. Pela has been a weekly contributor to Phoenix New Times since 1991, primarily as a cultural critic. His radio essays air on National Public Radio affiliate KJZZ's Morning Edition.
Water in My Grave and Other Short Stories is a sinister collection of 24 short stories based on sorcery and urban legends from Sri Lanka that delve into the mysteries of the undead and the unburied said to walk among us. Prepare to be dragged into the dark depths of Eastern Sri Lanka’s supernatural world that is guaranteed to keep you petrified till the last page.
The book was authored by the mother-daughter writer duo – Chandrika Gadiewasam and Nadeesha Paulis – to shine a light on the many superstitions spoken of in hushed tones in various parts of the country.
This set of occult-themed short stories will drag you into the sinister realm of the Eastern supernatural world with a number of visuals by Sri Lankan artists Udara Chinthaka and Kalath Warnakulasuriya. Their hauntingly beautiful illustrations further add to the element of fear. The book is the perfect introduction to the dark and insidious side of local folklore and features jungle exorcisms, haunted ancient relics and cursed properties where evil entities conduct personal vendettas from beyond the grave. The book also addresses superstitions held by many Sri Lankans such as abstaining from eating fried items come dusk for reasons other than cholesterol, and rituals observed by graveyard caretakers to prevent evil entities from pursuing them.
Two stories that are particularly terrifying are that of the “Train to Hell” and “The Feud”.
“Train to Hell” is centered on people dying in vehicles that have stalled on the 600+ unprotected railway crossings around the country.
The Feud, on the other hand, details a grizzly disagreement that takes place between two shamans who practice necromancy. The book elaborates that a pilluwa is a dried-up corpse brought to life by a shaman or gurunanse to do their evil bidding. Water In My Grave is also beguilingly informative, with the authors including a relatively detailed glossary at the end of the book that lists the names and descriptions of various undead entities covered in the book, from prethayas to the Kalu Kumaraya and Mohini, to name a few.
Among the stand-out features of the book is that in spite of it being written in English, the content has been localised, and any terms the reader may not be familiar with (be it kattadiyas or kinduris) are made easy to understand. This makes it an ideal gift for foreigners. There has also been a significant amount of time and effort the authors invested into researching folklore surrounding the occult. The widely espoused beliefs of some Sri Lankans pertaining to demons, ghosts and witchcraft featured in the book stem from personal encounters they claim to have had and that’s what makes it all the more terrifying!
If you’re interested in exploring the sinister parallel dimension of Serendib, Water In My Grave may prove to be a good start and is bound to leave you at the edge of your seat, from start to finish. If you are a fan of the occult and would like to get your hands on a copy of the book, message https://www.facebook.com/srilankanhorror or email nadeeshapaulis@gmail.com. The book retails at LKR 1000 and can be posted to you. Happy reading!
