Sunday, September 27, 2020

What America owes: How reparations would look and who would pay

SAMARA LYNN and CATHERINE THORBECKE,
Good Morning America•September 27, 2020



This report is part of "Turning Point," a groundbreaking month-long series by ABC News examining the racial reckoning sweeping the United States and exploring whether it can lead to lasting reconciliation.

In the early 20th century, Richard Givens, a Black man, toiled as a laborer in a box mill in Greensville County, Virginia.

He earned $300 for the entire year in 1939, according to U.S. Census records, an income Givens had to use to support a family of eight.

That seemingly paltry sum (worth only approximately $5,500 today) was even anemic for the time -- less than the median salary for non-white men ($460) and about a quarter of what white men made at the time ($1,112), according to data from the U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census.- ADVERTISEMENT -


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That economic gap for Givens, like many of his Black contemporaries, existed 75 years after the end of slavery and persists today. Many say that the existence of that gap has been perpetuated by systemic racism in America -- a combination of laws and institutions that perpetuate inequality -- and necessitates reparations to address those wrongs.

Since the end of slavery, Black Americans have been in a fervent and mostly futile race to catch up economically to their white counterparts. The Black-white wealth gap has been and remains vast -- the net worth of the average white family is 10 times greater than the average Black family, according to a 2016 report from the Brookings Institute.
PHOTO: Economists, advocates and more discuss what the reality of reparations for descendants of enslaved people in the U.S. would look like. (ABC News)
PHOTO: An illustration of a slave auction published in the Illustrated London News, Feb. 16, 1861. (Corbis via Getty Images)

Moreover, median wealth of Black families remains less than 1/10 of white families in 2020, the Senate Joint Economic Committee found in its report, The Economic State of Black America in 2020.

For over 200 years, colonial America and then the U.S. was a slave state, then, an apartheid state -- with Jim Crow laws in the South and actively racist practices such as redlining -- financial institutions denying mortgages to people of color, or providing mortgages to them only in limited areas usually with homes and properties of low value.
PHOTO: A restaurant in Maryland has a sign over its front entrance designating it 'white only' and telling African Americans that they must enter the establishment through the rear door, circa. 1948. (Joe Schwartz Photo Archive/Corbis via Getty Images, FILE)More

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Advocates and experts argue that ongoing systemic racism has placed Black Americans at a disadvantage in everything from obtaining an education to being paid fair wages, purchasing homes, starting businesses and passing down generational wealth -- all components needed to achieve robust economic health.

Some advocates and experts say reparations are the answer. They would not only help eliminate wealth differences caused by systemic racism, but are also "a form of compensation that would amount to healing," William "Sandy" Darity, an economist and professor at Duke University's Sanford School of Public Policy told ABC News.

The topic is controversial. While arguments have been made that reparations to Black descendants of enslaved people could help restore economic balance in the nation, there is the outstanding question of how much should be paid out and to whom.

So what exactly is owed? That depends on which economic expert you ask.
Calculating reparations

Darity and co-author Andrea Kirsten Mullen have a new book, "From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century," that analyzes past estimates for reparation amounts and offers new ones.

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign economist Larry Neal estimated in 1983 that America owed $1.4 trillion in reparations for Black descendants of enslaved people. Neal based this figure on the amount of wages earned by non-enslaved workers between 1620 and 1840, subtracting costs related to the care of slaves (food, housing, care, etc.).

According to Darity and Mullen, that 1983 figure compounded at 4%, 5% and 6% interest by 2019, would be $5.7 trillion, $8.1 trillion and $11.4 trillion, respectively, as per their calculations.

They also suggest there was a major flaw with Neal's calculation: it doesn't take into account the 20 years before the Civil War.

Roger Ransom, a former economics professor at the University of Virginia and the University of California, and Richard Sutch, who was a professor emeritus of economics at the University of California, before his death in 2019, based their calculation on the profit from slavery between 1806 and 1860. Their method, compounded at interest rates of 4%, 5% and 6% in 2018, would amount to $14 billion, $19.7 billion, and $27.7 billion, Darity and Mullen figured. But they also cited flaws with Ransom and Sutch's methodology. They argue that the calculation doesn't account for the first 30 years of slavery in the country, it omits profit from the slave trade, and charges the enslaved for their own maintenance costs, resulting in "the lowest bill for black reparations among those we examine," Darity and Mullen write in their book.

One of the more complex calculations is by Thomas Craemer, a professor of public policy at the University of Connecticut. He multiplied the "prevailing market wage" by the number of hours enslaved people worked (assuming a 24-hour work day) between the years 1776 and 1865. That model, calculated for 2019 at 4%, 5% and 6% interest rates, works out to $16.4 trillion, $17 trillion and $17.7 trillion, respectively.

The problem with Craemer's calculation, according to Darity and Mullen, is that it relies on "the market wage for non-slave labor" rather than "the hypothetical non-slave labor wage that would have prevailed in the absence of captive enslaved Africans." This yields a slightly lower calculation as per Darity and Mullen.

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Therefore, Darity and Mullen came up with their own calculation based on net worth. They cite the gap in mean household wealth by race, which was $795,000, according to the 2016 Survey of Consumer Finances.

"If the average black household consists of 3.31 persons," Darity and Mullen write in their book, "the mean shortfall in wealth for individual black Americans would have been approximately $240,000."

Next, they multiplied $795,000 by the U.S. Census Bureau's estimate of 10 million Black households, arriving at a reparations bill of $7.95 trillion.

They also offer an alternative calculation. The Black population comprises about 13% of the American population. The nation's total household wealth reached $107 trillion by the second quarter of 2018. Thirteen percent of that amount is $13.91 trillion. As Black Americans are estimated to hold at most, 3% of the nation's wealth, according to Census data, that amounts to $3.21 trillion.

Eliminating the difference in household wealth, "would require a reparations outlay of $10.7 trillion" or, $267,000 per person for the 40 million eligible Black descendants of slavery, Darity and Mullen write.

Eligibility, Darity said, can be established through genealogical research to find out if one's ancestors were held as chattel, a task some say is impractical, including Congressman Jim Clyburn, one of the highest-ranking House Democrats who said in an interview that he feared reparations "would lead to contested debates about who would be eligible due to the sprawling family trees that have evolved in the generations since slavery was abolished."
 
PHOTO: House Oversight and Reform Subcommittee Chairman James E. Clyburn speaks at a hearing on Capitol Hill, Sept. 1, 2020, in Washington, DC. (Graeme Jennings/Pool/Getty Images, FILE)

Critics of reparations have also argued that the conversation leaves an entire group of people, Black American-born descendants of immigrants, some of whose families have been in the U.S. for generations -- and many whose families may have survived decades if not centuries of institutional racism -- excluded.
Federal government reparations

As the nation grapples with allegations of systemic racism, the ongoing wealth gap and other persistent and mounting inequities between Black and white Americans -- including disparate health outcomes and police brutality -- academics and activists say the federal government needs to face a reckoning for its culpability in these ongoing issues.

"You often hear individuals say, I didn't own any slaves, and to them I always say, 'Well, you may not have but the federal government permitted it and endorsed it, facilitated it,'" Andre Perry, an economist and fellow at the Brookings Institution, told ABC News. "Therefore, the federal government has a responsibility of paying that back."

"The policies that facilitated slavery were at fault," Perry added. "The damage was caused by policy failure. Policies should drive the remedy."

Looking abroad, despite many of the individual perpetrators of the Holocaust being long gone, Germany has paid out billions of dollars to survivors, their families and eligible heirs.

Perry also noted that there are historical precedents for the U.S. federal government compensating victims of its past mistakes, and so-called "reparations" have happened before, just not for Black Americans.

Through the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, the government admitted to a litany of wrongdoings in its internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. As part of a reparations package, the government paid $20,000 to every living survivor of the internment camps and issued an apology that acknowledged a "grave injustice" that was "motivated largely by racial prejudice, wartime hysteria, and a failure of political leadership." In total, $1.6 billion was paid out to more than 82,250 eligible claimants. Adjusted for inflation, that figure would top $3.5 billion in 2020.
PHOTO: Japanese people lining up for registration at the Alien Reception Center, Manzanar, Calif., March 27, 1942. (Bettmann Archive/Getty Images, FILE)

Nkechi Taifa, a lawyer and reparations advocate with the National African American Reparations Commission (NAARC), told ABC News that when that bill was passed, "it came from taxpayer dollars."

"I had nothing to do with the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II," she said. "But my tax dollars helped to pay for that reparations settlement."

MORE: A look back at Japanese internment camps in the US, 75 years later

Taifa also noted a much darker historical precedent, referencing 1860s legislation that paid reparations to slave owners for their so-called loss of "property."

"Reparations were paid out after the Civil War, they just weren't paid to Black people," Taifa said. "They weren't paid to the formerly enslaved people. They weren't paid to the victims, they were paid to the slave owners for the loss of their property."

President Abraham Lincoln's emancipation bill in 1862 provided payment to slave owners up to $300 for each enslaved person who was freed. Adjusted for inflation, that figure would be approximately $8,000.

There has been a history of pushback for reparations at the federal level.

Black Republicans like Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina are not in favor of reparations, but instead, favor policies like opportunity zones. On his website, Scott claims opportunity zones are incentives that aim to "lift entire communities out of poverty by attracting private dollars to the corners of our country that have been left behind as the American economy has surged forward."

Black Democrats have also been skeptical of reparations including Rep. Clyburn, who said in an interview with the Post and Courier, that reparations would be "difficult to implement."

And some have argued that social programs like Medicaid, Social Security and other welfare benefits are a form of reparations, while not specifically targeted at Black people, write Darity and Mullen in their book.

Taifa called all the arguments for why the federal government shouldn't pay reparations now, because of cost, logistical difficulties or the amount of time that has passed: "hogwash."

"I say that because whose fault is it that this much time has passed that has not been addressed?" she said. "The demand for reparations has been going on ever since the enslavement era."

Perry added that historically in the U.S, "when there's white suffering, we find the money."

"We will sell debt, we will do a number of things to find the revenue," he added.

Taifa cited how Congress rallied some $2 trillion extremely quickly in the CARES Act to respond to the COVID-19 crisis as an example of how lawmakers are able to find the money when they need to.

At the local level, one city has found a creative way of raising reparations funds. Evanston, Illinois said earlier this year that it plans to use the $10 million collected by the city in legal marijuana sales to provide Black residents with housing and economic development benefits.

Ultimately, Perry said he doesn't think the issue is a matter of where the money will come from, but rather, "it's about political will."

"We shouldn't prohibit policy simply because it's hard to implement," he said. "They said the same thing about integration, about women's rights -- that it's too hard, that the culture won't allow it, that the blowback will be too severe."

"Resistance is more about ignorance," he said. "Not about facts."

Darity and Mullen in their book state, "The invoice [for reparations] should go directly to the U.S. Congress."

"The culpable party," Darity said bluntly, "is the United States government."

Darity and Mullen also propose in their book several ways the federal government could fund reparations without imposing new taxes. One way, they discuss is by funding through deficit spending.

Deficit spending -- defined as the government spending more than it collects -- Darity and Mullen write, would require no change in tax rates, and if reparations provide a stimulus, could actually generate a tax revenue to fund the program.

They also suggest that the Federal Reserve could fund reparations in much the same way it funded investment banks during the Great Recession.

Because of the bailout by the Federal Reserve, Darity and Mullen make the argument that "there can be no doubt that the Fed has vast capacity to provide the funds required for a properly designed and financed reparations program."
Private sector

Meanwhile, as increasing evidence emerges of private sector culpability or complacency in the slave trade, many are also calling on these entities which still exist today to pay reparations.

A slew of banks, life insurance companies and even universities have been thrust into the spotlight recently after evidence emerged they were involved in the slave trade.

Georgetown University admitted in recent years to selling 272 slaves in 1838 to pay off debts and ultimately keep the school open. In 2019, the private university announced the creation of a fund it said could generate $400,000 a year in scholarships to benefit the descendants of these people.

In 2005, JPMorgan Chase admitted that two of its predecessor banks in Louisiana had links to the slave trade, The Associated Press reported. The investment banking giant issued an apology and set up a scholarship fund for Black students from the state.

Taifa said she has been fighting for entities that "were culpable and benefited unjustly" from the slave trade era to "come up with a settlement or negotiation."

Earlier this year, the nation's wealthiest Black man, billionaire Robert Smith called on companies that profited off the slave trade to consider paying reparations.

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"I think corporations have to also think about, well, what is the right thing to do?" he told Reuters.
What should 'reparations' look like?

Proposals for what reparations should look like vary widely. Many advocates are calling for direct payments, others are arguing for tax cuts, and some say they should come in the form of investments in Black communities, scholarship funds or other collective investments.

The HR 40 bill that was introduced in the House last year by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Tex., calls for the creation of a commission to study and develop reparation proposals. Senator Cory Booker, D-NJ, introduced a partner bill in the Senate. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi reportedly expressed her support for the bill during at an event at Howard University last year. The late Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., first proposed the bill that would become H.R. 40 in 1989.
PHOTO: In this June 19, 2019, file photo, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee speaks during a hearing on slavery reparations held by the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties on June 19, 2019, in Washington, DC. (Zach Gibson/Getty Images, FILE)More

Despite support expressed from some high-profile members of Congress, the legislation tracking site GovTrack.us assigned it a 4% chance of being enacted in 2019, citing methodology by AI researchers and data engineers at the firm Scopos. This was calculated, however, before the police killing of George Floyd set in motion a new racial reckoning in the U.S.

The progressive political organization Democracy in Color said in a July 2020 poll conducted through the online platform Civiqs that 50% of Americans support H.R. 40, an uptick from 2019 when only 31% said they supported it.

Taifa said "beyond anything else it absolutely and completely, any and every reparation settlement must include an official apology."

She said she is fighting for monetary reparations but thinks that efforts should go beyond just payments, such as pardons for Black people who were disproportionately targeted during the problem-plagued "War on Drugs," educational scholarships, investments in Black community development and more.

"Our reparation settlement should be creative," she said. "The harm was multifaceted and the relief should be as well."

Perry added that as an economist he thinks the "most prominent form of reparations should come in the form of a check."

"This is about a debt that is owed," he said. "This about compensating for labor and damage, so it should come into the form of a check" to descendants of enslaved people.

In their book, Darity and Mullen also suggest direct payments and said they could be disbursed over time. They also suggest "a portfolio of reparations" which could be trust funds available for eligible Black Americans to apply for grants for homeownership, education, establishing businesses or purchasing financial assets.

Some localities are also "trying to figure out ways how they can create policies that address the policy violence inflicted on Black Americans over the over the course of centuries," Perry said.

"So, it might come in the form of investments in Black communities, new zoning practices, educational scholarships, business loans," he said.

Most importantly, to Taifa, reparations can "go a long way toward the racial healing that we need, the closing of a shameful chapter in this history and also the allowance for the victims themselves, those parties, to decide just what they want."

"When I say 'they,' I'm talking about we, Black people, really want as a future here, a political future, economic future, a cultural future in the light," Taifa added.

What America owes: How reparations would look and who would pay originally appeared on abcnews.go.com
How do you cover a group as diverse as Asian Americans in Southern California?

Teresa Watanabe,
Los Angeles Times Opinion•September 27, 2020

An article that appeared in The Times supported the wartime incarceration of Japanese Americans. (Newspapers.com)

In 1881, the Los Angeles Times ran an article titled “The Heathen Chinee,” which purported to enlighten readers about the “peculiarities of the race as observed in Chinatown.” The article appeared just four days after the paper, then known as the Los Angeles Daily Times, began publishing, and it told readers that “Chinamen” believe in goblins and ghosts and live in grimy rooms reeking of “mysterious odors.” They show “criminal carelessness” about fire safety with their open cooking braziers and — news flash! — their cheap meals of rice, mustard greens and slivers of fish and pork are the secret behind their ability to “live on a pittance” and outbid white workers for jobs.

Nearly a century later, the newspaper hired Edwin Chen, the first Asian American reporter to join the paper’s Metro staff. Chen, hired as a science writer in 1979, remembers being met by an editor on his first visit to the Metro newsroom with the greeting, “It’s Charlie Chan!” He was stunned, he says, and kept walking amid chuckles from his new colleagues.

Today, the newspaper features smart and sensitive coverage of the community by an Asian American columnist, Asian American podcasters and other Asian American journalists, who make up 14.6% of our newsroom staff. That proportion, the largest among major U.S. newspapers, is not far from mirroring the Asian American share of the population in Los Angeles County and California.

The Times has made real headway in its coverage and newsroom representation of the nation’s fastest-growing racial/ethnic group. But it has not been nearly enough.
An article from the Dec. 8, 1881, edition of The Times is filled with racist invective against Asian Americans. (Los Angeles Times)-

Of course, it’s never been easy to cover Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. We are a dazzlingly diverse array of more than 50 ethnic groups, with different languages, cultures, religions and histories in the United States. I am a third-generation Japanese American; my paternal grandfather came from a rural village in the shadow of Mt. Fuji to settle in Seattle in 1908. My colleague Anh Do arrived here with her family in 1975 from Vietnam days before the fall of Saigon. The families of The Times’ Asian American staffers come from Japan, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Vietnam, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, the Philippines.

The issue of coverage has bedeviled The Times from its inception, as the “Heathen Chinee” article demonstrates. Reading through more than a century of stories about Asian American Angelenos in the paper reveals stubbornly persistent stereotypes. No matter how long Asian American families had been in the United States — fighting its wars, paying its taxes, contributing to the nation’s well-being — they were still often seen as foreigners, exotic at best, sinister at worst.

In 1917, The Times wrote approvingly of Japanese Americans after Japan joined forces with the major Allied powers of the United States, Great Britain, France, Russia and Italy during World War I. “Thousands of young Japanese are being educated in the schools and colleges of America,” The Times wrote. “To the ancient standards of Samurai honor, to the proverbial thrift and industry of the Orient, they are adding practical, progressive American ideas.”

But after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in December 1941, launching America’s entry into World War II, Japanese Americans were portrayed as dangerous, disloyal and unable or unwilling to assimilate. “A viper is nonetheless a viper wherever the egg is hatched,” wrote W.H. Anderson in a Times column two months later, supporting the mass incarceration of 120,000 people of Japanese descent, including my family, in 10 remote detention camps ringed by barbed wire and guarded by armed soldiers.

Although there was never any evidence of Japanese American disloyalty, The Times supported the incarceration and opposed the community’s return to the West Coast. The editorial positions followed decades of agitating for racist laws to protect white Californians from the “Yellow Peril” — and economic competition — by barring the entry of Chinese and Japanese immigrants and prohibiting them from owning land.

The newspaper apologized for its support of the incarceration three years ago, 75 years after President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which paved the way for the mass removal and imprisonment of Japanese Americans.

But as recently as 2016, some Times coverage still implied that Asian Americans were an unwelcome presence. In a story that year, a white music store owner who had stayed put in Monterey Park despite a “tsunami” of Asian immigrants transforming the San Gabriel Valley was likened to a xenophobic bumper sticker that read the “last American to leave Monterey Park.” The story quoted no Asian Americans. After Times staffers Cindy Chang, Rong-Gong Lin II and Frank Shyong raised objections, a top manager agreed the story did not meet Times reporting standards. But the online version of the story remained largely the same, with the word “white” inserted in brackets between “last” and “American.”)

Asian Americans are still being blamed for the acts of foreign countries. President Trump has pointedly called COVID-19 the “China virus,” and Asian Americans have reported nearly 2,600 incidents of discrimination, including verbal and physical assaults, according to Stop AAPI Hate, a national coalition of organizations. Chinese Americans are also decrying what they say is an alarming and growing racial profiling of their scientists and researchers as federal agencies crack down on China’s efforts to steal intellectual property.

Today, however, The Times is covering these stories and giving space on its opinion pages to Asian Americans writing about them.
Japanese Americans wait with their luggage at the Santa Fe rail station in Los Angeles for trains that will take them to an incarceration camp in the Owens Valley. (Russell Lee / Library of Congress)

So how does a newspaper cover the vast Asian American and Pacific Islander community today?

Newsroom representation matters. In 1981, Times journalists Bill Sing, Nancy Yoshihara and David Kishiyama became three of the founding members of the Asian American Journalists Assn., aimed in part at increasing our ranks in U.S. news organizations. The group now has more than 1,500 members in 20 chapters across the United States and in Asia.

Back then, though, our presence was so small that former Times staffer Elaine Woo still recalls her discomfort during her newsroom interview for a suburban bureau position in 1983.

“My most distinct memory was a sea of middle-aged white men in short-sleeved shirts and black ties,” says Woo, who covered the Westside before moving to education, editing and obituaries. “I thought … ‘I don’t belong here.’”

Asian Americans and other journalists of color slowly began increasing at The Times after the 1984 launch of the MetPro diversity training and hiring program. A turning point was the 1992 Los Angeles civil unrest following the acquittal of four LAPD officers caught on videotape brutally beating a Black man, Rodney King.

Stewart Kwoh, who headed a local Asian American civil rights organization, brought community leaders to meet with then-Editor Shelby Coffey III. The group was particularly concerned about how Korean Americans had been portrayed during the unrest, when the paper ran sensationalist photos of some of them on rooftops armed with guns, without adequately explaining that they took up arms because police had abandoned their neighborhoods and left hundreds of their businesses to be damaged or destroyed.

Although our two Korean-speaking reporters at the time, business reporter Don Lee and San Diego reporter John H. Lee, pitched in on coverage of the unrest with stories humanizing the Korean American community, they had their own beats to cover.
Korean store owners attempt to defend their property in Koreatown at Western Avenue and 5th Street on April 30, 1992. (Hyungwon Kang / Los Angeles Times)

Kwoh’s group pointed out the need for someone specifically assigned to cover the Asian American community. Craig Matsuda, a longtime Times employee who left in 2008, recalls that he and other AAJA members had made a similar request to a Metro editor before the 1992 unrest but were turned down. Kwoh says that Coffey agreed on the spot to expand coverage, leading to the hiring of the late K. Connie Kang, an experienced journalist who was born in what is now North Korea, raised in Okinawa, Japan, and fluent in both Korean and Japanese.

In what came to be seen as a heyday of newsroom diversity, The Times hired many other journalists of color in the 1990s and launched a City Times section focused on the central city.

Diversity is important not only in the reporting ranks but also in decision-making roles. As an assistant managing editor, Karen Wada successfully lobbied for funds to include Asian Americans for the first time in the newspaper’s polls. In 1996, Wada became the first Asian American to join the newspaper’s masthead group of top newsroom leaders as a deputy managing editor and later as a managing editor.

After then-foreign editor Alvin Shuster sent me to Tokyo in 1991 as the newspaper’s first Asian American foreign correspondent, he was succeeded by Simon Li, who sent other Asian American correspondents to foreign postings, including Henry Chu and Ching-Ching Ni.

Ashley Dunn, a Chinese American who served as Metro editor from 2011 to 2014, saw the need for better coverage of Asian Americans and hired Do to cover the Vietnamese community and Chang to cover immigration and ethnic communities.

The Times broke new ground when editors named Shyong as our first Asian American Metro columnist last year and launched our first Asian American-focused podcast by him and entertainment writer Jen Yamato in March. “Ethnic reporting is an intervention in the white perspective that is embedded in journalism,” Shyong says.

But we still have vast holes in our coverage. We largely neglect the huge presence here of Filipinos and of South Asians with roots in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bhutan and the Maldives (yes, we have all of these groups in California). Staffers have written about Filipino American veterans, nurses, COVID-19 victims, cultural practices and Historic Filipinotown; about Little India, South Asian troubles following the 9/11 attacks and Sikh truckers; and more recently, about Democratic vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris’ Indian heritage. But the coverage is spotty and not nearly what the communities deserve given their size and influence. Ethnic Filipinos and Indians now make up California’s largest Asian American groups after ethnic Chinese.

That wasn’t always true. In the early 20th century, Asian Americans were overwhelmingly ethnic Chinese and Japanese. Thanks to liberalization of federal immigration laws in 1965, 37% of Asian Americans today trace their roots to East Asia, 33% to Southeast Asia and 27% to South Asia, according to Karthick Ramakrishnan, a UC Riverside political science professor.

“People need to update their understanding of what Asian Americans are,” Ramakrishnan says.
Times columnist Frank Shyong, left, visits Paul's Kitchen on San Pedro Street in Los Angeles. (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)

In addition, we can’t rely only on Asian Americans to cover the full breadth of Asian America. For one thing, not everyone wants that job. Chen, for instance, was born in China and speaks fluent Chinese but aspired to join our Washington bureau to pursue his passion for government and politics. He got there in 1989 and subsequently covered science, the Iraq war, presidential campaigns and the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations before leaving the paper in 2006.

Woo was drawn to education and profile writing, an art she honed with beautifully rendered obituaries.

“I didn’t want to be pigeonholed,” Woo says. “I didn’t think of myself as an Asian American or Chinese American reporter; I thought of myself as an American journalist, and I wanted others to think of me that way.”

The job is simply too vast, the communities too numerous and diverse for one or two reporters to handle alone. Shyong and Do bring expertise and excellence to our coverage, but we need to do more.

How to do better? One idea is for reporters across the paper — Asian American or not — who know and love certain communities to keep an eye on them. While I cover higher education, I also do stories about Japanese Americans and Little Tokyo every now and then, because I know what’s happening in my community and people reach out to me with story ideas. Editors should give all reporters with a similar desire the time to break from their beats for the occasional cultural story.

More broadly, however, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders should be part of the warp and woof, as Matsuda says, of our overall coverage. The question isn’t really how to cover Asian Americans; it is how to cover Los Angeles, because we, along with other racial and ethnic communities, are Los Angeles.

“When has the paper recognized Asian Americans are not a marginal group; we’re a defining group in the area?” asks Peter Hong, a former Times reporter who is Korean American. He calls the idea of a dedicated Asian American beat an outdated model that is “so 1980s.”

Asian American experts should be quoted in general news stories. Asian Americans should be covered as part of education, business, politics, environment, health, food, entertainment and geographical beats. Former Times reporter Mark Arax, for instance, broke new ground in the mid-1980s covering the rise of the ethnic Chinese community in the San Gabriel Valley. He is not Asian American, but he’s a terrific reporter who simply saw that demographic shift as an important part of his San Gabriel Valley beat. Later, he moved to the Central Valley and wrote about the Hmong community there along with Latino laborers, agriculture, Yosemite National Park and other local topics.

Nearly a decade earlier, William Overend wrote a piece that shattered the “model minority” myth that all Asian Americans are educated, affluent and without need for public services. In “The Chinatown Tourists Don’t See,” he wrote about poverty and isolation among Chinese immigrants, interviewing them through an interpreter.

The Times needs to invest in equipping all staff members with the cultural IQ and linguistic skills to understand our diverse communities. We live in one of the most diverse spots on the planet — both ethnically and religiously. Today, more than ever, our coverage needs to reflect that.
NY Times:
President Trump paid no federal income taxes in 10 of the past 15 years, he paid $750 in US income taxes in 2016, 2017

The Associated Press,
Associated Press•September 27, 2020

President Donald Trump paid just $750 in federal income taxes the year he ran for president and in his first year in the White House, according to a report Sunday in The New York Times.

Trump, who has fiercely guarded his tax filings and is the only president in modern times not to make them public, paid no federal income taxes in 10 of the past 15 years.

The details of the tax filings complicate Trump’s description of himself as a shrewd and patriotic businessman, revealing instead a series of financial losses and income from abroad that could come into conflict with his responsibilities as president. The president’s financial disclosures indicated he earned at least $434.9 million in 2018, but the tax filings reported a $47.4 million loss.

The disclosure, which the Times said comes from tax return data it obtained extending over two decades, comes at a pivotal moment ahead of the first presidential debate Tuesday and weeks before a divisive election against Democrat Joe Biden.

Speaking at a news conference Sunday at the White House, Trump dismissed the report as “fake news” and said he has paid taxes, though he gave no specifics. He also vowed that information about his taxes “will all be revealed,” but he offered no timeline for the disclosure and made similar promises during the 2016 campaign on which he never followed through.

In fact, the president has fielded court challenges against those seeking access to his returns, including the U.S. House, which is suing for access to Trump's tax returns as part of congressional oversight.

During his first two years as president, Trump received $73 million from foreign operations, which in addition to his golf properties in Scotland and Ireland included $3 million from the Philippines, $2.3 million from India and $1 million from Turkey. The president in 2017 paid $145,400 in taxes in India and $156,824 in the Philippines, compared to just $750 in U.S. income taxes. 
 
Trump found multiple ways to reduce his tax bills. He has taken tax deductions on personal expenses such as housing, aircraft and $70,000 in haircare. Losses in the property businesses solely owned and managed by Trump appear to have offset income from his stake in the television show “The Apprentice” and other entities with multiple owners.

During the first two years of his presidency, Trump relied on business tax credits to reduce his tax obligations. The Times said $9.7 million worth of business investment credits that were submitted after Trump requested an extension to file his taxes allowed him to reduce his income and pay just $750 each in 2016 and 2017.

Trump, starting in 2010, claimed and received an income tax refund that totaled $72.9 million, which the Times said was at the core of an ongoing audit by the IRS. The president has declined to release his taxes because of the audit.

A lawyer for the Trump Organization, Alan Garten, and a spokesperson for the Trump Organization did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press on the report.

Garten told the Times that “most, if not all, of the facts appear to be inaccurate.”

He said in a statement to the news organization that the president "has paid tens of millions of dollars in personal taxes to the federal government, including paying millions in personal taxes since announcing his candidacy in 2015.”

The New York Times said it declined to provide Garten with the tax filings in order to protect its sources.

During his first general election debate against Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016, Clinton said that perhaps Trump wasn't releasing his tax returns because he had paid nothing in federal taxes.

Trump interrupted her to say, "That makes me smart.”
UAE to send Arab world's first mission to the moon in 2024

Staff Reporter/Dubai
Filed on September 27, 2020 

(Twitter)
Sheikh Mohammed reviews 10-year strategy of MBRSC.
THE SHEIKH OF ARABIA SHOULD WEAR HIS MASK PROPERLY
LIKE THE FELLOW IN THE BACK 

The UAE will send the Arab world's first mission to the moon in 2024, it was announced on Saturday. The announcement comes a couple of months after the country successfully launched the Hope probe to Mars - the Arab world's first interplanetary mission.

The Emirates Moon Exploration Project will see "national competencies" employed for the mission.

This came as His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, reviewed a 10-year strategy of the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC). The strategy 2021-31 includes programmes to develop new specialised satellites and an outer space simulation centre for training, academic and educational programmes.

Sheikh Mohammed also referred to new space missions that will be announced soon. "The Emirati space programme is sustainable and would produce outputs that would have practical applications across other sectors. Professionals from these sectors will share their experiences with the rest of the country and the region. It will build international knowledge partnerships that will benefit humanity."

Sheikh Mohammed and the MBRSC reviewed the strategy that establishes a new phase of cooperation with international space agencies.

The strategy includes the objectives of the UAE National Space Programme in addition to five key components: The Emirates Mars Mission (Hope Probe), the Mars 2117 project, the UAE Astronaut Programme, the UAE Satellite Programme and the UAE Space Sector Sustainability Programme.

Sheikh Mohammed tweeted: "The UAE's ambition in the space sector explores, plans and makes the future. Our youth, engineers and pioneers open new horizons in the science, technology and innovation fields in this vital sector for the future of our world."

Innovation in space

Sheikh Mohammed was also briefed about the objectives of the new strategy to enhance innovation in the national space sector. It will prepare a new generation of qualified national cadres in the space sector to pursue advanced specialities in science, technology and space sectors. It will also attract new investments to the national space sector, which has seen more than Dh22 billion over the past few years.

Hamad Obaid Al Mansoori, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the MBRSC, said: "We are embarking on a new phase of the centre's journey with unlimited support from the leadership to achieve excellence in this vital sector for the future of humanity."

Yousuf Hamad Al Shaibani, Director-General of the MBRSC, said the 10-year strategy aims to bolster the UAE's position among the leading countries in the international space sector.

reporters@khaleejtimes.com
UAE UFO 
Sharjah's iconic 'Flying Saucer' reopens with an artsy touch
Nandini Sircar/Sharjah  September 27, 2020 

(KT/M.Sajjad)

Initially conceived as a French-inspired store, it started off as a one-stop-shop with a cafe.

The Flying Saucer, an iconic landmark in Sharjah, has been reopened as an art and community space. It also features a multimedia art installation that references aliens and colonialism.

Over the past few decades, the building has taken on different roles. As the building changed hands, so did its functions and architecture. Initially conceived as a French-inspired store, it started off as a one-stop-shop with a cafe. It has also served as a restaurant and gift shop, before becoming a supermarket and a fast food restaurant.
The Sharjah Art Foundation (SAF) began the process of restoring The Flying Saucer to its former glory in 2015.

Sheikha Nawar Al Qassimi, Vice-President of the foundation, said the dynamic space also will see some socially distanced film screenings and family workshops in the future.

The renovation introduced new elements enhancing the open character of the interior gallery space. The intervention also includes new additions designed to complement the building spatially to support its function as a community hub.

Sheikha Nawar added: "Arts, culture and education are Sharjah's pillars. Additionally, in the country today, there is a lot of talk about space exploration and the UAE's missions to Mars, so this building is particularly relevant in that context as well."

Talking about the nostalgia that the structure evokes, she said: "We grew up with this building around. The Flying Saucer has been a part of our cultural memory. The building had different functions from the 1970s onwards but one thing that was always there was its unique architectural structure. As a child, it was a really exciting UFO (unidentified flying object) building. As we grew up, we saw it take different forms and today we have preserved it and repurposed it as a space for arts, culture and education."

She said the idea is to take art out of formal museum spaces and bring it out to the public. "We have taken art spaces out of the art district and put them in everyday neighbourhoods and everyday locations in a way that it is not so formal and intimidating. So people can come and look at this place even if they are not a formal art audience, if they have just come here to have a cup of coffee, but they might end up checking out a show."

Who designed this UFO?

The intriguing part about this architectural quirk that was acquired by the SAF in 2012 is that nobody definitively knows who originally designed it.

Opened in 1978, the building's architecture draws from a combination of space-age and Brutalist influences that permeated the period.

Lindsay Seers, who is one of the creators of an immersive multimedia installation at the renovated building, said: "The building itself is quite mysterious. Nobody knows who built it. It almost feels like it dropped out of the sky and landed here as a UFO. In terms of its colonial history, it was next to a British Army Camp. They also had a phrase about this Flying Saucer ... 'the alien has landed'. I think it was to do with the idea of the aliens being the British occupying the territory here. There is a backdrop of post-colonialism as well."

The building has a "very specific" acoustic and lighting condition, Seers added. "It's a beautiful building. I knew I had to make something that referenced flying saucers. The building asks for it."

Keith Sargent, another key artist responsible for the multimedia installation, said: "There has been a lot of research around the idea of a building that doesn't seem to have any record of how it got here. So, that became the iteration of this piece."
‘Holy grail’ or epic hoax? Australian Kelly Cahill’s UFO abduction story still stirs passions


Matt Neal

If her story is to believed, on August 7, 1993, Gippsland woman Kelly Cahill saw a UFO and beings from another world.

As detailed in her in 1996 book Encounter, Ms Cahill’s case had all the hallmarks of the classic alien abduction story of the era – lost time, strange spaceships, bright lights, inhuman creatures and inexplicable marks on her body.

But her story had something other alien visitations didn’t – independent witnesses who could potentially back up her story.

Along with her then-husband Andrew, who was in the car with her on that fateful night on Melbourne’s south-eastern fringes, there were reportedly four other people in two separate cars who would be able to verify her otherworldly claims.

Because of its multiple witnesses, the incident was hailed as the “holy grail” of alien abduction stories by UFO researchers and enthusiasts.

It was the one with the potential to provide definitive proof, once and for all, that the truth was out there.

Cult TV show The X-Files even referenced the case in an episode.

But 27 years on, the truth about the so-called Eumemmerring Creek encounter is anything but clear.

A detailed report into the claims was never released, the other witnesses never came forward publicly, and Ms Cahill disappeared from public view.

So was her ‘encounter’ a missed opportunity, or just another UFO hoax?
Kelly Cahill, as she appeared in her 1996 book Encounter.
‘Hooded figures with glowing eyes’

According to Ms Cahill, she and her then-husband Andrew were driving along the Belgrave-Hallam Road in Narre Warren on that fateful winter’s night in 1993.

They were en route to a friend’s house when Ms Cahill saw in a paddock a row of five or six large orange lights on a ‘distinct circular shape . . . like nothing I had ever seen before’, she wrote in her book.

When they arrived at their destination, her husband and friends, and eventually even Ms Cahill, laughed it off.

But about midnight, driving home on the same road, she and Andrew apparently saw what she believed to be the same lights ‘hanging above the road’.


“I could then see that the orange lights were really windows . . . I could make out figures standing behind the portals,” Ms Cahill wrote.

The object flew off ‘at incredible speed’, but soon after they saw it again in a paddock on the side of the road, Ms Cahill said.  
  
Kelly Cahill’s drawing of the beings she claimed to have encounter in Narrewarren, taken from her book.

After that, Ms Cahill’s memory blanked, ‘like a cut to scene in a film’, and their car had travelled several hundred metres down the road without them knowing.

In the days and weeks that followed, she claimed to find strange marks on her body, including a small triangular wound below her bellybutton, and began experiencing stomach pains and night ‘visitations’ from tall black-hooded figures with lightly glowing red eyes.

Through hypnosis, she said, she was able to unlock her ‘missing time’.

Her husband had pulled over and they’d got out of the car to get a better look at the brightly lit object in the paddock.

Further back up the road, another car had parked, its occupants standing at the edge of the field.  
  
Bill Chalker called Kelly Cahill’s case “an extraordinary lost opportunity”.

A tall thin figure appeared in front of the object and Ms Cahill heard in her mind its thoughts: ‘‘Let’s kill them’’.

More beings appeared, unleashing an energy force that knocked Ms Cahill to the ground as she screamed to her husband: ‘‘They’ve got no souls! They’re evil! They’re going to kill us!’’

And that’s where her recollections end, but not the story.
The investigation begins

Sydney-based researcher Bill Chalker, of the UFO Investigation Centre, was one of the first people Ms Cahill contacted after that night.

Mr Chalker immediately thought it ‘a fairly important case’, but one that ‘‘required a lot of feet on the ground and a lot of intensive field investigations’’.

Mr Chalker alerted a loosely connected Melbourne group of paranormal investigators called Phenomena Research Australia [PRA], led by then-director John Auchettl.

Mr Auchettl interviewed Ms Cahill many times and examined the scene of the alleged sighting near Eumemmerring Creek  
.
Kelly Cahill appeared on Today Tonight in the ’90s to tell her encounter story.

He and the PRA placed an ad in local newspapers in an effort to find the occupants of the second car.

Remarkably, they got a response and Mr Auchettl said the stories from the second car were identical to Ms Cahill’s but went even further, detailing experiences inside the mystery craft where they were strapped to a table and examined by the beings.

According to the PRA, the women had the same triangular wounds near their navels, as well as other strange marks.

There was even talk of a third car driven by a local lawyer, PRA discovered, whose story also lined up.

The researchers began prepping an exhaustive 300-page report that promised to reveal the truth.
Burning bright in the night

Eventually the media got wind of the story and Ms Cahill appeared on TV current affairs show Today Tonight. Her story also ran in newspapers and magazines.

By 1996, she was a big name on the UFO circuit – a series of talks and conferences that thrived – and, with every appearance, Ms Cahill unveiled new tidbits from PRA’s forthcoming report.

Her book, published by Harper Collins, sold out and was quickly reprinted [it’s currently out of print and copies sell for $150 online].

But by 1998, Ms Cahill had disappeared from the scene and none of the other witnesses –including her ex-husband Andrew – had come out publicly to back her story.

As for PRA’s report, it was also nowhere to be seen.
‘Worthy of release’

Fast forward to 2020 and there’s still no report.

Aside from a brief moment of interest in 2016 when Ms Cahill’s case was name-dropped on The X-Files reboot by Fox Mulder, the ‘Eumemmerring Creek encounter’ has gone down in infamy.  
  
Kelly Cahill’s case was mentioned on The X-Files when it rebooted in 2016. Photo: Fox Broadcasting Company


As one Reddit user put it: “I used to think this was the holy grail case of encounter reports – I no longer hold that opinion.”

Remarkably, 27 years on from the event, John Auchettl told the ABC it was possible the PRA’s report might still come out, but not soon.

“The case is so good,” Mr Auchettl said.

“[Our report] is worthy of release.

“[But] we won’t release it [now] because once we release our report, then we become the focus of the case.

“Our idea was we would release the report and then bring [the witnesses] out.

“At the moment we don’t know where they are, so if we release anything all the focus is going to be on us. We’ll get hammered.”

He said the original 300-page report was whittled down to an unusable ‘100 pages or so’ when the witnesses, including Ms Cahill and her ex-husband, began to ask for information to be taken out and refused to allow the publication of medical and psychological reports they claimed backed up their stories.

Mr Auchettl also said that when Ms Cahill went to the media and other UFO groups in early 1994, it ‘‘muddied’’ the case.
‘An extraordinary lost opportunity’

Mr Chalker still believes Ms Cahill’s story but regrets handballing the case to PRA in 1993.


“There was a lot of bad blood that’s passed between them and me as a consequence of their role in this case,” Mr Chalker told the ABC.

“This was an extraordinary lost opportunity.

“I’ve seen a lot of information that suggests [the investigation] was carried out … but unfortunately they didn’t [want] to share the material.”

He said he ‘‘wasn’t that impressed with the explanations that were put forward’’ by PRA for withholding the report.



Mr Chalker wrote in his blog in 2016 he was ‘‘determined never to pass a case onto them again’’.

“It was frustrating that such a promising case was caught up in a situation where the group involved chose not to make their data available,” he wrote.

Mr Chalker said UFO enthusiasts had a right to feel disappointed by PRA keeping their research secret.

“I can understand the reaction from various members of the UFO research community,” he said.
Back to earth

As for Kelly Cahill, she dropped off the radar around 1998.

Mr Chalker said that in the early 2000s she called him and sent him all her files – ‘‘three large archival boxes’’ – and left the country.

She is now back in the Latrobe Valley in Gippsland, the same region she was living in when her ‘‘encounter’’ happened in 1993.

The ABC approached Ms Cahill for an interview but she did not respond.

“She really wanted to take a low profile and put all this behind her,” Mr Chalker said.

“She spent a lot of time trying to raise the profile of this episode and wanted to have the other [witnesses] come out as well.

“When it ultimately became pretty clear that she was going to be the only one that was going to go public on this, that’s when she felt less confident about being the constant contact point on this case, particularly when [PRA] didn’t back her up in terms of having the availability of all the case material that went with it.”

While it’s unclear how Ms Cahill feels about it all today, for a lot of UFO enthusiasts her case is either the one that got away or, worse, another one that never really was.
-ABC

NBA Fans Bash Right-Wing Conspiracy Theory Calling LeBron an 'Illuminati Wizard’

BYJOE PRICE warm apple night @BackwoodsAltar Sep 18, 2020

BY THE BY IS IT TOO OBVIOUS A CLUE
HIS JERSEY NUMBER
The 23 enigma can be seen in: Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea 's book, The Illuminatus! Trilogy (therein called the "23/17 Phenomenon") Wilson's Cosmic Trigger I: The Final Secret of the Illuminati (therein called "the Law of Fives" or "the 23 Enigma")
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/23_enigma
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/23_enigma


Image via Getty/Nathaniel S. Butler

NBA fans have took to social media to bash a ridiculous claim calling LeBron James an "illuminati wizard." Said theory came from right-wing conspiracy theorist and evangelist Sheila Zilinsky. 

In an absolutely bizarre video picked up on by Right Wing Watch on Twitter, Zilinsky suggested that LeBron has been "conjuring up demons before every game" through his chalk toss. "Is LeBron James just an athlete?" she asks, before beginning to highlight his chalk toss in numerous photos.

"The sports world calls it a chalk toss, but it’s simply disguise for what he’s really doing,” Zilinsky says in her truly deranged video. “A high level conjuring, a spell, an incantation from this Illuminati wizard, where he’s summoning demons. I believe he’s conjuring up demons before every game. Plain and simple. Really take a look at these so-called chalk tosses, it is very frightening this ritual that he does."

Right-wing conspiracy theorist Sheila Zilinsky warns that LeBron James in an "Illuminati wizard' who is "conjuring up demons before every game" by tossing chalk into the air. pic.twitter.com/hh0LHPLapo— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) September 18, 2020

While it might seem impossible to figure out how she reached this conclusion about LeBron, her YouTube channel is full of similarly unhinged videos. Video titles include, "SPIRIT OF THE WORM: ARE YOU INFECTED?" and "Dismantling The SPIRITS Behind the COVID Pandemic." Far-right Christian conspiracy theorist or troubled Houston Rockets fan? You be the judge.

Read reactions to the definitely not true theory that LeBron is an "illuminati wizard" who is "conjuring demons" below.

Sounds extremely cool. https://t.co/dFHBUwaZST— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) September 18, 2020

Y’all have to admit that he’s the goat after this one. I’ve never heard anyone say that MJ was so good that demons could be the only explanation of his greatness lmao https://t.co/qblSjFhl13— Alexandre Fall (@YaBoyBennieC) September 18, 2020

Lebron started advocating for racial equality and all the right-wing nutjobs called him an Illuminati wizard 😭 https://t.co/KOOqRpTcHh— Henry is in pain. (@wokehenryy) September 18, 2020

Where exactly can someone sign up to be an Illuminati wizard cuz that sounds cool AF?— •𖤐Rö|3𖤐• (@RobMatheny80) September 18, 2020

Is it against the rules to summon a demon to help you win? I don’t see it in the rule book, it’s an air bud rule— Alex K (@alexquitska) September 18, 2020

There’s a bunch of people in Washington who can tell her that lebron destroys Wizards https://t.co/6PSpBDBvfY— Ziggy (@ZiggyOfAk) September 18, 2020

Right-wing conspiracy theories are a dime a dozen, but I must admit that if Lebron is a wizard who can "conjure up demons," my respect for him would grow. https://t.co/15vr13LiO8— Don Adams (@Dadams507) September 18, 2020

are you for real? being as good as lebron was always a pipe dream but now you're telling me i have to be a fucking wizard too? i give up https://t.co/sZBfBHtWn6— Fuccboi Extraordinaire (@Sans_Argonauts) September 18, 2020
  • 23 enigma - Wikipedia

    Music and art duo The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu (later known as The KLF and the K Foundation) named themselves after the fictional conspiratorial group "The Justified Ancients of Mummu" from Illuminatus!; the number 23 is a recurring theme in the duo's work. Perhaps most infamously, as the K Foundation they burnt one million poundson 23 August 1994 and subsequently agreed not to publicly discuss the burning for a period of 23 years. 23 years to the day after the burning they returned to launch a novel and discus…

    Wikipedia · Text under CC-BY-SA license
  • MANY SUCH ILLUMINATI CONSPRIACY THEORIES ORIGINATE IN WEST AFRICAN POPULAR CULTURE, LIKE THE NIGERIAN PRINCE EMAILS FROM THE NINETIES 
  • The Number 23 - The illuminati Code - Religion - Nigeria

    The Number 23 is a secret number that many don’t know about. The Christians today read the bible on daily basis but don’t understand/notice the often use of the number 2 and 3 and ask about the secret behind it July 23rd July 23rd is both the Sumerian and Egyptian New Year. You can make your research, it fun time Latin Alphabet There are 23 letters in the Latin alphabet. Which was used in ...



  • OPINION

    Someone's head is in the clouds, but it isn't LeBron'

    Charita M. Goshay
    The Repository Canton Ohio

    Because we all could use a break from the nonstop drama, may I present the Rev. Sheila Zilinsky and her theory that LeBron James is secretly a wizard and card-carrying member of the Illuminati who conjures up demons by way of his pregame “chalk toss.”

    No, really.

    Someone - it wasn’t me - pointed out that James has that kind of power but he can’t regrow his fast-fading hairline?

    If it truly is the case that James has the ability to conjure the Underworld, how then, to explain his leaving the Cleveland Cavaliers, not once but twice, when he simply could have used his hoo-doo to win-win?

    Plus, with James being a faithful Northeast Ohioan, it only seems fair that he should have sprinkled a little magic dust on home plate at Progressive Field, and in the end zones at Cleveland Browns Stadium, commonly known as “the Factory of Sadness.”

    At the very least, he could have prevented Hue Jackson from becoming the head coach in 2017, resulting in a historic 0-16 season, or are Cleveland sports teams so cursed that not even Beelzebub wants a piece of the action?

    In 2016, James did carry the Cavs to the NBA World Championship, but what self-respecting wizard pulls only one rabbit out of the hat?

    Zelinsky charges that James is engaging in black magic.

    Well, he is Black, and he is pretty damned magical, even after 17 years.

    James does have superpowers that have nothing to do with chalk.

    His mantra is no spell, it’s simply this: “Nothing is given. Everything is earned.”

    He has used his powers for good from the moment he was handed a cape.

    Earlier this year, he used some of those powers to create More Than a Vote, an organization designed to help Americans to cast their votes.

    More Than a Vote has secured Dodgers Stadium as a voting venue and is paying fines for some former felons in Florida, which has imposed a type of poll tax in the form of unpaid court fines.

    Before you say that sounds reasonable and fair, ask yourself many Florida millionaires who have welched and dodged on their taxes and child support will be prevented from voting.

    Now, does evil exist? Your answer probably depends on your belief system, your culture, even your politics.

    If you believe in it, there’s no need to search for it in clouds of chalk.

    Zilinsky, whose website describes her as a former top Canadian government official in the area of environmental policy, writes books and runs a podcast which she uses to spread her particular brand of Chrisitanty.

    Among her other contentions are accusations that the Freemasons are fanboys of Satan, and that the Disney Co. uses “ Illuminati mind control” which has contributed to America’s spiritual demise. By positioning itself as a positive source of entertainment, Disney, Zilinsky argues, is manipulating Americans in plain sight.


    Zilinsky has every right to worship and believe as she pleases. What she doesn’t have the right to do is impugn another person with baseless and scurrilous accusations.

    There is a saying in evangelical circles that can be so spiritual that you are no earthly good.

    James has used his power to ensure that hundreds of kids in Akron can attend the University of Akron tuition-free, and his LeBron James Family Foundation has helped numerous Akron families acquire safe and decent housing.

    He and his business partner, Maverick Carter, have launched a media company to produce positive stories about the Black experiences which might not otherwise see the light of day.

    He could just shut up and dribble as some have suggested he do. Instead, he has exercised his celebrity to speak truth to power.

    October is around the corner, that time of year when the horror stories start to ramp up.

    Clearly, we’re ahead of schedule.


    An Illuminati Conspiracy Theory Captured American Imaginations in the Nation’s Earliest Days—And Offers a Lesson for Now

    John Fea,
    Time•September 24, 2020

      
    Timothy Dwight circa 1795: Reverend Timothy Dwight IV (1752 - 1817) Credit - Getty Images

    In the final weeks before the 2020 election, the outsize role of conspiracy theories in American politics has become unmistakable. For some Trump supporters in particular, campaign-season news is filtered through the powerful idea that hidden forces are at work, that the “deep state”—a supposed secret, shadowy and sinister group of leftist politicians, government bureaucrats, Chinese scientists, journalists, academics and intellectuals—is seeking to destroy American values. Seen through that lens, COVID-19, which has killed nearly 200,000 Americans, is a “hoax”; some even believe that Anthony Fauci is a “deep state doctor.”

    But while the particulars of these theories may be new, the dynamics are not. In fact, they go all the way back to America’s earliest years: In the late 1790s, Jedidiah Morse, the congregational minister in Charlestown, Mass., and a well-known author of geography textbooks, drew national attention by suggesting that a secret organization called the Bavarian Illuminati was at work “to root out and abolish Christianity, and overturn all civil government.” Today, such an idea sounds both eerily familiar and like a relic of a less sophisticated time—but the lessons of that episode are decidedly relevant.

    With the ratification of the Constitution fresh in the minds of most Americans, and upheaval ongoing across the Atlantic in the form of the French Revolution, the late 18th century was a volatile time. In that environment, Morse became convinced that this group of atheists and infidels were behind the secular Jacobin movement in France that sought to purge the nation of organized religion. He believed that the Illuminati group was pursuing the same clandestine agenda in America and was working closely with Thomas Jefferson-led Democratic Republicans, the Federalists’ political rivals, to pull it off.-

    Morse, a Federalist himself, read about the Bavarian Illuminati in books published by European religious skeptics, which described a network of secret lodges scattered across the continent. In a 1798 fast day sermon, he appealed to the worst fears of those evangelicals who remained concerned with the moral character of the new republic. He described the Illuminati’s ominous attempts to “abjure Christianity, justify suicide (by declaring death an eternal sleep), advocate sensual pleasures agreeable to Epicurean philosophy…decry marriage, and advocate a promiscuous intercourse among the sexes.”

    Get your history fix in one place: sign up for the weekly TIME History newsletter

    The presence of the Illuminati in America, Morse believed, should cause Christians to “tremble for the safety of our political, as well as our religious ark.” In another sermon on the subject, Morse printed a list of secret societies and Illuminati members currently working their sinister schemes in his Christian nation.

    Soon Timothy Dwight, the president of Yale College in New Haven, Conn., expressed similar fears about the Illuminati and used his pen to sound the alarm. In a Fourth of July discourse entitled The Duty of Americans, at the Present Crisis, Dwight quoted from Revelation 16 to caution his listeners and eventual readers about “unclean teachers” who were educating innocent people in “unclean doctrines.” Such teachers were spreading throughout the world to “unite mankind against God.” As they performed their malicious work, the Bavarian Illuminati took cues from previous opponents of Protestant America–the Jesuits, Voltaire and the Masons, to name a few.

    Dwight called Americans back to God. This, he believed, was the only effective way of resisting such subversive threats to social virtue. “Where religion prevails,” he wrote, “Illuminatism cannot make disciples, a French directory cannot govern, a nation cannot be made slaves, nor villains, nor atheists, nor beasts.” Dwight reminded his readers that if this dangerous society succeeded in its plans, the children of evangelicals would be forced to read the work of deists or become “concubines” of a society that treated “chastity” as a “prejudice,” adultery as virtue, and marriage as a “farce.”

    By the turn of the 19th century, theories about the Illuminati had traveled up and down the Eastern Seaboard and as far as the Caribbean islands. Elias Boudinot, a former president of the Continental Congress, and John Jay, a Federalist statesman, also bought into this conspiracy theory.

    Critics of these evangelical Federalists argued that Morse and Dwight, both clergymen, spent too much time dabbling in politics instead of tending to the souls of the Christians under their spiritual care. Others accused these conspiracy theorists of having “overheated imaginations”—and it soon became clear that, while the political forces at work in the 18th century U.S. were very real, this last group of critics was simply correct. There were no Illuminati forces at work in American politics. The conspiracy theory spread by these respected men was just that.

    Eventually, Morse’s accusations against Democratic-Republican societies were unable to withstand the weight of evidence and he stopped talking about the Illuminati. As historian Jonathan Den Hartog has written, evangelical Federalists concerned about the preservation of a Christian nation “overplayed their hand” by propagating the Illuminati scare. In the process, they “called their standing as societal authorities into question, and ultimately weakened their position” as shapers of American culture. Within two decades the Federalist Party had faded from the political landscape, but their fears about the collapse of evangelical culture in the United States would persist well into the 21st century.

    Today, many evangelical Christians, living with anxiety about perceived threats to what they believe to be the decline of a Christian nation, have turned toward conspiracy theories. Whether it is a “deep state” working secretly with the intelligence community to weaken the Trump administration, an Internet prophet called “Q” or demonic forces seeking to thwart God’s plan for America, we have seen this all before.

    In 1790, truth, evidence and reason prevailed, but not before evangelical leaders embarrassed themselves and tarnished their Gospel witness. The comparisons with 2020 are not perfect. No historical analogies are. But sometimes, as we like to say, history rhymes.


    John Fea is Distinguished Professor of American History at Messiah University and author of Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump.

    Locked-up computer systems only part of 'terrifying' ransomware scourge
    © Provided by The Canadian Press

    TORONTO — A shadowy group of cyber criminals that attacked a prominent nursing organization and Canadian Tire store has successfully targeted other companies with clients in governments, health care, insurance and other sectors.

    Posts on their NetWalker "blog" indicate the recent infiltration of cloud-services company Accreon and document company Xpertdoc, although only the College of Nurses of Ontario has publicly acknowledged being victimized.

    Experts say NetWalker surfaced about a year ago but its attacks took off in March as the criminals exploited fears of COVID and people working remotely. The ransomware, like similar malware, often infiltrates computer networks via phishing emails. Such messages masquerade as genuine, prompting users to provide log-in information or inadvertently download malware.

    Earlier ransomware attacks focused on encrypting a target's files — putting them and even backups out of reach. Increasingly, attackers also threaten to publish data stolen during their "dwell time," the days or weeks spent inside an exploited network before encryption and detection.

    The intruders promise to provide a decryption key and to destroy stolen records if the organization pays a ransom, often based on what the attackers have learned about its finances, by a given deadline.

    To underscore the extortion, NetWalker criminals publish tantalizing screen shots of information they have, such as personnel, financial, legal and health records.

    "The data in these cases is extremely sensitive," said Brett Callow, a Vancouver Island-based threat analyst with cyber-security firm, Emsisoft. "Lots of companies choose not to disclose these incidents, so the individuals and (third-party) organizations whose data have been compromised never find out."

    In an interview, Richard Brossoit, CEO of Montreal-based Xpertdoc, said this month's attack was a "little terrifying" at first. Fortunately, he said, damage was limited and no confidential client or personal information was compromised, although some records might be permanently lost.

    "Once we were able to isolate the problem and knew it was minimal — that our customers weren't really affected at all — obviously it was a very big relief," Brossoit said.

    With new computers, his several dozen employees were back up and running within days, he said. Still, Xpertdoc did hire specialists to deal with the cyber-criminals.

    "We were able to negotiate a very low ransom," Brossoit said. "They didn't ask too much and we were able to actually negotiate much lower than what they were asking."

    Morneau Shapell, one of dozens of potential third-party victims, said it accepted Xpertdoc's assurances no sensitive information had been compromised.

    Accreon, which has until the first weekend in October to pay up, would not discuss its situation.

    NetWalker did recently publish gigabytes of internal data from a Canadian Tire store in Kelowna, B.C. In response to a query, Canadian Tire Corporation said store computers were hit and authorities were investigating.

    "This incident has not affected the Canadian Tire Corporation computer networks that process customer information or purchases," the company said, adding store employees were told their personal information had been compromised.

    The nurses' college, which angered members by taking more than a week to publicly admit the attack discovered Sept. 8, did say it was getting back on its feet, although some services remained down.

    "We share our members' distress and frustration that this has happened," college CEO Anne Coghlan said in a statement. "Members can rest assured that we will notify them directly if we identify any risk to individuals."

    The consequences of ransomware can go beyond the financial and reputational. This month, for example, a hospital in Duesseldorf, Germany, was unable to admit a patient for urgent treatment after an apparent cyber-attack crippled its IT system, authorities said. The woman died.

    Such attacks have become increasingly frequent. Earlier victims in Canada include municipalities — among them Stratford and Wasaga Beach in Ontario and the Regional District of Okanagan-Similkameen in B.C. — health-care organizations and charities. Cloud storage companies, with troves of third-party data, have also become attractive targets.

    This year, the University of California San Francisco paid US$1.14 million to regain access to its data. The encrypted information, the school said, was "important to some of the academic work we pursue as a university serving the public good."

    Just how often victims pay — and how much — is hard to know. One analysis by New Zealand-based Emsisoft, using available data, estimates ransomware losses for Canadian enterprises could run up to US$1.7 billion this year.

    "It's really difficult to get accurate statistics," said David Masson, a director with cyber-security company Darktrace. "Those who pay won't be telling you. If you do pay, you're probably going to be attacked again because very quickly...you're going to get a reputation that you paid."

    Those behind NetWalker appear to be Russian speaking. They provide the malware for a cut to "affiliates," who promise not to attack Russian or Russia-friendly targets.

    "Their attacks are becoming increasingly sophisticated," Callow said. "These groups are using the exact same tools as nation-state actors. In some cases, they may actually be nation-state actors."

    Experts say up-to-date anti-virus software, segmenting networks and keeping separate backups are among critical protective measures. In addition, Masson said knowing what is going on within a network is crucial, while Brossoit advised hiring specialists should an attack happen.

    This report by The Canadian Press was first published on Sept. 27, 2020.

    Colin Perkel, The Canadian Press