Mexico asks pope for loan of ancient books held in Vatican library

David Alire Garcia,
Reuters•October 10, 2020


MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - The Mexican government has formally asked Pope Francis for the temporary return of several ancient indigenous manuscripts held in the Vatican library ahead of next year's 500-year anniversary of the Spanish conquest of Mexico.

The request to allow the texts to be exhibited in Mexico was made in a two-page letter addressed to Pope Francis and posted on President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's Twitter page on Saturday but dated Oct. 2.

It was delivered to the pope by Lopez Obrador's wife, Beatriz Gutierrez Muller, who met with him at the Vatican following a meeting she had on Friday with Italian President Sergio Mattarella.

One of the three codicies, or books, requested is the Codex Borgia, an especially colorful screen-fold book spread across dozens of pages that depicts gods and rituals from ancient central Mexico.
It is one of the best-preserved examples of pre-conquest Aztec-style writing that exists, after Catholic authorities in colonial-era Mexico dismissed such codicies as the work of the devil and ordered hundreds or even thousands of them burned in the decades following the 1521 conquest.

In the letter, Lopez Obrador requests the Vatican return the Codex Borgia, two other ancient codicies as well as its maps of the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan for a one-year loan in 2021.

The nationalist president is planning a series of events to commemorate the anniversary next year. He also reiterated his request that the Catholic Church, as well as reigning Spanish King Philip VI, apologize for atrocities that were committed following the conquest of Mexico, which Lopez Obrador said would mark an "act of historic contrition."

The Vatican has not yet responded to the request, but its museums and archives have in the past lent out various manuscripts and works of art after similar requests from other countries.


(Reporting by David Alire Garcia in Mexico City; Additional reporting by Philip Pullella in Rome; Editing by Chris Reese)

Mexican president asks Pope Francis for conquest apology

Associated Press•October 10, 2020


Mexico's President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador addresses family members of 43 missing students from the Rural Normal School of Ayotzinapa, during a presentation of the ongoing investigations on the sixth anniversary of the students’ enforced disappearance, at the National Palace in Mexico City, Saturday, Sept. 26, 2020. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico’s president published an open letter to Pope Francis Saturday calling on the Roman Catholic Church to apologize for abuses of Indigenous peoples during the conquest of Mexico in the 1500s.

In the letter, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador also asks the pope to lend Mexico ancient pre-Hispanic Mexican or colonial-era documents.

“The Catholic Church, the Spanish monarchy and the Mexican government should make a public apology for the offensive atrocities that Indigenous people suffered," the letter states.

López Obrador asked the pope to make a statement in favor of Miguel Hidalgo, Mexico's 19th-century independence leader who was once believed to have been excommunicated by the church for his involvement in the uprising. However, researchers later said it appeared that Hidalgo had confessed his sins before he was executed and thus was not excommunicated.

López Obrador said: “I think it would be an act of humility and at the same time greatness” for the church to reconcile posthumously with Hidalgo.

The letter comes as Mexico struggles with how to mark the 500th anniversary of the 1519-1521 conquest, which resulted in the death of a large part of the country’s pre-Hispanic population.

In 2019, López Obrador asked Spain for an apology for the conquest, in which millions of Indigenous people died from violence and disease.

Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Borrell said at the time that Spain “will not issue these apologies that have been requested."

100 YEARS AGO

How a president tried to hide his illness during a pandemic — and the disaster it created

1919 NOT 1917 AS TRUMP CONTINUES TO CLAIM

Rebecca Corey, Yahoo News•October 11, 2020


This is part of an occasional series of Yahoo News articles and accompanying videos on how the issues America faced in the 1920s — aka “the Roaring Twenties” — have echoes in our own decade, a century later.

On Oct. 2, President Trump tweeted that he and first lady Melania Trump had tested positive for COVID-19 amid a surge of infections among the president’s White House staff and those close to him — and the world was shaken.

Questions loomed about what would happen if the president succumbed to or was incapacitated by the deadly coronavirus, which has so far killed more than 214,000 Americans and infected over 7.7 million others.

Yet the U.S. was plunged into further confusion as contradictory statements and information kept emerging from White House staff and the president’s medical team, with officials repeatedly dodging questions on everything from Trump’s lung scans to timelines on when the president had last tested negative for the coronavirus. Eventually the president’s physician, Dr. Sean Conley, admitted on Oct. 4 that he had initially downplayed the extent of the president’s illness in an effort to remain “upbeat.”

“I was trying to reflect the upbeat attitude that the team, the president, that his course of illness has had,” Conley said. “I didn’t want to give any information that might steer the course of illness in another direction. And in doing so it came off that we were trying to hide something, which wasn’t necessarily true.”
 

Portrait of President Woodrow Wilson seated outdoors, circa 1920. (Photo by Fotosearch/Getty Images)

This isn’t the first time a president — and a White House — has contracted a deadly pandemic virus. And like the Trump administration, President Woodrow Wilson’s staff attempted to downplay the disease when Wilson caught the so-called Spanish influenza 100 years ago.

The first case of the Spanish flu within the Wilson White House was reported at the height of the pandemic in October 1918, but it was during a fateful trip to Paris that the president himself would fall ill.

World War I ended on Nov. 11, 1918, but the following year the Paris Peace Conference would convene to discuss the future of Europe and important topics like the creation of a League of Nations and war reparations to be paid by Germany.

“Influenza was rampant in Paris at the time,” John Barry, author of “The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History,” told Yahoo News. “It’s not clear if they were really taking any precautions. Probably not.”

For months, Wilson had downplayed the 1918-19 pandemic in an effort to keep morale and production high during the war, with no nationwide strategy to combat the pandemic. It’s an approach that was followed by many countries in Europe during the wartime effort; even the name “Spanish flu” is a misnomer — a nickname that stuck after Spain, which was neutral and had a free press, became the first to report on the pandemic.

In February 1919, multiple members of Wilson’s staff and family came down with influenza, including Secret Service members, the president’s chief usher, his stenographer and his eldest daughter, Margaret. And in April, in the middle of peace negotiations, Wilson himself fell ill.

Adm. Cary T. Grayson, physician to the late President Wilson, at his desk in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 5, 1933. (Getty Images)

Wilson’s staff and his personal physician, Rear Adm. Cary Grayson, tried to hide news of the president’s illness, saying he was merely suffering from a “severe cold.”

“The president has had colds of this sort from time to time,” the White House claimed to the New York Times on April 4, 1919, “and Admiral Grayson has always been able to combat them successfully.”

In reality, Grayson confided to a friend on April 14 that “these past two weeks have certainly been strenuous days for me. The president was suddenly taken violently sick with the influenza at a time when the whole of civilization seemed to be in the balance.”

Ultimately, their attempts to hide the president’s condition failed.

“They asked everybody to keep it quiet,” Barry told Yahoo News. “But there were too many people who knew.”

Even when Wilson was no longer bedridden, the effects of the Spanish flu were difficult to conceal. Neurological complications were a common feature of the 1918 virus — and of other influenza viruses, including COVID-19. Its toll on Wilson was noticed by everyone in Paris — from Wilson’s closest aides to other foreign leaders including David Lloyd George, the English prime minister, who remarked on Wilson’s “mental and spiritual collapse” during the conference.

“His mind was affected,” Barry said of Wilson. “It was noticed by everybody immediately. A level of paranoia; he thought he was being spied on by the French. Some crazy thinking; he thought he was personally responsible for every piece of furniture in the entire American delegation. Something about automobiles bothered him, even though he wasn’t going out. I mean, it was bizarre.”

“It probably affected his performance,” Barry added. “Prior to his illness, he was insistent upon the principles that he said that America was going to war to defend … and he caved in on every single thing after he got sick, except for the League of Nations. But everything else he gave away.”

Many historians believe that the resulting treaty, which was harshly punitive toward Germany, laid the groundwork for the rise of Hitler and World War II.

From left: British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, Italian Prime Minister Vittorio Orlando, French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau and President Woodrow Wilson at the Paris Peace Conference in May 1919. (Photo by Interim Archives/Getty Images/U.S. Army photo)More

Despite a brief hospitalization for COVID-19 only a week ago, including taking therapeutics remdesivir and the steroid dexamethasone, President Trump has been eager to quickly resume robust, large-scale campaign events. On Saturday, Trump gave a speech to hundreds of guests from the White House balcony — his first public event since testing positive for the coronavirus. The president also tweeted that he will be in Sanford, Fla., on Monday “for a very BIG RALLY!”

“Saturday will be day 10 since [Trump’s] Thursday diagnosis,” Conley said in a Thursday night press release, “and based on the trajectory of advanced diagnostics the team has been conducting, I fully anticipate the president’s safe return to public engagements at that time.”

On Saturday, Conley cleared the president to return to an active schedule.

But Dr. Uché Blackstock, a Yahoo News medical contributor and CEO of Advancing Health Equity, cautions that the disease has an unpredictable course and potential long-term complications.

“What it’s known for is this fluctuating course where people start feeling better and then they start deteriorating,” Blackstock said after Trump’s discharge from Walter Reed hospital last week. “And we also know that people have symptoms for weeks, if not months, and so I think it still remains to be seen how this president will do.”

The long-term effects of COVID-19 are still being studied, but so far there’s evidence of the virus’s impact on the lungs and heart months after infection, including heart muscle damage even for patients who experienced mild COVID-19 symptoms. Coronavirus is also known to cause brain-related conditions in patients even when they haven’t been hospitalized in intensive care units, including confusion, trouble focusing, changes in behavior and stroke.

President Woodrow Wilson addressing the public in Tacoma, Wash., during his tour to promote the League of Nations on Sept. 18, 1919. (Getty Images)

Wilson’s own encounter with the Spanish flu would continue to affect him long after his April 1919 ordeal in Paris. In September, during an aggressive speaking tour of the U.S. to promote the formation of the League of Nations, Wilson collapsed, with what Grayson described as “nervous exhaustion.”

In a formal statement, Grayson said, “The trouble dates back to an attack of influenza last April, in Paris, from which he has never entirely recovered.”

The rest of the tour was canceled, and days later Wilson would suffer a stroke — another medical incident that would be shrouded in secrecy, with Grayson and Wilson’s wife, first lady Edith Wilson, running many of the White House affairs themselves. With his health continuing to decline, Wilson would be largely debilitated for much of the remainder of his presidency, which ended March 4, 1921.

VIDEO

https://news.yahoo.com/how-another-president-tried-to-hide-his-illness-during-a-pandemic-and-the-disaster-it-created-144806298.html

SOUNDS FAMILIAR

Police fire teargas at Nigerians protesting at alleged brutality, witnesses say

Angela Ukomadu and LibGeorge, Reuters•October 9, 2020



Police fire teargas at Nigerians protesting at alleged brutality, witnesses say
People run during a protest in Abuja



By Angela Ukomadu and Libby George

LAGOS (Reuters) - Nigerian police used teargas on Friday to disperse dozens of people in the capital Abuja who had gathered to protest at alleged brutality by members of a special police unit, witnesses said.

Protesters, some holding placards, ran as clouds of teargas hung in the air. Multiple people at the incident said on Twitter that police had fired the canisters.

A spokesman for the police did not immediately respond to a message and call requesting comment.- 

"They poured teargas on each and every one of us, it's so hot I had to put water on my face. This is what Nigeria has turned into," protester Anita Izato said.

"We just got there with our placards and decided, they started throwing us teargas. That was it," another protester said.

Sporadic protests have broken out across Nigeria in recent days after a video circulated last week alleging to show members of the Special Anti-Robbery squad, known as SARS, shooting dead a man in Delta state.

The police pledged to reform the unit soon after the alleged incident, including by banning SARS agents from carrying out routine patrols and requiring them to wear uniforms when on duty. But protesters have called for the unit to be abolished.

Nigerians and international rights groups for years have accused SARS of brutality, harassment and extortion, and there have been multiple pledges in the past, including from the government of President Muhammadu Buhari, to reform the unit.

#EndSARS has been trending on Twitter in Nigeria for several days, popular singer Naira Marley held an Instagram chat with a police spokesman over the issue watched live by more than 30,000 people and even the deputy governor of Lagos state said he had been harassed by SARS agents.

"Every citizen of Nigeria should be upset," Lagos state government spokesman Gboyega Akosile said in a Tweet, sharing a video of Lagos state Deputy Governor Obafemi Hamzat addressing protesters and sharing his own story of harassment.


(Reporting by Angela Ukomadu and Libby George; Editing by Alison Williams)

The Republican Party has embraced American fascism

Linette Lopez, Business Insider•October 11, 2020

A man is heavily armed at a protest against coronavirus public health measures in Indiana. Jeremy Hogan/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images


Both President Trump and his Vice President have refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power if they lose the election. Militia groups emboldened by Trump tried to kidnap a Democratic Governor. A GOP Senator tweeted that America is not a democracy.


The GOP has embraced American fascism.


Our country's unique history with fascism goes back to the Antebellum South, when slaveowners mounted an insurrection against the US government to establish an anti-democratic society, the Confederacy.


The legacy of the Confederacy has firmly lodged itself into American politics ever since, and its ideology has been violently reinforced by terrorist groups like the Ku Klux Klan. We've chipped away at it's power but it will likely never disappear completely.


Trump's GOP has taken up that fascist legacy, and if we don't push back against it, it will ravage our democracy again.


This is an opinion column. The thoughts expressed are those of the author.


The Republican Party has embraced American fascism, an anti-democratic ideology that is unique to our country, and is engrained deeper in our collective consciousness and our history than most of us have been taught.

Historians often come ever-so-close to calling American fascism what it is, before backing away and concluding that fascism is something from abroad. Robert Paxton, a preeminant historian of the political philosophy, called the Ku Klux Klan (which was founded by high-ranking former Confederate soldiers) "the earliest phenomenon that can be functionally related to fascism." Yet somehow we do not own our American fascism.

Building on Paxton in the Washington Post in August, Princeton University historian David Bell acknowledges that Trump and the terrorist groups that support him are nationalists, yes. Anti-democratic, of course. But he says they are not fascists because they have not created a powerful mass movement — not like the movements in Europe between World War I and World War II.

This logic reeks of American exceptionalism. The fascist KKK derived its ideology from a mass, explicitly anti-democratic movement to overthrow the government of the United States — the Confederacy.

In 1861 the rich plantation owners of the South were able to mobilize the entire region to fight the Civil War. It was a movement so violent, that Union soldiers were forced to stay in Southern states for years after the Confederate Army surrendered in order to uphold democracy.

Some historians call what the Confederate slaveholders did "a counterrevolution." It was an explicit rejection of a crucial line founding father Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness…."

The Confederacy's repudiation of equality is outlined in its founding documents, including 'The Cornerstone Speech,' a seminal speech given by Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens just a few weeks before the Civil War broke out. In it he outlined the the new nation's rejection of equality on the basis of white racial superiority. His country promised wealth and possibility, but only for a few white men.

It is equality that makes a democracy possible. Without it, the strong can crush the weak and impose their will on the rest of society. That is how fascist governments are structured, that is how the Confederacy came to be, and that is what Trump's Republican party is embracing now

The Southern slaveholders were fascists

In order to justify the institution of slavery as humane and just, rich Antebellum Southern planters and politicians (they were almost invariably one in the same) started rejecting democracy and equality in the mid-1800s. Instead they decided their society should be built on a strict order, with the plantation owner on top and the slave on the bottom.

"Thanks to Jefferson we have made a mistake... and pushed the love of democracy too far," Georgia political journal The Southern Watchman declared in 1857.

"Vulgar democracy and licentious 'freedom' is rapidly supplanting all the principles of contintutional 'liberty'! When shall the American people perceive that all our difficulties arise from the absurdities of deciding that the 'pauper' and the 'landholder' are alike competent to manage the affairs of a Country, or alike entitled to vote for those who shall?"

It was clear to the Southern slaveholders that a sense of equality — or any attempts by the state to create equality — could disrupt their rule. So in an attempt to keep power with power they took equality out of the equation. They also starved their government coffers, much like the agenda of our modern GOP. The result was a society with crushing inequality not just between black and white, but the planter class and white, small-scale farmers.

An anonymous political pamphlet circulating among Southern farmers in the 1840s signed only with the name "Brutus" described the state of South Carolina outside the planter class like this:

"This state is said to have a republican form of government. It may be the form, but the substance is wanting... the great mass of the people are virtually disenfranchised... He can make nothing to lay up for his family. He cannot get his children educated. He and his family are doomed to poverty... ignorance, and to contempt of the favored aristocrat."

There could be no social mobility when all of the resources belonged to the planter class. So instead of seeing liberty as an individual's ability to pursue happiness, the Southern planters came to think of liberty as one's ability to perform one's duty in service of the social order. If you were a slave, you were most free when you were the best slave, if you were a woman you were subservient to your husband or father. The planter class placed its aspirations at the heart of its society's, and it expected everyone to fall in line. Those who did not were met with violence and derision.

The United States fought the Civil War to end slavery and preserve democracy on this continent. "The Cause" the doomed Confederacy fought for — that it raised private militias for — was the right to violently preserve an unequal society completely captured by a ruling class imposing its will on everyone else. This is the origin of American fascism.
Make the connection, then break it

Officially, the Civil War ended in 1865, but Union soldiers left the South 11 years later, after the contested presidential election of 1876. Democratic candidate Samuel Tilden refused to concede to Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, and would only agree to do so if Republicans agreed to end the US Army's occupation of the South.

Once they were gone, Southern fascists were able to organize their region's society in the anti-democratic way they wanted to, creating the Black Codes, Jim Crow, poll taxes and poll tests. This is how fascism — a mass movement to enforce the social order of white supremacy — has been allowed to grow within a democracy for generations since the Civil War.

Consider what has happened over the last two weeks alone.

President Donald Trump has openly talked about refusing to accept the outcome of the Noveember elections if he doesn't win. He is not the only one in his party who has suggested they will not respect the will of the people. On Wednesday in his debate against Sen. Kamala Harris, Vice President Mike Pence dodged a question about the peaceful transfer of power, refusing to reject Trump's stance in favor of democracy. Trump was elated.

That very night, on Twitter, GOP Sen. Mike Lee of Utah insisted that democracy is not a necessary part of this American experiment (it is). Instead, he argued, our government should strive for peace, prosperity and liberty — but for who? Without democracy there is only liberty for the strong, rich and violent. That is what we know from observing undemocratic countries around the world and through history.

Just hours after Lee's tweet, on Thursday, the FBI arrested 13 men in connection with a domestic terrorist plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Whitmer, a Democrat, has agitated armed right-wing groups in her state by enforcing public health regulations during the coronavirus pandemic.

Trump counts the violent individuals in these groups among his supporters. In fact, just before these charges were announced Trump called Whitmer, "the lockup queen" on Fox News. This after referring armed protesters in Michigan as "fine people" who were just a little angry.

In a press conference following the news, Governor Whitmer said Trump was complicit in the threat on her life. She drew a direct line between Trump's refusal to denounce armed white supremacist groups at the first presidential debate. In doing so she was repudiating America's most virulent form of fascism. That is what white supremacy is. Because of the legacy of the Confederacy, in our country white supremacy and fascism are inextricably linked.



The militia groups threatening to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer, and the marchers carrying Confederate flags in Charlottesville back in 2017, are all participants in this history. Their ideology is derived from the mass movement to overthrow the US government in the Antebellum South, just like the ideology of today's neo-Nazis is derived from Adolf Hitler's mass movement to take over the world. Both groups are just as fascist today as they were in the past, even if they lack the support they had before.

In part because of our refusal to acknowledge this history, American fascism is lodged so deeply into our system that we are still fighting it on multiple fronts — voter suppression, right-wing terrorism and racial injustice. That same denial has permitted men like Donald Trump and Sen. Mike Lee to delude themselves into thinking they have some kind of commitment to freedom when they are, in fact, carrying on that fascist history. It's time we all acknowledged that.

Read the original article on Business Insider
Our goal is to create a safe and engaging place for users to connect over interests and passions. In order to improve our community experience, we are temporarily suspending article commenting.

#QUACK  

White House Doctor Gives Trump The All-Clear With Few Details

HE IS A #CHIOPRACTOR

Mary Papenfuss Trends Reporter, HuffPost•October 10, 2020

Donald Trump’s physician issued a statement late Saturday declaring that the president no longer poses a risk of transmitting COVID-19 to others. But he failed to provide the critical detail about whether or not Trump has tested negative for the coronavirus.

“By currently recognized standards,” Trump is “no longer considered a transmission risk to others,” noted the unsigned statement by White House physician Dr. Sean Conley. He added that the “assortment of advanced diagnostic tests obtained reveal there is no longer evidence of actively replicating virus.”

Not only did Conley fail to reveal if Trump has tested negative for COVID, but he also did not provide specific details about the results of Trump’s “advanced diagnostic tests.” The PCR lab test Conley refers to his memo can give doctors a “rough sense” of how much virus remains in a person’s body, or the viral load, The New York Times noted. Conley’s wording implies that some virus remains in the president’s body.

Melissa Miller, a clinical microbiologist at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, told the Times that no test can definitively show if a person at the end of a coronavirus infection is still contagious and poses a risk to others.

The White House has been extraordinarily tight-lipped about the exact nature of Trump’s illness and recovery.

It remains unclear when the president contracted the coronavirus. The White House has refused to reveal when Trump last tested negative.

Conley initially suggested a week ago that Trump had actually been diagnosed a full day earlier on Sept. 30 than what the president stated in a tweet, which would have meant that Trump knew he had COVID-19 before attending group events without a mask or social distancing. Conley later retracted his statement after the White House complained.

But Conley again indicated in his memo that Trump was diagnosed Sept. 30. That would make Saturday “day 10 from symptoms onset,” as Conley noted in the memo.

WH doctor says Trump “no longer considered a transmission risk to others...” pic.twitter.com/ymUrjMLx4Z
— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) October 11, 2020

In any case, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that those with severe COVID-19 may need to isolate for 20 days. Trump was airlifted to Walter Reed hospital, was given supplemental oxygen, steroids and two experimental drugs before he was discharged three days later on Monday, which would indicate the illness was serious.

Also, the president’s health could still deteriorate in the next few days, experts note.

Epidemiologist Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding, senior fellow of the Federation of American Scientists, called Conley’s memo “evasive” and “sketchy.” He noted the 20 days in isolation recommended by the CDC — and pointed out that people with COVID can be infectious to others for even longer if they’re taking dexamethasone, the steroid that Trump has been on.

3) also studies show that dexamethasone (a corticosteroid) extends the period of infectiousness of #SARSCoV2 #COVID19 beyond even 20 days!!! pic.twitter.com/GcQu77uLzP
— Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) October 11, 2020

He also pointed out that “synthetic antibodies” created by the experimental drugs Trump took is not the same as immunity, and may skew diagnostic results.

Breaking—Dr Conley now claims Trump is not infectious. He cites CDC criteria, yet CDC clearly says severe #COVID19 cases are infectious for 20 days. And his viral load might be down, but he also has synthetic antibodies. Synthetic doesn’t equal immunity. Ct value also unreported. https://t.co/i4bAXZPXk5 pic.twitter.com/tn3dgp3lDs
— Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) October 11, 2020

Trump plans to resume his campaign rallies in the coming days.

#METOO #BELEIVESURVIVORS

Paris Hilton leads protest and calls for closure of Utah school

Associated Press,TODAY•October 10, 2020

Paris Hilton has been speaking out about abuse she said she suffered at a boarding school in Utah, and on Friday she took her push nearly to the school’s front doors.

Hilton organized a protest in a park near Provo Canyon School, along with several hundreds of others who share stories of abuse they say they suffered there or at similar schools for troubled youth. She is calling for the closure of the school.

Hilton, a socialite who became a reality TV star, and many others wore black T-shirts with red letters on the back that said, “survivor” and on the front read, “breaking code silence,” a reference to Hilton’s new campaign to compel others to shed light on what she believes is a corrupt industry that manipulates parents and traumatizes youth. It was Hilton’s first time back to the area since she was there as a teen, when she says she was verbally, emotionally and physically abused in what she described as “torture.”

Image: Paris Hilton (Rick Bowmer / AP)

Since a documentary titled “This is Paris” was released on YouTube last month, other celebrities have also spoken out about their experiences at that school or others like it, including Michael Jackson’s daughter Paris Jackson and tattoo artist Kat Von D.

“It’s something so traumatic that you don’t even want to think it’s real,” Hilton said in a speech to the crowd. “It’s something I blocked from my memory for forever.”

Related: Jackson shared her story in solidarity with Hilton.

The institution is now under new ownership and the administration has said it can’t comment on anything that came before, including Hilton’s time there. Owners of the school declined comment Friday, pointing to a statement on the school website that said the previous owners sold the school in 2000. The school aims to help youth who have struggled in typical home and school environments, some of whom are dealing with drug addiction or acting out violently, according to the website.

“We are committed to providing high-quality care to youth with special, and often complex, emotional, behavioral and psychiatric needs,” the statement read.

In the documentary, Hilton says she got into the nightlife scene in New York as a teenager and would sneak out and go to clubs while her family lived at the Waldorf Astoria hotel.

Image: Paris Hilton (Rick Bowmer / AP)

Her exasperated parents sent her away to various programs to straighten out. When she was 17, Hilton was finally sent to what she describes as “the worst of the worst”: Provo Canyon School in Utah.

She stayed at Provo for 11 months and says while there, she was abused mentally and physically, claiming staff would beat her, force her to take unknown pills, watch her shower and send her to solitary confinement without clothes as punishment.

The 39-year-old says the treatment was so “traumatizing” that she suffered nightmares and insomnia for years.

After she went home, she was determined to protect herself and eventually constructed the persona that she embodied when she became famous on the reality show “The Simple Life” in the early 2000s, the documentary revealed.

Image: Paris Hilton (Rick Bowmer / AP)

Hilton and others at the protest vowed to push forward until all schools that mistreat youth are shut down. After she and others spoke at the park, she led the group in a protest walk until they arrived at the front gates of the school, where she stopped to pose in front of a school sign holding her own poster that said, “Shut down Provo.”

“There is thousands of these schools all around. Provo Canyon is just the first one that I want to go down,” Hilton said. “From there, it will be a domino effect.”

Paris Hilton leads abuse survivors in Utah protest of Provo Canyon School: 'This is just the first step'

Elise Solé, Yahoo Celebrity•October 10, 2020

Paris Hilton lead an Oct. 9 protest demanding the closure of Provo Canyon School in Springville, Utah, where she claims she was abused as a student. (Photo: Tibrina Hobson/WireImage)

Paris Hilton advanced her campaign to close the Utah boarding school where she alleges she was abused, with a Friday protest.

In her Sept. 14 YouTube documentary This Is Paris, the reality television star revealed that she was abused by administrators at Provo Canyon School in Springville, Utah at the age of 17. Frustrated by her rebellious behavior, Hilton’s parents sent her to the residential treatment center, where Hilton says she was kept in solitary confinement, hit and intimidated.

A disclaimer on school’s website reads, “We are aware of media referencing Provo Canyon School. Please note that PCS was sold by its previous ownership in August 2000. We therefore cannot comment on the operations or patient experience prior to that time. We are committed to providing high-quality care to youth with special, and often complex, emotional, behavioral and psychiatric needs.”

For the documentary, Hilton met with other survivors of the school and this month, tattoo artist Kat Von D recalled her time there as “the most traumatic six months of my life.”- 

On Friday, hundreds of people joined Hilton at a park near the school. Wearing a black T-shirt that read “Survivor” and “Breaking code silence,” Hilton held a sign with the lettering, “The kids you abuse today will be the ones that will take you down tomorrow.”

“They want us to be ashamed and we’re not the ones who should be ashamed,” @ParisHilton said at the rally in Provo. “The people who should be ashamed are the ones who work at these places.”https://t.co/eE4c8ds4G6
— The Salt Lake Tribune (@sltrib) October 9, 2020

Yesterday was one of the most empowering moments of my life! Returning to the place that has haunted my nightmares since I was a teen. Being there surrounded by hundreds of other survivors who have all endured the same pain & abuses that I have. pic.twitter.com/IdtRf2xtuS
— Paris Hilton (@ParisHilton) October 10, 2020

According to the Salt Lake Tribune, Hilton told protestors, “Today, I’m not here as Paris Hilton. I’m here as just another survivor who was abused, who has lived with that since the day I left. And I am dedicated to shutting down Provo Canyon School, which will cause a chain reaction among this entire industry.”

The star also told Fox 13, “This has been one of the most empowering moments of my life and this is just the first step.”

Hilton, who subsequently developed post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and depression, said her experience at the school led to multiple abusive relationships and her 2003 sex tape with ex-boyfriend Rick Salomon who sold the footage titled 1 Night in Paris.

"That would never have happened if I hadn't gone to that school," Hilton told CBS Sunday Morning. "When I got out of that school, I was so lost. And then I ended up meeting the person who did that.”

On Friday morning, Hilton told Good Morning America that boyfriend Carter Reum has re-established her trust in men. “It’s the first time I’ve really opened my heart and he is so incredible, I finally feel safe...he makes me feel like the luckiest girl in the world...”

The star’s Change.org petition to close the school has more than 130,000 signatures.

Hillary Clinton Takes Shot at F-35 Program, Urges Retirement of Old Air Force Planes

Oriana Pawlyk, Military.com•October 10, 2020

In its quest to retire old weapons and aircraft, the U.S. Air Force has an unexpected advocate: former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

In a piece published in Foreign Affairs magazine Friday, Clinton, a former U.S. senator from New York and Obama administration official, proposed that the Air Force, and the military as a whole, hasten plans to "retire aging weapons systems or close bases that have outlived their usefulness" in an effort to free up resources to spend on future technologies.

"Among the highest priorities must be to modernize the United States' defense capabilities. In particular, moving away from costly legacy weapons systems built for a world that no longer exists," Clinton said in the piece, "A National Security Reckoning: How Washington Should Think About Power."

"Deep savings -- potentially hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade -- can and should be found by retiring legacy weapons systems," she said. "New technologies such as artificial intelligence are rendering old systems obsolete and creating opportunities that no country has yet mastered but many are seeking."

She cited China as the primary competitor to the U.S. in this field.

Clinton took a shot at the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, which has been projected to cost more than $1 trillion over its 50-year service lifetime, and said the Air Force should look to buy fewer F-35s in favor of the B-21 Long Range Strike Bomber (LRSB) program. The Air Force is the largest customer for the stealth fighter aircraft, with hopes to procure 1,763 of the F-35's A-variant.

The Pentagon "sank so much time and money into the project that turning back became unthinkable, especially since the F-35 is the only fifth-generation aircraft currently being manufactured in the United States," she said. "And because the plane directly and indirectly supports hundreds of thousands of jobs across hundreds of congressional districts in nearly every state, it has legions of defenders in Congress."

"The U.S. Air Force will have to focus less on short-range tactical fighter planes and more on long-range capabilities," she continued. "That means it won't need nearly as many F-35s as planned, but it should welcome the arrival of the B-21 Raider, a long-range bomber under development that is designed to thwart advanced air defenses."

In its 2021 budget request, the Air Force proposed retiring multiple aircraft, including a number of KC-10 Extenders, KC-135 Stratotankers and B-1B Lancer bombers, that need repeated structural work; officials have recommended divesting portions of these fleets early in order to avoid upkeep costs for old planes.

The Air Force plans to have 165 to 175 bombers in its inventory once the B-21 comes online. That future inventory is expected to be solely made up of the new LRSB and the B-52 Stratofortress. But some officials maintain that more are needed.

Gen. Tim Ray, the head of Air Force Global Strike Command, has often proposed a bomber force of more than 200 aircraft.

"We've said publicly that we think we need 220 bombers overall -- 75 B-52s and the rest B-21s, longterm," Ray told Air Force Magazine earlier this year. The service plans on retiring its B-1s and B-2 Spirits in the early-to-mid 2030s.

"The size of the bomber force is driven by the conventional requirement, and then we manage the nuclear piece inside of that, based on treaty and policy. In the context of the National Defense Strategy and great power competition, 220 is where we think we need to go," he told the magazine in May.

A number of lawmakers have backed the call for additional B-21s, such as Sen. Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas. Cotton in the past has even suggested the B-21s replace the B-52 fleet, despite the Air Force's plan to keep the plane flying into the 2050s.

Congress, however, has been skeptical of letting the service retire weapons systems early until there are capabilities to backfill their role.

For example, the Air Force has tried numerous times over the last decade to retire its A-10 Warthog close-air support aircraft.

The once seemingly logical proposal, however, launched a firestorm in 2014 when lawmakers -- led by former Air Force colonel turned Republican congresswoman Martha McSally, who joined forces with the late Sen. John McCain of Arizona -- rushed to save the beloved plane from mothballs. Years later, the fleet is being refurbished with new wings instead of being sent to the boneyard.

"There are some circumstances [under which] only the A-10 is going to keep Americans alive," said McSally, who was appointed to the Senate in December 2018 as a replacement for McCain.

"So why would we want to get rid of that until we have a suitable alternative?" McSally told Military.com in an interview earlier this year. "It's got the ability to fly well into the 2040s, and we're going to keep fighting to make sure it does."

-- Oriana Pawlyk can be reached at oriana.pawlyk@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at @Oriana0214.

Related: Congress Wants a 'Manhattan Project' for Military Artificial Intelligence

REVERSE DISCRIMINATION TROPE

The DOJ is suing Yale, accusing it of discriminating against Asian American and white applicants. Their claims are 'leveraging the model minority myth' to pit racial groups against each other, scholars say.

Inyoung Choi, INSIDER•October 9, 2020

Yale university in New Haven, CT. Associated Press/Beth J. Harpaz

On Thursday, the Justice Department sued Yale University, accusing it of race-based discrimination on "most Asian and White applicants" after alleging in August that Yale discriminated against Asian American and white applicants based on a two-year federal investigation.

Scholars of the Asian American and Pacific Islanders community are criticizing the DOJ's accusation, saying it's part of a larger attempt to pit racial minorities against each other.

The DOJ is "leveraging the model minority myth to undermine the opportunity to build a multiracial coalition in this country to dismantle racism," a former board member of the Korean American Association told Insider in August.

Meanwhile, students and faculty have criticized legacy status as a factor of admissions that favors white applicants

The Department of Justice sued Yale University on Thursday, accusing it of discriminating against Asian and white applicants.

The lawsuit comes months after the DOJ in August accused Yale of imposing undue and unlawful penalties on racially-disfavored applicants, including Asian American and white applicants in particular. Their notice followed a two-year investigation following complaints about admissions at Ivy League colleges. Yale President Peter Salovey denounced the allegation at the time as "baseless."

In a statement issued Thursday, Salovey doubled down on the university's belief that the DOJ's "allegation is based on inaccurate statistics and unfounded conclusions."

"I want to be clear: Yale does not discriminate against applicants of any race or ethnicity. Our admissions practices are completely fair and lawful," he said. "Yale's admissions policies will not change as a result of the filing of this baseless lawsuit. We look forward to defending these policies in court."

Connecticut Attorney General William Tong also criticized the DOJ's allegations and said: "this lawsuit is as baseless as it is offensive, and every aspect of it demonstrates complete and utter overreach. My office is exploring all legal avenues to support Yale University and its students. The Department of Justice action deviates starkly from decades of well-established legal precedent and threatens to disrupt admissions practices at hundreds of universities nationwide."

The DOJ's claim is messaging stoking 'white resentment,' scholars say

Scholars of the Asian American and Pacific Islanders community criticized the Justice Department's accusation in August that Yale discriminates against Asian American and white applicants, pointing out the move just pits racial minorities against each other while ignoring the larger problem of legacy admissions.

"It's leveraging the model minority myth to undermine the opportunity to build a multiracial coalition in this country to dismantle racism," Dona Kim Murphey, a former board member of the Korean American Association, told Insider in August.

According to Michael Li, senior counsel at The Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan public policy center that focuses on equal representation in government, the DOJ's accusation is ultimately "messaging for white people."

"It's like 'Hey if you're stuck at a job or not moving up the economic ladder, your income hasn't increased for decades — you can blame people of color and elites for keeping you out of schools like Yale,'" Li told Insider in August. "That's just political messaging for November."

Li added that this messaging was in line with the Trump campaign stoking "white resentment for people taking jobs and spots in schools." He said that, in addition to targeting white working-class resentment, the campaign seeks to promote white suburbanite resentment by talking about "what schools children of white suburbanites get to go to."

"The message that this sends to the AAPI community is that the DOJ is very interested in dismantling policies that create diversity and increase access to those who have been excluded to places like Yale," Janelle Wong, a professor of American Studies and Asian American Studies at the University of Maryland, told Insider in August. Wong received her doctorate at Yale.

Last year, a federal judge rejected Students for Fair Admissions' lawsuit that claimed Harvard discriminated against Asian-Americans. Brooks Kraft/Corbis via Getty Images

Many selective private colleges use a holistic admissions process that accounts for each applicant's background, including their race. They also take into consideration a number of other factors, like legacy status.

At Yale, only 5.8% of the entire student population identifies as Black. Fewer than 10% are Hispanic, and under 15% are Asian. Nearly 43% of the student body is white.

The Justice Department's action against Yale resembles a recent case against Harvard University that also took aim at affirmative action policies. Last year, a federal judge ruled against plaintiffs in a lawsuit that claimed Harvard discriminated against Asian-Americans. The lawsuit was filed by Students for Fair Admissions, which is led by Edward Blum, a white politically conservative legal strategist. In February, the Justice Department threw its support behind the lawsuit when it was sent to an appeals court.

"There's been a movement to dismantle affirmative action policies for decades at this point," Kim Murphey, a Harvard alumna, told Insider in August. "It's very misguided and the fact that they're drawing Asian Americans into that is exceedingly problematic."

Yale University. Michelle McLoughlin/Reuters

Jennifer Lee, a professor of sociology at Columbia University, told Insider by email in August that the DOJ's accusation is another example of "a full-throttle attack on affirmative action, fueled by the false equivalency of race and minoritized status."

She said that, in reality, "affirmative action is not negative action against Asian Americans" — and most voters recognize that. A 2016 AAPI data survey of Asian American attitudes shows that nearly two-thirds of Asian Americans support affirmative action.

"There's so much evidence that these policies create the learning environment these students thrive in," Wong said, adding that affirmative actions do not harm but benefit the AAPI community.

The Department of Justice did not respond to Insider's request to comment in August.
Meanwhile, students and faculty call the end of legacy status

Admissions processes have been known to favor applicants with legacy status, meaning they're members of families who attended or donated to the respective university.

In a 2005 article published in Yale's student newspaper, the dean of undergraduate admissions, Richard Shaw, said legacy "gives a slight edge, and we have no qualms about that."

But there is little data or investigation into how tangibly the status affects applicant status. According to The New York Times, Harvard places children whose parents attended the college — who often donate money as alumni — on a "Z-list," where they are admitted after a gap year.

A survey conducted by the Harvard student newspaper showed that over a third of the Harvard Class of 2022 were legacy admits. A study by the National Bureau of Economic Research published in 2019 showed that over 43% of white admitted students were "recruited athletes, legacies, those on the dean's interest list, and children of faculty and staff." Fewer than 16% of African American, Asian American, and Hispanic admitted students, respectively, fit that category.

Collin Binkley/AP Photo

But data on legacy admissions released from the university are largely unavailable. A spokesperson for Harvard told Insider in an August statement that "we do not publicly release this type of data, as it is not part of the IPEDS data set, required by the federal government." Yale publicly disclosed that 12% of the Class of 2023 had a legacy affiliation.

Earlier this year, Ronald J. Daniels, the president of Johns Hopkins University, wrote an essay in The Atlantic explaining why the university chose to end legacy admissions, citing that ending "hereditary privilege in American higher education" would be a step towards accessible, equitable education. In July, students and faculty at Georgetown started signing a petition calling for the same.

"I never became reconciled to the prevalence of this form of hereditary privilege in American higher education," Daniels wrote. "Particularly given this country's deeply ingrained commitment to the ideals of merit and equal opportunity."

Climate change concerns Latinos in Florida
Associated Press Videos•October 9, 2020



The Associated Press spoke with three Latino voters in Florida – an independent, a Democrat and a Republican – about key issues in the battleground state, including climate change, for the interview series “AP Newsmakers.” (Oct. 9)
Video Transcript

SHARIKA MITHA-OCHOA: We have a major problem in Biscayne Bay. And I know we have a problem globally, what's going on out in the West Coast is terrifying, lack of oxygen in the air for humans, but we have a problem here and we're surrounded by water and we need to take care of our waterways. And it just doesn't seem like we're doing enough.

RUBEN VICENTE: I think that we need to discuss more what things we have in common, what goals we share, what differences we have, and where we can reach middle ground. Because trust me, I'll be out there with you with my big old, I'm an old Republican shirt, I'm already old. And I'll be picking up the litter off of the side of Biscayne Bay.

GISELLE MAMMANA DIAZ: So I have seen it, I have personally experienced it. I haven't been able to take my twin boys sometimes to the beach, because there's too much seaweed and bacteria on the shore. So I do see it, I just wonder what moves the conversation for people to actually act and make a change.