It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Tuesday, October 27, 2020
VOTER SUPPRESSION Voting by mail isn’t so easy on Native American reservations By STEPHEN GROVES and PIA DESHPANDE 1 of 4 A sign for a tribal council candidate on the Rosebud Indian Reservation is shown on Aug. 6, 2020. An Associated Press analysis in Democratic primaries in South Dakota showed that turnout was 10% lower among voters who lived in counties with a majority American Indian population and at least 95% of the county on reservation land. Voter advocates say that long trips to access polling places and the fact that some people lack reliable transportation has led to low voter turnout. (AP Photo/Stephen Groves)
MISSION, S.D. (AP) — The small, brick post office in Mission, South Dakota, sees steady business most days as people wait outside to allow one family at a time to check for mail at one of just four such depots scattered across the Rosebud Indian Reservation.
With limited polling places on a reservation that’s roughly 2,000 square miles (5,180 square kilometers) and officials pushing people to vote by mail amid the coronavirus pandemic, cramped post offices such as this one are a lifeline to preserving Native Americans’ right to vote.
But voting rights advocates fear it’s not enough.
The slow-moving nature of mail on large reservations puts the people who live there at a disadvantage to getting their votes counted, advocates say. They have launched a series of legal challenges in several states to gain accommodations for reservation voters while also pressing people to figure out how to get their ballot counted as the coronavirus upends life in Native American communities.
“Using the mail is less effective, and it’s devastating in Indian Country,” said OJ Semans, co-founder of an advocacy group called Four Directions.
Home mail delivery is rare on Rosebud Indian Reservation, Semans said, so people rely on post office boxes, some making a roundtrip of over 60 miles (95 kilometers) to check their mail — or to vote. Complicating the process: Many people don’t have reliable transportation and extended families share post office boxes.
“Poverty, time, distance, transportation has always been a barrier to participating in elections,” Semans said, describing the compounding obstacles that lead to low voter turnout on many large reservations.
Native Americans have a long history of exclusion from voting, with the U.S. government depriving them of citizenship until 1924. Some states, including the Dakotas, had laws preventing tribal members from voting into the 1950s.
In recent years, voting rights advocates and tribes have won or settled 86 election-related lawsuits in a state-by-state legal battle to increase voting access for Native Americans. But advocates worry that progress could face setbacks as election officials push for mail-in voting and tribes scramble to contain COVID-19 outbreaks by locking down reservation communities.
In Arizona, an appeals court recently rejected a lawsuit from six members of the Navajo Nation seeking an extra 10 days to count tribal members’ mailed ballots.
In Montana, tribes and voter advocates successfully sued to overturn a law limiting the number of absentee ballots that a person can collect and turn in to county auditors — “ ballot harvesting” that tribes said is vital.
Data from this year’s primaries, which relied heavily on mail-in voting, reveals shortfalls in voter turnout on reservations. An Associated Press analysis of Democratic primaries in South Dakota showed that turnout was 10% lower among voters who lived in counties with a majority American Indian population and at least 95% of the county on reservation land. The analysis considered data from presidential Democratic primaries because the Republican presidential primary was not competitive this year.
Wicahpi Yankton, an 18-year-old member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe in South Dakota, worked a number of drives this year. She said people showed up from all corners of the Pine Ridge Reservation, getting rides with family members to travel as far as 50 miles (80 kilometers).
She was surprised to meet a fellow first-time voter who was 71 years old — born when South Dakota still had laws barring tribal members from voting. Yankton helped the woman, whom she called unci (grandmother in the Lakota language), complete the voter registration form. Full Coverage: Election 2020
Completing the form can be tricky because reservation residents don’t always have addresses with a street name and number. Instead they rely on descriptions such as, “I’m on the highway going towards Gordon, take a left, you should see a white trailer, then you go past that trailer and you should see another trailer there. That will have two cars in the front. That’s where I live,” Yankton said.
Oglala Lakota County, where Yankton helped with voter drives, had the lowest voter turnout in the state during this year’s Democratic primaries, with just 14% of registered voters casting ballots.
Despite the difficulties, community leaders are emphasizing the importance of voting. Many tribes are entitled to federally provided health care and education, leaving these essentials to the fluctuations of bureaucracy.
But many Native Americans are distrustful of federal and state governments — another factor that mitigates voter turnout, according to Jean Schroedel, a political science professor at Claremont Graduate University who has conducted polling on several reservations.
“In particular, when you turn to voting by mail, the levels of trust dropped dramatically,” Schroedel said.
Tribes also have found themselves pushing back against moves to shrink the number of satellite offices that collect absentee ballots on reservations. The Blackfeet Nation in Montana sued to have a satellite office opened on reservation land. In Arizona, a federal judge denied the Pascua Yaqui Tribe’s request to open an early voting and ballot collection site on their reservation that was closed after 2016.
In the Dakotas, organizations are looking at options like coordinating rides among family members instead of using the vans or buses that usually ferry people to polling places on Election Day. Several tribes dealing with virus outbreaks have issued lockdown orders, adding another element of uncertainty.
On the Standing Rock Reservation, which spans North Dakota and South Dakota, the tribe has joined with the Lakota People’s Law Project to organize a phone bank to call Native American voters, especially in the battleground state of North Carolina, where they say tribal members have struggled to get to the polls in previous years.
The resolve is something that phone bank worker Melanie Thompson hopes she passes on to Native Americans in North Carolina who had mail-in ballots sent back because they weren’t filled out properly.
“They say they are going straight to the polls to get in that line,” Thompson said. “Coronavirus or no coronavirus.”
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Deshpande reported from Chicago. Associated Press reporters Felicia Fonseca in Flagstaff, Arizona, and Matthew Brown in Billings, Montana, also contributed.
Feeding Houston’s hungry: 1M pounds of food daily for needy By ANITA SNOW and JOHN L. MONE
1 of 14 Pallets of various foods are stacked on shelves in the extensive warehouse at the Houston Food Bank Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2020, in Houston. It's the largest U.S. food bank and national food bank leaders say they don't see an end in sight to the demand. (AP Photo/Michael Wyke)
HOUSTON (AP) — In car lines that can stretch half a mile (0.8 kilometers), workers who lost jobs because of the coronavirus pandemic and other needy people receive staggering amounts of food distributed by the Houston Food Bank. On some days, the hundreds of sites supplied by the country’s largest food bank collectively get 1 million pounds.
Among the ranks of recipients is unemployed construction worker Herman Henton, whose wife is a home improvement store worker and now the sole breadwinner for their family of five. They tried to get food stamps but were told they only qualified for $25 of federal food assistance monthly.
“As a man, as a father, as a provider I felt at a low point. I felt low,” Henton said as he waited in his car near West Houston Assistance Ministries, which gets food from the Houston Food Bank for its care packages aimed at helping feed families for a week. “In this type of situation there’s nothing you can really do.”
Distributions by the Houston Food Bank now average about 800,000 pounds (363,000 kilograms) daily after reaching the unprecedented 1 million pound mark for the first time in the spring, a level that the organization still delivers periodically.
Before the coronavirus struck, the group’s average daily distribution was 450,000 pounds (184,000 kilograms), said Houston Food Bank President Brian Greene.
Then workers in Houston and millions around the country were suddenly thrown out of work and forced to rely on the handouts.
“It had that feeling of a disaster, like the hurricanes in the Gulf,” Greene recalled. “It was shocking how the lines exploded so quickly.”
Almost overnight, one of America’s most ethnically and racially diverse cities became a symbol of a desperate need as the food bank scrambled to take in enough milk, bread, vegetables and meat from multiple sources to feed the hungry.
Many people in Houston and around the U.S. live paycheck to paycheck and were caught off guard by the economic fallout from the coronavirus that initially cost the nation 22 million jobs, with10.7 million that haven’t come back.
“Forty percent of households have less than $400 in order to weather a storm,” Greene said, referring to a Federal Reserve survey. “So, when this crisis hit the number of families who needed assistance was immediate and very large.”
After Henton was laid off, he and his wife ate one meal daily so their three children could have all three.
His family is one of about 126,500 that the Houston Food Bank has helped with boxes of food every week since March via its system powered by workers and volunteers who sort, box and pack the food onto trucks that deliver their loads to distribution centers throughout greater Houston’s suburban sprawl.
Nationwide, the charitable food distribution “surge has stayed at a surge level,” said Katie Fitzgerald, executive vice president and chief operating officer of Feeding America, a national network of 200 food banks.
Her group boosted the amount of food it distributes to 2 billion pounds (907 million kilograms) from April through June, up from 1.3 billion pounds (590 million kilograms) during the January-March period.
The federal government has helped meet demand with programs such as one that buys farm goods like vegetables, meat and dairy originally produced for now shuttered restaurants and gives it free to food banks and the distribution groups they work with.
But the money set aside for the U.S. Agriculture Department’s multibillion-dollar Farmers to Families program runs out at the end of October.
Individual food banks also get 20% to 40% of the food they distribute from other government programs, including one that helps farmers hurt by foreign tariffs by buying their produce, beef, pork and chicken and ensuring that producers get paid while edible food doesn’t end up in landfills. That program is funded so far through 2020.
The food banks get the rest of what they distribute from supermarket or farmer donations or buy it with donated cash.
Fitzgerald said the nation’s food banks have enough food to meet U.S. demand for now, but said distributors “are concerned about the future” as winter approaches.
Demand for food in the Houston area, long subjected to the volatility of the oil industry, will probably continue without more government relief for jobless workers, said Mark Brown, CEO of West Houston Assistance Ministries, which gives food to nearly 2,000 people each week
“I think we will have an elevated need in our community for at least two years,” he said.
The charity was founded in 1982 to help people during an oil bust that eliminated 225,000 jobs and toppled the city’s real estate market. The group also helps people pay their rent and find work.
On one recent food distribution day, many people waiting in their cars with the tailgates open so bags could be easily loaded in their vehicles in a socially distant way were reluctant to speak about their economic misfortunes or other reasons for lining up.
Unemployed stagehand Priscilla Toro said she was embarrassed at having to resort to the free food line but added: “We have to get by. We’ve got to eat.”
Henton said he was simply thankful that he and many others can feed their families with the extra help.
“It can happen to anyone,” he said.
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Snow reported from Phoenix.
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On Twitter: twitter.com/asnowreports, twitter.com/JohnMone
Post-Abe agenda: Suga says Japan to go carbon-free by 2050 By MARI YAMAGUCHI 1 of 8 Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga delivers a policy speech during an extraordinary Diet session at the upper house of parliament in Tokyo, Monday, Oct. 26, 2020. Suga has declared Japan will achieve zero carbon emissions by 2050 in his first policy speech after taking over from Shinzo Abe. The policy speech Monday at the outset of the parliamentary session set an ambitious agenda reflecting Suga's pragmatic approach to getting things done. (AP Photo/Koji Sasahara)
TOKYO (AP) — Japan will achieve zero carbon emissions by 2050, Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga declared Monday, outlining an ambitious agenda as the country struggles to balance economic and pandemic concerns.
The policy speech at the outset of the parliamentary session was Suga’s first since he took office on Sept. 16 after his boss Shinzo Abe resigned over health reasons. It reflects Suga’s pragmatic approach to getting things done, though it’s unclear he will have the political heft needed to overcome vested interests in weaning this resource-scarce nation from its reliance on imports of oil and gas.
Suga just returned from a trip last week to Vietnam and Indonesia, where he pushed ahead with Abe’s efforts to build closer ties and promote a regional vision for countering growing Chinese influence.
Now out of Abe’s shadow, back home Suga has been pumping out consumer-friendly policies. He has earned a reputation as a cost cutter.
He said he intends to make a sustainable economy a pillar of his growth strategy and “put maximum effort into achieving a green society.” That includes achieving a carbon-free society by 2050.
The European Union and Britain have already set similar targets for net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, and China recently announced it would become carbon-free by 2060. Japan previously targeted a 80% reduction by 2050.
Suga portrayed the need to shift away from fossil fuels to counter climate change as an opportunity rather than a burden.
“Global warming measures are no longer obstacles for economic growth, but would lead to industrial and socio-economic reforms and a major growth,” he said. “We need to change our mindset.”
Japan’s current energy plan, set in 2018, calls for 22-24% of its energy to come from renewables, 20-22% from nuclear power and 56% from fossil fuels such as oil, coal and gas.
Progress toward reducing reliance on fossil fuels has been hindered due to the prolonged closures of most of Japan’s nuclear plants after the meltdown of the Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant due to the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in the northeastern Tohoku region.
Energy experts are now discussing revisions to Japan’s basic energy plan for 2030 and 2050. The 2050 emissions-free target would require drastic changes and likely prompt calls for more nuclear plant restarts.
About 40% of Japan’s carbon emissions come from power companies, and they must use more renewable sources of energy while stepping up development of technologies using hydrogen, ammonia and other carbon-free resources, experts say.
Suga said he will speed up research and development of key technologies such as next generation solar batteries and carbon recycling. He also promised to reduce Japan’s reliance on coal-fired energy by promoting conservation and maximizing renewables, while promoting nuclear energy.
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres called Japan’s announcement that it will achieve net zero emissions by 2050 “a very significant positive development,” his spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, said in a statement.
“The secretary-general now looks forward to the concrete policy measures that will be proposed and implemented to reach this goal, that can help other countries define their own strategies,” the statement said.
Environmental groups also welcomed the announcement. “Carbon neutrality is no longer a lofty, faraway dream, but a necessary commitment,” in line with international climate change agreements, Jennifer Morgan, executive director of Greenpeace International, said in a statement.
In the short term, Japan’s top priority is to curb the pandemic while reviving the economy, Suga said.
Turning to Japan’s biggest long-term problem, a low birthrate and shrinking population, Suga reiterated a pledge to provide insurance coverage for infertility treatments. He also said he would promote paternity leaves for working fathers to ease the burden of child-rearing and home-making on working mothers. He promised more help for single-parent households, more than half of which are living in poverty.
Among other highlights, Suga said:
—The Japan-U.S. alliance, a cornerstone of Japanese diplomacy and security, is key to achieving a “Free and Open Indo-Pacific” regional economic and security framework to counter China’s sway.
—Japan, meanwhile, seeks to have stable ties and cooperate with China.
—Japan is open to meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to resolve conflicts over abductions of Japanese citizens years ago and wartime compensation and to normalize diplomacy with Pyongyang.
—South Korea is “an extremely important neighbor,” but it should drop its demands for compensation over Korean wartime forced laborers to restore “healthy” bilateral relations.
Since taking office Suga has crafted a populist and pragmatic image, winning public support for his relatively modest background and low-profile, hardworking style.
He has ordered his Cabinet to step up implementation of pet projects such as lowering cellphone rates and accelerating use of online government, business and medical services.
“I will break administrative divisions, vested interests and bad precedents to push for reforms,” Suga said.
But he also said Japanese should try to help themselves before looking to the government for assistance, in line with what experts say is a conservative stance that is unsympathetic to the disadvantaged.
Suga is best known for his effectiveness in corralling powerful bureaucrats to force through Abe’s policies.
His hardline approach has sometimes drawn criticism. Earlier this month, he was accused of seeking to muzzle dissent by choosing not to appoint six professors out of a slate of 105 to the state-funded Science Council of Japan.
The flap triggered massive protests from academics and took the public support rating for his Cabinet down about 10 points to just above 50%.
Opposition lawmakers are expected to raise the issue during the 41-day session through Dec. 5.
NXIVM guru gets 120 years in prison in sex-slaves case
By LARRY NEUMEISTER and TOM HAYS 1 of 12 FILE - In this Tuesday, May 7, 2019, file courtroom drawing, defendant Keith Raniere, center, leader of the secretive group NXIVM, is seated between his attorneys Paul DerOhannesian, left, and Marc Agnifilo during the first day of his sex trafficking trial. Raniere, a self-improvement guru whose organization NXIVM attracted millionaires and actresses among its adherents, faces sentencing Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2020, on convictions that he turned some female followers into sex slaves branded with his initials. (Elizabeth Williams via AP, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — Disgraced self-improvement guru Keith Raniere, whose NXIVM followers included millionaires and Hollywood actors, was sentenced to 120 years on Tuesday for turning some adherents into sex slaves branded with his initials.
U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis called Raniere “ruthless and unyielding” in crimes that were “particularly egregious” because he targeted girls and young women. He handed down the unusually high sentence in federal court in Brooklyn after hearing anguished statements by victims of a sex-trafficking conspiracy that resulted in Raniere’s conviction last year, along with unrepentant remarks from the defendant himself.
“I do believe I am innocent of the charges. ... It is true I am not remorseful of the crimes I do not believe I committed at all,” Raniere said.
Prosecutors had sought life in prison while defense lawyers said he should face 15 years behind bars.
The sentencing culminated several years of revelations about Raniere’s program, NXIVM, which charged thousands of dollars for invitation-only self improvement courses at its headquarters near Albany, New York, along with branches in Mexico and Canada. Adherents included millionaires and Hollywood actors willing to endure humiliation and pledge obedience to the defendant as part of his teachings.
NXIVM has been the subject of two TV documentary series this year, HBO’s “The Vow,” and the Starz series “Seduced: Inside the NXIVM Cult.”
Prosecutors said Raniere, 60, led what amounted to a criminal enterprise, inducing shame and guilt to influence and control co-conspirators who helped recruit and groom sexual partners for Raniere. He was convicted on charges including racketeering, alien smuggling, sex trafficking, extortion and obstruction of justice.
They said that among other crimes, Raniere began a sexual relationship in 2005 with a 15-year-old girl and confined another teenager to a room for nearly two years.
Raniere had come under harsh attack on Tuesday from former followers during sentencing in his sex-trafficking case.
India Oxenberg, the daughter of “Dynasty” actor Catherine Oxenberg, called him an “entitled little princess” and a sexual predator and lamented that she “may have to spend the rest of my life with Keith Raneire’s initials seared into me.”
The likelihood of leniency had seemed to dissipate with the recent sentencing of Clare Bronfman, 41, an heir to the Seagram’s liquor fortune, for her role in what has been described by some ex-members as a cult. Bronfman was sentenced to nearly seven years in prison. Prosecutors had only sought five years.
Ex-followers told the judge that Bronfman for years had used her wealth to try to silence NXIVM defectors.
Reniere’s followers called him “Vanguard.” To honor him, the group formed a secret sorority comprised of female “slaves” who were branded with his initials and ordered to have sex with him, the prosecutors said. Women were also pressured into giving up embarrassing information about themselves that could be used against them if they left the group.
Along with Bronfman, Raniere’s teachings won him the devotion of Hollywood actors including Allison Mack of TV’s “Smallville.” Mack also has pleaded guilty and is awaiting sentencing.
In a sentencing submission, lawyers for Reniere said he “continues to assert his complete innocence to these charges.”
They wrote that his jury conviction at an unfair trial resulted from a media campaign involving witnesses who were motivated to testify falsely as part of a “heavy-handed prosecution that threatened potential defense witnesses.”
His lawyers said the life prison term prosecutors sought was excessive.
“No one was shot, stabbed, punched, kicked, slapped or even yelled at,” they said. “Despite the sex offenses, there is no evidence that any woman ever told Keith Raniere that she did not want to kiss him, touch him, hold his hand or have sex with him.”
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Keith Raniere, the founder of the cult-like group NXIVM, watched as 15 former members spoke out against him on Tuesday ahead of his expected sentencing for sex trafficking and other crimes, which could land him life in prison.
At a sentencing hearing in a federal court in Brooklyn before U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis, the victims, most of whom were women, described what they called the devastating impact Raniere, 60, had on their lives.
The first to speak was a woman, identified in court only as Camila, who recounted a 12-year sexual relationship with Raniere starting when she was 15 and he was 45.
“He screwed with my mind for so long that trying to find the strength and clarity to tell my story has been a slow and painful journey,” Camila said.
Camila’s brother Adrian and mother Adriana, who were also part of NXIVM, lamented how two other family members -- the father and Camila’s oldest sister -- remained loyal to Raniere.
“Before being part of NXIVM, my family was close,” Adrian said. “He destroyed my family.”
Another former member, the actress India Oxenberg, told Raniere at the hearing: “You stole seven years of my life that I’ll never get back.”
Federal prosecutors said Raniere deserves life in prison for exploiting victims at NXIVM, a purported self-help group based near Albany, New York where women were kept on starvation diets, branded with his initials, and ordered to have sex with him.
Lawyers for Raniere have said he maintained his “complete innocence” and was the victim of an “unfair trial,” and asked Garaufis for a sentence of no more than 15 years in prison. Raniere is expected to make a statement at the hearing.
Jurors convicted Raniere in June 2019 of racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, possession of child pornography and other crimes, following extensive testimony from former NXIVM members.
Prosecutors said Raniere created a secret sorority within NXIVM called DOS, where female “slaves” turned over nude photos and other compromising materials that could be used for blackmail if they tried to leave.
They also said the nude photos Raniere kept of Camila were the basis of the child pornography charge.
More than 50 people wrote letters to Garaufis urging leniency for Raniere. Many said NXIVM classes, which could cost thousands of dollars, had greatly improved their lives.
Several other people affiliated with NXIVM have pleaded guilty to criminal charges.
They included Seagram liquor heiress Clare Bronfman, actress Allison Mack, former NXIVM President Nancy Salzman and her daughter Lauren Salzman, who became a star prosecution witness.
Bronfman was accused of helping bankroll NXIVM, and was sentenced last month to more than six years in prison.
Halloween in 2020: Some fun with death and fear, anyone?
By TED ANTHONY
1 of 13 FILE - In this Oct. 22, 2020, file photo, coronavirus-themed Halloween decorations are displayed on a lawn in Tenafly, N.J. In a year when fear and death have commandeered front-row seats in American life, what does it mean to encounter Halloween, a holiday whose very existence hinges on turning fear and death into entertainment? (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)
PORTERSVILLE, Pa. (AP) — The setting: a rolling patch of Pennsylvania farmland, about 15 miles from the little town where “Night of the Living Dead” was filmed. The moment: Halloween season 2020, a moonlit Friday night.
She strides up to the hayride and beckons you to the dimly lit tent behind her. Her eyes are hollow. “Blood” streaks her nurse’s uniform. Across her forehead is a deep, oozing wound.
“This is the corona tent,” she says. “I’m Nurse Ratched. We’re gonna test you all for the corona.”
On the truck, the voice of a teenage girl slices through the darkness: “I TOLD you there’d be a COVID section.”
This is Cheeseman Fright Farm, one of those stylish Halloween attractions that emerge from the shadows in the United States of America when the leaves start falling and the days grow shorter.
On this night, it is the place to be: By 8:45 p.m., a line 400 strong — some wearing face masks, some not — waits, at $20 a pop, to be carted off into the darkness and have creatures in various stages of decay leap out at them for the better part of an hour.
Good fun? Other years, sure. But this year? This 2020 that we’ve clawed through 10 months of so far, through pandemic and uncertainty and racial injustice and sometimes violent unrest and unthinkable political divisions and, and, and, and ALL of it?
In a year when fear and death have commandeered front-row seats in American life, what does it mean to encounter the holiday whose very existence hinges on turning fear and death into entertainment?
What happens when 2020 and Halloween collide? Can being scared — under certain, controlled conditions — still be fun?
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When we are afraid, we have sought out fear. For a century, that’s been the odd contradiction in American popular culture.
In 1931, when the Great Depression was at its height and American society seemed fragile, Universal Studios uncorked the first of its iconic horror films, delivering up Bela Lugosi as Dracula and Boris Karloff as Frankenstein’s monster.
But usually the fear Americans have chased is different than — though certainly related to — the fear present in our lives.
Today, in a nation that has buried more than 225,000 of its own from COVID, how does the iconography of death play — the tombstones and caskets and decaying corpses and the feeling, however fleeting, that you might not make it around the next corner?
“We have to process all this unpleasant cultural stuff. But it’s easier to do when you’re not looking at it too directly,” Skal says. “I hope there is some kind of catharsis that comes out of Halloween this year.”
Yet with so many Americans affected by the events of this year, is that the kind of release people seek?
“There’s a real dichotomy right now,” says Matt Hayden, co-owner of Terror Town, an Old West-themed horror village in Williamsburg, Ohio. “If you’ve been directly impacted by serious illness or loss, we’ve heard from people that this isn’t something that appeals to them this year.”
That’s not the majority. Hayden reports record attendance this year, people who want to swap that dull, pounding fear for something immersive and cinematic — to lose themselves in a storyline for a moment.
“They can come to places like this,” he says, “and separate themselves from this year and what it’s been.”
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The coronavirus might be 2020’s newest bogeyman, but other, older ones are just as menacing. Even beyond COVID, there’s enough fear and death in American life to go around this year.
Among the scares: What will happen on Election Day? What will happen to the republic AFTER Election Day? Both sides of a polarized citizenry have their own brands of unease at those questions.
Then there’s the racial reckoning fueled by centuries of fear and death visited unto Black people in America — and renewed by 2020′s convulsive events. As The Root wrote in October 2016, “Every day is Halloween for Black people.”
The HBO show “Lovecraft Country,” which ended its first season this month, played on that notion with a blend of fantastical horror and the ugly real-life terror of racism in 1950s America.
Though it was filmed before the pandemic descended and George Floyd’s killing by police set off a season of protest, its message — that there are two kinds of monsters, and sometimes they overlap — feels pure 2020, an extension of work like Jordan Peele’s “Get Out” and “Us.”
“I thought the world was one way, and I found out it isn’t. And that terrifies me,” one main character says, leaving us to wonder: Which horror does she mean? As showrunner Misha Green tweeted recently: “Nothing is scarier than real American history.”
“Lovecraft Country” got, instinctually, what Americans are absorbing as 2020 lurches along: What we’ve been trained by Hollywood and Halloween to consider frightening might pale compared to what’s around daily life’s next corner.
Are your finances uncertain? Unemployment might be your horror. Pre-existing health condition? As daunting as a murderer in a hockey mask. And if you are a young Black man who gets pulled over by police, the fear could be as dreadful as any seven-eyed monster with three-inch teeth.
Esther Jones, dean of the faculty at Clark University in Massachusetts, studies medical ethics, speculative fiction and African American literature. To her, 2020′s blurred lines are part of what makes this COVID-inflected Halloween — and the notion that fear can still be fun — into an unusual moment.
“Halloween, for one night, you know it’s coming. You’re going to immerse yourself in this fear and this release. And the next day you’re back to normal,” says Jones, an associate professor of English. “We could kind of go along happily assuming what we believed to be true — that we are resilient and strong and infallible.”
But 2020 “has turned over the rock. It’s removed the mask,” she says. “Everything that we thought was so strong and resilient and would not change is changing in front of our very eyes.”
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So 10 months into this wretched year, what do fake blood, zombie mannequins in the supermarket foyer and hands clawing out from front-yard Halloween graves in the suburbs really give us?
“In light of 2020, playing with fear and death acts as kind of an escape from fear and death.” That’s how Ben Lish, 17, a senior at Hampton High School north of Pittsburgh, explains the allure of a place like Cheeseman Fright Farm, which he visited this month.
Across the nation in California, horror lover Melody Bentson offers a similar assessment. “It’s fun to look in the face of something that’s dark or scary and come out the other side,” she says.
That may be it right there. Perhaps the fear itself isn’t what offers release. Maybe it’s that the fear, consumed in bite-sized doses, comes to a distinct and measurable end. And when it does, no matter what the rest of the world is dishing out, turns out you’re still fine after all. You’ve made it. Or, at least, you can pretend you have.
“I understand that people want to escape. But I think it’s really important to separate what’s real and what’s not real,” says Yu-Ling Cheng Behr, co-producer of an education initiative called Remake Learning Days Across America and the mother of two young daughters.
“If that’s how you want to escape — what you call fake adrenaline, the scare — that’s fine,” she says. “But just know that’s not how real life works.”
Real life. This year has certainly offered a sufficiency of that. As little ghosts and vampires navigate Halloween 2020, maybe Americans are living out the equivalent of a national horror film — navigating terrifying challenges, some loud and some more quiet, and trying to make it through. Collectively, at least.
“The notion of survival — that we come out on the other side of this — has perhaps changed, but perhaps come out stronger,” Jones says. But “if there’s no end in sight for it, how do we exist with this threat?”
Back in 1968, that original “Night of the Living Dead” ended with the hero — a Black man — surviving the flesh eaters only to be shot by a police posse. Then came “Dawn of the Dead” and “Day of the Dead.” Halloween will come and go, but those other horrors — they don’t end when the sun comes up the next morning.
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Ted Anthony, director of digital innovation for The Associated Press, has been writing about American culture since 1990. Follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/anthonyted
Japan rejects nuclear ban treaty; survivors to keep pushing
By MARI YAMAGUCHI
Members of Atomic Bomb survivors groups gather, holding a banner calling for Japanese government to ratify the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, with the Atomic Bomb Dome in background, in Hiroshima, western Japan, Sunday, Oct. 25, 2020. The United Nations confirmed Saturday that 50 countries have ratified the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, known as the TPNW, paving the way for its entry into force in 90 days. (Kyodo News via AP)
TOKYO (AP) — Japan said Monday it will not sign a U.N. treaty that bans nuclear weapons and does not welcome its entry into force next year, rejecting the wishes of atomic bomb survivors in Japan who are urging the government to join and work for a nuclear-free world.
The United Nations confirmed Saturday that 50 countries have ratified the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, paving the way for its entry into force in 90 days.
The announcement was hailed by anti-nuclear activists, but the treaty has been strongly opposed by the United States and other major nuclear powers.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato said Japan shares the goal of achieving a nuclear-free world, but does not think the treaty is the way to go.
“Japan’s approach is different from that of the treaty, and there is no change to our position not to sign it, as we have said,” Kato told reporters Monday. “We doubt if support is growing even among non-nuclear weapons states, let alone nuclear weapons states.”
Japan has said that it is not realistic to pursue the treaty with nuclear powers and non-nuclear weapons states sharply divided over it. Kato said Japan has chosen instead to serve as a bridge to narrow the gap between the two sides.
Asked if Japan at least welcomes the treaty taking effect next year, Kato only repeated Japan’s position.
Japan has decided not to sign the treaty even though it is the world’s only country to have suffered nuclear attacks and has renounced its own possession, production or hosting of nuclear weapons.
That is because Japan hosts 50,000 American troops and is protected by the U.S. nuclear umbrella. Its post-World War II security pact with the U.S. also complicates efforts to get Japan to sign the treaty as it beefs up its own military to deal with perceived threats from North Korea and China.
“We need to appropriately respond to the current security threats, by maintaining or strengthening our deterrence. We have to be realistic about promoting nuclear disarmament,” Kato said.
Atomic bomb survivors, who have long worked to achieve the treaty, renewed their call for Japan to become a signatory. Terumi Tanaka, a survivor of the Aug. 9, 1945, Nagasaki bombing who has long campaigned for a nuclear weapons ban, said he has not given up hope.
“It is the Japanese government that will be embarrassed when the treaty enters into effect,” Tanaka told reporters Monday. “We will keep working to get the government to change its policy.”
The U.S. had written to treaty signatories urging them to rescind their ratification, saying four other nuclear powers — Russia, China, Britain and France — and America’s NATO allies “stand unified in our opposition to the potential repercussions” of the treaty.
There are over 14,000 nuclear bombs in the world, many of them tens of times more powerful than the weapons dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that killed more than 210,000 people in the closing days of World War II.
The treaty was approved by the 193-member U.N. General Assembly in July, 2017, by a vote of 122 in favor. The five nuclear powers and four other countries known or believed to possess nuclear weapons — India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel — boycotted negotiations and the vote on the treaty, along with many of their allies, including Japan.
Pope names 13 new cardinals, including 1st Black US prelate By FRANCES D'EMILIO October 25, 2020
1 of 13 FILE - In this Sunday Oct. 6, 2019, file photo, Washington D.C. Archbishop Wilton Gregory greets churchgoers at St. Mathews Cathedral after the annual Red Mass in Washington. Pope Francis on Sunday, Oct. 25, 2020, named 13 new cardinals, including Washington D.C. Archbishop Wilton Gregory, who would become the first Black U.S. prelate to earn the coveted red hat. In a surprise announcement from his studio window to faithful standing below in St. Peter’s Square, Francis said the churchmen would be elevated to a cardinal’s rank in a ceremony on Nov. 28. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis on Sunday named 13 new cardinals, including Washington D.C. Archbishop Wilton Gregory, who would become the first Black U.S. prelate to earn the coveted red hat.
In a surprise announcement from his studio window to faithful standing below in St. Peter’s Square, Francis said the churchmen would be elevated to a cardinal’s rank in a ceremony on Nov. 28.
Francis asked for prayers so the new cardinals “may help me in my ministry as bishop of Rome for the good of all God’s faithful holy people.”
The selection of Gregory won praise from LGBTQ advocates in the United States, days after Pope Francis grabbed headlines for voicing support for civil unions for gay couples.
Other new cardinals include an Italian who is the long-time papal preacher at the Vatican, the Rev. Raniero Cantalamessa, who is a Franciscan friar; the Kigali, Rwanda, Archbishop Antoine Kambanda; the Capiz, Philippines, Archbishop Jose Feurte Advincula, and the Santiago, Chile, Archbishop Celestino Aos Braco.
Another Franciscan who was tapped is Friar Mauro Gambetti, in charge of the Sacred Convent in Assisi. The pope, when elected in 2013, chose St. Francis of Assisi as his namesake saint. Earlier this month, the pontiff journeyed to that hill town in Umbria to sign an encyclical, or important church teaching document, about brotherhood.
Gambetti was so surprised, at first he thought the pope was joking when he heard he was named, convent spokesperson the Rev. Enzo Fortunato said. Gambetti quickly pledged to “put himself at the service of humanity at a time so difficult to us all,” including offering compassion to the needy, Fortunato said in reference to the coronavirus pandemic.
In a reflection of the pope’s stress on helping those in need, Francis also named the former director of the Rome Catholic charity, Caritas, the Rev. Enrico Feroci, to be a cardinal.
The prestigious Washington archdiocese traditionally brings elevation to cardinal’s rank, so the appointment of Gregory, 73, last year by the pope had positioned him to be tapped for the honor.
Still, the timing of his rise to cardinal is noteworthy, coming in the thick of increased U.S. attention on racial injustice following the police killing of George Floyd, a Black man, in Minnesota this year. Gregory was publicly critical of U.S. President Donald Trump’s visit to the St. John Paul II National Shrine in Washington a day after civil rights demonstrators were forcibly cleared from a square to facilitate the president’s visit to an Episcopal church in the U.S. capital.
Gregory has had his pulse on factions in the U.S. Catholic Church, which has both strong conservative and liberal veins since he served three times as the head of the U.S. Conference of Bishops.
Conservative prelates in the United States have openly lambasted Francis for his more liberal stands, including his support for same-sex civil unions that came out in a new documentary this week.
Gregory said in a statement that becoming a cardinal would allow him to work more closely with the pontiff in caring for the Catholic Church.
While Gregory headed the Atlanta diocese earlier in his career, he wrote positively in a column about his conversations with Catholic parents of LGBTQ children. An advocate for LGBTQ Catholics, Francis DeBernardo, told The Associated Press that choosing Gregory for a cardinal’s post signals Francis wants “LGBTQ people to be part of the church, and he wants church people to respect them.”
DeBernardo linked the appointment to Francis’ recently reported comments supporting civil unions for same-sex couples.
He also praised the elevation to cardinal’s rank of a Vatican bishop who comes from Malta, a tiny, traditionally Catholic nation which has made significant progress in LGBTQ civil rights and protections in recent years.
DeBernardo was referring to Mario Grech, 63, who serves at the Vatican as secretary general of the Synod of Bishops office and who formerly headed the diocese on the Maltese island of Gozo.
“Since naming cardinals also affects who the next pontiff will be, the pope also shows that he is planning for the future of the church to continue in this affirming posture on issues of sexual orientation and gender identity,” the U.S.-based DeBernardo said in a written statement.
Not all of the pope’s picks might stir positive recollections.
In 2010, while preaching at a Good Friday service attended by the then-pope, Benedict XVI, Cantalamessa upset both Jewish and sex abuse survivors’ groups when he likened allegations that the pontiff had covered up sex abuse cases against clerics to the “more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism.” The Vatican quickly distanced Benedict from Cantalamessa’s remarks.
Nine of the new cardinals are younger than 80, and thus eligible to elect the next pontiff in a secret conclave. Some cardinals head powerful Vatican offices, and pontiffs frequently turn to cardinals for advice.
No details were immediately given by the Vatican about the formal ceremony to make the churchmen cardinals, especially in view of travel restrictions involving many countries during the COVID-19 pandemic.
As he has in other groups of cardinals he tapped in his papacy, Francis in this selection reflected the global nature of the Catholic Church and his flock of 1.2 billion Catholics.
Others receiving the honor include Monsignor Marcello Semeraro, an Italian serving as prefect of the Vatican office which runs the saint-making process; Bishop Cornelius Sim, a Brunei native who serves as apostolic vicar of Brunei; the Italian archbishop of Siena and nearby towns in Tuscany, Augusto Lojudice; the retired bishop of San Cristobal de las Casas, Mexico, Monsignor Felipe Arizmendi Esquivel; and an Italian former Vatican diplomat, Archbishop Silvano Tomasi.
Churchmen over 80 who are named cardinals are chosen to honor their life of service to the church. Those in this batch too old to vote in a conclave are Cantalamessa, Tomasi, Feroci and Arizmendi Esquivel.
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David Crary in New York and Elana Schor in Washington, D.C., contributed reporting.
Facebook demands academics disable ad-targeting data tool By FRANK BAJAK October 24, 2020 FILE - In this March 29, 2018, file photo, the logo for Facebook appears on screens at the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York's Times Square. Academics, journalists and First Amendment lawyers are rallying behind New York University researchers in a showdown with Facebook over its demand that they halt the collection of data on political ads-targeting on the world’s dominant social media platform. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)
BOSTON (AP) — Academics, journalists and First Amendment lawyers are rallying behind New York University researchers in a showdown with Facebook over its demand that they halt the collection of data showing who is being micro-targeted by political ads on the world’s dominant social media platform.
The researchers say the disputed tool is vital to understanding how Facebook has been used as a conduit for disinformation and manipulation.
In an Oct. 16 letter to the researchers, a Facebook executive demanded they disable a special plug-in for Chrome and Firefox browsers used by 6,500 volunteers across the United States and delete the data obtained. The plug-in lets researchers see which ads are shown to each volunteer; Facebook lets advertisers tailor ads based on specific demographics that go far beyond race, age, gender and political preference. ADVERTISEMENT
The executive, Allison Hendrix, said the tool violates Facebook rules prohibiting automated bulk collection of data from the site. Her letter threatened “additional enforcement action” if the takedown was not effected by Nov. 30.
Company spokesman Joe Osborne said in an emailed statement Saturday that Facebook “informed NYU months ago that moving forward with a project to scrape people’s Facebook information would violate our terms.” The company has long claimed protecting user privacy is its main concern, though NYU researchers say their tool is programmed so the data collected from participating volunteers is anonymous.
The outcry over Facebook’s threat was immediate after The Wall Street Journal first reported the news Friday considering the valuable insights the “Ad Observer” tool provides. It has been used since its September launch by local reporters from Wisconsin to Utah to Florida to write about the Nov. 3 presidential election.
“That Facebook is trying to shut down a tool crucial to exposing disinformation in the run up to one of the most consequential elections in U.S. history is alarming,” said Ramya Krishnan, an attorney with the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, which is representing the researchers. “The public has a right to know what political ads are being run and how they are being targeted. Facebook shouldn’t be allowed to be the gatekeeper to information necessary to safeguard our democracy. “
“ The NYU Ad Observatory is the only window researchers have to see microtargeting information about political ads on Facebook,” Julia Angwin, editor of the data-centric investigative tech news website The Markup, tweet in disappointment.
The tool lets researchers see how some Facebook advertisers use data gathered by the company to profile citizens “and send them misinformation about candidates and policies that are designed to influence or even suppress their vote,” Damon McCoy, an NYU professor involved in the project, said in a statement.
After an uproar over its lack of transparency on political ads Facebook ran ahead of the 2016 election, a sharp contrast to how ads are regulated on traditional media, the company created an ad archive that includes details such as who paid for an ad and when it ran. But Facebook does not share information about who gets served the ad.
The company has resisted allowing researchers access to the platform, where right-wing content has consistently been trending in recent weeks. Last year, more than 200 researchers signed a letter to Facebook calling on it to lift restrictions on public-interest research and journalism that would permit automated digital collection of data from the platform.
18TH CENTURY VESTIGIAL ORGAN Electoral College
vs. popular vote in the United States
The Associated Press October 23, 2020
Graphic shows scenario in which a presidential candidate can win the popular vote but lose the election.;
WASHINGTON (AP) — WHY IS IT THAT ONE CANDIDATE CAN WIN THE POPULAR VOTE BUT ANOTHER WINS THE ELECTORAL VOTE AND THUS THE PRESIDENCY?
That’s how the framers of the Constitution set it up.
This unique system of electing presidents is a big reason why Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016. Four candidates in history have won the popular vote only to be denied the presidency by the Electoral College.
The Electoral College was devised at the Constitutional Convention in 1787. It was a compromise between those who wanted direct popular elections for president and those who preferred to have Congress decide. At a time of little national identity and competition among the states, there were concerns that people would favor their regional candidates and that big states with denser populations would dominate the vote.
The Electoral College has 538 members, with the number allocated to each state based on how many representatives it has in the House plus its two senators. (The District of Columbia gets three, despite the fact that the home to Congress has no vote in Congress.)
To be elected president, the winner must get at least half plus one — or 270 electoral votes.
This hybrid system means that more weight is given to a single vote in a small state than the vote of someone in a large state, leading to outcomes at times that have been at odds with the popular vote.
In fact, part of a presidential candidate’s campaign strategy is drawing a map of states the candidate can and must win to gather 270 electoral votes.
There was a lot of confusion over how Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote but Trump won the Electoral College. The Associated Press explains in this five-part animation series.
In 2016, for instance, Democrat Hillary Clinton received nearly 2.9 million more votes than Trump in the presidential election, after racking up more lopsided wins in big states like New York and California. But she lost the presidency due to Trump’s winning margin in the Electoral College, which came after he pulled out narrow victories in less populated Midwestern states like Michigan and Wisconsin.
It would take a constitutional amendment to abolish the Electoral College — an unlikely move because of how difficult it is to pass and ratify constitutional changes. But there’s a separate movement that calls for a compact of states to allocate all their electoral votes to the national popular vote winner, regardless of how those individual states opted in an election. That still faces an uphill climb, though.
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This new series from the AP is dedicated to answering commonly asked questions from our audience about the 2020 U.S. presidential election.
UN: Climate change means more weather disasters every year By JAMEY KEATEN October 13, 2020 FILE - In this Monday, Sept. 14, 2020 file photo, a firefighter is silhouetted against a fire burning outside the village of Roqueiro, near Oleiros, Portugal. In the wake of heat waves, global warming, forest fires, storms, droughts and a rising number of hurricanes, the U.N. weather agency in a new report released Tuesday Oct. 13, 2020, is warning that the number of people who need international humanitarian help could rise 50% by 2030 compared to the 108 million who needed it in 2018 (AP Photo/Sergio Azenha, File)
GENEVA (AP) — In the wake of heat waves, global warming, forest fires, storms, droughts and a rising number of hurricanes, the U.N. weather agency warned Tuesday that the number of people who need international humanitarian help could rise 50% by 2030 compared to the 108 million who needed it worldwide in 2018.
In a new report released with partners, the World Meteorological Agency says more disasters attributed to weather are taking place each year. It said over 11,000 disasters have been attributed to weather, climate and phenomena like tsunamis that are related to water over the last 50 years — causing 2 million deaths and racking up $3.6 trillion worth of economic costs.
In one hopeful development over that period, the average number of deaths from each separate weather disaster per year has dropped by one-third, even as the number of such events and the economic costs from them have both surged.
The 2020 State of Climate Services report, compiled by 16 international agencies and financing institutions, calls on governments to put more money into early-warning systems that can improve countries’ ability to prepare for, respond to and mitigate the impact of such natural disasters.
“While COVID-19 generated a large international health and economic crisis from which it will take years to recover, it is crucial to remember that climate change will continue to pose an on-going and increasing threat to human lives, ecosystems, economies and societies for centuries to come,“ said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas.
“Recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic is an opportunity to move forward along a more sustainable path towards resilience and adaptation in the light of anthropogenic climate change,” he said.
Taalas, responding to a question from China’s CCTV network at a news conference, also hailed a “great” announcement from Chinese President Xi Jinping last month that his country plans to become carbon-neutral by 2060. Taalas noted investments in renewable energy programs like solar and wind in China, the source of one-fourth of global carbon emissions — largely due to coal-fired power plants.
While praising the U.S. private sector for its efforts to fight climate change, Taalas also expressed hope the U.S. government — which under the Trump administration has rejected the 2015 Paris climate accord — to come on board. He noted the “common vision” between China and many European Union countries on the issue.
The European bloc wants to become carbon-neutral by 2050, though not all member states agree on how to achieve that target.
“I hope that also the USA will join that club in the near future,” he said.
