CRYPTOCURRENCY NEWS

IMF: Growing cryptocurrency adoption poses financial stability challenges

Jordan
Major

The rapid development and growing adoption of crypto assets represent a threat to financial stability, according to the latest Global Financial Stability Report by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) published on October 1.

Indeed, three IMF officials, Dimitris Drakopoulos, Fabio Natalucci, and Evan Papageorgiou, stated in a chapter of the report titled “The Crypto Ecosystem and Financial Stability Challenges” that as crypto assets gain traction, authorities must step up their efforts to protect investors. 

The IMF commented:

“Despite potential gains, the rapid growth and increasing adoption of crypto assets also pose financial stability challenges.” 

They added: 

“In emerging markets, the advent of crypto assets has benefits but can accelerate cryptoisation and circumvent exchange and capital control restrictions. Increased trading of crypto-assets in these economies could lead to destabilizing capital flows.”

Crypto tool for cross border payments

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In particular, technology based on crypto assets can be used as a tool for making cross-border payments that are both quicker and more affordable. Thus, individuals may convert bank deposits into stablecoins that provide immediate access to a wide variety of financial goods from digital platforms as well as fast currency conversion. 

Moreover, according to the report, decentralized finance may serve as a foundation for the development of financial services that are more creative, inclusive, and transparent.

The IMF declared:

“Crypto-assets offer a new world of opportunities: Quick and easy payments. Innovative financial services. Inclusive access to previously “unbanked” parts of the world. All are made possible by the crypto ecosystem. But along with the opportunities come challenges and risks.”

By way of illustration, the crypto ecosystem faces operational and financial integrity risks from crypto asset providers, investor protection concerns regarding crypto-assets and digital currency exchanges, and reserve and transparency deficiencies for certain stable currencies.

Lawmakers should establish global rules 

Thus, the IMF argued policymakers should establish worldwide regulations for crypto-assets and strengthen their monitoring capabilities by solving data shortages. As the importance of stablecoins expands, laws must keep pace with the dangers they pose and the economic services they serve. 

For example, emerging economies confronted with the threat of cryptoisation should bolster macroeconomic policies and explore the advantages of central bank digital currency issuance.

IMF concerned about Bitcoin becoming legal tender

Meanwhile, in a blog post published on August 29, the International Monetary Fund expressed worry about Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies becoming national currencies. 

It seems that the IMF is worried about the increasing number of nations, such as El Salvador, who recognize Bitcoin as their national currency and how this may impact their global operations.

Watch the video: Global Financial Stability Report Chapter 2: The Crypto Ecosystem and Financial Stability Challenges

Israel escalating abuse against Palestinians in Hebron: PLO

PLO accuses Israel of subjecting Palestinians in Hebron to harsh life and depriving them of basic needs

Awad Rajoub |02.10.2021


RAMALLAH, Palestine

The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) on Saturday accused Israel of escalating its abuses against 3,000 Palestinians living in the West Bank city of Hebron to pave way for their eventual displacement.

Hebron is witnessing "an escalation in attacks on citizens and their properties in an attempt to intimidate them…to eventually displace them from their lands in favor of expanding (its illegal) settlements, "the PLO’s National Center for the Defense of Land said in a report.

“The threats of the occupation and its settlement ambitions affect the residents in an area of about 38,500 dunams where more than 3,000 citizens reside,” it added.

A dunam equals 1,000 square meters.

The PLO accused Israel of subjecting Palestinians in Hebron -- especially those in Yatta district -- to harsh life and depriving them of basic needs to conduct “ethnic cleansing using various means including hiring settlers to carry out this task under the protection of the occupation army."

Last week, the PLO warned of Israeli plans to consolidate its settlements in the occupied West Bank by building synagogues. It mentioned a number of villages and ruins mostly affected by the Israeli violations.

On Wednesday, Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid termed an Israeli settler attack on Palestinians in Hebron, in which 12 people were injured, as “terror”.

Attackers, who even stabbed some of the goats of Palestinian farmers in the area, also threw stones at Palestinian houses and vehicles.

Meanwhile, left-wing Knesset member Ofer Kassif shared a video clip on his Twitter account showing a number of dead sheep bearing stab wounds caused by sharp tools and knives used by settlers.

Israeli and Palestinian estimates indicate that there are about 650,000 settlers in West Bank settlements, including occupied Jerusalem, living in 164 settlements and 116 outposts.

Under international law, all Jewish settlements in occupied territories are considered illegal.

*Writing by Ibrahim Mukhtar

US, UK condemn Israeli settler attack on Palestinian village in South Hebron Hills

Masked Israeli settlers getting ready to attack Palestinians in the South Hebron Hills.

RAMALLAH, Saturday, October 02, 2021 (WAFA) – The United States and the United Kingdom have condemned an attack carried out by colonial Israeli settlers on Tuesday evening in which 12 Palestinian civilians were injured, including a 3-year-old boy, in the South Hebron Hills in the occupied West Bank.

James Cleverly, the UK Minister of State for Middle East and North Africa, condemned the attack in a tweet. "The UK condemns this violent act against a Palestinian village in the South Hebron Hills by settlers on 28 Sept," Cleverly tweeted. "Israel must tackle this problem and protect Palestinians," he added.

The US government also condemned the attack. "The U.S. government strongly condemns the acts of settler violence that took place against Palestinians in villages near Hebron in the West Bank on September 28," a US Embassy spokesperson was quoted as saying by CNN.

On Tuesday afternoon, dozens of masked Israelis, marking the last day of the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, threw stones at Palestinians in the South Hebron Hills. The rocks smashed cars and injured at least 12 Palestinians including Mohammad Bakr Hussein, aged three.

In videos from the scene, Israeli settlers can be seen breaking Palestinian car windows and hurling stones at Palestinian homes.

The confrontations took place near the small Palestinian shepherding village of al-Mufaqara, a cluster of homes located close to two illegal Israeli outposts, Avigayil and Havat Maon.

The left-wing NGO Peace Now called the attack a "pogrom." According to another Israeli human rights group, Breaking the Silence, while incidents like the one on Tuesday represent one of the worst acts of settler violence in the area for years, other types of intimidation against local Palestinians, like stealing goats and sheep, polluting water cisterns, and attacking children on their way to school, are an almost daily occurrence.

Human rights groups say settlers suspected of violence against Palestinians are rarely arrested or detained, and by Friday evening up to four of the five detained in connection with Tuesday's attack had been released, according to Israeli media reports.

M.N./M.K.

More than 17,000 deaths caused by police have been misclassified since 1980

October 01, 2021
Martin Kaste

After the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., news organizations started to keep their own tallies of deaths, which turned out to be higher than the government's numbers. (Erik McGregor/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Deaths involving police have been greatly undercounted in the United States, and African American people die in such encounters at 3.5 times the rate of whites, according to a new analysis by public health researchers.

In an article published Thursday in the medical journal The Lancet, researchers found that deaths from police violence between 1980 and 2018 were misclassified by 55.5% in the U.S. National Vital Statistics System, which tracks information from death certificates.

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"For most causes of death, the death certificate filled out by a physician is sort of the gold standard," says Chris Murray of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, who is one of the study's authors. But he says that in this area, the certificates seem to fall short. "There is a pretty systematic underrecording of police violence deaths. "

That realization isn't entirely new. After the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., news organizations started to keep their own tallies of police-related deaths, which turned out to be higher than the government's numbers.

What Murray and his co-authors have done, though, is measure the discrepancy between independent tallies and the government data, and project it back in time.

"We've used those relationships of what fraction get underreported to go back and infer, for example, in the 1980s, what was the likely number of police violence deaths," Murray says.

The researchers based their inferences on numbers from three open-source databases: Fatal Encounters, Mapping Police Violence and The Guardian's The Counted, which they compared with the data from the death certificates.

They calculate that the death certificates misclassified the cause of death on more than 17,000 such deaths since 1980.

"If it's legit, it's pretty cool how they can take existing data from a short time frame and work backwards," says Justin Nix, associate professor of criminology at the University of Nebraska.

But as a criminologist who studies shootings by police, Nix has reservations about the underlying data.

"My concerns with this paper are the same as many that use these crowd-sourced databases," he says. He has documented cases where the databases count, for example, domestic violence by off-duty officers as police killings.

"I'm not saying we don't need to track that in these sorts of databases, but I'm just saying that all police killings are not created equally," he says.

"I think there's definitely issues around exactly the criteria used," says the IHME's Murray. "I think that's an important question, given that we're looking at multiple sources. [But] I don't think it's really influencing the time-trend we're seeing. In other words, the numbers are going up, regardless."

The study shows the death rate in these encounters dropping in the 1980s, then generally rising again since about 2000.

The article also highlights the disparity in the mortality rate for African-Americans, which it says is 3.5 times higher than that of whites.

The article suggests the disparity is caused by "systemic racism in policing," but it doesn't specify how that happens. Specifically, it doesn't address whether police are more likely to use lethal force against African-Americans or whether nonpolicing factors lead African-Americans to have more encounters with police.

Murray says this analysis doesn't answer that.

"I don't think from a scientific point of view, we have enough information here to parse out how much of this is, you know, basic differences in where people live, what sort of disadvantage they have, versus the actual specific actions of the police," he says.

But as a public health expert, Murray says the more we know about these deaths, the easier it will be to find policy solutions.

"It's the old saw: You manage what you measure. And so we've got to do a better job of tracking in what's actually happening," he says.

Copyright NPR 2021.

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'Mothers of Gynecology' monument honors enslaved Black women who were tortured to help advance science


Christine Fernando and Javonte Anderson, USA TODAY
Fri, October 1, 2021, 4:03 AM·8 min read


Pieced together from a mixture of recycled copper, brass and bronze metals and standing nearly 15 feet tall, a new monument in Montgomery, Alabama, honors the legacy of three enslaved women whose suffering helped advance modern medicine.

The monument, entitled "Mothers of Gynecology," features statues of three women--Anarcha, Betsey and Lucy--who were unwillingly experimented on by a white physician. It was unveiled last week.

“They represent the strength and resilient spirit of Black women,” said Michelle Browder, the artist who created the monument. “ We can’t let history forget their sacrifice and their contributions to medicine.”

Just a few blocks from the monument, under the shade of an oak tree at the Alabama State House, stands a statue of Dr. J. Marion Sims, the doctor who experimented on their bodies. Without giving consent and without receiving anesthesia to numb the pain, these enslaved women suffered to bolster his reputation.

The statues of the women stand as a reminder of the pain Sims inflicted on enslaved Black women but also of a larger story of how Black women have been harmed throughout the history of reproductive science, experts said.

The three sculptures are welded together with all recycled materials, including door hinges, crews and surgical equipment. Bicycle chains are used for the cornrows.

“We used only discarded objects that symbolize how Black women have been treated in this country,” Browder said.

“I look at the objectification of women and how our bodies have been used to cleanse and cure women of all races. I look at them as being the strength and backbone of women’s health and gynecology.”

Sims, himself a slaveholder, is heralded as a pioneer for American medicine, often referred to as the father of modern gynecology.

“He gets the accolades, he has the statue, the hospital named after him, but it was because of these women’s Black bodies,” Browder said. “He’s the so-called father of gynecology, but what about these women? It’s time to recognize them and celebrate their strength.”

Lucy, from left, Anarcha and Betsey statues represent the "Mothers of Gynecology" at The More Up Campus in Montgomery, Ala., on Friday, Sept. 24, 2021.

Sims’ unethical experimentation on Black women

Much of Sims’ work centered around vesicovaginal fistula, which results from a tear from the bladder to the vagina following labor and causes urinary leakage, according to a 1993 paper on Sims in the Journal of Medical Ethics.

Unable to work or have more children in their condition, enslaved Black women with vesicovaginal fistulae were brought to Sims by slave-owners in hopes of a cure so that they could retain their economic value, said Nicole Maskiell, an assistant history professor at the University of South Carolina

Sims experimented on at least 11 enslaved Black women, many of them teenagers, without anesthesia in the mid-1800s, Maskiell said. After refining his technique, Sims began offering the procedure to white women under anesthesia.

One of the Black women, Lucy, endured “excruciating pain" during an hour-long surgery, according to the Journal of Medical Ethics. But the operation failed, and Lucy nearly died after becoming “extremely ill with fever resulting from blood-poisoning.”

“Lucy’s agony was extreme,” Sims wrote in his autobiography, "The Story of My Life." “She was much prostrated, and I thought that she was going to die.”

Anarcha endured at least 30 painful surgeries until in 1849 Sims successfully completed the procedure, according to the journal. These procedures were so painful that Sims had other men hold the Black women down. When they became too gruesome, the men began refusing to participate and the enslaved women were forced to hold each other down, Maskiell said.

Sims’ defenders say he was merely a product of his time, but historians today have raised concerns over whether the women he experimented gave consent -- or if they even could.

Details of the statue during the reveal of the "Mothers of Gynecology" statues at The More Up Campus in Montgomery, Ala., on Friday, Sept. 24, 2021.

The women were not asked if they agreed to the surgeries, according to the Journal of Medical Ethics, and Sims instead got permission from their slaveholders.

"These experiments were done under severe coercion,” Maskiell said. “This man had power over these women's lives in a way we can't fully comprehend today.”
Long history of injustice in reproductive science

Sims is just one chapter of a larger history of Black women being harmed in the evolution of reproductive science, historians said.

In the 19th century, most Caesarean sections in the South were performed on Black women, Sharla Fett, a history professor at Occidental College in Los Angeles, said in a March interview with USA TODAY. At the time, the operation was “usually fatal for either mother or infant, and sometimes both,” Fett wrote in her award-winning book, “Working Cures.”

These experiments on enslaved Black women “wouldn't have been done on white women because they would have been considered too risky.”

Much of our knowledge of reproductive science was built on unethical experimentation on Black women, Maskiell said. But that knowledge was also weaponized against Black women. For example, enslaved women who ran away could be punished through physical scarring, often affecting their reproductive capabilities.

Civil rights icon Fannie Lou Hamer spoke openly about a white doctor taking away her ability to have children when in 1961 she was given a hysterectomy without her knowledge or consent. She became one of history’s best-known examples of commonplace forced sterilizations of Black women in many Southern states, Maskiell said.

Myisha S. Eatmon, an assistant history professor at the University of South Carolina, said forced sterilizations of Black women occurred in North Carolina in her grandmother’s and mother’s generations.

“Black women have been used to advance the medical field as subjects,” she said. “They are used and exploited for certain things and then they are cast aside or thrown away or abused afterward by the very knowledge they helped create.”
Black women today have limited access to reproductive health

While reproductive science rests on the pain of Black women used in unethical experiments, Maskiell said the fruits of that knowledge remain less accessible to Black women today.

Pregnancy-related deaths among Black women was four to five times as high as rates for white women, according to a 2019 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report.

Black women also have less access to prenatal care, contraceptive care and abortions, among a slew of other reproductive health access issues resulting from systemic racism in healthcare, Maskiell said. With current efforts to limit abortion access, including recent legislation in Texas prohibiting abortions as early as six weeks, she said these inequities may only get worse.

“Women of color are being adversely affected by policies that limit their access to life-saving technologies that stemmed from the forced labor of their foremothers,” Maskiell said. “That is just such a basic transgression of justice.”

Eatmon added that doctors are quick to dismiss Black women.

“The irony is that Black women's bodies are experimented on, but when Black women tell doctors what's wrong with them, they're not believed,” she said.
'Representatives of the forgotten'

Across from the New York Academy of Medicine in Central Park, a statue of Sims stood from the 1890s until 2018 as one of the best-known symbols of his stature in medical history. In 2017, a group of women stood in front of the statue in hospital gowns splattered with red paint, demanding the statue be removed. It came down in 2018.

People gather to watch as a statue of J. Marion Sims is taken down.

Sims had once been honored with at least a half dozen statues across the country. But a statue of Sims outside Jefferson University, his former medical school in Philadelphia, was moved to storage. A painting of his at the University of Alabama at Birmingham came down in 2006.

At the University of South Carolina, student-led efforts are pushing to remove Sims’ name from a residence hall in the women’s quad. Maskiell teaches lectures on Sims and has seen many of her students join the movement.

But his name still graces the dorm, as well as a road and a park named after him in South Carolina. Maskiell calls it a continued form of violence.

“His name is everywhere,” she said. “There's an enduring legacy, even though the names of women he brutalized are nowhere, and it is impossible to ignore the history even if I wanted to forget.”

When Maskiell found out about the monument to the mothers of gynecology in Montgomery, it was a moment of joy. It was the first monument to the women in Sims’ experiments that she had seen and she hopes a similar one may one day come to South Carolina, reminding people of the pain inflicted on Black women in the history of reproductive science.

Eatmon said she hopes the stories of the mother of gynecology, among others who were subjected to unethical experimentation, find their way into more classrooms.

“While we honor Lucy, Betsey and Anarcha, we have to remember that there are so many other Black people who've had similar experiences whose names are either forgotten or buried in the archives,” she said. “So when we honor some as individuals, we honor them as part of the collective, representatives of the forgotten."

Contact News Now Reporter Christine Fernando at cfernando@usatoday.com or follow her on Twitter at @christinetfern. Contact Javonte Anderson at janderson1@usatoday.com or follow him on Twitter at @JavonteA.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Mothers of gynecology statues honor Black women tortured for science

Story of U.S. vice president from Ky., his enslaved wife shows how history surprises us.

Paul Prather
Fri, October 1, 2021, 

Recently on a beautiful fall afternoon, my wife Liz and I visited Great Crossing in Scott County, looking (unsuccessfully, as it turned out) for the farm of one of Kentucky’s more amazing, and largely forgotten, figures.

Richard Mentor Johnson (1781-1850) led a stranger-than-fiction life. The product of a prominent Central Kentucky family, he rose to greater heights than any of his kin: hero of the War of 1812, U.S. representative, U.S. senator and, ultimately, vice president of the United States under President Martin Van Buren.

Along the way, he defied all conventions. His story demonstrates how complex and hard-to-pigeonhole our forebears actually could be.

In the 1813 Battle of the Thames, fought in Canada, Johnson led a regiment of Kentuckians against British regulars and their Native American allies. Although wounded multiple times, Johnson not only prevailed in the attack, but was alleged to have personally slain the famous Shawnee chief Tecumseh. He became a national hero.

But he was far from a one-dimensional warrior. A devout Baptist and a proponent of education, Johnson in the 1820s set up the Choctaw Academy on his Blue Spring farm near Great Crossing, according to the Kentucky Encyclopedia.

The Choctaw Academy was established by Richard Mentor Johnson in 1825 near Stamping Ground in Scott County to educate American Indian youth. The school, which closed in 1845, was one of the nation’s first inter-racial schools. Several local white families also sent their sons there.More

Not only the Choctaw but many other tribes sent boys there to study “reading, writing, arithmetic, grammar, geography, practical surveying, astronomy, and vocal music.”

By 1835, enrollment approached and may have exceeded 200. A Choctaw chief described Johnson as a man with a noble impulse and a big heart.

Still, the school closed in the 1840s. The Choctaw had been removed to Indian Territory (now Oklahoma), and the Kentucky academy had been supplanted by mission schools there.

Some students who attended the Choctaw Academy became successful in business and tribal politics. Others found it difficult to return to their tribes, because they’d lost touch with their relatives and Native American customs.

“Unable to cope with the changes, many of these young men would go on to commit suicide,” says the website Kentucky Historic Institutions.

More remarkable, though, and scandalous to his contemporaries, was Johnson’s unique relationship with Julia Chinn, an enslaved woman who had been given to Johnson as part of his father’s estate.

Many white men had sexual relationships with enslaved women—think of Thomas Jefferson, for example. Most such relationships amounted to rape.

Johnson, however, instead of hiding and denying his actions as other white men did, openly lived with Chinn, declared her his “bride” and even wed her in a private ceremony, although antebellum laws against mixed-race marriages prohibited their union from being legally sanctioned. Their common-law marriage lasted two decades.

Chinn wore the finest fashions, befitting the wife of a wealthy man, and co-hosted Johnson’s parties at Blue Spring plantation. In 1825, the couple hosted the Marquis de Lafayette, the Washington Post said in a February 7 article about Johnson and Chinn.

During Johnson’s long absences to serve in Washington, D.C., Chinn ran his 2,000-acre plantation, and Johnson told his white employees to respect and obey her as they would him. She also ran the Choctaw Academy’s medical ward.

The couple had two daughters, Imogene and Adaline. Johnson gave them his last name. He insisted they be fully accepted by white society as his children.

“But when he spoke at local July 4 celebration, the Lexington Observer reported, prominent White citizens wouldn’t let Adaline sit with them in the pavilion,” the Washington post said. “Johnson sent his daughter to his carriage, rushed through his speech and then angrily drove away.”

Chinn died of cholera in 1833. For reasons I haven’t seen explained, Johnson never emancipated her. He may have loved her and obviously considered her his wife, but legally she remained enslaved until her death.

Meanwhile, Johnson’s political opponents pilloried him for his interracial relationship and children.

After Johnson’s own death 17 years after Chinn, his brothers destroyed his papers in an attempt to keep his surviving daughter, Imogene, from inheriting his estate. It may also be that they wanted to shield the record of Johnson and Chinn’s union from history.

Amrita Chakrabarti Myers, a professor at Indiana University, has written a book about Chinn, “The Vice President’s Black Wife,” that’s scheduled to be published by the University of North Carolina Press.

Myers has contrasted the attention lavished on Henry Clay, another Kentuckian of the same period, with the comparative obscurity of Johnson.

“The whole thing is depressing,” she wrote in an online essay. “The main house at Johnson’s Blue Spring Farm is gone, the cemeteries on the land are overgrown and have disappeared to the naked eye, and the only remaining school building is about to crumble into the ground.”

Meanwhile, in nearby Lexington, “thousands of visitors annually stream through the impeccably maintained gardens and halls of Ashland, the home of Henry Clay, Kentucky’s other great antebellum statesman. The contrast between the two sites couldn’t be any starker. And the difference has everything to do with race.”

It’s because of characters like Johnson and Chinn that I love reading and researching history. You find again and again that human beings have always been complicated and self-contradictory and surprising. The times have always been complex.

Paul Prather is pastor of Bethesda Church near Mount Sterling. You can email him at pratpd@yahoo.com.

The Erasure and Resurrection of Julia Chinn, U.S. Vice President Richard M. Johnson’s Black Wife.

Posted on March 3, 2019 by admin

Great Crossing Baptist Church lies nestled in the curve of a quiet country lane just outside Georgetown, Kentucky. Founded by Vice President Richard M. Johnson’s parents in 1785, it was where his enslaved wife, Julia Chinn, was baptized in 1828, and where she and Richard worshipped. While the first sanctuary burned down in 1925, the cemetery behind the building contains markers dating back to the 1790s. Many Johnsons are buried in this tiny stone-walled graveyard, including both of Richard’s parents. Richard is buried in the state cemetery in Frankfort, and an enormous monument marks his gravesite. We don’t know, however, where Julia, his wife of 22 years, is buried. The location of her grave has disappeared, just as her very existence was erased from the history books, and from the memories of her own descendants, in a nation still wrestling with its history of slavery and interracial sex.

The whole thing is depressing: The main house at Johnson’s Blue Spring Farm is gone, the cemeteries on the land are overgrown and have disappeared to the naked eye, and the only remaining school building is about to crumble into the ground. Thought to have been one of the dormitories of an Indian school located on the property, the building’s doors and windows are boarded over, and its roof and back wall have caved in. On the right-hand side of the driveway stands an antebellum-era building. Made of stone, it is so overgrown with weeds, grasses, and brush that it is barely visible. There are holes in the roof and broken glass in the windows, but it looks sturdier than the Choctaw Academy school building. It is believed to have been one of the slave cottages or a kitchen building at Blue Spring.

The very air of the ninth vice president’s farm reeks of sadness and neglect.

On the other hand, just a few miles away, thousands of visitors annually stream through the impeccably maintained gardens and halls of Ashland, the home of Henry Clay, Kentucky’s other great antebellum statesman.

The contrast between the two sites couldn’t be any starker. And the difference has everything to do with race.

Make no mistake: Richard’s decision to live publicly with Julia and their children, Imogene and Adaline, and Henry’s decision to hide his black “mistresses” in the slave quarters and sell their offspring downriver to New Orleans, played enormous roles in how the two men are remembered today. It is, in my opinion, the reason why Ashland is a tourist attraction and can be rented for weddings, and why Blue Spring Farm no longer exists.




It’s also why Julia Chinn has disappeared from sight and memory.

Born in 1780, Richard Mentor Johnson was a career politician who lived in the public eye for over forty years; he should have left behind a large collection of archival materials. While I wasn’t interested in writing a book about Richard, I knew I’d have to use his records to write about Julia; I would have to go through him to get to her. This is one of the realities of the work I do: in order to reconstruct the lives of black women who lived in the Old South, I have to use records created by white men, the very people who not only oppressed black women but who never intended for their materials to highlight black women’s voices.

I knew this would be one of my biggest challenges as I undertook writing Julia’s story. I was prepared for that. What I wasn’t ready for was the fact that there was no massive collection of Johnson’s archival materials anywhere. How was this possible? I’m now certain that when Richard died in 1850, his two surviving brothers destroyed his records to try to erase all evidence of his black wife and children. This was partly so they could inherit what little property Richard died still owning, and partly because they were ashamed that he had been involved with an enslaved woman for over twenty years.

I was devastated when I realized what those two men had done. Especially since Julia, Imogene, and Adaline, unlike most southern black women at the time, were literate. Amongst the papers the men had burned, then, were likely hundreds of precious letters that the three women had written to Richard during the months he lived in Washington each year while they remained in Kentucky overseeing the family farm. What the men couldn’t do, however, is destroy the letters that Richard wrote to other people, or the newspapers, church materials, and government records that existed. It is these documents that have allowed me to reconstruct Julia’s story.

While doing my research, I was struck by how Julia had been erased from the history books. Nobody knew who she was. The truth is that Julia (and Richard) are both victims of legacies of enslavement, interracial sex, and silence around black women’s histories. The reality of this was driven home to me when I met some of Julia’s and Richard’s relatives, none of whom knew, until they were older, that they were descended from a vice president. And this was no accident. At some point in the early twentieth century, perhaps because of heightened fears of racism during the Jim Crow era, members of Imogene Johnson Pence’s line, already living as white people, chose to stop telling their children that they were descended from Richard Mentor Johnson… and his black wife. It wasn’t until the late 20th century that younger Pences, by then already in their 40s, 50s, and 60s, began discovering the truth of their heritage.

In 2019, we’re still working to resurrect black women’s lives and stories. And I’m searching for Julia Chinn’s and her younger daughter’s graves. While Richard is buried in Frankfort, and Imogene and her husband, Daniel, are buried on their own farm, just across the creek from the main family home at Blue Spring, no one knows where Julia (who died from cholera in 1833) and Adaline were laid to rest. I’m positive that they were buried on the home plantation, however, and I’m trying to have ground penetrating radar equipment brought out to Blue Spring to locate their graves. I hope that we will be able to identify Julia’s and Adaline’s gravesites to mark the locations with stones so we can honor their memories. For me, it’s important we do this as a way to proclaim, once more, that Black Women’s Lives, and Stories, Matter.

Amrita Chakrabarti Myers is Ruth N. Halls Associate Professor of History and Gender Studies at Indiana University in Bloomington. She is the author of the multiple-award-winning book, Forging Freedom: Black Women and the Pursuit of Liberty in Antebellum Charleston, 1790–1860. Look for her book on Julia Chinn, The Vice President’s Black Wife: Resurrecting Julia Chinn, in 2020. Follow her on Twitter @CountessCanuck.

Posted in abwhtruth

Unstoppable lava from La Palma volcano eruption reaches ocean in stunning space photos

By Tereza Pultarova  

SPACE .COM

The volcanic eruption on Spain's La Palma island shows no signs of stopping.

A burning lava scar on the La Palma island seen from the International Space Station (Image credit: Roscosmos/Novitsky)

New images from space of the La Palma volcano eruption in the Canary Islands show the unstoppable river of lava flowing into the Atlantic Ocean just as locals report new earthquakes in the region.

The burning lava scar on the western flanks of La Palma, one of the islands of the Spain-governed Canary archipelago off the coast of northwest Africa, glows brightly in nighttime images captured by U.S. Earth observation company Maxar Technologies on Thursday (Sept. 30). The images clearly reveal the area on the left where the lava flow spills into the Atlantic Ocean at the secluded Playa Nueva beach near the town of Tazacorte.

The Volcanic Institute of the Canaries (Involcan) reported the solidifying lava has created a new penninsula, that is already larger than 25 soccer pitches, The Guardian reported.

Related: Bright lava flows, smoke pour from La Palma volcano eruption in new Landsat photos

(Image credit: Maxar Technologies)

The glowing river of lava from the Cumbre Vieja volcano can be seen reaching the Atlantic Ocean in this image obtained by Maxar Technologies on 29 Sept. 2021. (Image credit: Maxar Technologies)

This image captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellite on 30 September, shows the flow of lava from the volcano erupting on the Spanish island of La Palma. (Image credit: Copernicus)

Russian cosmonauts Oleg Novitsky and Pyotr Dubrov on the International Space Station also photographed the eruption from orbit and shared the images on Twitter a day after capturing them on Wednesday (Sept. 29).

The image, shared by Novitsky on Thursday (Sept. 30), shows a glowing lava river considerably outshining the urban network of lights as the island and the surrounding ocean hide in darkness.

"Yesterday Pyotr Dubrov and I managed to capture the volcano's magma from the ISS at night," Novitsky said in the tweet.

The European Union's Copernicus Earth observation program also shared new images of the ongoing eruption today, saying that more than 1,000 buildings have been buried in the boiling stream of lava since the eruption started on Sept. 19.

Over 1.4 square miles (3.6 square kilometers) of land have been buried so far as the eruption shows no signs of stopping. A series of mild earthquakes up to the magnitude of 3.5 shook the island on Friday (Oct.1) and a new lava-spewing fissure opened about 1,310 feet (400 meters) north from the original crater of the Cumbre Vieja volcano, according to Sky News.

More than 6,000 people including hundreds of tourists have been evacuated since the eruption started and three coastal villages are currently locked down as geologists worry the boiling lava mixing with cool sea water might release toxic gases.

The eruption, the first for Cumbre Vieja since 1971, had been preceded by more than 20,000 mild Earth tremors in the week prior to the first fissure opening. Involcan predicts the eruption may continue for weeks or even months.

Erupting Spanish volcano turns 'more aggressive': officials

DANIEL ROCA and BARRY HATTON
Fri, October 1, 2021

LOS LLANOS DE ARIDANE, Canary Islands (AP) — An erupting volcano on a Spanish island off northwest Africa blew open two more fissures on its cone Friday that belched forth lava, with authorities reporting “intense” activity in the area.

The new fissures, about 15 meters (50 feet) apart, sent streaks of fiery red and orange molten rock down toward the sea, parallel to an earlier flow that reached the Atlantic Ocean earlier this week.

The volcano was “much more aggressive,” almost two weeks after it erupted on the island of La Palma, said Miguel Ángel Morcuende, technical director of the Canary Islands' emergency volcano response department.

Overnight, scientists recorded eight new earthquakes up to magnitude 3.5.

The eruption was sending gas and ash up to 6,000 meters (almost 20,000 feet) into the air, officials said.

The prompt evacuation of more than 6,000 people since the Sept. 19 eruption helped prevent casualties.

A new area of solidified lava where the molten rock is flowing into the sea extends over more than 20 hectares (50 acres).

Officials were monitoring air quality along the shoreline. Sulfur dioxide levels in the area rose but did not represent a health threat, La Palma’s government said.

However, it advised local residents to stay indoors. It also recommended that people on the island wear face masks and eye protection against heavy falls of volcanic ash.

The volcano has so far emitted some 80 million cubic meters of molten rock, scientists estimate — more than double the amount in the island’s last eruption, in 1971.

The lava has so far destroyed or partially destroyed more than 1,000 buildings, including homes and farming infrastructure, and entombed around 709 hectares (1,750 acres).

La Palma, home to about 85,000 people who live mostly from fruit farming and tourism, is part of the volcanic Canary Islands, an archipelago off northwest Africa that is part of Spain's territory.

The island is roughly 35 kilometers (22 miles) long and 20 kilometers (12 miles) wide at its broadest point. Life has continued as usual on most of the island while the volcano is active.

___

Hatton reported from Lisbon, Portugal.

APTOPIX Spain Volcano

A cemetery tombstone is covered with ash from a volcano on the Canary island of La Palma, Spain on Friday Oct. 1, 2021. An erupting volcano on a Spanish island off northwest Africa has blown open another fissure on its hillside. Authorities were watching Friday to see whether lava from the new fissure would join the main flow that has reached the sea. The new fissure is the third to crack open since the Cumbre Vieja crater erupted on La Palma island Sept. 19. (AP Photo/Daniel Roca)

Lava flowing into sea creates delta, expands Spanish island

Thu, September 30, 2021, 

LOS LLANOS DE ARIDANE, Canary Islands (AP) — The surface of Spain's La Palma island is continuing to expand as lava from a volcano flows into the Atlantic Ocean and hardens when it comes into contact with the water, European Union scientists said Thursday.

Copernicus, the European Union's Earth observation program, said Thursday that its satellite imagery showed a D-shaped tongue of molten rock building up on the island's western shore measured 338 hectares (835 acres) by the end of Wednesday.

Trade winds typical of Spain's Canary Islands were helping dispel the plumes of water vapor and toxic gases that result when the lava with a temperature of over 1,000 degrees Celsius (1,800 F) meets the ocean, where the water is 22 degrees Celsius (71.6 F).

But authorities were on alert because Spain's weather forecaster, AEMET, indicated the wind's direction could change later Thursday and bring the toxic plumes toward the shore and farther inland.

The hydrochloric acid and tiny particles of volcanic glass released into the air can cause skin, eye and respiratory tract irritation.

The direction the lava flow could take was also a source of concern. Molten fluid emanating from the volcano that first erupted on Sept. 19 was still running downhill like a river and then tumbling over a cliff into the Atlantic. But uneven terrain could make the lava overflow its current path, spread to other areas, and destroy more houses and farmland.

At least 855 buildings and 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) of roads, as well as other key infrastructure, have been wiped out so far. Banana plantations that are the source of income for many islanders have also been either destroyed or damaged by volcanic ash.

Over 6,000 residents have been evacuated so far, and hundreds more were advised to stay home to avoid the possible inhalation of toxic gases. No casualties or injuries have been reported among La Palma residents since the eruption began.

La Palma, home to about 85,000 people, is part of the volcanic Canary Islands, an archipelago off northwest Africa. The island is roughly 35 kilometers (22 miles) long and 20 kilometers (12 miles) wide at its broadest point.

Tragic and completely avoidable’: US hits 700,000 Covid-19 deaths

Despite the availability of vaccines, 100,000 Americans have died of coronavirus since June

People visit the In America: Remember public art installation near the Washington Monument on the National Mall in Washington DC. 

Photograph: Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times/Rex/Shutterstock

Lauren Aratani
Sat 2 Oct 2021 

The Covid-19 death toll in the US has now surpassed 700,000 , despite the Covid-19 vaccines’ wide availability in what one expert called a “tragic and completely avoidable milestone”.

Data from Johns Hopkins University shows that the US went just past 700,000 deaths on Friday; the US had previously reached 600,000 deaths in June. The country has had a total of 43.6m confirmed cases of Covid-19 since the start of the pandemic, according to Johns Hopkins.


Coronavirus treatments: the potential ‘game-changers’ in development

Over the last few months, the overwhelming majority of people who died from Covid were unvaccinated. A study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published last month found that after the Delta variant became the most common variant in the US over the summer, unvaccinated Americans were 10 times more likely to be hospitalized and die due to the virus compared with vaccinated Americans.

Recent deaths have primarily been in southern states that have lagging vaccine rates, including Florida, Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana. Nationally, about 65% of people 12 and older who are eligible to receive the vaccine have been fully vaccinated, according to the CDC.

With a slight majority of the population fully vaccinated, the Covid death rate has significantly decreased compared with the death rate during previous surges of the virus, when the vaccine was unavailable. Following the surge in cases seen last winter, 100,000 people died in a 34-day period between January and February. Comparatively, it took over three months for the US to see another 100,000 deaths this summer.

Public health experts attribute the slowed death rate to the effectiveness of the vaccine but say that the milestone could have been avoided altogether with a higher vaccination rate.

“Reaching 700,000 deaths is a tragic and completely avoidable milestone. We had the knowledge and the tools to prevent this from happening, and unfortunately politics, lack of urgency and mistrust in science got us here,” John Brownstein, an epidemiologist at Boston children’s hospital, told ABC News.

Experts are hoping that hospitalizations and deaths will decrease as the surge in cases due to the Delta variant seems to be decreasing and vaccine mandates are starting to roll out.

Without a winter surge, which experts say is still possible, statistical modeling has shown that the Covid-19 cases can continue to decline into 2022, providing some much-needed relief to hospital systems across the country that have been overwhelmed by Covid-19 cases.

One hospital in rural Washington state is still dealing with a surge of patients, with 15 of its 20 intensive-care unit beds being occupied by Covid patients. The hospital has had to delay more than two dozen heart surgeries because of its shortage of ICU beds.

“We’ve got a backup of like 30 cases that need to be done,” Jackie Whited, director of intensive care at Central Washington hospital in Wenatchee, Washington, told the Seattle Times. “I have no beds, I will have one clean bed in the ICU.”

In an effort to get more people inoculated, vaccine mandates have been rolling out across the country, to some success.

Major health systems in California, where healthcare workers have been required to get vaccinated, have reported an uptick in vaccination rates among staff members. New York, which has a similar mandate, has seen similar results with thousands of healthcare workers getting vaccinated before the state’s vaccination deadline.


California becomes first state to require Covid vaccines for all students

United Airlines had said it would fire the nearly 600 employees out of its workforce of about 67,000 employees who refused to be vaccinated. On Thursday, the company said that nearly 250 of those employees ultimately decided to get vaccinated.

“Our vaccine policy continues to prove requirements work – in less than 48 hours, the number of unvaccinated employees who began the process of being separated from the company has been cut almost in half, dropping from 592 to 320,” the company said in a statement.

Adding to further optimism that the virus’s hold on the country is waning was the drug manufacturer Merck’s announcement on Friday that research found its Covid-19 treatment pill reduced hospitalizations and death to the virus by half. The company said it was seeking emergency use authorization from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for distribution of the pill.

HYPOCRITES
Amazon, Apple, and Disney execs secretly back anti-climate reform lobbies

“Major corporations love to tell us how committed they are to addressing the climate crisis and building a sustainable future, but behind closed doors, they are funding the very industry trade groups that are fighting tooth and nail to stop the biggest climate change bill ever.”
Kyle Herrig, president of Accountable.USA

Supakrit Tirayasupasin/Moment/Getty Images
Andrew Paul
10.1.2021 

A new investigation from The Guardian in conjunction with analysis provided by the watchdog group, Accountable.US, links many of the country’s most powerful execs to lobbying efforts against the Biden administration’s climate change reform bill, despite their brands’ supposed commitment to combatting ecological crises. Companies including Amazon, Apple, Disney, and Microsoft all proudly tout various green goals, but their decision-makers’ membership in numerous anti-climate reform groups show their efforts to be clandestinely hypocritical at best, and actively harmful at worst.

“Major corporations love to tell us how committed they are to addressing the climate crisis and building a sustainable future, but behind closed doors, they are funding the very industry trade groups that are fighting tooth and nail to stop the biggest climate change bill ever,” president of Accountable.US, Kyle Herrig, said in a statement. Boasting supporters like the CEOs of Apple, Alphabet Inc., and Amazon, groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Business Roundtable, and the Rate Coalition are funneling millions into watering down — or even preventing — congressional climate reform efforts.


MediaNews Group/The Riverside Press-Enterprise via Getty Images/MediaNews Group/Getty Images

NO ONE IS DENYING IT — One of the most unsavory aspects of the new report appears to be the response from many of these businesses to the revelations. Of the many contacted by The Guardian, not a single one of them would “rebuke the stance of the lobby groups they are part of and none said they would review their links to these groups.”

DO AS THEY SAY, NOT AS THEY DO — Although companies like Amazon and Microsoft have recently pledged to become carbon neutral within the next few decades (already a commitment that’s too little, too late), it should surprise absolutely no one to see concrete data linking their most powerful players to these lobbying groups. It is by these corporations’ very nature to constantly operate with the largest possible profit margins in mind after taking public scrutiny and opinion into consideration.

It’s good to see such major companies hypothetically pledging to work against eco-collapse, but much of it will always be canceled out by clandestine decisions like these lobbying group memberships.

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Apple, Amazon and others back groups trying to kill US climate legislation




Kris Holt
·Contributing Writer
Fri, October 1, 2021

Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Disney are among the major companies backing corporate lobby groups and organizations that are battling a US climate bill, according to a report. That's despite those companies all making pledges to reduce their impact on the environment.

The United States Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable and the Rate Coalition are three of the lobbyist and business groups that oppose the Democrats' $3.5 trillion budget bill, which includes measures to fight climate change. The Guardian reports that watchdog Accountable.US analyzed the groups to learn which companies have connections to them.

The Chamber of Commerce, the biggest lobbying group in the US, has said it would "do everything we can to prevent this tax-raising, job-killing reconciliation bill from becoming law.” The group's board includes executives from the likes of United Airlines and Microsoft.

The board of the Business Roundtable includes Apple CEO Tim Cook, Google and Alphabet chief executive Sundar Pichai and Amazon CEO Andy Jassy. The group has said it's “deeply concerned” about the bill and the increased taxes it would lead to for the rich. Google has also made political contributions in the past to individuals and organizations that have denied climate change.

The report notes that The Rate Coalition is set to release attack ads against the bill. That body's members include Disney and Verizon (Engadget's former parent company).

The support of lobbying groups that are attempting to kill the bill conflicts with the tech companies' attempts to tackle the climate crisis. Apple, Google and Microsoft have all backed the Paris Agreement, for one thing. Apple and Microsoft promised to become carbon neutral and carbon negative respectively by 2030.

In 2019, Amazon and founder Jeff Bezos launched the Climate Pledge, which has a goal of hitting net zero carbon emissions by 2040 and meeting the Paris Agreement benchmarks a decade early. Microsoft is among the 200+ companies that have joined the pledge. Disney, meanwhile, is aiming to reach net zero emissions for its direct operations by 2030.

Engadget has contacted Apple, Google and Microsoft for comment. The Guardian said that none of the companies it contacted rejected the stances of the groups they're members of. None of them said they would re-assess their connections to those bodies either.

On Friday, Amazon expressed support for the infrastructure bill and the climate aspects of the Build Back Better reconciliation bill. A spokesperson provided the following statement to Engadget:

Amazon believes both private and public sector leadership is required to tackle the global issue of climate change. That’s why we actively advocate for policies that promote clean energy, increase access to renewable electricity, and decarbonize the transportation system. In addition to advocating for these issues on a local, state, and international level, we have a worldwide sustainability team that innovates sustainable solutions for both our business and customers, as well as co-founded The Climate Pledge - a commitment to be net-zero carbon 10 years ahead of the Paris Agreement.


Amazon has made bold commitments to reduce our carbon emissions, and we continue to encourage other companies to join us. We support investments in the Infrastructure and Build Back Better bills to lower emissions in key sectors like energy and transportation, and we believe these investments will help advance America’s carbon reduction goals. As we said earlier this year, we support an increase in the corporate tax rate to pay for things like infrastructure, and we look forward to Congress and the administration coming together to find the right, balanced solution that maintains or enhances U.S. competitiveness.

Update 1/10 12:22PM ET: Added Amazon's statement.