BECAUSE OF COURSE THEY DID

Russia puts jail torture video whistleblower on wanted list

Issued on: 23/10/2021 - 

Whistleblower Savelyev is now a wanted man in Russia 

Ursula HYZY AFP/File

Moscow (AFP)

Moscow on Saturday put a former prison inmate seeking asylum in France on a wanted list after he leaked harrowing videos of alleged rape and torture inside a Russian prison.

According to a notice published on the Russian interior ministry's website, Sergei Savelyev -- a Belarus national -- is wanted in connection with an unspecified criminal case.

Savelyev smuggled shocking footage of abuse out of a jail in the central city of Saratov. Fearing reprisals, he fled Russia in February and last week arrived in France, where he asked for asylum.

While serving 7.5 years for drug trafficking, he worked as an IT maintenance officer, earning access to the prison's internal server and those of other jails, where he found several videos.

He saved them on a USB stick that he hid near the prison exit.

Some of the videos were then published by the Russian rights group Gulagu.net, prompting an official probe and the sacking of several officials.

Savelyev said that while the interior ministry did not provide details of why he was wanted, he thought it was for "leaking state secrets".

"They are going down the only path they know, the path of force," he said in a video from France published by Gulagu.net

Russian authorities are trying "to shut my mouth."

"It's a shame that instead of using the time to reform the system and investigate all this terrible evidence we gave them, they are trying to hide the truth," he added.

Torture and sexual violence inflicted on inmates have long been systemic in Russia's vast penitentiary system, prison monitors say, but the videos have cast new light on such abuses.

A prison guard with a dog is seen near an entrance to the IK-2 male correctional facility in the town of Pokrov, Russia on October 8, 2021. © Tatyana Makeyeva, Reuters

(AFP)

MISOGYNISTIC FEMICIDE BY HUSBAND
Mourners, athletes demand justice for Kenyan star runner Agnes Tirop at funeral

Issued on: 23/10/2021 - 

Kenyan athletes and other mourners throw flowers towards the coffin in memory of star runner Agnes Tirop during her funeral service on October 23, 2021. © Monicah Mwangi, Reuters\
Text by: NEWS WIRES

Olympic running greats came together on Saturday to bid farewell to rising Kenyan star Agnes Tirop, whose murder earlier this month sent shockwaves across the nation and the athletics world.

A double world championships bronze medallist tipped for future stardom on the track, Tirop was buried in a white casket in central Kenya on what would have been her 26th birthday.

Her body was found on October 13 with stab wounds in the bedroom of her home in Iten, a high-altitude training hub for top-class athletes.

Tirop's husband appeared in court this week as a suspect in her killing after being arrested and remanded in custody.

Among the mourners gathered in Mosoriot, Tirop's childhood village about 30 kilometres (18 miles) south of Eldoret, were two-time Kenyan Olympic champion David Rudisha and fellow gold medallists Joshua Cheptegei and Peruth Chemutai of Uganda.

Many in the congregation wore the signature red shirts of Athletics Kenya, which described Tirop as a "jewel" and one of the fastest-rising stars on the international running circuit.

Her death sparked outpourings of grief and condolences from Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, but also anger at a life taken so young.

Impassioned speakers at her funeral demanded swift justice for Tirop, and huge crowds marched in Eldoret on Friday calling for an end to violence against women.

Tirop's death has thrown a spotlight on the pressures faced by the country's female athletes who pay a huge -- and often tragic -- price for their spectacular success in a male-dominated society.

"The injustice against female athletes here in Kenya is a threat to all of us athletes all over the world," said Olympic 5000 metres champion Cheptegei.

"We are here in solidarity to show that we condemn such acts in such a manner."

Athletics Kenya announced on Saturday that the Kenyan leg of the World Cross Country Tour would be named after Tirop.

Born to a peasant farming family, Tirop launched her athletics career less than a decade ago but swiftly ran up a host of second-place finishes in national and international cross country races.

She went on to become one of Kenya's rising stars -- as the 2015 world cross-country champion, a two-time world medallist over 10000m, and came fourth over 5000m at the Tokyo Olympics this year.

(AFP)

‘Salvini’s moment has passed’: Fading champion of Italy’s right wing on trial for migrant kidnapping



Issued on: 23/10/2021 - 

Matteo Salvini pictured outside the court in Palermo, Sicily on October 23, 2021. 

© Gregorio Borgia, AP

Text by:  Benjamin DODMAN


Italy’s former hardline interior minister Matteo Salvini went on trial Saturday over his refusal to let a migrant rescue ship dock in August 2019, leaving some 147 people stranded at sea for days. The trial comes at a critical time for the far-right leader, whose fortunes have declined sharply since the dramatic stand-off.

The firebrand former minister appeared in a court in Palermo, accused of kidnapping 147 migrants on board the Open Arms rescue ship, most of whom were left at sea for 18 gruelling days in sweltering heat. Salvini, whose far-right League party takes a hard line on immigration, has said he was only doing his job to protect Italy’s borders by refusing entry to the Spanish NGO ship.

Saturday's hearing was largely procedural and lasted less than three hours, before the presiding judge set the next session for December 17. Salvini tweeted a photo of himself inside the courtroom, mocking a “trial wanted by the left and by the fans of illegal immigration”.

Activists are hoping the court case will set a legal precedent, sending a warning to governments that hinder search-and-rescue missions in the Mediterranean. The trial could also have major implications for Italian politics, potentially dealing a fatal blow to Salvini’s political career – or offering a platform for him to reverse a slump in the polls and fend off challengers on the far right.

The case against Salvini

Palermo prosecutors have accused Salvini of kidnapping, abuse of power and dereliction of duty for keeping the migrants at sea off the Italian island of Lampedusa for almost three weeks even as conditions on board sharply deteriorated. Some people threw themselves overboard in desperation as the captain repeatedly pleaded for a safe port. Eventually, after an 18-day ordeal, an Italian judge overruled the interior minister and the remaining migrants still aboard the ship were allowed to disembark.

Prosecutors say Salvini’s actions violated “international conventions governing maritime rescue and, more generally, the protection of human life”. They say the interior minister ignored instructions from the prime minister’s office urging him to at least allow the minors on board the ship to disembark.

Salvini’s prosecution was made possible by a Senate vote that stripped the former minister of his parliamentary immunity, paving the way for a trial. He faces up to 15 years in prison if he is found guilty.

The defence: A ‘sacred duty’

Salvini claims he was protecting the country as part of his "closed ports" policy, which aimed to stop people from attempting the dangerous Mediterranean crossing to Italy. When the trial was announced earlier this year, he tweeted that defending the country was the “sacred duty” of every Italian. “I’m going on trial for this, for having defended my country?” he asked. “I’ll go with my head held high.”

At the time of the Open Arms incident, Salvini was part of a coalition government in which he simultaneously held the positions of interior minister and deputy prime minister. He has argued that his migrant policy was not his alone but was approved by the government, including by former prime minister Giuseppe Conte, whom he has called as a witness in the trial.

In a boost for the defence, a court in Catania earlier this year dismissed a related case in which Salvini was accused of blocking other migrants on board the Italian coastguard boat Gregoretti. The prosecutor in that case argued that Salvini was carrying out government policy agreed by other cabinet members when he kept the 116 migrants at sea for five days.

The witnesses: Top officials and a Hollywood star

Twenty-three civil parties, including the Spanish-based NGO Open Arms and nine migrants who were on board the ship, are represented in the trial. In addition to Conte, high-profile witnesses summoned to testify include Salvini’s successor at the interior ministry, Luciana Lamorgese, and the current foreign minister, Luigi di Maio, who also served as deputy PM at the time.

Plans for actor Richard Gere to give testimony have attracted greater attention, with Salvini deriding a “show trial”. The Hollywood star, known as a campaigner for Tibet and other human rights issues, boarded the Open Arms ship in August 2019 to support the migrants – a visit mocked by Salvini at the time.

Hollywood icon Richard Gere helps to serve meals to migrants aboard the Open Arms ship on August 9, 2019. © Francisco Gentico, AP

"You tell me how serious a trial is where Richard Gere will come from Hollywood to testify about my nastiness," Salvini told journalists outside the courtroom on Saturday. "I hope it lasts as short a time as possible because there are more important things to take care of."

Salvini had previously quipped that he would ask Gere for an autograph for his mother.

Political implications: ‘Salvini’s moment has passed’

While the port stand-off two years ago dominated headlines in Italy for weeks, the trial’s opening has attracted surprisingly little attention in the Italian media. The contrast reflects both Salvini’s declining fortunes and the public’s fatigue with the subject, says Luca Tomini, a professor of political science at the Université libre de Bruxelles, describing the trial as “an echo of something Italians have put behind them”.

Salvini’s standing has suffered a sharp decline since he pulled the rug on an uneasy coalition government with the anti-establishment Five-Star Movement in August 2019, soon after the Open Arms incident. His far-right League party was sailing high in the polls at the time, and Salvini hoped to trigger a snap election. But the move backfired when rival parties agreed to form a coalition, shutting out the League. Since then Salvini has been overtaken on the right by another far-right outfit, Brothers of Italy, and a shellacking at the hands of left-wing parties in municipal elections last week confirmed the League’s dramatic slump.

“This is an extremely difficult time for Salvini, whose leadership of the right is in crisis,” Tomini told FRANCE 24. “Salvini will be hoping to use the trial as a platform, a chance to revive his flagging political fortunes in the event of a non-guilty verdict. [But] for the time being, the leading party on the right is Giovanna Meloni’s Brothers of Italy. Salvini’s moment has passed.”

\

If convicted, Salvini could face a maximum of 15 years in prison Pau Barrena AFP

The broader picture: EU migration policy ‘in the dock’

While stoking the nationalist sentiment of his supporters, Salvini’s hard line on immigration was designed to address the grievances of many Italians who felt abandoned by the European Union. It was part of a tussle with Italy’s EU partners aimed at forcing them to take in a larger share of migrants arriving in Italy. During the stand-off, Salvini repeatedly brandished an opinion poll suggesting that two-thirds of Italians backed his stance.

The interior minister also argued that humanitarian rescue ships were only encouraging migrant traffickers in North Africa and that his policy saved lives by discouraging further risky trips across the Mediterranean – a claim experts say is not borne out by evidence.

On the other side of the aisle, Open Arms has also said it plans to use the Salvini trial as a platform to criticise the EU’s migration policy. Ahead of the proceedings, the Barcelona-based NGO tweeted: “In the court dock with [Salvini] will also be the deadly migration policy of the [EU], which has caused and continues to cause thousands of innocent victims in the Mediterranean

THE PRIMACY OF ARBITRATION AND COLLECTIVE BARGAINING

Health care worker fired for drinking can't challenge termination using Human Rights Code: Supreme Court

CBC/Radio-Canada 

© Justin Tang/The Canadian Press The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that disputes between a unionized employee and their employer that are covered by a collective agreement must be settled by a labor arbitrator under the Labour Relations Act.

A Manitoba health care worker who was fired from her job for drinking alcohol cannot challenge her termination under her province's Human Rights Code, the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled.

The ruling sided with the employer's argument that disputes between a unionized employee and an employer on an issue covered by a collective agreement can only be settled by a labour arbitrator working with both parties.

The ruling is significant and has ramifications across the country because the human rights codes and labour relations acts of many provinces are based on similar principles of law.

This case stems from the 2011 suspension and subsequent firing of Linda Horrocks from a personal care home run by the Northern Regional Health Authority in Flin Flon, Man.

Horrocks, who suffered from alcohol dependence — a disability recognized by her employer, her union's collective agreement and Manitoba's Human Rights Code — was suspended from work for being intoxicated.

The health authority offered Horrocks her job back providing she agreed to a total abstinence from alcohol. She refused to sign the agreement, saying it discriminated against her based on her recognized disability, and was fired as a result.

Horrocks grieved her termination to the union and in 2012 she struck a deal allowing her to return to work providing she abstained from drinking, sought counselling and submitted to random alcohol tests.

When her employer received reports that Horrocks was intoxicated outside of work, she denied drinking. But her employer told her that those "denials are not believed," concluded that she was in breach of her agreement to abstain from alcohol and fired her.

Rather than filing another grievance with her employer, Horrocks brought her complaint to the Manitoba Human Rights Commission, where an adjudicator ruled that she had been discriminated against based on her disability.

The adjudicator ordered the health authority to rehire Horrocks and compensate her with lost wages and $10,000 for injury to her "dignity, feelings and self respect."

The health authority objected to the jurisdiction of the Human Rights Commission and a court agreed, ruling that a labour arbitrator had jurisdiction in the case. Horrocks had that decision overturned at the court of appeal, which ruled in 2017 that both the commission and a labour arbitrator had jurisdiction in the case and sent it back to the lower court judge.

The health authority appealed that decision to the top court where six of the justices that heard the case sided with Horrocks' employer, ruling that the Labour Relations Act trumps the Human Rights Code in this case.

"The [labour] arbitrator's jurisdiction under the Labour Relations Act over claims that arise, in their essential character, from the interpretation, application, or alleged violation of the collective agreement is exclusive and, more particularly, exclusive of the [Human Rights] Commission," the judgment said.

"In its essential character, Ms. Horrocks' complaint alleges a violation of the collective agreement, and thus falls squarely within the [labour] arbitrator's mandate."

The ruling means that the decision by the province's Human Rights Commission requiring Horrocks to be reinstated has no legal standing.

Horrocks' lawyer Paul Champ told CBC News in an email that he is disappointed with the ruling — which he said "slams the door of human rights tribunals to unionized employees with discrimination claims" — but appreciates that the country's top court saw the issue differently.

Champ said that Horrocks, now 64 and working in retail, was disappointed that the case was dismissed and that the decision under the Human Rights Code has been set aside.

"The court left the door open that a grievance still might be considered by the employer in the circumstances, and we are going to get in touch with the union to see if they will file a grievance now," he said.

Rethinking the Civic Imagination & Manufactured Ignorance in the Post Pandemic World - Noam Chomsky

Oct 13, 2021

McMaster Humanities

The Wilson Institute for Canadian History and the Center for Scholarship in the Public Interest is pleased to present 

Noam Chomsky

"Rethinking the Civic Imagination and Manufactured Ignorance in the Post Pandemic World." 

Monday, 4 October, 2021 at 7 p.m. 

This is a joint project sponsored by Dr. Henry A. Giroux, McMaster University and Professor for Scholarship in the Public Interest and Dr. Ian McKay, L.R. Wilson Chair in Canadian History, Professor of History.

Dinosaur fossil from a supposed huge carnivore belongs to something else

By Megan Marples, CNN 

A dinosaur fossil footprint found about 50 years ago is from a plant-eating dinosaur -- not a huge meat-eating dinosaur as previously thought, according to a new study.

© Kamil Porembinski/Creative Commons/Courtesy Dr. Anthony Romilio 

The Prosauropod is an herbivorous dinosaur who lived during the Triassic age.

The footprint, which dates back to the Triassic Period about 220 million years ago, was initially thought to have come from a large dinosaur from the Eubrontes family, said lead study author Anthony Romilio, a technical assistant in the School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences at the University of Queensland in Australia, in a statement.

He worked with a team of international researchers to reanalyze the fossil and found the footprint belonged to the Prosauropod, an herbivorous dinosaur. This would make the footprint the only physical evidence of any Triassic-age Prosauropod in Australia, Romilio said.

The fossil was discovered in a coal mine in Ipswich, a city west of Brisbane, nearly 656 feet (200 meters) underground. Scientists at the time estimated the creature that made the footprint to have legs over 6 feet (2 meters) tall, which would have made it the largest carnivorous dinosaur of the Triassic period, he said.

Romilio wasn't buying it -- in part because of a lack of consistent data regarding the fossil.

"I knew about this fossil many years ago and was surprised there was no consensus on basic details such as the footprint length or even its shape," he said.

One indication the footprint came from an herbivore like Prosauropod was the shape of the feet, Romilio said. Predatory dinosaurs had toes that were bunched together, but the fossil's toes were spread apart.

This long-necked animal had legs around 4.5 feet (1.4 meters) tall and was nearly 20 feet (6 meters) in length. The dinosaur likely had a small head and walked on two feet, Romilio added.

Earlier scientists were not able to examine the fossil when conducting their research, which forced them to make their conclusions based on photographs and drawings, Romilio said in the statement.

Geologists made plaster casts of the footprint in 1964, which were later turned into 3D models that the research team studied, said coauthor Hendrik Klein, in a statement. He is a fossil expert at Saurierwelt Paläontologisches Museum in Germany.

"The more we looked at the footprint and toe impression shapes and proportions, the less they resembled tracks made by predatory dinosaurs -- this monster dinosaur was definitely a much friendlier plant-eater," Klein said.

Dinosaur enthusiasts can catch a glimpse of the dinosaur fossil at the Queensland Museum in Brisbane or take a look at the 3D model online.

Romilio is investigating other dinosaur fossil footprints in China, South Korea and the United States to learn more about the creatures that made them.

Each dinosaur created millions of tracks across its lifetime, so collectively they left significantly more fossil footprints than bones to research, he said.

The study published Thursday in Historical Biology.

© Courtesy Dr. Anthony Romilio Researchers looked at 3D images of the fossil footprint to determine what type of dinosaur made those tracks.

Los Angeles observes 150 years since one of the largest lynchings in American history

Kimmy Yam 

A century and a half after a violent race riot in Los Angeles’ Chinatown terrorized the city’s Chinese American community, area schools and organizations are calling attention to the 1871 massacre, which they consider a “forgotten history.”

 

© Provided by NBC News

In observance of the 150th anniversary Sunday, local groups have been commemorating the race riot, which resulted in the murder of roughly 20 Chinese Americans — among the largest mass lynchings in American history. The organizations hosted a livestream performance and a K-12 teacher training workshop on the riot last week.

An estimated 500 white and Latino men and boys participated, after white police officers got involved in a dispute in Chinatown. About 10 percent of the area’s Chinese population were killed that day.

“Remembering both the accomplishments and achievements of different groups in society is as important as remembering the tragedies,” Karen Umemoto, director of the Asian American Studies Center at UCLA, one of the universities involved, told NBC Asian America. “That can help us figure out what it is we need to put in place as a society so that we can all thrive equally.”

Hao Huang, a music professor at Scripps College (which is also participating), who produced a podcast on the topic, “Blood on Gold Mountain,” said that the tragedy began with an argument between Chinese crime organizations.

One reason these associations emerged was "because there was regular violence by non-Chinese toward Chinese,” Huang said. “There was sort of a demand for protection rackets, who kind of started to victimize the people who they were supposed to protect.”

The dispute began when a Chinese woman who had been arranged to be married to an older merchant ran off with a younger man, Huang said. Both men belonged to the associations. When a shootout ensued, white police officers responded to the scene. In the chaos, a civilian, saloon owner Robert Thompson, was killed. A police officer, Jesus Bilderrain, was also injured.

“Both of them shot first … but once Robert Thompson was killed, then all hell broke loose because people were running around saying ‘the Chinamen are killing white people by wholesale,’” Huang said. “It was very opportunistic violence.”

In addition to lynchings, many white residents looted Chinatown, stealing roughly $1.5 million of property in current dollars, money the immigrants could not afford to lose, Huang said.

"The Chinese arrived here because ironically they called California 'Gold Mountain,'” Huang said. “They did not find gold. They found death. And it really took only two hours to kill at least 20 of them.”

Huang emphasized that though about 20 bodies were found, there could have been more deaths that went undiscovered. But of the hundreds who were involved in the killings and destruction, not a single person was held accountable. The few who were arrested were released on a technicality, and ultimately no one would serve a prison sentence. Chinatown had been burned down and was never rebuilt, and the newspapers that documented the day claimed that it was “what the Chinese deserved” because it began as a dispute within the community.

Huang explained that in the late 1800s, Los Angeles had not yet developed into the metropolitan center it is today. The town was small and its Chinese American community, largely made up of immigrants who were brought over to work on the transcontinental railroad, amounted to about 200 in the entire L.A. region. About half lived in the city’s segregated area along what was known as the Calle de los Negros, where Chinatown sat.

“It was basically a very rough neighborhood. Many, many dozens of people were killed every year there,” Huang said. “It was definitely a place where no one wanted to live, and that’s where they put the Chinese.”

The environment was difficult for Chinese immigrants, who often worked for sub-standard wages in industries like food service, laundry and other forms of hard labor, Huang said.

Ellen Wu, an associate professor of history at Indiana University Bloomington, explained that at the time, the West was a hotbed of anti-Chinese sentiment. Many white Americans ascribed to the idea of “manifest destiny,” the belief that expansion across the continent was justified and that they were the ones entitled to the bounty of the American West, she said. It was also a period when slavery had been abolished and American industrialism was on the rise, while opportunities for white people to own their own farms and work for themselves were simultaneously on the decline. White people increasingly found themselves having to earn wages by working for others, she said.

“Very quickly white workers start to basically come to a consensus that Chinese workers are different in a threatening way,” Wu said. “And a big part of that assumption, that they’re threatening, is that they are our new embodiment of unfree labor.”

Against such a backdrop, racial tensions in California were palpable, experts said, and the state would become notorious for the burnings of Chinatowns and other enclaves up and down its coast. The massacre in Los Angeles, however, was one of the first acts of mass violence and terrorism toward the Chinese American community of that era.

About a decade later, the country would implement the Chinese Exclusion Act, which put a 10-year moratorium on any Chinese labor immigration, the first legislation in the U.S. that discriminated by ethnicity.

Huang said the effects of such events were felt for years afterward, likely contributing to generational trauma and shaping the way in which many Asian Americans chose to deal with racism.

“I was told by my parents, don’t stick out, don’t make trouble. Because there is a terror that we’re different enough. You don’t need to make things worse by drawing attention to yourself,” he said. “We have a history to show that we have been targeted time and time again.”

Through events held in conjunction with the UCLA Asian American Studies Center, the UCLA Asia Pacific Center, the Chinese American Museum and Scripps College, the groups hope to keep the discussion over such racial tensions alive. And while some opponents of ethnic studies claim that discussions over these topics will only aggravate divisions in the country, Umemoto argued that such work is particularly inclusive, incorporating the histories of communities that have long been made invisible.

“We can be critical of the things that have taken place in history without necessarily blaming the ancestors of those who may have perpetrated certain justices,” Umemoto said. “There’s an ethos that those of us in ethnic studies have followed, which is that we’re teaching about the full lives of people of color in this country and Indigenous peoples in this country so that we could develop that historical empathy for one another.”

The LA Chinatown massacre podcast series – “Blood On Gold Mountain”

This multi-episode podcast series about the 1871 LA Chinatown massacre commemorates the worst mass race lynching on the West Coast, when at least 20 Chinese immigrants were killed in one night by a crowd of about 500 Angelenos, which accounted for nearly one fifth the male population of the city. This podcast series tells the story through the eyes of Yut-Ho, a young woman who arrives in LA as a refugee, only to become embroiled in a love intrigue, a gang war, and ultimately, the LA Chinatown Massacre. This little-known chapter of history finds eerie parallels to the vicious anti-Asian American attacks that are taking place today in the USA, spurred by racism and COVID-19 fears. Join us in the telling and the listening on the initial podcast release on Wednesday, March 24th, 2021, with following episodes in the series released every other Wednesday.

Trailer: https://blood-on-gold-mountain.captivate.fm/

UPDATE

In addition to a recent interview article in the Washington Post, yesterday we were interviewed for NowThis, the #1 mobile news brand in the U.S. [Nielsen DCR, June 2020]. By providing insightful context from a youth perspective, NowThis’ entertaining and informative videos are created for a mobile generation and receive over 2.6 billion monthly views [platform analytics, June 2020]. In December 2016, NowThis joined forces with Thrillist, The Dodo and Seeker to form Group Nine Media — the #1 video publisher on mobile in the U.S. [Nielsen DCR, June 2020].  

In the most recent news, our team was also awarded the UCLA Chancellor’s Arts Initiative Award to present “The Los Angeles Chinatown Massacre: 150-year Commemorative Performance and Dialogue”, a live performance in LA on October 24, 2021.

  Coverage of LA Chinatown massacre podcast to date:

Coverage:

• Press Play with Madeleine Brand on KCRW National Public Radio broadcast an interview about  the “Blood on Gold Mountain” podcast. 

https://www.kcrw.com/news/shows/press-play-with-madeleine-brand/immigration-aapi-hate-chinese-massacre-1871-film/blood-on-gold-mountain-podcast-la-chinatown

• Cinema Junkie with Beth Accomando on KPBS NPR broadcast an interview about  the “Blood on Gold Mountain” podcast. 

https://www.kpbs.org/news/2021/mar/24/podcast-1871-LA-chinatown-massacre/

• Interview in the Orange County Register, Los Angeles Daily News, Pasadena Star News, Press-Enterprise and @12 other papers that are part of the Southern California News Group that number @5 million+ readers per week (more than the Boston Globe and the San Francisco Chronicle together)
• Featured on EASTWIND: Politics and Culture in Asian America

https://eastwindezine.com/blood-on-gold-mountain-two-remaining-podcasts-june-30-and-july-14/ – East Wind ezine

• Center of Asian American Media feature story:

https://caamedia.org/blog/2021/06/07/blood-on-gold-mountain-podcast-dramatizes-the-early-roots-of-anti-asian-violence/

• Center for Asian American Media (CAAM) recommends Blood on Gold Mountain

https://www.facebook.com/CAAMedia/photos/a.269767429812182/3601753569946868/?type=3

• Featured interview, KPBS-TV, Public Broadcasting Service member television station, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GChute1kVI&t=3s
• Washington Post interview with Marian Liu, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/04/12/la-chinatown-asian-massacre-podcast/
• Feature on digital media outlet NowThis news, a progressive social media-focused news organization and the largest distributor of news on social media

https://twitter.com/nowthisnews/status/1394513828658827265?s=20

• Interview with Inside the Issues with Alex Cohen, on Spectrum News 1, American cable news television channel founded by Time Warner Cable

https://vimeo.com/564850072

• Broadcast of entire podcast series on KSPC-FM in May, Asia-American/PI Heritage Month.  
• Claremont Courier feature article 

https://www.claremont-courier.com/articles/news/t41112gold

• The Student Life feature article

https://tsl.news/tag/blood-on-gold-mountain/

• The Scripps Voice feature article

https://tsl.news/tag/blood-on-gold-mountain/

• Guest presentation for the Harvard Club of Chicago in May and
• Guest presentation for the Harvard Club of Seattle in June

The Trump SPAC is doing stonk things, which is hilarious

Alex Wilhelm
Fri, October 22, 2021

When news broke that former U.S. President Donald Trump had conceived of a media and technology company and intended to take it public via a blank-check company, you would have been forgiven if you immediately began to wonder how quickly you could short the stock.

Pick a reason: Right-leaning social networks have largely flopped; the company appeared to be severely underfunded given the scope of its goals and the wealth of its rivals; the fact that there was no product available to use, let alone historical revenue to model forward. There are other reasons for skepticism, but those are my favorite.

And yet! Shares of the SPAC in question, Digital World Acquisition Corp, shot higher on the news. And it is repeating the feat this morning:

Recall that DWAC is the Class A share ticker symbol of Digital World Acquisition Corp, while DWACU is the same equity, but with half a warrant attached. The latter shares are up less, which is a bit odd.

Regardless, DWAC now sports a market cap of around $4.7 billion, per Yahoo Finance. That means that Digital World -- aka Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG) -- is something akin to the newest unicorn to come out of the land of media and tech. Sure, it's a public price, but because the company that will merge with Digital World is so nascent as to be risible: Fuck it, let's call it a startup.

None of this makes sense. Even by the standards of 2021 and the SPAC era, this is all very stupid.

The only thing that TMTG has that makes it anything other than hot air attached to tissue-thin market statistics -- we'd like to thank the company's presentation for reminding us that podcasts are rising in popularity, a truly mind-bending insight -- is Trump's name. Recall that TMTG intends on using SPAC money to fund its operations, not Trump cash; it doesn't even really have the financial backing of the man whose name is atop its business. You know, the supposed billionaire.

Perhaps the fact that the company is so silly should have tipped us off to it becoming a memestock, or stonk. Why? Because only the wackiest companies seem to make the cut. Physical retail is falling amid rising digital delivery of gaming goods? Let's send GameStop to the moon. No one is renting cars? Let's pile into Hertz stock. That sort of thing.

So, almost, of course DWAC is going vertical. Why not?! This stock shooting higher is at once utterly hilarious and a grim indictment of efficient market theory. Nothing makes a stonk better as a meme than it making little to no sense as a business. Thus, TMTG is up a kajillion percent, which makes sense precisely in how little sense it makes.

Normally I'd just go to bed at this point, but it turns out I have a lot of work to do so, we'll leave this here for now. Good luck to everyone trading today.

stonk

[stäNGk]

NOUN

1. a concentrated artillery bombardment.

   "a mortar stonk"

VERB

1. bombard with concentrated artillery fire.

Stonks

A term to express a financial decision that resulted in financial gain. Mostly used ironically.

*1998 Yahoo refuses to buy Google for $1 million
*2002 Yahoo realizes it’s mistake, tried to buy Google for $3 billion, Google wants $5 billion, Yahoo says no
*2008 Yahoo refuses to be sold to Microsoft for $40 billion
*2016 Yahoo sold to Verizon for $4.6 billion
CEO of Yahoo: “Stonks”

What We Talk About When We Talk About Stonks

BY JORDAN WEISSMANN

JAN 28, 2021

A cry for our age. Special Meme Fresh

Americans don’t own stocks these days. They own stonks.

The purposeful misspelling, long a throwaway joke among market obsessives and memelords, has suddenly become ubiquitous as the entire worlds of media, finance, politics, and internet shitposters have intersected over the gyrations of GameStop, all thanks to a plucky, hilariously reckless band of Redditors who’ve pumped the stock’s price skyward to make bank while blowing up some hedge funds that had bet against the ailing retailer, and that are now crying betrayal at the day trading app Robinhood after it cut the action off. #Stonks are all anybody can talk about on Twitter, where it’s become the hashtag of choice for everyone following the escapades, a six-letter shorthand for the absurdity and excitement of the moment. Searches for the phrase have shot up. The original meme (see above!) is everywhere. The stonks man cometh.

This is not the first time stonks, the word, has had a moment. According to the sleuths of Know Your Meme, it first emerged on Facebook in 2017. The image of a generic business dude with a 3D-rendered head standing in front of a ticker with a giant arrow pointing up, with its suggestion of empty-headed overconfidence, became a popular template for jokes about dumb life and money decisions. (Buy a $10 scratch card and win $5? Stonks! Lose your shirt on Bitcoin? Stonks! Some guy actually tried to trade a kidnapped baby for Big Macs? Stonks!). But mostly, it was just a funnier way to say the word stocks that caught on with people who spend too much of their time on the internet, like Redditors or Elon Musk, who gave the term a big boost with a tweet in 2019.

Interest in stonks also surged in March of last year when the coronavirus was kicking into high gear and the market dropped like a rock. Speaking completely from personal observation, it’s been seeping further into common parlance ever since. I’m an economics writer, and sometimes colleagues or friends make the mistake of asking me for insights on investing. My usual response over the last few months has been to say, “I’m not much of a stonks guy.”

The crucial thing about stonks is that it sounds goofy. The proper word stocks is polite and almost patrician with its wide-open “aw” syllable. You can practically yawn it. Stonks, in contrast, is an exclamation, a honk of joy or incomprehension that signals that you don’t take any of this finance stuff too seriously, that you are in it as much for the lulz as the opportunity to actually make a buck. It fits the mentality of day traders who see themselves as party crashers screwing with Wall Street, make memes comparing themselves to the Joker or the Avengers, and might brag about purposely buying shares in a company just as it’s about to crash, as if they were purposely getting kicked in the balls on an episode of Jackass.

But the phrase has also caught on because it matches the sense of absurdity that actual professionals often feel about the world of investing. If you try hard enough, it’s possible to make sense of the stock market. Sometimes. There are moments where it’s obvious what’s happening: A company craps out on earnings, and its price falls. There’s a pandemic and so everyone buys shares of Peloton and Zoom.* The Federal Reserve signals interest rates will stay low, so stocks pop. The best reporters who cover equities also know how to trace the shrouded mechanisms that drive the action on some days, and the obscure, algorithm-driven hedge fund strategies that can snowball into a route or just quietly skim cash until someone or another is a billionaire.

But on many days, maybe most days, stocks go up or stocks go down and people are left to make up a rationale for it all, to try and impose a narrative where not much of one may actually exist. On those afternoons, the most honest thing to do is just throw up your hands and post the stonks guy meme. And at a moment that the markets are being overrun, for better or worse, by posters who’ve basically dedicated themselves to shredding the idea that markets are efficient, rational mechanisms for allocating capital and discovering value, tweeting about stonks seems far more appropriate than discussing something as reasonable and comprehensible as stocks. It’s an emotional onomatopoeia for talking about people throwing their money at the market when, lol, nothing matters.

Washington state launches study that could lead to tearing down Snake River dams



Washington Gov. Jay Inslee and Sen. Patty Murray pledged to keep open minds as they announced Friday a joint federal and state process to see if there are reasonable means to replace the benefits of the lower Snake River Dams.

They expect to make recommendations no later than the end of July.

Breaching or taking down the four dams from Ice Harbor Dam near the Tri-Cities to Lower Granite Dam near Lewiston, Idaho, has been proposed as a way to help endangered salmon.

Inslee foreshadowed the announcement at a Washington Conservation Voters event earlier this month, saying he and Murray would be launching a rigorous, robust and fast assessment of what would be required to replace the benefits of the four dams.

“Both of us believe that, for the region to move forward, the time has come to identify specific details for how the impacts of breach can, or cannot, be mitigated,” Inslee and Murray said in a joint announcement Friday.

They said neither have made a decision on whether there are reasonable ways to replace the benefits of the dams in order to support tearing them down as part of the salmon recovery strategy for the Snake River.

In the coming months they will talk to a wide range of individuals and groups across the Pacific Northwest with varying views on dam breaching, they said.

“This will include close consultation and advisement by treaty-protected tribes whose unique perspectives and sovereignty each of us deeply appreciates,” they said.

Conservation and fisheries groups have called for the dams to be removed to help rebuild populations of salmon that must navigate eight hydroelectric dams between the Idaho and Washington border and the Pacific Ocean.

“Saving our salmon is absolutely essential to Washington state’s economy and cultural heritage. It is an urgent undertaking that we are fully committed to,” Inslee and Murray said.

Breaching focus questioned

But Northwest RiverPartners said it was concerned by Murray and Inslee’s apparent focus on the lower Snake River dams, framing the issue as whether their services can be replaced rather than whether they should be replaced.

“With massive declines in chinook salmon survival up and down in the Pacific Coast over the past 50 years tied to climate change and a warming ocean, the idea of breaching major carbon-free generation infrastructure just doesn’t make sense,” said Kurt Miller, executive director of the nonprofit representing utilities and agriculture and shipping interests that depend on the Snake River dams.

Calls to breach the dams for salmon recovery lack the scientific rigor necessary for such a drastic decision, he said.

“There is still so much we don’t know about salmon and we risk doing more long-term harm than good by breaching the dams, given the context of climate change,” Miller said.

Pacific Northwest Waterways Association pointed out that a $40 million environmental study completed last year concluded that breaching the dams was not in the best interest of society from the perspective of climate, costs and societal benefits, especially given the uncertainty of benefits for salmon.

The association said that shifting shipping from barges on the lower Snake River to trucks and rail would increase carbon dioxide and other harmful emissions annually equivalent to a coal-fired power plant operating for five or six years.

But a coalition of a dozen conservation, fishing and additional groups with similar views on breaching the dams praised Inslee and Murray’s plan.

They said the science on preventing extinction is clear.

Support for breaching dams

“Salmon and steelhead need free-flowing, cold water, which requires removal of the four lower Snake River dams,” they said in a statement.

Nancy Hirsh, executive director of Northwest Energy Coalition said she is confident that energy services provided by the four Snake River hydroelectric dams can be reliably and affordably replaced with effective planning.

“The pressure on the Snake River dams just hit an all-time high” with Inslee and Murray joining to look at replacing their services, said Guilia Good Stefani, senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy nonprofit.

“This is a giant step forward for the tribes that have kept the fish on life support all these years and for all of us who care deeply about justice and living in a rich and climate-resilient Northwest,” she said.

The planned quick turnaround of the evaluation recognizes the urgency of the need to save salmon, said Justin Hayes, executive director of the Idaho Conservation League.

“Preserving a place in the Water Resources Development Act to deauthorize the dams makes sense. Endless study does not,” he said.

Murray said she would ensure that key elements of a salmon recovery strategy that comes from cooperation between the state and federal governments are included as part of any Army Corps of Engineers strategy in the Fiscal 2022 Water Resources Development Act.

That could include possible analysis by federal agencies of breaching the four lower Snake River dams as part of a solution, she and Inslee said.

The federal analysis would be necessary to pursue further action with the dams, potentially including breaching, to be included in a future Water Resources Development Act.

“Without this critical step, options that may be essential to salmon restoration could be excluded from the most timely and viable federal legislative vehicle,” they said.

Inslee and Murray said they would be working with both Democrats and Republicans to assess how benefits of the dams could be replaced.

‘Something fishy’

However, Washington state’s Republican U.S. representatives — Dan Newhouse, Cathy McMorris Rodgers and Jamie Herrera Beutler — were skeptical.

“It is becoming more and more clear that the public and stakeholders who rely on the Columbia Snake River System have been shut out of conversations between the Biden administration, federal agencies and groups whose sole mission is to breach the Lower Snake River dams,” they said in a joint statement Friday.

It appears “suspicious at best” that a settlement announced Thursday would halt litigation related to operating eight Columbia and Snake river dams until July, the same time the state and federal review of dam benefits is to be completed, they said.

“This appears to be nothing more than a predetermined backdoor deal in the making ... ,” they said. “There is something fishy going on, and it’s not just the promising salmon returns we are seeing on the lower Snake River.”

A process for written comments to be submitted for the joint federal and state process has yet to be announced.

‘I was terrified’: the vet sterilizing Pablo Escobar’s cocaine hippos

Joe Parkin Daniels in Bogotá
Fri, October 22, 2021

Photograph: Joaquín Sarmiento/AFP/Getty Images

When Gina Paola Serna studied to become a biologist and veterinarian in Colombia, she never expected to one day be tasked with neutering an invasive herd of hippos that once belonged to Pablo Escobar.

When they were smuggled into the drug lord’s private zoo in the 1980s, there were just four hippos. But in the 26 years since Escobar’s death, their numbers have steadily grown : the herd now includes about 80 animals – threatening to disrupt ecosystems in Colombia. So now, Serna spends her days tracking and sterilizing the hulking riverine mammals.

“The first time I worked with a hippo I was terrified – these are animals way bigger than we are used to working with in Colombia,” Serna said, before another day in the field. “These are massive and territorial animals, so everything is complicated when it comes to working with them.”

The so called “cocaine hippos” were illegally brought to Colombia and kept in a zoo Escobar built on his vast Hacienda Nápoles estate, along the River Magdalena. He brought rhinos, giraffes and zebras to his menagerie. Oral history suggests his associates were wowed by his collection of spectacular beasts of the wild, which included about 200 animals.

A pink statue of a hippo greets tourists at Hacienda Nápoles Park in Puerto Triunfo, Colombia. Hacienda Nápoles was once a private zoo with illegally imported animals that belonged to drug trafficker Pablo Escobar. 

Photograph: Fernando Vergara/AP

But after El Patrón was shot dead by police on a rooftop in his hometown of Medellín, Colombian authorities seized his estate and the animals on it. Most were shipped off to zoos, though the logistics of moving the four hippos – each weighing well over a metric ton – proved insurmountable, and they were left to wander the Andes.

As many as 24 hippos have been sterilized so far, using Gonacon, an immunocontraceptive vaccine, which works temporarily but can cause permanent infertility. Originally, there were calls to cull Colombia’s hippo population, but in the end, sterilization was thought to be the more humane option.

“Obviously you can’t let these hippos keep reproducing, which is what they’ll keep doing because they are in paradise,” said Enrique Zerda Ordóñez, a professor of biology at the National University of Colombia in Bogotá, adding: “They’ll always have water, all the plants they could ever want to eat, and they can pop out of the river and eat grass with the cows.”

Rural farmers have grown fond of the wandering herd, charging tourists for a glance at the hippos that bathe on their lands, though one villager was injured last year after getting too close. Animal rights activists and conservationists have also sought to protect the hippos, vehemently protesting any initiatives to cull the animals.

“This is only a pilot project, but something had to be done,” said Robin Poches, a biologist and businessman who helped the Colombian government secure a donation of 70 doses of Gonacon from the United States Department of Agriculture. “Otherwise it’s only a matter of time before someone gets seriously injured or killed.”

The decision to medically sterilize the animals, rather than castrate them, will save money and time-consuming work.

Castrating a hippo is no small feat, and costs about $7,000 for each animal. Hippos spend most of their time submerged in rivers, grazing on underwater flora, and only emerge at night, so the surgery would have to be performed after dark. A hippo’s reproductive organs are internal, so veterinarians have to carry out invasive procedures in order to neuter the animals.

“The surgery itself isn’t the most complicated part – the tricky thing is anaesthetising them,” said Serna, who has castrated six hippos from the herd, knocking them out with tranquilizer darts that pierce 5cm (2in)-thick skin. “It requires a whole team of people and as we don’t have those drugs for such enormous creatures available in Colombia, it is very expensive.”

The hippos are one of many enduring holdovers of Escobar’s reign of terror, which spanned from the late 70s until his death in 1993 and brought widespread murders and kidnappings. But for Serna, the animals should not be associated with the kingpin.

“The hippos are not Escobar’s legacy, they are simply animals that escaped and bred and made a home in an environment that is not their own,” Serna said. “So to me, they don’t have anything to do with Escobar.”

Colombia Shoots Birth Control Darts at Pablo Escobar's Hippos

Thu, October 21, 2021,

This video  Colombia Shoots Birth Control Darts at Pablo Escobar's Hippos (msn.com)

In the 1980s, notorious Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar imported several hippos to his private zoo. At first, Escobar had one male and three female hippos. Escobar died in 1993, and the hippos were abandoned in the years since. Well, over almost 3 decades, the ‘cocaine hippo’ population has grown to approx 80, and biologists are worried about the hippos’ impact on the local environment and community. The Colombian government has tried to neuter the creatures, but traditional surgical sterilization is extremely risky. According to local authorities, only 11 hippos have been sterilized by this method. Now, Colombian environmental officials are trying to shoot the hippos with darts laden with a birth control drug called GonaCon. ‘It is the first time that we are implementing this procedure,’ the regional environmental agency Cornare said in a statement, via CNN. ‘We are going to follow up and monitor it to find out how successful it can be.’