US Literary star Viet Thanh Nguyen on the roots of identity politics

Nguyen won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for his best-selling 'The Sympathizer'

 (AFP/Martin BUREAU)


Alexandra DEL PERAL
Tue, November 9, 2021, 11:11 PM·3 min read


By offering up a new perspective on US and French imperialism, Viet Thanh Nguyen has become a literary star.

But the Pulitzer-winning author insists that reducing everything to identity politics misses the point about the horrors of the past, and how to move forward.

"I'm often called a Vietnamese-American writer, which I don't have a problem with," Nguyen told AFP.


"But I do have a problem with it when other writers are just called 'writers'.

"My books are not only speaking about Vietnamese issues. They are speaking about France, the US, and global issues like colonialism, racism and imperialism."

Nguyen won international acclaim for his million-selling 2015 novel "The Sympathizer" about a half-Vietnamese, half-French double agent during the Vietnam War, who later remains embedded among exiles in the United States.

He has followed it with a sequel, "The Committed", which follows the same character to France where he confronts discrimination and his own guilt over the violence in his past.

"The identity crises in France and the US are only symptoms, and if we focus on symptoms we don't understand the actual problems," Nguyen said.

"We wouldn't have these identity crises if it hadn't been for colonisation and conquest that brought these people to these countries."

- 'Painful memories' -

Nguyen was speaking to AFP ahead of the release of the French translation of "The Committed".

The novels have particular resonance in France -- the former colonial power in Vietnam, and a nation that has often seemed reluctant to question its imperial past.

"The French still have a really hard time dealing with not only the Algerian past but the Indo-Chinese past," Nguyen said.

He is sympathetic to these historical blind spots, however -- having suffered some of his own.

Born in Vietnam, Nguyen arrived in the US at the age of five.

He remembers little of his native country or the war, though the memory of being separated from his parents when he arrived at a refugee centre in the US has stayed with him.

"Sometimes painful memories can scar you forever," he said.

Nguyen blanked out his experience in the refugee camp for many years -- "as a survival mechanism".

"I'm fully aware that memory is very unreliable whether we're talking about personal or national memory, and every nation is deeply reluctant to recognise the crimes it has committed in the past."

- Doomed approaches -

Growing up in California, Nguyen found refuge in books and his own tentative steps at writing, though literature could also be a dangerous pastime.

"As a very precocious young reader, I would venture outside the children's section -- for instance reading books about the Vietnam War by American soldiers where the Vietnamese were depicted very negatively."

Those painful early encounters fuelled his later studies, and he has ended up specialising in postcolonial memory at the University of Southern California.

France's official approach to race is often contrasted with the US -- promoting the idea of universal liberal values rather than multi-culturalism.

For Nguyen, both systems are lacking.

"The French and American systems are doomed because they are both racist in their own way," he said.

"They cannot solve the problems unless they are able to address their history of slavery and colonialism."

adm/er/ah

 PATRIARCHY IS MISOGYNY & FEMICIDE

Azerbaijan activists sound alarm over wave of killings of women

Azerbaijani Dilara Bagiyeva says her husband abused her for years (AFP/Tofik BABAYEV)

Elman MAMEDOV
Tue, November 9, 2021, 11:20 PM·4 min read

Dilara Bagiyeva's face grew pale as she recounted how, after suffering abuse from her husband for a decade, he turned on their eight-year-old daughter in a drunken fit last year.

That evening in November, he returned home intoxicated to their 13th-floor apartment in Azerbaijan's capital Baku, beating Bagiyeva first in the bedroom, then the hallway and finally the kitchen, where he tried to throw her from the balcony.

Before the 41-year-old English teacher lost consciousness, she remembered her daughter Farah pleading: "Daddy, don't hit my mom."


When she came to, Farah was nowhere to be seen. Police who arrived at the scene shortly after refused to let Bagiyeva see the body.

"He dragged me out onto the balcony that night to throw me off. Instead, he threw my baby out the window," Bagiyeva said.

"She was my everything," she added, looking at a picture of her daughter on her phone.

Bagiyeva is among thousands of women subjected to domestic violence in Azerbaijan, where activists are sounding the alarm over femicide despite considerable barriers in the conservative Caspian Sea country.

Seventy-one women were killed in the ex-Soviet republic by husbands or male relatives last year and 48 more in the first eight months of 2021, the office of Azerbaijan's prosecutor general told AFP in an email.

The first Muslim nation to introduce universal suffrage in 1919, Azerbaijan is one of the most secular countries in the Islamic world.

But wives and daughters are often limited to carrying out family duties in its male-dominated society, which tolerates abuse against women.

- 'Fear of retribution' -

Officials said the approximately 2,000 cases of domestic violence against women that are reported annually are just the tip of the iceberg, as most victims remain silent.

"Many women don't phone the police for fear of retribution from family members," said Taliya Ibrahimova of the state committee for women's affairs.

The government last year adopted a four-year action plan to combat domestic violence that included setting up a hotline and a state-run shelter for victims.

Ibrahimova said a 2010 law to tackle domestic violence was being updated, and the violation would soon become a separate category of offence in the penal code.

But activists say the measures are not enough, and accuse the authoritarian government of President Ilham Aliyev of failing to protect women.

"Femicide is a political issue because tackling the problem requires political will," said Gulnara Mehdiyeva, a prominent women's rights activist.

She described Azerbaijan's political system as "despotic", and said the authorities "don't want citizens to know their rights".

Mehdiyeva said activists had come under pressure from conservative groups since March 8 last year, when they held their first rally to raise awareness of violence against women.

She said a pro-government website had even leaked recordings of her conversations with a friend "to portray me as a whore and to shame me".

There is a prevalent "negative attitude in society that accuses us of eroding family values", Mehdiyeva said.

The US embassy this year raised concerns over the killings of women, while the British embassy urged Azerbaijan to join the 2011 Istanbul Convention on combating violence against women and domestic violence.

Azerbaijan is among just a handful of countries that have not ratified the first legally binding international treaty to address the issue.

Azerbaijan activists sound alarm over wave of killings of womenDilara Bagiyeva says she will fight 'until my last breath' for justice for her daughter (AFP/Tofik BABAYEV)

- 'Until my last breath' -

The United Nations says Azerbaijan lacks the statistics to accurately track trends on women's rights, including on the pay gap and physical and sexual harassment.

But it noted that, as of February this year, women held only 18 percent of seats in parliament.

"Women lack the foundational representation in public office that would ensure that others hear their voices," the Borgen Project, a US-based women's rights group said last year.

Lawyer Zibeyda Sadikova said police "don't take seriously" women who report domestic abuse, but instead "shame and subject them to psychological pressure".

"Many women I try to convince to report (abuse) to the police say they already did, and the police told them to reconcile with their husbands, who have since continued beating them," she said.

"Most people in society think a woman must be locked up at home and her husband has the right to beat her."

She said the flawed implementation of government policies and gaps in legislation added to the problem.

"The government must fill such legal gaps, initiate an awareness-raising campaign, and ensure women's access to psychological and judicial assistance," she said.

Bagiyeva said her husband was at first only charged for beating her and not for murdering her child, whose death was ruled a suicide.

But she said a murder probe was now underway, and she had appealed to the prosecutor general and even to strongman Aliyev for justice.

"I will fight until my last breath, until my strength expires, to restore justice, so the truth comes out," she said.

eg-im/jbr/mbx/ah

Still fighting: WWII Warsaw Uprising veteran defends EU

Still fighting: WWII Warsaw Uprising veteran defends EU'

I'm a soldier, I tell it like it is,' Traczyk-Stawska says (AFP/Wojtek RADWANSKI)

Stanislaw WASZAK
Tue, November 9, 2021, 

Wearing a military beret and a Polish wartime resistance armband, 94-year-old Wanda Traczyk-Stawska stunned the crowd at a pro-EU rally when she thundered "Be quiet, stupid boy! You lousy bastard" at a member of a far-right group attempting to disrupt the gathering over a loudspeaker.

Despite her advancing years and tiny stature, the Warsaw Uprising veteran has lost none of her fighting spirit when it comes to defending Poland's presence in the European Union and migrant rights.

Tens of thousands of people had turned out in October in support of Poland's EU membership after the Constitutional Court contested the primacy of EU law, in what experts saw as a step towards a "Polexit" given the nationalist ruling party's euroscepticism.

"I'm a soldier, I tell it like it is," Traczyk-Stawska told AFP, smiling coyly as she took a sip of tea at her home in Warsaw filled with Polish and EU flags.




- 'Doughnut' -

Traczyk-Stawska was a 12-year-old girl guide when the German army invaded Poland. She joined the resistance movement and went on to carry out acts of sabotage under the sweet pseudonym of "Doughnut".

At the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising on August 1, 1944, she was one of 50,000 fighters to revolt against the Nazis -- as well as a rare girl with a machine gun, an assignment usually reserved for men at the time.

Over the course of 63 days of battle, nearly 200,000 civilians and fighters died and the city was reduced to a pile of rubble.

Traczyk-Stawska later passed through four German prisoner-of-war camps, before Polish forces operating in the Netherlands and Germany freed her from a camp in Oberlangen, northwest Germany, in 1945. Once back home, she worked as a teacher at a centre for handicapped children.

The last order she received, her life's mission, has been to watch over the cemetery bearing the remains of nearly half of the wartime dead found in the ruins of the Polish capital.

- 'A fly against an elephant' -

Remaining in the EU "is a question of national security... Were we to quit the union, where would that leave us?" Traczyk-Stawska asked.

"We already know what 1939 was like," when Poland found itself alone in the face of a two-front invasion by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.

"It's our greatest danger... We'd end up like a fly up against an elephant," she added, her robust voice contrasting with her fragile frame.

She said she was "furious" at the rally when she chose to call out the far right, who have received funding from the state and plan to go ahead with a march through Warsaw on Thursday, Poland's Independence Day.

The controversial march, which has drawn upwards of 10,000 people in past years and has often turned violent, has been the subject of intense legal wrangling.

"I got up on stage to speak of the Poland of our dreams, us veterans of the uprising... a Poland that is kind and tolerant," Traczyk-Stawska added.

She soon received death threats.

- Death at the border -

Traczyk-Stawska also expressed concern over how migrants and refugees trying to cross the Belarus border into Poland have been treated. Most are repeatedly sent back and forth by the two countries, left to wander around the cold and humid woods.

At least 10 migrants have already died, including seven on Polish territory, according to the Gazeta Wyborcza daily.

The EU accuses Belarusian strongman Alexander Lukashenko of orchestrating the unprecedented influx in retaliation for the bloc's sanctions over a brutal crackdown by the regime on the opposition.

The Polish government has adopted a hardline approach, imposing a state of emergency that bans journalists and charity workers from the immediate border zone.

It has also reinforced the area with thousands of troops and legalised pushbacks, even in the case of women and children.

- 'Shameful' -

"I am invested in the case of the children at the border. If we don't change our attitude towards these children, they will die," Traczyk-Stawska said.

"You can't abandon a child in danger. It's shameful to treat the border children that way," she added, recalling the days when as a 12-year-old she witnessed Nazis "entertaining themselves by firing at babies".

Speaking of the veterans of the uprising, Traczyk-Stawska observed that "we are all very old, on the verge of death. For us, this situation is a disgrace."

"We no longer have the strength to take a stand. All we can do is weep. Well, not everyone. Me, I'm not used to crying. I was a soldier," she said.

"But I regret that I'm so old and frail."

sw-amj/mas/gd/kjm

Climate Change: A Syllabus - JSTOR Daily

A selection of stories to foster dialogue among students both inside and outside of the classroom.

Credit: NASA
By: The Editors
November 9, 2021

The 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, better known as COP26, wraps up this week. We’re left with lingering questions. Are the biggest polluters willing and able to cap their greenhouse gas emissions? And more existentially: how long do we have? What’s going to happen? How can we cope? At JSTOR Daily, we’re constantly acquiring new content that looks at the climate crisis from different angles, but in the meantime, these previously published stories consider what the past has to teach us and what the future may bring. We hope it will help foster dialogue among all our readers, whom we consider students of the world. As always, the stories here and the underlying scholarship are free to everyone. We’ll be updating this syllabus and welcome reader suggestions for coverage.

Paul Gosar has a long history of posting unhinged far-right memes on Twitter
Jerod Macdonald-Evoy, Arizona Mirror
November 09, 2021

Gage Skidmore.

This story contains descriptions of videos and images of a racially charged nature, as do some of the links.

Paul Gosar has stoked national outrage for a Tweet depicting himself as an anime character killing and attacking prominent political figures, the latest in a string of posts from the Republican congressman that draw on far-right and racist memes and imagery.

On Tuesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called for the House Ethics Committee and law enforcement to investigate “this horrific video."

The tweet in question is a parody of the opening sequence of the popular anime series “Attack on Titan," based on the Japanese manga series of the same name.

The series has become widely popular with western audiences and has also garnered attention from the alt-right community, which has latched onto it. Recent themes in the manga have drawn parallels with real world antisemitism and far-right politics in Japan.

The video, which Gosar posted on his official congressional Twitter account, has been viewed over 3.4 million times. Twitter has deemed that the Tweet has violated the company's guidelines for hateful conduct. The social media company initially left it up due to “public interest," but it was no longer visible as of Tuesday afternoon. It is unclear if Twitter removed the post or if Gosar deleted it.

The video depicts Gosar as one of the main characters of the show — his face is digitally pasted over the actual character's face — killing and attacking enemies whose faces have been replaced with those of Democratic politicians.

In one shot, Gosar can be seen killing an enemy that has U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's face superimposed on it. Later, he is about to attack an enemy with President Joe Biden's face on it.

In a quote tweet on his personal account, Gosar thanked his “team" and said their creativity is “off the charts." However, the meme appears to be a rip-off of a similar 2016 meme that cast former President Donald Trump as the hero.

An account claiming to be the creator of the video shared an unfinished video in which Gosar is seen as a character from another anime called “Death Note" in which the main character has the power to kill people by writing their names in a journal. Gosar is seen killing Biden, Osacio-Cortez and Rep. Bennie Thompson, the Mississippi Democrat who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee. Gosar's congressional Twitter account follows the supposed “team" member account.

That same account has posted homophobic remarks, mocked LGBTQ people and said that they want to “end all immigration."

Gosar's office did not respond to a request for comment about the account claiming credit for the video. After an Arizona Mirror reporter followed the account, its owner blocked the reporter and made the account private.

The anime video that sparked outrage this week isn't the first video tweet by the congressman that co-opted far-right meme culture.
White supremacists and Groypers

Just last month, Gosar tweeted out and deleted a meme which has roots in neo-Nazi and white nationalist meme culture.

The since-deleted tweet, which was saved by the Internet Archive, begins with a cartoon image of a man looking dismayed as a number of headlines are displayed while the song “Little Dark Age" by MGMT plays.

Before the song crescendos, a buff cartoon with Gosar's head superimposed on it appears in a doorway before the cartoon character, and a montage of Gosar is played before another photoshopped image of the congressman's head on a muscular man is shown while a spinning “America First" logo is shown around his head.

The meme follows a format that is popular among online neo-Nazis and white nationalists who take the same song and superimpose it with images from Nazi Germany, as well as other imagery, the Arizona Mirror found.

Gosar's office didn't respond to requests for comment about the origins of the video or if it was created by the same “team" that created the anime video and other meme related content the congressman has shared.

Before Gosar deleted the tweet, some white nationalists and white supremacists on Twitter discussed its similarity to popular alt-right memes. One, for example, said the only difference between Gosar's tweet and “w**nat" content was the lack of an image called a “spinsun."

The term “w**nats" is used by the alt-right to describe people within the white nationalist movement that generally advocate for violence, antisemitism and accelerationism.

The “spinsuns" and “spinny wheel" that other Twitter users complained about referred to an image known as a sonnenrad, also known as the sunwheel or Black Sun. The Nazi party adopted the sonnenrad and it has become used by a number of modern Neo-Nazi groups as well as in violent attacks. The man who killed 51 and injured 40 more in New Zealand had a sonnenrad on his manifesto.

The most popular version of the sonnenrad used by white nationalists and white supremacists is two concentric circles with crooked rays that come out from the center circle and to the outer circle. Some sonnenrads have a swastika in the center or another norse rune.

The meme that Gosar tweeted did have a spinning “America First" logo around the congressman's head.

Gosar has also posted other memes related to “America First," a slogan popular among the Groyper movement and white nationalist Nicholas Fuentes.

Groypers are white nationalists and far-right activists who often troll conservatives who they feel are not extreme enough. Though loosely organized and members of many different groups, groypers are almost all followers of Fuentes.

One of the main goals of groypers is to push conservatives in a white nationalist direction, and one way they attempt to do this is to present their views in a mainstream appearance or within mainstream organizations.

Gosar spoke at an event held by Fuentes but later attempted to distance himself by saying he denounced “white racism" and said he attended the event to reach a younger voting base, according to the Washington Post.

In March, on his personal account, Gosar tweeted out a meme depicting a man soliciting a prostitute telling the man that $50 will get him whatever he wants to which the man replies “tell everyone America First is inevitable."

The phrase “America First" was used as far back as 1896 by President William McKinley, but it became prominent in isolationist and xenophobic circles in the 1920s when the Ku Kluk Klan adopted the phrase “America First" in the 1920s. It was later promoted by American Nazi sympathizers. And David Duke, the former Grand Wizard of the KKK, would go on to use the term when describing his foreign policy platform as a U.S. Senate candidate.

“America First" has now become the rallying cry for white nationalists, like Fuentes, a young podcast host and the leader of the white nationalist group that Gosar spoke to earlier this year.

Arizona Mirror is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arizona Mirror maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jim Small for questions: info@azmirror.com. Follow Arizona Mirror on Facebook and Twitter.

Sorry, Josh Hawley, the left doesn't hate masculinity — women just don't want to make you a sandwich

Amanda Marcotte, Salon
November 08, 2021

Josh Hawley. (Photo: Screen capture)

Because right-wingers are nothing if not unoriginal, Josh Hawley, the Republican senator from Missouri, is centering his likely doomed 2024 presidential bid on the played "feminists are man-haters" schtick. It's a bit that was long in the tooth even when Hawley, 41, was running off potential prom dates by sneering at their Lilith Fair tickets. In the era of #MeToo and the Texas abortion bounty hunter law, this "men are the real victims" nonsense is particularly laughable. Still, Hawley is digging in. And, to illustrate why he's going to get trounced in the GOP primary by Donald Trump, he's doing so by attacking two very popular American pastimes: porn and video games.

On "Axios on HBO" Sunday night, Hawley defended a speech he made at a gathering of conservatives last week, in which he insisted that liberals are trying to create "a world beyond men" because liberals hate "traditional masculine virtues" like "courage and independence and assertiveness." In response, the supposedly braver, more independent, and more assertive gender, according to Hawley, is "withdrawing into the enclave of idleness and pornography and video games." True men of courage, it's well-known, react to even the slightest criticism by pouting in their mancaves like toddlers throwing a tantrum.

When pressed on this by Axios' Mike Allen, Hawley doubled down, insisting that liberals are saying "your masculinity is inherently problematic." But tellingly, he was extremely vague on examples of either liberals saying this or even what he means by "masculinity." Instead, he just said, "A man is a father. A man is a husband. A man is someone who takes responsibility."

So the charge is what, that liberals are against men being fathers, husbands, and people who take responsibility? Note that it was just last month that it was liberals defending Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg after he took paternity leave to care for his two prematurely born newborn babies. It was conservatives like Tucker Carlson and supposed masculinity icons like Joe Rogan who were bashing Buttigieg for having the courage and independence of mind to shrug off their childish bullying to do what was right for his family. Indeed, looking at that whole incident, what is clear is that whatever conservatives are defending about masculinity is something, but it sure doesn't have anything to do with taking responsibility or being devoted to family.

As is usual with these reactionary defenses of "masculinity," what Hawley is trying to say is left deliberately ambiguous. As Paul Waldman of the Washington Post recently pointed out, for instance, "assertiveness" can mean all sorts of things, as, "Harvey Weinstein was certainly an assertive man, but so is Sen. Bernie Sanders."

It's also worth noting that these "masculine" qualities are hardly exclusive to men. It's doubtful that even Hawley is a troll enough to deny that women should also want to be courageous, independent, and assertive. Indeed, it's hard to think up a supposedly "masculine" virtue that isn't also a quality non-men aspire to have. Strong? Honorable? Competent? All also virtues in women and non-binary folks.

No, Hawley is being vague because what is being defended here is not virtuous behavior at all, but sexism and male dominance. The left doesn't have ire for men who exhibit good or pro-social behaviors. The behavior Hawley whines is called "toxic masculinity" is cis straight men who act entitled and abusive, in ways that range from being merely gross (like mansplaining) to being downright criminal (such as Donald Trump's boast about how he "grabs 'em by the pussy.") You're not really seeing a lot of feminists bash, say, Barack Obama for being a good husband and father. You do, however, see a lot of criticism of, to pull a recent example, Dave Portnoy of Barstool Sports for allegations that, as one woman texted a friend, "I was being raped he video taped me and spit in my mouth and choked me so hard I couldn't breathe."

Hawley's little word games cover up for the truly gross behavior that he and his audience are feeling defensive about. Men who long for when it was easier to get away with sexual harassment and abuse can project that behavior into the term "assertive." But if confronted on this, Hawley will just pretend he's talking about men speaking up for good causes, which, again, no one objects to. "Independence" sounds great, until you realize that a lot of crappy men are hearing a defense of men like Aaron Rodgers and Joe Rogan, who think being "independent" means believing you know better than doctors how immunity works. And by "courage," it's hardly likely Hawley's intended audience is imagining the true courage of a young drag queen performing for the first time or the men at NBC News who turned on Matt Lauer for his alleged sexual assaults. It's men who want to believe they're warrior princes of the highest order because they brave women's eyerolls with their "take my wife, please" jokes.

That it's sexism Hawley is defending is evident in this porn-and-video-games talk. That's just a tired sexist trope, that men's presence in women's lives needs to be purchased with women's submission, and if women demand equality, men will reject them entirely. This threat of male abandonment has been leveraged to keep women down for, well, ever. In recent decades, however, it's lost some teeth. Women are no longer barred from having checking accounts and jobs, and so aren't in danger of being destitute for the sin of being too uppity. The premise that a man's value is so self-evident that a woman should subjugate herself to keep a man happy, which was treated as gospel in the 50s era America the right is so nostalgic for, has also lost a lot of its shine. Straight women are increasingly asking men to demonstrate real worth, by being a partner instead of entitled and domineering. Hawley is speaking to an audience terrified of having to actually step up and be something more than a paycheck with a pulse to women.

The grim truth is a lot of men — and unfortunately, their female enablers — believe female submission is men's birthright and are quite angry about changing gender norms. It's why Donald Trump didn't lose any votes on the right for bragging about sexual assault. It's why there's so much whining about "cancel culture" from so many straight men who are criticized for acting like jerks or bigots. It's why groups like the Proud Boys wallow in "tradwife" fantasies, wishing for the days when women didn't have rights so had to put up their crap.

The audience Hawley is trying to reach isn't courageous or assertive or independent at all. They are whiny babies who are throwing a childish tantrum because women told them to make their own damn sandwiches. Those men are plentiful enough to be a voting bloc, as Trump has shown. Still, it's doubtful Hawley will break through to them with his dismissal of porn and video games. The voters he's seeking want more of that "grab 'em by the pussy" talk when imagining the rebirth of male dominance, not all this needlenecked whining about "responsibility."

New QAnon-style conspiracy theory links Astroworld tragedy with supposed mind control experiments

Brad Reed
November 09, 2021

Travis Scott performed at the Astroworld Festival in Houston on November 5th. © Jamaal Ellis/ AP

A video that's spreading across Facebook is falsely claiming that the tragedy at Astroworld over the weekend was part of an experiment in which the crowds at the show were mind-controlled using "graphene oxide" purportedly found in COVID-19 vaccines.

The Houston Chronicle on Tuesday published a fact check of this claim in which it explained that this conspiracy theory simply has no basis in reality.

First of all, contra the video, there's no evidence that graphene oxide turns people in "zombies." Additionally, none of the COVID-19 vaccines contain graphene oxide.

"We previously fact-checked a claim that falsely said graphene oxide — a material made by the oxidation of graphite — was used in Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine," the paper writes. "A company spokesperson told us that the material is used in some vaccines, but none by Pfizer. None of the listed ingredients is another name for graphene oxide, and the material doesn't appear in ingredient lists for the Moderna and Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccines. "

QAnon conspiracy theorists have also been claiming this that the Astroworld disaster was part of a "Satanic ritual" in which rapper Travis Scott was harvesting people's souls in a purported sacrifice to the devil.

Liberty University files restraining order against 'whistleblower' suing for wrongful firing

By Michael Gryboski, Christian Post Reporter | Tuesday, November 09, 2021

The Freedom Tower at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia,

 is the home of Liberty's School of Divinity. | Courtesy of Liberty University

Liberty University is asking a federal court to stop a former employee from disclosing confidential information and documents amid a legal battle over claims that the evangelical Christian school wrongfully fired him for speaking out about how it handled sexual assault allegations.

Scott Lamb, formerly the school’s senior vice president of communications, sued the Lynchburg-based university and claimed that he was dismissed because he expressed concern over how Liberty officials handled sexual assault claims.

Liberty filed a request for a temporary restraining order last Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia against Lamb, arguing that he is still bound to his confidentiality agreement with the university.

The motion also asks for Lamb to, among other things, deliver “all documents or other information, including all privileged, confidential, and/or trade secret information” to Liberty and to disclose all the people to whom he has sent such sensitive documents or information.

In a memorandum of law filed in support of the motion, a copy of which was emailed to The Christian Post on Monday, Liberty argued that “Lamb promised not to disclose any confidential information without Liberty approval and to return all confidential Liberty information upon his departure” when he signed a confidentiality agreement in 2018.

“Although many of these materials were likely protected trade secrets, privileged communications or attorney work product protected information, Lamb has admitted that he disclosed them to the media, general public and commercial enemies of Liberty without privilege or prior permission as contractually required,” the memorandum reads.

“Perhaps most shockingly, Lamb has demonstrated no regard for the attorney-client privilege, freely discussing privileged advice regarding litigation strategy and other matters on national media.”

Liberty filed a counterclaim to Lamb’s lawsuit, denying certain statements made in his filing last month. Liberty contends that Lamb was fired "for insubordination, expense mismanagement, and overall poor performance."

In a statement emailed to CP, the university said that while it “made every possible effort to avoid taking this action,” it believes that “Lamb simply continues to make egregious, false claims and to violate the law.

“We simply had to act to protect the institution’s mission. We will let the lawsuit speak for itself. It speaks clearly and factually. We have absolutely no doubt that in court our claims will be irrefutable,” Liberty maintained

Lamb directed CP to a statement he posted to Twitter on Monday in which he explained that he tried to change Liberty from within regarding alleged abuses. He claimed that Liberty is “lying about the reason for my termination.”

“Because Liberty University has neither the law nor the facts on its side, its strategy is to pound on the one who sought to reform from within — the whistleblower,” tweeted Lamb.

“As I allege in my lawsuit, I spoke about abuses at Liberty during my entire duration of employment. I spoke out loudly, often, and with little regard for hanging to my job, because I spoke as one who will give an account to God.”

In his statement, Lamb said that he gave over 20 hours of testimony when the Baker Tilly firm interviewed him during an independent investigation in 2021.

“Before my first minute of testimony, I was given a 2-page letter of ‘whistleblower protection,’ signed by interim president Jerry Prevo, instructing me to speak honestly, forthrightly, thoroughly, and without any regard to the reputation of the school, its leadership, or its board. “And Prevo promised that there would be no retaliation for my honest testimony,” he wrote.

“I indicted the former president, the Board of Trustees for negligence and Jerry Prevo as the chairman of the trustees during the entire presidency of Jerry Falwell Jr. Baker Tilly presented their report to Jerry Prevo and the Board of Trustees on September 29. Seven days later, Jerry Prevo fired me.”

Lamb further added that he has “enough documentary evidence” to prove his claims in court and would be happy to give testimony under penalty of perjury to federal agencies or U.S. Congress.

Lamb added that while Liberty “can hire every lawyer and PR firm in the land to attempt to silence me,” this “will not stop the truth from breaking out of Liberty’s conspiracy of silence.”

“God help me if I do anything else but speak up for the true heroes of this story — those who were silenced previously but now are shouting from the rooftops,” he concluded.

Last month, ProPublica published an investigative piece titled, “‘The Liberty Way’: How Liberty University Discourages and Dismisses Students’ Reports of Sexual Assaults.”

ProPublica interviewed former Liberty students who detailed experiences in which the university allegedly mishandled sexual assault allegations and claimed the school even threatened accusers.

The article mentioned how Lamb was allegedly fired for expressing concerns over how the university was handling the allegations of sexual misconduct.

“Concerns about sexual assault would go up the chain and then die,” Lamb told ProPublica, adding that he believed Liberty engaged in a “conspiracy of silence” regarding allegations.

In July, 12 unnamed women filed a class-action suit against Liberty, claiming the school violated Title IX federal discrimination law by failing to process allegations properly.

“Liberty University has intentionally created a campus environment where sexual assaults and rapes are foreseeably more likely to occur than they would in the absence of Liberty’s policies,” stated the lawsuit.

The suit claimed “The Liberty Way,” the school’s honor code, was used to silence accusers by not clarifying if a woman who reports being sexually assaulted will be punished for violating the code if she admits to breaking other aspects of the code, such as the ban on drinking, when reporting an alleged assault.

Liberty President Jerry Prevo issued a statement declaring that “The Liberty Way should never be misused to cover up wrongdoing.”

“It is also the case that as a Christian university we will remain unwavering in our commitment to cultivating a culture in our Liberty community that honors God’s Word and embraces God’s principles for life,” stated Prevo.

“While ‘The Liberty Way’ must never be used to discourage victims from reporting wrongdoing, we also believe that we do not have to choose between embracing our code of conduct as a Christian university and in complying with our legal Title IX obligations.”

At least 10 missing in Turkey building collapse

Issued on: 09/11/2021 - 

There were conflicting reports about how many people were trapped under the debris Handout IHH humanitarian aid group/AFP

Istanbul (AFP) – A two-storey building packed with shoppers and diners collapsed in eastern Turkey on Tuesday, burying at least 10 people under heavy debris.

The incident occurred on a busy street in the eastern plains city of Malatya during evening rush hour, as residents packed shops on their way home from work.

Witnesses and media reports said the building crumbled during planned repairs that resulted in damage to one of the supporting columns.

"I heard a crack first and then the building collapsed. A cloud of dust emerged. It was like judgement day," witness Turhan Cobanoglu told HaberTurk television.

Turkey's AFAD emergencies service said 13 people had been rushed to hospital as rescuers searched for signs of life under piles of debris spilling across one of Malatya's main thoroughfares.

Officials issued contradictory reports about how many people were believed to be inside the various restaurants and shops when the building crumbled at 4:50 pm.

Local mayor Osman Guder told HaberTurk television that between 20 and 25 were believed to still be trapped inside.

Malatya's main opposition CHP party chairman Enver Kiraz put the number trapped at up to 30.

"On the first floor, there was a chicken restaurant, a dried nuts seller and bakery. And on the second floor there was a coffee house," Kiraz told AFP by telephone.

"It is a very busy street. As far as I know, some of the people were injured while passing by the building."

But HaberTurk later reported that only 10 people remained unaccounted for.

Media reports said two of those rescued had suffered serious injuries.

Television images showed rescuers using construction diggers to remove large blocks of debris and trying to listen for signs of any survivors as the evening set in.

Turkey has been rocked by a series of disasters -- including a wave of wildfires and two flash floods -- that claimed some 100 lives this year.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan came under fierce political pressure when it emerged in August that Turkey no longer had functioning fire fighting planes.

The deadly flash floods wiped out houses in mountain valleys and sparked questions over why officials were approving construction licences for regions prone to violent weather events.

Erdogan's communications director Fahrettin Altun said the state and regional authorities had fully mobilised in the search and rescue mission.

"Our prayers and hearts are with our Malatya brothers and sisters," Altun tweeted.

© 2021 AFP

WTF

WATCH: Starbucks CEO begs workers not to unionize by comparing the company to Holocaust prisoners

Sarah K. Burris
November 09, 2021


Starbucks employees are inches from forming a union to advocate for safer working conditions, better wages and benefits. The movement might be leading CEO Howard Schultz to desperation.

In a video address, Schultz compared Starbucks to Holocaust prisoners in his effort to stop the unionization. He described the experiences of prisoners in rail cars headed to their torture and death in Nazi concentration camps, Vice News reported.

Schultz explained that in those rail cars only a few were given blankets and had to share them with others. He told the workers that the Starbucks workers should share the company's blanket instead of demanding their own individual benefits. One of the many problems with Schultz's argument is that the workers are still the Holocaust prisoners in that analogy.

"Not everyone but most people shared their blanket with five other people," Schultz, who noted that he is Jewish before sharing the story, said. "So much of that story is threaded into what we've tried to do at Starbucks is share our blanket."

Howard Schultz's net worth is $5 billion.

A spokesperson wouldn't comment on the story, but noted he's talked about it before in a March 2016 speech to shareholders about "the American dream" Vice reported.

See the video below:


Howard Schultz compares workers to prisoners of Nazis

www.youtube.com