Hot milk and grooming for camels at Saudi luxury 'hotel'



Hot milk and grooming for camels at Saudi luxury 'hotel'A Saudi man tends to a camel at the "hotel" during the King Abdulazziz Festival at Rumah east of Riyadh (AFP/Fayez Nureldine)

Haitham El-Tabei
Tue, January 11, 2022, 9:05 AM·3 min read

With heated stalls and hot milk, life couldn't get more glamorous for Saudi Arabia's most beautiful camels when they stay at a luxury compound near Riyadh.

For 400 riyals (just over $100) a night, the camels are trimmed, scrubbed and pampered before taking part in beauty contests, where millions of dollars are at stake.

The camels, many of which are rented, are checked closely for Botox and other illegal enhancements which could see them thrown out for cheating.

And it's all done in a Covid-safe environment to prevent any disruptive outbreaks.

The Tatman, described as the first hotel for camels, is an open-air desert compound near the annual King Abdelaziz Festival, which has prizes totalling $66.6 million.

It's a logical step for the lucrative industry in the well-heeled Gulf, where camels are prized as a symbol of traditional life.

The animals are judged on attributes including their lips, necks, humps and colouring, and wins are highly prestigious for their owners.

Omair al-Qahtani, who is Saudi, checked 80 camels into the Tatman for 16 days, saying it would cost him $160,000-213,000.

The facility is "very comfortable, as the camels remain under their care and undergo regular medical examinations", the 51-year-old businessman told AFP.

It has 120 enclosures, including singles and doubles, each equipped with plastic containers for water and fodder. Check-out is 12:30 pm.

During their stay, 50 workers look after the animals and are kept under strict sanitary conditions to minimise the risk of Covid cases.

- 'Obsession with camels' -

In years past, Qahtani and his assistants would set up tents near the festival, tending to and feeding the camels themselves.

Many of the four-legged guests are competitors in Mazayen al-Ibl contest, the world's biggest camel beauty pageant and a highlight of the King Abdelaziz Festival.

Mohamed al-Harbi, media chief of the camel club that organises the competition, said the group dreamed up the hotel "to protect and preserve camels and also to reduce the burden on the owner".

He said the hotel was popular, bringing in revenues of more than $1.6 million.

Money is no object for some attending the festival, which features well-appointed buildings and tents in the middle of the desert, and booths for luxury car-makers Rolls-Royce and BMW.

Saudi enthusiasts can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on camels entered into the contests, where unscrupulous competitors sometimes seek an illegal advantage.

Forty-three dromedaries were drummed out of the festival when camel checkers spotted infringements such as Botox, silicone and fillers injected into lips, humps and tails.

But Harbi said the hotel provides a "check" so that people "can find any tampering early", reassuring them their rented beasts won't be sent packing.

Qahtani said this is a big advantage, as doctored camels can attract fines of up to $26,000.

The competitions "reinforce the obsession with camels in Saudi Arabia", Harbi said.

ht/sy/th/dv

MERS ORIGINATED IN SAUDI ARABIA IN  CAMELS AND WAS PASSED ON TO HUMANS

Molière: 400 years as master of the French stage


AFP
11 January 2022

A bust shows the famous French playwright, Molière. Today would 

have been his 400th birthday. (Photo by BERTRAND GUAY / AFP)

Tuesday marks the 400th birthday Molière - a playwright who many consider as the French Shakespeare. Here's everything you need to know about the man who remains central to French culture today.

Today would have been the 400th birthday of one of the most celebrated French writers of all time.

When the French refer to their native tongue, it is the “language of Molière” – the name of a playwright who remains as central to their culture as Shakespeare in the English-speaking world.

Here’s what you need to know on the life and legacy of France’s most illustrious writer.

A little-known star

Molière, real name Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, left zero trace of his personal life: no journal, correspondence or even notes on his work. The only of his four children to survive to adulthood, lost his manuscripts.

We don’t know the source of his stage-name — which refers to a quarry — nor his date of birth (we have only a baptism certificate, dated January 15, 1622, that was discovered two centuries later in 1820).

As eldest son, he stood to inherit a comfortable living from his father as chief upholsterer and valet to the king, but gave it up to be an actor.

It caused his father much strife: he was forced to buy his son out of prison after his first company, The Illustrious Theatre, fell into debt.

Molière fled Paris at 23, spending the next 13 years with a travelling troupe.

Success on the road won him a return to Paris and a successful audience for the young king, Louis XIV, that earned him a powerful patron even though he faced constant battles with censors.

Despite the myth, he did not quite die on stage, but shortly after a performance — as the hypochondriac character Argan no less — at home on the Rue de Richelieu on February 17, 1673.

World’s oldest theatre company

La Comedie-Francaise was created by King Louis XIV in 1680, seven years after Molière’s death, as a merger between his troupe and another.

The longest-running theatre company in the world, it is known as “La Maison de Molière” and has performed his work every single year since its formation.

Based since 1799 on the Rue de Richelieu, close to the Louvre, it now employs 400 people, including 60 actors, and has a costume department comprising 50,000 items.

Memorable characters

Molière created characters who often take their foibles to extremes, but allow us to laugh at our universal human failings in the process.

Perhaps best-known is Tartuffe, from the play of the same name — a fraud who disguises himself as a priest to convince a naive, wealthy aristocrat into handing him his fortune and daughter’s hand in marriage, even as he chases after his wife.

The play is seen as practically inventing the “comedy of manners” that satirises the moral hypocrisies of high society.

Though Moliere is not thought to have been particularly anti-religious himself, “Tartuffe” scandalised the Catholic Church and became a key text in the anti-clerical movement of the following centuries.

Among other key characters is the money-obsessed Harpagnon, from “The Miser”, who exhorts his servants “not to rub the furniture too hard for fear of wearing it out”.

The hypochondriac Argan from “The Imaginary Invalid” is another eternal character that Moliere used to satirise quacks in the medical profession who exploited people’s fear of death.

Does the land of Shakespeare care for 400-year-old Moliere?

AFP-January 11, 2022 

An anthology of French playwright Moliere’s plays in English and French dating from 1732. (AFP pic)

PARIS: American actor Denis O’Hare could sense the ghost of Moliere smiling as he rode his co-star Olivia Williams like a horse on stage at London’s National Theatre.

Usually a rather cerebral place, the National’s audience was in stitches as O’Hare’s character Tartuffe, from the classic 17th-century French play, tried to disguise his adulterous antics as a bit of horseplay.

“The comedy translates across the centuries if you know what you’re doing,” O’Hare told AFP.

“Some of the funny was based on language, and some of it on sheer idiocy… But there are also great moments of pathos and human emotion that make it all the richer.”

That hit production of “Tartuffe” in 2019 was a reminder that Moliere, France’s most celebrated playwright who turns 400 this week, can resonate in the land of Shakespeare.

It was not always the case.

“It used to be a box office manager’s nightmare to have a Moliere production. You often had more people on stage than in the theatre,” said Noel Peacock of the University of Glasgow, an expert on Moliere translations.

In the 1980s, one “Sunday Times” critic even feared that Moliere was an obstacle to a united Europe: “How can you trade freely with a nation whose best comedy does not travel?”

But since those times, there has been a “complete turnaround”, said Peacock.

There have been dozens of British productions in recent years, with three major versions of “Tartuffe” in London alone between 2016 and 2019.

He is attracting celebrities: Keira Knightly played in “The Misanthrope” in 2009 and David Tennant, of “Doctor Who” fame, in “Don Juan” in 2017.

Highly adaptable

Peacock credits fresh translations that worried less about linguistic accuracy than capturing Moliere’s spirit with helping to bring out the universal truths in his work.

“Tartuffe is a rogue, a rascal, a hustler,” O’Hare agrees. “But he’s also a truth-teller in the great tradition of the French clown. He upends society’s norms and conventions.”

That has made him highly adaptable to modern scenarios. The Royal Shakespeare Company recently relocated “Tartuffe” to a British-Pakistani family in Birmingham, where the commentary on religious hypocrisy found fresh relevance.

Denis O’Hare played a memorable Tartuffe in a version that shifted the action to Brexit-era London. (AFP pic)

But it’s not just the English-speaking world that has embraced Moliere, whose real name was Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, of late: translations have proved popular in Germany, Russia, Japan and beyond.

A recent French book about Moliere in the Arabic world found he had been performed in the region since at least 1847 and had become the “godfather of theatre” in many countries.

“Moliere’s plays have been extremely important internationally. He even provided the foundation for some national theatres who adapted his plays to their local languages and cultures,” said Agathe Sanjuan, conservator of the Comedie-Francaise in Paris, the longest-running theatre company in the world that has performed Moliere’s work every year since its formation in 1680.

It was always a tougher sell in England, of course, where he had to compete with the Bard, though adaptations of Moliere were appearing there as early as the 1660s, according to Peacock.

However, he found more success in Scotland, Peacock added, which had a “Shakespeare-sized hole to fill” and where Moliere’s “biggest advantage was that he wasn’t English”.

U.S. Mint begins shipping quarters featuring Maya Angelou
By Megan Hadley



The Mint announced last year that several notable women would be featured in the quarter program, including Angelou, Chinese American film star Anna May Wong and former astronaut Sally Ride. Image courtesy U.S. Mint


Jan. 11 (UPI) -- The U.S. Mint says it has begun shipping a new quarter that features poet Maya Angelou, which is the first U.S. coin ever to honor a Black woman.

Angelou's quarter is part of the America Women Quarters Program, which will feature a number of historical figures.

The Mint says that coins featuring other prominent American women will also begin shipping later this year and continue through 2025.

"Each 2022 quarter is designed to reflect the breadth and depth of accomplishments being celebrated throughout this historic coin program. Maya Angelou, featured on the reverse of this first coin in the series, used words to inspire and uplift," Mint Deputy Director Ventris Gibson said in a statement Monday.

Angelou, who died in 2014 at the age of 86, was an author and social activist. Her autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, was nominated for the National Book Award.

In her lifetime, Angelou received more than 20 honorary degrees from institutions such as Boston College and Tufts University, and was granted the first lifetime Reynolds Professorship of American Studies at Wake Forest University in 1982.

The Mint announced last year that it would include several notable figures in the quarter program, including Chinese American film star Anna May Wong, former astronaut Sally Ride and Wilma Mankiller, the first woman to be elected principal chief of the Cherokee Nation.

The program was established by the Circulating Collectible Coin Redesign Act of 2020, and requires that five prominent American women be recognized on quarters between 2022 and 2025.

Read More

On This Day: Poet Maya Angelou dies at 86

Late Maya Angelou's Forever stamp features quote she didn't write

At stamp dedication, Oprah honors Maya Angelou's legacy

 

https://www.usmint.gov/news/press-releases/united-states-mint-begins-shipping-first-american-women-quarters-program-coins

Polish court dismisses charges against writer who called President Duda a 'moron'
By UPI Staff


Polish President Andrzej Duda speaks during a press conference. Charges against a writer who called Duda 'a moron' were dropped on Monday. File Photo by Andrzej Lange/EPA


Jan. 11 (UPI) -- A Polish Charges dismissed charges against a well-known writer who called Poland's President Andrzej Duda a moron on social media.

Writer Jakub Zulczyk faced up to three years of prison for insulting Duda in a social media post, but a regional court in Warsaw dropped the charges on Monday and decided to discontinue the case.

Judges cited free speech rights and said a conviction could lead to preventing people from criticizing authority in the future.

Judge Tomasz Julian Grochowicz said public figures like the president were at a larger risk of public criticism and that Zulczyk didn't commit any crimes.

Zulczyk's comment was a response to Duda's reaction to U.S. President Joe Biden's electoral victory.

Duda tweeted that he would await the nomination by the Electoral College. People criticized the tweet, saying that Duda suggested the victory wasn't definitive.

In a Facebook post, Zulczyk said Biden clearly won the election and that Duda was "a moron."

Zulczyk said he was probably the first writer in the country to be tried for writing something insulting.

Poland had broad insult laws including offending religious views or the country's flag, but those in violation of those laws are usually handed fines or community service punishments.

Gallup poll: Americans reading fewer books than in previous years
By Rich Klein

A new Gallup survey finds many Americans read fewer books last year -- in any format, whether print, electronic or audio. File Photo courtesy of Amazon

Jan. 10 (UPI) -- Americans read an average of 12.6 books during the past year, according to a new Gallup poll released Monday.

That represents the lowest number of books read compared to any previous survey dating back to 1990, Gallup said. In three polls conducted between 2002 and 2016, Gallup surveys showed that Americans read an average of 15.2 books per year.

"It is unclear from these data if the declines in book readership are occurring because of a lack of interest in books, a lack of time to read books, or perhaps COVID-19-related disruptions in lifestyle activities or access to books," the pollster said. "It is also uncertain at this point whether the declines in book reading mark a temporary change or a more permanent one."

The results are based on a Dec. 1-16 poll of a random sample of 811 adults living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. The participants were asked how many books they "read -- either all or part of the way through" in the past year -- including electronic books and audiobooks.

The decline in book reading is mostly a function of how many books readers are consuming, rather than fewer Americans reading at all, Gallup said in a news release issued with the poll.

The 17% who said they did not read any books in the past year is in line with the 16% to 18% measured in 2002 to 2016 surveys, Gallup said.

Gallup reported that 27% of respondents said they read more than 10 books, down 8 percentage points since 2016 and lower than every prior measure by at least 4 points.

College graduates, women and older Americans also are reading a bit less.

For example, those 55 and older went from a previous average of reading 16.7 books to 12. There has been little change in the average number read by those younger than 55.

The survey's margin of error is plus or minus 4 percentage points.

A poll from the Pew Research Center last week found that more people are reading electronic books, about 30%. That survey found Americans reach an average of 14 books last year in any format, the same as its findings in 2011.

Donald Trump Has Normalized Fascism

By giving a growing fascist social and political movement in the United States a classically authoritarian leader, Trump shaped and exacerbated it, and his time in politics has normalized it.

Jason Stanley GUARDIAN

by DonkeyHotey, licensed under CC BY 2.0

LONG READ

"Let us be reminded that before there is a final solution, there must be a first solution, a second one, even a third. The move toward a final solution is not a jump. It takes one step, then another, then another.”

So began Toni Morrison’s 1995 address to Howard University, entitled Racism and Fascism, which delineated 10 step-by-step procedures to carry a society from first to last.

Morrison’s interest was not in fascist demagogues or fascist regimes. It was rather in “forces interested in fascist solutions to national problems”. The procedures she described were methods to normalize such solutions, to “construct an internal enemy”, isolate, demonize and criminalize it and sympathizers to its ideology and their allies, and, using the media, provide the illusion of power and influence to one’s supporters.

Morrison saw, in the history of US racism, fascist practices – ones that could enable a fascist social and political movement in the United States.

Writing in the era of the “super-predator” myth (a Newsweek headline the next year read, “Superpredators: Should we cage the new breed of vicious kids?”), Morrison unflinchingly read fascism into the practices of US racism. Twenty-five years later, those “forces interested in fascist solutions to national problems” are closer than ever to winning a multi-decade national fight.

The contemporary American fascist movement is led by oligarchical interests for whom the public good is an impediment, such as those in the hydrocarbon business, as well as a social, political, and religious movement with roots in the Confederacy. As in all fascist movements, these forces have found a popular leader unconstrained by the rules of democracy, this time in the figure of Donald Trump.

My father, raised in Berlin under the Nazis, saw in European fascism a course that any country could take. He knew that US democracy was not exceptional in its capacity to resist the forces that shattered his family and devastated his youth. My mother, a court stenographer in US criminal courts for 44 years, saw in the anti-Black racism of the American legal system parallels to the vicious antisemitism she experienced in her youth in Poland, attitudes which enabled eastern European complicity with fascism. And my grandmother, Ilse Stanley, wrote a memoir, published in 1957, of her experiences in 1930s Berlin, later appearing on the US television show This is Your Life to discuss it. It is a memoir of the normalization years of German fascism, well before world war and genocide. In it, she recounts experiences with Nazi officers who assured her that in nazism’s vilification of Jews, they certainly did not mean her.

Philosophers have always been at the forefront in the analysis of fascist ideology and movements. In keeping with a tradition that includes the philosophers Hannah Arendt and Theodor Adorno, I have been writing for a decade on the way politicians and movement leaders employ propaganda, centrally including fascist propaganda, to win elections and gain power.

Often, those who employ fascist tactics do so cynically – they do not really believe the enemies they target are so malign, or so powerful, as their rhetoric suggests. Nevertheless, there comes a tipping point, where rhetoric becomes policy. Donald Trump and the party that is now in thrall to him have long been exploiting fascist propaganda. They are now inscribing it into fascist policy.

Fascist propaganda takes place in the US in already fertile ground – decades of racial strife has led to the United States having by far the highest incarceration rate in the world. A police militarized to address the wounds of racial inequities by violence, and a recent history of unsuccessful imperial wars have made us susceptible to a narrative of national humiliation by enemies both internal and external. As WEB Du Bois showed in his 1935 masterwork Black Reconstruction, there is a long history of business elites backing racism and fascism out of self-interest, to divide the working class and thereby destroy the labor movement.

The novel development is that a ruthless would-be autocrat has marshalled these fascist forces and shaped them into a cult, with him as its leader. We are now well into the repercussions of this latter process – where fascist lies, for example, the “big lie” that the 2020 election was stolen, have begun to restructure institutions, notably electoral infrastructure and law. As this process unfolds, slowly and deliberately, the media’s normalization of these processes evokes Morrison’s tenth and final step: “Maintain, at all costs, silence.”
Constructing an enemy

To understand contemporary US fascism, it is useful to consider parallels to 20th century history, both where they succeed and where they fail.

Hitler was a genocidal antisemite. Though fascism involves disregard for human life, not all fascists are genocidal. Even Nazi Germany turned to genocide only relatively late in the regime’s rule. And not all fascists are antisemitic. There were Italian Jewish fascists. Referring to the successful assimilation of Jews into all phases of Weimar era German life, my father warned me, “if they had chosen someone else, some of us would have been among the very best Nazis.” We American Jews feel firmly at home. Now, where the fascist movement’s internal enemies are leftists and movements for Black racial equality, there certainly could be fascist American Jews.

Germany’s National Socialist party did not take over a mainstream party. It started as a small, radical, far-right anti-democratic party, which faced different pressures as it strove to achieve greater electoral success.

Despite its radical start, the Nazi party dramatically increased its popularity over many years in part by strategically masking its explicit antisemitic agenda to attract moderate voters, who could convince themselves that the racism at the core of Nazi ideology was something the party had outgrown. It represented itself as the antidote to communism, using a history of political violence in the Weimar Republic, including street clashes between communists and the far right, to warn of a threat of violent communist revolution. It attracted support from business elites by promising to smash labor unions. The Nazis portrayed socialists, Marxists, liberals, labor unions, the cultural world and the media as representatives of, or sympathizers with, this revolution. Once in power, they bore down on this message.

In his 1935 speech, Communism with its Mask Off, Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels described Bolshevism carrying “on a campaign, directed by the Jews, with the international underworld, against culture as such”. By contrast, “National Socialism sees in all these things – in [private] property, in personal values and in nation and race and the principles of idealism – these forces which carry on every human civilization and fundamentally determine its worth.”

The Nazis recognized that the language of family, faith, morality and homeland could be used to justify especially brutal violence against an enemy represented as being opposed to all these things. The central message of Nazi politics was to demonize a set of constructed enemies, an unholy alliance of communists and Jews, and ultimately to justify their criminalization.

Contrary to popular belief, the Nazi government of the 1930s was not genocidal, nor were its notorious concentration camps packed with Jewish prisoners, at least until the November pogrom of 1938. The main targets of the regime’s concentration camps were, initially, communists and socialists. The Nazi regime urged vigilante violence against its other targets, such as Jews, separating themselves from this violence by obscuring the role of agents of the state. During this time, it was possible for many non-Jewish Germans to deceive themselves about the brutal nature of the regime, to tell themselves that its harsh means were necessary to protect the German nation from the insidious threat of communism.

Violent militias occupied an ambiguous role between state and non-state actors. The SS began as violent Nazi supporters, before becoming an independent arm of the government. The message of violent law and order created a culture that influenced all the Nazi state’s institutions. As Yale historian Timothy Snyder writes in On Tyranny, “for violence to transform not just the atmosphere but also the system, the emotions of rallies and the ideology of exclusion have to be incorporated into the training of armed guards.”

In the US, the training of police as “warriors”, together with the unofficial replacement of the American flag by the thin blue line flag, augur poorly about the democratic commitments of this institution.

For a far-right party to become viable in a democracy, it must present a face it can defend as moderate, and cultivate an ambiguous relationship to the extreme views and statements of its most explicit members. It must maintain a pretense of the rule of law, characteristically by projecting its own violations of it on to its opponents.

In the case of the takeover of the mainstream rightwing party by a far-right anti-democratic movement, the pretense must be stronger. The movement must contend with members of that party who are faithful to procedural elements of democracy, such as the principle of one voter one vote, or that the loser of a fair election give up power – in the United States today, figures such as Adam Kinzinger and Elizabeth Cheney. A fascist social and political party faces pressure both to mask its connection to and to cultivate violent racist supporters, as well as its inherently anti-democratic agenda.

In the face of the attack on the US capital on 6 January, even the most resolute skeptic must admit that Republican politicians have been at least attempting to cultivate a mass of violent vigilantes to support their causes. Kyle Rittenhouse is becoming a hero to Republicans after showing up in Kenosha, WI as an armed vigilante citizen, and killing two men. Perhaps there are not enough potential Kyle Rittenhouses in the US to justify fear of massive armed vigilante militias enforcing a 2024 election result demanded by Donald Trump. But denying that Trump’s party is trying to create such a movement is, at this point, deliberate deception.
Black rebellion, white backlash

Street violence proved invaluable to the National Socialists in their path to power. The Nazis instigated and exacerbated violence in the streets, then demonized their opponents as enemies of the German people who must be dealt with harshly. Trump’s rise followed Black protest, at times violent, of police brutality in Ferguson and Baltimore. More recently, the murder of George Floyd and a historic protest movement in the US in the late spring has given fuel to fascist misrepresentation.

All of these recent developments take place as only the latest in a long US history of Black rebellion against white supremacist ideology and structures, and a parallel history of white backlash.

White vigilante groups regularly formed in reaction to Black rebellions, to “defend their families and property against Black rebellion”, the historian Elizabeth Hinton writes in her recent history of these rebellions. Hinton shows that police often acted in concert with these groups. For decades, the instigator of these rebellions has typically been an incident or incidents of police violence against members of the community, following a long period of often violent over-policing that exacerbated these communities’ grievances.

Street movements in the US have often been accompanied by vigorous campus protests, from the protests against the Vietnam war of the 1960s, to recent campus protests for racial justice that attracted media rebuke (paradoxically, for “chilling free speech”). Politicians in both parties have feasted on these moments, using them to troll for votes. During these episodes of protest and rebellion, US politicians from Barry Goldwater onwards, placing campus protests together with Black rebellion against over-policing, have encouraged harsh law and order policing and crackdowns on leftists. John Ehrlichman, one of Nixon’s top advisers, said that Nixon’s campaign and administration “had two enemies: the anti-war left and Black people”, and invented the drug war to target both:


You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.

Politicians have shown less interest in addressing the underlying conditions that lead to violence in poor Black urban communities – the widespread availability of guns, the massive and persistent racial wealth gap and the effects of violent policing and mass incarceration. And why should they? As long as these underlying conditions persist, politicians of either party can run for office by milking fear and promising a harsh law and order response. Morrison’s 1995 address is a warning that these conditions are ripe for harnessing by a fascist movement, one targeting democracy itself.

In its most recent iteration, in the form of the reaction against Black Lives Matter protesters and the demonization of antifa and student activists, a fascist social and political movement has been avidly stoking the flames for mass rightwing political violence, by justifying it against these supposed internal enemies.

Rachel Kleinfield, in an October 2021 article, documents the rise of the legitimation of political violence in the US. According to the article, the “bedrock idea uniting right-wing communities who condone violence is that white Christian men in the United States are under cultural and demographic threat and require defending – and that it is the Republican Party and Donald Trump, in particular, who will safeguard their way of life.”

This kind of justification of political violence is classically fascist – a dominant group threatened by the prospect of gender, racial and religious equality turning to a leader who promises a violent response.
How to topple a democracy

We are now in fascism’s legal phase. According to the International Center for Not for Profit Law, 45 states have considered 230 bills criminalizing protest, with the threat of violent leftist and Black rebellion being used to justify them. That this is happening at the same time that multiple electoral bills enabling a Republican state legislature majority to overturn their state’s election have been enacted suggests that the true aim of bills criminalizing protest is to have a response in place to expected protests against the stealing of a future election (as a reminder of fascism’s historical connection to big business, some of these laws criminalize protest near gas and oil lines).

The Nazis used Judeo-Bolshevism as their constructed enemy. The fascist movement in the Republican party has turned to critical race theory instead. Fascism feeds off a narrative of supposed national humiliation by internal enemies. Defending a fictional glorious and virtuous national past, and presenting its enemies as deviously maligning the nation to its children, is a classic fascist strategy to stoke fury and resentment. Using the bogeyman of critical race theory, 29 states have introduced bills to restrict teaching about racism and sexism in schools, and 13 states have enacted such bans.

The key to democracy is an informed electorate. An electorate that knows about persisting racial injustice in the United States along all its dimensions, from the racial wealth gap to the effects of over-policing and over-incarceration, will be unsurprised by mass political rebellion in the face of persistent refusal to face up to these problems. An electorate ignorant of these facts will react not with understanding, but with uncomprehending fear and horror at Black political unrest.

Sometimes, you trace a fascist movement to its genesis in Nazi influence on its leaders, as with India’s RSS. In the United States, the causal relations run the other way around. As James Whitman shows in his 2017 book, Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law, the Jim Crow era in the United States influenced Nazi law. In 2021, legislators in 19 states passed laws making access to the ballot more difficult, some with specific (and clearly intentional) disparate impact on minority communities (as in Texas). By obscuring in our education system facts about this era, one can mask the reemergence of legislation that borrows from its strategies.

Indeed, the very tactic of restricting politically vital information to schoolchildren is itself borrowed from the Jim Crow era. Chapter 9 of Carter G Woodson’s 1933 book, The Mis-Education of the Negro, is called Political Education Neglected. In it, Woodson describes how history was taught “to enslave the Negroes’ mind”, by whitewashing the brutality of slavery and the actual roots and causes of racial disparities. In Fugitive Pedagogy: Carter G Woodson and the Art of Black Teaching, Jarvis Givens documents the strategies Black educators used to convey real history in the constricted environments of Jim Crow schools, strategies that, tragically, will again become necessary for educators to take up again today.

Fascist ideology strictly enforces gender roles and restricts the freedom of women. For fascists, it is part of their commitment to a supposed “natural order” where men are on top. It is also integral to the broader fascist strategy of winning over social conservatives who might otherwise be unhappy with the endemic corruption of fascist rule. Far-right authoritarian leaders across the world, such as Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, and Russia’s Vladimir Putin, have targeted “gender ideology”, as nazism targeted feminism. Freedom to choose one’s role in society, when it goes against a supposed “natural order”, is a kind of freedom fascism has always opposed.

According to National Socialist ideology, abortion, at any point in pregnancy, was considered to be murder. Just as it was acceptable to murder disabled people and other groups whose identities were considered dangerous to the health of the “Aryan race”, it was acceptable to perform abortions on members of these groups. In the first six years of Nazi rule, from 1933 to 1939, there was a harsh crackdown on the birth control movement. Led by the Gestapo, there was a punitive campaign against doctors who performed abortions on Aryan women. The recent attack on abortion rights, and the coming attack on birth control, led by a hard-right supreme court, is consistent with the hypothesis that we are, in the United States, facing a real possibility of a fascist future.

If you want to topple a democracy, you take over the courts. Donald Trump lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton in 2016 by almost 3m votes, and yet has appointed one-third of supreme court, three youthful far-right judges who will be spending decades there. The Roberts court has for more than a decade consistently enabled an attack on democracy, by hollowing out the Voting Rights Act over time, unleashing unlimited corporate money into elections, and allowing clearly partisan gerrymanders of elections. There is every reason to believe that the court will allow even the semblance of democracy to crumble, as long as laws are passed by gerrymandered Republican statehouses that make anti-democratic practices, including stealing elections, legal.

There has been a growing fascist social and political movement in the United States for decades. Like other fascist movements, it is riddled with internal contradictions, but no less of a threat to democracy. Donald Trump is an aspiring autocrat out solely for his own power and material gain. By giving this movement a classically authoritarian leader, Trump shaped and exacerbated it, and his time in politics has normalized it.

Donald Trump has shown others what is possible. But the fascist movement he now leads preceded him, and will outlive him. As Toni Morrison warned, it feeds off ideologies with deep roots in American history. It would be a grave error to think it cannot ultimately win.

Jason Stanley is Jacob Urowsky professor of philosophy at Yale University. He is the author of How Fascism Works

Rome church condemns swastika-draped casket at funeral

A picture made available by the Italian online news portal Open, showing people gathered around a swastika-covered casket outside the St. Lucia church, in Rome, Monday, Jan. 10, 2022. The Catholic Church in Rome on Tuesday, Jan. 11, 2022, strongly condemned as "offensive and unacceptable" a funeral procession outside a church in which the casket was draped in a Nazi flag and mourners gave the fascist salute. (Open Via AP)

ROME (AP) — The Catholic Church in Rome on Tuesday strongly condemned as “offensive and unacceptable” a funeral procession outside a local church in which the casket was draped in a Nazi flag and mourners gave the fascist salute.

Photos and video of the scene outside St. Lucia church following the Monday funeral service were published by the Italian online news portal Open. They showed around two dozen people gathered outside the church as the swastika-draped casket emerged, shouting “Presente!” with their right arm extended in the fascist salute.

In a statement Tuesday, the Vicariate of Rome strongly condemned the scene and stressed that neither the parish priest, nor the priest who celebrated the funeral, knew what was going to transpire outside after the funeral Mass ended.

It called the swastika-emblazoned Nazi flag “a horrendous symbol irreconcilable with Christianity.”

“This ideological and violent exploitation, especially following an act of worship near a sacred place, remains serious, offensive and unacceptable for the church community of Rome and for all people of good will in our city,” it said.

The statement quoted the parish priest, the Rev. Alessandro Zenobbi, as distancing himself and the church from “every word, gesture and symbol used outside the church, which are attributed to extremist ideologies far from the message of the Gospel of Christ.”

Italian news reports identified the deceased as a 44-year-old former militant of the extreme right-wing group Forza Nuova, who died over the weekend of a blood clot.

Pope Francis is technically the bishop of Rome, but he delegates the day-to-day management of the diocese to his vicar, Cardinal Angelo De Donatis.

USA

Kroger workers survey reveals economic hardship, food insecurity

By Rich Klein

Negotiations over wages between Kroger/King's Snoopers and a union representing the company's workers in Colorado have stalled and could lead to a strike beginning Wednesday. 

File Photo by Bob Strong/UPI | License Photo


Jan. 11 (UPI) -- Nearly two-thirds of Kroger workers do not make enough money to pay for basic expenses every month, and some experience food insecurity, according to a survey of the company's retail workers in three states released Tuesday.

The survey conducted by the Economic Roundtable is the largest-ever independent survey of retail workers in the United States, according to the organization, a nonprofit research group. It was requested by four United Food and Commercial Workers unions.

Kroger is the largest grocery chain in the United States, including King Sooper's, Fred Meyer and QFC.

Three regions with 36,795 hourly Kroger workers were surveyed: The Puget Sound region of Washington state, the state of Colorado, and Southern California. Completed surveys were received from 10,287 workers, representing a 28% response rate.

Among the workers who reported being unable to afford necessities, 44% were unable to pay rent, and 39% said they wee unable to pay for groceries. Fourteen percent of respondents reported being homeless now or during the past year.

Kroger "falls short in using its abundant food resources to meet the essential needs of its front-line employees," the Economic Roundtable said.

Seventy-three percent of Kroger workers said they are not fairly compensated based on their experience and the work that they do.

Kroger's annual revenue rose 8% in 2021, to $132 billion, BuzzFeed news reported, with senior executives paid $5 million or more each in 2020. CEO Rodney McMullen earned $22 million.

Meanwhile, negotiations over wages between Kroger/King's Snoopers and a union representing the company's workers in Colorado have stalled and could lead to a strike beginning Wednesday.

As of Jan. 1, the minimum wage in Colorado was raised to $12.56 from $12.32.

#FIGHTFOR15

ALDOUS HUXLEY; ENDS AND MEANS/DO WHAT YOU WILL

 

https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.201445/page/n3/mode/2up

https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.78656/page/n5/mode/2up

SOMA

Psychedelic-laced beer may have helped this ancient South American empire rule

Beer laced with hallucinogenic drugs derived from plant seeds may have helped leaders of a South American culture maintain their political control for hundreds of years, according to new research.

© Lisa Milosavljevic/Royal Ontario Museum A team of researchers excavated the Quilcapampa site in Peru from 2013 to 2017 in order to better understand the Wari civilization.

By Ashley Strickland, CNN 

JAN 11,2022

The Wari, who built an empire and ruled the highlands of what is now Peru from 600 to 1,000 AD, preceded the Incas.

Archaeological excavations at the Quilcapampa site in southern Peru, which took place between 2013 and 2017, have found that the Wari used seeds from the vilca tree and combined the hallucinogenic drug with chicha, or beer made from the molle tree. This beer was then served to guests at communal feasts, reinforcing relationships while maintaining Wari political control.

The research, published Tuesday in the journal Antiquity, has shown the first evidence of vilca seeds at a Wari site.

The discovery of vilca at Quilcapampa fills a gap in the understanding of how different civilizations used substances.

"This was a turning point in the Andes in terms of politics and use of hallucinogens," said study author Matthew Biwer, a visiting assistant professor of archaeology at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania.

"We see this kind of use of hallucinogens as different use context than in prior civilizations, who seem to have closely guarded the use of hallucinogens to a select few, or the latter Inca Empire who emphasized the mass-consumption of beer but did not use psychotropic substances such as vilca at feasts."

The power of the feast

Researchers have yet to uncover the reason behind the collapse of the Wari Empire, but studying Wari sites is revealing more about its people.

​"The Wari Empire stretched from northern Peru to the far south near the Chilean border, and from the coast to the mountainous areas of the Andes," Biwer said. "It is the first example of an empire in South America, having collapsed around 400 years prior to the rise of the Inca Empire."

It has long been known that the Wari used beer and feasting as part of their political control, but the research proved their access to vilca and its use as a hallucinogen.

Additionally, the scientists discovered evidence that the Wari were brewing chicha in large quantities. Alongside the well-preserved botanical remains were ceramics from the center of the site, which indicate that this is where the feasts were held, the study authors said

.

© Lisa Milosavljevic/Royal Ontario Museum 

These molle drupes were used to make an alcoholic beverage similar to beer called chicha.

​"The Wari added the vilca to the chicha beer in order to impress guests to their feasts who could not return the experience," Biwer said. "This created an indebted relationship between Wari hosts and guests, likely from the surrounding region.

"We argue that the feasting, beer, and vilca thus served to create and cement social connections between Wari affiliated peoples and locals as the Empire expanded. It also was a way for Wari leaders to demonstrate and maintain social, economic, and political power."

The guests of these feasts would have felt compelled to acknowledge the power of their hosts or feel the need to owe them a favor in the future, he said.

© Lisa Milosavljevic/Royal Ontario Museum

 Investigating Wari sites in South America could help researchers determine why the empire ended.

"In the Andes, this is typically known to have occurred by the consumption of beer (chicha), llama meat, various plants such as corn and potatoes, and other foods and drink," Biwer said.

The use of vilca, typically inhaled like snuff or through a pipe, dates back at least 4,000 years, indicated by an ancient pipe from that time found at the Inca Cueva site in Argentina. The drug was also used by those in Tiwanaku, a neighboring site in Bolivia, during the time of Wari rule.

A ritual for empire-building

Earlier findings also showed that vilca was only provided exclusively to some, like priests, and not available to all.

The Wari, however, were likely dropping the drug in their alcohol and providing it to others, effectively enhancing the psychoactive effects of both substances. This inclusive behavior by the Wari elites not only showed off their hospitality, but offered an experience that wasn't widely available elsewhere and couldn't be easily replicated by anyone who may want to oppose Wari control.

"They may have experienced euphoric or spiritual sensations," Biwer said. "This type of food would have been a very powerful experience for guests who were led on a journey by Wari hosts."

It would have been too dry in the region surrounding Quilcapampa to grow vilca, he said.

"Wari established a system of roads, which the later Inca used, that move people and resources," Biwer said. "I would say that it would not have been accessible to everyone, as it was in the interest of Wari leaders to control the use and access to vilca, but it would not have been extremely difficult to get vilca to Quilcapampa."

© Luis Manuel González La Rosa and Justin Jennings/Royal Ontario Museum 

Fragments of face-necked jars from Quilcapampa were likely used to serve vilca-laced beer. Afterward, the jars were sometimes intentionally broken with a blow to the chest, according to the researchers.

Vilca grows in the Ayacucho region, where the capital of the Wari Empire once stood, as well as parts of the Cusco region 249 miles (400 kilometers) from Quilcapampa, he said.

Previous research has shown that the Wari were also capable of accessing other distant resources, like seashells, obsidian and Amazonian feathers.

Next, Biwer and his team are eager to search for Wari sites in a coastal valley in Peru. Discovering new sites could help researchers determine how climate change and drought could have impacted the Wari before their reign ended.

© Luis Manuel González La Rosa and Justin Jennings/Royal Ontario Museum 

This Chakipampa-style cup from the Quilcapampa site may have been used to drink beer. It was shattered during the final feast.

© Lisa Milosavljevic/Royal Ontario Museum 

Maico Aybar Villalobos holds fragments of a Robles Moqo vessel that he excavated from Quilcapampa.

there is always soma, delicious soma, half a gramme for a half-holiday, a gramme for a week-end, two grammes for a trip to the gorgeous East, three for a dark eternity on the moon...”

Soma in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932)

https://www.huxley.net › soma › somaquote