Elizabeth Warren says Elon Musk launches personal attacks on her, rather than actually discussing the tax system

insider@insider.com (Isobel Asher Hamilton) 

© Provided by Business Insider Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Patrick Semansky-Pool/Getty/Patrick Pleul/picture alliance via Getty Images

Sen. Elizabeth Warren spoke to tech journalist Kara Swisher about her spat with Elon Musk.

Musk called Warren "Senator Karen" in December after she said he pays too little tax.
Warren told Swisher: "What he's hoping for is that this is personal."

Sen. Elizabeth Warren said Tesla CEO and world's richest man Elon Musk prefers to make things "personal," rather than engage with criticisms of how much tax he pays.

Warren made the comments during an appearance on The New York Times Sway podcast. Host Kara Swisher asked her about a December Twitter exchange in which Warren said Musk should "actually pay taxes and stop freeloading off everyone else."

Musk responded: "You remind me of when I was a kid and my friend's angry mom would just randomly yell at everyone for no reason."

He added: "Please don't call the manager on me, Senator Karen."

Asked by Swisher whether she minded the insult, Warren said: "What he's hoping for is that this is personal."

"It's about trying to make it personal instead of talking about what's wrong with the tax system," she added.

Warren told Swisher that Musk paid no federal income tax in 2018.

"Every nurse who paid taxes, every firefighter who paid taxes, paid more than Elon Musk. That's a broken taxation system," she said.

Swisher said Musk is due to pay billions in income tax this year. The Tesla CEO said in December he will pay over $11 billion in taxes for 2021.

Warren countered that this is only because he sold off a large swathe of his stock in 2021.

"Pretty much everybody in America would be a little richer today or a lot richer today if they had not had to pay any federal income taxes for years and years and years," Warren told Swisher. "So to say now that he's in this position where he can sell off a slice of his business and make a bazillion dollars and because he chose to take that action he will pay taxes this year — I'm sorry, I just don't think that wins him the Good Tax-Paying Citizen of the Year Award."

Swisher asked Warren why she thinks tech leaders, in general, criticise her and characterise her as a stern schoolteacher.

"I just assume it's the same as anybody who doesn't like someone who challenges them. And they look for what they think is a vulnerability. And somehow, they think that's my vulnerability," Warren said.

"I don't know. I don't actually spend a lot of time worrying about it. I am not a thin-skinned billionaire," she added.

SAUDI ATTACK TRAINED BY USA

Children among more than 60 killed in airstrikes in Yemen, NGO reports

United Nations envoy for Yemen, Hans Grundberg, voiced grave concern over the military escalation and called on both sides to “exercise maximum restraint.”


Jan. 21, 2022
By Reuters

Three children and more than 60 adults are reported to have been killed in air strikes in Yemen on Friday, Save the Children said. A Reuters witness said several people including African migrants were killed in a raid in Saada province.

Rescue workers were still pulling bodies out of the rubble around midday local time (4 a.m. ET) following the dawn strike on the temporary detention centre in Saada in north Yemen, but it was not immediately clear how many people had been killed.


A Saudi-led military coalition has intensified air strikes on what it says are Houthi military targets after the Iran-aligned movement conducted an unprecedented assault on coalition member the United Arab Emirates on Monday and further cross-border missile and drones launches at Saudi cities.

The aftermath of an overnight Saudi-led coalition strike on a telecommunications hub in the port city of Hodeidah that triggered a nationwide internet blackout, on Friday.Ansarullah media center / via AFP - Getty Images

A statement from Save the Children said more than 60 adults were killed in air strikes around the country on Friday, adding three children were killed when missiles struck the western port city of Hodeidah.

It called on parties to the conflict to protect children and their families from “the horror of the ongoing violence” and avoid the use of explosive weapons in populated areas.

Houthi-run Al Masirah television channel said tens of people had been killed and injured in the strike in Saada. It showed footage of men trying to clear rubble using their hands to reach those trapped and of wounded at al-Jamhuri hospital.

Doctors Without Borders said in a statement that the hospital had received “around 200 wounded and they say that they are so overwhelmed that they cannot take any more patients.”

June 2021: Houthi attack on gas station is war crime, Yemen authorities sayJUNE 7, 2021

00:36

Despite Yemen’s war, migrants from the Horn of Africa still go there en route to Saudi Arabia or wealthy Gulf states.

Yemen was experiencing a nationwide Internet outage on Friday with the exception of the southern city of Aden. Houthi media blamed it what it said was a coalition strike on a telecommunications facility in Hodeidah. Reuters could not immediately confirm the cause of the outage.

The Saudi-led alliance on Thursday reported operations against “Houthi military capabilities” in Hodeidah, ballistic missile launch platforms in Bayda province in central Yemen and military targets in Yemen’s Houthi-held capital Sanaa.

The conflict, in which the coalition intervened in March 2015 after the Houthis ousted the internationally recognised government from Sanaa, has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced millions and pushed Yemen to the verge of famine.

United Nations envoy for Yemen, Hans Grundberg, on Friday voiced grave concern over the military escalation and called on both sides to “exercise maximum restraint.”

The Everyday Practicality of Evil

BY AL CARROLL • 13 JANUARY 2022

“Protecting the Settlers,” by J. R. Browne, 1864. In the 19th century, thousands of indigenous people in California were massacred by United States government agents and private citizens in a campaign now known as the California genocide.
“After every atrocity, one can expect to hear the same predictable apologies; it never happened; the victim lies; the victim exaggerates; the victim[s] brought it upon [themselves]; and in any case, it is time to forget the past and move on. The more powerful the perpetrator, the greater is his prerogative to name and define reality, and the more completely his arguments prevail.”
—Judith Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence

Hannah Arendt famously spoke of “the Banality of Evil.” To the Banality of Evil, we must add the Everyday Practicality of Evil, the Ordinary Pragmatism of Evil. This is the whole subject of this essay.

When Holocaust deniers deny the Holocaust, we usually know why. They know their neo Nazi or anti-Semitic beliefs are discredited by the massive horror of genocide their ideological clones committed. When many Turks deny the Armenian, Assyrian, and Pontic Greek genocides, we know why. It offends their sense of pride in the Turkish nation and people.

For American deniers, it’s more complex. When Americans deny genocide took place in America, they often are not doing so from malice, but ignorance. Most are actually repeating the poor, heavily whitewashed, and highly censored and sanitized schooling they had, and thus are blameless.

But many other Americans often are no different in motive than their anti-Semitic or Turkish nationalist counterparts. American pride often demands the Myth of American Innocence, the ludicrously unlikely claim that every American has always been as innocent of wrongdoing as an infant, or perhaps Jesus himself. In recent years, there has even been the bizarre resurgence of an idea discredited in academia for two generations, American Exceptionalism, with fealty to a patently absurd claim to unique American virtue. Genocide denial in America is a product of cognitive dissonance. Genocide in America is denied because it is uncomfortable to admit to it if you strongly believe in American patriotism.

There was no such genocide denial while the most obvious forms of physical genocide were going on, when it was openly called or even celebrated as the extermination of inferiors and heathen savages. Only after the worst and most blatant of mass murders ended did the denials begin.

This denialism grew stronger over time, in the name of colonialist nostalgia and hagiography for American Founding Fathers. Nomadic conquerors from Europe and their descendants transformed into “settlers.” The true settlers, indigenous people building and living in established nations, are depicted as “nomads” who magically vanished away like snow in the spring, their genocide supposedly natural, its perpetrators unmentioned, but obvious to any discerning eye.

America is mostly a nation in denial about the genocides (yes, plural) that took place on its own soil. America is mostly a nation in denial about genocides carried out by some of its people, including governments and leaders. This denial is taught by most of its schools and teachers, and led by and enforced and reinforced by its leading commentators, journalists, politicians, and even scholars.

Most individual Americans are guiltless of genocide denial. They cannot be blamed for what they were not taught, or more often, deliberately mis-taught, falsely indoctrinated, and outright lied to. But for their leaders, their media and government figures and especially academia, it is a different matter. All guilt is theirs, all shame, and all the harm caused by such denial needs to be laid upon them, almost as much as that of the ones carrying out physical genocide. Those who deny genocide need to be recognized as collaborators after the fact, like a criminal who helps another criminal conceal evidence of a crime.

There are, to be sure, many without blind spots. Some scholars have done noble, important, penetrating, insightful and deeply necessary work. There are entire fields like Genocide Studies and American Indian Studies. Entire disciplines like anthropology have spent several generations coming to grips with the legacy of their earlier record of endorsing scientific racism and justifying the worst evils humanity has done, including genocide. Just on the subject of California Indian Genocide alone, we have outstanding history works like An American Genocide by Benjamin Madley; Murder State by Brendan Lindsay; A Cross of Thorns by Elias Castillo; Diggers: Tragic Fate of the California Indians by Jerry Stanley; and Exterminate Them! by Clifford Trafzer. Trafzer, himself a California Indian, deserves the greatest credit for a lifetime of devotion to remembering those lost and understanding the mechanisms of genocide.

But much of this valuable research and insight remains unknown to the American public. This is in spite of the great popularizers of history from below, works that debunk popular myths and strip away falsehoods. Books like James Loewen’s Lies My Teacher Told Me and Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States have a huge impact, eagerly devoured by much of the American public, especially younger generations weary of nationalist, imperialist, or outright racist lies posing as neutral and objective, or most obscenely of all, pretending to be patriotic history.

Yet the push back from many, whether nationalists, racists, or simply those who don’t want to believe anything negative about America, has prevented such truths and insights from making their way into public schools. I know firsthand as a college professor who teaches primarily first year students. Not one in fifty of them ever heard the term genocide in their high schools except when discussing the Holocaust. In seventeen years of teaching over 2,000 students, not a single one of them ever heard of California Indian Genocide before.

Try to imagine something comparably disturbing, that very few Germans except scholars knew about the Holocaust. Would the world not rightfully be concerned that Germany might be part of the rise of fascism or another mass murdering dictatorship again? Would it not make sense that Jews and others would fear history repeating itself, and a future German genocide seem almost inevitable? In the US, failing to teach accurately about genocides on American soil made it far more likely it would happen again…seven times.

To its credit, German society teaches extensively about Holocaust Studies in its high schools. Germany is more honest about its history because the Nazis lost power. In the US, genocide perpetrators won, and their descendants remain powerful and prospered unchallenged. Only with the start of the civil rights movement did a powerful moral counter narrative begin.

Holocaust deniers are deservedly outcast pariahs, regarded as the cranks and bigots they are. But deniers of genocide against American Indians and others in the US have the highest levels of respectability, and are often rewarded for their denial. American genocide deniers are likely to be praised as “thoughtful” and “non-ideological” and “calm” for their arguments when they should be seen as they truly are: nakedly aggressive, carrying out a willfully blind murder of the truth, and ultimately hateful.

What is the effect of such mainstream American genocide denial? First, look at the effect Holocaust denial has on Jewish people. Denial comes from bigots or cranks arguing, “Your relatives did not die in camps. You made that up. You just want to make Germans feel guilty. Jews own all the banks anyway. Jews were traitors to Germany and a threat to the world.” Such claims are horrifying, deeply ignorant and prejudiced, but done almost entirely by the fringe.

Now imagine yourself as an American Indian, say one who is 30 years old, born in 1989. Nine tenths of your people were killed during the Gold Rush, or a third killed on the Trail of Tears, or many of them slaughtered at Sand Creek or any number of other massacres. But the textbooks, when they discuss this at all, often call such massacres “battles.”

Your people likely lost their homeland a century and a half ago. You don’t know your own language because your grandparents and great grandparents were beaten if they dared speak it at government boarding schools they were forced to attend. There is as much as a one in four chance your female relatives were forcibly sterilized by the US government. One aunt may have gone in to have her tonsils taken out and then had her tubes tied without being asked. Or an older female cousin might have been told she had to be sterilized, threatened that she would lose custody of her children if she did not.

There is also a one in four chance you were forcibly adopted by white fundamentalists, Mormons, or others convinced it was for your own good. Perhaps they never told you about your people’s past, or if they did, taught you it was “savage” and better forgotten. Maybe you did not find out you were Native until adulthood. Possibly only then did you discover your real family was intact all along, and there were relatives out there you didn’t know.

Still, you hold onto traditional knowledge to help you deal with being stopped yet again by the police for Driving While Indian, and by so many people being surprised Natives still exist when nearly one in 50 Americans are also American Indian. You try not to get discouraged realizing most other Americans don’t know about genocides done by American governments, even presidents, against American Indians and Latin American Indians as recently as 1974 and 2000, respectively.

But everyone keeps telling you, “Native Americans never went through genocide.” The schools claim this, and most non-Natives do not know any better, even while Natives do. The list of justifications many repeat to you is long:

“It was all by accident. Disease did all the killing.”

“Those Natives were savages. They killed each other too.” (But raiding is not genocide.)

“Besides, they get all that money from casinos.” (Actually, most tribes don’t have them.)

“There’s no real Indians left anyway.”

“There’s only about 10,000 Natives left.” (Actually said to me by students.)

“I don’t care, and I’m one myself. I heard we had a Cherokee princess in our family.”

“We honor those people with sports mascots. Go Braves!”

“They live on free government money.” (Old racist myth.)

Such heinous moral callousness is the inevitable result of teaching genocide denial. When schools teach accidental-disease-as-genocide-denial, what should we expect? When schools spread the Myth of Native Isolation, what should we expect? When professional sports and public school institutions teach that degrading, mockery, and stereotyping are “honoring,” what should we expect? When Hollywood teaches that you are not truly Native unless you lived before 1900 and dressed in buckskin, it’s no wonder many Americans ignore six million American Indians in their midst, imagining all or almost all Natives are gone. These justifications for genocide are what American Indians contend with all the time, often said or shouted directly, face to face.
“American pride often demands the Myth of American Innocence, the ludicrously unlikely claim that every American has always been innocent of wrongdoing.”

No respectable newspaper, magazine, or network would hire Holocaust deniers. No museum or university would sponsor or countenance such unethical bigoted denial, not without rightfully facing condemnation. Heads would roll. A politician, newscaster, or scholar would see their career ended quickly for Holocaust denial. But never has that condemnation or outcast status happened for denying Native genocides, and some are rewarded. The disgust and horror dealing with genocide deniers is a constant daily occurrence for Natives.

Denialism plagues America. The word plague is a deliberate choice, for this illness greatly weakens, even cripples, this nation. Denialism cripples efforts at reconciliation among different backgrounds, harming those in denial as well as the minorities attacked. It also cripples American efforts to deal with human rights abuses and atrocities, ongoing or potential genocide overseas, by removing any claim by America to have the moral high ground, making the US look hypocritical and ignorant of its own past.

This is not even a distant past, as the earlier examples made clear. Natives personally live with genocide right now. Many thousands of Native women living today bear the scars, both literal and psychological, of forced sterilization. Hundreds of thousands of American Indians living today deal with the great trauma of forced assimilation by boarding schools and forced adoption from intact families…


Passengers shooting buffalo from the Kansas-Pacific Railroad, 1871 (Library of Congress)

These should not be shocking revelations or arguments. One of the mistakes made by those who argue what was done to Natives was genocide is to label all seven acts of genocide as only one. Genocide deniers and racists eagerly leap upon this error and exploit it. But we do not say that all genocides ever done against Jews were one genocide. We make a distinction between genocide by Romans, Crusaders, Russians, and Nazis because they took place separately, by different perpetrators over many centuries. These were distinct even though those carrying them out had similar motives, beliefs, and in some cases methods.

We must and should make those same distinctions between genocides against Natives over the course of more than 500 years, beginning with Columbus’s genocide in Hispaniola and ending (for now) with forced sterilization in Peru.

As a rule, perpetrators of genocide must be defeated, thrown out, and punished to end it. Staying in power leads to denials genocide ever happened. Much of the public argues there was no wrongdoing. How could such a horrific crime really be a crime if no one was executed or imprisoned?

Deniers make genocide likely to happen again and again. An entire industry of genocide denial in America, almost all public schools, parts of universities, and textbook companies lazily reproduce denial. Genocide deniers should be named and shamed.

This article is a passage from a forthcoming book entitled Genocide Denial in America.


Published in the Winter 2022 Humanist

Al Carroll is Associate Professor of History at Northern Virginia Community College. He is the author or editor of four history books and one of alternate history, and numerous articles for Beacon, Counterpunch, History News Network, Indian Country Today, LA Progressive, Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Truth Out, Wall Street Examiner, and elsewhere.

INTERNATIONALIST HUMANIST

Celebrate Thomas Paine’s Birthday on January 29th

BY MARGARET DOWNEY • 

13 JANUARY 2022

Thomas Paine portrait via New York Public Library

On Saturday, January 29th the newly-formed Thomas Paine Memorial Association will hold a virtual celebration of Thomas Paine, founding father and humanist.

Congressman Jamie Raskin (MD-8) opened last year’s Thomas Paine Day celebration by saying, in part, “There’s so much to celebrate with regard to Thomas Paine, whose memory and message have only become more urgently relevant as every day goes by. Thomas Paine put democracy itself in government by the people and the sovereignty of the people at the very center of our political philosophy. Paine has a lot to teach us about civil rights and about social justice and reconciliation of the country. His legacy is endlessly rich and fertile for us who continue to fight for strong democracy against all of the fascist undertones of our day.”

On January 29, 2022, at 1:00 PM (PST)/4:00 PM (EST), hundreds of people will gather on Zoom to celebrate the birthdate of an often-forgotten Founding Father, Thomas Paine. Paine is hailed as a “Freethought Hero,” and great patriot and the event will be, as far as we know, the very first Zoom celebration of his birth, creating connections from all over the world. All are invited to share a toast in celebration of the life and work of this champion of reason, independent thought, and revolutionary ideas.

The Thomas Paine Memorial Association (TPMA), is a new non-profit organization, with the mission of educating the public and installing statues of Thomas Paine in Washington, DC and other places of significance to his life.

Event cosponsors include American Humanist Association, Center for Inquiry, Freedom From Religion Foundation, Freethought Society, the Stiefel Freethought Foundation, and the Thomas Paine National Historical Association.

During the Thomas Paine Birthdate Celebration, the Stiefel Freethought Foundation (SFF) is pleased to offer an opportunity to TRIPLE any donation to TPMA that is received. A $17.76 donation will be matched to become $53.28 and a $1,776 donation becomes $5,328. Don’t miss this opportunity to support an important endeavor. Todd Stiefel, founder and president of SFF stated, “Thomas Paine was a patriot, revolutionary, Founding Father, and a victim of colonial America cancel culture. His advocacy for freedom from authoritarian organizations made him both lionized and ostracized. It is past time for his legacy to be restored and for him to be honored for his critical role in driving and sustaining the American Revolution. Without Paine, there likely would not be an America.”

Closing remarks at the event will be delivered by Congressman Jamie Raskin.

Educator, songwriter and recording artist James Klueh will perform two Thomas Paine-themed songs prior to the interactive social hour. He said, “My primary experience of all things Thomas Paine has been through the endeavor of setting his verse and poems to music. This minor contribution constitutes my addition to the continuing celebration of one of history’s most important actors.”

Please register here for this international event: https://bit.ly/ThomasPaineBirthdayCelebration

The following statements are from some of the TPMA board members who will be speaking at the event.

Gary Berton, Thomas Paine researcher and expert:
The age of democratic revolutions was sparked by Paine—the modern concept of democracy was placed before humanity by him – with the possibility of liberty from tyranny, from poverty, from the chains of superstition, and from helplessness. That is his legacy. 1776 began with Common Sense and closed with the first Crisis. If this country should honor him, a statue in its capital is necessary.

Robyn Blumner, CEO, Center For Inquiry:
Thomas Paine said, ‘To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.’ How relevant for today’s epidemic of COVID misinformation and anti-vax hysteria. If only more people read and understood the writings of Thomas Paine, perhaps rabbit holes would just be where rabbits lived.

Christopher Cameron, history professor:
In addition to inspiring the Declaration of Independence with his pamphlet Common Sense and stirring the hearts of weary troops with his Crisis essays, Thomas Paine was a pioneering abolitionist who published anti-slavery essays as early as 1776 and helped make Pennsylvania the first state to adopt a gradual emancipation law. Throughout his life, Paine was a stalwart champion of the downtrodden and the oppressed and should be remembered as one of the leading humanitarian thinkers of his age. This statue will go a long way toward preserving that memory.

John de Lancie, actor, director, producer, writer, and educator:
The more I read Thomas Paine, the more I feel we’ve let him down. We have a lot of work to do.

Marnie Mosiman de Lancie, actor and singer:
In these perilous times for democracy, no doubt Thomas Paine would once again say, ‘These are the times that try men’s souls.’ I think he would be astonished that, so long after he fought against the notion that voting rights extended only to those of wealth and property, we would once again be fighting for all citizens to have the simple right to vote.

Ann Druyan, author, producer, and director:

Thomas Paine is that rarity, a Founding Father, for whom we need not make any excuses. More than two hundred years after his death, the writings of this least celebrated, yet possibly most influential architect of the dream of America, requires no special pleading. They are the blueprint for equality, diversity, and freedom. For too many of his contemporaries it is time to come to grips with their crimes and tear down their statues. For Thomas Paine it is long overdue to raise one up.

Annie Laurie Gaylor, Co-President, Freedom From Religion Foundation:

My favorite Thomas Paine quotation is, ‘The mind once enlightened cannot again become dark.’ The Freedom From Religion Foundation invites everyone to celebrate Thomas Paine’s enlightening wisdom on the date of his birth, January 29, 2022.

Julia Sweeney, actor, comedian, and writer:

Thomas Paine said, ‘He who dares not offend, cannot be honest.’ I think of this all the time. Paine’s words challenge me to be more honest. He didn’t retreat. He explained and encouraged this country to strive to be more honest, more equitable, more reasonable, and more democratic. I want to help promote his ideas, so that they become a part of our common understanding of what it means to be a citizen.

Actor Ian Ruskin will speak about his experiences portraying Thomas Paine. He will share photos of appearances and will include an overview of his “Walk in the Footsteps of Thomas Paine” tour that took place in England. Ruskin said, “A statue helps us to remember someone’s life and work, and who could be more deserving than Thomas Paine, who had such an impact on the birth and soul of America? Yet I know of only three in all of the world. Performing my play To Begin the World Over Again: The Life of Thomas Paine in England, I found them in country towns large and small, in Thetford, Lewes, and London. There are great monuments to a number of men in Washington, DC, and it’s time to add a statue of Thomas Paine. It’s time to remember, thank, and celebrate this truly visionary man.”

Freethought Society president Margaret Downey will be talking about the many Thomas Paine-themed activities she has sponsored, including her “Walk in the Footsteps of Thomas Paine” that took place in Paris, France. In regard to the January 29th celebration, Downey said, “The first formal gathering to celebrate the birth of Thomas Paine took place on January 29, 1825. One hundred and ninety-seven years later, I’m looking forward to conveying how Thomas Paine became my freethought hero and what I’ve done for 30 years to honor his life and work.”

Sculptor Zenos Frudakis will join the festivities from his studio in Glenside, Pennsylvania. He recently stated, “To me, Thomas Paine represents common sense and reason in politics. As such, a statue of Paine would embody those ideals and inspire others by his words and example. Paine was a critical voice in the Enlightenment of the last quarter of the 18th century. His continued relevance in presence of form and substance of thought is dearly needed now. I’m pleased to be the sculptor selected for this important project.”

Margaret Downey is the founder and president of the Freethought Society in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

THE WRITINGS OF THOMAS PAINE

EDITED BY DR. PHIL S. FONER

TWO VOLUMES

Publication date 1945

The writings of Thomas Paine helped shape the American nation and left their imprint on democratic thought all over the world. This two-volume set represents an attempt to make these writings available to both the general reader and the student. Every effort has been made to include all of Paine's writings available at present, and to present them in a manner that would make clear their historical background. Emphasis has been placed throughout on presenting Paine's writings in their essential clarity, and for this purpose efforts have been made, without in any sense distorting Paine's meaning, to modernize the spelling, capitalization and punctuation wherever it was necessary to make the meaning clear to a present day reader.

Volume One contains Paine's major works: Common Sense, The American Crisis, Rights of Man, The Age of Reason, and Agrarian Justice.

https://archive.org/details/TheCompleteWritings/mode/2up

Volume Two contains Paine's political and economic essays, theological dissertations, scientific papers and political and personal correspondence. Much of the material found in the second volume has never been included in any previous collection of Paine's writings.

https://archive.org/details/TheCompleteWritings2

 

 

texts

The Complete

Humanism Offers Hope over Despair

BY GINAN RAUF • 20 JANUARY 2022

Photo by David Gavi on Unsplash

There is not just one humanism. There are cultural variants, emerging humanisms, we must strive to bring into being/existence in a world riddled with multiple/cascading crises. Here one thinks of Anthony Pinn’s humanism with its embrace of difference. The humanism of which I speak is an open-ended venture insofar as it concerns itself with transformative action and collective struggle for a ‘’better’’ world. Imagined possibilities are central to this project (along with) an abiding faith in human creativity, particularly our collective ability to transform ourselves in order to transform the world. That faith can appear absurd, naive or downright foolish to the cynical. Cynicism, after all, corrodes this abiding faith in others and our willingness to work for unimagined possibilities. Why invest time or energy in risky ventures? The results are uncertain and the benefits to the individual unclear. Cynicism aligns itself most easily with the counterrevolution and bends adaptively, perhaps even opportunistically, to the will of authoritarian regimes.

Despair works to the advantage of those who seek to perpetuate oppressive structures. It robs us of the power to act. As Rebecca Solnit shrewdly observes, “Your opponents would love you to believe that it’s hopeless, that you have no power, that there’s no reason to act, that you cannot win. Hope is a gift you don’t have to surrender, a power you don’t have to throw away. And though hope can be an act of defiance, defiance isn’t reason enough to hope. But there are good reasons to hope.”

It’s hardly a coincidence, then, that authoritarian regimes repeatedly make a spectacle of despair and target young activists who are closely associated with the possibility of (radical) cultural transformation. They serve as a visual embodiment of how activism invariably leads to incarceration or worse. Take the example of Sarah Hegazi, an Egyptian queer activist and feminist arrested for flying a rainbow flag during a Mashrou’ Leila concert.

Accused of promoting “devious sexual behavior” that purportedly violates the values of the Egyptian family, she was tortured in prison and sought asylum in Canada where she eventually committed suicide.

A highly articulate activist and original thinker had been driven to despair. That’s the situation before us: We are left to mourn the tragic loss of an individual life and contemplate the tragedy of her squandered human potential. Hegazi’s death sheds light on how structures of power decimate hope as expressed by Rebecca Solnit. There are violent mechanisms in place that disrupt any attempt to cultivate a different way of life or expand the freedom of expression. The incarceration of highly visible activists nips hope in the bud so that the young and experimental don’t get too many ideas into their heads or feel the collective power to act.

Suicide, a radical articulation of despair, signals that all self-directed action or forms of resistance are bound to end in a futile act of surrender. Its usefulness to authoritarian regimes cannot and should not be underestimated. One might think of it as a ritual reenactment of authoritarian triumph over the state’s designated enemies or shattered bodies. Anti-humanist “virtues” such as blind obedience and excessive reverence for authority figures are constantly being cultivated in the public sphere.

Examples abound. Let’s turn for a moment to the case of Alaa Abd El-Fattah, one of Egypt’s most prominent political prisoners and young activists who has practically become a symbol of the revolution (or Arab Spring). Born into a family of dedicated activists, he has been subjected to arbitrary detention and placed in solitary confinement. There was a ban on family visits in Tora prison where he was being held. His sister, Sanaa Seif, was abducted and subjected to various forms of harassment for protesting prison conditions. The human costs of political activism are considerable, demonstrating how entire families can become targets of structural despair until they reach the breaking point and ultimately surrender.

Pen America noted, for instance, that during one court appearance Abd El-Fattah considered suicide as an option or possible way out, “On September 11, 2021, after detaining Abd El-Fattah for nearly two years without trial, Cairo Criminal Court discussed extending the pre-trial detention of Alaa Abd El-Fattah. At the extension hearing, Abd El-Fattah told the judge that he would contemplate suicide if forced to continue staying in a solitary cell in the Tora Prison.” Still, other hopeful options and forms of human solidarity remain open to us. This is not a matter of being naively optimistic or of romanticizing the resilience of dissidents who are being pushed to the breaking point. Nobody is inexhaustible. The capacity to endure indefinitely cannot be taken for granted. Strength is neither a constant nor static quality. Rather, it is often cultivated and renewed in the intersubjective spaces that exist between us. How’s a humanist to respond?

As humanists many of us recognize that we draw strength from one another in these interactive spaces and in conjunction with others, particularly during times of crisis. And ours is a world of cascading crises. Keeping others going during times of extreme distress or fragility is arguably consistent with humanistic values that privilege individual lives on earth and the fulfillment of human potential.

What might a humanistic response look like? A compelling example of how this might play out in the real world can be seen in the recent publication of Alaa Abd El-Fattah’s book, You Have Not Yet Been Defeated which has been translated into English by a group of anonymous translators with a preface by the prominent activist and writer Naomi Klein. The interplay between the anonymous and the prominent demonstrates how different people with different skills can mobilize their collective resources to amplify the voices of those who are being deliberately isolated or cut off from networks of human solidarity.

The word “yet” in the title indicates that historical outcomes are not a fait accompli but largely depend on how we act in the world. What’s more, an integral component of acting in the world includes engagement with the humanities, prison writings in this instance. Alaa Abd El-Fattah once famously said to an American audience that we can help him by fixing things here. That is to say, we have a responsibility to probe our own complicity with authoritarian regimes in the Middle East and Muslim majority countries. This variant of humanism requires a robust amount of political self-awareness and a willingness to enter into dialogue with dissidents from whom we have much to learn. Translation in this instance, then, is arguably a form of hopeful action, a refusal to surrender to despair or abandon the abandoned. Alaa Abd El-Fattah may be the most prominent political prisoner but he’s by no means the only one.

Ahmed Douma, an Egyptian activist and leader of the uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak, has been languishing in Egypt’s prisons since 2013. He has been repeatedly jailed in what can perhaps be described as a Kafkaesque cycle of state sponsored despair. Douma’s case is of particular interest given that he comes from a prominent family of Muslim Brotherhood activists. Although his father was a leading figure in the Beheira Governorate, Douma secretly fled to Cairo and started a new life as a secular activist. In other words, his life story embodies the possibility of transformational politics and intergenerational rebellion in the home as well as in the streets.

Such a trajectory conceivably presents a threat to authoritarian regimes bent on perpetuating hierarchical structures characterized by fear and reverence for the old patriarchal guard. Douma also happens to be a poet whose work has recently been removed from the Cairo International Book Fair. It’s hard to escape the impression that this a war on an entire generation of young revolutionaries and any possibility of a different future.

Suicide, the negation of all hope, continues to be a distinct possibility. A few more examples will suffice to demonstrate these tragic possibilities. Mohamed Oxygen and Abed Al Rahman Mokka, for instance, both tried to commit suicide but were brought back from the brink with extreme difficulty.

One can only imagine the anguish and torment experienced by these political prisoners. It falls to humanists to hold out hope over despair and encourage support for these activists.

Ginan Rauf is a fine arts photographer, educator, humanist and co-founder of An-Nas: Humanists Rising in Muslim Communities, an organization dedicated to providing alternatives to faith-based communities and contributing to a more inclusive humanism.

Police find 124 caged snakes in dead man's Maryland home

Some of the snakes, all of which were meticulously cared for, are venomous and illegal to keep, officials said.


Jan. 20, 2022
By Tim Fitzsimons

Maryland officials found a dead man and a collection of 124 live snakes, some venomous and illegal to keep, in his home during a welfare check this week.

The snakes were "meticulously cared for" in cages stacked throughout the Pomfret home, they said.

Out-of-state exotic animal experts removed the snakes Thursday, one day after deputies discovered the man dead during a check his neighbors requested, Charles County spokesperson Jennifer Harris said.

Among the snake were rattlesnakes, cobras, black mambas and a 14-foot-long Burmese python, Harris said.

“Nobody seemed to be aware that he was harboring snakes inside the home,” Harris said of the man, who has not been publicly identified.

The cause of the death will be released pending completion of an autopsy, but Harris stressed there are no indications of foul play or that any of the reptiles killed him.

Officials remove snakes from a home in Maryland.Charles County Government

“We don’t anticipate that there was any security issue with any of the snakes escaping," Harris said. "He was well-known by his neighbors in the community, but nobody had just basically ever been inside his home to know that this part of the home life was going on."

Harris said the Charles County chief of animal control told her that he had "never encountered anything quite like this situation that we saw today" and that typically, animal control officials encounter dangerous dogs, raccoons and coyotes — not snakes.

LGBTQ dating ban at Brigham Young University probed in federal investigation

Associated Press

SALT LAKE CITY — The U.S. Department of Education has opened a civil-rights investigation into how LGBTQ students are disciplined at Brigham Young University, a private religious school.

The complaint under investigation came after the school said it would still enforce a ban on same-sex dating even after that section was removed from the written version of the school’s honor code, the Salt Lake Tribune reported. Students can be punished for holding hands or kissing someone of the same sex, harsher discipline than that faced by heterosexual couples at the school operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 

BYU removed its written ban on “homosexual behavior,” in early 2020, prompting students to publicly come out as members of the LGBTQ community. But the school clarified a few weeks later that same-sex dating is still prohibited, even if it’s no longer expressly written in the honor code. It also bans things such as alcohol consumption, beards and piercings.

Students protested the apparent reversal, saying they felt tricked into coming out. The federal investigation from the department’s Office for Civil Rights started late last year under Title IX, the law that protects against discrimination on the basis of sex in schools.

A university spokeswoman acknowledged the investigation but said in a statement that BYU is within its rights to enforce the church’s policies against same-sex relationships and does not anticipate any further action. 

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“BYU is exempt from application of Title IX rules that conflict with the religious tenets of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,” Carri Jenkins said in a statement.

The church has softened its approach in recent years but maintains doctrinal opposition to same-sex marriage and sex outside of marriage. 

A Department of Education spokesperson confirmed an investigation was opened in October, but declined to comment further. As a private religious school, BYU does have religious exemptions from Title IX related to sexuality and gender expression. 

Federal scrutiny like this is rare at church-owned schools, and typically happens only in places where there are believed to be potential systemic or serious issues, said Michael Austin, a BYU graduate and vice president at the University of Evansville, a private Methodist school in Indiana. 

“It’s really significant that investigators are stepping in now,” he told the newspaper. The new investigation appears to be about whether those exemptions allow faith-based discipline for LGBTQ students even if the behavior is not directly related to education or expressly prohibited in its written honor code.

The school’s president argued those exemptions do apply, and everyone who attends or works at BYU agrees to follow the honor code and “‘voluntarily commit to conduct their lives in accordance with the principles of the gospel of Jesus Christ,’” according to a letter Kevin Worthen wrote to the Department of Education in November 2021.

In a response obtained by the Tribune, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights affirmed the school does have some religious exemptions but the department had to investigate whether the complaint it received falls under those exemptions. 

LGBTQ rights have been a major issue in recent years at the school located in Provo, Utah. A lawsuit filed by several students last year alleges discrimination, with one recent graduate who is a lesbian alleging she lost her job at the school because she didn’t look “feminine enough” to her boss.

The institution has also banned protests near its large letter “Y” posted on a mountainside after protesters lit the letter with rainbow colors. Last fall, a top-ranking church leader publicly criticized faculty members and students who challenge the faith’s teachings on same-sex marriage.

Sonia Sotomayor Appears to Take Up the Women's Rights Mantle Left by Ruth Bader Ginsburg

BY JUSTIN KLAWANS ON 1/20/22


United States Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor issued a blistering dissent on Thursday after the court rejected another attempt to block Texas' six-week abortion ban, appearing to step into the role as a women's champion that was once held by the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

In a 6-3 decision, the court ruled that the case would not be returned to the 5th U.S Circuit Court of Appeals, which would have further delayed the ban. The court had previously allowed the law to stand but paved the way for abortion providers in Texas to sue over the ruling.

However, the court's conservative majority denied this request, allowing the ban to continue without significant barriers

Sotomayor, who was joined in her dissent by the other liberal justices of the court, Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan, stated that she "will not stand by silently as a State continues to nullify this constitutional guarantee [of abortion]."

"This case is a disaster for the rule of law and a grave disservice to women in Texas, who have a right to control their own bodies," Sotomayor continued.

Sotomayor also harshly criticized the majority of the court for, in her mind, ignoring "nearly 50 years of this Court's precedents."

"Because our precedents are clear that Texas cannot directly ban abortion before viability, the state legislature enacted a convoluted law that instills terror in those who assist women exercising their rights between 6 and 24 weeks," Sotomayor added.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor issued a strong dissent of the Supreme Court's latest ruling on abortion. Here, Sotomayor can be seen during a group photo call in 2021.
ERIN-SCHAFF POOL/GETTY

Sotomayor argued that the case should have been returned to the lower district court following the prior decision of the Supreme Court, arguing that the 5th Circuit had twisted the Supreme Court's ruling to allow for the abortion ban to take effect.

"The Fifth Circuit should have immediately recommended this case to the District Court, allowing it to consider whether to issue preliminary relief," Sotomayor wrote. "But Texas moved to certify...the question this Court had just decided."

"Texas never asked the Fifth Circuit to certify this question during its first pass through the court, nor did it ever ask this Court to do so."

"Today, for the fourth time, this Court declines to protect pregnant Texans from egregious violations of their constitutional rights," Sotomayor wrote. While decorum typically sees dissenting justices end their opinion with "I respectfully dissent," Sotomayor simply wrote, "I dissent."

This echoes many dissents written by Justice Ginsburg, who was an ardent supporter of women's rights during her years on the court. She was seen as a champion for women and helped to initiate gender equality for educators.

However, the court's latest decision marks a major setback for pro-choice groups, who have been fighting to get the abortion ban in Texas overturned. Many activists have noted that the law only allows for abortions before six weeks, which is prior to when many women know they're pregnant.

Some activists stated their concern that the Texas abortion ban could be the first step in the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court case that guaranteed a constitutional right to abortion. Many pointed to another case, based in Mississippi, that is currently being argued before the court.

This case also concerns a law that would move to make access to abortions significantly harder in the state of Mississippi. The Magnolia State currently has only one abortion clinic, which lies at the heart of the Supreme Court case.

"So if the Supreme Court rules in the Mississippi case in a way that weakens or overturns Roe v. Wade, this means it's going to be even more difficult for people to access abortion care," Kari White, a University of Texas sociologist, told NPR. "And that this will fall most heavily on people who are already experiencing structural disadvantages."

New study shows an overwhelming correlation between weak gun laws and high rates of gun deaths

Tod Perry

01.21.22

via lifesizepotato/Flickr

Pardini GT9.

Everyone in America wants the country to be a place where they’re safe from violence. But there’s a big difference in how people think we should achieve that goal. Some Americans think that tougher gun laws make it more difficult for people to commit heinous acts of violence. While others believe that people are safer when they have easy access to firearms to protect themselves.

A new study released by the Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund has found a very strong connection between a state’s gun laws and its rate of gun deaths.

The analysis concludes that states with strong gun safety policies have lower rates of fatal shootings while states with weaker gun laws have higher rates of gun deaths, including homicides, suicides and accidental killings. Everytown for Gun Safety makes a pretty clear point by ranking states from strongest gun laws to weakest.

California has the strongest gun laws and some of the lowest rates of gun deaths per 100,000 residents, at 8.5. The national average is 13.6. Conversely, Mississippi has the weakest gun laws and the highest rate of gun deaths per 100,000 residents, 28.6.

California

via Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund

Mississippi

via Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund

“States with strong gun safety policies, such as background checks on all gun sales and extreme risk laws, have lower rates of gun violence while states with weaker gun laws, such as permitless gun carry and Stand Your Ground, have higher rates of gun violence,” Nick Suplina, senior vice president of law and policy at Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund, told Upworthy.

Here are the top eight states when it comes to the strength of gun laws.

Top 8 states with strong gun laws

via Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund

The 8 states with the weakest gun laws

via Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund

You can see the entire list of all 50 states at the Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund’s website.

"Everytown’s Gun Law Rankings shows what we have been saying for years: gun laws save lives. There is a clear and direct tie between a state's gun laws and its rate of gun deaths,” Suplina told Upworthy.

The evidence for strong gun safety laws appears to be overwhelming based on Everytown’s graph. But as any statistician will tell you, correlation doesn’t imply causation. In other words, just because states with tougher gun laws are safer doesn’t necessarily mean that strong gun laws are the sole reason that gun violence is lower.

The rankings also get a bit blurrier when one takes into account the fact that guns can move from state to state. Therefore, strong gun laws in one state can be affected by weaker laws in a neighboring state.

There is a whole host of factors that can influence the rate of gun violence in a given state, including socioeconomics, access to mental healthcare, education, social mobility and its citizens’ trust in institutions

via Fibonacci Blue/Flickr

However, states with weaker gun laws make it easier to access firearms, and studies show that access to a firearm triples the likelihood of suicide, and a gun in the home is associated with more gun homicide.

The debate over guns has been one of the most heated fights in America’s culture wars and it won’t be solved anytime soon. But we all want what’s best for the country and to come to some effective agreement on how to do so we have to start with the facts. Everytown for Gun Safety has made a very compelling argument for stronger gun control laws across the country; it’ll be interesting to see if its opponents can muster any counterarguments that come close.

Doomsday Clock stuck at 100 seconds to midnight as 'apocalypse' looms

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists keeps the Doomsday Clock at 100 seconds from midnight – the metaphorical time when the human race could destroy the world with technologies of its own making.

The idea of the Doomsday Clock symbolising global vulnerability to catastrophe followed in 1947. (AFP)

The "Doomsday Clock," representing the judgment of leading science and security experts about perils to human existence, remains at 100 seconds to midnight this year, with advances like Covid-19 vaccines balanced by rising misinformation and other threats.

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists president Rachel Bronson declared on Thursday the world was no safer this year than two years ago when the clock's hands were moved to their current position.

"If humanity is to avoid an existential catastrophe, one that would dwarf anything it has yet seen, national leaders must do a far better job of countering disinformation, heeding science and cooperating," she told reporters on the 75th anniversary of the clock's initial unveiling.

The fact that it hasn't shifted closer to midnight does not imply threats have stabilised, the group said in a full statement.

"On the contrary, the Clock remains the closest it has ever been to civilization-ending apocalypse because the world remains stuck in an extremely dangerous moment."



Hopeful developments

The Bulletin was founded in 1945 by Albert Einstein, J Robert Oppenheimer and other scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project which produced the first nuclear weapons.

The idea of the clock symbolising global vulnerability to catastrophe followed in 1947.

Its time is set by the organisation's board, with the support of its board of sponsors, which includes 11 Nobel laureates.

In its statement, the Bulletin noted hopeful developments at the start of 2021, including the renewal of the New START arms control agreement between the United States and Russia.

But international tensions continue to loom ominously, including most recently over Ukraine. The United States, Russia and China meanwhile continue their march to develop hypersonic weapons.

Nice words, but little climate action

No country meanwhile remains immune to threats to democracy, the Bulletin said, "as the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol demonstrated."

More than 10 percent of those charged with crimes related to the riot were active or retired service members, underscoring extremism in the military.

On climate, COP26 in Glasgow offered positive rhetoric but relatively little action.

Encouragingly, several countries announced net-zero carbon dioxide targets by 2050, but getting there would require immediate divestment from fossil fuels, investment in renewables, upgrading infrastructure and shifting land use and agriculture practices.

"The past year has seen a staggering onslaught of climate disasters," said Raymond Pierrehumber, a professor of physics at the University of Oxford.

"We've had the heat dome over North America, worldwide fires, drought, floods, but this is just a sample of what is to come if we don't get the emissions of carbon dioxide to zero."

Disinformation stoked by politicians

And while Covid-19 has focused the world's scientific attention, governments must be prepared for other biological threats –– from weapons programmes to the rise in antibiotic resistance, which the Bulletin said could trigger a new pandemic within a decade.

The Bulletin particularly highlighted how disinformation –– much of it stoked by politicians in high office –– is undermining faith in science and handicapping the world's ability to confront its challenges.

The Bulletin called on Washington and Moscow to expand the scope of nuclear reduction, and for the world's leading polluters to accelerate decarbonisation.
Source: AFP