LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment

Sunday, January 23, 2022

How Scholars Are Countering Well-Funded Attacks on Critical Race Theory

There is a long history of right-wing forces fighting against progressive educational curricula. Now, scholars like Robin D. G. Kelley are working to level the playing field against the moneyed political interests behind the attacks.

Robin D. G. Kelley, Distinguished Professor and Gary B. Nash Endowed Chair in U.S. History.

PHOTO BY LISAGAY HAMILTON

BY SONALI KOLHATKAR

JAN 11, 2022

Invoking Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in mid-December, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced new legislation that allows parents to sue schools for teaching critical race theory. “You think about what MLK stood for. He said he didn’t want people judged on the color of their skin, but on the content of their character,” said DeSantis, a political ringleader in the latest chapter of the United States’ culture war. In using a quote from Dr. King to justify an attack on curricula that uplifts racial justice, the Republican governor inadvertently created a strong case for why critical thinking on the history of race and racism in the U.S. is necessary.

History professor Robin D. G. Kelley is all too familiar with the sort of contradictory statements like those DeSantis spouted. Kelley, who is the Gary B. Nash Endowed Chair in U.S. History at the University of California, Los Angeles, explains that he “came into the profession at the height of a battleground over history, in the 1980s, with the war on political correctness.” And although he’s lived through decades of conservative-led attacks, like those by DeSantis, he describes the 2020s as “dangerous times.”

The Origins of CRT

Kelley sees right-wing attacks on CRT—what he considers an umbrella term for the teaching of “any kind of revisionist or multicultural history”—as a measure of the success communities of color and progressive parents and teachers have had after pushing for years to ensure that educational curricula reflect racially and ethnically diverse classrooms.

The most recent movement for such education can be traced to the Freedom Schools of the 1960s, which, in the words of educators Deborah Menkart and Jenice L. View, “were intended to counter the ‘sharecropper education’ received by so many African Americans and poor whites.” In a civil rights history lesson created for Teaching for Change, Menkart and View explained that the education offered in nearly 40 such schools centered on “a progressive curriculum … designed to prepare disenfranchised African Americans to become active political actors on their own behalf.” In 1968, after months of pressure from student activists, San Francisco State University established the first College of Ethnic Studies in the U.S.

A movement to offer ethnic studies courses in public schools, including colleges and universities, has gained traction nationwide. Such education is now standard fare as part of required college courses. California remains on the cutting edge of multicultural education, becoming the first state in the nation, in October 2021, to require high schoolers to enroll in ethnic studies courses in order to graduate.

Leading African American scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw, a law professor at UCLA, coined the term “critical race theory” and co-edited the book of the same name, which published in 1996, to define race as a social construct and provide a framework for understanding the way it shapes public policy. Crenshaw explained in a New York Times article that CRT, originally used by academics and social scientists to analyze educational inequities, “is a way of seeing, attending to, accounting for, tracing and analyzing the ways that race is produced … the ways that racial inequality is facilitated, and the ways that our history has created these inequalities that now can be almost effortlessly reproduced unless we attend to the existence of these inequalities.”

Understanding the Attacks on CRT

Critical race theory is precisely the sort of nuanced educational lens that Crenshaw, Kelley, and others use in their courses and that has White supremacist forces up in arms. Attacks against CRT are taking the form of multi-pronged legislative restrictions and even bans, as well as firings of teachers accused of teaching biased histories.

Kelley sees conservatives like DeSantis working relentlessly to eliminate any education that actually reckons with the history of American slavery, the genocide of Indigenous peoples and dispossession of their lands, sexism and patriarchy, and gender and gender identity. Reflecting again on the ’80s, he says the attacks on ethnic studies, culture, and race didn’t only come from the Right. “In fact,” he says, they also came from “liberals, from the Left,” and from those saying “we’re not paying enough attention to class [struggles].”

Kelley cites “classic liberal fatigue” against ongoing demands for racial justice, which he encapsulates in responses such as, “We already gave you some money, we already gave you this legislation, what else do you want to ask for? Why are you criticizing us?”

A case in point about how liberal figures are joining the right-wing war on CRT is a new venture called the University of Austin, Texas, created by a group of public figures led by former New York Times writer Bari Weiss. Weiss, in an op-ed in the Times, cited unpopular ideas, such as “Identity politics is a toxic ideology that is tearing American society apart.” She expressed dismay that such an opinion—generally considered a racist one—is shunned by many academics.

To counter what Weiss considers censorship, UATX’s founders say they are devoted to “the unfettered pursuit of truth” and are promoting a curriculum that will include the “Forbidden Courses” centering on “the most provocative questions that often lead to censorship or self-censorship in many universities.”

As if to underscore Kelley’s warning about liberals joining the right-wing culture war, the nascent university’s board of advisors includes figures like Lawrence Summers, former U.S. treasury secretary and former President Barack Obama’s economic adviser, who is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the left-leaning Center for American Progress.

A Counter to the Moneyed Interests Backing CRT Attacks

Kelley sees a difference between earlier battles over political correctness and those centered on CRT today. “The Right has far more political weapons. They are actually engaged in a kind of McCarthyite attack on school teachers, the academy, on students, on families, and passing legislation on what’s called critical race theory,” he says.

Right-wing narratives have cast the backlash against CRT as a grassroots effort led by parents concerned about bias in their children’s education. But secretive and powerful moneyed interests are at work behind the scenes. The watchdog group Open Secrets recently exposed how right-wing organizations, like the Concord Fund, are part of “a network of established dark money groups funded by secret donors … stoking the purportedly ‘organic’ anti-CRT sentiment.”

Additionally, CNBC reporter Brian Schwartz exposed how “business executives and wealthy Republican donors helped fund attacks” on CRT and that it is expected to be a centerpiece of the GOP’s campaign ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.

In contrast to the politically formidable and well-funded forces arrayed in opposition to CRT, the Marguerite Casey Foundation each year gives out unrestricted funds to prominent thinkers, like Kelley, to counter “the limited financial resources and research constraints frequently faced by scholars whose work supports social movements.”

The Foundation chose six scholars whom it describes as doing “leading research in critical fields.” Those include abolition and Black, Latino, feminist, queer, radical, and anti-colonialist studies, which are precisely the fields that are anathema to anti-CRT forces.

Kelley, who was named one of the foundation’s 2021 Freedom Scholars, agrees that such funding can help level the playing field for academics working to expand educational curricula that challenge White supremacist and patriarchal histories.

Going beyond defensive countermeasures against the right-wing attacks on CRT, such awards can help fund the study of histories of social justice movements that are thriving. “We’re beginning to break through the narrative of civil rights begets Black Power, [which] begets radical feminism,” says Kelley, citing grassroots change-making groups that have been active over the past 50 years through today and that have not gotten enough attention, such as the Third World Women’s Alliance, the Boggs Center, the Combahee River Collective, The Red Nation, and INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence. “Just in the last two decades, we’re seeing so many amazing movements whose history is being written as we speak,” says Kelley.

He is heartened by what he calls “new scholarship” that is “thinking transnationally, thinking globally, and moving away from a focus on mostly [White] male leadership and thinkers,” giving way instead to the “political and intellectual work of those who have a different vision of the future.”

SONALI KOLHATKAR is currently the racial justice editor at YES! Media and a writing fellow with Independent Media Institute. She was previously a weekly columnist for Truthdig.com. She is also the host and creator of Rising Up with Sonali, a nationally syndicated television and radio program airing on Free Speech TV and dozens of independent and community radio stations. Sonali won First Place at the Los Angeles Press Club Annual Awards for Best Election Commentary in 2016. She also won numerous awards including Best TV Anchor from the LA Press Club and has also been nominated as Best Radio Anchor 4 years in a row. She is the author of Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords, and the Propaganda of Silence, and the co-director of the nonprofit group, Afghan Women's Mission. She has a Master’s in Astronomy from the University of Hawai’i, and two undergraduate degrees in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Texas at Austin. She reflects on her professional path in her 2014 TEDx talk, “My Journey From Astrophysicist to Radio Host.” She can be reached at sonalikolhatkar.com

Rest in Power Mike Parker, 1940-2022

Mike co-authored the beloved book Democracy Is Power: Rebuilding Unions from the Bottom Up and broke ground with his brilliant analysis of employer strategies that swept the country in the 1980s and 1990s: lean production, the team concept, and labor-management participation schemes. Photo: Alyssa Kang

Mike Parker, the author of four Labor Notes books and a close supporter and key strategist throughout our 43-year history, died January 15 of pancreatic cancer. He will be hugely missed—remembered as a brilliant thinker, a humble and dedicated movement-builder, and a moral compass and mentor to generations of activists.

“I knew Mike Parker when I was a student at the University of Chicago in the early 1960s,” Senator Bernie Sanders told Labor Notes. “Mike was a brilliant advocate for workers and unions then, and he remained so for the rest of his life. Mike fought tirelessly for human solidarity and a more just and humane world. His life’s work and dedication should serve as an example for all of us.”

One of Mike’s major contributions was a critical examination of closely linked employer strategies that swept the country in the 1980s and 1990s: lean production, the team concept, and labor-management participation schemes with names like “quality circles” and “quality of work life.” He developed this analysis while working as an electrician and Auto Workers (UAW) member at Chrysler and Ford plants near Detroit.

Lean production was vigorously promoted by Toyota, spreading first through the auto industry and then to all kinds of other sectors such as hospitals. Its veneer of worker empowerment and emphasis on solving problems could sound enlightened until you decoded those terms—as Mike did in Inside the Circle: A Union Guide to QWL (1985), Choosing Sides: A Union Guide to the Team Concept (1988), and Working Smart: A Union Guide to Participation Programs and Reengineering (1995), the latter two co-authored with Jane Slaughter.

“He analyzed each aspect of how they tried to fool you into thinking that giving them your ideas was going to help the workers, and how it was not,” said Slaughter, one of the founders of Labor Notes. “Workers were going to have ‘a say,’ but the say was how to speed up your job, how to go from six workers on your team to five.”

Mike’s analysis of lean production was “brilliant and groundbreaking,” Slaughter said. “It got attention in academic circles as well as in the labor movement. His analysis of how the system was designed to automatically put pressure on workers to speed up and never make a mistake was really eye-opening. He was the first person to understand how that system worked, not with a supervisor standing over you but with the system itself as the whip.”

SCHOOLS OF RESISTANCE

To disseminate this analysis and strategies for resisting, Parker and Slaughter devised a curriculum and organized a series of intensive weekend Team Concept Schools—“some of the best educational events for rank-and-file workers,” said Kim Moody, another Labor Notes founder.

“I learned to call lean production ‘management by stress’ and to substitute the words ‘more profitable’ every time the boss says ‘more competitive,’” said Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU) organizer David Levin. “When UPS tried to introduce Team Concept, Teamster reformers at the international union launched a counter-campaign under the slogan ‘Our Team Is the Teamsters’ and won. That campaign helped lay the groundwork for the 1997 contract campaign and strike.”

In the Communications Workers (CWA), Parker’s work was important to keeping telephone unionism in the Northeast on track. Inside the Circle was “an incredible tool for debunking what was, in the mid-1980s, a heavy-duty CWA embrace of quality circles,” said Steve Early, then an organizer with the union. After the 1989 strike at NYNEX (now Verizon), when the company tried to use a participation scheme to derail union militancy, Parker spoke at a district conference and even debated a local union leader in front of an audience of 300 at a Queens union hall. (See Early’s tribute, “Mike Parker: A Labor Educator with Impact,” for more.)

The schools and books attracted many new people into the Labor Notes orbit. “Inside the Circle flew off the shelves,” Slaughter said, “because these programs were being installed everywhere, and often international unions were promoting them. Nobody else was offering the kind of analysis that Mike came up with.”

“If it’s hard to explain today how much buy-in these programs had across the board,” Levin said, “much of the credit goes to Mike and Jane’s work.”

DEMOCRACY IS POWER

Mike’s fourth book, Democracy Is Power: Rebuilding Unions from the Bottom Up (1999), co-authored with Labor Notes staffer Martha Gruelle, is a classic that has lately attracted fresh interest from a new generation. (The book is currently out of print, but the PDF is posted on the Labor Notes website where anyone can read and use it for free.)

A new leadership at the AFL-CIO had lifted hopes for a revitalization of the labor movement—but with a top-down approach that emphasized union power while saying nothing about union democracy. Parker and Gruelle argued that a union’s power to fight the boss and win was rooted in the degree to which members ran and owned their organization.

The book was not just a manifesto but also a how-to guide, detailing practical steps to build a democratic culture in your union and the challenges that could arise. Parker and Gruelle argued that democracy was far more than formal practices—in fact, there’s a whole section on how to avoid getting bogged down in Robert’s Rules of Order, and another on making meetings interesting. There’s also a checklist of advice for newly elected union officers: everything from “start a stewards’ council” to “change the locks.”

A KEEN INTEREST IN THE DETAILS

Mike was part of a generation of student activists who decided to devote their lives to the labor movement by getting jobs as rank-and-file union members in industries like auto, telecom, and trucking. Their aim was to join up with existing reform movements to help transform important unions like the UAW, CWA, and the Teamsters from below. He moved to Detroit in 1975 and was hired as an electrician at Chrysler.

His experience made him a mentor to others. “Mike was such a great, quiet mentor to so many rank-and-file activists of my generation and younger,” said Mark Brenner, director of Labor Notes from 2005 to 2017. “One of the things he always said is, ‘You’ve got to find a job you like. If you don’t do that you’ll never make it.’ That’s exactly what he did—whether it’s teaching programmable logic control or being a technician in an auto plant programming the machines himself, he really loved that, and found a way to have a career doing something he liked. “

He was someone you would go to for insights—generous and forthright. “One of the things that made Mike so special was that he had this tremendous wealth of experiences and wanted to share them, not by talking over people, but by talking with them,” said Pam Galpern, a Verizon tech and activist in CWA Local 1101.

His analysis of employer strategies drew on his own experiences and observations on the job. He always had a keen interest in the processes of work, technological changes, the particular role of higher-skilled workers, and how all these specifics could reveal where employers and workers could each find leverage.

“Mike could look at a complicated situation or process—lots of pluses and minuses for both labor and management—and understand what was the key outcome for workers,” Gruelle said. “And then he could explain it.”

“One of Mike’s most original points of genius was that labor activists could win by keeping ahead of the boss on technology,” said Keith Brower Brown, a steward in UAW Local 2865 at the University of California. “In the ‘70s and ‘80s, Mike was constantly learning about new computers and robots coming for the auto plants. When the boss proposed to outsource jobs on those new systems to non-union consultants, Mike could credibly say, ‘Not so fast—we’re ready to run this as UAW members, and do it our way.’

“Mike’s job as a Chrysler electrician meant he could move around the auto plant, meet different workers, and get access to restricted areas, like the central air compressors that could drive or shut down the whole assembly line. He knew he had power from being able to ‘fix what the supervisors can’t,’ as he once told me.”

“He was genuinely super-interested in understanding the work,” Galpern said. “In my case, he was really interested in understanding the work we were doing in telecom—the transition from copper to fiber and what that meant, the move toward wireless, what all these technological changes meant in terms of workers being able to control their day-to-day work.

“When I talked with him, he asked me lots of questions I didn’t know the answers to. He never made me feel stupid, but I left feeling like I wanted to learn more about my own job and industry, to be able to answer those questions for myself.”

THE CONNECTIVE TISSUE

“Mike was really the connective tissue for Labor Notes as an organization for many, many years,” Brenner said. “Mike was very much an anchor of what we should do and where we should go."

He never minded doing the nitty-gritty work, from staffing a conference registration table to rewiring the electricity in the Detroit office shared by Labor Notes and TDU and building custom databases for both organizations.

Mike’s political work throughout his life stretched beyond the labor movement. As a college student in Chicago he was a leader in the Student Peace Union and the Young People’s Socialist League (along with Senator Sanders). In Berkeley in the 1960s he was active in the Free Speech Movement and was instrumental in building an alliance between the Black Panther Party and the Peace and Freedom Party.

In his retirement, Mike left Detroit for Richmond, California, where he became a key leader in the Richmond Progressive Alliance—a grassroots political organization that managed to beat Chevron in that oil refinery town, wresting control of the mayor’s office and city council. (Read more in Steve Early’s book Refinery Town: Big Oil, Big Money, and the Remaking of an American City.) He became a mentor to activists in the Bay Area labor movement and Democratic Socialists of America, and remained an active board member and supporter of Labor Notes.

“Even when he was super-involved in helping lead RPA, Mike always wanted to keep Labor Notes at the forefront. He said, ‘If we don’t have the labor movement the rest of it doesn’t matter,’” Slaughter said.

“Mike was passionate that he and other veteran activists couldn’t lead for others—we had to help workers fight for themselves, and help those fights get organized to last and win,” Brower Brown said. “That was driven home for Mike especially by decades of work supporting hard fights against racism, including with the Black Panther Party and police reform in Richmond.” Last year, Richmond passed a budget that shifts resources from the police department to social programs aimed at creating real public safety. Mike was not only active in the campaign—even as he fought cancer—but, characteristically, helped outline its lessons in an article for Jacobin.

In the last year of his life, he and longtime TDU national organizer Ken Paff set up a foundation to carry on his work, the Social Justice and Solidarity Fund.

Mike’s beloved partner Margaret Jordan passed away two years ago. He is survived by his daughter Johanna, who took care of him through his illness, and his brothers Bill, Bob, and Jerry. He asked that any remembrance donations be sent to the Richmond Progressive Alliance, the Eduardo Martinez for Mayor of Richmond 2022 campaign, and Unite All Workers for Democracy, a grassroots movement of UAW members.

If you have memories of Mike you'd like to share with Labor Notes, email them to editors@labornotes.org or leave a comment below.

Dan DiMaggio contributed reporting to this piece.

Selected articles by Mike Parker on the Labor Notes website:

Excerpts from Democracy Is Power:

Other articles:

Alexandra Bradbury is the editor of Labor Notes.al@labornotes.org

US is 'closer to civil war than any of us would like to believe,' a leading expert on civil wars says in a new book

Kelsey Vlamis
Sat, January 22, 2022

Barbara F. Walter, a civil war expert, said the US is closer to violent conflict than many think.

In her new book, Walter identifies three factors that increase the likelihood of a civil war.

Her book, "How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them," was released earlier this month.

Barbara F. Walter has spent more than 30 years studying civil wars around the globe and, according to her new book, the US is a lot closer to one than most people think.

Walter – a political scientist and professor at the University of California, San Diego – is one of the world's leading experts on civil wars. She's a member of the Political Instability Task Force, a group of analysts that study data to predict where volatility and violence is most likely to break out.

In her new book, "How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them," which came out this month, Walter outlines three factors researchers have identified that presage civil conflict and explains in detail the ways in which the US exhibits those warning signs.

"Civil wars ignite and escalate in ways that are predictable; they follow a script," Walter writes, adding that the same patterns have emerged in Bosnia, Ukraine, Iraq, Syria, Northern Ireland, and Israel.

She said one of the best predictors of civil war is if a country is moving towards or away from democracy. If a country is an "anocracy" – a term used to refer to countries that are not fully democratic or fully autocratic but somewhere in between – they are more likely than both full autocracies or democracies to experience violence.

Today, the US is an anocracy for the first time in more than two hundred years, according to Walter, who cites the Polity Project, a nonprofit that measures how democratic or autocratic a country is. Walter said the country's recent slip on the democracy scale started with the 2016 election, which observers said was marred by politically driven rules and Russian interference.

The US slipped further on the scale during President Donald Trump's term, when executive powers expanded and the president refused to cooperate with Congress's first impeachment inquiry, Walter said. And then it slipped again, after the January 6 insurrection.

Another warning sign Walter points to is "factionalism," a specific kind of political polarization.

"Countries that factionalize have political parties based on ethnic, religious, or racial identity rather than ideology, and these parties then seek to rule at the exclusion and expense of others," she writes, adding that Trump especially catered to Americans along ethnic and religious lines with a focus on white evangelical Christians.

Finally, Walter points to a phenomenon known as "downgrading" as another predictive measure. Downgrading refers to a dominant group's loss of status in society. She said researchers have found the "trajectory of a group's political status" was the "most powerful determinant of violence."

"People were especially likely to fight if they had once held power and saw it slipping away," she writes.

Walter said downgrading can apply to all kinds of groups, "rich or poor, Christian or Muslim, white or Black," but the key is that the group feels a "status reversal," not just a political defeat.

She cites racial resentment among whites who believe Black Americans or other minority groups are now getting unfair special treatment. She also points to Trump's focus on the grievances of working-class white people and his attempts to appeal specifically to those who feel they have lost something, as evidenced by his slogan "Make America Great Again."

"Where is the United States today? We are a factionalized anocracy that is quickly approaching the open insurrection stage, which means we are closer to civil war than any of us would like to believe," Walter concludes.

Walter explains that a civil war today might look different than in the past. She points to specific examples of violence, like the extremist plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and the insurrection at the Capitol as indicators that at least some groups are already willing to move towards violence.

Ex-Niger Delta Militants Beg Oil Firms To Return To Region

The former warlords also called on interventionist agencies to work together to sustain the peace and ensure development of the region.

BY SAHARAREPORTERS,

NEW YORK

JAN 23, 2022

Some Ex-agitators have begged companies that left the Niger Delta region following militancy to return to the region, while promising uninterrupted peace.
The former warlords also called on interventionist agencies to work together to sustain the peace and ensure development of the region.

They spoke in Yenagoa, the Bayelsa State capital, during a regional peace summit to sensitise people to the need to advance the peace currently enjoyed in the region.

The ex-agitators also condemned proliferation of illegal refineries and lamented its adverse effects on development.

One of the participants at the summit and ex-freedom fighter, Pastor Nature Dumale Kieghe said as ex-agitators, who keyed into the vision of the Interim Administrator, Presidential Amnesty Programme Col. Milland Dixon Dikio (rtd), they had resolved to work for a new and better Niger Delta.

He said: "It is important to sensitise our people to a peaceful Niger Delta and create a friendly environment that will attract development, Multinational companies and other foreign investors to the region.

“We, who once carried guns, are now here to preach the message of peace to our people in the region. Peace is the only way we can have the developed environment that we dream of. Peace is the only way to attract the multinationals, investors and also be gainfully employed".

Nature maintained that peace remained a vital tool to attract investors to the region which would in turn create business and job opportunities for the people.

He said, "Companies that have left the Niger Delta because of insecurity need to return; this is the purpose for sensitisation. We are blessed with an environment that is supposed to prosper us; we can only enjoy our natural resources if there is a peaceful environment.”

He said that a major setback to the development of the Niger Delta was the absence of proper coordination among key stakeholders.

He said with the right synergy, the Ministry of Niger Delta Affairs, the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), Ministry of Environment, Ministry of Petroleum Resources, the Presidential Amnesty office, could hasten the needed development of the region.

He said beyond hampering the development of the region, illegal refining of petroleum products was life threatening and dangerous to the ecosystem.

The sensitisation programme commenced in Bayelsa State with 150 Niger Delta youths in attendance and would be held across the nine states of the region to create adequate awareness.

Israeli firm develops body cams with facial recognition

Tirza said he partnered with Tel Aviv-based Corsight AI to develop a body-worn police camera that could instantly identify people in a crowd, even if they wear masks, make-up or camouflage, and could match them to photographs dating back decades

(AFP/AHMAD GHARABLI)

Daniella Cheslow
Sat, January 22, 2022

Twenty years after he planned the controversial barrier between Israel and Palestinians, Dany Tirza is developing a security tool that requires no cement: body cameras with facial recognition technology.

Tirza, a former Israeli army colonel, says his company Yozmot Ltd aims to produce a body-worn camera enabling police to scan crowds and detect suspects in real time, even if their faces are obscured.

Facial recognition in law enforcement has sparked global criticism, with US tech giants backing away from providing the technology to police, citing privacy risks.

Proponents including Tirza, however, tout its ability to track down criminals or missing persons.

"The policeman will know who he is facing," he said.

- 'It's easy' -

Tirza, 63, spoke to AFP from his home in Kfar Adumim, a Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank.

He said he partnered with Tel Aviv-based Corsight AI to develop a body-worn police camera that could instantly identify people in a crowd, even if they wear masks, make-up or camouflage, and could match them to photographs dating back decades.

Corsight CEO Rob Watts did not confirm the collaboration but said his company was working with some 230 "integrators" worldwide who incorporated facial recognition software into cameras.

The technology allows clients to build databases, whether of company employees allowed into a building, ticket holders permitted into a stadium, or suspects wanted by the police, Watts said.

He said Australian and British police were already piloting the technology.

The facial recognition industry was worth about $3.7 billion in 2020, according to market research firm Mordor Intelligence, which projected growth to $11.6 billion by 2026.

Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon and IBM have all declared temporary or permanent freezes on selling facial recognition programmes to law enforcement.

France last month ordered the US-based Clearview AI to delete data on its citizens, saying the company violated privacy when it built a facial recognition database using images "scraped" from the internet.

Watts called Clearview's actions "abhorrent" and said Corsight AI did not sell to China, Russia or Myanmar because of "human rights and ethics".

"What we want to do is promote facial recognition as a force for good," he said.

He said Corsight had hired Tony Porter, the United Kingdom's former surveillance camera commissioner, as chief privacy officer, and that the software would blur or delete faces deemed not of interest within seconds.

Corsight AI was valued at about $55 million in a recent funding round, Watts said, estimating this would grow to $250 million by year's end and noting the technology's potential.

"Why do I need a credit card? I don't, I've got a face," he said. "The consumer will very, very quickly and readily adopt facial recognition because it's easy."

- Controversial history -

Surveillance technology developed in Israel has a chequered history.

The NSO Group, founded by Israeli military intelligence veterans, makes the Pegasus software that can spy on mobile phones.

US authorities blacklisted NSO in November, and Facebook and Apple have sued the company after the spyware was discovered on devices belonging to dissidents and journalists.

NSO says Pegasus meets the Israeli defence ministry's export rules.

Israeli facial recognition software, too, has encountered criticism.

In November, former Israeli soldiers revealed they had photographed thousands of Palestinians to build a database for a sweeping facial recognition surveillance programme in the West Bank city of Hebron.

In 2020, Microsoft divested from Israeli facial recognition firm AnyVision, now renamed Oosto, over the company's alleged involvement in surveilling Palestinians.

Oosto works with law enforcement agencies and private companies worldwide, and its software is used at checkpoints where Palestinian labourers cross into Israel.

Corsight CEO Watts said his company has "a number of contracts in Israel -- governmental contracts and agencies", but declined to elaborate, citing non-disclosure agreements.

- 'Control' -

Palestinian digital rights activist Nadim Nashif said the use of facial recognition technology entrenched Israel's "control" over Palestinians and added to a "domination" of physical spaces.

But Tirza praised its use at checkpoints, saying the main aim was to reduce "friction" between soldiers and residents.

Tirza was a colonel in the Israeli military in 2002 when he was tasked with designing a barrier in response to attacks during the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising.

Part towering concrete slabs, part fence, it now snakes for more than 500 kilometres (310 miles) along the Israel-West Bank border.

Palestinians say the barrier's construction grabbed nearly 10 percent of the West Bank, and the International Court of Justice ruled it illegal.

But Tirza said it also reshaped the conflict.

Until it was built, "a lot of people thought you cannot separate" Israelis and Palestinians, he said.

Tirza said he expected to have the body camera finished within a year, and hopes to market it to US and Mexican law enforcement -- though he acknowledged some reluctance.

"They were very interested, but everyone says we have to check the laws" to see whether it goes too far, he said.

"But I believe it is not too far."

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Archeologists discover 2 giant sphinxes at the lost 'Temple of a Million Years' built by a great pharaoh in Egypt 3,300 years ago

Alia Shoaib
Sat, January 22, 2022

Two large sphinx statues were discovered during the restoration of a temple in Luxor, Egypt.Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities

Archeologists found two large sphinx statues during the restoration of a temple in Luxor, Egypt.

The "Temple of Millions of Years" was a vast funerary temple of King Amenhotep III, who ruled about 3,300 years ago.

The limestone statues measured around 26 feet in length and depict the Pharoah in the form of a sphinx.

Archeologists discovered two colossal sphinx statues while restoring the ancient Egyptian funerary temple of King Amenhotep III, according to the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.

King Amenhotep III was a pharaoh who ruled Egypt around 3,300 years ago when it was rich in gold and oversaw a peaceful period of prosperity and growing international power.

The limestone statues measure around 26 feet in length and depict King Amenhotep III in the form of a sphinx – a mythological creature with a lion's body and a human head – wearing a mongoose headdress, a royal beard, and a wide necklace, the ministry said.

An Egyptian-German archeological mission found the statues half-submerged in water inside the Luxor temple, known as the "Temple of Millions of Years."

The team also found three black granite busts of the goddess Sekhmet, a goddess of war also associated with healing which is often depicted as a part lion.

Remains of the walls and columns were decorated with inscriptions of ceremonial and ritual scenes, the ministry said.

A granite bust of the goddess Sekhmet, a goddess of war also associated with healing who is often depicted as part lion.Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities

Inscriptions on the remains of a wall or column.Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities

Dr. Horig Sorosian, head of the Egyptian-German mission, said in a statement that the large sphinxes indicated the location of a procession road used to celebrate festivals.

After the statues underwent cleaning and restoration, archeologists found an inscription that said "the beloved of the god Amun-Re" across the sphinx's chest, referring to the sun god often depicted as a sphinx.

The vast funerary temple, built close to the Nile river by King Amenhotep III, was destroyed by an earthquake that swept Ancient Egypt.

The mortuary temple's main purpose was as a place for offerings for Amenhotep III for after his death and movement into the afterlife.

The project to restore the temple and the Colossi of Memnon, two massive stone statues of the pharaoh, began in 1998 under the supervision of the Egyptian tourism ministry, it said in a statement.

DAME Emma Thompson confronts nudity and ageing in Sundance sex worker comedy

'Good Luck To You, Leo Grande' sees British actress Emma Thompson

tackle several intimate nude scenes (AFP/JUSTIN TALLIS)

Sat, January 22, 2022, 8:31 PM·2 min read

Emma Thompson's naked scene in her new film about an older woman hiring a sex worker was "probably the hardest thing I've ever had to do," she told the Sundance film festival Saturday.

The Oscar-winning actress, 62, stars in "Good Luck To You, Leo Grande" as a repressed former schoolteacher who pays a handsome male escort for the sexual adventures she regrets having shunned as a younger woman.

The heartfelt comedy set almost entirely in a hotel room addresses the ethics of sex work and taboos surrounding motherhood and ageing -- and sees Thompson tackle several intimate and nude scenes.

The actors and director rehearsed "entirely nude" and played games that involved discussing their bodies on the scaled-down set in order to build trust.

Still, "it's very challenging to be nude at 62," said Thompson.

"I don't think I could've done it before the age that I am," she told an online panel.

"And yet, of course the age that I am makes it extremely challenging because we aren't used to seeing untreated bodies on the screen."

In addition to sexual scenes with Daryl McCormack, 29, Thompson's character disrobes before a mirror and looks at her body "in a completely relaxed, un-judgmental way."

"I have never done that... She doesn't alter herself, lift herself up, suck her stomach in, turn around or try to alter what she sees," said Thompson.

Despite trusting the filmmakers, Thompson said she "still found it fantastically hard to do."

"Probably the hardest thing I've ever had to do really -- and that's interesting in itself."

"That tells the whole story of my life as a woman surrounded by impossible demands and images of bodies," she said.

"That's the great tragedy of the female body in the 20th and 21st centuries. And it's a narrative that we absolutely have to change."

Earlier Saturday at Sundance, new docuseries "We Need to Talk About Cosby" premiered.

It focusses on the gulf between Bill Cosby's decades-long status as "America's dad" and long-simmering allegations of serial sexual assault.

Cosby was found guilty of drugging and sexually assaulting a woman, but his conviction was overturned on a technicality last year and he is currently free.

The series, described by The Hollywood Reporter as a "provocative and important" attempt to spark conversation about the scandal, airs on US network Showtime from January 30.

Also premiering at Sundance on Saturday was "Sharp Stick," the first new film in over a decade from "Girls" creator Lena Dunham.

The Sundance festival runs until January 30.

amz/bfm

Study links depression symptoms with believing COVID-19 vaccine misinformation

A new study has found links between belief in inaccurate information about the COVID-19 vaccines and depression.

File photo by Debbie Hill/UPI | License Photo

Jan. 21 (UPI) -- People who experience symptoms of depression may be more susceptible to online misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines, a study published Friday by JAMA Network Open found.

Among more than 15,000 adults age 18 years and older surveyed, those who reported symptoms of major depressive disorder were more than twice as likely to endorse at least one vaccine-related statement that included misinformation, the data showed

Respondents who endorsed at least one statement of vaccine misinformation were 60% less likely to be vaccinated and nearly three times more likely to describe themselves as resistant to getting vaccinated, the researchers said.

"Depression appears to make people more susceptible to absorbing misinformation, at least about the COVID vaccine," study co-author Dr. Roy Perlis told UPI via email.

RELATED CDC: Depression, anxiety continue rise in U.S. due to COVID-19 pandemic

The findings are "just another reminder that we need to do better in ensuring people can get treatment if they need it," said Perlis, director of the Center for Quantitative Health at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

Major depressive disorder, or depression, is defined as having at least two weeks of low mood, low self-esteem and loss of interest in daily activities, according to the National Institute of Mental Health.

The percentage of adults reporting symptoms of depressive disorders in the United States rose by 17% in 2020-21, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates.

Misinformation, sometimes called "fake news," refers to any claims or depictions that are inaccurate, according to the American Psychological Association.

In this study, Perlis and his colleagues asked respondents to rate their level of agreement with statements of vaccine-related misinformation such as, "The COVID-19 vaccines will alter people's DNA" or "The COVID-19 vaccines contain microchips that could track people."

Other misinformation examples used in the survey included, "The COVID-19 vaccines contain the lung tissue of aborted fetuses" and "The COVID-19 vaccines can cause infertility, making it more difficult to get pregnant," the researchers said.

RELATED Study: 'Bots' primary source of misinformation on COVID-19 on Facebook

Among the 15,464 people surveyed, 27% had moderate or severe depressive symptoms and 19% endorsed at least one of the misinformation statements provided by the researchers, the data showed.

"People who are depressed can sometimes see the world with dark- rather than rose-colored glasses -- that is, they can have a bias toward paying attention to negative over positive information," Perlis said.

"So, depression can put a finger on the scale, changing how people make decisions about vaccination," he said.

However, just because someone believes vaccine-related misinformation does not mean they have a mental illness, according to Perlis, and experts believe misinformation is a threat to anyone, not just those who may be struggling with depressive symptoms.

"We are constantly exposed to misinformation online, particularly on social media, and elsewhere," John W. Ayers, co-founder of the Center for Data Driven Health at the Qualcomm Institute at the University of California, San Diego, told UPI in a phone interview.

"Misinformation existed before the pandemic, so this is not a new problem, and it is important that we see it as a threat to all of us, not just certain people," said Ayers, who has researched the topic.

French physicists create bubble that takes more than a year to pop

A team of physicists from France's University of Lille said they used glycerol to create a gas bubble that lasted for 465 days before popping.

Photo courtesy of Aymeric Roux, Alexis Duchesne and Michael Baudoin/University of Lille

Jan. 21 (UPI) -- A team of French physicists announced they blew a bubble that lasted for 465 days before popping.

The University of Lille team, whose findings were published in the journal Physical Review Fluids, said their research into soap bubbles found they tend to pop after just a few moments due to the "gravity-induced drainage and/or the evaporation of the liquid" inside the soap sphere.

The team, Aymeric Roux, Alexis Duchesne and Michael Baudoin, studied typical "fragile and ephemeral" soap bubbles and gas marbles, a type of bubble made from a liquid solution that contains plastic beads.

The researchers said they analyzed water-based gas marbles and gas marbles made with a solution of water and glycerol, a compound commonly used in various foods and medicines.

The gas marbles containing glycerol displayed particular longevity, with one of the bubbles lasting for a total 465 days before bursting. The team said the gas marble's lifespan is believed to be a new world record.

The researchers said the long-lasting bubbles they created during their project could be used to create stable foams.