Hundreds gather in Dearborn to mark Palestinian expulsion, protest killing of journalist


Miriam Marini, Detroit Free Press
Mon, May 16, 2022, 

Hundreds gathered in Dearborn for a demonstration May 15, 2022 to commemorate the 74th anniversary of the mass expulsion of Palestinians from the homes by Israeli forces. The anniversary of the expulsion of Palestinians came days after famed Palestinian Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was killed while covering an Israeli raid.

Hundreds gathered at the Ford Community and Performing Arts Center in Dearborn to commemorate the 74th anniversary of the expulsion of thousands from their homes in Palestine.

The Nakba, which translates to "catastrophe" in Arabic, refers to the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in 1948. This year's anniversary came days after well-known Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh with Al Jazeera was killed while covering an Israeli army raid on the Jenin refugee camp.

In Dearborn, political and religious leaders took to the microphone before hundreds of attendees, including generations of displaced Palestinians impacted by the displacement.


"Unfortunately, it feels like we convene more often than ever now, condemning killing or assassination or murder, because what happened in Palestine was certainly an assassination," said Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud, referring to the killing of Abu Akleh, who was 51 at the time of her death. "I am proud to be standing with all of you, whether we have a stage or whether we don't, we will always continue to stand strong with Palestine until we have a free Palestine with the right to self-determination."

Hundreds gathered in Dearborn for a demonstration on Sunday, May 15, 2022, to commemorate the 74th anniversary of the mass expulsion of Palestinians from their homes by Israeli forces. The anniversary of the expulsion of Palestinians came days after famed Palestinian Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was killed while covering an Israeli raid..More

In a statement Wednesday, Qatar-based news organization Al Jazeera said Israeli occupation forces assassinated Abu Akleh. An initial investigation into the shooting by the Israeli army found that it was unclear whether Abu Akleh was killed by Israeli fire, but multiple eyewitness accounts from other journalists at the scene said the shooting didn't come from the Palestinian side.

Abu Akleh was one of the most prominent and recognizable names in Arab journalism. She is the 55th Palestinian member of the press to be killed by the Israeli army while performing their job since 2000, according to Al Jazeera.

Calls for an independent investigation into the shooting have echoed nationally and globally, including from journalism protection groups and the White House. Israel receives $3.8 billion in military aid from the United States, according to The New York Times.

A thorough and cooperative investigation into the shooting is the only feasible pathway forward, said Rabbi Asher Lopatin, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council/American Jewish Committee, in metro Detroit.

"The truth is, the only way we're going to get to a better place and to peace is by working together by shared society," Lopatin told the Free Press Sunday evening. "Through the process of Israel and Palestinians working together, I think we'll come to a better place and hopefully really learn how to do these kinds of things. Whoever killed her, whichever side killed her, by accident or whatever it was, won't happen again. I really believe from tragedy can come something better, some light if we work together."

Among those calling for an objective investigation is U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who represents Michigan's 13th Congressional District and is of Palestinian descent.

"It doesn't matter, until the end of the day, even if I'm the only one that votes against the $3.8 billion of unconditional aid," Tlaib said. "This is our money, our money that is putting tethers on children in Jerusalem, that is caging children and detaining them, that is killing, not only (Abu Akleh), but people before her.

"The fact of the matter is, we cannot be silent because we have the facts on our hands...I'm not afraid, I'd rather lose an election than turn my back to this kind of violence and oppression."

Sunday's demonstration was one of many taking place nationwide in remembrance of the Nakba and Abu Akleh. A scholarship fund dedicated to Abu Akleh's legacy and to inspire young aspiring journalism students, particularly Palestinian women, has been established.

Contact Miriam Marini: mmarini@freepress.com

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Hundreds commemorate Palestinian expulsion amid grief for journalist

How media reports of 'clashes' mislead Americans about Israeli-Palestinian violence


Maha Nassar, Associate Professor in the School of Middle Eastern and North African Studies, University of Arizona

THE CONVERSATION
Mon, May 16, 2022, 

When does a 'clash' become an 'assault'? AP Photo/Maya Levin

Israeli police attacked mourners carrying the coffin of slain Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh on May 13, 2022, beating pallbearers with batons and kicking them when they fell to the ground.

Yet those who skimmed the headlines of initial reports from several U.S. media outlets may have been left with a different impression of what happened.

“Israeli Police Clash with Mourners at Funeral Procession,” read the headline of MSNBC’s online report. The Wall Street Journal had a similar headline on its story: “Israeli Forces, Palestinians Clash in West Bank before Funeral of Journalist.”

Fox News began the text of its article with “Clashes erupted Friday in Jerusalem as mourners attended the burial of veteran American Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh who was shot dead Friday when covering a raid in the West Bank city of Jenin.”

There is no mention in the headlines of these articles about who instigated the violence, nor any hint of the power imbalance between a heavily armed Israeli police force and what appeared to be unarmed Palestinian civilians.

Such language and omissions are common in the reporting of violence conducted by Israel’s police or military. Similar headlines followed an incident in April in which Israeli police attacked worshippers at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Then, too, police attacks on worshippers – in which as many as 152 Palestinians were injured by rubber bullets and batons – were widely described as “clashes.”

And headlines matter – many Americans do not read past them when consuming news or sharing articles online.
Neutral terms aren’t always neutral

The use of a word like “clashes” might seem to make sense in a topic as contentious as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in which violent acts are perpetrated by both sides.

But as a scholar of Palestinian history and an analyst of U.S. media coverage of this topic, I believe using neutral terms such as “clashes” to describe Israeli police and military attacks on Palestinian civilians is misleading. It overlooks instances in which Israeli forces instigate violence against Palestinians who pose no threat to them. It also often gives more weight to official Israeli narratives than to Palestinian ones.

U.S. media have long been accused of misleading their audience when it comes to violence committed against Palestinians. A 2021 study from MIT of 50 years of New York Times coverage of the conflict found “a disproportionate use of the passive voice to refer to negative or violent action perpetrated towards Palestinians.”

Using the passive voice – for example, reporting that “Palestinians were killed in clashes” rather than “Israeli forces killed Palestinians” – is language that helps shield Israel from scrutiny. It also obscures the reason so many Palestinians would be angry at Israel.

It’s not just The New York Times. A 2019 analysis by data researchers in Canada of more than 100,000 headlines from 50 years of U.S. coverage across five newspapers concluded that “the U.S. mainstream media’s coverage of the conflict favors Israel in terms of both the sheer quantity of stories covered, and by providing more opportunities to the Israelis to amplify their point of view.”

That 2019 study also found that words associated with violence, including “clash” and “clashes,” were more likely to be used in stories about Palestinians than Israelis.
Competing narratives

One problem with using “clash” is that it obscures incidents in which Israeli police and security forces attack Palestinians who pose no threat to them.

Amnesty International, a human rights advocacy group, described the recent incident at the Al-Aqsa Mosque as one in which Israeli police “brutally attacked worshippers in and around the mosque and used violence that amounts to torture and other ill-treatment to break up gatherings.”

The word “clashes” does not convey this reality.

Using “clashes” also gives more credibility to the Israeli government version of the story than the Palestinian one. Israeli officials often accuse Palestinians of instigating violence, claiming that soldiers and police had to use lethal force to stave off Palestinian attacks. And that’s how these events are usually reported.

But Israeli human rights group B'Tselem’s database on Israeli and Palestinian fatalities shows that most of the roughly 10,000 Palestinians killed by Israel since 2000 did not “participate in hostilities” at the time they were killed.

We saw this attempt to shift the blame to Palestinians for Israeli violence in the killing of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. According to her colleagues at the scene of her death, an Israeli military sniper deliberately shot and killed the veteran journalist with a live bullet to her right temple, even though she was wearing a “PRESS” flak jacket and helmet. One or more snipers also shot at Abu Akleh’s colleagues as they tried to rescue her, according to eyewitness accounts.

At first, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said that “armed Palestinians shot in an inaccurate, indiscriminate and uncontrolled manner” at the time of her killing – implying that Palestinians could have shot Abu Akleh. Then, as evidence mounted disproving this account, Israeli officials changed course, saying that the source of the gunfire “cannot yet be determined.”

A mural of slain Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. AP Photo/Adel Hana

The New York Times initially reported that Abu Akleh “was shot as clashes between the Israeli military and Palestinian gunmen took place in the city.” Further down in the same story, we read that Palestinian journalist Ali Samudi, who was wounded in the same attack, said, “There were no armed Palestinians or resistance or even civilians in the area.” Yet this perspective is missing from the headline and opening paragraphs of the story.

A few days later, an analysis of available video footage by investigative journalism outlet Bellingcat concluded that the evidence “appears to support” eyewitnesses who said no militant activity was taking place and that the gunfire came from Israeli military snipers.

The New York Times has not updated or corrected its original story to reflect this new evidence.

It provides an example of why the use of “clash” has been widely criticized by Palestinian and Arab journalists. Indeed, the Arab and Middle Eastern Journalist Association in 2021 issued guidance for journalists, urging that they “avoid the word ‘clashes’ in favor of a more precise description.”
An incomplete picture

There is another problem with “clashes.” Limiting media attention to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict only when “clashes erupt” gives Western readers and viewers an incomplete picture. It ignores what B’Tselem describes as the “daily routine of overt or implicit state violence” that Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories face.

Without understanding the daily violence that Palestinians experience – as documented by groups such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International – it is harder for news consumers to fully comprehend why “clashes” take place in the first place.

But the way people get their news is changing, and with it so are Americans’ views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This is especially true among younger Americans, who are less likely to receive their news from mainstream outlets.

Recent polls show that younger Americans generally sympathize with Palestinians more than older Americans. That shift holds among younger Jewish Americans and younger evangelicals, two communities that have traditionally expressed strong pro-Israel sentiments.

U.S. journalists themselves are also working to change how outlets cover Israeli violence. Last year several of them – including reporters from The Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post and ABC News – issued an open letter calling on fellow journalists “to tell the full, contextualized truth without fear or favor, to recognize that obfuscating Israel’s oppression of Palestinians fails this industry’s own objectivity standards.” So far, over 500 journalists have signed on.

Accurate language in the reporting of Israeli-Palestinian violence is not only a concern for journalists’ credibility – it would also provide U.S. news consumers with a deeper understanding of the conditions on the ground and the deadly consequences.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Maha Nassar, University of Arizona.

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Maha Nassar is a 2022 Palestinian Non-Resident Fellow at the Foundation for Middle East Peace.

Bankers brush off concerns about Brazil's polarized election


Tue, May 17, 2022
By Tatiana Bautzer

NEW YORK, May 17 (Reuters) - On one side is a president questioning the integrity of the electoral system. On the other, a challenger warning he could roll back the country's biggest privatization in decades.

But investment bankers are sanguine about the impact of Brazil's presidential election this year on investor appetite for upcoming deals.

They say investor attention is focused on global risks such as higher U.S. interest rates and inflation or the war in Ukraine, executives say, making a presidential contest between two familiar faces seem like a manageable concern.

"Given the global outlook, Brazil represents an attractive opportunity for investors as a global commodity provider, likely overriding any potential short term political uncertainty," said Max Ritter, managing director at Goldman Sachs & Co responsible for Latin America.

Former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has stuck to proven left-wing rhetoric while riding a healthy lead in the polls. However, bankers see his choice of centrist former Sao Paulo Governor Geraldo Alckmin as a nod toward the market-friendly policies he adopted on taking office in 2003.

Ricardo Lacerda, founder and CEO of Brazilian investment bank BR Partners, acknowledged the risk that far-right President Jair Bolsonaro and his supporters could challenge the election result, after casting doubts on Brazil's electronic voting system.

But he said interest in mergers and acquisitions remains strong in Brazil, even as appetite for new share offerings has waned.

"Some investors are looking at Brazil again after the sharp interest rates hikes boosted the real," Lacerda said.

The head of Latin America at Citigroup, Eduardo Cruz, said there may be a window for renewed share issues by the end of the year, although he expects mostly listed companies selling new stock rather than a new wave of initial public offerings.

Even the bankers on a deal publicly criticized by Lula say there is little sign of cold feet.

Bolsonaro's government is racing to privatize state power company Centrais Eletricas Brasileiras SA, or Eletrobras, with a share sale diluting the government's stake and raising more than $6 billion before the October election.

Lula has warned "serious business leaders" to steer clear of the deal, telling supporters at a rally that buyers taking part in privatizations under Bolsonaro "will have to talk to us."

Three bankers involved in the Eletrobras deal, who requested anonymity to speak freely, said they continue to see strong interest in Eletrobras among foreign investors. They called the comments from Lula overheated campaign rhetoric.

"There are not many assets available worldwide with a strong upside potential as Eletrobras after the privatization", one of them said. (Reporting by Tatiana Bautzer; Editing by Brad Haynes and Stephen Coates)

How the new Latin America left is seeking a greener future



Mon, May 16, 2022
By David Alire Garcia

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Colombia's presidential front-runner Gustavo Petro wants, if he wins later this month, to stop all new oil exploration and move his country to a greener future.

That lines him up with Chile's recently-elected President Gabriel Boric, a Millennial who has also pledged to take a firm stance on tackling climate change.

As Latin America sees a resurgent 'pink tide' - with most of the region set to be headed by leftists by the end of the year - the greener hue of these newer leaders contrasts with the old guard "resource nationalists," who have typically seen tight state control of energy and metals as the best path to economic progress and self-determination.

The wild card? Brazil's Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. The former president and front-runner in his country's October election has long been identified with support of oil development - but he is also eager to contrast himself with far-right incumbent and climate skeptic President Jair Bolsonaro.

Colombian voters will vote on May 29 in a first-round presidential election where Petro, 62, aims to catapult the left to its first victory in decades. The ex-guerrilla turned politician has tapped environmental activist and rising progressive star Francia Marquez to be his running mate.

Marquez, who would be Colombia's first Afro-Colombian vice president, stressed in an interview that she and Petro would break not only with the country's conservatives, who have long embraced oil and coal, but also with fellow regional leftists like Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, an unapologetic backer of fossil fuels.

"The point is that both the left and the right are fomenting a policy of extractivism when humanity faces the challenge today of transitioning from this extractivist economy to a sustainable economy," Marquez, 40, told Reuters. "Life isn't possible without our planet."

Petro has vowed to freeze new oil and gas exploration, protect water resources, and provide more security for environmental defenders in Colombia, the world's most dangerous country for such activists.

In Chile, meanwhile, a new law is set to bind the country to achieving carbon neutrality by 2050. Companies will have to adapt to new "borders" put in place to limit emissions and pollution, Boric's environment minister told Reuters on Friday.

LULA 2.0

In Brazil, the region's largest economy, Lula often hearkens back to the prosperity that defined his previous 2003-2011 stint in power. Back then, a commodities super-cycle fueled by surging Chinese demand for steel, soybeans and other goods filled government coffers.

Lula also presided over state-run Petrobras' discovery of some 50 billion barrels of crude in offshore deposits, a tantalizing find that was seen as a potential gamechanger for alleviating poverty.

In recent interviews, the 76-year-old has brushed off suggestions he follow Petro's lead and shun potentially lucrative oil projects.

Even so, Senator Humberto Costa, a close Lula ally, sees a faster green energy transition in Brazil if the left regains power, including more solar, wind and biomass generation.

"I think the newest thing would be environmental and energy concerns," he told Reuters, dubbing them "more urgent" than during Lula's earlier government.

The lawmaker also said Lula would permit only "self-sustaining development" in the Amazon rainforest, unlike Bolsonaro.

For traditional Latin American leftist leaders, control and use of resources is bound up with a legacy of exploitation dating back to colonial times - and their policies center on keeping profit-maximizing foreign and private hands away from their natural riches.

Lopez Obrador last month won congressional support to nationalize the exploitation of lithium, a crucial battery metal that Mexico does not yet produce. The Mexican leader has since said he wants to join Chile, Argentina and Bolivia to advance likeminded development.

He has also sought to strengthen state oil firm Pemex and national electricity company CFE's dominance in their respective sectors, canceling competitive oil and renewable power auctions, and prioritizing the dispatch of power from CFE plants, even though they overwhelmingly burn fossil fuels.

In Bolivia, one of the region's poorest countries, the need to spur development by exploiting gas fields has long clashed with environmental concerns. Current socialist President Luis Arce is also keen to make the most of his country's natural resources - including gas and lithium - but in a break from the resource nationalists he has indicated he is open to bringing in outside help.

In the campaign homestretch in Colombia, Marquez is keen to avoid unrealistic expectations for Petro's green agenda.

"Will this change happen overnight? No, it won't happen in four years," she said. "But we need the political will to say, 'Yes, we must begin the transition."

(Reporting by David Alire Garcia in Mexico City; Additional reporting by Gabriel Araujo in Sao Paulo; Editing by Christian Plumb and Rosalba O'Brien)

Analysis-White House weighs inflation vs. farmers in new biofuel mandates



Mon, May 16, 2022
By Jarrett Renshaw and Stephanie Kelly

(Reuters) - The White House is expected to announce in coming weeks the amount of biofuels like corn-based ethanol that U.S. refiners must blend into their fuel this year, a decision that will force it to weigh taming consumer inflation against supporting the nation's farmers.

How the administration balances the competing priorities could play a role in November's midterm elections, as high consumer prices pose a political threat to President Joe Biden's Democratic party and Farm Belt voters remain a crucial constituency.

The White House National Economic Council, led by Brian Deese, is pouring over numbers to gauge whether lowering blending mandates for ethanol and renewable diesel will help blunt rising food and fuel prices, according to two sources familiar with the process.

Cutting mandates for ethanol and advanced biofuels like biodiesel could theoretically cut food costs by reducing demand for corn, soy and other staple crops that have become more scarce since Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Trimming the mandates could also potentially take pressure off pump prices by reducing blending compliance costs for some oil refiners.

But doing so would anger farmers and the biofuels industry that insist the annual blending mandates are critical to supporting their livelihoods.

White House officials are meeting with lobbying groups representing oil and consumer goods giants, including the Food Manufacturing Coalition, American Bakers Association, American Petroleum Institute and Renewable Fuels Association, as they weigh the possible changes.

"I have never in the history of the program seen such a confluence of issues potentially impacting the outcome. If there was a perfect storm, this is it," said Michael McAdams, president of the Advanced Biofuels Association.

The Environmental Protection Agency sent its proposal on biofuel volume mandates for the years 2020 through 2022 to the White House for final review in late April. The proposal would retroactively lower the mandate for 2020 and 2021 but to boost it back up again for 2022, three sources told Reuters. The EPA declined to comment.

ETHANOL AND HIGH GAS PRICES

The U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard, enacted in 2005, requires refiners to blend biofuels like ethanol into the fuel pool or buy credits from refiners who do. The program has been an economic boon for states like Iowa and Nebraska, but smaller refiners who have not invested in blending facilities say the cost of buying credits threatens their plants.

U.S. credits tied to ethanol are trading at over $1.60 each, the highest since August, while biomass-based credits are over $1.80 each, near the highest since June. The ethanol credits, which traded as low as 8 cents apiece in early 2020, have remained at historically higher levels since last year.

Economists say some portion of the cost of the credits is passed on to consumers, resulting in higher pump prices. Some refiners and their union backers are encouraging the White House to lower the ethanol mandate below 15 billion gallons in 2022 to drive the credit costs down.

Without the cost of compliance credits, however, adding ethanol to the nation's fuel pool can actually reduce pump prices, by expanding the overall volume of available fuel using a substance cheaper than straight gasoline.

The White House earlier this year tapped into that dynamic by announcing it was lifting a ban on summer sales of higher ethanol blends of gasoline, called E15.

FOOD VS FUEL

Corn-based ethanol accounts for the overwhelming majority of blending under the RFS. In 2022, the EPA proposal would require refiners to blend 15 billion gallons of ethanol and 5.77 billion gallons of advanced biofuels.

In recent years, while ethanol demand has remained stagnant, demand for advanced biofuels like renewable diesel and sustainable aviation fuel has surged as states like California and Oregon adopt their own renewable fuel mandates. That has swollen demand for oilseeds like soybeans and canola that serve as biofuel feedstocks and compete with other food crops for finite planting area.

The edible oils are used in everything from cakes, chocolate and frying fats to cosmetics, soap and cleaning products.

Robb MacKie, president of the American Bakers Association, which includes companies like Kroger Co and Tasty Baking Company, first raised concerns about supply and prices for these products with the EPA last year, asking that blending levels be rolled back to 2020 levels.

Then Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February made the problem worse.

Russia and Ukraine account for nearly a third of global wheat and barley production, and two-thirds of the world's exports of sunflower oil used for cooking. Also, Indonesia recently banned exports of palm oil, cutting off more than half of the global supply.

Soybean futures have risen over 20% so far this year to more than $16 per bushel, while corn futures have gained about 30% to over $7.90 a bushel.

"In light of what we are experiencing, the alarm bells are ringing," MacKie said.

(Reporting By Jarrett Renshaw and Stephanie Kelly; Editing by Heather Timmons, Richard Valdmanis and Marguerita Choy)

SEE LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for BIOFUEL 

Western Architecture is Making India's Heatwaves Worse

Ciara Nugent
Mon, May 16, 2022, 

[India RF: Residences]
Arched windows, reflecting on floor surface, likely at old palace in Jaipur, India. 

The design helps keep heat out. 

Credit - Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images

Benny Kuriakose remembers when his father built the first house in his village in the southern Indian state of Kerala with a concrete roof. It was 1968, and the family was proud to use the material, he says, which was becoming a “status symbol” among villagers: the new home resembled the modern buildings cropping up in Indian cities, which in turn resembled those in images of Western cities.

But inside, the house was sweltering. The solid concrete absorbed heat throughout the day and radiated it inside at night. Meanwhile, neighboring thatch-roofed houses stayed cool: the air trapped between gaps in the thatch was a poor conductor of heat.

The Kuriakoses’ experience was an early taste of a phenomenon that, over the next few decades, spread across most of India’s big cities. As a more standardized international approach to building design emerged, many Indian architects abandoned the vernacular traditions that had been developed over thousands of years to cope with the weather extremes of different regions. The earthen walls and shady verandas of the humid south, and the thick insulating walls and intricate window shades of the hot dry northwest, were swapped for a boxy modern style. Today, buildings in downtown Bangalore often look like those in Ahmedabad, in the north, or Chennai, in the east—or those in Cincinnati, Ohio, or Manchester, England.

“In most cities, people have blindly followed the Western model,” says Kuriakose, an architect now based in Chennai. “There was no attempt to look at the local climate. There was no attempt to look at the materials which are available.”

A version of this story first appeared in the Climate is Everything newsletter. To sign up, click here.

In the climate change era, that uniformity is looking like a mistake. Large parts of India have been stifled by a spring heatwave since April, with temperatures lingering close to 110°F for weeks in some places, and topping 120°F in Delhi this week, making it dangerous to go to work or school—all weeks before the official start of summer. Spiking energy demand for cooling has helped trigger daily blackouts in cities, and what AC units are running are belching hot air into streets, worsening the urban heat island effect. As such heatwaves become increasingly common and long-lasting, experts say India’s modern building stock will make it harder for Indians to adapt.

Environmentalists are calling for a fundamental rethink of how India builds its cities. There are some positive signs. A growing number of sustainability-minded architects are reviving vernacular approaches. And in February the Indian government pledged to revise urban planning guidelines and investments to train planners to better design cities. Progress is slow, though, says Aromar Revi, director of the Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS), a research-focused university. “We need to essentially affect the entire fabric of our cities, from planning to land use, to building, to transportation systems,” he says. “We are only at the start of that conversation.”

Western-style skyscrapers in Kolkata, India, April 3, 2022.

Indranil Aditya/NurPhoto—Getty Images

How traditional architecture lost ground in Indian cities

The architecture of Indian cities began to change rapidly in the 1990s, when the country transitioned to a market-based economy. As construction boomed, Western or globalized styles became the norm. The shift was partly aesthetic; developers favored the glassy skyscrapers and straight lines deemed prestigious in the U.S. or Europe, and young architects brought home ideas they learned while studying abroad. Economic considerations also played a role. As land became more expensive in cities, there was pressure to expand floorspace by eliminating thick walls and courtyards. And it was faster and easier to throw up tall structures using steel and concrete, rather than use traditional earth blocks which are suited to lower-rise structures.

The consequence of that cookie-cutter approach was to make buildings less resilient to India’s high temperatures. The impact of that once seemed minimal. It could easily be offset by electric fans and air conditioning, and the energy costs of cooling were not developers’ problems once they sold their buildings. “Where a home [built in the vernacular style] needs around 20 to 40 kilowatt hours per meter squared of energy for cooling, today some commercial places need 15 times that,” says Yatin Pandya, an architect based in Ahmedabad. When AC units are turned on to help people sleep at night, they release heat into the streets, which can increase the local temperature by around 2°F according to U.S.-based studies. During the day, depending on their orientation, glassy facades can reflect sunlight onto footpaths. “You’re creating [problems] in every direction.”

The shift away from climate-specific architecture hasn’t only affected offices and luxury flats, whose owners can afford to cool them. To maximize urban space and budgets, a massive government housing program launched in 2015 has relied largely on concrete frames and flat roofs, which absorb more heat throughout the day than sloped roofs. “We’re building hot houses. In certain parts of the year, they will require cooling to be habitable,” says Chandra Bhushan, a Delhi-based environmental policy expert. He estimates that roughly 90% of the buildings under construction today are in a modern style that pays little attention to a region’s climate—locking in increased heat risk for decades to come.

Even small artisanal construction crews, which are responsible for the majority of homes in India, have leaned into more modern, standardized styles, says Revi, the IIHS director. These teams rarely have a trained architect or designer. “So they build what they see,” he says. “They might build traditional elements into their village houses, but when they come to the city, they’re driven by the imperatives of the city, the imaginaries of the city. And there the international style is the aspiration.”

Similar shifts have happened in developing countries all over the world, with cities from the Middle East to Latin America taking on the “copy and paste texture of globalized architecture,” says Sandra Piesik, a Netherlands-based architect and author of Habitat: Vernacular Architecture for a Changing Planet. As the global construction industry embraced concrete and steel, local materials, designs, and technologies became displaced—with lasting consequences. “Some of these traditional methods didn’t undergo the technological revolution that they needed,” to make them more durable and easier to use on a massive urban scale, Piesek says. “We focused instead on [perfecting] the use of concrete and steel.”
A climate comeback for vernacular architecture

A movement to revive more regionally-specific styles of architecture—and combine them with modern technologies—is well underway in India. Over the last decade, thousands of architects, particularly in the experimental township Auroville on the east coast of Tamil Nadu state, have promoted the use of earth walls and roofs; earth absorbs heat and humidity, and it can now be used to build larger and more complex structures thanks to the development of more stable compressed blocks. In the dry hot northern city of Ahmedabad, which has suffered some of the country’s deadliest heatwaves in recent decades, Pandya’s firm Footprints E.A.R.T.H., uses careful orientation and overhanging roofs and walls to shade its buildings from heat, and central courtyards for ventilation.

“We are course-correcting now,” says Bangalore-based architect Chitra Vishwanath, who built her own home and hundreds of other buildings using earth. Larger universities are teaching students to build in a climate-specific way, she says, while nonprofits and artisanal construction firms are running workshops teaching this approach to architects and small-scale builders. “Younger architects who are graduating today are extremely sensitive to climate,” Vishwanath adds. “I would say in another 5, 10 years westernized style buildings won’t be built so much.”

Wider adoption of climate-sensitive architecture would greatly reduce the energy needed to cool buildings, Vishwanath says. That could be crucial for India in the coming years. While only around 8% of Indians had air conditioning in their homes in 2018, as more people enter the middle class and can afford to buy their first unit, that figure is expected to climb to 40% by 2038, according to the government’s 2019 National Cooling Plan. Health experts say AC can no longer be considered a “luxury” in India’s increasingly brutal climate, and that expanding use for low-income households is essential to both saving lives and supporting India’s economic development. But it will come at a high cost in terms of India’s greenhouse gas emissions—unless cleaner cooling technologies can be developed and rolled out rapidly.

Increasing the use of traditional materials in India’s sprawling construction sector would also make a dent in the country’s emissions. Vernacular architecture tends to use more natural, locally-sourced substances like earth or timber, rather than concrete and steel, which are created through carbon-intensive industrial processes and transported from thousands of miles away. A 2020 paper published by Indian researchers in the International Journal of Architecture found that the production of vernacular materials required between 0.11 MJ and 18 MJ of energy per kilo, compared to 2.6 MJ to 360 MJ per kilo for modern materials.

It wouldn’t be feasible to replace all the modern materials used in India’s buildings with vernacular counterparts. Though technological advances are making it possible to build larger, multi-storey buildings with earth, it wouldn’t work in a skyscraper. And some traditional features, like sloping roofs and detailed window shades are too expensive for many people to consider when building their homes. Perhaps most importantly: in cities, the high cost of land makes it extremely difficult to find space for verandas and courtyards.

Given those challenges, Kuriakose says the future of Indian architecture won’t be simply reverting to how things were fifty years ago, before his grandfather installed their concrete roof. The way forward is to channel the locally-rooted problem solving strategies of traditional architects. His firm, for example, has found ways to build traditional sloped roofs, which allow water runoff during monsoon seasons and prevent heat absorption, while incorporating concrete in some elements to make them cheaper. “We are trying to use the knowledge system which has been passed on from generation to generation over the centuries,” he says. “Not to blindly follow how villagers used to do things.”

Pandya, the Ahmedabad architect, puts it another way. “Sustainability is not a formula—what works in Europe might not work here,” he says. “Like a doctor, you have to understand the patient, the symptoms, the conditions—before you arrive at the cure.“

Poor workers bear the brunt of India's heatwave

Labourers work at a construction site on a hot summer day, in Noida

Sun, May 15, 2022, 7:20 PM·3 min read
By Sunil Kataria

NOIDA, India (Reuters) -For construction worker Yogendra Tundre, life at a building site on the outskirts of the Indian capital New Delhi is hard enough. This year, record high temperatures are making it unbearable.

As India grapples with an unprecedented heatwave, the country's vast majority of poor workers, who generally work outdoors, are vulnerable to the scorching temperatures.

"There is too much heat and if we won't work, what will we eat? For a few days, we work and then we sit idle for a few days because of tiredness and heat," Tundre said.

High temperatures in the New Delhi area, which soared above 120 Fahrenheit (49 Celsius) in some regions on Sunday, have often caused Tundre, and his wife Lata, who works at the same construction site, to fall sick. That in turn means they lose income.

"Because of heat, sometimes I don't go to work. I take days off ... many times, fall sick from dehydration and then require glucose bottles (intravenous fluids)," Lata said while standing outside their house, a temporary shanty with a tin roof.

Scientists have linked the early onset of an intense summer to climate change, and say more than a billion people in India and neighbouring Pakistan are in some way at risk from the extreme heat.

India suffered its hottest March in more than 100 years and parts of the country experienced their highest temperatures on record in April.

Many places, including New Delhi, saw the temperature gauge top 40 Celsius. More than two dozen people have died of suspected heat strokes since late March, and power demand has hit multi-year highs.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has called on state governments to draw up measures to mitigate the impact of the extreme heat.

Temperatures in and around New Delhi are likely to be lower over the next three days, but the India Meteorological Department (IMD) has forecast a heatwave again on Friday.

Tundre and Lata live with their two young children in a slum near the construction site in Noida, a satellite city of New Delhi. They moved from their home state of Chhattisgarh in central India to seek work and higher wages around the capital.

On the construction site, labourers scale up walls, lay concrete and carry heavy loads, using ragged scarves around their heads as protection against the sun.

But even when the couple finish their day's work, they have little respite as their home is hot, having absorbed the heat of the sun all day long.

Avikal Somvanshi, an urban environment researcher from India's Centre for Science and Environment, said federal government data showed that heat stress was the most-common cause of death, after lightning, from forces of nature in the last 20 years.

"Most of these deaths occur in men aged 30-45. These are working class, blue-collar men who have no option but to be working in the scorching heat," Somvanshi said.

There are no laws in India that prevent outdoor activity when temperatures breach a certain level, unlike in some Middle Eastern countries, Somvanshi said.

(Reporting by Sunil Kataria in New Delhi; writing by Shilpa Jamkhandikar; editing by Neil Fullick, Bradley Perrett and Lisa Shumaker)

MSNBC hosts blame Tucker Carlson and Fox News for elevating 'racist conspiracy theory' following Buffalo mass shooting

Stephen Proctor

Tue, May 17, 2022, 

On The ReidOut Monday, MSNBC’s Joy Reid joined the chorus of people calling out Fox News, specifically opinion host Tucker Carlson, following a mass shooting in a Black area of Buffalo, New York, over the weekend that left 10 people dead. In a lengthy screed, the alleged shooter repeatedly cited the “great replacement theory,” a racist conspiracy that claims that white people in the U.S. are being replaced by people of color. Congressional Republicans and right-wing pundits regularly go on Fox and claim that Democrats are purposely bringing people of color into the country, changing the demographic makeup for political gain, and no one has pushed this line of thought more than Carlson. So much so that former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, David Duke, has praised Carlson for pushing the conspiracy.

“No singular voice in right-wing media has done more to elevate this racist conspiracy theory than Tucker,” Reid said, “who even with a new head writer spends night after primetime night injecting the rot from the dregs of the Internet directly into the veins of Republican voters.”

Reid referenced Carlson’s new head writer because the old one resigned after racist and sexist online activity came to light. She went on to play a mashup of clips in which Carlson pushes the conspiracy before adding, “The reality is, Tucker’s not some deep thinker. He’s clearly just channeling the gross stuff his viewers could easily find online, then feeding it to Republican voters and Republican politicians as infotainment. And that feedback loop has terrifying reach.”

They will stop the moment Rupert Murdoch tells them to stop.Lawrence O'Donnell

Reid then highlighted an excerpt from the alleged shooter’s manifesto, in which, he used very similar language to what Carlson has used in the past regarding diversity.

“In his racist manifesto, which reads like a bad term paper by the way,” Reid said, “the Buffalo shooter asked, ‘Why is diversity said to be our greatest strength? Does anyone bother to ask why?’ Okay, remember that now? Now listen to this from a 2018 Tucker Carlson segment. Just asking questions.” She then played a clip of Carlson saying, “How precisely is diversity our strength? Since you’ve made this our new national motto, please be specific as you explain it.”

On The Last Word With Lawrence O’Donnell later in the night, O’Donnell took it a step further and put the blame squarely on Fox founder Rupert Murdoch.

“They will stop the moment Rupert Murdoch tells them to stop. It’s as simple as that,” O’Donnell said. “Every minute spent talking about the TV hosts on Fox, is a minute that hides the true villain of the piece. Rupert Murdoch is the billionaire puppeteer. In 1995, when Rupert Murdoch was planning to create a cable news channel, he had never heard of any of the people who are now his most prominent hosts. But Rupert Murdoch knew what he wanted Fox to do from day one, and Fox has always done and said exactly what Rupert Murdoch wants.”

The “replacement theory” conspiracy has been cited in multiple mass shootings in recent years, leading O’Donnell to levy a hefty accusation at Murdoch.

“White supremacists, mass murderers in this country who take encouragement from Fox want to, among other things, stop immigration to this country, as does Fox,” O’Donnell said, “a company owned and operated by an immigrant who has done more damage to this country in the 21st century than any immigrant in the world has done to any other country in the 21st century.”

The ReidOut airs weeknights at 7 p.m. on MSNBC.

The Last Word With Lawrence O'Donnell airs weeknights at 10 p.m. on MSNBC.

Tucker Carlson After Mass Shooter Targets Black People: ‘All Lives Matter’
BLAMING 'MENTAL ILLNESS' NOT GUNS
William Vaillancourt
Mon, May 16, 2022

Fox News

Two days after a white supremacist in Buffalo shot and killed 10 people and wounded three, most of whom were Black, Fox News host Tucker Carlson declared that “All lives matter.”

In his Monday night monologue, Carlson dared not mention the Great Replacement Theory, though he has spoken about it several times before—and the Buffalo shooter’s screed indicates he was inspired by it. (The conspiracy theory asserts that liberal politicians are trying to replace white Americans with immigrants because they’re more likely to vote for them.) Instead, Carlson used the tragedy to complain about what he called the “ruthlessness and dishonesty of our political leadership” and how those in power want to silence people like himself.

Payton Gendron, who was taking into custody after the shooting, “was the heir to Donald Trump, they told us. And for that reason, it follows logically, we must suspend the First Amendment. That’s hardly an exaggeration of what they are saying,” Carlson said, exaggerating as usual.

“What is hate speech? Speech that our leaders hate,” Carlson said earnestly after playing a clip of commentators pointing out the limits of First Amendment rights. “Because one mentally ill teenager murdered strangers, you cannot be allowed to express your political views out loud. That is what they are telling you. That is what they wanted to tell you for a long time, but Saturday’s massacre gives the pretext and justification.”

Carlson acknowledged that the suspect’s motivations were “definitely racist,” but rather than explore the issue, the Fox host essentially suggested that Americans should stop talking about race so much. As an example, Carlson cited how after the Rwandan genocide in the 1990s, that country’s government did not include ethnic classifications its 2003 constitution.

The result, Carlson said: “There have been no more genocides in Rwanda.”

“That could easily be the path forward for this country too,” Carlson claimed. “There is only one answer to rising racial tension, and that is to de-escalate and do what we have done and what we’ve tried to do for hundreds of years, which is work toward color-blind meritocracy and treat people as human beings created by God rather than as faceless members of interest groups that might benefit some political party,” Carlson said.

“We have a moral duty to do this,” he continued, “because all people have equal moral value, no matter what they look like. All lives matter, period.” Then, for good measure, Carlson referenced Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous quotation about the content of one’s character.

President Joe Biden, on the other hand, is engaging in “race politics,” Carlson said.

Carlson quoted from a Politico report stating that Biden doesn’t recognize the GOP, which he now sees as “an existential threat to the nation’s democracy.” Carlson then told viewers, “This threat that Biden is referring to is you.” When Biden visits Buffalo on Tuesday, Carlson predicted, he “is likely to use racial wounds in order to make his point.” Doing so would be so bad, Carlson claimed, that actually “there is no behavior worse.”

“Race politics always makes us hate each other, and always in a very predictable way,” he said. “How could you be surprised when [identity politics] leads to white identity politics? You could not be surprised. You did it and it was always going to happen. And then what happens next? Nothing good. Race politics is a sin. Race politics always leads to violence and death.”

Video of Tucker Carlson promoting ‘Great Replacement’ theory surfaces again



Graig Graziosi
Mon, May 16, 2022

A white supremacist mass shooter in Buffalo killed 10 people and wounded another three — 11 of whom were Black — and left behind a manifesto that clearly indicated he had been inspired to commit his crime by the "Great Replacement Theory”.

The accused Buffalo shooter's manifesto echoes ideas that are becoming fairly standard in conservative ideology, thanks in no small part to Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

Mr Carlson, who helms the most-watched political opinion programme in the country, has frequently pushed the Great Replacement Theory during his shows. A compilation of him touting the ideas recently went viral on social media.

Adherents to the Great Replacement Theory believe that there is a concentrated effort by liberals to replace white Americans as the dominant cultural force in the country by importing people of colour and immigrants, who Mr Carlson says are "obedient" and will vote for Democrats.


"So I know that the left and all the little gatekeepers on Twitter become literally hysterical if you use the term 'replacement', if you suggest the Democratic Party is trying to replace the current electorate, the voters now casting ballots, with new people, more obedient voters from the third world," Mr Carlson said. "But they become hysterical because that's that's what's happening actually. Let's just say it. That's true."

The Independent has reached out to Mr Carlson for comment.

Despite the fact that immigrants and people of colour do not vote in monolithic blocks, some conservatives have accepted the conspiracy theory as true, and it has fuelled some of the worst modern mass shootings.

Both the 2019 mosque shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand, and a 2018 shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh were motivated in part by complaints that white people were being replaced.

Mr Carlson said that "demographic change is key to the Democratic party's political ambitions" in another segment.

"In other words you're being replaced and there's nothing you can do about it so shut up!" he said before letting out a maniacal laugh.

In another episode he was less veiled in this feelings on the issue, claiming that "our country is being invaded by the rest of the world”.

"I'm going to state unequivocally the country is being stolen from American citizens as we watch." he said in another segment.

Last September he even used the name of the theory, saying the "policy is called the 'Great Replacement,'" which he said was the "replacement of legacy Americans with more obedient people from faraway countries."

By "legacy Americans," he means white.

Those are only a sample of the times Mr Carlson has pushed the ideology; a New York Times report found 400 instances of the pundit suggesting that Democrats are trying to force a demographic change to improve their election chances.

The Buffalo shooting should make the GOP change its 'Great Replacement Theory' rhetoric

BUT OF COURSE IT WON'T

Ben Jealous
Mon, May 16, 2022

The mass shooting in Buffalo has drawn attention to the deeply pernicious "Great Replacement Theory," a theory boosted by the Far Right and its allies at Fox News and some conservative media.

Tragically, the GOP, the party of Lincoln, is making the same mistakes the old Democratic Party did after the Civil War. They are becoming a party whose modern legacy is being defined by violent white supremacists. If we are ever going to stop this sort of home-grown white supremacist terrorism, it is going to take all of our leaders doing everything they can.

It is time for national Republicans to go to Buffalo and reflect on the racist mass killing there, as well as the lives of great Republicans Frederick Douglass and Jack Kemp, who were both connected to that area.

Douglass was born into slavery and became one of the greatest anti-slavery crusaders. He gave important abolitionist speeches in Buffalo and lived in nearby Rochester, where a statue of him has been repeatedly vandalized in recent years.


Kemp was a former quarterback for the Buffalo Bills who ran for president as a Republican and a card-carrying member of the NAACP.

Columnist Rex Huppke: Delaware HBCU team’s bus searched in Georgia. They didn't find any critical race theory.

The young man charged with Saturday's killings was allegedly inspired by racist and anti-Semitic theories about powerful forces scheming to replace white people in this country with Black people and immigrants.

Jack Kemp on Aug. 10, 1996, in Russell, Kan., as Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole introduces him as his running mate.

A deadly theory on race

The Great Replacement Theory is deadly. It has inspired previous mass murderers who killed Jewish people in Pittsburgh, Latinos in El Paso, and Muslims in Christchurch, New Zealand. It radicalizes lost young men who prowl toxic corners of the internet.

And it is poisoning the minds of millions of Americans who now hear it being promoted by irresponsible elected officials and cable television personalities.

Ethical challenges: The Fox News texts about Jan. 6 are a low moment for journalists

The fear at the root of the Great Replacement Theory is a very old one. In the 19th Century, Douglass recognized and directly addressed the fears that white Americans would be unable to survive or sustain their dominance if the country granted full equality to Black people or welcomed immigrants from China.

This is an undated photo shows abolitionist Frederick Douglass.

Douglass understood that these sentiments struck at the heart of the American ideal. In an 1869 speech called “Our Composite Nation,” he called out those who saw racial and religious differences as a weakness rather than a national strength. He said that fears “that the Caucasian race may not be able to hold their own against that vast incoming population, does not seem entitled to much respect.” Regarding immigrants, the Black Republican said, “we shall be stronger if we receive them as friends and give them a reason for loving our country and our institutions.”

Columnist Connie Schultz: How potholders got me thinking about racism, my father and the whitewashing of US history

Douglass called on Americans to expand their vision of what America could be and to welcome the full equality of everyone who could strengthen the young country that had just been through the devastating Civil War.

A crowd gathers as police investigate after a shooting at a supermarket on Saturday, May 14, 2022, in Buffalo, N.Y.

“Our geographical position, our relation to the outside world, our fundamental principles of Government, world embracing in their scope and character, our vast resources, requiring all manner of labor to develop them, and our already existing composite population, all conspire to one grand end, and that is to make us the most perfect national illustration of the unity and dignity of the human family that the world has ever seen,” he said.
What we need to hear today

Americans today urgently need to hear that kind of vision from our elected officials – not small-minded pandering to fear and bigotry.

I want to be clear that a vision of an America strengthened by diversity and renewed by immigrants does not have to divide us along partisan lines as it does too often today. Although the Republican Party is on the verge – some of my friends would say long past that point – of becoming a white supremacist party, there is still time for reflection and change.

Columnist Suzette Hackney: Finding my family's history in Brunswick, Georgia, where Ahmaud Arbery was murdered

If Republican leaders visit upstate New York, they should reflect on Douglass’s vision of a country whose growth and strength are nourished by a confident embrace of diversity. And they could reflect on the words of Kemp, who when asked to explain the seeming distance between his approach to race and that of his colleagues, responded, “I can’t help but care about the rights of the people I used to shower with.”

This latest brutality gives those with media platforms and political power a responsibility to reckon with the twin evils of mass violence and racial, ethnic and religious hatred. We are all capable of growth and clarity and courage. And we desperately need all of them from our nation’s leaders.

Ben Jealous is president of People For the American Way and a professor of the practice at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a former national president of the NAACP. A New York Times best-selling author, his next book "Never Forget Our People Were Always Free" will be published by Harper Collins in December 2022. Follow him on Twitter: @BenJealous.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Buffalo shooting puts spotlight on GOP and Great Replacement Theory

High-Ranking Republican Pushes ‘Great Replacement’ Rhetoric Two Days After White Supremacist Mass Shooting

Ryan Bort
Mon, May 16, 2022,

Rep. Elise Stefanik - Credit: Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc/Getty Images

Elise Stefanik is the third-ranking Republican in the House of Representatives. She is a member of the party’s leadership, in other words, elevated last year by Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. She’s also one of a growing contingent of conservatives who have brushed up against the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, a white supremacist tenet holding that white people are being replaced by people of color and, politically speaking, that Democrats are deliberately trying to flood the U.S. with immigrants in order to gain an electoral advantage. The mass shooting in Buffalo on Saturday was inspired by the great replacement, but that didn’t keep Stefanik from continuing to push the idea that Democrats are trying to replace white people with people of color.

“Democrats desperately want wide open borders and mass amnesty for illegals allowing them to vote,” she wrote on Monday morning. “Like the vast majority of Americans, Republicans want to secure our borders and protect election integrity.”

Stefanik and others may frame this not so much as a racial issue, but one of Democrats replacing America-loving Republicans with foreigners more willing to support the “radical left’s” policies. The subtext, however, is clear. It’s about white people being replaced by non-white people, an idea which was popularized recently by Renaud Camus, a French writer who described African immigrants invading European nations in order to do away with the white race. White nationalists, including the ones who chanted “Jews will not replace us!” in Charlottesville during Trump’s first year in office.

Stefanik is no stranger to this kind of rhetoric, though a slightly (and cynically) sanitized version of it. Her campaign committee claimed in an ad released last September that Democrats want to enact a “PERMANENT ELECTION INSURRECTION,” and that their plan is to “grant amnesty to 11 MILLION illegal immigrants will overthrow our current electorate and create a permanent liberal majority in Washington.” She’s since regularly criticized Biden for allowing an “invasion” at the U.S.-Mexico border while advocating for the completion of Trump’s border wall. Standard fare.

The great replacement’s emergence among the Republican Party’s mainstream has not coincidentally coincided with Trump’s emergence as the party’s god-king. It’s also as it has been pushed by name by Tucker Carlson, who may be the most influential figure in conservative politics next to Trump. “In political terms, this policy is called the ‘great replacement,’ the replacement of legacy Americans with more obedient people from faraway countries,” the Fox News host said last September in criticizing President Biden for not doing more to keep desperate Haitian migrants from entering the United States. “This is the language of eugenics,” Carlson added of Biden’s rhetoric around the issue.

Carlson has also repeatedly pushed the idea that Americans should take action in response to the “great replacement,” as Media Matters pointed out on Monday. Payton Gendron, the teenage white supremacist who killed 10 people after opening fire in a supermarket in a Black neighborhood in Buffalo, New York, on Saturday, did just that. The “great replacement” conspiracy was rampant throughout his 180-page manifesto.

Stefanik isn’t the only politician or aspiring politician who pushed the political version of the great replacement theory in the wake of Saturday’s shooting. Blake Masters, a far-right candidate for Senate in Arizona posted a video of himself railing against Biden’s border policy hours after the shooting took place. “The Democrats want open borders so they can bring in and amnesty **tens of millions** of illegal aliens — that’s their electoral strategy,” he wrote. “Not on my watch.”


J.D. Vance, the Republican who rode Trump’s endorsement to victory in last month’s Senate primary in Ohio, has also pushed the conspiracy theory. So too have members of Congress like Rep. Scott Perry. McCarthy and other establishment Republicans may not be willing to push it as explicitly, but they too have recognized that the party has molded itself around white supremacy in an effort to court Trump’s base, as evinced by their frequent trips to the border and strained effort to make immigration the central issue of the midterms. Stefanik is also fully aware of this, and she doesn’t seem to feel any need to show any restraint regarding white supremacist theory — mass shootings be damned.