Buffalo shooting leaves neighborhood without a grocery store

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People walk and drive by Twin City Market, four blocks east of Tops Friendly Market, on Tuesday, May 17, 2022, in Buffalo, N.Y.

 (AP Photo/Joshua Bessex)


PIA SARKAR and NOREEN NASIR
Tue, May 17, 2022, 10:35 PM·4 min read


BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — Tops Friendly Market was more than a place to buy groceries. As the only supermarket for miles, it became a sort of community hub on Buffalo's East Side — where you chatted with neighbors and caught up on people's lives.

“It’s where we go to buy bread and stay for 15, 20 minutes because ... you’re going to find four or five people you know and have a couple conversations before you leave," said Buffalo City Councilman Ulysees O. Wingo, who represents the struggling Black neighborhood, where he grew up. “You just feel good because this is your store."

Now residents are grieving the deaths of 10 Black people at the hands of an 18-year-old white man who drove three hours to carry out a racist, livestreamed shooting rampage in the crowded supermarket on Saturday.

They're also grappling with being targeted in a place that has been so vital to the community. Before Tops opened on the East Side in 2003, residents had to travel to other communities to buy nutritious food or settle for snacks and higher-priced staples like milk and eggs from corner stores and gas stations.

The fact that there are no other options lays bare the racial and economic divide that existed in Buffalo long before the shooting, residents say.

“It’s unconscionable to think that Tops is the only supermarket in that neighborhood, in my neighborhood,” said retired Buffalo educator Theresa Harris-Tigg, who knew two of those killed.

While Tops is temporarily closed during the investigation, the community is working to make sure residents don’t go without.

A makeshift food bank was set up not far from the supermarket. The Buffalo Community Fridge received enough monetary donations that it will distribute some funds to other local organizations. Tops also arranged for a bus to shuttle East Side residents to and from another of its Buffalo locations.

After decades of neglect and decline, only a handful of stores are along Jefferson Avenue, the East Side’s once-thriving main drag, among them a Family Dollar, a deli, a liquor store and a couple of convenience stores, as well as a library and Black-run businesses like Golden Cup Coffee, Zawadi Books and The Challenger News.

Jillian Hanesworth, 29, who was born and raised there, said construction of an expressway contributed to cutting off the neighborhood, with drivers passing underground without ever having to see it. At a recent rally, Hanesworth said she asked the crowd how many needed GPS to get there, and many of the white people raised their hands.

“A lot of people who talk about Buffalo don’t live here,” said Hanesworth, the city’s poet laureate and director of leadership development at Open Buffalo, a nonprofit focused on social justice and community development.

Like many residents, she pauses to think when asked where the next-closest major grocery is located: None is within walking distance, and it takes three different buses to get to the Price Rite.

Before Tops opened on the East Side, residents, lawmakers and other advocates pushed for years for a grocery store in what had become a “food desert” after groceries and other stores closed in the neighborhood's Central Park Plaza, Wingo said.

Yvette Mack, 62, remembers when the streets weren’t so empty. But when she was around 15 or 16, she noticed places going out of business.

“Everything started fading away as I got older,” she said.

Eventually she moved downtown but came back to the East Side in 2020, happy that a supermarket had returned. Mack says she shopped at Tops daily, sometimes three or four times, to buy pop, meat and to play her numbers. She was there Saturday before the shooting.

Now, she's not sure she can go back once the store reopens, but hopes community conversations lead to more businesses on the East Side. Harris-Tigg, the retired educator, also hopes the shooting brings the city together to talk about disparities.

“It’s time to do more. It’s time for white folk to talk to white folk and really have honest conversations,” she said.

Pastor James Giles, coordinator of the anti-violence group Buffalo Peacemakers, thinks that is happening. He juggled calls offering help from area churches and businesses, the Buffalo Bills, competing grocery stores and even the utility company after the shooting.

“I want us to be the City of Good Neighbors. And I do hope that we aspire to live up to that nickname,” Giles said. “But I feel like we can’t get there until and unless we tell the truth about the white supremacy and racism that is already present in our town.”

___

Sarkar and Nasir are members of AP’s Race and Ethnicity team. AP writers John Wawrow in Buffalo, New York, and Tammy Webber in Fenton, Michigan, contributed to this story.

Iran state TV says 2 French nationals arrested over protests

There have been teachers' strikes over the past weeks in cities across Iran. Teachers have walked out of their classes to press for better pay and working conditions.

Mon, May 16, 2022,

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran’s state TV on Tuesday confirmed the arrest of two French citizens, saying they met with protesting teachers and took part in an anti-government rally.

The report identified the two as Cecile Kohler, 37, and Chuck Paris, 69, and said they were not on a tourist visit to Iran. France had earlier identified the two as a teachers’ union official and her partner on vacation in Iran.

The Intelligence Ministry in Tehran last week only said that it had detained two Europeans.

The TV broadcast footage of the arrival of the two, saying they landed from Turkey at Tehran airport on April 28. It also broadcast footage of their meetings with Iranian teachers and other activists, as well as their presence at a protest gathering, and also aired a video purported to show the two being arrested while on their way to the Tehran airport to leave the country on May 7.

The report said the two French citizens were “organizing a protest" with the purpose of creating “unrest" in Iran.

Last Thursday, France condemned the “groundless arrest" of the two and called for their immediate release. France’s Foreign Ministry said its ambassador in Tehran has already attempted to obtain consular access to the couple and that the charge d’affaires at Iran’s Embassy in Paris has been summoned for explanations.

Another French citizen, Benjamin Briere, was sentenced in January by Iran to over eight years in prison for espionage, for photographing “prohibited areas” with a drone in 2020 during what he said was a tourist visit in the north of the country.

Briere’s lawyer had claimed his client was being used as a “bargaining chip” in diplomatic negotiations at the time between Iran and Western countries over Tehran's tattered nuclear deal with world powers.

Also in January, Iranian justice ordered the re-imprisonment of Franco-Iranian academic Fariba Adelkhah, arrested in 2019, who had for a time been allowed to serve a five-year prison sentence under house arrest. She had been accused of “propaganda against the Islamic Republic’s political system” and “collusion to undermine national security.”

There have been teachers' strikes over the past weeks in cities across Iran. Teachers have walked out of their classes to press for better pay and working conditions.

‘People should be more aware’: the business dynasties who benefited from Nazis

In his new book Nazi Billionaires, David de Jong explores the damning history of companies who have refused to examine their murky history with Hitler

Adolf Hitler admires a model of the Volkswagen car. He is with the designer Ferdinand Porsche, left, and to various Nazi officials. Photograph: Heinrich Hoffmann/Getty Images


David Smith in Washington
@smithinamericaWed 18 May 2022 


Colonial and Confederate statues toppled. Looted objects returned by contrite museums. Tainted family names such as Sackler expunged from buildings. A worldwide reckoning with the past crimes of great powers is under way. But is there a glaring omission?

A new book, Nazi Billionaires, investigates how Germany’s richest business dynasties made fortunes by aiding and abetting Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich. It also examines how, eight decades later, they still escape close scrutiny and a nation that has done so much to confront its catastrophic past still suffers a very particular blind spot.



Top 10 novels about postwar Germany

“What struck me was this is a country that’s so cognisant of its history in many ways but seemingly the most economically powerful actors do not engage with that,” says author David de Jong, a 35-year-old Dutchman. “That was the reason why I wrote the book. It’s an argument in favour of historical transparency.”

The former reporter for Bloomberg News examines German companies that own beer brewers and wine producers as well as famous US brands such as Krispy Kreme and Pret A Manger. But he casts an especially harsh light on car makers led by household names such as BMW and Porsche, which powered the postwar economic miracle and contribute about a 10th of the nation’s gross domestic product.

De Jong tells how the rise of the Nazis was initially met with scepticism and contempt by many business leaders but some discovered it could be very profitable.

Ferdinand Porsche convinced Hitler to put the Volkswagen Beetle into production. The company thrived under his son, Ferry Porsche, who volunteered for the SS, became an officer and lied about it for the rest of his days. Ferry Porsche designed the first Porsche sports car and surrounded himself with former SS members in the 50s and 60s.

The steel, coal and arms magnate Friedrich Flick was convicted at Nuremberg of using forced and slave labour, bankrolling the SS and looting a steel factory. But he was released in 1960 and eventually became controlling shareholder of Daimler-Benz, then Germany’s biggest car manufacturer. Deutsche Bank bought the Flick conglomerate in 1985, turning his descendants into billionaires.

Perhaps no one better encapsulates de Jong’s argument than Günther Quandt and his son Herbert Quandt, members of the Nazi party and patriarchs of the family that now dominates the BMW Group.

Volkswagens are parked at Bonneberg near Kerford, in 1945.

 Photograph: Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone/Getty Images

Herbert Quandt had responsibility over battery factories in Berlin where thousands of forced and enslaved labourers toiled, including hundreds of women from concentration camps. He acquired companies stolen from Jews in France and used prisoners of war and forced labourers on his own private estate. He even built a concentration subcamp in Nazi-occupied Poland.

When Günther Quandt was 37 and widowed, he met and married a 17-year-old called Magda Friedländer and had one child with her. After their divorce, Magda married the Nazi propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, with whom she murdered their six children before both killed themselves in 1945.

After the war, Günther Quandt was arrested for suspected collaboration with the Nazis, only to be acquitted after falsely claiming that he had been forced to join the party by Goebbels.

“Günther Quandt becomes one of Nazi Germany’s most most successful industrialists,” de Jong, who has been reporting on the families for a decade, said in a phone interview from Palm Springs, California. “He was already immensely wealthy before Hitler seized power. He uses it at the end of the war as a way of saying, ‘I was a victim of persecution. I was persecuted by Joseph Goebbels and by my ex-wife.’”

Herbert Quandt inherited vast wealth from his father and saved BMW from bankruptcy, becoming the company’s biggest shareholder. Two of his children, Stefan Quandt and Susanne Klatten, are now Germany’s wealthiest family, with close to majority control of the BMW Group, large holdings in the chemical and technology industries and a net worth of about $38bn.

They and other dynasties are celebrated for turning Germany into an economic powerhouse, with buildings, foundations and prizes bearing their names. The skeletons in their cupboards are not a secret – but nor are they well known or accounted for. Acknowledgment remains an afterthought despite Germany’s much-vaunted remembrance culture.

Some have taken baby steps towards transparency. The Quandts commissioned a study in 2011 to look into their shameful past. Changes have been made to corporate websites but only, de Jong charges, grudgingly and incrementally, with important details omitted. Stefan Quandt still gives out an annual media prize named after his father and works from headquarters named after his grandfather.

De Jong, who found family members unwilling to be interviewed other than one London-based heir, says: “You have BMW and Porsche, particularly the families that control them, conduct this whitewashing or leaving out of history where they celebrate the business successes of their founders or saviours but leave out the fact that these men committed war crimes.

“I never got an answer whether it’s because they are afraid it would hurt the bottom line or share prices of the companies to be fully transparent about the history, or whether it’s just because they derive their entire identity from the successes that their fathers and grandfathers had and, by being transparent about them, it’s kind of disavowing their own identity. It’s probably a combination of both.”

BMW headquarters in Munich. 

Photograph: Christof Stache/AFP/Getty Images

The families tend to lean on Germany’s notion of collective guilt, de Jong continues. “But it’s very perverse, where you now have the BMW Foundation Herbert Quandt, which has a model to inspire responsible leadership in the name of a man who, yes, saved BMW from bankruptcy in 1959, but also designed and built and dismantled a concentration subcamp in Nazi-occupied Poland. At a bare minimum what we can expect from these companies and families is historical transparency.”

In his book, de Jong notes that an international drive for such transparency, and its attendant reckonings, have brought down statues of Confederate generals, slave traders and Christopher Columbus and heralded the rechristening of colleges named after racist presidents.

“Yet this movement toward facing the past is somehow bypassing many of Germany’s legendary businessmen,” he writes. “Their dark legacy remains hidden in plain sight. This book, in some small way, tries to right that wrong.”

The author, now based in Tel Aviv, Israel, adds: “I hope people will become more aware on a consumer level that the money they spend on these products might end up as dividends for these families and might go towards the maintaining of foundations, corporate headquarters and media properties in the name of Nazi war criminals.

“I think people should be more aware of these histories and of history in general, particularly when it comes to consumption and the continuing whitewashing of history by these consumer brands and families that control them.”

Nazi Billionaires is out now

Gyanvapi masjid: India dispute could become a religious flashpoint


Soutik Biswas - India correspondent
Wed, May 18, 2022,

In Varanasi, one of the world's oldest living cities, Hindus and Muslims have prayed close to each other in a temple and a mosque that sit cheek by jowl.

The heavily-guarded complex points to its uneasy history. The Gyanvapi mosque is built on the ruins of the Vishwanath temple, a grand 16th Century Hindu shrine. The temple was partially destroyed in 1669 on the orders of Aurangzeb, the sixth Mughal emperor.

Now the place is in the throes of a dispute which could stoke fresh tensions in Hindu-majority India, where Muslims are the largest religious minority.

A bunch of Hindu petitioners have gone to a local court asking for access to pray at a shrine behind the mosque and other places within the complex. A controversial court order which allowed video-recorded survey of the mosque is said to have revealed a stone shaft that is the symbol of the Hindu deity Shiva, a claim that has been disputed by the mosque authorities.

After this, a part of the mosque has been sealed by the court without giving the mosque authorities a chance to present their case. The dispute has now reached the Supreme Court, which said on Tuesday that the complex would be protected, and prayers will continue in the mosque.

This has triggered fears of a re-run of a decades-long dispute involving the Babri Masjid, a 16th-Century mosque which was razed to the ground by Hindu mobs in the holy city of Ayodhya in 1992.

The Babri dispute reached a flashpoint in 1992 when a Hindu mob destroyed a mosque at the site

The demolition of the mosque climaxed a six-year-long campaign by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) - then in opposition - and sparked riots that killed nearly 2,000 people. In 2019, the Supreme Court ruled that the disputed site in Ayodhya should be given to Hindus who are now building a temple there. Muslims were given another plot to construct a mosque.

A 1991 law called the Places of Worship Act disallows conversion of a place of worship and maintains its religious character as "it existed" on 15 August 1947, India's Independence Day. Critics of the dispute in Varanasi say this is a defiance of the law. Asaduddin Owaisi, a prominent Muslim leader, says the "mosque exists and it will exist".

A leader of the ruling BJP in Uttar Pradesh state, where Varanasi is located, believes nothing is set in stone. "The truth has come to light... We will welcome and follow orders of the court in the matter," Keshav Prasad Maurya, the deputy chief minister, says.

It is not entirely clear what truth has to be uncovered.

For one, it is widely accepted that a temple existed at the site. The shrine was "grand in scale and execution, consisting of a central sanctum and surrounded by eight pavilions", according to Diana L Eck, a professor of comparative religion and Indian studies at Harvard University.

It is also established that in less than a century, the temple was "torn down at the command of Aurangzeb", Prof Eck says. "Half-dismantled, it became the foundation of the present Gyanvapi mosque".

It is also accepted that the mosque is built on the ruins of the temple. In Prof Eck's description "one wall of the old temple is still standing, set like a Hindu ornament in the matrix of the mosque".

"When viewed from the rear of the mosque, the dramatic contrast of the two traditions is evident: the ornate stone wall of the old temple, magnificent even in its ruined condition, topped by the simple white stucco dome of today's mosque".

The fact that a part of the ruined temple's wall was incorporated into the building "may have been a religiously clothed statement about the dire consequences of opposing Mughal authority", according to Audrey Truschke, author of Aurangzeb: The Man and the Myth.

Historians believe one reason why the temple was attacked by Aurangzeb was that its patrons were believed to have facilitated the escape from prison of Shivaji, a Hindu king who was a prominent enemy of the Mughals.

"Temples patronised by persons who had submitted to state authority but who subsequently became state enemies were often targeted by Mughal rulers," says Richard M Eaton, who teaches South Asian history at the University of Arizona.

Varanasi is one of the world's oldest living cities

At least 14 temples were "certainly demolished" by Mughal officers during Aurangzeb's 49-year rule, according to Prof Eaton, who has recorded 80 examples of desecration of temples in India between the 12th and 18th Century.

"We shall never know the precise number of temples desecrated in Indian history," he says. However, what historians do know as fact is far from the exaggerated claims by the right-wing that up to 60,000 temples were demolished under Muslim rule.

In desecrating temples, Mughal rulers were following ancient Indian precedent, Prof Eaton says.

He adds that Muslim kings since the late 12th Century, and Hindu kings since at least the 7th Century "looted, redefined, or destroyed temples, patronised by enemy kings or state rebels as the normal means of detaching defeated rulers from the most prominent manifestations of their former sovereign authority, thereby rendering them politically impotent."

This is not exceptional, say historians. European history had its share of religious conflict and desecration of churches. Northern Europe, for example, saw many Catholic structures demolished or desecrated during the Protestant revolt in the 18th Century. Such examples include the desecration of Utrecht Cathedral in 1566, or the near-complete demolition of St Andrews Cathedral in Scotland in 1559.

But as Pratap Bhanu Mehta, a prominent commentator, observes: "Secularism will be deepened if it lets history be history, not make history the foundations of a secular ethic." And that the ongoing dispute in Varanasi can only end up opening "another communal front".

Such concerns are premature, says Swapan Dasgupta, a right-leaning columnist. "There is, as yet, no demand for the removal of the mosque and the restoration of the previously existing state of affairs… Also the law does not allow any scope for the present religious character of a shrine to be modified," he wrote. "To that extent, the present tussle in Varanasi is aimed at securing greater elbow room for worshippers."

Such assurances do not find many takers. Last year the Supreme Court accepted a petition challenging the Places of Worship law, which by itself could open a fresh fault line.

"This campaign [in Varanasi] is just the beginning of a series of demands in respect to other places of worship on which there are [Hindu] claims," says Madan Lokur, a retired justice of India's Supreme Court.

This could easily lead to a lifetime of strife.

UN envoy warns that Iraq's `streets are about to boil over'


EDITH M. LEDERER
Tue, May 17, 2022

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The U.N. special envoy for Iraq warned its political leaders Tuesday that “the streets are about to boil over” because of their deadlock and failure to address a host of issues, including the suffering of ordinary people and armed groups firing rockets with impunity.

Jeannine Hennis-Plasschaert told several reporters after briefing the U.N. Security Council that Iraq and the region cannot afford to go back to October 2019.

That is when young men and women fed up with an Iraqi political elite they blamed for many grievances launched mass demonstrations that were met with bullets, water cannons and tear gas that plunged the country into renewed instability just as it was starting to emerge from war against the Islamic State extremist group.

In her briefing to the council, Hennis-Plasschaert warned that “notorious aspects of Iraqi political life are repeating themselves in a seemingly incessant loop of zero-sum politics.”

More than seven months after parliamentary elections, she said, “multiple deadlines for the formation of a government have been missed.”

In late March, powerful Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose political bloc won the most seats, announced he was stepping back for 40 days to give his Iran-backed rivals a chance to form the next government. But there is still no agreement on a government.

Hennis-Plasschaert warned Iraq’s political leaders not to hide behind the argument that a government hasn’t been formed, which she said “distracts from what is at stake.”

It not only excuses a political deadlock while armed groups “fire rockets with apparent freedom and impunity” and ordinary people suffer, she said, but “it excuses a political impasse while simmering public anger can boil over at any moment.”

Hennis-Plasschaert said political leaders support dialogue or another round of negotiations. “But the willingness to compromise? It is painfully absent,” she said.

“Visit any market and Iraqis will tell you: the national interest is, yet again, taking a back seat to short-sighted considerations of control over resources and power play,” she said.

Hennis-Plasschaert said it is time to return the spotlight to the Iraqi people who are demanding adequate services for all people.

They also want, she said, “an end to pervasive corruption, factionalism and the pillaging of state institutions,” a diversification of the economy, an end to impunity, the reining in of armed groups and “predictable governance instead of constant crisis management.”

She was sharply critical of “the sorry pattern of ad-hoc negotiations” between the central government and the semi-autonomous Kurdish region, saying an institutionalized “mechanism” is critically needed to solve all outstanding issues, including the recent Iraqi Federal Supreme Court ruling that the Kurdistan region’s 2007 oil and gas law on production, revenues and exports is unconstitutional.

“Having engaged with both sides on this matter, I am convinced that there is a way out,” she said.

Hennis-Plasschaert called incoming missiles and rockets “disturbing, disruptive and dangerous,” pointing to Turkish and Iranian shelling activities in northern Iran and armed groups outside government control recklessly firing rockets, including at an oil refinery in Erbil, the capital of the Kurdistan region, some two weeks ago.

Discussing Sinjar, the region where U.N. investigators say Islamic State extremists committed genocide against the Yazidi minority in 2014, Hennis-Plasschaert said the area “has increasingly turned into an arena for external and domestic spoilers”

Clashes in recent weeks have made Sinjar families again pack their belongings and go back to Kurdistan to seek shelter, she said.

Legal advocates sue US over Iranian-born scholar's treatment


MARK PRATT
Tue, May 17, 2022, 

BOSTON (AP) — A Canadian diabetes researcher scheduled to start a two-year fellowship at Harvard Medical School was wrongfully denied entry to the U.S. and discriminated against based on her Iranian heritage, according to legal filings.

Harvard Law School’s Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program said Tuesday that it has filed a lawsuit against the federal government as well as a complaint with the Department of Homeland Security's civil rights office on behalf of the researcher, identified in court papers as Maryam Shamloo.

The civil rights complaint alleges that Customs and Border Protection officers denied Shamloo and her husband entry to the U.S. based on their Iranian birth and violated procedures by demanding DNA samples. They and their two children are Canadian citizens.

The lawsuit asks the federal government to issue Shamloo a visa as soon as possible so she can begin the fellowship by June 6, more than a year after it was supposed to start.

“I worked very hard for the last five years in order to be able to get this prestigious dream fellowship,” Shamloo said in a statement. “My hope was to go to Harvard and develop my knowledge of therapies in response to unmet needs in the field of diabetes.”

Shamloo and her minor children are listed as the plaintiffs in the suit. Her husband is not.

A spokesperson for the Department of Justice said in an email that the agency had no comment. An email requesting comment was left with the Department of Homeland Security.

“We call on the State Department to issue Maryam’s visa as soon as possible so that she may proceed with her fellowship and continue to use her exceptional talents to better our society,” said Sabrineh Ardalan, director of the Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program. “We also hope that the Department of Homeland Security will investigate this incident and hold Customs and Border Protection accountable in order to ensure that immigrants of Iranian descent do not continue to face discrimination when entering the U.S.”

According to the suit, Shamloo was recruited to join a team of researchers at Harvard and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center developing gene therapy-based approaches to treating Type I autoimmune diabetes.

The family attempted to cross into the U.S. at the Pembina-Emerson port of entry at the North Dakota-Manitoba border on April 2, 2021.

There they “faced unjust scrutiny” due to their country of origin. Border agents interrogated her husband about his mandatory military service while in Iran and his political opinions before denying them entry, the Harvard law clinic said.

When Shamloo tried take a plane from Toronto to Boston without her family on April 18, 2021, she was again denied entry to the U.S., and told by Customs and Border Protection officers that she is “Iranian and there is a travel ban,” even though she is Canadian and the travel ban had been revoked, according to the suit.

As a result of her treatment, she “cried for several days, had trouble sleeping, and was prescribed anti-anxiety and anti-depression medication by her physician,” according to the suit.

As instructed, she applied for a J-1 visa, even though as a Canadian citizen she is not required to have one to enter the U.S., the suit said. That application remains pending.

Iran and the U.S. have not had formal diplomatic relations since April 1980, several months after the takeover of the American Embassy in Tehran, according to the State Department.

Human Rights Activists ask top court to void Marcos Jr's presidential win


JIM GOMEZ
Tue, May 17, 2022

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Human rights activists have asked the Philippine Supreme Court to block Congress from proclaiming Ferdinand Marcos Jr. as the next president, alleging that he lied when he said he had not been convicted of any crime.

The Commission on Election twice dismissed their petition and six other similar complaints to cancel Marcos Jr.'s candidacy papers ahead of the May 9 vote. The petitioners elevated the case to the highest court on Monday, saying Marcos Jr. was convicted in 1995 of tax evasion with a jail term, which should have permanently barred him from seeking public office.

A 1997 Court of Appeals ruling upheld Marcos Jr.'s conviction for failing to file income tax returns from 1982 to 1985 and ordered him to settle his unpaid taxes and fines, but did not mention any imprisonment.

Most of the petitioners are leaders of groups representing survivors of martial law in the 1970s under late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, the father of the presumptive next president. They want the court to temporarily block the Senate and the House of Representatives from undertaking an official canvassing of votes starting next week that would eventually proclaim Marcos Jr. as the winner.

“Our petition notes that a candidate’s imminent victory cannot cure his ineligibility,” said Fides Lim, spokesperson of one of the human rights groups.
“If the Supreme Court were to allow such a brazen lie to trump the rule of law, all substantive eligibility requirements in all future elections can be circumvented by ineligible candidates who happen to secure a victory,” she said.

Marcos Jr. had more than 31 million votes in an unofficial count in what’s projected to be one of the strongest mandates for a Philippine president in decades. Sara Duterte, his vice-presidential running mate and daughter of the outgoing populist president, appears to have also won with a large margin.

His electoral triumph is a striking reversal of the “People Power” revolt in 1986 that forced his father out of office following years of human rights violations and plunder that Marcos Jr. has never acknowledged.

Unofficial counts also show that allies of Marcos Jr. and Sara Duterte are set to capture most of the 300 seats in the House of Representatives and half of the 24-seat Senate that was up for election, and likely the chambers' top leaderships.

The 12 winning senators, including lone opposition Sen. Risa Hontiveros, who ran for reelection, are to be proclaimed Wednesday by the Commission on Elections.

All key challengers of Marcos Jr., including current Vice President Leni Robredo, a human rights lawyer, and former boxing star Manny Pacquiao, have conceded defeat.

U.S. President Joe Biden, Chinese President Xi Jinping and other world leaders have congratulated Marcos Jr. and Duterte on their victory and the relatively smooth conduct of the elections. The separately elected president and vice president are to take office on June 30 for a single six-year term after Congress confirms the results.

Marcos Jr. and Duterte have defended the legacies of their fathers.

Court cases and legal issues still hound the late dictator’s family, including payment of a huge estate tax, a 2018 corruption conviction of his widow, Imelda Marcos, which is on appeal, and compensation of thousands of victims of torture, detentions, disappearances and other abuses committed during the martial-law era when he was in power.

A brutal anti-drug crackdown launched by outgoing President Rodrigo Duterte which killed thousands of mostly petty drug suspects has sparked an investigation by the International Criminal Court as a potential crime against humanity. The outgoing leader has said he will likely face more criminal complaints when he steps down on June 30.

BALOCHISTAN
Protesters block Pakistan highway after arrest of women accused of attack plot

Tue, May 17, 2022
By Gul Yousafzai

QUETTA, Pakistan (Reuters) - Hundreds of protesters blocked a highway in Pakistan for second day on Tuesday to protest against the arrest of two women, one of whom security officials described as a would-be suicide bomber who was planning to target Chinese citizens.

Police arrested one woman who they said planned to blow herself up near a convoy of Chinese nationals and that they had recovered explosives and detonators from her.

On Tuesday officials confirmed a second woman had also been arrested.

Arrests of women are rare in southwestern Balochistan province and the detentions have enraged supporters. The protesters said they would continue their sit-in until the women, who they said were innocent, were freed.

"It is all lies," Dost Gulzar, a political activist who is leading the protest, told Reuters.

The arrests came two weeks after a woman suicide bomber blew herself up on a university campus in the southern port city of Karachi, killing three Chinese teachers.

The woman belonged to the militant separatist group the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), which has waged a violent secessionist insurgency in Balochistan, and has targeted Chinese interests in the region.

The sit-in is taking place in the town where the women were arrested, Hoshab, some 415 miles (670 km) south of provincial capital Quetta. The highway links Quetta with Gwadar port and was built under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor initiative.

China, a close Pakistan ally, plans to invest over $65 billion in Pakistan under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor - a part of Beijing's Belt and Road Initiative to seek road and sea trade routes to connect with the rest of the world.

Beijing is also developing the Gwadar deep-water port.

The local administration is negotiating with the protesters, asking them to unblock the highway as a large number of vehicles are stuck, a senior official from the Balochistan police told Reuters, requesting anonymity.

Rights activists have long accused security forces of extrajudicial abductions and killings in Balochistan. Security officials say the accusations are exaggerated and not always linked with the state.

(Writing by Syed Raza Hassan; Editing by Alison Williams)

Christian Academy of Louisville homework shows indoctrination happening in private schools


Willie Carver
Tue, May 17, 2022
The Courier Journal

One needs but scroll through Facebook or watch Fox News for a few minutes to hear an accusation of indoctrination in public schools. Some would have people believe that indoctrination is utterly rampant in K-12, though The Common Core Standards, adopted by many public schools, including in Kentucky, the first state to adopt them, explicitly and intentionally guide students in critical thinking.

Indoctrination and critical thinking can’t coexist, since indoctrination is, by definition, “the act or process of forcing somebody to accept a particular belief or set of beliefs and not allowing them to consider any others.” There is no room for criticism, for objection, for individuality of thought with indoctrination.

If work coming out of The Louisville Christian Academy is any indication, it is private schools we might need to watch more carefully for indoctrination.

In a recent tweet by JP Davis, a Kentucky business owner, a leaked assignment shows one of the clearest examples of indoctrination and heartbreaking homophobia I’ve ever seen in any curriculum.

In the assignment, a student must imagine a friend of a similar age and gender that they’ve known “since kindergarten” who attends their church and is “struggling with homosexuality” (sic). Given eight short sentences, they are asked to use logic and scripture to show the friend that “homosexuality will not bring them satisfaction” while making sure to signal they “don’t approve of their lifestyle” all while making sure to communicate that they “love” them.

In short, the students are set up to fail, since the task is impossible.

More: Homework at Christian Academy of Louisville: Persuade your friend to stop being gay

How the assignment set students up to fail

First, being gay is not a choice. This is settled truth. No one asking a gay person to change can be acting in love towards them while doing it, because they erase basic truths about their personhood. Anyone asking a gay person to change is saying to them that who they are, at an intrinsic, immutable level, should not be - we can’t be acting in love while we are actively telling someone that a fixed part of them shouldn’t exist.

Secondly, it is utterly impossible, and I speak as an English teacher, to appeal to logic when telling someone that being gay won’t bring them satisfaction, since, despite heavy discrimination, gay people tend to be happier in marriage than their straight counterparts. More importantly, gay people are equally satisfied in life only when they are accepted, so not accepting a person because of a characteristic and then blaming the characteristic for their unhappiness over not being accepted is not only a textbook example of a fallacy of cause and effect, it’s cruel.

This assignment, given by a school purporting to prepare students “to reason logically” sets students up not to understand rational thinking and equally conflates love and cruelty.

Moreover, the assignment utterly lacks critical thinking because it is indoctrination.

Despite the fact that many mainstream churches (and the majority of Christians) believe homosexuality should be accepted, this assignment is predicated upon one narrow understanding and requires all students to comply with it to get points. In fact, according to the rubric, a student can receive a “fair” grade if they employ “little love” and “no scripture”. The lowest descriptor on the rubric, interestingly, requires at least “one truth” - but it requires “little love” and neither logic nor scripture.

In a school system based upon Christ, neither love nor scripture are required for minimum points. The assignment does, however, mandate truth – but as the school defines it.

From where, then, does that truth come?

This is indoctrination

David Gooblar explains that indoctrination is “an effort to change … beliefs and instill a fear or reluctance to consider conflicting evidence.”

It is in this fear that the rejection of LGBTQ people (and any other people) resides.

Students will not come to reject LGBTQ people based upon love. It’s impossible because love is the opposite of hate. This is why the rubric still gives points even if little love is shown.

Students will not come to reject LGBTQ people based purely upon scripture; denominations are divided, but plenty of scripture-bound churches affirm gay people. This is why the rubric still gives points even if no scripture is shown.

Students will not come to reject LGBTQ people based upon logic. It’s impossible because homophobia is recklessly illogical. This is why the rubric still gives points even if no logic is shown.

Students will only come to reject LGBTQ people as people always have: through indoctrination. This is why the rubric requires at least “one truth” for even the lowest-performing students to get a minimum score–the “truth” that being gay is wrong.

This is the “one truth” on which the assignment rests, the “one truth” that must be confessed for a student to get any points, the “one truth” for which the entire assignment was made.

Willie Carver

This is the thing about indoctrination - it necessarily requires coercion, because, were it to use any other approach, like truth, logic, or love, the lesson simply falls apart.

Willie Carver teaches French and English at Montgomery County Schools in Mount Sterling, Kentucky. He is the 2022 Kentucky Teacher of the Year.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: CAL homework shows indoctrination happening in private school: Opinion

Nigerian entrepreneur builds electric mini-buses in clean energy push

Mon, May 16, 2022, 
By Seun Sanni

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria (Reuters) - Nigerian entrepreneur Mustapha Gajibo has been converting petrol mini-buses into electric vehicles at his workshop, but he is now going a step further to build solar battery-powered buses from scratch in a push to promote clean energy and curb pollution.

Africa's top producer and exporter of crude oil has heavily-subsidised gasoline and a patchy supply of electricity -- a combination that might discourage anyone from investing in electric vehicles.

But Gajibo, a 30-year-old university drop-out and resident of Maiduguri city in Nigeria's northeast, is undaunted. He says rising global oil prices and pollution make electric vehicles a worthwhile alternative in Nigeria.

At his workshop, he has already stripped combustion engines from 10 mini-buses, powering them with solar batteries. The buses, which have been operating for just over a month, cover a distance of 100 km on a single charge, he said.

His most ambitious project is building the buses from scratch. They will be equipped with solar panels and batteries.

"As I am speaking to you now at our workshop, we are building a 12-seater bus which can cover up to 200 kilometres on one charge," Gajibo said.

"Before the end of this month we are going to unveil that bus, which will be the first of its kind in the whole of Nigeria," he said, adding that his workshop had capacity to produce 15 buses a month.

In Nigeria, like most of Africa, electric vehicles have not yet gained traction because they are more expensive and there is little electricity and no infrastructure to charge vehicles.

For now, Gajibo has one charging station powered by solar.

There are other hurdles like foreign currency shortages that make it difficult to import parts. So, he is looking to source them in Nigeria.

"We have been substituting some materials with local materials to bring our costs down and maximise profit," said Gajibo.

(Additional reporting by Abraham Archiga in Abuja, Writing by MacDonald Dzirutwe, Editing by Christina Fincher)