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‘Are Americans Being Poisoned?’: Diamond’s Memorial Goes Off the Rails

Zachary Petrizzo
Sat, January 21, 2023 

via Twitter

Trumpworld figures converged at Lynnette “Diamond” Hardaway’s remembrance ceremony on Saturday afternoon to celebrate the life of the pro-Trump pundit who died suddenly at 51—but the memorial took a dark turn as her sister suggested a nefarious plot behind her death.

Diamond’s sister—half of the “Diamond and Silk” duo—Rochelle “Silk” Richardson addressed the crowd at the Crown Theatre in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and appeared to fall back into her old anti-vaxxer ways.

“Instead of asking if Americans are vaxxed or unvaxxed, the real question to ask is: Are Americans being poisoned?” she asked the pro-Trump crowd filled with friends and family.


“In the wild, when they want to depopulate and sterilize a large group of animals, they usually inject one animal, and that one animal infect the rest of the animals,” Silk said, suggesting, without evidence, that the COVID-19 vaccine creates harm. “People are dropping dead around here, and nobody is talking about it! They are dropping dead suddenly and unexpectedly.”

According to fact-checkers and researchers, there is no evidence that COVID-19 vaccines cause people to die. And despite far-right pundits amplifying the phrase “died suddenly” on social media with videos of people having seizures to support their theory, the claim isn’t supported by science.

Silk also recalled her sister’s final moments: “She said to me, ‘I can’t breathe.’ It was something out of nowhere, and no warning… Each breath was less, and less, and less.”

“What I want to say to everybody is don’t you dare call me a conspiracy theorist. Because I saw it happen. I saw how it happened. I was there when it happened, and it happened suddenly,” she said, urging the crowd to “get some answers as to why people are falling dead suddenly.”



Silk’s comments immediately sparked a wave of outrage from figures on the right, with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene taking to Twitter to declare, “I demand an IMMEDIATE investigation into Covid vaccines and the dramatic increase of people dying suddenly!”

In the early days of the COVID pandemic, Diamond and Silk floated many fringe conspiracy theories, including the idea that quarantining would result in people getting “sick” and that increased COVID-19 case numbers being shared with the public was an attempt to harm Trump politically.

Silk has repeatedly denied on Twitter that Diamond passed away due to COVID-19. Instead, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell has stated publicly that the pro-Trump pundit suddenly collapsed in her kitchen. (Diamond’s cause of death remains unclear, and an autopsy report has not been made public. Reached for comment via phone by The Daily Beast on Saturday evening, Diamond and Silk's executive director Tressie Ham hung up and did not address questions via text message.)

“Where’s your proof that my sister died from contracting COVID-19? No Proof plus No Truth equates to a Lawsuit,” Silk wrote after Diamond’s death was announced.

Biden’s ‘Ultra MAGA’ Remark Leaves Diamond and Silk Battling TrumpWorld: ‘Stop Adapting!’

Other Trumpworld royalty joined the solemn service to pay their respects to Diamond on Saturday—including the former president himself.

“It’s so hard to understand what could have happened,” he said. “When you got to know her, there was nobody that was kinder, there was absolutely nobody that was a more devoted person to the common sense of our country and to making our country great again.”

“Through the tears and the grief, let us celebrate this incredible life,” Trump added.

The local North Carolina paper, The Fayetteville Observer, reported that around 150 people attended the celebration of life event and were given a programming pamphlet with a list of Diamond’s favorite sayings.

“In a blink of an eye… she is now in the—presence of the Lord Jesus Christ,” Trump-loving Pastor Mark Burns declared. “I believe without a shadow of a doubt, Diamond is talking to Jesus, and she is saying, Jesus, ‘Please make sure that Donald J. Trump is the next President of The United States of America.’”

‘Totally Unexpected’: Diamond of MAGA Duo ‘Diamond & Silk’ Dies

Like many pro-Trump events, the event at times slid off the rails and took the form of a MAGA rally rather than a funeral service.

“She lives on in the hearts and the minds of those who loved her,” Republican North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson said. “The news media right now has paid little to no attention to her passing. We all know what the news media is. It is the most evil devil in America.”

“She was wise, she was strong, and she was beautiful,” Robinson continued.

Each speaker, including Trump, paid tribute to her unwavering support of the former president.

“And another secret about Diamond: She had a boyfriend. Yes, that’s right. And she had a boyfriend, and oh, my God, we would talk about him all of the time,” Ham said. “His name: President Donald J. Trump. Yes, yes, yes. President Donald J. Trump, that was her boyfriend.” Ham added that Diamond’s “side piece” was Mike Lindell.


REUTERS/Rick Wilking

Silk also used the service to threaten to file a complaint against local police over their handling of her sister’s death, though she gave few details.

“To the Hoke County Sheriff’s department, you have a rotten apple in the bunch,” Silk said. “While the body is still warm on the kitchen floor, you don’t overstep the next of kin… then try and barge into my home, that I pay the bills for, illegally, with no warrant, to retrieve my sister’s dead body.”

“You don’t push yourself onto someone then say ‘don’t touch me,’” she continued. Silk—who has long called for “handcuffs” to be removed from police—then pledged to file a “complaint” against the local North Carolina police department “ASAP”—adding, “just because you are dressed in blue doesn’t mean you get to abuse the power you think you have.”

The Hoke County Sheriff’s office did not return The Daily Beast’s request for comment on Saturday evening.

The Daily Beast.

Donald Trump Spoils Eulogy For Supporter Diamond With Odd Remark About Her Sister

Ben Blanchet
Sun, January 22, 2023 

Former President Donald Trump awkwardly claimed he “didn’t know” Silk, one half of the popular conservative duo Diamond & Silk, during a speech at her late sister Diamond’s memorial service on Saturday.

Lynette “Diamond” Hardaway, who popularly backed Trump along with her sister, died earlier this month at the age of 51 in what the former president described as a “totally” unexpected occurrence.

Trump made an appearance at the North Carolina service where — in addition to reflections on Diamond — he railed about inflation and gas prices as he listed a string of political grievances.

The former president, who visited with the duo in the White House and looped theminto rallies in the past, referred to Diamond as one of the world’s “brightest stars” before making an odd remark about her sister.

“I’m serious, I thought I knew them both. I didn’t. I knew Diamond but I didn’t know Silk at all. I just learned about Silk. You’re fantastic,” Trump said.

Trump later spoke about the crowd at the memorial service before he used his time on stage to dive into how planning went for the event.

“The chapel wouldn’t have held the kind of people, the number of people that we have,” Trump said.

“And we’re doing it right and that’s the way it should be and I did notice a big line of very, very nice vehicles outside. That’s got to be handled properly, right? So we’re going to handle it properly. Go out in style. She knew that. Go out in style.”

Trump also went on about the length of the three-hour-plus service, which he said was a “little longer than 15 minutes.”

You can watch more clips from the service below.

Former Trump Official to High School Students: 'Do Your Part, Get Married and Have Kids—Lots of Them'

Laura Bassett
Sat, January 21, 2023 

Photo: Getty (Getty Images)

Roger Severino, the former director of the Office of Civil Rights at Health and Human Services under Donald Trump, told a group of more than 2,000 high school and college kids at the Students for Life annual conference Saturday that they can win the abortion fight by having tons of babies.

“You have to do your part,” he said. “Get married and have kids—lots of them.”

Students who support abortion rights, Severino added, are at a natural disadvantage because they “don’t reproduce.” (Nevermind that the average abortion patient, according to the New York Times, is already a mother.)

Politico reporter Alice Ollstein posted updates from the Washington, D.C., conference on Twitter Saturday, noting that students took a vote on what kinds of abortion bans they’d like to see now that Roe v. Wade was overturned, and one speaker made a very unfunny joke about the national diaper shortage.

Sunday will mark the 50th anniversary of the 1973 Roe decision, and the anti-abortion movement apparently has no plans of taking their feet off the gas now that they got the opinion overturned. At the annual March for Life Friday, attendees chanted, “One, two, three, four, Roe v. Wade is out the door...five, six, seven, eight, now it’s time to legislate,” as leaders called on politicians to get down to the business of banning abortion through laws.

“We have to work very hard to make sure we keep our eye on the prize, that we don’t say, ‘Hey, Roe v. Wade is overturned. We’ve done our work. Now it’s time to go home.’ I would say, to be transparent, that was a concern of ours,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, according to Ollstein. “I think some people were a little bit frozen in time and not sure what to do.”

Of the state ballot initiatives post-Roe, in which voters in California, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Montana and Vermont made clear that they want to keep abortion rights, Dannenfelser said conservatives need to simply “up [their] funding game” rather than abide by the will of voters.

“I think those ballot initiatives were a wake-up call that 50 years of work can be wiped out in a second unless you’re ready to go with a real battle plan,” she said.

Needless to say, the overturning of Roe was never about sending the issue back to the states, as conservatives have claimed for decades—it was about getting the green light to impose their will on the whole country.

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CRIMINAL CAPITALISM WAR PROFITEERING
Ukrainian Defense Ministry overpays for food, reports Ukrainian media

Sat, January 21, 2023 

According to the media, the Ministry of Defense purchases products for the military at inflated prices

The newspaper obtained a copy of a Defense Ministry's agreement worth UAH 13.16 billion (about $360 million) for catering services for military units located far away from the front line, in particular in Poltava, Sumy, Kyiv, Zhytomyr, Chernihiv and Cherkasy oblasts.

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The agreement was signed on Dec. 23.

Zerkalo Tuzhnia compared the prices stated in the contract with the prices in Ukraine's Silpo supermarket chain. They discovered that the most common items were overpriced by two to three times.

For example, the MoD purchases eggs at the price of UAH 17 ($0.46) per egg, while retail prices in Kyiv's supermarkets is about UAH 7 ($0.2) per egg.

Potatoes are bought for UAH 22 ($0.6) per kilogram, while it can be bought at a price of UAH 8-9 ($0.25) per kilogram at a regular shop.

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Meanwhile, chicken thighs were purchased at UAH 120 ($3.27) per kilogram, while average retail prices cost about UAH 80 ($2.18).

The newspaper noted that these price comparisons were only for retail – wholesale prices would be even lower.

The Ministry of Defense is yet to respond to the newspaper's request on the matter. The agreement on catering is much wider than just food purchase, but those costs are described separately.

Read also: Russia continues to export oil products to Europe, evading EU ban – Skhemy

"If one wades through the document, they will see that catering service is specified separately with the cost of UAH 30 million ($820,000) that is about 0.2% of the total contract value, not even 2%," the newspaper emphasized.

The MoD signed the contract worth UAH 13 billion with Active Company LLC, a company with registered assets worth UAH 1,000 ($27).

Read also: Russians stealing metal products from Mariupol to send to Russia

In 2021, the tax service revoked this company's VAT payer certificate due to lack of deliveries and failure to report taxes.

In 2019, Active Company LLC was involved in a criminal investigation where the National Police suspected the firm of submitting a fake certificate for a tender for the supply of beef for prisons and pre-trial detention centers in Ukraine.

The government’s response to the scandalous news

The Ukrainian parliament has already responded to the investigation. Mariana Bezuhla, a Ukrainian MP and deputy chairwoman of the Committee on National Security, Defense, and Intelligence, wrote on Facebook that the "problem isn't limited with the food purchase alone".

"An inspection of the Ministry of Defense is currently being conducted by the State Audit Service of Ukraine, as well as by the police,” she said.

“We are expecting their conclusions. Our MoD has done a lot during the war time of 2022. But there are also some omissions, and even more so the risk of corruption has to be addressed.”

Later, she reported that the leadership of the Ministry of Defense is expected to provide an explanation to the committee for this contract.

ZN.ua

Read the original article on The New Voice of Ukraine

Can Bolsonaro's insurrectionists be deterred?

David Faris, Contributing Writer
Sun, January 22, 2023 

The aftermath of the Brazil riots. Illustrated | Getty Images

In early January, supporters of defeated Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro invaded the country's seat of government in Brasília, in a challenge to the peaceful transfer of power modeled explicitly on the U.S. Capitol insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021. While the rioters were eventually cleared, the incident raised troubling questions about the loyalty of the country's security and military services, as well as the future and health of Brazil's democracy. Will efforts to arrest and prosecute the insurrectionists deter future attempts to overthrow the government? Here's everything you need to know about Brazil's troubled democracy:

What brought us to this point?

For a time after former President Jair Bolsanaro was defeated in Brazil's October 2022 runoff election, it appeared that the country had narrowly averted disaster. Despite ominous signals from Bolsanaro in the year leading up to the election that he would attempt to enlist his allies in the military to thwart the popular will, this didn't happen, at least not immediately. Challenger Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, commonly known as Lula, was inaugurated on New Year's Day — a ceremony that Bolsonaro petulantly skipped, just like former U.S. President Donald Trump did in 2021.

Lula's speech promised a return to democratic values. "The great edifice of rights, sovereignty, and development that this nation built has been systematically demolished in recent years," he told the gathered throngs. "And to re-erect this edifice, we are going to direct all our efforts." Those efforts, unfortunately, had to commence almost immediately, when mobs of Bolsonaro's supporters swarmed into the Congress, Supreme Court, and presidential palace buildings in the capital city of Brasília a week later on Jan 8. Security forces appeared to act in concert with the rioters, increasing fears that Lula's term would be cut short by a military coup dressed up as a street uprising.

How did Bolsonaro handle the situation?

While he didn't try to seize power immediately, Bolsonaro refused to concede his defeat to Lula. It was in keeping with his style of rule, which included escalating attacks on journalists, attempts to shield himself and his family from public scrutiny, and staffing his administration with former military officials. Throughout the campaign, he had hurled baseless accusations against the country's voting machines, attacked the Supreme Court, and argued that the military should conduct its own audit of the results. Bolsonaro consistently trailed Lula in public opinion polling, but the actual results were far closer than expected. That may have emboldened Bolsonaro, since a narrow loss is easier to undermine with charges of fraud than an overwhelming thumping.

As Lula's inauguration approached, Bolsonaro supporters set up camp outside of Brasília's main military compound, urging the armed forces to restore Bolsonaro to power. Bolsonaro left the country for Florida on Dec. 31, leaving Vice President Hamilton Mourão in charge of the country for a day before Lula's swearing-in. Bolsonaro denied involvement in escalating tensions in the capital and denounced a bomb plot that was foiled by authorities. "I did not encourage anyone to enter confrontation," Bolsonaro said on social media.

What did his supporters achieve?

A week after Lula's inauguration, everything boiled over in the capital. More Bolsonaro supporters arrived in Brasília by bus and began marching toward the governing complex. Unlike the Jan. 6 attack in the U.S., the riot was not intended to disrupt the transfer of power, which had already happened, but seemingly to invite the military to seize power and depose Lula.

Critics charged that security forces deliberately allowed rioters to gain access to the buildings, a sentiment later echoed by Lula himself. "There was an explicit connivance of the police with the demonstrators," he said. The lack of preparation was particularly suspicious given the open planning of the riot by far-right supporters of Bolsonaro on social media. Bolsonaro, though, refused to openly support the violence from Florida, stating "Peaceful protests, in the form of the law, are part of democracy. However, depredations and invasions of public buildings are not the norm."

Military leaders, whatever their private sympathies might be, declined to join the insurrection or to move against Lula, so far preserving the continuity of democracy that has held since the end of a 21-year military dictatorship in 1985. The army, instead, cleared the insurrectionists out of their redoubts in a sign that, as The New York Times' German Lopez argues, Bolsonaro lacked the necessary support inside the military to pull off a coup. The Supreme Court suspended the capital region's governor for 90 days for negligence. That same justice, Alexandre de Moraes, approved arrest warrants for security officials responsible for the Federal District. Roughly 1,500 people were detained for participating in the riot, and many were subsequently arrested, a much swifter crackdown than was seen in the U.S. after Jan. 6.

Is democracy safe?

Whether the crackdown will suffice to deter future plots against democracy remains to be seen. For Time, Ian Bremmer argues that "there is no evidence that the events of Jan. 8, dramatic and ugly though they were, have changed many minds." While the insurrection itself was unpopular with a majority of Brazilians, a staggering 37 percent support the military stepping in to remove Lula, a figure that will surely go up if his administration stumbles.

In Foreign Affairs, Benjamin H. Bradlow and Mohammad Ali Kadivar write that Brazil's institutions won't avert a slide into autocracy — instead, Lula "will have to rely on this wide, organized social base of support to again strengthen the institutional basis of Brazilian democracy." That is especially true because Lula's allies lack effective majorities in Congress to implement any reforms that might alleviate the threat of far-right authoritarianism. According to Maria Laura Canineu, Brazil director at Human Rights Watch, "authorities should strengthen the democratic system and defend the rule of law by holding to account all those responsible for carrying out or enabling the violence."

It is not yet known when Bolsonaro plans to return to Brazil from Florida, if he would be prosecuted for his role in the events of Jan. 8, or if he would run again for president. Authorities have not yet made a request to the U.S. for Bolsonaro's extradition. But Brazil has surely not seen the last of him, and ongoing vigilance will be required to maintain the integrity and effectiveness of the country's democratic institutions.

Brazil's new president works to reverse Amazon deforestation
 

FABIANO MAISONNAVE and DIANE JEANTET
Sun, January 22, 2023 

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Shaking a traditional rattle, Brazil’s incoming head of Indigenous affairs recently walked through every corner of the agency’s headquarters — even its coffee room — as she invoked help from ancestors during a ritual cleansing.

The ritual carried extra meaning for Joenia Wapichana, Brazil’s first Indigenous woman to command the agency charged with protecting the Amazon rainforest and its people. Once she is sworn in next month under newly inaugurated President Luiz Inácio da Silva, Wapichana promises to clean house at an agency that critics say has allowed the Amazon's resources to be exploited at the expense of the environment.

As Wapichana performed the ritual, Indigenous people and government officials enthusiastically chanted “Yoohoo! Funai is ours!’’ — a reference to the agency she will lead.

Environmentalists, Indigenous people and voters sympathetic to their causes were important to Lula's narrow victory over former President Jair Bolsonaro. Now Lula is seeking to fulfill campaign pledges he made to them on a wide range of issues, from expanding Indigenous territories to halting a surge in illegal deforestation.

To carry out these goals, Lula is appointing well-known environmentalists and Indigenous people to key positions at Funai and other agencies that Bolsonaro had filled with allies of agribusiness and military officers.

In Lula's previous two terms as president, he had a mixed record on environmental and Indigenous issues. And he is certain to face obstacles from pro-Bolsonaro state governors who still control swaths of the Amazon. But experts say Lula is taking the right first steps.

The federal officials Lula has already named to key posts “have the national and international prestige to reverse all the environmental destruction that we have suffered over these four years of the Bolsonaro government,” said George Porto Ferreira, an analyst at Ibama, Brazil’s environmental law-enforcement agency.

Bolsonaro's supporters, meanwhile, fear that Lula's promise of stronger environmental protections will hurt the economy by reducing the amount of land open for development, and punish people for activities that had previously been allowed. Some supporters with ties to agribusiness have been accused of providing financial and logistical assistance to rioters who earlier this month stormed Brazil's presidential palace, Congress and Supreme Court.

When Bolsonaro was president, he defanged Funai and other agencies responsible for environmental oversight. This enabled deforestation to soar to its highest level since 2006, as developers and miners who took land from Indigenous people faced few consequences.

Between 2019 and 2022, the number of fines handed out for illegal activities in the Amazon declined by 38% compared with the previous four years, according an analysis of Brazilian government data by the Climate Observatory, a network of environmental nonprofit groups.

One of the strongest signs yet of Lula's intentions to reverse these trends was his decision to return Marina Silva to lead the country's environmental ministry. Silva formerly held the job between 2003 and 2008, a period when deforestation declined by 53%. A former rubber-tapper from Acre state, Silva resigned after clashing with government and agribusiness leaders over environmental policies she deemed to be too lenient.

Silva strikes a strong contrast with Bolsonaro’s first environment minister, Ricardo Salles, who had never set foot in the Amazon when he took office in 2019 and resigned two years later following allegations that he had facilitated the export of illegally felled timber.

Other measures Lula has taken in support of the Amazon and its people include:

— Signing a decree that would rejuvenate the most significant international effort to preserve the rainforest — the Amazon Fund. The fund, which Bolsonaro had gutted, has received more than $1.2 billion, mostly from Norway, to help pay for sustainable development of the Amazon.

— Revoking a Bolsonaro decree that allowed mining in Indigenous and environmental protection areas.

— Creating a Ministry of Indigenous Peoples, which will oversee everything from land boundaries to education. This ministry will be led by Sônia Guajajara, the country's first Indigenous woman in such a high government post.

“It won't be easy to overcome 504 years in only four years. But we are willing to use this moment to promote a take-back of Brazil's spiritual force," Guajajara said during her induction ceremony, which was delayed by the damage pro-Bolsonaro rioters caused to the presidential palace.

The Amazon rainforest, which covers an area twice the size of India, acts as a buffer against climate change by absorbing large amounts of carbon dioxide. But Bolsonaro viewed management of the Amazon as an internal affair, causing Brazil's global reputation to take a hit. Lula is trying to undo that damage.

During the UN’s climate summit in Egypt in November, Lula pledged to end all deforestation by 2030 and announced his country’s intention to host the COP30 climate conference in 2025. Brazil had been scheduled to host the event in 2019, but Bolsonaro canceled it in 2018 right after he was elected.

While Lula has ambitious environmental goals, the fight to protect the Amazon faces complex hurdles. For example, getting cooperation from local officials won't be easy.

Six out of nine Amazonian states are run by Bolsonaro allies. Those include Rondonia, where settlers of European descent control local power and have dismantled environmental legislation through the state assembly; and Acre, where a lack of economic opportunities is driving rubber-tappers who had long fought to preserve the rainforest to take up cattle grazing instead.

The Amazon has also been plagued for decades by illegal gold mining, which employs tens of thousands of people in Brazil and other countries, such as Peru and Venezuela. The illegal mining causes mercury contamination of rivers that Indigenous peoples rely upon for fishing and drinking.

“Its main cause is the state's absence,” says Gustavo Geiser, a forensics expert with the Federal Police who has worked in the Amazon for over 15 years.

One area where Lula has more control is in designating Indigenous territories, which are the best preserved regions in the Amazon.

Lula is under pressure to create 13 new Indigenous territories — a process that had stalled under Bolsonaro, who kept his promise not to grant “one more inch” of land to Indigenous peoples.

A major step will be to expand the size of Uneiuxi, part of one of the most remote and culturally diverse regions of the world that is home to 23 peoples. The process of expanding the boundaries of Uneiuxi started four decades ago, and the only remaining step is a presidential signature, which will increase its size by 37% to 551,000 hectares (2,100 square miles).

“Lula already indicated that he would not have any problem doing that,” said Kleber Karipuna, a close aide of Guajajara.

___

Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, right, and congressional candidate Marina Silva, campaign in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Monday, Sept. 12, 2022. Environmentalists, Indigenous people and voters sympathetic to their causes were important to Lula's narrow victory over former President Jair Bolsonaro. Now Lula is seeking to fulfill campaign pledges he made to them on a wide range of issues, from expanding Indigenous territories to halting a surge in illegal deforestation. (AP Photo/Andre Penner, file)

Gov. Sarah Huckabee- Sanders' Latinx Ban wades into community's generational rift


Sarah Huckabee Sanders Latinx Ban

This image provided by Makhi Brasfield, shows Angel Castillo Reyes. Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders is tapping into a debate that's sharply divided Latinos with her decision to ban most state agencies from using the gender neutral term Latinx. Sanders this month signed an order banning the term by agencies. It was one of her first acts as governor.

 (Makhi Brasfield via AP


ANDREW DeMILLO and CLAIRE SAVAGE
Sun, January 22, 2023 

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — One of Sarah Huckabee Sanders' first acts as Arkansas governor was to ban most state agencies from using the gender-neutral term Latinx, tapping into a debate that's divided Hispanics along generational lines.

Sanders called the word “culturally insensitive” in an order that's prompted complaints from some critics who view it as yet another attack by Republicans on the LGBTQ community. Yet her move may have limited impact, given that the word does not appear to be widely used in Arkansas government.

It was among several orders the 40-year-old former White House press secretary signed within hours of taking office office that were cheered by conservatives, including restrictions on teaching critical race theory in public schools and banning TikTok on state devices. The Latinx prohibition gives agencies 60 days to revise written materials to comply.

“One of the things as governor that I will not permit is the government using culturally insensitive words," Sanders said as she signed the order.

Sanders' order adds to the debate over a word that's found little widespread support among Latinos and even prompted backlash from some Democrats. It comes as Republicans have sought to rally around culture war issues. They also are seeking to make inroads with Latino voters, but fell short of the major shifts some in the party were hoping for in last year’s elections.

The term Latinx was coined in recent years as a gender-neutral alternative to Latino and Latina, since all nouns in the Spanish language are gendered. Many in the LGBTQ Latino community have embraced the word, but it has been slow to catch on more widely, with some Latino figures calling the term unnecessary.

The League of United Latin American Citizens, the oldest Latino civil rights group in the U.S., announced in 2021 that it would no longer use the term Latinx. The group declined to comment on Sanders' order.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego from Arizona also said that year his staff was not allowed to use the term in official communications.

“When Latino politicos use the term it is largely to appease white rich progressives who think that is the term we use," Gallego tweeted in 2021.

The Log Cabin Republicans, which represents LGBT members of the party, praised Sanders' order.

“The term Latinx is just another misguided product of the modern left’s relentless obsession with stripping gender from American life, an obsession that LGBT conservatives fight back against daily," Charles Moran, the group's president, said in a statement.

Sanders' order doesn’t apply to the state’s institutes of higher education or other state agencies considered constitutionally independent, such as the Arkansas Department of Transportation. It also allows the governor to grant exemptions for the word’s use.

Several state agencies said they were reviewing their forms to make sure they would comply. Health Department spokeswoman Meg Mirivel said two jobs that had been unofficially called the Latinx public information coordinator and the Latinx outreach coordinator will continue to work with the Latino community but will no longer include Latinx in their titles.

Sanders isn't the first governor to ban or restrict the use of certain words. Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul last year signed a bill in New York removing from state education law the word “incorrigible," a term that critics had called sexist and racist.

In 2015, then-Florida Gov. Rick Scott was criticized after former officials said they were instructed to not use the terms “climate change” and “global warming." Scott, a Republican who now serves in the Senate, denied he banned the terms.

Critics of Sanders' order have said that just because the term isn't universal among Spanish speakers, that doesn't mean it's insensitive to use.

“Language is constantly evolving,” said Manuel Hernandez, head of the Latino LGBTQ group Association of Latinos/as/xs Motivating Action. “We don’t speak Old English. I’ve never met someone who says ‘thy.’”

Hernandez called Sanders' order “an attempt to erase" the LGBTQ Latino community.

Sanders signed the order the day after Arkansas lawmakers kicked off a session that's already included newly proposed restrictions on the LGBTQ community. One bill would classify drag shows as adult-oriented businesses, and another would ban transgender people from using bathrooms at K-12 schools that align with their gender identity.

Sanders has also said she would support legislation similar to Florida's law that forbids instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade. Critics have dubbed it the “Don't Say Gay” law.

Sanders’ executive order banning Latinx cites a 2020 report from Pew Research Center, which found that 1 in 4 U.S. Hispanics have heard the term “Latinx,” but just 3% use it.

Age is an important factor. Hispanics ages 18-29 are six times more likely than older generations to have heard of the term — 42% compared with 7% of those ages 65 or older, Pew found.

Its popularity has risen since 2016, but remains below Latina, Latino and Hispanic, according to the report.

“If you’re trying to categorize a community with the term that they seemingly are rejecting or in some cases are even openly hostile against, it makes sense that that term would in essence, go the way of the dodo, which Latinx seems to have done," said Fernand Amandi, president of Bendixen & Amandi, a multilingual public opinion research firm.

Among those using the term is Angel Castillo Reyes, a 21-year-old nonbinary student at the University of Arkansas who uses the pronouns they/them. Castillo Reyes uses both Latinx and “Latine," another gender-neutral term that's been used by some in the Latino community to describe their ethnic identity.

“I appreciate those terms because I know it doesn’t come from a sense of wanting to divide," Castillo Reyes said. “It comes from the sense of wanting to unite."

Conversations with older Latino people about gender neutrality can be difficult, Castillo Reyes said. Their parents, who are evangelical Pentecostal Christians, find the terms “ridiculous.”

Castillo Reyes criticized Sanders' order as unnecessary, but said they think it will offer an opportunity to discuss the need for gender-neutral terms with a wider community.

“Now that I know Spanish can be used in a way that is inclusive, it’s like, ‘Wow, I never thought this was possible,’” they said.

___

Savage reported from Chicago and is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

NEXT; BIBLE BURNING!

Protests in Stockholm, including Koran-burning, draw strong condemnation from Turkey

Sat, January 21, 2023 

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) -Protests in Stockholm on Saturday against Turkey and Sweden's bid to join NATO, including the burning of a copy of the Koran, sharply heightened tensions with Turkey at a time when the Nordic country needs Ankara's backing to gain entry to the military alliance.

"We condemn in the strongest possible terms the vile attack on our holy book ... Permitting this anti-Islam act, which targets Muslims and insults our sacred values, under the guise of freedom of expression is completely unacceptable," the Turkish Foreign Ministry said.

Its statement was issued after an anti-immigrant politician from the far-right fringe burned a copy of the Koran near the Turkish Embassy. The Turkish ministry urged Sweden to take necessary actions against the perpetrators and invited all countries to take concrete steps against Islamophobia.

A separate protest took place in the city supporting Kurds and against Sweden's bid to join NATO. A group of pro-Turkish demonstrators also held a rally outside the embassy. All three events had police permits.

Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom said that Islamophobic provocations were appalling.

"Sweden has a far-reaching freedom of expression, but it does not imply that the Swedish Government, or myself, support the opinions expressed," Billstrom said on Twitter.

The Koran-burning was carried out by Rasmus Paludan, leader of Danish far-right political party Hard Line. Paludan, who also has Swedish citizenship, has held a number of demonstrations in the past where he has burned the Koran.

Paludan could not immediately be reached by email for a comment. In the permit he obtained from police, it says his protest was held against Islam and what it called Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan's attempt to influence freedom of expression in Sweden.

Several Arab countries including Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Kuwait denounced the Koran-burning. "Saudi Arabia calls for spreading the values of dialogue, tolerance, and coexistence, and rejects hatred and extremism," the Saudi Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Sweden and Finland applied last year to join NATO following Russia's invasion of Ukraine but all 30 member states must approve their bids. Turkey has said Sweden in particular must first take a clearer stance against what it sees as terrorists, mainly Kurdish militants and a group it blames for a 2016 coup attempt.

At the demonstration to protest Sweden's NATO bid and to show support for Kurds, speakers stood in front of a large red banner reading "We are all PKK", referring to the Kurdistan Workers Party that is outlawed in Turkey, Sweden, and the United States among other countries, and addressed several hundred pro-Kurdish and left-wing supporters.

"We will continue our opposition to the Swedish NATO application," Thomas Pettersson, spokesperson for Alliance Against NATO and one of organizers of the demonstration, told Reuters.

Police said the situation was calm at all three demonstrations.

In Istanbul, people in a group of around 200 protesters set fire to a Swedish flag in front of the Swedish consulate in response to the burning of the Koran.

SWEDISH MINISTER'S VISIT CANCELLED

Earlier on Saturday, Turkey said that due to lack of measures to restrict protests, it had cancelled a planned visit to Ankara by the Swedish defence minister.

Jonson said separately that he and Akar had met on Friday during a gathering of Western allies in Germany and had decided to postpone the planned meeting.

Turkish Defence Minister Hulusi Akar said he had discussed with Erdogan the lack of measures to restrict protests in Sweden against Turkey and had conveyed Ankara's reaction to Jonson on the sidelines of a meeting of the Ukraine Defence Contact Group.

"It is unacceptable not to make a move or react to these (protests). The necessary things needed to be done, measures should have been taken," Akar said, according to a statement by Turkish Defence Ministry.

Turkey's Foreign Ministry had already summoned Sweden's ambassador on Friday over the planned protests.

Finland and Sweden signed a three-way agreement with Turkey in 2022 aimed at overcoming Ankara's objections to their membership of NATO. Sweden says it has fulfilled its part of the memorandum but Turkey is demanding more, including the extradition of 130 people it deems to be terrorists.

(Reporting by Omer Berberoglu, Ezgi Erkoyun and Bulent Usta in Istanbul and Niklas Pollard and Simon Johnson in StockholmAdditional reporting by Moaz Abd-Alaziz in CairoWriting by Ezgi Erkoyun and Niklas PollardEditing by Toby Chopra and Frances Kerry)

THE ORIGINS OF ANTIFA

Vintage Chicago Tribune: In 1977, Skokie was a refuge for thousands of Holocaust survivors. Then a group of self-styled Nazis planned a march.

Ron Grossman, Chicago Tribune
Sun, January 22, 2023 

Decades after the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp on Jan. 27, 1945, revealed the magnitude of the Holocaust, an epilogue was witnessed halfway around the world.

“It has come to my attention that on May 1 there is going to be a Nazi parade held in front of the village hall,” a member of the public said at a 1977 meeting of Skokie’s village trustees. “As a Nazi survivor during the Second World War, I’d like to know what you gentlemen are going to do about it.”

By an unlikely chain of events, the fate of a Chicago suburb had been linked to that of Jews who escaped a European genocide.

Until World War II, Chicago’s North Shore was largely off limits to Jews. Property deeds provided that they were only to be sold to white Christians. But Skokie had undeveloped land that homebuilders hoped to capitalize on.

So during the pent-up housing demand of the postwar years, those developers got the word out to residents of Chicago’s Jewish neighborhoods that Skokie was open to them.

The town’s Jewish population grew exponentially. By contrast, in neighboring Evanston, subsequently to become a liberal community, Jews only got property for a synagogue with the aid of Unitarians, who quietly bought it for them.

Meanwhile, Holocaust survivors were looking for someplace to rebuild their lives. Immediately after the war, some had returned to their Polish hometowns. But that ended abruptly when more than 40 Jews were killed during a pogrom that began in Kielce and spread to other cities in 1946.

“Reports of apparently systematic attacks on Jews attributed by the government to fascist elements are received every day,” the Tribune reported in a dispatch from Warsaw. “They tell of bandits who board trains and trolley cars in suburban districts, strip and rob Jews and drag them away to be murdered.”

The U.S. wasn’t interested in taking in survivors, so they languished in displaced persons camps — some formerly Nazi concentration camps.

“We survivors had so much trouble to come to the U.S.,” recalled Erna Gans, founder of the Skokie Holocaust Memorial, in 1994. “The American authorities questioned and re-questioned us. Our concentration camp guards went through with no problem at all.”

When the neo-Nazis announced their march in Skokie, its population was about 60,000, an estimated half of whom were Jewish. Approximately 7,000 residents were thought to be Holocaust survivors. Its mayor said it was largest concentration of Hitler’s victims outside of Israel.

Howard Reich, the former Tribune music critic, recalled what attracted survivors, like his parents, to Skokie.

“In this little town, barely 10 miles square, on Chicago’s northern border, survivors could find blintzes and bialys at innumerable Jewish delis, buy kosher meats at butcher shops where everyone spoke Yiddish and stroll on High Holy Days to services at storefront shuls without fear of harassment,” Reich wrote in Moment magazine in 2010.

That landscape also appealed to Frank Collin as a way to promote his antisemitic ideology. He was the leader of a small neo-Nazi group with headquarters on the Southwest Side, and an enigma to his family. “We don’t know how or when it started,” Gertrude Hardyman, Collin’s grandmother, told the Tribune. “It’s a mystery.”

Collin’s father was a German Jew who survived the Dachau concentration camp, she explained.

Skokie’s authorities were sure of one thing about Collin: Given the village’s demographics, he and his followers shouldn’t be allowed to march in Nazi uniforms carrying flags emblazoned with the swastika that flew over Auschwitz.

Ordinances prohibiting that event were quickly enacted. Just as quickly, civil libertarians cried foul.

“As a Jew, I abhor the fuss being raised in Skokie by members of the Jewish ethnic community,” Sheldon Waxman wrote in a letter to the editor. “People should know, by now, that free speech defuses the ticking time bomb of hatred.”

The Jewish War Veterans organization said they would mount a counter demonstration. Others said that would give the neo-Nazis the publicity they were seeking. Better to stay off the streets.

“But there was a time we were told to stay at home when the Nazis marched through the streets,” Gans said. “That won’t happen again.”

In her youth, the strategy of the European Jewish leaders was to avoid confrontations with Hitler’s followers. Eventually the German people would be tired of his antics. Rule of law would be restored, and life would return to normal for Jews.

Instead, the Holocaust followed.

Illinois Gov. Jim Thompson agreed that the Nazi march wasn’t simply an extension of Collin’s constitutional right to freely speak his mind.

When the American Civil Liberties Union agreed to represent Collin, a philosophical dispute became a knockdown, drag-out battle.

“It was inevitable that the ACLU would defend the 1st Amendment in Skokie,” its director David Hamlin wrote in a Tribune op-ed. “The ACLU is more than 55 years old, and it has defended the 1st amendment vigorously through out its history.”

In fact, the organization was simultaneously trying to keep its dirty linen from being aired in public.

Hamlin objected to the release of ACLU files showing that during the red-baiting of the 1940s, its officials, “had systematically provided the FBI with information on their own organization and some of its own members.” Instead of defending Communists, the ACLU had squealed on them.

Many ACLU members were outraged at the ACLU’s defense of neo-Nazis. “Without the free help of the ACLU these despicable people would be relegated to muttering among themselves instead of seeing the name of their party in the headlines of the major newspapers of the country,” a Northfield resident said in a letter to the Tribune

 “Therefore I want my name removed from ACLU membership rolls.”

By August of 1977, 700 to 1,000 local members had resigned. Plus 2,000 from other chapters, Hamlin reported. Shortly, he stepped down.

Some objected to the objectors. Congressman Abner Mikva, a prominent liberal who favored banning the march, was chastised by a Northwestern University professor who also, as the Tribune reported, expressed, “sympathy for residents of the heavily Jewish suburb who will be distraught if the march takes place.”

The ACLU got a court order allowing a Nazi march in Marquette Park on Chicago’s Southwest Side, but that further antagonized the organized Jewish community, as the Tribune reported: “The Public Affairs Committee (of the Jewish United Fund) will not in any manner condone, aid, or abet the promotion of Nazi or any other racist doctrine in Skokie or any other community.”

The most poignant memory of the contorted affair was George Baum’s. “My interest in the Nazis’ march is personal. It recalls a march under different circumstances,” he noted in an August 1977 Tribune op-ed.

In 1945, Baum was freed by Russian soldiers from the Terezin concentration camp, a way-station en route to Auschwitz’s gas chambers. Of the 15,000 Jewish children who had been imprisoned there, by some estimates fewer than 150 survived.

As their Nazi guards were being marched away fellow inmates, shrunken by starvation and dressed in rags, pummeled them until the Russians said it was enough.

“How can one hate, when hate has brought so much suffering? How can one keep his own sanity if he adopts the insanes’ ways?” Baum recalled asking himself as a 12-year old.

“Today I still understand the question. But the answers still elude me, as they have eluded mankind.”

U$A

‘Assassinated in cold blood’: Eco-activist killed protesting Georgia’s ‘Cop City’


2.5k
Timothy Pratt in Atlanta

THE GUARDIAN
Sat, January 21, 2023

Belkis Terán spoke with her child, Manuel, nearly every day by WhatsApp from her home in Panama City, Panama. She also had names and numbers for some of Manuel’s friends, in case she didn’t hear from the 26-year-old who was protesting “Cop City”, a planned gigantic training facility being built in a wooded area near Atlanta, Georgia.

So by midweek, when she hadn’t received a message from Atlanta since Monday, she began to worry. Thursday around noon, a friend of Manuel’s – whose chosen name was “Tortuguita,” or “Little Turtle” – messaged her with condolences. “I’m so sorry,” they wrote. “For what?” she asked.

Related: The US activists holed up in treehouses to block $90m ‘Cop City’

Terán wound up discovering that on Wednesday around 9.04am, an as-yet unnamed officer or officers had shot and killed her son. The shooting occurred in an operation involving dozens of officers from Atlanta police, Dekalb county police, Georgia state patrol, the Georgia bureau of investigation and the FBI.

The killing has stunned and shocked not only Tortuguita’s family and friends, but also the environmental and social justice movement in Georgia and across the United States. Circumstances surrounding the incident are still unclear and there are demands for a thorough investigation into the killing and how it could have happened.

The police apparently found Manuel in a tent in the South River forest south-east of Atlanta, taking part in a protest now in its second year, against plans to build a $90m police and fire department training facility on the land and, separately, a film studio.

Officials say Manuel shot first at a state trooper “without warning” and an officer or officers returned fire, but they have produced no evidence for the claim. The trooper was described as stable and in hospital Thursday.

The shooting is “unprecedented” in the history of US environmental activism, according to experts.

The GBI, which operates under Republican governor Brian Kemp’s orders, has released scant information and on Thursday night told the Guardian no body-cam footage of the shooting exists. At least a half-dozen other protesters who were in the forest at the time have communicated to other activists that one, single series of shots could be heard. They believe the state trooper could have been shot by another officer, or by his own firearm.

Meanwhile, both Terán and local activists are looking into legal action, and Manuel’s mother told the Guardian: “I will go to the US to defend Manuel’s memory … I’m convinced that he was assassinated in cold blood.”

The incident was the latest in a ramping-up of law enforcement raids on the forest in recent months.

Protests had begun in late 2021, after the then Atlanta mayor, Keisha Lance Bottoms, announced plans for the training center. The forest had been named in city plans four years earlier as a key part of efforts to maintain Atlanta’s renowned tree canopy as a buffer against global warming, and to create what would have been the metro area’s largest park.

Most of the residents in neighborhoods around the forest are Black and municipal planning has neglected the area for decades. The plans to preserve the forest and make it a historic public amenity were adopted in 2017 as part of Atlanta’s city charter, or constitution. But the Atlanta city council wound up approving the training center anyway, and a movement to “Stop Cop City” began in response.

A series of editorials and news stories lambasting the activists began in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the area’s largest daily paper. At least a dozen articles in the last year-plus failed to mention that Alex Taylor, CEO of the paper’s owner, Cox Enterprises, was also raising funds on behalf of the Atlanta police foundation, the main agency behind the training center.

At some point, Kemp and other civic leaders began referring to the protesters as “terrorists”, in response to acts of vandalism such as burning construction vehicles or spray-painting corporate offices linked to the project.

In an interview with this reporter last fall, Tortuguita was discussing how some Muscogee (Creek) people interested in protecting the forest as well felt that leaving a burnt vehicle at one of its entrances was not a good idea, and was an alienating presence in nature. The activist seemed understanding of both sides and critical of violence.

“Some of us [forest defenders] are rowdy gringos,” Tortuguita said. “They’re just against the state. Still, I don’t know how you can connect to anything if that’s your entire political analysis.”

Police raids on the forest intensified until 14 December, when a half-dozen “forest defenders” were arrested and charged with “domestic terrorism” under state law – another unprecedented development in US environmental activism, said Lauren Regan, founder of the Civil Liberties Defense Center, who has a quarter-century’s experience defending environmental protestors charged with federal terrorism sentencing enhancements and others.

Seven more activists were arrested and received the same charges the day Manuel was killed.

State killings of environmental activists are common in other countries 

... but it’s never happened in the US

Keith Woodhouse

Regan and Keith Woodhouse, professor of history at Northwestern University and author of The Ecocentrists: A History of Radical Environmentalism, both said there has never been a case where law enforcement has shot and killed an environmental activist engaged in an attempt to protect a forest from being razed and developed.

“Killings of environmental activists by the state are depressingly common in other countries, like Brazil, Honduras, Nigeria,” said Woodhouse. “But this has never happened in the US.”

Manuel’s older brother, Daniel Esteban Paez, found himself in the middle of this unfortunate historical moment Thursday. “They killed my sibling,” he said on answering the phone. “I’m in a whole new world now.”

Paez, 31, was the only family member to speak extensively with GBI officials, after calling them Thursday in an attempt to get answers about what had happened. No one representing Georgia law enforcement had reached out to Belkis by Thursday afternoon. “I quickly found out, they’re not investigating the death of Manuel – they’re investigating Manuel,” Paez said.

A navy veteran, Paez said the GBI official asked him such questions as “Does Manuel often carry weapons?” and “Has Manuel done protesting in the past?”

The family is Venezuelan in origin, but now lives in the US and Panama, Paez said. Less than 24 hours into discovering the death of his sibling, Paez also said he “had no idea Manuel was so well-regarded and loved by so many”. He was referring to events and messages ranging from an Atlanta candlelight vigil Wednesday night to messages of solidarity being sent on social media from across the US and world.

Belkis Terán, meanwhile, is trying to get an emergency appointment at the US Embassy in Panama to renew her tourist visa, which expired in November. “I’m going to clear Manuel’s name. They killed him … like they tear down trees in the forest – a forest Manuel loved with passion.”