POTUS 2024

‘I see this campaign as challenging a system’: Marianne Williamson

ABC News’ Jon Karl interviews Marianne Williamson on “This Week.”

Marianne Williamson's 'This Week' interview: Full transcript about her 2024 campaign

The bestselling author talked about Biden, Trump and more.

ABC News’ Jon Karl interviews Marianne Williamson on “This Week.”

March 5, 2023,

Marianne Williamson on Saturday announced her 2024 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. On Sunday, ABC's "This Week" aired her interview with ABC Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl. Below is their complete conversation. For previous show transcripts, visit the "This Week" transcript archive.

JONATHAN KARL, CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Thank you for taking the time to talk to us.

MARIANNE WILLIAMSON, PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Oh, thank you for having me.

KARL: Why do you want to be president?

WILLIAMSON: I want to be president because this country needs to make an economic U-turn. Over the last 48 years, according to the Rand Corporation, $50 trillion has been transferred from the bottom 90% of Americans to the top 1%. And the system that effectuates and perpetuates that kind of income and opportunity inequality is not changing itself.

It tweaks itself every once in a while. There are some incremental change. But the devastation, the ubiquitous economic despair and human devastation that is produced by this sociopathic economic system is not changing. And it's not going to change if we continue to elect the same-old same-old.

KARL: So you -- so you said Washington is filled with good political car mechanics.

WILLIAMSON: Yes.

KARL: The problem is that we are on the wrong road.

WILLIAMSON: Mm-hmm.


KARL: So what's the plan? I mean, I understand your diagnosis of the problem. What's the plan for changing that?

WILLIAMSON: Well, it will help, first of all, with the whole system's breakdown. No one person is going to make all the difference. No one elected official is going to make all the difference. It's the people of the United States who have to rise up. But a president who lays down the truth and tells it like it is would help.

A -- a president who actually gets in there and actually makes appointments and takes actions that obstructs the overreach of unfettered, unregulated capitalism, that would help a lot.

KARL: You -- you have been called, I think it was the Associated Press said you are the longest of long shots. And, you know, look, you've never held elected office before.

WILLIAMSON: Mm-hmm.

KARL: You -- you've run before. You've lost.

WILLIAMSON: Mm-hmm.

KARL: What -- why do you think you can do this?

WILLIAMSON: I would bet that the Associated Press also said that Hillary Clinton was a shoo-in. I'm sure that they would --

KARL: I don't know if --

WILLIAMSON: -- have said --

KARL: -- they would've used that language, actually.

WILLIAMSON: Maybe not. But that --

(CROSSTALK)

WILLIAMSON: -- system, you know exactly what I'm saying.

So the system that is now saying that I'm unserious, I'm not credible, or I'm a long shot is the very system that protects and maintains this idea that only those whose careers have been entrenched within the system that drove us into a ditch should possibly be considered qualified to lead us out of that ditch.

My qualification is not that I know how to perpetuate that system. My qualification is that I know how to disrupt it. And that is what we need --

(CROSSTALK)

KARL: Disrupt it how?

WILLIAMSON: Oh, well, the first thing you can do is you can cancel all college loan debt. You can make sure --

KARL: Now Biden just tried that and then the courts --

WILLIAMSON: He tried.

KARL: -- stopped him.

WILLIAMSON: He -- he tried, yes. And some people think if he had just canceled the entire thing that -- and he had done it immediately, that would not have given his opponents the opportunity to wage the kind of battle against that that it has.

But it is so much more than that.

KARL: I mean, you still have the courts, you know?

WILLIAMSON: It is so much more than that. Let's stop pretending that there has been such a gargantuan effort that has been made. We were promised that the -- that the -- that the minimum wage would be raised for everyone, and then when the parliamentarian said no, we hide behind the skirts of the parliamentarian?

KARL: But there are rules of how you -- how you could accomplish things. And you do have to work through Congress. I mean, we don't have a dictator in this country.

WILLIAMSON: There are many things that the president can do without working through Congress. There are many things. The president declassify marijuana right now. The president could cancel college loan debt. The president could cancel all contracts --

KARL: Again, he tried to do that. He tried to do that.

WILLIAMSON: He tried to do that in which way are we saying?

KARL: Cancel -- cancel college loan debt.

WILLIAMSON: Well, he tried with the part that he has. And that is part of a larger picture. He also could demand that there be an audit of every single cent that is being spent by the Pentagon. We could also cancel all of the contracts with union-busting companies. We could also influence Congress and -- and support Congress in calling by subpoena every CEO of every -- every industry, whether it's airlines or big pharma or big food or anyone else that has been price-gouging the people of the United States.

There are many things that the president could do. This president -- and this -- I don't see myself as running against Joe Biden. I see this campaign as challenging a system. But this administration has given more oil (ph) --

KARL: But you do have to beat Biden to -- I mean --

WILLIAMSON: Well, yes, I do.

KARL: -- if you're going do this, you have to --

WILLIAMSON: Yes, I do. And I plan on pointing out, not with any kind of negativity on a personal level, I have -- I have no interest in taking potshots on any person, let alone to this president, he's a nice man. And he has given more oil-drilling permits to fossil fuel extraction companies than Trump did. He has talked about what a -- what a existential crisis it is, the climate change, on the -- at the same time, the Inflation Reduction Act gives 5%, the money that we give to the military only 5%.

This is how I see President Biden. He is helping people -- I think he has a good heart. He is helping people survive an unjust system. We need to do more than that. We need to end an unjust system. It's like when Eleanor Roosevelt said to Franklin Roosevelt, we need more than the amelioration of stress. We need genuine economic reform.

That would be universal health care. That would be tuition-free college and tech schools. That would be free child care. That would be --

KARL: I mean -- I mean, Biden has had initiatives on each of those. But you have to -- I mean, to make changes like that, you do have to get Congress to -- to pass laws.

WILLIAMSON: Not all of them. No, that's not true.

In this June 5, 2021, file photo, Project Angel Food Founder Marianne Williamson is seen at the AIDS Monument Groundbreaking in West Hollywood, Calif.
Emma Mcintyre/Getty Images for Foundation for AIDS Monument

KARL: I mean, universal health care, you're going to do that by executive order?

WILLIAMSON: Well, I will say this, what Libby, Montana, got -- where Libby, Montana, got that they got Medicare-for-All because of their emergency? So should Jackson, Mississippi. So should East Palestine. But it is more than that. This president has never used the bully pulpit to call for universal health care. This president has never --

(CROSSTALK)

KARL: I mean, he has been talking about health care for decades, to be fair. I mean, and -- and --

WILLIAMSON: That's right. But --

KARL: -- he was a big part of passing Obamacare and -- and --

WILLIAMSON: The -- the president has tried to improve Obamacare. Even with improved Obamacare, which I think he has accomplished to some extent, that is not universal health care. We have one in four Americans living with medical debt. We have 18 million Americans who cannot afford the prescription drugs that their doctors give them. We have 80 -- 68,000 Americans who die every year from lack of health care.

This kind of thing does not exist in other advanced democracies. Every other advanced democracy has universal health care. This is a moderate position in those countries. And it should be considered a moderate position here.

We're in a position, particularly as Democrats, when someone even makes the slightest effort, we go, “oh, that's so good”. And if they can't make it happen, “oh, poor baby”. You think the Republicans would treat their president that way if they failed to give them the blessings of democracy as they define them?

KARL: Well -- well, let me ask you this, because you endorsed Bernie Sanders when you got out of the race.

WILLIAMSON: I sure did.

KARL: You -- you called Elizabeth Warren -- I think you said she was a legend. I mean, you --

WILLIAMSON: She is. She -- I love those people.

KARL: Both of them have said that Biden deserves re-election.

WILLIAMSON: Well, that's their opinion. And this is the thing --

KARL: Are they wrong? So they're wrong?

WILLIAMSON: No, it's not about -- no. No, no, no. This is a democracy. This is not about what I think is wrong. Obviously I believe the American people should be offered an agenda for genuine, fundamental economic reform. And it should be the voters who decide. It should not be the DNC that decides. It should be the voters who decide. That is what a democracy is.

We -- this is not 100 years ago when a bunch of men smoking cigars get to sit around a table and decide the nominee.

KARL: Do you expect the DNC to have debates?

WILLIAMSON: Pardon?

KARL: Do -- do you expect to -- do you expect that Biden will debate you?

WILLIAMSON: He certainly should debate me. It's called democracy. And I'm running as well.

KARL: And -- and what about this notion of taking New Hampshire out of its -- out of its position as first? You're going to New Hampshire.

WILLIAMSON: I can tell you that New Hampshirites are not happy about that. The fact that the --

KARL: So will you be competing in the New Hampshire Primary?

WILLIAMSON: Absolutely --

KARL: Even though the DNC has said --

WILLIAMSON: -- I will. This is a democracy. This is the thing.

KARL: Yes.

WILLIAMSON: The DNC should not be rigging this system. They don't even pretend anymore. They're not even covert about their -- their swaying the -- the primary season. They're very overt about it. They're going to get --

(CROSSTALK)

KARL: So that's what's going on, is they're rigging the system for Biden.

WILLIAMSON: They even admit that, Jonathan.

KARL: OK.

WILLIAMSON: They admit that. They know that the president did not do well in New Hampshire. They know that New Hampshirites are very open to independent and more progressive voices.

KARL: Mm-hmm.

WILLIAMSON: And they know that they -- he did very well in South Carolina. They're not even -- you know this, I know this, they know this. And they're not even pretending otherwise.

KARL: Do you think Biden is too old to run for re-election?

WILLIAMSON: No. I -- I'm -- I'm not going there. I don't think ageism has any place in our -- in -- in our thinking. But I do think that the American people obviously know what the statistics are. They -- they know that --

KARL: What statistics?

WILLIAMSON: Well, the -- just the statistics as we get older. And -- and -- and the importance of who the vice president is, et cetera.

But once again, it should be the people who decide whether or not they feel any factor, the president's agenda or the president's personhood, would make them either vote for him or not vote for him.

KARL: So what is -- I mean, you're basically saying -- I know you're not going to make this personal, but you're basically saying that Biden doesn't deserve a second term.

WILLIAMSON: I wouldn't -- the word “deserve” is not what comes up for me. Those are your words. I'm saying that the president --

KARL: OK. But you're saying that he should -- he -- he should not be president again.

WILLIAMSON: Well, I'll tell you this. I do not believe that that is the winning ticket for 2024.

KARL: Will you endorse him if he wins the nomination?

WILLIAMSON: I will certainly endorse the candidate who I feel can beat the Republicans, absolutely.

KARL: So but -- but if he's the Democratic nominee, will you endorse him?

WILLIAMSON: I -- I will -- I will do whatever I feel I can do as an American to make sure that the neo-fascist threat that is represented by some aspects of the Republican Party does not win in 2024.

KARL: But you wouldn't run as a third party candidate if you lost --

(CROSSTALK)

WILLIAMSON: I'm not saying that I would run as a third party candidate. And I certainly wouldn't --

KARL: Are you saying you wouldn't, though?

WILLIAMSON: I'm saying that I will do what I can, as an American, a patriotic American to make sure that the overriding issue is addressed. And that's that the Neo-fascist threat of authoritarianism that is far too present in the current establishment of the Republican Party does not win the White House in 2024.

KARL: Is America better off? The old question is America better off. Were you better off now than you were four years ago? How would you Is America better off because Biden was elected president.

WILLIAMSON: 20% of Americans are doing very well in this economy. But that 20% are living on an enchanted island that is surrounded by a vast sea of economic despair and anxiety. That’s why--

KARL: So is the answer no, you don't think America is better off because Biden --

WILLIAMSON: America is over 360 million people. What I'm saying is the 20% of Americans are probably better off–

KARL: What about the other 80%?

WILLIAMSON: The other 80% are drowning, the other 80% are filled with people 1/3 of America's workforce that lives on less than $15 an hour, the other 80% of Americans, 64% of Americans, who are living paycheck to paycheck that people who are working full time at less than minimum wage, can't even afford a place to live. We're talking about 85 million Americans who are underinsured and underinsured. No for them, the economy is not going well. And they know that.

KARL: Let me ask you a bigger picture–

WILLIAMSON: So If I may say so,

KARL: Yes.

WILLIAMSON: If I may, for the Democrats to run in 2024 on the idea that the economy is doing well. That right there shows the unbelievable disconnect between DC think tanks and the visceral experience of the majority of Americans.

KARL: Do you think Trump could beat Biden?

WILLIAMSON: I would do everything I could to make sure that didn't happen. But it's not you know. This predictive thing is so silly. Nobody thought that Trump could beat Hillary, you know, this is not a football game. This is the state of our democracy, our environment and our economy that we're talking about. It's not a football game.

KARL: But let me ask you about your candidacy. You said last cycle that the media got you wrong by portraying you as anti-science, anti-vax, a crystal lady.

WILLIAMSON: Yeah.

KARL: So, how should Democrats view your candidacy?

WILLIAMSON: Well, I am an American, but I am Excuse me? Well, I am a Democrat, but I am an FDR Democrat. I think that I returned to the principles of FDR, a significantly unabashed advocacy for the working people of the United States is the great unfinished business of the Democratic Party. There are a lot of corporatist elite, establishment Democrats who look at progressives, such as myself and say, we're trying to hijack the party, they hijacked the party. I'm old enough to remember a time when the Democratic Party more than not, did make an unequivocal stance, we're now at a point where we have a Democratic president siding with the railroad, as opposed to with the workers on that railroad who only want sick pay. No, the Democratic Party needs to be a conduit for the healing of this country. But first, the Democratic Party needs to look in the mirror and heal itself.

KARL: You've talked a lot about cutting defense spending, how much? How much would you cut --

WILLIAMSON: You know, I'd like to see 30%. But that's not going to happen. So, you know, I understand that. I think what we need to have as a serious conversation about the fact that it was $858 billion, that it is today, so much more than any other nation, there are people within the military themselves. Who would say that this is more than we need for actual --

KARL: Where would you cut

WILLIAMSON: -- actual security.

KARL: -- for security?

WILLIAMSON: I don't know specifically where I would cut it from. But I'll tell you this much, when -- when you're looking at what should the United States be concerned about in terms of dangers coming down the road? I think climate change in many people's minds is a bigger danger. And I'm not under estimating or minimizing some of the international dangers that exist. But I think that if we're really talking about keeping this country secure, this has more to do with money for defense contractors for Northrop Grumman for Boeing for Raytheon, then it has to do with the genuine security concerns of the American people. And the difference between now and even four years ago, is how many people now see that.

KARL: You've supported much of what the administration has done–

WILLIAMSON: Pardon?

KARL:You've supported much of what President Biden has done in Ukraine. But I want to ask you something you said right after the invasion, you said Putin is a madman, but his madness has been matched by a madness of our own. Do you really --

WILLIAMSON: But not in this situation.

KARL: But do you believe?

WILLIAMSON: What do you think Iraq was? I think the imperialism of Iraq the imperialism of the last 20 years, not --

KARL: Do you think that's the same as Putin invading Ukraine?

WILLIAMSON: There, there-- listen, we're talking about a bad guy versus a really, really, really bad guy. Let's be very clear here. The United States needs to look in the mirror. Vietnam should-- War should not have occurred. The Iraq war should not have occurred. The last 20 years in in Afghanistan were a moral and military failure, millions of people Around the world and thousands of Americans died --

KARL: But this is entirely different than a war of conquest, isn't it? I mean, Putin invaded another country --

WILLIAMSON: And I'm -- oh, and I -- excuse me, I support the President's basic policy here. If we were to if we were to withdraw military support from Ukraine right now, there would be no Ukraine. That is not acceptable to me.

KARL: So, you support, you support the funding of the Ukrainian military, the sending of weapons over there --

WILLIAMSON: Right now -- well, I feel --

KARL: -- setting up tanks.

WILLIAMSON: I feel the President is being careful he is being considered. He has said no jets for now. So, right now, I basically I while I do not support all of the rhetoric of the president regarding -- regarding this war, for the most part, for the most part, I support that policy.

KARL: I'm gonna ask you something else that you said, though, in the earlier stages of this war, you said “there is certainly enough blame to go around, and that includes the United States. For years, we've been encouraging Ukrainian behavior that posed a threat to Russia's sphere of influence. Any American can appreciate that if Canada or Mexico aligned itself with the Russian military interests, we would cry foul to say the least”.

WILLIAMSON: I do not think the United States should be proud of some of the ways we dealt with NATO. I think it is a general consensus even in this town that the missiles in Poland, the HHS missiles were not a good idea. But please don't get me wrong. And don't let your viewers get me wrong. I am not equating America's behavior in this situation with Vladimir Putin. Nothing that the United States has done justifies the this is a brutal dictator, dictator, and nothing that the United States has done, justifies what he is doing.

If we're going to be anti-imperialist about America, we have to be anti-imperialist about Russia. What the United States needs to stand for in every situation is negotiation and diplomacy. The only question right now even Milley said the RAND Corporation said, General Milley and the RAND Corporation have both said, this is going to end with negotiation, this is going to be negotiated into a conflict. The only question now is, at what point is that possible in a way that supports Ukraine the most? And I think that’s what we’re trying to do--

KARL: Yeah at what point can you get Putin to negotiate?

WILLIAMSON: That's well, not -- not -- not right now, because he feels he's winning the war. And that is why I support our policies at this time.

KARL: Do you think America is the greatest nation on Earth?

WILLIAMSON: I think that the -- no, I don't think that God -- I think God created all people equal. So, that kind of talk is seventh grade, and sophomoric and does not serve us. I think that there are exceptional principles, the exceptional principles at the core of our Declaration of Independence, that all men are created equal is -- is exceptional, that God gave all men inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, that's exceptional, that governments are instituted to secure those rights. And it's the right of the people to alter it if the if it is not doing so that is exceptional. However, the fact that your principles are exceptional, doesn't mean you're actualizing those principles some generations have in really brilliant ways and some haven't, and we are right now experiencing the same struggle, as other generations have between those who seek to expand the democratic -- democratic franchise and those who seek to narrow it.

KARL: Let me ask you about China, because President Biden suggested is the biggest long term threat facing the United States. How, as President, would you handle China if they invaded if China invaded Taiwan?

WILLIAMSON: First of all, I don't like the saber rattling that's even involved in that question. China's economy is not doing well. We must keep our competition with China off the battlefield. China knows that we and other Western and Western allies could cause a lot of problems for them economically, if they were to do that, just as we know that they could mess with us. We must be very careful, we must be very firm, we must not let them bully us or our allies. But we -- as much as we must make a stand for such things as human rights. At this point, we must be committed that this not spill over into a military confrontation.

KARL: But should we be committed to defending Taiwan?

WILLIAMSON: There are ways to defend Taiwan other than military. And I don't think I don't think that Taiwan appreciates that Americans are having this conversation the way they are. They have played this very carefully. They keep their heads down. They don't even go there--

KARL: They invited Nancy Pelosi to come--

WILLIAMSON: Did they invite her? There are many there were many Taiwanese who were not happy that she was coming there at all.

KARL: OK, last question. You in a in a blog post talking about possibly running for President recently you said “Change is inevitable in this country. We are either going to have a peaceful revolution or a violent one". What do you mean by that?

WILLIAMSON: Excuse me, did you not cover January 6th?

KARL: Yes, oh I did.

WILLIAMSON: What is happening in this country is that people who -- who are experienced vast amounts of economic fear anxiety, when you have this much economic anxiety, and millions and millions of people experiencing that kind of desperation-

KARL: Do you think January 6th was about economic anxiety?

WILLIAMSON: No, I did not say that.

KARL: Well --

WILLIAMSON: But I do think that the election of President Trump the first time in many ways was. Just as I feel that the support of Bernie Sanders, Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump have both said to the American people, “I understand your rage. I understand you're upset with an obviously economically rigged system.” And that is what the Democrats need to offer in 2024, a president who isn't just saying, “oh, it's going well,” to millions of people for whom nothing like that is true, but rather we understand that you are living at the effect of an unjust economic system. And we are going to change that.

KARL: But do you think we may see a violent revolution in this country?

WILLIAMSON: Hear me out. We -- I think people, particularly people living in this town, it's so interesting in this town, I'd always heard it was a bubble. It's actually more like a walled city. Sometimes I don't think people in this town even know what's going on out there. Obviously didn't know what was going on there in 2000s, out there in 2016. I think that people who are at their wit's end are closer to the gates of the Bastille than we have any idea. All kinds of chaos could erupt, all kinds of chaos is already erupting in our society, chaos inside people, their addictions, their suicides, their depression, we must address the suffering that is going on within the hearts of so many millions of people.

KARL: That sounds a little bit like American carnage. I mean, your -- your -- your description.

WILLIAMSON: American Carnage? Yeah, that was -- oh, no, absolutely it is not, because this is what I'm saying. He wanted to exploit that pain for his own. What you're referring to the president, the president exploited that pain for his own political purposes. His own, his own Son in law said that he had said to his father-in-law, there are a lot of angry people out there, we could harness all that and elect you president. I'm saying there's a lot of dignity, decency, intelligence and love out there. And we can harness that for political purposes, we but we must make that U turn. We are supposedly a country based on liberty and justice. We do not have economic justice, or environmental justice, or criminal justice or racial justice in this country. And candidates who pretend otherwise, are not going to be able to reach into the hearts of the American people in lit and win in 2024. And even more importantly, will not be able to repair the incredible damage that has been done to this country over the last 50 years.

KARL: All right. Well, thank you for taking the time to talk with us and we'll be following your campaign.

WILLIAMSON: Thank you very, very much.

KARL: Thank you. Excellent.

How a UC Berkeley professor taught with remains suspected to be Native American

Professor Tim White taught with a collection of human remains that UC Berkeley reported likely includes those of Native Americans.

Chelsea Stahl / NBC News; Getty Images

A mysterious, century-old collection of human remains at UC Berkeley has pitted a prominent professor against his own institution and angered tribes.

March 5, 2023, 6:00 AM MST
By Mary Hudetz, ProPublica and Graham Lee Brewer

LONG READ

This article was published in partnership with ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive ProPublica’s biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

For decades, famed professor Tim White used a vast collection of human remains — bones sorted by body part and stored in wooden bins — to teach his anthropology students at the University of California, Berkeley.

White, a world-renowned expert on human evolution, said the collection was passed down through generations of anthropology professors before he started teaching with it in the late 1970s. It came with no records, he said. Most were not labeled at all or said only “lab.”

But that simple description masked a dark history, UC Berkeley administrators recently acknowledged.

UC Berkeley has been slow to repatriate Native American remains, some may be lost forever

MARCH 3, 2023

UC Berkeley conducted an analysis of the collection after White reported its contents in response to a university systemwide order in 2020 to search for human remains. Administrators disclosed to state officials in May that the analysis found the collection includes the remains of at least 95 people excavated from gravesites — many of them likely Native Americans from California, according to previously unreported documents obtained by ProPublica and NBC News.

The university’s disclosure was particularly painful because it involved a professor who many Indigenous people already viewed as a primary antagonist, according to interviews with tribal members.

White holds a replica of a 1.7-million-year-old homo erectus skull in the National Research Centre on Human Evolution in Burgos, Spain.

Ricardo Ordóñez / El País

UC Berkeley has long angered tribal nations with its handling of thousands of ancestral remains amassed during the university’s centurylong campaign of excavating Indigenous burial grounds.

More than three decades ago, Congress ordered museums, universities and government agencies that receive federal funding to publicly report any human remains in their collections that they believed to be Native American and then return them to tribal nations.

UC Berkeley has been slow to do so. The university estimates that it still holds the remains of 9,000 Indigenous people in the campus’ Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology — more than any other U.S. institution bound by the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, or NAGPRA, according to a ProPublica analysis of federal data.

That tally does not include the remains that White reported and relinquished in 2020.

For decades, White served as an expert adviser in the university’s repatriation decisions, sitting on committees that weighed whether to grant or deny tribes’ requests, according to a review of hundreds of pages of federal testimony and internal university documents.

White said the collection did not need to be reported under NAGPRA because there is no way to determine the origin of the bones — and therefore the law does not apply.

The collection has exposed deep rifts at UC Berkeley, pitting a prominent professor who said he’s done nothing wrong against university administrators who have apologized to tribes for not sharing information about the remains sooner.

For tribes the episode follows a familiar pattern of UC Berkeley’s delays and failures to be transparent with them.

“This is a major moral, ethical and potentially legal violation,” said Laura Miranda, a member of the Pechanga Band of Indians and chair of the California Native American Heritage Commission. She made her comments at a July hearing held by the commission, which oversees the university system’s handling of Indigenous remains.

UC Berkeley officials declined interview requests, saying “tribes have asked us not to.” In a statement, the university said White was no longer involved in repatriation decisions. There is now a moratorium on using ancestral remains for teaching or research purposes, according to the statement. The Hearst Museum is currently closed to the public so that staff can prioritize repatriation.

The university also acknowledged that, in the past, UC Berkeley had “mishandled its repatriation responsibilities.”

“The campus privileged some kinds of scientific and scholarly evidence over tribal interests and evidence provided by tribes,” the university said in the statement.

The Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology still houses more than 9,000 Native American remains, according to federal data. 

Justin Katigbak for ProPublica

In an interview with ProPublica and NBC News, White said he’s been villainized for strictly adhering to the federal law, which he said requires balancing scientific proof with other evidence.

In the years immediately after Congress passed NAGPRA, UC Berkeley relied on White’s expertise as curator of the museum’s skeletal collection to challenge Indigenous people’s repatriation requests, according to testimony before a federal advisory committee.

Some tribal members accused him of demanding too high a burden of scientific proof for repatriations and discounting knowledge passed down through the generations. In the 1990s, he made headlines for fighting to use Native American remains as teaching tools, arguing that students should not be deprived of the opportunity to learn from them. He later sued to block the UC system from returning two sets of remains estimated to date from 9,000 years ago, saying they were too old to be linked to any living descendants.

NAGPRA does not require definitive scientific proof for repatriation, only that institutions report human remains that could potentially be Native American and consult with the affected tribal nations, said Sherry Hutt, an attorney who is a former program manager of the federal National NAGPRA Program. “It’s not a scientific standard. It’s a legal standard,” she said.

White often had the backing of university administrators in disputes over remains, but not anymore. At the July hearing before the California Native American Heritage Commission, UC Berkeley administrators cited an analysis by another anthropologist at the school, Sabrina Agarwal, that determined thousands of the bones in the collection were excavated from gravesites.

Given UC Berkeley’s legacy of raiding Native American graves, it is likely the collection White taught with contains the remains of Native Americans from what is currently California, said Linda Rugg, associate vice chancellor for research at the university.

“I want to apologize for the pain that we caused by holding on to this collection,” Rugg said at the hearing. “When we found out about it, we were dismayed ourselves.” A university spokesperson said staff and administrators are consulting with several tribes on next steps. Federal officials confirmed UC Berkeley has contacted them requesting guidance.

White, who retired last spring but is still a professor emeritus, said administrators knew about the collection, which was used to teach hundreds of students over the years. “It is very disappointing to find the Berkeley employees are making false allegations and misrepresentations,” he said.

Behind UC Berkeley’s reckoning is the centurylong saga about a powerful, progressive institution that is finally confronting its past. Isaac Bojorquez, chairman of the KaKoon Ta Ruk Band of Ohlone-Costanoan Indians of the Big Sur Rancheria, called for accountability for the newly reported remains, but also for UC Berkeley’s decadeslong delays and denials of other tribes’ repatriation requests.

“We want our ancestors,” he said. “They should have never been disturbed in the first place.”
A painful history

With no documentation for the origin of his teaching collection, White surmised in a report to university officials in 2020 that it dated back to UC Berkeley’s early days and the university’s first anthropology professor, Alfred Louis Kroeber.

Ishi, the last known member of the Yahi tribe, with anthropologist Alfred L. Kroeber in 1911.

Online Archive of California

Kroeber, who joined the faculty in 1901, became a world-renowned scholar for his research on Native Americans in California, encouraging the excavations of Indigenous gravesites during his four-decade tenure.

His name recently was stripped from Berkeley’s anthropology building, in part for housing an Indigenous man found in the Sierra Foothills as a living exhibit at what would later become the Hearst Museum. Described as the last living member of his band of Yahi Indians, the man — whom Kroeber called “Ishi” — was studied and made to craft arrows and greet visitors for nearly five years, until his death in 1916.

The Hearst Museum continued for decades to voraciously collect Native American remains and funerary objects, trying to assemble a collection to rival the British Museum and Harvard University, said historian Tony Platt, a distinguished affiliated scholar at UC Berkeley’s Center for the Study of Law and Society. “To be a great university you’ve got to acquire stuff, you’ve got to hoard massive amounts of things,” Platt said.

The vast majority of UC Berkeley’s collection of remains came from sacred ancestral sites in California, according to ProPublica’s analysis of federal data. The collection included ancestors of the Ohlone, the tribe whose land was seized by the federal government to fund public universities, including UC Berkeley.

The university eventually amassed the remains of about 11,600 Native Americans, stored in the basement beneath its gymnasium swimming pool and in other campus buildings. But Platt said that number is likely an undercount because museum records often counted multiple remains excavated from the same gravesite as one person.

In the early 1970s, Native American activists’ long-standing resistance to the grave robbing started gaining momentum amid protests that stealing from Native Americans’ burial sites in the name of science was a human rights violation.

By then, the teaching collection that anthropology professors used had grown to thousands of bones and teeth that White said in his report to university administrators had been commingled with others donated by amateur gravediggers, dentists, anatomists, physicians, law enforcement and biological supply companies.

The remains were unceremoniously sorted by body part so students could study them. A jumble of teeth. A drawer of clavicles. Separate bins for skulls. For decades, anthropologists added to the collection, used it in their classes and then passed it along to the professors who came after them, White said.

It was this collection that White started teaching with when he joined UC Berkeley’s anthropology faculty in 1977.

The Anthropology and Art Practice Building at the University of California, Berkeley.

Justin Katigbak for ProPublica

UC Berkeley hired White, then 27, soon after he had obtained his Ph.D. in biological anthropology from the University of Michigan. He already was collaborating with a team to analyze “Lucy,” a 3.2-million-year-old human ancestor.

White published articles in prestigious journals and co-authored a textbook, “Human Osteology,” that boasted of UC Berkeley’s collection of human remains and called ancient skeletons “ambassadors from the past.”

Congress passed NAGPRA in 1990, recognizing that human remains of any ancestry “must at all times be treated with dignity and respect.” As UC Berkeley prepared to comply with the new law, the campus museum appointed White curator of biological anthropology, overseeing the university’s collection of human remains.

Almost as soon as tribes started making claims to ancestral remains under NAGPRA, Indigenous people accused White of undermining their efforts to rebury their ancestors, according to a review of hundreds of pages of testimony before a federal review committee tasked with mediating NAGPRA disputes.

Since NAGPRA only applied to federally recognized tribal nations, many tribes in California were not entitled to seek repatriation. (Of the 183 tribes in the state, 68 still lack federal recognition, according to the Native American Heritage Commission.) UC Berkeley’s collection of remains included those of thousands of people designated as unavailable for repatriation because they came from tribes lacking federal recognition.

Recourse under the law was limited, leaving tribal nations to file formal challenges with the federal NAGPRA Review Committee, an advisory group whose members represent tribal, scientific and museum organizations. It can only offer recommendations in response to disputes.

In the first challenge following the passage of the law, in February 1993 the Hui Mālama I Nā Kūpuna O Hawai’i Nei, a Native Hawaiian organization, took a dispute over repatriation of two ancestral remains before the federal committee. The remains had been donated to UC Berkeley in 1935, at which time a museum curator classified them as Polynesian. White disagreed.

Addressing the committee, White introduced himself as “the individual who is responsible for the skeletal collections at Berkeley.” He argued the remains might not be Native Hawaiian and could belong to victims of shipwrecks, drownings or crimes. They should be preserved for study, he added, making an analogy to UC Berkeley’s library book collection, where historians access volumes for years as their understanding evolves.

Edward Halealoha Ayau, then the Native Hawaiian organization’s executive director, pounded his fists on the table in outrage. “We do not have cultural sensitivity to books. We did not descend from books,” he said, according to a transcript of the meeting.

Ancestral remains are not research material, Ayau said, they are people with whom he shares a connection — a perspective that is central to Native Hawaiian culture.

Edward Halealoha Ayau, right, was part of a Hawaiian delegation that traveled to Germany in 2022 to accept the return of human remains from a museum in Bremen. 

Sina Schuldt / picture alliance via Getty Images

White recently said that his analogy comparing human remains to books was taken out of context. “Both hold information,” he said. “I was obviously speaking metaphorically.”

Instead of recommending that both ancestors’ remains be repatriated directly to the Hui Mālama, the committee advised UC Berkeley to return one of them and send the other to the Bishop Museum in Honolulu for analysis, Ayau said. There, researchers finally agreed that the remains were Native Hawaiian — but only after conducting a scientific analysis over Ayau’s objections.

“I just started crying,” Ayau, who now chairs the federal NAGPRA Review Committee, recalled in a recent interview. “We failed to prevent one more form of desecration.”

The Bishop Museum declined to comment on its role in the 1993 repatriation, saying it happened too long ago for anyone to have knowledge of it.

For Ayau, the experience left him with a sense of loss over the treatment of his ancestors.

“To have someone disturb them is really bad,” he said. “But then to have them steal them and then fight you to get them back is beyond horrific.”

'Berkeley should be ashamed'

White’s fight to use a set of Native American remains he had borrowed from the Hearst Museum for teaching purposes made headlines in the 1990s after he clashed with then-museum director Rosemary Joyce. She said when she was hired in 1994, it was common practice for White and other museum curators with keys to borrow ancestral remains and belongings without documenting what they’d taken.

“Just leaving aside NAGPRA, as a museum anthropologist, that’s an unacceptable thing,” she told ProPublica and NBC News. “When materials are not in the physical control of the staff of the museum, you need legal documentation.”

She changed the locks on the museum’s storage space. Heeding requests from tribes, she tried to recall a museum collection of Native American remains that White kept on loan in his lab and used for teaching. White refused to return them.

The vice provost for research of the UC system sent Jay Stowsky, then the system’s director of research policy, to mediate the dispute between White and Joyce. Stowsky agreed with Joyce, calling the lack of controls at the museum “terrible.” He said human remains were “just sort of thrown into boxes” with a label on them. “Berkeley should be ashamed of itself on so many levels,” Stowsky, now a senior academic administrator at UC Berkeley, said in a recent interview.

White included this image of drawers in the “Osteology Teaching Collection” in a letter he sent to UC Berkeley administrators.

White filed a whistleblower complaint with the university in 1997 accusing the museum, under Joyce’s leadership, of seeking an unnecessary extension to NAGPRA’s reporting deadline. (Campus investigators found no improper activity, according to White.)

Joyce said she was simply trying to account for all the remains that would need to be reported under NAGPRA. “It’s really kind of insane to have to say, I did the thing that the law said I should do,” she told ProPublica and NBC News. Joyce said the complaints were found to be “meritless.”

White then filed an internal grievance against Joyce with the school’s Academic Senate, alleging that by asking him to relinquish the human remains she had infringed on his “academic privileges.”

The university brokered a deal: White could keep ancestral remains provided museum staff and tribes could access them to conduct inventory and report them under NAGPRA.

Joyce said the arrangement was untenable and she felt unsupported by the university’s leadership. White continued to teach with the remains.

A decade after NAGPRA

Myra Masiel-Zamora, now an archaeologist for the Pechanga Band of Indians, enrolled in White’s osteology class more than 20 years ago when she was 18 and a first-year student. But, she said, she withdrew from the course after a teaching assistant told her the human remains belonged to Native Americans.

“That was the first time I really truly learned that an institution could and can — and is — using real Native American ancestors as teaching tools,” she said. “I was really upset.”

Concern over institutions’ handling of Indigenous remains extended beyond the classroom.

Troubled by the slow pace of repatriations under NAGPRA, California lawmakers passed their own version of the law in 2001, aiming to close loopholes in the federal statute and allow tribes to claim remains regardless of whether they have federal recognition. But the state failed to fund an oversight committee established by the bill.

In 2007, without consulting tribes or offering public explanation, UC Berkeley abruptly fired museum employees who were responsible for NAGPRA compliance, and named White and others to a newly formed campus repatriation committee, according to tribal leaders.

That upset tribal members, who brought their concerns about the new committee to state senators. The firings “eliminated the only staff at the university that would stand up to Mr. Tim White and his offensive remarks regarding Native American tribes and our ancestral remains,” Reno Franklin, then a council member and now the chairman of the Kashia Band of Pomo Indians, said during a 2008 state legislative hearing.

In emails sent to ProPublica and NBC News, White sought to discredit the testimony by Franklin and others at the hearing by saying that it had been the result of a decadeslong effort by the university to use him as a scapegoat for its failures. White said he only held an advisory role and did not make final repatriation decisions.

Meanwhile, White’s career was skyrocketing after he led a team that discovered and excavated a 4.4-million-year-old hominid unearthed in Ethiopia. It was deemed the scientific breakthrough of the year in 2009 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science and cemented his reputation in the field. It also landed him, along with the likes of Barack Obama and Steve Jobs, on Time magazine’s 2010 list of the world’s 100 most influential people.

White attends the Time100 gala at Lincoln Center in New York in 2010. 

Timothy A. Clary / AFP via Getty Images

Two years later, White and two other professors sued to block the repatriation of two 9,000-year-old skeletons to the Kumeyaay, 12 tribes whose homelands straddle the U.S.-Mexico border near San Diego. White and the other professors wanted to study the remains, which had been unearthed in 1976 from the grounds of the chancellor’s house on the University of California, San Diego, campus.

They argued that there wasn’t enough evidence to support the Kumeyaay’s ancestral connection to the remains, and that the UC system had failed to prove that the remains could legally be considered “Native American.” Based on the professors’ interpretation of the law, human remains had to have a cultural or biological link to a present-day tribe to be considered Native American.

They said that not allowing them to study the remains violated their rights as researchers. An appeals court ruled against the professors, citing the Kumeyaay’s sovereign immunity, meaning they couldn’t be sued.

As tribes’ frustration with the lack of progress on repatriations grew, UC Berkeley convened a “tribal forum” in 2017. In the private gathering, tribal leaders and others expressed anger that university staff, including White, had resisted their requests to repatriate and that the university was requiring an excessive amount of proof to reclaim ancestors, according to an internal university report.

The following year, UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ disbanded the campus’ NAGPRA committee that White had served on, records show. The university established a new one that did not include him.

Meanwhile, Berkeley prepared for its biggest repatriation to date: the return of more than 1,400 ancestors to the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians, a small tribe whose ancestors’ remains were excavated from burial grounds along California’s coast and Channel Islands. According to the school’s NAGPRA inventory records, many of the remains had been taken by an archaeologist in 1901 whose expeditions were funded by Phoebe Apperson Hearst, wife of mining magnate George Hearst and namesake of UC Berkeley’s anthropology museum.

UC Berkeley held on to the Chumash remains and loaned some to White for research projects, before returning them to the tribe in the summer of 2018.

The Chumash reservation is in California’s Santa Ynez Valley.

Alejandra Rubio for NBC News and ProPublica

When the repatriation day finally came, Nakia Zavalla and other tribal members drove 300 miles to campus and entered a backroom of the anthropology building where UC Berkeley stored their ancestors.

“Going into that facility for the first time was horrifying. Literally shelves of human remains,” said Zavalla, the tribe’s cultural director. “And you pull them out, and there’s ancestors mixed all together, sometimes just all femur bones, a tray full of skulls.”

Zavalla said tribal members had to bring their own cardboard boxes to carry their ancestors home for burial — a complaint other tribal nations have made in dealing with the university. UC Berkeley officials said they were unaware of Zavalla’s “disturbing account” but have changed their policies to ensure they provide assistance “as requested by Tribes.”

Zavalla said the visit highlighted how the university had deprived the tribe of more than ancestral remains, she said. The university housed recordings and items that ethnographers and anthropologists had previously collected from Chumash elders.

For Zavalla, the information could have benefited her and other tribal members’ efforts to revitalize the Santa Ynez Chumash’s language and traditions — which government policies once sought to eradicate. But the information was not freely shared, she said: “They stole those items.”

Nakia Zavalla, cultural director of the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians, said the tribe had to bring its own cardboard boxes when retrieving repatriated remains.

Alejandra Rubio for NBC News and ProPublica

'They need to go home'

California state lawmakers passed a bill in 2018 to expand the Native American Heritage Commission’s oversight of repatriation policies and compliance committees within the UC system. The legislation called for an audit of all UC campuses’ compliance with NAGPRA.

The following year, UC Berkeley finally barred the use of Native American remains for teaching or research, according to the university.

The state auditor’s office announced the results of its review in 2020, singling out UC Berkeley for making onerous demands of tribes claiming remains.

The auditor also noted that UC Berkeley had identified 180 missing artifacts or human remains. In a statement, UC Berkeley said staff had searched for the missing remains and artifacts, some of which had been lost for more than a century.

Soon after the audit, the UC president’s office called for all campuses to search departments that historically studied human remains for any that had not been previously reported.

In August 2020, White reported the contents of the collection he taught with to university administrators.

White told ProPublica and NBC News that given the lack of documentation, it would be impossible to determine if they were Native American, much less say which tribe they should be returned to.

“There’s nobody on this planet who can sit down and tell you what the cultural affiliation of this lower jaw is, or that lower jaw is. Nobody can do that,” he said.

The Native American Heritage Commission, or NAHC, is continuing to press UC Berkeley for answers and accountability for its handling of the collection White reported.

Bojorquez, the tribal chairman and an NAHC commissioner, said it was “mind-blowing” that Berkeley still has not provided any documentation on the origins of the collection.

The university should have consulted tribes sooner, he said, to ensure the remains were handled respectfully and to help speed the repatriation process. “So much happened to these ancestors,” he said — they should not be in a box or on a shelf.

“They need to go home,” he said.

More missing

Separate from the teaching collection that White reported in 2020, he also notified administrators that he’d discovered remains with museum labels stashed in gray bins in a teaching laboratory. They later were identified as the partial remains of six ancestors of the Santa Ynez Chumash that were supposed to have been repatriated in 2018.

When UC Berkeley finally informed the Chumash six months later, it felt like a “blow to the chest,” said Zavalla, the tribe’s cultural director. Zavalla and other tribal staff members drove to Berkeley to retrieve the remains.

“I felt lied to,” she said. “They did not give us all of the ancestors, and they didn’t do their due diligence.”

The discovery of the missing remains outraged Sam Cohen, an attorney for the tribe, who called for probes into whether UC Berkeley or White had violated policies or laws.

Sam Cohen, attorney for the Chumash tribe, called UC Berkeley a "bad actor."

Alejandra Rubio for NBC News and ProPublica

“He is considered untouchable, I think, by Berkeley because he’s so famous in human evolution,” Cohen said of White. “He basically wasn’t going to voluntarily comply with anything until he was forced.”

White said he was unsure how the remains ended up in the teaching laboratory. He suggested they may have been mistakenly placed in his lab during a move years ago while he was overseas. He provided ProPublica and NBC News with a copy of an email from an investigator with UC Berkeley’s Office of Risk and Compliance Services, which said the office found no violation on his part regarding the Chumash remains. UC Berkeley declined to comment on the outcome of the investigation, calling it a personnel matter.

“I have accounted for everything that happened in granular detail,” White said in an interview.

Chancellor Christ apologized to the tribe in December in a letter and acknowledged: “We do understand that, given our history, it is difficult for tribes to have confidence in our university and Professor White.”

The apology was little consolation, Cohen said, especially since it came with yet another painful acknowledgement. University records show there are still more unreturned Chumash ancestors. So far, they have yet to be found.

Christ assured the Chumash that the university was committed to returning all Native American ancestors to all tribes. UC Berkeley officials estimate it will be at least a decade before that happens.

The Chumash cultural museum in Santa Ynez.

Alejandra Rubio for NBC News and ProPublica

Mary Hudetz, ProPublica
Mary Hudetz is a reporter for ProPublica. She is a member of the Crow Tribe and based in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Graham Lee Brewer
Graham Lee Brewer is a national reporter for NBC News. He is a member of the Cherokee Nation, based in Norman, Oklahoma.

Alex Mierjeski, ProPublica and Ash Ngu, ProPublica contributed.

UC Berkeley has been slow to repatriate Native American remains, some may be lost forever

NBC News

 #UCBerkeley #NativeAmerican #NBCNews

The Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians fought for years for the return of their ancestors from UC Berkeley. They recently learned some of the remains are still missing.

 

TORY RULE

'Britain is not firing on all cylinders': US multinational companies shun UK due to high taxes and no plan for growth, warns KPMG

The Big Four consultancy says Britain risks falling behind its counterparts

It has warned that 'dozens' of US firms snubbed the UK last year alone

By MATTHEW LODGE
5 March 2023

Dozens of US companies have decided against investing in the UK because of Jeremy Hunt's insistence on putting up taxes in this month's Budget, KPMG has warned.

The head of the firm's UK tax policy department claims a perception that Britain is not 'firing on all cylinders' is holding multinational companies back from putting money into the country.

Tim Sarson said the combination of red tape and high taxes means Britain is not as attractive as is has been in the past, and that 'probably dozens' of firms have shunned the country in the last year.

This includes building materials giant CRH, which last week announced it was moving its main stock market listing from London to New York as this 'would bring increased commercial, operational and acquisition opportunities'.

It comes ahead of the Chancellor's Spring Budget this month, in which he is expected to increase corporation tax from 19% to 25% - a move that is set to bring pain to many firms.

Building materials firm CRH, which is helping construct the Queensferry Crossing (pictured), recently announced it would move its stock listing to the United States from the UK

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt plans to increase corporation tax from 19% to 25% in this months' Budget

Last week business leaders put pressure on Mr Hunt to scrapped to planned tax rise, saying it would throttle the economy and hurt growth.

Mr Sarson, who is from one of the Big Four consultancy firms, said companies from overseas had been making 'quite loud noises about the lack of competitiveness of the UK regime'.

He told the Telegraph: 'There's a general sense of the UK not firing on all cylinders, a reluctance to put investment in the UK and a sense that the country is not quite what it was.

'We're not quite seen as a basket case, but people will often joke on conference calls: 'what the hell are you guys doing?'

'What we can't get away from is that the UK is now no longer trying to be a low tax location. It is now just somewhere in the middle of the pack.'

He added that the UK needs a clear growth strategy or living standards will drop, leaving the country 'lagging behind' its counterparts.

'We absolutely need [investment] otherwise we miss out on a whole bunch of new technologies.

'There is a need for a very, very clear plan because we are entering a world of massive competition for incentivising investment. The danger is we're caught in the middle.

He added: 'There's still a preference to be in the UK because of the language and the culture, but having said that, it's nowhere near the same no-brainer as it was before.'

However, the last week alone has seen a number of firms decide to leave the UK and flock to competitor markets. SoftBank and CRH decided to place their main listings on the New York stock mark instead of in London, while AstraZeneca decided to build a new factory in Ireland due to Britain's 'discouraging' tax rate.

Last week Lord Bilimoria, the vice president of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), became the latest top business leader to demand that a planned increase from 19% to 25% next month should be scrapped.

Mr Hunt has so far resisted calls for the hike to be axed, insisting the Government will stick to its plans.

Today a poll of Tory activists by the Conservative Home website showed three in five want Mr Hunt to make tax cuts a higher priority than reducing the UK's deficit.

Cobra beer founder Lord Bilimoria told an audience, including prominent politicians, at the British Kebab Awards on Tuesday: 'This is not the time to put up taxes.'

He said: 'I'm just all for not having a high tax burden at any time – let alone a time like this. Businesses have suffered so much.

Tim Sarson, head of UK tax policy at KPMG (pictured), says Britain risks falling behind counterparts in Europe and the United States

'They've had three years of pandemic followed by the Ukraine war, the energy crisis, cost of living crisis, inflation and, on top of that, you're increasing taxes. I mean, how much can business take?'

It came as the CBI separately urged Mr Hunt to use the Budget on March 15 to save businesses from a tax 'double-whammy' next month.

Firms face a rise in corporation tax at the same time as the 'super deduction' policy ends – it gives big tax breaks to companies investing in infrastructure and factory and machinery assets.

Pressure on the Chancellor to help businesses intensified last week after an analysis suggesting he will have a £30billion windfall after public finances turned out to be in better shape than expected.

Lord Bilimoria, pictured, said he had told then Chancellor Rishi Sunak as far back as February 2021: 'Don't put up taxes because taxes will stifle the recovery and hamper growth'.

He added: 'He didn't listen and he's been putting up taxes to the highest level in 70 years and I think that is absolutely the wrong thing to do, including putting up corporation tax from 19 to 25 [and]... removing the super-deduction, which was a great incentive to invest.

'We're very concerned about it because it is a huge extra burden on business. It is a big worry from the inward investment point of view.'

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US multinational companies shun UK due to high taxes and no plan for growth, warns KPMG

The Idea of Male Vulnerability Is So So So Ancient

Emotional vulnerability does not equate to softness.

March 5, 2023 by Lau Ciocan 


In this post, I am returning to an idea explored in a previous post on mentoring from Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. But this time, I’m sharing what I’ve learned about male vulnerability from Homer’s beautiful 8th century BC epopee.

Here’s a refresher of some relevant bits of the story:

Menelaus, king of Sparta, wages war against the city of Troy after they took his wife, Helen. Odysseus joins Menelaus in his fight against Troy, leaving his son Telemachus in the care of his wife, Penelope, his good friend Mentor and the swineherd, Eumaeus. (I’ll come back to this section probably in another post).

The siege against Troy lasts a decade and because Odysseus’ journey home takes so long (another decade) no one knows whether he is still alive or not. By the time his son Telemachus reaches manhood, probably in his late 20s, he decides to visit Menelaus to find out what he knows about his father. Menelaus throws a welcome party where Telemachus talks to him about his father. Sadly for Telemachus, the Spartan king doesn’t have any news and believes that Odysseus has perished. At this thought, both men start to weep and are joined by Helen in a public display of emotions.

This left me in awe.

They simply cried. In public. At a party! Homer makes it sound so casual; their tears did not attract the attention of others, raise suspicions or cause tumult at the party.

I was surprised by their free expression of feelings in public at the thought of a dear friend and father no longer being alive. There was no judgment of, derogatory associations with, or commentary on the feelings being expressed by these men. In another part of the poem “great Odysseus melted into tears”

Bear in mind that a few decades prior, Odysseus and Menelaus were warriors spearheading trojans, literally, and at the same time, they were comfortable in showing emotions. This formed part of their masculinity and showing emotions wasn’t perceived as a weakness. Although Homer’s writings are stories, in many ways they reflect the culture and norms of those days.

There’s a similar portrayal of emotions from the 1st century AD, but this time from the Bible. Jesus finds out his good friend Lazarus has passed away and he travels to Bethany, in Judea, to visit his grave. As he approaches Lazarus’ grave Jesus starts weeping. #realbromance

When the locals see Jesus’ reaction, they are touched and acknowledge “behold how he loved him!” These are the same locals that try to stone Jesus to death a few chapters earlier because of their view of Jesus’ reputation.

As he weeps, Jesus is in a vulnerable situation. He is morning the loss of a dear friend and his critics could use this moment strategically to humiliate him. Instead, they recognise that his tears symbolise love, affection, but also sorrow at the loss of his friend.

Like in the other historic text, neither the author nor those present belittle or ridicule Jesus for his public display of emotions.

These two nuanced examples from Greek mythology and Christianity evidence that both male vulnerability and expressing how one feels in a healthy way go way back.

They confirm that there is a sweet balance between being comfortable and confident in one’s masculinity and displaying emotions. They refute the contemporary notion that confident and secure masculinity is synonymous with being emotionless.

By displaying emotions, I do not necessarily mean crying. The spectrum of emotions ranges from expressing ecstasy or experiencing tranquillity to sadness and grief, and at times could result in tears of sorrow or of joy.

We might be tempted to think that men have always been like they are today or in the recent past, valuing a stiff upper lip approach to feelings. We might also perceive men in the past as “barbaric” and men in the present as “flawless”.

This polarity also makes me question the idea of men who have been through war and are completely desensitised by their experiences, unable to show any emotions except anger. The above quote about Odysseus melting into tears is in the context of him thinking of the horrors of the Trojan war.

It’s time to learn how we as men, can be comfortable in displaying emotions healthily. No, it doesn’t make us weak or soft, quite the opposite. The toll for suppressing our emotions can be high for us and those around us. For some, it is lethal.

Suicide is still the biggest killer of men under 49 years old. Beyond male suicide, we must consider the impact we have on others as men — our partners, families, colleagues, and even complete strangers.

However, if you find yourself on the receiving end of a man who trusts you to share his emotions with you, show him support, compassion and empathy.

—

This post was previously published on medium.com.

EVIL COMES FROM THE NORTH, TWIN PEAKS

Tenney to Newsmax: Ignored Northern Border Facing Massive Surge

(Newsmax/"Wake Up America")
By Sandy Fitzgerald | Sunday, 05 March 2023 

"No one's paying attention" to the nation's northern border with Canada, and that has led to a massive surge of immigrants entering the United States, Rep. Claudia Tenney said on Newsmax Sunday, two days after her visit with Border Patrol agents there.

"[We've seen] an over 846% surge since last year of illegal crossings, and this includes a lot of different types of drugs, exotic drugs like ecstasy, fentanyl, other illicit drugs, human trafficking, and human smuggling," the New York Republican said on Newsmax's "Wake Up America." "This is happening and it's continuing to go on because no one's paying attention."

Another part of the problem is that many of the northern border agents have been diverted to deal with the crisis at the southern border, said Tenney.

The congresswoman's visit with Border Patrol agents from the Buffalo Sector and the Swanton Sector, which is in her district, came after they asked her office to visit. She said she's learned how the cartels have "outsmarted" President Joe Biden and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, "who is nothing more than an accomplice for Joe Biden's bad policies."

The migrant surges at the northern border are also happening because the United States has a "lot of laws in place that we don't enforce," said Tenney.

She noted that the Border Patrol agents told her that those laws are interpreted differently by different presidential administrations.

Further, there is no visa requirement for people from Mexico to fly into Canada, so the cartels are flying the immigrants and drugs in through commercial airlines, said Tenney.

"They have ways of sneaking them in and getting them across the border," she said. "They land in Canada, pick up an Uber, and Uber takes them to the border and the cartels get them across the line," said Tenney.

True asylum seekers make up the smallest margin of immigrants, said Tenney, while others come for economic reasons, but then there are the "really bad guys" who are "coming here to exploit and make money off of our open borders, selling drugs, selling people."

New York laws that include giving illegal immigrants driver's licenses are also causing issues, said Tenney.


"You cannot determine who they are when you go to make a vehicle stop," she said.

ALREADY JOINED AT THE HIP

US House letter urges more military, security cooperation with Israel

Brooke Anderson
Washington, D.C.
05 March, 2023

Israel's Iron Dome is an example of its use of advanced technology for military use. [Getty]

Nearly 50 members of the House Armed Services Committee have signed a letter to the US Defense Department urging for increased security cooperation with Israel.

The bipartisan letter, addressed to US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin and signed by 47 members of the Armed Services Committee, said threats to Israel could be met with better technological cooperation.

The letter notes areas of advanced technology that are already being used by Israel against its adversaries, and suggests ways it can build upon these systems.

"Cooperative missile defense programs such as the Iron Dome, David’s Sling and Arrow are critical to ensuring Israel can meet the growing threats posed by adversaries such as Iran and its proxies, including Hezbollah, Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad," reads the letter, which was issued on Monday. It emphasised threats to the region by Iran and by extension Russia.

"Given the increasing sophistication of threats to Israel, we are concerned that we may be underestimating the quantity of weapons Israel will require to defend itself," it continues.

"We believe that by working together with our allies in Israel we can secure critical American achievements in emerging technology sectors such as artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, directed energy, automation, and space."

The letter concludes by requesting an assessment on the three key areas: Israel’s short- and long-term security threats; Israeli capabilities to meet and defend against these threats, as well as any shortfalls; and an assessment of the potential for increased US-Israel defense collaboration."

U.S. Army carries out 48 operations in Iraq, Syria within a month

• Amr Salem
•  March 5, 2023

U.S. forces in Syria. Photo: Al-Arabiya News

Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) – The United States Central Command announced it carried out 48 operations, with other partners, against ISIS terrorists in Iraq and Syria last month.

The Central Command elaborated in a statement that 22 terrorists were killed, and 25 others were arrested in these operations.

The statement indicated that these operations are important to prevent ISIS terrorists from regaining their ability to plan attacks in the region and against American allies and interests.

The statement also noted that if operations to combat terrorism are not continued, the terrorists will restore their ability to recruit new members and plan attacks.

“We focus on ensuring a permanent defeat of ISIS and we continue to work with our partners to defeat the terrorist group in Iraq and Syria,” the commander of the U.S. Central Command, Michael Corella, said.

Corella praised the efficiency and professionalism of the Iraqi security forces and the partners in the Syrian Democratic Forces, noting that the fight against ISIS is continuing.

Washington is leading an international coalition to fight ISIS, and is carrying out raids targeting ISIS terrorists and leaders in Syria and Iraq.

After ISIS terrorists lost their last stronghold in 2019 in favor of the Kurdish forces with the support of the coalition, ISIS terrorists in Syria retreated to hideouts in the desert in eastern Syria.  

CRIMINAL CRYPTO CAPITALI$M
FTX Collapse: Bankman-Fried's Golden House Arrest About to Get Worse
2023/03/05


By Luc Olinga

Federal prosecutors demand that the former crypto king be limited to using a flip phone and only access a restricted list of websites.

Sam Bankman-Fried, 30, had it coming.

The founder of bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX and its sister company Alameda Research could see his pre-trial living conditions further constrained.

He, who until now enjoyed great freedom, could see his life being very restricted. In fact, federal prosecutors asked the court in charge of his case on Mar. 3 to approve restrictions on his use of communication services and tools. These requests are part of a number of modifications to the conditions of his bail.

Federal prosecutors accuse him of securities fraud, wire fraud, and multiple conspiracy counts, related to FTX customers and Alameda's lenders. Additional charges include illegal campaign contributions, money laundering, operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business and bank fraud.

The former crypto king has pleaded not guilty. But three of his lieutenants pleaded guilty to fraud and agreed to cooperate with investigators.
A Flip Phone

The former trader was released on bond on Dec. 22, after being extradited from the Bahamas, where he lived and where FTX was headquartered. His release had been secured after his parents signed a $250 million recognizance bond, pledging their California home as collateral.

The trial of the former trader is scheduled for October.

If Judge Lewis A. Kaplan sides with the federal prosecutors, Bankman-Fried will only be able to use a flip phone, or a non-smartphone, and will only be able to access a limited list of websites.

"The parties propose that the defendant be limited to the use of the following devices, and that he otherwise be prohibited from using any other cellphones, tablets, computers, video games (including video game platforms and hardware) that permit chat and voice communication, or smart devices with internet capability," wrote Damian Williams, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, in a court document unsealed on Mar. 3.

The former crypto king will be allowed to use a flip phone or other non-smartphone with no internet capabilities. The communication function on the phone will be limited to text messages (SMS) and voice calls and all other message applications will be prohibited, Williams detailed.

Bankman-Fried will also receive a new laptop but the device's serial number, MAC address, and IP address will be provided to the court and to the government. His connection to the internet will be via a previously authorized VPN.

"The parties propose that the defendant’s new laptop be configured so that he is only able to log on to the internet through the use of specified VPNs, and that the VPNs only permit the defendant to access websites that have been whitelisted through the VPNs," Williams wrote.
Risk of Witness Tampering

This tightening of his bail conditions comes after Judge Kaplan said he could "conceivably” revoke Bankman-Fried’s bail, after he found that there was a "threat” of witness tampering.

A few days after his release under bail, Bankman-Fried contacted the former general counsel of FTX and used a virtual private network, or VPN, days after the judge said he wanted to restrict the use of encrypted devices.

A strict list of apps to which the former trader will have access via his laptop has been established. It is Zoom -- only to be used with defense counsel -- Microsoft Office, Adobe Acrobat, Screenshot tool, Notepad and Notepad++, 1password, Python (to read the FTX codebase), SQL tool (for running queries on the FTX read-only database), and a Web browser "used to access the internet consistent with the provisions set" by the parties.

For his personal use, a list of websites and apps, including websites of news media and tech groups, has also been determined: Nytimes.com, Nypost.com, Ft.com, Bloomberg, Forbes, WSJ, Businessinsider, Opensecrets.org, Prnewswire.com, Puck, Reuters, Coindesk, Cointelegraph, The Block, Decrypt, Beincrypto.com, Netflix.com, Spotify, Doordash.com, Uber eats, Amazon, MLB.com and NFL.com.

The prosecutors are also asking that his parents, with whom he currently lives, agree not to let him use their tech devices.

"The defendant’s mother and father will submit sworn affidavits listing their respective devices with serial numbers and MAC addresses (each has an iPhone, each has an Apple laptop, and they share a desktop iMac), and representing that they will not bring additional devices into the home nor permit the defendant to access their devices, which will be password protected," Williams said.

A decade of fighting: Worker waiting for benefits 10 years after suffering lung damage

Randall Ralphs, 70, talks to a reporter at the Las Vegas Review-Journal offices Wednesday, March 1, 2023. Ralphs has been going through the workers' compensation system since 2013 after he inhaled harmful chemicals at work and developed reactive airway disease. (K.M. Cannon/Las Vegas Review-Journal) @KMCannonPhoto

Randall Ralphs, 70, at the Las Vegas Review-Journal offices Wednesday, March 1, 2023. Ralphs has been going through the workers' compensation system since 2013 after he inhaled harmful chemicals at work and developed reactive airway disease. (K.M. Cannon/Las Vegas Review-Journal) @KMCannonPhoto

Randall Ralphs, 70, talks to a reporter at the Las Vegas Review-Journal offices Wednesday, March 1, 2023. Ralphs has been going through the workers' compensation system since 2013 after he inhaled harmful chemicals at work and developed reactive airway disease. (K.M. Cannon/Las Vegas Review-Journal) @KMCannonPhoto

By Jessica Hill Las Vegas Review-Journal
March 5, 2023 -

When Las Vegas resident Randall “Randy” Ralphs was injured on the job in 2013, he did not expect it would take more than 10 years for his workers’ compensation case to wrap up.

Ralphs is one of hundreds of injured workers in Nevada who are waiting for their cases to get resolved. Since the Review-Journal exposed problems within the department handling appealed workers’ compensation cases in September, he and many other injured workers have come forward to highlight what they say is a broken, unjust system that requires systemic change.


“I’ve seen so many people that were injured employees from all over. Casino workers, city workers … But nobody’s gone through it for 10 years,” Ralphs said.

A judge in 2021 awarded Ralphs a settlement for his injury, and he thought his case would finally be finished. But now he is fighting to ensure he receives all the money he is owed.

The department that handles the appeals of injured worker cases has gone through many changes in recent months. After the Review-Journal reported complaints of staff working infrequent hours, the department announced it would schedule hearings on Friday mornings. Gov. Joe Lombardo directed all state employees to return to their offices and appointed a new director of the Department of Administration, which oversees the hearings and appeals division, the head of which retired in February.

Years fighting

Ralphs, 70, spent 26 years as a maintenance worker for the state parks department, repairing buildings, cleaning carpets and helping manage forest fires in the area. On Jan. 8, 2013, he cleaned a water heater with Comet and muriatic acid, exposure to which can cause severe lung damage. Afterward he began feeling a burning sensation in his chest and had difficulty breathing, according to his medical records provided to the Review-Journal.

He was first diagnosed with chemical inhalation exposure and later with reactive airway disease, which occurs when a person’s bronchial tubes overreact to an irritant causing breathing problems. Doctors had found that he burned all the alveoli in his lungs over a long period of time, Ralphs said. Alveoli are the tiny sacs in the lungs that allow the exchange of inhaled oxygen and exhaled carbon dioxide.

Ralphs, a non-smoker, had difficulty breathing, and any form of exercise would wipe him out. His lung capacity has progressively gotten worse over the years, his medical records show. On good days, his lungs are at 92 percent capacity and on bad days they drop to around 79 percent.


He now has to carry an oxygen tank with him wherever he goes, although most days he stays at home with his grandchildren. Just getting out of his car and walking into a building is a “killer,” he said.

Ralphs had to fight a long battle with his former employer’s third-party insurance company, Cannon Cochran Management Services, Inc., and while his case was pending he had to pay for own medical costs out-of-pocket. One doctor had found Ralphs to be “totally disabled,” a definition that would give him permanent disability benefits. A hearings officer denied the claim, and his insurance company requested another doctor’s opinion. Another doctor, who had not completed all the tests on Ralphs, diagnosed him as being obese and not disabled. And another one found that because of his pulmonary impairment, Ralphs would no longer be able to work.

Winning his case

In 2020 a judge ruled that he was permanently and totally disabled and was entitled to a settlement, but Cannon Cochran put a stay order on the case so that it would not have to pay. In December 2021 — eight years after he was injured — a second judge ruled in favor of Ralphs, ordering that the third party administrator pay him more than $300,000 plus interest in a form of three checks per month: one for the back pay and money that is owed to him since his case began, another for the cost of living increase since his case started, and another for the current time period, Ralphs said.

His first check came in February 2022, but the others came sporadically and at random amounts. Some months he did not receive any checks, he said. Often the cost-of-living checks are missing. Ralphs does not know how the exact amount is determined, and he wishes the system would create an amortization schedule, a complete list that shows how much money he will be paid in principal and in interest, and when that money will be coming.

Ralphs has received about $345,000 so far, but there is still more money that Ralphs says he is owed.

“We’re still looking for the loopholes that they have not paid us for,” he said.

He and his lawyer, who takes 40 percent of everything, have to comb through the Nevada Revised Statutes, see what else he is owed, and request a hearing with the appeals officer to make the insurance company pay him. Due to a stacked calendar in the hearings and appeals division, his next court date will be in more than six months, he said.

“There’s lots of people that just give up because (the insurance companies) have this playbook that they just use,” Ralphs said. “It’s down to the money. It’s not about the injured worker.”

Tani Consiglio, a claims representative for Cannon Cochran Management Services Inc. who handled Ralphs’ case, did not return requests for comment.

Ralphs uses the settlement money to get things fixed or replaced around his house, tasks that he had to put off to pay for his medical expenses during the many years he was going through the workers’ compensation system. He also depleted his savings to cover his medical treatment throughout the years.

Ralphs had to pay for his oxygen tanks for years, although he received a letter this month from his insurance company stating that it will reimburse him for the out-of-pockets for the oxygen. Even if he gets all the money he is owed, Ralphs still is not done with the insurer. Each time he needs oxygen, he must fill out a script for the insurance company to determine whether or not he actually needs it, he said.

“I keep fighting,” Ralphs said.

Contact Jessica Hill at jehill@reviewjournal.com. Follow @jess_hillyeah on Twitter.