Congress has clashed with Supreme Court justices over ethics in the past

Ron Elving, NPR
April 22, 2023 

The Supreme Court's legitimacy is once again being called into question after news broke that Justice Clarence Thomas failed to disclose 20 years of lavish trips paid for by a billionaire Republican donor.
Jacquelyn Martin/AP

When Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin this week asked the chief justice of the Supreme Court to give the committee an update on the ethics of the court, he spoke of "a steady stream of revelations regarding Justices falling short" of ethical standards.

Durbin did not mention the shortcomings of any justice in particular.

He did not have to.

Everyone old enough to read a newspaper or understand a newscast knows Durbin's letter was prompted by media reports on Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, the longest-serving member of the current court, who took the oath in 1991.

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The high heat on the high court comes in the wake of an investigation by ProPublica spotlighting Thomas' long and beneficial friendship with Harlan Crow, a billionaire Republican megadonor and activist. Among the benefits cited: vacations around the world valued at approximately $500,000.

Thomas has been spotty, at best, in disclosing these gifts and other transactions, in some cases in apparent violation of Supreme Court rules. He has said that unnamed colleagues told him this was OK because it was just "personal hospitality" and he will comply with more stringent rules in the future.

Thomas has long been regarded as the court's anchor on the right, so it is not surprising to hear a cadre of outspoken progressives in Congress urge Thomas to resign or call for his impeachment.

But even some voices on the right have objected, suggesting Thomas needs to do more to clear the air. Longtime Fox News contributor Juan Williams, whose career has also included years at NPR and The Washington Post, has said his "old friend" Thomas needs to dispel "the smell of financial corruption."

Thomas reports renew focus on Supreme Court ethics

Durbin's request for John Roberts to testify is not the first time the chief justice has had to tackle the question of how ethics standards apply to his court. For years, he has defended the high court's exemption of itself from the ethics rules governing the rest of the federal judiciary (and others in the federal power structure).

He addressed the issue in his 2011 Year-End Report on the Federal Judiciary, calling the code for lower courts a good "starting point" but saying he saw "no reason" for the Supreme Court to be held to that code. He said his fellow justices looked to multiple sources of guidance and that there were certain "ethical considerations unique to the Supreme Court."

However Roberts' statement might have been received in 2011, it is clearly less satisfactory now. As Durbin wrote in his invitation to Roberts this week, "problems were already apparent back in 2011, and the Court's decade-long failure to address them has contributed to a crisis of public confidence."
When it comes to the Supreme Court, the threat of impeachment is not an easy weapon

In defending the court's current ethics, Roberts can always throw down the ultimate gauntlet of impeachment: If Congress is not satisfied with the court's self-policing, let it use the tool provided in the Constitution — impeachment.

Of course, Roberts is well aware that no Supreme Court justice has ever been impeached and removed by Congress. Samuel Chase of Maryland, appointed by George Washington in 1796, was impeached by the House in 1804. Supporters of Thomas Jefferson, president at the time, accused Chase of bias and partisan behavior — largely because of his demeanor and biting opinions. But when the Senate held a trial in 1805 and acquitted him, Chase returned to the high court and served until his death in 1811.

But if impeachment is impractical, some prominent members of Congress have managed to express their unhappiness with prominent members of the court. They have employed something more like moral pressure — such as was brought to bear against Justices Abe Fortas and William O. Douglas.
Moral pressure has been deployed by Congress in the past

Fortas was first named to the court in 1965 by President Lyndon B. Johnson, whom he helped in a contested Senate election in Texas in 1948. While Fortas was considered a legendary legal intellect of his time, his close relationship with Johnson soon came under scrutiny

.
Former Associate Justice Abe Fortas of the Supreme Court poses in his judicial robes in Washington D.C., June 26, 1968.
Charles Tasnadi/AP

In 1968, Johnson named Fortas to succeed Chief Justice Earl Warren, who was retiring. At his confirmation hearing to be chief justice, details of his close relationship with Johnson were revealed. As a sitting justice, he sat in on meetings at the White House, discussed secret court deliberations with Johnson and lobbied members of the Senate who opposed the war in Vietnam on the president's behalf.

The panel also learned that he had received a privately-funded stipend to teach at American University, equivalent to about 40 percent of his Court salary. The stipend was supported by a variety of business officials raising concerns of a conflict of interest. The GOP also had hopes their party would win the White House in the fall and a Republican could name a chief justice of their own.

Ultimately, a Republican-led filibuster stalled his confirmation and Fortas asked Johnson to withdraw his nomination.

Meanwhile, Fortas was being pilloried for his association with Louis Wolfson, an imprisoned financier, for whom he had worked as a consultant to Wolfson's family foundation. But Fortas was being paid for that work at a time when Wolfson had come under scrutiny for securities fraud, and some Democrats joined Republicans in calling on Fortas to resign from the Court entirely. Fortas did that in May 1969, allowing the newly sworn-in President Richard Nixon to name a replacement for him.

Fortas may not have needed to resign, but told friends he did not want to force an impeachment proceeding. According to biographer Laura Kalman, Fortas hoped his departure would lower the temperature of debate about the court.

Justice Douglas: an exception to many rules

Douglas, another exceptionally brainy justice with strong liberal credentials, had been antagonizing opponents for three decades before Fortas' resignation. Douglas had been named to the Court by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1939, helping cement pro-Roosevelt control over the one branch of government that had defied him. Douglas would serve on the Court for 36 years, which is still the record, and write more opinions than any other justice in history.

Douglas built a record over the years that marked him as perhaps the most liberal justice in the court's history. He originated the thinking about "emanations" and "penumbras" of rights that established a Constitutional right to privacy in his Griswold decision (1962) and formed the basis years later for the landmark Roe v Wade decision on abortion in 1973 and the Obergefehl decision legalizing same-sex marriage (2015).

The first effort to impeach Douglas arose in the 1950s after he issued an order that temporarily halted the execution of Jules and Ethel Rosenberg, who had been convicted of passing key information about the atomic bomb to agents of the Soviet Union. Douglas' stay was overturned by the full court, and the impeachment effort faded.

But in the late 1960s, Douglas was pursued again by members of Congress upset with his lifestyle and cultural interests as well as his judicial rulings. One of his chief antagonists was a Republican congressman from Michigan named Gerald R. Ford, who would later be Nixon's vice president and then his successor.

Ford found useful ammunition in some of Douglas' efforts to make money, in part to meet obligations from his three divorces. Douglas wrote more than 30 books, but he was also drawing an income from the Parvin Foundation, run by a Las Vegas casino owner-operator. This prompted Ford to accuse Douglas of consorting with both Communists and organized crime figures.

The hearings began in April 1970 in the House Judiciary Committee, where Ford in particular went after Douglas for publishing in Playboy and for defending foreign films some considered pornographic.

While they generated considerable coverage at the time, the hearings did not build much momentum among the committee members and no formal vote was taken. In a letter to Fortas, Douglas described himself as frustrated with "staying around and being obnoxious" but unwilling to resign and let Nixon appoint his successor.

In 1974, however, Douglas was incapacitated by a stroke and eventually persuaded to retire the following year. He and his fourth wife were honored at the White House by Ford, by then the president, who said he hoped "bygones would be bygones."

Douglas had been just 40 years old when first appointed to the Court, one of the five youngest ever to serve. Thomas was just a year older at 41. As it stands now, he still needs to serve until 2029 to surpass Douglas' length of service.

Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Opinion
The American war on books

A prominent feature of the assault on freedom of thought and expression in the US is the race to ban books.

Belén Fernández
Al Jazeera columnist
Published On 23 Apr 2023

A student reads a pamphlet during a meeting of a book club discussing books banned in Texas school districts at the University Branch Library in Sugar Land, Texas, on April 15, 2023

 [File:Callaghan O'Hare/Reuters]


Once upon a time, George W Bush – former governor of Texas, 43rd United States president and accused war criminal – made a worrying observation: “Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?”

Bush did have a point; after all, that question is indeed rarely asked, at least not by people with a command of English grammar. And yet it is a question that increasingly comes to mind these days, and particularly today on World Book Day, as the US state of Texas leads the country in a book-banning frenzy.

According to the literary and free expression advocacy organisation PEN America, between July 1, 2021, and March 31, 2022, a total of 1,586 book bans took place in school libraries and classrooms across 26 US states. Texas was at the vanguard with 713 bans, followed by Pennsylvania with 456, Florida with 204 and Oklahoma with 43.

Heavily targeted for removal were books featuring LGBTQIA+ themes and characters as well as texts dealing with structural racism in US society – actions that naturally only reinforce the bigoted and malevolent foundations of the so-called “land of the free”.

To be sure, book bans are nothing new and have been around in America since the 1600s. In the 19th century, anti-slavery books were banned in the US South. And in Germany, the Nazis banned Albert Einstein’s Relativity: The Special and the General Theory among numerous other titles.

Despite the dubious success rate of book bans, which ultimately depends on how one defines “success”, the feverish rage they have been known to generate can certainly serve as a handy distraction for actual societal problems.

Take the case of Llano County, situated northwest of the Texas capital of Austin, where local officials are currently deciding whether to completely shut down the public library system after a federal judge recently ordered 17 banned titles returned to the shelves.

The titles include They Called Themselves the KKK: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group by Susan Campbell Bartoletti, which won the Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults award from the Young Adult Library Services Association in 2011.

Also on the list are Jazz Jennings’s book Being Jazz: My Life as a (Transgender) Teen and Robie H Harris’s It’s Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, and Sexual Health.

Then there’s a children’s book series by Jane Bexley comprising such subversive titles as Larry the Farting Leprechaun, Freddie the Farting Snowman and Harvey the Heart Had Too Many Farts.

Which brings us to the following point: In a country plagued by racism, discrimination, socioeconomic inequality, homelessness, depression and addiction, a gas-afflicted snowman should be the least of anyone’s worries.

Mass shootings have become a daily occurrence in the US, and, just last May, an 18-year-old gunman killed 19 children and two adults at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, southwest of Llano County.

Give me a farting leprechaun over an assault rifle any day.

Obviously, the presence of any given book on a library shelf does not mean that even a tiny fraction of the population will actually read it. This is especially true in the present era of total digital distraction – another societally destructive trend that will not be solved by, you know, shuttering libraries.

But the Llano County showdown is emblematic of the general assault on any lingering sense of community in the US, where the bipartisan ruling elite directly profits from the divide-and-conquer approach and the obliteration of any notion of communal solidarity.

The resulting individual isolation and dismantling of empathy, in turn, helps cultivate a national landscape that is more conducive to mass shootings and the like.

But back to farting leprechauns.

I myself spent much of my youth in Texas and have delightful memories of the Austin Public Library, of pre-internet summers spent among stacks of books and of the satisfying sound of the librarian stamping the book checkout cards with a tool I can’t even recall the name of.

Granted, I also engaged in youthful activities like shooting beer cans off fence posts with my parents’ friend’s pistol and learning in school about why it was so great for my country to be bombing people in the Middle East in Operation Desert Storm, waged by the father of the man who would subsequently ask whether our children was learning.

Fast forward three decades, and the US continues to devote much of its time and money to destroying other countries. Lest Americans start to connect the dots as to why a country with such incredible resources can’t provide affordable housing, healthcare or education, the powers that be pursue a simultaneous domestic assault on freedom of thought and expression – one manifestation of which is the race to ban books.

And things are only going downhill.

The Republican-led Texas House of Representatives is currently making headway on a bill to ban materials containing sexually explicit content in public school libraries – an initiative that has also garnered significant support from Democrats

And in Missouri, the state House recently voted to cut all funding for public libraries in its proposed annual budget.

According to a March press release from the American Library Association (ALA), “a record 2,571 unique titles were targeted for censorship” in the US in 2022, which constituted a 38 percent increase over 2021. The ALA noted that the “vast majority were written by or about members of the LGBTQIA+ community and people of color”.

It goes without saying that a society that bans books has a lot to hide. And as we mark World Book Day this year, it is worth reflecting on the fact that you cannot hide systemic rot behind the cover of a banned book.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Belén Fernández
Al Jazeera columnist
Belén Fernández is the author of Inside Siglo XXI: Locked Up in Mexico’s Largest Immigration Center (OR Books, 2022), Checkpoint Zipolite: Quarantine in a Small Place (OR Books, 2021), Exile: Rejecting America and Finding the World (OR Books, 2019), Martyrs Never Die: Travels through South Lebanon (Warscapes, 2016), and The Imperial Messenger: Thomas Friedman at Work (Verso, 2011). She is a contributing editor at Jacobin Magazine, and has written for the New York Times, the London Review of Books blog, Current Affairs, and Middle East Eye, among numerous other publications.

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet pens a letter to a local school board

Perspective by 

April 23, 2023

In southwest Michigan, the school board of the Brandywine Community Schools district was recently flipped from a liberal to conservative majority in local elections. The new members had voiced their intent to restrict how teachers can address issues including race, racism and other important subjects, leading hundreds of alumni, teachers, former administrators and others to bind together in opposition. Members of the opposition have shown up at school board meetings and are advocating against changes that would limit what students can learn.

One of the vocal graduates of Brandywine High School is Diane Seuss, an American poet and educator whose book titled “frank: sonnets” won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for poetry as well as the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry. Seuss grew up in Michigan and attended public schools, later studying at Kalamazoo College, where she earned a bachelor’s degree, and Western Michigan University, where she received a master’s degree in social work. She returned to Kalamazoo in 1988 to teach English, which she did until 2016. She has been a visiting professor at the University of Michigan and Washington University in St. Louis while writing numerous books of poetry and publishing poems in a variety of journals. In 2021, she received the John Updike Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

The following is an open letter that Seuss wrote to the school board about her experiences at Brandywine High School, urging them to think twice about imposing restrictive learning policies.

To the Brandywine Public Schools Board of Education:

I am a 1974 graduate of Brandywine Public High School. My sister graduated in 1969, and ultimately became a Hospice nurse. My father was Director of Guidance at BHS in the early to mid-1960s, when he died at age 36 of a rare illness, likely attained during his service in the Navy during World War II. My mother went to college after he died. Once she graduated, she was hired to teach in the English Department at Brandywine, where she remained until her retirement. Given this family history, I feel some responsibility for speaking up at this important time in Brandywine’s educational development.

During the years of my dad’s illness, and after his death, we received vital support from the Brandywine family. And yes, it was a family. I’m sure people had a diversity of political and religious points of view, but those differences were not at the forefront of the conversations and friendships. I cannot imagine how our family would have remained as intact as it was and is without that cohesive network that kept us grounded. From what I understand, Brandywine now has a fine faculty and administration that continues in the tradition I have described. The community is lucky to have such impressive human resources.

I feel sadness and anger, then, that members of the school board are now jumping on the bandwagon of recent trends in bringing conservative religious and political dogma into educational decision-making, planning to sift through libraries and teacher’s curricular plans to rid them of what these board members consider dangerous ideas. These plans threaten to create unnecessary conflict between the board and the staff and administration. They represent a lack of understanding of the purpose and power of education, and why a free exchange of ideas is imperative to a healthy school system, and they communicate a lack of trust in educated and experienced teachers, librarians, and administrators.

After I graduated from Brandywine, I attended Kalamazoo College, and received my Masters from Western Michigan University. I ended up teaching at both WMU and “K,” and in fact was Writer in Residence at K for 30 years. I have written poems since my first typing class when I was a freshman at BHS. Learning to type came easy, and freed up my imagination, in that I could move ideas from my brain to the page very quickly. I never had my mom in class, but I had her at home. At school, I had wonderful teachers who supported my creativity, even though I wasn’t a “typical” student. That bedrock led to my own teaching career, and to my publication of five books of poems. Last year, my fifth book received several national and international awards, including the Pulitzer Prize. I am one of three poets from Michigan, the only female, and the only poet who continued living in Michigan, to have received the Pulitzer.

And here’s the thing: I don’t believe any of my accomplishments would have happened without my time at Brandywine. Books were freely available in the library. Challenging books. Even controversial books. My mom taught some of them in her classrooms, and kept those students who might have otherwise checked out engaged in discussions of literature to which they could relate, or even about which they could argue. My theater teacher encouraged me to do some acting. He directed plays that the community attended in droves. They were plays that brought crucial historical and emotional issues into the light. For instance, we did Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, on the Salem witch trials, in which people who may have lived differently, or thought differently, or expressed themselves differently from the norm, were put on trial and, in many cases, executed. I learned from my involvement in Jim’s plays that I was capable of working hard and of expressing myself in ways that could matter to others. I learned empathy, and the price one can pay for having a controversial point of view. I gained confidence. I experienced excellence.

I urge the school board to think long and hard before turning Brandywine into a school system without freedom of thought and freedom of expression. You risk alienating hard-working professionals who are, in fact, experts in their fields. You risk shutting down the imaginations and intellectual adventurousness of the students. A surefire way to turn off students to their own educations is to control them into submission. If you fear what is now being tagged “Critical Race Theory,” make very sure you understand what it means. I suggest you not get your information from conspiracy-laden websites, but from unbiased experts. I have never seen CRT taught outside of college courses. Middle or high school history text books that offer a unit on slavery in the United States, and the issues that led to the Civil War, are not engaging in CRT. They are attending to historical reality. I remember stumbling through the construction site that was to become Brandywine Public High School with my dad, holding his hand. He had such hopes, such excitement for what that building could offer its future students. I wish he was still here to write his own letter to you. I’m sure it would be wiser and kinder than mine. What I know is that the school board has the power to extend or destroy his legacy. I wish you wisdom in your decision-making.

With hope, and warm regards,

Diane Seuss Professor of English, Emerita Kalamazoo College

By Valerie Strauss

Valerie Strauss is an education writer who authors The Answer Sheet blog. She came to The Washington Post as an assistant foreign editor for Asia in 1987 and weekend foreign desk editor after working for Reuters as national security editor and a military/foreign affairs reporter on Capitol Hill. She also previously worked at UPI and the LA Times.  Twitter

Poet Tanya Holtland laments the toll of environmental apathy

Shin Yu Pai

April 23, 2023 

Each day during the month of April, KUOW is highlighting the work of Seattle-based poets for National Poetry Month. In this series curated by Seattle Civic Poet and Ten Thousand Things host Shin Yu Pai, you'll find a selection of poems for the mind, heart, senses, and soul.

In her Ballard-based poem "Golden Gardens," Tanya Holtland contemplates environmental pollution and its impacts on non-human species and future generations.

Tanya Holtland is a poet and writer. She is author of the chapbook Inner River (Drop Leaf Press, 2016). Her eco-poetry collection Requisite (Platypus Press, 2020) was a finalist for the Broken River Prize and nominated for the 2021 Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Her work surrounds the intersections of memory, ecology, healing, design, and matriarchy.

Golden Gardens

feathered
underwing of the newborn

seagull has only just begun
to rot, by its first meal

filter,
dead cigarette at the tongue

mother feeds
her and I,

also deadened, dis—
believe

the symphony
preceding change

is surely all these symptoms
not us not

seeing the seals, turtles
not the coyote, wren, or deer

not the fox, salmon, frog
not the orcas, not the worms

not the whales, not the bees
not the waters, not these

losses
of meaning

or dawn can seem to rise
to meet the insatiable

distance between
the earth and us—

capable, loving, longing
conflicted in all our glory—

we, the only ones
who can tell and be told a lie

Story from Poetry in Bloom

Shin Yu Pai
HOST, TEN THOUSAND THINGS

Shin Yu Pai is the current Civic Poet for The City of Seattle (2023-24) and host of KUOW's podcast Ten Thousand Things (formerly The Blue Suit). She is an award-winning writer and visual artist based in Seattle.

China urged to step up laser weapons development to keep pace with US

The country risks falling behind its major strategic rival, defence analysts say

Washington is trying to develop portable laser weapons, but some observers believe this may be a long way off


Kristin Huang

SCMP.COM

A US warship fires at a training target in December 2021. Photo: handout

China should speed up the development of laser weapons to keep pace with the swift progress made by the United States, Chinese military analysts have said.

The US Government Accountability Office said last week that the Pentagon is spending US$1 billion a year on developing directed energy weapons to counter threats such as drones and missiles.

It said much recent research has focused on making laser weapons small and light enough to be used by one person, but is still facing a challenge in moving beyond the prototype stage.

Laser weapons are seen as a good solution to the use of drone swarms, which have been widely used in modern conflicts such as the Ukraine war.

A laser beam can confuse a drone’s optical sensor, or burn a hole when its power is increased.

The United States has been researching the technology since the 1960s and the country is a frontrunner in developing and using directed energy weapons.

US bid to ‘outcompete’ China yields its largest-ever defence budget
14 Mar 2023


In 2014, the US navy installed its first laser weapon system, the AN/SEQ-3, on the USS Ponce for field tests that proved successful.

Last year the US navy installed its first permanent laser on its Arleigh Burke–class destroyer the Preble. Lockheed Martin, which developed the Helios laser system, said it is most useful in attacking drones and small surface ships.

China has also been researching the use of laser weapons and has had some successes, such as the Silent Hunter, an anti-drone system developed by Poly Technologies.

In March last year, Saudi Arabia used the technology to intercept and destroy 13 suicide drones operated by Houthi militants in Yemen.

But Zhou Chenming, a researcher with the Beijing-based Yuan Wang military science and technology think tank, said China has to put more effort into developing high-powered laser weapons.

“China is good at making smaller laser weapons, such as the Silent Hunter, but China doesn’t have more powerful ones that can intercept bigger targets like missiles or ones that can be installed at naval vessels.

Chinese scientists build hypersonic generator to power futuristic weapons
2 Feb 2023


“I believe this is the direction that China can go in when developing and expanding the country’s own laser technology,” said Zhou.

He said “another promising direction” would be to fit laser weapons to warplanes, because they could be used at high altitudes and would be less affected by dust and rain.

Sean McFate, a professor at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School and Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, said despite the heavy US investment in the technology, there were still limitations.

Philippines files protest to embassy over Chinese coastguard’s use of laser
14 Feb 2023


“Everyone wants light and portable laser weapons but it’s far off. Essentially, you also need a portable power plant, which is unrealistic… Lasers are more hype than reality, and the US is investing US$1 billion a year to bridge this gap. However, it may go on for years,” said McFate.

Song Zhongping, a former PLA instructor, said China should invest more into researching directed energy weapons.

“Lasers are an important part of modern technology. China doesn’t just need laser technology, but also has to apply lasers in certain fields, such as the battlefield,” said Song.

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for PERMANENT ARMS ECONOMY 

WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY STUDENTS WERE EXTREMELY IMPORTANT TO CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVISTS

Booker JonesApril 23, 2023

Black demonstrator people holding hands against racism - Focus on civil fists - Black and white edit

New research centered on the civil rights movement seems to be never-ending and that’s a good thing. Marc Arsell Robinson, Assistant Professor of African American History at California State University released a new book that examines the civil rights protest in the Pacific Northwest region.

Prof. Robinson spoke with The Conversation about his new book Washington State Rising, his research, and why he chose to focus on Washington as a site of civil rights protests. 

“As an African American born and raised in Seattle, I was curious to learn if and how my hometown was connected to the protests of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements,” Prof. Robinson said during his interview with The Conversation. “I was pleased to learn the city, and region was deeply connected to these larger movements. I felt a responsibility to share what I had learned.”

Much of the research based on civil rights focuses on Southern states with Oakland, Calif., being an exception. However, The Washington Post reports, Pacific cities like “Portland [had a] small but growing Black community helped transform the city, sparking new civil rights activism.” Now, Prof. Robinson is adding to civil rights protests near the Pacific. 

“My book shines light on Black Power’s reach beyond major cities like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles,” Prof. Robinson said.  “It shows Black Power’s impact on higher education, and it details how some Black student activists used community organizing and interracial alliances to create change.”

Through the research process for Washington State Rising, Robinson made some interesting discoveries about the connection between the University of Washington and the Seattle Black Panther Party. 

“The Black Student Union, or BSU, at the University of Washington, helped connect the Black Panther Party to Seattle,’ Robinson said to The Conversation. “The group formed in the fall of 1967, and later several of its members helped co-found the Seattle Panthers in April 1968. This includes Aaron Dixon, who confirms in his memoir that he was in the Black Student Union at UW before being appointed by Bobby Seale as Captain, or leader, of the Seattle Panthers.” 

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Taiwan's top science research institute to open observatory in Hawaii

Academia Sinica facility will monitor deep space radio bursts on Big Island

By Duncan DeAeth,

 Taiwan News, Staff Writer
2023/04/23

(Pexels photo, Igor Mashkov)

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Taiwan’s premier scientific research institute, Academia Sinica, is preparing to open a new facility for studying astronomy in Hawaii, with assistance from U.S. and Canadian organizations.

The Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics (ASIAA) reached a deal with state authorities to use a two-acre site in Ka’u District on the southwest side of Hawai’i Island, reported Big Island Now. The facility will be used to monitor short radio bursts from deep space, which have puzzled astronomers for decades.

In an early April meeting, the local Windward Planning Commission approved a special use permit so that work on the facility can begin. The site was selected because it is a silent, secluded area that is not subject to large amounts of sound pollution or radio interference.

The land, originally designated for agricultural use, will be leased to Academia Sinica for 10 years. The facility will be mostly unmanned, with a researcher visiting the site once or twice weekly.

According to Big Island Now, the observatory will include 10 commercial TV satellite dishes, each six meters in diameter, and a 15-by-15 meter dipole antenna array. Every effort will be made to reduce electronic signals in and around the research facility so that the observatory can record even the faintest radio signals from the widest region of space.

“We’re just listening…we’re sitting there listening to some whispers from the sky,” said Chen Ming-tang (陳明堂), the deputy director of ASIAA operations in Hawai’i, as quoted by Big Island Now.

Want to listen to space noise? NASA wants to hear from you

By ERIN BLAKEMORE
SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON POST • April 23, 2023

The Heliophysics Audified: Resonances in Plasmas project uses data from five NASA satellites that launched in 2007. 

(NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab)

Note to citizen scientists: NASA wants your help listening in on the universe — specifically, on the sounds of low-frequency waves generated by solar particles colliding with “Earth’s magnetic environment.”

The goal is for volunteers to assist the space agency’s scientists in identifying important features within the cacophony.

Heliophysics Audified: Resonances in Plasmas (HARP) is now open to citizen scientists. HARP uses data from five NASA satellites that launched in 2007 to help study auroras, which occur when solar particles run into Earth’s bubblelike magnetic field, or magnetosphere.

The name HARP riffs off what happens when solar particles collide with the magnetosphere — “the region of space surrounding Earth where the dominant magnetic field is the magnetic field of Earth,” according to NASA. That region shields Earth’s surface from many types of solar radiation as the sun constantly streams and blows particles toward the planet. When the solar wind and plasma from coronal ejections strike Earth’s magnetic field lines, our invisible shield vibrates like the strings of a harp.

The waves those interactions produce aren’t audible to the human ear; they are produced at too low a frequency for that. But the HARP team has sped them up so users can hear them — and it’s inviting citizen scientists to listen and identify interesting features within the cosmic soundscape. The hope is that volunteers can help trawl through the massive amount of data while sussing out sounds that reveal more about the vibrations. Researchers will use their increased understanding of those interactions to help humans better prepare for future space weather events.

Think listening to years’ worth of wave patterns is a job for artificial intelligence? Think again. In a news release, HARP team member Martin Archer of Imperial College London says humans are often better at listening than machines.

“The human sense of hearing is an amazing tool,” Archer says. “We’re essentially trained from birth to recognize patterns and pick out different sound sources. We can innately do some pretty crazy analysis that outperforms even some of our most advanced computer algorithms.”

If you’d like to hear the sounds of solar wind and more, and to contribute to the project, visit Listen.spacescience.org

Daesh using Afghanistan as a terror base, leaked Pentagon document reveals

• By Amu TV   TODAYPrintShare via Email

Nearly two years after the US forces’ withdrawal from Afghanistan, the country has become a significant coordination site for Daesh (ISIS), from where the terrorist group plans attacks across Europe and Asia, and conducts “aspirational plotting” against the United States, according to a leaked classified Pentagon document that portrays the threat as a growing security concern, the Washington Post reported.

The attack planning, detailed in US intelligence findings leaked on the Discord messaging platform and obtained by The Washington Post, reveal specific efforts to target embassies, churches, business centers and the FIFA World Cup soccer tournament, which drew more than 2 million spectators last summer in Qatar. Pentagon officials were aware in December of nine such plots coordinated by Daesh leaders in Afghanistan, and the number rose to 15 by February, says the assessment, which has not been disclosed previously.

“ISIS has been developing a cost-effective model for external operations that relies on resources from outside Afghanistan, operatives in target countries, and extensive facilitation networks,” says the assessment, which is labeled top-secret and bears the logos of several Defense Department organizations. “The model will likely enable ISIS to overcome obstacles — such as competent security services — and reduce some plot timelines, minimizing disruption opportunities.”

The Afghanistan findings are one facet of a complex and evolving terrorist threat described in the leaked documents, now linked to a criminal case in which a member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard is accused of sharing classified information with friends online. Other reports in the same trove of documents reveal persistent efforts by the Islamic State (Daesh) in other parts of the world to obtain expertise for creating chemical weapons and operating drone aircraft, and a plot in which the group’s supporters would kidnap Iraqi diplomats in Belgium or France in a bid to secure the release of 4,000 imprisoned militants.

The documents will almost certainly be used as a political cudgel by congressional Republicans and others still seething about the Biden administration’s chaotic management of the US exit from Afghanistan in August 2021, the Post reported.

More than 120,000 people were evacuated in the process after the fall of Kabul. Tens of thousands of American allies were left behind, however, and the two-week operation saw horrific suffering. As the mission neared its end, a Daesh suicide bomber killed an estimated 170 Afghans along with 13 American troops before US drone operators, believing they had identified another would-be ISIS attacker, killed 10 civilians in a botched airstrike days later in the north of Kabul.

The Washington Post reports that Biden administration officials declined to verify the leaked documents’ authenticity, but defended their counterterrorism record since taking office.

Despite the ongoing efforts to acquire a weapon of mass destruction, the March 2023 document notes, encouragingly, that the terrorist group’s ambitions were severely undermined by the collapse of the caliphate.

The documents also detail Daesh responding to several recent world events, including consideration for sending a suicide bomber to Qatar to attack the World Cup tournament last year.

As a collection, the documents indicate that US intelligence agencies have succeeded repeatedly in intercepting the communications among Daesh cells. Such intercepts appear to have led to the disruption of plans for kidnappings and small-arms attacks on government buildings in Europe.

The documents also suggest that the al-Qaeda organization once headed by Osama bin Laden continues to decline. While the reports highlight the emerging threat from Daesh in Afghanistan, there is no mention of an al-Qaeda resurgence there, something many counterterrorism experts had feared would happen following the US withdrawal.

The group’s reclusive leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, sought refuge in Kabul but was identified and targeted in a CIA-led operation that culminated in July 2022 in a lethal strike on an apartment where Zawahiri was staying in the Afghan capital in proximity to the former US Embassy.

Daesh activities in Afghanistan

An Amu finding shows that Taliban, despite its repeated denials of Daesh presence in the country, carried out eight operations against militants affiliated with Daesh’s Khorasan branch in a 23-day period from March 3 to March 26.

The operations were carried out in the capital city, Kabul, as well as in Herat, Balkh and Nimroz provinces.

The finding shows that Daesh carried out seven attacks against Taliban targets in the same period.

On March 9, a suicide bomber killed Mohammad Daud Muzammil, the Taliban’s governor for Balkh province, in Mazar-e-Sharif, the provincial capital. In a reprisal attack, the Taliban then claimed that they killed three key Daesh leaders – including Shadow governor for Khorasan Mawlawi Ziauddin; IS-K member Abu Omar Afridi; and a military trainer and bomb-making expert Salman Tajikistani – during a raid in Mazar-e-Sharif.

According to the CENTCOM commander, around 6,500 Daesh fighters are in Afghanistan of which 4,000 militants have been stationed across from the Tajikistan border.

On January 12, the Taliban defense ministry in a letter, a copy of which was seen by Amu TV, told the group’s border forces that around 7,000 Daesh members were expected to enter Afghanistan from Pakistan. According to the letter, these militants, led by a person named Muslim Kotwal, had received “extremist training” in the Korm area of Pakistan.

CULTURAL COLONIALISM
Edward Hopper retrospective goes back to realist painter's roots

By Park Yuna
Published : Apr 23, 2023 - 



"Night Windows" by Edward Hopper (© 2023, The Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence)



Ever since it was announced early this year that American realist painter Edward Hopper’s exhibition was going to open in Seoul, there has been a huge interest in the show, prompting more than 100,000 early bird tickets to be sold before the opening last week.


The exhibition “Edward Hopper: From City to Coast” at Seoul Museum of Art, which opened Wednesday, marks the first-ever exhibition in South Korea of the New York-born artist (1882-1967), known for his paintings of ordinary people’s urban life -- especially for his depiction of their moments in solitude.

The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, which houses the largest Hopper collection in the world, has brought together more than 160 pieces of the late artist’s works including drawings, oil paintings, etchings and watercolors as well as more than 110 archival materials from the Sanborn Hopper Archive.


"A Woman in the Sun" by Edward Hopper 

(© 2023 Heirs of Josephine Hopper/Licensed by SACK, Seoul)

“We have more than 3,100 works (of his art), and that is more than any number of works that we have by any other artist in the Whitney collection,” said Adam D. Weinberg, director of Whitney Museum at the press preview on Wednesday.

Weinberg also highlighted that the Hopper exhibition was building upon the special bond the museum has built with the Korean art scene.

“Forty years ago in 1982, Whitney was the first museum ever to organize the retrospective of great Korean artist Paik Nam-june. Three decades ago in 1993, the Whitney Biennale (a biennale exhibition of contemporary American art at the museum) traveled to the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea in Seoul. It was the first and only time that Whitney Biennale ever traveled to another country,” he said.

The Whitney is running another exhibition, “Edward Hopper’s New York,” at the museum in New York that opened October last year and will close on May 5.

While the New York exhibition focuses on Hopper’s artistic process associated with New York City, the Seoul exhibition shows a comprehensive look at Hopper’s art and life, spanning 65 years.

Edward Hopper's cover illustration for Bulletin of the New York Edison Company is on display at “Edward Hopper: From City to Coast” at Seoul Museum of Art. 

(Park Yuna/The Korea Herald)

The exhibition at SEMA goes beyond the artist’s most popular and iconic paintings of modern people. Rather, it explores how the artist started his career as an illustrator for magazines, how his wife and fellow artist Josephine Hopper influenced him and what Hopper was inspired by while traveling.

The “From City to Coast” exhibition takes visitors to the places Hopper repeatedly visited -- Paris, New York City, the New England region and Cape Cod, with four different sections dedicated to paintings inspired by each city.



An installation view of “Edward Hopper: From City to Coast” at Seoul Museum of Art (Park Yuna/The Korea Herald)

Hopper left a lot of oil paintings of nature. Captivated by the charms of New England, Hopper and his wife set up their own home in Truro, southern Cape Cod in 1934. They spent their summers there, and returned to New York City in early autumn every year for the rest of their lives. The "Cape Cod" section shows oil paintings of rustic farm houses and coastlines.

During three visits to Paris, Hopper would observe the daily life of Parisians, including janitors, prostitutes, cafegoers and people dressed in fashionable clothes. The painting “Soir Bleu” shows an assortment of people at a Parisian cafe. A working-class man is shown on the far left, a bourgeois couple on the far right and a prostitute and clown smoking a cigarette at the center, the museum description reads. The painting was created in 1914, four years after the artist’s final trip to the city.



"Soir Bleu" by Edward Hopper

 (© 2023 Heirs of Josephine Hopper/Licensed by SACK, Seoul)

“After I took up etching, my painting seemed to crystallize,” the artist once said. Etching was an important part of his artistic career as he turned to etching -- a printmaking technique in which lines are emphasized -- when he was caught in the tedious reality of working as an illustrator for a living. His black-and-white etching is featured at the section titled “New York.”

"Etching for Hopper became a very important medium. We think of Hopper as someone who is so involved with color and light, but he honed a lot of that through the etching medium, working with these kind of dramatic contrasts," said Kim Conaty, Steven and Ann Ames Curator of Drawings and Prints, showing etchings created between 1915 and 1923.


Works of etching by Edward Hopper are featured at “Edward Hopper: From City to Coast” at Seoul Museum of Art. (Park Yuna/The Korea Herald)

The section continues to show a number of Hopper's sketches of architectural elements and people in New York City, which the artist would bring together in compositions. From the late 1930s, he began infusing his paintings with images from his memory and imagination.

On the first floor are his writings, illustrations as well as a documentary that sheds light on his artistic career. After her husband’s death, Josephine donated some 2,500 pieces of Hopper’s artworks and materials to the Whitney museum.

The exhibition runs through Aug. 20.

A room dedicated to a documentary of Edward Hopper for the exhibition "Edward Hopper: From City to Coast” at Seoul Museum of Art

 (Park Yuna/The Korea Herald)

HINDUTVA IS ARYAN FASCISM

India governing its religious duties, don’t want to be like US, Russia: RSS chief

BySaptarshi Das

Apr 23, 2023 

He said India is now moving forward with its religious belief and the country

 fighting for religion will not take advantage of any other country

Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat said India believes in serving its religious duties and does not want to be an authoritative nation like the US, Russia or China.

“India believes in serving others and this tradition has been followed since the Vedas. Our country is developing to be a righteous nation and governing its religious duties as it paves its way to being a developed nation,” he said during his address at the Ved Sanskrit Gyan Gaurav Samaroh on Sunday.

He said that the developed nations exercise their power over other countries like when the Soviet was in power, it was overthrown by the US. Now China is positioning itself to overpower the US, whereas, the US and Russia are using Ukraine as a pawn, Bhagwat added. He said that India has always supported other nations in need of help irrespective of its relation with the country.

“India just wants to help Ukraine. This is our nation,” said the RSS chief. 

Praising India’s foreign policy, Bhagwat said that earlier India could not take its stand in this manner. Citing the example of how India helped Sri Lanka during its economic crisis, Bhagwat said, “Sri Lanka used to always side with China or Pakistan and always kept India away from their internal affairs but when it was in danger, only India came to its rescue as we will never take advantage of any country’s situation.”

He said India is now moving forward with its religious belief and the country fighting for religion will not take advantage of any other country.

Issuing cryptic a statement over the advancement of technology, Bhagwat said, “Science disregards religion. People fear that tomorrow Artificial Intelligence (AI) will take over the human race and we will become nonexistent. Science even considers humans as biological animals, but not religion.”