The Language of Force: How the Police State Muzzles Our Right to Speak Truth to Power

by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead / March 20th, 2024

Tyrants don’t like people who speak truth to power.

Cue the rise of protest laws, which take the government’s intolerance for free speech to a whole new level and send the resounding message that resistance is futile.

In fact, ever since the Capitol protests on January 6, 2021, state legislatures have introduced a broad array of these laws aimed at criminalizing protest activities.

There have been at least 205 proposed laws in 45 states aimed at curtailing the right to peacefully assemble and protest by expanding the definition of rioting, heightening penalties for existing offenses, or creating new crimes associated with assembly.

Weaponized by police, prosecutors, courts and legislatures, these protest laws, along with free speech zones, bubble zones, trespass zones, anti-bullying legislation, zero tolerance policies, hate crime laws, and a host of other legalistic maladies have become a convenient means by which to punish individuals who refuse to be muzzled.

In Florida, for instance, legislators passed a “no-go” zone law making it punishable by up to 60 days in jail to remain within 25 feet of working police and other first responders after a warning.

Yet while the growing numbers of protest laws cropping up across the country are sold to the public as necessary to protect private property, public roads or national security, they are a wolf in sheep’s clothing, a thinly disguised plot to discourage anyone from challenging government authority at the expense of our First Amendment rights.

It doesn’t matter what the source of that discontent might be (police brutality, election outcomes, COVID-19 mandates, the environment, etc.): protest laws, free speech zones, no-go zones, bubble zones, trespass zones, anti-bullying legislation, zero tolerance policies, hate crime laws, etc., aim to muzzle every last one of us.

To be very clear, these legislative attempts to redefine and criminalize speech are a backdoor attempt to rewrite the Constitution and render the First Amendment’s robust safeguards null and void.

No matter how you package these laws, no matter how well-meaning they may sound, no matter how much you may disagree with the protesters or sympathize with the objects of the protest, these proposed laws are aimed at one thing only: discouraging dissent.

This is the painful lesson being imparted with every incident in which someone gets arrested and charged with any of the growing number of contempt charges (ranging from resisting arrest and interference to disorderly conduct, obstruction, and failure to obey a police order) that get trotted out anytime a citizen voices discontent with the government or challenges or even questions the authority of the powers-that-be.

Journalists have come under particular fire for exercising their right to freedom of the press.

According to U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, the criminalization of routine journalism has become a means by which the government chills lawful First Amendment activity.

Journalists have been arrested or faced dubious charges for “publishing,” asking too many questions of public officials, being “rude” for reporting during a press conference, and being in the vicinity of public protests and demonstrations.

It’s gotten so bad that merely daring to question, challenge or hesitate when a cop issues an order can get you charged with resisting arrest or disorderly conduct.

For example, college professor Ersula Ore was slammed to the ground and arrested after she objected to the “disrespectful manner” shown by a campus cop who stopped her in the middle of the street and demanded that she show her ID.

Making matters worse, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling in Nieves v. Bartlett that protects police from lawsuits by persons arrested on bogus “contempt of cop” charges (ranging from resisting arrest and interference to disorderly conduct, obstruction, and failure to obey a police order) that result from lawful First Amendment activities (filming police, asking a question of police, refusing to speak with police).

These incidents reflect a growing awareness about the state of free speech in America: you may have distinct, protected rights on paper, but dare to exercise those rights, and you risk fines, arrests, injuries and even death.

Case in point: Tony Rupp, a lawyer in Buffalo, NY, found himself arrested and charged with violating the city’s noise ordinance after cursing at an SUV bearing down on pedestrians on a busy street at night with its lights off. Because that unmarked car was driven by a police officer, that’s all it took for Rupp to find himself subjected to malicious prosecution, First Amendment retaliation and wrongful arrest.

The case, as Jesse McKinley writes in The New York Times, is part of a growing debate over “how citizens can criticize public officials at a time of widespread reevaluation of the lengths and limits of free speech. That debate has raged everywhere from online forums and college campuses to protests over racial bias in law enforcement and the Israel-Hamas war. Book bans and other acts of government censorship have troubled some First Amendment experts. Last week, the Supreme Court heard arguments about a pair of laws — in Florida and Texas — limiting the ability of social media companies such as Facebook to ban certain content from their platforms.”

Bottom line: what the architects of the police state want are submissive, compliant, cooperative, obedient, meek citizens who don’t talk back, don’t challenge government authority, don’t speak out against government misconduct, and don’t resist.

What the First Amendment protects—and a healthy constitutional republic requires—are citizens who routinely exercise their right to speak truth to power.

Yet there can be no free speech for the citizenry when the government speaks in a language of force.

Unfortunately, this is how the government at all levels—federal, state and local—now responds to those who choose to exercise their First Amendment right to speak freely.

Remember, the unspoken freedom enshrined in the First Amendment is the right to challenge government agents, think freely and openly debate issues without being muzzled or treated like a criminal.

As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, by muzzling the citizenry, by removing the constitutional steam valves that allow people to speak their minds, air their grievances and contribute to a larger dialogue that hopefully results in a more just world, the government is creating a climate in which violence becomes inevitable.

Facebook

TwitterRedditEmail

John W. Whitehead, constitutional attorney and author, is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. He wrote the book Battlefield America: The War on the American People (SelectBooks, 2015). He can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Read other articles by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

 

Private Profits vs. Social Prophets

by Frank Scott / March 20th, 2024

…What we see at work is not an expression of the sentiments of the American people; rather it reflects the will of a powerful minority which uses its economic power to control the organs of political life.

— Albert Einstein, Einstein on Peace, p. 343.

We entered the massive marketplace labeled “our democracy” as always long before any election and at this date hundreds of millions have already been spent both officially and off the books to insure that ruling power maintains control over American capitalism no matter who or what may be elected sheriff, mayor, animal control officer or president of the United States. Given that, the spending and consciousness brutality have already exceeded past experience and, as befitting a system verging on complete collapse and involving much more of humanity than American voters, the time for global as well as national focus on the status of an American empire making more people rich than ever before while making multitudes far more poor and continuing mass murders in other subject nations is not only at hand but at all parts of the international political economic organism.

As the fading rulers of western capitalism act more like a crazed rat on a sinking ship but instead of leaping into the deeps it promotes the entire world into more warfare, mass murder, incredible profits for those who feed on bloodshed and a mental condition that might make homicidal maniacs seem critically thinking human beings, the natural and especially political environmental reality approaches the worst fantasy of religious fanatics: eternal damnation in the fires of hell. This joyful futuristic vision was born of a brilliant past that might make the present seem docile since none of the modern weapons existed in biblical times when spears, lances and demented religious leaders operated as ruling wealth as opposed to the lethally armed with weapons of mass murder political and media servants of rulers do today.

The continuing since 1917 American imperial attacks on Russia have reached a point in the current war using Ukrainians to kill Russians while they die by the thousands with no hope of winning and American and foreign munitions makers make billions. Various of the NATO lapdog leaders sound even more crazed than Americans and urge broadening of the war to stop the eternal threat of Russia which exists in their fevered minds, said fever having been planted by America since the end of the second world war.

Meanwhile, the center of global anti-Semitism, Israel, has exploded as never before with such bloody horror that many of the innocent and previously comatose have awakened and expressed anger and hostility about a situation that has prevailed since 1948 when Palestine was engulfed and devoured by the new nation said to have been a haven for those suffering horror during the second world war. This would be like Japan getting even for the American atrocities at Hiroshima and Nagasaki by invading Mexico, throwing the natives out when possible and making all others second class citizens once they took over, changed the language and culture to Japanese and proceeded to treat Mexicans worse than Americans ever had.

In only one of thousands of contradictions of logic, language and morality, the European Jews who stole the land continue calling themselves Semites and screaming anti-Semitism whenever real Semites commit an act of aggression in retaliation and millions in the western world have their brains sunk deeper into an ocean of mental sewage. Like everything else in a radically changing world in which previous western dominance is nearing an end and hopefully global freedom is nearer than ever, the radical changes underway that can spell revolution for the human future can be made to seem more dismal than ever under the consciousness control of purveyors of the imperial lies now fantastically more powerful than any past relatively tin-pot dictatorial regime of later made to seem glorious royals and other past murderers.

While it seems that the horrible choice offered voters by capital’s two parties back in 2020 will be the same in 2024 the only difference is that the divisions among Americans have grown even worse than before. But as the frustration and anger at both parties increase alternate choices, usually written off as foreign plots or national disorders, may finally have space to speak to radical change favoring democracy in substance rather than the bogus brain disease foisted on innocent people who are told it is freedom and democracy. Of course, and rape is simply an economic form of dating and hundreds of thousands of Americans living in the street are merely getting close to nature.

While political madness depicts Putin as a menace to humanity for reacting to an American owned and operated insurrection in Ukraine and fill voters heads with alleged crimes committed by Trump which are the everyday reality of political pimps and hustlers who own and operate “our” democracy, especially Congress and the white house, Palestinians will continue to be murdered by Israelis financed by American taxpayers proving that our peace loving democracy is just what the world needs to bring on a nuclear destruction of humanity which is in the planning stages of our Mass Murder Inc. at the pentagon. This will come to pass if Americans do not rise up and create real democracy before it is too late. Among other things that will mean voting against the supposed lesser evil of the two party combo of economic cancer and political polio to bring about the end of capitalism and the beginning of a future for the human race that does not involve growing poverty for hundreds of millions while a relative handful become billionaires.

The opening quote is from someone long admired for something called the theory of relativity, a term not even vaguely understood by billions of humans, but far more relevant, easily understandable and important is the fact that he was an anti-capitalist, a socialist and an anti-war pacifist, easily understandable by those same billions and hardly known by most. That and many other hidden facts about people, nations and political economics should become clearer while we adjust and work to transform a dreadful social reality into a hopeful future by ending warfare capitalism and bringing about a democratic world such as our pre-historic beginnings in social and communistic cooperation. And after we clear up some reality about Einstein, we’d all do well by checking out Marx in his own words and not those of his simplistic and far too often murderous detractors. He can help us learn more about what we need to understand about why our reality is crumbling and what we need to do to rebuild it.

FacebookTwitterRedditEmail

Frank Scott writes political commentary which appears online at the blog Legalienate. Read other articles by Frank.

 

Censors Celebrated: Misinformation and Disinformation Down Under

by Binoy Kampmark / March 21st, 2024

The heralded arrival of the Internet caused flutters of enthusiasm, streaks of heart-felt hope.  Unregulated, and supposedly all powerful, an information medium never before seen on such scale could be used to liberate mind and spirit.  With almost disconcerting reliability, humankind would coddle and fawn over a technology which would, as Langdon Winner writes, “bring universal wealth, enhanced freedom, revitalized politics, satisfying community, and personal fulfilment.”

Such high street techno-utopianism was bound to have its day.  The sceptics grumbled, the critiques bubbled and flowed. Evgeny Morozov, in his relentlessly biting study The Net Delusion, warned of the misguided nature of the “excessive optimism and empty McKinsey-speak”, of cyber-utopianism and the ostensibly democratising properties of the Internet.  Governments, whatever their ideological mix, gave the same bark of suspicion.

In Australia, we see the tech-utopians being butchered, metaphorically speaking, on our doorstep. Of concern here is the Communications Legislation Amendment (Combating Misinformation and Disinformation) Bill 2023.  This nasty bit of legislative progeny arises from the 2019 Digital Platforms Inquiry conducted by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC).  The final report notes how consumers accessing news placed on digital platforms “potentially risk exposure to unreliable news through ‘filter bubbles’ and the spread of disinformation, malinformation and misinformation (‘fake news’) online.”  And what of television? Radio? Community bulletin boards?  The mind shrinks in anticipation.

In this state of knee-jerk control and paternal suspicion, the Commonwealth pressed digital platforms conducting business in Australia to develop a voluntary code of practice to address disinformation and the quality of news.  The Australian Code of Practice on Disinformation and Misinformation was launched on February 22, 2021 by the Digital Industry Group Inc.  Eight digital platforms adopted the code, including Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Twitter.  The acquiescence from the digital giants did little in terms of satisfying the wishes of the Morrison government.  The Minister of Communications at the time, Paul Fletcher, duly announced that new laws would be drafted to arm the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) with the means “to combat online misinformation and disinformation.”  He noted an ACMA report highlighting that “disinformation and misinformation are significant and ongoing issues.”

The resulting Bill proposes to make various functional amendments to the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 (Cth) as to the way digital platform services work.  It also proposes to vest the ACMA with powers to target misinformation and disinformation.  Digital platforms not in compliance with the directions of the ACMA risk facing hefty penalties, though the regulator will not have the power to request the removal of specific content from the digital platform services.

In its current form, the proposed instrument defines misinformation as “online content that is false, misleading or deceptive, that is shared or created without an intent to deceive but can cause and contribute to serious harm.”  Disinformation is regarded as “misinformation that is intentionally disseminated with the intent to deceive or cause serious harm.”

Of concern regarding the Bill is the scope of the proposed ACMA powers regarding material it designates as “harmful online misinformation and disinformation”.  Digital platforms will be required to impose codes of conduct to enforce the interpretations made by the ACMA.  The regulator can even “create and enforce an industry standard” (this standard is unworkably opaque, and again begs the question of how that can be defined) and register them.  Those in breach will be liable for up to $7.8 million or 5% of global turnover for corporations.  Individuals can be liable for fines up to $1.38 million.

A central notion in the proposal is that the information in question must be “reasonably likely […] to cause or contribute serious harm”.  Examples of this hopelessly rubbery concept are provided in the Guidance Note to the Bill.  These include hatred targeting a group based on ethnicity, nationality, race, gender, sexual orientation, age, religion or physical or mental disability.  It can also include disruption to public order or society.  The example provided in the guidance suggests typical government paranoia about how the unruly, irascible populace might be incited: “Misinformation that encouraged or caused people to vandalise critical communications infrastructure.”

The proposed law will potentially enthrone the ACMA as an interventionist overseer of digital content.  In doing so, it can decide what and which entity can be exempted from alleged misinformation practices.  For instance, “excluded content for misinformation purposes” can be anything touching on entertainment, parody or satire, provided it is done in good faith.  Professional news content is also excluded, but any number of news or critical sources may fall foul of the provisions, given the multiple, exacting codes the “news source” must abide by.  The sense of that discretion is woefully wide.

The submission from the Victorian Bar Association warns that “the Bill’s interference with the self-fulfilment of free expression will occur primarily by the chilling self-censorship it will inevitably bring about in the individual users of the relevant services (who may rationally wish to avoid any risk of being labelled a purveyor of misinformation or disinformation).”  The VBA also wonders if such a bill is even warranted, given that the problem has been “effectively responded to by voluntary actions taken by the most important actors in this space.”

Also critical, if less focused, is the stream of industrial rage coming from the Coalition benches and the corridors of Sky News, where Rupert Murdoch ventriloquises.  Shadow Communications Minister David Coleman called the draft “a very bad bill” giving the ACMA “extraordinary powers.  It would lead to digital companies self-censoring the legitimately held views of Australians to avoid the risk of massive fines.”  Sky News has even deigned to use the term “Orwellian”.

Misinformation, squawked Coleman, was defined so broadly as to potentially “capture many statements made by Australians in the context of political debate.”  Content from journalists “on their personal digital platforms” risked being removed as crudely mislabelled misinformation.  This was fascinating, u-turning stuff, given the enthusiasm the Coalition had shown in 2022 for a similar muzzling of information.  Once in opposition, the mind reverses, leaving the mind to breathe.

The proposed bill on assessing, parcelling and dictating information (mis-, dis-, mal-) is a nasty little experiment in censoring communication and discussion. When the state decides, through its agencies, to tell readers what is appropriate to read and what can be accessed, the sirens should be going off

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com. Read other articles by Binoy.

 

Still No Human Rights for the Poor

by Abahlali baseMjondolo / March 21st, 2024

The poor and marginalised have not seen any gains in almost 30 years of democracy. The poor remain poor and unemployment, poverty and inequality are worse today than at the end of apartheid. Many more people live in shacks than in 1994.

Those who live in shack settlements continue to be denied access to basic services such as water and sanitation. Violent evictions continue. Those in the rural areas continue to walk long distances to the nearest health facilities. Those who live in farms continue to be abused by farmers who see them as less than human.

For almost thirty years we have been treated as human waste and not as human beings. For as long as our dignity and our existence as humans is not recognised we will not be celebrating Human Rights day. For as long as rights on paper do not mean rights in reality we will not celebrate. Instead we are mourning the betrayal of democracy by the ANC, a democracy that so many ordinary people fought so hard for.

The ANC is a corrupt government with immoral leaders who have no integrity. They came to power claiming to represent the people but have made themselves the enemy of the people. They have vandalised our humanity.

The ruling party will be using this holiday that is held on the anniversary of the massacres in Sharpeville and Langa in 1960 for its own electioneering. It will do so despite the fact that it perpetrated its own massacre in Marikana in 2012, and despite the fact that it has never acted to stop the assassinations of grassroots activists. It will do so despite the fact that the people of Sharpeville and Langa continue to live under inhuman conditions, like so many other poor people across the country.

The rights to equality, dignity and justice – as well as the more concrete rights to land and housing – have not been realised because the ANC is led by people who do not care about society. They continue to steal from the poor and deprive us of even basic services such as water, sanitation, electricity and refuse collection. They continue to deny us access to land, to a fair share of the wealth of the country and to a right to participate in all relevant discussions and decision making. Thirty years of rule by the ANC has been thirty years of shame.

When we organise to build our power from below to struggle for justice we are met with repression, including assault, arrest, imprisonment and assassination. Even our most basic rights to political freedom are denied under the ANC. For us the rights and freedoms on paper do not exist in reality. Repression ensures that we remain oppressed.

For this reason it is essential to use our collective vote to remove the ANC from power and to give a clear lesson to all politicians in all parties that if they disrespect the people and repress their struggles they will also be removed. We know that there is no socialist or even progressive party on the ballot and that we cannot vote for freedom and justice in this election. All the political parties are funded by factions of the elite and not one of them is on the side of the people. Not one of them is a mass democratic formation. We know very well that whatever coalition of parties rules us after the election we will have to keep struggling against them from the day that they form a new government.

However we can vote against repression, against the political party that has murdered our comrades and the government that has allowed it to happen and often acted in support of repression. We will be using our collective vote as the poor to remove the ANC.

Outside of the electoral process we will be organising to keep building our collective democratic power from below and using it to advance towards a more just society.

Abahlali baseMjondolo, or AbM, is a shack-dwellers' movement in South Africa. It campaigns to improve the living conditions of poor people and to democratize society from below. The movement refuses party politics and boycotts elections. It's key demand is that the social value of urban land should take priority over its commercial value and it campaigns for the public expropriation of large privately owned landholdings. Read other articles by Abahlali baseMjondolo, or visit Abahlali baseMjondolo's website.

This Day in Anarchist History

by subMedia / March 21st, 2024

The Paris Commune

Hello and welcome to the first of what we hope will be a many episodes of our new series, This Day in Anarchist History!

In this series we’ll make brief primers on historical anarchist events, uprisings, bios of famous anarchists and beginnings of autonomous communities around the world and throughout time. It’s our hope that by understanding our past we can put our current social movements into broader perspective and fight for a better future.

In our premier episode we examine The Paris Commune, a short lived uprising when a broad coalition of the working classes took control of the city on March 18, 1871 and held out under siege until the end of May when the French national army entered Paris and executed thousands of the rebels.

In the coming years, anarchists would seek vengeance for their comrades who fell at the Paris commune.

SubMedia is directed and produced by Frank Lopez. Read other articles by subMedia, or visit subMedia's website.

 

The Struggle for Women’s Emancipation Will Always Be Worth It

by Vijay Prashad / March 21st, 2024

8 March was not always International Women’s Day, nor has there always been any such day at all. The idea emerged from the Socialist International (also known as the Second International), where Clara Zetkin of the German Social Democratic Party and others fought from 1889 to hold a day to celebrate working women’s lives and struggles. Zetkin, alongside Alexandra Kollontai of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, sustained a struggle with their comrades to recognise the role of working women and the role of domestic labour in the creation of social wealth. In a context in which women across the North Atlantic states did not have the right to vote, these women intervened in a debate that was taking place among delegates of the Socialist International over whether men and women workers must be united under the banner of socialism to fight against their shared experience of exploitation or whether women should stay home.

In 1908, the women’s section of the Socialist Party of America held a mass rally in Chicago on 3 May to celebrate Woman’s Day. The following year, on 28 February 1909, this expanded to National Woman’s Day, held across the US. At the Second International Conference of Socialist Women, held in Copenhagen in 1910, a resolution was finally passed for all sections of the Socialist International to organise Women’s Day celebrations that would take place the following year. Socialist women organised public events in Austria, Denmark, Germany, and Switzerland on 19 March 1911 to commemorate the March Revolution of 1848 in Germany. In 1912, Europeans celebrated Women’s Day on 12 May, and in 1913, Russian women marked the date on 8 March. In 1917, women workers in Russia organised a mass strike and demonstrations for ‘bread and peace’ on 8 March, which sparked the wider struggles that led to the Russian Revolution. At the Communist Women’s Second International Conference in 1921, 8 March was officially chosen as the date for annual celebrations of International Working Women’s Day. That is how the date became a fixture on the international calendar of struggles.

In 1945, communist women from around the world formed the Women’s International Democratic Federation (WIDF), a body that was instrumental in establishing International Women’s Day. In 1972, Freda Brown from Australia’s WIDF section and the Communist Party of Australia wrote to the United Nations (UN) to propose that it hold an International Women’s Year and that it advance the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. Pushed by WIDF, Helvi Sipilä, a Finnish diplomat and the first woman to hold the position of UN assistant secretary-general (at a time when 97% of senior positions were held by men) seconded the proposal for the International Women’s Year, which was accepted in 1972 and held in 1975. In 1977, the United Nations passed a resolution to hold a Day for Women’s Rights and International Peace, which is now known as International Women’s Day and held on 8 March.

Each March, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research honours this tradition by publishing a text that highlights an important woman in our struggle, such as Kanak Mukherjee (1921–2005) of India, Nela Martínez Espinosa (1912–2004) of Ecuador, and Josie Mpama (1903–1979) of South Africa. This year, we celebrate International Women’s Day (though perhaps International Working Women’s Month would be better) with the publication of dossier no. 74, Interrupted Emancipation: Women and Work in East Germany, produced in collaboration with the Zetkin Forum for Social Research and International Research Centre DDR (IFDDR). We have published two previous studies with IFDDR, one on the economic history of the German Democratic Republic (DDR) and the other on healthcare in the DDR. The Zetkin Forum is our partner on the European continent, named after both Clara Zetkin (1857–1933), whose work contributed to the creation of International Working Women’s Day, and her son Maxim Zetkin (1883–1965), a surgeon who helped build the new healthcare system in the Soviet Union, fought as part of the International Brigades in defence of the Spanish Republic (1931–1939), and became a leading physician in the DDR.

Interrupted Emancipation traces the struggles of socialist women in East Germany in various women’s platforms and within the state structures themselves. These women – such as Katharina ‘Käthe’ Kern, Hilde Benjamin, Lykke Aresin, Helga E. Hörz, Grete Groh-Kummerlöw, and Herta Kuhrig – fought to build an egalitarian legal order, develop socialist policies for childcare and eldercare, and bring women into leadership positions in both economic and political institutions. These programmes were not designed merely to improve the welfare and wellbeing of women, but also to transform social life, social hierarchies, and social consciousness. As Hilde Benjamin, the DDR’s minister of justice from 1953 to 1967, explained, it was essential that laws not only provide a framework to guarantee and enforce social rights, but that they also ‘achieve further progress in the development of socialist consciousness’.

Women entered the workforce in large numbers, fought for better family planning (including abortions), and demanded the dignity that they deserved. Interrupted Emancipations teaches us how so much was achieved in such a short time (a mere forty years). Leaders like Helga Hörz argued for women’s entry into the workforce not merely to enhance their incomes, but to ensure the possibility of women’s participation in public life. However, changes did not take place at the speed required. In December 1961, the politburo of the ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED) condemned the ‘fact that a totally insufficient percentage of women and girls exercise middle and managerial functions’, blaming, in part, ‘the underestimation of the role of women in socialist society that still exists among many – especially men, including leading party, state, economic, and trade union functionaries’. To transform this reality, women set up committees in workplaces as well as housewives’ brigades to build mass struggles that fought to win society over to women’s emancipation.

The destruction of the DDR in the 1990s and its incorporation into West Germany led to the erosion of the gains socialist women had made. Today, in Germany, these socialist policies no longer remain, nor do mass struggles retain the level of vitality that they achieved in the four decades of the DDR. That is why the dossier is called Interrupted Emancipation, perhaps a reflection of the authors’ hope and conviction that this dynamic can be brought back to life.

Gisela Steineckert was one of the women who benefitted from the transformations that took place in the DDR, where she became a celebrated writer and worked to develop the cultural sector. In her poem ‘In the Evening’, she asks, is the struggle worth it? Without much pause, she answers: ‘the heart of the dreamer is always overly full’. The necessity of a better world is a sufficient answer.

In the evening, our dreams rest their heads against the moon,
asking with a deep sigh if the struggle is even worth it.
Everyone knows someone who suffers, suffers more than anyone should.
Oh, and the heart of the dreamer is always overly full.

In the evening the mockers come, a smile on their lips.
Belittle our every asset, turn pounds into chips.
They like to come at us with their lines, no one’s spared it.
Oh, and they advise us: Nothing was worth it.

In the evening, the sceptics come with creased faces,
leaf through old letters, don’t trust our words.
They stay away from it all, age ahead of their time.
Oh, and their pain and suffering are sublime.

In the evening, the fighters take off their boots,
eat dinner with relish, hammer three nails into the roof.
They want to contend with half a book, fall asleep at the end of a line,
amid captured weapons, next to red wine.

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian and journalist. Prashad is the author of twenty-five books, including The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World and The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South. Read other articles by Vijay, or visit Vijay's website.

 

Terrorism’s Ugly Face

by Paul Larudee / March 22nd, 2024

In August, 2008, Ismail Haniyeh, the elected Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority in Gaza, welcomed me and other members of the Free Gaza Movement to his home in the relatively small al-Shati refugee camp in northern Gaza, not far from the larger Jabalia camp. We had just arrived on the first boats to enter Gaza by sea in 41 years, breaking the Israeli siege, and all of Gaza was celebrating.  The home was very simple, not different from most others in the camp, and the Prime Minister was proud to show it to us.

This was the beginning of my education about Hamas, although I had previously been in touch with Dr. Bassem Naim, who was Minister of Health at the time, to coordinate our arrival. Dr. Naim was not the only MD in the Hamas cabinet. Dr. Mahmoud Zahhar, who was Foreign Minister at the time, also welcomed a small group of us into his house, as well.

My view of Hamas is that they are a national liberation organization, which, like most such organizations, is depicted as terrorists by their oppressors, occupiers and enemies, in this case including Israel, the US and other western allies of Israel. We, who pride ourselves on hearing both sides of an issue, have never sought the Hamas point of view, much less to the same degree as the Israeli side.

I really don’t like the term terrorist any more than I do savage or barbarian, which have been used historically for much the same purpose. It is a pejorative term, almost a racist one, that paints in black and white. Every government and every resistance organization uses weapons, which means that they use fear and intimidation to a greater or lesser degree. Isn’t that the definition of terrorism? And isn’t it the purpose of armed forces?

Hamas, of course, is blamed for extensive use of terrorism on October 7, 2023. But if you look at the facts and the analyses, especially as reported by the Grayzone, the Intercept and the Electronic Intifada, the exact opposite picture emerges. Not a single rape is verified, and not a single instance of deliberate killing of unarmed civilians, although some were obviously “collateral damage” killed in the process of engaging armed combatants.  Others may have been armed civilians or combatants out of uniform, part of a deliberate Israeli policy of creating armed settlements throughout territory that it claims. Many if not most of the civilians appear to have died as a result of the Israeli “Hannibal Directive” to kill everything in sight, while most of those killed by Hamas were soldiers. Furthermore, those who encountered or were taken captive by the Palestinian fighters often said that they were treated with respect and dignity. This is because the resistance forces are highly disciplined and devout Muslims who respect the teachings of Islam with respect to the rules of war, which are roughly the same as those of the Geneva Conventions, if not more stringent.

I am not prepared to say that Hamas has never committed an act that could be called terrorism. The suicide bombings of the Second Intifada come to mind. But they have also used nonviolent resistance on a massive scale, in the Great March of Return, during which more than 9,000 unarmed Palestinian civilians were shot by Israeli soldiers, and 223 killed. Sadly, the world looked the other way.

On the other hand, the following act, the video of which was posted to the Telegram channel of CCHS Resistance News on March 19, 2024 would meet most definitions of terrorism (caution: hard to watch): Jabalia girls school massacre

Israel, true to form, is reportedly doing everything possible to have this video removed from social media. But let’s face it: it’s not that exceptional. We’ve seen many such massacres since October 8, 2023, though not always at a girl’s school housing starving refugees in the Jabalia refugee camp, similar to the one I visited in 2008. It’s what we’ve come to expect as part of the Gaza genocide, despite our efforts to end it.

Is Israel a terrorist state? Apparently, they would be proud to say so. Even before its establishment, the Jabotinsky “Iron Wall” doctrine espoused expulsion and lethal force to clear the land of Palestinians and maintain a Jewish supremacist state. Israel has always explicitly relied upon fear and intimidation to achieve that objective. What Israel is doing in Gaza is not fundamentally different from what it did in 1948 except that its weapons today are vastly more destructive.

In 2006, I visited the Beirut suburb of Dahiyeh the day after Israel had bombed it into obliteration. It was nothing more than a pile of rubble, still smoking in some places. Israel gave the name of that suburb to the doctrine that has dominated Zionist policy for the past century even if the name is recent. The Dahiyeh Doctrine became synonymous with the use of disproportionate force and the destruction of civilian infrastructure to achieve military ends. Is it terrorism? It’s certainly an explicit policy to commit war crimes. Is Israel committing terrorism in Gaza? You be the judge. Most of us agree that it is genocide. If there’s a distinction, who cares?

Paul Larudee is a retired academic and current administrator of a nonprofit human rights and humanitarian aid organization. Read other articles by Paul.

MULTICULURALISM IS CANADA

Punjabi music is taking the world by storm and its new sound is based in Canada

Story by The Canadian Press

 • 1d •

Punjabi music is taking the world by storm and its new sound is based in Canada© Provided by The Canadian Press

TORONTO — Ikwinder Singh is too young to remember the last time Punjabi music was on the cusp of breaking into the mainstream in Canada.

The 23-year-old producer was only a baby when rapper Jay-Z joined British-Indian artist Panjabi MC on 2003's “Beware the Boys (Mundian To Bach Ke).” The track drew attention for its distinctive combination of bhangra music and a killer hip-hop bassline, inching up the music charts and offering Indian listeners hope that a new scene was emerging globally.

And then pop radio moved on to the next big sound.

“It’s one of those things no one was ready for,” supposes the Toronto-raised music creator, known as Ikky.

He suggests that North American record executives of that era may have been caught off-guard by the song’s success and that not enough Punjabi artists were primed for crossover careers.

Singh doesn’t waste much time wondering what could’ve been. He’s confident that today the story is different.

Over the past few years, a new generation of Punjabi performers has emerged from Canada with a unique fusion of cross-cultural influences that could've only come from this country.

The Punjabi wave, as some call it, is a blend of the Indo-Aryan language with elements of global hip-hop, R&B and trap music. In Canada, its popularity is led by an array of names including AP Dhillon, Karan Aujla, Gurinder Gill and producer Ikky.

Related video: Punjabi protest songs from 2020-21 shaking up the farmers' protests in 2024 (India Today)  Duration 3:12  View on Watch

These artists, helped by a tight-knit community of music professionals, have scaled India and Canada's charts, launched major tours and left some in the industry wondering if Punjabi music is on the cusp of its breakout moment akin to what "Gangnam Style" and "Despacito" did for Korean and Spanish-language pop music.

This weekend, two rising stars of the Punjabi-Canadian music scene head to Halifax for the Juno Awards, where they vie for the fan choice prize alongside pop's biggest names, including the Weeknd and Tate McRae.

Karan Aujla, whose track "Softly" certified the British Columbia-raised singer as a hitmaker last year, will compete with rapper Shubh, a Brampton, Ont.-based artist known for his streaming hits "One Love" and "Cheques." The fan choice award is handed out at the end of Sunday's CBC Junos broadcast.

This is a pivotal moment for the Punjabi genre, which has never been represented in the marquee Junos category, which aims to capture the zeitgeist. Aujla holds a second Juno nod for breakthrough artist this year.

All of this comes as the genre's profile continues to rise in Canada.

One of the most symbolic moments happened during last year's Junos in Edmonton, where AP Dhillon made history as the first Punjabi music act on the broadcast.

The Victoria-based indie rapper's flashy delivery of his single "Summer High" was designed to usher in a new era for the genre. But it was upstaged by a topless protester who crashed his introduction by Avril Lavigne. Despite the unexpected turn of events, Dhillon's presence signalled how quickly the scene was being taken seriously.

Then last summer, Warner Music Canada announced a partnership with its India division to launch 91 North Records. The Canadian label was designed to foster a generation of local South Asian artists and better link two sides of the world. The label's first release "Making Memories," a collaboration between Aujla and Ikky, debuted at No. 5 on the Billboard Canadian Albums chart.

In February, Punjabi rapper Sidhu Moose Wala debuted at No. 9 on the Billboard Canada Hot 100 chart nearly two years after his shooting death in India. His single "Drippy" became the latest in a run of Punjabi-Canadian chart hits.

Outside the country, the Punjabi music industry has taken notice. Next month, India-based performer Diljit Dosanjh launches an arena and stadium tour that rolls through five Canadian cities, starting in Vancouver and ending in Toronto.

"This is just the tip of the iceberg," said Toronto rapper AR Paisley, who appears on "Drippy."

"With what's happening, we're going to see a lot of young and talented artists on the come up."

Music producer Gagundeep Singh Randhawa said it takes looking back a couple decades to understand how Punjabi-Canadian music reached its current status.

For the longest time, Punjabi artists relied on folk music instruments — such as the tablas and tumbis — for their sound. He said that meant even rap songs such as "Beware the Boys" sounded like traditional music, which often relegated them to Indian weddings and other cultural spaces.

It took the work of people like Jazzy B, a Surrey, B.C.-based performer who found success in the mid-2000s, to fuse electronic and hip-hop elements in a new way that inspired a generation.

"He brought a different flavour," said Randhawa, who works under the name Gminxr (pronounced G-minor).

"He shifted the scene. But after him, it just went back to folk."

Nearly a decade passed before Punjabi music was reinvigorated. He credits Moose Wala's early work for launching the current wave with its blend of the Punjabi language and trap music.

Moose Wala's career got underway around 2017 while he was an international student living in Brampton, Ont., and his reputation spread through online forums.

Randhawa said the rapper's music opened his ears to how Punjabi songs could break barriers and find broader audiences.

Around the same time, an influx of young students was moving from India, which the Victoria-based producer said offered him further motivation.

"Coming from this small city, where it's predominantly white, and all of a sudden seeing Indian people everywhere, it was a big change," Randhawa added.

Meanwhile, other changes were taking place in how people consumed music. More Punjabi music fans were gravitating to paid subscription services instead of solely YouTube, where the genre first thrived.

In response, the streaming platforms began to support more Punjabi-Canadian artists, placing their new songs in prime real estate. Spotify began positioning Dhillon and others on its New Music Friday Canada playlist, exposing their sound to listeners who never heard Punjabi music.

By the time COVID-19 restrictions were easing, those streaming numbers were proving themselves in concert ticket sales. Dhillon's Out of This World Tour kicked off in late 2022, drawing crowds to the 19,000-seat Rogers Arena in Vancouver.

Live Nation promoter Baldeep Randhawa said he's confident Punjabi music can draw far bigger numbers in the coming years. To make that happen, people like him are working to secure the right artists for the biggest venues, offering them technical support that puts them on a level with global stars.

"We’re giving them the same opportunities that someone like Drake would (have)," he said.

"They’re able to play these professional venues (and) do it with a vision they like and want. When the audience is coming to these shows they’re leaving in awe of the level of production."

The Live Nation promoter has already witnessed the positive impact of these massive concerts on the local Punjabi-Canadian community.

"I’m watching so many people come into these rooms for the first time," he said.

"And I remember hearing a kid say ‘I can’t believe someone with a turban is playing this stage.'"

What Canada's Punjabi music wave still needs to thrive is more domestic support from the major record labels, say many who watch the scene.

While Warner has thrown themselves into the mix full force, Universal Music Canada and Sony Music Canada have yet to announce any significant investment in the genre or its performers.

Paisley is confident it's only a matter of time.

"Some people in the industry have taken notice, but I think there's some (who) are still trying to turn a blind eye," he said.

"It's going to take more of an in-your-face moment. We've had a couple, but maybe it's going to take a couple more."

One of those moments may have happened earlier this month at a concert in Mumbai. Pop superstar Ed Sheeran shocked his fans by bringing out Indian star Diljit Dosanjh — the artist who's touring Canada this spring.

Together, they sang Dosanjh's hit "Lover" with Sheeran chiming in to perform the chorus in Punjabi. It was a moment that earned positive attention on social media and suggested that Sheeran has his eye on the burgeoning corner of music.

Paisley said collaborations like these will be key to the Punjabi wave's crossover success. He would like to hear more songs between the genre's stars and big names in Latin and hip-hop music, as long as they feel authentic.

"I think we're stronger together than we are apart," he added.

Producer Ikky agrees. He recently released "Ikky's House," an EP that plays around with genre conventions and introduces the Punjabi language into the pop sphere with help from Punjabi and English artists.

His production work aims to blend his perspective growing up in Canada with positive cultural values established in Punjabi music. It's a concept he's still working on, and something he believes will take time for the rest of the world to catch up to.

"We're still in a very early stage of global domination," he said.

"First to India, we had to prove Canada is the home of Punjabi music. Now that we've succeeded, we have to prove to Canada that this is Canadian music."

"After that, we've got to tell the world."

--

Listen to The Canadian Press playlist of 2024 Juno Award nominees on Spotify: https://bit.ly/Junos2024

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 21, 2024.

David Friend, The Canadian Press

Superhot Rock Geothermal May 'Unlock Vast Amounts of Clean Energy'

Story by Robyn White • 3h • NEWSWEEK


A photo shows the map that pin points where superhot rock geothermal energy may be extracted. It also estimates how much energy could be gained from this source

.© Clean Air Task Force

Scientists have calculated where superhot rock geothermal energy might be extracted, and how much power it might be able to provide.

A map developed by the Clean Air Task Force (CATF) with the University of Twente in the Netherlands pinpoints where we could use this material, and how it could be commercialized.

Superhot rock geothermal is a potential renewable energy source generated from dry rock that's at a temperature of 752 degrees Fahrenheit or more. It can be found all over the planet. According to researchers, there is "vast energy potential" in this material.

"While this modeling is preliminary, our findings suggest an enormous opportunity to unlock vast amounts of clean energy beneath our feet," Terra Rogers, director of Superhot Rock Energy at CATF, said in a statement. "Tapping into just 1% of the world's superhot rock energy potential could generate 63 terawatts of clean firm power, or enough to meet global electricity demand in 2021 nearly eight times over.

"Dozens of wells across the globe have reached superhot conditions, and with the right technical and commercial advances, we could see early commercial-scale plants in years, not decades. Energy security backed by always-available zero-carbon energy isn't a far-off dream—and the people attending events like CERAWeek are uniquely positioned to make that dream a reality."

To gain this energy, researchers would need to use drills to access the superhot conditions deep within the earth. These conditions could then be extracted to provide renewable, carbon-free energy. Using this type of energy would have a smaller land-use footprint than other methods, CATF reports.

Along with its map, the CATF used global heat endowment to estimate "the financial and economic potential that could be unlocked if it were fully commercialized in specific regions, including the U.S."

"Now, it's important for governments and companies to test the extent to which these estimates for superhot rock energy are achievable," Rogers said in the statement.

The most recent research found that just 1 percent of this energy could provide the U.S. with 4.3 terawatts of power. The CATF estimated that this was the same as 21 billion barrels of oil.

They also found that the same amount of superhot rock in Europe could potentially provide 2.1 terawatts of energy.

"Superhot resources are available around the world, with thousands of terawatt-hours on every inhabited continent [i.e., every continent except Antarctica]," a summary of the findings reported. "CATF's preliminary modeling suggests that superhot rock energy at commercial scale would be cost-competitive with current market power prices."

Stellantis lays off about 400 salaried workers to handle uncertainty in electric vehicle transition




DETROIT (AP) — Jeep maker Stellantis is laying off about 400 white-collar workers in the U.S. as it deals with the transition from combustion engines to electric vehicles.

The company formed in the 2021 merger between PSA Peugeot and Fiat Chrysler said the workers are mainly in engineering, technology and software at the headquarters and technical center in Auburn Hills, Michigan, north of Detroit. Affected workers were being notified starting Friday morning.

“As the auto industry continues to face unprecedented uncertainties and heightened competitive pressures around the world, Stellantis continues to make the appropriate structural decisions across the enterprise to improve efficiency and optimize our cost structure,” the company said in a prepared statement Friday.

The cuts, effective March 31, amount to about 2% of Stellantis' U.S. workforce in engineering, technology and software, the statement said. Workers will get a separation package and transition help, the company said.

“While we understand this is difficult news, these actions will better align resources while preserving the critical skills needed to protect our competitive advantage as we remain laser focused on implementing our EV product offensive,” the statement said.

CEO Carlos Tavares repeatedly has said that electric vehicles cost 40% more to make than those that run on gasoline, and that the company will have to cut costs to make EVs affordable for the middle class. He has said the company is continually looking for ways to be more efficient.

Related video: Today marks one year since Stellantis idled its Belvidere plant. Here's what's happened since: (WQRF Rockford)
In December of 2022, Stalantis announced it would idle production.
Duration 1:09   View on Watch

U.S. electric vehicle sales grew 47% last year to a record 1.19 million as EV market share rose from 5.8% in 2022 to 7.6%. But sales growth slowed toward the end of the year. In December, they rose 34%.

Stellantis plans to launch 18 new electric vehicles this year, eight of those in North America, increasing its global EV offerings by 60%. But Tavares told reporters during earnings calls last month that “the job is not done” until prices on electric vehicles come down to the level of combustion engines — something that Chinese manufacturers are already able to achieve through lower labor costs.

“The Chinese offensive is possibly the biggest risk that companies like Tesla and ourselves are facing right now,’’ Tavares told reporters. “We have to work very, very hard to make sure that we bring out consumers better offerings than the Chinese.

Last year Stellantis offered buyout and early retirement packages to about 6,400 nonunion salaried workers, but it has not said how many took the offers.

In 2022 the company announced that it planned to close a factory in Belvidere, Illinois, and lay off 1,350 people in an effort to trim its manufacturing footprint. But during contentious contract talks last year with the United Auto Workers, Stellantis agreed to keep the plant open to make EVs, as well as add a battery factory in Belvidere.

The world’s third-largest carmaker reported net profit of 7.7 billion euros ($8.3 billion) in the second half of last year. That was down from 8.8 billion euros in the same period a year earlier.

The Stellantis workforce reductions come after crosstown rivals Ford and General Motors cut thousands of white-collar jobs, also due to the transition to electric vehicles.

In the summer of 2022, Ford let go of about 4,000 full-time and contract workers in an effort to cut expenses. CEO Jim Farley has said much of Ford’s workforce did not have the right skills as it makes the transition from internal combustion to battery-powered vehicles.

About 5,000 salaried GM workers, many in engineering, took early retirement and buyout offers last spring.

The Associated Press