Who Are Vietnam’s Montagnards And What Are Their Grievances? – Analysis

 September 5, 2024 

By RFA

By Mike Firn

Montagnard activist Y Quynh Bdap from Vietnam is on trial at Bangkok’s Criminal Court, facing extradition to Vietnam where he has been convicted of “terrorism” in connection with a deadly 2023 attack, which he denies.

Bdap is a founding member of Montagnards Stand for Justice (MSFJ), which campaigns for the rights of the indigenous group in Vietnam. In March, the nation listed MSFJ as a terrorist organization.

Who are the Montagnards?

Montagnard is a term meaning “mountain dweller” coined by French colonialists to describe a grouping of about 30 indigenous minorities in Vietnam’s Central Highlands. Many of them are Christian. 

The minorities in the Central Highlands have long been wary of outside interference and have been at odds with governments, including U.S.-backed South Vietnam before 1975, and the communist government of Vietnam afterward.

In the 1960s, many Montagnards were part of a group called FULRO, that campaigned for autonomy for indigenous people. During the Vietnam War, Montagnards helped U.S. forces as they tried to interdict North Vietnamese forces and supplies entering South Vietnam.

Analysts said Vietnam has never forgiven them for that action. 

In the United States, where many Montagnards resettled after the war, their plight is viewed sympathetically. The community in North Carolina is hailed as the largest population of Montagnards outside Vietnam.

What are their grievances?

Land and religious freedom are at the heart of Montagnard grievances.

Beginning in the 1990s, the government encouraged the migration of ethnic Kinh Vietnamese into the Central Highlands to grow coffee, putting them at odds with the Montagnards who practiced swidden, or slash and burn, agriculture.

Since 1975, over 3 million people have moved into the region. According to government statistics in 2019, Montagnards accounted for 39% of Dak Lak province’s total population of 5.8 million.

Many Montagnards are Evangelical Christians and they have said that authorities try to stop them gathering to practice their faith and disrupt their church services.

On March 8, villagers in Dak Lak province found the body of preacher Y Bum Bya hanged in a cemetery. The Central Highlands Evangelical Church of Christ released a statement saying Bya was killed after being beaten and threatened by police. 

Frustration over religious persecution and land grabs has sometimes boiled over into violence.

In the early 2000s, violent protests against the confiscation of ancestral lands and religious controls prompted a crackdown by Vietnamese security forces that saw hundreds of Montagnards charged with national security crimes.

On June 11, 2023, dozens of Montagnards attacked the headquarters of the People’s Committee and the police of Ea Tieu and Ea Ktur communes in Dak Lak province. Four police officers, two commune officials and three civilians died in the attacks. 

In January, 100 people were convicted over the attacks, with 10 jailed for life.

Representatives of the minority said they want indigenous land rights and basic human rights and they reject what they said are government attempts to link them to overseas separatists.

What does Vietnam say?

Vietnam does not use the term Montagnard, which it says implies disparagement. It uses the term Degar to refer to non-state sanctioned Protestant Montagnards in the Central Highlands. 

The Vietnamese government said it is a multi-religious state with freedom of religion where minorities can “promote their internal resources and jointly develop the country.” It said people with “bad intentions” take advantage of the concept of “indigenous people” to spread false information and incite secession.

What does the international community say?

Over the years, International human rights groups have called on Vietnam to end the repression of Montagnards, to allow independent religions organizations to act freely and release all Montagnards imprisoned for peaceful religious or political activity.

On June 14, a group of U.N. Special Rapporteurs wrote to the Vietnamese government raising their concerns about the Dak Lak terrorism trials. They said there had been an “excessive response,” an unfair mass trial and reports of intimidation of Vietnamese refugees in Thailand seemed “part of a larger and intensifying pattern of discriminatory and repressive surveillance, security controls, harassment and intimidation.”

Rights groups said Thailand has given Vietnamese law enforcement operatives free rein to track down and kidnap activists seeking refuge there.

In April, 2023 Vietnamese blogger Duong Van Thai was allegedly abducted by Vietnamese agents in Bangkok, later emerging at a detention center in Hanoi. In February, 2019, journalist and Radio Free Asia blogger Truong Duy Nhat was abducted in Bangkok and forcibly returned to Vietnam, where he was jailed for 10 years.

Montagnards who have trekked through border jungles to neighboring Cambodia risk being sent back to Vietnam. In June 2023, then-Prime Minister Hun Sen said all Montagnards who had taken refuge in Cambodia had been expelled and any new arrivals would be returned to Vietnam in light of the attacks in Dak Lak.

This undated photo taken from Facebook shows Y Quynh Bdap before his arrest by Thai Police. [Y Quynh Bdap via Facebook]

RFA

Radio Free Asia’s mission is to provide accurate and timely news and information to Asian countries whose governments prohibit access to a free press. Content used with the permission of Radio Free Asia, 2025 M St. NW, Suite 300, Washington DC 20036.

HULK HOGAN & KID ROCK
Trump leverages hyper-masculinity to rally the ‘macho’ vote


Former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump reacts as he arrives for a rally at 1st Summit Arena at the Cambria County War Memorial in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, on August 30, 2024. — AFP pic

Thursday, 05 Sep 2024 

JOHNSTOWN, Sept 5 — He lauds strongmen autocrats, hangs with martial arts stars, and has no greater compliment than calling someone a “fighter.” Donald Trump is going all out for the macho vote in November’s election — and it’s working.

The real estate tycoon and former president has long crafted an often cartoonish, hyper-masculine image — most controversially including bragging about sexual assault.

Now, in an election where Kamala Harris is vying to become America’s first woman president, Trump’s macho powers are being put to the ultimate test.

Harris is seeing a surge in female support and has made the question of abortion rights a top campaign issue.

Trump, meanwhile, is unapologetically drilling down into the part of the electorate that loves cryptocurrency, the ultra-violent Ultimate Fighting Championship, and thinks society has become too feminine and “woke.”

“He speaks to our generation,” said Nick Passano, standing with four tattooed fellow Millennial cryptocurrency investors who dub themselves the Maga Boyz, at Trump’s Make America Great Again, or MAGA, rally in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, last Friday.

“We have to set the tone in regards to what we want our children to emulate, which is strong masculine men. And he very much represents that,” said Passano, 37, one of several men who spoke to AFP about the “manosphere” aligning with Trump.

They wore shirts with crass imagery — Trump giving the middle finger — and said he should not put up with “any more BS.”

It might seem a stretch for a billionaire, golf-playing 78-year-old to pose as a bad boy, but Trump knows more than perhaps any other US politician about marketing.

His response to being convicted on 34 felony charges in New York in May was to attend a UFC bout a few days later, winning thunderous applause from the crowd of 16,000.

And at July’s Republican convention, just days after Trump survived an assassination attempt, pro wrestling icon Hulk Hogan ripped his shirt off and hailed Trump as a “gladiator.”

Voters, it seems, are watching: a new ABC News/Ipsos poll finds Trump up against Harris by five points among men — and Harris leading among women by 13.

Alpha male

When President Joe Biden was still seeking reelection, Trump’s strategy was unambiguous.

Although only slightly younger than the president, Trump hammered his opponent as weak and senile — and reveled in the battering he delivered during their June debate.

The entry of 59-year-old Harris means Trump is facing someone far younger.

Trump also has to contend with the risk that his brash — critics would say bullying — style will backfire against a female and Black opponent.

But University of Pittsburgh communications professor Paul Johnson said Trump won’t — and likely can’t — switch tone.

Trump is pushing the “Trumpian worldview,” Johnson told AFP — a world that is “nasty” and where “‘real Americans’ need to be ready to fight for it, to say uncomfortable and racist truths about the world, and if necessary to use violence.”

This is reflected in Trump’s frequent reposting of crude, sexualised attacks on Harris and his attempt to play the race card by questioning whether she is really Black.

For young voters at the Johnstown rally, however, that’s just Trump being unafraid.

“Him being himself I feel is the reason I like him so much,” said Wyatt Waszo, a 21-year-old restaurant worker.

Fighting ‘male malaise’

The macho movement goes far deeper than just Trump.

Trump’s claims about Democrats jettisoning masculinity and killing off male-dominated blue-collar professions like manufacturing and mining strike a chord in electorally strategic rust belt communities.

And it’s a message echoed on countless right-wing radio shows and influential podcasts about the so-called “male malaise.”

It’s a backlash against globalism and the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements, said Kristin Kobes Du Mez, a professor of history and gender studies at Calvin University.

“Trump’s game is playing into fears of losing what you have.”

Polling by nonpartisan researchers PerryUndem last year shows 82 per cent of Republican men say society today punishes men “just for acting like men.”

Harris has so far notably avoided anchoring her campaign around the historic goal of a first female presidency. And Democrats hope her earthy running mate Tim Walz will help balance the ticket in the gender wars.

The 60-year-old Minnesota governor may be a liberal, but it’s the other half of his CV that the party thinks helps him most: military veteran, former school football coach, hunter and ice-fisherman. — AFP

Trump’s Visit to Howell, MI Turned a Dogwhistle into a Bullhorn

The former president spoke of sending outside police to Detroit to Intimidate voters in a place with a troubling history of white supremacist and far-right activity.


Former President Donald Trump speaks at the Livingston County Sheriff's Office in Howell, Michigan on Tuesday, August 20, 2024.
(Photo: Sarah Rice for The Washington Post via Getty Images)

Hank Kennedy
Sep 04, 2024

Common Dreams

When former U.S. President Donald Trump announced he would speak in Howell, Michigan on Tuesday, August 20, the dogwhistles could be heard loud and clear. It was a signal to the president’s white nationalist supporters that he was still on their side. Howell accrued a reputation for open racism and white supremacism when Ku Klux Klan Grand Dragon Robert E. Miles set up shop just north of the city. Although Miles died in 1992, cross burnings continued, and the house of a farmer who had spoken up for a proposed Drag Bingo event was vandalized with pro-Klan graffiti as recently as 2021.

During Trump’s speech, which was recorded although not open to the public, he fantasized about sending Livingston County police to Detroit to intimidate voters. “I’d love to have them working there [in Detroit] during the election.” Trump defended his appearance in Howell with a rhetorical question: “Who was here in 2021?” The answer was President Joe Biden. Be that as it may, Biden did not decide to campaign in the city a month after neo-Nazis had demonstrated their love for him in the same city.

One month to the day before Trump’s speech, on July 20, neo-Nazis and Klansmen marched through the city of Howell. Neo-Nazis sieg heiled and shouted “We love Hitler! We love Trump!” in a rally that coincided with the former president’s visit to Grand Rapids. On August 17, the day Trump announced his stop in Howell, a similar rally occurred in Brighton. Many Michiganders who saw pictures or videos of the rallies probably naively shook their heads at what they imagine is a purely Howell or Livingston County phenomenon.

The history of white supremacism and neo-Nazism in Michigan is not just Howell’s history, but all of our history.

Yet, those who say that neo-Nazis and Klansmen aren’t who “we” (here meaning Michiganders outside of Howell) are, could not be more incorrect, in fact, dangerously so. The Ku Klux Klan flexed its political muscles across the state throughout the 1920s. In 1925, the Klan-backed candidate Charles Bowles almost won the mayoralty of Detroit. The Michigan KKK pushed a statewide ballot issue that would have banned parochial schools in a fit of bigotry against Catholics. Prominent Michiganders such as Dan F. Gerber, founder of Gerber Baby Foods, were Klan members.

Although the 1920s Klan declined amidst sexual and financial scandal, its torch was picked up in Michigan by the Black Legion. The Legion, immortalized in a 1937 Humphrey Bogart film, launched violent attacks against Catholics, immigrants, Blacks, and labor unions. In his autobiography, Malcolm X states that his father was murdered by the Legion. The group was blamed for a total of around 50 murders. Prominent political figures were counted as members, including the mayor and chief of police of Highland Park. It was only a federal investigation brought about by the Legion’s murder of federal employee Charles Poole that ended the group’s reign of terror.

The German American Bund, founded in 1936, was dedicated to spreading the ideas of Nazism in the United States. Like the Legion, the Bund was memorialized in film: 1939’s Confessions of a Nazi Spy. In 2017, the Oscar-nominated documentary A Night at the Gardenrecounted the 20,000 strong rally the Bund held in Madison Square Garden on February 20, 1939. The Bund has multiple Michigan connections. Bund fuhrer Fritz Kuhn worked in a Detroit Ford plant before founding the group. The group also built summer camps for young American Nazis across the United States, including Camp Will and Might in New Jersey, Camp Siegfried in New York, Camp Hindenburg in Wisconsin—and Camp Eichenfeld, about 12 miles north of Pontiac, near US-10.

Camp Eichenfeld bustled during the summer months. The leader of the Detroit Bund John H.B. Schreiber said that the camp, which flew a flag with a Nazi swastika alongside the Stars and Stripes, hosted between 500 and 700 people every weekend. Bundists also packed into the German-American Restaurant on the northeast corner of E. Jefferson and E. Grand Boulevard in Detroit for monthly outings. Today, the story of Detroit’s Nazis is nearly entirely forgotten, buried in old issues of The Detroit News and Detroit Free Press. It was only with assistance from employees at the Burton Historical Collection at the Detroit Public Library that I learned about it. The national Bund reeled under investigations from federal officials before finally closing up shop for good after the U.S. entered World War II.

This was not the end of fascist activities in Michigan, though. Demagogues like Father Charles Coughlin and Christian nationalist Gerald L.K. Smith preached the fascist doctrine in print and over the airwaves. Smith made an unsuccessful run for Senate that garnered over 100,000 votes. A new group, the National Workers League, continued where the Bund had left off. The League was one of the groups that incited a riot against the Sojourner Truth Housing Project, because most of the families living in the project were Black. Parker Sage, the head of the League, and Garland Alderman, the secretary, were arraigned after the riots. Those charges were dropped so that Sage, Alderman, and William Robert Lyman, also of the League, could be indicted in Washington D.C. for sedition. After a 1944 mistrial caused by the death of the presiding judge, the charges against the League members and their co-defendants on the far-right were dropped.

Even members of Congress from Michigan echoed pro-fascist sentiments. Congressman Roy O. Woodruff inserted a letter into the Congressional Record that included the alarming phrase: “We do not need to fear Hitler.” Another Congressman, Clare E. Hoffman, saw a beneficial side to Nazism. The U.S. “might now profit…” he advised, “from what Hitler has done by adopting at least some of his decent methods of production…” Hoffman’s speech was given as France was falling to the Nazis. Two months before Pearl Harbor, Congressman George A. Dondero said in Congress “The greatest danger menacing the United States today is not invasion or attack by the Axis Powers but the trend of socialism and communism.”

Running the license plates of the far-right demonstrators, Livingston police determined that several were not residents of Howell or Livingston County. That should give pause to those living outside of Howell who think they and their neighbors are paragons of tolerance. The history of white supremacism and neo-Nazism in Michigan is not just Howell’s history, but all of our history. We must now decide if it will be our future as well.

Fast fashion drove Bangladesh - now its troubled economy needs more

Nikhil Inamdar
Business correspondent in Dhaka

BBC

BBC
Many garment manufacturing jobs remain well below the minimum wage

Bangladesh is the beating heart of the global fast fashion business.

The clothes its factories export stock the shelves at H&M, Gap and Zara. Over three decades, this has transformed the country from one of the world’s poorest to a lower-middle income nation.

But its garment industry, worth $55bn (£42bn) a year, is now facing an unsettled future after weeks of protests toppled the government of Sheikh Hasina in August. Hundreds of people were killed in the unrest.

At least four factories were set alight, while manufacturers struggled to operate under a nationwide internet blackout. Already, three big brands, including Disney and US supermarket chain Walmart, have looked elsewhere for next season’s clothes.

The disruption is continuing. From Thursday, some 60 factories outside Dhaka are expected to be closed because of worker unrest. Staff have been protesting with various demands, including for better wages.

Reuters
Mass protests gripped the country for weeks before the government fell


Recent events “will impact the confidence level of brands”, says Mohiuddin Rubel, a director at the country’s garments manufacturers and exporters association.

“And probably they might think - should we put all our eggs in one basket?” he says, noting rival garment-producing countries like Vietnam.

Indeed, Kyaw Sein Thai, who has sourcing offices in both Bangladesh and the US, suggests the recent political unrest could result in a "10-20% drop in exports this year”. That’s no small amount when fast fashion exports account for 80% of Bangladesh’s export earnings.

Even before the events of the past few months, Bangladesh’s garment industry – and its economy – were not in good health. Child labour scandals, deadly accidents and the Covid-19 shutdown had all taken their toll.

Soaring prices had made manufacturing more expensive - but slowing demand meant you couldn’t sell for as much. This was especially bad for Bangladesh, which relies heavily on exports. As profits from exports shrank, so did foreign currency reserves.

There were other problems too: excessive spending on showpiece infrastructure projects had drained the government’s coffers. And rampant cronyism weakened its banks, as powerful businessmen with links to former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League party failed to repay loans.

“It wasn’t benign neglect but a designed robbery of the financial system,” the country’s new central bank governor, Dr Ahsan Mansur, told the BBC in an recent exclusive interview.

Fixing this, Dr Mansur said, was his top priority, but he warned it would take years and the country would need more financial support, including another IMF bailout.

“We are in a difficult spot and we want to remain fully compliant in terms of servicing our foreign obligations, every penny of it. But we need some additional cushion for now,” said Dr Mansur.


An abandoned office space in a technology park near Dhaka


Mahaburbur Rahman, whose family founded clothing manufacturing firm Sonia Group two decades ago, points out that the country’s falling reserves of foreign currencies alone are enough to dent confidence.

“They are concerned about how we will pay for imports of yarn from India and China if we don’t have enough dollars. Many of them are not even able to come to Bangladesh anymore to place new orders because they aren’t getting travel insurance,” Mr Rahman says.

But Bangladesh has a bigger problem at hand – the protests that ousted Ms Hasina were driven by students who were frustrated over the lack of well-paying jobs and opportunities.

While the clothing factories may have created millions of jobs, they don’t pay well. Some factory workers who spoke to the BBC said they struggled to survive on pay that was barely half the national minimum wage, which meant they were forced to take out loans to feed their children.

Many of them joined the student-led protests in recent months to demand better pay and conditions.

“We will settle for nothing less than a doubling,” union leader Maria said. “Wages have to reflect the increase in cost of living.”

The student protesters, though, are calling for a more radical shake-up of the jobs market.

Abu Tahir, Mohammad Zaman, Mohammad Zaidul and Sardar Armaan were all part of the demonstrations.

All unemployed for between two and five years, they tell the BBC that they are keen to work for the private sector but don’t feel as if they are qualified for the jobs that are available.

“[My parents] hardly understand how competitive the job market is. To be unemployed is a major source of pressure in my family. I feel belittled,” Mr Zaman says.

“We just get a degree, we are not getting the right skills,” says Mr Zaidul.

“The new adviser is an entrepreneur himself though, so we all feel more hopeful he’ll do something about this,” he adds, referring to the country’s interim leader, Muhammad Yunus. Mr Yunus won a Nobel Peace Prize for his pioneering work in micro loans.


The clothing industry has helped lift millions of people out of poverty


Dr Fahmida Khatun of the Centre for Policy Dialogue think tank points out that diversifying the economy will be critical to meet the aspirations of educated youth - arguing that that would be no bad thing for the economy.

“No country can survive for a long time based on only one sector,” she says. “It will take you so far, but no further. There have been [diversification] attempts, but so far it’s only been in the books.”

A disused technology park outside the capital Dhaka offers evidence of this. Inaugurated in 2015, it was meant to be part of a nationwide initiative to create higher paid jobs and cut Bangladesh’s reliance on garment production.

It now sits abandoned – a reminder of the previous administration’s economic failures.

“This is the perfect example of the gap between what industry needs and what the government has provided,” says Russel T Ahmed, a software entrepreneur.

“Nobody asked us if we needed these parks. Bangladesh has been investing in physical infrastructure, but how much have we invested in human infrastructure? That is the raw material this industry needs.”

What the new government needs to do, says Dr Khatun, is remove bottlenecks like corruption and red tape to encourage foreign and private investment.

Mr Yunus has vowed to bring comprehensive reforms to the country’s economy and fix institutions that have, as Dr Khatun says, been “systematically destroyed” over the past few years.

He has a formidable task ahead – steadying the economy, delivering free and fair elections, and preventing government policymaking from being controlled by vested interests.

All of this has to be done as the country faces a raft of other problems: slowing global demand for the goods it makes, deteriorating relations with its giant neighbour and trading partner India, which is harbouring Ms Hasina, and climate change causing more intense cyclones in the flood-prone nation.

These challenges are as vast as the hopes many people have heaped on Mr Yunus’ shoulders.

 

"Macroevolutionaries: Reflections on Natural History, Paleontology, and Stephen Jay Gould," by Bruce S. Lieberman and Niles Eldredge

New Book ‘Macroevolutionaries’ Explores Intersection Of Evolution, Art And Popular Culture – Book Review

 September 5, 2024

By Eurasia Review

A new book of natural history essays co-written by a University of Kansas paleontologist has been published by Columbia University Press.

Bruce Lieberman, Dean’s Professor of Evolutionary Biology and senior curator of invertebrate paleontology at KU, co-wrote “Macroevolutionaries” with fellow paleontologist Niles Eldredge in the tradition of their late Harvard mentor and famed science popularizer, Stephen Jay Gould.

“Gould inspired me and my collaborator on the book, Niles Eldredge,” Lieberman said. “He’s a well-known evolutionary biologist who, along with Gould, developed many important ideas in evolution, the most famous being ‘punctuated equilibria.’ This idea, developed about 50 years ago by paleontologists, explains the overall patterns of evolution we see in the fossil record.”

Gould, who died in 2002, was a prolific writer and essayist who boosted popular understanding of science via monthly columns in Natural History magazine and several bestselling books for a popular audience.

“His essays were designed to be accessible and discussed interesting issues in natural history, paleontology and evolution,” Lieberman said. “Niles and I are trying to revive the natural history essay for a new audience and generation, focusing on paleontology, natural history, and the connections between paleontology, science, popular culture, music and art. I’m excited that we get to mention people like Miles Davis and Art Blakey in the book. We’re trying to make it accessible and get people thinking about the connections between science and art.”

Chapters in “Macroveolutionies” touch on cultural icons as varied as “The Three Musketeers,” baseball player and manager Yogi Berra, fictitious TV stuntman Super Dave Osborne, Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” gossip columnist Walter Winchell and jazz musicians.

“One of the chapters we have is an essay on the evolution of the trumpet and the cornet and how the designs of the cornet have changed through time,” Lieberman said. “We focus on how they resemble and differ from the evolutionary process on the biological side. We examine any differences between cultural evolution or evolution in the technosphere and biological evolution.”

Repeatedly, the co-authors examine the idea of punctuated equilibria, first conceived by Gould and Eldredge.

“The traditional view on evolution, as described in Darwin’s ‘On the Origin of Species’ and since, is that a species starts as one thing and then slowly and gradually changes into another type over time,” Lieberman said. “For example, one type of finch slowly transforms into another species of finch. By contrast, the punctuated equilibria idea, which better fits what we see in the fossil record, suggests species remain mostly the same throughout most of their history. They don’t appear to change much, with most species in the fossil record lasting for several million years. Then, over a relatively quick interval — maybe a few thousand to tens of thousands of years — they change, usually in response to a population becoming geographically isolated. These conditions encourage divergence.”

Lieberman said that most species change little over 90% to 95% of their existence, but then undergo more rapid periods of change, perhaps branching away into entirely new species in just thousands of years. 

Another theme running through “Macroevolutionaries” is the importance of mass extinctions to evolutionary processes.

“One of those essays is called ‘Star Dust Memories,’ which explores the role that astronomical factors may play in driving mass extinctions,” Lieberman said. “We discuss why mass extinctions are important and note that over the last 500 million years, there have been somewhere between about five and 15 mass extinctions. Mass extinctions involve most species doing fine and then suddenly, over a relatively short interval, experiencing a dramatic cataclysm that wipes out many species. This introduces an important element of chance into the history of life.”

For example, the KU researcher said the space rock that killed off the dinosaurs and so many other species some 66 million years ago also was a creative force that led to the rise of mammals on Earth, including humans.

“When a giant rock slammed into the planet, it caused tremendous environmental changes,” Lieberman said. “No matter how well adapted a species was, it couldn’t survive getting hit by a 6-mile-wide asteroid. This event displaced successful species and allowed other groups, such as mammals, to rise. Before the extinction of the dinosaurs, mammals were relatively small. Within about 10 million years of the extinction event, diverse mammals like bats and whales had evolved. Thus, mass extinctions displace successful species and allow other species to emerge, although this process can take millions of years.”

The book ends with a tribute to trilobites, extinct marine arthropods that thrived in the Paleozoic Era, about 521 to 252 million years ago.

“The last chapter explores why we love trilobites so much and why we think Walter Winchell wouldn’t have loved them,” Lieberman said. “As usual, we incorporate famous or infamous media personalities to discuss these topics. Trilobites were incredibly successful and highly diverse for around 300 million years. Ultimately, a series of mass extinctions eliminated them. Trilobites offer a window back to a different time when a completely different set of life forms were successful. Now, nothing like them exists anymore. It’s fascinating to think about what made them so successful and why they ultimately failed.”

In the tradition of Gould, Lieberman said he hoped the book would appeal to a broad readership.

“He tried to relate broader human societal patterns to his work, showing his talent for making connections,” Lieberman said. “Making connections is increasingly difficult as everything becomes more specialized. While specialization is beneficial, it’s also important to step outside and think about how different ideas relate. In our book, we aimed to show how developments in music, for example, can be analogous to how we understand biology, or how phenomena in distant stars can affect patterns of extinction on Earth. We wanted to make these connections clear. We also aimed to keep the book light and humorous. Our goal was to make the book learned on one hand, and accessible and humorous on the other.”

THE RIGHT TO SELF DEFENSE

Peru: Two loggers killed in bow and arrow attack after 'encroaching on land of uncontacted tribe' in Amazon

Rights group Fenamad said the attack happened around 15 miles from the site of a July incident, when the Mashco Piro tribe also attacked loggers.


Thursday 5 September 2024 

Members of the Mashco Piro along the Las Piedras River in the Amazon in June. Pic: Survival International via Reuters

Two loggers have been killed in a bow and arrow attack after allegedly encroaching on the land of the uncontacted Mashco Piro indigenous tribe deep in Peru's Amazon.

Tensions between loggers and tribes are on the rise, according to a rights group known as Fenamad, which defends the rights of the country's indigenous people.

Fenamad, which represents 39 indigenous communities in the Cusco and Madre de Dios regions in southeastern Peru, said two other loggers in the attack were missing and another was injured, with rescue efforts under way.

The incident took place on 29 August in the Pariamanu river basin while loggers were expanding their passageways into the forest and came into contact with the reclusive and renowned territorial tribe.

"The Peruvian state has not taken preventive and protective measures to ensure the lives and integrity of the workers who have been gravely affected," Fenamad said in a statement on Tuesday.

The group said the attack happened around 15 miles (25km) from the site of a July incident, when the Mashco Piro also attacked loggers.

Fenamad said in their statement that even though they advised the government of the risk of a rise in violence, nothing has been done.

Image:Pic: Survival International via Reuters

"It's a heated and tense situation," said Cesar Ipenza, an Amazon-based lawyer who specialises in environmental law in Peru.

"Undoubtedly, every day there are more tensions between indigenous peoples in isolation and the different activities that are within the territory that they ancestrally pass through."

In 2022, two loggers were shot with arrows while fishing, one fatally, in an encounter with tribal members.

In January, Peru loosened restrictions on deforestation, which critics dubbed the "anti-forest law".

Kamala Harris departs from Biden capital gains tax plan to widen her reach

Harris’s proposal for a lower tax rate than the one laid out by Biden suggests she wants to appeal to a broader base of voters.

Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris proposed a lower tax rate on capital gains than what was proposed by President Joe Biden [File: Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters]
Published On 4 Sep 20244 Sep 2024

Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris has proposed raising the capital gains tax rate for those earning $1m or more to 28 percent, instead of the 39.6 percent rate proposed by President Joe Biden in his fiscal 2025 budget.

On Wednesday, Vice President Harris also told cheering supporters at a brewery in North Hampton, New Hampshire, about 10 miles south of Portsmouth, that she would push for a $50,000 tax deduction for new small businesses, 10 times the current tax break.

“As president, one of my highest priorities will be to strengthen America’s small businesses,” Harris said, noting that small businesses employ half of all private sector workers in the United States.

Harris said lowering the cost of starting a new business – estimated at $40,000 on average – would help the US reach her “very ambitious” goal of having 25 million new small business applications filed by the end of her first term.

A record 5.5 million new business applications were filed in 2023, according to the Small Business Administration.

Harris’s proposal for a lower top tax rate on capital gains suggests she wants to appeal to a broader base of voters even as she sticks with most of Biden’s plans to strengthen the middle class. Harris became the Democratic nominee after Biden stepped aside on July 21.

In his fiscal 2025 budget, Biden had proposed raising the tax rate on long-term capital gains – the profits made from selling or trading an asset held for more than a year – to 39.6 percent for those earning more than $1m annually, from the current rates, which range up to 20 percent, depending on income.

Harris said she also plans to offer low- and no-interest loans to small businesses, cut the red tape they face and expand access to venture capital.

She said she supported a minimum tax for billionaires proposed by Biden, adding, “It is not right that those who can afford it are often paying a lower tax rate than our teachers and our nurses and our firefighters,” she said.

Lead over Trump

Harris took aim at her Republican rival, former President Donald Trump, saying his plans would cut off federal programmes that offer loans to small businesses, cut the corporate tax rate and push the US deficit higher.

Recent polls show Harris with a four to six percentage point lead in New Hampshire over Trump ahead of the November 5 election.

Harris spoke at the woman-owned Throwback Brewery, joined by the state’s two female US senators, other elected officials and a leader of a “Republicans for Harris” group in New Hampshire, where 330,000 registered independents outnumber the 258,000 registered Democrats and 301,000 registered Republicans.

New Hampshire has backed a Democratic candidate in every presidential election since 1992, except for former President George W Bush’s 2000 win.

Trump spokesperson Karoline Leavitt denied a news report that Republicans had given up on the state and said Trump’s campaign had an on-the-ground presence, office and staff there.

Source: Reuters

ICYMI

The Big Rip: Low Wage Corporations Spent Half A Trillion Inflating CEO Pay – OpEd

 September 5, 2024  By Sarah Anderson

Most of us believe in fair pay for honest work. So why aren’t low-wage workers better paid?

After 30 years of research, I can tell you it’s not because employers don’t have the cash. It’s because profitable corporations spend that money on their stock prices and CEOs instead.

Lowe’s, for example, spent $43 billion buying back its own stock over the past five years. With that sum, the chain could’ve given each of its 285,000 employees a $30,000 bonus every year. Instead, half of Lowe’s workers make less than $33,000. Meanwhile, CEO Marvin Ellison raked in $18 million in 2023.

The company also plowed nearly five times as much cash into buybacks as it invested in long-term capital expenditures like store improvements and technology upgrades over the past five years.

Lowe’s ranks as an extreme example, but pumping up CEO pay at the expense of workers and long-term investment is actually the norm among America’s leading low-wage corporations.

In my latest “Executive Excess” report for the Institute for Policy Studies, I found that the 100 S&P 500 firms with the lowest median wages — the “Low-Wage 100” — blew $522 billion on buybacks over the past five years. Nearly half of these companies spent more on this once-illegal maneuver than they spent investing in their long-term competitiveness.

This is a scam to inflate CEO pay, pure and simple.

When companies repurchase their own shares, they artificially boost share prices and the value of the stock-based compensation that makes up about 80 percent of CEO pay. The SEC found that CEOs regularly time the sale of their personal stock holdings to cash in on the price surge that typically follows a buyback announcement.

I also looked into what these corporations contribute to employee retirement — it’s peanuts, compared to their buyback outlays. The 20 largest low-wage employers spent nine times more on buybacks than on worker retirement contributions over the past five years.

Many of these firms boast of their “generous” matching benefits, typically a dollar-for-dollar match of 401(k) contributions up to 4 percent of salary. But matching is meaningless for workers who earn so little they can’t afford to set anything aside.

Chipotle, for example, spent over $2 billion on stock buybacks over the past five years — 48 times more than it contributed to employee retirement plans. Meanwhile, 92 percent of eligible Chipotle workers have zero balances in their 401(k)s. That’s hardly surprising, since the chain’s median annual pay is just $16,595.

The conclusion is unmistakable: CEOs are focused on short-term windfalls for themselves and wealthy shareholders rather than on long-term prosperity for their workers — or their companies.

As United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain put it in his Democratic convention speech: “Corporate greed turns blue-collar blood, sweat, and tears into Wall Street stock buybacks and CEO jackpots.” Public outrage over CEO shakedowns helped the UAW win strong new contracts last year with the Big Three automakers.

Support for policy solutions is growing as well. The Democratic Party platform calls for quadrupling the 1 percent federal tax on stock buybacks. And a recent poll shows strong majority support among Democrats, Republicans, and Independents alike for proposed tax hikes on corporations with huge CEO-worker pay gaps.

Extreme inequality isn’t inevitable — and it can be reversed.

Forty years ago, CEO pay was only about 40 times higher than worker pay — not several hundreds of times higher, as is typical today. And just 20 years ago, most big companies spent very little on stock buybacks. At Lowe’s, for example, buyback outlays between 2000 and 2004 were exactly zero.

Corporate America’s perverse fixation on enriching those at the top is bad for workers and bad for the economy. With pressure from below, we can change that.

• This op-ed was adapted from Inequality.org and distributed for syndication by OtherWords.org.Facebook

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Sarah Anderson
Sarah Anderson directs the Global Economy Project and co-edits Inequality.org at the Institute for Policy Studies.