Saturday, May 28, 2022


JOSEPH NEEDHAM WOULD AGREE

Xi calls for advancing study of Chinese civilization, strengthening cultural confidence

Updated 28-May-2022
CGTN


Two visitors take photos of a bronze mask discovered at the Sanxingdui Ruins site, in Guanghan City, Sichuan Province, China, February 15, 2022. /CFP

Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday stressed the strengthening of awareness and confidence in Chinese culture by inheriting and carrying forward its fine traditions and unswervingly following the path of socialism with Chinese characteristics.

Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, made the remarks during the 39th group study session of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee on a national research program dedicated to tracing the origins of the Chinese civilization.

Chinese civilization has a long history, is extensive and profound and is the unique spiritual identity of the Chinese nation, he said. It is also the foundation of contemporary Chinese culture, he said, as well as the spiritual bond that binds Chinese people around the world and the treasure of Chinese cultural innovation.

The project to explore the origins of the Chinese civilization has made remarkable achievements, Xi said, but there is still a long way ahead as the successes are still preliminary and phased.

The project to explore the origins of Chinese civilization has made an original contribution to the study of the origin of world civilizations, he said, but more efforts are needed in conducting research, interpretation, and display of unearthed cultural relics and sites to enhance the influence and appeal of Chinese civilization.

He pointed out that exploring its origins helps to show the development of the sense of community in the Chinese nation.

In promoting the creative transformation and development of fine traditional Chinese culture, he underlined carrying forward revolutionary culture, developing advanced socialist culture and seeking the source of vitality from China's fine traditional culture.

He stressed upholding the values of equality, mutual learning, dialogue and inclusiveness among civilizations, saying that people should understand the values of different civilizations with an open mind and respect people of different countries in exploring their own development paths.

In handling relations among civilizations, let us replace estrangement with exchange, clashes with mutual learning, and superiority with coexistence, he said.

He also stressed the importance of cultural relic preservation and historical heritage protection.



The conversations Needham had with Chinese scientists and the network he built during his four years in the country provided the material for what he initially ...
Apr 22, 2013 — The basis of Needham's work is the massive Science and Civilisation in China (Needham 1954–; twenty-five volumes published since 1954).
Dr. Needham cites one of the first books to describe the magnetic compass, Dream Pool Essays (1086) by Shen Kuo in the Song Dynasty, about 100 years ...
Science in China has a long history and developed quite independently of Western science.Needham (1993) has researched widely on the development of science and ...
For more than 30 years, Joseph Needham's work on the history of Chinese science and technology has been carried out as a contribution toward the detailed ...


According to Needham, Chinese innovations, such as gunpowder, the compass, paper, and printing, helped transform European Feudalism into Capitalism. By the end of the 15th century, Europe was actively financing scientific discoveries, and nautical exploration.


TORY ANTI-GRAMSCI CAUCUS

Government ‘pushing England’s universities out of teacher training’ over leftwing politics

Higher education leaders say ministers think departments are full of ‘Marxists’, as top universities fail accreditation process


There are concerns universities walking away from teacher training might exacerbate teacher shortages.
 Photograph: Peter Cade/Getty Images


Anna Fazackerley
Sat 28 May 2022 

Leaders in higher education said this week they believed the government was trying to push universities out of teacher training for political reasons because ministers thought their education departments were “hotbeds of leftwing intellectualism” and full of “Marxists”.

Under changes announced last summer, all initial teacher training providers in England must be re-accredited by the Department for Education to continue educating teachers from 2024. However, two-thirds of providers, including some top universities, were told this month that they had failed the first round of the new accreditation process. The DfE said last week that just 80 providers, out of 216 who are understood to have applied, had made the cut.

Those currently out in the cold include some from the prestigious Russell Group. The University of Nottingham, a member of the elite group, said it was “very disappointed and perplexed” to have been failed only two months after Ofsted rated it as outstanding, with inspectors praising the “exceptional curriculum taught by experts”.

The University of Birmingham, which the DfE has chosen as one of the specialist partners for its new school-based National Institute of Teaching, also failed the first round of accreditation.

The head of one university that failed, who asked not to be named for fear of deterring applicants, said: “Our staff involved in teacher education, who are excellent, were devastated by not being successful. They find it hard to believe because of our track record.”

The DfE has said providers can reapply, but experts say some big universities are so outraged they may walk away from teacher training altogether, exacerbating fears about teacher shortages in many subjects. Cambridge University did not apply for the accreditation due to fears its curriculum would be compromised.

Mary Bousted, the general secretary of the National Education Union, said: “This was the brainchild of [former schools minister] Nick Gibb, who was obsessed with the idea that university departments of teacher education were hotbeds of leftwing intellectualism. I told him I didn’t know how to convey my frustration that he was coming out with this rubbish.”

Prof David Spendlove, associate dean of Manchester University’s faculty of humanities and former head of initial teacher education, said: “As education secretary, Michael Gove talked about fighting ‘the Blob’ [the education establishment]. He and Nick Gibb had this idea that universities and teacher education departments were all Marxists. Their influence hasn’t gone away.”

The University of Nottingham was the first university to publicly confirm it had failed the first round of the new accreditation process. 
Photograph: Mike Egerton/PA Media

Manchester passed the accreditation, but Prof Spendlove believes the new process is “damaging the very bedrock” of university teacher education and it is now “harder to stay in it than to leave”.

“People who have been doing this for a very long time are being told they aren’t fit for purpose, despite all the positive inspections they’ve been through. That’s a farce,” he said.

Prof David Green, vice-chancellor of Worcester University, which has a strong focus on teacher education, said: “Gibb had a clear agenda to remove universities from teacher training. Some officials may have remained faithful to his outdated perspective.”

He said: “This new DfE system risks destroying much existing high quality teacher training. That would be a disaster for children who will be recovering from the educational devastation wrought by the pandemic for years.”

Prof Spendlove said no university should celebrate its success in the first round, arguing that the next stage of the accreditation process, which focuses on the curriculum, means losing autonomy over what is taught. “It involves increased scrutiny of the content of courses and a review of curriculum materials, which is utterly bizarre,” he said. “The DfE is hoping people will be so desperate to pass they will just roll over and accept it.”

This idea is worrying to many universities. Cambridge, which had more than 250 teaching entrants this year and is rated outstanding by Ofsted, said its decision not to apply was because of concerns about the government’s “highly prescribed curriculum” and its model of mentoring, both of which it said “do not look at all like what we do”.

Bousted said: “Universities are right to fear the DfE trying to control their teaching curriculum. That is what is happening.”

Teaching unions have been warning for many months that forcing providers to jump through new bureaucratic hoops risks damaging the supply of teachers. Teacher training applications are down 24% on last year after a brief Covid boom, with recruitment dropping below pre-pandemic levels.

A report by the National Foundation for Educational Research in March said that a large range of secondary subjects would not meet teacher recruitment targets in 2022. These include shortage subjects such as physics, maths, chemistry and computing, but also those that typically recruit well such as English, biology and geography.

Prof Chris Husbands, the vice-chancellor of Sheffield Hallam University, whose initial teacher training provision passed the first round of accreditation, said: “I think this is indeed intended to drive some providers out of the market. But the risk the government runs is driving out some of the people they should be aiming to keep.”

He said universities were committed to teacher training “but not at any cost”. “Large organisations always have choices,” he said. “I don’t really understand why the government is picking this fight. The evidence from Ofsted inspections shows the sector is in pretty good shape. This doesn’t make any sense to me.”

Nottingham was the first university to confirm publicly that it did not pass through the first round of accreditation. The news was met with anger in the sector.

Green described the decision as “simply ludicrous”, coming so soon after Ofsted rated all aspects of Nottingham’s teacher education as outstanding.

John Dexter, who was director of education at Nottingham city council until February and spent more than 30 years in teaching and school management in the city, tweeted that he was “baffled, cross and frustrated” about the result.

He said: “It’s extraordinary. Getting an outstanding from Ofsted on ITT [initial teacher training] is pretty impressive.” He said the Nottingham course was good for helping students to understand the environment they would be teaching in. “I really don’t understand why the DfE is doing this.”

The government announced on Thursday, after a year-long contract dispute thought to have cost hundreds of thousands, that its National Institute of Teaching would open in September 2023, led by a consortium of four school trusts called the School Led Development Trust.

The DfE was approached for comment.
In remote U.S. territories, abortion hurdles mount without Roe

Women from places like Guam would have to travel farther than other Americans to terminate a pregnancy if the national right to the procedure is overturned.

Sunday Mass at a church in Tumon, Guam, in 2017. It’s already difficult to get an abortion in Guam, a small, heavily Catholic U.S. territory in the Pacific.
Tassanee Vejpongsa / AP

May 27, 2022 / Source: Associated Press

HONOLULU — Women from the remote U.S. territories of Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands will most likely have to travel farther than other Americans to terminate a pregnancy if the Supreme Court overturns a precedent that established a national right to abortion in the United States.

Hawaii is the closest U.S. state where abortion is legal under local law. Even so, Honolulu is 3,800 miles away — about 50 percent farther than Boston is from Los Angeles.

“For a lot of people who are seeking abortion care, it might as well be on the moon,” said Vanessa L. Williams, an attorney who is active with the group Guam People for Choice.

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It’s already difficult to get an abortion in Guam, a small, heavily Catholic island of about 170,000 people south of Japan.

The last physician who performed surgical abortions there retired in 2018. Two Guam-licensed doctors who live in Hawaii see patients virtually and mail them pills for medication abortions. But this alternative is available only until 11 weeks gestation.

Now there’s a possibility even this limited telehealth option will disappear.

A recently leaked draft opinion indicated the Supreme Court could overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade decision and allow individual states to ban abortion. About half of them would most likely do so, abortion rights advocates say. Oklahoma got a head start Wednesday when its governor signed a measure prohibiting all abortions with few exceptions.

All three U.S. territories in the Pacific — Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands and American Samoa — also have the potential to adopt prohibitions, according to a 2019 report by the Center for Reproductive Rights. None have legal protections for abortion, and they could revive old abortion bans or enact new ones, the report said.

Traveling to the nearest states where abortion is allowed — Hawaii or the U.S. West Coast — would be prohibitive for many women.

A nonstop flight from Guam to Honolulu takes nearly eight hours. Only one commercial airline flies the route. A recent online search showed the cheapest tickets going for $1,500 roundtrip in late May.

Williams said many Guam residents need time off work, a hotel room and a rental car to travel for an abortion, adding more costs.

Hawaii legalized abortion in 1970, three years before Roe. The state today allows abortion until a fetus would be viable outside the womb. After that, it’s legal if a patient’s life or health is in danger.

Flying to a country in Asia that allows abortion would be quicker, but several reproductive rights advocates on Guam said they hadn’t heard of anyone doing that. For one, it would require a passport, which many don’t have, said Kiana Yabut of the group Famalao’an Rights.

Without Roe, Guam could revert to an abortion ban dating to 1990. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the law unconstitutional in 1992, but it has never been repealed.

James Canto, Guam deputy attorney general, agreed under questioning by a Guam senator this month that existing abortion laws in various states and territories would “be the law of the land” if Roe was overturned.

But Alexa Kolbi-Molinas, deputy director of the reproductive freedom project at the American Civil Liberties Union, said the 9th Circuit permanently enjoined the 1990 law, meaning Guam’s attorney general would have to ask the local U.S. District Court to lift an injunction to begin enforcing it.

The 32-year-old statute made it a felony for a doctor to perform the procedure except to save a woman’s life or prevent grave danger to her health, as certified by two independent physicians, or to end an ectopic pregnancy, which is a dangerous abnormal pregnancy that develops outside the uterus.

It made it a misdemeanor for a woman to have an abortion, or for anyone to ask or advise her to have one.

The 21-member unicameral Legislature unanimously approved the ban after then-Archbishop Anthony Apuron threatened in a television interview to excommunicate any Catholic senator who voted against it. All but one of the senators was Catholic, but most senators said they were unaware of the threat.

Guam’s Legislature has been considering additional measures to restrict abortion. This month it held hearings on a bill modeled after a new Texas law that bans abortion once cardiac activity is detected, usually around six weeks. The Texas law, which has withstood legal challenges so far, leaves enforcement up to private citizens through lawsuits instead of criminal prosecutions.

The possibility that abortion may become less accessible on Guam has spurred some nonprofits to come together to increase their support for pregnant women in need, said Mona McManus, executive director of the island’s Safe Haven Pregnancy Center.

Her organization, which opposes abortion, provides free pregnancy tests, prenatal and parenting classes and information on adoption and abortion. It recently started a “wraparound service group” with other nonprofits that can help secure housing, foster care for teen mothers, adoption and other services.

Jayne Flores, director of the Bureau of Women’s Affairs, a Guam government agency, believes residents would still have access to medication abortions from off-island if Roe is overturned. But she wonders whether the Legislature might outlaw that too.

“At what point do you start looking in people’s mail?” she said.


The Associated Press

‘Stranger Things’ filmed in Lithuania jail where Nazis held Jews

Season 4 of Netflix teen hero sci-fi series features scenes shot at Lukiškės Prison in Vilnius; Menachem Begin was jailed there in 1940 for Zionist activity in Soviet Union

NORMALLY JTA WOULD BE DENOUNCING THIS
WITH FAUX OUTRAGE

By PHILISSA CRAMER
28 May 2022

David Harbour in a scene from season four of 'Stranger Things.' (Screenshot from YouTube/JTA)

JTA — Now streaming on Netflix: scenes from inside a notorious Lithuanian prison whose inmates have included Jews en route to being murdered by Nazis and future Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin.

Part of season four of “Stranger Things,” the teen hero sci-fi series, was filmed inside Lukiškės Prison in Vilnius, according to promotional materials distributed by the Lithuanian capital’s tourism board.

The prison was used for a century before closing in 2019; it has now been converted into a cultural center where guests can stay in a “Stranger Things”-themed cell for 107 Euros ($114) a night.

During Lukiškės’s century of operation, it was the site of imprisonment, torture and executions for political prisoners.

In 1941, the first people to be murdered in the Ponary massacre were 348 Jews and others who had been imprisoned at Lukiškės. Nearly 100,000 people, mostly Jewish, would be murdered at the Ponary site near Vilnius, formerly known as Vilna, in the subsequent months.

Lukiškės was also where Begin was imprisoned for eight months in 1940 and 1941 because of his Zionist activity within the Soviet Union. His time there was marked by “extremely cold and hungry conditions,” according to a timeline assembled by the Menachem Begin Heritage Center, and was followed by deportation to a Soviet penal colony.

That ultimately may have saved his life, as he was freed when the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union and ultimately was able to make his way to what would become Israel, where he became the sixth prime minister in 1977. Much of his family was murdered.

 

New England psychiatrists, pediatricians say more kids are experiencing climate change anxiety

On average, the sea level has risen 8 inches along the New England coast since 1950, and that trend is expected to accelerate due to climate change. Scituate, Mass., March 2018. (Jesse Costa/WBUR)

Psychiatrists and pediatricians from New England say that children they see in their practice show increased anxiety around climate change.

At a webinar Thursday, hosted by the National Alliance of Mental Illness of New Hampshire and the New Hampshire Health Care Workers for Climate Action, Elizabeth Pinsky, a child, and adolescent psychiatrist and pediatrician at Massachusetts General Hospital, said her family’s personal experience with these emotions brought her to study climate change-related anxiety more deeply.

Pinksy recounted that she was consuming too much news on social media and waking up at night worrying about the environment.

“I thought I was doing a good job of keeping that anxiety contained,” she said. But she noticed one day that her kids were feeling that anxiety too.

A 2021 survey of 10,000 young people ages 16 to 25 from the global north and south revealed that 68% feel anxious, 58% angry, 57% powerless, and 51% guilty when it comes to our changing climate.

Pinsky explained that not all youth are equally vulnerable. She said climate change is a threat multiplier that can be a catalyst for other disparities such as structural racism, language barriers and economic inequality.

According to Pinsky, communities in the United States at the greatest risk of climate change, which may result in anxiety, are young people of color, young people with disabilities, and children already living in poverty.

She pointed out that climate change anxiety, rage, or despair are not mental illnesses.

“It means that we care about the planet,” she said. But when that turns into uncontrollable or pathological behavior, that can be a problem for the child.

When it comes to solutions for climate change anxiety, Pinsky recommended that parents talk with their kids, providing accurate information and remaining open to discussion.

She said it’s important not to minimize their thoughts.

“More and more people will be eco-anxious as the crisis deepens, but we want people to engage and not deny it so they can move on and take action,” she said.

This story was originally published by NHPR, a partner of the New England News Collaborative.

It is now irresponsible not to talk about UFOs

BY DOUGLAS MACKINNON, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 05/28/22 
THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HIL
Department of Defense via AP
In an image from video provided by the Department of Defense labelled Gimbal, from 2015, an unexplained object is tracked as it soars high along the clouds, traveling against the wind.


When I was 11 years old and living in the small town of New Boston, N.H., a friend and I saw something that was not only never explained, but actually denied. It was the middle of summer and we were walking up Meeting House Hill Road, toward our homes, after buying a couple of sodas at the general store. Suddenly, flying fairly high above us, a pure white, cigar-shaped object zipped across the cloudless blue sky, in complete silence.

My friend and I looked at each other in shock, and ran the few hundred feet remaining to our houses to tell our parents. They came outside, as did several neighbors, and as if on cue, this strange object whipped back across the sky. This time, however, it was being chased by a couple of Air Force fighter jets — until it accelerated to a seemingly impossible speed.

By strange coincidence, there was an Air Force tracking station (now part of the Space Force) in New Boston, as well as what was then Pease Air Force Base about 60 miles away. My father called both places and was promptly — and officially — told that there were no Air Force jets in the area and it must have been a figment of our imagination.

Two days later, still upset by the denial of something we all saw, the child sleuth in me decided to walk the five miles to the Air Force tracking station and — I hope the statute of limitations has run out on this — break into the facility by digging a small tunnel under the fence. But after finding no Area 51/Roswell-like smoking gun evidence, I dejectedly walked home and then mostly forgot about it.

That is, until last week.

For the first time in more than five decades, Congress held a hearing on the possibility of unidentified flying objects, or UFOs — now wisely renamed unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAPs. More specifically, the hearing was held by the House Counterterrorism, Counterintelligence and Counterproliferation Subcommittee, chaired by Rep. Andre Carson (D-Ind.).

Carson wasted no time cutting to the chase by calling out the Department of Defense (DOD) for ignoring a potential threat: “For too long, the stigma associated with UAPs has gotten in the way of good intelligence analysis. Pilots avoided reporting, or were laughed at when they did,” he said. “DOD officials relegated the issue to the back room, or swept it under the rug entirely, fearful of a skeptical, national security community. Today, we know better. They are real; they need to be investigated, and the many threats they pose need to be investigated.”

Carson could not be more correct, and should be applauded for dragging this subject out of the shadows. Whether UAPs are advanced foreign weapons systems or something infinitely more complicated, there have been too many sightings, from too many credible witnesses, to pretend they don’t exist. From this moment forward, turning a blind eye to these sightings would be not only irresponsible but a dereliction of duty.

Of course, part of what has made witnesses hesitant to come forward and the DOD to “sweep these reports under the rug” is the reaction from many in the news media. Often, reporting on UFOs — or UAPs — is accompanied by artwork depicting a little green man in a flying saucer, the old-fashioned view of “life” from elsewhere in space. It’s as if editors include these illustrations as a wink and nod to other news outlets to say, “We may have to cover this nonsense, but we will cheapen the reporting to let you know we are in on the joke.”

Now there is a chance that the joke is on those condescending skeptics.

With top Pentagon intelligence officials sitting before him, Carson told them that UAP sightings represent “a potential national security threat and need to be treated that way.” And — no surprise to those paying attention — both Ronald Moultrie, the under secretary of defense for intelligence and security, and Scott Bray, the deputy director of naval intelligence, agreed with the congressman. Both men are overseeing the newly created Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group.

The group’s creation came about because, over the past 15 years, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence reported last year that there have been at least 144 credible yet unexplainable sightings of UAPs.

Again, are these aerial phenomena highly advanced foreign aircraft, unknown weapons systems, or something beyond that? It is the Pentagon’s responsibility to find out — and quickly. Bray agreed with Carson that UAPs “represent serious hazards.” More than that, he acknowledged that the Pentagon must do more to remove the stigma associated with reporting such sightings.

“We also spent considerable efforts engaging directly with our naval aviators to help destigmatize the act of reporting sights and encounters,” Bray said. “The direct results of those efforts have been increased reporting.”

Both Bray and Moultrie said they are not aware of any technological advances among our foreign adversaries or other nations that could explain any of the sightings. Military pilots have recorded some of the encounters. As Bray showed footage of one such sighting during the hearing, he commented, “I have no explanation for what this specific object is.”

We need an explanation, and we need the media to stop using patronizing caricatures and start getting back into real journalism to help our government get to the bottom of it.


Douglas MacKinnon, a political and communications consultant, was a writer in the White House for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, and former special assistant for policy and communications at the Pentagon during the last three years of the Bush administration. His latest book is “The 56: Liberty Lessons From Those Who Risked All to Sign the Declaration of Independence.”
COMMENTARY

Franz Kafka predicted Fox News — but even he might have been shocked

If we show our children pictures of enemies with "sharp pointed teeth," Kafka told us, they "run into our arms"


By RONALD H. DAVIDSON
PUBLISHED MAY 28, 2022
Fox News building in midtown Manhattan. (Getty Images)

Paranoia sells, and Rupert Murdoch's Fox News enterprise likes to scare the hell out of its viewers for fun and profit if there's good money to be made — especially when it's got skin in the game. But this time the political stakes are much higher than usual: America's future as a democracy is on the line.

Witness the obsessive preoccupation at Fox with the "great replacement" theory, as if hyping such a transparently fabricated existential crisis to its targeted demographic — that is, mostly older white conservatives — was purposely intended to raise doomsday anxiety levels in a gullible audience, the sort of viewers long conditioned to interpret events in a conspiratorial framework. Following the twisted path of this racist creation myth to its origins reveals a provenance that stretches well beyond Tucker Carlson's nightly pitch to his loyal fans, many of whom share a collective fear that the traditional barriers intended to keep certain groups of others outside and out of sight are no longer working as expected.

Fox is running in a crowded field of competitors in the faux-paranoid theme park that it's been meticulously ginning up over the years — hanging with a deeply weird array of QAnon rubes, white supremacists, Christian nationalists, Trumpian dead-enders and similarly motivated co-conspirators — all of them working overtime to push an agenda of racist fear and animus. One tragic consequence of their deadly stimulus project recently played out in a Buffalo supermarket.



Still, for all its high-volume flailing, the Fox hype machine is mostly amateurish stuff, a perverse riff on Donald Trump's side-hustle con involving an American Wall, one that promised his cult of MAGA pawns to keep the threatening hordes of invasive species permanently excluded on the other side. At root, it's a protocol for ensuring dominance and control of the public spaces that define every element of American culture; more ominously in the short term, it's also a mobilizing electoral strategy now fully embraced by one of the two major American political parties.

For a guided tour of this paranoid mindset from a true connoisseur of the art of cynical manipulation, though, one needs to turn to Franz Kafka, whose story "The Great Wall of China," written in 1917, offers prescient psychological insights into the storyline being performed on Tucker Carlson's show any night of the week.

"Against whom was the great wall to provide protection," Kafka asked, adding that there were no genuine threats besides the terrifying portraits in "the books of the ancients," which served the emperor's purposes by conjuring up atrocities committed by malicious outsiders, enemies whose "sharp pointed teeth … will crush and rip to pieces" the peaceful citizens living behind the Great Wall. "When children are naughty, we hold up these pictures in front of them," Kafka wrote in his century-old warning memo to us, "and they immediately burst into tears and run into our arms."


Franz Kafka, meet Tucker Carlson (and friends).

Replacement theory and CRT set up a target-rich environment of Black people, Jews, Muslims, LGBTQ folks and immigrants who can be portrayed as mortal threats to the fantasy world of white supremacy.

Joining the reception line are a coterie of like-minded race-baiting provocateurs and conspiracy-mongers littered throughout cable news shows and the darker social media corners of the internet. Replacement theorizing — along with its kissing cousin "critical race theory," another imaginary playmate at Fox — offers a useful platform for this loose confederation of proto-fascist trolls to practice their specialized craft, setting up a target-rich environment of Black people, Jews, Muslims, LGBTQ folk, feminists and foreigners of all kinds (well, non-European ones, anyway). Think of their nihilistic search-and-destroy mission as a Kafkaesque effort to discover hidden enemies — even imaginary ones will do, in a pinch — who can be portrayed as mortal threats to the fragile fantasy world at the core of white supremacists' self-deluding ideology.

Granted, the more respectable members of this confederacy may suffer brief moments of panic when one of their unhinged followers becomes a breaking news story, as when it turned out that the alleged Buffalo shooter's 180-page manifesto acknowledged that the bloody rage-killings were live-streamed online as a self-promoting "act of terrorism," a fantastical infomercial intended to prevent white people from succumbing to "replacement."

Put another way, when a lethal mode of performance art seizes control of the public stage, demanding that attention be paid to its incoherent rhetoric of virulent hate, Fox and friends get as nervous as the Wizard of Oz (right before Dorothy's little dog Toto pulls back the curtain on the sad old man working the gears). Rupert Murdoch's media magic quickly loses its persuasive charms if folks get too close a look at the inner workings of the cynical manipulation machinery.

Following Buffalo, the unanticipated exposure of the machine's source code may explain the peak hysteria coming from the primetime players at Fox, who have frantically scrambled to deny that they share any responsibility for inspiring and/or inflaming one of their (ahem) crazier viewers to violently act on his paranoid fantasies about replacement theory. "Goodness, who knows where he might have picked that nonsense up. It must have been antifa!"

Arguably, the Trump-organized mob actions of Jan. 6, 2021 — performed live on the steps of the U.S. Capitol as a theatrical rehearsal for fascism — differed in terms of the number of actors taking part in the patriotic cosplay drama (and the body count at the end of the day). Nonetheless, that staged event was produced and directed with essentially the same motivational goals as the alleged Buffalo shooter: Capture the attention of an aggrieved audience; play upon their sense of resentment and victimhood; engage them in the urgent task of redeeming the country from their godless enemies; justify the use of violence as legitimate political discourse in the service of an imaginary version of "our America."

Despite such temporary program interruptions, things at Fox News quickly settle back down to a normal daily routine of partisan demagoguery and fear-mongering, though carefully re-coded just enough to allow for some degree of plausible deniability, at least until the next mass shooting (or perhaps a seditious insurrection) breaks out.

We are now entering uncharted territory, a place far beyond the familiar era of earlier forms of institutionalized racism in America — back when segregated schools, employment and housing discrimination, mortgage redlining and gated communities served as more structured (that is, less overtly chaotic) mechanisms for excluding certain others from participating in the public square. No less oppressive, such exclusionary traditions seem almost quaint by contrast now that the façade has fallen away, revealing an apocalyptic vision of the new authoritarian political agenda, which makes no pretense about its core beliefs and anti-democratic intentions (including a hair-trigger readiness for organized violence, if needed).

Years before the killings in Buffalo, an American president once stood in front of other mourners in a Black church and sang "Amazing Grace," a poignant moment signaling what the country was then only reluctantly coming to understand about itself: There are no safe spaces left in the once-shared public squares of our communities: Not in churches, synagogues or mosques; not in elementary school classrooms or high school corridors; not in women's health clinics; not in workplaces; not on public street corners.

 And now, not even in grocery stores.

In Buffalo, a grieving Black woman told a CNN reporter about the far deeper emotional scars the shootings left on her shattered community. "We didn't have much, and you took what was left," she said, as if speaking to the killer. "Now our safe space has been infiltrated and taken from us."

Present-tense domestic terrorism may appear different from earlier versions, but the logic of its embedded racist code is the same that motivates white supremacist politics everywhere and always.

Such domestic terrorism may appear different in form than earlier versions, often relying on the lone-wolf-deranged-gunman mythology to distract public attention from questions of broader political accountability, but the logic of its embedded racist code is still rooted in the covert agenda motivating white supremacist politics everywhere and always.

Not that long ago, lynchings were public entertainment in certain parts of America, a shameful history still viewable online today in the hundreds of archived photographs of white mobs cheerfully posing in front of the bodies of dead Black men. Billie Holiday knew what she was telling a segregated America the moment she recorded "Strange Fruit." even if most white folks back in 1939 weren't ready to listen to its lyrics:

Southern trees bear a strange fruit
Blood on the leaves and blood at the roots
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees



If in the present era the Ku Klux Klan has traded in its bedsheets for military camo gear and morphed into the heavily militarized Proud Boys, their implicit message has just been repackaged as something that generally gets a pass from the morally flexible content standards of primetime Fox News, Facebook and Twitter: say, for example, replacement theory.


The chant of "Jews will not replace us," shouted by a Tiki-torch-carrying mob of fascist wannabes during the 2017 Unite the Right demonstration in Charlottesville — where Donald Trump saw "good people on both sides" — was an early harbinger of the emerging and rebranded white nationalist movement, freed at last from the political closet by a different sort of president, one who surely wouldn't know the words to "Amazing Grace." Apart from a few minor setbacks, including a failed insurrection and some indictments for seditious conspiracy, it's been a bull market ever since for replacement theory and the cynical Fox News con artists who peddle it 24/7.

When a significant element of the political culture tolerates (and even encourages) a racist discourse that reduces certain groups to the status of invasive species — implying that such persons ought to be "weeded out," one way or another — the shared public square in a democratic society is no longer safe for anyone. Stoking racial and class fears to produce a sense of paranoid resentment and faux victimhood may be an effective political technique in the short-term, assuming that its practitioners simply don't care about the longer-term existential sustainability of the society, but it reveals the moral cognitive blindness motivating the authoritarian impulse for power at any cost.

Kafka understood this sort of cynical fear-mongering when he warned us about it a hundred years ago. If he could offer us some political consultation today, it might be simply this: "Paranoia does not seem to be a bug in this system that you are describing; it's quickly becoming a feature. Please stop before you destroy yourselves."



Formalising HR practices can fight workplace racism: Panellists at race forum

"Nowadays young people are not going to put up with discrimination, and that is entirely a good thing."

Singapore has been making policy moves to take workplace discrimination to task. 

Ng Wei Kai

SINGAPORE - Companies should have human resource processes in place to correct people's subconscious ethnic biases which can result in racist and discriminatory hiring practices.

They must also provide a safe environment for employees to raise grievances on issues like racial discrimination, said Ms Faith Li, who is general manager at the Tripartite Alliance for Fair and Progressive Employment Practices (Tafep).

She was speaking at a panel discussion on Saturday (May 28) at a conference on racism at the workplace called "Keeping Harmony@Work" at the Grand Copthorne Waterfront Hotel.

It was organised by OnePeople.sg, a national body which promotes racial harmony, and the Institute of Policy Studies (IPS).

About 250 religious leaders, government officials, academics and representatives from the corporate sector and non-governmental organisations attended the conference.

Also on the panel were IPS research associate Shamil Zainuddin and chief executive of the Singapore International Chamber of Commerce Victor Mills.

Ms Li added that a structured hiring process that checks applicants' abilities and skills instead of using

Senior Minister of State for Manpower Koh Poh Koon, who gave an opening address, said more can be done.

Singapore has been making policy moves to take workplace discrimination to task, he said.

During last year's National Day Rally, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong announced that the Government will enshrine Tafep guidelines in law, to give them more teeth and expand the range of actions that can be taken against errant companies.

But legislation alone cannot solve the problem, said Dr Koh.

He said: "We want to avoid creating a litigious culture and preserve the common space at the workplace while ensuring that discrimination in any form is not tolerated.

"Therefore, tripartite partners will continue to prioritise engaging and educating employers to shape the right mindsets and practices, and resolving reported cases through mediation as far as possible."

Senior Minister of State for Manpower Koh Poh Koon speaking during a dialogue moderated by IPS principal research fellow Mathew Mathews at the conference.
ST PHOTO: NG SOR LUAN


IPS research from 2013 and 2019 showed that about one third of minority race respondents, including Malays and Indians, felt discriminated against at work, said IPS principal research fellow Mathew Mathews, who opened the conference with a presentation on IPS' research into trends on race and perceptions of discrimination in Singapore.

These perceptions extend to the areas of hiring and promotion.

Dr Mathews said that while most Singaporeans consider tolerance and multiculturalism to be important values, and less than 10 per cent of minorities perceive worse treatment by public services such as hospitals or schools, racial discrimination at the workplace remains an issue.

Tackling such perceptions are crucial, said Mr Shamil, adding that addressing the perception that minorities are discriminated against is just as important as addressing real instances of discrimination.

IPS research associate Shamil Zainuddin and chief executive of the Singapore International Chamber of Commerce Victor Mills during the panel discussion. 
ST PHOTO: NG SOR LUAN

The floor was open to participants after both the panel discussion and a dialogue with Dr Koh, and various concerns were raised, including that there may be no incentive to work on diversity for a profit-driven company.

Mr Mills said diversity and inclusive practices are good for bottom lines, as happy workers do their best work and these may be necessary to attract younger talent.

He added: "Nowadays young people are not going to put up with discrimination, and that is entirely a good thing."


Report from Germany: Refugees Welcome … Sometimes

Posted on streetlamps all over Germany are stickers showing fleeing silhouettes with the caption, “Refugees welcome – bring your families”. Some have been blacked out with felt markers or ripped partially away. The Germans have mixed feelings about refugees, as demonstrated in the earlier waves from the Mideast and the current one from the Ukraine.

Germany took in over two million refugees from the Mideast wars, far more than any other country. The equivalent for the US population would be eight million.

This has created an enormous financial and cultural strain in a country that historically has had little immigration. It comes at a time when poverty is increasing and social services are being reduced. The once-generous welfare state is gradually being dismantled. This financial squeeze is worsening now because of expenses for the refugees. The two million newcomers receive enough money to live on plus free healthcare, education, and access to special programs. Some cheat on this, registering in several places under different names and getting multiple benefits. Many Germans resent paying for all this with high taxes while their own standard of living is declining.

The trauma of war and displacement has caused a few refugees to lose their moral compass. They do things here they wouldn’t do at home.

Two-thirds of the refugees are young men, some of them convinced Allah has ordained males to dominate females. In their view, women who aren’t submissive need to be punished. Since being male is the only power many of them have, they feel threatened by women in positions of power, and they sometimes react with hostility. Over a thousand women have been physically attacked — some murdered and raped and many aggressively grabbed on the breasts as a way of showing dominance. Many more have been abused — insulted, harassed, spat upon.

Many refugees are aware that Germany, as a member of NATO, supports these wars that have forced them to flee their homes. They’re not fooled by the rhetoric of “humanitarian intervention.” They know NATO’s motives are imperialistic: to install governments agreeable to Western control of their resources and markets. Although they are now safe, their relatives and friends are still being killed with weapons made in Germany and oppressed by soldiers and police trained and financed by Germany. Rather than a grateful attitude, some have come with a resentful one.

Crime has increased, especially violent crimes such as knife attacks. Police and others have been killed and wounded by refugees. Organized criminal clans have become established in Germany’s lenient legal atmosphere. A few ISIS and al-Qaeda members slipped in with the refugees. They have bombed a Christmas market, attacked synagogues, murdered Jews on the street, recruited new members in mosques.

In the past 75 years Germany has become a peaceful country. The current violence is profoundly disturbing to them. It brings back terrible memories.

The violent refugees, though, are only a small minority. Most of the newcomers have a positive attitude. They are getting a fresh start in life, recovering from trauma, getting an education, learning new skills. They’ve been introduced to other cultural possibilities.

Women in particular are responding favorably to this new environment. Seeing how women here live, some of them are beginning to free themselves from patriarchal bondage. With help from German feminists they are developing the energy and determination to challenge male rule and change the conditions of their lives. And they’ll inspire their sisters back home.

The situation with the Ukrainian refugees is much different. The cultures are similar, so there’s less clash. The war hasn’t been going on for long, so there are few of them and problems have not yet developed. They are being celebrated as brave heroes standing up to an aggressive Russia intent on dominating Europe. Anti-Russian feelings have been strong in Germany for two centuries, so this propaganda finds ready acceptance. During the Cold War the German government beamed out the constant danger of Russian attack in order to justify the presence of US troops and nuclear weapons on their soil. Now they condemn Putin as the new Hitler. Atrocity stories of Russian troops get enormous coverage, those of Ukrainian troops against separatists in Donbass are ignored. Every small Ukrainian victory is cheered with blood-thirsty enthusiasm. Welcoming these refugees is part of the strategy for maintaining NATO dominance.

But, of course, it is important to take them in, to shelter them from this latest capitalist butchery. Like the Arabs, most of them are fine people, and many will stay and contribute to the society in their new home.

Germany still has anti-foreign, anti-Semitic, right-wing extremists, but since World War Two the West German government has systematically pushed them out of public life. Unfortunately that wasn’t true in East Germany. There the Stalinist regime ignored the problem, as did Stalinist governments in the eastern European countries. They didn’t want to risk provoking uprisings against their dictatorships. In the former East Germany, which is much smaller than the West, right-wing extremists are a small minority, but a hateful, well-organized, and sometimes violent one. In eastern Europe they are much stronger, sometimes the most powerful political force.

The establishment press in the USA, Britain, and France jump at every opportunity to exaggerate right-wing incidents in Germany in order to divert attention from problems in their own country. The right wing in the USA is much more powerful and dangerous than that in Germany. That’s why our resistance to it is so important.


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William T. Hathaway is an emeritus Fulbright professor of American studies at universities in Germany. His new novel, Lila, the Revolutionary, is a fable for adults about an eight-year-old girl who sparks a world revolution for social justice. Read other articles by William.